MMOG Creators On The Levelling Treadmill 74
Thanks to RPGVault for their article discussing the problems of repetitive gameplay in MMORPGs. The article defines the issue as "...the so-called "levelling treadmill" that involves repetitive play, often combat against NPCs that present little real challenge, in order to advance [the player's] characters" Representatives from NCSoft, Microsoft, and Auran offer their opinions, which range from "...levelling in and of itself is not evil" to "...levelling has to become dull or the level-up reward would lack value."
Re:If there is no levelling (Score:3, Insightful)
And these systems are simply more realistic. Hitpoints that increase so drastically as in AD&D are a fun but stupid concept - no matter how great you are, if someone slashes at you with a big sword or a huge mace and hits you hard, you're out, if not dead.
It's interesting to consider how a system would work without levels at all (neither hidden nor visible), but there we're getting into real role-playing rather than hack'n'slash, which is what most computer rpg's are about. And we start needing an intelligent DM, which no program is yet close to (and many humans don't achieve either!!).
Daniel
Re:The problem lies in AI (Score:3, Insightful)
Another trick is to make that information *very* costly (and not in monopoly money, but in ingenuity, time, etc), so that people who do discover it will not be so quickly inclined to put it on a webpage so that joe newbie can make use of it and swamp the spawn point. This goes very well along with making the objective of the quest very scarce and valuable - because then advanced players will not share the secret very simply because they want the items for themselves, so the fewer ppl know about it, the better.
Finally, keeping the world updated helps a lot, for instance by changing things around so that the previous way to solve the quest becomes the way to die. Someone who discovered the hard-to-figure trick themselves will likely be well aware if something has changed and will be cautious, whereas joe faq-reader will just happily stumble into the trap and learn to be a lot more cautious of advice gleaned on the net, and that advice will get more complex (do this, but if you see this do that, and if you see this do that instead, and if you see this and that together then don't go there) so that figuring out the faq becomes as much work as figuring out the quest itself.
Daniel
Players Create Their Own Leveling Treadmill (Score:4, Insightful)
It's possible to level by constantly facing new opponents, taking on the most challenging opponents available, and trying new things.
It's generally more efficient to go to a place that is "good" for your character to level. It's often more efficient to face weaker opponents, because it adds consistency to your hunting experience. Consistency is what allows you to play for eight hours straight, with a group of less than competant adventuring mates, while watching TV. It's less fun, it's less challenging, it's slower, but at the end of the day you're higher level and that's what counts, not whether you "had fun" along the way.
People complain about the leveling treadmill because they find it boring (it's still fun because leveling is constantly reaching goals, and every goal reached is fun). Sometimes people don't know what they really want though. It's easy to go completely off track in responding to these complaints. Lets look at what people really want:
- They want to be able to gain power consistently, constantly reaching short term goals
- They want to be able to come home from work, tired, play for a few hours, and reach some goals
- They want this entire experience to be easy
You can make this process as interactive, and fun, and mission based, and private dungeoned as you want, but it will still end up being a leveling treadmill of some sort. People are going to skip and ignore your NPC text, power through your dungeon to save the princess to go on to the next quest, do whatever they can to 'ding' as soon as possible. The fundamental goal is to gain power, over their peers, more quickly, and everything else is gravy.
That is fine though, I think we can make better MMORPGs with less repetitive leveling treadmills. Make people experience different content to level, literally force them. They may not care, they may not appreciate, they may even complain (don't fall into the trap of making this new content "hard" they still want "easy"), but at the end of the day they may have more fun.
FAQ off (Score:3, Insightful)
FAQs are primarly useful in static quests, quests where you need to find 11 items in 7 zones dropped by 14 creatures. You can follow them like an instruction manual, bam.
This isn't necessarily a problem, the original questers have fun solving the quest before it's spoiled. Many people (myself included) enjoy completing quests without the slightest application of ingenuity. At that point the quest becomes a simple timesink with a rewards, but the reward is still fun.
You can make quests more dynamic by having more variable quest components. Instead of needing Harpy's Feathers and Eye of Newt for the quest potion, why not pick one item from quest item group A, and one item from quest item group B. At this point we're getting more into the area of automagically generated quests, which are cool.
I think there is also value in fixed rewards for variable quests though. Quests can become part of community understanding, which increases their value. For example, the epic quests in Everquest, for cool class specific items. Take one of those quests, make 25% of the content more dynamic, you'll have more interesting quests.
But keep in mind not everyone likes quests. You will soon have players complaing about "stupid quests" or "boring quests" or even "broken" (I can't solve it) "quests" if their real advancement is held up by a dynamic quest made just for them.
Re:If you found levelling evil, boring, whatever (Score:1, Insightful)
One aspect I miss (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps the problem isn't gaining levels (Score:3, Insightful)
RPGs come with a buttload of predefined genre baggage. Designers are all too eager to accept them all. Numbers dictate actions, rather than the other way around. There needs be change, but god help us all should our Savior be The Sims Online!