I would just like to point out a game that used a different style of skill based lvling silkroad online. now i know u still gain exp and lvl but u also gain skill point exp which u use to gain and improve ur skills. i personally like this system because it allows complete customizability of ur char.
The more complicated the progression system, the more prone to bugs/errors/and unbalance (SWG).
The more bugs/errors/unbalance in a progression system, the more development time/money spent on fixing.
The more time spent fixing, the less time for new content.
The more unbalanced and bug riddled, the worse PvP is.
I mean, does anyone actually remember pre-NGE/CU SWG?
The first "flavor of the month" I remember was Riflemen. One shot long range sniper PvP machines. Impossible to kill unless you were a Riflemen.
Then there was the Teras Kasi phase. Invincible melee masters. Enough knockdowns and stuns and evasion to kill anyone 1vs1 no matter what.
There was the Creature Handler phase. In order to get any real XP from missions/groups at a decent rate you had to have a Creature Handler pet Tank.
The Commando phase. Commando's solo'ing ATST walkers with ease.
The Bounty Hunter phase.
The Combat Medic phase (yes that's right) AoE poison masters could demolish entire groups of players with ease.
Wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't a Pistoleer/Smuggler from day one and I never switched. Too bad both Pistoleer and Smuggler were 100% useless in PvP and most PvE. Hell, half the skill boxes in the Smuggler tree did nothing or had no real gain what so ever.
I remember having to "level" up my melee fighting to get access to the Smuggler tree. Fist fighting. All because Han Solo punched a guy like once in the movies, I had to level up my unarmed combat skills... and then the "dirty fighting" tree in the Smuggler profession was 100% useless. As were all the skill boxes in Pistoleer...
Haha actually pistoleer was the first FoTM, before rifleman. It went Pistoleer/BH - CH - Commando - Teras Kasi, then ridiculous out of control buffs came in and the only way you beat someone was by draining their mind pool, hence rifleman/combat medic, both of which targeted the mind pool. After that, melee defense stackers (usually fencer/2h swords) were the last FoTM I remember before the Combat Upgrade.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that SWG's failings in combat balance weren't the fault of the skill system, they were the fault of the developers and SOE, who were too lazy, stupid, and preoccupied with developing other stuff that things went broken or hideously unbalanced and NEVER got fixed. Creature Handler was ridiculously overpowered for at least four months. Some professions (Pikeman, Squad leader) were broken from Launch In June 2003 to the NGE in November 2005 (a two and a half year time span) and NEVER were effective. Imagine the fallout in WoW if a class, say, Druid, was totally broken and ineffective for TWO YEARS? A good MMO company in Blizzard would never let that happen.
So, getting stronger faster and tougher and having more skills and abilities each time you reach a new level is more realistic ?????????
i have a proposal. how about no level system or skill leveling system and just put the power into the hands of the crafters and stats. loot and drops items buffs and potions.
why do people scream out for charecter progression in terms of level by level growth that inevitably ends at say lvl 50 or lvl 90 once you hit this top level the game is over!!!
or!! you could take alook at how eve online does things. you cant go afk and leave your computer to auto grind your charecter no no!! because its all done through time based skill progression. you start the skill and it takes a set amount of time to reach the next level.. these skill training times can be reduced by finding items in the game by actually playing the game.
level by level grinding ruins mmorpg's its basic and boreing and linear and you know that once you get that little orange bar to the end of the screen you will reach lvl 2 and that once you reach level 2 you will have to do a little bit more work to reach level 3. you also know that you will have to repeat this process between 50-100 times depending on the mmo.. now if im not mistaken that sounds boreing before you even start trying to do it!!! when you log into an mmo today the whole focus is on how fast you can reach the end of the game so you can start playing the game, this is all because of level based items and level based charecter growth. the best fun and best turn out and fun in todays new titles can only be had at max level and in the end game areas..
the entire game is centred around reaching that critical end game content its all about getting the most elite armour sets its all about the last phase pvp... problem is, once you get to this stage, you have experienced the entire games quests and items and content, although it was boreing to you in the first place, because it had to be boreing to make you want to rush to end game content, it means now that your unlikely to start another charecter because you dont want to grind all those levels and all those same quest and have to make the same exact loot choices again from all your quest rewards for a diffrent name on a diffrent charecter class.. the only defineable diffrence is. the way you play.. instead of casting spells and sitting at the back, you are now a t ank and in the thick of it letting people bounce their digital hammers off your tough bulky tanky exterior. the game is the same the play is the same just your posistion in the combat has changed, all the items are the same the content is the same everything stays the same. its boreing!!!! games like this have a average player life expectancy of about 8 months.. 8 months is enough time to get 3 charecters to end game content and get utterly bored with content pvp and quests and to also spend a conciderable amount of time on the forums trolling and flameing your oppinions over charecter balance issues.
thats just not fun at all!!!
developers should take the whole charecter profgression by levels and experience out of the game, and instead put the effort into the game content instead and class's, make the game deeper. make it more emersive! we dont need to level up and unlock new skills. why do we even have skills in the first place. why not make it so crafters can create armour and items with stats of their chooseing and add tombs or something to the items which grant the user of that item a specific skill or ability.
we dont need levels. what we need is a charecter thats the exact same as every one elses with starting attributes.. then its down to the players to aquire the best custom armours and items they can to improve their charecters stats in a pasrticular area and to aquire certain abilities and skills by wearing these custom made armours.
this basically means every one is the same from the start in terms of capability. the longer you play the wealthier you get meanind you can buy the better geer, or if you like to craft you can make the items and get wealthy that way.
the npcs. will gradualy get harder as you explore through the world too, not by level but by their equipement they are useing, this means to get through a certtain area you need to work out what the weak points are on each type of mod and adapt to overcome it. adapt in terms of switch out your armour and such so your more suited to that type of area. or the area may demand you to buy better more advanced geer.
the thing is, because their is no levels it means people wont be restricted from the get go, every one will be able to have super geer and make an impact from the start, this means the game is instantly enjoyable for the majority of people.
pvp should never be full open pvp in any mmorpg. their should be an /command you can type to switch you from none pvp to full pvp something like /pvp .
i agree with the op concerning skill based leveling. ive played a number of games now that relies on skill based leveling and hes dead right, people abuse it and people look for ways to cheat their way to greatness, its just fact that people have great difficulty playing a game propperly. i have a little brother that does this exact thing, he doesnt know how to play a game propperly, as soon as he installs it hes on websites looking for work arounds and walkthroughs cheats and exploits, if he cant play the game of his own steam, he cant play the game at all and quits!! and its all because of the level based char progression and level based skill training.
get rid of it all, leave the progression in geer aquisition and make sure their is enough content in terms of items and loot for the players to be for ever busy sorting through for the best conbinations, or enough content for the crafters to make diffrent outfits to create the diffrent class types we are so acustomed to in all mmorpg's.
also maybe the items could incorporate skills in them, this means no huge pallet of skills to use when playing, the player has to decide what skills he will have by the geer he/she will be useing. the tiems they use can be imbedded with skill books, this would give you a limited number of usable skills based of how many items you have equiped. no more of this 4 bars of 10 skills crap lol. having limited amount of skills forces the player to play more tacticaly and think a little about their play style, it measn the end of the wadeing in to the frey and sitting their takeing on tens of mobs at once. it forces tact and makes the game a bit mroe fun.
the game will no longer be focussed around getting to level 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or the last level to use the best armour. the game becomes instantly fun for every one that plays it from the start.
the progression part is in the land scape and geer customisation, im not just talks skills and stats on the items, im talking about how they look colour schemes and so on. set bonus and thingsa like that. also the game would have to have some pretty ingenius crafting system too as some players will want to be the ones to make these items. also progression would be the mobs you encounter and the possible instances that may be discovered. the thing is no one set of armour will be enough for a single player to conquer the game with, he/she wont be able to compete in the entire games content wearing the same exact armour, he/she will have to carry multple sets with diffrent skill sets on them. it would mean wasdeing into a mob to get to an objective could prove difficult if your charecter isnt propperly prepaired for the encounter.
leveling of any kind is bland boreing linear and reaches a climatic end of "wtf do i do now comments"
normal games so far are as follows -
start game
rush through levels
reach last level
grind all the raids 30-40 times each to get best armour.
equip best armour that every one else has too
look the same as every one else
pvp for 4 months
bored to death within 5 months
cancel subscriptions and change game.
SOME!!! people are slower than others, not every one spends alot of time playing these games, so ffor them it could take a year or 2 to accomplish all of the above, but make no mistake, its exactly the same for them as it is for every one else, they just do it more slowly.
games are too repetative too linear and too unimaginitive.
all we get is a grind fest, pretty much every game is a grind fest. which is why i will say eve-online is my favourtie game so far out of all of them. it just offers you something no other mmo can. it offers you a reason to keep playing. it takes hold of your imagination and inspires you to want to see what else is diffrent compaired to other games.
its about time developers started to think more about the games than the short term fix's they have been delivering to us.
Pre-CU SWG had a fine skill-based system, and it worked.
The leveling worked really well the system didn't.
It was impossible from a code standpoint to balance 32 classes that could be mixed and matched.
RM/CM, Dodge stacking fencer/pistoleer, TKM. Swords, TKM/dot pikeman, TKM/Dr to name just a couple of the FOTM's
How would you know if it was impossible to balance, it's not like the devs tried to do it even once.
I am not saying it would be easy but claiming that something is impossible when you haven't even tried it is not making a good argument.
Oh they tried at first, until Jedi started being popular and more common in game, and then they threw balance out the window and stopped even trying. They continued to try and "balance" the game but it was pointless by that time. They put themselves in such a hole making jedi's powerful and then trying to balance it out so that bounty hunters could hunt them properly that it made both sides unhappy so they decided to continue changing the system in lieu of actually balancing.
the thing is its starwars, jedi should be powerful in comparrison to other class types, lots of people hate the sound of that but its cannon. balance in swg was a bad thing, it shouldnt have been balanced at all, but the charecters should all have strengths and weaknesses.. what we ended up with was every charecter with just strengths. balance ruind swg. its because of balance that jedi became a starting class. jedi was something that had to be earned which warranted the slightly overpowered nature of it.
and no medic should be able to pvp in a combat sence, medic is healer< healer is a back line troop, its support it should be sqwishy as hell with practically no offencive capabilities, swg made them into gods!!! and then you have the entertainer class LOL absolutely useless short of sitting in a cantina talking shit all day buffing people for money!! what kind of game play is that. even crafters had more offencive abilities than an entertainer did.
chars with guns should perish at close range melee but they didnt they could own melee classes close range and in melee as well as at long range shooting.. swg was so balanced it was incredibly unbalanced. they tried to make every class as effective as each other and that alone ruined the game.
jedi should have been the all singing all danceing combat class, the pivotol force so to speak, they use the magic and can move things with their minds and see most things before they happen. it gives them an edge, they can deflect blaster fire and beat every one that isnt jedi in hand to hand combat useing melee weapons.
but!!!
they gave us a nerfed version of jedi that was no match for a trooper or a commando or a medic ffs!! and yes riflemen took the piss with its one hit kills. from long range.
in the films jedi could sence the bad things that where about to happen meaning they could counter it to some degree.
and another thing abotu swg that ruined it for me, was seeing hundreds of jedi jumping around out side moseisley, arnt jedi supposed to be extinct and hunted to the ends of the galaxy. if so how come their was hundreds of thousands of them in the server and how come you could play jedi from start.
swg was a good game but it had some serious problems, i also think swg is better than most mmorpg's today, even with its obvious flaws.
In my experience skill based systems like those in Darkfall or Oblivion actually lead to an even bigger grind than typical level based systems. I remember in DF people would just sit in town and spam mana missile (or whatever it was called) in the air to level it up.
At least with traditional level systems you can be power leveled or at least have something in actually killing something.
To say that it is stupid for someone to gain skill in a certain area by doing repetitive tasks is stupid IMO. For example if you were a new unskilled archer in RL you wouldnt run out on the battle field and start flinging arrows to train yourself would you? No you would probrably shoot arrows at a wall over and over to increase your strength and aim, or if you were training to be an assasin you probrably wouldnt throw yourself into a mission and hope you eventually get better, you would probrably do some thing like hopping around collecting resources (that one is kinda funny though). I dont see anything wrong with a skill based system, it allows for more customization of an avatar.... what I do find rediculous is a class based system if terms of reality, it is unreal to see someone shooting a blaster at a wall over and over to increase their aim but it is normal for someone that is a healer to not be able to pick up a sword? Or a huge mage with massive muscles not be able to wear armor because and only because he is classed as a mage. I think that if I make my avatar myself then I should be able to chose exactly what I am able to do and not do... look at games like champions online... not really a class based game but not a game where you need to repeat tasks in order to get "stronger" in a particular area something like that would be fun, realistic, and make it so my avatar is really MY avatar and not the same exact thing that 90% of the people in the zone have.
Star Wars: The Old Republic lead combat designer Damion Schubert made the case against the use of skill-based leveling in TOR in a recent post to the game's official forums.
Damion Schubert responding to a member of the community opining that skill-based leveling systems are more natural and offer more freedom:
One of my great pet peeves of pure skill-based systems is that they claim that they are more realistic, but they in fact can create extremely unrealistic situations inside the world.
In the original Everquest, it was not uncommon to see a player throwing himself off a cliff over and over again to improve his safe falling skill, or to see a person macroing some random text gibberish in order to improve his languages. In Meridian 59, players used to park themselves in front of low level monsters and leave the keyboard - they were unlikely to die, and could accumulate defense points in a slow, steady and totally risk-free manor. In Oblivion, the best way to build an assassin character is to hop through fields picking flowers. Jumping improves your Acrobatics (I believe), and the player needs enough flowers to grind up his Poisoning skill.
Sure, each of these could be destupidified with enough designer/programmer time and focus, but then you're coding, QAing and exploit-proofing a different advancement mechanism for every skill in the game. And you'll probably still end up with some silliness somewhere.
Damion's Oblivion example is both hilarious and sad, and something I've heard before. Indeed, I myself participated in a number of stupid behaviors leveling things up in Oblivion.
So my question to you all is: Keeping in mind that development is generally a delicate balancing act of manpower, do you think the benefits of such a system outweigh the massive "destupification" that would be required to try and keep the goofiness of it out?
So what's "stupider", learning "Poisoning" by interacting with plants / flowers or learning it by having your friend beat a goblin with a club?
Personally, if it's a question of "reality" I'll take picking flowers as the activity more likely to result in poisoning knowledge.
I think this is a poor argument against skill-based systems simply because the same argument can be used just as well (if not better) against level-based system. "Oh look, I just ran 10 miles to deliver this package to a nearby village - it makes perfect sense that my swordsmanship has improved."
Both skill and level systems have merit and in my experience hybrids have worked best. But as far as this argument goes, it's a very poor one.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
Too many posts to read but I think a good way of advancement is how dragon age: origins did it - you level up and you spend points on whatever attributes, skills and abilities you want. Far more flexible (although dragon age was still restricted to abilities within the characters class) and takes away the stupor of levelling skills, instead you just choose what skill you want upon levelling.
Currently playing: No MMOs Played properly: WoW Tried: AoC, WAR, Aion, Darkfall Looking forward to: FFXIV, Earthrise, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 (very much), Project Copernicus (and Mercury for that matter), Everquest and Planetside Next (finally a meaningful mmofps again) Wants to play in 2 years time if it survives from the subscriptions of fanatics and turns into the game with all features stated on the website: Mortal Online
Just use a system like AC has. You gain XP, you put those xp points in different areas. Your total XP determines level.
'nuff said, really, but point being, there are other ways of doing a skill-based system. doesn't have to be like the elder scrolls, or ultima online. hell, if they really set their minds to it, I bet they could even come up with some *gasp* new ideas.
Skill based systems aren't so much about how progress is made, but of how characters can be put together. i.e. classes with pre-packed skills vs the means to pick and choose skills. There are countless different ways of giving players those skills to pick from.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It is nice to see a developer's viewpoint on the topic... and though he is absolutely correct on his examples, and how a skill-based system can lead to bizarre forms of leveling...
Essentially all his comments and posts boiled down to this:
I don't want to to code it.
Which is perfectly understandable... It is far easier to build a theme-park that follows the rules you set forth and generate profit for the makers.
It is far more difficult to build a world that grows, changes, and allows players to pretty much do whatever they want... and still be profitable.
If there were no limits in technology, you'd still be hard-pressed to find someone who is going to create a world where the inhabitants are allowed to do whatever they wanted.
Why? Because honestly... who would want to take care of something like that?
Grind is grind. Can call it whatever you want, you will still need to grind for some useless crap, same stupid raid no better then a Baal run in Diablo 2, and hearing words like LFG spammed all the time. This MMO like any other out there. Will have nothing majorly different. Different coat of paint to please different players and nothing more.
When did you start playing "old school" MMO's. World Of Warcraft?
I am not getting my hopes up for ToR. I have been let down too many times by "The WoW killers". Sure...I will try it, but I am getting the feeling that it is going to be too solo play driven as you choose your path. I am currently playing AoC after quitting soon after it's failed launch. As of right now, it is a totally different game and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
If you rage quit AoC like I did, you really need to try it out again.
Comments
I would just like to point out a game that used a different style of skill based lvling silkroad online. now i know u still gain exp and lvl but u also gain skill point exp which u use to gain and improve ur skills. i personally like this system because it allows complete customizability of ur char.
Haha actually pistoleer was the first FoTM, before rifleman. It went Pistoleer/BH - CH - Commando - Teras Kasi, then ridiculous out of control buffs came in and the only way you beat someone was by draining their mind pool, hence rifleman/combat medic, both of which targeted the mind pool. After that, melee defense stackers (usually fencer/2h swords) were the last FoTM I remember before the Combat Upgrade.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that SWG's failings in combat balance weren't the fault of the skill system, they were the fault of the developers and SOE, who were too lazy, stupid, and preoccupied with developing other stuff that things went broken or hideously unbalanced and NEVER got fixed. Creature Handler was ridiculously overpowered for at least four months. Some professions (Pikeman, Squad leader) were broken from Launch In June 2003 to the NGE in November 2005 (a two and a half year time span) and NEVER were effective. Imagine the fallout in WoW if a class, say, Druid, was totally broken and ineffective for TWO YEARS? A good MMO company in Blizzard would never let that happen.
So, getting stronger faster and tougher and having more skills and abilities each time you reach a new level is more realistic ?????????
i have a proposal. how about no level system or skill leveling system and just put the power into the hands of the crafters and stats. loot and drops items buffs and potions.
why do people scream out for charecter progression in terms of level by level growth that inevitably ends at say lvl 50 or lvl 90 once you hit this top level the game is over!!!
or!! you could take alook at how eve online does things. you cant go afk and leave your computer to auto grind your charecter no no!! because its all done through time based skill progression. you start the skill and it takes a set amount of time to reach the next level.. these skill training times can be reduced by finding items in the game by actually playing the game.
level by level grinding ruins mmorpg's its basic and boreing and linear and you know that once you get that little orange bar to the end of the screen you will reach lvl 2 and that once you reach level 2 you will have to do a little bit more work to reach level 3. you also know that you will have to repeat this process between 50-100 times depending on the mmo.. now if im not mistaken that sounds boreing before you even start trying to do it!!! when you log into an mmo today the whole focus is on how fast you can reach the end of the game so you can start playing the game, this is all because of level based items and level based charecter growth. the best fun and best turn out and fun in todays new titles can only be had at max level and in the end game areas..
the entire game is centred around reaching that critical end game content its all about getting the most elite armour sets its all about the last phase pvp... problem is, once you get to this stage, you have experienced the entire games quests and items and content, although it was boreing to you in the first place, because it had to be boreing to make you want to rush to end game content, it means now that your unlikely to start another charecter because you dont want to grind all those levels and all those same quest and have to make the same exact loot choices again from all your quest rewards for a diffrent name on a diffrent charecter class.. the only defineable diffrence is. the way you play.. instead of casting spells and sitting at the back, you are now a t ank and in the thick of it letting people bounce their digital hammers off your tough bulky tanky exterior. the game is the same the play is the same just your posistion in the combat has changed, all the items are the same the content is the same everything stays the same. its boreing!!!! games like this have a average player life expectancy of about 8 months.. 8 months is enough time to get 3 charecters to end game content and get utterly bored with content pvp and quests and to also spend a conciderable amount of time on the forums trolling and flameing your oppinions over charecter balance issues.
thats just not fun at all!!!
developers should take the whole charecter profgression by levels and experience out of the game, and instead put the effort into the game content instead and class's, make the game deeper. make it more emersive! we dont need to level up and unlock new skills. why do we even have skills in the first place. why not make it so crafters can create armour and items with stats of their chooseing and add tombs or something to the items which grant the user of that item a specific skill or ability.
we dont need levels. what we need is a charecter thats the exact same as every one elses with starting attributes.. then its down to the players to aquire the best custom armours and items they can to improve their charecters stats in a pasrticular area and to aquire certain abilities and skills by wearing these custom made armours.
this basically means every one is the same from the start in terms of capability. the longer you play the wealthier you get meanind you can buy the better geer, or if you like to craft you can make the items and get wealthy that way.
the npcs. will gradualy get harder as you explore through the world too, not by level but by their equipement they are useing, this means to get through a certtain area you need to work out what the weak points are on each type of mod and adapt to overcome it. adapt in terms of switch out your armour and such so your more suited to that type of area. or the area may demand you to buy better more advanced geer.
the thing is, because their is no levels it means people wont be restricted from the get go, every one will be able to have super geer and make an impact from the start, this means the game is instantly enjoyable for the majority of people.
pvp should never be full open pvp in any mmorpg. their should be an /command you can type to switch you from none pvp to full pvp something like /pvp .
i agree with the op concerning skill based leveling. ive played a number of games now that relies on skill based leveling and hes dead right, people abuse it and people look for ways to cheat their way to greatness, its just fact that people have great difficulty playing a game propperly. i have a little brother that does this exact thing, he doesnt know how to play a game propperly, as soon as he installs it hes on websites looking for work arounds and walkthroughs cheats and exploits, if he cant play the game of his own steam, he cant play the game at all and quits!! and its all because of the level based char progression and level based skill training.
get rid of it all, leave the progression in geer aquisition and make sure their is enough content in terms of items and loot for the players to be for ever busy sorting through for the best conbinations, or enough content for the crafters to make diffrent outfits to create the diffrent class types we are so acustomed to in all mmorpg's.
also maybe the items could incorporate skills in them, this means no huge pallet of skills to use when playing, the player has to decide what skills he will have by the geer he/she will be useing. the tiems they use can be imbedded with skill books, this would give you a limited number of usable skills based of how many items you have equiped. no more of this 4 bars of 10 skills crap lol. having limited amount of skills forces the player to play more tacticaly and think a little about their play style, it measn the end of the wadeing in to the frey and sitting their takeing on tens of mobs at once. it forces tact and makes the game a bit mroe fun.
the game will no longer be focussed around getting to level 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or the last level to use the best armour. the game becomes instantly fun for every one that plays it from the start.
the progression part is in the land scape and geer customisation, im not just talks skills and stats on the items, im talking about how they look colour schemes and so on. set bonus and thingsa like that. also the game would have to have some pretty ingenius crafting system too as some players will want to be the ones to make these items. also progression would be the mobs you encounter and the possible instances that may be discovered. the thing is no one set of armour will be enough for a single player to conquer the game with, he/she wont be able to compete in the entire games content wearing the same exact armour, he/she will have to carry multple sets with diffrent skill sets on them. it would mean wasdeing into a mob to get to an objective could prove difficult if your charecter isnt propperly prepaired for the encounter.
leveling of any kind is bland boreing linear and reaches a climatic end of "wtf do i do now comments"
normal games so far are as follows -
start game
rush through levels
reach last level
grind all the raids 30-40 times each to get best armour.
equip best armour that every one else has too
look the same as every one else
pvp for 4 months
bored to death within 5 months
cancel subscriptions and change game.
SOME!!! people are slower than others, not every one spends alot of time playing these games, so ffor them it could take a year or 2 to accomplish all of the above, but make no mistake, its exactly the same for them as it is for every one else, they just do it more slowly.
games are too repetative too linear and too unimaginitive.
all we get is a grind fest, pretty much every game is a grind fest. which is why i will say eve-online is my favourtie game so far out of all of them. it just offers you something no other mmo can. it offers you a reason to keep playing. it takes hold of your imagination and inspires you to want to see what else is diffrent compaired to other games.
its about time developers started to think more about the games than the short term fix's they have been delivering to us.
the thing is its starwars, jedi should be powerful in comparrison to other class types, lots of people hate the sound of that but its cannon. balance in swg was a bad thing, it shouldnt have been balanced at all, but the charecters should all have strengths and weaknesses.. what we ended up with was every charecter with just strengths. balance ruind swg. its because of balance that jedi became a starting class. jedi was something that had to be earned which warranted the slightly overpowered nature of it.
and no medic should be able to pvp in a combat sence, medic is healer< healer is a back line troop, its support it should be sqwishy as hell with practically no offencive capabilities, swg made them into gods!!! and then you have the entertainer class LOL absolutely useless short of sitting in a cantina talking shit all day buffing people for money!! what kind of game play is that. even crafters had more offencive abilities than an entertainer did.
chars with guns should perish at close range melee but they didnt they could own melee classes close range and in melee as well as at long range shooting.. swg was so balanced it was incredibly unbalanced. they tried to make every class as effective as each other and that alone ruined the game.
jedi should have been the all singing all danceing combat class, the pivotol force so to speak, they use the magic and can move things with their minds and see most things before they happen. it gives them an edge, they can deflect blaster fire and beat every one that isnt jedi in hand to hand combat useing melee weapons.
but!!!
they gave us a nerfed version of jedi that was no match for a trooper or a commando or a medic ffs!! and yes riflemen took the piss with its one hit kills. from long range.
in the films jedi could sence the bad things that where about to happen meaning they could counter it to some degree.
and another thing abotu swg that ruined it for me, was seeing hundreds of jedi jumping around out side moseisley, arnt jedi supposed to be extinct and hunted to the ends of the galaxy. if so how come their was hundreds of thousands of them in the server and how come you could play jedi from start.
swg was a good game but it had some serious problems, i also think swg is better than most mmorpg's today, even with its obvious flaws.
In my experience skill based systems like those in Darkfall or Oblivion actually lead to an even bigger grind than typical level based systems. I remember in DF people would just sit in town and spam mana missile (or whatever it was called) in the air to level it up.
At least with traditional level systems you can be power leveled or at least have something in actually killing something.
To say that it is stupid for someone to gain skill in a certain area by doing repetitive tasks is stupid IMO. For example if you were a new unskilled archer in RL you wouldnt run out on the battle field and start flinging arrows to train yourself would you? No you would probrably shoot arrows at a wall over and over to increase your strength and aim, or if you were training to be an assasin you probrably wouldnt throw yourself into a mission and hope you eventually get better, you would probrably do some thing like hopping around collecting resources (that one is kinda funny though). I dont see anything wrong with a skill based system, it allows for more customization of an avatar.... what I do find rediculous is a class based system if terms of reality, it is unreal to see someone shooting a blaster at a wall over and over to increase their aim but it is normal for someone that is a healer to not be able to pick up a sword? Or a huge mage with massive muscles not be able to wear armor because and only because he is classed as a mage. I think that if I make my avatar myself then I should be able to chose exactly what I am able to do and not do... look at games like champions online... not really a class based game but not a game where you need to repeat tasks in order to get "stronger" in a particular area something like that would be fun, realistic, and make it so my avatar is really MY avatar and not the same exact thing that 90% of the people in the zone have.
So what's "stupider", learning "Poisoning" by interacting with plants / flowers or learning it by having your friend beat a goblin with a club?
Personally, if it's a question of "reality" I'll take picking flowers as the activity more likely to result in poisoning knowledge.
I think this is a poor argument against skill-based systems simply because the same argument can be used just as well (if not better) against level-based system. "Oh look, I just ran 10 miles to deliver this package to a nearby village - it makes perfect sense that my swordsmanship has improved."
Both skill and level systems have merit and in my experience hybrids have worked best. But as far as this argument goes, it's a very poor one.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Too many posts to read but I think a good way of advancement is how dragon age: origins did it - you level up and you spend points on whatever attributes, skills and abilities you want. Far more flexible (although dragon age was still restricted to abilities within the characters class) and takes away the stupor of levelling skills, instead you just choose what skill you want upon levelling.
Currently playing: No MMOs
Played properly: WoW
Tried: AoC, WAR, Aion, Darkfall
Looking forward to: FFXIV, Earthrise, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 (very much), Project Copernicus (and Mercury for that matter), Everquest and Planetside Next (finally a meaningful mmofps again)
Wants to play in 2 years time if it survives from the subscriptions of fanatics and turns into the game with all features stated on the website: Mortal Online
'nuff said, really, but point being, there are other ways of doing a skill-based system. doesn't have to be like the elder scrolls, or ultima online. hell, if they really set their minds to it, I bet they could even come up with some *gasp* new ideas.
Skill based systems aren't so much about how progress is made, but of how characters can be put together. i.e. classes with pre-packed skills vs the means to pick and choose skills. There are countless different ways of giving players those skills to pick from.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Level-Based System vs Skill-Based System
It is nice to see a developer's viewpoint on the topic... and though he is absolutely correct on his examples, and how a skill-based system can lead to bizarre forms of leveling...
Essentially all his comments and posts boiled down to this:
I don't want to to code it.
Which is perfectly understandable... It is far easier to build a theme-park that follows the rules you set forth and generate profit for the makers.
It is far more difficult to build a world that grows, changes, and allows players to pretty much do whatever they want... and still be profitable.
If there were no limits in technology, you'd still be hard-pressed to find someone who is going to create a world where the inhabitants are allowed to do whatever they wanted.
Why? Because honestly... who would want to take care of something like that?
Just look at our own real world.
Grind is grind. Can call it whatever you want, you will still need to grind for some useless crap, same stupid raid no better then a Baal run in Diablo 2, and hearing words like LFG spammed all the time. This MMO like any other out there. Will have nothing majorly different. Different coat of paint to please different players and nothing more.
When did you start playing "old school" MMO's. World Of Warcraft?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I am not getting my hopes up for ToR. I have been let down too many times by "The WoW killers". Sure...I will try it, but I am getting the feeling that it is going to be too solo play driven as you choose your path. I am currently playing AoC after quitting soon after it's failed launch. As of right now, it is a totally different game and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
If you rage quit AoC like I did, you really need to try it out again.