What if We Leveled Backwards?!
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
What I think would add a realistic element to games and such is that you don't gain levels or anything as such, instead you have it's about simply gaining items and learning how to use them in unique and effective ways.
You've got a wrench and all you know is hitting things with it, then you read a D.I.Y magazine and you can fix up your character's hideout with it, read a car magazine and you can tune up cars.
That sort of thing. It's not about being more powerful, it's about having options.
You're still just as weak, you just have to out-think and out-preform your enemies.
You've got a wrench and all you know is hitting things with it, then you read a D.I.Y magazine and you can fix up your character's hideout with it, read a car magazine and you can tune up cars.
That sort of thing. It's not about being more powerful, it's about having options.
You're still just as weak, you just have to out-think and out-preform your enemies.
Erm, sorry thread I really don't want to read 383 posts to see if I'm a repeat, so a quick skim is all you get but
As an MMO if you levelled down, would the game NOT end at level 1?
Let me say that differently: that would leave developers pretty stuck for what to do when you hit level one. Can they really pull off making you any weaker by that point? You can always increase the level cap and make people stronger but there's gotta be a cut-off for weaker.
One way around is to have your players start at 100, reach 40 where there's still stuff to take away and then force a "stop" till your next update, but you have kinda just stuck yourself with - let's pretend - 8 updates of 5 levels, no more, no less. Get my picture?
I'm not saying the numeric's can't be fooled with to get it to work, but it sure wouldn't look pretty.
*shrug* Yes, no?
As an MMO if you levelled down, would the game NOT end at level 1?
Let me say that differently: that would leave developers pretty stuck for what to do when you hit level one. Can they really pull off making you any weaker by that point? You can always increase the level cap and make people stronger but there's gotta be a cut-off for weaker.
One way around is to have your players start at 100, reach 40 where there's still stuff to take away and then force a "stop" till your next update, but you have kinda just stuck yourself with - let's pretend - 8 updates of 5 levels, no more, no less. Get my picture?
I'm not saying the numeric's can't be fooled with to get it to work, but it sure wouldn't look pretty.
*shrug* Yes, no?
I think a nice twist to the idea would be to start with all abilities in a basic level, and giving the player some time to find out which ones correspond with their playstyle best. Then, as the game progresses, the player gets to improve abilities by sacrificing other ones. That way, there would be no more screens full of useless abilities, while your hero would still have strong abilities at his disposal. With the addition of a system of several ability branches, that you had to give up completely in order to access later abilities, this could even lead to a very definite later game class specialzation. For example you would start with a mage that has all magic powers, but in order to be a good destructive mage, you would have to get rid of, say buffing completely. That would allow developers to give starting players only a handful of options, giving players incentive to work towards the class they want.
I don't know how many people are going to get the reference, but this very much reminds me of my favorite book series, The Dresden Files.
Every book has our hero, Harry Dresden (professional Wizard living in Chicago), up against some sort of monster of the week or cosmic horror threatening to tear reality in half (because hey, somebody's gotta do it), and Dresden steps up to fight the baddie. Except, most of the time, the bad guy is a whole lot stronger than him and Dresden gets by on sheer luck and relying on allies along with skill and tricky ploys.
In every single book, Harry gets beat to shit and back. It's kind of one of the defining things about the series, and makes him a good character. By the end of each book, he's been beaten to near death (sometimes mentally and emotionally as well as physically), is running low on power with which to use any magic, and might actually be dying. But damn it, he always manages to fight as long as possible, even when it might (or definately will) get him killed. A good series, by the way, definately recommend it.
In the gaming world, you can kind of (vaguely) look at Metal Gear Solid 4 for this. Snake, the hero that's been whispered about for years, is, well, old. His back acts up if he runs for too long, smoking makes him cough something terrible, and he's on the verge of death, for the most part. Granted the game mechanics still allow you to kill armies by yourself as long as you keep Psyche up, but the idea and possiblity was there. The final act actually played this out beautifully (especially in that hallway that I'll try not to spoil here), and the final fight at the end really gave you the feeling of a soldier on his last legs finishing his last mission.
Granted, they could have played with it more in MGS, but I definately think it could work in an RPG setting, where the rigors and confrontations of your journey leave your worn out and weak near the end, at the point where you'd want to be your strongest. I'd think that it would make victory that much sweeter.
Every book has our hero, Harry Dresden (professional Wizard living in Chicago), up against some sort of monster of the week or cosmic horror threatening to tear reality in half (because hey, somebody's gotta do it), and Dresden steps up to fight the baddie. Except, most of the time, the bad guy is a whole lot stronger than him and Dresden gets by on sheer luck and relying on allies along with skill and tricky ploys.
In every single book, Harry gets beat to shit and back. It's kind of one of the defining things about the series, and makes him a good character. By the end of each book, he's been beaten to near death (sometimes mentally and emotionally as well as physically), is running low on power with which to use any magic, and might actually be dying. But damn it, he always manages to fight as long as possible, even when it might (or definately will) get him killed. A good series, by the way, definately recommend it.
In the gaming world, you can kind of (vaguely) look at Metal Gear Solid 4 for this. Snake, the hero that's been whispered about for years, is, well, old. His back acts up if he runs for too long, smoking makes him cough something terrible, and he's on the verge of death, for the most part. Granted the game mechanics still allow you to kill armies by yourself as long as you keep Psyche up, but the idea and possiblity was there. The final act actually played this out beautifully (especially in that hallway that I'll try not to spoil here), and the final fight at the end really gave you the feeling of a soldier on his last legs finishing his last mission.
Granted, they could have played with it more in MGS, but I definately think it could work in an RPG setting, where the rigors and confrontations of your journey leave your worn out and weak near the end, at the point where you'd want to be your strongest. I'd think that it would make victory that much sweeter.
this because if you end with 1 skill the game looses all endgame complexity and depth making it fail but if it got more complex while making you weaker then you would have to rely on strategy and skill to proceed and would probably end up with an awesome endgame community cuz they couldnt herpa derp through the last levelsOdgical said:
Hmm... akin to how life itself sort of works and how, as mentioned, truly compelling stories usually go. I recently had to design a game for college that is quite the opposite (for exceedingly good reason however), but this idea of starting in your prime and growing "older", wiser, weaker, but in a sense far more able or atleast far more accomplished is something i may work with in the near future.
Interesting concept, but needs more polish.
You should change it so that at the start, the new players have all the skills (108, for example), but be completely and utterly useless with them. As they level up, they have to sacrifice one skill and all their remaining skills would gain bonuses. At maximum level, the skills they have are insanely powerful, but they are also specialised to the point where they suck without help from other players.
You should change it so that at the start, the new players have all the skills (108, for example), but be completely and utterly useless with them. As they level up, they have to sacrifice one skill and all their remaining skills would gain bonuses. At maximum level, the skills they have are insanely powerful, but they are also specialised to the point where they suck without help from other players.
Sounds very interesting. Stats and abilities could be taken away and replaced with passive effects which explain this. Extra Credits mentioned this sort of thing in "Amnesia and Story Structure", where they talked about have perks related to your life before getting shot in the head, (+1 Perception for being a courier etc) but having them all taken away by a "Was shot in the head" perk. This could work well for Backwards leveling.
Lets say, there was a Saw-esc situation where you had to escape a room by cutting off a body part. You had a choice between two fingers, two toes or, to be deposited somewhere safe like an inn, instead of wandering in the streets, one of your eyes. Now, by cutting off your fingers, you would lose some of your spells, or they would become less powerful, as they require finger movement from both hands. With your toes, you would lose a lot of agility because you couldn't balance yourself properly on your mutilated feet. But, if you cut out your eye, you cut your Perception in half, but you can rest for the night in an inn, as promised by your captor, and your wounds can be treated, so you wont lose more stats, because of gangrene or what not.
Lets say, there was a Saw-esc situation where you had to escape a room by cutting off a body part. You had a choice between two fingers, two toes or, to be deposited somewhere safe like an inn, instead of wandering in the streets, one of your eyes. Now, by cutting off your fingers, you would lose some of your spells, or they would become less powerful, as they require finger movement from both hands. With your toes, you would lose a lot of agility because you couldn't balance yourself properly on your mutilated feet. But, if you cut out your eye, you cut your Perception in half, but you can rest for the night in an inn, as promised by your captor, and your wounds can be treated, so you wont lose more stats, because of gangrene or what not.
[after reading topic but before reading any other comments in the thread]
Now that is an awesome idea.
This concept NEEDS to be implemented in at least one game, even if just to see how good this mechanic would really work in a real-world situation (or virtual world, in this case).
All the people who play to have fun and blow stuff up with 'splodey fireballs and tragic missiles can have their newbie parties, and the "serious" gamers who are interested in following the story and completing the game will (in effect) suffer for their art and show their dedication to their enjoyment by voluntarily levelling down to access new areas, with new quests/stories/etc.
Now that is an awesome idea.
This concept NEEDS to be implemented in at least one game, even if just to see how good this mechanic would really work in a real-world situation (or virtual world, in this case).
All the people who play to have fun and blow stuff up with 'splodey fireballs and tragic missiles can have their newbie parties, and the "serious" gamers who are interested in following the story and completing the game will (in effect) suffer for their art and show their dedication to their enjoyment by voluntarily levelling down to access new areas, with new quests/stories/etc.
Thanks, Yahtzee. I've been saying this for years, but in relation to FPS games, and whenever I do, people on this forum act like I'm a complete retard. Now that you're saying it instead, maybe someone will listen (maybe).Yahtzee Croshaw said:
I always thought it was stupid that in FPS games you start off with very little and end up with a kick-ass arsenal, effectively making the game easier the more you play it. Most FPS games counter that in the single-player campaign by ramping up enemy difficulty to balance it against your new toys (as if the enemies have some telepathic ability to know that you've got a better gun now, and think "gosh we'd better lift our game, guys"). Fine for singleplayer, but for a multiplayer game this obviously doesn't work. It's so annoying to wander around with the default weapons and constantly get slapped down by vets who have all this cool stuff that they only have because they unlocked it after playing for 679 hours.
I think people in FPS games who get a lot of kills should instead of getting new toys, get a handicap of some kind. The "reverse gungame" in Counter-Strike is a bit like that - you start off with the best weapons and as soon as you get a kill, the game swaps you to the next weapon down, the objective being to score a kill with every weapon. Thus, by the end of the round, the vets are all duking it out with pistols, nades and knives, while the nublets who have racked up hardly any kills still have cool assault rifles and therefore actually have a reasonable chance of making back some ground in the latter stages of the game and not having their soul completely crushed by SuperSniper1337.
Another option that could work for both the FPS and the RPG is to have more realistic injury modelling... so a character who was in the game for a long time might have been in a few fights and have the scars to show for it, therefore they might be limping a bit or in a reasonable amount of pain which might make it harder to aim that gun, swing that sword, cast a spell etc. The original Rainbow 6 games (back when the series was good, before Ubi dumbed the franchise down into a simple brain-off action shooter with Lockdown and that Vegas garbage) had it where if you got wounded you were limping at half-speed for the rest of the round and your aiming was correspondingly shithouse, you could take that concept further by making the wounding persistent across your whole account - where every time you get wounded, you become less effective at combat, permanently, little by little. This would then make the vets who had year-old accounts ultra-cautious tactical players. Those veteran stripes would then be looked at a whole lot differently... the vets might not want any more hits to their character, and may be too crippled to do much fighting themselves, so they could then stand behind cover and order the noobs around instead, so what you have is someone with those special sarge stripes actually acting like a sargeant for a change, using their experience and combat prowess to direct others, instead of acting like a run-and-gun private in the front line.
Same here.Olrod said:
Wait a second...
With the MMO example, I can think of a major flaw.
When you're a noob you've got all these abilities which you don't fully understand - and by the time you get to the point where you've lost most of them, you look back wistfully and wish you'd used those epic abilities more effectively.
This leads to those experienced players starting over as a newbie, but this time (surprise surprise) they completely own up with their knowledge of how best to use their abilities.
So go on, try and think up a solution for that one. =P
I'm reminded of "I Wanna Be The Guy", where throughout the game you're weak throughout.
I've actually thought about the idea of a game where the character gets weaker. However I found the idea kinda counterintuitive to most games in that I initially thought it unsatisfying. Now however the idea of a little guy managing to beat someone bigger and badder is still pretty satisfying itself.
I've thought and heard of other similar ideas, though they mostly involve a character that remains relatively weak throughout depending on either companion characters or various other "tricks" in order to progress.
Then again, maybe I find it harder to accept the idea because I'm indoctrinated by the mainstream to only accept a certain standard or something. Or because I like improving over time in games.
I've actually thought about the idea of a game where the character gets weaker. However I found the idea kinda counterintuitive to most games in that I initially thought it unsatisfying. Now however the idea of a little guy managing to beat someone bigger and badder is still pretty satisfying itself.
I've thought and heard of other similar ideas, though they mostly involve a character that remains relatively weak throughout depending on either companion characters or various other "tricks" in order to progress.
Then again, maybe I find it harder to accept the idea because I'm indoctrinated by the mainstream to only accept a certain standard or something. Or because I like improving over time in games.
I think this would work better as a sequel or expansion to an existing, more traditional game. It would work brilliantly if woven into a game like Baldur's Gate, for example. Level to 20 or 25, for example, unlock a ton of max-level spells and high-level abilities, then have your whole party cursed or something and start leveling backwards. Without the overpowered max-level abilities the player will be forced to ingeniously make use of scrolls, potions, and special items that they've collected, as well as find creative uses for low-level spells to make up for max-level ones. "Progression" as a goal is still available in the form of items, but difficulty scales well and the player is forced to find new solutions to previously trivial obstacles.
to some degree yes. however, using this gameplay mechanic of continually removing options, wouldn't work in your mage/fireball example. think of any game that you've ever played a mage in and started out with one or two spells. you in fact had very few tactics or strategies because you had very few resources. if all you have is a fireball and a heal spell, you've really only got three options: fight, run, heal. i don't see how you can make new tactics or strategies out of that. maybe in a novel or movie yes, but most games don't allow you the freedom to apply lateral thinking to gameplay.grumbel said: