CharChar Odell, hero of the wastes, patrols the lands of Old Russia, in search of glory, loot, and the rare Skarmory. Our hero, opportunistic and cunning, spots a group of enemies standing by an abandoned craft just north of the open Steppes. She readies her pulse rifle and crouches low, trying not to be seen so that she may observe…she does this for 15 minutes and nothing happens. The encounters are forced and obnoxious; the XP reward is low, the loot is rarely even special ammunition, and the enemies have no purpose to their existence. If there were a group of Fallen outside of an aircraft, one would think that they were guarding something valuable inside the aircraft. Perhaps an upgrade to your spaceship, or a weapon encryption, or a document which unlocks a new mission with a greater reward, but the Fallen, a scavenging, ravenous, supply hungry force are patrolling a wasteland for no reason and it destroys the immersion I quickly become aware that I am playing a video game, no matter how beautiful the visuals are. My solution, as I try to be a troll with a cause, would be patrols with a purpose. A player should be able to stalk a large patrol to a large loot reward. In addition, larger amounts of enemies in one encounter should yield increasingly larger rewards. For example: one Drell (D) is worth (Y)experience points (xp). If another Drell were with him, the second Drell would be worth ((Y)1.05)xp and would increase the xp value of the first Drell to ((Y)1.05)xp, or in non-nerd-speak, with 2 Drell, the value of each Drell increases by 10%. With a group of 20 enemies, each enemy would be worth 2 times, 200%, or ((Y)2.00) xp. In addition to this, the number of experience gained would increase by 10% for each additional Guardian who was involved with an encounter. Let’s use a complex ambush as an example to show how the XP is distributed W = value of XP awarded to a player for taking part in killing a Wizard K = value of XP awarded to a player for taking part in killing a Knight D = value of XP awarded to a player for taking part in killing a Drell N = number of enemies above 1 in an encounter (number of players minus 1) P = number players above 1 who took part in an encounter (number of enemies minus 1) [xp] = Experience Points CharChar Odell, Bobby Blackfoot, and SniperXX69KushLove are through the Steppes and are ambushed by 2 knights, 1 wizard, and 7 Drell. Assuming all enemies are slain, the reward is calculated as follows: (1+0.05P)*((2K+1W+7D)(1+0.05N)) = [xp] awarded to each player This new [xp] system would remedy the bother of killing so many enemies for no reason as well as further encourage team tactics.