This can have the effect of bleaching the gameplay of unique storytelling. If all quests are nothing more than a means to an end, then there is no point to paying any attention to the particulars of the quest. It's all too easy to simply collect quests, fulfill their requirements, and reap the resulting experience without paying heed to what the quest givers have to tell you. Therefore, there is no storytelling character development, and all players are just the same.

So, it's easy enough to point out problems, harder to solve them. If we want to do away with the experience system, just as a thought experiment, then what should replace it?

I think of games like the Skate series, which puts you in charge of a character over whose movement you have complete control. From the very beginning of the game, you have all the tools you need to excel; it's just a matter of putting in the time to get better at applying them. You never buy better skateboards to improve your skater's stats, there's no leveling up to increase the character's abilities to make it easier to complete tricks -- there's just you and the controls. So if you can't do a trick, you just have to keep trying until you've learned it.

Another skill-based game without an experience mechanic is the Legend of Zelda series. True, you can increase your health by finding empty heart containers, but you still have to put in the legwork. Combat is a matter of observing an enemy's pattern, then learning to exploit their weaknesses. Along the way, you find new weapons to use, and that increases the number of available attacks at your disposal, but you have to learn to use them properly. This series is even more relevant to my point, because the Zelda series is story-based; you have a quest, and you journey to fulfill it. It's you, the player, who succeeds as a direct result of your skill, and not based on a simple series of mathematical equations.

It's not my brief here to begin to outline a way to replace the experience system in all games that currently feature it; merely to suggest that doing so will provide more enjoyment for the player by making the actual content of quests more meaningful, and allow more satisfaction for the player by putting the entirety of their success into their own hands. As it stands, the only thing that seeing "Level 80" above a player's name tells me is that they either stuck it out the hard way and worked their way to the top of the tree, or that they took advantage of a leveling guide. Neither of these tells me anything about their particular skill as a player, and that's what I'd most like to see in our games.