I didn't like Tabula Rasa because it felt like World of Warcraft with pew pew guns. I didn't like Auto Assault because it felt like World of Warcraft with cars. I did like Pirates of the Burning Sea, because of its skill-based naval combat system and the player driven economy. But the rest of the game, with its quest arcs and lackluster combat was just World of Warcraft with arrr matey, manly women, and boats.
With the recent high profile MMORPG failures, some people might ask if the MMORPG industry is oversaturated. I don't think it is; I think it has plenty of room for future growth. What I do think is: it is oversaturated in quest-arc driven leveling games.
We already have our fill. EverQuest, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Age of Conan, and now Warhammer Online. I think anyone and everyone who wants to play a quest-arc driven leveling game has found one by now, and its going to take a lot more than sci-fi trappings and pew pew to draw us away.
I think there are probably many, many people out there like myself, who have already found an addiction we're happy with (for me, EverQuest II), already capped a few characters with the leveling, and just don't have the patience or desire to do it all over again.
I think Warhammer Online would have been better if they had dropped the battle rank. Just use renown ranks to give people a goal, but otherwise have people start in the end game, marginally equal (except for the benefits renown ranks provide) with war everywhere, trying to capture the other city. As it is, I just can't muster the interest anymore to grind through its lackluster PVE or Tor Anroc until I get to 40. There should be no need for chickening or other silly game mechanics. There should have been no need for mentoring. Characters could still improve with time invested, but the difference between an RR80 and RR1 character isn't as big as the gulf between a Battle Rank (BR) 40 character and a level one noob.
I don't think you'll see another major success in the MMO genre until you get one that either eliminates the leveling mechanic (replacing it with another carrot, such as collecting, for instance) or flattens the leveling curve such that new players and veterans can play viably together.
Looking forward, the Agency looks like it might be that game; it seems like it uses a collection mechanic (collecting agents) as its RPG advancement "carrot". Other than that, what else is there that doesn't look like Yet Another Leveling Game? Because we've all been there, and done that, and its high time for something new...
... or old? Maybe I should have given Eve Online a chance.
Showing posts with label LEVELING. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LEVELING. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
I Think I Have Enough Experience Already
In GU49, EverQuest II is going to dramatically lower the experience curve required to level. Right now, apparently, it takes an average of 260 hours to get to level 80. However, most people consider the end game to be the only true part of the game. After all, that's where everyone else is, and the most fun parts of an MMO are the parts where you can play with other people in tactically interesting scenarios. Levels 1-79 becomes sort of a really long drawn out tutorial. Granted, we need to take some time to learn our characters, but do we really need a 260 hour long tutorial? Every time they raise the level cap, that tutorial effectively increases in length (fortunately, SOE decided not to increase the level cap for The Shadow Odyssey), making things worse.
There are two problems with the wide level disparity:
1) high level players who simply want to try out the end game with a different class (or race) but don't want to grind through the same old content all over again
2) new players who find the world empty because all the veterans are playing the end game
Sony's decision to decrease the time it takes to get from level 20-70 (by about 64 hours!) is a pretty bold move. The proposed change to GU50 that allows each level 80 to give the player a +10% XP bonus to all their other characters is a great idea as well, allowing us to reroll our characters, and still take a decent amount of time to learn then, so that leveling an alt doesn't become a chore.
Some discussion on MMO Nation referenced AGDC roundtable discussions that, among other ideas, proposed 'instacharacters' (like in Dark Age of Camelot /level command - or the Death Knight in World of Warhammer, which starts at level 55). That sounds good to some extent, except it only addresses the first problem. It would probably make things worse for new players or anyone who chose to level up from the beginning.
At least with Sony's solution, new players have a chance of running into someone leveling back through that 1-80, even if they might be doing so faster.
Maybe there could be other alternatives that help address both issues? Perhaps people could earn a new kind of point system, such as "social XP", when mentoring players, or assisting low level players with quests or defeating named monsters, in addition to whatever benefits they normally get (such as accelerated achievement XP). Maybe players who don't have a max-level character on their account would have the option to flag themselves as "newbies" to attract the attention of more experienced players who want to earn social XP?
Social XP could be an account-wide pool and be used to purchase accelerated leveling (or bypass levels) for other characters. Or even other bonuses, such as unlocks for exclusive new races or prestige classes. That would encourage players to use their existing characters to help new (or rerolling) players to power level their offline (or future) characters.
While skipping or accelerating through levels for veteran players is a great idea, it does have some impact on the rest of the game, and a healthy game needs to retain the ability to attract newer players. That isn't possible if everyone just auto-rerolls high level alts or rushes through the old content in the optimal fashion as quickly as possible.
There are two problems with the wide level disparity:
1) high level players who simply want to try out the end game with a different class (or race) but don't want to grind through the same old content all over again
2) new players who find the world empty because all the veterans are playing the end game
Sony's decision to decrease the time it takes to get from level 20-70 (by about 64 hours!) is a pretty bold move. The proposed change to GU50 that allows each level 80 to give the player a +10% XP bonus to all their other characters is a great idea as well, allowing us to reroll our characters, and still take a decent amount of time to learn then, so that leveling an alt doesn't become a chore.
Some discussion on MMO Nation referenced AGDC roundtable discussions that, among other ideas, proposed 'instacharacters' (like in Dark Age of Camelot /level command - or the Death Knight in World of Warhammer, which starts at level 55). That sounds good to some extent, except it only addresses the first problem. It would probably make things worse for new players or anyone who chose to level up from the beginning.
At least with Sony's solution, new players have a chance of running into someone leveling back through that 1-80, even if they might be doing so faster.
Maybe there could be other alternatives that help address both issues? Perhaps people could earn a new kind of point system, such as "social XP", when mentoring players, or assisting low level players with quests or defeating named monsters, in addition to whatever benefits they normally get (such as accelerated achievement XP). Maybe players who don't have a max-level character on their account would have the option to flag themselves as "newbies" to attract the attention of more experienced players who want to earn social XP?
Social XP could be an account-wide pool and be used to purchase accelerated leveling (or bypass levels) for other characters. Or even other bonuses, such as unlocks for exclusive new races or prestige classes. That would encourage players to use their existing characters to help new (or rerolling) players to power level their offline (or future) characters.
While skipping or accelerating through levels for veteran players is a great idea, it does have some impact on the rest of the game, and a healthy game needs to retain the ability to attract newer players. That isn't possible if everyone just auto-rerolls high level alts or rushes through the old content in the optimal fashion as quickly as possible.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Learning from Magic: the Gathering
One alternative to leveling that has proven to be very viable in an MMO setting is collecting. Gods and Heroes has the a game mechanic that lets you collect "minions" to engage in squad based combat. The Agency has what Smedley called a "living loot" system where you collect operatives to work with you. Guild Wars makes collecting skills a part of the game.
I'm hoping this becomes more commonplace and that more MMOs use collecting as a means of 'advancing' your character, instead of levels.
One of the great things about Guild Wars was that veteran players were often not that more "powerful" than new players; because collection was one of the principle means of "advancing" your character, but the items you collected weren't necessarily "better" than another, how you strategically used the skills/heroes/etc. was more important than your level.
I found Metal Gear Portable Ops to be a highly addictive game because of this mechanic. As well, in Guild Wars, many players often went after quests to obtain skills that they had no real interest in using, simply to be completists.
Magic the Gathering had it right: collection can a powerful enough motivator to keep a user subscribing that can help level the playing field between new and old players, helping avoid the issue of mudflation, and it also can add more strategic elements to the game play (assuming you are restricted in the number of items from your collection that you can use at any one time.)
I'm hoping this becomes more commonplace and that more MMOs use collecting as a means of 'advancing' your character, instead of levels.
One of the great things about Guild Wars was that veteran players were often not that more "powerful" than new players; because collection was one of the principle means of "advancing" your character, but the items you collected weren't necessarily "better" than another, how you strategically used the skills/heroes/etc. was more important than your level.
I found Metal Gear Portable Ops to be a highly addictive game because of this mechanic. As well, in Guild Wars, many players often went after quests to obtain skills that they had no real interest in using, simply to be completists.
Magic the Gathering had it right: collection can a powerful enough motivator to keep a user subscribing that can help level the playing field between new and old players, helping avoid the issue of mudflation, and it also can add more strategic elements to the game play (assuming you are restricted in the number of items from your collection that you can use at any one time.)
Monday, July 30, 2007
Alternatives to Leveling
On Voyages in Eternity, Damionov reposted an idea from the mud-dev forums which proposes an alternative to the XP mechanism for advancing levels. The idea involves moving characters along in levels by accomplishing "achievements." I think Dungeons and Dragons Online attempted to do something similar by rewarding XP based on completing quests as opposed to the mindless killing of monsters.
Its a nice idea, but I don't think it really fixes anything. In my humble opinion, the main problem with MMORPGs is that the leveling mechanism is broken. It makes great sense in a single player game since it gives you a sense of progression. In an MMO, however, it also segregates players as players of different levels can't play with each other.
The leveling mechanism in most MMOs also reduces the attractiveness of the game as it matures; most MMOs attract the majority of their players when they first come out. Mature MMOs end up being empty wilderness devoid of players except in the highest level zones after some time. In EverQuest II, they introduced many low-level zones with Echoes of Faydwer. They are mostly empty. I rolled an Arasai and took him through the new starter zone they recently introduced in GU35. Its pretty much dead. The game simply will never have the population it had at launch in the low-level zones. And as they add more low-level zones, like the upcoming Sarnak starting area, the already low numbers of low-level players will be further spread out.
Most people I know hesitate to join any MMO that is already established for this very reason; its just a very lonely experience to jump into a game where you don't know anyone, and there is no one to play with you since they are at the end game already. And its not as fun to explore when everyone else already has walkthroughs or has done the quests you are on already and wants to get through it in the most efficient manner possible.
Raph Koster recently went into detail about these and the many other reasons why levels suck on his site, and I would recommend reading that.
Recent MMOs have tried "hacks" to fix the broken leveling mechanic. City of Heroes and EverQuest 2 introduced mentoring systems so you can temporarily change levels. I rarely see it used in EQ2, except to "cheat" by mentoring down before zoning into scaling instances (so the monsters in the instance will be set to a lower level than usual.) I saw it used quite a bit in CoH, so I guess its a success there, but its still a duct tape patch on the problem.
Dungeons and Dragons Online has a flatter level range (a lot of advancement is done "within" a level) and rewarded XP for quests instead of grinding monsters. But the inevitable result was that players grind quests instead -- Kanthalos talks about some of the issues with quest-oriented advancement systems on his site. So that fixed nothing.
So what can we do? Can we just eliminate levels? To do that, we first have to understand the purpose they serve in terms of the game mechanics... Levels serve a very important purpose: advancing your character is what motivates players to keep playing. If you eliminate levels, people would require a substitute as a goal. In games like EverQuest, the primary motivator to keep playing is to increase one's level. At the level cap, the motivation is channeled into item acquisition, which is simply another form of leveling mechanism.
So the question is: is there a way to change or replace the leveling mechanism so that it doesn't segregate players, while still providing an incentive to keep playing? I think so. We've already seen this done, to some extent, in a few games:
Vendetta Online avoided some of the issues with leveling because its combat model was twitch based. Levels merely gated content so the "better" ships were out of reach until you "earned" them. However, a new player in the starter ship could take out a veteran in the "best" ship in the game if he played better. So, new players still can find roles to play on servers where the majority of players are at max level.
Guild Wars largely avoided the problem with levels. While they did have a leveling mechanism, you got to the level cap quickly - you could do it in a day. At that stage, the primary motivator in the PvE game was to accomplish missions, collect Heroes, and obtain skills. The skills did not necessarily make a player "better;" instead characters simply became more specialized, so a new level 20 could still play with a veteran level 20 and pull his own weight.
That's what I'd like to see more of. I'd like to see leveling replaced with mechanisms to allow a player to earn the ability to customizer their character, or specialize the character in ways that doesn't forcibly segregate them from the rest of the player population. But I'm no game designer, so what do I know. :)
Its a nice idea, but I don't think it really fixes anything. In my humble opinion, the main problem with MMORPGs is that the leveling mechanism is broken. It makes great sense in a single player game since it gives you a sense of progression. In an MMO, however, it also segregates players as players of different levels can't play with each other.
The leveling mechanism in most MMOs also reduces the attractiveness of the game as it matures; most MMOs attract the majority of their players when they first come out. Mature MMOs end up being empty wilderness devoid of players except in the highest level zones after some time. In EverQuest II, they introduced many low-level zones with Echoes of Faydwer. They are mostly empty. I rolled an Arasai and took him through the new starter zone they recently introduced in GU35. Its pretty much dead. The game simply will never have the population it had at launch in the low-level zones. And as they add more low-level zones, like the upcoming Sarnak starting area, the already low numbers of low-level players will be further spread out.
Most people I know hesitate to join any MMO that is already established for this very reason; its just a very lonely experience to jump into a game where you don't know anyone, and there is no one to play with you since they are at the end game already. And its not as fun to explore when everyone else already has walkthroughs or has done the quests you are on already and wants to get through it in the most efficient manner possible.
Raph Koster recently went into detail about these and the many other reasons why levels suck on his site, and I would recommend reading that.
Recent MMOs have tried "hacks" to fix the broken leveling mechanic. City of Heroes and EverQuest 2 introduced mentoring systems so you can temporarily change levels. I rarely see it used in EQ2, except to "cheat" by mentoring down before zoning into scaling instances (so the monsters in the instance will be set to a lower level than usual.) I saw it used quite a bit in CoH, so I guess its a success there, but its still a duct tape patch on the problem.
Dungeons and Dragons Online has a flatter level range (a lot of advancement is done "within" a level) and rewarded XP for quests instead of grinding monsters. But the inevitable result was that players grind quests instead -- Kanthalos talks about some of the issues with quest-oriented advancement systems on his site. So that fixed nothing.
So what can we do? Can we just eliminate levels? To do that, we first have to understand the purpose they serve in terms of the game mechanics... Levels serve a very important purpose: advancing your character is what motivates players to keep playing. If you eliminate levels, people would require a substitute as a goal. In games like EverQuest, the primary motivator to keep playing is to increase one's level. At the level cap, the motivation is channeled into item acquisition, which is simply another form of leveling mechanism.
So the question is: is there a way to change or replace the leveling mechanism so that it doesn't segregate players, while still providing an incentive to keep playing? I think so. We've already seen this done, to some extent, in a few games:
Vendetta Online avoided some of the issues with leveling because its combat model was twitch based. Levels merely gated content so the "better" ships were out of reach until you "earned" them. However, a new player in the starter ship could take out a veteran in the "best" ship in the game if he played better. So, new players still can find roles to play on servers where the majority of players are at max level.
Guild Wars largely avoided the problem with levels. While they did have a leveling mechanism, you got to the level cap quickly - you could do it in a day. At that stage, the primary motivator in the PvE game was to accomplish missions, collect Heroes, and obtain skills. The skills did not necessarily make a player "better;" instead characters simply became more specialized, so a new level 20 could still play with a veteran level 20 and pull his own weight.
That's what I'd like to see more of. I'd like to see leveling replaced with mechanisms to allow a player to earn the ability to customizer their character, or specialize the character in ways that doesn't forcibly segregate them from the rest of the player population. But I'm no game designer, so what do I know. :)
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