Kyle Labriola

Tales of Phantasia has a character who leaves the party early on and is something like 30 levels behind by the time he rejoins. The next time you rest at an inn with him in the party you get a cutscene where he's training at night because he doesn't want to hold the party back, and he gains like 10-15 levels overnight.

I thought it was very convenient in Baldur’s Gate 3 that the party members pretty much gain experience and level up in unison. I can’t think of any reason why it’d be interesting to have certain party members “falling behind” the rest.

So this isn't an "interesting" answer so much as a practical one and it's very tangential but: staggering level-ups in some way for a group-game like that does mean that you get one person at a time leveling up, which means a) you're not making build decisions for like...a bunch of characters at once, just like one at a time, which is good for games that are heavy on build decisions and b) you get more of that good numbers-go-up feedback because it's not all subsumed into one go.

I agree for like 95%+ of cases, yeah.

I can imagine if there's good ludonarrative tie in, not sharing exp could work. Like imagine an RPG where it really delivers a feeling of tension about adventurers risking life and limb, and so both tension and promise surrounds newbie party members.

I think it can also feel better if it doesnt just result in you doing repetitive things that you wouldnt otherwise want to do. Perhaps you have multiple parties, and when one rests you take control of another one and go to a different, easier area- so like you do some adventuring with a veteran squad, and then with a less experienced squad. So you're doing different stuff and its not just "ugh, catchup". At some point perhaps the latter catches up, or there's some ability to mix the two which may work out in certain ways(like support/caster characters being more safe to put in a higher level party).

I feel like exp gaps are most meaningful in war games because victory isn't a given. There's a lot of tension about committing a highly experienced unit to a battle going poorly- it could be the thing that turns things around, or it could be a horrendous waste. RPGs generally structurally dont allow for the same types of dynamics because of other, greater competiting design goals in RPGs, understandably.

I think lack of EXP share could also be fine if the game is just so good at A)putting varied things in front of you, so "i gotta go to do this easier stuff" isnt a drag but is instead just fun variety you'd be doing anyway and B) leveling is super rewarding, like getting really excited about new points to put into dazzling new talents or skills or whatever.

That's unfortunate about Eiyuden- if i recall, catching up in Suikoden games was always really easy, because exp gain was very rubber banded.

I see we're getting into the Kylelab blogs that are inspired by previous cohost posts, for the true kyle labriola fans out there /lh
Honestly though, exp shares feel like a pretty necessary QoL feature. There's also ways to avoid "the grind" when it comes to character progression that doesn't need to involve exp. As long as you still have to allocate points to a skill tree, an exp share is really just saving you time.
I really like the idea of giving it a gimmick, though I think a lot of people might find that annoying.
I would prefer it being an option (the kind most people enable but some people don't) because I want the option to allocate exp how I want when I want to.

Honestly, though, in Bravely Default/Second I was pretty okay turning off encounters most of the time and doubling them when I wanted to grind real quick. Every day we stray further from those games which just did random encounters so well.
While I'm thinking about it, there was also that apple arcade game that tied skipping random encounters with adding to the exp multiplier, and I think systems like that can work in place of a basic exp share, because then it feels like you're engaging with the system instead of how some people see exp shares as kind of a crutch.

Not directly related, but I think you’d really dig Patrick Holleman’s “Reversing the Design” essays. Here is one about XP!

Hearing about Eiyuden and I'm curious, do they not do the thing that Suikoden does? Where EXP gains are variable and scale to help characters rapidly catch up? Because in Suikoden level just isn't a real issue in fielding characters since they'll catch up to a usable level quickly.

Though more on topic, it really depends on the game but I agree that most games would be improved with some form of just giving the people on the bench EXP. If the EXP system isn't designed to let characters rapidly catch up then them falling behind can just put you off even more from using them, not to mention why would you possibly have your main team get less overall experience if they won't get anything while on the bench.

Dungeon Crawlers are some of the main games I think of where I'm fine without it though, since in those games the "bench" is your other party members being back at the inn and generally those fill the role of being Capital 'B' backups. Though even then it's not too weird to see games of that genre have some kind of EXP share or spillover going on for them even if you have to put some work into it. Strangers of Sword City Revisited is one I know that has that going on, and you could even build someone in a passive class that just sits at the base all day playing games helping out which can include increasing the EXP that characters at the base earn.

Coming back to this post because I remembered about the Bonus EXP system in Fire Emblem Path if Radiance and Radiant Dawn. In these games (and all linear FE games which don't have an explorable map) the problem of a good unit joining too late to be used is very legitimate, so the way these two games compensate for that is rewarding the player with exp when they engage with extra map mechanics (typically ones that tie into the gimmick of the level, e.g. avoiding being detected by the enemy on a stealth map) but can also just be for playing well by giving it as a reward for clearing the chapter within X amount of turns. This bonus EXP can then be given out between chapters to units which are lagging behind. The game also gives you some just for clearing the chapters at all, which is good so some players can still use the mechanic.