Doing away with character levels, quadrillions of hitpoints, mana and damage

[element_of_void]

I searched the Game Design / Development board and couldn't find something reflecting the thesis I'm wondering about. Also I gave up on all plans to create anything... I'm only interested in tossing around ideas and play with theoretical game settings.


Problem:
How to get rid of a character level (increasing hitpoints and damage dealt each level) without loosing a good measure for the players health and allowing for improvement?


In many games each level you gain, you get more hitpoints and mana while dealing more damage. This results in a large unbalance of high and low level characters.
If you remove levels and replace them with attribute gains, you gave the horse another name but the problem is still the same.

Doing away with the mana bar could be easy by allowing the use of magic without mana. Repetitive casting or casting of big spells could drain your endurance (like running, fighting, lifting weights and other bodily activities would). This way you streamline fighters and casters and got rid of one bar to monitor while playing (by replacing it with another I admit).

I think that life and endurance are things to monitor because they represent your characters condition. I don't think that increasing the values that represent said condition is the way to go. 0 - 100% should be good enough for this. Better trained athletes learned to preserve more endurance and use it more wisely but if they have only half of their endurance left, they feel just like anybody else; exhausted.
You might argue that a bodybuilder, athlete, trained soldier or average meatshield "has more health" or can take damage/pain better than the average person. While this might be true to some extend, a knife in the back still kills him, if placed correctly (i.e. under the 8th rib, pointing upwards, perforating all muscles and stuff). A trained fighter might be better at taking damage because he is better at ignoring the pain or maybe strengthening certain parts of his body to prepare for the impact etc.


I kind of liked the idea of the old SWG, where you had pools for health, action and mind (if I remember correctly). My problem with this was that using skills lowered my pools and made me vulnerable to certain attacks while some attacks seemed unbalanced in the pool damage the dealt.


OK, now we have a streamlined condition monitor. What about weapons, spells and other things that damage the character?
A sword is a sword. If it is rusty, it is more likely to break on impact... If it is sharp, it is more likely to cut... (duh) If it is well balanced and light weighted, it's wielder will be able to hit more precisely and maybe even faster. Just because it has 20 edges, a glowing scull and a dark blue blade, it won't magically deal more damage than any other sword, or will it? The weapon is only a means to an end. The wielder is the person using it. If I gently touch you with it, it won't hurt you. If I wield it like a sledge hammer, it will do some damage but if I hone my abilities and strike as deadly as a swordmaster, I will deal even more damage.

I think the choice of the weapon should be about style and feel. If I prefer slow but hard hits, I choose a slow and hard hitting weapon. If I prefer fast combat, I choose fast weapons.  Some daggers are better for this, other for that. In the end, things should even out to some extend. Using a "magical sword +10 of the imperfect ogre" shouldn't determine the outcome of a battle as much as the skill used for wielding it.

Casting offensive spells is in my eyes just another choice of weapons. Using fireballs, lighting strikes and stuff shouldn't be much different from physical combat or everybody would go the magic route, because it's unbalanced and "better". Casting Spells either comes with drawbacks of limitations.


This leads to yet another point. Healing has to be kept at a minimum if not even only out-of-combat healing. Combat should not be about that guy in the last row that keeps your life bar green. Combat should be about hitting, dodging, blocking, countering and being hit. It should be about casting spells and shooting arrows. Combine that with blocking of enemies, intercepting shots and stuff and you get something more interesting then one guy taking the beating, one guy healing the guy taking the beating and 6 people behind the guy beating the guy taking the beating and finishing of the foe.
Being a good fighter includes that you know how to deal with damage, prevent it and return the favor. A good defense is worth more if there is no healer and no aggro/taunt. I don't know if some of you are familiar with the exalted rpg. You can learn perfect attack and perfect defense abilities and a perfect defense always beats a perfect attack. How about an active defense that prevents most (if not all) of the damage otherwise taken but comes at a price like reduced mobility or preventing offensive actions (thus loosing damage potential). This way using the right defensive abilities at the right time is the key to negating damage.



Resulting problems:

 - advanced players might feel cheated because their advance is not visible enough (player progression is less tangible)
 - scaling all weapons, spells and abilities to be in line with the overall setting for health/endurance
 - scaling weapons, spells and abilities to provide some extend of progress to a player without hurting the overall balance of things




I know (or at least like to think to know) that many of you dislike the holy trinity of tank, healer and dd. I also know that many dislike the idea of preset classes to railroad player progress. I'd like to know what you think about the possibilities to get rid of character levels and high hitpoint / damage numbers and resulting problems.

I'm eagerly awaiting your replies.

[IainC]

These things do not have to be tied together unless you choose them to be. You can have a level-based game that does not have hitpoint and action pool gains, likewise you can have a level-free game that does have those things.

Most of the rest of your points can be answered in the same way. These things are design choices that don't have to be taken unless your design calls for them. The fact that most RPG games do include them is more to do with comfort zones and customer expectation than hardwired mechanical requirements.

Recently at work I and my colleagues had to sit down and prototype a progression system from a blank slate. The first things we asked ourselves were 'do we want levels?' and then 'what do we want levels to do?' The answers to these questions should be different for each team.

[Arrrgh]

I searched the Game Design / Development board and couldn't find something reflecting the thesis I'm wondering about. Also I gave up on all plans to create anything... I'm only interested in tossing around ideas and play with theoretical game settings.


Problem:
How to get rid of a character level (increasing hitpoints and damage dealt each level) without loosing a good measure for the players health and allowing for improvement?


In many games each level you gain, you get more hitpoints and mana while dealing more damage. This results in a large unbalance of high and low level characters.
If you remove levels and replace them with attribute gains, you gave the horse another name but the problem is still the same.

Doing away with the mana bar could be easy by allowing the use of magic without mana. Repetitive casting or casting of big spells could drain your endurance (like running, fighting, lifting weights and other bodily activities would). This way you streamline fighters and casters and got rid of one bar to monitor while playing (by replacing it with another I admit).

I think that life and endurance are things to monitor because they represent your characters condition. I don't think that increasing the values that represent said condition is the way to go. 0 - 100% should be good enough for this. Better trained athletes learned to preserve more endurance and use it more wisely but if they have only half of their endurance left, they feel just like anybody else; exhausted.
You might argue that a bodybuilder, athlete, trained soldier or average meatshield "has more health" or can take damage/pain better than the average person. While this might be true to some extend, a knife in the back still kills him, if placed correctly (i.e. under the 8th rib, pointing upwards, perforating all muscles and stuff). A trained fighter might be better at taking damage because he is better at ignoring the pain or maybe strengthening certain parts of his body to prepare for the impact etc.


I kind of liked the idea of the old SWG, where you had pools for health, action and mind (if I remember correctly). My problem with this was that using skills lowered my pools and made me vulnerable to certain attacks while some attacks seemed unbalanced in the pool damage the dealt.


OK, now we have a streamlined condition monitor. What about weapons, spells and other things that damage the character?
A sword is a sword. If it is rusty, it is more likely to break on impact... If it is sharp, it is more likely to cut... (duh) If it is well balanced and light weighted, it's wielder will be able to hit more precisely and maybe even faster. Just because it has 20 edges, a glowing scull and a dark blue blade, it won't magically deal more damage than any other sword, or will it? The weapon is only a means to an end. The wielder is the person using it. If I gently touch you with it, it won't hurt you. If I wield it like a sledge hammer, it will do some damage but if I hone my abilities and strike as deadly as a swordmaster, I will deal even more damage.

I think the choice of the weapon should be about style and feel. If I prefer slow but hard hits, I choose a slow and hard hitting weapon. If I prefer fast combat, I choose fast weapons.  Some daggers are better for this, other for that. In the end, things should even out to some extend. Using a "magical sword +10 of the imperfect ogre" shouldn't determine the outcome of a battle as much as the skill used for wielding it.

Casting offensive spells is in my eyes just another choice of weapons. Using fireballs, lighting strikes and stuff shouldn't be much different from physical combat or everybody would go the magic route, because it's unbalanced and "better". Casting Spells either comes with drawbacks of limitations.


This leads to yet another point. Healing has to be kept at a minimum if not even only out-of-combat healing. Combat should not be about that guy in the last row that keeps your life bar green. Combat should be about hitting, dodging, blocking, countering and being hit. It should be about casting spells and shooting arrows. Combine that with blocking of enemies, intercepting shots and stuff and you get something more interesting then one guy taking the beating, one guy healing the guy taking the beating and 6 people behind the guy beating the guy taking the beating and finishing of the foe.
Being a good fighter includes that you know how to deal with damage, prevent it and return the favor. A good defense is worth more if there is no healer and no aggro/taunt. I don't know if some of you are familiar with the exalted rpg. You can learn perfect attack and perfect defense abilities and a perfect defense always beats a perfect attack. How about an active defense that prevents most (if not all) of the damage otherwise taken but comes at a price like reduced mobility or preventing offensive actions (thus loosing damage potential). This way using the right defensive abilities at the right time is the key to negating damage.



Resulting problems:

 - advanced players might feel cheated because their advance is not visible enough (player progression is less tangible)
 - scaling all weapons, spells and abilities to be in line with the overall setting for health/endurance
 - scaling weapons, spells and abilities to provide some extend of progress to a player without hurting the overall balance of things




I know (or at least like to think to know) that many of you dislike the holy trinity of tank, healer and dd. I also know that many dislike the idea of preset classes to railroad player progress. I'd like to know what you think about the possibilities to get rid of character levels and high hitpoint / damage numbers and resulting problems.

I'm eagerly awaiting your replies.

I haven't had my coffee yet, but I took this as "A fantasy FPS would be nice".

[Mrbloodworth]

It would be.

I have always liked systems that use dots or wound types myself.

[element_of_void]

You are right. Those points aren't necessarily tied together but they affect each other.

Let's forget the idea of levels, because they don't matter that much for this. I mentioned them because in most games the level is tied to the hitpoints and stuff.

So let me try to rephrase it. Is it possible to simplify hitpoints, action pools, damage (melee, ranged, magic and other) as mentioned above without loosing much of the "I just got stronger" feeling of player while advancing through the system? What other consequences could come up with our typical game systems that would have to be taken care of.

[Zetor]

Guild Wars is pretty much this.

It has fixed hp/mana pools and basically no gear inflation once you hit max level (which is doable in a couple of hours and can be considered a tutorial). You can get minor upgrades to min-max your character after that (or you can just buy those minor upgrades from other players), but that's about it.

Progression happens in the following areas:
- cosmetics: minipets, better-looking armor (same stats as normal armor though), epeen titles, badass-looking gear (again, same stats as normal gear)
- diversity: you can find / capture other skills by progressing through campaigns or unlocking them via pvp; these skills are NOT more powerful than the basic ones every character gets while they get past the 'tutorial', but rather are more specialized / situational. You can also only have 8 skills (1 elite) equipped at any time, so having access to more skills doesn't automatically make someone more powerful.
- pve stuff: campaigns, hard modes, pve-only skills from reputation etc (I guess this is the equivalent of typical diku endgame, but you're not forced to do it ala raiding / dungeon grinding / daily quest farming)
- pvp stuff: arena ladders in various game types, guild vs guild, faction vs faction

Needless to say, the only MMOG I'm really looking forward to atm is Guild Wars 2. :p

[element_of_void]

I only played a Guildwars Demo back when it was first released and never after that. All we did was some basic missions and little more. Sounds somewhat like what I was thinking about.

I allways thought GW was 95% about Guild vs Guild and only like 5% PvE. Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you choose some sort of PvP gamestyle, skip the PvE and go straight to the PvP game by choosing your class and skills?

Sounds like a game primarily driven by player skill (right choice of skills, game tactics, reactions, team play etc) and most players tend to hone their PvP Skills. All players playing the PvP game therefor tend to have the same level in means of points(skills etc) available to distribute. It's about the decisions you make but not about your progress.

How many people do play GW mainly to progress in the PvE game? Do they do so to feel better/stronger/more fashionable  afterwards or to be more badass in PvP (evil looking or better choice of skills)?

[tazelbain]

I am been interested in pointless rpg.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am been interested in pointless rpg.

GCG should be the true term for all current "RPG's". As in the PnP world, there is more role playing then dice rolling in most cases. But not in a MMG.

So, GCG (Gear Chasing Game) should be the new acronym.

Then again, I always thought it was retarded in FF games that I can hit for 99999 points of damage. Sliding scale and all that.

[Zetor]

I only played a Guildwars Demo back when it was first released and never after that. All we did was some basic missions and little more. Sounds somewhat like what I was thinking about.

I allways thought GW was 95% about Guild vs Guild and only like 5% PvE. Correct me if I'm wrong but can't you choose some sort of PvP gamestyle, skip the PvE and go straight to the PvP game by choosing your class and skills?

Sounds like a game primarily driven by player skill (right choice of skills, game tactics, reactions, team play etc) and most players tend to hone their PvP Skills. All players playing the PvP game therefor tend to have the same level in means of points(skills etc) available to distribute. It's about the decisions you make but not about your progress.

How many people do play GW mainly to progress in the PvE game? Do they do so to feel better/stronger/more fashionable  afterwards or to be more badass in PvP (evil looking or better choice of skills)?

I'm not really a huge GW player (though I do own all expansions), but the game has changed a LOT since launch.

There's way, way, way, way more "actual content" for pve than pvp in GW. PVP isn't all guild-v-guild either (though obviously you have high-end pvp guilds, but you have those in every single mmog with pvp). You have a large variety of battles from random deathmatch arenas to hybrid battlegrounds like wow's Alterac Valley, but still only ~30 or so maps altogether (I think?). For pve you have several campaigns that are on par with single player games (cutscenes, cheesy voice acting and everything) and those missions have a lot more complex stuff in them than just "kill these foozles and watch for the 2 special attacks that the end boss has". Sometimes you need to get past an area without being spotted, other times you're defending a keep with NPC allies, other times you team up with another player group and conquer a map from two different sides, etc etc.

You can have a pvp-specific character (and unlock skills / gearsets through pvp) if you want. That way you don't need to pve at all, but pvp-only characters can't do pve; you can do pvp with pve characters however.

A lot of people do play GW for the pve, but I don't think anyone can answer the "how many" question without turning into sir bruce or something.   GW has a lot of dungeons and heroic mode zones that are really hard; you can also do time-trial challenges of certain areas with a high score chart and everything. Most of all though, people play through the campaigns the same reason they'd play through a single-player rpg (only this is persistent and you can have your friends playing with you etc).

Anyway, in summary, GW does almost everything right from the POV of your original post: an almost completely flat power curve, very little power creep (builds change as the metagame changes, but everyone still does the same damage and has the same hp/defenses), and progression that is more about versatility and specialization than just power.

[element_of_void]

I'm intrigued. I'd give GW a free try if I had more free time on my hands right now. Would you maybe answer a few more questions about the game for me? That would be nice.

How did GW solve the problem of NPC enemy strength. If player strength doesn't add up to FF-like levels of 99.999 Damage and 255 Luck and stuff, how do NPCs differ in starting areas (for players with little skill diversity and only basic equipment) and more experienced players?
Do they use a 3 tier setup or something with minions, sergeants and bosses (with maybe a few elite bosses{COH comes to mind})?
Do they use larger numbers of NPCs to match the player strength (quantity over quality)?

How long do fights last? Short and fast fights (like Diablo) or longer and more tactical fights (with tactical decisions rather than hack'n'slay)?

Thanks in advance,
Elovoid

[Zetor]

Sure, though I'm by no means a GW guru (I'm playing GW right now for the War in Kryta event, but haven't really played the game THAT much), so any experts feel free to correct me.

NPC enemy strength: there are a few things at play here.
- Levels: this part is easy, enemies are not always level 20 [which is the player level cap]. For the first campaign (Prophecies) a fairly large % of the game is actually 'before max level', so you are still fighting level 16s halfway through the campaign, and even in the other campaigns the newbie area has mobs below level 20. Mob levels also progress above 20 (there is no 'you can't hit anything 5 levels above you' rule in GW): big nasty mobs are typically level 24-ish, hard mode mobs are 26, bosses can be 30, super nasty end bosses even higher. I forget what level the end boss of the Nightfall campaign was, but it was... 32 or so? Still, level in this case is usually just an indicator of hp/damage (higher level = more skill points = more damage / stuff done by your skills).
- Tiers: Not as much as COH, but there are 'boss' type mobs (they have more hp, do more damage, have an elite skill, etc), and 'end boss' type mobs at the end of story missions that have truckloads of hp. I know it goes against the '50000 hp' problem, but I don't really think it's avoidable for bosses unless you do something obnoxious like the end boss of Factions. There are also 'fodder' type mobs with less hp, but it isn't always apparent.
- Skill/stat selection: There are definitely easy/hard mobs depending on what skills they use and what their skill point spread is. Most melee mobs are fairly easy to deal with, but casters can devastate groups quickly.
- Monster skills: monster-only skills that do something like stun everyone in a group, do a ton of damage, place a heavy DOT if you get too near, etc. Environmental effects also come in play here (I know there's a dragon cave mission in Prophecies where every level has a different zone-wide debuff on the party).
- "pvp in pve": This is actually fairly new (I haven't seen it before the War In Kryta thing), but there can be very varied groups of mobs that actively help one another and play just like players would, ie. no real aggro control, focus fire squishies, interrupt heals, etcetera. There are traces of this in other games too, though (WOW: BRD event, priestess boss in magister's terrace, Faction Champions).
- Numbers: Yeah, more is better, though I haven't really seen more than 8 in a 'pull'.
- Other things to do in missions than kill stuff: There are missions where you have to sneak, run somewhere, or protect a caravan. In those cases, pure killing power isn't necessarily the answer...
- Hard mode: Everything does more damage, has more armor, takes more to kill, casts spells faster, etc. We've been doing some hard modes recently, and it's a definite step up from the standard fights.

Fights last as long as they have to ;) but usually they're over fairly quick. Boss fights last a loooooong time though.

[WindupAtheist]

The most pimped out UO character will have like 120 HP. The average new character will have about 80 HP. A brand new character created in such a way as to be as weak as possible will have 55 HP. Progress is all about gear and is pretty substantial, but the power curve is still infinitely flatter than the average WoWalike.

Sorry, mandatory WUA post. PS, god is fake and Revenge of the Sith was awesome.

[Tannhauser]

I'd like to see someone take a stab at a modern UO system.  Same with AC1's. 

[Lantyssa]

Sorry, mandatory WUA post. PS, god is fake and Revenge of the Sith was awesome.

What's the difference in power curve between tanks and mechs?

[Typhon]

 

[WindupAtheist]

This tank (top) beats the shit out of any mech.

[Hutch]

That also answers the power curve question.

[Trippy]

I'm eagerly awaiting your replies.

RuneQuest.

[Sheepherder]

Problem:
How to get rid of a character level (increasing hitpoints and damage dealt each level) without loosing a good measure for the players health and allowing for improvement?

Large hit point and mana pools are not a problem whatsoever.  Scaling is the problem.  Large quantities of each (or high precision percentages) are actually intrinsically good tools to adjust balance in small increments.