Remove leveling up or make it harder and fun

1) Why do we have leveling up in MMOs?
2) Why Ashes of Creation needs the leveling up phase?

In single player RPGs leveling gives a sense of progression while presenting the story.
When the player reaches max level, the end of story might also be close.
The fun comes from seeing how the fight style changes when a new skill is added.

In MMORPGs knowing how to play against other classes makes us read and watch videos to learn them too.
And makes sense to go through the story only once, for the first character.
Maybe different races have different stories?
Anyway I like pressing the ESC key to skip everything. I don't care about story when I see players running around skipping content too.

On release the developers anticipate max level should be attainable in approximately 45 days if playing 4-6 hours per day.[14][15]

I think the 45 days leveling in AoC is very short. Some players will definitely reach max level in half that time.
So why do we have it in this game?

I think the life of the character at mid levels should be fun too.
But as it is now, the leveling up phase is a disadvantage for AoC.

How can this game, based on caravans, nodes wars and risk vs rewards be adjusted to let players see and enjoy these aspects while leveling up?
Why would anyone go through this 2nd and 3rd time?

Find more posts tagged with

Staff

Comments

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Do we disagree on this part?

No, we agree. I'd assume that what I described would probably best apply to low tiers and above, while everyone would only be able to do basic tier of gatherables, if not specced into that tree/branch.

Though, I guess, that goes directly against the "lootboxiness" of rocks, because if anyone can hit most rocks and some of those rocks can have more valuable resources - you have yourself a ton of people that could potentially mine a ton of valuable resources, even w/o leveling up their artisanry.

And if you don't give those people the valuable part of the lootbox, you're not only encouraging the griefing potential of overfarming, but also discourage all of those bored people from hitting rocks.

Azherae

From there you get to 'balancing profitability by skill'. Fortunately we have a game where this has been observable in many iterations for many years. Good ol' BDO.

All of the outcomes on the BDO side are bad, as I see them. Why? It's not exactly a mystery, but it's very complicated.

If specialists gather rocks way better than newbies, they undercut the newbies if they can, to the point where the only reason newbies gather rocks is their lack of other options. This is fine, except that it leads to long periods where they don't make any money because they're being undercut. So they put in a lot of TIME, and get a very delayed reward. In a game where you need to buy tools, this starts to get troublesome.

At midlevel, you're still at the mercy of people above you. Nearly ANY system for this gets stupid pretty fast. Example:

A player hits a tree and gets 4 wood. A more specialized player hits the same tree and gets 6 wood. They spent the same amount of time.

Player A wants to sell that wood for 25 Cu each to make it 'worth their time.

Player B sells it for 20 Cu each, it's STILL more worth it to player B, and Player A often has to come down to that, 'losing money'. If they persist, and Player B really wants to make their life hard, they just go down to 18 Cu.

Still make slightly more than Player A was going to make. Player B can push Player A out of a market WHILE still making more profit than Player A was hoping to make. This leads to games where people just tell you 'might as well level to X level before you even start trying to make money with this'.

Maybe the 'time' of Player A is 'worth less' in general, but Player B is always incentivized to have money funnel to them rather than to spread out. And they're already specialized for lumbering. They don't WANT to do anything else or they'd have chosen that.

The result is a massive surplus of resources because those with less 'valuable' time are 'fighting against' those who generate more value per unit time.

For clarity BDO has solved this issue, but it was by creating four more, so there's solutions. They're manipulative and antisocial as usual, though.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

For clarity BDO has solved this issue, but it was by creating four more, so there's solutions. They're manipulative and antisocial as usual, though.

Did those solutions include the "high specc dude literally can't farm low tier mat or it's so inefficient that only griefers would try" one?

Because I feel like if the artisan system just consisted of a bunch of L2-like vertical lines, with high lvls having either no access or worse yield to the low tiers, the inherent nicheness of artisan classes would work in favor of such a system.

And the basic resources could be farmed by all, but they'd also give the smallest return on time investment, because they'd be literally "a thing you do while you're bored".

Vaknar

NiKr wrote: »

...That's the beauty of a sandbox game - you can have fun as soon as you want. And Steven has already said that their plan is to provide fun content all throughout the leveling process rather than just at the end.

Well said! I'd like to add something that Steven said: "Not everything is driven through your class level per-se. There's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game"

The game will also feature XP debt, which will give players another reason to gain XP as if they were leveling up!

Fantmx

Strevi wrote: »

1) Why do we have leveling up in MMOs?
2) Why Ashes of Creation needs the leveling up phase?

In single player RPGs leveling gives a sense of progression while presenting the story.
When the player reaches max level, the end of story might also be close.
The fun comes from seeing how the fight style changes when a new skill is added.

In MMORPGs knowing how to play against other classes makes us read and watch videos to learn them too.
And makes sense to go through the story only once, for the first character.
Maybe different races have different stories?
Anyway I like pressing the ESC key to skip everything. I don't care about story when I see players running around skipping content too.

On release the developers anticipate max level should be attainable in approximately 45 days if playing 4-6 hours per day.[14][15]

I think the 45 days leveling in AoC is very short. Some players will definitely reach max level in half that time.
So why do we have it in this game?

I think the life of the character at mid levels should be fun too.
But as it is now, the leveling up phase is a disadvantage for AoC.

How can this game, based on caravans, nodes wars and risk vs rewards be adjusted to let players see and enjoy these aspects while leveling up?
Why would anyone go through this 2nd and 3rd time?

I often disagree with you but in this we are united. See @Dygz I am not crazy in the way I think.

I have argued for years now that the character leveling process is meaningless and mismanaged. That is should be a focus on storytelling and character skills.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

For clarity BDO has solved this issue, but it was by creating four more, so there's solutions. They're manipulative and antisocial as usual, though.

Did those solutions include the "high specc dude literally can't farm low tier mat or it's so inefficient that only griefers would try" one?

Because I feel like if the artisan system just consisted of a bunch of L2-like vertical lines, with high lvls having either no access or worse yield to the low tiers, the inherent nicheness of artisan classes would work in favor of such a system.

And the basic resources could be farmed by all, but they'd also give the smallest return on time investment, because they'd be literally "a thing you do while you're bored".

Which would then be inherently counter to a lot of the structures the game uses.

I think we've reached the point where any discussion on this would be better in the other thread, though.

I'm still trying to figure out if it is just my bias for FFXI that causes this reaction, but I HAVE played other MMOs and even liked some of their systems too, so I can't be sure, and honestly, FFXI's GATHERING is too restrictive and usually sucks (killing mobs for drops is ok but would never work in a PvX game).

Still, this is another case where I am constantly surprised where other people's experiences come from. This is all solvable easily by an Economy Designer, not even a super experienced one.

Generally, if you see that something that feels like a problem isn't solved, it's because the devs don't see it as a problem.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

FFXI's GATHERING is too restrictive and usually sucks (killing mobs for drops is ok but would never work in a PvX game).

I meaaaaaaaaan, unless we go the Dygz/Noaani route and completely disregard even the probability of L2 being called a PvX game - L2's "gathering" was exactly that

The "spoiler" class was gathering its mats off of mobs and mobs only. I'm guessing FFXI's gathering was available to more classes than just one, so L2's system is even more restrictive than the one you're used to from ff.

Dygz

Fantmx wrote: »

I often disagree with you but in this we are united. See @Dygz I am not crazy in the way I think.

I have argued for years now that the character leveling process is meaningless and mismanaged. That it should be a focus on storytelling and character skills.

LMAO
I never said you were crazy. I said no leveling is a different game type than RPG.
You are not interested in the Hero's Journey, but the Hero's Journey is what RPGs are trying to emulate.
You can have a great game with RPG elements and no Hero's Journey that is not an RPG.
And we are starting to get MMOs similar to that with MMO Life Sims, like Palia.

You just want to play football instead of soccer. Nothing crazy about wanting to play football.

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

FFXI's GATHERING is too restrictive and usually sucks (killing mobs for drops is ok but would never work in a PvX game).

I meaaaaaaaaan, unless we go the Dygz/Noaani route and completely disregard even the probability of L2 being called a PvX game - L2's "gathering" was exactly that The "spoiler" class was gathering its mats off of mobs and mobs only. I'm guessing FFXI's gathering was available to more classes than just one, so L2's system is even more restrictive than the one you're used to from ff.

LMAO
I would probably call L2 a PvX game just as Ashes is a PvX game.
They are both PvP-centric - the PvPers who play will have to do some PvE.
I'm not aware of a PvP-centric MMORPG that is not PvX. Perhaps you can list some examples.

Ludullu

Dygz wrote: »

I'm not aware of a PvP-centric MMORPG that is not PvX. Perhaps you can list some examples.

Nah, don't think there's any mmos that have tried a purely pvp gameplay approach. Or at least I've never heard of one.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

I'm not aware of a PvP-centric MMORPG that is not PvX. Perhaps you can list some examples.

Nah, don't think there's any mmos that have tried a purely pvp gameplay approach. Or at least I've never heard of one.

Isn't this entirely the reason why we just label PvP-centric MMOs as 'PvP MMOs'?

There's always Mortal Online tho.

Noaani

Azherae wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

I'm not aware of a PvP-centric MMORPG that is not PvX. Perhaps you can list some examples.

Nah, don't think there's any mmos that have tried a purely pvp gameplay approach. Or at least I've never heard of one.

Isn't this entirely the reason why we just label PvP-centric MMOs as 'PvP MMOs'?

Indeed it is.

Edit to add, for an MMORPG to be truly PvX, it needs to fall between the MMORPG's that are considered PvP (L2, Tera, Archeage, BDO, EVE, et al) and the MMORPG's that are considered PvE (WoW, EQ, Rift, FFXIV, GW2 et al).

Runescape is/was PvX. Ashes is PvP.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

There's always Mortal Online tho.

Doesn't mortal have mobs?

But yeah, pretty much any mmo that has open world pvp would be a pvx mmo. Oh wait, I guess Planetside 2 is the closest thing to a really pvp mmo, cause iirc there's no environmental stuff there (unless I'm forgetting or they've changed smth).

Foxhole might be seen as a pvp mmo too, cause it's a completely player-created world and any environment hazards come directly from other players.

But neither of those are rpgs, even though they have ranks and "classes" which could kinda be seen as parts of an rpg gameplay. And, if anything, Foxhole's roles are waaaay stronger than your standard pvp mmorpgs (especially recent ones). Medics were mostly purely medics (sometimes even w/o guns), logistics people could not even interact with enemies and would just play their own particular role.

novercalis

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

There's always Mortal Online tho.

Doesn't mortal have mobs?

But yeah, pretty much any mmo that has open world pvp would be a pvx mmo. Oh wait, I guess Planetside 2 is the closest thing to a really pvp mmo, cause iirc there's no environmental stuff there (unless I'm forgetting or they've changed smth).

Foxhole might be seen as a pvp mmo too, cause it's a completely player-created world and any environment hazards come directly from other players.

But neither of those are rpgs, even though they have ranks and "classes" which could kinda be seen as parts of an rpg gameplay. And, if anything, Foxhole's roles are waaaay stronger than your standard pvp mmorpgs (especially recent ones). Medics were mostly purely medics (sometimes even w/o guns), logistics people could not even interact with enemies and would just play their own particular role.

If you consider a unpiloted aircraft crashing into you

Dygz

NiKr wrote: »

But yeah, pretty much any mmo that has open world pvp would be a pvx mmo. Oh wait, I guess Planetside 2 is the closest thing to a really pvp mmo, cause iirc there's no environmental stuff there (unless I'm forgetting or they've changed smth).

Right. Planetside 2 is an MMOFPS.

koltovince

The leveling process will take 45 days, but thats if you are pure leveling. From my understanding Ashes is going to make it where halfway through leveling or sooner is when the player can engage in caravans or crafting, or even just exploring more. The soft cap on these activities will probably just be the level of the area or the player you are facing.

Also 45 days of leveling might not seem like much to some, but to others its way to much. It is also considering 45 days to level a single character, in a game system with 64 total combinations for classes. We will be doing 8 different classes worth of leveling, 45 days each.

Strevi

Strevi wrote: »

Akaime wrote: »

... and old content never became irrelivent

@Akaime why would a player with a high level character roll a new one, to play low level content in this game?
On the first, "main", I think everybody will rush to reach max level, to be efficient in sieges and caravan combat. And on sea.
To slow down and enjoy the intermediate level content could be viable in PvE game but not here.
But maybe a 2nd character or a 3rd one could have some benefits. Still I do not see right now any hint on wiki that they think about such aspects.
So what's your oppinion?

@Akaime mentioned Anarchy Online as a way to keep old content relevant at all time.
Can AoC learn from Anarchy Online how to offer a similar experience?
In my opinion, the character leveling up phase makes no sense and should be removed unless it is tied to something else which gives a good reason to either want to level up slowly or to have alts locked at lower levels.

The feeling that the character itself becomes more powerful as you level up is not a good enough reason to have a character leveling up in AoC. That can be moved onto the node leveling and when the node is lost, some will chose to move to a low level node and others might move to another metropolis, if they can afford the price.

Depraved

how to progress in your adventurer class then? should we introduce all 30-40 skills plus 8 x 4 + racial and religious augments at once? how can we prevent this system from completely overwhelming players, given the number of choices? if only we could have a system where players could access their skills and augment them little by little to avoid being overwhelmed hmmm.. I wonder how we could do that? maybe we could have some sort of progression hmm. any ideas?

Strevi

Leveling up is not a tutorial.
I think it was never meant to be one.

Dygz

RPGs use leveling to emulate the Hero's Journey of novels - typically Fantasy novels.
Other genres of MMO, like MMO Survival games or MMO FPS games, might not use leveling.
Skill progression isn't much different than Character progression, but...
Character levels probably do make it easier to determine which mobs and challenges are fair game.

In D&D, Levels help determine Challenge Rating.
In MMORPGs, Levels help determine which regions/dungeons/raids are appropriate for hunting.

Lots of gamers these days realy only care about the MMO part and aren't at all intersted in the RPG part of MMORPG.

Child Item