What if We Leveled Backwards?!

[fates_puppet13]

rpg wise it is a very interesting concept
maybe your character starts out in their prime and gets older as the game progresses
or maybe a curse drining their soul
there are many ways to introduce it to the plot
you could even have it as a plot twist
many games have tried to have a dyanamic difficulty curve but this does sound like a better idea in that respect
maybe you could

as an mmo however it does not
as said in the world of warcraft review people want to be better than everyone else
maybe keeping their stats the same and redistributing them over time and calling it specialising might work
but getting worse as you progress sounds like a bad idea in am mmo
alough it would be the better show of skill

it sounds like a good concept but i doubt the gaming industry would move away from its winning formula

 

[mptothedc]

Sounds like something for a Raiden from Mortal Kombat RPG where the realms merge and Raiden gradually loses his powers lol

 

[MadsenRC]

Omg I never thought of this, but I'm already hooked.

 

[yoyo13rom]

Unfortunately the school legally owns the game because it was produced using their equipment, and it was just a school project and not intended to be sold. I tried to look for it online, but unfortunately I couldn't even find a Youtube video of it! Sorry!

I'm sure that one day they'll make a sequel and get rich and stuff

 

[jajujo]

I always thought the reverse leveling should be used for FPS online multiplayer, that way the top level people actually have skill rather than just better toys than the newbies. Or decrease the selection of weapons but increase passive skills (ex: mine detection)

 

[maturin]

This is Oblivion, isn't it?

 

[Marik Bentusi]

And the finale shall be a fist-fight with a sick, old, half-dead rat. That gaming experience has got to be anti-climactic and lack any sense of achievement.

 

[Lurklen]

I think this is an awesome idea. If it's done right the trade off should be that by the time you are at the end of the game you have capabilities that still allow for success. Meaning that throughout the game you are learning new ways to fight or progress because of your loss. Thae nature of gaming is such that for it to be satisfying to the player there has to be some form of win scenario, even if it's just watching your protaganist go out like a bad ass.(I.E. Halo Reach) But I think it's how that win would be achieved that makes this idea so interesting. You would have to truly become better at the game as you progressed because your options for how to solve problems would become more and more limited. something which occurs in games already but feels artificial because by the end of most rpgs we've become superhuman juggernauts.

However I don't see this fitting as well with a multiplayer game, this feels like a single player journy to me. Something in the vein of the Prince of Persia games or a more focused Oblivion. As for a story that makes sense, well I like Yahtzee's idea of a pantheon of super beings. Sort of God of War 3 from the Olympions perspective, a massivly over powered people who rule the world being destroyed by some kind of upstart. While also losing what made them the dominant force in the world. A twilight of the gods or Ragnarok where you are part of something powerful and amazing but maybe also corrupt and unnatural that is ending.

 

[Plurralbles]

since when do video games have good enough writing for this to work?

And I feel that I'd constantly be complaining about how arbitrary the ability stealing is.

 

[scowie]

How about the player being a demi-god who has his god-like strength reduced by the powers-that-be every time he takes a life. In order to save the humans he lives amongst from some terrible evil, he needs to go off on quests to defeat powerful enemies which obviously comes at a price.

Such a game would involve trying to avoid confrontations as much as possible by sneaking around (think the Thief series) and even running and hiding (Amnesia?) so you can avoid having to kill the lesser bad guys. Killing the bosses would presumably be unavoidable.

In such a scenario the protaganist would likely favour weapons that are less likely to kill, like a staff or a war-hammer, and maybe a slingshot. And how about some fire-weapons similar to molotov-cocktails, that can be used to prevent enemies following you down a corridor.

There could be a scenario where you sneak into some castle and kill some boss in a one-on-one fight, but all the guards you sneaked past then get alerted and to get away some enemy deaths are unavoidable, resulting in your powers being greatly reduced.

The ultimate boss can be a human who's power comes from the army he commands. Maybe it's the emperor of the lands or something, but in the finale when you have no more god-like powers, he thinks he can defeat you in a one-on-one fight. It would be kind of similar to the ending of The Gladiator, where the emperor thinks he can defeat a near-death Russel Crowe!

 

[beefpelican]

(I am also willing to bet that there's at least one flash game out there that uses the concept.)

In the very broadest sense, sort of. It's this one. http://armorgames.com/play/5355/immortall
Alt+Escape talked about it back when Alt+Escape still existed.

OT: This sounds really cool, but it probably would end up less fun than it sounds. One of the main draws for me in playing an abilities centric game is all the cool stuff i'll be able to do eventually. Taking away content would just make the game less and less interesting, because it would take away my choices. I like being able to destroy things in new and interesting ways.

 

[LongLiveourMachine]

LEVELLING BACKWARDS!?! Yahtzee you devilish madmen that so crazy it just might work, your brilliants is only matched by your rugged goodlooks. Well played sir, well played.

 

[Jupsto]

Its never gona work in a themepark MMO but...

I think a single player story RPG could work where your character has some sort of degenerate disease and grows weaker through the game.

This would work as a nice story element, reminding me of lord foul's bane, and also be a way to notch up the difficulty as the game progesses like your suggestion.

 

[VGC USpartan VS]

As usual, Yahtzee has us a different type of game concept. By responce is that this should be made into some indy game for pure art value. Why? Give a big budget title something like this and there will be complaints. Y'know, like when you lost your power-ups in Metroid Prime when YOU WERE THROWN AGAINST A WALL! Seriously Samus, your armor is stronger than that.

 

[TBman]

how about negative achievements? do something wrong and you lose gamerscore.

 

[Jyggalag]

I wouldn't do any sidequests.

 

[TheKruzdawg]

I like what some people have said about aging and things. I think a mechanic to incorporate that could look something like what Borderlands used for its weapon skill development, only in reverse.

So you start with all of your stats and skills at maximum power. Over time they will decrease, but the player has some control over how much and which skills will decrease. The more you use a skill, the less weak it will become each time that you level up. And each time you level up, skills will require more use in order to hold off the weakening effect. This leads to specialization and you will get to keep the skills that you want to use and will use most often. It rewards the player (in a sense) for the hard they put into certain skills by keeping them stronger than the rest and I guess the saying "if you don't use it, you lose it" applies.

 

[thehomemade]

I like this idea a lot.
Although it's not the same at all, one game did something similar.

Remember Heavenly Sword?
If I recall correctly, how it worked was that the heroine was using a powerful sword that was basically weakening her the more she used it.

And so, as you progress through the game, you are getting weaker.
So, you`re still fighting the same enemies, but they seem stronger, because you`re weaker.

Although it`s not an RPG, I really liked that idea.
I would like to see something like that used more in other video games.

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

It's been done in Warcraft 3 TFT as previosly mentioned where it worked well storywise and it made me change my gamestyle somewhat.It's also been done in Heroes of Might and Magic 3 if i'm not mistaken.One of your characters spent 1 campaign collecting really rare items into sets and then he had to give them away to seers but he stopped advancing in levels shrinking the little advantage he had in favor for a lot more shrewd tactics in gameplay.

It can work since it adds immerssion and it's a very new gameplay mechanic...something we haven't seen.

 

[inkheart_artist]

What if they lost skills as they leveled up but the skills they got were more powerful. As long as someone didn't fuck themselves over as they leveled up they would be strong enough to beat lower level 'stronger' players. So it'd be fatigue that would take skills away and wisdom that would make them stronger.