I'd go for that. I loved AC as a hs/college kid with tons of free time to piss away but with a job and limited time to game I definitely wouldn't mind getting rid of the leveling process entirely. The majority of players are just going to rusn thru the content in their effort to hit "endgame" anyways so it seems counter productive to waste any resources at all developing that content if you ask me.
Why is Counterstrike able to be so popular for so long with no carrot on the stick gear grind or leveling? Because it's fun as hell and it appeals to casuals who can hop online and have a blast playing for 15 minutes all the way to the hardcore MLG elites who play everyday.
IMO a mmo that that was developed with that same design strategy in mind would clean up.
The game begins at level 1. Not 80 or 90, or whatever the cap is. The problem is, you do not demand that the company nmake the game engage you at level 1. You have given up on the idea that the game should be fun at level 1. There is NO difference between a Chess game, and an MMO... or a game of Monopoly, or parcheesi.
An MMO starts at level 1. The problem is, that WoW has many convinced that they should be happy to get through all the content they were unable to make fun and engaging.
They have a Lot of players convinced that since the game does not begin til the level cap... all attention should be focused on the level cap. So any attention focused on making level 1... or 5...or 15 relevant, engaging or fun would be a total waste of time.
People that played MMO's before WoW was released, understand that. So when I say " Wow has dumbed down the genre" they get where I am coming from. The phrase " the game begins at level cap." was something i had never heard...until I played WoW...and the person that told it to me... it turns out that WoW was their first game.
This is Like someone that comes Into a new restaurant that doesn't serve bottomless cups of coffee... and seeing that each refill is the same price as the original cup... being shocked when I ask." wait... there are no bottomless refills here?" " Of course not " they reply as if the idea were foreign..Not realizing that until only a short while ago..... bottomless refills were standard.
Fun, engagement... relevance...from level 1 til cap..used to come standard. Now it's something to be ignored, something to be played through in a week..... if that is the case..why not dispence with the levels to begin with? why not just hand everyone a bunch of skill points and tell them." just put themwherever you want...make a level 60 character." ?
If the game really begins at the level cap... and you are content with that, you have allowed the company to sell you short. That is Like buying a Book that only contains the last chapter, and snippets of the ones In between...the beginning, and the end.
The game begins at level 1.
Let’s discuss this: Class vs Skill. I completely agree that Skill progression games begin the moment you start the game. Dungeons and Dragons is a skill progression game (one I love), that let’s the player start having fun right from the start. Skill progression games are very open ended, and have a horizontal approach to leveling. It’s about what you do with your character in the subtle ways, not how far you take your character. On the other hand class progression games are very vertical (linear) and give you very little flexibility in how you develop your character.
Let’s look at a few skill progression games: All of the Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim), Darkfall, Mortal Online & EvE. These games allow you to start playing and having fun in the game right from the start.
Class level games on the other hand are all about “maxing†your character out, otherwise they wouldn’t have a cap on levels. Progressing through a Class leveling system is about learning your character, and getting all of your skills maxed out. Class level games eventually have a point where a player reaches max level and content is now on a repeat cycle. Games that fall into this category are EQ, Vanguard, AoC, WoW & Tera (just to name a few).
There is however a 3rd choice out there. This is the Hybrid – It starts off as a class based system, but has content similar to the skill based content. There are only 2 games like this that I know of: Dark Age of Camelot and Shadowbane. In Shadowbane it took 3 days to level, but you could play that character joyfully for years. In games like DaoC and SB, even though you were doing the same thing time and time again, it was also very different. Each siege was unique, each capture was fun, each fight you learned something. The mechanics of those games didn’t change each time, it was the experience of the player that changed.
Just because a game begins at level 1 doesn’t mean the enjoyment begins at level 1.
I have never played WoW, although I have played Warcraft. I did not cut my teeth on a game after WoW; I cut it on UO. I am familiar with games that took forever to reach cap, and I understand that their might be a fun factor involved in leveling up. Yes, game companies today seem to “dumb down†the content as leveling occurs.
You want to talk about EQ and its long leveling. I want to talk about UO and how leveling was never a concept in games until EQ. It should all be skill based like UO……….. /sarcasm
EQ was one way of providing fun to a niche group of high fantasy online players. Shadowbane was another way of providing fun to a different niche of players. The key here is they were niche games. Mainstream games have to dumb down their services to include the lowest common denominator.
Fun, engagement... relevance...from level 1 til cap..used to come standard. Now it's something to be ignored, something to be played through in a week..... if that is the case..why not dispence with the levels to begin with? why not just hand everyone a bunch of skill points and tell them." just put themwherever you want...make a level 60 character." ?
You have just described the basis for a “skill†based game. Skill based games (compared to class based) allow the players to put points into the skills they see fit. We are not talking about how much skill an individual player uses in a game. Let me ask you how you would enjoy a game that let you create your character as you saw fit, based upon groups of skills? If the game allowed you to explore and interact with content in a slow way, would it matter if you had all skills available to you at day 1 vs day 1001?
Class base games make you level up; I have not seen a class based game that doesn’t make you level up. But eventually that leveling stops and you hit a cap. Now you have access to all the content in the game, but this doesn’t happen until you have reach max level. Look at Tera, there are several dungeons that can not even be accessed until max level; same with the Battle Grounds in Tera, only available for level 60 players. Skill based games allow you to have access to all the content the game has to offer, at day 1. You may not be able to conquer all the content without fleshing out your character with a few more skills, but the content is all available to you.
Tera is not an inherently flawed game. However there are aspects of the game that are flawed and need work; Vanarch anyone? But content at max level should be the first thing a developer thinks of, as that is where most of the player base will spend there time for years to come. Again why a Shadowbane style game is great, because you code the content once, and then let the playerbase fight over the cities for years to come. Content for low level characters should be secondary, and this is a flaw that too many companies in the industry make. They try and build the first few levels to get a player in, instead of concentrating on the content that players could play for 5+ years.
I am editing this cause Nethe posted first and I dont want to beat up on Rhino. Especially since I agree with them.
Rhino is a pvp player, as such they should be interested in a fair and balanced skill based competition. I assume gear and levels would be considered not part of that as they offer innate bonuses, advantages not releated to skill.
As such, a perfect PvP game for him would have no leveling to begin with, end-game would be the entire game as everything would open up immediately. Nothing stops you from getting in on the point of the game from the word GO (cept maybe a tutorial).
That's a design choice though. The intent is a pvp wonderland, and the design needs to accomadate that design.
Am I in the right ballpark?
You actually stated in great.
@Nerelith - I totally understand your desire for the journey to be fun. I enjoyed the journey in games like D&D and WtA. I do enjoy PvP games, in a high Fantasy setting; I don't like FPS games where there is no persistence. But we both agree that WoW make standards for leveling style games lower than you or I would like.
I agree with you 100 %. If Everquest were released today With the playerbase we have now. It would not last long. Mostly because as you said... Players want to hit level cqap as soon as possible..and " win." These are not gamers by my defenition. They have no desire to actually play the game. They just want to play at level cap...and feel uber.
Your definition of "gamer" is excessively narrow, and really only describes RPGers. The desire to reach the endgame quickly is strongest with the many, many people who start their gaming in games where there is no level progression, such as FPS, and to whom all this gear-collecting and optimizing, the hallmark of MMOs, is foreign.
Different types of gamers are not worse or better than you. They're just different.
nothing like pointless posts that compares fail games to ones with actual potential. bottom line if you don't like the game leave. no one is holding you here. these are your opinions. these forum QQ's are in every MMO ever created. when will you guys tire of whining about the same thing??...
take some action, make your own game. then come back an shove it in everyone's face when you have surpassed WoW's sub total.....
but this diatribe about this game does this and that game does that is just regurgitated nonsense.
sadly some people just like to see themselves type it seems.
1. Get rid of taunt. You got no taunt, you got no tank, and suddenly everybody must play more carefully.
2. Increase AI so big raid encounters aren't an idiotic game of keeping people alive for half an hour while a monster's giant bag of hitpoints is whittled down. Works well in conjunction with #1.