Well, I can only give an example of how things could be done.
In Guild Wars, it was possible with a template character of choice to jump from the start to 'endgame' content which consisted of the high level PvP arenas.
In fact, there was a split between the PvE content and the PvP content: the PvP endgame content could be jumped to rightaway - with a template char of chosen class and a limited range of skills. if you wanted to do the PvE content - explore the world, do the quests, hunt the zones for all the different skills that existed, then you had to follow the regular path with leveling your starter char and so on.
This catered to both of the groups, the ones who wanted to dive into the endgame PvP right away from the start but weren't that much interested in questing, level grinding and exploring the world and the lore, and the other group who were interested in exactly that. Of course, when you followed the regular path you would at the end have more skills collected. But that didn't mean you could easily defeat someone who went into PvP with a premade char right from the start, far from.
That's just one example, there are many different ways to approach this problem. But I liked how they managed to cater two groups with very different preferences within the same game, by clever game design.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Leveling is like an elogated tutorial. As you level up, you learn how the game works, and then get to the endgame. A lot of people consider that endgame is the real meat of a game. That's where you get into serious competitiion, big battles, storyline, and other goodies. So why not change the dynamic a bit. A dozen levels might be enough to allow someone to learn how to play a character, or some form of level-less system. The point is, after so many different MMOs, levelling has gotten pretty boring. So let's do away with it. It might help the persistant worlds, too. There's plenty of mid level areas that are never revisited once a character levels past them. Suddenly, there's no more need for these areas, and the whole world can be relevant at max level play, which would then be the majority of the game.
In Dungeons and Dragons (tabletop, not online), levelling works just fine because there are always cutting edge challenges for you, scaled to your level. That's the benefit of a human DM. But MMOs don't have that. So let's try and put people at the max level that much faster, and stop spending time, effort, and money on the mid-game that is really nothing more than a time sink.
My case in point is Aion. Abyss PvP is really cool. The questing and leveling in that game makes me want to hurl myself out of a sixty third story window. Focus on the good parts, and just give the rest of it the axe.
It's this idealogy that has produced the MMORPGs of today, and undoubtedly, will produce the MMORPGs of tomorrow. It's coming, the whole 'why waste your time?' concept. Give everyone everything till there's nothing left to give.
The issue is developpers' focus on the arrival, not the journey. If all that 'fun stuff' was available during leveling, and held appropriate rewards, then leveling would hold some sort of interest, and meaning, and be fun.
There's a line between being a tutorial, and being a traffic light. The idea of leveling being an elogated tutorial probably held water 8+ years ago, but I'd hardly subscribe to that statement in today's games. I think there's a lag between balances right now in MMORPGs, and I'd wager we'll go another 5 years until we start to see properly designed games become 'the norm'.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
and its one of the EXTREMELY NUMEROUS inherent byproducts of the fundamentally crappy idea of segregating players each on their own seperate treadmill.
they may be all in the same virtual world, but there's only a tiny FRACTION of the entire playerbase that happens to have their treadmills near you, where you can have any meaningful interaction with them.
its not the concept of endgame that sucks, its the fact the many developers fails to make quality endgame content.
this is so because tradition of jamming busy work, in the form of cash cow time wasting leveling, is so entrenched in the minds of so many MMO players.
i agree, bad painter paints bad. this doesent mean painting as an art form is bad. same principle goes for end game design.
i restate, however, give the option of creating a max level toon at creation, will all point free to distribute as you see it right then and there.
im willing to bet that even the most devoted levelers would begin to just push the "endgame" button...
the thing is if there was good 'end game' content then it would not be the end of the game and then the content would not be end game content.....repeat
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Originally posted by Athcear Or at least make it really short. Leveling is like an elogated tutorial. As you level up, you learn how the game works, and then get to the endgame. A lot of people consider that endgame is the real meat of a game. That's where you get into serious competitiion, big battles, storyline, and other goodies. So why not change the dynamic a bit. A dozen levels might be enough to allow someone to learn how to play a character, or some form of level-less system. The point is, after so many different MMOs, levelling has gotten pretty boring. So let's do away with it. It might help the persistant worlds, too. There's plenty of mid level areas that are never revisited once a character levels past them. Suddenly, there's no more need for these areas, and the whole world can be relevant at max level play, which would then be the majority of the game. In Dungeons and Dragons (tabletop, not online), levelling works just fine because there are always cutting edge challenges for you, scaled to your level. That's the benefit of a human DM. But MMOs don't have that. So let's try and put people at the max level that much faster, and stop spending time, effort, and money on the mid-game that is really nothing more than a time sink. My case in point is Aion. Abyss PvP is really cool. The questing and leveling in that game makes me want to hurl myself out of a sixty third story window. Focus on the good parts, and just give the rest of it the axe.
Leveling is the entire point of RPGs. Progression of your character. You build up so that your character gains experience and abilities so that they can move on to harder and more rewarding content.
If you cut out the leveling and progression you might as well be playing Street Fighter, or Super Mario.
People hated the long EQ grind, wow made it faster. People didnt want to grind 6000 AA, wow made talents.People didnt want to run back to there body, wow make ghost runs. Leveling is to be the most immersive part. It regulates your power and offers challenges for longer periods of times.
You start bitching about one little piece that seems to be a major problem, next thing you know you've taking away some of the major thrills. Remeber trying to get your body back when you where in THE HOLE? How powerful did you feel when you got that 120th AA that now made your Spell X double crit? Remeber when you had a nice lazy day of Camping the vampires in ME or Greig's End? it took some work to play an MMO but you got 10x more out of it.
People hated the long EQ grind, wow made it faster. People didnt want to grind 6000 AA, wow made talents.People didnt want to run back to there body, wow make ghost runs. Leveling is to be the most immersive part. It regulates your power and offers challenges for longer periods of times.
You start bitching about one little piece that seems to be a major problem, next thing you know you've taking away some of the major thrills. Remeber trying to get your body back when you where in THE HOLE? How powerful did you feel when you got that 120th AA that now made your Spell X double crit? Remeber when you had a nice lazy day of Camping the vampires in ME or Greig's End? it took some work to play an MMO but you got 10x more out of it.
Nicely done!
__________________________________________________________________________________________ "Your pride, good sir, far exceeds your worth." -x3r0h
Oldest mmorpg.com member with the least amount of post counts. That counts for something, right?
People hated the long EQ grind, wow made it faster. People didnt want to grind 6000 AA, wow made talents.People didnt want to run back to there body, wow make ghost runs. Leveling is to be the most immersive part. It regulates your power and offers challenges for longer periods of times.
You start bitching about one little piece that seems to be a major problem, next thing you know you've taking away some of the major thrills. Remeber trying to get your body back when you where in THE HOLE? How powerful did you feel when you got that 120th AA that now made your Spell X double crit? Remeber when you had a nice lazy day of Camping the vampires in ME or Greig's End? it took some work to play an MMO but you got 10x more out of it.
Nicely done!
Nah.
We got World of Warcraft because SOE mis-managed one of the greatest IP's out there and flopped on what should have been the greatest MMO experience of all time...
And because Origin was bought by EA and hacked to pieces and UO 2 was scrapped. Then UXO was scrapped.
The genre was young, it could have recovered... but then WoW came out and all the big execs at the top company's got the wrong message.
You don't re-create the success of WoW by re-creating WoW...
You re-create the success by learning from what Blizzard did and understanding it.
Leveling is like an elogated tutorial. As you level up, you learn how the game works, and then get to the endgame. A lot of people consider that endgame is the real meat of a game. That's where you get into serious competitiion, big battles, storyline, and other goodies. So why not change the dynamic a bit. A dozen levels might be enough to allow someone to learn how to play a character, or some form of level-less system. The point is, after so many different MMOs, levelling has gotten pretty boring. So let's do away with it. It might help the persistant worlds, too. There's plenty of mid level areas that are never revisited once a character levels past them. Suddenly, there's no more need for these areas, and the whole world can be relevant at max level play, which would then be the majority of the game.
In Dungeons and Dragons (tabletop, not online), levelling works just fine because there are always cutting edge challenges for you, scaled to your level. That's the benefit of a human DM. But MMOs don't have that. So let's try and put people at the max level that much faster, and stop spending time, effort, and money on the mid-game that is really nothing more than a time sink.
My case in point is Aion. Abyss PvP is really cool. The questing and leveling in that game makes me want to hurl myself out of a sixty third story window. Focus on the good parts, and just give the rest of it the axe.
Leveling is the entire point of RPGs. Progression of your character. You build up so that your character gains experience and abilities so that they can move on to harder and more rewarding content.
If you cut out the leveling and progression you might as well be playing Street Fighter, or Super Mario.
this is getting down to the meat of the issue. what you are saying is true. this IS the problem!
there IS no virtual world Street Fighter. yet.
there IS no virtual world Mario (maple story & all the clones don't count). yet.
there is no REAL virtual world FPS (PlanetSide and all the FPSRPG hybrid grindfests don't count). yet.
BUT, people who love RPG's have 300 or so mmoRPGs to choose from. they are well served. they even have all kinds of RPG hybrids that dabble in mixing other genres, and various levels of massively versus lobby/instance setups.
i personally HATE RPGs, and Ultima Underworld would have been my last RPG if my hunger for virtual worlds didn't force me into them. (and no you can't convince me not to read/post here just cuz the domain here has "RPG" in it).
*I*, and others like me are not being served........ AT ALL. (Valkyrie Sky and Darkfall come the closest, but they aren't close enough).
and i may be the only person ON THIS FORUM who wants these things. but there's tons more out there who won't ever COME here in the first place, and who have NEVER subbed an MMO, or only did so for a few months. some don't like RPGs. period. some don't like MMORPGs cuz they are not the right kind of RPGs or the right mix of RPG + __insert_other_genre__.
i'm an outlier for the unserved people. the rare one who has spent 11 years exploring virtual worlds DESPITE the fact that i hate the gameplay and virtually all the fundamental mechanics virtually all MMOs are built on currently.
after 11 years you are starting to find alot of people that come from the RPG loving traditional MMORPG camp who are making steps TOWARDS my direction. they are far from my standpoint, but a significant portion have started moving my way. healthy people can only stand endless repetition for only x many years before it starts to feel really hollow, and they
.......start looking for games that are FUN in the moment to moment gameplay. not all about being bribed into mindless activities to be doled out "rewards" at a calculatedly & increasingly diminishing pace.
or to put it into buzzwords some people might comprehend better, they
......start to look for intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards to their precious gaming time.
characters ALWAYS get left behind, and effectively thrown in the garbage. its just a matter of time. real life experiences (not points) and real life skill improvements stay with you for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. and are go with you from game to game.
no, i don't BY ANY MEANS think the majority of games will eventually come to where i am. FAR from it.
I am the kinda of player that likes the experience of Leveling, Endgame means nothing to me( I spend more then 2 years to get a toon level 220 in AO) and everyone someone speaks of Endgame it reminds of a game called Fury and what happend to the game? It was what players would be call fun endgame pvp...but even so it fails.
WHy removing leveling while you atill be doing same thing over and over again, I wonder what is so fun about doing same thing hundred of times just to get one piece of gear? Thats one o the reason I quit AO and Always moving from one MMo to another mmo and trying never rush to max level(corrently playing CO and have a character at level 38,7 and I stopped play with that toon because I will probably give up on the game after 40, even with alts and I still have 2 months of gameplay.
It's seems that to me, the op wants to replace one grind for another, remove the leveling grind for Epic gear and epic pvp grind. What would be the point?
"you are like the world revenge on sarcasm, you know that?"
I'm not entirely sure whether I agree with every post ... but the leveling system is quite dated.
But, in truth, a LOT of people like it. Mostly casual players that just want to click the level up button and go whack more stuff without getting into how adding a 1/10th of a point to dex or str and the resulting DPS change vs survivability impacts the overall effectiveness of a character.
I love that stuff. But I'm not particularly casual either.
I'm not sure why there is a level cap. Why not just use the XP gained in some sort of function with a set amount of points that we can choose to distribute across all the skills available in the game. So, if we both have the same XP, then you're twice as good as I am wherever you've dedicated two points and I've only dedicated one. Or, we're both the equal in that same skill if I've got twice as many XP as you do. Then, theoretically, the maximum "level" is whatever variable type you assign to the XP field. ULong_Int in C is: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. If you built the game so that the uber hardcore averaged 10k XP every five minutes (this includes all player down time, server down time, etc) that still works out to be some stupid amount of time before you ever reach maximum. Like 17,548,272,520 years stupid.
Then, you'd never reach cap.
Make gear effective based on your XP so you could put together an equipment group you enjoy and not ever have to change it if you didn't want to. Age of Conan doesn't have two-handed swords for every level and I despise! axes ... but to stay competitive even with PvE I HAVE to switch to something I don't enjoy.
And the awesomeness of this system is, if it turns out one particular skill is overpowering, you don't have to nerf it into oblivion. You can just change how the XP ratio works so that its less powerful where its overpowered but remains the same at other points along the XP curve.
Anyway, there are lots of other options out there. But with WoW's numbers, nobody is going to be willing to invest in something that hasn't proven effective.
Originally posted by Athcear Or at least make it really short. Leveling is like an elogated tutorial. As you level up, you learn how the game works, and then get to the endgame. A lot of people consider that endgame is the real meat of a game. That's where you get into serious competitiion, big battles, storyline, and other goodies. So why not change the dynamic a bit. A dozen levels might be enough to allow someone to learn how to play a character, or some form of level-less system. The point is, after so many different MMOs, levelling has gotten pretty boring. So let's do away with it. It might help the persistant worlds, too. There's plenty of mid level areas that are never revisited once a character levels past them. Suddenly, there's no more need for these areas, and the whole world can be relevant at max level play, which would then be the majority of the game. In Dungeons and Dragons (tabletop, not online), levelling works just fine because there are always cutting edge challenges for you, scaled to your level. That's the benefit of a human DM. But MMOs don't have that. So let's try and put people at the max level that much faster, and stop spending time, effort, and money on the mid-game that is really nothing more than a time sink. My case in point is Aion. Abyss PvP is really cool. The questing and leveling in that game makes me want to hurl myself out of a sixty third story window. Focus on the good parts, and just give the rest of it the axe.
Leveling is the entire point of RPGs. Progression of your character. You build up so that your character gains experience and abilities so that they can move on to harder and more rewarding content. If you cut out the leveling and progression you might as well be playing Street Fighter, or Super Mario.
this is getting down to the meat of the issue. what you are saying is true. this IS the problem!
there IS no virtual world Street Fighter. yet. there IS no virtual world Mario (maple story & all the clones don't count). yet. there is no REAL virtual world FPS (PlanetSide and all the FPSRPG hybrid grindfests don't count). yet.
BUT, people who love RPG's have 300 or so mmoRPGs to choose from. they are well served. they even have all kinds of RPG hybrids that dabble in mixing other genres, and various levels of massively versus lobby/instance setups. i personally HATE RPGs, and Ultima Underworld would have been my last RPG if my hunger for virtual worlds didn't force me into them. (and no you can't convince me not to read/post here just cuz the domain here has "RPG" in it). *I*, and others like me are not being served........ AT ALL. (Valkyrie Sky and Darkfall come the closest, but they aren't close enough).
and i may be the only person ON THIS FORUM who wants these things. but there's tons more out there who won't ever COME here in the first place, and who have NEVER subbed an MMO, or only did so for a few months. some don't like RPGs. period. some don't like MMORPGs cuz they are not the right kind of RPGs or the right mix of RPG + __insert_other_genre__. i'm an outlier for the unserved people. the rare one who has spent 11 years exploring virtual worlds DESPITE the fact that i hate the gameplay and virtually all the fundamental mechanics virtually all MMOs are built on currently. after 11 years you are starting to find alot of people that come from the RPG loving traditional MMORPG camp who are making steps TOWARDS my direction. they are far from my standpoint, but a significant portion have started moving my way. healthy people can only stand endless repetition for only x many years before it starts to feel really hollow, and they .......start looking for games that are FUN in the moment to moment gameplay. not all about being bribed into mindless activities to be doled out "rewards" at a calculatedly & increasingly diminishing pace. or to put it into buzzwords some people might comprehend better, they ......start to look for intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards to their precious gaming time.
characters ALWAYS get left behind, and effectively thrown in the garbage. its just a matter of time. real life experiences (not points) and real life skill improvements stay with you for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. and are go with you from game to game.
no, i don't BY ANY MEANS think the majority of games will eventually come to where i am. FAR from it.
I agree. There is a lot of room for new concepts to exist within a persistent world setting that aren't necessarily RPGs. We've seen attempts, but they end up being instanced lobby games. Why not have a Mario world were everyone can explore and have adventures and not worry about leveling or advancement and just play to have fun with other people? Or a game like L4D where instead of being 4 players on a map trying to get from point A to point B it's a persistent world where everyone just strives to work together to survive?
MMO doesn't have to mean MMORPG. I hope my previous post didn't sound like I felt that was the only possibility. Having a persistent world fighting game or something where you didn't level or advance your character so much as you simply played and got better through personal skill would be a great idea, and I hope that with the popularity of MMOs right now that some company has this kind of thing on their minds. The only difficulty with that would be the difference between people's hardware and connection speeds, but if the graphics were kept stylized and low res kind of like WoW it should be possible to make it work for most everyone.
I was replying on the OP, not on every other post on the thread including yours.
You were just going on your general "WoW is so great and all other MMO's suck" rant (though blissfully not with that 2nd part in your post this time).
So basically you were replying on a generic thread, non-WoW forumthread, as you always do: 'if you want to enjoy leveling, go play WoW the way I suggested'.
Stunning.
No you were referring to me without giving elements to why levels are trivial if you want them to be trivial (with the option of putting experience off - just like in EQ btw).
I showed that putting off experience option gains is a decent solution to the OP's problem.
YOU decide how or not to level. A very valid added point to this discussion....
I suggest you look more into what BLIZZARD is doing as ... they simply have more resources in their hands than probably 95% of all other developpers combined.
So I rather refer to the market leader in MMO's (and guys like Rob Pardo) when viewing some discussions.
You know the kind of guys that actually MAKE games work instead of losing time about a rather old problem of leveling these days.
Old because it is fast and even as fast as or as slow as the user himself wants it to be...
So you don't have to ignore me, you simply ignore Blizzard techniques (...) as the market leader.
That's stunning.
Yeah, yeah, you're always going on about how everyone should look at how Blizzard is doing things and how WoW beats all the other MMO's in every aspect someone can think of and how awesome Rob Pardo is and sucky the rest... frankly, in the few weeks that I've started visiting here more I've grown tired of seeing you post the same message over and over again in all these threads around no matter what the OP was. But give me a few more of your posts, and I can predict how your response will be on whatever subject, because that's what you sound like, a broken record stuck on the WoW happy song.
And for the record, I do not hate WoW, I like it, and I do not think the way Blizzard does things should be ignored; but neither do I think Blizzard is the Second Coming what you apparently seem to think with a dedication that almost feels religious.
On topic: the leveling system as it is now in many current MMO's is in need of a revision or a make over. When you level the first time it's nice to see all the content, but when you make your second and third alt many people want to reach end level content as fast as possible. So it's a shame that 80-90% of the content will be rendered obsolete and forgotten within a few months, while MMO's are built to last for many months more, even years if possible.
EVE Online is a good example of how things can be done differently. Progression is one of the key elements of a MMO, but the level range system is just one way to measure that, and I'm curious to see how upcoming games like TSW or GW2 will do it. Most importantly, whether it's character leveling or gear leveling or skill leveling, I think a game has done it right when it doesn't feel like a grind (even if it is).
Sidenote:
Actually there is a reason Rob Pardo turned EQ1 into a multi million based new MMO.
Without him you would stare the average 10 hours on a screen before the fun started.
After Pardo took his big red crayon and deleted all the non-fun stuff in MMO's, we actually had a ... video game without the need to live in a basement for 12 hours a day.
On topic:
EVE Online is just WOW with the spaceship replacing the end gear of an avatar ... as far as progression goes.
And people still need "levels" to have a "feeling" of their progress.
Be that expressed in colored gear or spaceship parts.
Nothing more nothing less.
But the acquiring of the pieces (or levels, or ranks, or ...) should be simply "fun" and adaptable to how one would like to play.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
i consider the entire leveling procedure in any mmo nothing but a protracted demo or tutorial for what end game content will provide.
when i want to own a car, i dont start with buying the steering wheel....i can imagin that some people prefer to build everything they use, but not me.
this goes doubley for MMO's. i do not want or need someone elses idea of a paced progression limit to give my gameplay some halfassed notion of context.
a game that just drops you off, with nothing to do after max level, was designed by monkeys. getting to max level isnt "beating the game". its finally getting to use all of the games features.
why is this so hard to comprehend. it would be like if you had to wear a blindfold playing baseball, unless you were in the major league. non max level toons, are the same as max level toons, but marginally less fun and less strategically complicated.
leveling is just a paradigm. someone should set up a poll asking who would (honestly) choose to start at level 1, if you exist in the same game world, with the same options, but with the choice of starting as a max level toon...
I personally find leveling just as fun as endgame. In fact, it's often the endgame that gets repetitive & boring fast, because it all comes down to gear grind for the most part. Not their fault really, there is only so much you can make people do once they stopped leveling & gaining exp.
It just seems that when you are leveling, there is always something to look forward to, something new to get, something new to see. Once you cap out, you just end up doing the same thing over and over again for the sake of getting gear, gear, and more gear.
If you enjoy PvP, you'll often see people liking the lower level pvp better. That's because when you aren't maxed out, you don't have all these ridiculous abilities and ridiculous gear that give you advantage over others. That's why some of the lower bracket PvP are some of the most fun and engaging PvP out there in MMO's.
Skip the leveling part? No thanks, I like leveling in my MMO's.
Maybe they should do it like a Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield and other singleplayer games, where you have the campaign to enjoy the story and content, but from the start can jump into the multiplay combat cq end level dungeons/combat. With the difference that for the MMO you can do the 'campaign content' together with other people.
The whole principle of (current) MMO's, next to the idea of character progressing over time, is that content will unlocked gradually, the farther you get into the game. I don't think it works to just unlock all the content there is from the beginning. Just like with your singleplayer games you don't want the whole story/content available from the start. But maybe it's a matter of taste, in which some MMO players like their MMO to be like an online shooter where the content is all there available from start and progress is measured by your skill, while other MMO players like their MMO like RPG games or other singleplayer games, with a story to follow and a world to explore.
There is a difference in perception in that large groups of players think that the story/leveling part is just something to suffer through until the juicy parts has been reached at the endgame content, where dev teams and MMO game companies have the perception that the largest part of their game, their world and content are in the leveling stages before the high level content, where endgame content is just a small part, sometimes even an afterthought, of their MMO.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I never got into this "race to end game" mentality. When I reach the cap, things quickly become tiedous and boring, and I either unsub, or reroll an alt, if there is enough content to make sure his journey will be different from the other's.
I'd be more happy if devs could spend their brainpower thinking of a way to give us "a game without an end to it", where the journey is in constant evolution, and is what truely matters. Where you don't reach a limit, so you don't have to roll an alt, but if you do, even after a hundred time, your experience always feel fresh.
Can I just say HALLELUJAH?! And YES...AMEN!
Your post was like a religious experience...like rays of light beaming down from heaven above onto a dreary and shadowy MMOland that has been oppressed under the weight of a stomping 800 pound gorilla who has crushed all the joy out of virtual life...lol...sorry.
Thankfully....there are still a few games where "rushing to end game" is actually a BAD idea and not encouraged, and...you don't really want to do it anyway since there are plenty of enjoyable things to do that you'd miss if you raced through it all, apart from really gimping your character by just blazing to the end. Some games....actually still require building skills and advancing your character in ways OTHER THAN that of gear and levels, and if you just rush leveling...you cannot build up those other things you need. (I'm trying not to bring the name of any specific games into my post, because then it always ends up being a "this game is better than that game" argument.)
But of course...like you said...it can always get even better!
i consider the entire leveling procedure in any mmo nothing but a protracted demo or tutorial for what end game content will provide.
when i want to own a car, i dont start with buying the steering wheel....i can imagin that some people prefer to build everything they use, but not me.
Ahhh, but games are not cars, are they?
this goes doubley for MMO's. i do not want or need someone elses idea of a paced progression limit to give my gameplay some halfassed notion of context.
a game that just drops you off, with nothing to do after max level, was designed by monkeys. getting to max level isnt "beating the game". its finally getting to use all of the games features.
why is this so hard to comprehend. it would be like if you had to wear a blindfold playing baseball, unless you were in the major league. non max level toons, are the same as max level toons, but marginally less fun and less strategically complicated.
Why is it so hard for YOU to comprehend that not everyone AGREES with your preference? I mean...I'm just sayin'. Your analogy doesn't fit really, by the way. Trust me...I know...I'm the Queen of Crappy Analogies, ask anyone around here.
leveling is just a paradigm. someone should set up a poll asking who would (honestly) choose to start at level 1, if you exist in the same game world, with the same options, but with the choice of starting as a max level toon...
I, for one, would WANT to start at level 1 and "grow" my character through a "life story." Starting all "grown"...is just an FPS to me, dressed up with swords instead of guns and plate armor instead of cammies.
This whole post, in my opinion....is from the mentality of someone who doesn't actually "get" or like the MMORPG GENRE itself. You may like MMOs, but NOT MMORPGs. Maybe this is the differentiation between us all. There is a difference between an MMORPG and a MMOG of other types, like MMORTS, MMOFPS, etc., etc. SADLY, however, it seems everything gets lumped into the category we call MMORPGs.
I agree with you that not ALL MMOs need leveling (or a similar marked progression), but then it depends on the type of MMO. If the penultimate goal of the game is just PvP for the sake of PvP (not a story-driven sort of thing, but more a CS Source experience in fantasy armor)....then I'm with you...I don't see the point in levels or story, for that matter. But if the goal of the game is to be a "hero" in a fantasy world, living out a story...like MMOs originally were intended to be...like being inside a book, basically....then there needs to be a "life" you live and "grow" in before you ARE that "hero."
I would wager that MOST people that played MMOs, prior to just five years ago, played them because they were "roleplaying" another character in a virtual world. They played them for the story, the fantasy, the stimulation to the imagination, like reading a really great book....but being INSIDE the book and portraying one of the heroic characters in an epic story. THAT group of players loves the epic nature of the quest to greatness, and the unfolding of that virtual "life" is VERY much the "meat and potatoes" of the game....for us.
Thankfully....there are still a few games where "rushing to end game" is actually a BAD idea and not encouraged, and...you don't really want to do it anyway since there are plenty of enjoyable things to do that you'd miss if you raced through it all, apart from really gimping your character by just blazing to the end. Some games....actually still require building skills and advancing your character in ways OTHER THAN that of gear and levels, and if you just rush leveling...you cannot build up those other things you need.
Examples, examples. You may also PM them me
And yep, I totally agree with your other post, I'm also from before WoW, I will never forget the sense of exploration and wonder when I first wandered the lands of Norrath or the many fun groups fighting or adventuring together. but I think that for everyone their first MMO has a special place in their heart, that first sensation of 'holy crap, I'm walking around in a virtual world with hundreds and thousands of other people and fighting together against monsters, how awesome'.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Comments
Well, I can only give an example of how things could be done.
In Guild Wars, it was possible with a template character of choice to jump from the start to 'endgame' content which consisted of the high level PvP arenas.
In fact, there was a split between the PvE content and the PvP content: the PvP endgame content could be jumped to rightaway - with a template char of chosen class and a limited range of skills. if you wanted to do the PvE content - explore the world, do the quests, hunt the zones for all the different skills that existed, then you had to follow the regular path with leveling your starter char and so on.
This catered to both of the groups, the ones who wanted to dive into the endgame PvP right away from the start but weren't that much interested in questing, level grinding and exploring the world and the lore, and the other group who were interested in exactly that. Of course, when you followed the regular path you would at the end have more skills collected. But that didn't mean you could easily defeat someone who went into PvP with a premade char right from the start, far from.
That's just one example, there are many different ways to approach this problem. But I liked how they managed to cater two groups with very different preferences within the same game, by clever game design.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
"Endgame" is an inherently stupid concept IMO.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
It's this idealogy that has produced the MMORPGs of today, and undoubtedly, will produce the MMORPGs of tomorrow. It's coming, the whole 'why waste your time?' concept. Give everyone everything till there's nothing left to give.
The issue is developpers' focus on the arrival, not the journey. If all that 'fun stuff' was available during leveling, and held appropriate rewards, then leveling would hold some sort of interest, and meaning, and be fun.
There's a line between being a tutorial, and being a traffic light. The idea of leveling being an elogated tutorial probably held water 8+ years ago, but I'd hardly subscribe to that statement in today's games. I think there's a lag between balances right now in MMORPGs, and I'd wager we'll go another 5 years until we start to see properly designed games become 'the norm'.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
and its one of the EXTREMELY NUMEROUS inherent byproducts of the fundamentally crappy idea of segregating players each on their own seperate treadmill.
they may be all in the same virtual world, but there's only a tiny FRACTION of the entire playerbase that happens to have their treadmills near you, where you can have any meaningful interaction with them.
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Word.
Say hello, To the things you've left behind. They are more a part of your life now that you can't touch them.
the thing is if there was good 'end game' content then it would not be the end of the game and then the content would not be end game content.....repeat
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Leveling is the entire point of RPGs. Progression of your character. You build up so that your character gains experience and abilities so that they can move on to harder and more rewarding content.
If you cut out the leveling and progression you might as well be playing Street Fighter, or Super Mario.
THIS IS exactly why WE got World of warcraft.
People hated the long EQ grind, wow made it faster. People didnt want to grind 6000 AA, wow made talents.People didnt want to run back to there body, wow make ghost runs. Leveling is to be the most immersive part. It regulates your power and offers challenges for longer periods of times.
You start bitching about one little piece that seems to be a major problem, next thing you know you've taking away some of the major thrills. Remeber trying to get your body back when you where in THE HOLE? How powerful did you feel when you got that 120th AA that now made your Spell X double crit? Remeber when you had a nice lazy day of Camping the vampires in ME or Greig's End? it took some work to play an MMO but you got 10x more out of it.
Nicely done!
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"Your pride, good sir, far exceeds your worth." -x3r0h
Oldest mmorpg.com member with the least amount of post counts. That counts for something, right?
Nah.
We got World of Warcraft because SOE mis-managed one of the greatest IP's out there and flopped on what should have been the greatest MMO experience of all time...
And because Origin was bought by EA and hacked to pieces and UO 2 was scrapped. Then UXO was scrapped.
The genre was young, it could have recovered... but then WoW came out and all the big execs at the top company's got the wrong message.
You don't re-create the success of WoW by re-creating WoW...
You re-create the success by learning from what Blizzard did and understanding it.
this is getting down to the meat of the issue. what you are saying is true. this IS the problem!
there IS no virtual world Street Fighter. yet.
there IS no virtual world Mario (maple story & all the clones don't count). yet.
there is no REAL virtual world FPS (PlanetSide and all the FPSRPG hybrid grindfests don't count). yet.
BUT, people who love RPG's have 300 or so mmoRPGs to choose from. they are well served. they even have all kinds of RPG hybrids that dabble in mixing other genres, and various levels of massively versus lobby/instance setups.
i personally HATE RPGs, and Ultima Underworld would have been my last RPG if my hunger for virtual worlds didn't force me into them. (and no you can't convince me not to read/post here just cuz the domain here has "RPG" in it).
*I*, and others like me are not being served........ AT ALL. (Valkyrie Sky and Darkfall come the closest, but they aren't close enough).
and i may be the only person ON THIS FORUM who wants these things. but there's tons more out there who won't ever COME here in the first place, and who have NEVER subbed an MMO, or only did so for a few months. some don't like RPGs. period. some don't like MMORPGs cuz they are not the right kind of RPGs or the right mix of RPG + __insert_other_genre__.
i'm an outlier for the unserved people. the rare one who has spent 11 years exploring virtual worlds DESPITE the fact that i hate the gameplay and virtually all the fundamental mechanics virtually all MMOs are built on currently.
after 11 years you are starting to find alot of people that come from the RPG loving traditional MMORPG camp who are making steps TOWARDS my direction. they are far from my standpoint, but a significant portion have started moving my way. healthy people can only stand endless repetition for only x many years before it starts to feel really hollow, and they
.......start looking for games that are FUN in the moment to moment gameplay. not all about being bribed into mindless activities to be doled out "rewards" at a calculatedly & increasingly diminishing pace.
or to put it into buzzwords some people might comprehend better, they
......start to look for intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards to their precious gaming time.
characters ALWAYS get left behind, and effectively thrown in the garbage. its just a matter of time. real life experiences (not points) and real life skill improvements stay with you for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. and are go with you from game to game.
no, i don't BY ANY MEANS think the majority of games will eventually come to where i am. FAR from it.
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I am the kinda of player that likes the experience of Leveling, Endgame means nothing to me( I spend more then 2 years to get a toon level 220 in AO) and everyone someone speaks of Endgame it reminds of a game called Fury and what happend to the game? It was what players would be call fun endgame pvp...but even so it fails.
WHy removing leveling while you atill be doing same thing over and over again, I wonder what is so fun about doing same thing hundred of times just to get one piece of gear? Thats one o the reason I quit AO and Always moving from one MMo to another mmo and trying never rush to max level(corrently playing CO and have a character at level 38,7 and I stopped play with that toon because I will probably give up on the game after 40, even with alts and I still have 2 months of gameplay.
It's seems that to me, the op wants to replace one grind for another, remove the leveling grind for Epic gear and epic pvp grind. What would be the point?
"you are like the world revenge on sarcasm, you know that?"
One of those great lines from The Secret World
I'm not entirely sure whether I agree with every post ... but the leveling system is quite dated.
But, in truth, a LOT of people like it. Mostly casual players that just want to click the level up button and go whack more stuff without getting into how adding a 1/10th of a point to dex or str and the resulting DPS change vs survivability impacts the overall effectiveness of a character.
I love that stuff. But I'm not particularly casual either.
I'm not sure why there is a level cap. Why not just use the XP gained in some sort of function with a set amount of points that we can choose to distribute across all the skills available in the game. So, if we both have the same XP, then you're twice as good as I am wherever you've dedicated two points and I've only dedicated one. Or, we're both the equal in that same skill if I've got twice as many XP as you do. Then, theoretically, the maximum "level" is whatever variable type you assign to the XP field. ULong_Int in C is: 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. If you built the game so that the uber hardcore averaged 10k XP every five minutes (this includes all player down time, server down time, etc) that still works out to be some stupid amount of time before you ever reach maximum. Like 17,548,272,520 years stupid.
Then, you'd never reach cap.
Make gear effective based on your XP so you could put together an equipment group you enjoy and not ever have to change it if you didn't want to. Age of Conan doesn't have two-handed swords for every level and I despise! axes ... but to stay competitive even with PvE I HAVE to switch to something I don't enjoy.
And the awesomeness of this system is, if it turns out one particular skill is overpowering, you don't have to nerf it into oblivion. You can just change how the XP ratio works so that its less powerful where its overpowered but remains the same at other points along the XP curve.
Anyway, there are lots of other options out there. But with WoW's numbers, nobody is going to be willing to invest in something that hasn't proven effective.
I agree. There is a lot of room for new concepts to exist within a persistent world setting that aren't necessarily RPGs. We've seen attempts, but they end up being instanced lobby games. Why not have a Mario world were everyone can explore and have adventures and not worry about leveling or advancement and just play to have fun with other people? Or a game like L4D where instead of being 4 players on a map trying to get from point A to point B it's a persistent world where everyone just strives to work together to survive?
MMO doesn't have to mean MMORPG. I hope my previous post didn't sound like I felt that was the only possibility. Having a persistent world fighting game or something where you didn't level or advance your character so much as you simply played and got better through personal skill would be a great idea, and I hope that with the popularity of MMOs right now that some company has this kind of thing on their minds. The only difficulty with that would be the difference between people's hardware and connection speeds, but if the graphics were kept stylized and low res kind of like WoW it should be possible to make it work for most everyone.
Sidenote:
Actually there is a reason Rob Pardo turned EQ1 into a multi million based new MMO.
Without him you would stare the average 10 hours on a screen before the fun started.
After Pardo took his big red crayon and deleted all the non-fun stuff in MMO's, we actually had a ... video game without the need to live in a basement for 12 hours a day.
On topic:
EVE Online is just WOW with the spaceship replacing the end gear of an avatar ... as far as progression goes.
And people still need "levels" to have a "feeling" of their progress.
Be that expressed in colored gear or spaceship parts.
Nothing more nothing less.
But the acquiring of the pieces (or levels, or ranks, or ...) should be simply "fun" and adaptable to how one would like to play.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
i consider the entire leveling procedure in any mmo nothing but a protracted demo or tutorial for what end game content will provide.
when i want to own a car, i dont start with buying the steering wheel....i can imagin that some people prefer to build everything they use, but not me.
this goes doubley for MMO's. i do not want or need someone elses idea of a paced progression limit to give my gameplay some halfassed notion of context.
a game that just drops you off, with nothing to do after max level, was designed by monkeys. getting to max level isnt "beating the game". its finally getting to use all of the games features.
why is this so hard to comprehend. it would be like if you had to wear a blindfold playing baseball, unless you were in the major league. non max level toons, are the same as max level toons, but marginally less fun and less strategically complicated.
leveling is just a paradigm. someone should set up a poll asking who would (honestly) choose to start at level 1, if you exist in the same game world, with the same options, but with the choice of starting as a max level toon...
I personally find leveling just as fun as endgame. In fact, it's often the endgame that gets repetitive & boring fast, because it all comes down to gear grind for the most part. Not their fault really, there is only so much you can make people do once they stopped leveling & gaining exp.
It just seems that when you are leveling, there is always something to look forward to, something new to get, something new to see. Once you cap out, you just end up doing the same thing over and over again for the sake of getting gear, gear, and more gear.
If you enjoy PvP, you'll often see people liking the lower level pvp better. That's because when you aren't maxed out, you don't have all these ridiculous abilities and ridiculous gear that give you advantage over others. That's why some of the lower bracket PvP are some of the most fun and engaging PvP out there in MMO's.
Skip the leveling part? No thanks, I like leveling in my MMO's.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
I actually feel the exact opposite of the OP. Let's skip the end game. The end game always sucks.
Even in the most content filled, long standing MMOs like WoW, the end game content is a mere fraction of what the game has to offer.
Most newer games have no end game content at all? Why would you want to skip to there?
Maybe they should do it like a Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield and other singleplayer games, where you have the campaign to enjoy the story and content, but from the start can jump into the multiplay combat cq end level dungeons/combat. With the difference that for the MMO you can do the 'campaign content' together with other people.
The whole principle of (current) MMO's, next to the idea of character progressing over time, is that content will unlocked gradually, the farther you get into the game. I don't think it works to just unlock all the content there is from the beginning. Just like with your singleplayer games you don't want the whole story/content available from the start. But maybe it's a matter of taste, in which some MMO players like their MMO to be like an online shooter where the content is all there available from start and progress is measured by your skill, while other MMO players like their MMO like RPG games or other singleplayer games, with a story to follow and a world to explore.
There is a difference in perception in that large groups of players think that the story/leveling part is just something to suffer through until the juicy parts has been reached at the endgame content, where dev teams and MMO game companies have the perception that the largest part of their game, their world and content are in the leveling stages before the high level content, where endgame content is just a small part, sometimes even an afterthought, of their MMO.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Can I just say HALLELUJAH?! And YES...AMEN!
Your post was like a religious experience...like rays of light beaming down from heaven above onto a dreary and shadowy MMOland that has been oppressed under the weight of a stomping 800 pound gorilla who has crushed all the joy out of virtual life...lol...sorry.
Thankfully....there are still a few games where "rushing to end game" is actually a BAD idea and not encouraged, and...you don't really want to do it anyway since there are plenty of enjoyable things to do that you'd miss if you raced through it all, apart from really gimping your character by just blazing to the end. Some games....actually still require building skills and advancing your character in ways OTHER THAN that of gear and levels, and if you just rush leveling...you cannot build up those other things you need. (I'm trying not to bring the name of any specific games into my post, because then it always ends up being a "this game is better than that game" argument.)
But of course...like you said...it can always get even better!
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Why not just skip the sex, and just smoke a cigarette and go to bed?
This whole post, in my opinion....is from the mentality of someone who doesn't actually "get" or like the MMORPG GENRE itself. You may like MMOs, but NOT MMORPGs. Maybe this is the differentiation between us all. There is a difference between an MMORPG and a MMOG of other types, like MMORTS, MMOFPS, etc., etc. SADLY, however, it seems everything gets lumped into the category we call MMORPGs.
I agree with you that not ALL MMOs need leveling (or a similar marked progression), but then it depends on the type of MMO. If the penultimate goal of the game is just PvP for the sake of PvP (not a story-driven sort of thing, but more a CS Source experience in fantasy armor)....then I'm with you...I don't see the point in levels or story, for that matter. But if the goal of the game is to be a "hero" in a fantasy world, living out a story...like MMOs originally were intended to be...like being inside a book, basically....then there needs to be a "life" you live and "grow" in before you ARE that "hero."
I would wager that MOST people that played MMOs, prior to just five years ago, played them because they were "roleplaying" another character in a virtual world. They played them for the story, the fantasy, the stimulation to the imagination, like reading a really great book....but being INSIDE the book and portraying one of the heroic characters in an epic story. THAT group of players loves the epic nature of the quest to greatness, and the unfolding of that virtual "life" is VERY much the "meat and potatoes" of the game....for us.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Exactly.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Examples, examples. You may also PM them me
And yep, I totally agree with your other post, I'm also from before WoW, I will never forget the sense of exploration and wonder when I first wandered the lands of Norrath or the many fun groups fighting or adventuring together. but I think that for everyone their first MMO has a special place in their heart, that first sensation of 'holy crap, I'm walking around in a virtual world with hundreds and thousands of other people and fighting together against monsters, how awesome'.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Personally, I skip the end game part. Talk about boring and repetative.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.