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Would this game have been better without vertical progression?
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
So this game is growing on me. I definitely have some issues with it, but it seems like whenever I get frustrated with it, I find something new that I have tons of fun with and it restored my faith in the game.
The latest "new thing" I found was just adventuring around Cyrodiil with my friend in a duo group. We didn't follow the zerg, we just went our own way and explored and it was awesome. There are so many hidden gems to find in the massive Cyrodiil zone...big public dungeons, tons of skyshards, lorebooks, towns with lots of quests. We even found a goblin dungeon with a boss in it named "Runnyeye" lol 
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And the best part is, the ENTIRE zone is open to you...you never need to worry about not being able to go somewhere because it's higher/lower than your level. Regular PvE feels like you're walking down a linear path, whereas Cyrodiil feels like you're in a world where you can explore wherever you want. And it's all because there is no level-gating in Cyrodiil.
So this got me thinking...would the entire game have been better without level-gating? IE, completely remove the generic stat increases with leveling, but keep everything else. Make it a purely skill based (as in character skills as opposed to levels) system.
Think about it...you could explore the whole of your faction's lands (or maybe even all of Tamriel) right from the start, just like an SP Elder Scrolls game. You would still want to level/explore because you would want to get skill points and level up your skills.
This simple change would have made the game soooo much more fun for me. Imagine just being able to pick where you go in an MMORPG instead of being forced down a prescribed path, but still getting that progression (in the form of skill points, and skill gain) we all want.
So what do you guys think? Do you think the game would have been better without vertical progression?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
I like vertical progression. Most games have some sort of vertical power progression. Hell, even in UO, which didn't have any levels, you couldn't go everywhere you wanted. I mean technically you could but you would get destroyed in quite a few areas. Same for all these MMOs like WoW and TESO. Technically you can go everywhere but mobs will one shot you.
UO was no where near as bad but saying that you could go anywhere with your newly created toon is a huge exaggeration.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
This is true, in UO you couldn't go ANYWHERE with a new toon, but you could basically go all over the world. There are monsters in dungeons that would destroy you sure, but it wasn't anything like EQ/WoW style themeparks where the level gating is very strict. IE, you can basically only get exp from maybe 1/20th of the world at a time because that is all that is within your level. And you essentially need to walk down the quest hub (or grinding) "path" to progress.
I would have liked if ESO was more like UO in its explorability. Because there are still passives and better skills to get, so maybe you would need these to take on the truly tough monsters. But the majority of the world would be open to you always.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
After the first time I played in the beta I made a comment to someone that the only way ESO could ever feel like a "real Elder Scrolls game" is if they did content scaling like in the offline games. Basically, have the content level with you. This is what gives games like Skyrim the illusion of choice and exploration. This would have probably boosted the game's success considerably with offline ES fans. This would fix one of those main problems that when ES fans are playing something doesn't feel quite right.
The more I think I about I'm still not sure if this would work in an MMO. Basically, drop you into the world and make everything your level and as you get stronger have it scale with you. For generic side quests it would be fine. For dungeons that have completely unique stories it would be fine. For the main story that ties into the side quests and gives you a direction through the game....it could work but that would need to have been planned from the start. But this may turn off the primarily MMO players. Sadly, no matter how you look at it an ES MMO could never please everyone.
Another problem is that this game was in development for years. Like most MMOs it shares many aspects of other mmos that were popular when it was first being developed. It was a "well people seem to like these Elder Scrolls games like make a Wow-like Elder Scrolls MMO". And ESO's development overlapped with Skyrim. Skyrim made ES more even more mainstream with the impressive graphics, dragons, and better(slightly) combat. If this game had come out after Oblivion......and I'm going off on a completely different topic......done.
With one of our guild events we were hunting all skyshards one day.
We entered a public dungeon and 2 of our members screamed INCOMMING on TS !!!
So we waited inside the dungeon to give them a suprise
Little did we know.... their group was much bigger :P
But we lasted for around 15 minutes before the last man fell.
There is so much to do in Cyrodiil then laying sieges
Solo or Duo pvp
Small group pvp
medium group pvp
large group pvp
each form has its own thrill of kill and kicking ass or biting the dust
Strange that this kind of pvp comes from ESO instead of a "pure" rvr game studio.
I was extremely sceptical about ESO and being sub based, even tought it would fail harder then SWTOR.
But now i played it for 2 weeks i can savely say ESO is epic for pvp.
Endgame pve ? no idea only V1 atm
"
Dungeons are good
Story is ok
Questing feels better then all other mmo's and i dispise questing after playing mmo's for so long, but zenimax did a good job with that part of the game "if the quests work
Still it has its flaws tough, rerold and going trough the same story line kinda sucks, but no mmo is perfect.
Give it a few months to mature and iron out the bugs and glitches and ESO is a realy good mmo.
The game would have been infinitely better if it had been set up like the REAL Elder Scrolls Games where "levels" were based on skill increases ala Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind... Morrowind in particular.
Morrowind offered "classes", but classes were just a means to emphasize that certain skills contributed more to player level than other skills, but players could level EVERY skill. Morrowind also allowed a player to create his own "class", an adventurer, where the player decided what skills were the most important.
In a MMORPG, I'm not sure it's possible to completely eliminate vertical progression; UO had it, but UO also created pseudo-levels as players' skills and gear outstripped that of others.
In any case, the pseudo-skill system in ESO is highly dissatisfying. I don't necessarily have to use a skill to see my character's ability with it increase, just have it on my skill bar when I "level". For skills like the Templar healing line that aren't used all that often (since most fights end up being solo), this is necessary with the pseudo-class structure that the game is built on; but it really makes the game more WoW-ish than Elder Scrolls-ish.
The whole concept of skill points and skyshards is just stupid; ZOS should have gone with something like the "perks" in Skyrim. The kluged mess we've got looks like they tried to shoehorn a bunch of different concepts together to make the game "like Elder Scrolls", but also "like WoW" and "like DAoC" at the same time.
As a result, the game has no identity of its own.
IMO levels should be done away with. All levels do is make it so you can only play with people your level. Levels limit the games social interaction.
Ultima Online and Darkfall Online where the best mmos for social interaction. You could take a day one character with you anywhere. He wasnt as helpful as a skilled character, but he could still help quite a bit.
Levels just need to stay out of mmo's, they dont fit because it limits grouping with your friends.
In fact right now I have a friend in ESO who is high level and he has to make a new character if we want to play ESO together. That is just dumb.
Except that MMORPGs were meant to computerize PnP D&D sessions which had levels. In a historical context it makes perfect sense as to why we have levels in RPGs.
But then again, D&D sessions were social engagements and MMOs have become less and less social. Maybe it's time to get rid of levels too...
That's just, like, my opinion, man.
SWG didn't have levels. Its modular approach to character building worked IMO. I don't understand why no one has tried to adopt that approach to character advancement.
You could borrow gear equipping from Anarchy Online. Where better gear wasn't equipped based on reaching a higher level, but based on a minimum primary stat prerequisite. So instead of getting to the next level to wear that new chest piece, you'd need to get your strength up by 10 more points. So at certain XP increments, you are given a new pool of points to spend on stat increases and/or new skills of your choice.
SWG did have a lvl based con system, they just indicated it to you through colors rather than numbers for the most part, although you did have a combat level that you could see as did mobs.
I think the problem with SWG though and why many don't repeat that system is because of how unbalanced it was as well as how hard it was to maintain an idea of balance. Far too many variables. Hence why they never really worked on the lesser professions like carbineer.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You can have vertical scaling and progression while still keeping the world open and seamless and exploration centric. See Asheron's Call to see how this is done. Keep weaker and more easily killable mobs near settlements and towns and create one super huge area way the f**k out in sticks with little to no NPC interactivity.
Basically the more you level the further out from town you get. This is to 100% better then having gated zones which break immersion.
The other issue is you need to slow the leveling way down, create a super huge world and don't implement artificial stumbling blocks for the players. I'm not saying don't fix exploits but if someone wants to spend a few hours kiting a boss around or perching atop a rocky outcrop where the melee mobs can't reach then by all means let them. These were the hallmark on why Asheron's Call was and is light years above any MMO ever released.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
This is essentially how SWG was designed as well, near towns like Mos Eisley mobs were weak, the further you moved away from them the tougher mobs got, far out in the dune sea is where you'd find Krayt dragons and the like.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Better? Probably, yes.
However, not nearly as well received (the irony of that statement aside). As much as we ask for more open (sandbox) type games, people still seem attached to vertical progression / skinnerbox design models. As a result it's nearly impossible to fully get away from that. Instead we are stuck w/ hybrid approaches, that hide the horizontal progression behind a brief vertical progression gate. Giving noobs the illusion of vertical progression, without compromising the core design of the game.
It sucks for the rest of us, because it's honestly kind of pointless once you realize it's there. However, if it gets more people to give horizontal progression games a chance, it's a small price to pay.
No. Games NEED MORE vertical progression. Like the person above me said, vertical progression now is nearly fraudulent. It's gets handed to you so quickly and so haphazardly it doesn't even matter, and then the next enemy you see gets notched up right along with you.
Then people like you come around and want stats taken out of the game completely. Trust me, big time devs want this to happen too. You can all run around mashing a few mouse buttons and everybody will get a health bar with 4 notches on it and it will be called an mmorpg. Devs won't have to do any number crunching and it will be no different than playing an FPS or Super Mario Bro's.
Luckily Asian devs will never allow this to happen lol.
Dragon Age is my favorite example of what you are talking about. Enemy level scaling.... The stats in that game MEAN NOTHING. Why even bother putting numbers in that game?
My three favorite MMO's were Ultima Online, Darkfall Online, and Mortal Online. None of them had levels, all of them were skill progression. I had the greatest unscripted adventures in their open pvp worlds that other games just cant recreate with theme park games. They just cant script things that are as exciting as unscripted human interaction.
Despite all the flaws those games had, social interaction was not one of them.
I also played a lot of PnP D&D. The difference there is the GM controls the game and usually designs the campagin around the level of the adventurers. It would be wierd in D&D to have a group of level 7's take on a new player at level 1. The GM's i played with would either start over the campaign when the new person joined, or allowed the new player to make a level 7 character who wakes up with no items, or something like that. It just depended on what the players wanted to do.
In MMO's there is nothing really to help my friends out who join me later in the game, or me joining them. This is why people power level to 50 so fast. Everything from 1-49 is just filler junk, when it should not be.
I think a lot more MMO's would be more enjoyable with skill progression systems and open worlds. I want to go on an adventure, not be told where to go. You know what I mean?
One of the reasons I am enjoying ESO currently is me and my wife are playing together. So we are the same level and experience the lower level content together. This is a crappy solution to the problem because we want to play sometimes when the other is at work.
In skill progression games one of us might find a cave or something interesting but we dont have to enter until we both are on to travel together. Because the game does not script us to have to enter the cave until we the player choose to do so.
Just my 2 cents.
Go play UO, Darkfall, Or Mortal Online and you shall see my friend. Step into the light.
If everyone reads the same books, everyone will have the same thoughts. Dont be part of the flock.
It would have been better if this game had never been created, actually.
I seriously doubt many ES players were saying, ES is awesome and all - one of the best RPGs ever - but what we REALLY NEED is for it to be a weaker version of ES coupled with a weak MMORPG with a health does of PvP, because what one of the best single player PvE series of all time REALLY needs is PvP.
If they had made ES VI with co-op, so you could enjoy everything that's amazing about ES with a few friends without compromising everything that makes ES great (immersion, huge open world, freedom, decisions with permanent impact, etc) - that would've been amazing.
ESO is just an amazingly bad idea.
Sure, a lot of people claim to love it now - that's par for the course - it's not like most people buy in to a $60 game and immediately turn around and say it's junk, but I'd say, give it a couple of months and see how many people are left after the new game smell wears off.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
Actually it is the Ultimate vertical progression game... the game has 50 quick levels and then 10 veteran levels
They intend to never stop progression... and are comnsidering to raise veteran level with every zone or adventure zone they release here after.
Which is close to my wet dream, this game has written progression in every little part of it, and actually its one of the many things i really really like.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Short answer...NO
Long answer....NO
Leveless MMO's are the bane of the genre and should not even be called MMORPG.
If World of Warcraft did not have vertical progression, it would never be that popular.
Look at the subs. When is the time where people usually unsubscribe in WoW? When you have accomplished the new raids and have all the gear you want.
The only reason GW2 still has players is because it is b2p and has no sub. GW2 has horizontal progression, so it doesn't matter if you are level 1 or 80. Doesn't matter if you get another weapon etc.
If you make gear obsolete, than what is the point of getting gear?
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
When I played UO I don't remember it this way. There were lots of places you could go but the monsters would just eat your new toon alive.
Although I agree that the way UO did levelling was great. UO was a real sandbox MMO. Unfortunately WOW decided to look to the vastly inferior themepark on rails called EQ. If WoW was inspired by UO, maybe most MMOs today would do the skill levelling system.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.