So i am in our Teamspeak chatting and talking about Pantheon and throwing around ideas and thoughts and i thought this is important to share! Thinking of newer ways and the Progeny System, Perception System and VR`s Visions and efferts they are putting into this.
Now this is in some why a very wild and crazy idea and not everyone might be behind it or might get confused so please take that to thought. If something is not clear i do apologize in advance i very hardly type in English even though this is my "Native" tongue. So if something needs more clarification please ask and i will do my best. I ran down this thought here as soon as we finsihed talking about it so i would not forget it, and still failed to get it all in here. I hope as i read on other views and thoughts the rest comes back to me.
So why do we have to Level ? What i mean is why do we have to have Levels 1 to 60 or 60 - 70 etc ?
We can do without that and still have an awsome game as it is and make it all rewarding for all counterparts.
The Idea is instead of leveling through the game as we do in so many MMO`s of todays games why not elimnate all that and instead we have skills or experince points that raise our HP, Mana, Stats, etc instead and there is no Levels. Now before you ask yourself what the hell is that or where is the sense in that please bear with me a minute and read on before calling me insane ;) .
So this would mean that alot of the mechanics would have to be deeply connected.
You would have your starting armor and that would never change, you would keep that armor throughout the game (Unless you find some really rare gear or epic gear that would make sense for you to swap)
You could advance that armor piece with crafters or item dropes throughout the World.
Why would you do that you ask ? Well it makes the world more dynamic and immersive. Your Armor would grow stronger with you as you go out through the world adventuring.
Now we get into the whole no levels thing that connects to the "Faction System some what and Perception System & Progeny System . Since there are no levels what is the point and does this mean i can get high level gear from the start and just do end content ? Simple answer: Hell NO!
You still need to level up like you normally would only diffrence is you don`t get to level 2 or 50 or 100 you just get "Smarter" or "More Experienced" or "Skilled in combat and knowledge"
What Advantages could this bring the Perception System and Faction System or the Progeny you ask ?
Well lets start off with the Faction System:
So you would add a Solcializing Faction into that system that would level up the more you group, the more you raid or the more you hang out in the lower tier areas. Well what is the point ?
So with a system like that in place it would add to the Community Side of things in a huge way. This Social Faction could be made viewable to everyone. You could see how low or high someones social skill is. We get to see how active or social a player is and its not meant to show everyone "Hey he is cool or he is not" The thought behind it is to help everyone in the community of the game get along and find their way.
So as an example:
1. You are maxed out you have made it to the end of the world. Now you go back to the lower tiers and hang out there and help newer players along to get accustomed in the world.
You can group up with anyone Yes that is right since we have no levels there is no cap or restriction on grouping. Thats insane you say? Waitt and read on. There are however restrictions as to what the lower tier players can go and do they still cannot group up with you in the higher tiers and just jump, skip and bounce out a few tiers and gp from start to finish. They still need to go through everything you wnet through to get to the end of the world. You as a higher Leveled Player though can group up with lower tiered players anytime.
So that this is out of the way i hope it clarifys some of the confussion this post may have on all of you.
So where is the reward or what is the goal behind all this ?
So as in the exaple that is concluded here. So you are now hanging out in the lower tiers being a nice guy. You are rewarding the newer players along by being an awsome tank or healer or Damagedealer etc and yes you are "OP" so these group of "Newer Player" are getting way faster ahead and are archieveing their goals and quests alot faster than you did and being rewarded.
Where is your reward ?
You get socializing Faction skills that evidently reward you by showing you are first off, a top engange community member and the perception system rewards you also maybe by offering you a quest you never got before in that area. Crazy right! So now you have discovered yet again a quest and its in the lower tiers. Well what would that quest be ? Maybe you could get rewards for being so kind and helpful and show that off or just to get a sense of self pride. There are some many things one could do with this. Add more depth into the knowledge of the Lore of the World for instance you get rewarded by being told more about the lore of that area maybe. These are just some ideas.
So i "STRESS" again this isn`t to find out who is cool and who is not. The general idea for the Faction is yes to still reward you and to reward the newer players but in the end this can open up our minds also.
So lets compare this example and see where it brings us!
2. Example:
You are total social
I am not my points in that skill are fairly low, now this begs the question as to why ? And def. gets your intrest. So now you might actually start a convo with me and see what that is all about.
I might be someone who is not a social person and would rather be alone or i might not be sure of my ability of the class i play and don`t socialize outside my inner circle or i could just be a douche bag yes there is that option too.
But it gets us to engage each other and want to bond with others and strangers,
So the social faction would only kick in when you get towards the mid tiers to end tiers of the game and would open up more stuff for you to act up on rather than just doing the same over and over again. It gives us options.
Now we get to the Progeny System:
How does this help the Progeny System and the vision of VR that we all still want to engage in the lower tiers and adventure through there again and it doens`t become something of the past. Well because of adding the social aspect and the perception system i think it helps alot. These systems can be advanced further on down the line.
And without having levels it makes us bond even more. Your main group or guild aint on at the moment and instead of running the 20th twink you could just be a cool guy and run through the lower tiers and help out newer players and maybe even help your guild even gain new members these are just some thoughts i have and there are much more just finding it hard to gather them all at once. And maybe just maybe Perception could kick in at any given time revealing more lore more quests etc.
I would like to know what everyone thinks about this ?
The idea behind these thoughts are to see what can bring "the Old School" and "New Age" MMO together as one and make it cool for everyone and help bring this MMORPG industrie into the next level and truely a new way of going about this whole "Genre"
I thought since VR are doing the same trying to bring the next gen MMO experience with the old mechanics i would do the same with this thought process.
I know it is a little late since we already have levels but i still find it important to share this with the community and the DEVs to show there are maybe others way we can approach this "Industire" and bring it into the next generation without being so close minded and sticking to what we already know.
Thanks
Yarnila
Todays levelsystem is based on what Gygax made for Chainmail (and turned into D&D later), it was a simple system to simulate experience. You don't really need it for a MMO, already P&P games have different mechanics. Levelsystem tend to give you a bunch of powers/skills, more hitpoints and access to better gear as you level up.
Games like Shadowrun instead let you buy powerups one at a time with karma points (basically XP) and since that game isn't itemfocused you can always use any gear (well, you need to be a magicuser to use magical stuff). That does have some advantages but also disadvantages, it is way easier there to mix older and newer characters since the powergap is smaller and you can pick and choose the powerups as you want. But it is also more complicated for the player, balancing is harder and lethality among players is way higher then in D&D since a single nasty hit can kill you.
Personally do I think a similar system would be just as fun as a levelsystem but Pantheon is not the game to try something like that out. First of all is this not something you could add to a game in development, it would mess things up badly.
Secondly do this type of mechanics works better in more modern worlds where most players use firearms. TSW have a rather basic and not so great version of it but iot would be awesome to actually make a Shadowrun MMOs with this type of mechanics. This type of mechanics is optimal for any world where you have firearms with multiple shots so any setting from western to pure space opera sci-fi would be fine.
There have been a few god pen and paper games that have been leveless as well, Warhammer fantasy RPG (the original GW game, not FFG lousy remake) and Runequest are worth mentioning but it would take pretty hard play testing to get a system like that working in fantasy or pre industrial historical games and that takes a rather large budget.
I certainly think that we eventually will see a good leveless MMO, and I think the key to the mechanics are in P&P games. :)
There have always been RPG based on levels (simulating a character's experience) and others based on skills (simulating a character's skill) .
Actually the very first MMORPG, Ultima online released in 98 was a skill based MMORPG - so there were no levels, only skills that were improving with experience .
It was EQ, released about 1 year after UOL which was based on levels (the famous "Ding !") and most MMORPG, most significantly WoW, preferred rather the EQ (or D&D/ MUD preceding EQ) level concept tied to XP by an easily handled and optimized formula and this system prevailed until today .
I think that both systems are absolutely equivalent . After all, an RPG is about your character growing in power as its experience increases . The metrics measuring this experience (or power) is quite irrelevant - it can be skills , it can be levels , it can be a mixture of both .
The level concept is preferred in most MMORPG because a level is a visible single number assimilable to age (as opposed to multiple invisible numbers that are skills) and it's psychologically more rewarding for most players . Beyond being psychologically rewarding, a level system is much easier to be balanced than a skill based system because it's easier to tweak functions of a single variable (e.g level) than to tweak functions of multiple variables (e.g skills) . And easier in this case means less investment and less development time .
But otherwise any level based game could be transformed in a skill based game and vice versa without fundamental problems .
If one made a vote, the majority of players would probably prefer level-base to skill-base and that's why it's levels most of the time . And also because it's easier to balance .
Deadshade, you read my mind in referencing Ultima Online as a skill based MMO. If there are/were others, I'm not aware of them.
However, UO took a different approach in another way that I feel is important to tie when you mention UO's skill based progression...it was also classless. Your character could potentially be whatever you wanted it to be! But, they did build restrictions into this, your character could never be a grandmaster at everything (at least in the early days when I was playing). There was not a cap on the number of skills that you could have points in, but there was a cap on the total number of skill points you could have!
There were innumerable skills, in several different categories: various weapons skills, magic, tradeskill, tracking, herbalism, etc. But for the sake of explanation, lets narrow it down to the following: magic, swords, alchemy, hiding, and animal taming. As you may expect, as you get more skill in a given category, you can do more things or are more powerful.
You allocate skill points through using that skill. As your points increase, you get more powerful...more likely to hit powerful monsters, can cast higher spells, make more potions, etc. You could use swords and hiding almost exclusively, with a little magic thrown in, wind up being a rouge who would just barely have the ability to teleport himself, provided he had the runes to do so. Or, you could use magic and herbalism almost exclusively and have a lower mid level familiar via taming. But, in addition to that, you could change your characters abilities over time, because you could reallocate skill points simply by using the skills you decided that you wanted. Skills that went unused would deteriorate over time and give their points to the skills that you WERE using. This led to an amazing amount of adaptability to changing play styles, and really enabled you to play exactly the character that you wanted to play. Moreover, I do see this as much more realistic...as an example, I played several sports when I was 5-9 years old, and did fairly well at them all. However as I aged I focused on two, and 'allocated all of my skill points' to those. I could have remained an decent all-around athlete, however I chose to devote my time to just 2 and thusly became much more proficient in them than I could have had I spread my time out among all of them.
I'm not saying that I think skill-based systems are the way to go, or that Pantheon should have gone this way. I'm just very surprised that, to my knowledge, no one has brought a modern take to this concept. If I'm mistaken, please let me know...I would be very interested in seeing how a modern skill-based mmo is implemented!
I would say Eve OL and Skyforge are leveless too. Probably there are more that I don't know (The Secret World ?) .
Actually looking at this kind of games (including UOL) you realize that all have levels . That's why I wrote that "skill based" and "level based" are completely equivalent .
The difference being merely that in a level based game the number that rules them (almost) all is called level . In a "leveless" game the number that rules them all is called "Prestige", "skill points" , "Battle points" - you name it . So insted of saying for a game that "the max level is 50", you say "the max number of skill (prestige etc) points is 50" but it really means the same thing from the design point of view .
So this other number that is not called level behaves exactly like a level - it defines your progression, your power, your abilities .
As I said, it really boils down only to how easy it is to balance the game and it is easier and less expensive by using a level (function of XP only) that is the number that rules the system.
However nothing prevents you to add level independent numbers (skills) to the level dependent numbers (HP, mana etc) and this is actually what most games do .
Deadshade said:There have always been RPG based on levels (simulating a character's experience) and others based on skills (simulating a character's skill) .
Actually the very first MMORPG, Ultima online released in 98 was a skill based MMORPG - so there were no levels, only skills that were improving with experience .
It was EQ, released about 1 year after UOL which was based on levels (the famous "Ding !") and most MMORPG, most significantly WoW, preferred rather the EQ (or D&D/ MUD preceding EQ) level concept tied to XP by an easily handled and optimized formula and this system prevailed until today .
I think that both systems are absolutely equivalent . After all, an RPG is about your character growing in power as its experience increases . The metrics measuring this experience (or power) is quite irrelevant - it can be skills , it can be levels , it can be a mixture of both .
The level concept is preferred in most MMORPG because a level is a visible single number assimilable to age (as opposed to multiple invisible numbers that are skills) and it's psychologically more rewarding for most players . Beyond being psychologically rewarding, a level system is much easier to be balanced than a skill based system because it's easier to tweak functions of a single variable (e.g level) than to tweak functions of multiple variables (e.g skills) . And easier in this case means less investment and less development time .
But otherwise any level based game could be transformed in a skill based game and vice versa without fundamental problems .
If one made a vote, the majority of players would probably prefer level-base to skill-base and that's why it's levels most of the time . And also because it's easier to balance .
Uo was hardly the first MMO. Meridian 59 and The realm both released the year before and M59 had a lot in common with EQ (I assume it inspired Verant, however a lot of it's mechanics first showed up in MUDs).
There have indeed been other skillbased MMOs, Mortal online and Darkfall are 2 other examples. Eve is probably the one that had most players.
Anyways, EQ was first with many things but level is not one of those. You can even argue for SSIs/AOLs "Neverwinter nights" from '91 was the first online roleplaying game with levels. I wouldn't call it a MMO since it was closer to GW and DDO (but turned based) but it still deserve a mention.
Pen and paper games have always had hard competition between levelbased and leveless games (well, since the late 70s at least). D&D, Pathfinder and R.I.F.T.S are successful levelbased games. Vampire, Shadowrun, Warhammer fantasy RPG and BRP (includes among other Runequest and call of Cthulhu) are successful leveless systems. I think Pathfinder is the leader at the moment but Vampire was huge in the 90s, probably larger then D&D for some years.
So far have most MMOs been fantasy games based on D&D, and the levelsystem frankly work best there, it sucks when yoiu add it to modern or sci-fi games (Cthulhu D20 was a disaster and Star wars D20 and Saga both became a mess after you players reached level 10 (of 20). You can certainly make a fantasy MMO without levels but I think leveless MMOs would need another setting to truly shine.
My personal favorite P&P mechanics and world is "Shadowrun", it would have made an awesome MMO (Microsoft had a SR MMO planned but canned it since their really bad Shadowrun FPS failed).
There is several advantages with a leveless fantasy MMO as well but the problem is that UO, DFO and MO all had pretty bad mechanics for PvE and they also lost a lot of players due to their FFA PvP focus. To get the mechanics right you would have to re-engineer new mechanics from a good P&P system and there are plenty of work to get that just right.
loke666 said:
Uo was hardly the first MMO. Meridian 59 and The realm both released the year before and M59 had a lot in common with EQ
Yes of course Meridian was before UOL and I played both but most players agree that the neither Meridian nor The realm with their few tens of thousands players (for a very short time) deserve the first M in MMO .
Same for the MUDS and D&D which were still older than that .
Anyway the question what was the first truly massive MMO is irrelevant to the issue I treated here - level vs skill based MMOs .
Both exist and they are equivalent from the design point of view - in both there is a number (or a set of numbers) that defines the power of the PC .
For the reasons I developped above, level based games are generally preferred for MMOs.
Deadshade said:Yes of course Meridian was before UOL and I played both but most players agree that the neither Meridian nor The realm with their few tens of thousands players (for a very short time) deserve the first M in MMO .
Same for the MUDS and D&D which were still older than that .
Anyway the question what was the first truly massive MMO is irrelevant to the issue I treated here - level vs skill based MMOs .
Both exist and they are equivalent from the design point of view - in both there is a number (or a set of numbers) that defines the power of the PC .
For the reasons I developped above, level based games are generally preferred for MMOs.
I guess it is pretty irrelevant but tens of thousands still qualify as massive in my book.. Never played The realm though so Im not sure how MMOish it was. M59 I played for a while until I tired of playing with my laggy modem, and since my regular gamestore actually sold hardcopies it couldn't have been really small.
I don't really think that levelbased games makes better or worse MMOs, and if Blizzard had decided on leveless that would have been the standard today. It is basically just ways to simulate gained experience even if level based games tend to have way higher powergap but there is nothing that say that games with levels must have that or that games without levels shouldn't.
That most games are made in a certain way doesn't mean it is the best way, and players don't really see if another system is better before they tried it. But today there basically is just Eve and TSW that are leveless (unless you count really small FFA PvP sandboxes but games like DFO and MO is actually smaller then M59 was back in '96, so most MMO players havn't even heard of them).
The level up ding is absolutely necessary. As such, levels are a must. No levels = no level up ding = non-starter :p
Sicario said:The level up ding is absolutely necessary. As such, levels are a must. No levels = no level up ding = non-starter :p
Why? In many P&P systems you just buy abilities for XP/Karma when you collected enough, that is just as sweet. Other systems raises your skills as you use them (or when you crit).
The argument for levels usually is about it being easier but you can just have a "recommended" button that automatically buy you the standard ups when you have enough points to get them.
I don't think the EQ games would have been worse if they only used AA to gain power (as long as they had been designed for it from the start). AA is really way sweeter then levels.
No-one is saying that your character shouldn't gain power as you play. Besides is the level up ding nowhere as sweet as it once was, now you ding all the time anyways and people don't bother to gratz you for a ding anymore, it is just way too common. Too many levels you pass too fast have destroyed the ding rush.
In the thread:
I suggested an explanation for the Tenet as follows:
An agreement that player levels should be both meaningful and memorable achievements.
We have stated that the world you will live in will be challenging. When your character does manage to pass specific milestones in the game, such as gaining a new level, we want you to feel a real sense of achievements when you hear the magical 'ding'. When you gain a level which gives access to new spells, we want you to remember that point in your journey as significant - something your group-mates and Guild-mates will celebrate with you - and not merely one of a series of tiny roadbumps in a break-neck gallop towards the 'end'. This is only possible with a pace of advancement that allows you to recognise the merit of each acheivement with the significance it deserves.