Ainadak said:@Fluffy
I actually agree with your argument, but not your conclusion. It is true that a level is not inherently memorable. Nobody really cares that they got 1 higher number at some point in time. It is the associated benefits that make the thing worthwhile. If your character had "dinged" when you reached level 12.5, but absolutely nothing else happened until you actually reached level 13, then the 12.5 ding would be utterly meaningless, while the 13 ding would be memorable.
However, that does not negate the value of a leveling system. Using a leveling system provides a rigid structure around which the goals we seek can be arranged. Progression based games require a structure to organize the work and rewards. We need something restricting us in order to provide a sense of progression and to that end, the leveling paradigm fits the bill. It provides clear (albeit arbitrary) distinctions between what you can and cannot do at a given point in time, allowing the players to understand their current status on the progression curve and how to improve their character. There are probably many other great (better?) ways to organize work and rewards, but I would say if it aint broke, don't fix it.
I agree that saying the fork which let you eat the good food is not what makes it memorable, despite being necessary. However, I'll try to twist your analogy to make my point. Let's say you ate a shrimp scampi dish that had onions and parsley that really balanced each other out and tasted amazing. You could describe it as "great shrimp scampi" and be entirely right, but in reality, it was the onions and parsley that made it shine. Saying that "leveling" was great is still entirely right, even if it is the underlying "ingredients" that made it shine.
I believe there are better ways to organize work and reward,Ainadak(Like a mastery system)
When I look at the first tenet mentioned -an awareness that content is king- I realize that a level system works against spending meaningful time in each area without running through as quickly as possible
Levels cause a suffocating attachement subject to personal whims, that transcends the importance of the actual game content
That is one of the reasons why I am convinced that there is need for an alternative way to organize work and reward
and why I think it actually does need fixing.
I'm going to quote a part of the perception sytem because I think it also applies to levels in a way
*we want players to care about the world they are in, and why things are the way they are. When you think of MMOs, when is the last time you discovered the meaning, or the history, or the secrets of a person, place or event without being told by a text box?
What if we’ve conceived of a way to bring players back to exploring because they are compelled by what they see in front of them - not because a blinking light tells them to go there? *
Levels are just like that,compelling the player by blinking lights sort to speak,rather than being compelled by what they see in front of them.
That is why in so many games outleveled content no longer matters to players.
Levels are destructive when you consider that content should be king.
*Pantheon will redefine how the game world becomes known, and how players will work together to progress.*
I'm curious for how this would affect players undertanding their current status on the progression curve;
With this approach,will we look differently at how to progress our character?
You have some very interesting views Ainadak,often leading to more questions it seems
I also agree there is need for a rigid structure,I just believe levels are not the right pick to fit their vision
Page 5 of the thread - I have little or nothing new to add but I'll toss my opinion in anyway. On the overall topic of leveling.
While I agree that experience should be important for gaining levels, and there *is* that joy to "ding" especially in a game with very slow leveling, it would be nice if progression required things other than levels.
Many of us have played EQ2 though most would say that EQ was a better game. EQ2 had a system I still miss to this day - you started as a basic class, at level 10 you had to do a quest to choose your subclass, and at level 20 you had to do another quest to choose your specialization within that subclass. In the early days of Rift you had to do quests to unlock souls - the name Rift gives to classes.
I'm not citing either approach as a model to follow - Rift in particular the quest was far too trivial. But they are examples of how you can provide things to do to other than grinding experience to progress through the game. Ideally things related to either your own progression towards mastery in your chosen field - a quest line for warriors, for example, tied in with learning how to be a better tank, or to the lore of the game - a challenge to kill a significant local or racial enemy before you can be trained further.
Consider it a speedbump as some have said - you actually have to do something new to keep going. Or consider it an incentive to replay the game with an "alt" if it is different for each class/subclass/race etc.
Note that the same can apply to crafting. LOTRO used to (we old schoolers sure overuse the phrase used to don't we) have quests you needed to do to advance in crafting. Some were craft-related and required no adventure levels - repair a certain bridge. Some required killing (tailors had to kill poor Trampletusk near Esteldin). Again, these can be done better but the *idea* of something other than grinding as a speedbump or gate to higher levels strikes me as a very good thing for this type of game.
Yes,leveling is what MMOs are all about nowadays Doford: They lack body/depth
So we are at the point levels,maximum damage and endgame are what MMOs are all about
That makes it hard to change(and a jump to make for developers);it is like telling a room full of smokers that it is bad for their health and that there are other options to improve their health.
Meanwhile,it is like the players keep buying new packs of cigarettes (or keep hopping MMOs with bland/dull content in the hope that the fun is at endgame)
Infact the level system also makes the whole experience much like a cigarette burning up-one direction(how we burn through content), tunnel-style (with only endgame on our minds)
While the rest of the content in-between is thrown away like the burned-up residue from the used cigarette.
Sure you can roll alts,yet the worlds remain static and unchanging and it is like you burn up the cigarette from different angles.
One more quote to think about from the powerful spells and abilities section on the Pantheon site
*In Pantheon, many of the more rare and exotic spells and abilities are found not at the local trainer but from a wise sage hiding in the depths of a dungeon or at the top of a remote tower. *
We need all progression systems to be intertwined with the content like this , reason to explore and to care about the content. Another reason I believe mastery system with trainers would be a better progression system for Pantheon
Doford said:@Fluffy
I found if there's plenty of content i've out leveled I create an alt & visit those places.
I would love to play a mmog without levels. It's a bit risk for developers though as leveling is what mmos are currently all about.
A level-less game is one of those things that sounds great in theory, but terrible in practice. I hate to bring up EQ Next, but they too thought that a game with no levels would be the next generation of MMO's. Turns out it's not actually very fun at all. People need to see tangible progress. Vertical progression is key to being able to, at the end of a gaming session, look back and feel like you accomplished something that day. If you play for 8 hours, for example, and don't really see any evidence that you're any better off than when you started playing, your brain will pretty quickly decide that it's a waste of time to play the game at all. The main point of playing games is to have fun and advancing is just plain fun. It's really really difficult to make a game fun without vertical progression.
The better solution is not to remove levels completely, but to make each level take long enough that you have time to explore the content of that level.
Bazgrim said:Doford said:@Fluffy
I found if there's plenty of content i've out leveled I create an alt & visit those places.
I would love to play a mmog without levels. It's a bit risk for developers though as leveling is what mmos are currently all about.
A level-less game is one of those things that sounds great in theory, but terrible in practice. I hate to bring up EQ Next, but they too thought that a game with no levels would be the next generation of MMO's. Turns out it's not actually very fun at all. People need to see tangible progress. Vertical progression is key to being able to, at the end of a gaming session, look back and feel like you accomplished something that day. If you play for 8 hours, for example, and don't really see any evidence that you're any better off than when you started playing, your brain will pretty quickly decide that it's a waste of time to play the game at all. The main point of playing games is to have fun and advancing is just plain fun. It's really really difficult to make a game fun without vertical progression.
The better solution is not to remove levels completely, but to make each level take long enough that you have time to explore the content of that level.
While it technically had levels, Asheron's Call is an example of how a level-less game can work. Basically there was levels but they didn't really mean anything. As your character gained experience, you used the experience points gained to improve various skills, raise your stats, and unlock new skills. So someone being level 50 vs level 100 does tell you a little bit about the reletaive power level of each character, but it is entirely possible that the level 50 could have some select skills or stats that are actually higher than the level 100 depending on how they build their character.
Idk but i got the impression EQ Next failed because they didn't get the technology needed to make the world fun. I belief the obstacle of level will at some point be replaced with other kinds of obstacles that are based on the world you're in, the factions, the npcs, the lore and the environment.
Say Bazgrim,have you ever played Everquest next? Because you mention it turned out that it is not very fun at all.
As far as I know the project never saw the light of day.
Also in horizontal gameplay with no level,you can see progress in how good your character is based on accomplishments
Spending meaningful time in each area ,bringing the focus back to exploring,players compelled by what they see in front of them.
The example of the sage you have to find on top of a remote tower,it would involve challenge,maybe you can't reach the trainer on your own.
So even without vertical progression ,at the end of your game session you can have a satisfying sense of accomplishment.
Not difficult at all to make the game fun without vertical progression.
Infact I believe horizontal progression will help keeping areas relevant;at each place you can spend meaningful time/find meaningful content.
While with vertical zone progression,zones become irrelevant as soon as you outlevel them.
Horizontal progression will keep content king.As it is more about the journey than the set path (levels tied to zones you get with vertical progression)
Fluffy said:Say Bazgrim,have you ever played Everquest next? Because you mention it turned out that it is not very fun at all.
As far as I know the project never saw the light of day.
Also in horizontal gameplay with no level,you can see progress in how good your character is based on accomplishments
Spending meaningful time in each area ,bringing the focus back to exploring,players compelled by what they see in front of them.
The example of the sage you have to find on top of a remote tower,it would involve challenge,maybe you can't reach the trainer on your own.
So even without vertical progression ,at the end of your game session you can have a satisfying sense of accomplishment.
Not difficult at all to make the game fun without vertical progression.
Infact I believe horizontal progression will help keeping areas relevant;at each place you can spend meaningful time/find meaningful content.
While with vertical zone progression,zones become irrelevant as soon as you outlevel them.
Horizontal progression will keep content king.As it is more about the journey than the set path (levels tied to zones you get with vertical progression)
Actually, The CEO of Daybreak said it was not fun in their cancellation announcement.
@snrub Yeah I didn't say it was impossible per se for a game to be fun without vertical progression, but it's definitely not easy. I never played Asheron's Call, but I'm familiar with it. I'd argue that even just watching a number go up (gaining levels) is satisfying even if they don't really mean much. It's kinda like leveling up Fishing. Realistically, there's hardly any difference between:
You have gotten better at Fishing! (156)
and
You have gotten better at Fishing (157)
Yet, there's still something that triggers in your brain that makes you feel good about it.
@Doford yeah there were definitely a lot of reasons why EQNext failed. Basically, they bit off way more than they could chew. Ambition is good, but they got ahead of themselves and forgot to build a foundation.
@Fluffy I of course never played it personally because it never got off the ground. I'm just going off reports I've read from devs that worked on the game but have since left and are talking about what went wrong. Who knows how accurate the reports are, but one is that by the time they had a working prototype, the internal testers decided that it was not fun and because they developed things out of order, it would take too much money to go back and fix the problems to make it fun. Makes you glad for Brad's "ground up" design philosophy. As I said, there were a lot of reasons why EQN failed. It was pretty much doomed from the start from a design and business perspective. It's pretty clear they had many bigger problems than just a lack of vertical progression. But nevertheless, a level-less design is very risky.
That's why I was hesitant to bring up EQN cause it's kinda a loaded subject. It was just an example haha. Because of course there's a lot more to it than just that
Bazgrim said:The better solution is not to remove levels completely, but to make each level take long enough that you have time to explore the content of that level.
I have to agree with this. The longer a level takes to get, the less I worry about it. The longer it takes, the more I explore the world and change places I want to xp in and/or get loot from. The longet it takes the more time I spend just goofing around, making friends and helping others out. This way it takes me a long time to ever finish with a Zone.
And talking about finishing a zone, I fail to see how horizontal progression is different than level progression. Once you are finished with your horizontal progression in a zone, you are just as finished with that zone as if you out leveled it.
Or am I misunderstanding everything..
-sorte.
I was thinking about the leveling curve in MMO's recently, and one thing that I started thinking about that I really didn't have a good answer for is why at least in every MMO I've personally played later levels always take significantly longer than early levels. Even with as slow as leveling was in vanilla EQ, level 1 took maybe 10-15 minutes, and even at level 10 it really only took an hour or two per level provided you were focusing. Then by the 50's levels could take weeks or longer even playing with a good amount of efficiency. I wonder what it would be like it the leveling curve was evened out a bit so that each level took approximately the same amount of time. Basically this would mean the early levels would take much longer and the later levels would be a bit faster. One nice thing about doing something like this is it would actually give people time to consume the low level content before they outleveled it, and prevent the low level game from dying out so quickly.
Of course, if a game were to do something like this, they'd have to make the low level game much more interesting. Caster classes in EQ started with two or three spells and it would be quite boring to be limited to such a small array of skills for too long.
Beefcake said:CEO of Daybreak said it was not fun in their cancellation announcement.
Well it is pretty much like how a new home owner might not like the way the previous owner did the bathroom.
I tried daybreaker games but they already bore me after 10 minutes.
So what if the CEO of daybreaker said it was no fun.If daybreaker had ever released a game themselves that is actually fun ,it might be worth to give any value/weight to that statement.
The only kind of fun daybreak probably knows is the thought of gaining profits.
Bazgrim said:You have gotten better at Fishing! (156)
and
You have gotten better at Fishing (157)
Yet, there's still something that triggers in your brain that makes you feel good about it.
That would be the earlier mentioned mastery system,instead of a level system for progression.
going from novice to expert can also be seen as a sort of level gain.But it takes way longer
And it is no shame to bring up Everquest next at all,I think it might have been great if it was ever released.
Fluffy said:
Durp said:The event was memorable and level and therefore the ding was what made it so.
Following that logic:
The dish in that restaurant was so memorable,therefor the fork I ate it with made it so
It is the good food that made it memorable,not the fork you eat it with
(Just like it is the game content that makes things memorable,not the level system)
I think you read that wrong or perhaps I should have included a comma or something.... let me rephrase
The event was memorable (getting my last name) ..... and level (and therefore the ding) was what made it so.
It wasn't anything else. I looked forward to dinging 20 from when I was 15. If the level had been 30, it would have been level 30 that was memorable.
In your analogy, the fork had nothing to do with the food as potentially, you could have eaten the food with your hands. Also, the food could have been awful and that's why it was memorable. Or the dish was memorable because someone threw it in your face and there was a food fight.
Point being, that each of your examples are not necessarily dependent on each other. In mine they certainly were. And together, they made the event, ding, level, whatever, memorable.
I don't really like to repeat the content of a previous post, but in this case I guess I did.
So to reiterate the point of my orginal post:
To me it would be a major asset if certain defining things happened to your character at (a) certain levels(s).
There was no added value to hell levels , all it did was funnel people that knew the exp value of zones into specific locations to max out zem.
Those that think hell levels where "hard" either where truely playing casual , did not know about zem or where not truely trying to grind through the level.
The ability to get through hell levels in original eq was nothing more then devoting a entire day to solid exp grinding that specific level in a specific area.
Perfect examples levels 30 , 35 and 40 = MM , 45 = COM / SolB all of these hell levels where a bug and are highly over hyped.
Durp ,sorry if I would misunderstand parts,I really try to understand you.
I agree that in my analogy the fork(levels) has nothing to do with the food (content).The whole point is that the 2 do not have to relate at all.
And yes ,you could eat the food with other things like hands (have other progression systems ,like the mastery system)
If the food is good, it is memorable,no matter with what you eat it.
Durp said:I looked forward to dinging 20 from when I was 15. If the level had been 30, it would have been level 30 that was memorable.
I'll try to explain it with your new example
Is like saying-I looked forward to become 20 years old when I was 15,if the age i looked forward to was 30,that was memorable instead-
Thing is,the age by itself inherently is not memorable ;it lacks the memories that made it special.Like a wedding day for example
So to return to the first analogy ;content is the food to make it memorable
Durp said:So to reiterate the point of my orginal post:
To me it would be a major asset if certain defining things happened to your character at (a) certain levels(s).
Fluffy said:Beefcake said:CEO of Daybreak said it was not fun in their cancellation announcement.
Well it is pretty much like how a new home owner might not like the way the previous owner did the bathroom.
I tried daybreaker games but they already bore me after 10 minutes.
So what if the CEO of daybreaker said it was no fun.If daybreaker had ever released a game themselves that is actually fun ,it might be worth to give any value/weight to that statement.
The only kind of fun daybreak probably knows is the thought of gaining profits.Bazgrim said:You have gotten better at Fishing! (156)
and
You have gotten better at Fishing (157)
Yet, there's still something that triggers in your brain that makes you feel good about it.
That would be the earlier mentioned mastery system,instead of a level system for progression.
going from novice to expert can also be seen as a sort of level gain.But it takes way longer
And it is no shame to bring up Everquest next at all,I think it might have been great if it was ever released.
I find it difficult to believe that the CEO of Daybreak was the only person in the company to determine that the game wasnt fun and drop the axe. Far more likely the team as a whole decided that the plan just wasnt panning out, and wouldnt without a large and costly revamp or whole scale restart.
And as others have pointed out, no levels sounds interesting in theory but in practice presents a host of other issues. Not the least of which being balancing progressions thru content. Levels are used as much to indicate what content is designed for what stages of progression as they are for satisfying a player's itch to reach for the carrot. How do you let a player who has mastered 3 of 25 disciplines know he is wholly outmatched by the npc designed to be defeated by one of the remaining 22 disciplines? Or do you propose that every player must cap all thier disciplines to be competitive against the NPC discipline level X? The point being, either you break the ability to indicate comparative power, or you just rename the concept of levels by another mechanism that is itself essentially still levels.
One last thought; technology rarely is a deciding factor in degree of fun. Some of the best games have looked like crap and ise pretty rudimentary code. They just have good design. Its like suggesting that people need a new kind of cardboard to create a better board game.
Daybreak probably drops any costy project.Why risk anything by investing anything in a new project when they have gained all these old cashcow games they hold publish rights of?
Daybreak only wants to break your wallet.
Have there been examples of MMOs in practice without levels so you can present us with a list of the issues they bring?
What kind of balance do you think is needed when we have progression through content?
Knowing that 'environment' means a lot more than just fighting NPC and
world atmosphere providing the means for players to contend with the world itself(hot,cold,enchanted,darkness,silence,poison,maisma,tornados)
Engaging the world is part of progression ,tactics are needed for progression through content.
All content is designed for progression,there are no different stages,just different challenges according to the zone an adventure takes you.(nothing wrong with NPCs that are too powerful for you to handle alone)
Each zone will challenge players and they need to plan which disciplines to use carefully. You'd have to prepare for your journey (and also to be competitive against certain NPC disciplines
No levels for players means no levels for NPC either.Later on ,Npcs might afflict you more with wicked ailments and the NPCs get more exotic abilities they use against you ,which challenge you to rethink the approach you are about to go for.
I think a mastery system is not simply a rename of a level concept.
Unlike the vertical level system,
the horizontal mastery system allows your character to unfold based on your engagement with the world and its inhabitants.
Its like starting out as a commis knowing very little about recipes,while a chef has the knowledge and the skill to get creative ,knowledge is power.
Technology is rarely a deciding factor in degree of fun. For example, I enjoyed interacting with people before the mayority became screen zombies with their smartphones.
Also I think with a mastery system,eg the power of a fireball could be more noticeable going from novice-expert.So it gives a more realistic sense of character development,power gain and prestige.There might be different trainers,relics,sites in the world hidden away that can add a unique twist to your fireball cast.
I dont want to be progressed thru content. I dont want to be led to the next "appropriate" region and be fed a series of quests that were specifically designed to lead me down a particular path. I want a living world in which i choose my path.
With that in mind there needs to be some manner by which i can judge the degree of risk I'm willing to accept as i move about. Totally ambushing players because they are blind to the level of danger is not fun. Giving them something g to gauge the danger on is necessary or its just demoralizing.
Remove levels. Whats the gauge?
Beefcake said:Pantheon has levels and horizontal progression. Problem solved.
the problem is that levels are part of the vertical climb that outdates content,leads players to the next "appropriate region to be fed a series of quests that were specifically designed
to lead you down a particular path
while they try to make content king here
Which means a living world in which you can choose your path.
So levels with a horizontal progression is like mixing oil and water.
A mastery system where the player grows based on their interaction with the world blends in like 2 drops of water with the horizontal progression
Do you instead want a world in which you can forever be satisfied and gain horizontal progression without ever needing to move to other regions?
I dont want to be led around. But even less do i want a world that i can successfully navigate every inch of because I'm essentially the same level as all the other inhabitants.
You keep suggesting that horizontal progression is different than having levels. Its not. Its just a different manifestation of them. And if mastery accrues player powern there has to be stages at which content is no longer valuable to them. To do anything else would suggest that all content has a natrow range of diffculty, and at some point accruing power would make that content trivial to engage with.
You have to act and travel to grow
tenet -Apathy or lack of action should not be rewarded-
The atmosphere/climate system make it so that you can not navigate every inch of the world successfully unprepared.
You grow with the journey, you have to go-get your ability unlockments: they do not come to your doorstep.
The Dynamic NPC encounter groups can see to it that content remains valuable,keeps content engaging and prevents it from going trivial
Quote
-The world is not static and unchanging – every day is not ‘groundhog’ day. Events occur that can completely change the population of a zone or the population of a group of NPCs within a zone (and the rarer the event, the rarer the rewards -- many exotic items can only be obtained when one of these zone events occur). An example: after you kill some key mobs guarding a hill giant camp, this triggers a zone event that loads up an invading force of Storm Giants who then proceed to attack the Hill Giant camp.-