The links that the AP gave are a bit interesting, I almost have to assume that the AP is 'Hawkins', simply because both threads are started by Hawkins and the AP posted them as reference instead of opinion.

I think that the idea of 'holding back' the 'powergamers' is silly. They will separate themselves out no matter what you do. If you doubt it, then just look at EQ. Every server has an 'uberguild' that is sitting in high-end GoD (Uqua or higher) and the community tends to cycle through those 'uberguilds'.

If you want a quick and dirty version of those discussions, it goes something like this:

1) Treadmills and forced grouping is necessary to keep the ubers from being *too* uber (impossible, IMO) and to keep the casual gamer 'in the curve'.

There are ways to mitigate the 'uberdom' of people, but there will always be people at the top of the curve and people at the bottom.

2) An MMO can't be an RPG, simply because role-playing is centered around playing a hero.

Whatever...

Both threads do have something in common though, beyond the "Stop the Ubers!!!" theme, even though many participants are ubers (in the second thread they reclassify themselves as "overachievers").

I think that there is a huge difference between solo content and grouping content. Solo content should be something where you enter an area and must make it through with as much brains and stealth as with ability. There is 1 big problem with the solo vs. group ideas: In reality, if 1 guy is faced with 20 orcs, unless there is some reason why they can't simply overbear him and slit his throat, he is a dead man. That is why we group. 20 vs. 4 is completely different because someone can say "I've got your back" and if 20 try to overwhelm 1, the others can start slitting the overbearer's throats and all of a sudden it's 12 vs. 4 and skill becomes a much bigger player in the situation.

Is solo content appropriate for every class? No. Sad to say, but there is no reason why a Warrior should be trying to run into enemy territory to kill the enemy leader and expect success, regardless of his capabilities. The Rogue or Ranger? They can expect to sneak through by stealth and maybe get close enough to get an attack off. They might even get an assassination attempt off successfully without being detected and be able to sneak away, though it's sure that the enemy is going to search for them soon. It's a stupid priest who tries the same thing, unless his deity is the God of Stealth and Assassins.

There should be content that is centered around solo play. It's not going to be a way to get 'phat lewt' though. That would just lead to abuses and rogues getting rich quick. Then again, you get rich enough and that brings about it's own consequences...

One thing I do dislike though, from the second discussion: Holding players back based upon RL time passage. When I heard that they were going to do it in Horizons I immediately wrote the game off, to some extent. Any game that does this is just asking for the higher end players (who are actually needed, someone needs to create the 'elite' in the game) to leave. And keeping new players from getting to those upper echelons. If someone needs to spend time waiting to level up, they're going to log out, figure out what time they can log back in to get their level up, login and then play more.... eventually they'll log out, go fool around with another game, get hooked on it and never log back into your game. Anything in an MMO that causes players to log out is bad. I don't even like the idea of rebooting the servers all at once... just reboot them one at a time and let the players move from zone to zone avoiding your rebooting if you *have* to.

There is something that I did get from the first topic. The need to keep people in a bell-shaped power curve. Because I want to create an uncapped system, there needs to be some way to basically slow down the top and speed up the bottom groups while keeping the center happy. The ubers will always be ubers, no matter what you do to them. But the players at the bottom will want to get up to the rest of the playerbase as quickly as they can so that they can group and play with more players all the sooner. The options of either A) creating a level 'cap' (EQ is now 70, used to be 65, then 60 before that, then 50 before that) or B) Accepting that players are going to be 'out of their league' somewhat permanently if they start after a certain point in time.

Socializing is what these games are really about. You socialize while playing a game and having fun. If your players are doing those 2 things, you've succeeded.

Anyway, I'm just mostly babbling now ;).

Well, I never considered the idea of eliminating ubers or skill depreciation beyond the academic thought, primarily because there are too many skills that you never really lose. I was straddled with doing decay to 1/2 your max skill then quick recovery or eliminating decay completely. My reasons? How fast do *you* lose skill? I can still do probabilities and statistics in my head relatively quickly. Can you pull the verb, subject and action out of this sentence?

Skills 'decay' horribly slowly in the real world and when they do it takes little more than a quick refresher to put you back not far from where you were before. If you really want to go all the way with realism, you're better off only having decay put you to 1/2 your skill max and then having recovery take 1/4th the amount of time it takes to gain new skill, if not closer to 1/10th. Skill decay down to the base and then making someone relearn their skills completely isn't realistic, it's just another form of penalizing the players. Penalize players enough and they'll penalize you by not playing your game.

Hmmm.. Morrowind did have a fairly interesting system, but it was all built around a class system (custom or otherwise) that would make some skills easier to learn, and some not. Either way you ended up with a jack of all trades anyway.

I think a system where the more a player does a particular action (trying to cast, swinging big swords, etc) the more it increases that particular skill, and eventually if the player keeps in a particular direction, he attains a class status (fighter, mage etc). A good way to keep them from learning every skill though, would be to have certain skills Opposite each other.

What this basically means is, if a big burly fighter wants to learn magic, by putting skill points into magic, it will decrease his fighting skills in proportion to each point he learns (vice versa for fighters skills). So the more magic he learns, the less of a fighter he becomes, down to a certain level. To this end, you could just give them a certain number of allocatable points that they use by utilizing the specific skills they want to increase.

This way they can be put into specific classes, but be able to branch them selves out into other classes if they want to, it would be upto the players preference. This would also prevent quick class swaping in groups, since it would take time to train and move your skills around, (once allocated, they might be alot harder to reallocate).

I think a character class represents much more than just the background history and the abilities of the character. It also includes things such as aptitude (e.g. as in the inherent ability to learn magick) and connections to different entities (a sorcerer could have an access to the facility where he first learned sorcery etc.). Of course, in games where you can level up wherever you want, all this is abstracted away, but I think it's still there.

If the class system was abolished, so to speak, how would you put in these limitations? I mean, you can learn to fight with a sword by practicing, but who is going to teach you all the special moves? In a purely class-based system this would be done by the friends and tutors implied by the class. How are you supposed to learn magickal spells? Just casting a thousand magic missiles doesn't necessarily have to make it better. And I don't think you could improve your "quantum mechanics" skill from level 0 just by trial and error.

So if skills are abolished, but the inherent limitations and assumptions made by them are desired, something else should be thought of. One way to do this was to replace the classes by guilds, cults, what have you, and replace the class levels by titles (such as apprentice, master, and so on). By gaining "levels" in "classes" (that is, getting higher ranks in organizations), the guilds could teach you all those spells and special moves.

This way, you could still retain the desirable limitations, but get rid of the artificial class-level-system. Of course, the system would still be in there, in some way, but it wouldn't be so artificial.

Learning skills by doing is a good thing, but you can't learn everything that way. At least you need someone to help to get you started.

By far the most fun I ever have had in an rpg was a skilled based one. The reason skill based systems are so fun is that you get a higher dimension of customization. Every game that has a skill based system shows this. Examples are Diablo 1 and 2, Ultima Online, and Morrowind.

Skill based systems also fit the whole paradigm of Role Playing games. You truly get to create your own role when you select your unique skills. My friends and I who partake in the same rpg games will have totally different characters from each other, this of course adds to the fun 10 fold. My friends and I can all be warriors, yet we have skills that make us unique. One might be a tailorer, another a blacksmith/miner, and another a thief/warrior.

Whenever we play level based games, all of ours chars are the same, and there is very little deviation among characters. Almost no diversity. Examples are EQ, SB, and WoW. If we're all a warrior in the games just mentioned, our chars are almost exactly the same, except one of my friends attacks will do more damage, and one of my different attacks will do more damage, but we both have all of eacht ohers attacks. And the most powerful attacks we have are both the ones that we level. No diversity.

Level based games can be fun, but to me and my friends, they are not as fun as skill based games. Designers complain about overpoweredness, but I have yet to see a skill based game that has crumbled to this. Patches and balance are harder to implement, but worth the effort.

I could see a system like that being useful in a single player game (1 level = 1 year), but in an MMO it's impractical, more for the fact that you'll have 2 people that start at age 16 and a few days later one is 32 and the other is only 24.

Back to Hawkins: Maybe I didn't phrase it well. I didn't really mean stop the ubers as in stop them from being uber, I meant stop the ubers as in keep them from dominating the landscape of your game world. Everquest was doing relatively good at this from start to Vellioius, but with Luclin, it started to become easier and easier to become an 'uber', particularly with quick leveling zones (Paludal Caverns) and the high number of zones targeting the ubers (The Deep, Ssra Temple, Akheva Ruins, Vex Thal) and it's just gotten worse in most of the other expansions, excepting LDoN. 4 out of the last 6 expansions were largely targeting only the higher end players, only about 10-15% of the playerbase.

Of course, you end up with a lot of problems with any system unless you put in caps and if you put in caps, then the playerbase is going to attain the highest level relatively quickly (every MMOG since EQ has had very fast leveling, with few exceptions) and then the highest end players are going to get bored. The lower end content is going to empty out, regardless of the fact that huge tracts of the game world were built around the early game, so then you have the option of putting in 'the grind', that dreaded thing that everyone apparently hates, but somehow seem to hate it not being there more.

This is something that Im struggling with as well.

With an level-grind system ...well its a grind.
With a pure-skill levels...someone could be come the master of all skills.

A Korean game called RF Online actually splits these up with an XP level and a level for each skill, kind of mentioned in this thread before.

So you can learn new skills, but you will hit with a low proficiency. Thats fine but once you reach XP LEVEL 30 you cant attack lower level mobs ...so that means you cant level up your new skills.

Now you can stay at a lower level until you raise all the skills for that level, but it would take a bloody long time to advance.

So what is the answer for designing a system with:

a) no classes - dynamic characters
b) no xp grind
c) skill per use but no one being the master of all skills

Anyone...anyone?

Quote:

Original post by Vanquish a) no classes - dynamic characters b) no xp grind c) skill per use but no one being the master of all skills Anyone...anyone?

Perhaps a maximum amount of skill points (you get these skill points when using the skill). You can use, for example, 300 skill points (skill max is 100 points) so you can be master of 3 skills. When all your skill points are used up and you start advancing in another skill your other skills will weaken accordingly.. Not sure if that's a good system but that's one way to avoid players becoming masters in all skills..

Aren't they all just different ways of making the player stronger as they spend time on the game?

I personally would prefer a skill-based system that gives you a numerical skill level based on your character's skills and abilities. Your level could be determined by your skill instead of the other way around; it could be merely an indication of how good you are.

I'm up for the skill based games....

however, just know how to make the player trees like a simple
"rock paper scissors" way of leveling

example:
I have a character with 20 points in my rock skill
If I go against someone with a 40 point rock skill, I would be owned to the end of time...

example #2:
I have another character with 40 points in my paper skill, I could just come up to Mr. lvl40 rock man and clobber his bum.

example #3:
At the sound of his friend being clobbered, Mr. lvl40 scisors man comes over and cuts me to ribbons...

As I'm saying, if there are always ways to combat each and every option, you'd eliminate that "leet"ness in your game.

At the same time, you would benifit those that play the game more.

On top of that, you get your all time addictive factor... diversity.

I hope this helped...