Can someone give me an example of how to scale an open world ( or zone if you want to say that ) in an MMORPG? And please dont say GW2 because that is lame. I dont want to see my level 50 turn into a twinked level 10 because I zoned nor do I want to see my level 1 bolstered up to a level 50s base stats. No boosting up or lowering either. IMO players should not be able to go anywhere at anytime without big risks.. An ogre should not scale down to level 1 because a new character ran across one.
Will the mobs be what scales and not the player? How would that work in an MMORPG outside of instances? You will have different level players running around the same areas. How will the game know who to scale to? Will they scale when they are attacked or aggro? Again some creatures shouldnt scale.
What about the DLC? Does this mean that everything they release now is going to be instanced to you or your group? No more open world content and player interaction seems likely if they are going to scale it all. Exploring the huge areas is a huge deal to me.
Honestly.. Paul Sage needs to look back at UO and see that even though you could go anywhere you wanted there you would die quickly without the proper skill levels. Now with ESO and action combat that is thrown out because there are no dice rolls and characters skills mean very little when you can avoid hits easily by simply moving and land hits by simply having your crosshair over an enemy.. Skills really dont matter.
This could be a mess in more ways than one.. Scaling leading to nothing but instanced DLCs which is my biggest worry.
They almost certainly have to do it in a manner that ensures all there can fight what's there. There would be no other point, so mob scaling wouldn't work, unless they phased every range of player. Yet that sounds like a nightmare in coding and on performance. The easiest way is to scale player power, it ensures everyone can fight and it's less tracking or spawning/phasing for the game to pull off. It's the most efficient way
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Im sure they are not doing this for player freedom but more so they are not creating any barriers to anyone buying their DLC packs.
I'm more inclined to see it as they're doing it to appease yet again another "it's not like TES, because" complaint. Which from launch until now has seemed to be their biggest priority. With it moving to the widest TES market; consoles, it makes sense.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
Originally posted by bcbully Very interesting. Like levels don't mean anymore.
Levels should not exist in rpg. There are better ways to give players progression, for example : players will raise their stats with experience and doing stuff that contribute to a unique stats and etc. Level system is a very old system that should be put in a book named "memory of long lost rpg system".
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
I am in the same boat. Level and level cap just means my progression is being artificially capped.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
I'm afraid that scaling content is not my cup of tea. Really did not like it in GW2 and if I'm at max level with good gear I want level 1 mobs to die even if I just look at them. I want to feel progression in my MMO.
Originally posted by Siug I'm afraid that scaling content is not my cup of tea. Really did not like it in GW2 and if I'm at max level with good gear I want level 1 mobs to die even if I just look at them. I want to feel progression in my MMO.
You think aoeing a mobs of level 1's feels like progress? Do you think its fun for all the other players in that zone who see mobs wiped out? do you think its fun for your low level friend you joined to help? There is no point in a mob/zone even being there if you can 1 shot it - that's exactly what you get in games that don't scale - 90% of the content is dead.
This is the difference between games where players are trained to think power is everything against a game that maintains the playability and integrity of a virtual world for all.
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
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
Lock out by skill can be a good carrot mechanic. You enter the red dragons lair and get trashed, then you work on you play skills and character skills, try again and eventually succeed.
One thing to note still. Character skills/builds are just another form of levels, both are progress mechanics and I find neither one artificial. The other is play skill which has always been a part of any mmorpg, levelbased or otherwise. However, the thing is a rpg is not suited well for pure player skill based mechanics, it needs its.. What you refer to as "artificial" chracter progression (skills/levels/whatever), infact that is the core of mmoRPG.
To be honest, removing levels is just another way of dumbing down a game.
Levels are required (much like attributes, which were omitted from the game) to provide the character progression more depth & something to look forward to as a player.
Gating content is good, because it gives the world a sense of danger & gives you as a player something to look forward to.
How many times did you wander to the wrong cave in Morrowind, only to be chased by a high level monster? That was fun, it made you think "hey, I'm coming back & I'll kick your ass", instead of "zzz... just another faceroll dungeon".
In fact, I would've liked to see much more of it in ESO (e.g. areas of higher level enemies in lower level zones & quests sending you there later on, or raids located in say, Stormhaven etc).
Removing levels removes just another layer of depth from the game, making it feel more like a hack&slash action game than a RPG.
So many Q&As some of the juicy bits are getting lost.
Here is that particular Q&A from Reddit earlier today:
**snip**
A couple of follow up questions that comes to mind but weren't asked are:
"Does that mean you plan to also remove the level-gating from current content?" and,
"Are you saying that you have plans to remove all levels?"
Interesting stuff.
Very interesting stuff.
I really wish they had learned this sooner (i.e. pre-launch). The problem w/ vertical progression has always been in the diminishing returns. It's fun, people love it, but they enjoy it a little bit less w/ each game. Not to mention the issues with powercreep, and invalidating good content.
What's ironic is that the single player ES games already knew this. Hopefully the new updates will keep making the game better. At the very least VR is going away.
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
Lock out by skill can be a good carrot mechanic. You enter the red dragons lair and get trashed, then you work on you play skills and character skills, try again and eventually succeed.
One thing to note still. Character skills/builds are just another form of levels, both are progress mechanics and I find neither one artificial. The other is play skill which has always been a part of any mmorpg, levelbased or otherwise. However, the thing is a rpg is not suited well for pure player skill based mechanics, it needs its.. What you refer to as "artificial" chracter progression (skills/levels/whatever), infact that is the core of mmoRPG.
The core of an RPG is progression and story. Leveling isn't really a core, it's just been so overused we've come to expect it. There are RPGs that are fairly level independant, indeed some of the best don't have levels. But the tradeoff is as such:
Leveling allows players to feel powerful with minimal effort. You just need to play a lot to grind up the exp. Everyone likes to feel powerful, especially in an RPG. Games with more horizontal progression tend to leave more of the responsibility on the player to figure things out. You can't simply just grind your way through the game, at some point you need to figure out how to proceed. And for a lot of people, this can be off-putting. Because no one wants to feel stupid while playing a game, or that they themselves aren't good enough. They want to be the hero of the story, they want to feel strong / powerful.
Leveling gives people that feeling for basically nothing. Horizontal progression works, but that type of feeling is more earned rather than given.
In an MMO levels for open world are almost mandatory. Simply because too many people come in contact with mobs all the time. So they have to have some standardized system to make mobs fairly 'predictable' in strength(s). They also level things in a gam e where people can have choices is because depending on how people focus any points, strengths, and weaknesses, so mobs might actually be impossible (even early or mod game) for some people (with totally random "builds" to beat) Which IMO isnt a bad thing. Like the cartoon shows, if someone is putting points into cooking or crafting or non fighting skills then NPCs who are supposedly skilled in one thing (killing you) should be more difficult. They also want to make NPCs as vanilla as possible. Giving them all the skills that players have would more than likely be too expensive. Even a pool of all the skills players have and let them have a random option for any of them in a given fight. That would actually make NPCs nearly as unpredictable and PvP players. But like I said too expensive probably.
So there are options as well as restrictions. Even labeling NPCs in this game shouldnt have been or be done. So when you come up on those three mobs standing around a fire, knowing one is a healer, one is a tanky type and one is an assassin or a sorcerer type makes it pretty easy to know what to do. If all you saw was armor type (and in a 'perfect' world even that wouldnt matter) you would have to guess if one was a healer or if he were just a pyromancer (or as described above have the option to use all those sorcerer skills). Having an option to not see them personally doesnt works especially ones mobs patterns become predictable because then you just know and it doesnt matter if oyu were blindfolded you knew what the options (and skills) each NPC group has.
Maybe a little off topic but goes to the whole point of why MMOs have 'levels". Its simply the cheapest and easiest way to put mobs into the world and give them a relative strength and weakness calculator.
The mmo Defiance scales your level to the open world event or dungeon you are participating in, seems to work in that most of the time I didnt even notice it was happening, I just went in and started blasting all of the mutants, alien robots, and giant bug-things I could see
The only way I like scaling is if there are many different types of mob difficulty. They can all be the same level but there better be at least 5 different mob difficulties. It is important that there are still many different challenges out there for solo, duo, group and multi group.
So many Q&As some of the juicy bits are getting lost.
Here is that particular Q&A from Reddit earlier today:
**snip**
A couple of follow up questions that comes to mind but weren't asked are:
"Does that mean you plan to also remove the level-gating from current content?" and,
"Are you saying that you have plans to remove all levels?"
Interesting stuff.
Very interesting stuff.
I really wish they had learned this sooner (i.e. pre-launch). The problem w/ vertical progression has always been in the diminishing returns. It's fun, people love it, but they enjoy it a little bit less w/ each game. Not to mention the issues with powercreep, and invalidating good content.
What's ironic is that the single player ES games already knew this. Hopefully the new updates will keep making the game better. At the very least VR is going away.
Yes. VRs going away is essentially the same as saying that levels 51-63 are going away because "rank" was just another name for level as things worked out and after they kept adding more and more ranks.
But advancement and progression isn't going away. That continues with the Champion Point system that is replacing VRs, as well as continuing to skill-up and train skill lines you haven't maxed yet.
Some people in this thread and other threads I've read say that skills and gear are essentially the same as levels. And they're only half wrong and only because they're using the wrong word: it's not "levels" it's progression and advancement. And that is an integral part of playing an RPG and isn't going away.
As an aside... I do wonder however how people will look for groups for hard content after the VR ranks are gone. Maybe something like "CP 800 healer LF Dragonstar"
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Originally posted by Siug I'm afraid that scaling content is not my cup of tea. Really did not like it in GW2 and if I'm at max level with good gear I want level 1 mobs to die even if I just look at them. I want to feel progression in my MMO.
You think aoeing a mobs of level 1's feels like progress? Do you think its fun for all the other players in that zone who see mobs wiped out? do you think its fun for your low level friend you joined to help? There is no point in a mob/zone even being there if you can 1 shot it - that's exactly what you get in games that don't scale - 90% of the content is dead.
This is the difference between games where players are trained to think power is everything against a game that maintains the playability and integrity of a virtual world for all.
Tastes are different. I don't like scaling and I don't kill low level mobs that people are after. There are other ways than scaling to make people return to lower level zones - for example raid areas, dynamic events etc. Or they can remove all levels - from players and from mobs as well. 100% horizontal progression can be fun if implemented well enough. I didn't like how they did it in GW2 though - just lowering player level according to the particular zone.
I like it. Hopefully more games will take note that gating content by level is and old and tired method that needs to go on vacation. Hopefully they add that to all current content, not only to the new stuff.
id love to have something like that in mmorpgs, but Dark Souls difficulty is based on excelent AI behavior and combat mechanics while mmorpg difficulty (unfortunately) is based solely on statistics (the higher your stats the lower damage you take) regardless of level.
The problem with level scaling is the same issue Oblivion had with it. You can run around with a level 1 and kill the hardest things in the game. Then you can come back with a level 10 and have issues with rats. Scaling has never really implemented to a satisfying effect.
Why can't we just tell the kiddo's.. "Listen, son, you're in level 1 starter gear with one spell. You actually need to go learn some stuff before you go fight that dragon or he's gunna eat you".
It's not bad. It's telling people they need more experience before they're ready to jump in.
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
Lock out by skill can be a good carrot mechanic. You enter the red dragons lair and get trashed, then you work on you play skills and character skills, try again and eventually succeed.
One thing to note still. Character skills/builds are just another form of levels, both are progress mechanics and I find neither one artificial. The other is play skill which has always been a part of any mmorpg, levelbased or otherwise. However, the thing is a rpg is not suited well for pure player skill based mechanics, it needs its.. What you refer to as "artificial" chracter progression (skills/levels/whatever), infact that is the core of mmoRPG.
The core of an RPG is progression and story. Leveling isn't really a core, it's just been so overused we've come to expect it. There are RPGs that are fairly level independant, indeed some of the best don't have levels. But the tradeoff is as such:
Leveling allows players to feel powerful with minimal effort. You just need to play a lot to grind up the exp. Everyone likes to feel powerful, especially in an RPG. Games with more horizontal progression tend to leave more of the responsibility on the player to figure things out. You can't simply just grind your way through the game, at some point you need to figure out how to proceed. And for a lot of people, this can be off-putting. Because no one wants to feel stupid while playing a game, or that they themselves aren't good enough. They want to be the hero of the story, they want to feel strong / powerful.
Leveling gives people that feeling for basically nothing. Horizontal progression works, but that type of feeling is more earned rather than given.
No one can feel strong and powerful, when everyone is strong and powerful - Players need to be able to distance and compare themselves from others. Lock out is one way to do this, and it can come in many forms, for example by level/skill mechanics, progression, keying, trials, questlines, achievements, level, etc. Inequality is a good thing because it makes players have something to look forward to and to strive for, and lock out is one way to do this.
I am not particularly fond of level mechanics, all I say is skill point mechanics is fundamentally the same. Lock out by level is a really simple mechanic, and only one of many ways to do it, but as I said it is outdated to lock out by level, however lock or gating as a feature is very much needed.
The problem with level scaling is the same issue Oblivion had with it. You can run around with a level 1 and kill the hardest things in the game. Then you can come back with a level 10 and have issues with rats. Scaling has never really implemented to a satisfying effect.
so do you suggest that because it hasnt been implemented to a satisfying effect devs should abandon it? If they do, they will never improve the scaling system. If they keep working on it then it will get to a very satisfying point.
That is the lamest way to make a buck and they know it and i hope MOST gamer's know it.
Sadly i think my fave game FFXI was the first to do this and it really angered not only me but a LOT of gamer's.FFXI is a very old game and a very hard game or it was,so to entice NEW players and try to sell them level 75 content was an IMPOSSIBLE chore.So what they did is change the game so that players could level super fast,what took years of work and effort was dumbed down to mere days and that was really sad.
Then the stupidity really sinks in when a NEW class is introduced to games.Since the INSTANT leveling experience makes levels so fast,the experience and enjoyment of playing the character is totally lost or done in a matter of days,how fun is that ../not.
Scaling was an idea SOE started with EQ2 at least i am sure of it.It looked great on paper but was a terrible idea.This of course was obvious as SOE abandoned that idea in the future.It completely removes the immersion of the game.Oh your group was able to beat said BOSS?Oh yes we scaled it to level 1 and killed in 20 seconds was real easy,we didn't even have a full party.
That kind of stuff makes me shutter at how lame a developer can be to totally ruin a game and it's assets for sake of a quick buck.What bothers me just as much is that even after such a lame move,players will continue to support said game because the usual,we already invested time in this game ,we don't want to throw it away.
The SMART gamer speaks with actions,leave the game send a message,empty servers and no money coming in sends a loud message.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Comments
They almost certainly have to do it in a manner that ensures all there can fight what's there. There would be no other point, so mob scaling wouldn't work, unless they phased every range of player. Yet that sounds like a nightmare in coding and on performance. The easiest way is to scale player power, it ensures everyone can fight and it's less tracking or spawning/phasing for the game to pull off. It's the most efficient way
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I'm more inclined to see it as they're doing it to appease yet again another "it's not like TES, because" complaint. Which from launch until now has seemed to be their biggest priority. With it moving to the widest TES market; consoles, it makes sense.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
..behind us untill the day where the demand for meaningful experiences and feeling of accomplishment rises again. Progressing a char and actually being unable to do something until your char is stronger or has earned the right is much underappreciated these days. Flat systems are the exact reason mmorpg are dull and meaningless, pretty timezinks with no soul because nothing you do has true meaning. But nothing beat the feeling of finally having progressed enough to do something you have been looking forward to..just think about memorable moments in gaming and you will probably agree.
Well anyways, lock out by level alone may be a thing of the past, but that is mostly becauses levels are being used in a wrong way in todays mmorpg, and therefore that mechanic is getting outdated. Lockouts at first thought sound like a bad idea, but a dev who show some balls will be repaid simply because players will stay and enjoy a meaningfull game experience (if other parts of the game are high quality).The trick with locked content is to show the carrot to the players..the players must know the content is in the horizon so anticipation and finally true feeling of acomplishment follows - The carrot can be shown in many ways, players showing off or selling drops from locked out content, lore, questing, community, and much more.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Lock out by skill. For me, meaningful progression comes from building my character and my play style through skills(builds)and skill. This is what ESO does best for me. No one runs my build. It's my play style that I've developed. It would probably be garbage to someone else because they don't play like me.
Progessing my character is everything in a mmorpg to me, but I hate levels and leveling. The magic number by my character frame shouldn't be dictating how strong I am. It's artificial imho. At no point is it ok to me.
Levels should not exist in rpg. There are better ways to give players progression, for example : players will raise their stats with experience and doing stuff that contribute to a unique stats and etc. Level system is a very old system that should be put in a book named "memory of long lost rpg system".
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
I am in the same boat. Level and level cap just means my progression is being artificially capped.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
You think aoeing a mobs of level 1's feels like progress? Do you think its fun for all the other players in that zone who see mobs wiped out? do you think its fun for your low level friend you joined to help? There is no point in a mob/zone even being there if you can 1 shot it - that's exactly what you get in games that don't scale - 90% of the content is dead.
This is the difference between games where players are trained to think power is everything against a game that maintains the playability and integrity of a virtual world for all.
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
Lock out by skill can be a good carrot mechanic. You enter the red dragons lair and get trashed, then you work on you play skills and character skills, try again and eventually succeed.
One thing to note still. Character skills/builds are just another form of levels, both are progress mechanics and I find neither one artificial. The other is play skill which has always been a part of any mmorpg, levelbased or otherwise. However, the thing is a rpg is not suited well for pure player skill based mechanics, it needs its.. What you refer to as "artificial" chracter progression (skills/levels/whatever), infact that is the core of mmoRPG.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
To be honest, removing levels is just another way of dumbing down a game.
Levels are required (much like attributes, which were omitted from the game) to provide the character progression more depth & something to look forward to as a player.
Gating content is good, because it gives the world a sense of danger & gives you as a player something to look forward to.
How many times did you wander to the wrong cave in Morrowind, only to be chased by a high level monster? That was fun, it made you think "hey, I'm coming back & I'll kick your ass", instead of "zzz... just another faceroll dungeon".
In fact, I would've liked to see much more of it in ESO (e.g. areas of higher level enemies in lower level zones & quests sending you there later on, or raids located in say, Stormhaven etc).
Removing levels removes just another layer of depth from the game, making it feel more like a hack&slash action game than a RPG.
Was nothing learned from Oblivion & Skyrim?
Just my thoughts.
Very interesting stuff.
I really wish they had learned this sooner (i.e. pre-launch). The problem w/ vertical progression has always been in the diminishing returns. It's fun, people love it, but they enjoy it a little bit less w/ each game. Not to mention the issues with powercreep, and invalidating good content.
What's ironic is that the single player ES games already knew this. Hopefully the new updates will keep making the game better. At the very least VR is going away.
The core of an RPG is progression and story. Leveling isn't really a core, it's just been so overused we've come to expect it. There are RPGs that are fairly level independant, indeed some of the best don't have levels. But the tradeoff is as such:
Leveling allows players to feel powerful with minimal effort. You just need to play a lot to grind up the exp. Everyone likes to feel powerful, especially in an RPG. Games with more horizontal progression tend to leave more of the responsibility on the player to figure things out. You can't simply just grind your way through the game, at some point you need to figure out how to proceed. And for a lot of people, this can be off-putting. Because no one wants to feel stupid while playing a game, or that they themselves aren't good enough. They want to be the hero of the story, they want to feel strong / powerful.
Leveling gives people that feeling for basically nothing. Horizontal progression works, but that type of feeling is more earned rather than given.
Level scale ... in skyrim
In an MMO levels for open world are almost mandatory. Simply because too many people come in contact with mobs all the time. So they have to have some standardized system to make mobs fairly 'predictable' in strength(s). They also level things in a gam e where people can have choices is because depending on how people focus any points, strengths, and weaknesses, so mobs might actually be impossible (even early or mod game) for some people (with totally random "builds" to beat) Which IMO isnt a bad thing. Like the cartoon shows, if someone is putting points into cooking or crafting or non fighting skills then NPCs who are supposedly skilled in one thing (killing you) should be more difficult. They also want to make NPCs as vanilla as possible. Giving them all the skills that players have would more than likely be too expensive. Even a pool of all the skills players have and let them have a random option for any of them in a given fight. That would actually make NPCs nearly as unpredictable and PvP players. But like I said too expensive probably.
So there are options as well as restrictions. Even labeling NPCs in this game shouldnt have been or be done. So when you come up on those three mobs standing around a fire, knowing one is a healer, one is a tanky type and one is an assassin or a sorcerer type makes it pretty easy to know what to do. If all you saw was armor type (and in a 'perfect' world even that wouldnt matter) you would have to guess if one was a healer or if he were just a pyromancer (or as described above have the option to use all those sorcerer skills). Having an option to not see them personally doesnt works especially ones mobs patterns become predictable because then you just know and it doesnt matter if oyu were blindfolded you knew what the options (and skills) each NPC group has.
Maybe a little off topic but goes to the whole point of why MMOs have 'levels". Its simply the cheapest and easiest way to put mobs into the world and give them a relative strength and weakness calculator.
The mmo Defiance scales your level to the open world event or dungeon you are participating in, seems to work in that most of the time I didnt even notice it was happening, I just went in and started blasting all of the mutants, alien robots, and giant bug-things I could see
Yes. VRs going away is essentially the same as saying that levels 51-63 are going away because "rank" was just another name for level as things worked out and after they kept adding more and more ranks.
But advancement and progression isn't going away. That continues with the Champion Point system that is replacing VRs, as well as continuing to skill-up and train skill lines you haven't maxed yet.
Some people in this thread and other threads I've read say that skills and gear are essentially the same as levels. And they're only half wrong and only because they're using the wrong word: it's not "levels" it's progression and advancement. And that is an integral part of playing an RPG and isn't going away.
As an aside... I do wonder however how people will look for groups for hard content after the VR ranks are gone. Maybe something like "CP 800 healer LF Dragonstar"
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Tastes are different. I don't like scaling and I don't kill low level mobs that people are after. There are other ways than scaling to make people return to lower level zones - for example raid areas, dynamic events etc. Or they can remove all levels - from players and from mobs as well. 100% horizontal progression can be fun if implemented well enough. I didn't like how they did it in GW2 though - just lowering player level according to the particular zone.
They should investigate this game for level scaling. I never notice the game being too easy.
http://darksouls.wikidot.com/new-game-plus
id love to have something like that in mmorpgs, but Dark Souls difficulty is based on excelent AI behavior and combat mechanics while mmorpg difficulty (unfortunately) is based solely on statistics (the higher your stats the lower damage you take) regardless of level.
The problem with level scaling is the same issue Oblivion had with it. You can run around with a level 1 and kill the hardest things in the game. Then you can come back with a level 10 and have issues with rats. Scaling has never really implemented to a satisfying effect.
Why can't we just tell the kiddo's.. "Listen, son, you're in level 1 starter gear with one spell. You actually need to go learn some stuff before you go fight that dragon or he's gunna eat you".
It's not bad. It's telling people they need more experience before they're ready to jump in.
No one can feel strong and powerful, when everyone is strong and powerful - Players need to be able to distance and compare themselves from others. Lock out is one way to do this, and it can come in many forms, for example by level/skill mechanics, progression, keying, trials, questlines, achievements, level, etc. Inequality is a good thing because it makes players have something to look forward to and to strive for, and lock out is one way to do this.
I am not particularly fond of level mechanics, all I say is skill point mechanics is fundamentally the same. Lock out by level is a really simple mechanic, and only one of many ways to do it, but as I said it is outdated to lock out by level, however lock or gating as a feature is very much needed.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
so do you suggest that because it hasnt been implemented to a satisfying effect devs should abandon it? If they do, they will never improve the scaling system. If they keep working on it then it will get to a very satisfying point.
That is the lamest way to make a buck and they know it and i hope MOST gamer's know it.
Sadly i think my fave game FFXI was the first to do this and it really angered not only me but a LOT of gamer's.FFXI is a very old game and a very hard game or it was,so to entice NEW players and try to sell them level 75 content was an IMPOSSIBLE chore.So what they did is change the game so that players could level super fast,what took years of work and effort was dumbed down to mere days and that was really sad.
Then the stupidity really sinks in when a NEW class is introduced to games.Since the INSTANT leveling experience makes levels so fast,the experience and enjoyment of playing the character is totally lost or done in a matter of days,how fun is that ../not.
Scaling was an idea SOE started with EQ2 at least i am sure of it.It looked great on paper but was a terrible idea.This of course was obvious as SOE abandoned that idea in the future.It completely removes the immersion of the game.Oh your group was able to beat said BOSS?Oh yes we scaled it to level 1 and killed in 20 seconds was real easy,we didn't even have a full party.
That kind of stuff makes me shutter at how lame a developer can be to totally ruin a game and it's assets for sake of a quick buck.What bothers me just as much is that even after such a lame move,players will continue to support said game because the usual,we already invested time in this game ,we don't want to throw it away.
The SMART gamer speaks with actions,leave the game send a message,empty servers and no money coming in sends a loud message.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.