The only thing dividing players in the old UO (98-2001) was knowledge of the game.  Didn't matter what skill level you were, what kind of gear you had, you could walk around naked if you wanted to and wreck shop just the same.  You could travel to any part of the world.  You didn't even have to live a virtual life as a fighter of any sorts, you could be a fisher man, hustler, crafter and be just as wealthy and on the same level as a pve farmer or a pvper.  Everything in UO back in those days were player ran.  From the begining of the game to the very tip of the end game.

Guild Wars killed the divide by making gear less of an issue and by putting in pvp characters, if that was your desire.  The only thing that divided players was knowledge of the game.  The same thing with Planetside.  There was no gear to make you more powerful, just new toys to shoot people with which could easily be countered by a low rank  player.  You could travel anywhere you wanted in Planetside no matter what rank, well at least the first version.  A rank 16 player can hang out with a rank 8 player and destroy their opponents on an equal level.  Again the only thing dividing players was knowledge of the game.

My only problem with level based games is that for the most part once you're done with an area, you're done with that area. And revisiting that area normally is just for a quick gathering run or whathaveyou.

Equipment should be their to enhance the players own individuality and style not be the factor in determining the players total worth.

''It's how you use the Sword that's important, not who owns It! You can't even understand something as simple as that, that's why your human'' - Masamune - Chrono Trigger.

I agree with ShadowSaturn. I think there's still room in this genre for a new Ultima Online type game or one that takes some of those base ideas and refines them even further.

 

Originally posted by dstar.

The only thing dividing players in the old UO (98-2001) was knowledge of the game.  Didn't matter what skill level you were, what kind of gear you had, you could walk around naked if you wanted to and wreck shop just the same.  You could travel to any part of the world.  You didn't even have to live a virtual life as a fighter of any sorts, you could be a fisher man, hustler, crafter and be just as wealthy and on the same level as a pve farmer or a pvper.  Everything in UO back in those days were player ran.  From the begining of the game to the very tip of the end game.

Guild Wars killed the divide by making gear less of an issue and by putting in pvp characters, if that was your desire.  The only thing that divided players was knowledge of the game.  The same thing with Planetside.  There was no gear to make you more powerful, just new toys to shoot people with which could easily be countered by a low rank  player.  You could travel anywhere you wanted in Planetside no matter what rank, well at least the first version.  A rank 16 player can hang out with a rank 8 player and destroy their opponents on an equal level.  Again the only thing dividing players was knowledge of the game.

 Man I used to jam UO with a hot pink shirt and nothing else on my character.  Killing scrubs left and right.

I personally lack the focus required to get to the endgame content; I'll just preface everything by getting that out there.  I like to feel like I'm influencing things in the game world, so when somebody who has killed 1.5x as many mobs as me can turn around and stomp me every time, I tend to get discouraged.  I don't particularly mind not being able to run the same dungeons or join the same raids as a high-level characters; it's the fact that I have basically no influence on their gameplay until I'm nearly the same level as them.  I can't give them money or loot or assistance that is worth squat, so I feel useless.  This lack of influence on other players is what bores me, and eventually causes me to stop playing the game.

I'm going to go ahead and pull EVE into this, at least for a moment, because it seems like a game that has done this quite well.  If one player has a Cruiser outfitted with Railguns, and another player is running Blasters on his little dinky Frigate, chances are that the "lower-level" player will be at least half-dead before he is able to close to effective firing range.  However, if he has a buddy with another little dinky frigate and a low-level ECM, the odds of victory go from nil to pretty bloody nice.  The fact is, two "level 5" players actually have a pretty fair chance at beating a "level 15" in EVE.  

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from that comparison, exactly, but I feel that the "level gap" is significantly smaller in EVE,  which allows my actions to have more consequence, and makes my overall gameplay more meaningful.

Originally posted by ShadowSaturn

Large division through equipment and levels is a mistake in game design in my opinion.

If one persons been playing the game for 3 days and the other 2 years, they should still be able to do stuff together that's on similar pages.

That was one of the strengths of Ultima Online, although I still think you could evolve a system much deeper.

One of the easiest logical fixes that comes to my mind is something similar to Counter-Strikes weapon and armor tier design. A 100$ handgun user could still stand his ground in a team fight with his partner using a 3000$ colt or 6000$ AWP, and can even put up a good fight and possibly defeat a player that he is fighting against with superior armor and weapon. You would possibly need a MMOFPS to support this design but It could even work in 3rd person MMORPG's of today.

What divides and spreads the community out is okay to have in some games, but when It's all games on the market, then It's quite a disaster in my opinion.



 

This is not a problem. UO is a pretty bad game because the progression is not clear.

Dividing the community is only problem if you community is small. I can't interact with more than a few people at a time anyway. It really does NOT matter to me if there are 100 or 1000 people in the same "power" range as me.

Judging by the popularity of games with clear progression, progression >>> not dividing the community. Heck, communities are regularly divided into different factions. What is the problem?

Originally posted by Torik

Originally posted by rav3n2 

I didnt mean it that way, you have taken it to the other end of the spectrum I didnt mean someone would have to wait 4 years to catch up, but make all content meaningful to everyone, because all you have done before is meaningless, and they may as well turn WoW into a multiplayer co-op game, go into chat room, "hey guys lets do this instance", because the journey doesnt really matter anymore the game as a whole can be broken down into leveling -> end game, and leveling is really just a time sink until you can do the latter.

 

Maybe we are not reading into the same thread but I see the OP complaining about division through equipment and levels and I must be mistaken but unless you are the top level and have geared up properly you cannot interact with the community that is at the "end game"? I mean surely this is a major problem when anyone under the level cap is meaningless and cannot interact through game mechanics with ppl at the level cap.

 

Comments like these make me think that you really do not care about the 'journey' but only about the epeen waving at endgame.

Everything I have done in WoW has meaning no matter how obsolete the content now might be.  That first Deadmines run had a ton of meaning as did those dozens of Mauradon runs.  The fact that I raided Molten Core in vanilla WoW and obtained those T1 and T2 items have meaning even if the stats on those items now are laughable in comparison to level 80 loot.  They have meaning because they were part of my journey through the game and they taught me a lot about playing the game, other players and myself. 

The past is the past and whether what you did has meaning depends on how you felt about it at the time it happened.  however, ultimately you have to move on and find new meaning in the present. That's what the 'journey' is about.  If you only define yourself by what you accomplished in the past you stop moving forward. 

Yesterday my WoW guild beat Hodir for the first time.  Many other players did it before us and in a year, it will be mostly obsolete content but at this particular place in time and for this particular group of people it has a lot of meaning.  We came together as a team and proved that we could attempt and beat this particular challenge.  We moved forward on our journey and we had fun doing it.

Dont take it the wrong way, epeen waving doesnt necessarily have to be a bad thing, im an avid MMO gamer but I cannot anymore due to work commitments and other things be a hardcore gamer, I cannot spend 4 hours a day and have my life planned around a game, but even then I like that there is a clear distinction of what ppl have achieved, I think its healthy that different ppl have different knowledge and experiences that they can pass down and tell other players for this to happen there cant be an "end game" concept we cannot create these two steps, someone earlier spoke about L2 at the start it was really harsh to level up once you got into your 50's but there was never an end game concept, one day you could be helping your guildie who just hit 45 , another you would be with ppl much higher than you that would showing you around a new place and it did really make everyone relevant it wasnt just a matter of "cmon X get to 80 and then you can raid" everyone could contribute to guild progression to politics and pvp.

No guild would ever deny your help to a castle siege because you are not at the level cap in these events everyone in the guild is summoned to take part, that also contributes to your journey and makes it more meaningful.

I agree with the OP but the problem is what has become the standard endgame for MMOs.  The common loot system in Ultima Online worked because the endgame was not defined by the gear you had.  The gear was a means to some other end that was your personal measure for endgame. (AKA Sandbox)

Now....dungeon crawls, PvPing, crafting is the means to an end....which is the gear.  You dont use gear to do the dungeon....you just do the dungeon to get the gear....if that makes any sense.

IMO opinion, the gear has less to do with the problems in MMO communities more than it has to do with the lack of accountability players have these days.  While UO surely was in no shortage of "bad guys", most people maintained a minimum amount of civility to others in combat zones because if they talked too much Trash they risked not only dieing, but loosing all their crap....TO THE GUY THEY TALKED SMACK TO no less.

In WOW, same guy can completely piece down another person and grief a person of the same faction till the other person logs or moves to another area with no accountability whatsoever.

Instances are also a community killer.  While it is nice to peacefully run linear progression dungeons (way more entertaining that static dungeons that are nothing more than a juiced up leveling spot).....it allows players to hide and avoid contact with other people.  In Lineage 2, guilds formed alliances with other guilds so that they would have un contested access to dungeons for leveling and items (and for protection when others outside the alliance threatened those benefits).  Building Alliances and Enemies is what makes an MMO a MMO where there is any form of PvP combat.

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Originally posted by ShadowSaturn
Large division through equipment and levels is a mistake in game design in my opinion.

If one persons been playing the game for 3 days and the other 2 years, they should still be able to do stuff together that's on similar pages.

That was one of the strengths of Ultima Online, although I still think you could evolve a system much deeper.

One of the easiest logical fixes that comes to my mind is something similar to Counter-Strikes weapon and armor tier design. A 100$ handgun user could still stand his ground in a team fight with his partner using a 3000$ colt or 6000$ AWP, and can even put up a good fight and possibly defeat a player that he is fighting against with superior armor and weapon. You would possibly need a MMOFPS to support this design but It could even work in 3rd person MMORPG's of today.

What divides and spreads the community out is okay to have in some games, but when It's all games on the market, then It's quite a disaster in my opinion.

 

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FFXI, which has always needed to deal with this problem because it's so group intensive, has had a number of interesting ways of making it work.

One they had from the very beginning was the job system. You can go into your player housing (or to a Nomad Moogle in town if the town doesn't have housing) and change your character class at any time. Thing is, each class levels separately. Want to level Ninja and you've never been that class before? You're level 1, 0 exp when you switch to Ninja. And you want level other classes because the system allows you to be two classes at once. You may be, for example, a Red Mage who has been using White Mage as his subclass. Want to subclass Ninja (which can be a great subclass for a soloing Red Mage)? Time to switch to Ninja and start levelling it, and suddenly newbies who are just starting out have a low level Ninja who's willing to join their parties (and show them the ropes).

And a while back, they introduced the universal ability to cap a party at the level of its lowest member, allowing balanced parties where everybody earns experience when they have (normally) widely separated levels (because of penalties for lower levelled characters and the fact the experienced earned in a party is always calculated off the level of its highest-level character, a party that is not close together in levels earns abysmal experience, and worse for the lower-level characters).