I've never had much love for leveling up in computer games, there is no equivalent in real life so it's never made much sense to me.
Really? Everything that you have learned in life has been leveling... you were a baby, then a toddler, then a teenager, then a young adult, then an elder... you learned to walk, to talk, to divide by zero... you played sports, played tournaments... you learned to mountain climb, then you climbed mountain x, then mountain y, then mountain z... you go to the gym an lift weights, then increase said weight, then again...
I don't see how you can't see the correlation. Life is about leveling... ever heard of birthdays? Anniversaries? The list is endless... and it all has to do with leveling.
Learning =/= Leveling
Of course my whole life has been about learning and improving myself, getting better (hopefully) at everything I do. But there are no levels in my life. I didn't go to school, hit "level 18" and suddenly unlocked a new ability to comprehend advanced maths.
Same with birthdays. They aren't levels, they are celebrations of not being dead. Nothing gets unlocked on my birthday, nothing improves, I don't learn anything new just because its my birthday.
This conversation is about levels and their purpose. There are no levels in life and the closest correlations mentioned in this thread (birthdays, martial arts belts, priesthood) bear no relation to levels either - they are awards for doing things (not dying, being good at martial arts, being gullible).
In fact, real life is the anti-thesis of levels. Life is a classless system with infinite possibilities and no cap beyond physical limitations. Everything is worked for and earned, rather than unlocked at arbitrary points in time. We attempt to impose levels and unlocks (e.g. driving license at 17, drinking at 18, pension at 65) but you can still gain those skills / experience / money outside of the law.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
Don't they?
H.S. Diploma required. B.A. required. Master's required. Ph.D. required. List of Certs required. Ten years previous experience required. References.
Ok, you're beyond the Gatekeeper, now you just need to pass a series of interviews...
You mentioned Level 18. The level at which you can vote and become a target overseas. And Level 21, the level at which you can drink legally.
Haven't you ever had to deal with H.R. at all? Isn't schooling typically endured to graduate one "level" after another, until a job seeker reaches "level" to get a toe in the door for the job they want?
If they don't require a certain minimum level of competence to nail the job, I'm all set for Director of the Large Hadron Collider! Pretty good paycheck, too.
I might start a black hole the eats the world, but the public will understand.
I can pass level by use relationship and equipment . Even in real-life , level don't mean hard wall , many ways to pass them. And when you compare to real-life , "level" is soft wall and multiple ways to develop .
Our children now did their first in 12-15 (or even lower) though level requirement for it is 16-18 , kids level lower than 10 can finish university
Even in game that don't have level like FPS we also level up our playing skills .
All of them are soft level wall that have multiple way to get pass .
Problem here ? the wall is too hard , make it soft . Don't build a wall , draw a line .
What exactly were Levels meant to accomplish in this genre?
Mimicing D&D, a hallmark to the origins of RP. One of those ongoing assumptions that persists because we're used to it.
An easy shorthand progress bar for "progression." And we're used to watching progress bars, because we're used to computers.
Ever notice how many alternative models have been conceived and implemented over the decades, and how few have survived?
Still, it's good to tinker with the standards and reevaluate your approach now and then.
Imagine a non-linearly constructed Time Travel RPG, and you might be on the way to being able to discard Levels. Or you might be on the way to creating a mess.
(People are linear, mostly. Imagine your progress bar from grade school through retirement, and you will note frequent "Dings" along the way. If RPGs have a true failing, from a 'realism' standpoint, it's 'immortal youth'.)
Is that more lack of viable options or tradition of how things are done? To me lots of people associate levels with RPG. This is developers and players. It doesn't matter if this tradition doesn't necessarily mesh with what MMORPG were initially designed to be virtual persistent worlds.
Developers like delivering the farm boy to demigod style narrative. Even in stories where you don't become a demigod your character does because levels just keep going. I can see the enjoyment of this type of gameplay of being rewarded with power and items at every step.
The problem levels that make huge and artifical power plateaus is that your world and player base is now divided up to feed that content. That translates to a problem for MMORPG is leveling has essentially become the only reason to play. It's a limited achievement ladder for a genre that was based on an on going advennture and community.
To be honest it's not that levels are the problem. It's the vast vertical progression systems that are the problem. Levels can mean anything. You don't have to have escalating stats and artificial power plateaus. Developers are just unimaginative.
What exactly were Levels meant to accomplish in this genre?
Mimicing D&D, a hallmark to the origins of RP. One of those ongoing assumptions that persists because we're used to it.
An easy shorthand progress bar for "progression." And we're used to watching progress bars, because we're used to computers.
Ever notice how many alternative models have been conceived and implemented over the decades, and how few have survived?
Still, it's good to tinker with the standards and reevaluate your approach now and then.
Imagine a non-linearly constructed Time Travel RPG, and you might be on the way to being able to discard Levels. Or you might be on the way to creating a mess.
(People are linear, mostly. Imagine your progress bar from grade school through retirement, and you will note frequent "Dings" along the way. If RPGs have a true failing, from a 'realism' standpoint, it's 'immortal youth'.)
Excellent post, @Antiquated. There are numerous conventions left over from D&D -- level, HPs, AC and the like. I wonder just how long a genre can survive without some fundamental rethinking of these conventions. After all, if the defining elements of a genre were defined in a nearly 45-year old game, how much has that genre really evolved?
The problem is that copying the existing ideas is easy, and being innovative is difficult. More so, innovation is risky, and where money is involved, businessmen are going to be cautious. I had a thread (a couple years ago -- please don't necro it) to try to rethink HPs. There have to be plenty of ways to abstract the health of a human body, but we're stuck with the D&D mechanism where the 'health' value and presentation are the same. Computers can do much better, providing more intricate representations of the human body modeling health in ways a roll of some dice simply cannot match.
There wasn't any good alternative offered in my thread, and I don't really know that a developer could build a new game without HPs. Many players simply don't want to let go of the simple systems they are familiar with from other games (probably more people are familiar with computer games than their PnP ancestors these days). The developers would require significant rethinking to come up with a system, then have to implement it and sell it to a possibly non-receptive audience, which would require a lot of marketing to make a 'different' idea/implementation palatable. All that would cost money. I do not believe than the money behind the games would ever tolerate such radical departure from the established 'norm'.
So, let me offer a premature Happy 50th (and 75th) Birthday to D&D. It seems as though we will still be playing the same systems you introduced in 1972 for a decade or more.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Levels are mindless crap,brought about like many other dumb ideas over the years.I am always looking around and thinking WTF,i try to make sense of other people and their thoughts and i always come away thinking no common sense.Well sometimes some surprise me and brings about a smile.
I think levels just make it EASY for developers,it allows them to have an organized system and where to put gear and spells/abilities within the game system.Sort of like having Shelves,you have all your A books on shelf A and B books on shelf B etc etc.Each shelf is like a sub program,organized easier to build the game that way.Does it make sense to have levels,nope not the way games are using them,maybe someone will figure it out for a GOOD reason and not just to cut more corners on game design. A perfect example >>GW2 All their BS crap and speeches about what they are doing fro the genre had ONLY ONE agenda,to save cost of development and no other reason.BDO another game,so much is left out of THE GAME,seems like a shallow focus towards simple end game pvp.People have been definitely fooled by the game,it is not doing very much at all,MOST of it is automated systems.Press T,Press WASD,Press "," ,press A ,Press Space,really sad that is what gaming has come down to.Oh and if you do all of that really well,we reward you with >>>wait for it..............LEVELS ...YAY !!!.../clap /clap ummm yeah exciting.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
it comes from a gaming concept that is literally about 40 years old now. 'levels' also takes away alot from the advantages of a good 'classless' system in my personal view
What game has a good classless system and isn't raising skills just like leveling?
Minecraft
Ah thats the problem...I dont consider legos a MMO
A single number is the simplest way to measure progression.
Levels provide such an extremely functional measure of progression in these games that many players think the game has somehow ended when you reach max level, and that there's no more journey.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Levels are mindless crap,brought about like many other dumb ideas over the years.I am always looking around and thinking WTF,i try to make sense of other people and their thoughts and i always come away thinking no common sense.Well sometimes some surprise me and brings about a smile.
I think levels just make it EASY for developers,
I don't think so , at lest not in MMORPG . Hard Level lock cause many problem in MMORPG design , majorly Level (power) gap . Then economy problem rise when they raise the reward when raise more level .
IMO They use "level" cause they can't think any better than that , they can't image how to run an MMORPG so they "let make singleplayer game with persistent world multiplayer"
it comes from a gaming concept that is literally about 40 years old now. 'levels' also takes away alot from the advantages of a good 'classless' system in my personal view
What game has a good classless system and isn't raising skills just like leveling?
Minecraft
Ah thats the problem...I dont consider legos a MMO
in all fairness and the entire zenimax and ubisoft wanting to re-define everything because it doesnt matter aside for the moment....
why would you say that? I cant say I agree. what if it was an RPG and had legos...still no good?
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
A single number is the simplest way to measure progression.
Levels provide such an extremely functional measure of progression in these games that many players think the game has somehow ended when you reach max level, and that there's no more journey.
Because the journey does end. You marginalized leveling then have a repetituous end game that appeals to a minority. The whole genre is based on progression that is finite and/or grind.. And it's why subscriptions are a thing of the past. The allure of playing around doesn't mean as much when it's sabotaged by single player progression.
Because the journey does end. You marginalized leveling then have a repetituous end game that appeals to a minority. The whole genre is based on progression that is finite and/or grind.. And it's why subscriptions are a thing of the past. The allure of playing around doesn't mean as much when it's sabotaged by single player progression.
Journey is playing the game.
A highway that takes you to a national park has mile-markers (levels) but when you reach the national park they stop. Meanwhile the trail continues through the woods and you can choose to hike it if you want.
Similarly, at endgame in a MMORPG there's still a lot left to do to actually max out your character's progression, so there's a lot of journey left.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I wouldn't agree that doing the same dungeon over and over again for better loot is character progression. Nor is doing PvP over and over again for loot. The progression is for leveling. Getting equipment is just and added bonus, but nothing compared to leveling up and getting new abilities to try out.
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
When you apply for a job, they ask you about years of experience. You and I call that XP. Which is what is used in games to gain levels.
Except that their "years of experience" mean exactly jack and squat. I've known System Administrators who've been doing the job for 20 years who don't know shit compared to some kid that graduated MIT yesterday... that's skill.
To take a relevant position to these forums: Both Mark Jacobs and Derek Smart have years of experience in creating video games. Now, having seen what they are both capable of producing, do you still think that experience trumps skill?
Experience does have the ability to confer wisdom if the receiver of the experience understands what they are experiencing, but not necessarily skill.
I will take a skill based system over an antiquated and elementary school based single number system any day
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
Don't they?
H.S. Diploma required. B.A. required. Master's required. Ph.D. required. List of Certs required. Ten years previous experience required. References.
There are three people working for my company with none of these. Literally none. They came in on a referral, sat down with a software developer and proved their skill and ability. Skill... and ability. Not the level of their degrees.
You mentioned Level 18. The level at which you can vote and become a target overseas. And Level 21, the level at which you can drink legally.
I stated this in an entirely facetious and condescending manner. It's an arbitrary number that our society has assigned to certain ages. I've known 10 year olds that acted far more like adults than 45 year olds. Setting 18 as a bar is entirely for legal reasons, and not an indication of character progress.
Furthermore, I drank at home long before 21 because my parents weren't anti-alcohol nuts like the rest of this prudish country. It's not that you can't drink at age 21 because trying to equip a beer before age 21 will return a message "You are not old enough to touch this beer!", it's simply a standard. It's completely unrelated to "levels". Some people need to be kept away from alcohol their entire lives no matter the legal age.
Haven't you ever had to deal with H.R. at all? Isn't schooling typically endured to graduate one "level" after another, until a job seeker reaches "level" to get a toe in the door for the job they want?
Yet again, this is an arbitrary standard with literally thousands of exceptions.
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
If they don't require a certain minimum level of competence to nail the job, I'm all set for Director of the Large Hadron Collider! Pretty good paycheck, too.
I might start a black hole the eats the world, but the public will understand.
Albert Einstein kept a picture of Michael Faraday on his study. He considered Faraday, a man with no college education, to be one of the most preeminent scientists on earth and regarded the man with high praise.
So yes, you can work at the LHC with enough skill no matter what level of degree you've earned. You just gotta be smarter than the rest.
Hard cap. Raised. Raised again. Players expect it to always expand. Raised again.
Not easy. Just an easy shorthand way ( game simulations use a lot of those, like your HP and mana bars... ) to model 'progression.' Growth. Learning. Skills. And a variety of other concepts that can be lumped together under "the hero's journey, growing more badass."
Turns out it was simple enough to be easily grasped by non-gamers; which goes a long, long way toward explaining its conceptual longevity.
Personally, I've always found "hit points" to be a thornier problem, as a concept. Particularly right around "zero"--dead or unconscious or stunned or what? Permadeath, /general "hey can I get a rez", corpse run, massive death penalty mmoasochism, no death penalty ezmode?
Time to re-examine "hit points" and the roles they play in our mmorpgs.
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
When you apply for a job, they ask you about years of experience. You and I call that XP. Which is what is used in games to gain levels.
Except that their "years of experience" mean exactly jack and squat. I've known System Administrators who've been doing the job for 20 years who don't know shit compared to some kid that graduated MIT yesterday... that's skill.
are you trying to say that XP in games should be removed because the word 'experience' is basically a bunch of B.S. to you?
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Because the journey does end. You marginalized leveling then have a repetituous end game that appeals to a minority. The whole genre is based on progression that is finite and/or grind.. And it's why subscriptions are a thing of the past. The allure of playing around doesn't mean as much when it's sabotaged by single player progression.
Journey is playing the game.
A highway that takes you to a national park has mile-markers (levels) but when you reach the national park they stop. Meanwhile the trail continues through the woods and you can choose to hike it if you want.
Similarly, at endgame in a MMORPG there's still a lot left to do to actually max out your character's progression, so there's a lot of journey left.
That's commonly called gear level.
All it is, is stat progression. That's not a lot.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
When you apply for a job, they ask you about years of experience. You and I call that XP. Which is what is used in games to gain levels.
Except that their "years of experience" mean exactly jack and squat. I've known System Administrators who've been doing the job for 20 years who don't know shit compared to some kid that graduated MIT yesterday... that's skill.
are you trying to say that XP in games should be removed because the word 'experience' is basically a bunch of B.S. to you?
This isn't even a discussion about experience bars in games at all... uhhh, ok?
In fact, I'm saying that overall, big number levels, over players head saying "This character is level 33!" should be removed. I'm saying that levels are generic, archaic and elementary conventions in our games. I'm saying that games should instead have hundreds of skills and that players should raise their skills through training and use.
Instead, we have everything about a character suddenly raise a few digits just because they killed a few bears for a quest, turned them in and dinged their next level. It's absurd.
When you apply for a job, they don't ask you what level you are in system administration.
When you apply for a job, they ask you about years of experience. You and I call that XP. Which is what is used in games to gain levels.
Except that their "years of experience" mean exactly jack and squat. I've known System Administrators who've been doing the job for 20 years who don't know shit compared to some kid that graduated MIT yesterday... that's skill.
are you trying to say that XP in games should be removed because the word 'experience' is basically a bunch of B.S. to you?
This isn't even a discussion about experience bars in games at all... uhhh, ok?
In fact, I'm saying that overall, big number levels, over players head saying "This character is level 33!" should be removed. I'm saying that levels are generic, archaic and elementary conventions in our games. I'm saying that games should instead have hundreds of skills and that players should raise their skills through training and use.
Instead, we have everything about a character suddenly raise a few digits just because they killed a few bears for a quest, turned them in and dinged their next level. It's absurd.
TOTALLY agree..
sorry i just jumped into a conversation without full context but yeah agreed 10000%
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Trying to remember that "skill progression" rpg that was so big about the same time as D&Ds birth. Similar arguments... And similar non�-conclusions, since this is largely a matter of personal preference.
Rolemaster? Collapsed under the enormous weight of its own critical tables and chart lookups (see Vol 3 page 217 chart XZ3.
Maybe something earlier. Hmm, I know there was another big one. Palladium? Traveller?
Trying to remember that "skill progression" rpg that was so big about the same time as D&Ds birth. Similar arguments... And similar non�-conclusions, since this is largely a matter of personal preference.
Rolemaster? Collapsed under the enormous weight of its own critical tables and chart lookups (see Vol 3 page 217 chart XZ3.
Maybe something earlier. Hmm, I know there was another big one. Palladium? Traveller?
love Traveler!
So I think I can help explain why D&D model did well and the other didnt.
In the town I lived in I got D&D from the store, I played it, we loved it and kept on playing. we had no idea a skill based game even existed until about 20 years later.
The main reason skill based pen and paper didnt take off is because many people didnt know it existed. same reason people think The Eagles is the best band ever.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
And thaaaaat depends entirely on the game. In some systems, stat progression mattered enormously.
What was our gear level in CoH? Oh, right, there wasn't any such thing; at least not originally.
So-so. Even when stat progression matters alot, it's still only one form of progression and does not offer anything "new" to experience for the progression obtained. Just a lot of verticality to represent power.
CoH was much more loose in that regard for not having gear, but they did have enhancements that you could progress in and farm for. Those enhancements were intentionally relatively narrow in their nature because the goal wasn't vast vertical progression in that game.
Another contrast would be the likes of the original Guild Wars. It had some gear and stat progression, but a good chunk of continued progress was skill hunting. Traveling around the game world and obtaining new abilities to utilize. Even GW2 has that to some degree, with the "max level" being hit way sooner than it takes for you to unlock all the available powers and build options. The horizontal (skill) progression is greater than the vertical (stat).
But point here was that once you are whittled down to just stat progression, there isn't a whole lot to that. It's just chasing bigger numbers. There is no real journey left or otherwise, it's been narrowed down to a treadmill of a single value that does not reflect upon the game in any way aside from bigger numbers.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
This isn't even a discussion about experience bars in games at all... uhhh, ok?
In fact, I'm saying that overall, big number levels, over players head saying "This character is level 33!" should be removed. I'm saying that levels are generic, archaic and elementary conventions in our games. I'm saying that games should instead have hundreds of skills and that players should raise their skills through training and use.
Instead, we have everything about a character suddenly raise a few digits just because they killed a few bears for a quest, turned them in and dinged their next level. It's absurd.
Skill systems work okay for PVE although they tend to introduce a problem with being overpowered. It's simply a matter of balance, that's why class systems (level based) are usually the go to option. It is simply easier to balance content toward a smaller variable. The biggest detriment to it in PVP is losing the players who view it as "fair" competition. They also believe a game "should" be made a certain way. Which is the polar opposite of what you see as the "should" be option (skill based). There's no real balance in a skill based PVP system. In the end it becomes a question of which market, if any, you want to sacrifice.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Of course my whole life has been about learning and improving myself, getting better (hopefully) at everything I do. But there are no levels in my life. I didn't go to school, hit "level 18" and suddenly unlocked a new ability to comprehend advanced maths.
Same with birthdays. They aren't levels, they are celebrations of not being dead. Nothing gets unlocked on my birthday, nothing improves, I don't learn anything new just because its my birthday.
This conversation is about levels and their purpose. There are no levels in life and the closest correlations mentioned in this thread (birthdays, martial arts belts, priesthood) bear no relation to levels either - they are awards for doing things (not dying, being good at martial arts, being gullible).
In fact, real life is the anti-thesis of levels. Life is a classless system with infinite possibilities and no cap beyond physical limitations. Everything is worked for and earned, rather than unlocked at arbitrary points in time. We attempt to impose levels and unlocks (e.g. driving license at 17, drinking at 18, pension at 65) but you can still gain those skills / experience / money outside of the law.
H.S. Diploma required. B.A. required. Master's required. Ph.D. required. List of Certs required. Ten years previous experience required. References.
Ok, you're beyond the Gatekeeper, now you just need to pass a series of interviews...
You mentioned Level 18. The level at which you can vote and become a target overseas. And Level 21, the level at which you can drink legally.
Haven't you ever had to deal with H.R. at all? Isn't schooling typically endured to graduate one "level" after another, until a job seeker reaches "level" to get a toe in the door for the job they want?
If they don't require a certain minimum level of competence to nail the job, I'm all set for Director of the Large Hadron Collider! Pretty good paycheck, too.
I might start a black hole the eats the world, but the public will understand.
I can pass level by use relationship and equipment . Even in real-life , level don't mean hard wall , many ways to pass them.
And when you compare to real-life , "level" is soft wall and multiple ways to develop .
Our children now did their first in 12-15 (or even lower) though level requirement for it is 16-18 , kids level lower than 10 can finish university
Even in game that don't have level like FPS we also level up our playing skills .
All of them are soft level wall that have multiple way to get pass .
Problem here ?
the wall is too hard , make it soft . Don't build a wall , draw a line .
Developers like delivering the farm boy to demigod style narrative. Even in stories where you don't become a demigod your character does because levels just keep going. I can see the enjoyment of this type of gameplay of being rewarded with power and items at every step.
The problem levels that make huge and artifical power plateaus is that your world and player base is now divided up to feed that content. That translates to a problem for MMORPG is leveling has essentially become the only reason to play. It's a limited achievement ladder for a genre that was based on an on going advennture and community.
To be honest it's not that levels are the problem. It's the vast vertical progression systems that are the problem. Levels can mean anything. You don't have to have escalating stats and artificial power plateaus. Developers are just unimaginative.
The problem is that copying the existing ideas is easy, and being innovative is difficult. More so, innovation is risky, and where money is involved, businessmen are going to be cautious. I had a thread (a couple years ago -- please don't necro it) to try to rethink HPs. There have to be plenty of ways to abstract the health of a human body, but we're stuck with the D&D mechanism where the 'health' value and presentation are the same. Computers can do much better, providing more intricate representations of the human body modeling health in ways a roll of some dice simply cannot match.
There wasn't any good alternative offered in my thread, and I don't really know that a developer could build a new game without HPs. Many players simply don't want to let go of the simple systems they are familiar with from other games (probably more people are familiar with computer games than their PnP ancestors these days). The developers would require significant rethinking to come up with a system, then have to implement it and sell it to a possibly non-receptive audience, which would require a lot of marketing to make a 'different' idea/implementation palatable. All that would cost money. I do not believe than the money behind the games would ever tolerate such radical departure from the established 'norm'.
So, let me offer a premature Happy 50th (and 75th) Birthday to D&D. It seems as though we will still be playing the same systems you introduced in 1972 for a decade or more.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I think levels just make it EASY for developers,it allows them to have an organized system and where to put gear and spells/abilities within the game system.Sort of like having Shelves,you have all your A books on shelf A and B books on shelf B etc etc.Each shelf is like a sub program,organized easier to build the game that way.Does it make sense to have levels,nope not the way games are using them,maybe someone will figure it out for a GOOD reason and not just to cut more corners on game design.
A perfect example >>GW2
All their BS crap and speeches about what they are doing fro the genre had ONLY ONE agenda,to save cost of development and no other reason.BDO another game,so much is left out of THE GAME,seems like a shallow focus towards simple end game pvp.People have been definitely fooled by the game,it is not doing very much at all,MOST of it is automated systems.Press T,Press WASD,Press "," ,press A ,Press Space,really sad that is what gaming has come down to.Oh and if you do all of that really well,we reward you with >>>wait for it..............LEVELS ...YAY !!!.../clap /clap ummm yeah exciting.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Levels provide such an extremely functional measure of progression in these games that many players think the game has somehow ended when you reach max level, and that there's no more journey.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Hard Level lock cause many problem in MMORPG design , majorly Level (power) gap .
Then economy problem rise when they raise the reward when raise more level .
IMO They use "level" cause they can't think any better than that , they can't image how to run an MMORPG so they "let make singleplayer game with persistent world multiplayer"
why would you say that? I cant say I agree.
what if it was an RPG and had legos...still no good?
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
A highway that takes you to a national park has mile-markers (levels) but when you reach the national park they stop. Meanwhile the trail continues through the woods and you can choose to hike it if you want.
Similarly, at endgame in a MMORPG there's still a lot left to do to actually max out your character's progression, so there's a lot of journey left.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
To take a relevant position to these forums: Both Mark Jacobs and Derek Smart have years of experience in creating video games. Now, having seen what they are both capable of producing, do you still think that experience trumps skill?
Experience does have the ability to confer wisdom if the receiver of the experience understands what they are experiencing, but not necessarily skill.
I will take a skill based system over an antiquated and elementary school based single number system any day
There are three people working for my company with none of these. Literally none. They came in on a referral, sat down with a software developer and proved their skill and ability. Skill... and ability. Not the level of their degrees.
I stated this in an entirely facetious and condescending manner. It's an arbitrary number that our society has assigned to certain ages. I've known 10 year olds that acted far more like adults than 45 year olds. Setting 18 as a bar is entirely for legal reasons, and not an indication of character progress.
Furthermore, I drank at home long before 21 because my parents weren't anti-alcohol nuts like the rest of this prudish country. It's not that you can't drink at age 21 because trying to equip a beer before age 21 will return a message "You are not old enough to touch this beer!", it's simply a standard. It's completely unrelated to "levels". Some people need to be kept away from alcohol their entire lives no matter the legal age.
Yet again, this is an arbitrary standard with literally thousands of exceptions.
Albert Einstein kept a picture of Michael Faraday on his study. He considered Faraday, a man with no college education, to be one of the most preeminent scientists on earth and regarded the man with high praise.
So yes, you can work at the LHC with enough skill no matter what level of degree you've earned. You just gotta be smarter than the rest.
Hard cap. Raised. Raised again. Players expect it to always expand. Raised again.
Not easy. Just an easy shorthand way ( game simulations use a lot of those, like your HP and mana bars... ) to model 'progression.' Growth. Learning. Skills. And a variety of other concepts that can be lumped together under "the hero's journey, growing more badass."
Turns out it was simple enough to be easily grasped by non-gamers; which goes a long, long way toward explaining its conceptual longevity.
Personally, I've always found "hit points" to be a thornier problem, as a concept. Particularly right around "zero"--dead or unconscious or stunned or what? Permadeath, /general "hey can I get a rez", corpse run, massive death penalty mmoasochism, no death penalty ezmode?
Time to re-examine "hit points" and the roles they play in our mmorpgs.
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All it is, is stat progression. That's not a lot.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
What was our gear level in CoH? Oh, right, there wasn't any such thing; at least not originally.
In fact, I'm saying that overall, big number levels, over players head saying "This character is level 33!" should be removed. I'm saying that levels are generic, archaic and elementary conventions in our games. I'm saying that games should instead have hundreds of skills and that players should raise their skills through training and use.
Instead, we have everything about a character suddenly raise a few digits just because they killed a few bears for a quest, turned them in and dinged their next level. It's absurd.
sorry i just jumped into a conversation without full context but yeah agreed 10000%
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Rolemaster? Collapsed under the enormous weight of its own critical tables and chart lookups (see Vol 3 page 217 chart XZ3.
Maybe something earlier. Hmm, I know there was another big one. Palladium? Traveller?
So I think I can help explain why D&D model did well and the other didnt.
In the town I lived in I got D&D from the store, I played it, we loved it and kept on playing. we had no idea a skill based game even existed until about 20 years later.
The main reason skill based pen and paper didnt take off is because many people didnt know it existed. same reason people think The Eagles is the best band ever.
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CoH was much more loose in that regard for not having gear, but they did have enhancements that you could progress in and farm for. Those enhancements were intentionally relatively narrow in their nature because the goal wasn't vast vertical progression in that game.
Another contrast would be the likes of the original Guild Wars. It had some gear and stat progression, but a good chunk of continued progress was skill hunting. Traveling around the game world and obtaining new abilities to utilize. Even GW2 has that to some degree, with the "max level" being hit way sooner than it takes for you to unlock all the available powers and build options. The horizontal (skill) progression is greater than the vertical (stat).
But point here was that once you are whittled down to just stat progression, there isn't a whole lot to that. It's just chasing bigger numbers. There is no real journey left or otherwise, it's been narrowed down to a treadmill of a single value that does not reflect upon the game in any way aside from bigger numbers.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson