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Expansion's never able to fit well
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Expansion's
The age old problem that was never solved !!
Adding 10 more levels for players that worked hard to get where they were.
This never sat well with anyone, yet never a real solution.... Do you have any ?
The age old problem that was never solved !!
Adding 10 more levels for players that worked hard to get where they were.
This never sat well with anyone, yet never a real solution.... Do you have any ?
Comments
-New starting zones, mid level and end game up to the "same" max level.
-New classes.
-No transfer of armor weapons or gold
Problem with this is, how do players blend together for people that don't buy them. However by adding 10 levels you have the same problem.
This could mess with your head like thinking about time travel !
Could you imagine if they always kept max level at 60.... Again, this could mess with your head !!
As for that kind of thing not sitting well with anyone, why would you think that? i think most players are excited to have new content in their MMO's, and single player games too come to think of it, after all its not like expansions are limited to just the MMO genre.
In my observation from post here.
People take their progress at end game seriously only to make it worthless by adding levels.
It gets far far worst as this happens several times in the same game.
If you make a game desiggned for 60 levels and increase that number the base mechanics takes a hit, and the more levels you add the worse the game mechanics become.
The first D&D came in boxes of levelranges and that worked fine, when your players came up to the levelcap of your current box you bought a new one and that worked fine since the mechanics were made for 20 levels from the start, they didn't just keep adding new levels as time passed.
If you plan from when you start making the game there is no problem but usually the devs just look on launchday when they are working on a MMO and that is a misstake. Currently MMO tend to get far worse after a couple of expansions, the mechanics feel broken, older zones of a certain levelrange becomes empty since newer zones of the same range gives better loot.
Another thing is that I don't get why MMOs need to have so many levels, now most releases with tons of them and add even more each expansion. Do 100 levels really make the game more fun then 20? Assume that getting to max level takes the exact same time, and that you with 20 levels actually get skill upgrades each level, not just some HPs most of them.
If I were to make a levelbased MMORPG I would create the game for 25 levels from the start, releasing the game with just 20 and add one each expansion. that last level would take as long time to reach as the 5-10 other games add. The game would be balanced and I would have rules of balancing items and classes up to lvl 25 before the game even launched.
I do think I would slow down the time to reach max level a bit as well to stop people getting into the endgame too fast (I don't have enough good ideas on how to make the endgame more fun then leveling up). Now it usually takes me at least 3 weeks to level up a character to max in most MMOs, 9 weeks would be far better since leveling tend to be the most fun part of the game.
That is at least how I would do things...
Amount of levels should coincide with the amount of abilities you plan on giving all your classes. Like if you have 60 levels and plan on giving one or two abilities all the way to then yes.
I can't remember how D&D gave abilities, because the game only went to level 14 or so in the early days.
But most games should base this on abilities...... Possibly based on amount of zones and how long you would like people to be in them.
GW2, did not add 10 more levels.
I think this is a "your mileage may vary" thing.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
- Albert Einstein
Developer mindset,
Our product was successful, however our numbers are falling. Lets add more paid content to continue and bring players back. We have two choices:
1) Side by side content up to level 60, but this adds a lot of work inter-weaving story and content to fit..... No, this is too much work.
2) Add 10 more levels.... Much easer.
Why is this a problem? If leveling is fun, then there is no problem.
If it is not, choose a game without levels.
Since there are plenty of games with levels making money, it looks like people are having fun with leveling.
SWG got it right with it's first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed. It didn't just add new content but a whole new game.
So is this why we buy expansions,to see a level bounce around for a week?
If the content is done well and leveling is slow enough to enjoy each level and gear that we attain each level,otherwise a VERY fast cycling effect that doesn't last long enough top enjoy anything be it good or bad.
FFXI is a good example,going form doing it really well to doing it really bad for sake of selling 3 new expansion packs that arrived in quick succession.In case of FFXI is was a sign of disrespect by SE to soak their fanbase quickly to fund FFXIV which was struggling bad in development and taking forever and costing too much.
This is not relegated to just FFXI during the Abyssea era,this has been going on in every single game,even worse since SOE and Blizzard offered up instant level 90-100 so they could warrant selling the latest expansion which focused ONLY on new zones.
The answer is VERY easy,case in point FFXI for about 8-9 years proved it and that is a pretty good length of time to do it right,seeing how other devs lucky to get 3-5 years of good structure out of their game.If you need me to explain one aspect>>>sub class,HELLO every other developer that doesn't have a clue !!.When utilizing sub classes the way FFXi did it keeps ALL zones relevant for a very long time,many years to be exact.It also creates incentive because you are forever improving your character over all classes and crafts without any need for alts,alt crafters.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Find a way to make that gear be relevant, or don't make it so long to get or just don't have it at all.
Maybe only do new levels every second or third expansion with AA points in one and new skills (abilities or gear or housing items... That give abilities...) In another.
But you are just getting a few more HP for most of them anyways, so what is the point?
With fewer levels each level actually would give you something new, you don't think it would be more fun if gaining a level actually meant something?
I am not saying that leveling shouldtake shorter time (rather the opposite), just that they should mean something.
If you just get something every 5th level you have tons of useless padding, at least I get far more a kick from gaining a new skill then just some more HP (of which I already have 20K).
Most MMO players enjoy gaining power as they play, I do and you do. And you would still do that with lesser levels, the difference is that leveling would start to mean something again.
You can certainly have a MMO with a thousand levels and having you level up every 10 minutes but for me that is just meaningless fluff, particularly since leveling is incredible easy today.
The reward you feel is greater if there is fewer levels and 20 is a good number, have worked for D&D the last 50 years after all.
And then an expansion hits, and you can't start over as a low level nobody so you have to become an even bigger hero, with an even bigger baddie at the end and then several expansions in it has become completely ridiculous with incredibly inflated damage numbers flying around while fighting God in the end. A great example is WoW. In vanilla you would fight boars in the beginning. Then TBC dropped and you were fighting boars again, but those were "hell boars" with spikes, too silly to be true but you just couldn't be a nobody again.
For me a great expansion adds new gameplay elements, I don't mind the farms/garrisons/class halls in WoW, I hate it that they become obsolete in the next expansion, aka worthless to begin with. Ad new gameplay elements and stick with them. Introduce new zones, classes, races and abilities but no levels, keep all current content relevant. I guess it comes down to ad, not replace. Ohh and graphic upgrades once every 5 years or so, keep it good looking.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Adding levels at the end also hurts the product.
Some people never really make it to the end to care about ten more levels. Yet they would like to vertically start over with something new.
People often have one at cap and many alts.... They may not want to play that one at cap to see the new content.
Many may see a new expansion and want to play as new again.... What new do they see with ten levels at the end ?...... WoW understood this, but they only half assed solved this by only making 1-20 level content.
Each expansion added new content from ~lvl 20 -75. New lvling areas, new jobs, new storys, new zones/continents, new dungeons, new world bosses, new instanced boss fights. Level caps were never increased so your work was never forcefully thrown away to make you start over.
It was all new content to do from beginning levels all the way to high tier endgame. Each expansion grew the whole world drastically without taking any stuff away (Aka.. negating it). This is the best example of how it should be done in the genre. None of this every 2 yrs throw everything else out bs we have in the genre now.
This is why you could play the game for 50hrs a week for 6+yrs and never run out of stuff to do or get burnt out from doing the same thing every week... you had to rotate content due to the shear amounts of it. To this date no mmo in existence has had more relevant endgame content or the amount of content that Pre-abysea FFXI had. Honestly no mmo has even had 1/2 of the amount.
So sad SE killed it off with abysea... which negated 4 expansions worth of building the game up.
It really is that easy... DO NOT REPLACE THE GAME EACH EXPANSION. I do not know maby expand your game with expansions instead.
You are using the term "vertically" incorrectly. Expanding vertically is exactly what does happen now: adding more levels. What you are describing is a horizontal expansion. The problem with adding a horizontal expansion to a game based on vertical progression is that most of what you add to the game is pointless. For those already at endgame, most of the expansion is redundant. For those who haven't reached endgame, how would they know whether the expansion is good or not? All they'll see is some extra zones whilst leveling, but as there were already enough zones before the xpac, the extra zones just offer choice - thats good, but good enough to justify an expansion?
My preferred solution is to build the entire game around horizontal progression. No levels or power gaps, therefore all content is "on level". Expansions would do the same things as now: new classes, new zones, new dungeons, new raids, new pvp areas, new emotes, new cosmetics, new housing, new crafting recipes etc. It would just all be done without increasing numbers.
Beyond that, there are many other pitfalls to avoid:
I've personally never played an expansion that made an MMO better than it already was.
I agree, the endgame suck and that is a huge part of the problem.
Letting people hit the endgame after a couple of weeks bore most people to tears. Adding 5 more levels every 2 years is lick putting a bandaid on an amputation. Only less play time in the endgame and more work on it (more gameplay options & more fun) can solve that.
Adding more levels only makes sense if you plan does levels from the start. Also, most average monsters should have a standard level. Don't have lvl 60 dogs walking around. Of course named mobs could be way higher then standard.
That also means that if you up the level and make a new zone 5 levels higher then the old top you need to add nastier mobs, not just raised level standard mobs. Save the nasty stuff for higgh level action, if you can kill one unnamed moblin in one zone easily you should be able to take then in any zone. Now, a hob-moblin can be far tougher without any problem but the levelsystem only makes at least minimal sense if you do like D&D and have standard levels for mobs.
As for doing something right, I think Guildwars Factions and Nightfall really did the not raising level expansion perfect, Making an alt in them was a pleasure, not a pain.