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(POLL) How would you feel about Everquest Next having no Player Character Levels unlike EQ1&2?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
How would you feel about Everquest Next having no Player Character Levels unlike EQ1&2?
Levels have been a key part of themepark MMO pathing concept.
But moving towards a more free roam design to the game, it would make sense to be able to go anywhere and fight anything regardless of a level number next to character's head that requires a useless grind to unlock parts of the world to explore.
Well a Levelless system would allow players from their first time playing, to explore and go anywhere in the game to progress and enjoy themselves, rather being locked to a limit of locations like in a themepark design MMO.
Whats your opinion on this? Do you support such a thing?
There is a somewhat caution to the idea though. I believe it was GW2 (a Very Very Popular themepark MMO) that at first designed the game to allow players to scale in level in any part of the game including the game world. Which allow players from day 1 to go anywhere and do any event they choose. Talk about exploration.
But some reason this idea was scrapped. Had to be a reason that is negative. Could such a reason apply to a Sandbox Everquest Next?
Yes yes share your thoughts and vote on this discussion.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
I think to uo, where titles were given based on proficiency,and notoriety, those were levels, regardless of what you actually thought of them, and even in eve, there are levels of advancement, based of the requirements of the ships, and activities you do.
Cheers,
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
But thats kind of the point. Since Nobody has ever designed a MMO from the ground up to not have levels (including hidden levels), how would you ever know how fun it really can be?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
It would be interesting, because this might help balance PVP and prevent rampant OW ganking of lower level characters.
But there needs to be some sort of progression system, so regardless of what they come up with, I'm sure more experienced players will have a large stat pools / better gear / available spells / available abilities... over new players. So it might not even help OW ganker control.
I voted yes, but if you had included an option for "Either / Or" I would have selected that.
I think levels are fun, but I'm always open to see something new.
Legends of Kesmai, UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SB, RO, SWG, EVE, EQ2, CoH, GW, VG:SOH, WAR, Aion, DF, CO, MO, DN, Tera, SWTOR, RO2, DP, GW2, PS2, BnS, NW, FF:XIV, ESO, EQ:NL
Considering many of WoW's game features are from Everquest, it should be a tired design.
I don't have to partake in harcore dungeon style S&M to know i won't enjoy getting smashed in the junk with a ballpeen hammer whilst having hot wax poured on my nipples during intercourse.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I like levelling even in a sandbox.
An alternative system could be an advancment based on careers like in WFRP, but it is too difficult to implement in MMORPG as Warhammer Climax project teach.
"Brute force not work? It because you not use enought of it"
-Karg, Ogryn Bone'ead.
Levels in modern MMOs have become nothing more than a tedious obligation. They fly by so fast and are just a chore to get through for a couple weeks or whatever. No one cares about the levels anymore, because they are so short and it's over so fast.
Having levels really has become pointless these days. So, I do not much care one way or the others nowdays. I'm ok with levels if they actually meant something. And, I'd be okay with a skill system instead of levels if it were done well.
It's really less about the type of system and more about how well implemented it is, for me.
When I get to level 50 or 60 or 100 then what? Then there are no more levels and we have to do something else and we measure our progress in other ways.
Players burn through content, leveling inside a month. All of the content from 1 - 50 is wasted on "leveling".
What if There were no levels? Then ALL content would be playable at "end game". Suddenly Blackburrow is still a challenge 6 months in and still drops items you can use to craft, especially if players craft everything and gear is disposable.
You measure your advancement by leveling other things, skills for example, whether like in EQ where you beat on stuff to get better at one handed swords and the like or a EVE style time based skill point system or a PS2 certification type system, this is how you measure your advancement.
Can you wear that T5 plate chestplate? Do you have enough strength and stamina and have you enough skill points into plate wearing? Yes instead of a simple level requirement items may require your mastery of many things to be able to use them.
In EVE I am a miner it took me 4 months of casual play to be able to fly a Hulk/Mackinaw, which are fairly expensive for a noob but made up very quickly by letting me mine a lot of ore. Now I want to be able to do mission runs and need to spend some time to level up that.
And what about adornments and enchants? What if you have to have the skill to be able to use say radiant gems and the tier above that is glimmering stones? Now you are leveling to wear gear then leveling to adorn and chant them.
Smed has said that there wont be the traditional gear treadmill but there will be raids, EVE has raids(Incursions), and there wont necessarily be a skill based system. I hope he was just covering his tracks with the skill system and they do have it. Well have to see but an EVE - like high fantasy AAA title would be amazing.
With or without PVP. I HATE PVP but I LOVE EVE. It isn't needed but certainly adds to the politics which is amazing.
And the economy...I could go on and on but you have heard it all before, no one has ever made it though. But when your company has several MMOs with less subs than EVE has you kinda take notice of this "niche" game and, well, maybe they are on to something.
If EQN is like EVE I will LOSE MY MIND, and it's a good thing.
And now for the next Poll...no classes... /evil grin
No. Horizontal progression is the death of games. See GW2. It's player base dropped dramatically because there was NOTHING TO DO AFTER 1 WEEK OF PLAY. You got to level 80 and literally nothing mattered because you could never get any better. Just look different/silly
i voted for the third option.
I am totally OK with no levels. In fact, that would be great, but ill still play the game with or without levels.
I think that had to do more with the fact that it was horizontal progression with set classes and max levels. EQN may have horizontal progression with class switching and without character levels, big difference IMO.
It was funny to watch the MMORPG panel for the "future of MMO gaming". The ANet guy was talking about how people want to be locked into classes because they identify the character as that class. Dave was shaking his head and smiling and said just after that about how players want that option to change what they do. We'll see how it turns out.
So, your saying that everyone would be able to go anywhere, equip anything,kill anything, craft anything, right from the get-go?
You get satisfaction from achieving goals in life, and yes It does translate into games as well. You say the level system is old and tired, and yet GW2 Peaked a few weeks in ans is declining ever since. Those that praised the game are now critical of the ease of the game, and we have ample evidence that games with progression do well if done right.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
I am not quite getting what your saying, as UO didn't have levels, you had skills, and the better your skills, the better you did, but a brand new character could go anywhere and fight anything, didn't mean you would win.
EQ, you could originally go anywhere, fight anything, with levels, same thing though, didn't mean you would win.
I would be fine with EQN having a skill system, and people worried about advancement after they max out their skill points, you could tack on a AA system, just like in a level based system.
Pretty good system I thoughg
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
Im sure many people are familiar with SWG before the revamp. I know there was a certain element of leveling but as it was skill leveling it was quite enjoyable. I know we have already heard that there is classes and many people have said that that means no skill base system Im still not entirely sure of that. SWG had professions, just imagine if you will change the name professions to classes and what do you get and skill based system which upon leveling of skills gives you your class.
For example. Level up healing with skill with some arcane magic your a cleric. Level up healing skill with some natural magic and spear your a shaman. Level a low amount of healing with some combat skills your a paladin. Even advanced levels could exist, such a templar, champion and so on.
Im not speculating that this is what it is im just saying that there are many ways to not have levels yet still show progression.
Just because the itinerary says "Classes" does not mean they are going to discuss specific classes and lay out the multiple of 4 classes that traditional MMOS have. They could very well just be using that to describe the panel where they tell us there are no classes and then explain how we go about getting skills and progressing.
There is ample evidence that skill based systems work well, even themeparks have them such as EQ and even early WoW, you leveled up your weapons skills.
UO/SWG and EVE are fantastic examples of skill based systems, so is PS2. There are many different ways to implement them, I wouldnt be surprised with a hybrid approach. Something like traditional weapon leveling where you beat on stuff to level your one handed axes and the like and then for special abilities a skill based system.
There are all kinds of ways to do this too like I said, Skyrims model, EVE's model, SWG's model etc., etc.
Everyone cant do everything from the get go, you have to train it up somehow and that takes time, how much we do not know, but I keep touting EVE's skill system which takes a full, literal, 22 years to skill up everything. Now I am not saying I want to take 22 years to be every class on one character but the point is that there are going to be time constraints even from simple acts like manual weapon based skill leveling, as an example.
I would be fine with no levels if it was done right, but what I've seen are games where levels are replaced with skill levels and stats, which are still levels.
If anything the games I saw not only had a grind for the stats/skills but more of a grind than you'd ever see in character levels because skills and stats could be improved faster by not adventuring and killing mobs.
What I hate most about levels is that in many games, including EQ, which I loved, have a bad feature where they do a level check to apply damage to Mobs. I didn't mind that much in EQ because the fights were challenging, but in WoW, and other games I got so bored.
The level appropriate mobs, say 3 levels higher than you are easy, when you're in a group or even with a partner you can kill everything, even groups of everything right up until the point where the level check kicks in and then you're hitting for zero damage. There's mega red mobs we could have had a fun fight against but fighting for an hour and not even budging a health bar was the result. It couldn't kill us because of leashing and our balancing aggro, but we couldn't even damage it. That's way too limiting on both sides.
Asdar
Leveling on a primitive level for humans is rewarding. It's been proven. But I feel that levels create unneeded problems. Once you "cap" your character, a few things happen that I think are problematic.
1. There's now a lot of "Useless" content in the game. There game is filled with amazing monsters, encounters, dungeons, quests, and situations that would be really fun to play, but they're now "grayed out". The mobs don't pose any threat to you and they don't drop anything you'd want.
2. It creates community barriers. Why play with a lvl 10 with your lvl 50? You're going to prevent the lower level from getting any loot/exp. You're not getting anything fun from playing. The mobs aren't a challenge to you. It's a losing situation that causes the community to become introverted and only play with players that match up in levels, gear quality, etc.
3. It's unrealistic. How would you like to watch a Lord of the Rings movie and have Aragorn say "Pffff orcs?! That's nooby junk, they can't hurt me because I'm lvl 87" and all the orcs/goblins just hit him with zero effect, unable to pose a threat to him. Wouldn't be much of a movie would it? In fact it would look laughable, like some sort of slap stick comedy. So why do we want that in a game?
So if there was an MMORPG that made the game "skill based". Made all monsters dangerous and all content viable in the game. You could play to have fun, with anyone you wanted, at anytime, and go on any adventure you wished.
I think this sounds fun, but I'm sure many people would want the traditional levels/gear progression. People often give me the impression that they don't play games for "fun". That they don't actually enjoy the gameplay itself. They only enjoy the levels, the unlocks, the gear grind, etc etc.
Oh well, you can't make a game to please everyone I suppose :P
Legends of Kesmai, UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SB, RO, SWG, EVE, EQ2, CoH, GW, VG:SOH, WAR, Aion, DF, CO, MO, DN, Tera, SWTOR, RO2, DP, GW2, PS2, BnS, NW, FF:XIV, ESO, EQ:NL
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)