To Level or not to Level

[Faille]

What are people's thoughts on this?
Personally, I would rather not have levels at all. I think they hurt more then help mmo's these days, and just server to waste content that could be used more often. I would much rather see some alternate way of character progression, like Gear collection, Skill / spell collection or anything else people can think of.

[xilsharn]

Use levels but don't have levels correlate to player power. I'm thinking like Achievements on Xbox Live...do a particular thing, reach a particular level and you get rewards, not more hitpoints, mana and some new spells.

[prescient63]

I like eve's progression. Time based progression means people are going to want to stay subscribed. They don't even have to log in. Rather than canceling an account when you get bored you just leave your account active so you can pop in for a few minutes and change skills. And you reward long term subscribers, because in the end its really all about revenue to support the servers and development costs.

[Faille]

Well money making is and sub retention is a long way off my radar atm, so its nice to have that sort of freedom that most companies wouldn't.

The question atm is about player power and whether levels should be used in that regard. Adding rewards for time spent playing, achieving certain goals, etc is a different category and probably should be included whether there's levels or not.

[Moontayle]

I voted for an alternate means.

EVE's progression was basically what I had in mind for a sort of optimal "leveling" system overall. I posted as such in the GMG thread back when speculation was running rampant. It basically solves the problem of being able to take time off without falling so far behind that you're all but useless when you come back.

Applied to a "Fantasy" setting, where the difference between a Warrior and a Mage is huge, with a system that has all skills open to everyone, checks and balances could be put into place using the itemization system. i.e. You can have a level 5 skill in Fireball and in Plate Armor, but wearing plate armor while casting fireball makes you suffer a 5x casting time and 10x mana cost.

Edit: To go with above: Alternately, there could be skills which reduce this penalty but there would always be some sort of penalty. Thinking of many of the various Class Kits that D&D had back in second edition (last time I played seriously).

[Haldin Darconis]

I like the idea of a mixture of UO and EVE. A skill-based system that increases with time, but I feel you should gain extra skill points while playing. These extra skill points could either be assigned to skills you're using or be given as generic skillpoints which you then assign. Personally, I'd prefer it to be automatically assigned during skill use.

Off the top of my head, I'd say that someone who plays 24x7 should maybe have double the skill rate of someone who doesn't log in at all. Of course, reality would be that someone plays (let's say on average) 4 hours a day, giving them a (24+4)/24= 116.7% skill rate compared to someone who doesn't log in. It's not huge, but it would encourage someone to play rather than just wait for a skill to complete.

[Hatorade]

I would like it to be purely skill based. You do pick your class and skills drop off mobs and can get them from quests. Certain skills can be equiped/used by certain classes.

It would making dungeon crawling...etc more exciting not only will you be getting loot off mobs but also skill books think Diablo.

[Soriak]

Skills/spells from mobs and quests sounds like a good idea - but it has to be done right to still be challenging. Equipment would also have to be very powerful to really reward players for the time invested.

I don't like Eve's leveling system much, it doesn't reward you at all for playing - it's safest/best to just get some good implants (~100m ISK) and don't leave the station. I think you should actually be encouraged to play.

[Faille]

The idea I had was skills / spells that drop off mobs and quests, but are also have ranks, similar to EQ2. So you would have the rank 1 of a skill obtainable by solo players, where as higher ranks would require groups and even raids to obtain.

You could have a set of skills that are time based like EVE so they increase in power / ranks with time passively.

[Hephalump]

Given the multiple worlds/portals idea of the game, I think it would be cool to have basic skills use timed progression like eve. So you could train things like your universal stats(whatever they are) or skills that would apply to all the worlds.

Then have different skill sets that you could gain through experience or as loot in the different worlds. Some could be universal and some could only apply to that world.

[...]

one idea i just had:

Timed progression like eve that allows you to learn pre-requisite to use gear and skills. once learned. you old-school xp up the overall effectiveness.

say the world has fantasy and scifi elements. you focus on fantasy magic development. you learn the ability to use basic fire magic on a time based system (like eve). all that does is let you have the ability to learn a spell. that spell could be in the form of a scroll --> spell book, a materia style slotting system, or just go strait into your brain when you purchase it. once it's in your skull, you can level up your fire magic. maybe that individual spell goes up, or maybe your overall skill at firemagicking goes up and all fire magic skills are based on your usage (grind/quest style xp) level. ie giving a player a solid number to flash around. "level 45 fire mastery lfg".

dunno if it would work, but it'd be a way to have both time based and 'level based'

[Vatoreus]

Originally Posted by ...

one idea i just had:

Timed progression like eve that allows you to learn pre-requisite to use gear and skills. once learned. you old-school xp up the overall effectiveness.

say the world has fantasy and scifi elements. you focus on fantasy magic development. you learn the ability to use basic fire magic on a time based system (like eve). all that does is let you have the ability to learn a spell. that spell could be in the form of a scroll --> spell book, a materia style slotting system, or just go strait into your brain when you purchase it. once it's in your skull, you can level up your fire magic. maybe that individual spell goes up, or maybe your overall skill at firemagicking goes up and all fire magic skills are based on your usage (grind/quest style xp) level. ie giving a player a solid number to flash around. "level 45 fire mastery lfg".

dunno if it would work, but it'd be a way to have both time based and 'level based'

That's crazy, I was JUST thinking about this exact system. I was trying to find a way to meld EVE's skill style into UO's. This would work perfectly.

I also feel that not all skills should be learned by a trainer, that you should be able to go out into the world and learn new abilities from mobs and through just general use of your own skills.

[Tuco]

Generally I favor levels being included in the game because it makes it much easier to award players for specific tasks. Often in non-level based games you can spend a great deal of time on something that you enjoy, but doesn't offer you any skillups. It's usually easier to have that task award xp than useful skill ups.

For UW, I wouldn't mind seeing it try to break the mold by not having levels, just to see how it turned out.

[Braen]

How about a system that uses levels to give someone an indication of how powerful you are, but is not the end all be all representative of actual power.

Sort of like this, instead of hitting an set number of "exp" points, you have to meet other conditions, like a system that grants you skill up based on using that skill. After you hit a few of those goals, then you are awarded a character level.

Players could start as a blank character with access to every skill out there. As they use the skills that they choose to use, then their character is defined by the player themselves and not just some develops archtype.

For example. Everyone starts as a commoner. Player1 decides he wants to play as a healer so he goes out and learns the basics of the various healing arts he wants and starts to use them. but later on he notices he needs more armor skils, or mace or whatever.

Of course you can't max out all the skill or eventualy everyone would be the same, but it could be limted on a total point system and as you raise various skills to equal that point, you would have to unlearn the skills in order to change.

[Vatoreus]

I like the idea of starting out with a blank template and having player choice affect how he/she wants to play. I however, disagree with having a point cap. I would like to see a system that has a multitude of learnable skills, while still retaining a sense of "classes". You can have restrictions based on skills such as magic becoming more difficult to cast with the more armor you wear and inversely, the less armor you wear, the less chance you have of staying alive in melee. *edit* Have it take a massive amount of time to learn all those skills though. *edit*

If a player has and is willing to dedicate the time necessary to master all the skills available, then he should be awarded with that ability. It will allow players to form themselves to how they want to play, doesn't require them to roll alts if they want to take on a new game play style, and allows for some unique dungeon design based on players being able to have multiple skill sets.

Of course, it would require a lot of fleshing out to get it to work really well, but great things take lots of time to develop.