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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Do we need Character Levels?
McShave
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I had an idea that I would like your thoughts on.
With so many ways to play this game and level your character, do we really need some arbitrary character level? If someone levels a character to 50 through combat, and another character to 50 by professions, then their level 50 really doesn't mean much.
An idea I had was to allow your character to level in many different areaa, like combat, professions, trade, etc. Let's say you can level to 50 in each of these categories, and then your "character level" would be the combination of all these different levels.
Is there another game out there that does this? Is this a good idea or bad idea?
With so many ways to play this game and level your character, do we really need some arbitrary character level? If someone levels a character to 50 through combat, and another character to 50 by professions, then their level 50 really doesn't mean much.
An idea I had was to allow your character to level in many different areaa, like combat, professions, trade, etc. Let's say you can level to 50 in each of these categories, and then your "character level" would be the combination of all these different levels.
Is there another game out there that does this? Is this a good idea or bad idea?
4
Comments
Same difference.
The best alternative I've seen was to divide/replace levels by skills. The Elder Scrolls games are like that. In the MMO genre, Star Wars Galaxies was like that too, but the total skill points available was restricted for balance. I think some fps shooters are like that too.
I would like very much that the game would completely forgo levels and track progression through a skill points system. No HP augmentation. Hits, accuracy, defence, evasion, all progressing with the use of their related skills. The more proficient you are with a skill/spell, the higher the damage or crit chance. Heck, classes could also be ditched, replaced with a limited number of skill points available or some sort of skill decaying system so that no one can master every skills. But that's just my, probably unpopular, dream.
@Tyranthraxus The system I proposed still has the leveling system, it's just altering what the definition of "character level" is.
So in OSRS you could be combat level 50 with a melee skill of 1 and a magic skill of 50, and vice versa.
Roleplaying systems that don't have levels (WFRP and Runequest for example) feel nice because you have to judge a character by their actions, clothing and what they say, instead of just looking at their profession and level. It feels healthier from a roleplaying perspective. However, I've not heard of any online RPGs doing things that way before. It would be extremely brave of any developer to go that route.
So many are happy and familiar with the selected format of Archetype and level with a skill tree point allocation system that has tiers which unlock as your character level increases. I think it is too late in the development for the Devs to change their current approach.
The artisan progression in some ways ticks that box for me, because you could max an artisan class and still be relatively low level, trading on your artisan reputation irrespective of your character level.
In Ashes, I believe that hovering your mouse over someone will just give a vague relative power level assessment based on their archetype / class level and gear. You won't get to know artisan skill levels, hit points, or any of the other things you we see by spying on a D&D character sheet when the player sat next to you isn't watching.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I would hate to spread mis-information.
Also about mousing over a character to gague their power levels, I think this is mostly to get around the cosmetics in the game. You won't be able to look at a character's gear to see how strong they are, so this is a good work around.
In games like Ashes I feel that a long leveling grind is required as a barrier to entry to access all of the content a game has to offer for a class/profession. If there is little work or effort required to make alts than everyone will have a alt for everything. It is worst in a game like Ashes because you could just make characters for specific tasks and then transfer things around since nearly no items are character bound. This would hurt the economy and reduce some of the social aspects of the game.
Another issue is that if you can just create max level characters all day, your name means nothing. If you piss off the wrong people that is fine. Just roll another toon and all is forgotten. This destroys some social dynamics that come from your character having to establish a name for themselves. Remember name changes will never be a thing in Ashes.
I strongly feel that leveling as a barrier to entry is necessary to prevent people from being able to quickly get to a point where they can do everything for themselves and keep player name identity important. This is a Risk Vs Reward Open World Focused game. People need to be able to recognize other players names in the world and react accordingly. You should not easily be able to just abandon all of the work you have put into making a name for yourself when you act up.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
dungeon level is 45 combat and you only want people with a Combat level from minimum 44 to dont make it a pain in the a** so then you will get many players who are 1 or 2 levels behind that 44 but are hiding it behind some useless (for dungeon) crafting levels.
FF14 has a system where your charakter can reach levels in each profession like
Class
Smithing
Mining
etc. etc. etc
Thats totally fine because you still see his real combat level whats the only important thing is if you want to go into a dungeon.
For games that put the content first, levels make sense.
Just shift the grind from the leveling to the actual end game content (professions, gear, etc). Leveling feels antiquated. perhaps a quick 1 - 20 levels that can be done in ~5 hours to help you get used to your classes abilities, but you don't really need more than that.
If the leveling has to be there to be a gate for end game systems, then it sounds like the end game systems are not strong.
Also, a leveling curve, even if steep, will not stop alts. Alts are a good thing for a game as well. It gives people variety in gameplay. For PvP it also helps you better understand how the classes you are going up against work.
Also, refering to it as character level seems somewhat wrong. Neither profession nor social activities/societies affect your "character level" Its much more akin to a combat level.
Considering, that your change would suggest maintaining a combat level, nothing would change at all except, that you'd wanna create another type of level, which would be the sum of all the level progress you have made across different activities.
Which would be completely and entirely useless. If you look someone for your party, you don't give a shit what his level is in any activity but combat. If you look for a crafter, you don't care about anything other than the level of their profession. A character level as you suggest it serves no purpose at all.
soudns like themepark mentality to me, where the game starts when you hit max level. Which is allegedly not going to be the case here. Systems don't unlock with your character/combat level at all here. Your character gets stronger though level ups, nothing else. You can do the exact same content whether you are level 20 or 50. Just that you'll probably have an easier time doing it as 50.
Make the grind 225-250 hours, and we got a deal... (which is what it is for AoC btw)
Remember we are getting into a Open world MMORPG not a WOW clone, things are different. There is a living breathing economy with a dynamic world. You are not going to be able to even rush to cap day one. There might not be a node with high level mobs for a while.
TBH I feel like the intended grind is not enough. It needs to be demoralizing.
You can understand other classes in PvP by reading there ability's and experience fighting them. You don't need to play every class to better understand how to deal with other classes in PvP. .
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Ocarina of Time would be an excellent example of a game where your progression is locked behind certain story points and you cannot complete the game w/o first completing each temple
Then you have BOTW where there's nothing stopping you (after the tutorial) from heading straight to Gannon...and whereas that might sound fun it would severely undermine the reward of "time invested" that so many AoC fans are looking for.
Why does it not mean much?
I'm just thinking of the scenario that someone leveled to max level using professions, then wanted to run a max level dungeon. A party takes this person because they are max level, but they don't even know what they're abilities do.
I may be wrong, but i remember Steven saying you gain xp with professions. But this is a good work around. Just have combat related xp contribute to your character level and this fixes my issue.
Gotta have some way for the pacifist to hit max level by only picking flowers for 3 years!
What gamers today don't seem to understand is that the endgame for them is all they want to get to because its where all the 'good stuff' is. But they forget that some games just weren't initially designed that way, they were designed for you to more slowly experience the world and feel a sense of growth on the way like a good RPG does. That feeling has been lost because of players rushing, which pushes developers towards simply making endgame content for them to consume instead of playing the game as it was built. Thus the current Meta and the feeling of the open world really being left behind, is being replaced with instances and segregation of the core gameplay loop people played the game for in the first place.
Ashes interests me because it feels like they are developing the game for you to play its core concept while leveling and feeling a sense of growth and not a mad dash to have to be the best at max level. And levels are the best way to do that in this type of setting. Slow down people and learn to enjoy your video games again. Leveling is fun, you just forgot why it was fun because recent games treat it as a barrier to entry instead of a core mechanic. If you level 1-50 in 40 hours, of course leveling is stupid and each level has no weight to it. But if it takes 15 hours just to get 1 level, getting that level is a milestone and it feels good.
I'm all for ongoing progression in various ways that make my max level character more powerful or that reward cosmetics (but be sure to have appropriate catch up mechanisms for users who start late, alts, or users who change their main. Without those the game will have too high if a barrier to entry long term and eventually die off due to atrophy).
I also wouldn't consider this theme park mentality. I'm not looking to skip the open world/sandbox experience. I just want to spend my time doing these activites max level with all of my classes skills instead of sub-par level grinding.
I find this statement to be the most important for what Ashes is trying to do to revolutionize the genre, and what I personally find one of the more inspirational things about the game is that it seeks to redefine what is "end game." Certainly some folks think that "the real game" does not start until max level. I would like to see a game where "max level" is not as important and that the leveling process of contributing to your node is just as important at lower levels than the high ones.
I really hope Ashes gets this right. Their introductory videos they did on this point were awesome and I hope we get a polished result on this.
I know a lot of people are excited for the return of "getting to max level will take months of time" but honestly I would be okay if Intrepid flipped it and made max level fairly easy to get to while providing a ton of ancillary skills we can take our time grinding so that it better focused the game on the nodes and growth of the world rather than just grinding boars simply to unlock your next spell.
There would need to not be major power gaps between levels if course. These extra levels would be somewhat like extra power from better gear.
The game will start at character creation and end when you decide it ends. The whole point of the game is to have fun why maximize the fun out of it. Just make your Tulnar go into Verra and have fun.
Kind of like when you where a small child just go out and explore and find your fun. Or have you always needed some one to script your fun for you?
Levels provide away to give feedback to the players of lessons learned and abilities gained.
I don't think this is fair. For as long as there's been RPGs there's been munchkins that enjoy the optimization of their characters. Nerds enjoy crunching into their characters and any gamer w/ a hint of competitiveness likes to know that they can do better.
Even in games as on the rails as Retail WoW no one is stopping you from taking your time and just enjoying the ride and I don't think a long leveling time is in any way relevant to your personal progress...it's just a timegate between abilities.
This is spot on and the core problem with leveling in MMOs! I don't need 3 to 4 hours between each ability added to my core toolkit to learn the new ability. Its more like 10 minutes. For example, it feels bad when your a new tank trying to "experience" tanking for a group at low level and you don't have your taunt because you don't get that till level 20, or your main defensive CD until your level 40... these are core things for your toolkit to fulfill your role and your handicapped until you have them. I get you don't want to overwhelm a new player with 40 skills right at the start, but you also don't want to take multiple hours/days to give the character these abilities.
If anything you want to get the core abilities to players faster. This way they can see of the flow of combat and associated combos/strengths/weaknesses align with the players style, or if the player should reroll. (I loved that WoW added clas trial with a almost max level toon so you could try out the list of abilities before actually committing to the toon. Sure the actual boost is debatable and probably not good for AoC, but the idea of trying out the abilities at max level, then going and creating the level 1 toon can certainly help avoid poor class selection decisions. Reading about classes isn't as good as actual hands on experience).
I wonder how much of the socialization resulting from a slow grind was by design originally or if it was simply a nice side effect to fill the repetitive boredom of the slow progression pace.
In sand box games, the players are, in large part, the content. A slow progression is not as needed as in a theme park.
First person shooters rely almost completely on the players for the gameplay: they will plays hours upon hours with no new content from the developers, a new map or game mode keeps them active for months. Many modern ones have some sort of leveling in them, but the old ones didn't.