Visualization of the MMO game design With and Without Character Level grind

MMOExposed

Visualization of the MMO game design With and Without Character Level grind.

This been a big discussion over the years here, and I realize most people dont really grasp the concept from text words alone, so I figured its be better if I could illustrate it for visual understanding.

I made three pictures the show the way modern MMOs are designed and why I theorize that the Levelless model is better. 

*This is the traditional MMO designed around the grandfathered Character Level grind model that Most MMO developers use:
https://imgur.com/M6DkEpi

The Green Box represent the whole game world. Its split up into Level Ranges. Each Level Range has Zones, Dungeons, Quest, Content etc built for that specific level.

Players create a character, and from day one, they grind out character levels (represented by the Orange arrows), moving from level range to level range until they eventually reach the Max Level Endgame regions and content. They have no reason to return back to the lower level regions for Progression purposes. So Endgame players generally stay in the Endgame regions. As new Levels get added, those former max level zones become ghost towns since like other low level regions, the playerbase moves on as they progress to higher level ranges.

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*This is the traditional MMO designed around character levels, but with down-scaling:
https://imgur.com/Zm8gnFT

the Greenbox represents the entire game world. The World is still split up into Level Ranges as the standard design model is. But the difference is that players scale back down to the lower level regions of content when they return. Where this model is superior to the traditional standard model is that the old lower level content can still be useful to a max level player to return to (as illustrated by the skinny orange arrows.). The flaws with this model is that, the lower level content still is typically easier for a downscaled player character, since all that content is designed around low level playerbase. This means that the rewards from this content is usually lesser than the rewards from the high level region content, even though the rewards may still have some value.  
Another flaw in this model is that the players still are funneled down the same level region to level region as they level grind their way to endgame. They have options to go back to lower level regions with the downscaling, which is better than the standard non-downscaling model, but its still less rewarding. With Content being gated by Character Levels, players want to gain access to that content sooner rather than later. Endgame may have some form of a cool dungeon or raid or Large Scale PvP or mounts or something that only the max level player characters can use. So if thats something that interested you into getting the game, most people are going to strive to get to that content sooner rather than later. And since older downscaled content is less rewarding, most players will stay on the same standard level region to level region seen from the standard model. 

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*This is the MMO model designed around not having Character Levels: 
https://imgur.com/HbPgLwX

The Green Circle illustrate the entire game world as the other examples before. 
The center gray circle is the Character creation and the starting part of the game. 
From there, players can go anywhere in the game world and do anything. Zones, Raids, Super Quest, Dungeons, Attunements, Achievement Hunting, Skin Hunting, Crafting, Dynamic Events, WHATEVER! I used Red Circles to illustrate this, since any of these things could be scattered all over the world for you to explore and find and unlock. You are free to make your own journey. The Journey wasnt hand picked for you until you get to the max level endgame stuff, like it is in most MMOs using the traditional grandfathered Character Level MMO design model.

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I know people often associate Sandbox MMOs with PvP MMOs,

But using the actual definition, which of these three models really seem more Sandboxish with the freedom to do as you want and make your own content and journey? 

in discussions like this and other subjects that dive into the issues why players always tend to rush to Endgame in just about every MMO. People almost always say something to the extent of
"Dont Rush to max level. The Journey is the most important and best part of the game"
But how is that the case in any of the MMOs using the traditional character level divided world model? The journey is already picked out for you.
Also since the game is designed around players repeating the max level content for years to come, most MMO developers try to over inflate the required Character Level Grind to buy time to develop more endgame content since all their early development resources went into a bunch of Low level content that people will eventually out-level and never go back to as your player-base overall reaches endgame. 

Lets use some made up numbers for a second. Assume the developers made 12 Dungeons for launch. 12 Dungeons is a lot of content in a MMO.
With the grandfathered traditional Character Level model and over 6 Level Ranges, you would have 2 Dungeons per level range.
*2 dungeons for level 1-10
*2 dungeons for level 11-20
*2 dungeons for level 21 -35
*2 dungeons for level 35-45
*2 dungeons for level 45-59
*2 dungeons for Endgame max level 60

So out of 12 Dungeons, only 2 of them are for the max level endgame players. And eventually players are going to reach endgame if they stick with the game. This means 10 out of the 12 Dungeons will eventually become out-leveled by the majority of the remaining player-base and become useless content thats just a waste of developer resources.

But in a MMO game designed around not having Character Levels, all 12 of those Dungeons are meaningful content since everything is endgame, not just the max level content like we see in MMOs using the traditional character level model.  So players have way more options to progress their characters and gain loot from meaningful content, since EVERYTHING is endgame.

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Note:
Assume its the same square area as the above boxes. I didnt draw any of this pictures sizes to scale. 

BruceYee

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

MMOExposed

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

Same incentives to do them in any MMO. When WoW vanilla, when you reached level 60, did all progression stop because you no longer gained levels? No.
You still ran max level Dungeons and raids and endgame pvp for loot. But in a Levelless system,  all dungeons are endgame.all raids are endgame. Since nothing gets outleveled.  Its no different from taking everything level 60 related in Vanilla WoW and scrapping the lower level stuff and replacing it all with level 60. Everything would be endgame.  Which means actual more meaningful content.

BruceYee

MMOExposed said:

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

Same incentives to do them in any MMO. When WoW vanilla, when you reached level 60, did all progression stop because you no longer gained levels? No.
You still ran max level Dungeons and raids and endgame pvp for loot. But in a Levelless system,  all dungeons are endgame.all raids are endgame. Since nothing gets outleveled.  Its no different from taking everything level 60 related in Vanilla WoW and scrapping the lower level stuff and replacing it all with level 60. Everything would be endgame.  Which means actual more meaningful content.

I see. When you imagine it like that the leveling process + constant level boosts(5, 10 etc) could possibly be removed entirely without ever being missed. All the resources that goes into development for the 'leveling process' could then be used to improve everything else. I like it.

Morgenes83

Hi,

maybe you should consider some free applications like draw.io.

Chart 2. I would draw the arrows back to the low level zones more randomly to show that people not only go back to lvl 1-10.

Chart 3. The arrows also go way more randomly as people might switch directions. Yours looks a little bit like "choose your path" while it should look more like "go and do whatever you want, every thing is the same rewarding"

But nice idea. I might try to visualize my ideas.

Regarding your explanations.
You are hitting the nail on the head!

Xiaoki

MMOExposed said:

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

Same incentives to do them in any MMO. When WoW vanilla, when you reached level 60, did all progression stop because you no longer gained levels? No.
You still ran max level Dungeons and raids and endgame pvp for loot. But in a Levelless system,  all dungeons are endgame.all raids are endgame. Since nothing gets outleveled.  Its no different from taking everything level 60 related in Vanilla WoW and scrapping the lower level stuff and replacing it all with level 60. Everything would be endgame.  Which means actual more meaningful content.

OK keeping with your classic WoW example -

What happens when you run Wailing Caverns and get a full set of gear from it? What incentive is there to then run Blackrock Spire? Since they are both "endgame" then they would have the same stats.

So, then, what would be my incentive to keep playing the game when I get a full set of endgame gear in the first week?

As much as people hate the gear treadmill, it's that never-ending race for more power that keeps people playing these bad video games for years.

Scorchien

This wall of text to describe what Ultima Online did 25 years ago .. 

olepi

ESO has every zone the same level. No matter what level your character is, you are equal level with every mob in every zone, due to scaling. The problem for me is that you can't intentionally go to a much harder area to try it out.

Vanguard had high level dungeons placed into low level areas, so if you were the low level player, you could get wiped instantly if you tried it. High level players had a reason to go back to the lower area for the dungeon.

Ryzom is skill-based, so your skills have levels, not your character. That means you can always go back to a lower area to work on one of your lower skills.

Amaranthar

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

UO was the best Sandbox, IMO. And that's the game that did this stuff right.
Characters would "level past" lower critters and MOBs. But that's reduced a lot compared to Level Based games. 

First, UO Dungeons had "levels", in the sense of layers down into the depths of the Dungeons. And each Dungeon level had more powerful MOBs. 

So Players had to work their Skills up to be able to handle deeper Dungeon Levels. 
But all that depended on whether, and how many, other Players were there, too. 
Other players would often help a Player who bit off more than he could chew, which provided some good social interactions between them. Many guilds were built by helping others. 

Also, MOB drops often contained resources for making things. So even a Maxed out Character would sometimes go to an easy (for them) first level to stock up on such supplies. (If they wanted tougher MOBs they would go deeper into the Dungeon.) 

Even so, as far as "easy" content, numbers could still sometimes overpower a Maxed Out Character. Depending on how "easy" those MOBs are. That was very rare though, unless the Character got stuck being blocked by large numbers surrounding them, AND they run out of Heal Potions or spell reagents, something most Players took care not to let happen. 
(There was blocking in UO.) 

Amaranthar

Xiaoki said:

MMOExposed said:

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

Same incentives to do them in any MMO. When WoW vanilla, when you reached level 60, did all progression stop because you no longer gained levels? No.
You still ran max level Dungeons and raids and endgame pvp for loot. But in a Levelless system,  all dungeons are endgame.all raids are endgame. Since nothing gets outleveled.  Its no different from taking everything level 60 related in Vanilla WoW and scrapping the lower level stuff and replacing it all with level 60. Everything would be endgame.  Which means actual more meaningful content.

OK keeping with your classic WoW example -

What happens when you run Wailing Caverns and get a full set of gear from it? What incentive is there to then run Blackrock Spire? Since they are both "endgame" then they would have the same stats.

So, then, what would be my incentive to keep playing the game when I get a full set of endgame gear in the first week?

As much as people hate the gear treadmill, it's that never-ending race for more power that keeps people playing these bad video games for years.

I can't imagine a Sandbox game having that kind of Gear Levelling. 
UO, for example, had 5 levels of any gear, in 3 different aspects (damage, durability, and accuracy for weapons, and something similar for armor). 
And Skilled Blacksmiths could eventually make them, but randomly and very rarely for the best of each aspect. MOBs would drop them too, so it was a mix on where players got theirs. 
Gear would wear out (it could be repaired, but lost a little something on durability each time). And of course it could be sold, too. So Players were always after good stuff to sell, or hold for themselves (or their Alts). 

Ungood

Now see, here is the thing.

The second example, the one with Downscaling.

That gives the players a sense of progress, a feeling of moving up towards an End Game, but also makes the world grow as they level, as opposed being shoehorned into content.

In this case, using the 12 dungeons.

They start with 2, and they keep adding more, until they obtain access to all 12 of them, and all 12 of them remain viable dungeons to play in.

This is ideally the best option.

Because unlike example 1. Where they at best get 2 dungeons to run at any time, which keeps their world tiny and limited, and 10 out of 12 dungeons remain unused.

Or Example 3: Where the world remains the same no matter what, they start with 12 dungeons and they stay at 12 dungeons, never growing or expanding their world.

While example 3 is better than example 1, because it gives more access to the game, both are vastly stagnate in their own way, where example 2 gives a sense of progression and growth..

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Theocritus

MMOExposed said:

BruceYee said:

Will the loot chase be for cosmetic styles or would the loot chase increase power and become the 'endgame'? Or both? What would be the incentive to do those twelve dungeons?

Same incentives to do them in any MMO. When WoW vanilla, when you reached level 60, did all progression stop because you no longer gained levels? No.
You still ran max level Dungeons and raids and endgame pvp for loot. But in a Levelless system,  all dungeons are endgame.all raids are endgame. Since nothing gets outleveled.  Its no different from taking everything level 60 related in Vanilla WoW and scrapping the lower level stuff and replacing it all with level 60. Everything would be endgame.  Which means actual more meaningful content.

I didnt find WoW any fun at all once I hit cap and I left.....THe gear treadmill is boring to me.....Especially when there is so much of it that it feels like it doesnt matter....

Kyleran

I'm not seeing the fourth model, ESO's upscaling, making every zone mostly relevant in terms exploration and rewards regardless of level at the cost of actual challenge for longer term players.

Like most MMORPGS there still is gear based challenge in ESO, but it's restricted to limited dungeon and raid content.

While every choice has pluses and minuses, I feel ESO's system works well for story heavy MMORPGs and for players who want to easily group with others.

It's also perfect for gamers who enjoy progression, things such as skyshard hunting, gathering, fishing with friends, exploration etc.

However if "challenge" is what one seeks, probably the worst of the four systems as it rarely ever is difficult in any of the overland content, world bosses aside.

Rungar

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

Sensai

Rungar said:

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

For the life of me,  I don't understand the whole "I want to grind sideways,  not vertically" argument that gets beat to death on this forum.  Grind is grind.  There will always be a gap due to character development.  If you want a new player to start out on equal ground to someone who has played for years, this is the wrong genre for that.  All of these suggestions are available in other types of games,  why must we bastardize MMORPGs further?  TESO is the example of what to do if you want casuals and make money, not for quality,  rewarding gameplay.  And an endgame that is just checking off exploration points and getting achievements?  No thanks.  Sounds like a social media boasting approach. 

Rungar

Sensai said:

Rungar said:

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

For the life of me,  I don't understand the whole "I want to grind sideways,  not vertically" argument that gets beat to death on this forum.  Grind is grind.  There will always be a gap due to character development.  If you want a new player to start out on equal ground to someone who has played for years, this is the wrong genre for that.  All of these suggestions are available in other types of games,  why must we bastardize MMORPGs further?  TESO is the example of what to do if you want casuals and make money, not for quality,  rewarding gameplay.  And an endgame that is just checking off exploration points and getting achievements?  No thanks.  Sounds like a social media boasting approach. 

its because your not there yet. Play vertical grinders long enough and youll eventually come to appreciate more refined and subtle horizontal systems. 

Achievements and alternate advancement is the perfect match. Many players go out of their way to complete achievements such as speed runs and no death runs. I think they should be rewarded for such achievements but if you like doing something else you should be rewarded for doing that as well.  

Achievements makes everything rewarding no matter what it is. The legacy 1/3 exp grinding is like a buffer in case your playstyle is a little more limited. 

You cant just find low hanging fruit and grind that with this kind of system. You have to do things for 2/3 of the system. 

Sensai

Rungar said:

Sensai said:

Rungar said:

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

For the life of me,  I don't understand the whole "I want to grind sideways,  not vertically" argument that gets beat to death on this forum.  Grind is grind.  There will always be a gap due to character development.  If you want a new player to start out on equal ground to someone who has played for years, this is the wrong genre for that.  All of these suggestions are available in other types of games,  why must we bastardize MMORPGs further?  TESO is the example of what to do if you want casuals and make money, not for quality,  rewarding gameplay.  And an endgame that is just checking off exploration points and getting achievements?  No thanks.  Sounds like a social media boasting approach. 

its because your not there yet. Play vertical grinders long enough and youll eventually come to appreciate more refined and subtle horizontal systems. 

Achievements and alternate advancement is the perfect match. Many players go out of their way to complete achievements such as speed runs and no death runs. I think they should be rewarded for such achievements but if you like doing something else you should be rewarded for doing that as well.  

Achievements makes everything rewarding no matter what it is. The legacy 1/3 exp grinding is like a buffer in case your playstyle is a little more limited. 

You cant just find low hanging fruit and grind that with this kind of system. You have to do things for 2/3 of the system. 

Lol, I've been playing MMORPGs for over 20 years, I'm not going to get there.  Chasing achievements is millennial nonsense,  not something you grow into with age. 

Theocritus

I remember when EQ first came out with AAs.....They were supposed to keep people playing for a long time....Then at some point, they became ridiculously easy to get...To where people had thousands of them.....

cameltosis

Sensai said:

Rungar said:

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

For the life of me,  I don't understand the whole "I want to grind sideways,  not vertically" argument that gets beat to death on this forum.  Grind is grind.  There will always be a gap due to character development.  If you want a new player to start out on equal ground to someone who has played for years, this is the wrong genre for that.  All of these suggestions are available in other types of games,  why must we bastardize MMORPGs further?  TESO is the example of what to do if you want casuals and make money, not for quality,  rewarding gameplay.  And an endgame that is just checking off exploration points and getting achievements?  No thanks.  Sounds like a social media boasting approach. 

This is the massively multiplayer genre.

The unique selling point is being able to play together with 100s of other players.

Vertical progression segregates the player base into tiny little slices, making it much, much harder to actually play the game with other people. Thus, building an MMORPG upon vertical progression is akin to shooting yourself in the foot: it actively harms your game and undermines the core point of building a massively multiplayer game in the first place.

Horizontal progression is one potential solution that would allow the game to still have progression mechanics, but without dividing the playerbase based on power. Players would still have things to aim for, new things to unlock, new loot to collect. Its just that the progression wouldn't make their character intrinsically more powerful.

It is a difficult concept to understand, primarily because the RPG genre has very few examples and the MMORPG has no examples. If you look at the shooter genre, you will find successful examples of horizontal progression. They learned years ago that if you want people to play together, they need to be on roughly equal footing. The MMO world still hasn't learned that lesson!

[NB: vertical progression is the direct cause of the solofication of the mmorpg genre]

Luckily for me, Camelot Unchained is being built around horizontal progression. Assuming the game ever comes out (and sticks to it's design principles) then we'll at least have an example of horizontal progression within the genre.

eoloe

Again, in GW1 the vertical progression was not much. Everybody was at the same level (20) very quickly.

Progression was

- skill acquisition

- individual/team skills (PvP/PvE)

- game knowledge (1000+ skills to combine /learn to use)

- cosmetic for bragging rights

It worked very well. The main criticism made to GW1 was its instantiated model that prevented some purist to label it as a MMO. Also of course the grinders did not like the only 20 levels.........................................

GW1 was 2005.

Kyleran

eoloe said:

Again, in GW1 the vertical progression was not much. Everybody was at the same level (20) very quickly.

Progression was

- skill acquisition

- individual/team skills (PvP/PvE)

- game knowledge (1000+ skills to combine /learn to use)

- cosmetic for bragging rights

It worked very well. The main criticism made to GW1 was its instantiated model that prevented some purist to label it as a MMO. Also of course the grinders did not like the only 20 levels.........................................

GW1 was 2005.

The developers coined their own term for GW1, Cooperative Online Role Playing Game, (CORPG) as they well understood it wasn't an MMO, unlike many confused  folks today.

OldKingLog

Rungar said:

i consider eso the best system thus far. The legacy systems are there but not that important. What is important is the acquiring of skills and equipment and powering them up. 

My favorite system is a modification of the eso one: 

1) find all the skills and power them up
2) achievements as alternate advancement
3) legacy experience point gathering that is its own achievement and counts for up to 1/3 of the alternate advancement system

Huh, we don't think alike. I found ESO's up-scaling to be a never ending Escher Stairway of boredom. No real feeling of accomplishment, just a never ending slog.

Mendel

cameltosis said:

<snip>

This is the massively multiplayer genre.

The unique selling point is being able to play together with 100s of other players.

Vertical progression segregates the player base into tiny little slices, making it much, much harder to actually play the game with other people. Thus, building an MMORPG upon vertical progression is akin to shooting yourself in the foot: it actively harms your game and undermines the core point of building a massively multiplayer game in the first place.

Horizontal progression is one potential solution that would allow the game to still have progression mechanics, but without dividing the playerbase based on power. Players would still have things to aim for, new things to unlock, new loot to collect. Its just that the progression wouldn't make their character intrinsically more powerful.

It is a difficult concept to understand, primarily because the RPG genre has very few examples and the MMORPG has no examples. If you look at the shooter genre, you will find successful examples of horizontal progression. They learned years ago that if you want people to play together, they need to be on roughly equal footing. The MMO world still hasn't learned that lesson!

[NB: vertical progression is the direct cause of the solofication of the mmorpg genre]

Luckily for me, Camelot Unchained is being built around horizontal progression. Assuming the game ever comes out (and sticks to it's design principles) then we'll at least have an example of horizontal progression within the genre.

I'm going to give a minor disagreement with the horizontal progression thing.

As said above, grind is still grind.  Any progression system is based on the principle that the time a character has been logged into a game and how efficient that time has been spent automatically makes that character more capable.  More gear, more skills, more levels, etc.  Grind is essentially a measure of how long a person has played.

Traditional vertical progression uses the differences associated with grind to segregate players.  The new player and experienced player cannot play together, due to level, skill, gear, etc.  Only a few games have bothered to include mechanisms for removing these gaps, mentoring, scaling, and others.

The only mechanism to combat the vertical progression issue that has really worked (in my opinion) is the monster mission concept from EQ1.  In it, a character takes on the role of a fixed entity within a limited scenario and the group attempts to achieve some objective.  The original characters abilities, stats, gear, level, class, etc. are all overwritten by those of the fixed entity.  This 'avatar of an avatar' approach allows characters of any levels to successfully group.

Horizontal progression is still grind, and still a measure of how long a character has been in-game.  It essentially allows a character to dynamically rearrange their class and skill and even abilities to fit within a group.  Several games use this approach -- from Ryzom with a set of gear and skills to accomplish a goal within a group; to New World with its abilities tied to specific weapons.

Ultimately, horizontal progression reduces (or even removes) the specialization between the classes.  To me, that cripples the purpose of having 'classes' within a role playing game.  It enables, encourages, and facilitates every character into doing everything.

Why bother with an elaborate character creation mechanism (that is in every game that can be remotely called an MMORPG), if every character can do everything?  And when everyone can do everything, enough of them will.  That transforms the 'massively' element of a game game into a mostly 'solo' experience.  Solo play negates most of the need for groups and leads to an "I'll do it myself" mentality.  (The Thanos approach) 

I will agree that vertical progression has problems.  I also think horizontal progression also has problems that may be more destructive to the MMORPG genre.

Kyleran

Mendel said:

cameltosis said:

<snip>

This is the massively multiplayer genre.

The unique selling point is being able to play together with 100s of other players.

Vertical progression segregates the player base into tiny little slices, making it much, much harder to actually play the game with other people. Thus, building an MMORPG upon vertical progression is akin to shooting yourself in the foot: it actively harms your game and undermines the core point of building a massively multiplayer game in the first place.

Horizontal progression is one potential solution that would allow the game to still have progression mechanics, but without dividing the playerbase based on power. Players would still have things to aim for, new things to unlock, new loot to collect. Its just that the progression wouldn't make their character intrinsically more powerful.

It is a difficult concept to understand, primarily because the RPG genre has very few examples and the MMORPG has no examples. If you look at the shooter genre, you will find successful examples of horizontal progression. They learned years ago that if you want people to play together, they need to be on roughly equal footing. The MMO world still hasn't learned that lesson!

[NB: vertical progression is the direct cause of the solofication of the mmorpg genre]

Luckily for me, Camelot Unchained is being built around horizontal progression. Assuming the game ever comes out (and sticks to it's design principles) then we'll at least have an example of horizontal progression within the genre.

I'm going to give a minor disagreement with the horizontal progression thing.

As said above, grind is still grind.  Any progression system is based on the principle that the time a character has been logged into a game and how efficient that time has been spent automatically makes that character more capable.  More gear, more skills, more levels, etc.  Grind is essentially a measure of how long a person has played.

Traditional vertical progression uses the differences associated with grind to segregate players.  The new player and experienced player cannot play together, due to level, skill, gear, etc.  Only a few games have bothered to include mechanisms for removing these gaps, mentoring, scaling, and others.

The only mechanism to combat the vertical progression issue that has really worked (in my opinion) is the monster mission concept from EQ1.  In it, a character takes on the role of a fixed entity within a limited scenario and the group attempts to achieve some objective.  The original characters abilities, stats, gear, level, class, etc. are all overwritten by those of the fixed entity.  This 'avatar of an avatar' approach allows characters of any levels to successfully group.

Horizontal progression is still grind, and still a measure of how long a character has been in-game.  It essentially allows a character to dynamically rearrange their class and skill and even abilities to fit within a group.  Several games use this approach -- from Ryzom with a set of gear and skills to accomplish a goal within a group; to New World with its abilities tied to specific weapons.

Ultimately, horizontal progression reduces (or even removes) the specialization between the classes.  To me, that cripples the purpose of having 'classes' within a role playing game.  It enables, encourages, and facilitates every character into doing everything.

Why bother with an elaborate character creation mechanism (that is in every game that can be remotely called an MMORPG), if every character can do everything?  And when everyone can do everything, enough of them will.  That transforms the 'massively' element of a game game into a mostly 'solo' experience.  Solo play negates most of the need for groups and leads to an "I'll do it myself" mentality.  (The Thanos approach) 

I will agree that vertical progression has problems.  I also think horizontal progression also has problems that may be more destructive to the MMORPG genre.

Thanos was just your typical guild leader who had all of his members funnel him the best gear.

Sensai

Mendel said:

cameltosis said:

<snip>

This is the massively multiplayer genre.

The unique selling point is being able to play together with 100s of other players.

Vertical progression segregates the player base into tiny little slices, making it much, much harder to actually play the game with other people. Thus, building an MMORPG upon vertical progression is akin to shooting yourself in the foot: it actively harms your game and undermines the core point of building a massively multiplayer game in the first place.

Horizontal progression is one potential solution that would allow the game to still have progression mechanics, but without dividing the playerbase based on power. Players would still have things to aim for, new things to unlock, new loot to collect. Its just that the progression wouldn't make their character intrinsically more powerful.

It is a difficult concept to understand, primarily because the RPG genre has very few examples and the MMORPG has no examples. If you look at the shooter genre, you will find successful examples of horizontal progression. They learned years ago that if you want people to play together, they need to be on roughly equal footing. The MMO world still hasn't learned that lesson!

[NB: vertical progression is the direct cause of the solofication of the mmorpg genre]

Luckily for me, Camelot Unchained is being built around horizontal progression. Assuming the game ever comes out (and sticks to it's design principles) then we'll at least have an example of horizontal progression within the genre.

I'm going to give a minor disagreement with the horizontal progression thing.

As said above, grind is still grind.  Any progression system is based on the principle that the time a character has been logged into a game and how efficient that time has been spent automatically makes that character more capable.  More gear, more skills, more levels, etc.  Grind is essentially a measure of how long a person has played.

Traditional vertical progression uses the differences associated with grind to segregate players.  The new player and experienced player cannot play together, due to level, skill, gear, etc.  Only a few games have bothered to include mechanisms for removing these gaps, mentoring, scaling, and others.

The only mechanism to combat the vertical progression issue that has really worked (in my opinion) is the monster mission concept from EQ1.  In it, a character takes on the role of a fixed entity within a limited scenario and the group attempts to achieve some objective.  The original characters abilities, stats, gear, level, class, etc. are all overwritten by those of the fixed entity.  This 'avatar of an avatar' approach allows characters of any levels to successfully group.

Horizontal progression is still grind, and still a measure of how long a character has been in-game.  It essentially allows a character to dynamically rearrange their class and skill and even abilities to fit within a group.  Several games use this approach -- from Ryzom with a set of gear and skills to accomplish a goal within a group; to New World with its abilities tied to specific weapons.

Ultimately, horizontal progression reduces (or even removes) the specialization between the classes.  To me, that cripples the purpose of having 'classes' within a role playing game.  It enables, encourages, and facilitates every character into doing everything.

Why bother with an elaborate character creation mechanism (that is in every game that can be remotely called an MMORPG), if every character can do everything?  And when everyone can do everything, enough of them will.  That transforms the 'massively' element of a game game into a mostly 'solo' experience.  Solo play negates most of the need for groups and leads to an "I'll do it myself" mentality.  (The Thanos approach) 

I will agree that vertical progression has problems.  I also think horizontal progression also has problems that may be more destructive to the MMORPG genre.

Well said.  Meaningful progression is the cornerstone of MMORPGs.  And while vertical progression does create fracturing,  that, in part, is the point.  It's that drive to progress, to advance level and gear wise.  Otherwise,  the genre becomes a online shooter where everyone is the same.   There are hundreds of games that give you that equal footing,  so what not play them rather than force MMORPGs to fit into a fps/battleroyale hole?  If you want to do horizontal progression,  that's fine, as long as it's meaningful and you actually have to make an effort.