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Why does leveling have to be the end all be all of MMO's?
Teala
Member RarePosts: 7,627
OK. Are we doomed to this game design forever more? Leveling! OMG how I hate it with a passion. OK...maybe not completely, I mean in the game of Planetside there is a form of leveling but it wasn't really leveling it was just progression through skills and unlocking trees as you advanced in rank which allowed you more freedom in what your PC could do. Want to be a sniper. Train as a sniper. Don't like it - drop it and pick up a new cert - skill. As you advanced you could train more skills in different fields making you more versatile and useful to your squad and platoon and outfit. Get to a high enough rank and you could be a Mossi pilot, a sniper, and ground assault grunt and a combat engineer all rolled into one! That allowed for some serious game play and allowed for a player to switch it up whenever the need arouse. As a sniper you where normally an advanced scout and later as a base wall clearer. Snipers could put enough surpression fire on walls to keep the defenders from using the walls which would allow for ground troops and armored units to approach more easily. As the battle moved inside you switched to being a close combat grunt weilding MCG's and small arms. After the battle the base you just took needs added defenses so you switch to combat engineer and help strengthn its defenses.
Oh and the best thing is you didn't have to be BR 23 to be effective. You could be a battle rank (BR) 6 and have access to any number of skills and weapons loadouts and take out a BR23 - 3 year vet player! As a BR4 you could run and go wherever anyone in your outfit went no matter what the others BR was. Level made no difference. As it should be.
These games need to be more about actually playing what the game is about and not centered around leveling! If you must level to X to be effective in any given situation then the game is poorly executed. In a game like Planetside you maybe had to level perse, but even a BR12 could kick some serious arse and the funny thing was you hardly paid attention to the fact that you were actually leveling because the rewards came at a good pace all it did was give you access to more skills - it didn't make you better. What made you better was you as you played and learned how to play and how to play certain skills well. The players behind the names become notorious in game for their ability to play the game well whether they were a feared sniper Larn1972 or theGr8rat or an oustanding and feared close combat person such as Redeemer, Triton, goldHaze. When you saw their name pop up you knew what you were in for. Same goes for whole outfits. PCP, 4475th Ranger Elite, D2A, 666 Devil Dogs, the Final Stand - all great outfits and all worthy opponents at one time or another in the game of Planetside.
The thing is the game is what made it what it was and it wasn't about leveling - it was about having fun and actually "playing and participating" in the game and how it played. Will we ever see MMO's in general become more focused on the "game" itself or must they always be about getting to level x?
Comments
We can only hope there wont be anymore level MMO in the future.
I have been watching a friend play LOTRO today. It looks good....but its the WoW clone i was afraid it would be......same stuff all over and over. Gain "quest" (tasks) to gain xp to gain level.
We need the player freedom MMO had from the beginning
Wow that really is a good point and i think it would be better if more games used the system Planetside uses as u said!
we can but hope.
I agree Leveling is a clumsy system from the days of Pen and paper roleplay games. What is needed is some sort of inovative thinking from the various groups of game devs.
As someone else said, we are in the "silent movie" age of MMOs. A lot of evolving still has to occur and it has to be proven a non-level system can be very profitable from a large business standpoint.
If we are playing and RPG, we are stuck playing character advancement. RPG = Character advancement. If you want something other than character advancement, at least have the sense not to call it RPG.
Now there are other systems for character advancement than level advancement.
But what I sense from your post is that you want something like a skill system. Although behind it, I suspect, is just the same old want to be an UBER gamer mentality. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to have a sense of power. Many people come to these games seeking things they can get in real life.
I hate lvling too. There's a new game called infinity comming out this year, well im not sure about the date. A bit like eve online but player skill instead of character skill. It's not gonna have any lvls or character skills. Might be your type of thing. Check out the fac. Sounds really good.
www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/
www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameID/241/setView/overView/
It means many things to many ppl. No point trying to make sense of it.
Tell you what it comes out this year I'm buying you the game
Just incase by some miracle it does come out ill write down your name and send you a pm if it does
Yay. my first post. I think I signed on quite some time ago but just forgot about doing this. Anyway, imho, no matter how you cut it, you can't really get away from some form of leveling involvement. Whether it's getting new skill-sets, or getting more hp or whatever. It's just the nature of the 'product'. It gives people a certain goal to aim for (even if I personally do find it tedious too). Ultimately when you play either a mmo or a mmorpg, it's all going to be the same at the end of the day. I think what really matters is whether or not the game has the ability to hold your interest in it, whether it's for a short period of time or a long period of time.
Think of it this way, it'd be kinda boring if you started a game at max level with all the skills and everything, then what would there be left to shoot for ? Doing quests or raids just for drops would get a little old after awhile.
Yes I like what you all are saying and I too hate the leveling in mmo's. I remeber when SWG did not have any levels all it had were skill trees. But I want to know is that does any one know if AOC will have any levels in it, or what are they going with in that game. I hope they don't go with the levels ,but we will see I guess.
Been playing RPGS since 1976 boy.
Been playing RPGS since 1976 boy.
::rolls her eyes::
Been playing RPGS since 1976 boy.
::rolls her eyes::
::pokes eyes out::
*stabs eyes out* Couldn't resist
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
"Grinding" is a function inversely related to the suicide rate in asia, and directly related to American obesity. WoW has caused more suicides in China and more cases of cardiovascular disease among American teenagers.
Been playing RPGS since 1976 boy.
OK, but I asked do you have any idea what RPG means. So do you have any idea?
I think advancing in some form is ok but I am also tired of having to kill 5 quadrillion mobs for a level.
I'd prefer to have a mmorpg with a levelingsystem that involves something like a trainingcamp in which the player has to learn to do complex combos and handle his char fast and efficient.
Maybe involve something like a theoreticle exams about your choice of weapon or for a mage some questions about fire and physics.
Hell developers should start doin some brainstorming to bring something new...
I miss the pre-cu system of professions and skill points greatly, sure you had to grind sometimes, but you felt like you weren't constantly restricted to one class throughout the whole game, that's where level based games fail at, offering customisation to your character, not just in appearance, but in skill as well, in Saga of Ryzom for instance, because the system is based on skill points and not levels and there are no real classes, you can literally make your own. I could have a spellcasting sword swinger or a ranged combat specialist with some basic unarmed combat if I wanted to, that's what makes non-level based games so great, but sadly, until developers realize this, we're stuck with these useless and uninspired grinds that are basically the same thing since Everquest 1, there's no question about it really, they're all the same as each other. There's no 'wow clone' if anything they're all 'Everquest clones' simply because Everquest was one of the first to introduce cookie cutter classes to the MMORPG genre, sure they had it in RPG's but even then with Baldurs Gate 2 the classes were nicely varied and there wasn't just eight rather bland classes.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
Do you even know what RPG mean?
Been playing RPGS since 1976 boy.
OK, but I asked do you have any idea what RPG means. So do you have any idea? Damn beat me to it... I miss my D&D campaigns where we created a character sheet just to have the top 1/5th so everyone knew what everyone else looked like. Surprisingly in a roleplaying game if you Role-play all the stuff out you don't need a character sheet. only when you perform a dungeon crawl do you really need a character sheet and thats a small subset of RPGs.
Now all RPGs have character advancement/development. All RPGs do NOT require Character SHEET advancement/development. That is the subtle difference that people don't get.
People don't like making mistakes. Leveling helps in that area. Point-based systems gives you choice and the ability to change an awesome character into a worthless character with one unexected event. Not to say leveling is better, just more casual-player friendly.
I'm not sure what you meant here the OP is asking for a skill based system which is an RPG. You know, like Guild Wars? You can create a max lvl 20 toon and then just proceed to unlock skills. Their is no UBER mentality in that game. Guild Wars is very close to a skill based system in that regards
I'm going to break this down- In Skill Based systems it puts a newbie on near equal footing with a vet. Look at Guild Wars, a noob can start off with a basic template and slaughter vets if he knows how to play his build. This is how skill based systems work in essence. It provides rich pvp opportunities because there is no barrier from vets <--> newbies. Newbies can play with vets, etc.
I have yet to see one convincing argument for a level based system. What game designers have done is remove the freedom for players to make their own choices. They have dumbed down this genre to a basic level and added tons of timesinks. Let's say I play a level based MMO and pick a Mage. Then after a couple months I decide I'd like to try Warrior. Well i cannot cross train in these type of fixed systems I am stuck playing as how the Developers envisoned I should play. And if I want to reroll well we all know that vicious cycle starts all over.
Level Based systems removes the gamer's freedom to play how they want. It's a social caste system- would you like it if someone told you at birth you should be a Solider? Even though you have the skills to be a scientist, artist, or doctor? If your anwser is NO then you want a Skill Based system
Now maybe you might be thinking of EvE which is skill based however the veterans do have an edge over the newbs. This occus because their is no skill cap. But in a game like Guild Wars that does have a skill cap (max # of skills you can have active concurrently)- this removes the barrier between vet and newbie
Yeah Yep thats a skill based system. As your character progresses your stats dont really improve per se. Since your health, resistance, etc are basically static it puts newbies on equal footing with veterans. The only edge the vets have in this sort of game is access to more skills. I much prefer that type of system too. And like you, I've been regulated to games like Battlefield, etc since in that game I'm on fairly equal footing with the vets. If only Battlefield 2142 was an MMO