What if We Leveled Backwards?!
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Needing to depower the gamer just to keep things interesting sounds like bad/lazy game design to me.
Reminds me a lot of my strategy game playthroughs. AI spams units with no need to maintain or pay costs, while my elite cadre of units is usually dwindling late to mid-game, while they keep creating more at a higher XP then mine.
@people above me: Are you not capable of understanding the actual play in a way that makes sense? YOu know, not eating for several days while you cleave cleave cleave through hundreds of soldiers ends with you drooling in agony instead of you grinding. In some ways, this game would remove the worst bits of a RPG, the grinding of levels in order to destroy things with little rhyme or reason.
@people above me: Are you not capable of understanding the actual play in a way that makes sense? YOu know, not eating for several days while you cleave cleave cleave through hundreds of soldiers ends with you drooling in agony instead of you grinding. In some ways, this game would remove the worst bits of a RPG, the grinding of levels in order to destroy things with little rhyme or reason.
Wonderful article. You can even pull this for shooters.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
After hours or days of fighting, (assumingly) less and less food, and very little sleep, you should make it harder and harder to aim as the day goes on. Your character shakes, can't run quite as much as they could at the beginning of the level/game before being tired, breathes heavier, can't throw as far. Little touches to make a real "Realistic shooter"
Over a long period of gameplay, my major concern would be the fact that the player might cease to earn a sense of achievement. A sense that they're work has paid off in growing stronger.
At any rate, its a fun concept to mull over.
At any rate, its a fun concept to mull over.
Yahtzee just described the game and mechanics that will finally bring video games under that greatly desired and much sought after description of "Art." Someone MUST design this game!!!
I can see this working very, very well for a well designed single player game. I have trouble imagining it working in an MMO tho.
Thanks Yahtzee, I had ideas for a game like this but now I can't make it because I'd be accused of stealing your ideas.
You are making the assumption that complexity has to lie in the construction of the character in an RPG, which is just not true.ScotRotum said:
A pure leveling backwards game woudl make you seek other solutions other than fighting.
Running away would become mandatory.
I once had this thought 3-4 yrs ago.
No one woudl want to do one though... except maybe Nippon Ichi.
Running away would become mandatory.
I once had this thought 3-4 yrs ago.
No one woudl want to do one though... except maybe Nippon Ichi.
In Deus Ex, stealth was a primary gameplay mechanic because combat was clunky and you couldn't hope to go toe-to-toe with some foes - which is how it should be.therandombear said:
There's a better name for 'leveling backwards', its called "attrition", and it is common in warfare. You won't find it in COD, where attrition manages to work in reverse: WWII era grunts somehow manage to get a .357 revolver which wasn't developed until 1967. There was a cool MMO called Combat Arms where drops from too high could cause lasting leg damage - that was a good start. Those developers now do.. I've forgotten the name but its pretty cool too.
It would be amazingly easy to create a (single player) FPS that works with attrition. Start with a realistic framework like STALKER, but add more realism to the weapons and to injuries received. [Very few FPS games to date have realistically modeled ballistics, and not one gets close to authentic noise or heat levels. Injuries? I will never ever play another game where you can walk off bullet wounds!] For example, a sniper scenario: the first shot is the only one you get because you are going to be running the hell away. You can shoot more, but they will find you faster. You end up using stealth to limp back to the extraction point with various leg and arm damage from bullet wounds.
Similar would be amazingly easy for other scenarios - so long as firearms are realistic. You really, actually do have to change out the barrel on a SAW after a certain number of shots, because repeated firing through a super hot barrel has destroyed the rifling. That common act of maintenance takes much longer than the 2-second reload(!!!!) that you see in FPS MMOs. So it would make a lot of sense to be forced to discard your primary weapon (regardless of how much you liked it!!!) and continue on with whatever weapons are available in an FPS game with correct attrition.
Reality is hard, but realism can also be very rewarding. The first casualty in any firefight is the plan, and making combat more difficult (realistic) won't be fun for the same people that don't like the STALKER series. Yet that also makes it challenging and I keep going back to STALKER for more: the enemy has better armor than I do and a bullet to the head means its all over, just like it should be.
Good idea.
This reminds me of a sci-fi concept which I thought was from the predator films (but wikipedia doesn't seem to think so), in which veteran fighters deliberately use less advanced weapons as they get more experienced, to show their skills and win honour.
To put it into gaming terms, veteran players wouldn't have access to 'easy' spells - no spammable area of effects or full self heals. Instead they are reduced to more tricky abilities - skill shots, situation specific abilities, stealth, and abilities which take a lot of planning to use. This means a truly great veteran player could still go toe to toe with a new player and win - but they'd have to play perfectly, and it would be a great achievement.
I also like the other path everyone's been suggesting of gaining wisdom at the cost of everything else.
This reminds me of a sci-fi concept which I thought was from the predator films (but wikipedia doesn't seem to think so), in which veteran fighters deliberately use less advanced weapons as they get more experienced, to show their skills and win honour.
To put it into gaming terms, veteran players wouldn't have access to 'easy' spells - no spammable area of effects or full self heals. Instead they are reduced to more tricky abilities - skill shots, situation specific abilities, stealth, and abilities which take a lot of planning to use. This means a truly great veteran player could still go toe to toe with a new player and win - but they'd have to play perfectly, and it would be a great achievement.
I also like the other path everyone's been suggesting of gaining wisdom at the cost of everything else.
ScotRotum said:
I too have thought this idea before I read the article, but I don't think it's impossible. If you look at western RPGs in the D+D vein, you gain points to assign to attributes like strength and dexterity and so on, as well as points to add into skills.
If you wanted to 'level backwards' (although it's easy to understand, it's actually a terrible way of putting it), you'd deduct attribute points but add skill points as you got more experience. So you became more skilled but less able. The idea is that you could learn everything but there's only certain things you could actually do - if you see what I mean?
I think 'levelling backwards' would be a great way of making a game that plays on the theme of getting older. You'd start the game at the peak of your physical powers but with little experience, but as you get older one decreases whilst the other increases. Imagine being 70 years old, and the enemy you could easily defeat in your 30s is now a boss level character. It'd be far more interesting as a story experience, but yeah, it would require a sense of progression. It's something for a skilled design team to consider
To those saying the game would lose mechanical depth at the end... not necessarily. With certain stats (such as the aforementioned INT) rising those careful yet heart-wrenching decisions you make as to which skill not to keep would be more like trading two skills at 100% for one at 120%. You'd be expected to excel at that skill and use it perfectly*, accompanied by items.
Combat items in RPGs are typically worthless after the first few dungeons because you're spoilt by choice after that, and why use the finite combat item when you could just use that regenerating skill you just acquired? As players naturally hoarde junk throughout the game, item/gear choices increase throughout the game. But are typically ignored as skills provide a crutch. Wise expenditure of ingame currency, as opposed to crazy end-game "I fart gold" spending sprees, could suddenly become a major gameplay element.
And again, what a fascinating reflection of real life: a wealthy, elderly and wise man** desperately spending to rejuvinate his ailing body. So much money, but not enough to buy immortality. For those with a true taste for the macabre, the final form of the boss could be just coincidentally shaped like an illegally-sourced organ.
* Imagine your character as a Spathi Eluder equipped with a rapid fire sweeping laser only usable when stationary and shields. If I had to pick one out of the BUTT and the two additions above, I know what it'd be... You couldn't argue the game has gotten more shallow when the shields and the laser are removed.
** A generic male protagonist because I feel keeping some tropes consistent would more effectively contrast all the RPG tropes challenged.
Combat items in RPGs are typically worthless after the first few dungeons because you're spoilt by choice after that, and why use the finite combat item when you could just use that regenerating skill you just acquired? As players naturally hoarde junk throughout the game, item/gear choices increase throughout the game. But are typically ignored as skills provide a crutch. Wise expenditure of ingame currency, as opposed to crazy end-game "I fart gold" spending sprees, could suddenly become a major gameplay element.
And again, what a fascinating reflection of real life: a wealthy, elderly and wise man** desperately spending to rejuvinate his ailing body. So much money, but not enough to buy immortality. For those with a true taste for the macabre, the final form of the boss could be just coincidentally shaped like an illegally-sourced organ.
* Imagine your character as a Spathi Eluder equipped with a rapid fire sweeping laser only usable when stationary and shields. If I had to pick one out of the BUTT and the two additions above, I know what it'd be... You couldn't argue the game has gotten more shallow when the shields and the laser are removed.
** A generic male protagonist because I feel keeping some tropes consistent would more effectively contrast all the RPG tropes challenged.
I like this idea, it would require the player to develop things like patience, tact, and cunning in order to get through the game.
It is definitely an interesting idea. However, if executed it would uproot an important analogy to life which RPGs uphold: a persons' ability to become more than he is.
The capacity to endlessly grow into something greater, that one might effect the world in ways he otherwise couldn't. That is the reason I have been playing RPGs most of my life.
Do not to mistake me for a fan boy or anything; I actually think most RPGs are Nothings better off not wasting the worlds' space. Gold is gold because it is exceptional. Otherwise it wold be just a weak, yellow metal.
I actually disagree with yahtzees premise that the idea will probably never be done. sooner or later someone in the games industry is going to realize that most people are self-hating, miserable parasites who prefer the sight of a god being stripped down to nothing than a mediocrity growing to become a god. It would sell very well. But that doesn't give it any merit in my eyes; the opinion of the masses means as much to me as a mob of sheep's opinion on which direction they should relocate.
The capacity to endlessly grow into something greater, that one might effect the world in ways he otherwise couldn't. That is the reason I have been playing RPGs most of my life.
Do not to mistake me for a fan boy or anything; I actually think most RPGs are Nothings better off not wasting the worlds' space. Gold is gold because it is exceptional. Otherwise it wold be just a weak, yellow metal.
I actually disagree with yahtzees premise that the idea will probably never be done. sooner or later someone in the games industry is going to realize that most people are self-hating, miserable parasites who prefer the sight of a god being stripped down to nothing than a mediocrity growing to become a god. It would sell very well. But that doesn't give it any merit in my eyes; the opinion of the masses means as much to me as a mob of sheep's opinion on which direction they should relocate.
itd be a cool idea to have an ability tree called "godly powers" (or something a bit more poetic)filled with powerful techniques. as the game progresses your character loses thier godly techniques having to rely on more human abilities.
the human abilities wouldnt be very powerful but they leave room for imagination in strategy.
if it was an mmorpg it would encourage people to team up a lot more imo. when i played wow i didnt make friends because id level up quicker on my own. if you're "leveling down" constantly and fights are becoming harder it eliminates the want to do everything yourself.
i think, your homeland is a place where demigods go to retire from a life of being a hero or something along those lines. say after you escape from whatever has invaded your homeland you are given the option of remembering what you were when you were just a man like anyone else, and that is when you choose your human class.
it wouldnt be defeating the whole purpose if you were given the option of buying new human skills from a trainer, i mean you are losing your powers and levels anyway.
the human abilities wouldnt be very powerful but they leave room for imagination in strategy.
if it was an mmorpg it would encourage people to team up a lot more imo. when i played wow i didnt make friends because id level up quicker on my own. if you're "leveling down" constantly and fights are becoming harder it eliminates the want to do everything yourself.
i think, your homeland is a place where demigods go to retire from a life of being a hero or something along those lines. say after you escape from whatever has invaded your homeland you are given the option of remembering what you were when you were just a man like anyone else, and that is when you choose your human class.
it wouldnt be defeating the whole purpose if you were given the option of buying new human skills from a trainer, i mean you are losing your powers and levels anyway.