Ding! Now You Suck Less

[warbaloon]

From the title I thought you were going to point out a flaw that is very prevalent in WoW.

In WoW some of your abilities are handed to you slowly, but you need them to succeed. While a wow warlock is great at any level, a wow mage suffers from mana problems that will not be resolved until the 50s and will still be around until 68 when mana gems become awesome. Until then they are forced to stop playing and drink while the world watches them.

Druids also have this problem until they hit near 40.

6. Thou shalt not abstain from giving classes abilities that are necessary to their function until later in the game.

 

[Mushroomfreak111]

I actually think the way BF2142 did its "level" system is quite good. I guess they are not exactly levels, but ranks anyway. Each rank in the begining results in a new title (fair enough) and an unlock. As you unlock more from a spesific kit, more items for that kit will become available. This is one of the few games with a leveling system like this that also allows the entirely new players to play the game very nearly as effective as players that has been there for a while, but still makes unlocking new tools to make yourself more effective or adapt new tactics possible.

They don't have any awesome "ding" sound when you level up, and it's simply and FPS game with a rank system and some unlocks, but IMO it works. Many MMOs and RPGs I think take too many levels and spread them too thin. Meaning, in the begining you'll be able to level OK, but after a while you find yourself grinding for days to get just one level. Often these levels won't even reward you with new gear or skills, just more "go there, kill that" jobs to get yet another boring level.

I have to be honest, I enjoy how the leveling in Oblivion works. You get better at swinging a sword by (simply) swinging a sword! True, you might not get all the skills in the begining, when you are called upon to make those desicions, but picking the blade skill and not the blunt skill won't render you unable to get better at wielding blunt weapons! You will need to do a little more training to get up to the same level, but its possible. A huge amount of RPGs won't let you do that! Then again, Oblivion and Fallout3 are two of the few games with a leveling system that will allow you to wield any gear and weapon at any time, you'll just suck at it until you level up in that skill.

For me a great anoyance is games that offers a geat amount of gear, but it's impossible to find a matching set! For example in WoW, you'll look like some raggedy retard until you finaly hit 80 and can get some awesome permanent gear, and still then it won't be very unique cause everyone else at your level is wearing the same damn thing! I wan't me to look cool! I'm in the game to be who I am in my dream, and I'm wearing very cool armor!

Worst thing a game can do tho is having the enemy level up the same as you are... I played a game with my brother back in the day, 4x4 evolution. A car-game. Anyway, you would spend and eternity earning money to buy engine upgrades, new wheels and a cowcatcher, and the very next race all the oponents have exactly the same upgrades! GAH! Even the same car's if you just bought the best one! STUPID!

I've got to stop this here.. :S

 

[Pimppeter2]

Nice article, I disagree with your second point(I think, its the one has the oblivion reference), because a game like oblivion is made for the fans of the series(Yes, I realize not only for them). People who have been playing TES since Arena know what Alteration is, not to mention the fact that it boldfacedly tells you exactly what it is.

 

[IanBrazen]

wow. good article.
You managed to name everything I hate about leveling in two pages, you are good.
I have got to say #5 is what pisses me off the most.
When I played Oblivion I thought that one of the points of the game is to evolve into a supreme badass, but after about two months of questing I finally asked, when do I get to murder some low level characters, I figured the bandits would be easy pickins by now.
Every time I got into a fight I barely escaped with my life, and somehow everyone managed to get a hold of deadric armor.
I felt like I hadent acomplished anything, Ive only been keeping up with everyone else.
Finally I got so frustrated that I lowered the difficulty slider so I could finally look like a badass even though I would never feel like one.

 

[Volodanti]

For the ding, did you mean like when Windows Vista has a new update; the "duh-ding!" noise it makes? cos that is one of the nicest dings i have heard...

 

[Fasckira]

Point 3 is one of the best points. Too often during the character creation process I get faced with a pile of options that all sound really cool but until you've actually played the game you have no way of grasping how it will effect your game play. Oblivion is indeed a good example of that; it whispers seductively in your ear about how you can play any role with any choice of stats and then as you leave the sewer coughs hurriedly something about how you'll get your ass kicked in most quests unless you went a warrior-like class (or you chose to play the game on an easy setting).
I recall the hours spent in Diablo, scouring a dungeon to level up so I could use certain equipment and then getting the joy of increasing my stats and being able to use a bow I had been saving for a few hours.
Bring back real leveling!

 

[DObs]

On a side note thats related to level based games (This is one of the things that has stopped me playing WOW and champions online) Does anyone else here hate the fact that at level 1 your fighting the exact same things as you do when your top level?

WOW is horrendous at this, how can one bear be lvl 1 and another bear that looks exactly the same be lvl 80? I know a lot of pen and paper systems use the method of putting monsters in level ranges but MMORPGS seem to ignore this. Surely in a 80 level game I shouldnt be killing Demon lords and Necromancers in the first 10 levels nor should I be struggling againt a vulture when im lvl 80.

I dont agree with most of this article for this reason. Having large level caps just increases the grind and the overall pointlessness of leveling up and waters down the entire experience unless the games bestiary is truely monumental and you can have appropriate monsters all the way to the top (Diablo managed this somewhat). Killing wolves from 1 to 10 gets me a fireball, woo! and somehow fighting the same monster all the way to 80 learns me to summon a demon. It doesnt make sence, its not immersive and its just lazy.

 

[LimeJester]

You are exactly right, especially with scalable enemies. Not only does the mechanic irk me, but I always felt it was weird when I wandered through Oblivion (and Fallout 3 to a lesser degree) that the landscape every few levels seemed to be inhabited by completely different monsters. If you are going to run an open world game mix up the enemies out in the over world, so at a distance when you look out there and you see that level 666 monster that will eat you for breakfast you pee yourself a little and find another way around till your level 667.

 

[Fasckira]

If you are going to run an open world game mix up the enemies out in the over world, so at a distance when you look out there and you see that level 666 monster that will eat you for breakfast you pee yourself a little and find another way around till your level 667.

Amen to that. 'Two Worlds' did an awesome job in that respect, as you actually had to think about either leveling up to get to certain areas or find a way to sneak past monsters. The only downside was that it meant for the first 10 levels pretty much any enemy could make you its ***** unless you planned carefully how to take them down (or try and pick them off one by one).

 

[Zydrate]

Fallout 3, while good, suffers from point #4.
Your character will be poor without Repair, and they will be locked out of many, MANY places without Science or Lockpicking.

 

[hugo.riley]

Mostly I agree with you, Shamus, but 100 levels?

Gaining a level should be something special: new powers, better skills, more equipment... If you have 100 levels they don't feel like achievement. They feel like hours on the clock, they just keep going. Also, if you are level above your opponent, it should mean more then 1% better.

Variety and progress are achieved with more then only levels: special equipment, skills, magic, NPCs and of course, interesting story unfolding before you.

There's 100 hours of gameplay in Baldur's Gate 2 and only 10 levels - enough for me.

 

[NBSRDan]

"How game designers muck this up: They put in too few levels."

Lack of examples makes it hard to understand what you had in mind. I can't think of a game where the number of level-ups has been a problem. What has been an issue is too few meaningful levels.
I don't care if there are only 5 levels as long as each level-up is a major reward. I don't even care if there is only 1 level (see: any non-RPG game) as long as I already begin with a significant amount of tactical options.
On the opposite end, a game can offer character growth to level 100 billion, but if the only difference between level 9,000 and 9,001 is that my maximum damage output with wooden spears 7-9 feet long unto furry humanoids rises from 163 to 164, I'm going to be sorely disappointed. In this case, it would be a great improvement to condense those billions of levels into a few hundred, so that each one feels like a significant accomplishment.

 

[Crystalgate]

Leveling is many things but elegant is not one of them. It adds ugly rules and administration tasks to everything in the game.

Shamus forgets to mention all of the dark sides to his positive points.

1. High granularity in numbers leads to very little sense of accomplishment or purpose when they go up. Alternatively absurd situations are set up when the designer has to make combat encounters for a level 500 character in a world where soldiers are level 50.

Agreed, but to few levels can still be a problem. Balance is the key. Make enough levels so that the player don't go to long without a level up, but not so many that the additional levels feel meaningless. In addition to that, games which allows the player to distribute the increases also has an advantage here. Instead of increasing both the sword and the shield skill slightly every time, the player can at one level up increase just the sword skill and at another just the shield skill which has the same end result, but should be more visible. Of course, this has it's own balancing problems.

2. If a player expects the level system to tell them if they can beat an opponent then the combat system could possibly be simplified to summing levels of both sides and the higher number wins. What is the combat system for?

I don't think this will be the problem. If you are at level ten and without breaking a sweat beat a quest which is described as being level 10, then you can probably figure out that you will be able to handle a level 12 quest. Also, if you're playing a non-combat build and is offered a combat related quest, you should be able to figure out that you have to add a few levels in order to compensate for your non-combat build.

I don't think the game need to tell you an actual level though. If you finish one quest and the same NPC gives you another, assume this one will be harder. If the NPC were to say "this mission is going to be much more dangerous than your last one" you will know that there's quite a difficulty leap and you may have to get multiple levels first unless you steamrolled the former quest. This of course requires that the game makers know what they are doing and are good at estimating how hard things will be.

The main problem is quest NPCs who gives you one single quest. If the game is inconsistent when describing how skilled NPCs are (one quest have veteran soldiers at level 7 and another has fresh recruits at level 10) every quest becomes a crapshot.

3. Start experienced players off slowly and bore the hell out of them, why not. Why not force me to play a 2 hour tutorial that teaches me how to use a mouse as well.

Good point. I can't believe I didn't realize that when I read the article.

4. If the player demands to solve any problem however they want then why use a game system in the first place? Sometimes it makes more sense for some solutions to work better than others and for the player to work this out and plan accordingly.

If some solutions work better than others, let the player choose a bad solution anyway. You need a McGuffin from an NPC and he demands that you do a quest for him to get it. Instead of doing the quest, something you may lack the skills for, you kill him or pickpocket him and then run off with the McGuffin. You can now progress further trough the story, but now you're an outlaw which makes this solution worse than doing the NPC's quest.

5. Seek my own challenge level? You mean grind for experience and gear?

I think he means choose tasks that are as hard as you want them to be. If you're at level 20 and want a challenging quest, choose one where you're supposed to be at level 30 or something.

 

[Chicago Ted]

The title made me instantly think of Borderlands. Good article, have to say this though. I'm fine with the world leveling with you and getting more challenging as you grow, as long as there's a point where they meet. I hated Oblivion because it felt so STATIC. Guards were ALWAYS 10 levels above you. Fallout 3 on the otherhand threw harder enemies at you when you leveled up, but still kept the weaker ones around also so you could feel like you've evolved, learnt, and grown. I think Bethseda did a great job fixing that.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Agreed, but to few levels can still be a problem. Balance is the key. Make enough levels so that the player don't go to long without a level up, but not so many that the additional levels feel meaningless.

If anything, I think that the limbo between levels is the annoying thing. I don't think that most people need to level up every hour or so if they hit the max level quickly enough or feel like they are powerful enough already.

I rarely play a game without levels and think, "gee, I wish this game had levels so my character wasn't as powerful now so I could be imperceptibly more powerful in an hours time." Maybe some people do, it takes all sorts.

If you are at level ten and without breaking a sweat beat a quest which is described as being level 10, then you can probably figure out that you will be able to handle a level 12 quest. Also, if you're playing a non-combat build and is offered a combat related quest, you should be able to figure out that you have to add a few levels in order to compensate for your non-combat build.

That way you still don't get into more trouble than you can handle or expect something tricky only to find out you can do it easily. Isn't that just as bad as rubber band level scaling, except maybe worse as it severely limits the content you can try instead of opening it up?

If the NPC were to say "this mission is going to be much more dangerous than your last one" you will know that there's quite a difficulty leap and you may have to get multiple levels first unless you steamrolled the former quest.

Subtle signals are much more interesting than signposting everything with traffic lights. I think that Demon's Souls has a system where players can leave notes for each other in game about what to expect. Useful or misleading.

If some solutions work better than others, let the player choose a bad solution anyway. You need a McGuffin from an NPC and he demands that you do a quest for him to get it. Instead of doing the quest, something you may lack the skills for, you kill him or pickpocket him and then run off with the McGuffin. You can now progress further trough the story, but now you're an outlaw which makes this solution worse than doing the NPC's quest.

That's a lot of developer work for a minor player decision that they would probably see as a fail state and reload the game, or write a angry post on a forum for a persistent game.

5. Seek my own challenge level? You mean grind for experience and gear?

I think he means choose tasks that are as hard as you want them to be. If you're at level 20 and want a challenging quest, choose one where you're supposed to be at level 30 or something.

If I want to finish the game at level 20 but it isn't mathematically possible until 30 then there is no content I want for my challenge level as I only want to finish the game. I have to grind.

 

[Telas]

I cannot believe that "Wasteland" has not been mentioned yet. Aside from being the ancestor to Fallout, it did a great job at not-quite-directing the player, but not wasting his time. If you hit the Citadel too early, the guards just laughed at you.

 

[Amazon warrior]

Ah, Oblivion! You know there's got to be something wrong with the system when you're 30th level and your best tactic for surviving a random enounter in the woods is _still_ to leg it to the nearest guard and let him do all the work...

And another thing: Why is nobody _ever_ pleased to see me???

 

[Knight Templar]

I love this column.

Anyway I agree on pretty much all points, and as other have said Oblivion is the prime example of how not to do leveling.
However for all it's faults leveling in Oblivion is optional for the most part, because you only level up when you sleep in a bed. Now although that has problems in itself it allows people to just stay at one level and not suffer the backlash of hiting a new level bracket. It works because your skills level up in a diffrent way to you, and I liked the "use it to bet better" form of skill leveling.

So Oblivion works... if you break the system.

The one point I agree with most is the first, few levels that are hard to reach.

 

[Gildedtongue]

Unfortunately, the opening of this article made me sigh and feel a little dead inside with Shaemus' "Forget the Roleplay aspect, RPGs is about leveling up!"

Unfortunately, that's how things have gone. The toxicity of computer RPGs with its limited "Rollplay" has even infected the tabletop world, especially with 3rd and 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. It's no longer about characters, backstory, individuality, it's about points and levels and how many people you can slaughter wantonly.

Granted, without good programming and creative game design, computer RPGs will always be like that. That's certainly why I preferred the original 2 Fallout games and Arcanum, at least they tried with the multiple approaches to solving issue X. Sure, diplomacy, or combat, or stealth didn't always work, but you had the option to try, and the ability to fail and still continue on with your life.

But, as far as the article proper goes... yes, I'm all for levels, as they give a player a base-feeling about where and how far they've gotten in the world. Tidbits of accomplishment, that also gives one a feeling about how well experienced and tempered someone is. Darklands, an old RPG set in semi-real-world Germany, tried to avoid "levels" doing a pure "skill based" character sheet (though, individual skills "leveled up."), and while somewhat useful, it's hard to figure out if your warrior with level 4 slashing is good enough to go fight that gargoyle over there.