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But this goes back to that business of being explorers, acheivers, killers or the other one (socialisers?) doesn't it? Some poeple want to adventure. Some people want to fight. Some people *like* working towards that next ding, and will always want it to be there.

It's a way to reward people for their time spent, that's a lot more tangible than the fact that they get better at the game. If indeed they do get better at the game. This has been said a lot but some form of levelling (whether stat increases or skills development or better gear) also allows the character to own those attributes rather than the player's skill being paramount.

I'm not a fan of grinding and I'm sure there a better, less linear ways of doing it, but I am for character progression.

Cryn wrote:Buying skills is just part of it. UO still uses the same level progression model in that Killing = experience = progress.

No that's the point, whilst killing is obviously the way to gain experience in the melee fighting skills (and even then it could be fighting anything from a player to a mob to a training dummy) that's where the similarity ends. You'd get gains in healing by healing everything from fellow players to NPCs, you get magery gains not just by killing stuff, but by casting spells ranging from shapeshift to heal, to teleport to damage spells.

It's the difference in transparency, level based games like DAoC have levelling as their primary goal and you only really get to play the game properly at 50 or whatever. In games like UO, Planetside and such you play from day 1 and that to me is a far better gaming experience all round. The reason it's not done more I think it's because it's not such an earner, having seperate classes that take countless hours to level and kit out is massively time consuming meaning you'll have to put so many hours in and hence play for a lot longer to play a large proportion of the game.

To get off the Killing = experience = progress treadmill you would need to make the points available at day 1. Neither UO nor Planetside do that.

SWG was similar on release too, in that you could only master so many skills, and it wasn't too hard to master the full amount.

The problem is that, as Ambera said, there has to be some goal to maintain interest, that is easiest done through levelling, better equipment etc.

Even in RL most of what we do is aimed towards a goal, either earning more cash, buying a better car or house. As a race we are fairly goal driven, and that is just carried over into games.

Xest wrote:No that's the point, whilst killing is obviously the way to gain experience in the melee fighting skills (and even then it could be fighting anything from a player to a mob to a training dummy) that's where the similarity ends. You'd get gains in healing by healing everything from fellow players to NPCs, you get magery gains not just by killing stuff, but by casting spells ranging from shapeshift to heal, to teleport to damage spells.

That's only if you agree that skills should progress in such a way, which I don't. I can see why, for realism - if that's ever a reason to do something in MMORPGs, you might want to allow skills to improve a bit as they are used. But the sort of improvements MMORPGs give to skills is crazy both from a realism perspective and from the gameplay perspective (because it creates a treadmill).

I say get rid of incremental power increases. Replace it with something more sophisticated.

Cryn wrote:That's only if you agree that skills should progress in such a way, which I don't. I can see why, for realism - if that's ever a reason to do something in MMORPGs, you might want to allow skills to improve a bit as they are used. But the sort of improvements MMORPGs give to skills is crazy both from a realism perspective and from the gameplay perspective (because it creates a treadmill).

I say get rid of incremental power increases. Replace it with something more sophisticated.

The big question though is how?

The only options I can see for systems which don't create a treadmill suffer from lack of incentive to play.

One of the reasons I like WoW over DAoC for the end-game is that there are different levels of treadmill you can get on. You get on the one that suits you. If you want to solo that's one treadmill. If you prefer to Raid 24/7, that's another. Each of the treadmills allows progress at differing rates, BUT there is still a treadmill of progress.

Cryn wrote:That's only if you agree that skills should progress in such a way, which I don't. I can see why, for realism - if that's ever a reason to do something in MMORPGs, you might want to allow skills to improve a bit as they are used. But the sort of improvements MMORPGs give to skills is crazy both from a realism perspective and from the gameplay perspective (because it creates a treadmill).

I say get rid of incremental power increases. Replace it with something more sophisticated.

Why do you not think they should progress like that? Surely being able to play the game from day 1 is better than having to wait weeks/months to acheive the highest level before you can really play it?

Well, it's a long subject and I dunno if people would want us to discuss it here, but I'll try to answer as short as I can.

I think the whole idea of progression through upskilling is wrong. Primarily because it means people stay in the game primarily to chase their next progression milestone. That could be a level, a new set of skill points to allocate or whatever - it's essentially the same dynamic at work.

It also encourages repetitive styles of gameplay that alienate people from the game. People grind to their next progress point. That's bad because grinding is people enduring the game rather than enjoying the game. There's no interest in the content or gameplay, it's just mindless repetition of whatever task gets you a good amount of progress. It also leads to people spending too much time online. You get your monthly subscription whether people play an hour a month or 10 hours a day, so encourage people to play healthy amounts.

The are alternative ways we could construct a game. Some of them that have occured to me are:

• Slant rewards towards cosmetic, prestige and intangibles rather than character progression. If you give someone a sword few people have got, make it LOOK cool but do nothing major to combat.
• Make PvP rewards about prestige and territory, maybe tie in access to cool places in the world. Don't give people new powers. Most people would play RvR for the fun of it with no rewards.
• Make the world dynamic. Instead of spending all that dev time trying to manage character progression and new powers, create a game where the GMs have sophisticated world editing tools. Make it the NORM to have a new quest, that gives some unique title/other reward, available for only a week or two. If your rewards don't impact game balance, you can be much more casual about letting your GMs create them for quests
• Spend more money on in game GMs who can play NPCs from time to time in key quests. Take out the predictability of things.
• Allow character progression that has no game balance impact. Let people hold political posts that have real meaning, or become notorious enough to star in quests.
• Make the artisan system run on knowledge. Instead of advancing skills, let people run quests for patents/designs.

Oops, it wasn't a short post after all! But hopefully you see what I am trying to say. Remove repetition, make the game engaging enough that people will want to play for sheer entertainment value.

Cryn wrote: [*]Allow character progression that has no game balance impact. Let people hold political posts that have real meaning, or become notorious enough to star in quests.

ive thought of that before
thought a good thing would be to have a roll of honor for major achievements in TNN or something

And i thought up two quests (ages ago) but prolly not feasable

first one was to have a leprechaun 'loose' his pot of gold and you have to search for it - like a treasure hunt but with decent reward (gold) for the x amt of people who complete it first

2nd one was to have a tornament featuring the dragons.
Get a quest based on getting items for the dragons then have them compete against each other
Winner is declared most powerful dragon of the year
battle would obviously take place in a non-rvr zone in the frountier

Xest wrote:Why do you not think they should progress like that? Surely being able to play the game from day 1 is better than having to wait weeks/months to acheive the highest level before you can really play it?

Not entirely imo, I think a short "learning-curve" introducing abilities in sequence is good, although I do agree the levelling to 50 in DAoC is too long and slow, probably the same for WoW although not as bad.

/reply to Cryn

The main reason people grind imo is not because of the typ of progression, but because it's the most efficient way.

Eve-online has an alternative levelling system that avoids people spending too much time online (to level anyway...), in that you train skills over time. Whether you are playing or not you are still learning a skill. In terms of character ability Casual and Hardcore have exactly the same training time.

This does have one big(ish) downside though, new comers will never match the skills of people who have been playing 3 years+. However due to the nature of the skills available it really just means that newcomers need to specialise a little more, whereas the old-timers get more variety in their character.

The grind is still there, getting cash for new ships / modifications etc. just nowhere near as bad.

If you are into PvP then I really think Eve takes a lot of beating, I just hope they don't sell out to EA too