That won't be very fun game unless they got something fun to replace it, an rpg stands for role-playing, and you do need class to display your character's abilities, you do need skill to improve your abilities, leveling up just show how powerful you are and how many low levels might think "I want to get that piece of awesome weapon and armor!". However, leveling is not very nessassery to be used but most mmorpg just place it there for status and let people know who to face and what not to in an easy way.

Originally posted by darkedone02

That won't be very fun game unless they got something fun to replace it, an rpg stands for role-playing, and you do need class to display your character's abilities, you do need skill to improve your abilities, leveling up just show how powerful you are and how many low levels might think "I want to get that piece of awesome weapon and armor!". However, leveling is not very nessassery to be used but most mmorpg just place it there for status and let people know who to face and what not to in an easy way.

Reading comments such as the poster above made me remember why I usually dont bother repplying or interacting with people. Its like a never ending affair, like for every hydra head you remove, many more are born from where the last one fell. Or the topic about defining MMO, if I stop or continue, it doesnt make a difference, the next week there will be more people to school.

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs are about vertical character progression?

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs have to have classes, levels and skills?

Thats why current MMOs suck and will continue to suck, because people are so ignorant and have no idea what its been shoved down their throats.

Is a nightmare, for every head, another seven rise up...

A skill-less, class-less, level-less game could exist, but it would either be purely gear-based, or predominantly playerskill-based.

Games which are predominantly about player skill might more closely resemble another genre entirely, but they might still be MMORPGs at their core (example: if Guild Wars had no stats or classes, but instead you were just a class-less avatar who collected Abilities, and you equipped a limited number of your collected Abilities to use in combat.)

Games which are purely gear-based would be unique and you could probably get reasonable progression out of it. Basically all the effort normally spread between level, gear, and stats progression would be concentrated purely on making gear progression especially deep and interesting.

The more you stray from being an RPG, the better these ideas seem. Trying to cling to RPG progression and ditching skills, classes, and levels will introduce some unique problems your game would have to solve to keep things fun.

Originally posted by Interesting

Originally posted by darkedone02

That won't be very fun game unless they got something fun to replace it, an rpg stands for role-playing, and you do need class to display your character's abilities, you do need skill to improve your abilities, leveling up just show how powerful you are and how many low levels might think "I want to get that piece of awesome weapon and armor!". However, leveling is not very nessassery to be used but most mmorpg just place it there for status and let people know who to face and what not to in an easy way.

 

Reading comments such as the poster above made me remember why I usually dont bother repplying or interacting with people. Its like a never ending affair, like for every hydra head you remove, many more are born from where the last one fell. Or the topic about defining MMO, if I stop or continue, it doesnt make a difference, the next week there will be more people to school.

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs are about vertical character progression?

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs have to have classes, levels and skills?

 

Thats why current MMOs suck and will continue to suck, because people are so ignorant and have no idea what its been shoved down their throats.

Is a nightmare, for every head, another seven rise up...

 

Try playing Magic:TG or old school D&D and you would be surprised what elements it has. And don't tell me you do, because then you would not make this comment.

Mentioning D&D and Magic the Gathering... What a fool.

LOL.

Just because D&D has skills, levels or classes doesnt mean RPGs have to have it. Reducing/Stereotyping RPG to D&D is fail. Even more fail is mentioning Magic the Gathering in the same sentence, now that is utter fail.

Seriously kid, stop embarassing yourself. Good God.

I just read the title... You should name it ''snails online: Infinite road of destiny''. Lots of fun garantee.

Originally posted by Interesting

Mentioning D&D and Magic the Gathering... What a fool.

LOL.

Just because D&D has skills, levels or classes doesnt mean RPGs have to have it. Reducing/Stereotyping RPG to D&D is fail. Even more fail is mentioning Magic the Gathering in the same sentence, now that is utter fail.

Seriously kid, stop embarassing yourself. Good God.

Yes of course, stereotyping rpgs to contain something that's in every rpg...

Every console RPG with a few notable exceptions (fallout, elder scrolls to name a couple) contain levels

In those games that do NOT, skills are used as an alternate form of progression.

Every game has classes. Let me tell you. Even the much-touted EvE does. People decide on a role, then arrange their stats/skills/whatever to accomplish that role. That, sir, is what a class is. A rose by any other name is still the same flower.

Sigh. Look, I understand you're wanting to think outside the box. In fact I applaud it. Now, can the vitriol and explain to me how you want a character driven role playing game to allow players to develop beyond whatever they start with without the above items. And I don't mean that it can't be done. I want you to tell me what you want to see in an MMO that allows progression of a character without those items.

Or, you're suggesting an MMO without progression. Essentially, counterstrike.

While it still has skills of a sort, I think the closest thing to this would be EVE Online. In EVE, you can improve any skill that you want at any time, if you first obtain the skill book to gain the 1st level, and are willing to take the time to learn the skill. The higher the skill ranks, the longer it takes to learn.

I could see something like this being in place for just about any game out there. You've got a great concept here, and if you find something that fits what your thinking, please let me know, as I would be interested in playing it.

If the game has no skills or levels, it really would be an RPG as it lacks one of the huge cornerstones, character development. You would, at that point, have an action game.

Otherwise, that makes every game that exists an RPG, being you remove the real defining factor, character development. Gear is not character development. You're not developing the character, only what he uses.

In short, no, no RPG exists like this, because if it did, it would not be an RPG. There are plenty of acion, adventure, racing, and shooting titles for you to choose from.

I just got to read some of the later comments about where people have learned RPGs need to have character progression. Because, if not it's not an RPG. Games do need some definition. Now, let me point something out:

An RPG game has:

Story

Action

Character Progession/Development

Usually a fairly large map

Lore

Memorable Characters (hopefully)

Exploration

Usually takes place in open ended enviorments

Largely 3rd person, popular 1st titles exist.

An Action/Adventure game has:

Story

Action

Smaller maps

Lore

Memorable Characters (Jak & Daxter? Ratchet & Clank?)

Exlporation

Third person for the most part

Usually has pigeonholed gameplay.

An FPS has:

Story

Action

Maps of all sizes, from the largest to the smallest

Lore

Memorable Characters (BioShock anyone?)

Exploration

First person perspective

Gameplay can be open-ended or fairly pigeonholed.

What is the defining charateristic between them? RPGs have strong character progression. if you remove that, it's an Action/Adventure delivered slightly differently.

What is an mmorpg without it's class, levels, and skills? is it just borderline Role-Play? Socialazation? what is it really? Darkfall Online has a level-less game and more concentrated on skills, yes? look how it turned out. How can you make a game that contains non skills, no level, and no class?

Originally posted by darkedone02

What is an mmorpg without it's class, levels, and skills? is it just borderline Role-Play? Socialazation? what is it really? Darkfall Online has a level-less game and more concentrated on skills, yes? look how it turned out. How can you make a game that contains non skills, no level, and no class?

It's just how you define MMO. I play games without levels which are MMO (read my post in this same thread) and they work fine.

You don't need levels or classes to have an "MMO" experience. The "RPG" part can be taken rather loosely imo, it doesn't need to be fantasy, you can be a warrior, or a construction worker or space marine, as long as you are somehwat connected to your character by a story and feel part of the world, giving it an RPG tag is fine imo.

MMORPG will evolve into MMO I think, the 'big' MMORPG companies are trying to hold this back though. Bioware, SoE, Blizzard, NCSoft would love to just continue on the same road and bring out MMORPG after MMORPG LEVEL TREADMILL , because it's easy, makes easy money and doesn't require any new type of gameplay. But it doesn't mean that all games should have levels and skill, because enough games have proven that's not the case.

Originally posted by Waterlily

It's just how you define MMO. I play games without levels which are MMO (read my post in this same thread) and they work fine.

You don't need levels or classes to have an "MMO" experience. The "RPG" part can be taken rather loosely imo, it doesn't need to be fantasy, you can be a warrior, or a construction worker or space marine, as long as you are somehwat connected to your character by a story and feel part of the world, giving it an RPG tag is fine imo.

MMORPG will evolve into MMO I think, the 'big' MMORPG companies are trying to hold this back though. Bioware, SoE, Blizzard, NCSoft would love to just continue on the same road and bring out MMORPG after MMORPG LEVEL TREADMILL , because it's easy, makes easy money and doesn't require any new type of gameplay. But it doesn't mean that all games should have levels and skill, because enough games have proven that's not the case.

I went back and hunted for a few of your posts to get some context here. Perhaps I missed one, but the one game you did mention, the Roller Blading one, had levels. And most MMO Action titles doe have them, that I've seen. But I digress.

One thing I'd like to say here is that this is MMORPG.com. That means this website is deveoted to roleplaying games. MMO Action titles have slowly filtered their way in, mostly due to the fact that they have added "rpg elements" (read: levels, class systems, character progression, etc) And no, no one is saying RPG must be fantasy. But it must be a game in which you cplay a role. The line between "role" and "class" is so thin. Also, traditionally, one of the joys (or sorrows depending on your take) of the RPG is that as you face more difficult challenges, you grow as a cahracter whether through skills, items, levels, whatever.  RPGs will probably always have these -in some form-

That said, I'd like a lot of posters on this forum to take a dose of honesty. EVE, ATiTD, and many other "sandbox" MMOs are not by any means different from level-based rpgs like WoW. Progression still exists. Classes exist. Any time you optimize yourself to fulfill a role, you have picked a class. Any time you have gained something that allows you as a character to become more powerful, you have gained a level. The only difference is semantics. The one GOOD thing about these types of games is that you can branch out along multiple paths and not restrict yourself. But uh...last time I poked around EVE, I found people discussing the best skill packages and ship setups to accomplish task XYZ. In other worse, the concept of a player's desire to min-max will cause the player THEMSELVES to pigeonhole themselves into whatever "optimal" build there is. The concept of "freedom" in many of these games is an illusion, because many players will build a minmax cage for themselves. And those that don't quickly find they can't keep up with those that do.

So, the only solution is a world devoid of these things. Where only the intelligence and reaction times of the person behind the keyboard makes any differnce.  And that pretty much brings us back to FPSes.

RPGs and MMORPGs have fewer and fewer skills these days. Mostly thanks to WoW. It looks like MMOs are moving in this direction anyways.

I would love to see an RPG go oldschool and have hundreds of skills to pick from. Where you could spend a day just thinking about character builds.

Originally posted by GreenChaos

I would love to see an RPG go oldschool and have hundreds of skills to pick from. Where you could spend a day just thinking about character builds.

Try Drakensang.

Originally posted by Interesting

Originally posted by darkedone02

That won't be very fun game unless they got something fun to replace it, an rpg stands for role-playing, and you do need class to display your character's abilities, you do need skill to improve your abilities, leveling up just show how powerful you are and how many low levels might think "I want to get that piece of awesome weapon and armor!". However, leveling is not very nessassery to be used but most mmorpg just place it there for status and let people know who to face and what not to in an easy way.

 

Reading comments such as the poster above made me remember why I usually dont bother repplying or interacting with people. Its like a never ending affair, like for every hydra head you remove, many more are born from where the last one fell. Or the topic about defining MMO, if I stop or continue, it doesnt make a difference, the next week there will be more people to school.

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs are about vertical character progression?

Where the f*ck people learned that RPGs have to have classes, levels and skills?

 

Thats why current MMOs suck and will continue to suck, because people are so ignorant and have no idea what its been shoved down their throats.

Is a nightmare, for every head, another seven rise up...

 

Kudos to you Interesting, for spending the time and care it took to even write that. I want to share a story with you. My brother and I went to Disney land and he waited almost an hour in line to get Goofy's signature. I said to him "You know that's just a kid in a goofy costume right?" and he said "Nope, I'm pretty sure that's the real Goofy right there."

You can't argue with that. You can take the time and care to logically counter every argument, only to have your opponent act as if their arguments are perfectly intact. It's kind of like all their peices are gone, their king is rolling around on it's side, and they're still thinking "I'm holding a strong position." Have you ever experienced something like this? The interesting thing about competence is, the very skills involved with competency (in a certain area) are the ones needed to judge how competent a person is (in that area). So if you're not in the first place, then you're even worse off because you don't even realize how incompetent you are.

I also want to thank you one more time for pointing out the difference between vertical and horizontal "progress" or "change" as I might put it.

Kudos to Axehilt

(example: if Guild Wars had no stats or classes, but instead you were just a class-less avatar who collected Abilities, and you equipped a limited number of your collected Abilities to use in combat.)

That's a system without the traditional use of skills, classes and levels- thank you!  The abilities an avatar has obtained and equipped are the very things that define his or her progress and role! Taken further, imagine if those skills were attatched to items carried around by the avatar, which can be looted upon death. There are ways to do this, I just don't think it's been done before in an MMOG style.

Touching base with Horizontal, and Vertical progress. The following excerpt is taken from here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22456

The core of game design is about crafting a series of descisions for a player to make, and that chain of descisions makes up the gameplay experience. But descisions come in two forms: Choices, and Problems.

Problems direct a player towards a goal.

Choices let the player choose their goal.

Any decision you have to make in a game that has a best answer or solution, is a problem. The easiest to spot are the math problems that many games are riddled with. In World of Warcraft, deciding what gear to wear is a problem, not a choice. Why is that? Because for every single objective in WoW  there is one set of gear that is the absolute best choice for the job. Gear in WoW is a puzzle if you really think about it. It's a fun and complicated puzzle, and not one that always has an obvious solution, but a puzzle just the same. Pretty much any time a player is presented with a clearly defined goal, and the fun or challenge is in executing or acheiving that goal, that's an example of a problem.

So then, what about choice? Choices are when you're asked to decide between things of equal or incomparible value. Deciding between an apple and an orange, roses or lillies, blue alien sex or the local flavor. These are all choices. Real choices tend to be much harder to design than problems, because they don't have a clear right answer. They also tend to be much harder to fit into games because giving players too many options expands the size of the game very quickly. Choices can complicate things very quickly, and part of the reason we see so many problems in games instead of choices.

This isn't to say that problems are bad, most games are built on problem solving. And that's how it should be. It would be hard for us to find any games without any form of problem solving at all. Problems are really at the heart of what we consider gameplay, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's important that we distinguish them between the two. So why does this matter at all? If problem solving is the foundation on which games are built, why make so much fuss over choices anyway?

Well for two reasons. One, a game designer needs to be able to distinguise between these to in order to use them effectively. When you're building something, it's kind of important to understand the tools and materials you'll be working with. But there's an even bigger reason then that. I do a lot of talking about games developing into an artistic medium, and this is another important key to that. In oder to be art, a medium must be able to adress the human experience, and there's a huge range of human experiences that are better expressed as choices rather than problems to be solved. Because in life, a lot of the descisions we make don't have a clear-cut answer. Such as choosing a career, choosing who to make friends with- from small questions like "what do I want to wear today?" to complex moral dillemas like "is violence an acceptable means to do good?" And isn't a dillemma like that more compelling when it's a real choice you have to make rather than a multiple choice question with an obvious answer?

As an industry we're trying to learn how to make our games more compelling. As an art, we're trying to learn how to make our games more expressive. The better game designers understand their tools, the better products they'll be able to create. It's just one more step to pushing games to new heights.

The Agency is close.

I was just reading up on it and there will be levels but a level one can take out a high level with a headshot.

To change your class you change what you are wearing.

So gear based classes with levels that don't mean much and it's mostly a shooter with some RPG elements.

WW2 Online is a pure player skill based MMO... but it isn't an RPG.

Originally posted by Torik 

The problem is that the abilities act as Power Multiplyers.

eg:

In a fight player A and B can do 10 damage per sec (10 DPS), during 10 sec they will each do 100 damage.  however, If player A has a stun ability that stops player B from attacking fro 5sec then player A now does 100 damage and player B 50 damage. 

So if the fight lasts 10 sec then the Effective Power level of player A is twice that of Player B.  Of course the longer the fight is and the longer the cooldown on the stun is the less of an effect it will have on the outcome.

There is a reason why players in WoW hate the rogue's StunLock ore the warlocks chain fears.

Well, simple solution would be to remove CC in PvP. I dunno but I don't find it fun to have any chance of retaliation taken away when playing in a PvP game.

It's like having the power to turn off the other guy's controller for a few seconds on a FPS game online.

I think you are looking too specific though. My fault for being so specific but someone asked for examples or a more detailed response.

You want players to be more powerful because they have played for a while and at the end of the day, time invested should equal some reward, but in a counter/counter/counter system player skill is > time investment in terms of reward.

I guess what I'm trying to get at, in general, is that a noob versus veteran should usually go to the veteran, but the noob has a chance unlike most level/gear based MMOs where the noob could sit there beating on the vet for an hour and not scratch him, and when the vet wakes up from his/her nap they one-shot the noob.

Originally posted by GreenChaos

The Agency is close.

 

I was just reading up on it and there will be levels but a level one can take out a high level with a headshot.

To change your class you change what you are wearing.

 

So gear based classes with levels that don't mean much and it's mostly a shooter with some RPG elements.

They have gear based classes in the Agency? Hmm, that is an interesting thing indeed. I'll take a closer look at it someday, thanks for sharing.

Originally posted by Boozbazz

Originally posted by GreenChaos

The Agency is close.

 

I was just reading up on it and there will be levels but a level one can take out a high level with a headshot.

To change your class you change what you are wearing.

 

So gear based classes with levels that don't mean much and it's mostly a shooter with some RPG elements.

 

They have gear based classes in the Agency? Hmm, that is an interesting thing indeed. I'll take a closer look at it someday, thanks for sharing.

According to wikipedia

[quote]

Class System / You are what you wear

The Agency will feature a class system in which you can switch your class depending on what you feel like playing[5]. By switching out gear, you choose how you want to play. There are six combat classes available and there are non-combat aliases. (The names of these classes may vary).

* Spec Ops: Both silent and deadly, the spec ops is about stealth, infiltration, disabling security, and such.
* Psy Ops: All about confusing the opponent, tricking and distracting them.
* Weapon Specialist: These guys/girls can use all weapons, and excel at doing so.
* Tactical Specialist: If you need someone to lay down suppression fire, breach doors, you'll need a tactical specialist.
* Field Tech: The field tech builds turrets repairs armors and such; very comparable to an engineer class in other first-person shooter games.
* Field Medic: As the title says, these guys/girls can patch you up in no time.

[/quote]