Levels, RPGs

First posted here in Danish:
http://deleet.dk/2009/04/20/levels-rpgs/
Translated and posted here:
http://deleet.dk/2009/04/30/levels-rpgs-english/

And now here.

Terminology

Level
By levels, I mean what usually belongs to the term ”level” in different games. This is a sort of measurement for various things: 1) How strong the character is, 2) How much experience the character has.

RPG
By RPG, I mean all games where there is a fairly great focus on the character's level. This implies that you control one or more characters. Example of several-character-control client: Dungeon Siege, singleplayer. Example of one-character-control clients: Dungeon Siege multiplayer, WoW, Guild Wars and Diablo 1 & 2. There is, at the same time, a heavy focus on certain characters in RPG's. This is a contrast to games where there is a low focus on certain characters, such as RTS games like the Command & Conquer franchise.

Levels, the world
What I want to discuss is: Should the levels of HNPC's(Hostile Non-Playable Characters aka creeps) follow the playable character or not? The ”should” in this question should be understood in relation to wanting to create a good game.

No coherence between the playable character's level and HNPC's
If the levels of HNPC's do not follow the level of the playable character's, then the HNPC's whose levels aren't maximum or around that, will become too easy to kill for the character when he's reached the maximum level. This leads to the game becoming severely less challenging in areas with these HNPC's. It leads further to, that if the playable character traveled to such an area, it would become boring to play. This is an unwanted situation.
If a big part of the world is inhabited by non-max level HNPC's, then a big part of the world is boring for max level players. This is very unwanted.

Solution one
A solution is to make sure that only a small part of the world is inhabited by non-max level HNPC's. This can be seen in Guild Wars: Factions and Guild Wars: Nightfall. The opposite can be seen in Guild Wars: Prophecies.

Solution two
Another solution is to implement a function that can be activated by a player, which will make HNPC's rise in level, so they once again will be a match for a max level character. This was introduced in Guild Wars in an update after Nightfall.

This solution requires a sort of instancing, where a copy of the world has changed and another has not. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for a low level character to play in that area at the same time. This would both make sure that beginners did not pass an area, while, at the same time, preventing players from leveling a new character and passing that area.
Here is assumed a sort of linear motion through the world. If there were more possible areas per level interval and these shifted between being max level oriented, then it would be possible to level up a character. This could, for instance, be adjusted by time.
A problem is that it requires a significantly larger world, if there has to be at least 2 areas for every level interval until maximum level. Simultanously, it needs a solution to what will happen you one finds oneself in an areas which is being changed and hasn't been instanced yet. If it got changed instantly, then a low level character would die instantly when the HNPC's he/she fights became near maximum level.

Coherence between the playable character's level and HNPC's
If the level of the HNPC's follows the playable character's, one can avoid the player not experiencing any resistance in areas where HNPC's are not near maximum level, but the player is.
This bring up another problem, though. The player would lose the sensation that his/her character is growing stronger. This would typically be evaluated by one's abilites opposite a constant, such as a certain type of HNPC. An example of a game where the levels of HNPCs follow the player is Fallout 3.

Solution one
A way to achieve this sensation anyway, is to clearly show that one's character grows stronger, such as when dealing damage. However, one should pay attention to not increasing the armor-effect by too much, since the numbers would then not rise appropriately with the player's level.

Solution two
Alternatively, one could completely remove the feeling of growing stronger from the player. However, this takes away one of the typical aims of playing an RPG: character development. This can be compensated for by putting more focus on the equipment of the character. The Guild Wars-series is an example of games that have chosen to ignore this character development part.

Illustration
Here, an illustration that demonstrates the above, can be seen. I am not the author of this image.
http://www.zweistein.cz/mmorpg/levels.png


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Thoughts?

Well, reading the interview about Guild Wars 2 it seems they have the right idea. Have a high or unlimted level cap, but have a point where you know longer gain power. That way people who just NEED that visual representation of their "experience" can have it without forcing a huge level grind. One of the biggest arguments against GW I hear from people is thats its lame you can only level to 20. Methinks alot of people assume more levels = more content, even if technically its teh same amount of content just takes much longer to go through it.

I would love to see a dynamic level system. Baddies are 0-4 levels above the highest level character in the zone... Hard Mode is just an increase of 4 in these dynamic level numbers, (so 3-8 levels higher), plus an improved skill bar...

This eliminates the "waste of time" you experience (in Normal Mode) by taking your 20th level warrior through Regent Valley and stomping on level 5 monsters, and feeling absolutely no challenge. I believe it would also encourage grouping with other characters of a nearly equal level, especially early in a games life, when everyone is new to the experience.

The challenge with Guild Wars, of course, is the viability of builds on monsters, and the effect on play balance. From a programming standpoint, it would be simpler to use one build, and not have to change the skill bars of all of your monsters based on their level.

If you have a warrior, such as a Dredge, and he is capable of being level 5, or level 25 (depending on the players' levels), would the same build be "fair" at both extremes? Could the level 5 Dredge dominate all level 2-3 players, but the high level Dredge (with the same skill bar) be weak against level 20 players?

I like the concept, but I just don't know how it would play out, were it deployed in a game like GW2.

This is often repeated, but I haven't seen it actually said by any anet employee. Does anyone have a source?

A sidekicking system doesn't make much sense with a low effective level cap.

I honestly don't remember which interview it was from. I'll take a look once I finish this z quest.

*Found one of em!

http://www.totalvideogames.com/Guild...ure-10979.html

"We're still talking about whether there'll be a very high level cap or if we're talking about an unlimited level cap; those are things that we're playing around with and seeing what we like the most and what works best. The idea behind it is to allow players to experience that kind of development, but that doesn't mean that we're going to grind the gamer so that players will have to invest thousands of hours until they feel like they have a very powerful character. We certainly don't want it to mean that if your friend is level 15 and your character is level 20 there's no way you can play together. One of the ways that we're getting around that is to introduce the Side-kicking system for both PvE and one of our PvP types, which is similar to the sort of thing that you see in City of Heroes, and allows gamers to play together no matter what level they are.

The other things that we're talking about is the plateau in power that you reach no matter what the level curve is, where players are relatively equal to each other. So for instance, a ten level gap early in the curve on means a lot more than a ten level gap later on in the curve. We're stilling playing around with where this power plateau actually evens out in Guild Wars 2, but it's safe to say that we're not going to require players to grind away their life to actually reach that plateau."

Thanks, that's interesting to see. Still, the wording here implies something more like a diminishing curve - because there are still small differences, and players are more of less equal. It means that say the stat boost from leveling 29->30 will be less than 19->20. Players will probably establish a "soft cap" around which additional levels hardly matter, but the wording suggests that the "hard cap" could be much higher. This isn't that different from the current state of title skills so I find it promising - it avoids huge gaps in character ability while still tugging a carrot for people to grind for. Although I again wonder why they need a sidekicking system with this in place.

Yeah I kinda messed around in paint trying to see what they would mean. This is what I came up with. In my example the cap is 100 and the "plateau" will be 20. I wonder how steep they could make the curve.

Red = stat gain



This is an example of course, but its a really intresting concept. I wonder how well it would pan out and how enemy levels would fit in on the curve.

When they first mentioned the possibility of very high or no level cap in GW2 I was very skeptical as I've played several games with high/no level cap and they were all very very grind heavy making GW's heaviest grind look like a vacation.

However after reading up on their statements about how they plan to deal with the leveling system it does make sense and I'm more or less won over if they do it like this.

It makes a lot of sense actually, it sounds a bit more like an extension of the current GW level system as there's nothing stopping you from earning xp after level 20 it simply adds up and adds up and while giving you some slight rewards your character is displayed the same even if it's a lvl 20 with only the required 150k ish XP or a hardened lvl 20 that's been everywhere and has several million xp under it's belt.

With this system it'd more or less just let your level number keep going up to match your total xp without the 1-20 leveling rewards of additional Health and Attribute points. This way you don't have an exponential grind for more power as the low level cap is still essentially in place but you can readily display that yes your character has been around a while and knows a thing or two.

Obviously it wouldn't be quite so simple but I very much like the idea, that way you satisfy both types, there's no annoying power creep and grind and yet those who do grind out every corner of the game world will have a nice high level number to show off for it.

There is a lot of character development that has nothing to do with levels. Look at Ultima Online for example.

Unlockable customizations (perks, feats, whatever)

Skill tree (training to raise cap so that you can assign points)

Skills (gotta catch em all)

Then there are less obvious ones (unlocking areas at map to travel to ...)

And there are more weird ones.

Only issue is that they are not as simple as seeing one number raise. But is that really issue?

Play hardmode.

Levels, skills
Here's how it could work out:
When the monster increases in level it unlocks more and more skills from a predefined skill bar.
Level:
1-3 - 3 skills.
4-8 - 4 skills.
8-13 - 5 skills.
14-17 - 6 skills.
17-19 - 7 skills.
20 - 8 skills.

That's a really easy way to do it. If you want a tougher monster, place the better skills at the start. For instance, place the elite skill as number one if it's a boss. In that way bosses always have an elite skill. If it's an easy monster, place the elite skill at the 8th spot.

This system is limited to level 20 though. For higher than that, one could start substituting various skills with elite versions. Or just keep the skill bar as it was at level 20, and instead add something else besides the higher attribute points.

AI
Like the above, higher levels of monsters could also unlock new AI functions. For instance, low-level monsters would be to stupid to move out of AoE; Would go for the casters.

I don't know anything about UO but I'll just add that the above is not inconsistent with what I wrote.

You didn't "get" Guild Wars then. It has character development, but not by growing stronger, but by growing more diverse as you learn new skills.
In fact Guild Wars is a good example of not needing levels at all. Everyone is level 20, so levels may as well not exist (mobs can just be given health, attributes etc).
IMO it even gives a deeper roleplaying experience. It's about learning how to play, not learning your character how to play, so you actually need to participate yourself.

Well, you wrote that there is not character growth without levels. But anyway, if you want to discuss merits of levels versus no levels, I suggest playing:

* Betrayal At Krondor
* Exile and Avernum series game

And read a bit about GURPS

- Most of the skills will be so similar that it's easy to find out which ones are more important to have. Thus PvE is incredibly stagnant environment as you can finish the whole game using one pre-made skillbar. Other than that it follows the tried and true "grind yourself titles" format which is present on every other MMO.

If you run the same build everywhere you go, that's your problem and I pity you for having it. If you on the other hand mean that they went overboard with skill bloat and power creep, and that there is now 90% useless skills and a few good ones, I agree with you. But the idea is still good, just not the execution, but that's Arenanet for you.

Gods, anything but dynamic levelling. It sucked in oblivion and it will suck more in an MMO. Part of the joy of an MMO is to walk into a new area, get completely jacked, and realize you're not strong enough to be there yet (anyone else remember the bridges in the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior series?). It is one of the few things I miss about prophesies. After my Lvl 7 finally finished the Diessa quests (Althea's ashes, etc...) I went to look around and ended up in Dragon's Gullet and got pounded to paste by hydras. As opposed to Oblivion which you can beat at Level 4...

Character development more and more changes to what is often called "horizontal progression".

Guild Wars is inspired by Magic: The Gathering. The idea was to add more skills, instead of making people or their skills stronger. So you have a progression, people get more skills and can react better on different challenges. At least this was the idea. We got a long list of skills, most of them useless, some used all the time, and a few supposedly overpowered skills.

The model of "vertical progression" is levelling up to max level X,Y,Z. Then people have to wait for the next expansion, or they get an endgame that interestingly often borrows ideas from the model of "horizontal progression". Vertical progression has huge issues with content getting old and inaccessible/unattractive to higher level players. Whole areas of the world become useless. The linked pic shows this.

I think a horizontal progression model has advantages. It also encourages people to think and play more actively, not so much relying on their "stats", but on their knowledge and skill at playing the game. Unfortunately, this often means abusing the system to the max, which people will always do.


A more dynamic world, e.g. zones changing a bit, getting some extras with major updates or an overhaul, would also be nice.

I also like one idea of Tabula Rasa: Dropships dropping Bane troops randomly - basically random spawns, you cannot predict exactly what you will be facing.

Right now Guild Wars PvE is either taking one of the proven team builds that work almost all the time or just looking up the Wiki what mobs you are going to face. Then you build a counter for that kind of mobs. Add some random mobs, change their position, give them some random skills and we might have to watch out a bit more what mobs actually do.

A human dungeon master would always try to match the difficulty of monsters to the skill of the party, but we do not have this in a computer game, and I have yet to see a system that could somehow divine from some ELO rating of how I played different dungeons what is the acceptable difficulty for me, something like that. This would have to be a very very good script. Maybe it could also be abused, i.e. play dumb to get easier mobs...^^

Bethesda tried this difficulty scaling in their solo offline rpgs, Oblivion and Fallout 3, and the results are not really that satisfying.


Well, nobody has found the holy grail to make it right for everyone so far. I think it is also not needed.

What is definitely wrong is dumbing down games more and more - removing interesting gameplay elements in favor of making things very simple and accessible for everyone. This leads to a downward spiral: bad players do not learn and get even worse. They miss out, they also do not have much fun once they hit the brick wall of a rather "easy" challenge.

Good game/level design challenges players to become better while they are playing and having fun, without pushing them too hard.

We have a very bad example in Nightfall in this regard: Most people could just breeze through Nightfall, there were few missions or areas where people had to try a bit harder. Then they met Shiro in the Realm of Torment and hit the brick wall.

The idea to have normal and hard/heroic versions of areas and dungeons is not bad, but it also had the negative side effect that normal got turned into "piss easy", no learning effect for people, extreme simple and actually dumb build and playstyle gets you through. "Hard" is the normal difficulty nowadays. And in fact, many supposed high standards elite areas are not so much "harder" in "Hard" mode, if you got the idea how to do them in normal mode, you are only a small step from doing them easily in Hard Mode, too.


OK, enough for now.

I basically fear GW2 gets turned into grindtastic Farm Wars that does not encourage people to think about their builds, tactics and so on.

One of the best things about an RPG is being restricted into one linear path for the whole game for every one one of your characters, as opposed to a much more seamless world that grows with you that allows for any route in which you'd like to progress through?

I will say that I liked my first Drok run when my jaw-dropped at seeing monsters over level 20. But I certainly wouldn't trade it for a more routeless progression.

Either way, it'd be interesting to see how something like this would be put into GW2's more persistant world.

Another intresting thing to keep in mind with GW2 in relation to enemy difficulty:

"You will be able to advance your character to the maximum level without ever joining a group if you so desire. Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved. This will give players the option to experience the game whichever way they prefer."

Pehaps this means enemies will be on the curve as well and they will "average" out depending on where the parties members are on the curve?

Oh Apollo, is this from the december interview about GW2?

I sometimes feel GW2 will be very different on a fundamental level from GW1.

I am not sure if they meant we play with a hero/hench group solo or actually really solo, with just our char in the instance, this is something we never do in GW1 unless we are farming.

Well, from what we know so far you can have only 1 "companion" (hero) with you at a time. If you choose to not bring a companion at all your character will recieve a buff instead. They are going to make all the classes soloable, which will be very intresting to see. What is cool about companions is they won't take up a slot in a party, they are considered an expansion of your character.

There's another way of solving this problem. Have enemies scale dynamically to the client and all damage done to them is percentage based. So, you have a fireball that does 5% damage to a foe, therefore it will take a level 100 and a level 1 both 20 casts to kill the foe.

However, I really feel that this isn't a problem that needs solving. You need the ability to go back and 'pwn' mobs when you're a higher level, it means your character feels like he's growing stronger and therefore you get a strong sense of satisfaction. What's the point in leveling if you're still going to take 20 casts to kill a mob?

Having different areas for different levels also has the advantage of compacting the playerbase at high levels, which is something GW suffers from not doing. in GW you can have a challenge in any zone in the whole world, and since there's so many to choose from the playerbase is spread very thin. By having high level zones it makes it much easier to group, because all the high level players are roughly in the same area.


-----Edit-------

I'd also like to expand on something someone said on the previous page:
I think one of the best things about RPGs is creating this character, a backstory and a name and such, and taking them through the world and watching them grow. Giving characters the ability to do too much detracts from true 'character development' because if your char can tank, heal, deal damage and shutdown then what's their specialism? You lose a sense of expertness, speciality and pride in your role.

Games like CoH really work well, where you choose a character type at the beginning and you have to stick with it all the way through. You get maybe 1-2 chances to change things as you go along, but once you hit max level you're fixed. I think it really gives you the feeling of become a specialist and great at waht you do. Rather than a 'jack of all trades'.

GW is too free in your role choice, WoW is darn nicely in the middle, and CoH is perhaps a little too fixed for some people

Of course, such games should offer freedom to replay the game in different ways. There needs to be more than 1 zone for each level range, and multiple classes so that you don't get bored second time through.

I'm talking more in relation to one of the things the OP was mentioning, which is in regards to the world around you, not the character's tree/build progression.

I have some opinions about GW & its status as an RPG in the Video game industry.

After playing Video Game RPGs(which are very different from RL RPG games, except D&D of course) for approximately 20 years(I'm 25, grew up playing RPGs, including the VG RPG pioneers Dragon Warrior(Dragon Quest) and Final Fantasy) there are a few things that I've found to be fundamental to the genre in the gaming industry. These fundamentals appear, in some way or form, in nearly every RPG and create the foundation on which th games in the genre are built today(btw Grind is not one of these).

1. Character Progression: Your Character(s) grow and gain strength as time passes in the game. This is usually represented with levels and XP, but it has been implemented in other ways. Nowadays, level/attribute progression has been separated from skill/magic progression and has essentially become the standard. GW hasn't done this too well as the skills are readily available at the start of the game if you have the money and growth is limited to max health. Not even energy increases over time. Sorry, but one of the things I've enjoyed in RPGs is waiting to get a new skill and try it out as soon as I get it at a certain level/point in the game. GW's allowance of immediate access to skills detracts from this enjoyment/excitement and I'd like to see it return.

2. Skill progression: This is the heart of the strategy/tactics of any real-time or turn-based RPG. What skills do I use, how do I use them, when do I use them and how will it effect the outcome of the battle. Obviously GW has done this very well and really needs minimal improvement as GW2 approaches(i.e. LESS overall skills. Right now there's too many to try and manage).

3. Character Customization: The ability for you to create and/or grow your character in different(but limited) ways that can determine/fit your style of play while limiting you to your role(s) and allowing for much higher replayability. This is a much more dynamic fundamental to the RPG genre as a SP RPG's replayability is different to a MMORPG's replayability. IMO, GW does this well, but not great as characters are far too dynamic in the game making too many characters good at many things but generally great at nothing(unless you put all Attrib points into at max 2-3 attribs.)

4. Equipment/items: As someone who's grown up playing RPGs, this is key to the genre as well. Equipment usually defines a player's play style; role; and, in cases where two players are nearly equal in skill, can determine the outcome of a battle. IMO, GW drops the ball here. While I agree the gear shouldn't be a win all type of thing, I feel right now gear in GW is the exact opposite of the skills/character customization. Weapons/Armor are too static and have too few varieties in both weapon/armor types and skins.

5. Battle System: How the main portion of the RPG's gameplay(the battle system) plays out. This includes AI, battle speed and simplicity/complexity. GW does as good as anyone can expect for a MMO. With something like the battle system, there are always ways to improve and things to complain about.

That's all 5 fundamentals for RPGs in the video game industry. Some may wonder why I haven't included Story as a fundamental and that is because there are many RPGs that have been successful without a huge focus on story, and this is true for many "old school" RPGs and MMOs(I'd also hate to break it to you guys, but the GW stories really aren't that great when compared to the large amount of RPG stories out there, besides this type of game is supposed to be more about getting online and playing the game with/around other people rather than get heavily invested in the story).

Finally, for the mention that GW was influenced heavily on Magic: The Gathering: Yes, ANet made this reference, but they also called GW a RPG & Magic is a CCG not a RPG and while I enjoy the skill system as it is, I expect more from a game claiming to be a RPG, especially with my experience with the genre over the years and what I've come to expect with the association.

Now, I want your thoughts.

Eagle, here are my thoughts

1.) Your idea to grow ever more powerful works wonderful in a single player environment. It has drawbacks in a MMO, where you hit the ceiling and will have to wait for the next expansion, leaving a trail of obsolete content behind you. Buying skills right away is not possible in GW either, you will have to "unlock" them first. The procedure and ways of unlocking are another debate, of course.

2.) Nothing more to add.

3.) What is a by far too dynamic char? You are talking about character customization, but you are very vague what you mean. Do you mean the armor customization options? At the moment you are talking about the attribute point distribution. And frankly, I have trouble to understand your whole point and reasoning.

4.) I somehow cannot agree, but you are right, there are not too many viable and wanted options to customize your weapon and armors around. But how many more options do you want without turning this into a gear-progression based game.

5.) No comment.


What you expect from a RPG seems to be the statistical progression part that was already started in pen & paper times.

You are heavily influenced by the japanese RPG design, I guess you are expecting more something along the lines of Final Fantasy XI - which does not work out too well as a MMORPG.

I don't have time to play the games.

GURPS is that this: http://www.sjgames.com/GURPS/ ? I'll check it later. Thanks.

Not really any argumentation here other than "I like getting pwned, getting stronger, and taking revenge". Fine with me, I just disagree.

Good post with some good points.

About the huge number of skills. This makes the game harder to learn for new players. I'm writing an article on this, but it's not done yet. Many people I know never wanted to play GW because they thought it was too hard to get into. And it is. It's easy for someone who's been playing it for years to adapt to a new "expansion" (Nightfall, Factions, GWEN). But for the new player learning everything that's including in modern GW is pretty tough. E.g. heroes with skill bars and items.

About the large number of useless skills. A solution is to have very regular changes. I even proposed an automatic system for this once. (If you dig around you might find it.) It's a bit of an extreme solution, maybe a better solution is to actively monitor which skills are being used most, and then nerf them. And vice versa; buff underused skills.

About random areas. I've proposed this before. But now I'm in doubt again. Don't you think someone will create some balanced build that can generally counter whatever is spawned? That seems plausible. The current example is, almost, sabway. (Three necro heroes: Rit healer, Minion Master, Curses) Having random spawns of creeps in all areas would then cause there to be a general build that everyone takes because it is safe i.e. always works. This safety is bought by paying in speed, so the build is slow to kill which then makes gameplay boring.

Here's another idea to counter the pre-made omnibuild. (I like words. 'omni' means 'all' in Latin. So, an omnibuild is a build that works against anything or almost anything.) It should not be completely random, for that would make every area the same challenge, except for perhaps levels or something. It should not be fixed as it is now. At least, not without a large increase in variation. (For instance, add a lot of healers. That'd RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up some PUGs/parties. And would give mesmers or other anti-caster builds a play in PvE.) So, many the solution is semi-fixed. But the rest is not random, but specifically designed to work against the build that you brought. This ensures (assuming it works, it might not) no one brings an extremely unbalanced party. For instance, six necromancers and two monks. The non-fixed monsters would then have great skills against necromancers and casters in general. (E-denial, massive hex removal etc.)

Just tossing around ideas. I rather like the more variation thing.

About the dumbing down. I'm definitely not into that. I like the idea of normal mode and hard mode a lot. Though I agree (I think) that normal mode shouldn't be that easy. I think the issue is PvE skills and I said this before they introduced that crap. It's completely against their "philosophy" of power in-game being a product of player skill, not player time spent! (Titles with special powers. MEH!)

I hope they didn't mean completely alone. That would seriously simplify gameplay to make it so that all professions (they really ought to call that classes, it's easier and why not?) can make it through alone.

If they do it nonetheless, the scaling up mechanisms have to be something else than just adding up levels or making copies of the monsters.

Admin Edit (Merge): Please put all your thoughts and replies in 1 post versus hitting reply.

FFXI? Definitely not. Played it, hated it, it's the definition of grind taken too far. That said, recent reports have shown that FFXI has joined the ranks of WoW and EVE as one of the few MMOs that are still growing.

as for your point #1, you seem to be implying that character growth is the only content. In an ideal setting, a game should have enough content to hold you over till the next expansion/content release. Also, if the improvements over time are extremely small, then it shouldn't matter anyway. But this returns to the fact that not all players define content the same.

Point #3 - Character customization is very broad, but I'm not referring to character creation in this case. GW has that down well enough for me. I'm referring to the fact that GW allows players too much freedom with the profs. If I'm playing a warrior, I feel I should be tanking or dealing dmg, that's all a warrior needs to be able to do, not heal, not cast spells. Same thing with my magic users, they need to have a decent weapon, but they should rely almost entirely on their magic w/ little to no melee capabilities. And character roles need to be more defined in GW. A Character(especially with the limited points available) functions much better when it is performing one role rather than many.

Point #4 - I feel that gear, skills, and level should go hand-in-hand, with one only being greater than the other where a specific game decides to put the focus on it. I think MMOs have taken the wrong direction in either going primarily gear focused or primarily Skill focused. It can be done, and done well.

As for your assumption that I was influenced by JRPGs, that's true, but I have also come to enjoy many US RPGs, such as Diablo 1&2(whose MP manages to perfectly balance gear, growth and skills very well), KOTOR 1&2, Fallout 3, Oblivion, BG: Dark Alliance and the Euro RPG Sacred. Most notably, though, I'm looking at Diablo 2's MP where everything seems quite balanced and done very well and in a way that, In my opinion, is completely feasible in the MMO market.

On a side note, you can definitely tell that the some of the guys that did GW and WoW worked on the diablo games. There are skills in GW and WoW, namely the Necro and Death Knight, that seem to lift skills right out of Diablo 2. I.E. - Putrid Explosion(GW) & Corpse Explosion(WoW) = Corpse Explosion(D2) with a few mods.

Also a good post. I do have some comments.

Character Progression
All skills are not readily available in GW. The obvious counter-example is elite skills. Others: Skills from a different campaign, skills from later in the same campaign. (Especially prophecies.)

Besides, this goes against the core of GW which is, simplified "Skills not grind", or, more formally; The power of the in-game character is a product of player skill, not of time spent. Really, if you want a game without that you should consider getting a different game instead of changing GW or GW2. Why would you want to change GW into a more traditional RPG?

Character Customization
Characters are too dynamic? Didn't see that one coming. Of course, the idea is that one can be jack of all trades (and master of none) or master of some specific "trade". GW does this fairly well. I don't know about other MMOs.

Why is great dynamity (sp?) bad?

Equipment/items
While I agree that items in GW are not different enough, I disagree that items ought to matter more. At least, I disagree as long as the actual system chosen to accomply this goes against the GW essence; "The power of the in-game character is a product of player skill, not of time spent."

Quick comment:

This is not good evidence that they worked at the Diablo games, or Diablo 2. The idea of using corpses is very simple. It was probably independently invented many times in game history. This goes for minions and explosions or whatever you can get from corpses.

Sabway, whateverway and similar builds work indeed most of the time. Not always the optimum solution, but if it works, why bother to change and optimize, right.

But this is not necessarily bad. The challenge should not only be picking the right build for an area, but give players a chance to overcome the mobs by themselves and their "player abilities", not alone by the virtue of having picked the right counter build.

I think "random area" is a misleading name for my random spawn idea - not the whole area is random. The desert areas would still have desert creatures and bosses at certain fixed locations.

Tabula Rasa, despite its shortcomings, had a nice idea how to introduce some randomness: A dropship appeared, dropped some enemy "Bane" troops, and disappeared, or continued to send out more and more waves of mobs.

A bridge or another key point in an area could be defended by nobody, a random Kournan battle group, or some devourers could have dug in and "trapped" the area. I can also imagine a small dragon flight prowling the area.

The general theme of an area would be left untouched and unchanged, e.g. heavy on melee mobs or casters, hexers or whatever. But at least some uncertainty and randomness could prevent hyper-specialized build wars.

The idea that the game detects one-trick ponies and counters the player build is interesting indeed. After reading that, we were not that far away in our intentions when it came to the "randomness/variation" theme for explorable areas.


This is indeed where they jumped the shark.

I played my Necro through EOTN, uncovered every inch of the map, vanquished all areas and did all dungeons in NM and HM and still did not have any title track maxed.

Skill efficiency tied to lots of title tracks is definitely what they initially wanted to prevent:
The char gets more powerful the more time you spend playing it.

And it takes quite some time, and it is not tied to the account like they did it with the Kurzick/Luxon titles which also reward time played and actually demand it. This caused farming, and this happens all the time when people are after the reward and feel it is taking them too long if they just play the game.

Back to EOTN pve skills, so all of my other chars would have to do the same, which really turned me off. Thanks god most skills work very well at lower faction rank levels.

They introduced PvE skills slowly and carefully, and they have taken it too far in the end. Lightbringer is restricted to a few demon infested areas in NF, and just playing through Nightfall gave people already high ranks in the Sunspear title track.

But as we have seen, just add more and more factions and well... a newcomer to this game finds himself in a bad situation, as if having not all elites and skills unlocked/captured would not already be enough of a disadvantage.


I somehow feel GW2 is not going to follow the initial GW premises, and also not going to innovate that much.

GW found its new audience: title driven piss easy pve, farm and grind for this or that, so that you have a reason to grind. Pvp is going the alliance battle routes, and I would not wonder if they dumb down GvG and HA a lot to make it more "accessible". But in the end I see GW2 going more the standard PvE MMORPG route than following their original "skill over time" mantra or the idea to put some emphasis on PvP.
The idea that players who do not play constantly for hours could at least be on an even level in terms of the abilities of their char seems to have been completely abandoned for PvE.

Yes, exactly.

Sure.

You are right. It is a misleading name. Let's call it semi-random spawning then.

Sounds analogous. I'll just note that I have no experience with that game.

It seems we have the same idea of semi-random spawning.

It should be easy to get rid of various simpleton builds. I wonder how much server CPU power it will take to create these variations in the mobs? I figure it's best to do it via if, then statements. Here's one I just made up to deal with sabway/necro heavy builds:

If the amount of necros in a party is n, then set the amount of anti-necro skills to m.

That's the general idea. Then there should be some relationship between n and m. Furthermore, the game could detect minion masters, and then bring anti-minion master skills. Though not too many to make the build useless or bad, but enough to balance it better. For instance, one creep in a group could have a MM skill, so that it would compete for the corpses with one's own MM. Or have a corpse explosion skill or whatever.

I agree with this, and I think it's depressing. I stopped being thrilled for GW2 when they started doing this farm to win crap.

I never use PvE skills, period. I consider them "cheap".

There are many good ideas for GW PvE that has yet to be tried, but it seems they are going for a more conventional game, than an experimental.

One idea I've been thinking about is to let PvP character enter PvE. Total character freedom! Though it's a bit tricky to do correctly. It opens up for a lot more interesting quests. I'm the experimenting type of player. I'd like to see, for instance, challenge quests of this type: Complete x mission only with n players, or only with x profession, or without armor or whatever.

I'm all for parts of the game to be challenging, but I do not want the game to be so hard its no longer fun. Face it, MMOs are not supposed to be ridiculously hard in the first place. True challenge should come from PVP, not frustrating hard PVE.

Actually, they did work on D2, check credits.

GW server infrastructure is based on their experience with battle net (hint: arena net?), original idea being that several different games of different genres would use it.

Eww. Is giving players choice really that bad? There is no reason to force people use pure archetypes, its just remnant of simplistic heroic fantasy and early rpg rulesets distilling that to make easy to follow and create rules.

If you want to play warrior and do pure warrirory stuff, be my guest. Noone forces you to hybridize. But other people should have choice (And as game stands, doing thing based on your primary is more effective than spreading out). Your "too much choice" comment is quite unsettling.

Just as well as that "skills are available too early"/"I enjoy waiting for them". Not everyone is you. If you resist urge to unlock everything and tome every single skill at start, you will have enough new skill to go through as you find new trainers/quests. Your call.

PS: you are supposed to invest to 2-3 lines, you are not "good at many thing, great at none" if you spread around, because three skill lines are more than enough to support 8 skill slots. But again, i see desire for game to make decisions of what to play and limit your choices of things like att line investments for you)

Why do you enjoy game constricting you? Making choices instead of you? I mean this question.

I really dislike the idea of levels. Both the original pen-n-paper D&D implementation, and the subsequent ones in computer RPGs, they break immersion to the point that it nearly ruins the entire fun of playing.
When growing up (I live in Sweden), I used to play a Swedish pen and paper RPG based on RuneQuest. It didn't have levels, instead you "leveled up" your skills by using them. However, the skills in that game were not as specific as the skills in for example GW, they were more like attribute lines. You didn't level up though, didn't get more health or hit points, didn't get 10 times as strong as the first enemies you meet. In the middle of dragonslaying and fireball-throwing wizards, it still had a bit of realism in that if you were caught in a dark alley by three common thugs with knives, you'd still lose the fight unless you get help. Just a little realism, but so much immersion.

Now, I'm not suggesting that such a system would fit in, say, GW2. I'm just saying that the idea of growing stronger all the time just completely destroys the suspension of disbelief. I mean take a RL karate champion... can he hit twice as hard as you? Sure. Can he hit 500 times as hard? No he can't, don't be silly. Will he win in a one-vs-one fight? Yes. Will he win against 20 guys with machine guns? Err no.

There's also the problem of playing together. How will it be, will we be able to play together with someone twice our level? There was some talk about a "sidekick system" that would temporarily raise our level to the level of the highest party member... or something like that. That sounds sort of lame, I don't want to be someone's sidekick.

Besides, levels don't even fill the same purpose in pen and paper RPGs as they do on computers. In the former they are there to track a character's development. Since there is a human there to run the game environment, he'll always make sure that no matter what happens, the story and so on works... And there's much more social playing.
In the latter, levels seem to just be there to no point, other than to control how far a player can go. But as GW proves, there are other ways to control that. For example you can't go to vabbi areas without first having done the consulate docks mission.

Well I could go on and on about this, I had to say it though, I think levels hurt RPGs more than they do good.

I know. Read more carefully. I said it was not good evidence.

Did you ever play Dungeon Siege? It uses this system.

As for GW, this system goes against the GW mantra: Skills not time spent. But the no levels suggestion works fine for GW. I suggested a while ago that they made leveling non-mandatory. So, if you wanted to skip that part, then you'd start at level max. The noob area would be the only place where one was under level MAX. It almost works like this in Factions and Nightfall, just without the skipping-choice.

Arguments from realism are futile. It's magic.

We have no good information about how it will work, so let's not make any judgments about it.

Sure, levels are unnecessary for GW. Another good example of character development without level is the enlightened and infused parts of Prophecies.