Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Kyleran

I think you'd find a game without any form of it, i.e. earning gold, gear, levels, skills, etc would be....a first person shooter.

 

Why do people so often parrot the patently daffy idea that player skill only exists in first person shooters?  Have there never been non-first person games that depended upon the skill of the player?  Is there no player skill involved in Super Mario World?  How about Tetris?  Europa Universalis 2?  Uniracers?

Furthermore, a first person perspective generally means that you're fighting as much with the controls and the camera as with the mobs that you're ostensibly fighting.  That's not my idea of an interesting challenge.

 

While that myth drives me mad as well, I really do not see where the guy you quoted said that.

My interpretation of his statement is that by elimination levels, you also eliminate character power progression.  FPS use a 'at the moment' skillset ie.  what matters is how you can utilize the skills you have right now in this instant.  RPGs give strong support to 'ahead of time' skillsets ie if you prepare ahead of time you will e more powerful in the fight.  

Personally, I am not a spontanous person and don't do that well when confronted with suprises.  As such I prefer to win my fights ahead of time.  So if I can win a fight easier by getting better gear and spells ahead of time I will do so rather than risk the outcome on my reaction time and/or luck.  So when people say that a fight takes no skill since you can gear up for it ahead of time, it baffles me since to me the real skill was getting the gear so the fight becomes easier.

Torik, you nailed exactly what I was trying to say, and much better than I would have.

My preferences are just the same as yours and I like games that cater to my playstyle.

My initial response was more to posters who claim if a game doesn't have FPS, point and click combat it means the players don't need any skill to play them.

I assure you, I've seen some amazingly skilled WOW players who will destroy all challengers.  Maybe the did it through better gear, but frequently it was because they were masters at using the right ability at the right time to neutralize their opponents.

I agree with those that are saying the removal of levels does not mean the removal of progress.  Characters can still progress with skills, abilities, stats and everything else without measuring their progress by filling up level bars. 

It is just that the concept of levels is so overpowering sometimes it stands front and center above anything else.  Almost everything in these games revolve around what level your character is.  It determines where you can go, who you can group with, what you can equip, when you get new skills-stats-abilities, etc etc.  It is no wonder why it dominates play and can even get in the way for those who do enjoy the journey. 

I also feel that a lot of the journey aspects have been getting replaced with filler content that is specifically designed for no other purpose than to fill experience bars up.  The journey being presented is getting rather shallow in some recent games.  It might be that is where the current market is at, but that doesn't mean it is unchangable.  That is part of the reason wow is so successful, they addressed problems in the genre.

-No one is making you grind 12 hours a day, play at your own pace

-Levels are implemented to increase the longevity of gameplay

-Self accomplishment

-Power of the player increases and sets them apart from weaker players so you don't have super legendary warrior fighting / grouping with a peasant

-Unlock new abilities that can be unbalanced with your previous one because you are using against monsters of high level that deserve such a spell

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Kyleran

I think you'd find a game without any form of it, i.e. earning gold, gear, levels, skills, etc would be....a first person shooter.

 

Why do people so often parrot the patently daffy idea that player skill only exists in first person shooters?  Have there never been non-first person games that depended upon the skill of the player?  Is there no player skill involved in Super Mario World?  How about Tetris?  Europa Universalis 2?  Uniracers?

Furthermore, a first person perspective generally means that you're fighting as much with the controls and the camera as with the mobs that you're ostensibly fighting.  That's not my idea of an interesting challenge.

 

While that myth drives me mad as well, I really do not see where the guy you quoted said that.

My interpretation of his statement is that by elimination levels, you also eliminate character power progression.  FPS use a 'at the moment' skillset ie.  what matters is how you can utilize the skills you have right now in this instant.  RPGs give strong support to 'ahead of time' skillsets ie if you prepare ahead of time you will e more powerful in the fight.  

Personally, I am not a spontanous person and don't do that well when confronted with suprises.  As such I prefer to win my fights ahead of time.  So if I can win a fight easier by getting better gear and spells ahead of time I will do so rather than risk the outcome on my reaction time and/or luck.  So when people say that a fight takes no skill since you can gear up for it ahead of time, it baffles me since to me the real skill was getting the gear so the fight becomes easier.

 

Torik, you nailed exactly what I was trying to say, and much better than I would have.

My preferences are just the same as yours and I like games that cater to my playstyle.

My initial response was more to posters who claim if a game doesn't have FPS, point and click combat it means the players don't need any skill to play them.

I assure you, I've seen some amazingly skilled WOW players who will destroy all challengers.  Maybe the did it through better gear, but frequently it was because they were masters at using the right ability at the right time to neutralize their opponents.

 

You seen amazingly skilled WoW player?  your kidding right?  Its all about gear in WoW, the one with best gear wins 9/10 times.  Nothing to do with skill.  Sure some timing on skills are important but for the most part is about the gear not the person behind the toon.

Point and click combat has nothing to do with skill or no skill the gameplay does and a game without risk has no skilled players.  Risk creates skilled players.  WoW/WAR/other clones have no risk.  WoW has no skilled players.   It is very simple logic.

Same with most FPS, its all about who saw who first, who got the first shoot off normally wins the gun battle. 

A game has to have some risk involved to create skilled players, most MMOs do not have risk nowadays. 

Again these are general statements and there are execptions to every rule.

Originally posted by Daffid011

I agree with those that are saying the removal of levels does not mean the removal of progress.  Characters can still progress with skills, abilities, stats and everything else without measuring their progress by filling up level bars. 

  

Isn't this just another form of leveling?

What do you get when you level?  New skills or improvements to skills, abilities and stats.

I do enjoy the way that different games take a different approach toon progression.  It gives each game its own individual flavour.

I haven't read everything, only OP and a few of the first page posts, but I'd like to share my opinion on this.

MMORPGs fight a dilema. The RPG aspect of the game is about a persistent character and the easiest way to give this persistent idea, are levels, gear, skills, whatever, things that you will acquire over time, not be born with, and constantly evolve. This is the fun of RPGs - the character. Also that is the reason most people get "glued" in their game, you have a virtual asset you are dedicating time into, some people will eventually play a game because of that and not because of the fun, and that is when they are getting addicted in a dangerous way, up to the point of Real Life "damage" which should be your true RPG to be "played".

Then you have the idea of non-RPG games like RTS, FPS, that are all about stepping in a game room, play it and have fun, and that's it. These games have no idea of persistent characters and are the more casually recommended.

The korean MMORPGs everyone rants so much about, are the MMORPGs with the RPG in its extreme, raw, form. The fun is in spending time and developing your character, to the inimaginable. The problem people find is that instead of the western MMOs, their form of endless content is exactly by slowing your pace through the content.

But well, games are "srs bsns" (serious business) for those that develop them. So, we've seen different MMOs with different mixes of the RPG and the non-RPG aspect of the games to appeal to the market. There is no "best", but what appeals to "most". You could say World of Warcraft has the winner combination so far, simply because of the subscription numbers, but then you have many other very succesful games mixes around, such as Guild Wars, EVE, FFXI, and the ones that derivate from currently sucessful mixes, like an investment, you want the least risk possible or you may succumb like Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, and other games.  

But you will never see a RPG in which you can directly head in the end-game content (and with no disadvantages), or will rarely see one, otherwise all the basic hierarchy and progression is broken - it's not a RPG, they are lying to you. RPGs have a tree of development, be it long or short and fast or slow.

Even games like Guild Wars and Chronicles of Spellborn that reduce level impact as much as it can get nowadays require you to climb a tree, and development will increase that tree size, which will obviously make it take more time for those that are just starting, but then they can reduce the difficulty and time it takes, but you will never be able to SKIP the path.

The paradox of character progression is you start with a game where 99% of the content is inaccessible, and end up with a game where 99% of the content is trivial.

Levels are there because they are the clearest and most universally understood mean of measuring character building / advancement. It's at the core of most pen & paper RPGs, at the core of the computer RPG genre, and thus naturally at the core of the MMORPG genre. Take them away, and you're moving into other MMOG genres, like MMOFPS - which isn't bad, but simply not MMORPG.

Levels can be replaced with skill based advancement system, which is unfortunately not well enough tried out in the MMORPG market to be low enough risk for developers. Levels is the tried and working method. Or like with other MMOG genres one can take the system away completely, which will take away a substantial time off the average player's subscription time with the game, i.e. financially a Bad Idea.

If you don't like levels, you're mostly out of luck in the MMOG market. There are few games that use another system, so you'll probably have to just suck it up to get to the part of the game you enjoy. Or just play Counterstrike like the rest of us when we need a quick PvP fix.

Originally posted by thorwood

Originally posted by Daffid011

I agree with those that are saying the removal of levels does not mean the removal of progress.  Characters can still progress with skills, abilities, stats and everything else without measuring their progress by filling up level bars. 

  

 

Isn't this just another form of leveling?

What do you get when you level?  New skills or improvements to skills, abilities and stats.

I do enjoy the way that different games take a different approach toon progression.  It gives each game its own individual flavour.

Similiar in the sense that both can be time consuming if developers need that to generate revenue.  However levels dominate the importance of gameplay.  Want to play with your friends, but you are 5 levels lower than them, to bad.  Go out and grind experience to fill the bar. When player advancement is measured by experience bars it has several effects.  One is that when players run out of bars to fill up the game changes drastically.   Also the goal of filling those bars becomes more important than the activities done to fill them.  Majority of players will gravitate towards the easiest method of filling those bars.  If that happens to be solo gameplay then the majority of the game will be people soloing.  If it is running battlegrounds, then the majority of the players will do that.  It can be something that most players despise doing, but they will do it just to advance fast.  Filling the bar becomes more important than actually playing the game.  

Separate all the rewards players get from leveling and a developer can offer players the option of what goal they want to achieve.  Want some more health, go do some activity that builds health.  Want to learn a new skill, go do that.  Go explore to learn something else.  Go deep into a dungeon to build another ability.  I'm not very creative in my examples, because that is why developers make the big bucks, but the concept is there.  The rewards and activities can be mixed up in any number of combinations to encourage players to engage in more than just the quickest path to gain max level.  It is just more flexable. 

So yes in essence they are similar, but at the same time offer different approaches.  It can be as little as perception or as big as to change the way the games are played. 

Levels are the oldest and simplest way to handle experience. There are other ways of handling it too but most of them includes some way of grinding too, whatever you grind lose XPs to better your character, gear or just skillpoint.

For the op: Try Guildwars, the grinding there is less than in any game, it have 20 levels and you get there fast.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and the truth is that no mmo has levels becuase its a good gameplay feature or becuase they think people enjoy levels. The 1 and only reason devs put levels in games is because it allows them to reuse the same gameplay over and over again while giving you the illusion of progression, but when you think about it you did pretty much exactly the same quest at lvl 1 as you do at max level, it might have gotten a bit more complex but at its core its exactly the same.

So by adding levels it means they don't have to make a deep and interesting game and still give you endless of gameplay hours.

i believe its a bad thing if all the mmos are no levelling. gamers and non gamers always want to do something inside the game that they currently playing and if they accomplish that thing..., at any rate you can call it level-up or levelling.

MMOs all have progression. Whether it's leveling like most. Getting money like EVE (while waiting for skills to progress). Or trying to find gear it's all the same thing in the end. Saying leveling is stopping your fun means you should not play MMOs because you don't want progression and go play something where everyone starts and is always equal like FPS (ones with no progression) or RTS or single player RPGs.

Whether it's watching a bar fill up or a skill go up one point or trying to find gear it all is the same thing in the end. You'll never be happy.

Would it be better if they took out the numbers and randomly after a while you gained more skills and spells? It's still leveling you just can't see the progress and you can't tell what strength anyone is!

Gamers want progression. If anyone made a game that had everyone was always equal no one would play they'd be here whining that there is nothing to do.

The problem lies in the fact that there is nothing to do once you do make it to whatever max level. Most people are quite happy until that point.

I totally agree with OP. I remember the time when I was playing GW and you could make char for PvP and it's in max lvl without grinding, loved it. Been hating grinding for getting max lvl to start really playing the game since I can remember.