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Can we really call it a "levelless" system?
AIMonster
Member UncommonPosts: 2,059
The more information released about this game the less enthusiatic about the game I get. I'm not going to go into a rant about it here, but from my understanding the skill system works as follows. I could be completely mistaken as the information on this is limited and fairly obscure.
You gain experience just like in normal MMO for killing creatures, completing missions, and possibly other sources. You have an experience bar just like in other MMOs. When it fills out you gain 3 Ability Points and 1 Skill Point.
You have ability tree paths which unlock various abilities from chakras and weapon skills. If I'm not mistaken in the ability tree some abilities cannot be unlocked until you've unlocked previous tiers in the tree. Abilities start costing more and more points to unlock the further down the tree (or wheel as it called) the ability is, costing upwards of 30 points for the more powerful abilities. There are 588 abilities in all. While the options here are quite flexible, I don't personally find it much different than the classic level systeming in other MMOs where you invest in talent trees and unlock abilities as you level up. Can we really call this a levelless system? Obvious there will be a point where I maxed out and reset the experience bar (trying not to call it leveling up here) and gained enough ability points to fully unlock a role, thus maxing out my potential in that role. This is the same as hitting max level in a MMO!
Skill Points enhance your efficiency with certain weapons or chakras. There is a limit to how far you can advance each weapon/chakra (I think I heard a seemingly random number like 55), but essentially aren't these just like leveling up in other MMOs? There will be an obvious difference between a player with 5 points in Assault Rifles and a player with 55. Isn't this just another form of vertical progression? Again, you hit a point where you maxed out a particular role and are now able to play that role with the most efficiency compared to someone who just started putting points into that role.
I don't mind that they have vertical progression in the form of gear, but it looks like the skill system also has vertical progression. Though there is a point where you will be able to cap in that progression (just like in other MMOs) on any path of the trees, but isn't that system just like FF MMOs where you can level each job individually? Maybe the key difference here is you can work on progression in any role from any role without having to be in the role you are working on progression on, but still why call it levelless when the system clearly has defined vertical progression through a point system?
Comments
I guess I'm a little lost on your concern on what you can really call the system. I might decide to call it something totally different so I like to leave out the "we" part.
SWG in effect used much the same system you are describing... Tho obviously the experience wasn't global. So if I wanted to train in medical skills... I couldn't simply farm experience from combat to advance. I have no clue how the current systems in TSW work and if I did.. I guess I'd be under NDA. Anyway... if what you describe is accurate it sounds similar to SWG except that its a global system. So you gain experience (just like in SWG) and then (unlike SWG) when you fill a bar you can spend points where you want. Since experience isn't specific to ability used from your description.
Ultima Online used a specific advancement system like SWG did. Meaning if I used a sword in combat I had a chance for some form of percentage increase in swords. If I was fishing.. I could gain fishing.
Beyond that the only difference that "experience" brings to the picture is guaranteed advancement. If I find a consistent source of experience it is a guarantee that everytime I fill the bar up I get points to spend (by your TSW example). Where in Ultima Online I might be at 99.9 taming... and spend a 72 hour marathon running around ice island taming winter wolves... and not gain the last .1 to hit 100.0 taming... aka the no guarantee advancement system.
In SWG and UO... having more skill (or skill boxes trained) in a specific weapon for example... made you better to some degree with that weapon. Just like your example from TSW...
So pretty much by your post... there has never been a level free MMO made... because your specific examples from TSW.. apply to every game that has claimed to be level free...
I guess the way I look at it is like this...
Level based game: I start when the game goes live and I gain a bunch of levels. A month later my buddy decides to buy the game and wants me to play with him. So now I either have to make an alt or I give him some gear and say "you are on your own dude." Which is what lead to mentor type systems...
Non level based: Same scenario... I simply group with my buddy from the day he joins. He can gain skill/xp and I don't have to mess around with mentoring etc
This is me glossing over a lot of stuff to try and cut down the wall of text... there are many points that could be debated.
To me the concerns you express... as I said... would apply to MMO's that have been in the market since at least 1997... and were always considered "non level based" or as UO was generally called... skill based.
Levels to me .. always segregated players and make early parts of the game world useless later. In UO.. you could simply play with anyone.. anywhere... and even "newb areas" could be useful at any time... for various reasons.
But UO and SWG don't claim to be a levelless system (I'm aware of how those systems work, so you don't have to explain). They have skill based leveling through skill usage. TSW claims to not have a level system and have no vertical progression except through gear, which turns out not to be the case at all. TSW is also neither skill based or traditional "themepark" level based and instead a bit of a mix between the two.
Can we call FFXI a non-level based game because you could switch to a job you haven't leveled to play with your friend? What happens when I max out everything in TSW and have all weapon skills leveled and want to play with a friend just starting out? Am I going to have to go to the newbie area and one shot everything or carry him/her through a higher "level" area where my friend isn't contributing a damn thing due to not having enough weapon skill unlocked? Neither sound particularly fun for either party. I think I would rather have the classic level system with mentoring.
For all we know you might not even gain experience if you go back to a newbie area and kill stuff after you acquire a certain amount of skill points or whatever. They didn't really explain this system. It could also have a curve where skill points later on will take so long and the experience from newbie areas is so small that you are always better off trying harder content worth more experience. Maybe I'm being a bit of a doomsayer here.
It's Funcom, they use half truths, bend sentences, and sensationalize their features.
Fact of the matter is, the game has experience points.
Any game with experience points = levels.
Even so-called "sandbox" games with "no levels" have levels.
"Hey, I'm getting better with my long sword skill, it's at 34/100".
Then you are level 34 out of 100 using a long sword.
The only true way to have a game with absolutely no levels or leveling is to have everyone completely the same when naked no matter how long they play.
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You don't quite have skill points right.
Each skill has 10 ranks, each rank costing progressivly more (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=55pts.)
The only thing a higher skill rank gets you is the ability to use more powerful gear. Per your example someone who spends 6 points (5 wouldn't get you a whole rank) in assault rifles would only be able to use rank 3 assault rifles while someone who spent 55 points would be able to use rank 10 assault rifles.
So gear is still the vertical progression and skill points are the gating mechanic to keep day one characters from using the best gear right away.
Ahh, good. That's a much better system if it's how you described it.
I learned something here (if it is true), interesting
You are 100% correct, but some people mean character levels when they talk about levels and don't think about skill levels.
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You can call it whatever you want. Its better than having an arbitrary number next to your avatar.
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Of course, FFXI solved that problem with Level Sync, and many other games have with mentor/sidekick systems. (Level sync sync'd everyone in the group to the sync target, but only if they were lower. A 37 could be sync'd to a 35, but a 33 remained 33.).
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
The Main difference in vertical and horizontal progression is that in horizontal progression, you max out faster at least in terms of having 7 active skills and 7 passive skills. However, by obtaining more skills on the overall tree you can make your combination/build stronger, but its stronger due to combinations of skills, not due to raw strength. Vertical progression is basically raw strength. In traditional mmos, this is character levels, but in TSW, it comes from the weapon/equips.
not to me because it's still a gear dependant race at the end. Isn't that what these innovations are trying to get away from? Gear treadmilling and leveling? I understand it's a work in prograss however TSW Devs originally stated there would be no GTM in their game and here we are almost at the end of developement and they do indeed have one. It's disappointing to me. It might not be like other games however giving the gear ranks so that high ranks can do more damage or be capable of higher stats is still the same to me as having fixed stats with enchanting/gemming, the community end game will demand you have certain sets of gear in order to do anything worth while.
It matters what it takes to get the gear. If you have access to lev 5 rifles and can easily purchase (in game currency) or run a quest for it (not grind same quest mob 20 times to drop it), it shouldn't be the same as a gear grind system. Whats makes gear grinding so bad is the low drop rates, and time it takes to raid for it. And you usually need many items, so spend insane amount of time just getting items to do next level of raids. If TSW makes getting the weapons fun or not so grindy/time consuming, then it should just be about how fun the content and combat is.
From the video's and interview's i've read, they said that your XP (for lack of better word) gain is the same no matter what or how much time you have spent in the world.. Tho you may need more skill points to get the better skills, you will still only need the same amount of points to get the ones you are not skilled in.
evryone new to mmogs say it with me "Leveling if a form of progression, but not all prgression is leveling" This is why we used different word for different thing. For example, a baseball not a golfball.
here
TSW is going to be a "gear treadmilling", not a level grinding type of game... a dev said that by the time you get the abilities points necessary to unlock all the abilities of a weapon, you would have already enough skill points to be at rank 10 on 3.5 different weapon. it's a system to make low level people unable to use end game gear.
and even the "gear treadmilling" is not going to be the same:
in most MMO end game gear = stronger gear.
in TSW the low level gear gives some standard bonus like + health or damage or healling, but as you advance in the game, gear starts becoming more and more specialized, like +15% chance of penetrating hit when the opponent is in hindered state.
TSW gear is going to be formed by 3 parts prefix + core + suffix.
it's all about making your character really good in what you want it to do
MMOs have had such systems for a long time, it's called leveling.
Aaaand, as has been pointed out before, you earn points from killing monsters to unlock skills. Like it or not--brand it however they want--that's Experience Points.
This thread, like so many others, shows how poorly Funcom has done about the press for this game. That's not a jab at you. I'm saying that the bits and pieces we know about the game are hard to farm into anything but a vague idea. This site promises to post much more information about the game this week. We might all understand a lot more about the game than the tidbits each of us have picked up in this video or that thread.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Simple question. Do You consider EVE Online level-less game?
The only difference is in EVE You earn skill points over time, while in TSW You earn them by doing missions/combat.
Was UO level-less?
Again, You had skills You could grind up doing combat/crafting, the difference was you gained skillpoints for skills you actually used rather than added to pool of skillpoints you could distribute yourself.
It's pretty much same concept, which offers the player more freedom in how to shape their character. In traditional level based game you are locked at just the skills your level allows you to use at given point. For eg. you get new skill at 4th, 8th, 12th level, it will always be exactly the same skill with every character within that class.
In system like TSW you can choose from the very beggining what you want to focus on first, how to progress your character, whenever you rush for maxing out single set or going for more diversity.
TSW is really kind of disappointing. They could have made an absolutely awesome game in the setting they picked. Instead, they are going to have gear treadmill and instanced pvp. What a waste, the skills, gameplay and graphics looked sweet.
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I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
This is nearly identical to a discussion on the official forums.
Basically, arguing whether to call it levels or ranks or whatever is just semantics. Whatever you want to call it, it's not a conventional level system, calling it level-less IS still half-true in that it's not just a 1 dimensional level grind, and the vertical progression in this game is much flatter and much less dependent on levels and straight up grinding.
Horizontal progression has always been the name of the game and still is, from all accounts at the moment. They are not doing a bait and switch here, people are just nitpicking mostly.
Also, as far as I can tell, yes, there is gear and it matters. Beyond that, it would seem the magnitude to which gear matters is signifigantly less then that of the likes of WoW or SWTOR.
The biggest difference between for instance WoW and TSW is probably the horizontal progression.
In WoW you get to max level, get the best raid gear and then you wait for content.
In TSW you can get one build perfect skill-wise, get the best gear for that build and then you can go ahead to get other builds working for your character and get gear for them.
This should make the first part where you level up and get gear for one build relatively quick and much less of a grind and then you can widen the scope of your character so you can take on any role you want for your character. This is just an example of how you can play it. You might take another route were you build up several builds at the same time which will be slower power-wise, but give you a more varied character.
TSW is still a RPG, which in recent years has ment that you aquire skills and gear, but approaches this from a fresh angle that to me looks very interesting.
I'd hardly call it fans/haters/people nitpicking, but rather Funcom being vaguely spinning something one way when it boils down to what we've always had.
That's a mistake. Talk about the game for its actual features, renaming xp isn't a feature.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
xp != levels
Not having to roll class alts is a huge step in the right direction imo. One of my least favorite aspects of themeparks is having to roll an alt if i want a diffrent playstyle. It causes burn out, then im stuck either trudging through the same content again or staying on a class im bored with.
It wont be a hard level system, but i agree, its going to be a type of level system. These games need progression and the progression is going to come from skills.
I think we will actually have to play the game to get a feel for its progression since there isnt a lot of frame of reference. I think this is largly going to be a quest/battleground/pve instance themepark just with no alts and a diffrent type of story and lore progression. Its diffrent enough already with just that to make it interesting.
I just hope it plays out well, last thing we need are more games that break the wow-park mold failing to solidify developers choice to not bring anything new to the market. Unless of course GW2 turns out to really be something diffrent, i tend not to believe games the profess this like GW2 has, i think ill wait and see what that game turns out to be. They still have classes and alt rolling however....