The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs 463
Karen Hertzberg writes "Since MMORPGs became a mainstream medium, players have debated the two primary methods of advancement. Which is better? Is it the level-based system that is so dominant in today's MMORPGs, or the lesser-used skill-based system? This has been a strong subject of debate on many forums, blogs, and gaming sites for as long as the genre has existed. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye investigates the two concepts and gathers input from some of the brightest minds in the gaming industry about their thoughts on the two systems of advancement."
Relatedly, I've seen a growing trend of players saying that such games don't really take much skill at all. The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." In the MMO community, people often make references to FPS or RTS games, saying they have a higher skill cap. However, the same complaints also come from within those communities, with comments like "you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
Both are bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with too many RPGs is that easy encounters are easy, and hard encounters are impossible until you level up, at which point they are easy. It FEELS like you are gaining skill at the game, which is enjoyable, but in fact your character is just tougher. You didn't learn shit.
It makes sense for your character to change over time: that makes the game keep feeling new. But the best system of all is one where your new characteristics are a tradeoff, and every player's capabilities remain somewhat balanced. Success should be from solving a problem in novel ways, not grinding. Like TF2, StarCraft. It is of course very hard to build games like this.
This has come up for me playing crap iPhone games. Since there isn't enough development time for them to put in real challenge, every goddamned thing has a level up mechanic. And certain things are just unbeatable until you level up, and then they are beatable through button mashing. It is lame as hell and apparently the customers don't care.
usage based (Score:5, Interesting)
One simple change could be to make progression depend on skill, not trivial success and grinding.
Or, in simpler terms, something that every dofus could do should give no XP at all. And yes, that includes the death of a monster. Instead, why not give XP for successful attacks, combos, or whatever defines your class? Balancing would be a lot more difficult than the current "monster is worth 123 XP, share between party members" system, but it could be more fair and more rewarding, and eliminate grinding.
What if combat would not give you XP for killing monsters, but for how well you fought? You get XP for every attack, depending on your skill of execution. Of course, that would require replacing the simple "click here for an attack, you'll automatically hit" system. But it would allow you to gain your XP slowly by very low XP per boring standard attack, or more rapidly if you know how to fight. Healers, mages, etc. would get XP for their successes, i.e. healing wounded party members, etc. - again, not on a flat system, healing someone who really needed it would give more XP than the standard "I'm throwing a group heal around, just in case anyone needs it".
Absolutely non-trivial to implement and balance, so it's probably not the end of the idea. But it might be a start.
Basically, imagine Oblivion where your athletics skill doesn't increase just because you bunny-hop through the world, but only if you actually use it for something useful.
Reward not use, but useful use.
Guild Wars (Score:5, Interesting)
MMOs with Leveling are inherently broken (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that levels themselves are throw back to a system where it would be very difficult to measure success another way on pen and paper.
Since the first MUDs and CRPGs just emulated the pen and paper systems, they never considered that there might be better ways.
Ultima Pagan [wikipedia.org] and Ultima Online (and plenty others that it would take too long to mention) tried other system, but it developers unfamiliar with anything else kept with the old model in future MMOs because the formula worked.
Now the key problem with leveling in MMOs is that it first and for most segregates your gaming populace with what content they can share and interact with.
Warhammer Online resolves this simply by making it easy to grind to level 40 so everyone really just play the games at that point. The games go other problems but player segregation isn't one of them.
Now this is nothing to be said about skill at this point, but there other ways a game can have progression rather than arbitrary levels.
Personally if a publisher handed me a bunch of cash and said "Go make a game" I would opt for something along the lines of giving out 1000 skill points to a player at the character creation and that would be it. They could design him anyway they choose (and go back and redesign later) and let them go with that instead of level grind. There would need to be something else that involves them to keep playing so you would have to create player made content and politics at the same time finding a way to prevent over greifing with said content.
People are getting bored of the level grinding for sake of leveling... I mean I'm bored it of it. I don't want to play those games anymore. Give me a breathing world without mob killing to level.
Maybe Ultima Online spoiled but its been 10 years and no developer has done better.
EVE Online's approach (Score:4, Interesting)
Training all the skills to their maximum level is impossible so most people get a core and then begin to specialise. One nice thing about them is they train up in the background, even offline. Most skills are easy enough to get to level 3 or 4 but level 5 can take days. So if a skill took 10 days to learn you could plan it to coincide with a real life holiday, or just have it going while you do something else.
So there is no levelling. There is no class system either although there are factions and you can put points into attributes that make a character for certain roles over others.
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course it's a somewhat limited skill set. But it's still a skill set nonetheless.
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:5, Interesting)
This is offtopic but while I'm ranting about my kids game play I have to get something off my chest. When he and his friends get together and play they often like to play something called "Super Smash Brothers". For you guys as old as me out there, it's a fighting game with all the Nintendo characters as the fighters. When you play the game your damage is counted up as a percentage. Except, get this, wait for it...., you don't die at 100%. In fact there's no set limit you die at. The game just decides it's your time to die. Sometimes their damage is at 150% or higher. WTF is with that. I can't even be in the same room when they're playing that. I go friggin nuts. The game itself makes me nuts because of what I just described but the bulk of my frustration comes from him and his friends not recognizing and acknowledging that there is something screwy about it. They look at me like I'm nuts.
Maybe I am nuts. Before you post a bunch of "lighten up psycho" messages know that I'm not this crazy controlling freak. I've just always been a gamer (not hardcore, just a gamer) and I always looked forward to sharing that with my kids. The way gaming has changed came as a surprise to me.
Re:EVE Online's approach (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Breakdown (Score:3, Interesting)
RTS: Its all about who is Korean. (I'm new to SC, want to play? I'm a nub go easy)
I know you were just going for the humour, but - it depends on the RTS.
Company of Heroes, for example, is a highly-advanced RTS that you can successfully play at reasonably high levels with a CPM of under 50. I've been hooked on the damn game for several years now, and every other RTS is just completely bland after it - mindless clickspamming and rushing for $BEST_UNIT.
some advantages of class-based system (Score:5, Interesting)
The class-based system lets the developer balance whole sets of skills at once, which means that the advantages of one skill could be offset by the disadvantages of a lack of skill or even a penalty in a class. This means that not every skill has to be balanced relative to each other; only the classes themselves need to be balanced.
Disadvantages include stuff like, inability to wield bladed weapons, or inability to wear armor, etc.
Disadvantages are difficult to incorporate into a purely skill-based system because nobody is going to pick a disadvantage unless forced, and so the developer has to arbitrarily staple them onto a skill. Like, wielding weapons means you suck at casting spells, or wearing armor means you can't sneak around. Congratulations, you've just implemented classes in a skill-based system.
It seems like most games these days are using primarily a class-based system with some "accessory" skills, which is essentially a class-based system with some extra flavor. It's because people haven't really figured out how to balance a purely skill-based system.
Re:usage based (Score:4, Interesting)
Straight up healers are a lame idea anyway, always have been. Darned health bar voyeurs. I mean, did Aragorn bring along a surgeon in his quest to destroy the ring? Leave the healing-only clerics in the bloody church in the center of town...tithe them when you limp back in after battle and they'll patch you up and send you on your way.
But if you're out adventuring with me, you better know how to kill something. The D&D cleric, at least the way we played him, didn't just hang out in the back -- he went in with his mace, knocked a few helmets off, then healed people up as he could afterwards.
To implement this, change the damage system. Aragorn got thrown across a cave into a stone wall by a troll...he got knocked out, but wasn't even badly bruised. Make our characters heroes, not spreadsheets. If we die, make it an epic death -- we're too cool to be chased down and mauled by a rodent. If it doesn't kill us, let us carry on with our quest -- let us be heroes. Dent our armor, even weaken our sword arm, but don't put us on the edge of a virtual cardiac arrest until we get magically healed or wait an hour.
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:3, Interesting)
Err... additional percentage. Like, 100% makes you have half the inertial mass, so you get twice the change in momentum. Something along those lines.
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed... The problem is if you group with other players and you haven't read the walkthroughs, most get all pissy with you and kick you from the group. They want you to know how to do the quest before you've done it because they are on their 25th loot run of the day and don't want to be held up.
I prefer to figure the stuff out on my own. Most people prefer to "follow the recipe" to beat the quest and have all the figuring out done for them. Part of the reason I don't play MMO's...
I get 0 satisfaction from playing that way. Any time you see kids run out of content in the first week, it's because they play like this instead of "adventuring" and figuring it out the "hard" way. They are in a race to get it done and learn the stuff before any of their friends have so they can run the quests with good loot 100's of times and have better gear than anyone else. /blech
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:4, Interesting)
It starts getting really complicated when you start predicting flash steps (very fast movement that appears like teleportation, but can be interrupted with costly special moves). You have to guess where the other player is going to flash step and then flash step to a position where you can attack the other player when they appear. But then what if the other player knew you were going to do that and goes somewhere different where he can attack you when you falsely guess where he's going? But you could forsee this and change where you flash step to as well
It gets really tricky and requires a mix of quick reflexes, quick thinking, strategy, and fingers that don't get tired
Re:usage based (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, that's quite true.
One idea I just had was that it's often easier to specify the opposite. Maybe give monsters an encounter value, but substract from it for everything that goes wrong. If someone in the party dies - less XP for the healers and the tank. If the monsters get to use their skills too often, less XP for the debuffers. If it survives for too long, less XP for the damage dealers, and so on.
Maybe this way around it's easier to define the specifics, while at the same time making it harder to game.
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and baking is just knowing the recipe (Score:3, Interesting)
Please hand in your nerd card! RTFM is what we do best ffs, we actually attempt to understand wtf it is we're doing and hence why we get labelled "nerds", the world is *nerd powered* without the nerds there'd be no f'n internet.
Thank god they:
-They read their fucking textbooks
-Taught themselveson their own time using the net/other means
-Gasp.. found learning shit they were passionate about fun.