I think progression can be good when it supports persistent world and character. I'm not sure I like MMO's where you can switch your class (respeccing) in an instant. Similarly, changing the world should have some inertia too. Too little inertial makes things transitory. Things change so fast you don't get a chance to appreciate them. Nothing has weight without inertia. It's hard for anything to be serious.
I also agree progression is better when you have an in-game purpose. For example, to build a guild settlement somewhere dangerous with unique strategy. It's not enough to just get more levels. They have to work towards something. Ultimatley, that's a big driving force behind these games.
I never played Everqust just to get to level 60, I played for the journey. Many of hte longtime players will tell you the same story. We played for the friendships, the challenge of a camp, getting our epic to truly grow into and embrace our class and stand out in the community, BSing and chatting during the downtime, the special places in zones, and more. If I'd treated those levels as simply something to only grind through, I would have lost interest early on and never would have went far as I did.
I think what ruined Everquest was a combination of mudflation and playing for the destination. The Earthshaker pulls were part of the "playing for the destination". There was no journey in it, it was just pure grind. Mudflation, while being helpful early on, eventually fails to hold the world together and the end result is similar to what happens when you play for the destination. Everything inbetween is a blur.
This is not to say progression is unwanted. It just can't exist alone. To summarize, it has to coexist with the journey and have some inertia.
Of course vertical progression can be problematic how it grows the mountain. It's a bit like asking how do you put human history into an MMO, assuming you started with stone age humans being the only content on release and each successive technological age was a yearly expansion? How do you preserve the value of stone age content when the agricultural and industrial ages occur? Even our own reality has mudflation in the form of old technologies not having high value anymore. For example, that old computer in the attic doesn't carry much value anymore except with collectors. We're not having to reinvent wheels or telescopes, we informed in a book about it. Many examples. If reality hasn't solve this probelm completely, how do MMO's?
I think the only solution, if it can be called that, are rebooted servers every X years, ending at certain epocs and starting over at a particular stage. So if you wnat to rexperience stone age items having high value, play on the rebooted server covering that era. It allows you to relive it without the mountain in the way. The results of each server instance could be stored, so your name might be forever famous for your actions. For example, it may record you were the first to discover stone anvils?
My answer is simple. It is not about 'how much' but more about 'how long'. Make progression really (and I mean reeeeally) slow so it feels more like an horizontal progression.
Not to beat on the same old dead horse but in the Original EQ the progression was so slow that you actually forgot it was there. Not having to worry about leveling made me actually enjoy the game and the community more. Today people just want to get to Max level ASAP skipping as much content as they can and avoid connecting with other players which (ironically for a multiplayer game) could slow down their leveling marathon.
The thing I find is that unless question and just grinding on mobs all day is your preferred content, slow progression just makes a painful process even more painful.
Reducing the power gap makes it a bit more bearable though. If the overall powergap is such that every few levels it creates an insurmountable power gap in both PvP and PvE I'm going to want to be in the same level range as my friends really badly for PvE and absolutely as powerful as I can get for the purposes of PvP.
If the power gap is such that I see my character reasonably progress over time but it's still enjoyable to do content together with weaker or stronger friends and have it be fun for all of us, or that I don't feel like stat vs stat is the primary deciding factor in PvP, then I'm more fun to actually relax and enjoy a lengthier grind rather than doing this:
I think the problem Eldurian is that what some plaeyrs think is grind to others is journey. For me EVerquest was filled with journeys. Some or many players just saw grind so they moved on to other games. I can assure you I don't like grind. Never have. Maybe my grind detector is more lightweight than most, or maybe I just find ways to occupy myself with less than usual. The other thing is I liked Everquest b ecause it had consequences, like death penalty and sometims long travel times. The sometimes heart pounding moments made me come back year after year looking for that thrill.
I also think it has to do with quest and storylines. Everquest I think focused moreso on group coordination and combat. You couldn't very well play to cap just doing quests and the quests weren't even very clear about things. The resuilt is playrs who need more story and questing liked WoW a lot more.
1. Depends entirely on the skill of the maxed player and the skill of the new players. If the new players are world-class esport players and the maxed player keeps running into the wall because he can't remember which button makes him go backwards, then a single new player should be able to completely destroy the maxed player. If they're at the exact same skill level, then anywhere between 1 and 10 depending on luck, with each additional new player increasing the chance of defeat for the maxed player. There should be no guaranteed wins unless the enemy is AFK.
2. Since skill cannot be infinite, new players able to be defeated should not be infinite.
3. No to AFK safety - regardless of whether you're an infant or Hercules, getting stabbed in the neck kills you the same. As for one-shotting, it should depend on the exact specifications of the engagement, but in some cases it makes sense when using the correctly specialized equipment and tactics. However, levels or gear alone should never make the difference unless the upgrade is major (a slingshot to a shotgun, for example).
4. I absolutely hate character levels - for stats, I like a max level of 100, but it really doesn't matter that much. The rate at which you progress through levels should depend on your total level (the sum of all your stats), not your progress in the specific stat. I think a good forumla would be
y = 10^((x - n) / (m - 1))
Where y is the number of hours it takes to max a stat (gain m - 1 levels), x is the player's total level, n is the number of stats the game has (assuming one starts at level 1 and not 0), and m is the game's max level. For example, say your game has Swords, Polearms, Blunt, Bows, Fire Magic and Nature Magic as stats (6 stats) with a max level of 100.
That would be
y = 10^((x - 6) / 100 - 1)
As a a new player, your total level would be 6, because you're level 1 in each stat, so the number of hours it would take to gain your first 99 levels would be:
Continuing on, gaining your next 99 levels would take 10 hours, the next would take 100 hours, 1,000 hours for the next, 10,000 hours for the next, and 100,000 hours for the last.
That makes 111,111 hours (around 76 years of playing 4 hours a day) to reach 'max level', so max level is an entirely theoretical concept in my ideal game.
That system forces people to specialize into 3 main stats in their first month of play, then have an ongoing goal of acquiring a fourth and perhaps even a fifth stat for hardcore players over the course of the next few months/years. It also means that new players can jump in and become a master swordsman in almost no time, allowing virtually new players to actually make useful contributions in various situations but still giving older players the advantage of player skill and versatility.
Enough that one or two months of hard work on a single character put me on relatively even footing with the rest of the playerbase. I am ok with progression after this, so long as it offers diminishing returns and isn't an RNG hell.
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Kind of a dumb question for mmorpg's but i'll bite....
endless.
I would say endless but not very much. Low powergap but always small things to gain when you play.
There is nothing more boring then just grinding a few raid instances with time-locks for gear and to do goldfarming, that makes even fantatic fans of a game to take a break until new content comes.
MMOs have become worse with giving us goals, now it is just about the next tier of gear when you maxed out (which usually is done in weeks).
The idea is that super casuals should enjoy the game as well but a low powergap would work fine for that as well without upsetting the people who play more.
Kind of a dumb question for mmorpg's but i'll bite....
endless.
I would say endless but not very much. Low powergap but always small things to gain when you play.
There is nothing more boring then just grinding a few raid instances with time-locks for gear and to do goldfarming, that makes even fantatic fans of a game to take a break until new content comes.
MMOs have become worse with giving us goals, now it is just about the next tier of gear when you maxed out (which usually is done in weeks).
The idea is that super casuals should enjoy the game as well but a low powergap would work fine for that as well without upsetting the people who play more.
I always liked SWG's progression methods in terms of providing endless progression.
The ability to essentially retrain your character into something completely new meant there was nearly always something to do and also catered nicely to a players changing needs. Retraining, rather than pure progressing, meant the power gaps didn't increase whilst still providing achievable goals.
It also meant that new players could become competitive very quickly by focusing on their initial template.
In terms of goals, I agree that a lot of MMOs are quite bad. For most people, the only real goals are completing the story / leveling to cap (generally solo, lacking in challenge, with vertical progression), then perfecting your character at endgame (tends to motivate a lot less people and is focused on grinding BiS gear and completing achievements), then crafting and pvp (both of which have small communities).
Creating better long term goals is easier for PvP - territory control, ranks, building bases etc - and a lot of the upcoming indie titles are focusing on this sort of thing.
On the PvE front, I'm not sure what you do. Player cities and stuff are a pretty good feature and I can't wait to see CSE's CUBE system in action, however I imagine for a lot of people, once you've built you first house it will have little ongoing use.
SWGs progessions, or Final Fantasy's jobs both provide long term goals of trying to master everything, but both do rely on repeating a lot of the same content in order to level up again, so not ideal.
Decent, sandbox style economies (not loot drops, just crafting) can provide some ongoing motivation - constantly needing to do things to earn money to buy replacement gear - but there still needs to be engaging content in order to facilitate that economy. If there is nothing to do, your gear wont get used so no reason to replace it.
I'd be curious to see whether a dev would be able to create a PvE version of territory control. Players would attack NPC camps / bases / towns / cities, each getting progressively harder the deeper you get. As you take over territory, their structures are destroyed and players could build their own. The servers then periodically send mobs to assault player's bases, resulting in an endless tug-of-war for control.
Might take a bit of work to ensure that NPCs don't ninja all player towns in the middle of the night, but could provide good, long term goals. Would be pretty fun to be out in a zone gathering mats, only to see a large army marching towards a player city. You send the call out, players gather to defend the city and we end up with an impromptu city defence. Would combine PvE grouping / raiding, crafting (building siege defences, as well as initial building and subsequent expansions of towns), supply trains to defend etc.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Kind of a dumb question for mmorpg's but i'll bite....
endless.
It's a very potent question that you really kind of missed the point of.
Endless progression can happen on many, many, many curves.
For instance in my 2nd post, what I describe is endless progression.
But most MMORPGs do progression like DragonBall Z. You have people freaking out, breaking their equipment, and being utterly shocked because someone's power level was "Over 9000." Everyone I knew who watched it was soon talking about how someone's power was in the million, and then in the billions. They thought that was super cool. That's part of what convinced me that I never wanted to watch that show. It's ridiculous.
So ok. You want endless progression. That's fine. But do you want something a bit more reasonable or DragonBall Z?
Slow and unlimited leveling with ranks in between levels. It would still be a week of grinding but instead of just gaining 1 level you'll gain parts of sub levels along the way so it still feels like you are progressing. That way the modern and impatient crowd can still play.
Slow and unlimited leveling with ranks in between levels. It would still be a week of grinding but instead of just gaining 1 level you'll gain parts of sub levels along the way so it still feels like you are progressing. That way the modern and impatient crowd can still play.
Rather than doing ranks between levels why not just make more levels? Levels are just an arbitrary measure of power progression so you can divide out the power steps into smaller increments. It's as easy as saying "50 levels = 500 levels" and dividing any gains from leveling by ten and making any straight level based perks you gain as you level happen on the 130th as opposed to the 13th.
I mean I suppose you could use either system but if you want people to buy in to the "level rank" based progression system then there needs to be something that happens with the level ranks.
For instance say a max level character (50) gets a 20% bonus to damage on hit, attack speed, and hitpoints. You get 0.4% of this bonus per level. You could make each level rank (10 ranks per level) give 0.04% so you slowly gain those rewards instead of getting a big 0.4% chunk at the actual level increment.
You could also do the same system with 500 levels. Just depends on what system of displaying progress creates the best reaction in users. Would have to do some market testing to see what people respond to better.
Enough that one or two months of hard work on a single character put me on relatively even footing with the rest of the playerbase. I am ok with progression after this, so long as it offers diminishing returns and isn't an RNG hell.
Yeah two months is a good amount of time needed to get to endgam,if there is any, or at least the upper-tier long game.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
Enough that one or two months of hard work on a single character put me on relatively even footing with the rest of the playerbase. I am ok with progression after this, so long as it offers diminishing returns and isn't an RNG hell.
Yeah two months is a good amount of time needed to get to endgam,if there is any, or at least the upper-tier long game.
I think the issue I've found in WoW clones is endgame isn't the end of the game.
People say grinds are short because the level grind is short. But when gear has negligible repair costs and never breaks / is never lost upon death that means your gear is a much a character feature as your levels.
I can't name any MMO in which max gear is an achievable objective or in which people who are closer to it than you don't have absolutely huge advantages.
If there were current/active MMOs with a true grind time of two months I'd be playing them. The last such game I'm aware of was the original Guild Wars.
There should always be something to achieve. Even if your game features the ability to run shops or perform other non-combat services, if the wealth you accumulate doesn't lead to something that further enhances that aspect of the game, it will seem more like a chore than a game.
Most of us already spend enough time grinding at thankless jobs in RL without much room for advancement. Emulating that experience in games would be a disaster.
Still kind of missing the point. "Breaking their equipment" was a reference to a DBZ meme. I'm surprised you didn't catch it. I've never watched the show but it's part of internet culture:
The point when I talk about DBZesqe progression is that their power levels apparently go into the millions and billions in later episodes. This is like MMOs if you look at how hitpoints and other stats progress across levels. A stat gap of greater than 5-10 levels is generally insurmountable in MMO. HP that used to be measured in thousands is measured in millions or billions. If you are 5 to 10 levels below your enemy you cannot win. Period. Your attacks will miss and bounce off and even when they hit they barely dent the healthbar of the higher level character. I'm essentially re-asking you questions one and two from the OP.
New players being defined as a character that has made it through some brief initial content taking between five minutes and five hours to complete (such as tutorials or starter zones) as opposed a freshly created character, and assuming equal player skill, no tactical advantages etc. how many new characters should a max level / max gear character be able to defeat?
If your answer to 1 is "infinite" how high should a level gap be before it becomes insurmountable?
I'm less concerned about how long you think the progression should take, and more concerned with how much "I win" you feel you have the right to inherit simply by playing longer.
You could work an unlimited amount of time toward slowly building the stats to kill 2 or 3 new characters played by players of the same player skill level as you via your stronger stats. Or you could work an unlimited amount of time building levels that make you a god compared to anyone 5 levels lower than you.
I like infinite levels/progression with some ability to mentor up or down so you can continue to play with friends. I don't PvP much so they question if a lower level taking me is moot.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I like the notion of endless progression, but I would rather it not be through vertical progression.
Some light overall stat growth maybe. But Preferentially it'd be through skill unlocks, stat rebalance options, fleshing out more proficiencies and playstyles/builds, and having a good variety of secondary progression mechanics that extend beyond the avatar directly like faction advancements/unlocks that affect a whole community, the ability to influence the military and economic power of towns and regions, or straight up building and progression of your own new territories.
Advancement doesn't need to be solely tied to the player directly, and very little of it needs to be in a constant climb.
I would like to describe what progression means for me given how I play now which is different then how I used to play. I want to use a real life game example, I will not mention the game however.
Phase 1: get basic base set up with oxygen, power and farm going, get proper gun, bullets, turrets to protect you and your stuff from drones.
Phase 2: Explore and loot looking for rare ores for next phase.
Phase 3: expand you base making farms larger, more cargo, more fridges or farms whatever you need. Start Landing pad
Phase 4: build a small ship
Phase 5: Either use small ship to attack high level POIs or fly ship into space finding the asteroids to mine as well as enemy POIs out in space to loot. In this phase you are primarly looking for material to build a jump drive to go to other planets.
Phase 6: build your capital vessel so you can go to the other planets.
Phase 7: Attack and look most high end POIs and build mega bases
game over.
That takes a LONG time even on easy
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Insurmountable power gaps based solely on levels and gear are stupid. Yes, the technological level of weapons and armor can make a difference in real life, but they do not make one invincible. In a particular PVP encounter in an mmorpg with the typical vertical level and gear progression, I can make all the right choices, move perfectly, and use my skills flawlessly, but a player with a higher level character equipped with better gear can smash me. The player can be much less skilled than me, doesn't matter. Training and experience make a difference in real life, but there are limits. The greatest, most skilled martial artist or soldier in the world can be killed by a child or a low level street thug in certain situations.
To say it another way, in PVE, I need to play with skill if I don't have good enough gear. Often, I will need help from other players if my gear isn't really powerful. However, if I manage to get the more powerful gear, eventually I can do things that were once hard easily and with barely any effort. The gear removes my need to play skillfully.
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To say it another way, in PVE, I need to play with skill if I don't have good enough gear. Often, I will need help from other players if my gear isn't really powerful. However, if I manage to get the more powerful gear, eventually I can do things that were once hard easily and with barely any effort. The gear removes my need to play skillfully.
That makes for terrible PvE gameplay. Players at any level should be able to choose whether they are in the mood to do something that requires skill or something easy. Players who want a challenge will quit if their level or gear removes the difficulty from he game, and new players who feel that the game is to difficult won't continue playing.
I want to help design and develop a PvE-focused, solo-friendly, sandpark MMO which combines crafting, monster hunting, and story. So PM me if you are starting one.
To say it another way, in PVE, I need to play with skill if I don't have good enough gear. Often, I will need help from other players if my gear isn't really powerful. However, if I manage to get the more powerful gear, eventually I can do things that were once hard easily and with barely any effort. The gear removes my need to play skillfully.
That makes for terrible PvE gameplay. Players at any level should be able to choose whether they are in the mood to do something that requires skill or something easy. Players who want a challenge will quit if their level or gear removes the difficulty from he game, and new players who feel that the game is to difficult won't continue playing.
I stop playing far less because of a lack of a challenge but far more because of a lack of vareity of game play
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I stop playing far less because of a lack of a challenge but far more because of a lack of vareity of game play
Those 2 are my 2 top problems, can't we have both?
An too easy game becomes boring and grindy to me rather fast, fighting loads easy trash mobs just bores me far more then fighting fewer but hard ones that forces me to adapt and use tactics.
Games that are so similar to every other games feels like I already played them for years and also adds boredom.
Right now I go for either improvement but both are probably required to get me invested for years again.
Insurmountable power gaps based solely on levels and gear are stupid. Yes, the technological level of weapons and armor can make a difference in real life, but they do not make one invincible.
History is filled with events where the technological advantages have made the other side practically defenseless even though they had numerical advantage. When pizarro conquered the Inca the spanish troops were almost invincible due to gear and training.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
Insurmountable power gaps based solely on levels and gear are stupid. Yes, the technological level of weapons and armor can make a difference in real life, but they do not make one invincible.
History is filled with events where the technological advantages have made the other side practically defenseless even though they had numerical advantage. When pizarro conquered the Inca the spanish troops were almost invincible due to gear and training.
Training is reflected by player skill not character stats. There are certainly some examples in history of nations that had better "stats" in terms of technology but sucked so bad the lost anyway.
History is filled with events where the technological advantages have made the other side practically defenseless even though they had numerical advantage. When pizarro conquered the Inca the spanish troops were almost invincible due to gear and training.
That is simplifying things rather much. Yes, the conquistadors had firearms and steel but their training wasn't that different.
The main reason the conquest went so easy was that the Incas were in a middle of a civil war and Pizarro had plenty of native allies with him. It certainly helped with technological advantage but the Inca empire were a rather nasty and unpopular empire already in revolt when the Europeans invaded. Also, the empire was in the middle of a succesion war.
What really won the day in the beginning was more tactics then technology. While there was just a thousand conqustadors the people who were conquered were many times the actual Incan population. The Incan empire was already in a disolving state due to political turbulence and starvation. Even without European influence the Incan empire would have gone under within 50 years.
Pizzaro was an amazing tactician and without that the whole project would have failed.
Technology does not always win the day, ask Hitler. The third reich technology were years before it's opponents but when a bad leader handle things and you opress the people you conquered things will eventually go south no matter how much advantage you have technology wise. And the German soldiers had far better training (at least at the beginning of the war, not so much when they started to recruits kids).
Strategy and tactics are more important then technology and training, and diplomacy is just as important. Those 3 factors is why Rome become so great and why Alexander was unbeatable.
Of course technology and training is very important as well but history is full of people that thought training and technology would give them an easy victory, ask Custer for instance. The last important factors are resources and logistics. Napoleon for instance was an expert on logistics and that was by far the most important factor in his victories.
Anyways, my point is that you are simplifying things. There were many factors to Pizzaros victories. You don't even have to win most of the battles to win a war, Washington lost more battles then he won and the Vietnamese lost most the battles against US but still won the war (yeah, US history books state they won all the battles but that is also simplifying things, IA drang valley for instance was rather a draw, both sides declared themselves the winner. And while Tet was a great US victory in military terms it was a huge political loss).
If technology and training were the only factors then the Vietnam war would have been a breeze for the American troops and their allies. Same thing for the Russians in Afghanistan and the British at Isandlwana.
Comments
I also agree progression is better when you have an in-game purpose. For example, to build a guild settlement somewhere dangerous with unique strategy. It's not enough to just get more levels. They have to work towards something. Ultimatley, that's a big driving force behind these games.
I never played Everqust just to get to level 60, I played for the journey. Many of hte longtime players will tell you the same story. We played for the friendships, the challenge of a camp, getting our epic to truly grow into and embrace our class and stand out in the community, BSing and chatting during the downtime, the special places in zones, and more. If I'd treated those levels as simply something to only grind through, I would have lost interest early on and never would have went far as I did.
I think what ruined Everquest was a combination of mudflation and playing for the destination. The Earthshaker pulls were part of the "playing for the destination". There was no journey in it, it was just pure grind. Mudflation, while being helpful early on, eventually fails to hold the world together and the end result is similar to what happens when you play for the destination. Everything inbetween is a blur.
This is not to say progression is unwanted. It just can't exist alone. To summarize, it has to coexist with the journey and have some inertia.
Of course vertical progression can be problematic how it grows the mountain. It's a bit like asking how do you put human history into an MMO, assuming you started with stone age humans being the only content on release and each successive technological age was a yearly expansion? How do you preserve the value of stone age content when the agricultural and industrial ages occur? Even our own reality has mudflation in the form of old technologies not having high value anymore. For example, that old computer in the attic doesn't carry much value anymore except with collectors. We're not having to reinvent wheels or telescopes, we informed in a book about it. Many examples. If reality hasn't solve this probelm completely, how do MMO's?
I think the only solution, if it can be called that, are rebooted servers every X years, ending at certain epocs and starting over at a particular stage. So if you wnat to rexperience stone age items having high value, play on the rebooted server covering that era. It allows you to relive it without the mountain in the way. The results of each server instance could be stored, so your name might be forever famous for your actions. For example, it may record you were the first to discover stone anvils?
Reducing the power gap makes it a bit more bearable though. If the overall powergap is such that every few levels it creates an insurmountable power gap in both PvP and PvE I'm going to want to be in the same level range as my friends really badly for PvE and absolutely as powerful as I can get for the purposes of PvP.
If the power gap is such that I see my character reasonably progress over time but it's still enjoyable to do content together with weaker or stronger friends and have it be fun for all of us, or that I don't feel like stat vs stat is the primary deciding factor in PvP, then I'm more fun to actually relax and enjoy a lengthier grind rather than doing this:
I also think it has to do with quest and storylines. Everquest I think focused moreso on group coordination and combat. You couldn't very well play to cap just doing quests and the quests weren't even very clear about things. The resuilt is playrs who need more story and questing liked WoW a lot more.
2. Since skill cannot be infinite, new players able to be defeated should not be infinite.
3. No to AFK safety - regardless of whether you're an infant or Hercules, getting stabbed in the neck kills you the same. As for one-shotting, it should depend on the exact specifications of the engagement, but in some cases it makes sense when using the correctly specialized equipment and tactics. However, levels or gear alone should never make the difference unless the upgrade is major (a slingshot to a shotgun, for example).
4. I absolutely hate character levels - for stats, I like a max level of 100, but it really doesn't matter that much. The rate at which you progress through levels should depend on your total level (the sum of all your stats), not your progress in the specific stat. I think a good forumla would be
y = 10^((x - n) / (m - 1))
Where y is the number of hours it takes to max a stat (gain m - 1 levels), x is the player's total level, n is the number of stats the game has (assuming one starts at level 1 and not 0), and m is the game's max level.
For example, say your game has Swords, Polearms, Blunt, Bows, Fire Magic and Nature Magic as stats (6 stats) with a max level of 100.
That would be
y = 10^((x - 6) / 100 - 1)
As a a new player, your total level would be 6, because you're level 1 in each stat, so the number of hours it would take to gain your first 99 levels would be:
y = 10^((6 - 6) / (100 - 1)) = 10^(0 / 99) = 10^0 = 1 hour
Continuing on, gaining your next 99 levels would take 10 hours, the next would take 100 hours, 1,000 hours for the next, 10,000 hours for the next, and 100,000 hours for the last.
That makes 111,111 hours (around 76 years of playing 4 hours a day) to reach 'max level', so max level is an entirely theoretical concept in my ideal game.
That system forces people to specialize into 3 main stats in their first month of play, then have an ongoing goal of acquiring a fourth and perhaps even a fifth stat for hardcore players over the course of the next few months/years. It also means that new players can jump in and become a master swordsman in almost no time, allowing virtually new players to actually make useful contributions in various situations but still giving older players the advantage of player skill and versatility.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
There is nothing more boring then just grinding a few raid instances with time-locks for gear and to do goldfarming, that makes even fantatic fans of a game to take a break until new content comes.
MMOs have become worse with giving us goals, now it is just about the next tier of gear when you maxed out (which usually is done in weeks).
The idea is that super casuals should enjoy the game as well but a low powergap would work fine for that as well without upsetting the people who play more.
The ability to essentially retrain your character into something completely new meant there was nearly always something to do and also catered nicely to a players changing needs. Retraining, rather than pure progressing, meant the power gaps didn't increase whilst still providing achievable goals.
It also meant that new players could become competitive very quickly by focusing on their initial template.
In terms of goals, I agree that a lot of MMOs are quite bad. For most people, the only real goals are completing the story / leveling to cap (generally solo, lacking in challenge, with vertical progression), then perfecting your character at endgame (tends to motivate a lot less people and is focused on grinding BiS gear and completing achievements), then crafting and pvp (both of which have small communities).
Creating better long term goals is easier for PvP - territory control, ranks, building bases etc - and a lot of the upcoming indie titles are focusing on this sort of thing.
On the PvE front, I'm not sure what you do. Player cities and stuff are a pretty good feature and I can't wait to see CSE's CUBE system in action, however I imagine for a lot of people, once you've built you first house it will have little ongoing use.
SWGs progessions, or Final Fantasy's jobs both provide long term goals of trying to master everything, but both do rely on repeating a lot of the same content in order to level up again, so not ideal.
Decent, sandbox style economies (not loot drops, just crafting) can provide some ongoing motivation - constantly needing to do things to earn money to buy replacement gear - but there still needs to be engaging content in order to facilitate that economy. If there is nothing to do, your gear wont get used so no reason to replace it.
I'd be curious to see whether a dev would be able to create a PvE version of territory control. Players would attack NPC camps / bases / towns / cities, each getting progressively harder the deeper you get. As you take over territory, their structures are destroyed and players could build their own. The servers then periodically send mobs to assault player's bases, resulting in an endless tug-of-war for control.
Might take a bit of work to ensure that NPCs don't ninja all player towns in the middle of the night, but could provide good, long term goals. Would be pretty fun to be out in a zone gathering mats, only to see a large army marching towards a player city. You send the call out, players gather to defend the city and we end up with an impromptu city defence. Would combine PvE grouping / raiding, crafting (building siege defences, as well as initial building and subsequent expansions of towns), supply trains to defend etc.
Endless progression can happen on many, many, many curves.
For instance in my 2nd post, what I describe is endless progression.
But most MMORPGs do progression like DragonBall Z. You have people freaking out, breaking their equipment, and being utterly shocked because someone's power level was "Over 9000." Everyone I knew who watched it was soon talking about how someone's power was in the million, and then in the billions. They thought that was super cool. That's part of what convinced me that I never wanted to watch that show. It's ridiculous.
So ok. You want endless progression. That's fine. But do you want something a bit more reasonable or DragonBall Z?
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
I mean I suppose you could use either system but if you want people to buy in to the "level rank" based progression system then there needs to be something that happens with the level ranks.
For instance say a max level character (50) gets a 20% bonus to damage on hit, attack speed, and hitpoints. You get 0.4% of this bonus per level. You could make each level rank (10 ranks per level) give 0.04% so you slowly gain those rewards instead of getting a big 0.4% chunk at the actual level increment.
You could also do the same system with 500 levels. Just depends on what system of displaying progress creates the best reaction in users. Would have to do some market testing to see what people respond to better.
People say grinds are short because the level grind is short. But when gear has negligible repair costs and never breaks / is never lost upon death that means your gear is a much a character feature as your levels.
I can't name any MMO in which max gear is an achievable objective or in which people who are closer to it than you don't have absolutely huge advantages.
If there were current/active MMOs with a true grind time of two months I'd be playing them. The last such game I'm aware of was the original Guild Wars.
Most of us already spend enough time grinding at thankless jobs in RL without much room for advancement. Emulating that experience in games would be a disaster.
Still kind of missing the point. "Breaking their equipment" was a reference to a DBZ meme. I'm surprised you didn't catch it. I've never watched the show but it's part of internet culture:
The point when I talk about DBZesqe progression is that their power levels apparently go into the millions and billions in later episodes. This is like MMOs if you look at how hitpoints and other stats progress across levels. A stat gap of greater than 5-10 levels is generally insurmountable in MMO. HP that used to be measured in thousands is measured in millions or billions. If you are 5 to 10 levels below your enemy you cannot win. Period. Your attacks will miss and bounce off and even when they hit they barely dent the healthbar of the higher level character. I'm essentially re-asking you questions one and two from the OP.
- New players being defined as a character that has made it through some brief initial content taking between five minutes and five hours to complete (such as tutorials or starter zones) as opposed a freshly created character, and assuming equal player skill, no tactical advantages etc. how many new characters should a max level / max gear character be able to defeat?
- If your answer to 1 is "infinite" how high should a level gap be before it becomes insurmountable?
I'm less concerned about how long you think the progression should take, and more concerned with how much "I win" you feel you have the right to inherit simply by playing longer.You could work an unlimited amount of time toward slowly building the stats to kill 2 or 3 new characters played by players of the same player skill level as you via your stronger stats. Or you could work an unlimited amount of time building levels that make you a god compared to anyone 5 levels lower than you.
What kind of power disparity do you want?
This can work if you do things EQ style and it takes ages to get that, but it's pretty easy in most games.
Long-term goals are always more appealing than chasing a carrot 1M away for me.
You can't ALWAYS bee getting new skills, etc...would require a monumental amount of dev resources to do that....so make them harder/longer to achieve.
Some light overall stat growth maybe. But Preferentially it'd be through skill unlocks, stat rebalance options, fleshing out more proficiencies and playstyles/builds, and having a good variety of secondary progression mechanics that extend beyond the avatar directly like faction advancements/unlocks that affect a whole community, the ability to influence the military and economic power of towns and regions, or straight up building and progression of your own new territories.
Advancement doesn't need to be solely tied to the player directly, and very little of it needs to be in a constant climb.
Phase 1: get basic base set up with oxygen, power and farm going, get proper gun, bullets, turrets to protect you and your stuff from drones.
Phase 2: Explore and loot looking for rare ores for next phase.
Phase 3: expand you base making farms larger, more cargo, more fridges or farms whatever you need. Start Landing pad
Phase 4: build a small ship
Phase 5: Either use small ship to attack high level POIs or fly ship into space finding the asteroids to mine as well as enemy POIs out in space to loot. In this phase you are primarly looking for material to build a jump drive to go to other planets.
Phase 6: build your capital vessel so you can go to the other planets.
Phase 7: Attack and look most high end POIs and build mega bases
game over.
That takes a LONG time even on easy
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
To say it another way, in PVE, I need to play with skill if I don't have good enough gear. Often, I will need help from other players if my gear isn't really powerful. However, if I manage to get the more powerful gear, eventually I can do things that were once hard easily and with barely any effort. The gear removes my need to play skillfully.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
An too easy game becomes boring and grindy to me rather fast, fighting loads easy trash mobs just bores me far more then fighting fewer but hard ones that forces me to adapt and use tactics.
Games that are so similar to every other games feels like I already played them for years and also adds boredom.
Right now I go for either improvement but both are probably required to get me invested for years again.
The main reason the conquest went so easy was that the Incas were in a middle of a civil war and Pizarro had plenty of native allies with him. It certainly helped with technological advantage but the Inca empire were a rather nasty and unpopular empire already in revolt when the Europeans invaded. Also, the empire was in the middle of a succesion war.
What really won the day in the beginning was more tactics then technology. While there was just a thousand conqustadors the people who were conquered were many times the actual Incan population. The Incan empire was already in a disolving state due to political turbulence and starvation. Even without European influence the Incan empire would have gone under within 50 years.
Pizzaro was an amazing tactician and without that the whole project would have failed.
Technology does not always win the day, ask Hitler. The third reich technology were years before it's opponents but when a bad leader handle things and you opress the people you conquered things will eventually go south no matter how much advantage you have technology wise. And the German soldiers had far better training (at least at the beginning of the war, not so much when they started to recruits kids).
Strategy and tactics are more important then technology and training, and diplomacy is just as important. Those 3 factors is why Rome become so great and why Alexander was unbeatable.
Of course technology and training is very important as well but history is full of people that thought training and technology would give them an easy victory, ask Custer for instance. The last important factors are resources and logistics. Napoleon for instance was an expert on logistics and that was by far the most important factor in his victories.
Anyways, my point is that you are simplifying things. There were many factors to Pizzaros victories. You don't even have to win most of the battles to win a war, Washington lost more battles then he won and the Vietnamese lost most the battles against US but still won the war (yeah, US history books state they won all the battles but that is also simplifying things, IA drang valley for instance was rather a draw, both sides declared themselves the winner. And while Tet was a great US victory in military terms it was a huge political loss).
If technology and training were the only factors then the Vietnam war would have been a breeze for the American troops and their allies. Same thing for the Russians in Afghanistan and the British at Isandlwana.