Nearly every one of us that posts in this forum (Development, MMO Concepts) including myself, is trying to think of a way to do away with levels. Yet, the systems we have seem to come up with "level" up skills, and in doing so, effectively "level" up a character.

Random Thoughts:

+ I believe we all want to do away with levels for the sole purpose of it chastising groups of players. (Level 32s don't play with level 8s.) But you can still work around this in a variety of ways. Examples being, you could "set" a player's level depending on the zone they're in, but not give them new skills, if a lower player was to walk into a higher level zone. Orrrrr, you could make leveling be only a slight boost to the character, so regardless of the level difference, a skilled player of lower level could still topple an unskilled player of a higher level.

+ Skill raising allows specialization. Which is completely true, but you could just slap a "level" number on your character depending on how many times they've increased their Axe skill, or whatever the case may be, and there would be absolutely no difference. It just 'shows' other players how much time you've invested into your character with a little number.

I don't know when the word "level" became the new flag for the counter-culture around here. It seems to be shrouded in some dark magics that you can't dispel. I honestly think people are just thinking the way they do for the sake of trying to be original.... just like everyone else. I just want to know how players seem to differentiate between the two, levels and skills.

A "real" game with no levels would be like, as mentioned in a previous post, you would buy your skills and they'd be useable for x amount of time. Or flat out, everyone is on the same page, but you get to pick different skill sets at character creation, or perhaps unlock additional abilities as you go. Any game where you are increasing the effectiveness of your skill, through using it (gaining exp for it essentially) is a game where you level.

I don't see the purpose in trying to sugar coat it.

A skill system doesn't do away with leveling either but what it does is break down a normal level system into smaller chunks to give you a choice of what you was to specifically level. I don't see any reason to completely do away with leveling. If you did how would there be much character progression when compared to offline games? Yeah you could make it so there are few levels or levels don't make much of a difference but having such minimal upgrades leaves players wanting more. I personally really like the skill training in Eve (and huge amount of them too) but for my game I'd have a combonation of play to increase skills with real time spent training.

My design completely and totally does not do away with leveling.   It's just using a skill / AP system to achieve a few effects: noticable advancement withing an hour or two of play, the ability to play how you want and advance how you want, and avoiding a few RPG retarded edge cases.

As a matter of fact I'm not even totally doing away with class systems and even somewhat embracing it on character creation where the player chooses a few "class" options so they can start out with a few max and near maxed out skills.   Which means I can have a "short" tutorial type thing while focusing solely on the "end game" since the "middle" game is almost completely non-exsistant(closest form being the easy dungeons/quests/challenges).

Originally posted by Repulsion

Any game where you are increasing the effectiveness of your skill, through using it (gaining exp for it essentially) is a game where you level.

I don't see the purpose in trying to sugar coat it.

You are confusing level-based design with general character advancement.

It is extremely rare that people post that they do not want functional, visible or numeric character advancement. It's not a counter-culture thing, Rep, rather attempts by posters to find resolutions to distinct issues often recurring level-based MMOs. The two most common are level disparity and linear progression.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Repulsion

Any game where you are increasing the effectiveness of your skill, through using it (gaining exp for it essentially) is a game where you level.

I don't see the purpose in trying to sugar coat it.

 

You are confusing level-based design with general character advancement.

 

It is extremely rare that people post that they do not want functional, visible or numeric character advancement. It's not a counter-culture thing, Rep, rather attempts by posters to find resolutions to distinct issues often recurring level-based MMOs. The two most common are level disparity and linear progression.

I agree and also would like to add that there are many different perspectives and concepts of "leveling". I don't think it should be in anyone's best interest either player side or designer side to want to do away with things such as a visible way of portraying a character's development. It's a matter of definition ultimately I think.

What is a level and what does it exactly mean? It could mean you are a certain distance away from maximum level, it could mean you have invested more time into the game, it could merely mean you just have owned and played the game longer than most (EVE Online anyone?) or even focused more of your actions into honing one particular skill level. In terms of development, this is an important question to ask within the game and the next question would be what are my options in terms of acquiring "levels"? And we could go on and on, but ultimately it will be hard to do away with this concept of providing concrete value to help portray character development and I cannot see why would anyone want to.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by Repulsion

Any game where you are increasing the effectiveness of your skill, through using it (gaining exp for it essentially) is a game where you level.

I don't see the purpose in trying to sugar coat it.

 

You are confusing level-based design with general character advancement.

 

It is extremely rare that people post that they do not want functional, visible or numeric character advancement. It's not a counter-culture thing, Rep, rather attempts by posters to find resolutions to distinct issues often recurring level-based MMOs. The two most common are level disparity and linear progression.

But I've seen level-based systems that handle the latter, and I've yet to see a skill based system that handles the former completely.  As long as defense advances as the character does, then a level 8 character will not be able to adventure with a level 40 character, at least not in any combat MMO. The artificial levelling system I've seen doesn't do much for it either.

And it doesn't seem that rare to me that the concept of levelling is decried. The OP speaks to a very real sentiment, from what I've observed, even if cooler heads prevail in this thread. 

What those who feel that leveling, in and of itself, is evil don't see is that the only way to really have progression without leveling would be to make capabilities (skills/powers/etc) On/Off, and players progress by collecting the skills and powers which they can load out in sets, and having each be explored in their own right.   Still, not having certain skills require other skills (leveling) or having more experienced players being able to load out more skills (leveling) would be counter-intuitive.

In a sense, if leveling isn't in the equation at all, then characters would essentially develop by customization, and the essence of interesting character development would be to make customization challenging, something many level-based games do already.

To a further point, leveling is a core mechanic of any RPG, single or what have you, even if the leveling doesn't take center stage.  As such, such a game that eschewed leveling completely would be a "true" MMO Action game.  Still, even single player action games, often, have some sort of leveling from Kratos' Enhanceable Blades to Spider-Man's extendable combos and Force Unleashed's Ranked-up special moves.

I agree with the OP that some people see classes and levels as the problem rather than classes and levels can lead to certain problems. Pure skill systems are not perfect purely by being skill systems e.g I'd bet most people who've ever played an Elder Scrolls game ended up as a sword-heavy armor-archer-healer-nuker-stealther-enchanter. This is fine in a solo game but is a bit dull in a group-centred mmo.

I think one of the simplest solutions uses levels and a skill tree or trees so that when a player "levels" they get to pick one new skill/spell. This is simple, avoids having to keep track of skill use and macroing exploits, yet provides lots of player freedom.

Originally posted by tupodawg999

I agree with the OP that some people see classes and levels as the problem rather than classes and levels can lead to certain problems. Pure skill systems are not perfect purely by being skill systems e.g I'd bet most people who've ever played an Elder Scrolls game ended up as a sword-heavy armor-archer-healer-nuker-stealther-enchanter. This is fine in a solo game but is a bit dull in a group-centred mmo.

I think one of the simplest solutions uses levels and a skill tree or trees so that when a player "levels" they get to pick one new skill/spell. This is simple, avoids having to keep track of skill use and macroing exploits, yet provides lots of player freedom.

Or you could just add some of the simplest design methods around like:  need a sword to use sword skills, need a "focus" to cast specific magic types, no "passive" skills that give beneifits with no requirements(atheletics/speed I'm looking at you), and similar.