Experience Meter

A meter that shows the current experience of a character, usually showing progress between two levels. This is obviously most common in games where experience is an important factor. However, it's not very common in an RPG, but is mostly found in MMORPGs. The color of this meter can be anything not used by the same game's Life Meter, Mana Meter or other main meters, and can vary in game depending on some factors. If the Level Cap is reached, the bar might disappear since it no longer serves any purpose.

Sub-Trope of Experience Points, as that's what's measured by the meter and Status Line (a display element showing the current disposition of the player, e.g. score, health, ammo, etc.

Unlike the two other meters, it's rather uncommon that something might subtract experience rather than adding to it - except death. Remember: in MMORPGs, as opposed to Real Life, death equals stupidity instead of the other way around.

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Examples

Action Games

• Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle use XP bars for weapons: When the bar is full, weapon gains a level and more synthesis points.
• Diablo II has one underneath the player's HP vial.
• NieR: Automata has a System Chip that displays your XP values and meter. The meter itself quickly becomes less useful as a source of information because it seems to display your total current XP and XP required to level, instead of how many percent you are close to gaining a level. You're free to unequip the chip to free up OS space if you really need it.
• Some of the Star Ocean games have a meter that also tells the points until the next level.

First-Person Shooter

• Prominently displayed at the bottom of all games in the Borderlands FPS trilogy, due to the RPG mechanics involved in the game. Hitting the Level Cap simply leaves you with a blank experience bar (since there's no more need to fill it, obviously).
• In the multiplayer of Call of Duty starting from Modern Warfare, your HUD includes an orange bar at the bottom of the screen that tracks how much experience you need to rank up. Like many, many other things these games do, this has been copied in other shooters, such as Rainbow Six: Vegas.

Idle Game

• Anti-Idle: The Game has several experience bars for different game features, though the most important is the one for your overall level that fills up in the top-right corner and even has makes the level number change color when you're close to increasing it.

MMORPG

• AdventureQuest Worlds has two separate Experience Meters. The first, in green, fills up as you gain Class Points, and when the meter is full, your class ranks up. As you rank up in a given class, you gain more skills, and the highest rank you can have in a class is 10. The other meter, in purple, is your basic leveling meter, and levels up your overall character when it's full. Ranking up classes is comparatively easier than leveling up your character, especially as you get into the higher levels.
• World of Warcraft has a purple meter that turns blue when the character has been resting, which indicates double experience until a certain limit is reached (up to 1½ levels worth of experience, which requires weeks of real-time resting). The bar also has a light blue meter showing how much rested experience you can gain. This only affects experience for killing monsters though and neither affects nor is consumed by most other means of experience gains like completing quests.
  • Originally, Hunter pets also had one, but it's only shown in their details and not quite as important, as they only need a fraction of their masters experience and never fall below 5 levels lower than him. Obviously, they can't outlevel him either. In patch 4.1.0, Hunter pet levels were changed and tied to their master's level.
  • Players can also display their reputation for one faction underneath it (the option is called "show reputation as experience bar), colored according to the reputation level system (going from deep red for hostile to green from friendly onwards).
• City of Heroes has an experience bar measured in "bips" or "bubbles". As of a recent patch, it follows something similar to the World of Warcraft example above, granting bonus XP for time not played. Dying also results in experience "debt", where subsequent XP gains are reduced to half, the other half paying off the debt. With the myriad ways to either avoid or reduce debt, however, the experienced player is usually able to avoid it entirely.
  • Patrol XP is built up while the character is logged off and works by adding a 1.5 modifier to XP gained from defeating enemies only, it doesn't apply to mission completion bonuses. Also, if you die while you have patrol XP built up it will automatically be used to pay off your XP debt.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online has a "rank" system for XP. As you fill up your XP bars, you gain Action Points that can be used to gain Enhancements for your class. When you gain five ranks, you're ready to reach the next level.
• Elsword keeps its meter in the lower left corner of the window. You can hover your mouse over it to get an exact percentage.

MOBA

• The HUD in League of Legends shows how much experience is needed to level up. Experience is gained from contributing to champion kills and being around enemy minions when they die (killing them gives no bonus XP).

Platformer

• Similar to the Dark Cloud example above, all but one weapon in Cave Story has its own experience meter that fills when the player collects "Experience Shards" from defeated enemies, and empties when the player is damaged. All weapons start at Level 1 and cap at Level 3 (plus a full experience bar). Weapons can level down if their experience bar is emptied, but will level up again if more experience is collected.
• Iji has a Nano meter at the lower-right corner of the screen that increases as you gather more Nano and resets once you've gained a level. It stays maxed out when you've hit the cap for the current sector.
• The EXP bar in La-Mulana is an interesting example, given that the game is a platformer with no RPG elements. Killing enemies fills up the meter, which, when filled, just restores your health.
  • This is pulled, like many other things in La-Mulana, from Maze Of Galious.
• In the later Ratchet & Clank games weapons have their own experience bars that fill the more you use the weapon. When the bar is full, the weapon levels up with much fanfare.
• Adventure Story: At the top of the screen when in a level, filling out from left to right, in yellow.

Role-Playing Games

• Player-controlled units in Fire Emblem have an EXP bar that pops up and fills when they gain experience during a battle. It maxes out when the unit reaches Level 20 (or, for certain units in certain games, level 30 or 40).
• As Kingdom of Loathing gives XP out in all three of its stats, each of them can have a bar for this, as well as your main level XP bar (which is based on your 'main' stat).
• Rare RPG example: Mario & Luigi games from Bowser's Inside Story, Dream Team and later have a flagpole for each character on the end-of-battle screen. The flags raise in proportion to the amount of EXP gained, and when they hit the top of the flagpole, a light flashes, signaling a Level Up.
• Parameters: The green bar at the top of the screen, which fills from left to right, with Experience Points written on it in [Current Experience] / [Experience to Next Level].
• In Phantom Brave, a character's level is displayed right on the meter.
• Pokémon has one for each Pokémon, in the fighting screen below the HP bar, with it being introduced in the Gen II games. In the first generation, the only indicator of how many experience points your Pokémon needed was in their status screen.
• Rakenzarn Tales added this in Version 2, located below the HP and RP meters in the menu.
• The Sonny games do this as well, showing XP graphically as well as numerically (as a percentage), with the meter gray unless a character levels up, at which point it will either turn yellow or blue depending on which Sonny you're playing.
• Recettear: You have a bar that tracks your Merchant Level EXP when in your shop, while a circular gauge tracks your Adventurer's EXP when they're fighting in the dungeons.
• Yandere Simulator:
  • When selecting what skills to increase in class, you are shown how close you are to the next level of each skill, with a bar that fills from left to right, empty being Level 0, and full being Level 5.
  • The Yanvania minigame has a green experience meter on the bottom of the screen that fills when you defeat enemies.

Turn-Based Strategy

• Battle for Wesnoth has a meter for every unit next to its Life Meter. The color of the meter is normally blue, white when the unit is about to level up and purple if the unit has reached its final advancement. It can still level, but instead of evolving into a different unit, doing so only gives the unit some extra health and heals it completely, which happens with every level up.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Minecraft has a EXP meter below the Health Bar. Rather than making you stronger, experience levels are used to enchant tools and armor.

Other

• flOw: The body of the creature you play as, functions as one. You eat things, you fill up the circles in your body, and once they're all filled, you get bigger, and all the circles are empty again.

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