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Partial skill-based progression in an MMO
Cryomatrix
Member EpicPosts: 3,223
Take an MMO and do this.
You level your character from 1-20, at level 20 you have to do a long arcing quest to choose a sub-class (L2). After that is completed, you have to do an instanced quest where if you die once, you have to restart it. Make the difficulty semi-decent but not too hard.
Once, they pass, they can finally choose their sub-class. They level another 20 levels and now they are level 40. Rinse and repeat, but this time, make it a bit harder, but they still do an instanced quest and if they die once, they need to restart.
Keep doing this at lvl 60, then 70, then 75, then every 2 levels until lvl 90, then every level till 99, then every 0.33 level.
Thus, when someone is level 100, it actually means they earned it instead of it being a function of time.
Rules:
Instanced quests can only be done solo, are class specific, or if not solo, may include NPC bots. There can be other goals other than surviving, like finishing in the right time.
In reference to items, the difference between gear has level off and not be exponential where everything is based on gear. Where skill matters.
Negatives:
Then again, making a cash shop with higher tiers of weapons where you'd need like +35 to do a level 100 would be a sinister way to model it. You'd get people paying the cash shop just to progress their character.
But the goal is to make a higher level actually mean something. Or you could do a tier system with gold/silver/bronze and tiered awards and whatever.
Just a thought I had.
Cryomatrix
p.s. I'm already pre-empting someone saying, "already done that in XYZ games"
You level your character from 1-20, at level 20 you have to do a long arcing quest to choose a sub-class (L2). After that is completed, you have to do an instanced quest where if you die once, you have to restart it. Make the difficulty semi-decent but not too hard.
Once, they pass, they can finally choose their sub-class. They level another 20 levels and now they are level 40. Rinse and repeat, but this time, make it a bit harder, but they still do an instanced quest and if they die once, they need to restart.
Keep doing this at lvl 60, then 70, then 75, then every 2 levels until lvl 90, then every level till 99, then every 0.33 level.
Thus, when someone is level 100, it actually means they earned it instead of it being a function of time.
Rules:
Instanced quests can only be done solo, are class specific, or if not solo, may include NPC bots. There can be other goals other than surviving, like finishing in the right time.
In reference to items, the difference between gear has level off and not be exponential where everything is based on gear. Where skill matters.
Negatives:
Then again, making a cash shop with higher tiers of weapons where you'd need like +35 to do a level 100 would be a sinister way to model it. You'd get people paying the cash shop just to progress their character.
But the goal is to make a higher level actually mean something. Or you could do a tier system with gold/silver/bronze and tiered awards and whatever.
Just a thought I had.
Cryomatrix
p.s. I'm already pre-empting someone saying, "already done that in XYZ games"
Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Comments
Better to do it the way that Kritika does: adjustable difficulty, but with massively increased rewards for higher difficulty. That way, if you get stuck on something, you can turn down the difficulty for that one thing and move on.
The forum cry babies whined and cried .. a river of tears , shamelessly .. crying .. till it was removed ..
Just up the difficulty, make leveling a lot slower, put levels accountbound and lock the sub classes for certain levels instead,
No need to die or do specific quests but you still have to earn your level. Also, making an alt wont be a pain as it usually is. Getting to max level will be harder and more time consuming but all your characters will be at the same level so you don't have to repeat everything over from the start each time you make a new character.
I think it would be easier to get by the players, The annoyance of slower leveling (for many players) would hopefully be balanced out on the accountwide level. You need the higher difficulty in any case though if you want the players to earn their levels, just increasing the leveltime wont be enough.
We also had to figure things out,where to go,how to get there,it took a lot of effort,no hand holding of any kind.
However every level is too extreme,even within FFXI every 5 levels later on was too extreme.
There is no REPEAT needed if xp is done via killing,you can simply pick a different spot to kill when doing a different class,alts are never a good design for a rpg.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I think the problem is more that this cost in time is so easily avoided, whether the game allows extreme leveling speed through the help of others, one can buy character levels in the game shop, or the levels are simply given as part of a game expansion package. Getting rid of all that will go a long way to restoring the earning and value of levels.
Obviously, the game will also have to be difficult enough so the time spent is a learning experience rather than busy work. If the endgame is to be heavily based on group play there should be some mandatory exposure to that as well, so that the player doesn't end out at the level cap only knowing how to solo.
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