Darkfall, you can hate it all you want but at least you can join the content at any level. No retarded quests. If more games did it their way they would have so much resources availible for some actual content instead of quest lines noone cares about.
I have not played Rise of Agon. The original Darkfall had spells that were nearly required to PvP against older characters such as Stormblast (For bunny hopping) and Wall of Force that you had to either macro or grind for months to get. Generally a bit of both given how many reagents you needed to cast all the spells it took to get your magic schools that high.
The gap was smaller, but the fact you were thrust straight into the action with that game meant you had to deal with months of ganking by people you had no chance against to get strong enough to counter them, unless you went destro.
Of course destro was only viable for very high PING connections, good systems, and good reflexes. Landing arrows is a lot more difficult than cycling nukes. And if you went destro it would hinder you from leveling the skills needed to be a hybrid meaning you're putting a permanent handicap on yourself if you don't have absolutely amazing reflexes.
I actually think the original Darkfall was a mess. One of the absolute worst. It was friendly on no-lifers and people who got in early but you had to invest hundreds or thousands of hours leveling spell schools and individual spells if you weren't one of the many people who macro-grinded their way to the top. Horrid.
I have not played Rise of Agon. The original Darkfall had spells that were nearly required to PvP against older characters such as Stormblast (For bunny hopping) and Wall of Force that you had to either macro or grind for months to get. Generally a bit of both given how many reagents you needed to cast all the spells it took to get your magic schools that high.
The gap was smaller, but the fact you were thrust straight into the action with that game meant you had to deal with months of ganking by people you had no chance against to get strong enough to counter them, unless you went destro.
Of course destro was only viable for very high PING connections, good systems, and good reflexes. Landing arrows is a lot more difficult than cycling nukes. And if you went destro it would hinder you from leveling the skills needed to be a hybrid meaning you're putting a permanent handicap on yourself if you don't have absolutely amazing reflexes.
I actually think the original Darkfall was a mess. One of the absolute worst. It was friendly on no-lifers and people who got in early but you had to invest hundreds or thousands of hours leveling spell schools and individual spells if you weren't one of the many people who macro-grinded their way to the top. Horrid.
Yeah, no levels is not always the same as even playing field and no quests does not mean you instantly can join the action and be useful.
Levels is just a very simple way to measure progression, if you instead level up skills the basics are the same, just like if you gain abilities based on time or in any other system.
The time it takes to max out your character is another matter and not really relevant to the discussion, we seen levelgames with etremely long time to level up (like EQ) and exrtremely low (like GW:Factions). Exactly how long time it should take to max out a character no matter what mechanics you use should be the topic for a new thread.
PvP seems to be the focal point of the issue with power gaps, which naturally results in an antagonism against the grind needed to achieve the gear that ensures you aren't at an automatic disadvantage in PvP. It seems an easy enough fix, really: DAoC use(s/d) a template system that effectively maximizes your character's stats for PvP. That's all that's really needed for other MMORPGs, too: an essentially hard cap on character stats via gear that doesn't take obscene amounts of time and effort to achieve. I don't PvP in MMORPGs to show off the epic hammer I just got in the dungeon, I do it to work together with extremely large amounts of players to fight against another large group of players in the closest thing we can get from video games to castle siege-levels of massive PvP. Gear disparities don't do much to improve that. The idea that I would be able to turn the tide by myself violates the entire point of participating in such large-scale PvP gameplay. If I want to force everyone to watch me dominate, I'll play Overwatch for it's POTG replay system.
The underlying stat caps will prevent this from being a variable that developers/gamers have to account for in PvP, resulting in more focus on player builds, skill, and teamwork. PvE need not be touched by such a change.
PvP seems to be the focal point of the issue with power gaps, which naturally results in an antagonism against the grind needed to achieve the gear that ensures you aren't at an automatic disadvantage in PvP. It seems an easy enough fix, really: DAoC use(s/d) a template system that effectively maximizes your character's stats for PvP. That's all that's really needed for other MMORPGs, too: an essentially hard cap on character stats via gear that doesn't take obscene amounts of time and effort to achieve. I don't PvP in MMORPGs to show off the epic hammer I just got in the dungeon, I do it to work together with extremely large amounts of players to fight against another large group of players in the closest thing we can get from video games to castle siege-levels of massive PvP. Gear disparities don't do much to improve that. The idea that I would be able to turn the tide by myself violates the entire point of participating in such large-scale PvP gameplay. If I want to force everyone to watch me dominate, I'll play Overwatch for it's POTG replay system.
The underlying stat caps will prevent this from being a variable that developers/gamers have to account for in PvP, resulting in more focus on player builds, skill, and teamwork. PvE need not be touched by such a change.
Yes, both Guildwars games do the same thing (well, in Gw you could make a max level PvP only character or level up the usual way so not exactly the same) and it works excellent for instanced PvP.
It does not work for open world PvP though and even in PvE the powergap still have disadvantages, even if they are not as serious. For instance, the higher the powergap is the fewer people you can effectively group with.
The powergaps still are too ridicoulus even if you don't use open world PvP, 10% of the standard gap is still large and more then enough.
Can we finally admit its not the leveling, progression that drives people away but boring, repetitive, clunky gameplay that drive them instead? Why limit advancement because the devs cant make the game itself fun. People wont play a game if the core element of the game is lacking. You can target it to whatever audience you want and it will flop like most games have.
Can we finally admit its not the leveling, progression that drives people away but boring, repetitive, clunky gameplay that drive them instead? Why limit advancement because the devs cant make the game itself fun. People wont play a game if the core element of the game is lacking. You can target it to whatever audience you want and it will flop like most games have.
Well, advancement can also be boring and repetetive if you do it wrong. Whenever you hit a new level and gain zero but some HP that is rather meaningless as well, many games have way more levels then they need and many players tire when they see they have a load of pointless ones to complete.
It is not really the time it takes to level, weeks, months or even a year, but having 100 or 120 levels is not more fun then 20, particularly when you get actual new abilities at every level there and something every 5 or 10 with 100 levels. The time it should take to level depends on the game, a large game for instance can let you max out slower then a small, and a open world PvP should do it faster with less powergap. The less reptetiton you have the longer you can let people level.
But of course, lazy and bad gameplay do turn many players away. Bringing letters between 2 guys 10 feet from eachother is not a "quest" or an "adventure" and I think the devs should consider what a worthy quest is and what isn't.
We don't need 5000 quests if most of them are boring crap, give us 300 fun and epic quests instead and just pay bounties on hunted monsters instead of encouraging people to grind boring crap.
Advancement can be fun if it is done right, but they do need to lessen the powerlevel anyways (10-20% of the current difference between a newly created char and the maxed out one is still an awesome upgrade). Focus more on giving us actually new skills and abilities when we level up and less on increasing our HP and damage mitigation.
Also, levels is not the only possible way to handle gaining power. You could just use XP as a currency and let people buy their upgrades instead which is more fun since you actually get to buy stuff and decide for yourself (add a recommended button for anyone with no clue).
PvP seems to be the focal point of the issue with power gaps, which naturally results in an antagonism against the grind needed to achieve the gear that ensures you aren't at an automatic disadvantage in PvP. It seems an easy enough fix, really: DAoC use(s/d) a template system that effectively maximizes your character's stats for PvP. That's all that's really needed for other MMORPGs, too: an essentially hard cap on character stats via gear that doesn't take obscene amounts of time and effort to achieve. I don't PvP in MMORPGs to show off the epic hammer I just got in the dungeon, I do it to work together with extremely large amounts of players to fight against another large group of players in the closest thing we can get from video games to castle siege-levels of massive PvP. Gear disparities don't do much to improve that. The idea that I would be able to turn the tide by myself violates the entire point of participating in such large-scale PvP gameplay. If I want to force everyone to watch me dominate, I'll play Overwatch for it's POTG replay system.
The underlying stat caps will prevent this from being a variable that developers/gamers have to account for in PvP, resulting in more focus on player builds, skill, and teamwork. PvE need not be touched by such a change.
It's not a PvP thing. It's a player interaction thing. The fact you can't quest together with friends. The fact that developers are putting massive resources into zones that are consumed and then thrown aside once you outlevel them. These are problems you'll never find solutions too if you pretend the problem is limited to PvP.
The issue with steep vertical progression and enjoyable leveling / not gated content is that they are two features that don't go together.
Let's list all our primary content in MMORPGs:
1. Quests 2. Dungeons 3. World Events 4. PvP Arenas 5. Open World PvP 6. Territorial Control 7. Trading (Including the transportation of goods such as in ArcheAge) 8. Resource Gathering 9. Crafting 10. Housing / Guild Halls
Quests - In your general MMO questing tends to be zoned with the vast majority of quests in a zone falling within a certain level range. To give players options there tends to be more than one zone for each level range. Vertical progression harms this content in that it becomes too easy past a certain point. If you are actually running quests for the enjoyment of the quests themselves you can run into situations where you are actually punished for leveling by the quests you want to run become overly simple due to your level (This is a major issue for me on my hobbit in LOTRO when I did every Shire quest). You also will almost certainly run into situations where it is unenjoyable to quest together with friends because of level gap.
Some games due attempt to solve this by deleveling people in certain areas. But beyond this being a hated feature by many, it's almost never balanced well. In short the more variance in player power, the more difficult it becomes to balance content and deleveling systems. An issue that is non-existant in games without vertical progression and much simpler in games where vertical progression is limited / realistic.
Dungeons - Dungeons suffer many of the same problems you do with quests. They are built for players of a specific level, then that level changes. Many games allow you to do the same dungeon at multiple levels having epic or hard mode versions of dungeons. But you almost never see dungeons that you can run at every single level. I'm going to assume that this again is due to the massive difficulty that would be involved in balancing such a system.
World Events - Like quests and dungeons, it's not scaled well. Events that should involve the entire player base tend to exclude lower levels or be overly easy for high levels.
Crafting - In most MMOs there are few goods you can craft at low levels more valuable than the materials involved in making them. Crafting is one of the few areas I'm ok with some progression but it does need to be useful starting at level 1. You shouldn't have to spend weeks, months, or years taking losses on crafting to make anything that will turn an even slight profit. It's not realistic and more importantly, it's not fun. Solving this issue is largely about making crafting a more involved process though. When you can straight up AFK while crafting after you have the resources it makes sense that it's something that generates no value. That value needs to come from effort few games allow you to put in.
Can we finally admit its not the leveling, progression that drives people away but boring, repetitive, clunky gameplay that drive them instead? Why limit advancement because the devs cant make the game itself fun. People wont play a game if the core element of the game is lacking. You can target it to whatever audience you want and it will flop like most games have.
Today devs are just cheap on the amount of xp they give out so they can have these lame ass double xp weekends. Some of you may not remember but some of those old school mmo's gave you great xp for everything you did in the game. Today devs think less xp means you play longer but mostly people get bored and quit.
Today devs are just cheap on the amount of xp they give out so they can have these lame ass double xp weekends. Some of you may not remember but some of those old school mmo's gave you great xp for everything you did in the game. Today devs think less xp means you play longer but mostly people get bored and quit.
I don't know. XP is really just a measure of how fast you level up and I would agree with those who say that the leveling process is far faster that it was historically in todays MMOs, though I wouldn't follow that through to the conclusion there is less grind as the gear grind is still near infinite in the vast majority of MMOs.
Today devs are just cheap on the amount of xp they give out so they can have these lame ass double xp weekends. Some of you may not remember but some of those old school mmo's gave you great xp for everything you did in the game. Today devs think less xp means you play longer but mostly people get bored and quit.
We don't play the same games. I remember back in the 90s, leveling took forever.
Level grind isn't bad if players are all on the same playing field and the path is entertaining. The problem IMO is when the grind is exploitable and level power gap becomes insurmountable for people who play normal/straight up. Tedious/repetition leveling and insurmountable power gap is never good. If players have to figure out how to exploit to get around your games leveling features you've pretty much failed as a dev. IDC what some older nostalgic MMO person says. That sh!# wasn't good back then, and it ain't good now... BUT;
I'll take reasonable grind over P2W or RNG anyday. At least with grind there is actually an achievable bar to reach that isn't gated by f#%kery
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
IMO, levelling up is part of the game. So when people say they don't like the levelling process, that means to me that they don't like the game. If people don't like the game, then they shouldn't play it.
When it comes to excessively long, grindy, or tedious levelling -- well, I did play EQ, which had pretty long levels (some more than others). A well-made game doesn't make levelling onerous, but what constitutes "onerous" varies for different people. There are a lot of things that I find fun in certain doses, but which get tiresome after a certain point. A good developer is aware of this.
I think that subscription-based games were more focused on providing content that kept you wanting to play, where shop-based games are more focused on getting you to buy things. So levelling that takes large amounts of time are more of a subscription-based concept, unless the game sells ways to mitigate the process, in which case it's definitely a shop-based strategy. I feel like back in the old days, subscription-based games like WoW and EQ wanted you to keep playing, which meant they were more interested in the enjoyment factor as you levelled up; a lot of shop-based games, IMO, only care about getting as much money from you as they can while you're there, and don't really try to keep you there for the long haul: whales will be whales, and if they can get a certain number of them versus the overall number of players, that's good enough. If the non-whales get annoyed and quit, it's no big deal because they weren't going to spend much anyway. With subscription-based games, this isn't true: everyone pays the same amount each month (more or less), so there trying to keep the majority of players happy is the main focus, which means not making the levelling process too onerous. That's my read on it, anyway.
Pointless grinds turn players off, not grinding in general. Tera is a prime example. All you're doing in that game is getting items > enchanting said items > using said enchanted items to get more items > enchant new items > over and over until you can't do it any further. You never really have a true sense of accomplishments with systems like that. WoW: Legion is another prime example. You can do heroic raids and get a titanforged piece of gear that can be better than a base mythic piece for a fraction of the effort depending on the boss. Dont even get me started on the Legendary RNG and AP farming. To make all those things worse? A green in the expansion coming out next year will end up being better than all the effort and 6 months into the new expansion, heirlooms will be upgradeable, meaning all that great raiding you did was pointless since you'll be using looms anyway. Games lack persistence. Say what you want about Archeage, but if you think about it, the approach XL did was pretty good in terms of progression. Instead of going with a normal level cap increase and making all that whale gear pointless with said cap increase, they just gave an alternative level system (prestige I think). So pretty much the time (more than likely whale money) will guarantee you progress. If more games did a system like that (minus the pay 2 win), it would honestly make people stay longer in games imo.
I found level-grinding in Shadowbane to be interesting. There was a tiny chance of decent gear dropping, so each grind felt like pulling the lever on a slot machine.
So old mmos were just like casinos only you rented access and got to pull the slot handle a lot and it paid out a few times a month.
You work and get payed? It is like casinos if you work there. Just subbing wouldn't get you anywhere after all, you need to find it as well.
IMO, levelling up is part of the game. So when people say they don't like the levelling process, that means to me that they don't like the game. If people don't like the game, then they shouldn't play it.
When it comes to excessively long, grindy, or tedious levelling -- well, I did play EQ, which had pretty long levels (some more than others). A well-made game doesn't make levelling onerous, but what constitutes "onerous" varies for different people. There are a lot of things that I find fun in certain doses, but which get tiresome after a certain point. A good developer is aware of this.
I think that subscription-based games were more focused on providing content that kept you wanting to play, where shop-based games are more focused on getting you to buy things. So levelling that takes large amounts of time are more of a subscription-based concept, unless the game sells ways to mitigate the process, in which case it's definitely a shop-based strategy. I feel like back in the old days, subscription-based games like WoW and EQ wanted you to keep playing, which meant they were more interested in the enjoyment factor as you levelled up; a lot of shop-based games, IMO, only care about getting as much money from you as they can while you're there, and don't really try to keep you there for the long haul: whales will be whales, and if they can get a certain number of them versus the overall number of players, that's good enough. If the non-whales get annoyed and quit, it's no big deal because they weren't going to spend much anyway. With subscription-based games, this isn't true: everyone pays the same amount each month (more or less), so there trying to keep the majority of players happy is the main focus, which means not making the levelling process too onerous. That's my read on it, anyway.
Leveling is not really part of the game, not all MMOs use levels to measure progression. Instead of allowing you to pick your own upgrades it portions them out for you.
Do you really think a game letting you buy the ups with XP instead of using levels would be so bad that it wouldn't even be a MMO?
But yeah, subscription based games tend to focus on keeping players long term. Lately they seems to try to bribe the players with more loot though instead of making it more fun.
My point: Levels is one simple way to simulate progression. There are several as good mechanics a MMORPG could use but they are a bit harder to balance. We need progression but we don't neccesarily need it through levels. But what model they use is no biggie as long as it is fun, and a MMO need to be fun longer then a single player game.
I found level-grinding in Shadowbane to be interesting. There was a tiny chance of decent gear dropping, so each grind felt like pulling the lever on a slot machine.
So old mmos were just like casinos only you rented access and got to pull the slot handle a lot and it paid out a few times a month.
You work and get payed? It is like casinos if you work there. Just subbing wouldn't get you anywhere after all, you need to find it as well.
He's the one that called old school loot mechanics like pulling the slot machine lever not me. I just described how we paid for it back then. I'm only pointing out that people considered old school games casinos too.
Yeah, lol (but it sounded better to when I replayed under you then him so both text boxes could be seen).
The whole F2P market made the comparision somewhat better though even if it really only work for mystery loot boxes and other random stuff.
Modern MMOs are more like a 7-eleven then a casino. )
IMO, levelling up is part of the game. So when people say they don't like the levelling process, that means to me that they don't like the game. If people don't like the game, then they shouldn't play it.
In the vast majority of MMOs I do not like the leveling, and I do not like the game, therefore I don't play them. This is why I've never been beyond level 25 in WoW for instance. That's the longest I could go before I was just straight bored out of my mind.
Not liking those games, heck, not liking any MMOs currently on the market does not mean that the concept of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is for you. Suppose the only genres of music you had ever heard were the genres of music you despise the most. Boy bands, country pop, rap, childrens show theme songs. Whatever you find most obnoxious. If that was the only music in the world you might conclude "I don't like music." People who love those genres might tell you "If you don't like any music go stare at a painting or something." But it's not that you don't like music. It's that there isn't any music you like.
Same is true of MMOs. Nowhere other than the minds of the simple minded is it a fact that MMOs must have a steep vertical progression or any vertical progression at all. It is possible to love an open persistent world filled with a massive quantity of players and despise what current MMOs have become.
Now the few MMOs I am willing to suffer through, it's because I hate a single feature of the MMO (The vertical progression) but love the rest of the game enough that I deal with it. Sort of like how if there is a girl you enjoy spending time with, but parts about her you don't like, that doesn't mean you just dump her and move on. Sometimes you just learn to live with the parts you don't like in order to enjoy the parts you do.
I hate grinding and vertical progression. I love open world PvP, territorial conflict, random encounters with players, player-politics, game's with a sense of community etc. These features are either not found or found on a much less engaging scale outside of MMOs. And that's why continue to play MMOs, and hold out hope for the genre.
I'm not going to let one feature preserved by people too short-sighted to see other possibilities ruin an entire genre for me. Especially when the developers themselves are starting to scale down it's importance in a lot of upcoming titles.
Filthy casuals stop whining, casuals are the reason why mmos suck today.......that classic excuse " i dont have time to play so cash shops are ok for me"......Filthy casuals go play minecraft then.
Leveling up in RPGS or MMOS is what I enjoy the most...it is certainly not the stupid end game grinds.....like doing daily daily quests and pvp ?? yea ok
The scaling down of importance isn't a result of the MMO portion. We've had this discussion.
Nobody says MMOs need deep vertical progression. Planetside 2 didn't have deep vertical progression. Because it's closer to an FPS than RPG.
RPGs, by and large, had, have, and will continue to rely on vertical progression, either by leveling or by tiered loot. It's part of the RPG, not the MMO.
I asked because in the US there are popular store chains on the east coast we don't have on the west, or are very rare and vice versa. I guess the corner convenience store is sort of a universal concept regardless of the name. I figured there would be a more popular regional company. I could have just looked on wikipedia. It lists it all right there.
We don't have Wallmarts and like 3 or 4 KFCs but I think you have to go to Cuba or North Korea to not find a 7 eleven nowadays. Cuba is at least the only place I been that doesn't have Mc Donalds & 7-eleven (no, I never been to North Korea, it doesn't seem like a good play to be a tourist).
All Scandinavian countries except maybe Iceland (have not been there either) have them. I'm not actually sure why, it's a convinient little store but not really something unique.
But it certainly is the best likelness to F2P cashshops I can think off. MadFrenchie said:
The scaling down of importance isn't a result of the MMO portion. We've had this discussion.
Nobody says MMOs need deep vertical progression. Planetside 2 didn't have deep vertical progression. Because it's closer to an FPS than RPG.
RPGs, by and large, had, have, and will continue to rely on vertical progression, either by leveling or by tiered loot. It's part of the RPG, not the MMO.
RPGs tend to have some kind of progression, yes. There are exceptions like Myst but they are few.
How much progression is another matter, Guildwars did well with a rather minimal vertical and some horizontal so you can clearly make a MMORPG with limited progression, particularly PvP MMORPGs.
The whole persistent world thing mean people except some progression after all. You might make one based on guild or realm progression instead of personal one. You could probably pull of a CIV based MMORPG where you progression helps the tech level of your realm which in turn give you access to that tech yourself, it would be an interesting experiement.
Personal progression works, but you can likely tweak it to offer more fun.
Oh I won't deny that at all, I agree. And I think games with shallow vertical progression are fine. Even ideal; variety is the spice of life.
The issue is with the idea that "MMOs" have the problem of vertical progression. They don't, because nothing about the MMO part requires vertical progression. That stems from the RPG roots.
Vertical Progression is a feature of RPGs like a garage is a feature of a house. They are commonly associated but not required. You can have a house without a garage attached to it, and you can have RPGs without vertical progression. Nowhere does it say roleplaying games need vertical progression.
In MMOs they have proven to actually be a distraction from the primary feature of RPGs. Roleplay.
Comments
The gap was smaller, but the fact you were thrust straight into the action with that game meant you had to deal with months of ganking by people you had no chance against to get strong enough to counter them, unless you went destro.
Of course destro was only viable for very high PING connections, good systems, and good reflexes. Landing arrows is a lot more difficult than cycling nukes. And if you went destro it would hinder you from leveling the skills needed to be a hybrid meaning you're putting a permanent handicap on yourself if you don't have absolutely amazing reflexes.
I actually think the original Darkfall was a mess. One of the absolute worst. It was friendly on no-lifers and people who got in early but you had to invest hundreds or thousands of hours leveling spell schools and individual spells if you weren't one of the many people who macro-grinded their way to the top. Horrid.
Levels is just a very simple way to measure progression, if you instead level up skills the basics are the same, just like if you gain abilities based on time or in any other system.
The time it takes to max out your character is another matter and not really relevant to the discussion, we seen levelgames with etremely long time to level up (like EQ) and exrtremely low (like GW:Factions). Exactly how long time it should take to max out a character no matter what mechanics you use should be the topic for a new thread.
The underlying stat caps will prevent this from being a variable that developers/gamers have to account for in PvP, resulting in more focus on player builds, skill, and teamwork. PvE need not be touched by such a change.
It does not work for open world PvP though and even in PvE the powergap still have disadvantages, even if they are not as serious. For instance, the higher the powergap is the fewer people you can effectively group with.
The powergaps still are too ridicoulus even if you don't use open world PvP, 10% of the standard gap is still large and more then enough.
It is not really the time it takes to level, weeks, months or even a year, but having 100 or 120 levels is not more fun then 20, particularly when you get actual new abilities at every level there and something every 5 or 10 with 100 levels. The time it should take to level depends on the game, a large game for instance can let you max out slower then a small, and a open world PvP should do it faster with less powergap. The less reptetiton you have the longer you can let people level.
But of course, lazy and bad gameplay do turn many players away. Bringing letters between 2 guys 10 feet from eachother is not a "quest" or an "adventure" and I think the devs should consider what a worthy quest is and what isn't.
We don't need 5000 quests if most of them are boring crap, give us 300 fun and epic quests instead and just pay bounties on hunted monsters instead of encouraging people to grind boring crap.
Advancement can be fun if it is done right, but they do need to lessen the powerlevel anyways (10-20% of the current difference between a newly created char and the maxed out one is still an awesome upgrade). Focus more on giving us actually new skills and abilities when we level up and less on increasing our HP and damage mitigation.
Also, levels is not the only possible way to handle gaining power. You could just use XP as a currency and let people buy their upgrades instead which is more fun since you actually get to buy stuff and decide for yourself (add a recommended button for anyone with no clue).
It's not a PvP thing. It's a player interaction thing. The fact you can't quest together with friends. The fact that developers are putting massive resources into zones that are consumed and then thrown aside once you outlevel them. These are problems you'll never find solutions too if you pretend the problem is limited to PvP.
I'll take reasonable grind over P2W or RNG anyday. At least with grind there is actually an achievable bar to reach that isn't gated by f#%kery
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When it comes to excessively long, grindy, or tedious levelling -- well, I did play EQ, which had pretty long levels (some more than others). A well-made game doesn't make levelling onerous, but what constitutes "onerous" varies for different people. There are a lot of things that I find fun in certain doses, but which get tiresome after a certain point. A good developer is aware of this.
I think that subscription-based games were more focused on providing content that kept you wanting to play, where shop-based games are more focused on getting you to buy things. So levelling that takes large amounts of time are more of a subscription-based concept, unless the game sells ways to mitigate the process, in which case it's definitely a shop-based strategy. I feel like back in the old days, subscription-based games like WoW and EQ wanted you to keep playing, which meant they were more interested in the enjoyment factor as you levelled up; a lot of shop-based games, IMO, only care about getting as much money from you as they can while you're there, and don't really try to keep you there for the long haul: whales will be whales, and if they can get a certain number of them versus the overall number of players, that's good enough. If the non-whales get annoyed and quit, it's no big deal because they weren't going to spend much anyway. With subscription-based games, this isn't true: everyone pays the same amount each month (more or less), so there trying to keep the majority of players happy is the main focus, which means not making the levelling process too onerous. That's my read on it, anyway.
Leveling is not really part of the game, not all MMOs use levels to measure progression. Instead of allowing you to pick your own upgrades it portions them out for you.
Do you really think a game letting you buy the ups with XP instead of using levels would be so bad that it wouldn't even be a MMO?
But yeah, subscription based games tend to focus on keeping players long term. Lately they seems to try to bribe the players with more loot though instead of making it more fun.
My point: Levels is one simple way to simulate progression. There are several as good mechanics a MMORPG could use but they are a bit harder to balance. We need progression but we don't neccesarily need it through levels. But what model they use is no biggie as long as it is fun, and a MMO need to be fun longer then a single player game.
The whole F2P market made the comparision somewhat better though even if it really only work for mystery loot boxes and other random stuff.
Modern MMOs are more like a 7-eleven then a casino.
Not liking those games, heck, not liking any MMOs currently on the market does not mean that the concept of a Massively Multiplayer Online game is for you. Suppose the only genres of music you had ever heard were the genres of music you despise the most. Boy bands, country pop, rap, childrens show theme songs. Whatever you find most obnoxious. If that was the only music in the world you might conclude "I don't like music." People who love those genres might tell you "If you don't like any music go stare at a painting or something." But it's not that you don't like music. It's that there isn't any music you like.
Same is true of MMOs. Nowhere other than the minds of the simple minded is it a fact that MMOs must have a steep vertical progression or any vertical progression at all. It is possible to love an open persistent world filled with a massive quantity of players and despise what current MMOs have become.
Now the few MMOs I am willing to suffer through, it's because I hate a single feature of the MMO (The vertical progression) but love the rest of the game enough that I deal with it. Sort of like how if there is a girl you enjoy spending time with, but parts about her you don't like, that doesn't mean you just dump her and move on. Sometimes you just learn to live with the parts you don't like in order to enjoy the parts you do.
I hate grinding and vertical progression. I love open world PvP, territorial conflict, random encounters with players, player-politics, game's with a sense of community etc. These features are either not found or found on a much less engaging scale outside of MMOs. And that's why continue to play MMOs, and hold out hope for the genre.
I'm not going to let one feature preserved by people too short-sighted to see other possibilities ruin an entire genre for me. Especially when the developers themselves are starting to scale down it's importance in a lot of upcoming titles.
And no, we don't have polar bears (surprisingly many people seems to think that for some reason).
Leveling up in RPGS or MMOS is what I enjoy the most...it is certainly not the stupid end game grinds.....like doing daily daily quests and pvp ?? yea ok
Nobody says MMOs need deep vertical progression. Planetside 2 didn't have deep vertical progression. Because it's closer to an FPS than RPG.
RPGs, by and large, had, have, and will continue to rely on vertical progression, either by leveling or by tiered loot. It's part of the RPG, not the MMO.
All Scandinavian countries except maybe Iceland (have not been there either) have them. I'm not actually sure why, it's a convinient little store but not really something unique.
But it certainly is the best likelness to F2P cashshops I can think off.
MadFrenchie said: RPGs tend to have some kind of progression, yes. There are exceptions like Myst but they are few.
How much progression is another matter, Guildwars did well with a rather minimal vertical and some horizontal so you can clearly make a MMORPG with limited progression, particularly PvP MMORPGs.
The whole persistent world thing mean people except some progression after all. You might make one based on guild or realm progression instead of personal one. You could probably pull of a CIV based MMORPG where you progression helps the tech level of your realm which in turn give you access to that tech yourself, it would be an interesting experiement.
Personal progression works, but you can likely tweak it to offer more fun.
The issue is with the idea that "MMOs" have the problem of vertical progression. They don't, because nothing about the MMO part requires vertical progression. That stems from the RPG roots.
In MMOs they have proven to actually be a distraction from the primary feature of RPGs. Roleplay.