Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Case to MMOs With Little to No Leveling / Twinking
Eldurian
Member EpicPosts: 2,736
Introduction
Allow me to begin by explaining the problem. Nearly every MMO has the same form of content it seems. You join, level for what may be a small to large quantity of time, then after reaching max level your turn your focus to gear. Gear which is effectively a permanent part of your character until you replace it with an even better piece of gear. So the main focus of the vast majority of MMOs is strengthening your character's stats.
Why is This a Problem (PvE)
I join a new game. My friend already has a high level character with good gear in that game. I want to play together with my friend. If my friend comes back to do low level content with me, everything will be far too easy for him and I will end up running behind while he steamrolls everything, not really contributing at all, while he is not challenged at all. If I go do high level content with him, he will be challenged but I will get one shotted by anything that notices me. If we do something in between I will still be useless and he will still not be challenged. There is no content appropriate for two characters of vastly different power levels to enjoy together.
Also, content now needs to be catered around specific levels. I have my level 20 areas and dungeons and my level 40 areas and dungeons. If everyone were on a similar power level then all content would be able to be enjoyed by everyone. You could even create specific areas and content to be extremely challenging and people couldn't just outlevel/outgear it.
Why is This a Problem (PvP)
I join a game wanting to PvP. Before I can PvP though, I need to slog through mass amounts of repetitive/boring PvE content to make my character strong enough. Or if I am lucky enough to be able to progress through PvP I need to get slaughtered over and over by high level / well geared character who have a massive stat advantage over me. I can't simply jump into the game and start having fun.
So What? If You Want Fairness Why Not Play an FPS/MOBA/Whatever...
MMOs are more than stat progression. MMOs are massive worlds that offer chances to explore the world, randomly encounter other players but peacefully, and in random encounter Open World PvP. MMOs can feature meaningful crafting, and a greater variety of content. MMOs give you a chance to make a mark on a world inhabited by real players. Some MMOs even have deep politics with player created factions. Some people love and desire to take part in many or all of these things without being subjected to massive power disparities based on level and gear.
But We Need Leveling, Leveling is Content
This argument died with the success of EVE Online. While EVE does feature character progression, character progression is simply selecting the skills you want and watching them level over time, whether you are online or offline. It's leveling provides no content whatsoever. What it does offer is a rich world with a player driven economy and rich storylines generated by interaction between players. It's not Alliance vs. Horde. It's Band of Brother vs. Goon Swarm and how those major factions interact with all the other player created and lead factions in the game. EVE proves the fact that if you allow players to generate their own content they will create a world more interesting than grinding for levels. And while you could argue there is gear progression in EVE that creates a lot of content, that gear progression can always be reset to nothing when you get blown up and your ship/equipment all get blown up with you. EVE could exist without skills, especially combat related skills, and still be a great game. EVE is one of the only games that is still able to successfully charge 15$ a month and it does this with one of the most boring combat and crafting systems found in any MMO.
That's a PVP Game. What About PVE?
Well, take a look at the original Guild Wars. A few days of hard play and you have your character at max level with max gear effectiveness. But there is so much game left after that point. You go around collecting new skills which are not inherently more powerful than the old ones, and cooler looking gear. Players still were motivated to go out and play past max level, and GW ended up being a wildly popular game despite the complete lack of an open world, any sandbox features whatsoever, or crafting. Features that could have made it even more compelling as a long term title.
Conclusion
We need more MMOs with less progression. Games where gear isn't permanent or level locked, and where we don't need to kill 1000 goblins to get the next level. Games designed to be fun from the moment you hop in and start playing, and that allow you to play with any of your friends and have fun, but that still have a rich MMO world to explore and take part in.
Allow me to begin by explaining the problem. Nearly every MMO has the same form of content it seems. You join, level for what may be a small to large quantity of time, then after reaching max level your turn your focus to gear. Gear which is effectively a permanent part of your character until you replace it with an even better piece of gear. So the main focus of the vast majority of MMOs is strengthening your character's stats.
Why is This a Problem (PvE)
I join a new game. My friend already has a high level character with good gear in that game. I want to play together with my friend. If my friend comes back to do low level content with me, everything will be far too easy for him and I will end up running behind while he steamrolls everything, not really contributing at all, while he is not challenged at all. If I go do high level content with him, he will be challenged but I will get one shotted by anything that notices me. If we do something in between I will still be useless and he will still not be challenged. There is no content appropriate for two characters of vastly different power levels to enjoy together.
Also, content now needs to be catered around specific levels. I have my level 20 areas and dungeons and my level 40 areas and dungeons. If everyone were on a similar power level then all content would be able to be enjoyed by everyone. You could even create specific areas and content to be extremely challenging and people couldn't just outlevel/outgear it.
Why is This a Problem (PvP)
I join a game wanting to PvP. Before I can PvP though, I need to slog through mass amounts of repetitive/boring PvE content to make my character strong enough. Or if I am lucky enough to be able to progress through PvP I need to get slaughtered over and over by high level / well geared character who have a massive stat advantage over me. I can't simply jump into the game and start having fun.
So What? If You Want Fairness Why Not Play an FPS/MOBA/Whatever...
MMOs are more than stat progression. MMOs are massive worlds that offer chances to explore the world, randomly encounter other players but peacefully, and in random encounter Open World PvP. MMOs can feature meaningful crafting, and a greater variety of content. MMOs give you a chance to make a mark on a world inhabited by real players. Some MMOs even have deep politics with player created factions. Some people love and desire to take part in many or all of these things without being subjected to massive power disparities based on level and gear.
But We Need Leveling, Leveling is Content
This argument died with the success of EVE Online. While EVE does feature character progression, character progression is simply selecting the skills you want and watching them level over time, whether you are online or offline. It's leveling provides no content whatsoever. What it does offer is a rich world with a player driven economy and rich storylines generated by interaction between players. It's not Alliance vs. Horde. It's Band of Brother vs. Goon Swarm and how those major factions interact with all the other player created and lead factions in the game. EVE proves the fact that if you allow players to generate their own content they will create a world more interesting than grinding for levels. And while you could argue there is gear progression in EVE that creates a lot of content, that gear progression can always be reset to nothing when you get blown up and your ship/equipment all get blown up with you. EVE could exist without skills, especially combat related skills, and still be a great game. EVE is one of the only games that is still able to successfully charge 15$ a month and it does this with one of the most boring combat and crafting systems found in any MMO.
That's a PVP Game. What About PVE?
Well, take a look at the original Guild Wars. A few days of hard play and you have your character at max level with max gear effectiveness. But there is so much game left after that point. You go around collecting new skills which are not inherently more powerful than the old ones, and cooler looking gear. Players still were motivated to go out and play past max level, and GW ended up being a wildly popular game despite the complete lack of an open world, any sandbox features whatsoever, or crafting. Features that could have made it even more compelling as a long term title.
Conclusion
We need more MMOs with less progression. Games where gear isn't permanent or level locked, and where we don't need to kill 1000 goblins to get the next level. Games designed to be fun from the moment you hop in and start playing, and that allow you to play with any of your friends and have fun, but that still have a rich MMO world to explore and take part in.
Comments
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
MMOs are more than stat progression. MMOs are massive worlds that offer chances to explore the world, randomly encounter other players but peacefully, and in random encounter Open World PvP. MMOs can feature meaningful crafting, and a greater variety of content. MMOs give you a chance to make a mark on a world inhabited by real players. Some MMOs even have deep politics with player created factions. Some people love and desire to take part in many or all of these things without being subjected to massive power disparities based on level and gear."
Unfortunately, with 90% of MMO's essentially being WoW and the very few well made original MMO's not addressing this problem... there's not really anywhere to turn atm. Unless you know of a game I don't?
Then you move into single player RPGs, most early single player RPGs being a progression from point A to point B you do yourself. Good single player RPGs had compelling story lines and you found yourself leveling as you progressed through the enjoyable content of a gripping storyline. The idea of your character becoming more powerful through their trials enhancing that storyline.
But finally when you get to MMOs you many players interacting in a world together, and gripping storylines giving way to "Kill 10 goblins" because developers can't keep up with the demand for content of people who play their games for hundreds or thousands of hours. Thus the rise of leveling as filler content, and the rise of the unintended consequences detailed at the start of this topic.
But people can't see a world with leveless MMOs. It's like telling someone in the 1700s that guns don't need ramrods. "Well how could a gun function without a ramrod? What will pack the powder and the bullet in?" Their minds can't even conceive cartridge based firearms.
Heck, EVE is no longer same no gear dependent game any more. Over the years it has got it's "purple" gear as well and the economy is shifting to loot based instead of complex mass production...
EVE Online is a good example how progression-less design isn't worth pursuing. And I am saying that as a fan of the game...
The bold truth is - progression works and people like it.
So grinding to the top and decking out your faction ship with all the best rigs and equipment and fitting yourself with all the best implants is not a recipe for you becoming an unbeatable god. There is also an element of skill and strategy in knowing what kind of gear to risk when. Your gear advantage has to be constantly maintained, and that is the primary driver to the economy and conflicts over resources.
So if you have that twinked out mega-ship that can slaughter everyone, you might just get ganged up on by a bunch of scrubs in T1 ships with T1 gear and lose it all, where if you kill them they lose practically nothing.
If skills (which again generate no content) were removed from EVE, you could hand your buddy the same ship you are flying or something of equivalent power then go out and to do content together with neither of you having a stat advantage.
Contrast this with WoW, LotRO, SWTOR, or ArcheAge. Your gear is bound to your character and will never be lost. Once you grind/pay enough to get the good gear, it's yours forever.
Assume we go to a platform jumper game forum and we find a thread calling for a reform, claiming that Mario Bros. and similar games, need to be fixed. The problem is that players are required to spam the jump button too much......
But because there was a very successful platform jumping game, many many players entered into the platform jumping genre. So now in a desperate rush to keep these players happy, developers start forgoing all the basics of what makes a platform jumper and start creating platform jumpers where players just run across the bottom of the screen and don't require jumping to achieve the goals. Now these players are claiming that these games are too easy and present no challenge and no nobody's happy anymore. Now platform jumpers are deemed too risky to develop and no one is developing them anymore.
Or maybe, those particular gamers really didn't like Platform Jumpers but didn't want to admit it.
"So What? If You Want Fairness Why Not Play an FPS/MOBA/Whatever...
MMOs are more than stat progression. MMOs are massive worlds that offer chances to explore the world, randomly encounter other players but peacefully, and in random encounter Open World PvP. MMOs can feature meaningful crafting, and a greater variety of content. MMOs give you a chance to make a mark on a world inhabited by real players. Some MMOs even have deep politics with player created factions. Some people love and desire to take part in many or all of these things without being subjected to massive power disparities based on level and gear."
Also I love your implied argument that removing levels makes game easier. Leveling is not difficult in any MMO I have ever played. Only time consuming. I don't want dumbed down MMOs but rather the opposite.
MMOs that replace boring repetitive content with player driven interaction and challenging content that can be accessed and remains challenging from your first day playing to your 10th year.
If you were to compare an MMO to a platformer leveling would be like if they decided to make the game 4 times as long but didn't want to expend additional resources on it so rather than creating new/original/challenging content they made it so every level had to be played 4 times before you could move on.
You've done the same thing (in reverse) by citing the minor disadvantages of leveling without mentioning the substantial advantages (most prominently: it's the single biggest motivating factor of the entire game to want to improve your character). You've done it even more clearly by citing the minor success of EVE without mentioning the substantial success of WOW, SWTOR, and other larger MMORPGs.
Progression is one of the core pillars of RPG design. Minor problems like 'can't play with friends' have already been solved in isolation -- in City of Heroes because I could sidekick up to my friend's level to play alongside them, we were able to play together in a way that didn't deprive the game of the substantial benefits to progression.
While this does mean that PVP will never be great in RPGs, it doesn't matter because RPGs are overwhelmingly PVE games. All of the alternatives are preferable: (a) MMORPGs can have non-RPG PVP inside of them like how WOW no longer has significant progression or population advantages in its instanced PVP, (b) MMORPGs could simply offer inferior PVP suited to casual players who don't mind non-skill factors like progression or population being part of the experience, and either way players can simply opt out of PVP in the RPG and seek it from genres which are better suited to providing a high-quality PVP experience.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The EVE example also deals with your main argument. "It's the single biggest motivating factor of the entire game is to want to improve your character." By removing that as the motivating factor and replacing it with the desire to have an impact on a player driven world, EVE proves that motivation can be successfully replaced by other motivations.
Again with the original Guild Wars it's cited this can also be done successfully in a PVE focused game as character progression in Guild Wars caps out very early on and is replaced by working to get more variety in build options and cooler character appearance. Both these games managed to flourish despite removing character improvement as a motivation to play and other major flaws present in these titles. (Spreadsheets in Space for EVE and The lack of any thing to do other than PvE and PvP combat in Guild Wars)
What is irrelevant tho is item decay. It does not matter whether the items are lost and you are being "unbeatable". You are losing a track of your own premise - progression.
But I guess that happens when you are ranting...it does not make whole much of sense.
Your original point was that progression-less games do well.
This is not true because:
1) EVE being the only successful game using such concept.
2) Even EVE integrated lots of gear progression and loot.
3) EVE is heading towards more and more streamlined game play.
In other words, EVE is a good example why your premise is false. Progression-less design might work but it isn't worthy to pursue - that is a message CCP is sending with the direction they are taking with the game.
"Allow me to begin by explaining the problem. Nearly every MMO has the same form of content it seems. You join, level for what may be a small to large quantity of time, then after reaching max level your turn your focus to gear. Gear which is effectively a permanent part of your character until you replace it with an even better piece of gear. So the main focus of the vast majority of MMOs is strengthening your character's stats."
...
"While EVE does feature character progression, character progression is simply selecting the skills you want and watching them level over time, whether you are online or offline. It's leveling provides no content whatsoever... ...And while you could argue there is gear progression in EVE that creates a lot of content, that gear progression can always be reset to nothing when you get blown up and your ship/equipment all get blown up with you. EVE could exist without skills, especially combat related skills, and still be a great game."
Your seeming grudge at them for implementing a loot based economy has nothing to do with my argument which has been extremely consistent from the beginning.
Any progression that can be reset to 0 quickly and easily is essentially a consumable, or a temporary power upgrade. Whether it's looted or produced from mined metals has no bearing on this whatsoever.
My argument has always been about permanent character upgrades such as leveling or gear that is not lost. I have never had a problem with consumables and temporary power upgrades.
In order to refute my argument you need to show me something in EVE that gives a permanent statistical advantage over opponents that can not be lost, and generates content. Last time I played the closest thing to fit the bill were skills, which do not generate content.
You are looking at "symptoms" instead of root cause.
Fact remains. You don't like MMORPGs. Leveling is a core mechanic of these games, remove that and it's no longer really an MMORPG, it's something new. The real problem is that leveling has been made irrelevant. The solution is to make it relevant again, not gut it.
You seem to not understand your own point. Are you just ranting to rant?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
In EVE you have different ships in your hanger. The ships you use for missions, the ships you are willing to use for risky PvP missions. The ships you use for high importance missions like defending your POS from an opposing alliance. This also translates over into other games with gear loss such as Darkfall or Wurm Online where you have complete sets of gear stored away ready to be replaced based on the situation you are using them for or if they get lost.
This deals with the first issue I raised. The issue of not being able to do content with your friends. Were these games to have their leveling removed you could hand your buddy one of your spare ships or sets of gear and go out and enjoy the same content and an equal level the very day they join the game.
With permanent gear progression you are going to maintain one or two sets of gear top. Gearing down is darn near unheard of as gear is such a major component of your character. Who has spare sets of gear in most MMOs?
Now translated over to PvP. If you have ever played ArcheAge and Darkfall you know just how big the issue of gear permanence is. In ArcheAge you can grind or pay to get permanent gear upgrades. It leads to situations where very unskilled players with 3000 gearscore advantage over you can one shot you, and if you actually put together a good group and take them down. They'll just come back 10 seconds later and wipe you. In Darkfall, I had an instance where someone whipped out the credit card to get awesome gear and defeat my guild. In a matter of one battle their advantage was negated, and my guild was sporting nice new sets of credit card warrior gear. Gear which of course decayed / was lost over the course of several more fights as was the nature of Darkfall.
Temporary gear upgrades do not create the same barrier to entry that permanent gear upgrades do. Which is why I made sure to stress the point of permanence in the very introduction to this topic.
Young people especially, don't understand the concept of open choice. Games have become extremely streamlined, especially in the mobile market. Same could be said for mainstream PC market though. Players are used to arrows, flashing lights around objectives, clear goals and some quantification of your progress (e.g. levels).
I really struggled with retaining playerbase on my Minecraft project - it was fully open world, with a lot of free choice. Such design relies on players to create their own "content". Even if you give them a lot of tools, it is a big thing to ask from a player. Majority will simply go play something where they don't have to make an effort.
Levelling happens to be a convenient way of doing several things at once. It gives you a number representing your progress. It also tells you what to do next. It makes it extremely clear that there is more content ahead (unless you hit level cap).
I agree with you that levelling has many flaws. If you were to remove it though, you have to do one of two things. You either have to replace it with systems that show you progression and point you to content. This may not really solve the underlying issues.
The second option is to design your game in a way that tries to break the stereotype - try to deliver an "unguided" experience. From what I've seen in the past, this is incredibly difficult to do. In the eyes of a publisher, it might be seen as too risky.
But the acronym MMMORPG now currently means Microscopic Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Kappa.