what i find 'odd' is that so many find themselves leveling too quickly. i don't. i never have really, except for once perhaps. i incessantly take my time, see the sights. follow the 'useless' side quests, craft, explore, etc.

for me i just always figured i sucked at leveling, but now i realize, its just how i play a game. slowly.

Originally posted by BadSpock

I truly wonder what would happen if a MMO game were ever released that had zero (and I truly mean 0) vertical progression.

No stats on toons or skill points or levels, no stats on gear...

The character got "better" because the player got better at playing the game, that was all.

They were able to take on more challenging tasks because their either (or both) A) understood the game better and were better at playing it and B) made more social bonds/friendships to tackle these challenging tasks with others instead of alone.

Interesting that no one has mentioned GW1 yet.

That game has actually only 20 levels, which you will usually hit at the end of the tutorial area (unless you are playing the original campaign, Prophecies, where the leveling was stretched out a bit).

After you hit 20, your stats, ie hp, number of attribute points, are fixed. Also! The gear had a max cap that was pretty easy to reach.

The only thing that changed after lvl20 were your skills on your hotbar, in that you still encountered skill trainers later in the game and had to capture elite skills from boss monsters. Atfter that, it just came down to what skills you put on your 8 slot hotbar and how well you used them.

Got an account just to post in thread and to say: nooooooooooo....

You shouldn't miss slow leveling, never, ever!!! We are throwing a pretty large amount of our lives through the windows with MMOs that people qualify as fast leveling, so I don't even want to imagine what it would be if leveling started to become slower.

Personally I just hate leveling. On WoW when I suddenly have the urge to play one of the high level dungeons with a caster, or try a new style for PvP all I have to do is sink 1 or 3 months of my life to satisfy this urge... GREAT!! Leveling is a wasted concept, a dividing one, I want to play with people, I want to try different style of play and not just get the kiddie version that low-level content is,  when I roll an alt, I want to raid with him NOW, I want to do real PvP with him NOW, not in a week, not in a month, NOW.

You can like it or not, but this iis what MMORPG will tend to soon, not limiting the content the player can enjoy because of "levels". If the player want to get to the hardcore stuffs right away, let him, odds are he or she knows what he or she is going, and if not they learn the hard way.

Slow leveling is going the way of the dodo.

Slow leveling would be fine.

Empty gameplay (which characterized all the early MMORPGs I played) wasn't, and still isn't.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by BadSpock

I mean, the idea of stats and levels is a simple way to quantify the "character growth" that is so very important and some would say critical to the story telling tool/design of the "heroes journey" but...

Growth/progression is about power. Using numbers is just an easy way to show it.

Power is really about .. today the goblin kill me easy, tomorrow i can blow him up with my fire ball.

Given we're talking about a computer, numbers are the only way to quantify character growth.

Do you have to quantify it?

Wouldn't it be the same as "gaining power" because you have more skill at playing the game and that is why "yesterday the goblin could kill me but today I defeated him?"

And isn't making a friend to help you kill the goblin also a form of growth/progression and thusly power?

My point was more technical than abstract.  To a computer it's all numbers.  A computer does not understand terms like "power".  Programmers give ideas like that concrete values.

Originally posted by chelan

what i find 'odd' is that so many find themselves leveling too quickly. i don't. i never have really, except for once perhaps. i incessantly take my time, see the sights. follow the 'useless' side quests, craft, explore, etc.

for me i just always figured i sucked at leveling, but now i realize, its just how i play a game. slowly.

For me, it isnt just about my own personal levelling pace.  It also has to do with the players around me, and getting to know people I group with.  There was a time when I formed friendships with people, because we grouped together so often, because we were in the same areas so often.  That just doesn't happen anymore, because of how quickly people speed through content.  

I could slow down and just hang out twiddling my thumbs, but that won't bring back the sense of community that slower levelling can help support.

Originally posted by ControlBlue

Got an account just to post in thread and to say: nooooooooooo....

You shouldn't miss slow leveling, never, ever!!! We are throwing a pretty large amount of our lives through the windows with MMOs that people qualify as fast leveling, so I don't even want to imagine what it would be if leveling started to become slower.

Personally I just hate leveling. On WoW when I suddenly have the urge to play one of the high level dungeons with a caster, or try a new style for PvP all I have to do is sink 1 or 3 months of my life to satisfy this urge... GREAT!! Leveling is a wasted concept, a dividing one, I want to play with people, I want to try different style of play and not just get the kiddie version that low-level content is,  when I roll an alt, I want to raid with him NOW, I want to do real PvP with him NOW, not in a week, not in a month, NOW.

You can like it or not, but this iis what MMORPG will tend to soon, not limiting the content the player can enjoy because of "levels". If the player want to get to the hardcore stuffs right away, let him, odds are he or she knows what he or she is going, and if not they learn the hard way.

Slow leveling is going the way of the dodo.

Bite your tongue.

Nah, seriously though....I only half agree with you, because see....I think the people that LIKE the leveling process need to be able to play the way THEY want to ALSO.  Fair for all.  I think games offering more and more and more CHOICES....are the way of the future.

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Originally posted by Leucent

It might sound odd, but I miss games taking a long time to level. Don t get me wrong, I enjoy alot of games, and play some games now, that don t take long to level, but I truly miss the old days of games like DAOC, and FFXI. It took a long time to hit max, and well each level felt like an accomplishment.

Maybe one day a company can make a quality game that takes a long time to hit max. I just felt the communities were so much better in those games.

I know alot of people will disagree with me, but it s an observation that myself and alot of MMO players I know, agree on.

I dont necessarily miss slow leveling but I do miss extended levels.  Instead of 50 - 80 levels I would love to play a game with 200+ levels like an Asheron's Call.  Get the best of both worlds, timely progression and extended level caps.

Bingo!!! That too, AC was a great game with how you could literally be anything. It hid any grind well, too with random loot etc. The sense of danger was awesome too. Loved having to retreive your stuff, was damn hars sometimes :)

I never did hit max level in Asheron's Call, though I had countless years of fun playing. Daoc It took me a while but I did get to 50. Then Darkness falls came and I had multiple 50's because on a MIdgard DF raid you could hit 50 in a day or so of the loop with help from a friend tagging everything. I loved both of those games, DAOC not so much after the Trials of Atlantis and New Frontiers, but when it was new and a few years out, it was fun as heck.

MMORPGs should be part of adventuring and not the chaotic rush to the end game. That is my view and I didn't read through the entire discussion so I'm sure there are many more who beleive that like me. It use to take months to get to level 60 in Vanilla WoW and I miss that! I just starting Fallen Earth again. It is somewhat old school graphics but the game is very unforgiving in that there is no hand holding! I am enjoying the struggle to level! 

Originally posted by Amjoco

MMORPGs should be part of adventuring and not the chaotic rush to the end game. That is my view and I didn't read through the entire discussion so I'm sure there are many more who beleive that like me. It use to take months to get to level 60 in Vanilla WoW and I miss that! I just starting Fallen Earth again. It is somewhat old school graphics but the game is very unforgiving in that there is no hand holding! I am enjoying the struggle to level! 

 

 I too like the slower strugle, i like the time you spent to get to  know other players,  and they knew who you were, you EARNED your place in the game, that ment something.

   now days i doesnt matter with these MMO's

  i kind of laugh and cry when i see people top out in a couple of days from launch,  Devs and producers spend thousands of man hours to make the game, millions of dollars spent, some lifless yahoo with 60 bucks logs on and finnishes most of the game in 2 weeks,

   oh well. maybe next game.

 I think MMOs could progress a lot slower overall, to the enjoyment of most, but the fun things usually at the end of "max level themeparks" need to start at level 10 instead of 50, 60 or 80.  It's not the players fault it's how the games are designed.  I'd like to see about a 500% decrease in level speed but put things that matter from 1 to max.

Edit: The "sweet spot" IMO is when people don't really care how long it's taking them to level.

i personally think that slow leveling is just not fun anymore, but even so, if they brought it back the thing that needs to be done would be to add meaning to that leveling.

leveling to level, whether slow or fast is pointless if barely anything changes, if you slow the leveling down there better be skills and abilities to make up for the slog.

i suppose for me that was really the difference between everquest and say lineage 2, both had slow leveling but everquest had more stuff at the end of that leveling to make up for the slowness.

of course now i can't stand slow leveling really anymore, well as slow as everquest and lineage 2 anyway. i also don't really enjoy tor's leveling. there is no sense of accomplishment with tor, since you aren't doing anything but listening to people talk for a while.

i guess really i just want what i'm doing to mean something to my enjoyment of the game, it is part of the reason i couldn't stand doing AA, it never felt as concrete as leveling did, leveling was noticable.

I dont miss it, thats how Vanguard works.

I dont know how it compares to other games, but if you want to have remotely decent gear in Vanguard, you need to do dungeons, and those take quite some time.

There is a bit of rose coloured glasses involved in the nostalgia when it comes to MMOs, specially earlier ones, but even despite that, I agree, I miss the journey, and I know  you can nowadays solo the whole game to max level and take your time, but that is not how it was before, hell even WoW in 2004 had an awesome leveling journey, there were people at all levels and in different areas you would always find something interesting somehwere, some pvp. People cared about things at all levels not just high level.

Then everyone got to 60 and it sort of went downhill from there till today, its not really specifically about slow leveling, its about allowing people to enjoy everything at their current level instead of being some sort of throw away content, you dont really care about. I remember when we had to farm low level instances to get lvl 20 or so Nature Resistance trinkets, that to me is fun.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by BadSpock

I mean, the idea of stats and levels is a simple way to quantify the "character growth" that is so very important and some would say critical to the story telling tool/design of the "heroes journey" but...

Growth/progression is about power. Using numbers is just an easy way to show it.

Power is really about .. today the goblin kill me easy, tomorrow i can blow him up with my fire ball.

Given we're talking about a computer, numbers are the only way to quantify character growth.

Do you have to quantify it?

Wouldn't it be the same as "gaining power" because you have more skill at playing the game and that is why "yesterday the goblin could kill me but today I defeated him?"

And isn't making a friend to help you kill the goblin also a form of growth/progression and thusly power?

My point was more technical than abstract.  To a computer it's all numbers.  A computer does not understand terms like "power".  Programmers give ideas like that concrete values.

Understandable. But wouldn't hiding the "behind the scenes" numbers give the same concrete effect with an increase in the abstract "feel" of the game?

I'm just arguing for the sake of discussion, I am a numbers person - I like stats and I like complex stat systems that require critical thinking, planning, etc.

Originally posted by ControlBlue

Got an account just to post in thread and to say: nooooooooooo....

You shouldn't miss slow leveling, never, ever!!! We are throwing a pretty large amount of our lives through the windows with MMOs that people qualify as fast leveling, so I don't even want to imagine what it would be if leveling started to become slower.

Personally I just hate leveling. On WoW when I suddenly have the urge to play one of the high level dungeons with a caster, or try a new style for PvP all I have to do is sink 1 or 3 months of my life to satisfy this urge... GREAT!! Leveling is a wasted concept, a dividing one, I want to play with people, I want to try different style of play and not just get the kiddie version that low-level content is,  when I roll an alt, I want to raid with him NOW, I want to do real PvP with him NOW, not in a week, not in a month, NOW.

You can like it or not, but this iis what MMORPG will tend to soon, not limiting the content the player can enjoy because of "levels". If the player want to get to the hardcore stuffs right away, let him, odds are he or she knows what he or she is going, and if not they learn the hard way.

Slow leveling is going the way of the dodo.

^ This is the opposite mindset of the OP. It becomes clear in your post that you think all the good stuff is at the end, so why slow it down even more? Simple: Stop making "end-game" a goal at all.

Somewhere along the way it changed from it being simply about the journey to it being about hitting a finish line. Aion, for example, didn't do extremely well because of this mindset. People kept trying to rush to the end-game where all the fun is, only to be stopped time and time again by slow exp gain. A lot of the people that jumped ship did it because they didn't think they could have as much fun at 18 as they would at cap. If all you're thinking about is end-game when you're used to the current generation of MMOs then Aion would have made you want to pull your hair out and bitch-slap your grandmother.

I think older gamers are the opposite. All we really knew was the journey. Once you hit cap, you were basically done. Reroll or roll out. What I enjoyed about that however was a few things.

It promoted long-term friendships: You were toughing it out side-by-side which made you really appreciate those around you doing the same.

Risk required backup: This required friends willing to give up precious exp (Or something else of value) if things went south when trying to explore a new area none of you had been to yet.

It is always faster with a group: This has been one of those things I miss the most. Grouping wasn't an option in older games, it was a requirement. In an MMO, if you can do everything by yourself, why bother doing it with others? This current generation of games has been the biggest culprits of this.

There are many many other things that could be listed but those are just a few that stick out to me. I think the only way a game can severely slow down leveling at this point is to somehow make it VERY clear from the start that there is no end-game, it's all about the journey. If you try pulling that now with what gamers are used to, it's going to be ugly at best. I am sure the biggest argument will be "I don't have time for that shit! Get a life!".

My point: If you don't have the time to waste, why are you playing games at all? Since when did gaming become serious business that you HAVE to fit in between changing diapers and shoveling the drive? All of it is a time-sink and the best ones take years.

As always, it's just my opinion, don't take it to heart. And yes, I am rockin' my rose colored glasses.

Instead of making Levels means powerlevel, levels should be a means of tracking how long you have been in game. The level of experiences playing the game.

What if levels = times played, won't that be something unique.

So if you have an player that has played from beginning, his level would be up to hundreds, and those new to the game would be in their teens

Originally posted by BadSpock

 

Understandable. But wouldn't hiding the "behind the scenes" numbers give the same concrete effect with an increase in the abstract "feel" of the game?

I'm just arguing for the sake of discussion, I am a numbers person - I like stats and I like complex stat systems that require critical thinking, planning, etc.

 

Won't work. The theorycrafters will run experiments and reverse engineer all the numbers.

In the old days of WOW, no hp/mana numbers are displayed. Only percentages. The theorycraft made a mode to estimate those numbers. Blizz caves and show the numbers.

In fact, there is no reason not to, if a majority of the players want to see.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by BadSpock

I mean, the idea of stats and levels is a simple way to quantify the "character growth" that is so very important and some would say critical to the story telling tool/design of the "heroes journey" but...

Growth/progression is about power. Using numbers is just an easy way to show it.

Power is really about .. today the goblin kill me easy, tomorrow i can blow him up with my fire ball.

Given we're talking about a computer, numbers are the only way to quantify character growth.

Do you have to quantify it?

Wouldn't it be the same as "gaining power" because you have more skill at playing the game and that is why "yesterday the goblin could kill me but today I defeated him?"

And isn't making a friend to help you kill the goblin also a form of growth/progression and thusly power?

Me as a person?  No, that idea is just stupid for a rpg.  If I am playing a mage, he is casting the fireball not me.

I find it funny that most level based games with this pace issue are Themeparks.  Based on the name alone, a real themepark doesn't even have progression.  It just has TONS of content to go explore and have fun with.   Now...again, I think the trick here is to make Themeparks or Sandbox or preferably to me, Hybrids of both with scaling levels or no levels at all.  Oh, wait...isn't that what GW2 and TSW and possibly ArcheAge going to do?  Seems like the answer is right around the corner to the OP's consternation and many others.  Myself included.

Also...some games do this, but give the option to turn off XP in level based games.  Rift has it now as does Vanguard and I'm sure a few others.  Not sure why this isn't a staple in the genre, as it gives people more options to play the way they like.  Then again, with a scaling mechanic, xp gain can keep on coming as fast or slow as it wants, as the content will always be viable at any level.