EQ 'Next'

[shiznitz]

I would like to see a game based on achievement progression instead of filling up experience bars. Finishing quests (actual quests not the simple ones we expect today), dungeon completion, dungeon special runs, exploration and stuff like that.

It would be so easy to do.  Give points for certain types of achievements: kills, dungeons, exploring, loot/discover gold, craft items etc.  All the bars are separate. As the bars are filled through play, advancement options and new titles are gained.  No exp ever.  If you are killing stuff, your combat skills get better.  If you are crafting stuff, your crafting skills get better.  If you are exploring stuff, you can learn to track, get mounts, increase your stamina.  As you find more and more gold, clothing and housing items become available.  This way the rewards for actions are tailored to the actions themselves.  Players can gain in all types or only one.  Your combat "exp" has no connection to your explore "exp", unless the devs want to add things for multi-faceted characters.  

Quests can be divided along the same lines and have mixtures.  The player can choose the quests that fit his goals and his "level" in monster killing would never gate his ability to craft.

It just seems so obvious...

[Goreschach]

I would like to see a game based on achievement progression instead of filling up experience bars. Finishing quests (actual quests not the simple ones we expect today), dungeon completion, dungeon special runs, exploration and stuff like that.

It would be so easy to do.  Give points for certain types of achievements: kills, dungeons, exploring, loot/discover gold, craft items etc.  All the bars are separate. As the bars are filled through play, advancement options and new titles are gained.  No exp ever.  If you are killing stuff, your combat skills get better.  If you are crafting stuff, your crafting skills get better.  If you are exploring stuff, you can learn to track, get mounts, increase your stamina.  As you find more and more gold, clothing and housing items become available.  This way the rewards for actions are tailored to the actions themselves.  Players can gain in all types or only one.  Your combat "exp" has no connection to your explore "exp", unless the devs want to add things for multi-faceted characters.  

Quests can be divided along the same lines and have mixtures.  The player can choose the quests that fit his goals and his "level" in monster killing would never gate his ability to craft.

It just seems so obvious...

Yeah, jamming a coffee stick into my keyboard to 'play' Morrowind was totally awesome.

[Venkman]

People like levels because they haven't known anything else.  GW2 has been one of the better compromises (or ways to hide a shallow curve), so it's not one that annoys me so much.

At least until the Ascended crap came about.  Even if the gain is minimal, achievers embraced it wholeheartedly and the GW2 team ran with it.  Grind, farm, grind.  Ugh.

I think there's too many things you're trying to sum up under "levels".

First, as you note, GW2 has ample levels and handles them well, mostly because there's no sawtoothing nor progression falloff. 1-2 is almost the same as 79-80, and it all goes by very quick. But the problem for GW2 was where all levels based games end up: what do you do with the advanced players who've run out of alts to level up but still want that sense of forward progress at the level cap? Players Raid because they find it fun and because it helps them achieve a modicum of forward progression. Ascended and other such grind progressions (including AAXP from EQ1) is for the same mental hook.

Second, the reason levels is where we're at isn't because other systems haven't been tried, but because they haven't hit critical mass to jump genres. Shit, everything has levels nowadays because it gives a very clean sense of that forward progress. Maybe the current crop of born-on-WoW players didn't experience 7xGMing in UO or skill-upping in SWG.

Third, even games with levels don't always rely entirely on that level for the power curve. Skyrim has levels. I can't even tell you what mine was, but I could sure ramble on where my skill points went. Diablo 2 had levels, but all power derived from the skill tree iirc (or maybe just most of it did with levels conferring health/mana pool size?)

And finally, whether a game features levels as the sole determinant of power/ability, levels that augment decisions made in parallel (X level confers Y points to apply as desired to Z skills), or nothing called a level but a whole series of boxes you still increase, it's not the level that drives the grind mentality. It's the grind mentality that drives the desire to break down the pace of achievements to the simplest measure as possible.

tl;dr: removing levels would only change what the person grinds. it does not remove the grind.

[Ingmar]

People like levels because they haven't known anything else. 

Sorry for generalizing about the younger generation of gamers who think WoW started the MMO trend.  Replace the last part of my sentence with "haven't known anything else or because they have terrible taste."

Better?

It's a step up. 

[shiznitz]

I would like to see a game based on achievement progression instead of filling up experience bars. Finishing quests (actual quests not the simple ones we expect today), dungeon completion, dungeon special runs, exploration and stuff like that.

It would be so easy to do.  Give points for certain types of achievements: kills, dungeons, exploring, loot/discover gold, craft items etc.  All the bars are separate. As the bars are filled through play, advancement options and new titles are gained.  No exp ever.  If you are killing stuff, your combat skills get better.  If you are crafting stuff, your crafting skills get better.  If you are exploring stuff, you can learn to track, get mounts, increase your stamina.  As you find more and more gold, clothing and housing items become available.  This way the rewards for actions are tailored to the actions themselves.  Players can gain in all types or only one.  Your combat "exp" has no connection to your explore "exp", unless the devs want to add things for multi-faceted characters.  

Quests can be divided along the same lines and have mixtures.  The player can choose the quests that fit his goals and his "level" in monster killing would never gate his ability to craft.

It just seems so obvious...

Yeah, jamming a coffee stick into my keyboard to 'play' Morrowind was totally awesome.

I never mentioned per use skill increases.  I am talking about having activity based exp as opposed to a general exp bucket.

[Numtini]

The only "skill based" system I actually enjoyed was Asheron's Call and that wasn't actually a skill system, it was a level system where you spent points on skills. When I think of skill systems, I think of macroing in UO and SWG.

[Merusk]

Yeah, jamming a coffee stick into my keyboard to 'play' Morrowind was totally awesome.

I never mentioned per use skill increases.  I am talking about having activity based exp as opposed to a general exp bucket.
[/quote]

Erm.. wouldn't activity-based be per use?  How else are you going to track it?  "Spend x hours doing something"  Hello bot programs.

Look, all skill/ leveling systems are macroable. All of them involve making small numbers bigger on the back-end which are just micro-levling instead of macro leveling.   Unless it's like an FPS and then it's subject to latency hacking and aimbotting.

[shiznitz]

By activity I meant generally, not specifically.  Combat experience would buy skills or powers in a combat tree.  Crafting experience would be used to buy skills and powers in crafting.  I am against swinging a sword = higher sword skill or using a shield = more parry.  That is too specific.

I never played AC, but it sounds like they did something along the lines of what I am talking about.  I just think it should be expanded further. 

And every 3D game world should have Super Leap from CoH.  Most fun travel power in gaming history.

[Numtini]

Looked up AC's system to refresh my memory. You spend XP directly to raise skills with no restriction on how it was earned (ie, kill stuff with a sword and spend it on adding to your alchemy). Levels are really just descriptive and their only reward is to give you points to buy new additional skills.

I will say that last time I played, every single player was a leeching tank mage using one of the subset of weapons that were good and there was no real cooperative gameplay other than zerging.

[shiznitz]

That is basically how PS2 works.  Level doesn't really indicate anything accept relative game experience.  My level 48 has about 13,000 certs, but a level 55 might have the same because I have cert boosts from being a subscriber that do not affect directly affect my levelling speed, i.e. 48 cert daily offline accrual vs 12 for non-subscribers.

[Falconeer]

New video showing off some of the Landmark tools. I can't stop being impressed by this, and how simple and powerful it seems to be.

[Sky]

Yeah, that's coming along nicely.

[Paelos]

It does look nice.

Pet peeve on the video for developer-types, or gamer-types. We don't need to see your fat bearded face in the corner. We can hear you just fine. You are not famous. Nobody cares to gaze upon you as you speak.

[Fordel]

You'd be surprised how many people do want to see the person talking.

[Paelos]

You'd be surprised how many people do want to see the person talking.

I really really would. Because I find it so profoundly arrogant amongst developers or youtube people.

[luckton]

I agree with the monkey.  Let the people assume/imagine what the dev looks like.  First impressions and appearances apply to more than just the launch of your product.  If you're gonna put yourself out there on display in an effort to "connect" with the people, be freaking presentable.

[Venkman]

That does look really nice. It's like SL met their room decorator system from EQ2, but in an tool that reacts to environmental context in ways I haven't seen in most CAD programs (though it has been a few years..).

Are they dealing with solids or surfaces? Not as wide a gulf between that as there used to be, but I'm just curious about time-to-MakerBot.

[Falconeer]

Well, I disagree. Meaning, I don't particularly care what the devs look like and I don't feel I need to find out but I can't see anything wrong with it if for whatever reason they want ke to show . And with "presentable" I have no idea what you mean. Seriously.

[Merusk]

Disheveled sweaty guys in old T-shirts with beards that have gone 3+ weeks without trimming.

That's what I took, at least.  But then I have this whole crazy idea about appearing professional.

[Venkman]

The folks running PR for this probably think that makes these videos more authentic.

The mysogonist stereotypes in this industry are much deeper than just the 90%+ guys and their stereotypes. It includes slovenly developers, college kids in sweatshops for QA, hoodies for your CEO and Marketing types recognized a mile away because they're the only ones who dress for the part. I thought that'd change when the analysts began running the show for social networking games. But that's done.

None of this is universally true of course. One of my motivations for getting in shape was because almost to a person, all the developers I knew were groomed healthy bastards who like mountain biked or did 10Ks on weekends and shit  .

[Hawkbit]

Holy shit!?  A developer had a beard and another appeared overweight? 

I'm hoping the last ~12 posts were meant to be in green and I can gladly be the sucker for this page.  There was no part of that video that was unprofessional, including their appearance.  Those guys could have been any one of our devs at work, or any one of the devs I've met so far here in Seattle.

Anyways, the toolset looks great.  I wonder how many people this may legitimately attract to level design for other games?  This looks like a gateway drug.

[Modern Angel]

Who the fuck even has a beard these days, Christ?

Savages.

[Ingmar]

The folks running PR for this probably think that makes these videos more authentic.

The mysogonist stereotypes in this industry are much deeper than just the 90%+ guys and their stereotypes. It includes slovenly developers, college kids in sweatshops for QA, hoodies for your CEO and Marketing types recognized a mile away because they're the only ones who dress for the part. I thought that'd change when the analysts began running the show for social networking games. But that's done.

None of this is universally true of course. One of my motivations for getting in shape was because almost to a person, all the developers I knew were groomed healthy bastards who like mountain biked or did 10Ks on weekends and shit  .

15 yards for misuse of the word misogynist. 5 yards for misspelling it as well; that penalty was declined. Repeat 3rd down.

[Miasma]

Holy shit!?  A developer had a beard and another appeared overweight? 

My only surprise was that they were two different people!  And that the overweight guy had a wedding ring!  Usually the idea would be beard+overweight.  Way to eschew traditional stereotypes game developers /archer.

I've never even thought about whether or not narrators of youtube videos talking about video games should be shown (and why would anyone ever consider such a question?) but those two guys looked authentic and genuinely excited about the game so I think it worked well.

[Merusk]

I love poking the sensitive spots.

Slobs.

[Paelos]

I don't want to see developers. I honestly don't give a shit about ever seeing a developer. I want to play the game. Show me the game, and get the fuck out of the way with your face. Your face is not the reason I am looking at your video of the game.

That was my point.

EDIT: Same thing applies to game reviews or Let's Plays. I'm watching them to make a determination of the game, show me more footage, less talking nerd head.

[Venkman]

15 yards for misuse of the word misogynist. 5 yards for misspelling it as well; that penalty was declined. Repeat 3rd down.

Goddamned instant replay ruined the game.

[UnSub]

I don't think MMO studios should show what their devs look like, mainly because it means that players can get attached to them and end up missing them when they're fired post-launch.

[Signe]

As compelling as the first couple of comments were after the initial one from Paelos, I didn't read the rest of the thread.  I'm saving it for a special day.

[Falconeer]

A video showing how claims work. To be honest I am not sure I understand what is going on, but it looks flexible I guess?

[Numtini]

The borders remind me uncomfortably of Second Life, where griefer construction got so bad there that Anshe Chung made a million bucks effectively running HOAs where if you built ugly shit, she chucked you out.

[Falconeer]

Anshe! She was my guildleader in Shadowbane!

[Malakili]

It looks like a neat, functional system.  That video does raise a lot of questions for me. Particularly about the plot "density" they are going to allow.  Those plots aren't huge to begin with, which is ok on its own. But if someone can build right up against yours it's going to feel really tiny and cramped.

[Scold]

This seems pointless, since I see no way to build a true 'gameplay ecosystem'. I can make something artistic in my little plot, sure, but you're not getting enough space to populate it with quests, factions, secrets, exploration, really building something "MMO-y".

[palmer_eldritch]

This seems pointless, since I see no way to build a true 'gameplay ecosystem'. I can make something artistic in my little plot, sure, but you're not getting enough space to populate it with quests, factions, secrets, exploration, really building something "MMO-y".

You can claim more than one plot. So I guess you can claim plots next to each other and build bigger things that way.