What if We Leveled Backwards?!

[Howling Din]

I just had an idea that belongs on this... well... for lack of a better word I'll call it a blog.
What if it went beyond just leveling up backwards? Nobody said leveling had to be a strict, linear path. It could jump around from weakling to demigod to weakling to mediocrity to anywhere.
what if in a game like Shadow of the Colossus you could, at various points, experience things from the point of view of the colossi?
Lumbering about playing Godzilla with the world, shaking suicidal adventurers off your back. And then going back to being puny and insignificant. It doesn't even have to be strictly within the size and strength category.
You could go from divine hero to insignificant nobody, and vice versa. Mannerly gentleman to barbaric brute. Fire to Ice. Air to Earth. Man to Machine to woman to child.

A game themed entirely on extreme contrast.

...'tis only food for thought.

 

[RinguPingu]

While I think this idea sounds very promising, I also agree with the many others here who don't think it would do well in MMO form. For this kind of concept to work, it seems to me like it needs to end at some point.

I thought of a different way that you could "level down" than the way described in the article. You could start out in a group, with maybe 10-15 characters in it. As you progress through the game, the members of your group either die or leave the group for other reasons. In the end you're the only one left, and your character decides to retire or something.

I think this idea would be easier for most gamers to like, as it's not your own character that is weakened per sé, but the entire group is weakened due to the the loss of members.

 

[gorfias]

Don't we already level backward in that, as your character is pushed to the limit, you find yourself losing health potions/packs, amo, your weapons degrade and become less effective, etc.?

I would feel a sense of progress if they just take my stuff from me as time goes on. I like that, as a game progresses, maybe I find some kickass armor or weapon. I like that and don't wanna lose it. That may be progress. It doesn't feel like success.

 

[MajWound]

It sucks that you don't play RTS, because you might find the afore-mentioned "Arthas leveling backward in Warcraft III" levels amusing.

 

[Vindestructable]

Jesus Mary and Joseph this man is a genius!

 

[Xman490]

Guild Wars seems to take care of the issue of difficulty. Leveling doesn't become too routine, as the level cap is 20. By level 20, you (probably) have the ability to change your secondary class (i.e. warrior, mage, healer), and you have fully grasped the concepts of the game. Each campaign has a monster level cap at 30 (or 36 or so on hard mode), however. The final bosses are level 30, and their soldiers go from level 20 to level 28 or 26.

 

[manic_depressive13]

Great idea. Punishing the player instead of rewarding them. It will definitely keep them on their toes. People get complacent when they are constantly praised for their achievements. Society would function so much better if, every time someone completed a task, they got punched in the face.

No, I do not think having only one button to mash is a goal to work towards. I think it makes far more sense to introduce new mechanics, but make the enemies strong enough as you go along that you actually need to employ them. Developers should be aiming for complexity, not difficulty.

 

[Trilliandi]

I somehow can't shake how awesome that game'd be. Though maybe come up with something more interesting or creative than sustaining injuries that make you weaken. Like, have a cutscene in the begining where the main guy's hit with a spell and... I dunno, slowly goes from being a seasoned warrior to... a novice? Or better yet, gets younger the longer he takes, thereby throwing in the whole sense of impending doom countdown thing like in Majora's Mask.

 

[VondeVon]

I'd played a lot of games with RPG elements where the game gets easier and easier towards the end as you gain more and stronger powers, which is failed design because games are supposed to have escalating difficulty curves.

I contest this. It's like saying 'games are supposed to have weapons.' Maybe most games should have escalating difficulty, but not all of them. Off the top of my head, I'd tentatively give the example of Limbo or Portal - I never ever felt that those games grew more difficult, simply more complex. How is that not the same thing? I'm not quite sure, to be honest.

I find that a game (RPGs especially) in which I level up but so does everything else (so that there's "always a bigger fish") kinda spoils the fun for me. Why would I want to always be the smaller fish? I didn't sink 160 hours into a game just so an auto-levelled enemy can make me feel like victory was the providence of Lady Luck and not the result of my dogged determination to cleanse the desert of cactaurs.

Now, a game where your increased powers have consequences such as people seeking your protection/destruction would be cool - enemies who have an individual, personal reason for leveling up (ie to be capable of kicking your overpowered ass, because 2 in-game years ago you bought the last of the Miraculous Medicines in their town and their Mum died for lack of it) and have been dedicating themselves to it is much more enjoyable than 'Oh gosh, I'm glad the level 80 lizard-men in this plot-dictated-location never thought about stepping outside the area for the easy pickings of level 10 adventurers.' (Or at least have geological reason for the condensed areas of high-level enemies. Put them on an island or something!)

But even these enemies shouldn't be the 'unkillable until X plot point' kind, they should just be incidental possible enemies seeded into the game as a result of player action. And the player should, after being attacked by the grief-wrecked son or daughter, be fully capable of choosing mercy or saving themselves the hassle and just ending them immediately.

So what's to stop your over-powered character from wading in and laying the smackdown on the main enemy? Well, I don't see why a well-prepared player should be forbidden from an easy final-battle win, but there are plenty of non-combat ways to stagger conflicts. Have the enemy realise that the slab of mana-crackling muscle is coming for them and run the hell away. Have political obstructions or consequences for killing the main enemy 'too early', similar to how choices during the game results in different endings - if you hold out and waste him when he's in a public area, his/her evil influence is shattered. Or, if you kill him before you yourself have established yourself as a hero/lawful murderer, you then face the unhappy reality of being reviled or a fugitive etc.

...And I've blah-blah'ed on much longer than I intended to. I just wanted to say: More and stronger powers, with which to stomp all over lesser mortals, is not flawed design but fun.

 

[Squidbulb]

Off the top of my head, I'd tentatively give the example of Limbo or Portal - I never ever felt that those games grew more difficult, simply more complex.

Well I just finished Portal for the first time today and I can say it grows somewhat more difficult. Mostly because you don't even start with a portal gun (at this point it's very easy) until eventually you get the gun but only one portal (these puzzles require some thinking, but not much) and finally both portals (at which point you have to start thinking). Then it introduces the turrets but doesn't get much harder from this point.
Anyway, I had a different plot in mind. It's sort of like reverse zelda. You start off after just having beaten the villain, and you now have to return home with the princess. Along the way you must return all the items you gained back to their previous owners, so you'd obviously lose those, and all the questing takes it's toll and you gradually grow weaker. This is aided by the fact that since you used up all your resources on the way, there are very little health potions (and the like) left for you to use.
I wish this game existed. Sadly, I have no idea how to make a game.

 

[caladors]

I like the idea but "No plan surives the battlefield."

I really do like the idea but for each type of game it you may have to change it.
But I think it could be amazing for say shooters not that they need any help but imagine say a multiplayer mode called tournament or whatever, at the start you have access to everything, I mean everything but the higher you get on there ranking the less gear you have access to, it could be binary where its 10 to 1 or it could be say one basic gun of there choosing.
Either way they would have to prove there skill each time they got on and the guy with the rocket launcher would be the noob, but still he has a rocket launcher.

RPGs, well the problem is you want to recapture that energy again (both metaphorical and there powers) like for example Dragon Age 2 the start of that was a fantastic example of how tutorials can be done right, you have all these powers your like "I am on top of the world!" but before you get to that I am bored moment they take it all away and if you know it or not you want it back!
I can see it work just, it would have to have alot of work done.

I think in a stratergy game this could work best because, you bleed reasourses in a war, it just happens, so at the end all of the bad guys are making there final stand but you still have to have your various places protected, so you can only go in with a small elite team to take down the BBEG, which means you have to use your men properly or lose. Rather than having the bloat battle where its who can capture the most resources and spam the other guy.

It's an idea to think about that's for sure.

 

[Guardian of Nekops]

One question that comes to mind is the matter of sidequests and exploration... if you lose power with every quest, then logically skipping every bit of content you can would let you end the game with more power, which seems... odd, to say the least. At that point, you're pitting the urge to experience the game world directly against your own power (or, in extreme cases, the ability to even complete the game without godlike skill.)

One possible solution would be a dual system, where you actually have two different sorts of experience/power markers/whatever. As suggested, you would start with a large amount of gear, and a simply staggering amount of natural ability, which would all degrade thanks to its being legendary, irreplacable equipment and thanks to some wasting disease, the degredation of both of which would be helped along by the main story plot points until you're level 1.

However, a secondary experience curve... you could call it Wisdom or some such... would work counter to that... an in-game manifestation of the increased skill you've gained by continuing to press on through the loss of all this power. This leveling up mechanic wouldn't replace what you were losing, not by a long shot, but it would give you a bit of an edge... maybe as your health and magical faculties wasted away, you would get a little better at haggling, lockpicking, and setting up cheap traps through exploration and sidequests. That way you don't get the powergaming bastard who's skipped half the game so that he can be level five at the end, instead of level one.

Of course, you could also solve this problem by making the whole thing a linear corridor you have to go through, but I think that's heading in the wrong direction.

 

[Slayer_2]

Too much like real life, but it would be interesting. Maybe like real life, you should start getting stronger, then quickly losing strength.

 

[Drawando]

interesting concept, but to implent it.....
hard to wrap my head around it, but i woiuld certainly play

 

[DYin01]

Ya know I think Yahtzee is wrong about this. His main argument is you get stronger and stronger in RPG's so the difficulty goes down...


He fails to realize that a developer with any skill gradually increases difficulty as the player gets stronger and more bold.


His theory = fail

And what you fail to realize is that this doesn't always hold true for a lot of games. The Witcher 2 is a good example. It's really challenging in the beginning, but you're an outright tank at the end and the game becomes incredibly easy. The toughest boss battles were in the beginning of the game. Skyrim is another good example. Your enemies do get tougher, but if you level properly you outfight them easily with your vast array of different skills and weapons.

 

[The Lugz]

I like the idea in concept but in practice I see it hard to make work. I think it would be better as a single player mechanic. The only thing I see able to motivate the player to give up power is to progress a storyline. The skinner box mechanics of an MMORPG doesn't work well with this because that getting stronger is a big reason to level. But if you can make a compelling story that needs the player to sacrifice something of themselves to progress the storyline.

this could be the perfect mmo storyline or starting area as in level 1-20 with endgame stuff, then get thrown in a dungeon for some reason and begin again as Bethesda style

at which point you know how to play the game

it's sheer genius I tell you!

 

[Dhatz]

to break the binary and bilateral thinking, we should develop systems with at elast 3 axes of development or such where xp and levels are only symbolic progress indicator and real changes are in the character development.

 

[Jfswift]

There is a small example of this being employed in Final Fantasy 7, at the gold saucer casino area. There's an arena mode where you select one player to fight for I think eight rounds and after each round you lose an ability. It was fun because it was challenging so I'll buy into your idea.

I've actually seen a game recently where overexerting yourself would physically hurt you, as in lower your stamina and that's kind of realistic actually. I think i'd be tired if I had to climb a bridge and I was already hungry/starving.

 

[Cerrax]

I've had an idea like this since I was little boy. I wanted to see a game where you start out completely healthy and normal, and then your character is struck with a horrible disease. In the struggle to find the cure, the game's enemies and obstacles remain the same difficulty, but the disease hinders your abilities further and further, gradually increasing the challenge. I'm surprised no one has done it yet.

One game that had a interesting mechanic was Maximo: Ghosts to Glory. Maximo begins the game with three slots which he can "lock" special powers in. He can gain more than three powers, but if he dies, he only respawns with the "locked" powers. The player gathers many different powers, but they must decide which powers are the most important to keep, because failure results in losing most of those powers. As each boss is defeated, Maximo is gioven and extra slot to "lock" an additional power. So you still grow stronger like a classic RPG and can amass an impressive arsenal of powers, but in a time of crisis, you can easily lose some of those powers, keeping the difficulty at a good challenge at all times.