Leveling speculation

CluckingChicken

I've been thinking a little bit about the possibilities an RvR based game could handle the leveling system. I mean, obviously you could be rewarded experience for kills and capturing objectives, and maybe even crafting, but what about the levels themselves?

The first part I thought about was level difference. For the purpose of this thread, let's say I'm a level 50 ranger, and I come across a level 10 warrior. Should it be like most MMOs, where I can just whack him with my weakest ability and he goes down? Or if this warrior is a better player than me, should he stand an actual chance?

If we can just look at a low level character, laugh to ourselves and say "oh look, a free kill", I think that poses quite an issue. While levels should make a big difference, I believe skill should play a stronger role in gameplay. Otherwise people just starting out or making alts will find themselves quite stuck, having quite a bit of difficulty leveling up to a point where they can actually enjoy the game and compete.

On the other hand, let's say that the warrior class is actually very powerful, so much so that he can plow me or any other ranger regardless of level into the ground with relative ease. While the concept of level and gear is more important than player skill is the simplest solution in most cases, it would take a lot of work in regards to class balance to find a more interesting solution.

Another issue in this regard would be the feeling of growing more powerful as you progress. If we take a look at what Guild Wars 2 does, they actually scale your character down level-wise if you enter a lower level area. While you have more abilities and item slots at your disposal, you still feel like your character hasn't grown much more powerful when you visit low level zones. It seems like it would be hard to balance character power and balance between level differences.

If the game takes a traditional route with levels, I believe ganking could become a big issue. While I didn't mind getting ganked back in my WoW days, it was mostly because there were a number of ways of avoiding it. There were zones where you couldn't get attacked, among other things. If this game is all about PvP, I could see large groups of high levels hanging around the enemy factions' starting area to get some easy kills and to piss people off.

Another issue of traditional levels is the contribution factor. If a low level can't kill anything or assist in very many ways, then there's really no point in being there other than to leech experience.

Here is what I had in mind. Players should get their bread and butter spells fairly early so they have a way to fight the enemy, but as you level up, you'll gain slight boosts to stats, as well as more utility spells to suit whichever class you're using. These stats should not increase too far so that low levels still have a fighting chance if they're better than you.

 

Another idea not really related to the issues above is an endless, or near-endless leveling system. Let's say at level 50 you have access to all of your spells, and your base stats are maxed, but after hitting that level, you still continue to gain experience and level up. As you level beyond that point, the leveling curve will keep increasing, and while you won't gain any more spells or stats, perhaps you could gain access to titles or cosmetic items. It would primarily be used as a way to show people how long you've been playing your character. If you come across a level 267 mage, you know he's spent a lot of time playing his class and could probably wipe the floor with your puny level 64 mage, even if you both have the same stats and gear. It would give people a reason to keep playing after getting the best items I think.

Sorry for the big rant, I've had a little too much coffee today.