2. Yes, it is strawman because you bring up something I am not talking about. How do you grind if there is little to grind? I never said anything about removing quest... just stupid task. Its about removing leveling which removes progression through questing and task.
And you're not explaining how being able to reuse the world and end game content isn't more variety than being stuck in just end game content after a short leveling experience?
If you reuse 30 areas unlimited times plus say 4 raids vs. being stuck in end game using the same 4 raids over and over after using the 30 world zones once. Anyone reasonable can do the math to see which one is more varied.
3. if you have no levels you can have more choice when you can pick and choose where and how you want to quest, explore, craft, hunt and raid. You also can balance the game towards exploration and other things since you're not grind out levels. You're doing activities you like. Its like you've obvious to this.
Nobody is saying out right eliminate quest. We're saying eliminate vast vertical progression tied to questing. This takes up the vast majority of your content but it's still short. It puts pressure on developers to make dumb task that don't even fit your character. After you level the vast majority of your time is repetitious of a few actives.
4. That's a fallacy because you can reuse the whole world and raids. You can also add new areas as well. The difference is you're not tied to the same few end game areas. You do know the point of this is that questing for narrative is better than questing just to progress. Many MMORPG quest are excuses for you to do something, be content and progress vs. advance the narrative or be fun.
5. We are talking about MMORPG. Usually single player RPG have achievement as just a portion of the game not the whole game like MMORPG. The quest drive a narrative.
1. It's not opinion. You may have heard of a species called "humans" who improve at things through a concept called "practice". What I'm describing is a fact of how humans work. It's not opinion.
2. You didn't bring up "how humans work" either, and yet when I use that example it's not a straw man because it has relevance to the thread at hand.
Bringing up asian MMORPGs was relevant to reinforce the unpopularity of grindy games, which is one of the set of factors I keep trying to get you to understand:
Grind isn't popular.
Mob-grinding is the least variety, and most grindy, and therefore unworkable.
Bad Quests are weak variety, and so a little better, but aren't really capitalizing on the advantage of having quests.
Quests are moderate variety, and can efficiently fill an entire long-form game.
Really Nice Quests are high variety, but aren't efficient enough to produce to fill a long-form game. (Also they're still quests. Everything you do in Halo or Assassin's Creed or whatever other major non-MMORPG is still inevitably a quest with one or more objectives.)
I've explained it many times: returning to old zones is less varied than exploring a new zone. That alone justifies the design, but it's also just tedious to have to travel a lot to reach other places and often doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective. It's certainly possible with instant fast travel and phasing tech, but it's just not important or valuable enough (given all the factors I've described) to do it.
3. You're wrong because this isn't tied to level. If there are no levels but there's sword skill and this mob requires 50 sword skill to fight successfully, then that progression has gated content in the exact same way as levels.
You're wrong to imply that complete freedom will automatically make for a better game. If you want total freedom, you shouldn't be playing RPGs, you should be playing virtual worlds or sandboxes like Minecraft. This genre, by its progression-focused nature, has always gated significant amounts of content from players so that they have a reason to improve their characters. It's great when the player has activity freedom (questing, exploring, crafting, killing, and harvesting all provide XP in WOW, for example, and if balanced a bit better you could have those things each be viable ways of advancing -- it'd be a bad idea to do so, but nothing prevents it. The reason it'd be a bad idea is that the skill required for those things isn't equal, and so players would opt for the easiest activity type, and become bored and quit the game; so it's quite similar to the grind problem where if mob-grind was a viable way to advance you would bore players and they'd quit.)
4. With new content, it's going to add variety to the game to explore a brand new zone than to repeat an old one. This isn't the biggest reason new zones are used (new zones are used because players want to explore new things) but it's one of them.
As for the other bit, bad quests are bad quests. I'm talking about good quest design like WOW's quality bar. With that, the narrative exists and typically relates to the broader story of the zone. If you choose to ignore it that's your choice, but it's there for those who are in the mood for it.
As for eliminating the vast vertical progression, again we're talking about RPGs. Progression is a core pillar. Don't like progression? Try a different genre.
5. The genre has stagnated because nobody aimed to produce higher-than-WOW-tier gameplay. Or if they aimed that high, they didn't achieve it. The 'relationship' you're trying to establish between vast vertical progression and the genre's stagnation is just nonsense. Players enjoy progression. They don't enjoy shallow combat or poorly-implemented quests with too much repetition.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I am working on a small MMO. Originally I didn't have levels and I didn't think they served any purpose in my game.
About a year ago, however, I added levels...
Why did I add them? One reason and one reason alone: My game is difficult to 'get' for a new player. Levels give the player feedback and a sense of achievement. My evil intent was to add a progression 'illusion' to help keep them 'entertained' until they understand the real point of the game.
I'm going to attempt to tune the progression speed of my 20 levels so that most players will reach level 20 *after* the big picture of the game becomes clear to them. I also integrated an incremental 'power' reward to each levelup so that the level isn't just a meaningless number.
- - -
Working full time on the Lost Raven MMO, a PVP sandbox for Space Pirates, Alien Hunters, Rock Jocks, and Fleet Commanders. The server is nearly feature-complete with client code to start soon.
Axehilt said: 1. It's not opinion. You may have heard of a species called "humans" who improve at things through a concept called "practice". What I'm describing is a fact of how humans work. It's not opinion.
2. You didn't bring up "how humans work" either, and yet when I use that example it's not a straw man because it has relevance to the thread at hand.
Bringing up asian MMORPGs was relevant to reinforce the unpopularity of grindy games, which is one of the set of factors I keep trying to get you to understand:
Grind isn't popular.
Mob-grinding is the least variety, and most grindy, and therefore unworkable.
Bad Quests are weak variety, and so a little better, but aren't really capitalizing on the advantage of having quests.
Quests are moderate variety, and can efficiently fill an entire long-form game.
Really Nice Quests are high variety, but aren't efficient enough to produce to fill a long-form game. (Also they're still quests. Everything you do in Halo or Assassin's Creed or whatever other major non-MMORPG is still inevitably a quest with one or more objectives.)
I've explained it many times: returning to old zones is less varied than exploring a new zone. That alone justifies the design, but it's also just tedious to have to travel a lot to reach other places and often doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective. It's certainly possible with instant fast travel and phasing tech, but it's just not important or valuable enough (given all the factors I've described) to do it.
3. You're wrong because this isn't tied to level. If there are no levels but there's sword skill and this mob requires 50 sword skill to fight successfully, then that progression has gated content in the exact same way as levels.
You're wrong to imply that complete freedom will automatically make for a better game. If you want total freedom, you shouldn't be playing RPGs, you should be playing virtual worlds or sandboxes like Minecraft. This genre, by its progression-focused nature, has always gated significant amounts of content from players so that they have a reason to improve their characters. It's great when the player has activity freedom (questing, exploring, crafting, killing, and harvesting all provide XP in WOW, for example, and if balanced a bit better you could have those things each be viable ways of advancing -- it'd be a bad idea to do so, but nothing prevents it. The reason it'd be a bad idea is that the skill required for those things isn't equal, and so players would opt for the easiest activity type, and become bored and quit the game; so it's quite similar to the grind problem where if mob-grind was a viable way to advance you would bore players and they'd quit.)
4. With new content, it's going to add variety to the game to explore a brand new zone than to repeat an old one. This isn't the biggest reason new zones are used (new zones are used because players want to explore new things) but it's one of them.
As for the other bit, bad quests are bad quests. I'm talking about good quest design like WOW's quality bar. With that, the narrative exists and typically relates to the broader story of the zone. If you choose to ignore it that's your choice, but it's there for those who are in the mood for it.
As for eliminating the vast vertical progression, again we're talking about RPGs. Progression is a core pillar. Don't like progression? Try a different genre.
5. The genre has stagnated because nobody aimed to produce higher-than-WOW-tier gameplay. Or if they aimed that high, they didn't achieve it. The 'relationship' you're trying to establish between vast vertical progression and the genre's stagnation is just nonsense. Players enjoy progression. They don't enjoy shallow combat or poorly-implemented quests with too much repetition.
1. My opinion is that players are shuffled to fast to be raid worthy. It's and opinion.
2. Who is talking about grinding? How are you grinding if the levelless design that I am talking about is not grinding. You're making a strawman argument.
With levels the end game returns you to the same small amount of raid zones. Without levels you return to the same small amount of raid zones plus you can return to the rest of the world. How can more be less?
3. There are more imaginative ways to level than what you're talking about. The same thing could be said that you should be playing single player game if you want single player questhubs only.
4. Horizontal progression exist and works. You can add new zones to any game even levelless. You seem to have a narrow view. Why does levelless imply grinding, lack of new content, lack of progression? That is why your arguments don't make sense.
5. No the genre stagnated because of repetition of the same formula and badly in most instances. Vast vertical progression does hurt the genre in my opinion. MMORPG are not single player games which is why things that work for them do not work for MMORPG.
I am not sure but i assume possibly to mimic aging but again not certain.
The concept as it has been delivered is a real bad one because it is driven by non realistic mechanics.Even the driving mechanics of quests is for the most part non realistic,basically just very simple code/triggers to support leveling points.I like to use "points" because by no means possible does it relate to the term experience.so in essence the term has been misused.
Where does it go moving forward?Likely the same old,nobody is changing the format used because it is EASY to design a game this way.However devs proving their lack of common sense are shooting themselves i nthe foot,nobody is going to create enough content to support levels in a realistic aging process.
Also devs are more worried about attention span of gamer's,than any game integrity.SO if they tried to remove levels and add in aging they likely lose all those hyper impatient ADDS players that think mmorpg=end game instance looting+pvp.SO if anything and already apparent,i expect to see even faster routes,easier routes,tons of hand holding to get players to end game pvp.
Not to simulate aging, that has been done from time to time and usually results in things like changes to strength, stamina and agility. If you go back to Dungeons and Dragons you will see formulas for character aging (by race) alongside class levels. If it was intended to be anything it was meant to indicate a gnostic hierarchy of knowledge, as you moved up in your class you were gaining access to more and more arcane details of your profession passed to you by masters. Computer games ramped this up well beyond eleven and took out the periods of training with a higher level master.
Yes. In D&D, levels actually had titles associated with them. Fighters went from Veterans (level 1) to Lords (level 10). Magic-Users went from Prestidigitator (level1) to Wizard (level 11). Levels were used here for 2 reasons. One to show progression within a character's class, and two to divide opponents into progressive difficulty. MMORPGs seemed to use levels for only the latter reason: progressive difficulty.
Personally, I prefer the skill based progression systems, where one finds opponents difficult until one improves their own skills. Generalized character levels seem to be one of the more divisive mechanics in MMOs.
edit It also seems that levels have turned into "pats on the back." Heck, many MMOs even have achievements for reaching specific levels now.
In the case of most RPG's your goal is narrative, once the narrative is done, there's little to do without extensive modding tools, which only a few games come equipped with in any given generation.
Actually there is an alternative that MMOs are uniquely capable of as a large community-driven gaming experience.
Collaborative Storytelling
Part of the big failing in MMOs is that there is a continued reliance on a narrative system that fits to a finite and private character story, and fails to tie into the game in a more global sense. It's the classical "everyone's the chosen one" scenario. Thing is, it doesn't have to be that way.
MMOs as a persistent world with large communities could capitalize on those elements with their storytelling to create ongoing and living narratives that are dependent on community interaction (and authorship) to grow. This would offer considerably more length and personal quality to the narrative of an MMO and absolve one of the constant issues that has existed because of the bad habit of wedging an ill-fitting narrative structure into a persistent/communal game.
"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
I'm absolutely shocked at how polarizing this discussion has become. I had no idea that the level/class system was so staunchly defended.
I was always under the impression that we used class and level based paradigm because it was easy to design early games around them. I had always assumed that as game development progressed through the years we would get away from this elementary system and move towards a system where people can play characters rather than playing a level/class.
True on both counts.
It's a shame that developers essentially gutted the roleplay systems support to cut costs on CE staff.
That did far more damage to the genre as a whole than levels or classes (mechanics) ever could.
1. My opinion is that players are shuffled to fast to be raid worthy. It's and opinion.
2. Who is talking about grinding? How are you grinding if the levelless design that I am talking about is not grinding. You're making a strawman argument.
With levels the end game returns you to the same small amount of raid zones. Without levels you return to the same small amount of raid zones plus you can return to the rest of the world. How can more be less?
3. There are more imaginative ways to level than what you're talking about. The same thing could be said that you should be playing single player game if you want single player questhubs only.
4. Horizontal progression exist and works. You can add new zones to any game even levelless. You seem to have a narrow view. Why does levelless imply grinding, lack of new content, lack of progression? That is why your arguments don't make sense.
5. No the genre stagnated because of repetition of the same formula and badly in most instances. Vast vertical progression does hurt the genre in my opinion. MMORPG are not single player games which is why things that work for them do not work for MMORPG.
1. Nonsense.
First, disagreeing with someone doesn't make what they say opinion.
Second, all that matters is practice makes them better. You don't get to set some arbitrary skill bar they must hit for questing to have "worked" (it's not even the primary purpose of questing in the first place!) So it's nonsense and completely irrelevant if you feel these players are raid-worthy.
2. You spoke about "being open to other philosophies." I explained why any philosophy involving grind is going to be a bad one (while pointing out how my own philosophy isn't rooted in levels but instead is about the most efficient ways to avoid grind.)
It's not a straw man if you're discussing a topic with someone willfully refusing to connect all the dots of the conversation.
Levels have nothing whatsoever to do with which zones you return to at endgame. Surely you could've read a little further to my 3rd point to realize this.
3. I'm sure there are more imaginative ways to level than what we've discussed. But as I've pointed out over and over, they're mostly change for change's sake and won't necessarily do much for a game (the gameplay of what a player is doing is more important than the specific form the reward takes.)
"Go play single player games" is nonsense. "If you want single player questhubs only" is nonsense. Why waste both our time with nonsense?
4. If you thought I said progression requires levels, it's not my arguments that don't make sense. It's your befuddled and flawed interpretation of them.
5. Don't claim to disagree with me and then agree with me. I told you that games failing to aim and achieve WOW-tier quality were the reason for stagnation and you just admitted new games do it "badly in most instances".
The major failings have to do with gameplay -- with the specific hows and whats of what the player is doing while playing the game.
Rewards are only a minor part of that.
That said, noticeable vertical progression undeniably adds to a PVE game. It's still just a minor part, but when you kill the mob to get the sword that makes your damage shoot up 15%, you notice it and it's satisfying.
One thing we haven't covered, is you're basically saying games would be more compelling without that. You're basically saying that the reward you get should only provide a 1% damage boost, if any at all. Given that's one of your main points, perhaps you'd like to walk through why players should accept your piddly 1% damage boost upgrade and be happy about it? The other game made progression feel noticeable and satisfying. Yours wouldn't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
In the case of most RPG's your goal is narrative, once the narrative is done, there's little to do without extensive modding tools, which only a few games come equipped with in any given generation.
Actually there is an alternative that MMOs are uniquely capable of as a large community-driven gaming experience.
Collaborative Storytelling
Part of the big failing in MMOs is that there is a continued reliance on a narrative system that fits to a finite and private character story, and fails to tie into the game in a more global sense. It's the classical "everyone's the chosen one" scenario. Thing is, it doesn't have to be that way.
MMOs as a persistent world with large communities could capitalize on those elements with their storytelling to create ongoing and living narratives that are dependent on community interaction (and authorship) to grow. This would offer considerably more length and personal quality to the narrative of an MMO and absolve one of the constant issues that has existed because of the bad habit of wedging an ill-fitting narrative structure into a persistent/communal game.
That's true, players can even create this type of thing on their own, we did in SWG, though it was hard to get the majority involved if you know what I mean, SOE also tried something like this with MXO, to varying results on a given day. CCP also has created a type of ongoing narrative for EVE as well. This is perfect for role-players, I deeply enjoy these types of things. It's the pure gamers (min-maxers, hardcore pve types etc..) that I can't see really having much interest in these types of things.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I'm absolutely shocked at how polarizing this discussion has become. I had no idea that the level/class system was so staunchly defended.
I was always under the impression that we used class and level based paradigm because it was easy to design early games around them. I had always assumed that as game development progressed through the years we would get away from this elementary system and move towards a system where people can play characters rather than playing a level/class.
Most of the discussion isn't a "for vs. against" sort of argument about levels.
It's mostly just that levels have an advantage in elegant simplicity over other forms of progression. It's not a huge advantage. It's actually quite small.
Conversely aren't many reason not to use levels. That part of progression is a pretty minor detail, and it'd mostly be change for change's sake. And the other system would be slightly less elegant. (Or maybe a lot less elegant; depends on the system.) Most other details are beyond the mere scope of "level" (since there's a ton of variety to level-based games. Level in particular is usually a very small part.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1. My opinion is that players are shuffled to fast to be raid worthy. It's and opinion.
2. Who is talking about grinding? How are you grinding if the levelless design that I am talking about is not grinding. You're making a strawman argument.
With levels the end game returns you to the same small amount of raid zones. Without levels you return to the same small amount of raid zones plus you can return to the rest of the world. How can more be less?
3. There are more imaginative ways to level than what you're talking about. The same thing could be said that you should be playing single player game if you want single player questhubs only.
4. Horizontal progression exist and works. You can add new zones to any game even levelless. You seem to have a narrow view. Why does levelless imply grinding, lack of new content, lack of progression? That is why your arguments don't make sense.
5. No the genre stagnated because of repetition of the same formula and badly in most instances. Vast vertical progression does hurt the genre in my opinion. MMORPG are not single player games which is why things that work for them do not work for MMORPG.
1. Nonsense.
First, disagreeing with someone doesn't make what they say opinion.
Second, all that matters is practice makes them better. You don't get to set some arbitrary skill bar they must hit for questing to have "worked" (it's not even the primary purpose of questing in the first place!) So it's nonsense and completely irrelevant if you feel these players are raid-worthy.
2. You spoke about "being open to other philosophies." I explained why any philosophy involving grind is going to be a bad one (while pointing out how my own philosophy isn't rooted in levels but instead is about the most efficient ways to avoid grind.)
It's not a straw man if you're discussing a topic with someone willfully refusing to connect all the dots of the conversation.
Levels have nothing whatsoever to do with which zones you return to at endgame. Surely you could've read a little further to my 3rd point to realize this.
3. I'm sure there are more imaginative ways to level than what we've discussed. But as I've pointed out over and over, they're mostly change for change's sake and won't necessarily do much for a game (the gameplay of what a player is doing is more important than the specific form the reward takes.)
"Go play single player games" is nonsense. "If you want single player questhubs only" is nonsense. Why waste both our time with nonsense?
4. If you thought I said progression requires levels, it's not my arguments that don't make sense. It's your befuddled and flawed interpretation of them.
5. Don't claim to disagree with me and then agree with me. I told you that games failing to aim and achieve WOW-tier quality were the reason for stagnation and you just admitted new games do it "badly in most instances".
The major failings have to do with gameplay -- with the specific hows and whats of what the player is doing while playing the game.
Rewards are only a minor part of that.
That said, noticeable vertical progression undeniably adds to a PVE game. It's still just a minor part, but when you kill the mob to get the sword that makes your damage shoot up 15%, you notice it and it's satisfying.
One thing we haven't covered, is you're basically saying games would be more compelling without that. You're basically saying that the reward you get should only provide a 1% damage boost, if any at all. Given that's one of your main points, perhaps you'd like to walk through why players should accept your piddly 1% damage boost upgrade and be happy about it? The other game made progression feel noticeable and satisfying. Yours wouldn't.
1. It is opinion. Optimal game play was impossible when I played a few games because the game play was too fast and easy. It did nothing to help me with group play. Did it help me get better at playing solo? I guess it was generally to easy and fast to see if I was making mistakes which I was.
2. Then we agree. My opinion the most optimal way to avoid grinding is removing the need to grind. Horizontal progression does this and few othet things. It removes the need for linear gameplay that consume the world in one go. It also removes the need to throw in trashy gameplay to fill in the needs for vast vertical progression. It also removes barriers to play with different players with varying experience naturally.
Bethesda games are good at this. They have levels but scale to make all content relevant. This does not work in MMORPG without making everything phased. But then it just divides the th player base.
In Fallout and Elder Scrolls I did not feel any grind returning to the same place a few times. I didn't even have to return as I would get side tracked do other things. When came back levels later the content was still relevant.
4. You told me I shouldn't play RPGs. It was just showing you a mirror Mr. Pot.
No they're not just for change sake. Removing the tie in to between questing and vast vertical progression helps questing and the grind. The way things are quest are there for few reasons like narrative or progression.
Many quest are just dressing for progression because games need progression content. Players accept these because they want to advance. Developers make them because it's cheap content. You then have a ton of trash content from almost all developers because of the pressure to fill in content for 60 levels of advancement. Even Bioware has this problem on a huge budget.
Quest should be about narrative and giving fun actives to do first. If it doesn't do that then it simply shouldn't be included. You can give players achievements and titles for killing.
5. What is WOW tier quest? When I played last I did majority kill and collect quest in the open world. This was an expansion ago.
Yes for achievement gamers achieving is fun. But it also alienates everyone else when you have nothing else. And nothing stops horizontal progression from having loot and achievements.
Wasn't that one of the things that people complained about with the Elder Scrolls Oblivion? It's one of the things that really bothered me about the game. It didn't matter where you went because the mobs would just be replaced as you leveled up. Gaining levels was fairly meaningless.
Some people like to have mobs littered throughout the world that can crush them and then can go back and try them again when they are more powerful. They removed the level scaling in the Elder Scrolls Skyrim for this reason. Now mobs like Ogres and Master Vampires existed right form the start of the game and would generally crush you as a starting character.
I don't like characters being overpowered, but I also think it's important to have some kind of progress system that shows you are now able to go to x area or x mob and defeat them. I don't think the game should tell you this, but you should find out through trial and error testing. Hopefully the stat increases are kept to a minimum per level and the increases from equipment aren't great. A lot of power should come from the new abilities you learn.
That's true, players can even create this type of thing on their own, we did in SWG, though it was hard to get the majority involved if you know what I mean, SOE also tried something like this with MXO, to varying results on a given day. CCP also has created a type of ongoing narrative for EVE as well. This is perfect for role-players, I deeply enjoy these types of things. It's the pure gamers (min-maxers, hardcore pve types etc..) that I can't see really having much interest in these types of things.
Yeah, but those type of players are inevitably content locusts regardless of the type of game they play. When the goal is to "beat" the game then there's not much to be done other than watch the player sprint towards any perceived end.
"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
1. It is opinion. Optimal game play was impossible when I played a few games because the game play was too fast and easy. It did nothing to help me with group play. Did it help me get better at playing solo? I guess it was generally to easy and fast to see if I was making mistakes which I was.
2. Then we agree. My opinion the most optimal way to avoid grinding is removing the need to grind. Horizontal progression does this and few othet things. It removes the need for linear gameplay that consume the world in one go. It also removes the need to throw in trashy gameplay to fill in the needs for vast vertical progression. It also removes barriers to play with different players with varying experience naturally.
Bethesda games are good at this. They have levels but scale to make all content relevant. This does not work in MMORPG without making everything phased. But then it just divides the th player base.
In Fallout and Elder Scrolls I did not feel any grind returning to the same place a few times. I didn't even have to return as I would get side tracked do other things. When came back levels later the content was still relevant.
4. You told me I shouldn't play RPGs. It was just showing you a mirror Mr. Pot.
No they're not just for change sake. Removing the tie in to between questing and vast vertical progression helps questing and the grind. The way things are quest are there for few reasons like narrative or progression.
Many quest are just dressing for progression because games need progression content. Players accept these because they want to advance. Developers make them because it's cheap content. You then have a ton of trash content from almost all developers because of the pressure to fill in content for 60 levels of advancement. Even Bioware has this problem on a huge budget.
Quest should be about narrative and giving fun actives to do first. If it doesn't do that then it simply shouldn't be included. You can give players achievements and titles for killing.
5. What is WOW tier quest? When I played last I did majority kill and collect quest in the open world. This was an expansion ago.
Yes for achievement gamers achieving is fun. But it also alienates everyone else when you have nothing else. And nothing stops horizontal progression from having loot and achievements.
1. My last post informed you why this is wrong.
Who's a better group member: the guy with 8 days playing that class solo, or the same guy with 0 days playing the class? Obviously 8 days of practice will produce a better grouper. Why are you even bothering arguing against such a blatant fact?
2. Your "solution" removes most of the player motivation to play an RPG at all. Also your solution feels a bit like a conversation on automobile efficiency, where your solution is "design a bicycle instead". While true in its own way, it doesn't actually address the problem at hand (which in this case is about progression system design in RPGs.)
4. Why do you think I shouldn't play RPGs? I'm the one generally arguing for genre norms, while you're the one suggesting the genre should abandon or minimize those norms.
It's change for change's sake until you explain a compelling reason to do it. So far you haven't. Your argument seems to amount to whining that you can't immediately travel to all zones. That's not a good enough reason to give you all zones immediately. Players want levels, they want zone access, they want gear, they want all kinds of things. It doesn't mean we should just give it to them.
Quests are about narrative. It's great to imply that bad quests shouldn't be bad, but that's something everyone already agrees with, so why bring it up? Quests aren't bad simply because they're a strong way of earning XP. That doesn't make quests bad. Weak narrative and too much repetition makes quests bad (keeping in mind that a typical repetitive quest system is still slightly more varied than a mob-grind.)
5. WOW quests offer a greater activity variety, and greater variety within activities (ie varied mobs to kill) than other games. That variety is the source of their quality.
Explorer, Killer, and Socializer gameplay still happens when you have Achiever gameplay. So your closing sentence makes no sense at all. Horizontal progression games have historically had awful loot.
Horizontal progression is appropriate to PVP, and it can augment vertical progression games, but it will not function as the backbone of a PVE game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
2 - Horizontal progression does not remove the potential for players to earn things and grow. An example would be the ability unlocks from GW1. Planetside 1 also had much ado about horizontal progression through certifications (which was a bit lost on Planetside 2).
It's been used with the example of how "leveling" can work in the past without having much vertical progression yet quite a lot of stat change/manipulation by making it so the higher level you are the more you can offset your stats from a generic balance into a specialized build.
3(4) - Seems the argument was that you flung the accusation arbitrarily first.
It'd be less "change for change's sake" in the context of a game design that supports it. For example in a system where classes are just specific builds/templates that characters slowly design their characters to resemble, and in the mean time are evolving out of being a generic multi-user of standard abilities into more unique skills characteristic to the design they are aiming for.
4(5) - To wrap two thing up at once, quests as they exist in MMOs are often not about narrative. They are used as a guide rail for content delivery.They also do not offer variety themselves, they simply enforce the variety that already exists in the game by offering a specified trail of activities for you to move through. In order for a quest in an MMO to deliver on variety or narrative both technically have to already exist as options and elements of the game world.
Horizontal progression would be perfectly fine as the primary mode of progression in PvE as well, so long as it's accounted for properly just like any other game mechanic. Just think of all the different gameplay mechanics that form up any given class ability or combat mechanic and realize that all those things can be broken down as unlockable traits for players to obtain and use to tailor their characters, powers, and skills. That's quite a lot of progress that could be built without ever numerically getting bigger.
That this would need to be explained to another dev says a lot about the industry. But that's not a new revelation that a small fraction of the game dev community has the creativity or capacity to improve game design.
"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
Comments
2. You didn't bring up "how humans work" either, and yet when I use that example it's not a straw man because it has relevance to the thread at hand.
Bringing up asian MMORPGs was relevant to reinforce the unpopularity of grindy games, which is one of the set of factors I keep trying to get you to understand:
- Grind isn't popular.
- Mob-grinding is the least variety, and most grindy, and therefore unworkable.
- Bad Quests are weak variety, and so a little better, but aren't really capitalizing on the advantage of having quests.
- Quests are moderate variety, and can efficiently fill an entire long-form game.
- Really Nice Quests are high variety, but aren't efficient enough to produce to fill a long-form game. (Also they're still quests. Everything you do in Halo or Assassin's Creed or whatever other major non-MMORPG is still inevitably a quest with one or more objectives.)
I've explained it many times: returning to old zones is less varied than exploring a new zone. That alone justifies the design, but it's also just tedious to have to travel a lot to reach other places and often doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective. It's certainly possible with instant fast travel and phasing tech, but it's just not important or valuable enough (given all the factors I've described) to do it.3. You're wrong because this isn't tied to level. If there are no levels but there's sword skill and this mob requires 50 sword skill to fight successfully, then that progression has gated content in the exact same way as levels.
You're wrong to imply that complete freedom will automatically make for a better game. If you want total freedom, you shouldn't be playing RPGs, you should be playing virtual worlds or sandboxes like Minecraft. This genre, by its progression-focused nature, has always gated significant amounts of content from players so that they have a reason to improve their characters. It's great when the player has activity freedom (questing, exploring, crafting, killing, and harvesting all provide XP in WOW, for example, and if balanced a bit better you could have those things each be viable ways of advancing -- it'd be a bad idea to do so, but nothing prevents it. The reason it'd be a bad idea is that the skill required for those things isn't equal, and so players would opt for the easiest activity type, and become bored and quit the game; so it's quite similar to the grind problem where if mob-grind was a viable way to advance you would bore players and they'd quit.)
4. With new content, it's going to add variety to the game to explore a brand new zone than to repeat an old one. This isn't the biggest reason new zones are used (new zones are used because players want to explore new things) but it's one of them.
As for the other bit, bad quests are bad quests. I'm talking about good quest design like WOW's quality bar. With that, the narrative exists and typically relates to the broader story of the zone. If you choose to ignore it that's your choice, but it's there for those who are in the mood for it.
As for eliminating the vast vertical progression, again we're talking about RPGs. Progression is a core pillar. Don't like progression? Try a different genre.
5. The genre has stagnated because nobody aimed to produce higher-than-WOW-tier gameplay. Or if they aimed that high, they didn't achieve it. The 'relationship' you're trying to establish between vast vertical progression and the genre's stagnation is just nonsense. Players enjoy progression. They don't enjoy shallow combat or poorly-implemented quests with too much repetition.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
About a year ago, however, I added levels...
Why did I add them? One reason and one reason alone: My game is difficult to 'get' for a new player. Levels give the player feedback and a sense of achievement. My evil intent was to add a progression 'illusion' to help keep them 'entertained' until they understand the real point of the game.
I'm going to attempt to tune the progression speed of my 20 levels so that most players will reach level 20 *after* the big picture of the game becomes clear to them. I also integrated an incremental 'power' reward to each levelup so that the level isn't just a meaningless number.
- - -
Working full time on the Lost Raven MMO, a PVP sandbox for Space Pirates, Alien Hunters, Rock Jocks, and Fleet Commanders. The server is nearly feature-complete with client code to start soon.
2. Who is talking about grinding? How are you grinding if the levelless design that I am talking about is not grinding. You're making a strawman argument.
With levels the end game returns you to the same small amount of raid zones. Without levels you return to the same small amount of raid zones plus you can return to the rest of the world. How can more be less?
3. There are more imaginative ways to level than what you're talking about. The same thing could be said that you should be playing single player game if you want single player questhubs only.
4. Horizontal progression exist and works. You can add new zones to any game even levelless. You seem to have a narrow view. Why does levelless imply grinding, lack of new content, lack of progression? That is why your arguments don't make sense.
5. No the genre stagnated because of repetition of the same formula and badly in most instances. Vast vertical progression does hurt the genre in my opinion. MMORPG are not single player games which is why things that work for them do not work for MMORPG.
Personally, I prefer the skill based progression systems, where one finds opponents difficult until one improves their own skills. Generalized character levels seem to be one of the more divisive mechanics in MMOs.
edit
It also seems that levels have turned into "pats on the back." Heck, many MMOs even have achievements for reaching specific levels now.
VG
Collaborative Storytelling
Part of the big failing in MMOs is that there is a continued reliance on a narrative system that fits to a finite and private character story, and fails to tie into the game in a more global sense. It's the classical "everyone's the chosen one" scenario. Thing is, it doesn't have to be that way.
MMOs as a persistent world with large communities could capitalize on those elements with their storytelling to create ongoing and living narratives that are dependent on community interaction (and authorship) to grow. This would offer considerably more length and personal quality to the narrative of an MMO and absolve one of the constant issues that has existed because of the bad habit of wedging an ill-fitting narrative structure into a persistent/communal game.
"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
It's a shame that developers essentially gutted the roleplay systems support to cut costs on CE staff.
That did far more damage to the genre as a whole than levels or classes (mechanics) ever could.
First, disagreeing with someone doesn't make what they say opinion.
Second, all that matters is practice makes them better. You don't get to set some arbitrary skill bar they must hit for questing to have "worked" (it's not even the primary purpose of questing in the first place!) So it's nonsense and completely irrelevant if you feel these players are raid-worthy.
2. You spoke about "being open to other philosophies." I explained why any philosophy involving grind is going to be a bad one (while pointing out how my own philosophy isn't rooted in levels but instead is about the most efficient ways to avoid grind.)
It's not a straw man if you're discussing a topic with someone willfully refusing to connect all the dots of the conversation.
Levels have nothing whatsoever to do with which zones you return to at endgame. Surely you could've read a little further to my 3rd point to realize this.
3. I'm sure there are more imaginative ways to level than what we've discussed. But as I've pointed out over and over, they're mostly change for change's sake and won't necessarily do much for a game (the gameplay of what a player is doing is more important than the specific form the reward takes.)
"Go play single player games" is nonsense. "If you want single player questhubs only" is nonsense. Why waste both our time with nonsense?
4. If you thought I said progression requires levels, it's not my arguments that don't make sense. It's your befuddled and flawed interpretation of them.
5. Don't claim to disagree with me and then agree with me. I told you that games failing to aim and achieve WOW-tier quality were the reason for stagnation and you just admitted new games do it "badly in most instances".
The major failings have to do with gameplay -- with the specific hows and whats of what the player is doing while playing the game.
Rewards are only a minor part of that.
That said, noticeable vertical progression undeniably adds to a PVE game. It's still just a minor part, but when you kill the mob to get the sword that makes your damage shoot up 15%, you notice it and it's satisfying.
One thing we haven't covered, is you're basically saying games would be more compelling without that. You're basically saying that the reward you get should only provide a 1% damage boost, if any at all. Given that's one of your main points, perhaps you'd like to walk through why players should accept your piddly 1% damage boost upgrade and be happy about it? The other game made progression feel noticeable and satisfying. Yours wouldn't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's mostly just that levels have an advantage in elegant simplicity over other forms of progression. It's not a huge advantage. It's actually quite small.
Conversely aren't many reason not to use levels. That part of progression is a pretty minor detail, and it'd mostly be change for change's sake. And the other system would be slightly less elegant. (Or maybe a lot less elegant; depends on the system.) Most other details are beyond the mere scope of "level" (since there's a ton of variety to level-based games. Level in particular is usually a very small part.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
1. It is opinion. Optimal game play was impossible when I played a few games because the game play was too fast and easy. It did nothing to help me with group play. Did it help me get better at playing solo? I guess it was generally to easy and fast to see if I was making mistakes which I was.
2. Then we agree. My opinion the most optimal way to avoid grinding is removing the need to grind. Horizontal progression does this and few othet things. It removes the need for linear gameplay that consume the world in one go. It also removes the need to throw in trashy gameplay to fill in the needs for vast vertical progression. It also removes barriers to play with different players with varying experience naturally.
Bethesda games are good at this. They have levels but scale to make all content relevant. This does not work in MMORPG without making everything phased. But then it just divides the th player base.
In Fallout and Elder Scrolls I did not feel any grind returning to the same place a few times. I didn't even have to return as I would get side tracked do other things. When came back levels later the content was still relevant.
4. You told me I shouldn't play RPGs. It was just showing you a mirror Mr. Pot.
No they're not just for change sake. Removing the tie in to between questing and vast vertical progression helps questing and the grind. The way things are quest are there for few reasons like narrative or progression.
Many quest are just dressing for progression because games need progression content. Players accept these because they want to advance. Developers make them because it's cheap content. You then have a ton of trash content from almost all developers because of the pressure to fill in content for 60 levels of advancement. Even Bioware has this problem on a huge budget.
Quest should be about narrative and giving fun actives to do first. If it doesn't do that then it simply shouldn't be included. You can give players achievements and titles for killing.
5. What is WOW tier quest? When I played last I did majority kill and collect quest in the open world. This was an expansion ago.
Yes for achievement gamers achieving is fun. But it also alienates everyone else when you have nothing else. And nothing stops horizontal progression from having loot and achievements.
Some people like to have mobs littered throughout the world that can crush them and then can go back and try them again when they are more powerful. They removed the level scaling in the Elder Scrolls Skyrim for this reason. Now mobs like Ogres and Master Vampires existed right form the start of the game and would generally crush you as a starting character.
I don't like characters being overpowered, but I also think it's important to have some kind of progress system that shows you are now able to go to x area or x mob and defeat them. I don't think the game should tell you this, but you should find out through trial and error testing. Hopefully the stat increases are kept to a minimum per level and the increases from equipment aren't great. A lot of power should come from the new abilities you learn.
"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
Who's a better group member: the guy with 8 days playing that class solo, or the same guy with 0 days playing the class? Obviously 8 days of practice will produce a better grouper. Why are you even bothering arguing against such a blatant fact?
2. Your "solution" removes most of the player motivation to play an RPG at all. Also your solution feels a bit like a conversation on automobile efficiency, where your solution is "design a bicycle instead". While true in its own way, it doesn't actually address the problem at hand (which in this case is about progression system design in RPGs.)
4. Why do you think I shouldn't play RPGs? I'm the one generally arguing for genre norms, while you're the one suggesting the genre should abandon or minimize those norms.
It's change for change's sake until you explain a compelling reason to do it. So far you haven't. Your argument seems to amount to whining that you can't immediately travel to all zones. That's not a good enough reason to give you all zones immediately. Players want levels, they want zone access, they want gear, they want all kinds of things. It doesn't mean we should just give it to them.
Quests are about narrative. It's great to imply that bad quests shouldn't be bad, but that's something everyone already agrees with, so why bring it up? Quests aren't bad simply because they're a strong way of earning XP. That doesn't make quests bad. Weak narrative and too much repetition makes quests bad (keeping in mind that a typical repetitive quest system is still slightly more varied than a mob-grind.)
5. WOW quests offer a greater activity variety, and greater variety within activities (ie varied mobs to kill) than other games. That variety is the source of their quality.
Explorer, Killer, and Socializer gameplay still happens when you have Achiever gameplay. So your closing sentence makes no sense at all. Horizontal progression games have historically had awful loot.
Horizontal progression is appropriate to PVP, and it can augment vertical progression games, but it will not function as the backbone of a PVE game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
2 - Horizontal progression does not remove the potential for players to earn things and grow. An example would be the ability unlocks from GW1. Planetside 1 also had much ado about horizontal progression through certifications (which was a bit lost on Planetside 2).
It's been used with the example of how "leveling" can work in the past without having much vertical progression yet quite a lot of stat change/manipulation by making it so the higher level you are the more you can offset your stats from a generic balance into a specialized build.
3(4) - Seems the argument was that you flung the accusation arbitrarily first.
It'd be less "change for change's sake" in the context of a game design that supports it. For example in a system where classes are just specific builds/templates that characters slowly design their characters to resemble, and in the mean time are evolving out of being a generic multi-user of standard abilities into more unique skills characteristic to the design they are aiming for.
4(5) - To wrap two thing up at once, quests as they exist in MMOs are often not about narrative. They are used as a guide rail for content delivery.They also do not offer variety themselves, they simply enforce the variety that already exists in the game by offering a specified trail of activities for you to move through. In order for a quest in an MMO to deliver on variety or narrative both technically have to already exist as options and elements of the game world.
Horizontal progression would be perfectly fine as the primary mode of progression in PvE as well, so long as it's accounted for properly just like any other game mechanic. Just think of all the different gameplay mechanics that form up any given class ability or combat mechanic and realize that all those things can be broken down as unlockable traits for players to obtain and use to tailor their characters, powers, and skills. That's quite a lot of progress that could be built without ever numerically getting bigger.
That this would need to be explained to another dev says a lot about the industry. But that's not a new revelation that a small fraction of the game dev community has the creativity or capacity to improve game design.
"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