hi Konidias,

i would consider this approach also, maybe create a new game mode that allows to play with no level ups, i will also try to implement all other leveling systems we talked about (allow user to choose).

i am afraid that if i completely remove leveling then my game will end like fury online :( . It had great pvp, but because it had no levels none played so it died.

1) are my fears irrational ?
2) i remember me as a rpg player, not playing great games just because it had no levels. (Stupid, i know, but thats how i felt )
3) I think there are more rpg players than other game gendres , or am i wrong ?

thanks,

One way to do it is to look at how combat works in real life and try to model it.

A more experienced fighter in real life can not take more damage than an inexperienced fighter. A sword to the face will kill either of them.

An experienced fighter is not invincible to a less experienced fighter. The inexperienced fighter may get lucky, the experienced fighter may make a mistake.
The outcome of a fight is not known beforehand, even though one fighter may be more likely to win.


In order to bridge the huge gap seen in typical rpg games, where a high level character can slice down 30 new characters without breaking a sweat, you make the power gap alot smaller.

I'm working on a game at the moment and the rough idea for player skills is this:

Every character has (roughly) the same amount of hit-points. This isn't hitpoints in the usualy sense, but a "blood supply" you could call it.

Each character also has an injury model (can't think of a better name for it!), which details the injuries sustained to each body part.

A successful strike against a characters leg with a blunt weapon, for example, will break the bone and seriously cripple the character impeding movement speed., until it heals (a time of a game week or so), or repaired with the aid of a healer (resulting in a faster healing time)

A successful strike against a characters neck with a small blade, may result in heavy bleeding, resulting in rapid drop of hitpoints (or blood supply), and then death. A larger blade may take the head clean off, resulting in instant death.

A strike against a characters hand could result in losing a finger or two, permanently affecting the dexterity of the hand, and affecting the accuracy of any weapon he uses with that hand.


The point being, that any character should be able to suffer these injuries no matter how experienced they are. The difference between a combat experienced character and an inexperienced character is that an experienced character should be harder to hit successfully. Once he does get hit, the consequence is no different than any other character getting hit. It may only take one strike from a new player to cause instant death, or serious injury.

As for working out if a player is successfully hit or not, a decent ratio may be a totally new character has a 5% chance of hitting a veteran character, which slowy increases to 50% as the new characters skill gets closer to the skill of the veteran. A new player can cause instant death to a veteran character, but it's more likely the veteran character will incapacitate the new character first. But that's never guaranteed.

I have a combat system in mind for the game which doesn't involve the dice-rolls of usual rpgs, but thats for another day, i've typed enough for now, and i'm not sure most of it made much sense. Or is even on topic. But i've typed it all so I'm going to post it anyway. Call it the ramblings of a crazy programmer.

@ DaveMS - The possibility of long-lasting or permanent injury is the reason most people in real life choose not to do any recreational fighting. Are you trying to discourage your players from fighting? Don't forget the all-important design question, "But is it fun?"

@sunandshadow

I agree to a certain extent, this really depends on the type of game these mechanics are employed in.

My ideas above are based on my own game i'm creating, which is a rouge-like type game, perma-death, procedurally generated world, content, and NPCs.

The death of your character doesn't end the game as such, the player is "born" as another character, in the same world his previous one just died in.

Hopefully a system like this will dampen the effects of permanent death to a degree, as the player is still able to see the effects his previous characters have had on the world.

I may even go as far as a family system, where the new character is born as a son to the death character and inherits a percentage of the dead character's wealth.

I'm still deciding on things at the moment, but one idea I had was to implement an aging system, where characters would grow old and eventually die, in the hope that player's wouldn't worry to much about perma-death.

"My character is going to die anyway eventually, so if he dies sooner due to combat, it's no big deal.."

But then I figured a system like that wouldn't be in the best interest of players at all.

After all, a player can cope with knowing that his character may die, but when he knows that it will die, then developing the character seems pointless.


I like the idea of permanent death, it forces players to be more considerate about their battles, and keeps the tension high.

I know perma-death RPGs aren't every gamers idea of fun, but I think there are emotions which can't be captured by any other game mechanics (or not as strongly at least).

Dave, I like what you said about making the power gap smaller. This actually could benefit a lot of online games right now.

Basically instead of having a level 50 player doing 40x the damage of a level 1 player, they would do maybe 5x or less.

Making leveling take a while and also not giving so much power increase for each level might at least balance things out for a lot longer.

I was also thinking about the whole "if you get a sword to the neck you're pretty much dead no matter how strong you are" thing, and that also could apply here. If you pit two average guys against eachother in a fist fight, one of them has to end up winning... So how do they determine who wins? Well I guess whoever can outsmart the other or who has more experience with fighting, etc. It then becomes a different sort of battle instead of "my punches can blow holes through brick walls so I win!"

Quote:

Original post by Si Hao A level 10 paladin and a level 20 paladin does have a power difference, a level 20 can kill monsters a level 10 cant.

Yes, but the monsters that a Level 20 faces will be equally hard to them. Because the monsters level up (or if new monsters are introduced they are the equivalent of the old ones levelled up) any actual gain in "power" is actually illusionary in terms of the game.

Sure in the numbers the character is "Stronger" but in terms of gameplay they are not.

Quote:

Original post by Si Hao A level 20 paladin has an advantage over a level 10 paladin in stats, equipment and skills. That is evidence of a player getting more powerful as level progresses.

No, because the challenges they face are matched to their power level. It is pure illusion in terms of gameplay.

It is not evidence, at all, of a character getting more powerful, only evidence that people fall for this illusion so readily.

Yes, in current games if a level 20 Paladin met a level 10 paladin the level 20 would wipe the floor with them, but this is not actually evidence of a more powerful (in terms of gameplay) character. If the gameplay is Player vs Player, then this would be true, but games like WoW, although they do have the capability of PvP are not primarily PvP, but are instead Player vs Environment.

As these games are PvE, then any "power" considerations must be taken in this context. A level 20 Paladin will ahve just as much difficulty tackling the dungeons designed for their level as a level 10 paladin will have for the dungeons designed for their level.

So in terms of gameplay, in WoW, there is no real power difference between the different levels because the game adjusts the difficulty of the areas to suit the character's current stats. If there is no effective difference in the power level, then any perceived difference in their power level must be illusionary.

So looking at the gameplay of any MMO, they design their areas to suit a particular character level, and funnel the characters into these as their levels reach the appropriate value. Therefore the gameplay of these is designed to cancel out any gain in power that the player gets, thus making any numerical gain nullified, turning what is a numerical increase into an illusionary gameplay increase.

Just to give an example, if instead of increasing the player's stats, what if you just reduced the stats of all the old monsters (and introduced new monsters with normal stats). This would effectively do exactly the same as increasing the player's stats. But would you feel the same sense of advancement? Probably not. So this completely rules out being able to beat up the old monsters and face new monsters with the same level of difficulty as earlier in the game as being what give the player the sense of advancement.

What also goes to prove that the sense of increased power that comes from such results just illusionary (which is my argument). Giving the player bigger numbers makes them feel as if they have increased in power, but in reality this sense of advancement is just an illusion because if you achieve the same results (being able to defeat old monsters easier) through lowering the monsters stats, the player no longer feels this sense of advancement (and probably would feel slightly cheated about it too).

It is the old "Red Queen Dilemma". In the book: "Alice through the looking glass", one of the characters "The Red Queen" is seen running as fast as she can on the spot. When Alice asks here why she is doing this, she tells her that she has to run as fast as she can, just to stay where she is.

In these Games, the character has to increase their stats as fast as they can, just to hold their ground with the new monsters. They are not advancing at all, they are just "running on the spot".

Another proof then, a level 20 paladin meets a level 10 paladin on the field and decided to attack him. If both paladins are controlled by players with comparable skills the level 20 paladin will always win out. Why? Because his weapon does more damage, he has more HP, he has more mana to cast his heals, he has more armor and can cast better spells a level 10 paladin can't.

What you mentioned of monsters leveling up with a player is in fact a choice. A choice the level 20 paladin chooses, he chooses to fight monsters designed for a level 20 paladin instead of those designed for a level 10 paladin. Because this monsters provide better drops and experience gains compared to a lower level monster.

This does not change the fact that a level 20 paladin did gain power with his leveling. In fact the level 20 paladin can go back to a level 10 area and farm lower level monsters with ease but the benefits are just not there for him to bother.

Also, the level 20 WoW paladin can choose to fight level 10 monsters. He won't get any experience but he can blow them away much faster than the level 10 and thus make money much faster than the level 10, so the level 20 character is more economically powerful.

I'm going to have to agree with Edtharan here. Si Hao, you basically just reiterated what he already said. Obviously a PvP match of level 20 vs level 10 is going to be outmatched if you include their stats. We're talking about if the stats didn't matter or didn't exist. The level 20 wouldn't have any huge advantage other than playing the game longer.

As far as you stating that a level 20 makes the choice to fight level 20 monsters... that's ridiculous. The game designers are practically bending your arm and telling you to fight them. You get better drops and experience from the level 20 monsters for a reason.

The whole mmorpg leveling system is like walking up a down escalator. You feel like you're making progress but in reality you're not going anywhere. (like the alice reference)

Sure as a level 20 you can go back and 1 shot kill level 5 monsters or something, but what do you gain from that now? Nothing. So what did your strength get you? The ability to defeat level 20 monsters. Huzzah! Then when you get to level 30 after grinding all those level 20 monsters, guess what? Yep, you get to kill level 30 monsters. And so on and so forth until the end of time. (or until the game runs out of level gains)

So using WoW as an example... in order to experience the actual "content" or what is referred to by most players as the "end game", you have to painfully grind your way through 80 levels until you can now effectively battle players on a more even playing field, and actually do things like raiding to take down big monsters with other people. Most WoW players will willingly admit that the best part of the game is the end game content... so why not remove all of the level grind and just let players play the rest of the game? The simple answer is because "developers are lazy and unimaginative and it gives them time to work on new stuff while people are grinding".

The reason why games like this have to keep introducing stronger monsters as you gain levels is because they have a horrible combat system. There isn't enough to enjoy in the battles to make it worth your time unless you're gaining something else from it. (experience/levels) If you notice in WoW, 95% of monsters do the same thing. They run at you and attack relentlessly. This is not interesting or creative in any way. The combat is stale, but they make up for it by saying "hey look, you got stronger!".

It's basically Progress Quest

How can it be an illusion when a higher level has better stats better equipment more areas to explore quest farm compared to a lower level player and as sunandshadow has pointed out the higher level player is more economically powerful too.