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General: Skelton: It's Lonely At The Bottom
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com player columnist Jamie Skelton writes this new article on the population vacuum that often exists in the lower levels of an MMO as more and more of a game's population settle at the end-game content. She also touches on what can be done to make going through those early levels a better experience or all involved.
Visit almost any MMORPG that's been around for a year or longer, and you're bound to find that the game is top-heavy. A heavy focus on end-game content, whether it's raiding, instances, or other max-level content, has led many community populations to become heavily concentrated with characters at maximum level; for example, almost a full 50% of active World of Warcraft characters on US servers are level 80 based on Warcraft census data. While lower-level characters do exist in the form of new players and alts, and these games usually have a reasonable amount of low-level group content created during their development and growth, that content often becomes abandoned and neglected by players on their rush to join the masses on top.
There are plenty of players who want to experience that content, of course, even if they have experienced it before. Unfortunately, the numbers of those players are often scattered widely between time zones and servers, making it difficult to find the prerequisite number of people to fill a group - much less a good group composition. For the lucky people who have managed to hit the right compromise of factors, low-level group content still gets its time in the spotlight. For those who aren't so lucky, other solutions have to be found.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Maybe they could just have randomly generated content, so it's always new. I don't think anyone has done that since Diablo 2.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Actually IMVPO the tightest spot is not the low levels, but those 10-20 levels before the top. There always are plenty who reroll and play the first 20 levels, but many quit after that and return to the max level chars. Or you have a guild which helps, since they did the low level stuff so long ago, they don't mind doing it again. But nothing was so difficult in EQ2 as to get people for the level 60-77 level stuff. When everyone in the guild was 80 by then, they just had done it and thus little will to see it just again. And as I experienced it those last 20 levels BEFORE the top were WAY harder to make. The XP is usually lowest and the ranks of fellows to group and thinnest.
Sidenote: I NEVER EVER understood why high levels take so much more XP to level up. Wouldn't it be logical to make them easier and the low levels slower? I mean, when you are new, like say, you learn Quantum Physics, the first steps are slow and take long, but once you are Einstein you rush through learning new things with leaps. Should the levelling curve not be entirely the other way around as it is present?? LONG at the beginning and fast at the end?
I really like the idea of the special currency earned for helping people. It provides an incentive without forcing anyone to do anything. I propose that how much you earn be based on level of the content being run through, and that the currency could be used for end game gear or its equivalent. As games get older it's harder and harder to attract new players - something like this would encourage end gamers to actively recruit new players. The only concern I'd have is exploiting - maybe do something like only one character per account per month counts as helpable?
Perhaps the answer is to get away from the concept of "end game" all together. I think the real answer is to get the lower levels involved in the meta-game from the very beginning.
Take a super-hero game, They are fighting off an invasion of some sort. The higher level mobs are taking out the bad guys, while the lower level guys are the ones who have to take the civilians to safety. The mobs that try to go after the civilians are in fact lower level, but if they are attacked by someone more than 5 levels above them, they let off some sort of massive one-hit attack (or they simply explode killing everything around them.
Bring the low levels into the game, and do not have the leveling treadmill be a requirement to get to the "Real Game"
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
City of Heroes/Villains has a very elegant solution to this issue. The Oroborous system combined with their sidekicking/exemplaring system allow for high level characters to revisit the lower level content. In fact, I'm very surprised the author didn't mention it here.
I like the way City of Heroes does the mentoring system. Any player of any level can team with any other player of any other level. There only needs to be one mentor on a team of 8 and they still get rewards, plus there are mentoring badges that can be achieved.
Games without levels allows content to always be viable, though advancement of somekind is achieved through hours played there are ways to build games so that content never becomes obsolete.
This story is only a very small tweak on a similar topic about content in general. My answer here is the same.
stats, armor, weapons, etc are all based on math. Simply tweak items/mobs and the resulting XP/drops based on the character. So, if I choose to revisit a "noob" zone as a level 60 or 80, the mobs are just as difficult as it was when I was a lvl 1.
The incentive to level, then, is to acquire new abilities. Questing can be about where the story takes you, rather than "arey ou high enough to survive here". Then a newbie could go in a dungeon with a veteran, and still be useful.
A level one healer as the 2 starting healing spells, but hasn't leanred the stam buff or the group heal or, etc etc.
IN WOW for example, skills learned by talent tree, and new skills introduced by reaching a certain level, would still be valuable.
There are several benefits to this.
1) Visit any zone, at any time and it is still beneficial.
How many zones did you skip because you obtained the levels needed without going there?
2) Revisit zones with new players.
Get a full group for a "low level" instance/dungeon without it being a "rushed" experience. The first time I played through Deadmines, it was a really neat combo of Disney's Pirate's of the Caribean and Goonies + WoW goodness. Rushing my wife through when she startd, it lost all of that mystery. As a 70 Tankadin, i could run through them all, and taken them all down at once. No help needed. In fact. I could kill them much faster than she could loot.
3) Keep your gear.
You found a lvl 20 sword that has an awesome flame effect. It looks awesome. But at lvl 40, the weapon just isn't useful anymore! You have to get rid of it. *cry* If weaopns/armor and mobs scaled, then you could keep armor and weapons that LOOK good.
Gotta run!
Currently not playing any MMOrpg --
Lvl 80 paladin WoW
Ok I can speak to the EQ2 mentoring system. It does allow you to mentor down to help low level toons advance. The problem with this is the drops. Say you have a level 80 mentoring a group of level 30's in runeye. The loot that drops is for the level 30's nothing at that level to even satisfy a level 80 as they are well beyond that level.
So the level 80 is only doing this to help kin mates only advance there alts and toons up. Or in my case the wife. I don't know any level 80 that is going to mentor down to a bunch of low levels if he dont know them.
I can also speek about LOTRO, as I do play there some. There is no mentor system. Inf fact if you get a hight level to come in there and power level you, The low level toon actually gets a penalty on the combat xp due to the hight level helping them. OH and while lotro is saying were gettting more accounts all the time, I never hardly ever seen anybody around 20 in ost while doing the troll bounty all I ever see is level 60's. So really the only folks tooling around are folks working on their alts and maybe some new folks but really the content is not being run to much.
Honestly I have never seen any game that actually reward high levels for helping low levels other than the satisfaction of helping a friend.
The problem with grouping is that it isn't encouraged. Not forced, no. But there are no real incentives to group up.
I'll confess and say that I played Tabula Rasa, and I loved it! It was a hell of an awesome game. Though not without its faults, it did get the squad mechanic better than most MMO's out there. It gave you rewards for grouping. First, it was a group buff. The more people were part of your squad, the bigger XP multiplier every member had. The levels of every squad member played into that muliplier. If your friend was too high, you got no XP for his kills. Too low, and the reward was menial at best, and you'd be setting your friend back. Secondly, grouping scaled instances. The more in the squad, the more difficult the instance, and better the rewards. Later on, TR added in /LFS, or looking for squad. A tool that allowed you to post up squad invites or set yourself up for an invite. It came a bit late, and wasn't advertised enough to the players (some had no idea it existed). But it was all there to let players know, that they were meant to group. They were given incentive and reason to group, which is something, a number of games don't do. "Training" players from the start to group, that grouping is good, will make it more probable that they will do so later on. Not forced, but suggested and made aware.
The second problem for lack of grouping is the lack of communication. Though sometimes there are tools and channels to promote and help people group up, these aren't made known. Not in the tutorials, nor by other players. Later who will often suggest "level more".
The other "main" problem with lack of grouping is something that bothers me to no end these days, the level system. Get rid of that, and everyone is on a level playing field. Skills, gear and knowledge aside of course. Make the game a bit more difficult on top of that and you can bet your pants you'll be grouping.
Being a person thats never has liked to play or see power leveling, I do not believe in rewarding people for doing so. I beleive that a system that scales instances to the characters coming through the door would work better.
Having a Level scale for instances, something like this. This instances is for 1st to 5th level characters and character over 6th lvl can not enter it. If you are first level and by yourself the instances scales the number and level of the mobs. Also the drops are not as good or as strong as if you came in with a full group of first level charaters. All instances can handle any number of charaters from 1 to 40 in number because the only diffrents is the number of mobs in a groups that you could pull / agro at anyone time. A level and number sliding scale based off of the number and level of the characters entering the instances. IE... 3 10th level charcters enter an instance, scale rating = 30. So 10 3rd level chatacters could handle the same rating. This is not to say that the rating of 30 means that the mob would be a single 30th level creature to fight, but maybe 6 5th levels mobs.
This way you don't reward power leveling, but you do reward grouping. And you don't penelize people for not finding a group or doing a instance. But you do need to reward people for getting a group together so make the drops stronger for them.
..its a guideline, not a rule, as players we must remember: Its a Game.
Great read here and you had some grand ideas down at the bottom there, I do know that this is a problem faced by many mmo's and have experienced it a few times after trying long running games out for the first time. I'm usually the opposite though strangley once I level a character up I tend to move on and go through alot of the content with alts (I'm not much of a raider) obviously provided the game has enough replay value. I will get to experience the skirmish system in LOTRO luckily which is one of the features I'm most anticipating. I also think COH could use a mention here as they also had the sidekick system in there game as well which I found pretty useful when I played that. But again a great read with some good ideas I'd hope to see used in some more games inthe near future.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
City of Heroes has solved this conundrum years ago in very elegant manner, and has even improved upon the concept once more this year.
Of course, unfortunately the chances of bigname games learning from them are slim.
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
What about giving up already that aritficial nonsense with character and mob levels and gear heavy dependency ? There is plenty of space left for character progression and diversifications without it. Just imagine a MMO game where you can enjoy all content of the game from the day one.
Most of modern MMOs give you ability to solo through most of its content. Multiple characters per account make you artificially independent from other players, destroying in this way another reason to interact with people. Lack of proper economy and low importance of crafting are the last nails to a coffin of such a MMO.
Make MMO games multiplayer experience back again - which they are suppose to be after all ! - that will definitly help with feeling of loneliness while playing a MMO game. MMOs need more group content so people have to cooperate, interact, trade, negotiate and compete with each other in order to achieve common goals or even survive. Group content builds community links and make it to thrives. That's the end game: the community.
yeah CoH and Champions Online really cover the problem nicly with a "global team mentor" the OP really should play another game beside LoTRO/WoWarcrack
Even Final Fantasy has Global Mentors
This is exactly what Dark Age of Camelot has had for years. There are 50 max levels and the instanced dungeons are grouped by tens. Its been so long since I did one I can't remember if a higher level toon can come in once a lower level toon has started one but it wouldn't matter because there is a level cap on how high the mobs will scale so even if a level 50 went in with a level 1 the mobs would be gray to him and neither person would get xp. One guy runs in and the mobs are blue or yellow. Two or more, up to a full group, go in and the mobs scale up in dificulty accordingly.
I really agree with all of the points that the OP brings up. They are in fact what I have been trying to do in eq2 with my now 1 person guild for close to a year now and I have yet to encounter a single player that feels the same. It seems from my experience that no one even wants to experience the journey anymore everyone wants to enter the game as a maxed out character and just raid or play with the same handful of people all the time.
I get very little sense of community in any mmo that I play these days. After the initial rush of players leveling at a game launch anyone who comes in late to the party and does not already have a support system is not going to be helped by anyone. Most guilds just become the same type of cliques that you would find in any junior high school and are not interested in helping anyone not already in there inner circle. If you don't believe me create a new character on any game more then a year old and see what you find with no main to support you financially or no friends list to rely on.
I think releasing expantions where the level cap is raised completely destroys mmos for me. I dont think I will ever play a mmo that raises the level cap. thats a sure way to destroy the world they created. its really depressing seeing the original world of a mmo totally abandoned and useless except to level alts.
Another thing is introducing new places in what I consider bad ways. Why cant they just add new content to the existing world instead of making us go all over the place to new continents and new worlds, etc? Spreading the population too thin is what that does, and I hate it.
If you stand VERY still, and close your eyes, after a minute you can actually FEEL the universe revolving around PvP.
Sidekick system like COH had and Guild Wars 2 will be having is the best solution.
In EQII you get a substantial boost to AA xp while mentoring someone.
An actual currency would be abusable by anyone with more than one account.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
The LDoN expansion in EQ had a system very similiar to this, except it was all set to 6 man groups.
City of Heroes has instances that scale from 1-52 and scale for number of players as well.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
.........or people could simply learn from their mistakes and stop churning out linear MMOs with levels. Make a game where everyone can participate in various activities regardless of how powerful they are. EVE seems to have managed this so why is it so difficult for other games to figure out?
Yes congratulations we've learned that if you make a game where you start at the level 1 area and end at the level 80 area then eventually everyone will be at the level 80 area. Gosh! Who could ever have forseen such an outcome? How many times do games companies have to keep relearning this lesson before they finally figure out that maybe.....just maybe.....this is a really really shit way to make an MMO. Rather than trying to find various quick fix solutions to this problem, wouldnt it make more sense to just simply not create the problem in the first place? Pay a high level friend to walk you through all the games content? ha ha ha! What a joke! Can game design possibly get any worse?
I know from when I used to play Everquest. It does have mentoring when in groups for the leadership xp. Also you can "shroud" down to lower levels to help lower level toons. You can even pick what class you shroud down to, as to help make a more balanced group. While shrouded, you get xp and items only used when you're shrouded, and allows you to unlock better and different shrouds. It is a unique system that I used a lot to get the special items and the different forms. More gmes should have stuff like that.
While on the topic of Everquest i want to point out another area that games have strayed from that could help this issue. In EQ the end content was HARD and i mean very hard. Take any of EQ's expansions, you could not take a max level character that had not raided or grouped heavily and have him be usefull in that current expansions content, he needed the end game gear from previous expansions to become productive. I think EQ balanced their gear upgrades nicely so that the non riad gear wasnt ever more powerfull then the last 2 or 3 expansions raid gear. WOW is very guilty of this and it kills any of its previous expansions content.
I remember in EQ joining a guild, and you had no trouble finding guilds working on content 2,3,4 expansions back to gear up, and running POP or Anguish and then Dethknell and then being able to hit some of the minor raid content on the new expansion. Even wiht what 13, 14 expansions out i bet if you surveyed most players many if not all would be familiar with a great amount of the games content.
So here is what i think we can take away and what should be implimented in future hard core games
Forced group content (regular trash mobs can be soloable but for "names" why not up the challenge)
Carefull scaling of content and items in expansions, make sure your expansion wont make the previous one just a passing through area on the way to the good stuff. The top tier stuff of 2 expansions back should still be viable for players to use effectively in regular play.
Bring back large scale challenging raids (I know many games including WOW have these but none have given me the thrill or challenge of many many EQ raids. lets see a few 40-50 men raids on some huge godlike BA mobs now that is an accomplisment not having 10 lvl 80 toons in a year.
Dont make caracter advancement to easy its something you should put alot of time and effort into it makes it rewarding
You know, this article made me think of something. Why focus on creating so much end-game content at all? Why not split 30/30/40 time creating new content for solo leveling/group leveling/end-game content respectively?