Levels, RPGs

First posted here in Danish:
http://deleet.dk/2009/04/20/levels-rpgs/
Translated and posted here:
http://deleet.dk/2009/04/30/levels-rpgs-english/

And now here.

Terminology

Level
By levels, I mean what usually belongs to the term ”level” in different games. This is a sort of measurement for various things: 1) How strong the character is, 2) How much experience the character has.

RPG
By RPG, I mean all games where there is a fairly great focus on the character's level. This implies that you control one or more characters. Example of several-character-control client: Dungeon Siege, singleplayer. Example of one-character-control clients: Dungeon Siege multiplayer, WoW, Guild Wars and Diablo 1 & 2. There is, at the same time, a heavy focus on certain characters in RPG's. This is a contrast to games where there is a low focus on certain characters, such as RTS games like the Command & Conquer franchise.

Levels, the world
What I want to discuss is: Should the levels of HNPC's(Hostile Non-Playable Characters aka creeps) follow the playable character or not? The ”should” in this question should be understood in relation to wanting to create a good game.

No coherence between the playable character's level and HNPC's
If the levels of HNPC's do not follow the level of the playable character's, then the HNPC's whose levels aren't maximum or around that, will become too easy to kill for the character when he's reached the maximum level. This leads to the game becoming severely less challenging in areas with these HNPC's. It leads further to, that if the playable character traveled to such an area, it would become boring to play. This is an unwanted situation.
If a big part of the world is inhabited by non-max level HNPC's, then a big part of the world is boring for max level players. This is very unwanted.

Solution one
A solution is to make sure that only a small part of the world is inhabited by non-max level HNPC's. This can be seen in Guild Wars: Factions and Guild Wars: Nightfall. The opposite can be seen in Guild Wars: Prophecies.

Solution two
Another solution is to implement a function that can be activated by a player, which will make HNPC's rise in level, so they once again will be a match for a max level character. This was introduced in Guild Wars in an update after Nightfall.

This solution requires a sort of instancing, where a copy of the world has changed and another has not. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for a low level character to play in that area at the same time. This would both make sure that beginners did not pass an area, while, at the same time, preventing players from leveling a new character and passing that area.
Here is assumed a sort of linear motion through the world. If there were more possible areas per level interval and these shifted between being max level oriented, then it would be possible to level up a character. This could, for instance, be adjusted by time.
A problem is that it requires a significantly larger world, if there has to be at least 2 areas for every level interval until maximum level. Simultanously, it needs a solution to what will happen you one finds oneself in an areas which is being changed and hasn't been instanced yet. If it got changed instantly, then a low level character would die instantly when the HNPC's he/she fights became near maximum level.

Coherence between the playable character's level and HNPC's
If the level of the HNPC's follows the playable character's, one can avoid the player not experiencing any resistance in areas where HNPC's are not near maximum level, but the player is.
This bring up another problem, though. The player would lose the sensation that his/her character is growing stronger. This would typically be evaluated by one's abilites opposite a constant, such as a certain type of HNPC. An example of a game where the levels of HNPCs follow the player is Fallout 3.

Solution one
A way to achieve this sensation anyway, is to clearly show that one's character grows stronger, such as when dealing damage. However, one should pay attention to not increasing the armor-effect by too much, since the numbers would then not rise appropriately with the player's level.

Solution two
Alternatively, one could completely remove the feeling of growing stronger from the player. However, this takes away one of the typical aims of playing an RPG: character development. This can be compensated for by putting more focus on the equipment of the character. The Guild Wars-series is an example of games that have chosen to ignore this character development part.

Illustration
Here, an illustration that demonstrates the above, can be seen. I am not the author of this image.
http://www.zweistein.cz/mmorpg/levels.png


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Thoughts?

Well, reading the interview about Guild Wars 2 it seems they have the right idea. Have a high or unlimted level cap, but have a point where you know longer gain power. That way people who just NEED that visual representation of their "experience" can have it without forcing a huge level grind. One of the biggest arguments against GW I hear from people is thats its lame you can only level to 20. Methinks alot of people assume more levels = more content, even if technically its teh same amount of content just takes much longer to go through it.

I would love to see a dynamic level system. Baddies are 0-4 levels above the highest level character in the zone... Hard Mode is just an increase of 4 in these dynamic level numbers, (so 3-8 levels higher), plus an improved skill bar...

This eliminates the "waste of time" you experience (in Normal Mode) by taking your 20th level warrior through Regent Valley and stomping on level 5 monsters, and feeling absolutely no challenge. I believe it would also encourage grouping with other characters of a nearly equal level, especially early in a games life, when everyone is new to the experience.

The challenge with Guild Wars, of course, is the viability of builds on monsters, and the effect on play balance. From a programming standpoint, it would be simpler to use one build, and not have to change the skill bars of all of your monsters based on their level.

If you have a warrior, such as a Dredge, and he is capable of being level 5, or level 25 (depending on the players' levels), would the same build be "fair" at both extremes? Could the level 5 Dredge dominate all level 2-3 players, but the high level Dredge (with the same skill bar) be weak against level 20 players?

I like the concept, but I just don't know how it would play out, were it deployed in a game like GW2.

This is often repeated, but I haven't seen it actually said by any anet employee. Does anyone have a source?

A sidekicking system doesn't make much sense with a low effective level cap.

I honestly don't remember which interview it was from. I'll take a look once I finish this z quest.

*Found one of em!

http://www.totalvideogames.com/Guild...ure-10979.html

"We're still talking about whether there'll be a very high level cap or if we're talking about an unlimited level cap; those are things that we're playing around with and seeing what we like the most and what works best. The idea behind it is to allow players to experience that kind of development, but that doesn't mean that we're going to grind the gamer so that players will have to invest thousands of hours until they feel like they have a very powerful character. We certainly don't want it to mean that if your friend is level 15 and your character is level 20 there's no way you can play together. One of the ways that we're getting around that is to introduce the Side-kicking system for both PvE and one of our PvP types, which is similar to the sort of thing that you see in City of Heroes, and allows gamers to play together no matter what level they are.

The other things that we're talking about is the plateau in power that you reach no matter what the level curve is, where players are relatively equal to each other. So for instance, a ten level gap early in the curve on means a lot more than a ten level gap later on in the curve. We're stilling playing around with where this power plateau actually evens out in Guild Wars 2, but it's safe to say that we're not going to require players to grind away their life to actually reach that plateau."

Thanks, that's interesting to see. Still, the wording here implies something more like a diminishing curve - because there are still small differences, and players are more of less equal. It means that say the stat boost from leveling 29->30 will be less than 19->20. Players will probably establish a "soft cap" around which additional levels hardly matter, but the wording suggests that the "hard cap" could be much higher. This isn't that different from the current state of title skills so I find it promising - it avoids huge gaps in character ability while still tugging a carrot for people to grind for. Although I again wonder why they need a sidekicking system with this in place.

Yeah I kinda messed around in paint trying to see what they would mean. This is what I came up with. In my example the cap is 100 and the "plateau" will be 20. I wonder how steep they could make the curve.

Red = stat gain



This is an example of course, but its a really intresting concept. I wonder how well it would pan out and how enemy levels would fit in on the curve.

When they first mentioned the possibility of very high or no level cap in GW2 I was very skeptical as I've played several games with high/no level cap and they were all very very grind heavy making GW's heaviest grind look like a vacation.

However after reading up on their statements about how they plan to deal with the leveling system it does make sense and I'm more or less won over if they do it like this.

It makes a lot of sense actually, it sounds a bit more like an extension of the current GW level system as there's nothing stopping you from earning xp after level 20 it simply adds up and adds up and while giving you some slight rewards your character is displayed the same even if it's a lvl 20 with only the required 150k ish XP or a hardened lvl 20 that's been everywhere and has several million xp under it's belt.

With this system it'd more or less just let your level number keep going up to match your total xp without the 1-20 leveling rewards of additional Health and Attribute points. This way you don't have an exponential grind for more power as the low level cap is still essentially in place but you can readily display that yes your character has been around a while and knows a thing or two.

Obviously it wouldn't be quite so simple but I very much like the idea, that way you satisfy both types, there's no annoying power creep and grind and yet those who do grind out every corner of the game world will have a nice high level number to show off for it.

There is a lot of character development that has nothing to do with levels. Look at Ultima Online for example.

Unlockable customizations (perks, feats, whatever)

Skill tree (training to raise cap so that you can assign points)

Skills (gotta catch em all)

Then there are less obvious ones (unlocking areas at map to travel to ...)

And there are more weird ones.

Only issue is that they are not as simple as seeing one number raise. But is that really issue?

Play hardmode.

Levels, skills
Here's how it could work out:
When the monster increases in level it unlocks more and more skills from a predefined skill bar.
Level:
1-3 - 3 skills.
4-8 - 4 skills.
8-13 - 5 skills.
14-17 - 6 skills.
17-19 - 7 skills.
20 - 8 skills.

That's a really easy way to do it. If you want a tougher monster, place the better skills at the start. For instance, place the elite skill as number one if it's a boss. In that way bosses always have an elite skill. If it's an easy monster, place the elite skill at the 8th spot.

This system is limited to level 20 though. For higher than that, one could start substituting various skills with elite versions. Or just keep the skill bar as it was at level 20, and instead add something else besides the higher attribute points.

AI
Like the above, higher levels of monsters could also unlock new AI functions. For instance, low-level monsters would be to stupid to move out of AoE; Would go for the casters.

I don't know anything about UO but I'll just add that the above is not inconsistent with what I wrote.

You didn't "get" Guild Wars then. It has character development, but not by growing stronger, but by growing more diverse as you learn new skills.
In fact Guild Wars is a good example of not needing levels at all. Everyone is level 20, so levels may as well not exist (mobs can just be given health, attributes etc).
IMO it even gives a deeper roleplaying experience. It's about learning how to play, not learning your character how to play, so you actually need to participate yourself.

Well, you wrote that there is not character growth without levels. But anyway, if you want to discuss merits of levels versus no levels, I suggest playing:

* Betrayal At Krondor
* Exile and Avernum series game

And read a bit about GURPS

- Most of the skills will be so similar that it's easy to find out which ones are more important to have. Thus PvE is incredibly stagnant environment as you can finish the whole game using one pre-made skillbar. Other than that it follows the tried and true "grind yourself titles" format which is present on every other MMO.

If you run the same build everywhere you go, that's your problem and I pity you for having it. If you on the other hand mean that they went overboard with skill bloat and power creep, and that there is now 90% useless skills and a few good ones, I agree with you. But the idea is still good, just not the execution, but that's Arenanet for you.

Gods, anything but dynamic levelling. It sucked in oblivion and it will suck more in an MMO. Part of the joy of an MMO is to walk into a new area, get completely jacked, and realize you're not strong enough to be there yet (anyone else remember the bridges in the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior series?). It is one of the few things I miss about prophesies. After my Lvl 7 finally finished the Diessa quests (Althea's ashes, etc...) I went to look around and ended up in Dragon's Gullet and got pounded to paste by hydras. As opposed to Oblivion which you can beat at Level 4...

Character development more and more changes to what is often called "horizontal progression".

Guild Wars is inspired by Magic: The Gathering. The idea was to add more skills, instead of making people or their skills stronger. So you have a progression, people get more skills and can react better on different challenges. At least this was the idea. We got a long list of skills, most of them useless, some used all the time, and a few supposedly overpowered skills.

The model of "vertical progression" is levelling up to max level X,Y,Z. Then people have to wait for the next expansion, or they get an endgame that interestingly often borrows ideas from the model of "horizontal progression". Vertical progression has huge issues with content getting old and inaccessible/unattractive to higher level players. Whole areas of the world become useless. The linked pic shows this.

I think a horizontal progression model has advantages. It also encourages people to think and play more actively, not so much relying on their "stats", but on their knowledge and skill at playing the game. Unfortunately, this often means abusing the system to the max, which people will always do.


A more dynamic world, e.g. zones changing a bit, getting some extras with major updates or an overhaul, would also be nice.

I also like one idea of Tabula Rasa: Dropships dropping Bane troops randomly - basically random spawns, you cannot predict exactly what you will be facing.

Right now Guild Wars PvE is either taking one of the proven team builds that work almost all the time or just looking up the Wiki what mobs you are going to face. Then you build a counter for that kind of mobs. Add some random mobs, change their position, give them some random skills and we might have to watch out a bit more what mobs actually do.

A human dungeon master would always try to match the difficulty of monsters to the skill of the party, but we do not have this in a computer game, and I have yet to see a system that could somehow divine from some ELO rating of how I played different dungeons what is the acceptable difficulty for me, something like that. This would have to be a very very good script. Maybe it could also be abused, i.e. play dumb to get easier mobs...^^

Bethesda tried this difficulty scaling in their solo offline rpgs, Oblivion and Fallout 3, and the results are not really that satisfying.


Well, nobody has found the holy grail to make it right for everyone so far. I think it is also not needed.

What is definitely wrong is dumbing down games more and more - removing interesting gameplay elements in favor of making things very simple and accessible for everyone. This leads to a downward spiral: bad players do not learn and get even worse. They miss out, they also do not have much fun once they hit the brick wall of a rather "easy" challenge.

Good game/level design challenges players to become better while they are playing and having fun, without pushing them too hard.

We have a very bad example in Nightfall in this regard: Most people could just breeze through Nightfall, there were few missions or areas where people had to try a bit harder. Then they met Shiro in the Realm of Torment and hit the brick wall.

The idea to have normal and hard/heroic versions of areas and dungeons is not bad, but it also had the negative side effect that normal got turned into "piss easy", no learning effect for people, extreme simple and actually dumb build and playstyle gets you through. "Hard" is the normal difficulty nowadays. And in fact, many supposed high standards elite areas are not so much "harder" in "Hard" mode, if you got the idea how to do them in normal mode, you are only a small step from doing them easily in Hard Mode, too.


OK, enough for now.

I basically fear GW2 gets turned into grindtastic Farm Wars that does not encourage people to think about their builds, tactics and so on.

One of the best things about an RPG is being restricted into one linear path for the whole game for every one one of your characters, as opposed to a much more seamless world that grows with you that allows for any route in which you'd like to progress through?

I will say that I liked my first Drok run when my jaw-dropped at seeing monsters over level 20. But I certainly wouldn't trade it for a more routeless progression.

Either way, it'd be interesting to see how something like this would be put into GW2's more persistant world.

Another intresting thing to keep in mind with GW2 in relation to enemy difficulty:

"You will be able to advance your character to the maximum level without ever joining a group if you so desire. Most content will be designed in a solo-friendly way, though often with mechanisms for scaling up in difficulty when more players are involved. This will give players the option to experience the game whichever way they prefer."

Pehaps this means enemies will be on the curve as well and they will "average" out depending on where the parties members are on the curve?