It seems more things can go wrong with it than right - it is a vulnerable system. Is there some advantage to using use-to-improve over some other system, such as receiving universal skillpoints (or XP) which you can then allocate to the skills you want? Is it worth it, to emulate reality?
Well. XP to skillpoints is in a lot of cases almost as easy to exploit as use to improve with bots and macroing.
Therefore a skill over time like in EvE is rather solid, but with another disadvantage, a new player starting a few years later can almost never catch the veterans.. he may become useful, but thats it about it.
On the other hand i am not fan of vertical progression anyways, rather do it horizontal, and then you can avoid all of the macroing/botting exploits.
I think of a system where you learn your skills from different trainers spread all over the world(a little bit like shadowbane), and where you have to convince them to learn you the new skill(with money, or a task/quest or whatever). And learning the skill should be some kind of tutorial, which will show you the skill, and what you can do with it. Because in my mind almost any character skill should also involve some amount of player skill, and that should be trained or at least shown in that tutorial.
If you have done the tutorial you got the skill.. no more vertical progression required, no way to macroing or botting. And i seriously dont see any good reason for any kind of vertical progression. And now a example from a themepark game, look at GW2.. there is vertical progression, but it will be neglected almost immediately by downleveling you while entering a lower level zone. With other words, they give you vertical progression and take it away immediately.. rather insane, isnt it?
So why not just drop vertical progression entirely and just progress horizontal.. and you can avoid instantly almost any problem you will have with any vertical progression system. And further more, you can make the skilling up more of a roleplaying thing and not pure grind/botting/macroing.. because look at it, vertical progression is almost always either grind, botting or macroing. There is no whatsoever advantage in a vertical progression.
PS: And about the arguement that you want to feel more powerful than a noob just starting. Is that really as much of a problem? Look at GW2 and ask yourself.. is it a problem? Because in GW2 your progression is mainly horizontal progression and a little bit of gear progression, but almost no horizontal progression.. although they do the way of horizontal progression, just with taking it away a few seconds later. And is there really an advantage to mimic horizontal progression.. do player need the feeling of getting more HP over time? Or would it in the case of GW2 not be as good as now, when you do not progress horizontally at all? Just the skill points/treat points? Would that not enough progression, because in fact you dont get more progression anyways in GW2(and the gear progression of course, which is also rather soft)
To put things in context, Arenanet doesn't like vertical progression either as proven by the fact that you could reach max level fairly quickly in GW1 and atleast 3/4 of the content was designed for max level characters. And as you suggest, the advancement at that point was done through hunting skills around the game world. It was the players who wanted more leveling and higher level cap so they met the demand.
But all advancement is vertical in one way or another. It is only much more hidden in games which do not have a character level.
I'd like to point out that when I was a GM in Rune Quest which used use-to-improve, encounters were much harder to design and there was a huge variance over how they played out. For example, I could design a very difficult encounter and the players would breeze through like it was nothing. Then again you could have one pair of goblins wipe the whole group. But this could all be due to how the game relied heavily on dicerolls and the system was very unforgiving.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I would reverse this question. What is advantage of allocable skill points?
You can earn XP or skill points the way characters do in a regular character XP level-based games which is much more resistant to exploitation than use-to-improve and still retain the flexibility of classless character development.
Players would be allowed to pick whatever activity they like for their advancement, but you can always impose limits so that you couldn't "level" crafting while killing monsters - if that sort of thing bothers you.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Originally posted by Enigmatus Uh...I'm not familiar with the "Use to Improve" thing you speak of.
He's talking about leveling up skills by using them, see Darkfall for an example.
And in that game when it first launched many players were macroing and botting to level up their skills to high levels when they weren't even at the keyboard.
There were "bloodwalls" and macro swimming and the like.
He's saying its not possible to create a good skill based system that can't be exploited by the player base.
He might be right.
Ok, gotcha ... sort of like systems employed in Forlorned World and more recently in Perfect World.
In my experience with these game sanctioned level-up systems, there's also a P2W cash shop involved, where artificially leveled toons can also purchase gear in some way (presumably to compensate for items they didn't get through the normal course of leveling). I really dislike these mechanisms and utterly refuse to play games featuring them.
Too many games catering to a certain type of casual player -- and by that, I mean L A Z Y S O B S who lack the strength of character, maturity, and patience to start something and play it through conclusion, no matter how difficult. I feel for people who can devote only an hour or two daily, but in themeparks it should be a simple fact of life that it will take them longer to level up. I can go on and on about that, but I think the real death knell for MMORPGs began when developers started pandering to this gaming population.
Too many gamers have migrated from SPs to MMORPGs, expecting the same experience, but with other players involved. You know who they are -- they think they're the center of the gaming universe, treat other players like NPCs, and generally act like the game was created for their sole enjoyment.
Sorry, I'm that heartless, opinionated biotch from that other thread.
The highlighted bit really gets me about gamers who play games aimed at a different demographic to them amd complain that the game is tailored to that demographic and not them. I've said this before as a music lover I do not buy Lady GaGa, Justin Beiber type music and complain its not as deep, complex and meaningful as a Beethoven Piano Sonata, no, guess what I do? There are plenty of deep complex games on the market but they are not as flashy and as well promoted as the AAA mainstream games. Gamers need to get of their butts and start playing these games thus supporting the makers and maybe the quality and polish will rise.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
I would reverse this question. What is advantage of allocable skill points?
You can earn XP or skill points the way characters do in a regular character XP level-based games which is much more resistant to exploitation than use-to-improve and still retain the flexibility of classless character development.
Players would be allowed to pick whatever activity they like for their advancement, but you can always impose limits so that you couldn't "level" crafting while killing monsters - if that sort of thing bothers you.
Sure, level on anything as a more user friendly vs level on specific as a more community friendly (since people are more likely to cooperate and find creative ways to do things they dont like as much) is a fair point.
Where you are kinda off is insisting that botting or macroing or repeating specific actions (crafting comes to mind) is exploiting, but getting "skillups" via a presumably more easy action (with or without botting) and then spending them on a harder one is not. That depends on implementation and thus does not matter.
If we would talk about smarthones and their user interface in 2005, we would come to a conclusion that touch UI sucks and we cannot ever get rid of styluses. There are simply not many games with a broad enough spectrum of activities which a use-to-improve system needs, thus we get the impression that the whole idea sucks.
And given that many activities need more money to create than fewer of them (say, raids ), it is unlikely that it will change.
I would reverse this question. What is advantage of allocable skill points?
You can earn XP or skill points the way characters do in a regular character XP level-based games which is much more resistant to exploitation than use-to-improve and still retain the flexibility of classless character development.
Players would be allowed to pick whatever activity they like for their advancement, but you can always impose limits so that you couldn't "level" crafting while killing monsters - if that sort of thing bothers you.
About exploitation. I agree about classic skill based games like UO, SWG, DFO and the like. This system is too exploitable via macroing / botting and I would not like game with exactly same system again. Simply because I don't tolerate macroing and botting and my tolerance for those actually decreased over the years.
Still problem with it's being exploitable does not necessarily is tied to "use-to-improve" thing. In example - you could make UO in a way that any use of skill would give you points to distribute over any skill. So in example if you would fight with mace you would not get 'macefighting % points increase', but simply 'points increase' which could be distriubuted for taming skill in example. That way it would not be direct 'use-to-impove' anymore. Still it would be explotiable as hell.
As for choosing activity for advancement. Yeah that's what bothers me. I want to play game that is immersive and that is role playing & virtual world. While I don't want total reality because that just won't work well, and mmoprpg's are games - it is all about balance of virtual world, game and rpg elements.
Having a system in which every action you take give you some kind of generic points that you can attribute to everything is not fun for me. I actually thought it would be fun, but after playing GW2 where to some extent it is done I changed my mind. There for every DE you get same type of reward. There are just some difftences in amount, but you get gold, karma and xp for whatever DE you do. Which is nothing bad, but I just personally don't like something like that. It definately streamline gameplay and make it in a way easier to conceptualize and develop things, but in some degree it bring game further to happy slasher and further away from virtual world and rpg (in my definition).
Mind you I am against games like that, there is enough people that like something like that and I don't even want to go rage and "demand" that certain title change to my liking. I just don't want to play games like those.
I just like synergy effect of merging virtual world, rpg, pseudo-realism, economy and so on in mmorpg. I personally found myself to not want to play an mmorpg where everything is heavily sacrified for combat-gameplay and conveniant character advancent.
When I want quick gamey fix - I start some FPS (BF3 or Planetside2 lately) and shoot some people for half an hour. Which is fun, but I don't look for that kind of game concept in mmoprg's.
Although it is not a perfect scenario,i wil lshare the light on one simple reason you don't want to remove it.
Imagine you have a RMTY operationthat wants to quickly level up players to use them as bots making money.
You could simply have 5 bots sit there in a group while a couple real players power level them.So those players sitting there would do absolutely NOTHING at all and be given a fully capable player.
At least with the skillup system as in FFXI for example you force players to actually play the game.Even then there are many who simply powerlevel to max level then work on the skills later.
A player that cheats or powerlevels to max will have no skills.that player might carry the tag of a level 90 but in reality plays like a level 5 because it has no skills.MOST games have level checks and give a penalty to fighting creatures to ofar and above,i think skill checks shoudl be used instead of level checks.
That way a player trying to fight a level 50 with level 2 skills,would not even hit the creature and would not get any skillups.
Really the only peoblem is that it is treated as a time=reward systm.it is a tough argument because just like in real liffe a person that does the same routine over and over wil be much more skilled than someone picking up a tennis raquet for the first time.
Originally posted by Quizzical
A lot depends on how it's implemented.
Good luck trying to macro the adventuring discovery skills in Uncharted Waters Online, for example. It's "use to improve", but a single use may entail sailing a long distance to a landing point not marked on any in-game map, then landing there, then running to a spot on the landing point that doesn't even have an in-game map, then using the skill. And you have to deal with various disasters at sea and getting attacked by ships while you're sailing, and then getting attacked by various mobs on land after you land. In many cases, it might take you half an hour to get credit for your one use of the skill, and you get no credit at all if you don't find the exact spot.
It seems more things can go wrong with it than right - it is a vulnerable system. Is there some advantage to using use-to-improve over some other system, such as receiving universal skillpoints (or XP) which you can then allocate to the skills you want? Is it worth it, to emulate reality?
A system I like is the spend XP to buy skills system like in the Perfect World games BOI and WOI, you play the game and amass XP and then just purchase different skills for a certain amount of XP with high end skills costing lots of XP and taking a long time to get and these skils just make your character more versatile and able to do more things. You could also have level requirements as well as when you spend the XP your level may drop as you actually lose that XP so it gives long term goals to achieve.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
I would reverse this question. What is advantage of allocable skill points?
You can earn XP or skill points the way characters do in a regular character XP level-based games which is much more resistant to exploitation than use-to-improve and still retain the flexibility of classless character development.
Players would be allowed to pick whatever activity they like for their advancement, but you can always impose limits so that you couldn't "level" crafting while killing monsters - if that sort of thing bothers you.
Just curious as to why you seem to think Xp / level bases systems are somehow less effected by things like exploits and botting. Nearly every level based game Ive ever played has both exploiters and bots. Neither system is in any way immune to them.
Haven't we seen enough failure to ditch it forever from MMOs. Its fine in a SP game where you are not competing against anyone, but in a multiplayer environment it will always be exploited in one way or another.
Look BF3 and CoD are still sold, why not playing that instead of expeting a MMO to be a PvP arena.
The point of MMORPG is progression.
Improving your character (both skill and equipment) is what keep people playing a MMO.
If you take out progression from a MMO, it just become a normal Multiplayer game, in which case you are spoilt for choice.
OP you chose the wrong genre to enjoy Esport PvP.
So to answer your question, NO, we are not done, and we never will.
Well.. i do play BF3 and to say it quite simple, even that game has now progression, you have to play a lot to get your new weapons and stuff. And in all honestly, i hate it. IT is a grind.
AND no.. MMORPGs, or RPGs are not about progression only, it is what want you tell games like WoW, where progression is everything. MMORPGs and RPGs meant to be Roleplaying games, and first and foremost it was a time where by that meant to play literally a role, and not to play a class with specific skills and stats. And MMORPGs were more along the line of the bartle classes Explorer, Socializer, Killer and Achiever, and only for the Achiever progression is important.. and by no means it have to be level/skill or gear progression.
And as much as i can tell you, and as i see it, noone wants to take out progression completely from mmos, it is more about how you do it. And the truth is, you cant progress the same way in a multiplayer game as you can do it in a single player game.
And that is exactly the reason why i hate WoW. It is not about the game WoW itself, it is ok for what it is. But it twisted the complete community, and dumbed down the whole genre. Nowadays almost everyone (as they have learned from WoW) RPGs are about progression, gear grind and nothing else. And seriously that makes me sick. I guess i am just to old for that genre. Or better they really should split up the genre entirely. In Virtual Worlds and Progression/GearGrinding collector games.. because basicly games like wow have much more in common with trading card games as they have with role playing games. It is all about to progress and collect some shiney gear.
Just curious as to why you seem to think Xp / level bases systems are somehow less effected by things like exploits and botting. Nearly every level based game Ive ever played has both exploiters and bots. Neither system is in any way immune to them.
No system is immune, but like I said, use to improve is more vulnerable. For example, in Skyrim you can "level up" by walking against a wall in stealth mode in a town. No need for bots or macros, hell you can do it with any object that can hold a button down. Just leave it there for few minutes.
You can whack a mob, or each other, with the simplest of macroes and with weapons that do little to no damage and improve the weapons skills of both.
In games like Endless Ages leveling through macroing was the norm. Finding and killing your enemy macroers became a twisted metagame.
The bots you have to use to level up in a game with character levels and XP? -Well, atleast you have to see some effort.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Comments
To put things in context, Arenanet doesn't like vertical progression either as proven by the fact that you could reach max level fairly quickly in GW1 and atleast 3/4 of the content was designed for max level characters. And as you suggest, the advancement at that point was done through hunting skills around the game world. It was the players who wanted more leveling and higher level cap so they met the demand.
But all advancement is vertical in one way or another. It is only much more hidden in games which do not have a character level.
I'd like to point out that when I was a GM in Rune Quest which used use-to-improve, encounters were much harder to design and there was a huge variance over how they played out. For example, I could design a very difficult encounter and the players would breeze through like it was nothing. Then again you could have one pair of goblins wipe the whole group. But this could all be due to how the game relied heavily on dicerolls and the system was very unforgiving.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
You can earn XP or skill points the way characters do in a regular character XP level-based games which is much more resistant to exploitation than use-to-improve and still retain the flexibility of classless character development.
Players would be allowed to pick whatever activity they like for their advancement, but you can always impose limits so that you couldn't "level" crafting while killing monsters - if that sort of thing bothers you.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The highlighted bit really gets me about gamers who play games aimed at a different demographic to them amd complain that the game is tailored to that demographic and not them. I've said this before as a music lover I do not buy Lady GaGa, Justin Beiber type music and complain its not as deep, complex and meaningful as a Beethoven Piano Sonata, no, guess what I do? There are plenty of deep complex games on the market but they are not as flashy and as well promoted as the AAA mainstream games. Gamers need to get of their butts and start playing these games thus supporting the makers and maybe the quality and polish will rise.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Sure, level on anything as a more user friendly vs level on specific as a more community friendly (since people are more likely to cooperate and find creative ways to do things they dont like as much) is a fair point.
Where you are kinda off is insisting that botting or macroing or repeating specific actions (crafting comes to mind) is exploiting, but getting "skillups" via a presumably more easy action (with or without botting) and then spending them on a harder one is not. That depends on implementation and thus does not matter.
If we would talk about smarthones and their user interface in 2005, we would come to a conclusion that touch UI sucks and we cannot ever get rid of styluses. There are simply not many games with a broad enough spectrum of activities which a use-to-improve system needs, thus we get the impression that the whole idea sucks.
And given that many activities need more money to create than fewer of them (say, raids
), it is unlikely that it will change.
Flame on!
About exploitation. I agree about classic skill based games like UO, SWG, DFO and the like. This system is too exploitable via macroing / botting and I would not like game with exactly same system again. Simply because I don't tolerate macroing and botting and my tolerance for those actually decreased over the years.
Still problem with it's being exploitable does not necessarily is tied to "use-to-improve" thing. In example - you could make UO in a way that any use of skill would give you points to distribute over any skill. So in example if you would fight with mace you would not get 'macefighting % points increase', but simply 'points increase' which could be distriubuted for taming skill in example. That way it would not be direct 'use-to-impove' anymore. Still it would be explotiable as hell.
As for choosing activity for advancement. Yeah that's what bothers me. I want to play game that is immersive and that is role playing & virtual world. While I don't want total reality because that just won't work well, and mmoprpg's are games - it is all about balance of virtual world, game and rpg elements.
Having a system in which every action you take give you some kind of generic points that you can attribute to everything is not fun for me. I actually thought it would be fun, but after playing GW2 where to some extent it is done I changed my mind. There for every DE you get same type of reward. There are just some difftences in amount, but you get gold, karma and xp for whatever DE you do. Which is nothing bad, but I just personally don't like something like that. It definately streamline gameplay and make it in a way easier to conceptualize and develop things, but in some degree it bring game further to happy slasher and further away from virtual world and rpg (in my definition).
Mind you I am against games like that, there is enough people that like something like that and I don't even want to go rage and "demand" that certain title change to my liking. I just don't want to play games like those.
I just like synergy effect of merging virtual world, rpg, pseudo-realism, economy and so on in mmorpg. I personally found myself to not want to play an mmorpg where everything is heavily sacrified for combat-gameplay and conveniant character advancent.
When I want quick gamey fix - I start some FPS (BF3 or Planetside2 lately) and shoot some people for half an hour. Which is fun, but I don't look for that kind of game concept in mmoprg's.
A system I like is the spend XP to buy skills system like in the Perfect World games BOI and WOI, you play the game and amass XP and then just purchase different skills for a certain amount of XP with high end skills costing lots of XP and taking a long time to get and these skils just make your character more versatile and able to do more things. You could also have level requirements as well as when you spend the XP your level may drop as you actually lose that XP so it gives long term goals to achieve.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Just curious as to why you seem to think Xp / level bases systems are somehow less effected by things like exploits and botting. Nearly every level based game Ive ever played has both exploiters and bots. Neither system is in any way immune to them.
Well.. i do play BF3 and to say it quite simple, even that game has now progression, you have to play a lot to get your new weapons and stuff. And in all honestly, i hate it. IT is a grind.
AND no.. MMORPGs, or RPGs are not about progression only, it is what want you tell games like WoW, where progression is everything. MMORPGs and RPGs meant to be Roleplaying games, and first and foremost it was a time where by that meant to play literally a role, and not to play a class with specific skills and stats. And MMORPGs were more along the line of the bartle classes Explorer, Socializer, Killer and Achiever, and only for the Achiever progression is important.. and by no means it have to be level/skill or gear progression.
And as much as i can tell you, and as i see it, noone wants to take out progression completely from mmos, it is more about how you do it. And the truth is, you cant progress the same way in a multiplayer game as you can do it in a single player game.
And that is exactly the reason why i hate WoW. It is not about the game WoW itself, it is ok for what it is. But it twisted the complete community, and dumbed down the whole genre. Nowadays almost everyone (as they have learned from WoW) RPGs are about progression, gear grind and nothing else. And seriously that makes me sick. I guess i am just to old for that genre. Or better they really should split up the genre entirely. In Virtual Worlds and Progression/GearGrinding collector games.. because basicly games like wow have much more in common with trading card games as they have with role playing games. It is all about to progress and collect some shiney gear.
No system is immune, but like I said, use to improve is more vulnerable. For example, in Skyrim you can "level up" by walking against a wall in stealth mode in a town. No need for bots or macros, hell you can do it with any object that can hold a button down. Just leave it there for few minutes.
You can whack a mob, or each other, with the simplest of macroes and with weapons that do little to no damage and improve the weapons skills of both.
In games like Endless Ages leveling through macroing was the norm. Finding and killing your enemy macroers became a twisted metagame.
The bots you have to use to level up in a game with character levels and XP? -Well, atleast you have to see some effort.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky