when playing games i often find myself thinking, just 5 more kills will get me that extra level, THEN ill eat dinner. but i can't decide what it is about leveling up that keeps me playing? in the game i am currently designing, i was considering not showing the characters stats, which would be incresed automatically when the character levels, but still allowing the player to choose a new skill/ability. After thinking for a while about my proposed system, i wondered - "what makes leveling up addictive, and will my system be taking away from the fun?" what do you find most appealing about leveling up?

Skill/stat point increases. Isn't that the whole reason to level up anyway?

Being able to goto new places, do new things when you reach a certain level is what makes it fun for me..when things start to be repetitive then it gets boring.

They have these "IdleRPG" games on QuakeNet.com (IRC) where all you do is be idle in a channel and you get level ups.

Thats pretty much the whole game, and it usally has about 200 people on it.

Infact, talking on the channel counts as a penaltie, and makes it take longer to level up.

Thats what I call one hell of a boring game.

the possibility of gaining a new ability is always appealing. From personal experience, when I play RPG's, I stay in the first couple areas until i can kill the enemies in one or two hits. then i move on.

so yes, stat increases and new attacks. any milestone would do, really. It's a measurable amount of progress I can follow as I play the game.

I think the draw of change is phenomenally addictive. Pardon my overly broad generalization, but as a people we're always interested in something new: Stores rearrange themselves constantly, websites all always updating, we can't stand to eat the same meals constantly, go to the same places for fun, hear the same news, etc., etc.

When the numbers change in an RPG it holds the promise of greater change. The same challenges we faced might be easier; we can now enter new areas safely; try out new tactics and new equipment; or have a different reason for doing the same thing (story).

Levels, themselves, btw, offer short term goals that feed very nicely into the system. When timed correctly they build anticipation and frustration (in a good way) that is satisfied through a positive feedback mechanism.

Quote: Original post by Enumerator
They have these "IdleRPG" games on QuakeNet.com (IRC) where all you do is be idle in a channel and you get level ups.

Thats pretty much the whole game, and it usally has about 200 people on it.

Infact, talking on the channel counts as a penaltie, and makes it take longer to level up.

The net never ceases to amaze me. But I'd be worried if there were 20k people doing that. Then I'd think I was in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.

I'ts pretty much a human nature issue. We like to achieve goals and receive rewards. Here endith game design 101.

Now, if I can just finish spackling the den my wife promised to cook me a nice dinner... got to run! Droooollllll...

when MMORPG concepts go too far....

For me the allure has always been more or less easily obtainable short term goals which immediatly segue to the next goal.

So in leveling, you say to yourself, 'just keep going till I get to lvl 30', then you get to lvl 30, and you say, 'just till I get some equipment for my lvl 30 character in town'. Followed is:

'Wait till I try out the equipment. Wow, I'm leveling so fast, just till I get 25% to lvl 31, then I'll stop. Oh, I'm so close to 1/3. Well, I'm at 1/3, let's go for 1/2...'

You get the idea. This is why IMO Black and White was addictive. You'd work for so long obtaining personal goals, and as you got to one goal, the next seemed so easily obtainable.

So a game is addictive when it offers a series of progressively more challenging goals which the player can achieve. As soon as the next goal seems too far out of reach is when the player will take a break, and when his interest can potentially wane.

Just keep the player playing for three more minutes. There's ALWAYS three more minutes to spend playing.

But the goals should give some kind of positive feedback, or else they're not worth obtaining. If the goals are just goals, then they're no fun.

I agree with Numsgil. Make sure you have multiple threads of progression going. For example, in Wizardry 8, I had 8 characters. At any given time, at least one of them was close to levelling. In Diablo, I either was close to levelling, or close beating the next [mini]-boss and getting cool items, or close to getting enough money to buy something, etc. Try to make sure that there are multiple simultaneous things going on, and at different rates. (One of the problems with Wizardry 8 was that you usually had two or three guys who levelled at exactly the same rate, so it unnecessarily cut down the parallelism from 8 down to around 4 or so.)