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MMO designers ! Remove levels and level restricted zones to address population density and make your
Blindchance
Member UncommonPosts: 1,112
Every MMO (especially theme parks) faces the same problem after a while. Population numbers drop, players move on to different games, others level up and low level zone feel like a ghost town. There is no initiative to stay in low level areas.
Easy fix and I'm sure I'm not the first person to think about it. Remove levels for players and mobs alike. Before some MMORPG zealots stone me to death for this heresy, lets think about it together.
I'm not calling for removal of experience of gaining new abilities. I'm calling for removal of mainly the health, damage output difference between new player characters and older players characters, NPCs and mobs alike.
This approach would allow to design the world not around a static zone journey which moves the player population towards the last max level zone, but allow an even player population distribution. You could have multiple starting areas were new players could start their game experience. Lack of level restrictions would mean that what is a starting zone for some could be a mid-game zone or end game zone for others. Then you could add additional benefits to travel between zones, except obvious new quests and events, regional crafting materials and resources, trading opportunities(simulated economy with different resources prices etc.).
While this approach isn't that new in some sandbox games I haven't seen a theme park which attempted it fully. I think recently GW2 was probably the closest to drop the idea of levels.
It would mean that any new players, returning players or players who start a new characters don't feel like they are playing a sub-par single player game until they reach zones with player population. The world would feel more alive with people going around their business not just dully grinding the levels to reach the "fun", populated area.
New characters could start with few more abilities than the usual one, just about enough to provide some offensive and defensive capabilities. Something like Guild Wars 2 where you could easily learn weapon skills, dodge / parry etc with few dozens of kills. Every zone could have some areas around it which offer more challenging content dotted around the zone, whatever would it be single player or group content, think a NPC castle, a swamp, a village being raided by a group of mobs, a town attacked by a dragon / army etc.
Class quest lines and story line quests could be spread and travel freely, even returning to the same zones from time to time. On the top of that we could have repeatable content like GW2 with bigger events and daily quests. Without any level restrictions and same experience gained from all of it, it would be up to players to decide WHERE they want to go today or what resources, crafting materials they need today.
Comments
I seem to remember Vanguard trying to do something like this. For some reason I didn't like that game as much as EQ. I guess I just didn't like the changes they made to the world, classes, and races. I preferred the JRR Tolkien/Forgotten Realms style more.
Anyway the concept is fairly sound. I'd imagine it would require some trickery like loading zones in the background while you are playing so that it doesn't seem like you are going to a new zone. The mobs would have to vary in level range a lot. You almost have to have more difficult mobs in certain areas making them more difficult and enjoyable to explore like large dark forests where you can become lost and something creepy is waiting to come from behind and get you.
I've always dreamed of a game with wide open unexplored territories that you can become lost in or find secret places. Something with large complex underground dungeons/tunnels filled with traps and hidden doors/walls. Something with a large array of environments from vast deserts to icy plains, to foreboding forests. There would be cities scattered around. Going from place to place would be a quest unto itself. The game wouldn't tell you that this city exists or how to get there. It wouldn't tell you where this dungeon was or this place. The NPCs might drop small cryptic hints here and there, but that's it. It would be up to you to figure explore, find different places, and find things to do with the tools they give you.
There is a simpler solution. Just put in difficulty levels like in D3. Games like that ... D3, Marvel heroes, .... all the content can be used at all levels.
Plus, moving to other games are not a bad thing. MOre variety of gameplay. Devs don't need to design a game that can last years ... they can simply design to make money (like box sales) for players to play for a few weeks and move on.
You are missing the point a bit, no LEVELS even as a concept to describe the difficulty
Of course mobs could vary in difficulty with more health ( 100 % - 600 HP %, obviously more for group bosses ) but still doable even as a fairly new player as long you understand the basic combat mechanics and use your skills properly. More challenging mobs could use more skills too.
I totally agree with the exploration aspect
There's one problem with that: Progression. Even if you removed the levels and stats from the gear, players would become increasingly powerful just by gaining more skills to use. PvE would be most challenging as you start out, then get easier and easier.
That would make the game's PvE content a mind-numbingly boring grind after the start.
Maybe the game could implement negative levels so that your power decreases a bit when you gain new skills to keep the content challenging. With end-game PvE requiring max. negative level.
Without levels (or equivalent skill tree based progression), what you are left with is a MOBA style game. No thank you.
Leveling and character development are core features of RPG's in general, not just computer based RPG's. Removing the leveling process destroys one of the core features of RPG's for me and other players like me, the journey.
The end-game is just that, the end. It is where you sit in a holding pattern waiting for the next expansion. The leveling process and the accompanying journey is where character growth occurs.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
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No one said all MMOs are supposed to follow this idea, no need to get defensive. It's going to be hardly a MOBA style game with quests, class quests and story line. The only thing I want to remove is the health / damage output difference between levels. You will still be able to gain new skills for experience.
If you strip new skills at every level MMORPGs don't give you anything else except HP and damage output difference, which is usually influenced by gear. That's not journey, that is just grind for sake of bigger numbers above your head. Which in no way means I want to have static gear quality. We can still have poor, common, good quality, masterwork gear types, just with less stat differences then now.
"Progression" / "Progress" is a key element of roleplaying games in general. I agree with that.
But what exactly is "progression"?
(1) It can be some player determined goal (e.g. the richest player, the best {insert role}, etc.).
(2) In CRPGs "progression" also means advancing on the main storyline/main quest.
(3) It also means improving the in-game power of a character (e.g. by leveling up, training skills, getting better equipment).
To limit "progression" to only (3) is far too short sighted.
You will always have zones or areas within the game just as empty/ghost town regardless if you have or do not have levels.
Even with GW2's Dynamic Level Adjustment you still have zones not heavily occupied and with group events unable to complete due to not having enough players or the difficulty.
That's just not true, many of the best pen and paper RPGs don't have levels and they sure have more advanced progression than MMOs. Here is a few examples: Shadowrun, World of darkness (Vampire, mage and so on), Cyberpunk, Call of Cthulhu/Basic roleplaying, Runequest, Warhammer fantasy RPG, Amber, Paranoia and a whole bunch more.
What is important is that characters still needs to progress even without levels. Not increasing the hitpoints but still offer a variety of new skills, feats and increased attributes works excellent.
I played pen and paper RPGs since 1984 and MMOs since '96 myself and I am sure that this actually works.
You can't just take away levels and make gear similar without replacing it with some other kind of progression if that is what OP suggest, that might work in an E-sport focused PvP game but not for something aimed at PvP.
MMOs need to let you and your character slowly gain power together, your character should improve and so should you as you play. What needs to be removed is the huge powergap between new and older players, but you shouldn't removed it altogether.
In PvP an excellent player with a new toon should just barely be able to beat a lousy playing vet, that is yhe perfect amount of powergap. Right now that is impossible in most MMOs.
It would still have all positive effects OP talks about while still gives us enough progression to enjoy ourselves as we play a long time.
While I really like your idea, and I totally agree that it would make at least a very different kind of experience, the problem is working within the realm of possibility.
I wonder how difficult it would be to have 200 PCs in a zone, all at different stages of character development, all fighting one mob a piece, and all the adjustments that would have to be made in an instant by the encounter beginning. Basically as soon as you attack/agro/whatever a mob, the game will need to do an instant adjustment to the encounter, otherwise you end up with the same problem you're talking about where the zone is all one "level".
Horizontal progression has been a request many a MMOer has asked for over the years. Its an odd shape to content when 75% of your content is designed for leveling and is excluded to when you reach max level. If this is what you are asking for OP, watch EQN as this is the closest any game have come to horizontal progression (or shooting for it). They break down areas and chars into tier 1 through 4. Going back as a tier 4 char in a tier 1 area you will still find content is not easy mode for doing so. MAtter of fact the game is being designed that when you reach tier 4 you will want to go back to the start as with Storybricks where you started wont be the same. Going through that same area again will reap a different play experience.
I wish more MMOs would move to horizontal progression.
Not anymore because of the mega servers but your point is still valid.
The thing is that when some zones gives better rewards then others most players will spend their time there, no matter the difficulty.
GW2 have another good example of that, until they took away the champs of Queensdale, it had a ton of not so greatly playing high level characters farming it since it gave too good loot compared to the difficulty.
If you trylu want players of all kinds to mix in the same zone you must also get risk Vs reward right and do like many of the older MMOs did: mix in some far more dangerous mobs even if the noob zones. Many of those games upped the difficulty of a zone at night with harder, higher level mobs and better loot while still being easy at day, other had random high power mobs sometimes walking the low level zones, and many of those mobs had really good loot.
The problem with that is of course that back then newer players couldn't beat every mob in a zone and accepted it.
And whenever you make an expansion you need to either up the drop table in the old zones or keep the exact same risk Vs reward ratio, or the old zones will be dead soon.
Problem is, while your idea sounds great on paper, most players don't seem to actually want this atm.
I hope there comes a time where that changes, and maybe it's sooner than we think. But essentially people are so used to that artificial 'ding! you've gotten a bit stronger!' that games without it somehow feel less satisfying. It's stupid, but it's true. Personally I would be all for a level-less game experience, but I find myself doubting how many others would be onboard with that.
Level indeed cause a lot of problems within MMOs, but until more people get comfortable with not having them, they may just be another 'necessary evil' of the genre.
The other problem with that is essentially what happened with FFXI.
You'd have a massive influx of players show up to zone, just to camp that one mega awesome monster that spawns, then POOF they were gone. They didn't really do much for the other players that were doing the majority of the zone. It's not unlike how GW2's World Bosses function atm, where you have this massive train of people map hopping from boss-boss.
I think what really helped GW2 out (that other games could utilize) is their requirement that you actually physically go to the maps you're doing dungeons for, in addition to all the achievements that redirect players back towards lower-level zones. This has added a lot of incentive to go back and help out in those lower level zones, instead of just speeding through.
I'm glad someone gets it
I agree, in a way..
Removing levels won't solve any problems, but removing the stat-gains while leveling up would help a lot.
If you think about what's the main reason max level characters are almost omnipotent compared to the lower level ones, it's the huge difference in stats. Even by wielding low quality weapons and armors they can single-handedly beat several lower level characters or mobs because of stats and artificial buffs that occur due to level difference, which can be seen as lowered hit and crit chance from a lowbie side.
For example in WoW level 1 character can't even hit lvl 100 character, and even if he could the damage output would be so small the high lvl character would be practically unharmed for being a punchbag for several hours. That's because of artficial buffs and a huge stamina gain from having 100 levels (not even counting his gear yet).
What should be done is to remove these stat gains and stupid level-difference buffs, and let the skills and gear be the only difference between a lowbie and a high level character. Weapons and armors would be easier to balance against both PvP and PvE, since they would be the only source of additional stats, excluding maybe some buff spells casters might have.
The problem is the max level health capacity vs. the low level dmg output. By decreasing stat difference in addition of what i wrote above would make these games a lot more interested, whether you were a PvE'er or PvP'er.
RPGs need progression, both horizontal and vertical, but allowing your players to become gods has never been a good idea.
One of my biggest issues with GW2 was going back to old content felt so incredibly dull. You were stronger than a normal person of your level so everything was easy yet you didn't get that satisfaction of being able to just crush the content either. You couldn't go mess around with a buddy and do a dungeon that was way under your level, go get revenge on that boss that killed you over and over etc. It just felt like the worst of both worlds.
EQN's idea of tiered zones probably could work though.
In EQ I also remember a lot of high level people hanging out in lower zones. Both to kill the big nasty monsters like Hill Giants, but also to buff the lower level players and help them out. I remember when items were not bind on equip. High level players would often give items they no longer used to low level players. There was a lot of community built form all of that. People would also help each other with things like retrieving corpses. The mass exodus from certain newbie zones usually came when an expansion was released. Everyone would flock to the new low level zones because they had better exp and loot. The old zones would be left forgotten.
At any rate it does seem to make sense to have levels not increase a players strength by so much in comparison to others or to have a skill system where they are no levels. Either way it's important to have a world instead of just zones with certain level ranges. That would bind things together even more.
Asheron's Call leveling system was pretty close to a "leveless" system in a leveling game. You had an experience pool that you could dump into skills/stats to increase their rank, which in turn increased your relative power. Levels delivered skill points at set intervals and served as a guide for what your relative power could/should be. While still being a leveling system, it did somewhat help with power creep. I remember being in my 50's and having people in level ranges of 60-90 hunting the same areas.
I do like where you're line of thinking it though, Blind, and it's a direction I think mmos could take. Especially mmos that aren't based upon an end game experience, but rather an experience of exploration, economy and social interactions. There would still be some power creep, as the developer would need to create content that is near impossible for a brand new toon, but doable for someone who has unlocked a greater number of skills. However, if a group of friends wanted to take their friend who is brand new to the most dangerous zone in the game, well there wouldn't be anything preventing them from doing that...and there wouldn't be an artificial penalty in place for them to do that either. It would be a wickedly exciting experience for a brand new player, and one hell of a fun challenge for the friends to keep their noob buddy alive.
GW2's system was pretty close to this. There is still leveling, but the automatic downleveling prevents certain challenging types of content from becoming faceroll even for a hardened vet. The biggest issue with GW2 was that not all zones were equally rewarding. Not everywhere was exciting and many places had zero dynamic events going on due to lack of population. Megaserver helped with that a bit, but there's still a severe lack of people in certain areas.
Someone else mentioned EQNext with their Tier functionality and Storybricks. Which is all fine and well, but with SoE turning into Daybreak who knows what the fate of EQN will be.
At this point, anything that is different would be welcome. Something that isn't DikuMud based and/or isn't a FFA PvP sandbox.
Yes ArenaNet simply wasn't radical enough to push with this idea. They tried, but failed.
How about a shared world shooter with better, less grindy content than Destiny?
People want to have some feeling that they are progressing in a game. If you remove levels, then where is the progression?
Sorry, I don't get what you want - it is counter intuitive. This is the reason level scaling is probably the best idea out there - both Rift and GW2 do it.
This would not work in a MMORPG, i believe what the OP was refering to with no levels and level zone restricted areas would be something more along the lines of what SWG PRE-CU had there were skill based trees not levels and no zones technically had level restrictions yet certain zone's ie planets had harder mobs to kill. But you could still travel there i really hope some developers get this type of Gear going.
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+1 I will never play other MMO with levels after playing SWG..
Level system is so flawed and so bad, it forces the same progression in every mmo - "kill rats", it wasted content by setting locks to levels, race and classes and removes uniqueness in the story driven by the player.
In real life I'm not born a warrior I can't change profession learn new things and adapt.
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New abilities, sub-classes, professions, class quests, story line quests, player owned housing, towns, strongholds, rare armour and weapons. Plenty of opportunities for progression. Level is nothing else than a number AND the health / damage output gap between you and lower / higher level. It doesn't help anything and only harms