Initially I had hopes that the idea of "horizontal progression" would take care of all this. However, it seems that leveling is too important to players- admitedly even me as a progression mark.
To me horizintal progression meant- the same yard trash in the newbie zone can still kill you- you just become more adept at killing them/ faster at nuking them/ armor is better at resisting them as you"progress" or your skills get higher. You never really "level" per se, you just get better at your skills.
If your skills determine your ability to wield certain weapons or wear certain armor, then twinking is also abolished in favor of playerability. So under my assumption of horizontal progression you would never level up per-se, you would just get better at killing lesser skilled monsters. In turn this makes all areas relevant.
You might be able to dodge past all the spiderlings in the newbie starting area on a naked corpse run but if they ganged up on you from accidentally stepping on an egg sac, you could still die unless you took other actions or used other skills. This could tie in with situational awareness since if heading back into town with high skills (higher up in leveled skills) and noticing some heavily armored spiders that the newbies are leaving alone- you would be interested in finding out why those particular spiders are armored- or whatever the devs or living world may have planned. Maybe the encroaching orcs have enslaved some spiders and are shoring up some ramparts not too far away form the city and need to be driven back by higher skilled players- making "old" zones relevant while at the same time leading those higher skilled players towards a clue or dungeon where the armor maker is.
But I think there's something psychologically important to the "ding" to the increase in level and stature that seems lessened by the mere increase in skills or ability. For it if were skills or ability it would be a feeback loop that would have to be re-trained in the player in a new game, perhaps in Pantheon, or perhaps not.
Fulton said:Level cap on dungeons.
Not cap as in prohibited from entering, but if your a lvl 50 going into a lvl 15-25 dungeon, you are scaled down to the dungeon cap.
So you wont have a lvl 50 solo farming gear to sell to everyone else.
Seems if mentoring is a thing with scaling down, this should be relatively easy to accomplish.
No matter what you do, there will always be a max level farming to sell on the market (always). Now I am not sure what is the best design for dealing with various abuses, but one thing I do think is that blanket artificial caps/constraints are never the right answer as it punishes everyone for the possible abuse of a minority and we have all modern MMO design to show for such freedomless systems. I don't see anything nefarious about a person getting higher level and eventually going back to a dungeon to pick up an item they wanted, or missed out on during groups of past. In fact, in EQ it was not uncommon for someone to reach the higher end of a particular target in a dungeon which would allow them to make there way there and kill it solo to obtain an item that may still be of use to them (Lava Pendant from Sol A is a good example of something that eventually a melee could even solo, but was beneficial at a higher level).
@MauvaisOeil
I completely agree that gear is a big problem, especially when power creep starts to come in, but you can’t disregard levels completely, if every expansions there are 5-10 levels added to the game, but the 4th year of the game the max level cap could be lvl 80 or more that already created a huge power gap, and will no bout also contribute to power creep.
The thing about giving out gear slowly and the new expansions not adding easy to get items is a good idea and will keep the “old content” relevant, but it only works out for the first expansion or so, because new expansion will have new dungeons, which are easier than raids, and will give items better or equal to the old content, and in no time the old content will be obsolete again.
One of the best things in world of warcraft are pets and mounts and how you get them.
So many bosses drop mounts or pets and this gets people doing content.
I think every MMO should have raids and dungeons that drop pets and mounts.
People who dont need the content still go back for them and poeple who need the content get their groups.
Watemper said:Sadly, MMO creators have this idea that every expansion needs more levels, and more zones, and having an ever expanding world. This will always result in dead zones and content becoming irrelevant. Probably why MMOs don't last long to begin with. Usually the trend of MMOs is that after the third expansion, from what I've seen, the MMO usually starts to decline in population. Even when this happens they still add more zones and levels spreading the population even thinner.
Well this is not true .
I don't understand why people keep reinventing the wheel when a solution to THIS problem already exists .
The Elder Scrolls on line . They didn't increase the level cap since launch , no place became obsolete , no gear became "overpowered" , no dungeon became trivial . How is that possible ? Simply with level scaling . In TESO no mob and no place has a constant fixed "level" forever . When you fight a difficult mob at level 10 , the very same mob is (almost) as difficult to fight at level 50 . Mobs and loot simply adapt to the level of the player .
When a level 10 player groups with a level 50 player and both fight together the same mob , the level 10 player will get hit for , say , 500 while the level 50 player will get hit for , say , 4 000 . When this mob drops a very good weapon , the same weapon will be very good for the level 10 player and also very good for the level 50 player . Of course the "level 50" weapon can't be used by a "level 10" player . This solves also the grouping problem because any level can group with any other level and a good level 10 player may be more efficient than a bad level 50 player . Last but not least this solves also the expansion problem because all expansions in TESO are exclusively horizontal . A TESO expansion adds a new story , new lore , new places to explore and new quests to do but it has never some "level" . It can be done indifferently both by a level 10 and a level 50 player and the difficulty is approximately equivalent to all levels . Yet a hard level 10 content will still stay hard at level 50 .
Of course a level 50 player is in a way more "powerful" than a level 10 player but the difference is qualitative , not quantitative . A high level player has more skills and more strategies to choose from , he can adapt better to a given fight but the difference is not just "brute" force due to stats .
However , and this is a true problem , it is impossible to design an MMO which would be both horizontal (e.g lore , exploration , story telling matter and are priority) AND vertical (e.g character power , levels , gear and stats matter and are priority) because this is simply a contradiction . A thing cannot be simultaneously A and non A . Pantheon decided to have places and mobs defined by an absolute level (even if it can of course be "revamped" by an expansion) . So the unavoidable corollary is that places and gear will become obsolete with time/expansions and that "high" level players willl always be able to destroy trivial level content in an eyeblink as they like .
Deadshade said:Watemper said:Sadly, MMO creators have this idea that every expansion needs more levels, and more zones, and having an ever expanding world. This will always result in dead zones and content becoming irrelevant. Probably why MMOs don't last long to begin with. Usually the trend of MMOs is that after the third expansion, from what I've seen, the MMO usually starts to decline in population. Even when this happens they still add more zones and levels spreading the population even thinner.
Well this is not true .
I don't understand why people keep reinventing the wheel when a solution to THIS problem already exists .
The Elder Scrolls on line . They didn't increase the level cap since launch , no place became obsolete , no gear became "overpowered" , no dungeon became trivial . How is that possible ? Simply with level scaling . In TESO no mob and no place has a constant fixed "level" forever . When you fight a difficult mob at level 10 , the very same mob is (almost) as difficult to fight at level 50 . Mobs and loot simply adapt to the level of the player .
When a level 10 player groups with a level 50 player and both fight together the same mob , the level 10 player will get hit for , say , 500 while the level 50 player will get hit for , say , 4 000 . When this mob drops a very good weapon , the same weapon will be very good for the level 10 player and also very good for the level 50 player . Of course the "level 50" weapon can't be used by a "level 10" player . This solves also the grouping problem because any level can group with any other level and a good level 10 player may be more efficient than a bad level 50 player . Last but not least this solves also the expansion problem because all expansions in TESO are exclusively horizontal . A TESO expansion adds a new story , new lore , new places to explore and new quests to do but it has never some "level" . It can be done indifferently both by a level 10 and a level 50 player and the difficulty is approximately equivalent to all levels . Yet a hard level 10 content will still stay hard at level 50 .
Of course a level 50 player is in a way more "powerful" than a level 10 player but the difference is qualitative , not quantitative . A high level player has more skills and more strategies to choose from , he can adapt better to a given fight but the difference is not just "brute" force due to stats .
However , and this is a true problem , it is impossible to design an MMO which would be both horizontal (e.g lore , exploration , story telling matter and are priority) AND vertical (e.g character power , levels , gear and stats matter and are priority) because this is simply a contradiction . A thing cannot be simultaneously A and non A . Pantheon decided to have places and mobs defined by an absolute level (even if it can of course be "revamped" by an expansion) . So the unavoidable corollary is that places and gear will become obsolete with time/expansions and that "high" level players willl always be able to destroy trivial level content in an eyeblink as they like .
Eso's system still sucks completely as a rpg. Using it as an example is risky to me, as it's implementation is only based about downgrading gear efficiency everytime the gear cap is increased. Speak about a game you're more powerfull at lvl 10 with rags than at level max with basic gear.