f13.net

If anyone wants to join the debate, it's ongoing at my blog -- lengthy article. Start with Part 1, of course, but save comments till after part 2. :)

http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 is part 1, there's a link at the bottom to part II.

Yes, they do. So does character development. I'd like my character to be perfect from the start, thank you. Now write me a game, not a slow character builder. Commented to that effect. :)

If you need to ask, you know the answer.

I need some sort of character development. Its fun for me. If its fun. I like putting skillpoints in skills, I like to test out new abilites, I like to gradually get new options once I used the old options for some while. I like to get into my character as the character grows. I like having fun while I do it.

I don't like getting SpellA_03 exactly 5600 killed foozles after SpellA_07, which does exactly the same, but better.

Make leveling fun, and I don't mind it. Let it happen gradually while playing the game and it is a added bonus once in a while. Make it a goal by itself and I get bored.

But there are different crowds, you can't please everybody. Games without character development suck. They are boring and pointless. Righ and I would have each others perfect game.

There's a lot to say about this, and I'm going to do so without reading the comments on your article, or really the article. By asking the question the way you have in the title of this thread, reading the article would be completely counter productive in answering the question. The important thing is that we come to the same conclusion on our own.

Do levels suck? No.
Does the current implementation of levels suck? Yes.
Are levels used as a self-implemented set of training wheels for which developers to structure games around? Yes.
Are levels a way of shortbussing progress in a game for the average user? Yes.


We're looking at a lowest common denominator thing here. Your average monosyllabic MMOG player can understand numbers. 60 is the highest number you can become and you start out at level 1. Therefore I want to be 60. It's the achiever credo. They don't think beyond that. Your average MMOG player couldn't give a shit about allakhazam or thottbot and probably doesn't know what the absolute best gear for a classe is or what the flavor of the month might be this time. He's looking for fun. And when fun is defined by the developers as what area you are in, what armor/weapons you can use at your current level (and in turn how cool they look), and what number is next to your name upon /examine - that is what they user will think as well. Sure, the people at f13 don't think like that. We know better. And we call you on this sort of shit on a near daily basis. But I can only assume this question came up because Raph wants to make a game without levels.

Bravo. But here's why it won't work. Not the first time around at least.

MMOG players, for the most part are NOT GOOD AT GAMES[/I]. And I don't mean MMOGs alone. I mean any game. Particularly strategy games and skill based games like an FPS (sure, there are exceptions to this - GunzOnline, Planetside, etc). But your average MMOG user probably bites ass at most skill based games. For every one very skilled gamer that plays an MMOG, there's probably 1,000 who play MMOGs that like the even footing everyone starts on. Sure, they also like playing with friends and making new friends and the biggest amount of jealousy that can come between them is what equipment your friends have. Which is cool in a way. I mean, you've got these people, they're a group of four longtime real-life friends. They each pick a different class and for the most part have different equipment and everything is peachy. The game is fun. You may know what to do to solve the problems an MMOG throws at you but the toughest fight/mechanic in an MMOG is easier than just about everything out there. This is where levels come in - how can one player beat another player? Time invested and efficiency of experience farming. MMOG developers Harrison Bergeron their consumers to maximize the amount of time they'll give money to the game. And (much like the legalization of marijuana) a change in this system won't occur on a large scale until someone figures out a way to rake in more than $15 a month (proper micropayments might get that job done - which opens up another can of worms which I'll address at the bottom for shits and giggles). Just to hammer the point home, here's the opening of Harrison Bergeron:


THAT'S NOT HOW THE WORLD WORKS. But that's what is done to us in the fantasy lands of MMOGs. Ok, Mr. Warrior, you're really strong but miss a lot, can wear heavy armor and can't cast magic. Mr. Priest - you control how much people heal, but watch out because, ironically, you have the least number of hit points. Rogues? You're useless. By definition you're too strong. The title is all you get. Enjoy it. Mages - twiddle those fingers, you couldn't kill a fly with a flyswatter. Yes, to some degree this is necessary handicapping but adding levels on top of it? Just. Mean. There is however something to be said about a hybrid level/skill system. Think back to the original Wild Arms (or even the more recent Magna Carta). Obtaining new skilsl and gaining levels were two different things.

1. With each level or half level some core stats go up, level gets a +1 counter, and your vitals reflect the core stat increase.

2. With each use in the mastering of a lower level skill, you are one step closer to learning the basics of the skill above that.

Those of incredible efficiency in damage but not damage mitigation may max out his skills and what he has access too very early. But he may bite as at damage mitigation, so he can't whack near as many foozles as the next guy. This creates a problem though. Which is more powreful - skills or levels. At level 99 is the level 10 skill more powerful than if you got the level 99 skill at level 10? In wild Arms and Magna Carta this doesn't matter. Rules don't have to make sense. Only one person has to follow them. There is no multiplayer - it makes balance uber easy. Who was strong, Palom or Porom? Didn't matter.

Now, a topic I almost never touch on, but humor me for a moment:

We need levels. Or at least some physical representation of growth. Something tangible in the game whether it be new skills or hit points or a simply increase of +1 or even a title. That something should never be taken away from the player. As long as the player invests enough time (think: Eve) that player is like everyone else who played 100 hours. But that's fine because skill is not of essence in these games. If you're going to create the great equalizer, it shouldn't be done halfassed - which is how it's done now. Go all the fucking way. Equalize the entire population. It's the easiest game to blance. It's not fun, but then again, WoW isn't fun to me.

The other option....ditch levels entirely. Be the first MMOG developer to make a non-combat based social MMORPG with a working economy that people want to play. If Teppy removed the tedium from creating mundane bullshit in ATiTD, you can bet your sweet ass I'd be all over it. Even though the skills have levels, there's nothing stopping anyone from leaning whatever whenver. And as much as it pains me to the core to say this, a disgusting bastard child of Hello Kitty Online and The Sims Online may be a fun game to play (if either of the originals were fun). Hello Kitty Online, for a child's game, has a deep economic backdrop. People create and run shops and it will probably be single handedly responsible for teaching the very young gamers ideas like bartering and capitalism. Assuming it ever comes out. The Sims Online, on paper, is fucking brilliant. Pimp your crib in a neighborhood with friends and then.....CHAT. Take that one step further, add in some sort of Harvest Moon farming mechanic or something even way more bizarre like the non-combat side of Startopia.

I guess when it all comes down to it, levels represent how many foozles you whacked. I'm tired of whacking foozles with a number key. I might as well be playing Mario Teaches Typing: The MMOG Hotkey Edition.

Micropayments. I'll keep this short and super sweet:

1. Don't sell anything that effects combat in a combat game.
2. Only sell exclusive things in a limited amount (like design a couch for a house, and only sell 500 of them. Take the Lars Teten cigar model to an extreme (christ, I can't believe I just reference Lars Teten - I don't think I could get more esoteric, ever). Make everything you sell in a limited number so people feel obligated to spend money. Also, offer incentives. If you spend $25 ($10 more than the price of a sub) in one of the MMOGs Micropayment Marketplace you get half taken off of your monthly fee.

Anyway, it's super late and I'm rambling. I'll discuss more of this tomorrow hopeuflly.

Blah blah blah...

For me (and my guess is that I am not alone),
- FPS == everybody on equal foot
- MMORPG == level grinding

MMORPGs center everything around character levels so the question is not really if levels suck but how they are rewarded... and how they stop me/us from playing how I/we intend to (be that with friends or alone).

WoW: 1-60 is enjoyable because it's a fast journey. Level rewards are very low... and I guess if there was a real level grind as in other MMORPGs, WoW wouldn't be that successful. Level gap basically means you can't play with friend until you are level 60.

CoH/CoV: Your character progresses dramatically up to lvl 30 and then the grind starts. You are rewarded each level with either a new power to choose from or slots to add to your powers. The level reward is not that good because once you have all your *core* powers the rest is fluff and the games become to be an immense grind just to get more slots added to your powers. My guess is that your bell curve is a bit different in CoH... A lot of people have characters stuck at various levels because they have seen all the core powers of that character / they don't feel like grinding with it anymore. The motivation to get to 50 with every toon is low. Altaholism is strong in CoH/CoV because people want to experience the powers... Level gap is alleviated by an intelligent sidekick system though.

AC2 (I know it's going to close): Endless grind... The true definition of having to spend the rest of the eternity to get any progress on your toon. 2 years on the hero system which added 100 levels above the 50 already existing ones... and most people barely scratched lvl 80 after 2 years. Lots of people left in disgust. Level reward was very low. You just added a few points to one of your skill and you did 2 more points of damage after months of grinding. Yeah. 5 level gaps and you can't play with friends. Moreover levels mean everything between doom & success in both PvE and PvP (defense & attacks were basically a factor of your level). Most moronic implementation.

AC1: 1-50 (out of a max of around 230 levels) is an easy level grind. Be that trough quests or dungeon grinding. Once you are level 50 you can group with anyone above lvl 50 without any constraint. You progress through levels and gain more capacity in skills you have. There is character & loot progression but it is not THAT critical to your chances of success in a group. The only AC1 problem was that this rather good system was destroyed by allegiance XP chains and macroing. Before that, there was a feeling of achievement even if that didn't make you overpowered. Level gap post-50 exists in abilities in PvE and PvP but that it's not that tangible. In AC1 mobs level didn't really mean anything, you could be lvl 20 and fighting mobs lvl 126+.

So yes levels suck because most of the time they are just an indication of the time you are able to spend in front of your monitor and not in any way, the correct reprentation of your abilities to hunt/trade/explore... it's just your ability to "catass". The feeling of achievement in a MMORPG is very long gone. WoW in some parts of it still has some (ability to do certain raids) but mostly it's just time spent in front of keyboards which might be fun for your first MMORPG but that also is not only not fun in your 2nd MMORPG and is very anti-casual players.

So IMHO levels should have a feeling of achievement so in that regard the grind is primordial but they shouldn't make a huge difference in your abilities especially when there is PvP involved. Having all the combat odds already be clear when I look at how a mob or character cons is just unrealistic. Ten minutes ago I was dead meat for that mob and now I can beat it ? Err, I didn't progress that much, did I ?

Posted there as well.  BTW, Raph, that pages crawls for me.  Any idea why?

Someone beat me to it, but I’ll echo the sentiment. Levels don’t suck; it’s how they are implemented that usually sucks. The presence or absence of leveling is not a predictor of good gameplay. How many Hit points a fighter gets per level compared to a mage or what % a skill goes up when used…all of that is purely aribrary number crunching to make the in game fomulae work.

What matters to me at this point is the much more basic view: how does the game actually PLAY moment to moment. If I’m going to spend 95% or better of my time in combat, then design a fun combat system or advancement system begind it wont matter.

Thats why DDO is proving interesting; they are making combat have more twitch like aspects and I think that will be the major determining factor on if players like their game not the D&D background (complete with levels, although only 10 of them). They are also changing the reward mechanism to quest completion rather than monster kills. Both of those things are new takes on implementation, and THAT’s what I want to see more of.

Xilren

This reminds me of a recent debate on these forums about how hps are broken and the holy trinity is the root of all evil.  And like then I think we're getting stuck on changes to systems (hps, HAM, etc)  instead of making changes to gameplay (autoattack, clickfest, twitch) to make the game more fun.

Levels are a system.  Skills are a system.  Levels and Skills are a system.  No single system by itself is necessarily better or worse than others (as others have already said, implementation matters), except EQ derivative autoattack, which is uniformly worse.  We're done with that.  Mobile bags of improvement.  We can work out any game based on this approach and be broadcasting 'lf damage healer' in as long as it takes people to work out the grouping function.  Try some new gameplay.  For the children.

I'm getting some weirdness there,too; the graphs all some across as blank white squares (but I can save them and view them locally fine, for some reason), and that "content creation" page doesn't want to scroll more than about a page down.  -shrug-

I have two things I'd like to add that I didn't see there.

1- Levels, to me, seem like a very, very lazy shortcut in most computer games.  In D&D, you're rolling dice and scribbling notes on looseleaf; you need to keep the numbers simple or the game gets insane.  Levels are a way to do that.  Your average PC, though, does nothing better than keeping track of complex mathematical junk, so they don't have that excuse.  They are, at best, a gross oversimplification of reality, and at worst completely unrealistic and counterintuitive.  It just seems like if you want to simulate character advancement and combat ability, you could do it much more accurately than you can by using "levels."

2- A bigger problem, to me, is the issue of character persistence and "ownership."  In most MMOGs you don't "own" your characters; you rent them for $15/month.  A level based system seems to me to be by necessity a linear system: you go from low level to mid level to high level.  These two traits to not go well together in my mind.  I can stomach the fact that I'm paying a subscription fee for the internet or my phone or whatever.  If I don't want to use it, I don't have to pay.  Moreover, if someone changes my service, I can walk away, no big deal.  But if I'm playing an MMORPG, it seems likely that there will be something I want to do that I can't do right now, because I'm not high enough level (some skill I want, some item I can't use, some dungeon I want to see, something like that).  And at that point, it seems like I'm not paying for what I want, but for the opportunity to possibly get what I want some time in the future.  Like getting cable TV today so I can watch a show in six months.  That's annoying in itself, but it introduces a ton of complications when you take into account the fluidity of these games.  Star Wars Galaxies is probably the most obvious recent example (even though it didn't, if I recall correctly, use levels per se), where a lot of people were driven into a frenzy over the idea that all of their previous work with their characters would be erased or negated.
It just seems to me like a lot of the time, people in MMORPGs aren't having fun, they're doing preparatory work (grinding) so that they can have fun later.  That sounds suspiciously like work to me.  Work that we pay the company to let us do, and then they keep the work and our money and make no promises regarding our having fun in the future.  That reads a lot like a bad deal to me, and it looks like implementing levels (or any kind of strictly linear progression) more or less forces the game in that direction.  There will always be something that my level prevents me from doing that I want to do, so there will always be that kind of "I'm doing this stuff so I can eventually have fun" kind of mentality to much of the game, and that does not mesh well with a subscription fee, for me.

I don't mean to kiss Raph butt, but UO's skill system is EXACTLY what I want as far as "levels." Let people mix and match a variety of combat and non-combat skills that have complemetary effects. Don;t make the game about gaining skills, though. Make that easy. Make the game about deciding how to mix and match under a skill cap.

I completely agree. Tank mages using harm wands of DOOM and recalling away when the going gets too tough are exactly what I want a MORPG to be! :)

No idea on the slow page/not being able to scroll thing. The images are just GIFs, and for some reasons IE is refusing to show them. They look fine on Firefox.

I can telll who read the article and who didn't. :)

You non conformist you.

To be clear, while I did read both articles, they just struck me as ivory tower.  Why do we want to devote pages of debate to something which is meaningless without a good gameplay foundation?  You could take original EQ, keep all the levels, classes, zones, equipment, factions etc etc and make a totally new game just by swapping out the combat mini game and exp rewarding mechanism for a different one.  Ok perhaps meaningless is too strong a word, but I think my point holds.  You said it yourself; most computer RPG combat stinks; since these games are generally combat heavy, focus there first and THEN determine what sort of level/leveless advancement system you want to build on top of it....

Xilren

Sucking, not sucking is irrelevant.
Players want structure.
Levels provide structure.
Levels are simple.
If you want to replace levels, it better provide structure and be simple.

Yep. Which is part of the reason I want to call Bullshit on the that old Content Costs more with Size. In most modern commercial MMORPG it must have reached it's cap cost early on.

Single player game development cost models work just fine. Content = playtime. As evidence: WoW and your own NGE.

Yeah, we learned that from Wish, Horizons, Earth & Beyond, Sims Online, Shadowbane, Asheron's Call2, early Anarachy Online and WW2Online, etc etc....oh wait.


Who said anything about replacing levels?  Levels can be fine and bring a lot of positives to the table as Raph noted in his writeups.  The point is, it's not the levels that makes the game, it's the implementation that does.  Structure is great, but any structure needs a decent foundation...

Xilren

Wish didn't suck.


Raph is.

Would levels with a flat hp curve be ok? The exponential hp curves are really the crux of the grind problem.

I already told Nyght he's nuts in three different ways ont he blog, but I'll say it here too. Nyght, you're nuts.

1, content != playtime in any games today, typically.

2, commercial MMORPGs may have reached a cost cap with WoW, but to say that content reached a cap cost early on is ludicrous. The content cost of WoW probably is equal to the total development cost of EQ2+SWG+EQ+UO. :P

3, single player development cost models are in crisis too, and it's been the talk of the industry for a few years and was practically the unofficial theme of last GDC.

I suspect the demands of levels end up shaping the gameplay foundation. Consider what the traditional level assumptions do to FPS gameplay, for example. I agree with you on your final sentence: pick the gameplay system first, then decide if you need levels to provide the feedback. Currently, typically the levels are assumed to start with.

Better me then you   :-D

I think in order to come up with an alternative way to provide this particular benefit:



you're going to need to decide first what the gameplay consists of - in other words, what sorts of playstyles your game can support and what sorts of challenges each one faces.

I'll admit it. I didn't read the article. But I did read this thread title and gave my opinion. The problem here is I really don't think that magical no level game is going to get made any time soon. All of the pontification in the world won't speed up the process. It's simply the best way to force manage the players time. Or at least the easiest and efficient way. And I can't really come up with an entirely better way myself. I've thought long and hard on the subject and it's been ingrained into my brain that levels are the way to go since Final Fantasy I. Ironically, the counterpoint to that is Zelda. But that had levels too, they were called dungeon. How far are you in Zelda? 7th Dungeon. How far are you in WoW? 38th Level. Same fucking thing.

Read the article.

I'd like to comment on it, but I really don't know what to add. Raph lays it out pretty conclusively.

Ok, so reading through the article I come to this conclusion (I read about half the comments):

Raph agrees with me but masturbation is easier than implementation.

I mean I look at every game on the market and everything has levels now. Including sports games, racing games (sure, subset of sports games), action games, even FPS titles (BF2 anyone?). They've permeated everything. Getting rid of them is an impossibility. The question I see is - how can we make online play as engaging as God of War or Resident Evil 4 instead of say.....everything else. So I take back my first post, levels don't suck and the implementation doesn't suck. It worked fine in Dragon Quest VII and Digital Devil Saga and it works fine in MMORPGs. The rate of advacement might suck though. The number of levels may changes which sucks ass well (as it's a total copout by developers). So here's how I'm looking at it, why is every MMORPG based on a mud. With the net gen of consoles I don't see why we couldn't have an (aforementioned) Resident Evil OG with Resident Evil 4 gameplay. That would be astounding. Have a max of 3-4 people per instance? I'd pay out the asshole for that. I'm sure a lot of people would, Resident Evil sells pretty goddamn well. Better than any MMORPG out there. But there are levels. They are just shown through your weapons instead of your level as a character. I know how far someone is in [RE4] when they get the Butterfly. I know how far someone is in God of War when they get the swords or when they max out certain abilities.

So, are levels the enemy? No. Are they implemented properly for their given genre? Yes. Are there alternatives? Yes. But not for levels. Only for the games. In other words, stop making shitty treadmill based RPGs (which Raph agrees with me on in the second page when he says typical RPG combat sucks) and suddenly the problem of levels gets moved into an entirely different system. Which brings us back to what is probably the oldest question on teh intarweb about MMOGs. When are we going to introduce a skill other than "pushing a hotkey" into MMORPGs? Star Wars tried the over the shoulder aiming reticle thing (which, I'll say again, is a step in the right direction). But it was implemented for shit.

In other words: As an industry we're getting there. I think it's worrying about gameplay is more important than worrying about levels though. The big problem is who is going to fund something other than a typical RPG online? I don't know. Try Capcom or Namco or a company that doesn't solely make shitty typical RPGs. I'd hazard to guess they'd be more interested (read Kojima's recent thoughts on a metal gear solid online game) than SOE, NCSoft, Webzen (though they are making Huxley), Mythic, Turbine, Squeenix, etc. They know how to make money off typical shitty RPGs. I for one can't see anything a modern RPG gives me done better in an MMOG. The experience in a single player self-contained world with a true story with it's ups and downs and told in a fashion tailored directly to me is simply more fun than most anything a MMORPG can give me. Communicating with people in an RPG is overrated. It takes away from the game. Communicating with people when you're trying to infiltrate a terrorist cell (Splinter Cell MMOG anyone?) or exterminate zombies on an island controlled by Umbrella would only add to the game.

So, do MMORPGs suck? So far, yes.
Do MMOGs suck? So far, yes.
Can that change? To which I say, do they want to? Everything I've seen points to No (here's looking at you McQuaid).

Edit: Would it be wrong of me to call all of the modern MMORPGs a chat room with a post count? What's the difference between saying "postcount ++" and gaining a level?

It's a well-known fact that I am nuts; every time I post on a public forum I am reminded.

Schild, you may have finally triggered the in-depth post on player skill and treadmills. :P

Not to me.  The single player RPG is a single pass through.  It's like a movie.  Play it once and your done.  I can only watch (play) so many crappy single player RPGs before I'm done (I'm pretty much done).  An FPS game played online is different with each match, and my skill level gradually increases as I play... but only so much.  Also, a FPS has the same mechanics every time I play.  I can only play so much of a game with the same mechanics before I'm done (pretty much done with FPS).

MMO games broaden the single player RPG by adding other people into the mix, and attempt to balance "game" and "world".  A really good MMO would have many different "games" (character progression paths) within a world.  A great MMO would have many different games within a world, and some of those games would be based on skill.

If games told a consistant story that moved along at a brisk pace WHILE you were gaining levels (an interesting story as well, look at Final Fantasy IV for an example), people wouldn't bitch and moan about the treadmills. It's not my fault the people who write lore for MMORPGs are uninteresting. It does help that the worlds current MMORPGs inhabit suck as well though. I'm not going to make a post about treadmills. It's all been said. They are a symptom of the destination being more interesting than the journey. The destination being level 60 and the end of the journey being....end of the journey? MMORPGs never end. The greatest flaw of all.

Take a look at the Resident Evil Online idea, these aren't players against eachother (though there's  A LOT you could do in that with PvP). There has to be some way to match people up in terms of skill. It doesn't mean the game won't be fun for people that are shitty at it. I like DDOs solution of adding a difficulty to quests. Though they need to work on it, it's a big step in the right direction.

Well, they can't you know because it costs too much and whatnot.

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

I agree and disagree. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of dollars get pumped into games that are shitty at the design document level each year? Just looking at MMORPG.com's list of "games in development" I see a grand total of maybe 7 games that deserve having money put toward them and about 4 indipendent titles I'd like to see finished just as a proof of concept. The rest of that money is going into another flavor of your standard shitty medieval grind.

I haven't read the articles and quickly skimmed the thread thus far (will go back and read tomorrow and most likely find that I've made an ass of myself here but oh well), but here's my take on levels. Levels are good, but the best interpretation I've ever seen of a level based RPG was Daggerfall. It remains my favorite RPG of all time. Players gained levels but only through repeated use of their major and minor skill sets. No exp from quests. No exp from mobs. And it forced the player to 'roleplay' that character. A warrior had to swing his sword and use shields and armor to gain exp and levels. A wizard had to cast spells and mix reagents. A thief had to sneak around and steal things. It made for a more immersive setting than just about any other game out there, even today. The only problem with this approach was that some classes were much easier than others. Playing a straight healer was a pain in the butt, but the challenge made it fun. I can only imagine the horrors that would come from implementing this in a multi-player environment (especiallly a PVP one), but I'd play it in a heartbeat. I loved it close to 10 years ago and I'd love it today. Is it feasible? Don't know, but I'd like to see it tried. I'd also like to see canned NPC and player responce text replaced with a dynamic parser based system (like Zork only more complex) but that's probably asking for the moon. And literacy on the part of the player base.

Agreed. But heres the deal. In Raph's Content subarticle, he argues that content cost is a function game size. The larger the player base, the higher costs PER hour of developed content.

What I am saying is that this cost per unit of content caps at a certain playerbase size. A size far less then the typical modern MMORPG achieves. So, in essence, beyond a subscription rate of say 100,000 accounts, one hour of play content costs the same if developed for that 100,000 or 1,000,000 players.

This is one of his arguments against levels; they are inefficient uses of development time because they don't produce a corollary subscription length. And my read is that he is trying to clever and use a nonlevel based system to overcome these inefficiencies.

I disagree. Content = subscription length if you look at it from the prospective of traditional single player games, which I believe WoW did (for example).

According to Raph, I nuts. Sometimes the asylum escapes the gates however.

I don't know. Why do there have to be 10,000 people on a server? Why not make a full game fit for 50 people. Say I bought a subscription. I could invite 50 people to live in my pocket world. Would that be more manageable? Hell, make it 10 people. I can only have 10 friends with me through the entire game. That would result in something far more manageable. You wouldn't have to create little community centers for 10,000 and could make a single cohesive game perhaps with 1/10th as many quests and storylines as there are now.

Just dont show the player the levels. Dazzle them with stories, player-generated content, and a massive skill library. I've seen some interesting skill-progression styles. Eve and its time-based model, ATitD with its buy-endless-skills model, SWG with limited pre-set skills, and it seems like they all have something good going for them.

I dont care about levels. I dont care if I'm level 1 or level 9,923. I just want to have fun. I dont want to play an online FPS. I want to play an ever-evolving online game where I can meet up with real-life friends or new Internet friends and play. I think the above poster who mentioned fast-paced stories is right on. Add to that the ability for Characters to take part in the Lore and Legend of the game. Give them a rapidly advancing series of Story Arcs, ala SWG's aborted Cries of Alderaan.

It seems to me that if everyone is able to participate effectively in some fashion, then their levels wont matter as much. Make the difference between level 1 and level 100 minimal enough that it does not guarantee that a level 100 guy will automatically beat a level 1 guy. Look, for me its all about flexibility in skills. I never played it, but there is a console game, I think in the Final Fantasy series, where you picked skills from a circular setup. There were a dozen different Circles that connected in a limited fashion to other circles. You bought your way through them in a completely personal manner, buying what YOU wanted. To some degree SWG did this as well with is old skill system. I thought it was fantastic that you could take one tree in a half dozen different professions, allowing you to do a LOT of things.

Min/Maxers love levels and stuff because they can get out their calculators and try and be "better" than everyone else. If there was no "better", then maybe instead they would just do something that they thought was fun. I hope that the guys running Dark & Light will get their heads out of their asses and release some more information on their crafting and political systems. I was very interested to hear that there will be about 42 different Trades available, but you would only be able to Master maybe one, and dabble in a couple others. Even with 5 (supposedly) toons per account, thats still not enough to do it all. I am really hoping that its true, and that there will be an opportunity there to be a little different from others.

Its been my experience (limited) that one of the things many MMO players want is to be unique (or at least uncommon), or at least to have something unique. Even if its just some kind of visual equipment. Couple that concept with a massive skill system AND a fast-paced Story Arc, and I think peoples focus on Levels will get buried. Dont give people the time to sit back and calculate out the FOTM template. But again, they have to be able to get involved in *some* fashion pretty quickly.

I am continually amazed about one thing. Why is it that none of the "big" MMO's out there let PLAYERS contribute to the stories running? There are millions of people out there playing these games who can write or draw. There are easily *hundreds* of them in every game who can write/draw at least as good as the people getting paid to develop our current MMO's. Why dont game companies put in a system wherein Players are able to write or script Story Arcs, and to submit Art? I know at least 3 people personally who would LOVE to write up a Quest, or script an encounter, or even design a dungeon. They would do it for free.

Content might be expensive, but it seems that if you let the dedicated players contribute, you can cut a lot of time of the development cycle and see a LOT more idea's roll across the screen that you would only using in-house writers.

Player generated content is often more assy than levels. The only place you're going to get Good player generated content is on a web forum.

At this point you're not talking about MMOGs. NWN servers can handle 32 people at a time. Battlefield servers I think can hold up to 64 people. Both of these games are pretty popular but they don't have the social and community aspects of a MMOG.

Not to say those games aren't good, or that there's not plenty of room for new and good ideas in online gaming... but for an MMOG you have to have some level of community beyond "people you know immediately".

Then you get folks who (quite rightly for their play style) complain that you're "hiding the numbers". One of the things that bothered me the most about EQ (and that I appreciated the most out of DAOC when I started playing it) was that EQ didn't report how much experience you earned. It would just say "You earned experience!" and you could peer at your little blue bar and maybe it went up a few pixels? I found it incredibly irksome.

If you just mean "hiding the numbers inside other numbers"... well, by that logic UO was a level based game. It just had a lot of levels. I was a 300th level dex monkey!

Ok, then I'm taking the Massive part out of MMOGs. Though, I don't really buy that. I mean add an auction house or something and it's all suddenly massive. Add ways for players to voluntarily interact without forcing them to. You know why I'm not going to be able to stick it out in Guild Wars this time?

Grouping with random schmucks. That shit makes me angrier than fuck. At least I can yell at my friends and call them terribly naughty things without feeling bad.

Point being, maybe it's time to take a step back from Massive. Everyone is trying to make things more and more massive. In reality it NEEDS to be scaled back because no one can make interesting content for a massive crowd.

Edit: Well, maybe someone can make interesting content. But it doesn't seem to be happening.

I'm unsure, so I went to read your article.  There were a lot of words, so I was discouraged at first, but luckily you included pictures:

(http://www.raphkoster.com/wp-content/typicalleveldistribution.gif)

Ahh, as it has been clearly illustrated, levels make us smile, therefore they must not suck.  Thanks!

I'll comment on this one point because my thoughts are scattered (as are most of my thoughts if you have had the pleasure of reading any of my posts) on this topic, and a lot of people smarter than me have said things I believe better than I could have already.

Again, Raph needs to look back to UO. A "level 1" guy shouldn't ever, ever be able to defeat a level 100 person unless they are AFK for minutes at a time. However in UO, I could make a char with 50 hiding, 40 str (hit points, out of 100 max at the time) and enough Dex so that I could push through a person/animal/monster (LOOK! PLAYER COLLISION, another thing of the past) and I could humiliate a several-year old maxed out character. I couldn't kill him, I couldn't take him on directly. I could pre-occupy him though and keep him busy.

Back in 'Nam some of my friends and I had a grand pasttime of making funny-named newbies to mess with the Covetous Crew outside of Covetous. (clever name isn't it?) One of these characters eventually ended up being a pretty popular thief char, but the point remains that I took a one minute old character and took him willingly to face one of the most infamous "pk" guilds on the entire server, and survived because I knew how to play.

Also, I could take a one minute old character and have a friend gate me to any depth of any of the world's dungeons, even Hythloth, and I would be able to surive there as well. Could anyone do that? No, you'd have to learn how things work, learn how to take advantage of the options you had, and finally just be good at the game. You can't do ANY of that stuff in any of the games on the market these days. (don't mention UO now, it's been retarded since '00 at latest, but if you ask me - early '99.)

Levels? Skills? Soulbound items?

Fuck all that shit man. I want to be able to pick up a GM heavy crossbow, some bolts, a bag that I had set aside with 20 of each reagent, my death robe, and maybe a recall scroll just in case and go out and compete with anyone on the server. Is it too much to ask for that type of gameplay?

Apparently so, as the industry and several newcomers are falling over their dicks trying to copy WoW. Or in DDO's case - trying to copy Guildwars. There is nothing massive about that game, they need to drop the moniker.

The problem is that graph is simply completely wrong.

This is the graph of the population on a WoW (every) server after a few months from its (of the server) launch:

(http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/storeroom/misc/dam.gif)

The point is that what is in the "database" (Raph's graph) doesn't matter. It's what the players play that has some relevance.

A graph saying something worthwhile would be one grouping the /played value of every character and put it on a chart.

I must ask, Why Not? Why should you not be able to compete, just because the other guy has played more? Granted, it seems like you example took advantage of some game mechanic exploits, but my point remains.

If you, as a player, are skilled enough, you should be able to wipe out any advantage earned by "play time." Best case, playing more shouldn't make you better. BEING better should make you better.

I'd like to see a game that applies "common sense" even when talking about stuff like dragons and conjuring butt monkeys and throwing fireballs.

The level 1 guy would start with a practice sword or a bronze sword or something like that. An established player, be it a warrior, should have armor that would repel every single attack from a bronze sword or a wooden practice sword. A high level thief type character would be able to endlessly dodge those attacks.

Now, if you catch that afk mage in cloth you would be able to cut him down. That's the instance that works I guess. If you're a level one mage and you specialize in Lightning magic, maybe you can also zap that armored guy if he's wearing the correct stuff that is very susceptible to lightning.

Then again this all takes into account a game involving dice rolls, which from what I can tell is the only thing we'll get in our lifetimes.

Even if it was a skill based game, something of a mix of mount and blade, die by the sword, and severance: blade of darkness, here's a scenario.

Your newbie dude swings his sword for the first time at an AFK knight standing there in shiny armor. PING as it hits and vibrates, causing it to flail around wildly. Another awkward swing done by the newbie, PING again, and the vibration is so great this time that the newbie actually drops the sword.

Then again I think I'm the only one who would enjoy a "common sense" game that involves fairies and fucking dragons.

The WW2 RTS version of this is called "Soldiers: Heroes of WW2" - and I'd recommend it to everyone. $10 at Frys, $8 at amazon, and a SP demo is available for download at fileshack and fileplanet (probably).

Again, the guy shouldn't win just because he's played more. He'll win because he's got the equivalent of steel. Steel vs bronze? Zulu war aside, there is some logic to it. Unless you want to talk about stuff like Planetside, where I'm all for 1 minute old characters killing 30 day old characters.

In other words, it's not wrong, you just wish it were of something else. :) I did point out that the bulge at the early levels is characters who were abandoned. if anything, the WoW graphs confirm my graph...?

I agree that what's in the database isn't ewhat matters, it's what players are playing that matters. By that same logic, we could do a graph of where players go, and it'd ullustrate some of my points even more clearly.

The figures from DAOC (and, I suspect, every other live MMO) back up Raph's graphs. Huge spikes at both ends, and where the middle varies is where you lose people.

As well as the beginning. There are a disturbingly high number of players who spend 5 minutes in a game and never come back, ever.

You're confusing context with mechanics. A game can still function closer to "real life" while being in a fantasy context. The presence of "dragons and fairies" has no bearing on combat mechanics.

Lets take your level 1 guy with a bronze or wooden sword against a warrior in plate. True, that level 1 guy is going to have a very hard time doing any kind of damage, but plate armor is far from an invincible shield. There are plenty of spots where a thrust from even a sharp stick can get through, and even a level 1 guy, who would know more than your average citizen NPC, would have some knowledge of this. So, killing a big guy in plate is extremely doubtful, but doing damage is plausible. Same thing applies to a thief; he's not a Matrix agent, so he will invariably get hit, if only by dumb luck.

Suffice to say, I think it's incredibly stupid for a "higher-level character" to be invulnerable simply because of their level, which is really a measure of time played. You can have the best equipment in the world, and still be killed by a sharp stick, especially in large numbers. Lets use your Zulu War as an example. Even with superior training and equipment, the British were far from invincible. The British won because of their superior tactics, especially in battles such as Rorke's Drift, where they were vastly outnumbered. You could also reference history's great battles at Marathon and Thermopylae.

Actually, the Zulu War was a masterpiece of tactical guerilla war fighting on the Zulu side. At Isandlwana, Cetishwayo beat the British troops. It's literally the ONLY time British troops suffered a loss in all of their colonial wars. Admittedly the Brits were outnumbered 22,000 to 1200, but then again the British had rifles and the Zulus had spears, which helped to even things up a bit.

After Isandlwana the British, shocked that a bunch of spear-shaking savages actually routed a British regiment, commited the entire might of the British army to pound the Zulus in dirt.

Enough of a tangent, though! (And yes, the British at Roarke's Drift, fought around the same time just down the hill from Isandlwana, managed to hold their attackers off.)

Anyway, here's the requisitie wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana  History is fun.

The Battle of Little Big Horn is another example, and with closer numbers.  780 US Calvary vs. 1,750 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho. The Indians had guns, although not in as great a number, and had more limited ammunition than the Calvary.  They also had better tactics.

It was another Pyrrhic victory.

Levels usually suck for me. I usually don't make it very far in level based games because I grok the pattern too quickly. Killing a level 1 mob is usually the same as killing a level 50 mob regardless of the twists a designer throws in to make it feel like it is different. I detect this in the first 10 levels or so. I'm one of those people stuck on the first downward slope in that graph.

Additionally, there is something that sticks in my mind and nags me in level based games. I can't really identify it other than it's something like I know I'll never be able to follow the same linear path as the people before me because I've already groked the path and they've already completed the path so what's the point? Boom. I'm gone from your game.

In the end all I can really do is point to games that I've liked playing in the past, which are not level based, and of which I've never grokked the pattern. Darklands. Wasteland. Fallout1/2/T. Golden Axe. UO. Planet's Edge. Castles. Pirates. Your usual TBS/RTS fair such as C&C/Warcraft/Warlords*/RomeTW/Homeworld/Civ. Diablo1/2. Savage. FPS games (pretty much one is like the rest). Even 2D fighting games like Street Fighter. I might have tired of these games but the game mechanics didn't drive me away.

Games with levels that I don't have a problem with include Guild Wars, Planetside, and NWN.

Levels in and of themselves don't bother me, it's the level disparity that bothers me.  Maybe it's left over from my mudding days, but I am so very disappointed by the invulnerability of max level players when it comes to min level players.  It wouldn't bother me if I could actually hit someone if it was only for 0.1% of their health, but in the MMOGs I've played, every swing I take is deflected, misses, or is absorbed.  Just silly.

Peasants with pitchforks who normally fight orcs should at least be able to scratch the dragon slayers.  Especially a pack of peasants.

"The dirk,  by which the footman shows the armored, mounted knight that all are mortal."

Raph's chart is valid even in WoW, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that he's using the wrong chart.

The accounts on a database don't matter much. It's the contemporary, active accounts that give you an idea what the players are actually doing.

I can create multiple level 1 character, but this doesn't mean that my playtime is all spent on them.

Sure, if you have no interest at all in finding out when/why people are leaving your game.

It's very easy to focus on the most active players (who unsurprisingly, also tend to be the loudest) but the ones who give up and leave tend to be a bit quieter.

But it's totally not the point of what is relevant in this discussion. Raph's graph isn't supposed to figure out why some players leave the game. It should just compare the volume of content available with the volume of players. And what is relevant in THIS context is the volume of players at the same time. Also because it's what matter to make the game accessible, bring the players together and enjoy the game. Something that is NOT POSSIBLE if all the players are spread thin around a desert.

So yeah, I'm not interested to find out why the players are leaving. Or maybe I am, but I think that another perspective will tell me a lot more about this specific argument (and in fact I was writing a longer reply that will explain what is my point here).

Level systems in and of themselves don't suck.  Being locked into a particular level system with one character seems to be where things get problematic.  In games like WoW, when you cap at max level, people find the endgame lacking.  In games like the initial version of SWG (which I think you had a big part in?), you could change your template/professions at any time.

You can keep throwing out new content and items here and there, but the real fun comes from experiencing the same game from a different point of view...ie a different class/profession.  New toons and multiple character slots on a server are fun, but to start over from level 60 to level 1, with a new toon, can be too daunting to bother with in the long term.  I think if you gave players the option to shuffle the skills of their character at will, while changing the game (slightly!!!!1) every so often, they'd find it much more desirable than having to completely reroll when the endgame gets dull.

And re: Being able to jump into a game and immediately pose any threat whatsoever to an established player.  That kills the whole point of building up a character in the first place.  Ok, if there's collision detection and actual skill involved, then a newb with a .5 dps weapon should maybe be able to kill a vet with mega-armor and a 1000 dps weapon...if the newb jumps around and dodges better than the vet (and it should take an hour and 45 minutes).  "Maybe".  But in the long term imo this is alot to ask.  RPG's are all about progression and development; Circus Atari and Asteroids are about being able to instantly be better than a vet because your reflexes are better.

I'd love if that shit was possible, personally. I just don't think anyone would ever do it. I'd love to see a 5 minute old newbie get a nice stiletto and be able to do an attack in a way that you could puncture the chainmail armpit of a fully armored knight and mortally wound him. That kind of stuff is A++ cool, but both you and I know that it'll never, ever be seen.

People are too interested in making 20,000 polygon models and fucking with water reflections and other worthless things.

Here are my graphic leet skillz:

(http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/storeroom/misc/redblue.gif)

Now, the first graph represents the situation on a server a few days after the launch. The blue line traces the *activity* on the server in a set moment and not the number of characters created that never come back. In the first weeks all the players are concentrated in the first levels and then slowly decrease. During this phase there's overcrowding and if you were in WoW at launch or at the launch of a brand new server you know how this is absolutely true. Everyone is running around the newbie zones and only a few players that never log out are able to reach an higher level compared to most of the other players.

Do you remember all the queues that lasted for multiple hours during the first days and all the players raging against Blizzard? That wasn't simply the server load, it was because all the players were packed in the newbie zones and the early levels in general. The red line here shows the volume of the content available targeted at those levels. At the beginning of the graph there's more of it to accomodate the number of players, but it's still not enough. There's more of it compared to the mid-levels because each race has its own newbie zone and content.

(the graph still doesn't factor the "time" needed by each level, or the first levels still wouldn't compare with the amount of content in the mid-levels, since each level takes more time and so requires more content available)

The second graph, instead, shows the situation of the server after a few months. Only a few new players are active at the same time and 99% of the game is emptier and lonely even if the game remains hugely successful. There's basically more than enough content for the whole level curve. At the exclusion of the last few levels where all the players start to amass. If you notice, the red line at the end of the graph rises more than the red line of the first graph. This because Blizzard developed and added more "endgame" content. But as you can see, even after this effort, the content is still nowhere enough for the number of players that are hoarding at that end.

And this is why right now we have all the complaints about not enough raid content, or not enough viable progress for casual players after level 60.

Now what even Raph seems to overlook and that from my point of view is the BIGGEST problem, is that the situation shown in the second graph gets worse over time. Till the point it becomes a plague for the whole game. A plague that will just shatter the game in the longer term, creating a number of unsolvable side-effects that will slowly kill the game. Till the point where it will need a replacement because broken beyond repair. As I said the inequality between the content available at the mid-levels and the few players populating those zones is still somewhat bearable and a non-issue in WoW because the game is still hugely successful and, between alts and new players, even the early levels are kept somewhat playable and fun.

But what would happen if the game wasn't a so huge success, and what will happen in the longer term? That the early game will be totally DESERTED. Only a few alts will dot the graph here and there, having an hard time finding someone alive to group with and, maybe, do those instances that were so popular the months before. The consequence of this trend is a recursive aggravation where less and less players enjoy the loliness of the early levels, deserting them even more till they won't become just a lonely "desert", but a swamp that you won't be able to cross anymore.

And here we hit something bigger that was again always overlooked. Why the possibility to solo is considered so fundamental today? There are surely various reasons, but the main one is that the possibility to solo is a somewhat effective antidote to a deserted game. So, even if there aren't enough players or if you play not during the peak time, the game remains playable. You won't crash against impassable barriers because the content is inaccessible. It's not because playing solo is more fun. It's because, after the gaps between the players become so huge, the solo play becomes the only viable solutions when playing with your friends is not anymore possible because the game put a WALL between you and them.

The huge gap that was created between the veteran players and the new ones will transform into an impassable barrier that will progressively isolate the game and the community (the elitism will to the rest). Slowly killing it in the longer term.

This is how these games die.

It's true that extended treadmills and character progression are effective mechanics to retain the subscriptions. But it's also true while going in that direction you progressively isolate the game from new players. It's as conservative approach that aims to preserve the current situation as long as possible but that is still cruising toward an unavoidable collapse.

An healthy online world that slowly *grows* instead of slowly collapsing, is one where new and old players are brought together and not cut apart. A type of game where the content is experienced and brings life to a world, and not burnt and thrown away as junk. The difference between a place where you live and one that you colonize and leech till there's nothing left.

Perfect mirrors of the American capitalism and colonialism.

/me flees far away after that last line

Raph's article debunks the notion that your character is getting more powerful. Your character is actually getting LESS powerful the more you level. You just don't notice because you get distracted by the shiny and the fact that you can peacock strut your number to players with a lesser number.

That is pretty sad for achievers actually. No matter how fast they run on the treadmill they get less and less powerful. What happened to the lone hero who could kill the dragon? WoW gives you a mob of 40 peasants and calls it a "raid".

Actually, I touched on that here (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/cooperative-static.shtml) and here (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/databasedeflation.shtml), but lord knows I've said it enough other times too. :)

Ah, but statistics without context will make liars of us all. Take the first graph you posted, a typical WoWCensus readout. By this metric alone, we'd decide OMG WOW MUST HAVE 99% OF THE CONTENT FOR LEVEL 60S!!! (which, not coincidentally, is a common forum refrain).

Yet one of the reasons WoW is currently selling 3 copies for every man woman and child on the Internet is the game's breadth and depth of content. Although on older servers many players have progressed to the end of the level curve, the fact that there was no lack of content getting there is not insignificant. It delivered MILLIONS of people to the end of that curve. That it doesn't then continue to provide huge swatches of content doesn't mean the game is poorly designed, it means that however huge the development budget, it can only deliver so much content, and the development team chose to concentrate their efforts on the "missing curve" that you dismiss.

You said that the problem is that there's not enough content at the far end of the curve. There will *never* be enough content, because the time spent by players at the endgame dwarfs any development team's ability to create challenges. This is why there's so much attention paid to procedurally generated content and player-generated endgames (political, combat, cooperative, whatever) because no matter how much content you create, you not only aren't going to keep up, you also with every addition run the risk of invalidating large swatches of the rest of the game by throwing off the power curve somehow. (Treasure that results in players becoming exponentially more powerful, for example.)

I disagree with what you said.

Well, this we can certainly agree on. But using this idea, let me modify my earlier concepts a bit.

Fresh off the Turnip Farm Newb vs Dragonslaying Veteran in Plate of Uberness.

Under conventional level rules on power, the Vet should be able to one-shot the newb, with the newb doing Maybe fractions of a point of damage in return. But things do not have to be this way.

At the other extreme, lets say combat was totally twitch (ie - FPS). Now, both people still have their respective weapons, the newb with a starter blade, and the vet with a vorpal lance of armageddon. But, seeing as this is twitch, ruling out any sort of special abilities, neither weapon will do anything unless a player is able to make physical contact with a strike. Now, seeing as the vet is wearing plate, the newb doesn't have many places to aim - but there are vulnerabilities, such as up under the helm, the armpit, back of the knee, etc etc. It's simply up to the players to be able to Hit those points, perhaps multiple times.

Now, some, perhaps a lot, of people will say this is unfair - that I can roll up a toon and cream any character in the game. Fine. I will even concede that this doesn't necessarily seem "fair" in the context of a game. But, we can compromise.

So, take the former example, but take the FPS aspect out of the equation, partially- Still leave the maneuvers in. Now, think for a second - what's the easiest way to strike at the vulnerable spots of a loaded-down knight? Approaching from behind, or at least flanking. Developers should easily be able to code this, in the form of giving to-hit and/or damage bonuses.

Now, what about the people who say that time spent should give an advantage? Well, I agree, in part. An adventurer who has been around awhile has become pretty good at not dying, either by avoiding blows, or absorbing them....but they're not invincible; just take a look at whatever literary or mythological source you like. Great heroes still get hit and take damage, but they don't die, because they've learned from through experiences how to stay alive. SO, some sort of bonus should be given for "level" (if the game must have them). One way to think of it is that an experienced person has learned to move in combat, how to maneuver and protect their vulnerable areas. That same armored knight, if he's worth even a percentage of the weight of his gear, is going to do everything he can to not give an assailant an easy opening for a quick kill.

But finally, I think the big equalizer, or in most games the largest unequalizer, is hit points. I do not think they are bad things - they're an easy way to measure the health and well-being of a character, and the amount of abuse they can take. What IS bad is how they are implemented - characters just seem to gain HP into infinity. It seems that in most games, even if a high level character can be hit by a lowbie, his HP and resistance is so sky-high that the lowbie can't even hope to chew through the pool - not even multiple newbs. What do you do? Cap hit points, and cap it low.

As an example, some of you may have played the Gemstone series of MUDs. They capped HP very low, and I think it worked well. What I think this would do in a modern game is force characters to avoid being hit, or at least minimize the damage. If a person is caught off-guard, or if a person gets off a particularly good attack, ANYONE could be one-shot-killed. Also, in Gemstone, there was practically no such thing as group healers - healing is either something you did by stopping combat and taking a few moments on your own to heal up, or going back to town and being healed by other characters. By coincidence, by removing the "need" for a healer in groups to keep everyone's HP up (because they're concentrating more on not getting hit in the first place, or taking as little as possible), you can break the reliance on the Holy Trinity.

Anyway, that's my ramble. I hope it made some sort of sense to someone, somewhere. In short, you can still have levels and let them have an effect, but let the players (both attacker and defender) be the difference - Not Time.

The first link discusses again possible ways to optimize the production of content. That has nothing to do with what I tried to say. My point is that the more you stretch the treadmill the more the game risks to break. And it will. The problem is not one of quantity, it's the one of accessibility and viability.

If new players join a barren world and have no ways to reach their friends or where the whole community currently is, the game will die over time. No matter how good are your "retention mechanics". It's destined to collapse sooner or later.

WoW will collapse later because it is more easily soloable, so accessible. But the model is still doomed.

The second link only passes by the issue without getting it (it's mostly a problem of economy and dynamism that I somewhat discussed here (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/922)).
This is true but, again, what I'm saying is not that the newbie experience is blander compared to the resources and value put on the endgame content (in WoW the endgame content is actually worse than the early game). what I'm saying is that, overtime, the newbie experience degenerates till the point the game becomes completely inaccessible because there aren't anymore players around to group with, enjoy the game and experience what requires more than one player available and well balanced groups with all the classes represented. Which is what you said in the first article (that I liked more): "they (levels) are used to keep people apart" And spread thin, I would add.

Till the point where the "latter" game is completely isolated and anymore accessible. Or you are ALREADY part of it, or you are out. If a mmorpg is a flow of water, this equals to cutting off the fount. You will still have the players gathering at the end like in a pool (I often use the image of a dam at the level cap) but the water will stagnate and it won't last for long.

So you can switch "overlook" with "not pinpointed well enough".

Actually, what you write in the second link is the opposite of what I'm saying. You point out the problem of twinking and increased knowledge that brings to trivialize some parts of the game. While I'm saying that with less players around and without a strong community supporting the early levels, the newbies will find the game *too hard* and inaccessible to be viable and fun.

This is a general trend. I always totally agree on your premises and those articles are wonderful. But then I disagree on the conclusions, and, most likely, on the possible solutions.

I'm no coder, but considering how fast technology iterates, this "inevitable collapse" could be desirable in the long run.  The market seems to be exploding, but how many of these new customers go straight for the eccentric 1st generation antiques?  Better to view an MMO as viable for only a short span of years to better prepare for the next iteration, hopefully learning a couple things in the process instead of forever trying to play "catch up" with an outdated base/model.  As such, I don't think this "slow growth" method is very practical, as it implies a ponderous pace that will be swept away by the next big thing.  Of course, I guess this is based on the assumption that there will be a next big thing.  (I think there will be)

Levels?  I don't have much to add..  I'll just echo that the MMO leveling system, although filled with illusions and fallacies, is a fundamentally effective way to engage players.  It forms a simple to understand basis of comparison that fuels the achiever mentality. 

I'm not sure if one can talk about RPGs without this kind of idea floating around.  I also don't think disguising it counts.

I really don't know where you are trying to disagree here. I took those premises (like the "not enough endgame content") to prove them wrong. Not to consolidate them.

Imho, WoW wouldn't be a better game if it had another 10 instances at the current endgame. That's not what I'm trying to prove. I'm just trying to say, as did Raph, that this model brings directly to an UNSUSTAINABLE siituation. And the game WILL collapse because of this.

1- The developers cannot keep up with the *increasing* demand for content.
2- The players need more content to remain in the game and have "things to do".
3- The more content added at the endgame and the more the treadmill is stretched, the less the game will remain accessible for new players.
4- This can last till a point (stretching and more stretching). Then it breaks.

But that's my point as well! I'm not going against that idea, I'm proving it.

And here's another point (where I strongly disagree with Raph and Dave). The generated content and AIs are *chimeras*. They will never work. Going in that direction won't bring to any result. The demand for (that type of) "content" can only be delivered in that way. You cannot magically (algoritmically) produce content. you won't fool anyone if not yourself (see Mike Rozak's splendid definition of content (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214#comment-681)).

As I said from MY point of view (the whole thing I'm saying here) is that quote I took from Raph: "they (levels) are used to keep people apart"

A solution to the problems I pointed are different models that could bring the players TOGETHER instead of apart. Levels, today, are used to chunk the community (which can also be good as I pointed to Raph here (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=223#comment-673)) but also to shatter it.

You already summarized my "view" on these games when you said I see them as "living worlds". I'd add that the model I would like to see is the one of a circle, where the whole game is self contained (http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214#comment-667) (+here, the comments (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=170)). Opposed to the current model that is just a lineear, endlessly stretched string that is viable only if you start at the same time of everyone else and are able to "keep up" with them.

If you join late, you are out. If you lose too much terrain and cannot keep up, you are out. (this is what Raph overlooked from my point of view)

Can you see that I'm pointing to the same problems you pointed too (http://www.brokentoys.org/?p=6911)?

Ah, good point, except, it's not.

No new customers play old mmorpgs BECAUSE of what I said. Because, over time, these games aren't anymore viable and fun for a newbie.

You cannot put the cart ahead of the mule and say my theory is broken because old games don't have appeal and so you won't have new subscribers anyway. It's that idea that causes the new players to not exist.

Let me relink what Raph just linked above (http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/databasedeflation.shtml):
Of course old game have no appeal. Because no developer spend time to improve the early game and all the development is focused to retain the subscribers they already have.

But they don't see new players BECAUSE OF THAT. "No new players" is a consequence of that development, not its cause.

Another WoWism on "why levels suck" - take a look at the level 60s.

If a guy bought the game in let's say October and has a level 60, how does he compare to someone who bought the game in December last year? The level number doesn't mean anything at all. It shouldn't even be there, as an 18 hour /played level 60 is probably 20% as capable (item-wise, as wow is an item whoring game) as a 500+ days /played level 60 that has chock full of purple gear.

It's just so damn meaningless. Then you look at the upcoming expansion where supposedly they're going to up the level cap. So they have .. Man I'm not even sure how many dungeons and raid instances that they have for level 60s now. Let's say they have 15 seperate instances, crammed full of content, fully itemized, people have spent tens of thousands of man hours creating these.

When that expansion comes out and people roll up Blood Elves or Panda dudes or whatever they do, nobody is going to use those 15 level 60 instances. They are going to be in the expansion equivalent of Azshara camping the birds, or running macro programs until they hit level 70, or 75. Whatever the new "Max" is. Because  you ain't shit if you ain't max, right? That's the mentality.

So all those great purple sets, gone. Wasted. All that art that made tauran-sized leafy shoulders and crossdressing night elf female sized leafy shoulders. 100% wasted. Sure, you can use those skins for other items or something, but everyone will laugh at you.

I don't know. I just like it where you had your character, you had your knowledge, and you had your friends. You kind-of knew what you were capable of if you've played enough, or tried enough stuff. You didn't have a level limit that kept you from entering a dungeon. You didn't have some retarded number that made you "matter".

In my case, in UO beta, I just had me, my hinds outside of Moonglow, a club, and some leather armor. And I'll be damned if those SoB motherfuckers are going to skin my creatures and deflate the prices of leather on my island, even if it's only for 30 minutes. They are NOT going to buy reags at the North mage shop in peace. I need that garlic and it's not going to recycle for an hour.

Whoa, excuse that UO tangent. Levels suck, it's not just the "system" and the fact that "skill %s are levels too in a different way!"

Bullshit, go back to being denied a group because you're level 59 and not 60. Or you're 60, but only have 1 purple and 6000 mana as a priest. WTF U NOOB.

Merry christmas by the way.

Aye... (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1060)

What is sad is that in my younger days, that is how I thought in EQ.

(with 65 level cap) "He's 63? Hmm, that's kinda low...."

Or how about people getting rejected for shit because they don't have Flowing Thought 15 or some nonsense? Fuck that uber shit.

This is happening already in WoW. Some would say it's because the players decided that themselves, but it's instead the game to impose its mechanics in the longer run (we are at this point now). And it's why the great majority of the "casual guild" have a very short life.

All the high-end guilds right now HAVE TO shape themselves around 40-man raid content. Smaller guilds dissolve or flow into bigger ones because they cannot survive if they cannot support those raids. At the same time the raiding guilds need to close themselves because they cannot support more members than those strictly required for the raid. Right now most of them are in fact closed and joining them would be harder that sneaking in the Pentagon. From interviews in voice chat, to obligatory links to profiles about what your character currently wears. Joining one of them requires more commitment than a REAL JOB.

As I said this brings these communities to isolate themselves, also because the progress in the raid (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1042) content is only possible if you are able to rinse and repeat it endlessly. If your raid has always different players at each run, you are going to fail big time. This is why all these guilds and the whole endgame is focusing on really stable and reliable groups of "friends" that can progress all at once and why these groups of friends don't welcome any new player if not under very special circumstances.

It's also similar to what happened in FFXI and the concept of "static party" that I NEVER heard in any other game.

It's ABSOLUTELY FALSE that the players shape these games and the communities. It's the game to shape its community.

All I see here is the blind men and the elepahant. Are we trying to build an everlasting world or the next highly sucessful broad market MMORPG?

People in the room who think both goals can be achieved in the same product raise there hand.

Me. Unashamedly. I believe Raph too.

I summarized somewhere else what I think of this discussion: "doing better, not doing without."

This discussion is *useless* if we cannot find better mechanics that retain ALL the qualities of the levels and then some. If possible new ideas aren't unquestionably better, then we can as well keep developing and playing level-based games.

If it's true that "levels suck" it's also true that better models are possible. *And* that they can be more successful.

If you beileve instead that level up mechanics are the best we can have, then the premises of this discussion would have been proven wrong. Raph wrote those two articles because he obviously believes that there could be better models, or there wouldn't be any reason to doubt of those level-up mechanics in the first place.

From my point of view this is a pragmatic manifesto. Not abstract theorization.

Oh, and let me finish, because I went past Raph in this discussion and moved forward to discuss the *solutions*, not just the premises.

I've already pasted my ideas on the "sandbox" and systemic games. But there's also the problem about why the sandboxes have failed, because they did (coping from Darniaq's page (http://www.darniaq.com/phpNews/news.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=170)):

There is not a design tenant anywhere that I am aware of that does not have both benefits and drawbacks. If there were such a thing, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Whether of not levels suck is very much dependant on the details of the total design.

My point it that there is no one size fits all. No absolute best. And that game development is a quid pro quo between the user and the developer. Users want entertainment (fun). Developers want revenue. If you chart the possibilities you would probably end up with kind of a flattened bell curved shaped graph like almost all sociological based things.

I believe you can find points on the top of that curve with or without levels. I am suggesting, once again, you guys are focusing on the developer side of the relationship too heavily. If you want hit the top of the curve, you have to focus on what the customer wants first. Then work on your systems to fit your revenue model underneath it.

Edited to add: Why is subscription longevity important to me as a user? Short answer: Its not.

I'll shut up now. Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday to all.

I don't believe this.  You don't have to create an AI that can have conversations with humans to create an AI that can produce content.  We can create AI that can beat the best chess player in the world, which says to me that we can create AI to wage war against another AI in a MMO.  The players are the foot soldiers, captains and colonels, the AI is the general.  This allows you as the player to focus on character and skill development without worrying about some human general and all the politics that brings.  Player ability to successfully implement directives influences faction success, so players influence world evolution, but they aren't at the whim of capricious leaders (well, not emotionally capricious leaders, anyway).  Guilds form squads, companies and battalions within faction armies.

This is not to say that story doesn't exists within the game.  Here is the proposed stages of character evolution:

Stage 1: Flexible character creation (SWG, CoH)
Stage 2: Nimble Character development with optional Story (WoW leveling pace, DAOC story/battlegrounds option)
Stage 3: Story intersecting with endgame-prep (DAOC battlegrounds with AI generals)
Stage 4: Main story completion with player entrance to end game conflict (DAOC endgame with mutable endgame world and AI generals)

One trick is to have the scripted content lead players to the point where they are handed off to the end game, where AI generals direct endless conflict.  This succeeds where worlds fail by giving people an idea about what it is they should (could) be doing.  Another trick is to have some (largely illusionary) sense of character progression within the endgame.

It's PvP, but the generals/conflict rules decide where and when PvP occurs.  When AI generals lose new generals must rise to take the place of the old.  Forces within empires that get larger must force them to split (civil war, AI general aging and death, wrath of god, AI proposed guild defection*, etc)

*AI chooses a guild(s) within a winning faction to bribe to switch sides to a lesser faction to modify the balance of power.

Yeah, the sandbox games just have to take another step. Look at Morrowind and the Grand Theft Auto games. You have this main story line that is doing one thing, and you have all these other things that you can do in the meantime that are fun. Sometimes you get so caught up in the other things that you totally forget what you're supposed to be doing.

The next step is banging hookers then running them over to get your money back, but only in mmo terms - surrounded by other people who can also laugh at it.

On a mostly unrelated tangent, thanks for reminding me why I quit WoW.  I was thinking about resubbing, but now I remember why I left.  (And I saved $15!).

Merry Christmas.

I can sit in Bryce and click "Random Sky", "Random Sky", "Random Sky" and algorithmically generate content. Another example is the CoH character generation system. You can click randomize and get a randomly generated character look. Why can't I fight these randomly generated characters instead of the same Thug #1, Thug #2, and Thug #3 500 times? Bottom line is, given a framework and/or a human filter, random and algorithmically generated content does work. I think a number of 20% human and 80% random has been mentioned before. MMOGs don't even have Eliza (http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3) level conversation systems and Eliza is ~20 years old.


My only question is why would I want to level in your game at all if the "endgame" is PvP? Just give me the PvP now and reward me with powerless shiny loot.

---

Skill systems are not levels in disguise. Real life doesn't have levels. If I have X million dollars and 3 cars while you have $5 and 8 kids what level are you and what level am I? If I'm a skilled stock broker I can still make mistakes. Power level progression systems don't leave room for mistakes. But look at Planetside's levels. It's meaningless to even call them levels. Why didn't they have a military "rank" system to be less immersion breaking? What sounds better, "Hello Level 25 what can I do for you today?", "Hello General what can I do for you today?"? Are MMOG characters/players so Borg that we are reduced to number designations to flaunt e-peen?

Some folks like their games to have stories that they get told, i.e. quests or missions.  Some folks like their to be a reason why they are going to fight enemy X, and a good backstory is a decent part of that.  Often the backstory is told through quests/missions.  In my opinion, folks view levels as the most important part of the story (journey) that the quests/missions tell (so much so that many people don't even read the quest stories).  If people didn't enjoy the journey that leveling represents, and they just wanted to jump into the PvP action, way more people would be playing Planetside.

Please note that the above Stages were only one example of where AI could generate content (without it being the "AI generates a story and/or writes Shakespearan plays").  The same game could be played without any PvP, players could always just be facing off against NPC enemies (i.e., raiding). This type of raiding would be driven by some AI attempting to secure some strategic goal rather then a story waiting to happen.

I think what we're looking at is consolidated levels don't exist in real life. We see levels every day in areas such as the martial arts (combat), labor unions (trade skills), fraternity/sorority organizations (social skills) and the military (leadership). They're called different things, as you pointed out, but they're still levels. And also as you point out, a high level in one area does not guarantee a high level in another area.

Interestingly enough, those real-life levels often prevent people of a low level from grouping with people of a higher level. But they also allow for side-kick grouping.

Those aren't levels; those are certifications. Getting a black belt doesn't make you stronger.  Becoming stronger gets you the black belt.

Anyway, I have been flundering around Eve for a few days.  A lack of level or classes have left me nonplused and the slow game play doesn't give me much incentive to figure that mess out.

Oh I totally agree with your chess AI metagame played on top of the main game (that would be sweet). I'm just pointing out that it need not be tied to a level system which cockblocks players from playing the real game. The setting and story doesn't need a level system to give it legs. Missions and quests don't need levels. The reason Planetside fails longterm is because there is no setting or reason for fighting at all. There is nothing to defend, nothing to gain, no one to fight for, and frankly no setting to speak of other than "we're stuck here lets fight". This works in the short term OMGFPS this is fun way but but arguable not in the long term.


I disagree.  Martial arts might look like a level system (red belt, green belt, black belt, whatever) but it is really a skill system because it's falliable. You can be a master martial artist and I can shoot you down or run you over with a tank without any problem. You yourself just listed "trade skills" and "social skills". Master Craftsman is not a level; it's a skillset. Why? Because you can get old and blind and not able to perform masterfully any more. You have to learn it. If you just plain suck at something it's possible that you will never get much better than you are now regardless of how much time you throw at it. And military rank is NOT a level system. Why? Because you can lose rank; you can screw up and be demoted to nothing.

I will admit that while thinking about this reply I decided that the American education system is a level system. Highschool level. BA. BS. MBA. PHD. Whatever. The reason I feel it is a level system is because it really doesn't have anything to do with skill and you can't lose it once you've gained it (beyond it being revoked for cheating). The "getting old and senile" doesn't apply here because it is a achievement that is bestowed by society.


I disagree. Your social class doesn't prevent you from interacting with people of different social classes. People of different social classes other than your own just may not be able to relate or get along with you. You certainly can try though and sidekicking is a nice hack as Raph says. Wealth however is also not a level system because you can lose it all. It is like a pitcher of water sitting in the sun.


See the problem with MMORPG level systems is that they are based on an infallible irrevocable god complex. To err is human but MMORPG level systems don't take this into account. Your character is basically the body of an automaton and you are the plugin AI brain. As long as you plug in all the right buttons for long enough you win and advance. You can't lose. There are not a lot of things in life that you can't lose at. And that is why levels suck (as they exist in MMORPG EQ clones today).


That all being said, sandboxes as they have been implimented in the past are not the answer either. I feel the directionless pain of EVE as well. Twitch sandboxes with a driving setting (such as a real evolving AI controlled faction war) could possibly be the answer. Wow, I wrote a lot of crap.

I agree, it doesn't need to be tied.  But I'm not sure that if the game doesn't have a demostrative increase in character power that you'll have the same sense of connection between player and character.  Players do not care out the Doom marine.  Players barely care about Morgan Freeman.  I'd say that a level system can be created that moves along quickly enough so that it doesn't feel like it's cockblocking players from playing the end game.  If it's 1) entertaining during the entire leveling process, 2) informative and/or instructive and/or formative (specifically from a community perspective), 3) not specifically required for alts or "remorts" (if the game has alts or "remorts", I'll trust Raph to know what the right word is for re-rolling without wiping) then it can be a decent addition to the game, and potentially takes a game with a good end game, and makes it a great game.

I'd also agree (if you'd said it) that levels aren't required to tell a story or give a sense of progression. 

[I repeat myself here in a slightly different way that I'm unwilling to simply cut, feel free to skip]: Where I'm uncertain is whether games without levels/skill system (I disagree that a skill system is significantly different then levels) or increasingly powerful items give the player as much of a sense of growth or connection with his character.  My feeling is that the greatest evil that levels cause is mudflation, and there hasn't been enough effort directed at mudflation to determine whether it's as unsolvable as everyone acts like it is (my feeling is that designers say things like, "we should have problems like mudflation"... until it's too late to do something about it).

In fact you don't build an entire game just with one idea. In the post above yours I pointed what is the biggest flaw of the sandbox from my point of view. That's what needs to be improved and if you follow the link at the bottom you see some practical, concrete ideas that I suggested for Eve-Online.

Of course there's not a one-size-fits-all game. What I say is not that. What I say is that I believe that you can have possibly (more) successful games even without levels.

Just that.

I'm not saying that this isn't "possible", I'm saying that this is "single-player". A mmorpg doesn't need that. It's redundant. Too much work that should be focused on THE PLAYERS, not the NPCs.

There's a blog post Ubiq wrote that I cannot find right now that explains why we really didn't want true AI in games.

My theories are simplified here:
AI is more like a "toy" than "content". This is why it would be more appropriate in PvP, where you don't need the control to tell a good story. But then the PvP really doesn't need AI by definition.

My point in a line about the AI: it simply doesn't contribute to a MMORPG in a way I see as worthwhile.

Yes, that's a huge problem and one that seems to exist in every sandbox. But this doesn't mean that the problem CANNOT be solved.

Raph says:
And I added my perspective on this point:
We all know how sandbox games SUCK. And they do. But this doesn't mean that they HAVE TO.

What I'd like to know is how one can account for say, AO's system, which gives you attributes and skill points to allocate when you level up.  The distinctions bleed together.

I think WoW's approach is a step forward in terms of the mudflation-newb problem.  The WoW solo experience was entertaining enough -in narrative and gameplay- for me to play alone for a lot of my time to lvl 60, which is basically an unprecedented move in the industry.  Whether one makes the transition to the more-social lvl 60 raid gameplay is another matter, but that's still a few months of subscription opposed to a cancellation in the first month.

I understood that you meant AI cannot create good stories.  I agree, at this point, AI can't create good prose that is often synonymous with story.  I disagree that story can only mean prose.  You played DAOC, you know that each server had a story about who had what relic when.  All stories aren't those you read.

I disagree that raiding content needs to have anything to do with story.  Raiding content usually is the most craptastic story in the game, great zones, great monsters, thin to no story.  Most raiders aren't reading any story that is provided, they are raiding... again, and again, and again.  What was the backstory around Legion and the DF princes in DAOC?  I have no idea, but I killed all of them multiple times.


Only during the journey, not at the endgame.  The endgame needs to be nearly static so mudflation doesn't fuck up your game before players are done playing with it.  As above, the endgame doesn't need story that isn't world changing because players aren't consuming endgame story, they are fighting the big scary for the fat loot.

A world changing story, on the other hand, seems like it could generate player interest if it was done in a way that folks felt like they had some degree of influence over.  A good way for story to be world changing, is for it to be dynamic.  A good way for it for it to be dynamic, is for it to be directed by an AI that is trying to win a war.  Writers can come in and write backstory/flavor story after the event has occurred and post it in the "news" section of that server instance to make players excited about making their own mark upon that server's game world.  In this way folks interested in story can read story, folks not so much don't have to.  To some extent this could be considered part of the "loot" to be collected - getting your name on the permanent record of ass-kicking for that server.

Stories aren't just linear things that end the same way each time that require reading.  History, for instance, is a "true" story told after the fact.

In my opinion, you'll never get a world until you completely abandon your predetermined stories and embrace entities with motivations and character descriptions that are free to act independently based upon input from the world.  In these worlds, each server would have completely different stories.  In these worlds, the stories don't dictate player action, player action creates the stories.

I'd be happy if the next step was a fusion of stories (quests) during character evolution that ends with AI driven strife (with stories told after/about that strife).  If that doesn't sound interesting consider the following example: An AI general is losing the war.  The game engine decides that the general needs a boost.  It flags the GM, who, working with server writers, decide that the general will consort with dark powers.  Over the next couple of days/weeks that faction's armies are bolstered with demons, and that general begins to recover.  If a rough balance of power is restored then no further change is required.  If the demon summoning general is becoming too powerful he can be eliminated and a demon-only force (NPC) can come into power with a cease fire breaking out between other AI generals occuring to band together to put down the demon menance (and players/guilds under the former AI general be subsumed into other armies as a way of evening the sides).  Players find out about what is going on through the communications (writen by the writer) that occur within the chain of command within the army (and possibly through stories released to the "news" section of the website for that server/instance).

It's a different model then everyone is used to.  Content that is developer created is made availabe to server-GMs/Writers who then wait for a in-game opportunity for that content to be used (such as the demons in the example above).

I totally agree with this. There was a comment from Amberyl on Raph's blog explaning exactly this:
Now the point is that, as I said, I prefer to see that dynamism that also DAoC has, in PvP. And expand it way beyond what DAoC did.

Because the raids are game-y. You wouldn't have the time to read a story even if you wish.

Most of WoW is game-y and the immersion is the result of many other elements, not the text in the quests.

I don't agree here. I already find absolutelly silly this distinction between the "endgame" and the rest. We don't need that gap if our goal is to BRING THE PLAYERS TOGETHER. It's a burden, not an advantage.

In FFXI there are good stories. The two expansions add a whole lot of storylines and chapters to follow. But still they are nearly worthless for the treadmill. You don't do them because you want more power, nor you are required to do them. Still, they are what the appeal of the game is.

And again I'm all for integrating some PvE "toys" in the PvP game. Again my idea is that you can add some of these mechanics to a PvP game. But not strictly PvE, because it's in the PvP that this type of dynamism is more fun and effective.

It goes also beyond what we are describing here. Complex dynamic events also driven by AI like the one you proposed are even HARDER to figure out and implement than the linear content. So you are going to burn even more resources on them.

So that type of dynamic content isn't even more optimized than hadcrafting everything in the smaller detail.

Yeah, I agreed with you in my original post, when I said "a high level in one area does not guarantee a high level in another area."


GURPS takes those things into account; skill level declining with age, or an inborn ineptitude at one thing or another. They might suck in an MMO, but game systems do exist for them.


I'm kinda undecided about that one. On the one hand, the prestige that can come with military rank can indeed be taken away. At the same time, the skills one can learn through that rank can stay with you.


Bear in mind I'm talking about these things in the context of game design. Game designers put artificial levels on their game mechanics, just as humans put artificial levels on skill sets (Apprentice, Journeyman, Foreman, 1st degree black belt, Grandmaster, etc). We try to find structure in the world around us, and when we can't find that structure, we imagine it.


Privates in the military cannot hang out in officers clubs. I know very few white belts that can hang in a fight between grandmasters. (They're out there, to be sure, but not in abundance.) Using the education analogy, my non-existant skill level in mathematics is of no assistance to my friend who's working on his thesis right now.

My comments regarding this were in relation to upper class vs. white collar vs. blue collar. You can converse with your mathematics friend regarding other topics. Additionally, you can probably do algerbra and possibly calculus while he/she can do more advanced math. I don't see those as levels because they feel like a learnable skillset. The actual title of PHD or what have you is the level. I also don't see the officers club vs. privates as a level thing either. It's more of a "what's the password old boys club" kind of thing which makes me think of the British army officers circa 1800s being all aristocrats and someone moving up from the ranks just not being accepted because of the same social class (re: Sharpe's Rifles).


I've read hundreds of scifi/fantasy books. However, ingame, any block of text that is more than two sentences causes my eyes to glaze over and me to click the next button as fast as possible so I can get back to stabbing things in the face. If you want to tell me a story in game my suggested method is to have a "sargeant" type character (and this is just one example) radio in and scream at me with urgency. Things like "They're breaking through! We need you over here right now! GO GO GO!". Make it urgent and make it matter when you fail. Halo captured some of this but in a MMOG it would/should be more dynamic. I am NOT going to read your two paragraph fedex quest dialog box in 10px font.

I don't think that the problem is that reading on a screen cannot work. In fact I'm reading right now. And I do plenty of reading while in front of the PC. I don't mind it.

I hate reading in mmorpgs, though. Still, a few days ago I was able to run again Ultima 8 and I'm replaying it. I love so much reading in that game. Without the dialogues with the NPCs and its story, it would be a shitty game, probably the worst ever since the gameplay sucks so badly in U8 (but it's more or less the same in every Ultima).

So I don't believe that "reading" doesn't work in a game. But I do believe, as Amberyl said, that the "presentation" of what we read is just plain bad. Which makes reading in mmorpgs suck so badly.

This also triggered a bunch of ideas that I'm planning to write down in detail. But the summary is: Enough of functional quests, waypoints, quest journals, marks hovering the NPCs, quest levels and so on. I was the first to propose and beg for those a few years ago, but now I would like these games to go in the opposite direction.

I want real dialogues and "living" NPCs as it happened in the Ultima series. Where you don't skip the quest text to get a strict summary of the objectives, but where, instead, you have to RESEARCH and EXPLORE. Talk with different NPCs, taking notes, figuring out the stories. Where you can ask about different topics and not just click, click, click and click again till you reached the end of a one-way text and finally got the quest. Where these NPCs are interconnected and where the dialogues are more rich. So that the world comes to life as something cohesive and not a bunch of quests glued together without any tie between one or the other if not a vague reference. A world where EVERY item is interconnected.

And dialogues that aren't simply functional to get or finish a quest, or flagged clearly that way. The NPCs would tell things to you, recommend who to speak to, where to search what you are looking for, give ideas of the world where you live, explain how to open that portal. But without strictly functional quests that trigger at some point. Without the game recognizing between "this is the text for a quest" and "this is extra text". Without a "you got a quest!". Without functional mechanics "you gained 300xp!".

If you are trapped in a dungeon, your duty would be to escape alive. Not to get experience points because you killed the monsters. If you are working to open a portal to another world your duty is to research and collect the items and knowledge you need to do that, and not other unexcused rewards. If you are researching a new spell, your duty is about studying it, learn where you can acquire it, train it. But not magically "dinging" and the spell appearing in your hotbar because you "gained a level".

Then, maybe, reading will regain its function instead of remaining "optional" extra text without a purpose.

EDIT- This would also mean that a "quest" would be completely detached from the purpose of being a "mean" to progress in the treadmill. Questing should be about living a story and just it. Not an pretence to kill mobs and disguise the treadmill.

To explain (more to myself than anything):
In a mmorpg the "kill10rats" model is about an "excuse" to disguise the treadmill. The strict purpose of this quest is that you gain experience and get loot. These quests are excuses so that the process seems more varied (kill10 this, then move and kill10 of that, instead of just plain grinding in one spot). Once you killed those 10 rats, you are exactly in the same situation of before. The quest is no more availiable and you pass on something else. But the quest itself, has no purpose or actual sense in the world. It was there as a pretence, not as a strong, motivating element. An "extra" in the game, not the subject of the game.

In my idea (that mimics that magic that made me love so much those early games and that the modern ones have lost) a quest is a mean for the story. A quest can be a way to get access to a different zone, discover a new spell and so on. If an NPC asks you to obtains some reagents (kill10rats) it's because once you have accomplished that simple quest, something will happen after. And then something else. You don't chase strictly your character progress. You chase a story and discover a world. If you don't deliver those reagents that were requested, or if you don't find an alternate way to pass that point, you won't be able to continue with the (your) story.

This means that there could be "kill10rats" quests. But they would be part of a world and a story that goes on, cohesively. And not a redundant action without a purpose.

Now an experiment. Roleplaying design instead of explaining the theory.

This is a rough idea I used to paint visually and define some concepts. The concept of a "plane" should work like a large "hub" of player. This dimension will be accessed from a portal located in the homeworld of the game. After stepping in this portal, the players will be moved on one of the planes/hubs available (themed after the magic schools). The hub will usually exist around a large outpost/city from where the players will have access to other dimensions and "adventures".

Think to one of this hub like a zone filled with mist. You cannot really look and distinguish things far away. There's a reddish light and mood that permeates everything, like seeing the world through red lenses. The surroundings are rocky, with bigger and smaller stalagmites, strangely shaped natural "sculptures" and a few odd plants that you cannot recognize. If it wasn't for the mist you could wonder if the whole place wasn't just inside a huge cavern. If you look up you don't see a sky or a ceiling but just more mist. All the sounds seem to have a weak echo. You seem to be on a road, vaguely discernable from the rocky landscape but looking as built by someone and not natural. Dotting the side of the irregular road are a few feebles, floating blue lights. On the distance you seem to discern some odd structures resembling to buildings. S you walk toward this city, the more you get closer to it the more you discover how huge and complex it is. The buildings have no doors and seem built directly in the rock. You cannot really define the landscape, there are slopes, ladders, buildings on top of other buildings, endless walls and narrow passages. Some odd bridges, dead ends. The whole place doesn't seem to have a "top" or "bottom". You enter what looks like a huge palace, there are odd people hidden in red cloaks, gliding around and whispering things you cannot discern, busy with their own duties. Some look at you but turn away if you look in their direction. The whole place is more complex than the city outside. The architecture doesn't seem to have a sense and seems coming out directly from a dream of Escher. Some rooms seem to not have entrances, some are nearly suspended, some are built at odd inclinations or have sections that have crumbled.

You may decide to leave the place and move away from the city to see if the zone where you are has borders, if it is a cavern and if you can find one wall, or if it leads to a different place. So you follow the road from where you arrived. The landscape remains rocky but it is not regular and you seem to move up, then down again, never in a straight line. You walk through some narrow passages and in some points the road continues in different directions. So you choose one and continue walking. You aren't sure if you will be able to return back without getting lost. You can just hear your steps and a weak wind in your ears that seems to pick up. The mist seems to become more thick, the visibility decreasing. You start to hear some creepy sounds, some steps just behind you, then running after you and moving in front of you. One of the lights that are bordering the road fades out, then another. reducing even more the visibility.

You aren't left with many options so you decide to stop for a while and see what happens. But nothing happens. You wait some more and then continue walking. At some point you see a shape, not far away, on the road you are following. It's rather big but you cannot really understand what it is. Just a dark shape in the mist, blocking your way. So you continue to walk toward it. As you walk closer you start to notice that it moves slightly, regularly. It seems to... breath. You start to see some more of it. It seems to turn toward you. You see distinguish a frightening face, glowing red eyes open on you. You hear it breathing slowly,  ruggedly. Then everything happens at the sudden, the demon seems to stand up from its position, becoming much bigger than how it appeared on the road. And it starts to move toward you, faster and faster. A loud growl tearing the dull quietness that permeated the place till that moment.

Note: This idea for a game assumes a total immersion. All the mechanics of the game will have to *bend* to that rule with no exception. This means, for example and as described, that there won't be any "pulling" mechanic. If you can see a mob, the mob can see you (if you aren't disguised, or hidden, or stealthed). And if the mob is aggressive, it will charge on you without giving you the time to organize. The demon in that scenario wants your blood, and it is going to get it.

Now we can see what actually would happen in a "mmorpg". People would spam "LFM demon run" in the town and gather at one of the portals. But then? The mood and gameplay is lost like that? I believe not. Not at all. You cannot outplay the mist. You are still moving through an ambient where you cannot see clearly what's around you. where you cannot predict the attacks even if you have been there various times. The demons don't stand still on a point and react and move as they see humans close to them. And they can perceive them from far away. They don't wait you to "pull" them. They don't sit waiting to be farmed. They FARM YOU and all the other players that dare to pass. And, maybe, there could be a mechanic making them stronger for every player they kill and devour, making this scenario even more unpredictable.

You won't have any radar or map in the game. So? Spoiler site! Okay, I still want to see how you'll figure out a place with multiple levels and a true z-axis that isn't just a flat map with a hill on the right and a tree in the middle. Where things are one above the other and not linearly connected. Slopes, passages, tunnels, peaks. It would be easier to describe it with words than map it. Maybe there will be players that will learn a path through these levels and avoid the meanest demons, and they will become "guides" for other group of players, escorting them from place to place. Hopefully safe. Good. That's what "content" is. And that's how you shape a world.

And I want the players to *die horribly*. Not swing a stick at the air. I want those demons to charge you, to hurl you away with a slap. I want them to uproot a stalagmite and throw it at you. I want them to tear you apart. Grab your sword and throw it far away and then chomp your head. I want them to jump on you and block you on the ground while your party tries to pull the beast off you before it devours you. I want the players to become PREYS. That's your "hero's journey". Survive that.

And that's how I was also hoping to recapture that mood and atmosphere that is now lost. We play these games boredly, like a routine. While I would like the game to make you feel like in a Lovecraft book. And be on your toes every second, if you are out in the mist.

And now I shut up to not definitely kill Raph's poor thread :)

Ah, I see. I think we're coming from different sides of the argument. I'm seeing things more like, we as humans put levels onto aspects of our life, in order to make sense of it. The black belt is a better fighter than the white belt, the PhD is better at mathematics than the high school student, etc. Developers put levels onto game content to try to make sense of that too. Level 10 content is more challenging than level 1 content, etc. Neither works out perfectly, of course, and in fact sometimes it makes things worse, but there it is.

I think we're totally in agreement that proficiency in one skillset does not constitute overall level of power. Me and my friend can work (form a group) evenly in the realm of poetry, and almost evenly with music. We've both studied and practiced it. Give me a set of drums and he a guitar, and we could pound out some good stuff. But if I were to try to help him with his math, I would give him bad results. If he were to join me in dance, it would cause spacial and rhythmic awkwardness. But we could use a side-kicking method where he gave me easier problems to solve for him, or I gave him different yet complimentary choreography.

Don't they have games where the sensible noob can challenge a vet?  Quakes, Halos, Battlefronts, etc.  Most people I game with play those games when they want to have some instant gratification on an anonymous level.  They function as a break from MMOs. 

On an existential level, I see Raph's point:  a player may gain levels, but with that the playable environment becomes exponentially more difficult.
But on a 1:1 basis, someone with experience in a particular environment should definitely have the clear advantage when matched against a person entering that environment for the first time.  There has to be a justification for the time investment, otherwise it's just a simple shooter.

Level 1-60 in WoW is just the tutorial, and rather superbly balanced (skirting the edge of tedium) to
the amount of content they were able to produce with the money / time they had available. Sure, it
would be nice to have hand-crafted, intricate, meaningful and tailored content for every step of the
way but that's just not economical even if it was possible... and people see through auto-generated
content very very quickly, intelligence is all about pattern recognition after all.

The levels themselves are just a generalized indication of character progression. They get rid of the
weakness with skill based systems where you have to grind each possible parameter of your character.
Such as "jumping" training in morrowind, or lock-picking in WoW or EQ. There's not actually enough content
that demands those skills so repetition is mandatory. This is why WoW has recently sprinkled empty, pickable,
locked boxes over various zones. Not to mention the amusing knots skill based games tie themselves
into when they have to consider HP increases. Instead you can say that a character is level "X" of class
"Y" and assign the skills they can be expected to have, without the boring gameplay involved in levelling
each skill individually. And there's lots of ways you can mix the two systems, such as rolemaster where
each level gave you points and your class determined how much each skill in the game cost for you, or
fallout which had tag skills where each point invested was worth more due to your specialisation. Of course
this is what talents do in WoW, though not very well.

Also somewhat amusing Raph didn't mention the game that had the ultimate skill grinding, SWG. Why not
grind up an endless sequence of skill sets you don't actually care about, that don't have much actual content,
for the Jedi carrot? Even more amusing because ultimately you were grinding the skills simply to delete
them.

In any case paying too much attention to the issues of levels is simply over-optimising the first month or two
of your MMORPG's gameplay. If you want a real challenge address meaningful character progression in the
end game that doesn't fracture game mechanics. This is certainly something WoW has no answers too (nor
was able to borrow from elsewhere). Although it is interesting they've so far resisted the easy answer of EQ's
Alternate Advancement system which was basically a way of extending the level grind to infinity, although it
did significant damage to the game.

Remind me to never play a game you design  :-D

Seriously, you want dramatic tension and role playing in a mass market game?  Good luck with that.  Much of what you want isn't easily doable in a Massive game simply due to the shared knowledge and the random playerbase.  You can't dismiss spoiler sites and the dissemination of information that way b/c as soon as you talk to one other person in game, they've expanded your knowledge whether you wanted it or not AND affected the mood.  So going through the area with a "guide" (other player who knows the area) will still spoil the mood unless that other player is intentionally trying to preserve it and using things like voice chat to do so than just fumble typing text at you (i.e. "big scari demno near!").  What you want is MUCH more akin to a small group focus rpg than these massive beasts.  Having a big sandbox game wouldn't change this.

(BTW, ironically enough, the original D&D pen and paper game, the mother of all levels, was very much the kind of sandbox game you want.  Just because so many of it's rules are combat related did not limit the scope of it b/c a skilled DM could tailor the experience to suit the players.  Even D&D had tradeoffs like Paladins having to follow the tenets of their faith in order to keep their powers, yet that is something which incredibly few crpgs let alone mmorpgs have implemented, mainly b/c their content isn't tailored to the players.  A good DM could have a great shared story about a paladin's faith being tested with no combat involved at all.  Levels and sandbox are not mutually exclusive especially if the power curve is small.)

In my mind, what you are seeking is a better NWN which allows for a human to fulfil the role of DM for a small group that has it's own adventures and more embedded game systems.  Levels (of skill levels) don't take the focus b/c all they are used for is to set appropriate difficulty challenges, and even than they aren't the end all be all.  How many quests have you played through where the Foozle you had to defeat was much too strong to fight head on, so you had to do something else to weaken, defeat, trick, entrap or otherwise find a non head on solution to deal with it?  "That dragon eats armies for breakfast, we'd better go search for the last dragonorb of gygax so we can mind control him into thinking he's a butterfly..."

Current popular MMORPGS are all about head on combat with generic content strictly to fuel advancement up a power curve.  Current sandboxy games give you game systems and freedom but no direction or reasons for wanting to do any of it, and again, generic content.  What you want simply isn't generic.

A small step in the right direction would be to allow instances to at least tailor adventures to best challenge the parties entering it but even that would be fairly cookie cutter (i.e. if party has a rogue, include 4 traps, 7 locked doors/containers, 3 pick pocket spots, a wall climb, 2 sneakable areas and 3 secret doors).  Another way to approach it would be true sever divergence based on player actions.  But again, the less generic you make things they more expensive it becomes to create them. 

I really hope someone is able to take the concept of NWN, flesh it out and figure out a way to make money doing it.  Sure 95-99% of all player created content is crap (no matter what form it takes), but just finding a way to harness that 1% applied to WoW millions of users help create a ton of content.

Xilren

I've talked about power differential for years, now. I mainly started on that when Planetside came out with an advancement mechanism that promoted diversity instead of power. Of course, it's also exposed to what I call 'mmogtardation', in which people play the game badly (from a tactical sense...and it's mostly a tactical game...) because they want to get more 'exp'.

I still think a shallow UO-like (NOT SWG skill era) advancement scheme is nice. Use weapons to get better at them, and thus customize your character. But don't make that customization take forever (SWG). The goal to me should be customization, not advancement.

Then, with a flat power differential (which is to say, none, but more realistically it's based on skill choices and player ability) you can have ungated content so people can enjoy what they'd like to in a game. You could still gate things by remoteness or other factors, just not some "Sorry, go kill more rats, no cool stuff for you" that makes most mmogs crap.

And that's not even getting into the divisiveness of levels, or all of the game systems you mention that cropped up because of such a silly mechanism sticking around forever.

I disagree. Normal levels yes. EQ clone levels no. EQ levels and EQ clone levels were designed as a cockblocking subscription retention mechanism. Or at least that is what I keep reading from Brad Mcquaid.

In fact the sandbox is "in the other direction":
That "homeworld" is the sandbox. Divided into regions that can be conquered and managed by the players. That's where the economy exists and where some elements of the "RTS" layer take place (gathering resources through NPCs).

For a scheme look here (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/237).

The "other side" is PvE, instead. PvP and PvE are geographically cut apart, even if the PvP has some PvE "toys" and the PvE some parallel competitive elements. The planes are shared hubs and also persistent, but from there you can open portals to other dimensions that will be instanced. This follow the model I described on a extra-long post when I was discussing "instancing" after the articles of Lum, Raph and Brad:
The advantage of the sandbox part in PvE (and on the planes I described) is that the game is completely skill based (even if I use a trick for endless progression with diminished returns) and the power curve flat.

Basically all the players (new and veterans) can access all the content available (and on the PvP side they HAVE TO play together). The PvE content isn't "repetable" because, as I said, PvE needs a story to be good. It needs involvement and identity. It cannot be "contingent". Contingent is antithetic to identity. So, by definition, you cannot radomly generate good PvE content or make it dynamic beyond a certain level (that must still be carefully planned).

As I said there ISN'T and there WON'T EVER BE a way to magically create good content with an algorithm. My "solution" on this aspect is about changing the overall scheme. So that every player can access the same content and not just a small fraction of it. So that new content won't mudflate out of the game old content. And so that the players are brought TOGETHER instead of apart.

The rest IS carefully handcrafted content. And it is NOT used as an excuse for the advancement. Instead it is founded on the ideas (about questing) I explained above.

Which is exactly what Sky wrote just below:

/generalizing

You guys don't want a game, you want Reality 2.0 with an optional elf boobies upgrade  :-P  Fuck all that 'my bronze sword ought to have a .037 chance to hit the armpit of the guy in steel plate armor' and 'skill points ARE/AREN'T levels' ... people want a FUN game, and while stuff like that may be fun for the hardcore masochists on this board, most people wont give a shit about the small details.  I am 100 percent sure that you can make a FUN level based system (WoW seems to do it pretty damn well) and a FUN skill point or whatever system (UO, EVE, ATITD).  There's too much worrying about perfecting the small stuff and not enough worrying about if its FUN.  As has been said before, WoW is a great game, but a very average world.  One could argue that power creep for equipment is a very necessary thing, in that it becomes

My take on levels/some kind of grind:  They're necessary for player retention.  If you give everyone (quick) access to the good stuff immediately, they're not going to want to stick around once they've tried everything.  There's no attachment to a character if he can be replaced in a few minutes, and therefore, probably not much attachment to the game.  How many people played Guild Wars beyond a month or two?  I hear people complaining about power creep, but really, why the hell would you stay in the game otherwise? Just move the whole guild to the next shiny game.

I have more points to make in a more coherent fashion, but I'm late for a movie. 

As with all things, there are two camps here at f13.  I find it easiest as a "game guy" to let the "virtual world" guys wax poetically about how, when someone finally makes the "ideal" virtual world, that genre will be fun.  I find it's best to stir things up occasionally by pointing out that thousands of fun games have been made, but no one has yet succeeded in making a fun virtual world.  They'll deny that fact, but that's what puts them firmly in the "wrong" camp.  :)

A fun virtual world, in and of itself, won't exist until someone invents a working holodeck.  Until then, virtual worlds are going to require a bit of effort on behalf of the participants.  No?

What's the point here?

Cevik says "no one has yet succeeded in making a fun virtual world".  I'm asking whether or not that fun exists in a vacuum.  I'm not saying I know the answer and I'm not defending any particular games.

Does the virtual world have to be something you can passively enjoy?  Does the virtual world provide more of a rewarding experience to those who put more effort into working within that world?

I'm not saying that we should accept a shitty virtual world as something that we have to force ourselves to have fun in.  But he said there have been no fun virtual worlds...none!  So I'm just kind of exploring that.

"Holodeck" was a bonus Star Trek TNG reference.  I'm using that as an example of a virtual world that can be passively experienced (until Data dresses as John Wilkes Booth and attempts to shoot Capt Picard dressed as Abraham Lincoln.  Then you must intervene)

Ralph Wiggum:  Fun toys are fun!


As a player, I don't give a fuck about player retention.  I'm not going to wade through crap for $15 a month to access the good stuff, which may never even come, just so I can help pay someone's bills.  No matter how great an MMO is, I don't see myself playing one for more than a few months anyway.  Even my favorite single-player games don't get that much of a commitment out of me, why do people expect MMO's to be different?

Well, my post vanished. I must have cut/pasted it out of the box to my site and then posted the wrong one and forgot to update the previous.

Anyway, the point here is: what the "sandbox" or virtual game has LESS compared to a linear one? Why you (Cevik) say that one is fun while the other isn't?

My answers are here (the post that I cut out):
Straight from Raph:
Why I would play a game? Because I'm interested in the experience it offers me and having lots of fun in it. Consequence -> I really want to be part and active subject of this world.

The power creep is really a detail, even for those who love the progression. Again from Raph (I'm starting to feel like a well-trained bot) :
This is REALLY the most basic stuff. We shouldn't discuss about this in this sort of community. We aren't five years ago. With WoW there's a REAL RISK to demolish all we learnt if observed superficially (http://www.brokentoys.org/?p=6595#comment-1163) like that.

Well, I didn't deny the fact at all. Quoting from above comments:
Back to Raph:
And back to me:

Dude, the details are the only things worth noticing.

Playing Soldiers and pulling charred corpses out of a blasted tank so I can get inside and pilfer it for ammo does in fact make the game experience better.

Raph's piece was well written, but I had the following problem:

There was not one concrete suggestion in the entire thing.


Most people grasp on some level that levels in MMORPGs, or at least how they are implemented, leave a lot to be desired. That's basically a given. You have a bunch of criteria, and levels fail some of those. Fine. Now suggest something that doesn't! That's the hard part.

I agree, that does sound cool.  The point I was trying to make - not very clearly, and I'm too tired right now to fix the whole post - is that people in the thread were focusing too much on minor gameplay mechanics that often have very little to do with how much most players actually enjoy the level procses. 

But I know if I ask 'how do you remove the levels from WOW and still make it fun for the players and profitable (sales and retention) for the company, people will bring up all many things that have very little to do with the overall fun factor, IMHO.  But ya know, why am I even posting on a message board at 1:30 AM if not to quibble the details.  That's not really a good point, is it.   

I did.

I believe Raph mentions near the end of article 2 that he won't be able to post implementation ideas.  The reason for this is cause, like, that's his day job.  SOE pays him to think big thoughts, they could stop paying him if he was just going to post them on a free website.

...and it's still just as meaningless without an implementation plan that makes the moment to moment experience fun.  It's not the design, nor the advancement scheme, which determines the success or failure of this projects, it the embedded game systems.  If they arent fun the whole project is moot b/c it wont attract and keep players.  You need look no further than SWG for a glowing example of this (the failure of the original combat game system to the latest tempest over their replacement of it and it's effects on the project as a whole)

To sum, start with the mirco view of your embedded games, then build on them to the macro view of the worldspace, not the other way around.  /Insert analogy of chain's weakest link of buildings with shaky foundations here

Xilren
PS It's possible somewhere in your tons of prose on your site or elsewhere you have actually gotten to this level; sorry, I'm not going spelunking to find it.  Besides, reading too much of you make my head hurt in a "warrior needs alcohol" kind of way...

I get what you are saying. I think the reason people are offering up examples of specific, small things because 'showing your work' when you answer 'yes' or 'no' to this question is hard. I talked about the 'stabbing the armpit' type of thing to provide an example of something that would be fun to me. If I had just said, "I'd like 3rd person combat controls" or something along those lines, maybe someone would have gotten the idea that I would like Rune Online.

That would be just as bad, if not worse than EQ, because it's very shallow. Taking the extra 10 steps past Rune, though, and allowing you to expose weak points in the opponents armor such as the armpits and the back of the knee shows some depth, strategy, and that you'll probably need player skill in combat. You need a strong core combat system to build the game on, because it always comes back to the combat. I do not understand why people use these games for online chatrooms, but Habbo Hotel is definately lacking in the graphics department so maybe they just like that type of shiny.

Then again, I could have just said "I'd like player skill in combat." A few steps past M&B and I'll be a happy camper.

The problem, and I think this has been pointed out above, is that the interface to our games is severely lacking.  SEVERELY.

Sure, dragging corpses out of tanks to scrounge for ammo sounds fun.  So does stabbing people in armpits.  The problem stems from the fact that the interface we have (typically a keyboard and a mouse, maybe a joystick, occasionally a game pad, unless we are talking about consoles, then turn that entire sentence on it's head, but it doesn't matter) lacks in it's ability to accurately convey our desired actions into this virtual world.

An example, someone on the Cornered Rat design team looked at WWII rifles, thought "wow, that's complex to shoot, it requires lots of different actions", then decided to put each of those actions as a separate action in the game.  WWIIO came out, required 17 button presses to aim and fire your rifle, and we had two years of comedic fun at their expense.  The intuitive actions on a rifle do not translate well to keys on a keyboard.  Battlefield 1942 came out and required one, maybe 2, button presses FOR THE SAME ACTION, and we had tons of fun killin' n00bs.

We are in the very baby stages of interface design on computers.  We have before us a device intended for nothing other than to make transcribing words (English words none the less) quick and easy.  Well, quick and easy by turn of the century standards, and not even the most recent turn of the century (inventend in 1868 no less).  We've added only one improvement over the last 100 years (unless you want to count the extra keys, which hardly seems worth counting), and that's a device that lets us move our cursor around the screen (an accessory that was only needed when we added screens to these keyboards, i.e. in the last 20 years).

Look at how I play WoW.  I have the "1 2 3 4 5 q w e r t a s d f g z x c v b and tab" keys and 4 buttons plus a scroll wheel all mapped to something I use in pretty much every battle, including shift + most of those keys.  There are other things I'd LOVE to map, but I'm out of real estate.  If the game gets more "complex", as in calling shots at a specific area of the body, I'd be screwed, there simply is no available interface left for me to capitalize on.  I have one hand on the mouse for moving/targeting the other hand has EVERY key that it is intended to press (plus a couple that it was never meant to press) mapped to something VITAL to the game as is.  All of that and I'm supposed to use THE SAME interface to talk to other people in the game (i.e. when I'm busy telling the /raid that there are two incoming 29 rogues to the flag room, I CANNOT fight, It's a half duplex interface, either I talk or I fight).

The dilemma for game makers becomes making a game that is FUN with the interface that is available.  Good console games take the interface in to account first, then design the game around the interface available (the dual shock, or the type S controller, whatever they are designing for).  The "best" console games are the ones that most intuitively let you use the interface they have to enjoy the game.  For some reason, PC developers NEVER seem to take this into account (aside from Flight Sims, which often are the best Sim type games, because most of their consumers purchase identical interfaces to their real world counter parts).  The difference between a "fun game" and a boring click fest is really the difference between a game designed with the limitations of the interface in mind and a game designed around a concept and forced to fit into the interface at the last moment.

Here is where you tell me I'm an uninformed jackass:

ETA:  For the techincally minded, yes I used Half Duplex incorrectly above, I realized that when I typed it, but it's a good way to describe the interface, it can only do one thing or the other (both actions are transmitting, the interface is incapable of recieving, so Half Duplex doesn't really apply, it'd be better to call it a toggle). 

Steel Battalion. Best input for a game ever, outside some arcade setups.

I agree with your sentiments, but I find console controllers to suck on their own (IE: on consoles). As a supplement for analog control on a pc, with the keyboard and mouse, they rock. In GTA I use a controller for driving and flying, the key/m for foot control and fps segments.

As with all things, there are two camps here at f13.  I find it easiest as a "game guy" to let the "virtual world" guys wax poetically about how, when someone finally makes the "ideal" virtual world, that genre will be fun.  I find it's best to stir things up occasionally by pointing out that thousands of fun games have been made, but no one has yet succeeded in making a fun virtual world.  They'll deny that fact, but that's what puts them firmly in the "wrong" camp.  :)

Well, I still fondly remmeber the virtual world that existed in SWG till the first CURB. Yes, it wasnt a fully virtual world, but one of the things about a "world" is the variety of things available to do. Call it virtual or not, all I want is a single, persistent game that offers several fun things to do, ranging from mindlessly slaughtering animals to managing a business/city/Guild.

The thing that amazes me is that it *seems* like no one believes the two camps can co-exist inside one game. Why does it HAVE to be one or the other?

Darniaq and I posited that the best of all possible worlds could have been a grafting of SWG and PS (not the NGE, heh). The trades and VW of SWG with the fast-paced fps combat of PS would have been the ultimate mmo, in my book. It became something of a joke for us, and the NGE is kind of a sand-kick to the face in that light. They both have the strengths the other lacks, SWG needed good combat, PS needed a world to exist in.

Still do, I guess.

I HATED[/i] pre-CURB SWG (and I have yet to ever play it post CURB or NGE, not worthy of my time).  The game sucked.  Moisture farming, while accurate, is not fun.  The combat system was retarded, unbalanced, and silly.  Having 3 "damage bars" that each could kill you, but only having healers for 2 damage bars is the most retarded thing I've ever seen.  How the fuck did Raph think that THAT wasn't going to be unbalanced?

Okay, so I probably missed it, but did anyone talk about why we need levels? I've been reading all these thesis and essays and I got confused, hehehe. Maybe its better served in a different thread, but why bother with levels? Just drop people in a game, and then let their actions in game determine their character progression. Want more hit points? Go see so-and-so who has a lead on potions/scrolls/implants/whatever that will allow you to boost your hit points. Want more spells? Go see so-and-so who will point you in the direction of a Guild/City/Dungeon/Master that will open the opportunity to learn a new spell or three. Wnat better equipment? Go see so and so who knows some legendary Crafters... but they need components to craft it, which you have to go get, and which leads to a whole 'nother series of content.

Levels are good pretty much for 2 reasons, IMHO. 1) To provide a concrete sense of accomplishment and status. 2) To assist min/maxer's in their quest to be uber.

The first reason can be fufilled by many means, and the second, well, wouldnt it be cool to be best because you WERE best, and not just becasue you had the current flavor-of-the-month template and used IGE-bought money to buy the best of everything?

Let us adjust our skills, let us grow in knowledge, let us be a little different that others, and let us do it without rolling new toon's.

I love this. Man, wouldnt it be nice?!

It wasnt fun for YOU. But there is a small percentage that likes it. These people even choose games based on if this type of gameplay exists. I think its been firmly established its a niche playstyle. But thats not a bad thing. Along with that niche comes dedication. That niche plays for a lot longer than a typical hack & slasher due to their investment in the game and the relationships that invariably evolve.

Again, why cant we have a game with moisture farming AND a great combat system, and maybe even a Sims Online facet too? Is it possible for one game to satisfy a few different niche playstyles, as well as the dominant murderer playstyle?

Problems:
-how would a character in this system be able to determine their chances against various AI opponents?  Not to mention players?  Taking the rails of is good but can you actually remove them?  So you want a new sword, you go to see the old monk in the temple on the hill.  You die three times getting there from the stone monkey demons then finally reach the old monk and he says something like:  "you are too young to quest for the sword of the kingslayer" oops would have been nice to know that in advance.  Or does he give you a quest you have absolutely no hope of completing?

-you would need a very elegant system to balance the maximum amount of power increase a character is capable of.

-do you somehow prevent a player from creating a character then being run through every quest/location they need to max the build they want?  Or do you accept that once you have an established player base you'll be seeing twinking on a scale that means you better not have designed any content to be completed by groups at certain power levels.

I like the idea, but managing the possibilities would be a tremendous task for the devs I'd imagine.

Why? Because change is hard. And I am not talking about the players here. The developers are human too ( inspite of various rumors to the contrary).

The business models are changing and as the genre matures and competition comes in, the ROIs are shrinking. Some cling to their old money hats, which are becoming tatered with age.

Without levels, how would you know when to /say gratz?

It was pretty dumb, but we made it work.  Crafters were able to make helmets that protected the blue bar so well, even against mega swordsman and riflemen, that if you could get your hands on one then it wasn't worth their time to attack the blue bar anymore, especially if you ate mind food.  See, it was a huge weakness, but it created a demand for good crafters...interdependence ahoy!!!  People are always going to find workarounds for stuff like that.

But what you said about interfaces is the interesting part.  The keyboard/mouse thing is getting kind of old.  I haven't even bound keys yet for WoW  :-P

I'm basically unschooled in all things Programming, but it seems to me that with the power of computers today, that it should be possible to set up a system by which all these things would be possible.

Again, with no real idea of what I'm saying, what if there were modifiers for every facet (my new word for the day) of the character? Using "X" sword grants a + modifier for accuracy, but a -mod for damage, then your personal Dex grants a slight increase in speed, then your skill in Short Swords (level 16 skill) grants some +when using this short sword. All together, it adds up to a cumulative set of modifiers for this encounter. Then apply terrain and environmental mods, plus movement mods, etc....

It seems to me that some of the games out right now already do these things. As I wrote it, it seems to bear resemblance to the EVE model plus the old SWG.

I'm always been a fan of diminishing returns. EVE, once again, has it right I think. The higher the skill level, the longer it takes to learn, and you can only learn one skill at a time. Low level skills are pretty fast, but with an exponential increase in the time needed to level that skill up. I would modify that so you actually have some kind of "counter" to fill up before increasing the skill instead of loggin out and "learning" anyway. Face it, to become a better Airplane Pilot, you need time in the air. So you accumulate this experience, and it gets you to the next level eventually. If there was no real limit on skill level, but a constant increase on the XP needed to get to the next level, people would find themselves dedicating themselves to what they LIKE, not necessarily to what makes them uber. In EVE, it takes around 2 weeks "training" to get to level 5 on some skills. Some are even longer. Well, what about if there was a level 6? 6 months? Why not!? If I want to be a Short Sword Specialist, I dont mind, and the result is that I will be one of very few at that skill level.

Managing such a system would be easy enough IF the system is solid and flexible. Designing it would be, um, fun, but managing should be easy enough. But I am obviously crazy, because I think the original skill system in SWG was great. I also liked the variety in combat, and the ability to be a little different that others.

Basically, it still seems like just hiding levels from the players should help. Keep them blind to some of the modifiers and such. I would gladly accept min/maxers whining on secret modifiers if it meant they spent their time playing the game for fun instead of trying to dominate. But dont mistake that for thinking I like the current Level system like the NGE brought in. I think thats total crap, and an insult to anyone with even only half a brain. I dont play games, with level or not, that are designed for idots on a console game.

I think that's A problem, but not one specifically related to levels.  Look at World of Warcraft, for example.  I tell my rogue to deliver a kidney shot, and he does.  I don't have to aim for the kidneys or anything like that, I just click the little square with the icon on it and he does it automatically.  That's the way the game controls; that's it's interface.  But that's not in any way related to a level system.  It'd be easy to come up with a game that controls identically to World of Warcraft save that it doesn't have levels.  There are FPSes out there that are level based, and FPSes which are not.  There are RTSes which are level based, and some which aren't.  If you want a game where your agile rogue can stab some plate wearing knight in a vulnerable spot, you can do that with levels or you can do that without levels.  Levels are something that gets thrown on over the control interface, and there are both advantages and drawbacks to doing so.  Levels are a way for the developer to control access to content; interface issues are a separate matter from that, I'd argue.

I was specifically responding to Nija's posts.  But I'd say that games are nothing if not interfaces, fun interfaces make fun games.  This is true for every game in history.  Balls and Nets, Pieces on a Board, Sticks and Balls, Cards.  The game itself is the interface, every fun game is developed around manipulating something in an intuitive and fun way.  Without a good interface, without that "fun" way of manipulating our environment, there is nothing.  If we are constrained by the interface, the only real way to develop a game is to find a fun way to manipulate that interface (i.e. if we designed a game around manipulating a ball with our minds, it would be boring, because the interface to the game is unusable, if instead we design a game around manipulating a ball with a stick, it will become our national passtime).

Or I could be high.

It was made to work after I left, several months into the game.  In other words, the work around took a long time coming. 

If you haven't bound keys yet for WoW, will you please come and play Alliance side BGs on Llane?  I need more people like you to kill.. :)

That first problem is usually the biggest hurdle for change, due to the fact that to get 'teh grate big numbers' demanded by the investors, developers go for the LCD, which means anything more difficult than 'is this number bigger than my number' is too hard, and it'd be nice if we had the game do it for you and assign a nice color indicating the outcome of a fight beforehand. 

There are several systems for RPGs that don't use levels, that base advancement off a point system.  Adapt GURPs, or Hero/Champion, or Storyteller, or any of the other various systems that don't base power progression on levels.  Your stats are X at start, those cost 200 points.  Place a cap at, say, 800 total points.  Allow people to work their stats up, skills up, gain spells and powers, etc, up the the limits allowed by that cap.  Then you can assign your color gradient based on the difference in the point value of the player's character vs. the point value of the enemy.  Of course, this won't always be foolproof.  It will be possible to gimp yourself, depending on what is made available and how it is accessed.  However it is, as your character's stats increase, you pay for it with exp, until you no longer have enough exp left to get more powerful.  You could even have certain kinds of things go up similar to EVE, I.e. I want to raise strength, so I buy a gym membership, and my character spends time there when I'm not logged in.  After X hours of time passes, I've spent the xp, and my str goes up.  Can buy another term of membership, and make it go up more.

Systems like Champion/Hero System have been around since before MMOs.  Why is it, then, that (almost) all MMOs look just like D&D as far as advancement?

Alkiera

Hmm.  Liked the articles Raph.  My biggest pain with the DIKU level system was surmised in your articles, the fact that as your gain levels, your world shrinks.  One of the biggest reasons I stopped playing DAOC was the fact that ever level I lost x amount of the game content and the time I had to spend in the alloted narrow band grew in proportion.  I can only imagine the nightmare of the HP factor currently.

WOW has more staying power because even a level 60 can go breeze through level 1 content.  Hell, even grouped the lower level characters still get XP and certainly through questing.

I enjoy the direction your taking with trying to tie down the HP inflation.  The skill system of UO could have easily been metered out in a level setting.  One of the best things about UO (which has been pointed at several times in this thread) revolve around the narrow gage of the HP range.

Well, it's not so important to know if I have done that (I have) as it is defining a fucking context.

All the discussions here seems to be about switching topics, like finding excuses to not discuss anything. We discuss the level up mechanics and someone say "Okay, but what about the character progression?". We discuss the character progression and someone says, "Okay, but what about the lack of direction?" We discuss about the lack of direction and someone says, "Okay, but what about the embedded game systems? Because it's all about that." We discuss about the embedded systems and someone says, "Okay, but you didn't know that it's all about the interface?"

Okay, what about chosing ONE argument and discuss it instead of keeping dodging the discussion to rinse and repeat the strategy of "Yes, but..." ?

I like to discuss *all* these topics where it comes to the ideas. The combat, the mechanics, character progression, the use of instancing, interfaces, PvE and PvP, economics, the controls and so on. BUT NOT ALL AT ONCE.

In this thread I touched many, many different arguments, myself. But it was consequent to a reasoning. We analyzed what's wrong in the level up mechanics: they bring the players apart instead of together, they make the production of content harder, they mudflate the game killing in it in the mid-long term and, in particular, they dumb down the game to a pointless power grind, killing the potential of saying something interesting and not redundant.

Then we analyzed the problems of the other model, the sandbox: lack of direction, clueless players, awful accessibility, rudimental, unfinished design.

And I proposed some of my ideas to solve most of those problems pointed. I suggested linear paths within the sandbox to give the players a direction and remove the barriers, I proposed a skill based system to bring the players together and not apart and that makes all the content accessible, preventing also the mudflation. I proposed new mechanics for the quests to detach their function from being just bland context for killing stuff and pack xp. Suggesting to rediscover the immersion from the old RPGs that is now completely gone and forgotten.

Along this I even suggested concrete ideas to already existing games, like Eve-Online. Even here trying to isolate the major problems of the game and searching possible AND CONCRETE solitions. And then I even proposed some sort of "roleplay piece" as seen from the eyes of the character to explain what type of *gameplay*, concrete gameplay, I was suggesting. I explained what happens *visually*, I explained the pulling mechanics, I explained the basic concepts of the combat, even pictured some group mechanics and examples of a play session.

So where's the "Yes, but.." ?

There's no need to make the players bounce between a few caps. There's really no need to "give them some, but not too much". That would be a compromise, half good, half bad. What's the advantage?

Take the pen&paper Stormbringer/Elric. It's 10 years that I say it's the best model for a mmorpg and the basis on which I founded my ideas. It uses the same underlying mechanics of "Call of Cthulhu", if you know it better. This is a complete skill based system. At character creation your stats determine your hit points. They never change if not in very rare conditions. You have the same hitpoints on day 1 as you have after becoming the most powerful hero ever. You choose a few skills at start. Combat, non combat, magic, evocation skills and more. Percent based. During a playsession you put a mark beside the skills you used. At the end of the playsession you roll a 100 dice. If your roll is ABOVE the value of your skill, you have skilled up -> roll a 1d4 dice (for example) to see how much you can add to it.

The more you skill goes up the harder is to improve (since you have to roll above it to improve it), plus there's a possibility to go above 100. Really slow. Still, this offers diminished returns, so while you are improving, the gap between a new player and an old one isn't that huge. And since your skill are always percent based, having a value above 100 is only useful in certain situations, without messing up the actual balance.

Then, after this system is set, you can add different forms of character progression. Through items, acquiring more powers and spells, moving through the world, make alliances with demons and so on.

But without chasing after ProgressQuest for retarded kids.

You could choose to be a moisture farmer if you wanted.  That was the beauty of it.  You didnt find it fun.  Others did.  Not everyone wants combat.  Others want a more sedate lifestyle. 

The combat system was unbalanced, and could have been balanced very easily.  And in fact is "was" with the ORIGINAL CU docs.  FWIW, there WERE stims that healed the mind in beta, and dropped in live.  However, they were never implemented as a schematic for *anyone* to craft (would have been an excellent money maker for entertainers).  The original CU docs included mind stims.  Combat was unbalanced *primarily* because of one thing:

The inability to heal the mind pool (by anyone not a Jedi or a Combat Medic) in combat without resting or not taking damage to that particular pool. 

Put in effective mind healing stims, and the game takes a radical turn towards being balanced.  And more strategic. 

Also, lack of foresight by the devs by not implementing cures to Combat Medic poisons and diseases fast enough (launch would have been a good time), as well as a way to cure being on fire (Commandos were the second profession to receive a solid hit with the nerf bat).  All put in WAY too late (1-1.5 years after launch, IIRC).   Another failure of the devs was the apparent lack of comprehension of their own crafting system and the heights and strengths to which it could produce armor, weapons, heals, etc.  I'm not entirely convinced they thought that the player base was smart enough to figure it out as quick as they did.

FWIW, the original CU docs had combat *on paper* very balanced.  There was a counter for everything. 

Straight from the rulebook:

- Suceeding at a poorly-known skill is hard, but you learn a lot when you succeed. An expert in a skill usually suceeds at it. Since he or she already knows most of what there is to know about it, the expert improves at a slower rate than a novice.

That's a very good model to keep the gap between the veterans and newbies narrow.

This is what I call Skill Plateau. It ramps up fairly quickly, but once high, becomes Extremely difficult to improve, almost to the point of pointlessness.

It makes sense to me as a good system, but not to your leet kids, who must be the best at everything, and not maxing something, regardless of actual impact, is unacceptable.

I've never understood why wanting to be the best at something (i.e. - leet) is a *bad* thing.

Why be mediocre?  Why settle for second best?

The point is that when you go fight with your character with a 90% in "sword" against someone with 91% that 1% is POINTLESS. And even if you had 40% (starting newbie) against one at 99% (veteran), you still would have your chance in the fight.

While it would require a lot of time to reach those values.

EDIT- Explaining: the power differential between a newbie who just joined the game and a veteran, would probably be close to the power differential that you have in WoW between a freshly dinged 60 and one with very good loot. Now the point is that in the first example, the WHOLE game is comprised in that threshold. Which would make all the content accessible and would bring the players together and not apart.

Plus, it would also be absolutely suitable for a PvP game. Newbie and veterans would always play together. You would ALWAYS be able to join your friends without the requirement to "catch up". You would be less skilled but you would still be effective and the margin would be negligible.

Now the point is: how you can carry over a meaningful character progression since the power curve wouldn't be enough to feel satisfactory? Which brings to the idea to move the progession AWAY from the exponential power gain and toward other aspects of the game, leaving out the "power differential" iself in order to not break the basic mechanics of the game.

Nuthing wrong with that, but take the ol' saying from NFL, "on any given Sunday."  It means that no matter how badass your team is, there is allways a chance that the underdog is going to kick you in the nuts and win.  Hell, that used to be the American way of cheering for the outgunned, beatdown, and outclassed team/individual and seeing them actually win.  Why is Rocky so cool?  Because he is Joe Six Pack that beat the fuck out of the champ.  Why is it allways a good game when certain teams play (Green Bay vs Chicago)?  Because of the history and it doesn't matter what your record is going in to it.  Both teams know that it comes down to every second every play and that it can go either way.

So, I don't mind being the best...but I still want the ability to knock the best out every once in a while.  That is probably why I play more FPS than MMOGS now.

There's a difference being trying to be a good and competant player, and grinding for negligible power increases, which has become the norm in MMOs.

Take WoW's priests for instance. Going up the Shadow tree is a lot of fun, but many players see this as unacceptable because you don't have the +10% to heals and shit.

Ten Percent. I got my priest to level 40 before quitting. Think about it - that 10% equates to less than 100 extra hp healed on most spells. But that's "unacceptable" to your leet kiddy players, which I think is ridiculous.

No, I don't think the act of moisture farming was really fun for anybody.

Or, rather, the people it was actually fun for could have been as easily amused by a piece of tinfoil. Push button, watch bar fill up, repeat 2500 times to build a machine that does it for you. And then you have to run all around creation every 2 weeks just to keep them all going at the same pace. Uh, no.

What _was_ fun about moisture farming, to the people who stuck with it, was the 'social crafter' aspect of it, of creating a product that other people could use and finding people who could use it. Like a tiny MMOG version of Cheers, you had your regulars and your oddball guests every now and again and you maintained a social space.

Puzzle Pirates and ATiTD are good examples of games with crafting processes that could actually be fun, at least for some people. Puzzle Pirates especially does a good job of dovetailing the craft process with the 'social crafter' aspect of coordinating production.

--GF

Absolutely


I've been trying to say this for at least a year or so now.  The best way to avoid the 'progressquest' nature of most of these games is to remove 'character advancement' as not only the primary, but the ONLY thing to do.  I'm not saying go completely 'virtual world' where you start maxed... leave room for advancement, but have advancement be (a) mostly a diversity thing, tho allow for some power increase, (b) allow for other things to do, and other reasons for doing things...  Someone mentioned AI controlled wars earlier; toss in some politics, some PC-controlled factions maybe... And make manipulating that 'social' environment skill/character related, so characters can spend time developing those skills, rather than pure combat ones.  Add in other 'worldy' things to do, like crafting, and running a shop, and make those be things your character can get better at... and make them interesting, so characters want to develop those skills.

Right now, characters advance in one direction... start at point A1, end at point A60.  Start at point B1, end at B60.  The problem with most is that you choose the letter at character creation, and are stuck with it.  It'd be nice if it were more interesting, so you could choose to advance(so to speak) in many directions, where most of them were not additive to combat prowess.

Alkiera

Welcome to A Tale in the Desert. Current census hovering around 1000 I believe.

Almost entirely due to lack of a combat game, I would guess.  That, and relatively low production values.  And no advertising to speak of.  Sure, we know about it, but we're hanging out on an MMO discussion forum.  Sometime, stop someone in EB and ask if they have heard of ATitD.  Odd are, no. 

And ATitD isn't doing too bad for Teppy, at least.  He's only got so many expenses, being a dev team of one.  If 1k people are paying $10/month to play, that's $120k a year... allowing for bandwith and hardware expenses, that's still a living.  Enough for 2 people to make a living, and still pay bandwidth fees.  You're not making money hats, but you're not starving either... and you're making games for a living, without working for a soul-sucking publisher like EA or Vivendi.

Alkiera

I responded (Lord Hades) on part I of the article, but what I said pretty much applies to both parts. I'm looking at it from a guildmaster's point of view, and games since DAOC have been divisive within guilds due to level and grouping restrictions.

You cant compare team sports competition to an MMO.

When the underdog rises up to beat the heavily favored team, its because the heroic effort of one individual, usually the quarterback, or someone on defense going completely apeshit and recovering fumbles or interceptions or making 20 tackles in the game.  

You're talking about a human variable - which is IMPOSSIBLE to replicate in numbers which is all combat in an MMO really is: numbers.  Whether or not I hit you in an MMO depends upon my accuracy being greater than, equal to, or less than your defense.  

I also happen to think that parity in the NFL and revenue sharing in baseball is the devil's own.  But thats another argument for another time.

I agree, ATitD has a better crafting system... but the graphics are lacking. And dont forget, you do the same exac thing as a fighter... push buttons, watch red bar empty, loot, rinse and repeat. Boring! To each his own though.

So you're making blanket statements that people who ran mining businesses (whether it be dropping a harvester on an ore spawn, or talus water spawn) didnt enjoy what they did?  Some people took great pride in having the best resources for sale.  For going out, surveying the land for the best, highest concentration spawn.  They could be the most antisocial person in the game, and still be great at what they did or enjoy it.  Technically, even as a crafter or merchant, you dont have to interact with ANYONE if you dont want to, as you're selling your wares thru a vendor, making the cash transaction thru a vendor, etc.

Of course it's possible; it all depends on how much player skill, like twitch elements or tactical decision making, you include, and how much randomness as well.  Take MtG; it has both player skill in how you play what you've been dealt, and randomnes in card drawing just like any other card game.  DDO has player skill in positioning and clicking to attack, and randomness in the attack itself being a D20 role in standard D&D fashion.

Too much player skill = FPS; too much randomness = generally not much fun, so most systems try to blend the two to be a decent mix of both and so the underdog CAN win either through superior play that match/game, or just getting lucky on a few die rolls.  Auto wins and auto losses generally suck.

Xilren

The human variable that I am talking about is an athlete getting in the "zone".  I'm guessing you have never played sports, or are much of a sports fan to begin with.  Combat, like sports, is both a physical test, as well as mental.  Its about a quarterback seeing the defense move before they actually DO.  Its about putting the football in the ONLY spot that ONLY the receive can catch it.  Its about the pitcher catching lightning in a bottle and painting the corners of the plate.  Or a hitter seeing the seams of the ball just as it leaves the pitchers hands. 

The only thing I could equate it to in the MMO world would be for EVERY player to have equal opportunity to get "inspired" or, be in the zone, so to speak.  Being "inspired" raises the attibutes of that person to near the level of their opponent.

Look at it this way....

The more you do something, the better at it you will be - unless of course, you have a natural talent for it. 

Look at Tiger Woods for example. 

Probably the best athlete that has EVER played golf.  If he were to play any other sport, he would probably do well at it.  Why?  He's a phenominal athlete.  But golf being his game of choice, he's dedicated himself to that.  He practices more than ANY other golfer out there save Vijay Singh who is widely regarded as the hardest working golfer out there.

To be the best, you have to put in the time - whether its grinding, or questing for that sword that gives 2 percent more to hit. 

For me, becoming the best wasnt about being leet.  It as a personal accomplishment that I had the best template, the best equipment, the best enhancers.  The best strategy for 1 v 1 combat, or even 1 v 5, or 1 v 10.  In SWG, I took great pride that as a Master Gunfighter (Pistoleer), I had the best tools at my disposal to be the best.  I had the best guns.  I had the best CAs and AAs.  I had the best armor.  I knew my strategy.  As a Jedi, I took alot of pride in being an honest to goodness alpha player - thru a perfect saber, capped attachments, and a unique template that suited my playstyle - and understanding my templates strengths and weaknesses.  I put in the time and "effort" to get the perfect pearls for a perfect saber.  I put in the time and "effort" to get +25 CA's.  I practiced dividing up groups, of being solo and wiping out 10 other players against friends, guildies, etc or even just saying fook it, and loading into Theed overt and solo and seeing what worked and what didnt. 

Bah, talk about getting sidetracked....


Anyway, what I am getting at, is that once you "master" or cap out a profession, it doesnt stop there.  All PGA players are exceptional golfers.  The difference in the pro's are the small percentages that makes one better than the other.

Eh, I've played sports and when I pvp in a mmog I get that same "high".. that "In the Zone" feeling where everything is clicking and you can't make a wrong choice and each little thing maps out to infinity of "perfect" choices before you and your body takes over and you're just along for the ride and there nothing left for you to do but watch as everything unfolds and your relfexes get lightening fast and you are the most uber person alive.

I also get that same feeling when I play music (guitar, keyboards, occasionally when I lay down vocals, though mostly that's "forced" and you can tell I lack that feeling).

You can actually buy that feeling in pill form for around $15.  They call it ecstasy.

As Cevik said, that's not constrainted to just sports (and yes, I both play them and am a big sports fan as well).  Being "in the zone" can happen in almost any activity be it phsyical or mental and interesting enough, seems to cause a streamlining of both your physical moves and mental processes.  Hell, I've spoken to programmers who have had similar experiences where they can code no wrong :).  I've had the feeling in MtG and PvP games a few times myself (though sadly never when playing golf or paintball).  Talk to a few really good FPS players if you don't believe me.

Point being, human variance is part and parcel of mmo's too, IF they're coded to allow it.  It's just by and large most mmorpgs to date don't allow it much impact b/c they don't really want the level 1 beating the level 50.  There's no reason to code in an artificial stat raise for "inspired" play so long as players have a worthwhile amount of control over their own effectiveness.

Xilren

I get that feeling once in a blue moon in AV when for once my charge into horde lines is timed with an actual push by the people that matter (mages, hunters, warlocks) and I move from horde to horde hamstring, MS, move on.  Execute if one is low.  Suddenly they swarm down on me and I fear them all away and watch with glee as 3 run right into range of the death dealers and die under concentrated fire.  Perhaps I even get a heal...  Then I'm in the midst of their gooey little casters, who often are sitting drinking and get up and try to kite but my charges and intercepts are too fast.  A pally even cleanses me perhaps!  Ahhh glorious.

God I love pvp, when I think of that rush and then listen to people who dont like pvp I can't help but hold them in contempt.  But at least I admit or something.

I've been generalizing a lot, which is something Raph doesn't seem to like, but "adding different types of advancements", or adding more mechanics that are not focused solely around combat, are the essential premises of a virtual world. That part of the "virtual world" that doesn't suck.

Which is also why I consider "sandbox" (and "virtual world") a synonym of "systemic":
A system is basically a finite space (compared to infinite, linear treadmills) where all the elements have a specific role (no mudflation) and are all tied together. The complexity of the system is proportional to the ties more than the number of elements itself.

Which is essentially: more things to do, more ties, more socialization, more "bring together" instead of apart. Discoving that these online games can offer much more than the endless repetition of one pattern. Which is just a strain and really "limiting".

Have you ever heard of "chess"? I don't think it's a FPS.

EDIT- Just to point out that "skill" isn't equal to "twitch". I really don't know how we arrived to that wrong generalization.

Speaking of wrong generalizations, didn't twitch mean arcade/console fighter style button mashing? I don't understand how fps is twitchy, really. Much of it is very tactical, but then, I guess that's because I play those that focus on a slower more tactical playstyle over headless chicken deathmatch crap with bunnyhoppers.

Let's just agree generalizations suck  :-P

I think people equate skill to twitch/FPS in an MMORPG because it's the easiest step from hitting a hotkey and watching a weapon or spell fly out of your hands. MMORPGs by nature are just a step away from a FPS.

Personally I'd rather skill mean turnbased tactics or some sort of card game. Though some FPS action in a solid MMOG would make me happy also.

just give me an MMORPG that is:
1.   sci fi based - I HATE elves......
2.   open ground and space pvp
3.   intricate crafting system - a) that no loot drops are better than anything player created   b) if there ARE loot drops that are greater than player created, put a cap on it, as in 25 percent greater, but make the odds of looting it greater than the Florida Lottery
4.   encourages (but not requires) player dependance
5.   allows for players to live in the cities via apartments or housing districts that cost near an arm and a leg to do so
6.   revolves around a central conflict between two sides with 2-4 spin off factions of each
7.   NOT FPS or level based
8.   That does not require me to delete my toon if I decide to go a seperate profession
9.   Offers a flexible skill based system a la preNGE SW:G
10.   Has devs that are honest and forthright with the player base
11. Isnt made by SOE or LA
12. (edit) I dont want the game to be easy.  I want it to requrie thinking.  I want it to be HARD.  I want to have to explore.  I dont want to be directed.  I want it to be  d i f f i c u l t.


And I'll be happy.

Is that too much to ask?  :nda:

Sounds like you have your content all figured out - just find yourself one of those programmer doohickeys and you'll have your very own money hat in no time!

hah....

/yell ltb programmer with own servers, bandwidth, etc etc etc PST!!!

Sounds like you want Pre NGE SWG... up until #10 that is.

the bad thing is...and i'll confess something here.....

SW:G was my first MMO that I EVER gave any serious time to.  Why?  Because I hate elves.  I hate gnomes.  I hate fantasy stuff.  It just does_NOT_appeal to me, at all.  

What I DID like about SW:G (besides the fact that it was freaking SW) was that it WASNT fantasy based.  The idea behind SW (which became apparent to me shortly after playing it on launch day +1) was that you could live your own life inside the VW sandbox.  It was flexible.  So, in that respect, it spoiled me.  I look at MMOPRGs (regardless of genre), and feel claustraphobic.  In SW:G, you *could* live the greatest story ever told - your own.  Now, only if it includes being a BH, Smuggler, Commando, Trader, Jedi, Entertainer, Spy, Officer, or Medic.  Sadly, BH, Smuggler, Spy, Commando, and Officer are all the same.  All have damage attacks.  All have snares.  All have heals.  The only thing that seperates them are armor, and a few certed weapons.  And Medics dominate 1 vs 1 PvP because they have two heals.  

Sadly, after 2.5 years of dealing with SOE/LA as being a member of the *cough* vocal minority *cough*, I'll never buy anything they are associated with...ever.  

Thats probably a very fair assessment.  I'd agree with that.  But that is what I enjoyed.  But it doesnt have to be Star Wars.  I would give near anything for Firefly to be an MMO based on the above. 

But because a certain MMO is sci fi, doesnt mean I'll play it.  Star Trek, for instance, has VERY little chance of me playing it. 

Tabula Rasa, baby.

FPS...bleh...Although it does look interesting...purty screenies thou

I just dont see how an MMOFPS will ever be that fun - primarily due to lag. 

Crafting?

Is it in beta yet?  alpha?  i see off of gamespot, where release date is just under a year away...

But again, in this case, the _results_ can be fun.

The _process_ isn't.

--GF

For *you* maybe.

Look, unless they've drastically changed resource gathering with the NGE, it goes something like this.

1) Activate survey tool.

2) Wait.

3) Look at result graph.

4) Walk to area with largest concentration.

5) Activate sample tool.

6) Wait.

7) Examine sample, assuming you got one, if not repeat from 5.

The end.

Resources are scattered randomly and patternlessly throughout the galaxy. There's no telling what will be where at any given time or how long it will be there. It's like a scratch-off lottery ticket that takes 10 minutes to finish scratching, and I don't know anybody who just can't get enough of scratching off those wonderful tickets, despite what my state lottery commercials would like me to believe.

I will say this - with the removal of the HAM system at least it's more fun than punching yourself in the face. Before it actually hurt you.

--GF

Allow me to edit this to reflect the flip side....


There are equally repetative and boring things to do on both sides of the fence. I would hope that game companies would put in both sides of the fence to open the doors for more people to play.

That would be a better argument if the only thing to fight in the game were lairs of Pikets. Of course anything algorithmable and even macroable isn't fun.

But there's no other way to gather resources.

--GF

Spies, despite getting most from the redesigned but unreleased ranger profession, did not get a snare. On the other hand, they do have a vanish (smoke bomb) that grants them immunity, which lets them wait out the heal and aoe cooldowns. FWIW.

Oh, and now that I've read through the rest of the wibble here, I'm even more confident that no character progression is the way to go. Getting new tools and weapons and puzzle solving to open up new content is better than just 'doing the time'. If there are people who use hint sites, macros and a focus on completing the unlocks very quickly and leave the game early, it's okay. They were not the sort of person who was going to spend months in a level/raid grind to unlock content anyhow.

As to people with no playtime coming into a game you've played for months and yet immediately being as powerful as you? Get over yourself buddy.

Well, if someone can roll an endless supply of n00bler alchemists and use their starting detonation potions to reduce any player-made structure to a smoking heap of rubble, that represents a problem.

Also: equipment progression is just character progression in a fancy hat. Instead of grinding to get level 50 which gets you gated entry to Glaciel's Crevasse, people will be grinding to get A Frost-Proof Climbing Rope, which gets you gated entry to Glaciel's Crevasse.

--GF

I take it you never have played sports? That type of stuff happens all the time. Yeah, you could argue that people play these games because they're not good at sports, but I'd just disagree again.

It works the same way in FPS games, and it pretty much works the same way in mmorpg games. Successful raid guilds from EQ are now successful raid guilds in WoW. Guys that were good at Q1DM are now great at CS.

Hypothetical -

World of Diablo is released. Some Diablo 2 players are hyped, start up characters, and level to 120 in about 6-8 weeks. (WoD = WoW x2) They join together to form an 80 player raid group to attempt the raid content. We'll call this Guild A.

3 months after release Guild B, a guild that has been raiding in WoW for the past 4 years stops playing WoW and creates new characters in WoD, never having played the game before. They level up to 120 in about 6-8 weeks as well. They can easily fill a single raid group of 80, and their 4 weekly groups are now divided into two weekly groups and they had to move up two pricing tiers on the Ventrilo server that they rent. They consider getting a leased line just to provide voice communication.

Which group of players will have more success? What does 'level 120' really mean in this example?

I think that the scrapping of the original CU design for whatever reason is where SOE really lost integrity of the game, along with the trust of the player base.  For a year and a half, players were fed the line "this will be solved with the Combat Upgrade" as the answer to balance issues, smuggler revamp, Galactic Civil War, etc, etc.
What was pushed live was seen by many as a betrayal of the original design, that had nothing to do with fixing the problems players had complained about since launch, added further imbalances and bugs, and three in a new interface.  What exatcly does adding cartoony icons have to do with a "combat upgrade" anyways?
Since the first try at attracting the WoW crowd failed with the "substitute" CU, SOE felt the need to try something even more drastic, which may have been on the back burner as a pet project for some time.  The problem with the NGE is that it has invalidated years of progression for players just 6 months after the CU partially invalidated time invested by most of the player base.
I was a pretty hardcore weaponsmith from launch, which to be successful I needed to know the combat system often better than my customers.  I did get out fairly often for group hunts, mostly to test things and have a little "shoot em up time", but most of my enjoyment from the game came from the challenge of tracking hundreds of resources, buying weapon upgrades from hunters, and tailoring custom weapons to what I knew would work best for my customers (most of which became friends, whom I could chat with even while they were out hunting).
I really would like to know what happened to cause the scrapping of the original CU vision, that could have fixed the majoity of the issues players had at the time.  A HAPPY, satisfied player base (word of mouth does matter), along with the commitment to advertising SOE has recently shown and a plan to attract former players could have been a much more successful venture than spending the manhours and money on 2 new game versions in a 6 month period.

In sports, those guys wouldn't be playing in the same league as I would. That's the thing.

You don't see Chelsea dropping by the local pitch and getting some kind of twisted thrill by stomping the local co-ed over 30 team (my place in the football world) by 250 to nil. In gaming, that's exactly what happens.

The problem is how to segregate people because the online world is anonymous and gaming culture has produced a very anti-social culture.

It means jack and shit as far as skill goes - they've just put in the requisite time to hit level 120.

Leveling takes zero skill in most MMOs - it's simply a matter of smacking enough mobs over the head to make a bar fill up.

Well, I know that some people have a hard time thinking that since they spent the time to wack-a-mole to the highest level, they should be able to beat up the low levels no matter what.  I disagre, especially if the low level uses some means to suprise the high level.

But I think a lot of it comes down to how the game is set up.  Some games have a terrible death penalties, some would favor certain classes over others, and some just totally ignored any use of the environment or positioning (what and where you were attacked from).  Plus, with having a leveling grind that takes forever to hit the top level, makes those who got to the top, unwilling to want to be killed in a fair fight by the low levels.

In Planetside, I don't mind if my Rank(level) 10 is killed by a 1-9, because I knew he got a better shot at me, got in a better position, or surprised me.  No biggie, I'll wait a few seconds and respawn and reequip.  Believe it or not, UO at one time was like that, well, if you weren't red that is... (oh I could bitch that it took a while to get the perfect 7 skill GM since skill gains were fucked up).  The private UO shard called Angle Island has somewhat brought that back.

I just think it would be a lot more fun if you had more people to play with, and right now the level requirements on many games means I won't play that game.
ex:
DAoC--takes too long to hit 50 so I can go out and defend my realm (plus other balance and fun stuff)
EQ--the original grind from hell (plus all the 'Zeke servers bullshit and game imbalances)
UO--takes forever to build a 7 skill GM (well, that was an old rant...have no clue now)

Now here is a twist though...I don't mind the grind in BF2!  Hell it has taken me  88+ hours and I'm only a Staff Sergeant ( http://bf2s.com/player/slipnslide1969/ ) and I'll be grinding away to get a few more weapons  :-D  If I spent that much time leveling in a MMOG wonder where I would be...and would I be able to skull fuck the highest level if I caught him from behind or dropped a boulder on him.

There are ways to put players of widely dissimilar levels on an even (okay, perhaps a slightly tilted) grounding with each other. In cases where they're implemented levels become much more of a way of measuring your character against the world.

The worst possible implementation of levels are where a higher-leveled player can always destroy a lower-leveled player but must run for his life from a dozen giant rats.

--GF

You're not even trying. For an extra fee, you too can play a giant rat!

Nope.  Tiger would get his ass kicked by professional football, baskeball, soccer players, etc.  Look to Jordan when he tried to play baseball, and he was serious about baseball before his basketball career.

I had a couple of friends who played a golf tournament where you had to take a shot of booze at every hole, and were pounding beers in the meantime.  One of them had a good quote, "Tiger Woods could kick my ass in a regular golf tournament, but I KNOW I could take him in one like this."

Tiger is a good golfer, but I doubt he's a good drinker, and I bet my friends could take him in a tournament that combines golf and drinking. 


You put WAY too much emphasis on equipment and skills gained from grinding.  You ARE about being leet.  I don't want a game where the highest level guy, with the best loot, is at a great advantage; I want a game where I can go head to head with players of relatively equal character levels and come out on top through better playing.

Kicking the ass of a group 2-5 times the size of yours, in numbers, but equal character skill, RULES.  I've experienced that plenty of times in oldschool UO.  Even when your character dies, but your group wins, it's awesome.  Even if your whole group dies, but you've got more of them than they got of you, it RULES.

We didn't need some super edge through items or levels (they didn't exist then), we just need better timing, tactics, and combat skill.  You didn't even need to be maxed out to be the best(this was true in early AC too).  There are plenty examples of sub 7xGMs who could destroy maxed out characters.

Face it, as much as you deny, you are just a fan of mud wimping, who wants every advantage the game can give you to have superiority over other players, through catassing.


It's still about SKILL at that level, not equipment and endorsements.  Do you really think these guys are going to do worse with "cheap" equipment?  Eddie Van Halen is considered to be about the best rock guitarist who ever lived, and he did his best work on a cheap-ass, beater guitar, that he assembled out of pieces.  I bet that Tiger could go buy a $200 set of clubs and still kick ass on the PGA.

The 120 means nothing. The 6-8 weeks worth of uberloot obtained by mindlessly smacking raid mobs every night mean everything. While the Ventrilo server may make things easier to coordinate and facilitate ease of communications, it also costs more money (although I will admit that the guild could host their own for free if they so choose) and doesn't do anything to change the mechanics of mindless repetitive strategies to farm uberloot to have the biggest epeen. I'm sure that'll piss some people off so yes, the first time through an encounter (and maybe even some subsequent times) requires skill... in organizing people, not at playing the game. Once a strategy is set, it's a matter of posting it and having your underlings read and understand it. Cake. Farm at your leisure. Okay, okay. I'm being a shit just to antagonize. Those with better reflexes and faster reading speeds will play the game better. Those with Ventrilo will be able to react even faster because the voice communication will beat the text communication almost every time. But the thing that will be that new uberguild (at least for a short time) would be the 6-8 week headstart on farming uber gear because at that level of these games, it's all about farming the uberloot dry until the devs release the next expansion with even more uberloot that requires previous copious amounts of uberloot to obtain because you'll never mitigate damage at this level of play without a whole hell of a lot of item assistance.

It always made me laugh that no matter how powerful or experienced your hero became in EQ, if you only wore plain, no stat adding armor, you were not much better than a newbie FOB. Ah well, I guess even in virtual worlds we're only human. Or orc. ;)

Guild Wars, partiocularly pre-order Beta.

Take me, powergamer with the constraints of a casual gamer & old qw/q2/q3 player with pretty good skills (your comment is right, I was naturally good at CS). When I played AC1/AC2 and now play CoH, I am always meet with compliments on how well I play my tank/healer/controller... I know the numbers, I know what is effective, I know how to place myself. I pull from the extremity of my range, I strafe, use corners for protection... All my twitch skills are very good.

Except that I have to endure the whole grind no matter what. I constantly see people playing like total morons and being higher level than me because they have more time on their hands.

Levels and their influence on ability to hit/defend/do damage are completetly unrealistic. If I am going to hit you in the back with a sword, no matter how more experienced you are, if you get hit, you die or are severely hurt. In a MMORPG, it will be MISS, MISS, MISS...

Levels are more of a bad system made in order to be able to categorize content and be able to signify character progression through content than any representation of reality. There is absolutely no reason I shouldn't be able to wield a sword. I may not be able to use it to its full potential but certainly not unable to use it at all.

AC1 despite its flaws had some good things. One of them was the ability for a level 1 to wield high-level equipment. Wearing it in combat was exhausting (you were over-burdened as you didn't have enough strength)...

You got it the wrong way around. Equipment levels were introduced after Level 1 were twinked with high level gear. Zone key quests were introduced when high levels complained about level 1 running around in high level zones and interrupting gameplay. Both in EQ.

If people wouldn't have ruined the gameplay of other paying customers by invading areas they had no business being in, or by taking away resources of other players who played the game as intended by killing in newbiezones with their twinked alts faster than the spawnrate could handle (and if the spawnrate would be adjusted untwinked characters would just have been slaughtered) those changes would never been introduced. We players just have to sleep in the beds we made for ourselves.

We are all egoistical bastards who don't care for anything but our own entertainment. And for some of us, this entertainment is the exact opposite of what other people want. If you wouldn't be annoyed that some other gamers were better because they have more time playing the game, those other people would be annoyed that you can beat them just because they don't have the same reflexes as you.

Different games for different strokes. Thats the only way there is.

Tebonas,

I didn't say that AC1 was without flaws :)
Magic system design was completly broken and that is what you talk about.

If it wasn't for lvl VII buffs being applied to level 1 toons, twinkage wouldn't have existed so much.
Fighting Shadows in the Obsidian Plain as a level 1 (with the help of friends) and gaining 15 levels from one kill was quite a rush though :)

To be annoyingly pendantic, my MUD had both level based equipment and zone keys.  We stole them from a different MUD I played (so don't think I'm trying to claim the idea), and I'm pretty sure that MUD had stolen the concept from other MUDs.  I think level requirements and zone keys have been around for much longer than EQ. 

Yeah, since the invention of the LOCKED DOOR.

I just wanted to point out it has been tried without both in one game and the makers of that game reconsidered for the abovementioned reasons. Not that it was invented by them, there is not much Verant invented.

The broken thing about the magic system in AC1 is that it was too easily deciphered, and Split Pea really ruined it.  Besides, if you were twinking with level VII spells, that was LONG after the damage had been done; when people were abusing the monarchy system.

I didn' have a problem with someone being twinked up in AC1.  Eventually they'd have to stand on their own feet.  I hated the XP whoring and the macroing.  That shit ruined Darktide.

I agree with what you said. I don't mind losing, if it's fun. Even if my group loses, but had a chance to win and the fight was interesting, it's a win in my book.

Being fucked because someone has the time to collect all the shiny power differential gear and levelup++ is not fun. Well, maybe for that person, but not anyone else. That's one part of why pvp in most mmo sucks balls.

Even a dev recognized it, buffs were broken in their design. Fixed numbers where it should have been percentage and the opposite.
Fixed number buff :
- 200 AL (Impenatribility 6) being applied to an armor piece regardless of the type of cloth/armor it was -> instant uber armor
- +60 skill to any skill at any skill initial level by using Creature VI spells -> level 1 as an uber untouchable killling machine
Percentage buffs:
- Accuracy & defense buffs on items (improved by fixed number buffs):
  +20% defense from an item on top of your already +60 boosted defense was really overkill and unbalanceable with toons that didn't have magic

In AC1, 3schools >> all.

The spell system you had to search spell formula was excellent, as was the concept of spell economy (the more a spell was used the less powerful it was). Sadly they didn't leverage on them to overcome their shortcomings.


AC1 macroing and XP chains ruined the game totally. We agree on that ;)
I played the game from early 2000 to end of 2003 (and then I *played* AC2... eek!). I have seen a lot happen in AC1 :) but this is for another day.

AC1 was always to me the only MMORPG where levels didn't matter so much. Sure there was difference between lvl 10 and level 130+... but a 5 level difference was never the overwhelming-difference it can be in other games. The progression was much smoother in a sense.

AC2 was also pretty lax on level vs level. I still have screenshots of me taking out a 28 FI and a 42 FI with my level 28 mage/defender.

Then I was taking out level 50 guys at 44, but that's pretty normal.

It was all about the vigor heal.

You got to level 44 in AC2? Catassing for charity?

Heh, he played at launch.  Most of that 44 was probably obtained through exploits.  I think I had a level 48 and level 42 in AC2 through completing quests I should have been able to, sitting on a ledge shooting things that couldn't fight back, or getting something stuck on a pixel and shooting it.  It wasn't exactly exciting, but it didn't really take that long either.

AC2 wasn't that bad until you realized you were funding the worst MMO development team ever.
 

After AC2 Turbine made every effort to become as independent as possible. They threw off the evil overlord and sought VC to fund expansion. I think there is a reason for that. I saw Microsoft hands all over the failings of AC2. I loved AC original but I started losing the fanboi shine as the MS manager (what the hell was his name?) took more and more lead.

Summation: Turbine did not, does not, have the worst MMO development team ever.

MS Manager: Ken Karl ?

I probably should make a CoV toon with that name (unless it's already taken). It would be a Dominator Mind/Fire.
- Sleep the fanboi
- Mezz devteam
- Fireball the players!!!

d

haha, dude I had a 50, 48, 45.. hmm 42 maybe.

Pretty pathetic but you have to realize the only leveling i did from 30 onward was watching movies/tv/playing other games and running a macro to target monsters that got stuck on 3 pixel high rocks.

Plus, you could run newbies through the Mage Academy quest and go from level 1 to level 38, then you could do another quest and go from 38 to 42.

Anyways, yeah. AC2, another well made Turbine product.

Haven't paid much attention to this thread, since the original premise (Do levels suck?) is pretty much a foregone conclusion in my mind. However, I just wanted to chirp up with the following-

After playing Eve (which has an incredibly broad and deep skill system), I am going to be hardpressed to ever play something with levels/classes again. It is all about customization and casual-friendly advancement schemes for me.

I don't think levels suck inherently, but all games leave something to be desired as to how they are implemented.  Seems to me that there is a holy grail somewhere out there that hasn't been invented yet, the ultimate level system to please "everyone" (note: you cannot please everyone).  Somebody in this thread mentioned something that got me thinking...

Right, so take any prototypical MMO.  Usually you can have just one main class, or in same cases you may be allowed to multi-class in two, possibly three different professions.  In the end, things become pretty predictable as people tend to flock towards the cookie-cutter templates.  In any event, you can usually tell what somebody is and what they are capable of just by knowing their class(es) and by looking at the little level indicator next to their name.  You can further judge the extent of these capabilities by the equipment they are wielding.

Why not add further dimensions to such a level system?  I am not talking about a "talent" or "skill" dimension, but a whole new system of sub-levels underneath the main level.

Let's say we have a Rogue class in an MMO game.  For the sake of argument, the level max will be 100.  Now, underneath the Rogue class, let's say you have 5 sub levels.  Each of these sub levels is potentially very important and powerful in and of itself within the class (not necessarily compared to other classes).  These could look as follows in my wildly ficticious example:

-Stealth & Defense - Classical stealth abilities and defensive modifiers (parry, dodge, counters, etc.)
-Melee Skills - Specific weapons certifications and offensive modifiers for melee weapons and general combat
-Ranged Skills - Specific weapons certifications and offensive modifiers for ranged weapons and general combat
-Healing, Buffs and Debuffs - Minor self healing and buffing relevant to a Rogue class.  Perhaps Regen rates.
-Items and Loot - Looting probability percentages and access to high level loot tables.  Restrictions on equipping certain special "elite" level equipment (enchanted weapons?)

Imagine now that you implement some sort of "talent" or "skill" system that ensures that the better abilities are achieved the nearer you get to the level 50 limit of the sub-set.  These enhance existing abilities, but do not determine what you can access in terms of abilities or certifications.  Further inherent racial and class bonuses and the usual STR, DEX, etc. will also apply.  Nothing new here.

So far so good.   Now, assume that the max level of each of these five sub-sets is 50.  With only 100 possible levels to allocate, this makes it necessary to pick and choose to the extent that you can be relatively powerful in the one area, while seriously gimping yourself in others.  Some areas may be entirely neglected.  The inlcusion of an "Item and Loot" section was intentional on my part.  In my ficticious system, a true loot whore might be a gimped fighter.

Right, so I go ahead an max out my character at 100 levels.  From the same order from above, he turns out as a 30/50/0/0/20 Rogue.  The idea here is that within one single class, I have a toon with 2 mediocre skill sets (Stealth/Defense & Item/Looting), 1 powerful set (melee fighting with every Rogue certed melee weapon), and two completely gimped areas...no ranged abilities whatsoever (and I lose some general combat advantages too), no healing, buff/debuff abilities.  Note that these strengths and weaknesses are relative to the class...its not to say that a level 50 melee Rogue can stand toe-to-toe with a Warrior at the same level 50.

The guy you are looking at wearing rags and carrying a stubby, rusty looking dagger might be a maxed out combat-oriented character that will tear you apart in 4 seconds.  The guy next to him wearing Gold Plate Mail +10 armor wielding some flaming 2-handed axe might not be able to fight his way out of a wet sack.

The point of all this, even if the example is ridiculous, is that I think it can be done such that a) characters really are different, even within the same class, b) you can not judge a person by a number or by their appearance, and c) to some degree you can make it such that the lower level stands a chance against the max level depending on where their levels are invested.   It should be possible to develop a level system such that you can line up 5 different Rogues each at a different level, and have no idea what they are or what they are capable of.  Each may be viable in one or two areas, but seriously lacking somewhere else.  That is the kind of level system I want to play in.

So... Like DAoC(Or WoW, for that matter), only more than three things to spec in...  Sure.  Not really revolutionary, and you run into the same problem those games have, that certain specs are seen as far superior to others.  You have to balance the abilities in all the trees, and the balance is more sensative the higher up you get in a given 'skill'.  31 Fire is a pretty rare choice for mages in WoW, because the high level ability is not seen as being on the same level as the 31 point abilities in the other two skills, especially Arcane Power.  Other classes have similar problems.  Only a few really have nicely balanced trees.  In WoW, for Mages at least, it does tend to mean that there are casters who are specialized into mostly fire, or mostly ice spells, because it makes sense to pick one or the other and power it up, and only use the other spells for utility or backups in case an enemy is highly resistant to the one you chose.

In the same way, there are rogues that use maces, those that use swords, those that use daggers.  Once they choose a route, it limits their talent choices in such a way that they would only every really use the weapon type they chose, switching from daggers to maces means a major shift in talents that are useful.

I agree that this kind of this is useful...  but I'd argue that if you get rid of classes and levels, and just lump all those things together to be chosen from, with a max number of points for a character...  You have Ultima Online.

Alkiera

More complex level systems only obfuscate the problem. I'm still going to see through the facade at some point (probably sooner rather than later) and bail.

See with skill based systems my character is 100% unique because no one else will have the same exact set of skills that my character has (unless I want to be cookie cutter of the month). Level based systems, not so much.

Skills are dynamic content, levels are static content.

Given a sufficiently popular game there's going to be at least one other player with exactly the same skill choices as you and lot's of players with characters that are practically indistinguishable from yours. Without the structure afforded by classes, talent trees and levels it just isn't so readily apparent. You just like to pretend you're a unique snowflake.

Balance is overrated, but that is another argument.  The reason that certain specs end up being superior is in large part due to the fact that they can ultimately "do everything".  Too many strengths, and no significant weaknesses.  Naturally, people are going to flock to these choices.   My point, though it may have been lost in the silly example, is that every choice should ultimately come at a HUGE cost somewhere else.

Yes, your Rogue can focus on any of those weapons and perform predictably with it.  That's the problem.  Chances are, when you see this character, holding some kind of flaming Dagger of Destruction +8, you know what he is capable of.  His best attack is probably to go into Stealth mode, sneak up and stab you in the back.  He is going to hit you a lot, for relatively small amounts of damage.  When you finally manage to engage him, he is going to be a quick SOB that dodges a third of your attacks.  When you do manage to hit him, you know it is going to hurt him because his armor rating stinks.   He has little or no healing ability.  Perhaps you are a level 60 to his 50, so you have a general idea of your HP advantage, and you also know that he is lacking specific skills that come in those last 10 levels of the Rogue class.

What I am thinking of is a way to buck these predictable trends.  You seem him holding the same flaming dagger, but have no clue as to what this means of his proficiencies with this or any weapon.  His Stealth abilities might be gimped to the degree that a backstab attack would  be counterproductive (or completely impossible).  His actual attack speed may be quite low, but hitting for higher damage numbers.  He might not be agile, an unable to dodge most attacks.  His armor rating might be much higher than you expect (levels invested in natural mods?), so you hit him for lessor numbers.  He may  have a relatively effective self-heal.  If you can even see his level indicator, the fact that he is ten levels below you might not give you a clue as to what he can actually do, and you have no idea what he is lacking either.  He may be fully invested in offensive melee combat, or he may be split between ranged combat and defense.  His 50 levels of melee might well trump your combination of 30 defense and 30 ranged.

Polarize the options.   Any great advantage in one area should come with a corresponding deficiency in another.  The level should only indicate potential, not absolutes.

Rock-paper-scissors, the greatest game ever!

Aye.  Problem is, most games allow you to be Paper and Rock at the same time.   And the scissors are not sharp enough.  And everyone knows that you are scissors.

It is not so much the chance to be a unique snowflake; it is more that a broad skill system allows me to focus on whatever aspect of character progression interests me most without level restrictions. There are far fewer cockblocks.

Agreed, which is why I'm liking EVE so much again. (Even though I still love my Level-based loot-aquisition simulators).   I don't HAVE to be a miner, or a corp leader, or a crafter to get shit done.  I'm also not hosed if I decide to be one of them but completly hate combat, and don't lose my combat skills just because I decided to take-up trading for a while.

You might think that but the math doesn't holds up. I'm going to trot Eve and Planetside out here and say I have a much better chance of being a special snowflake in both of those games than I do in a level cockblock game. I give myself between 1 in 10 and 1 in 250 chance of being a unique snowflake skillwise at any given time in Eve with a standard character. When there are non-combat elements not everything can be distilled down to damage per second.

One thing I think UO did right in that regard, was that crafting skills were just as much of your 700 skill points as your combat skills.  Ideally, crafting would be as interesting as combat, and should, thusly, be as much a part of a character's development.

The idea of being a super warrior AND a master alchemist is a bit odd, imo.  It's one thing to know a little about some craft or other... but most Master Craftsmen in fantasy stories aren't master fighters at the same time.  Usually they are has-beens, who may have some skill, but aren't masters anymore.

Alkiera

I think the biggest problem with skill tree vs level games is that it takes a lot more attention to detail to attempt balance between skills.  Ultimately players will find the few skills that will empower their avatar and create "preferred builds".  When it all boils down to it, the number of "preferred builds" will be significantly smaller than the number of skill iterations.  In essence, the game that had skill trees eventually distills to a class system with the illusion of greater variety.

When someone can offer a game where all skill options produce viable avatars, that's when the leap from the old class system will occur. 

Agreed. With a system like UO (with the small number of skills and skill point cap), preferred/optimal builds are inevitable.I am still an Eve n00b, so I may be off, but it seems the closest to the 'any skill set is useful'  utopia of anything I have played. Each skill has some sort of benefit, and there is no limit (other than time) on which skills can be learned. Nothing atrophies- I can learn a skill now and have it ready to go at the same level of usefulness in 6 months. Every second I spend toward learning a skill is retained- I can switch skills at the drop of hat and go back to learning the old one later with no loss.

Skill-based systems rock! The problem is that the games I have played that use(d) a skill-based system allow you too many skills, and worse, no limit on how much you can learn. R/P/S is great, but if you get to be 2 of the 3, its less fun. Fun to me would be splitting Rock/Paper/Scissors into 12 seperate sections (4 per category), and I get to pick 3 out of one category. To make it interesting, I can get really, REALLY good at 1 of them, and proficient at the other 2. And the learning curve is steeper the better I get. AND its based on something OTHER than friggin XP gain.

This is my thinking as well...levels within levels, though your simple analogy explains it better.  I know that some games attempt to do things like this...It doesn't change that fact that my Rogue (WoW example) will always be a sneaky bugger who likes to creep up on mobs and stab them in the back.   Investing my "talent" points differently probably isn't going to change that too any major degree.

Such variations exist in lots of games, but the degree of variance is not enough.

Well, in my experience, skill games usually open up more playstyles. But in most cases it's usually boring to advance through most skills when there aren't many different fun, entertaining or creative opportunities to use them.

Although I'm sure levels can be done good if done well, somehow.

its boring to advance because its almost always either : Go kill 10 lizards and return... OR make 5000 paper clips and come back.

Thats why I think adding Time into the mix would help. If people weren't so obssesed with gringing to "master" in new record times, maybe they would take some time to smell the roses.