[quote name='AltarofScience' timestamp='1341898723' post='4957522']
The real question is, should combat be realistic? Is actual swordfighting really all that fun? Hitting 17000 monsters to level up is just like real life sword fighting. Except in real life you are hitting a dummy all those times when you are just learning, which is way more boring than fighting a monster.

Eh, not so much xD It's more 'today, you will learn such and such move' and you spar with a friend to get a feel for it. 'Today you will practice beating their weapon aside,' 'today, you will practice catching their wrist mid-swing,' etc. There's actually very little to learn from smacking an inanimate object, aside from proper striking form.

Doing one thing 17k times will just teach you how to do one thing, no matter what it is. To learn new moves, you have to actually try new moves. Legend of Legaia is a good example: your 'fight' command consisted of up, down, left, and right inputs, and normally, you'd just punch or kick an enemy there. But if you strung the proper directions together, you'd activate a special attack like slamming your elbow or heel into their skull. You could find these combos totally by accident in-battle, or you could have them taught to you.
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Its true that you don't spend all your time doing that. But in order to become exceptional, you need to work on your muscle memory and your muscles. 17000 is a lot, but a few thousand certainly isn't. And you know if you are an athlete you have done several thousand pushups over your lifetime. I haven't been very physically active for years, but I've still got thousands of pushups under my belt. Furthermore, you just dont have access to the same number of skills in a game as real life. And as for combos, you actually do get more effective at various moves if you practice them. And you learn to apply them to targets that aren't all the same. If you do a lot of grappling with smaller dudes, bigger ones will not be as easy to deal with.

To the op,

Diablo 3 tried to do this, The levelling up system was of no real consequence. You put no points in(they are automatically added), and the points you do gain are minuscule in the grand scheme of things. The skills were locked initially, but all the skills open up at about level 30(??) if I remember correctly, it was just meant to ease the person into the game, the ultimate aim was to have all skills unlocked as early as possible to allow the player to choose any spell/skill at any time.

I think a better approach would be something like: there are 60 or more possible skills, they are all available to purchase from the beginning for one point each (well for some you might need to complete a quest to unlock them), but the player only starts with a basic attack and 2 points to spend, and has to earn the remaining skill points over time. On top of that, the player might start out with four skill equipment slots, and could earn more of those over time. Theoretically someone who had purchased the whole library of skills and the max number of, say 10 or 12 equipment slots would not be buffer than a starting character, but there would be some sense of progression. But in practice it would be hard to balance.

Almost a decade back, I was involved in an RPG maker competition where we had to come up with an original concept to hybridize the jrpg genre.
My testament was to make a game where most of the progression occured in the first quarter, leading to a sandbox afterwards.
What I chose to do is let the player experience a level that was, mostly just a school. Much akin to Harry Potter's school of witchcraft and wizardry, the player had to choose which classes to attend over the course of 3 "day/night" cycles. The game was real-time and the day/night cycle was too.
What this meant is that the player had to rush into classes, get a max of 4 per day approximately, for 3 days, ending with a max of 12 classes that improved various elements of the characters including stats and skills. Or, they could be the bad student and favor social interactions within that time, which affected the character in different ways (never really had much time to devote to this, but the plan was to get a dating-sim in there alongside a few other stuff).

Then, the game opened up as the student was tossed into the world, fully maxed out stats-wise. The further from the school you go overall, the more dangerous monsters were. This forced the player to tackle nearby objectives to obtain gear, the progression mechanic that I had retained, so that moving further was made possible.
This was made to ressemble wizards from the movies. You can't really imagine Gandalf leveling up, but he could stumbly upon a stronger staff allowing him to defeat Saruman or even Sauron. At least that was the intended target.

The botom line here is that it enforced a very specific concept in order to work out, and the sandbox part was, by far, the least interesting from the two in the end. It was like taking an ingredient off the formula of success to replace it with nothing.

My advice is, if you intend on doing anything of that nature, you need to find a kickass progression mechanic to replace leveling which is a punctual reward for the player.

Is actual swordfighting really all that fun?

Mount & Blade convinced me that it was. Simple, elegant, and though you do levelup, a skilled player could defeat a village of 200 while clearly underleveled. I loved that.

Almost a decade back, I was involved in an RPG maker competition where we had to come up with an original concept to hybridize the jrpg genre.
My testament was to make a game where most of the progression occured in the first quarter, leading to a sandbox afterwards.
What I chose to do is let the player experience a level that was, mostly just a school. Much akin to Harry Potter's school of witchcraft and wizardry, the player had to choose which classes to attend over the course of 3 "day/night" cycles. The game was real-time and the day/night cycle was too.
What this meant is that the player had to rush into classes, get a max of 4 per day approximately, for 3 days, ending with a max of 12 classes that improved various elements of the characters including stats and skills. Or, they could be the bad student and favor social interactions within that time, which affected the character in different ways (never really had much time to devote to this, but the plan was to get a dating-sim in there alongside a few other stuff).

Then, the game opened up as the student was tossed into the world, fully maxed out stats-wise. The further from the school you go overall, the more dangerous monsters were. This forced the player to tackle nearby objectives to obtain gear, the progression mechanic that I had retained, so that moving further was made possible.
This was made to ressemble wizards from the movies. You can't really imagine Gandalf leveling up, but he could stumbly upon a stronger staff allowing him to defeat Saruman or even Sauron. At least that was the intended target.

The botom line here is that it enforced a very specific concept in order to work out, and the sandbox part was, by far, the least interesting from the two in the end. It was like taking an ingredient off the formula of success to replace it with nothing.

My advice is, if you intend on doing anything of that nature, you need to find a kickass progression mechanic to replace leveling which is a punctual reward for the player.

[quote name='AltarofScience' timestamp='1341898723' post='4957522']
Is actual swordfighting really all that fun?

Mount & Blade convinced me that it was. Simple, elegant, and though you do levelup, a skilled player could defeat a village of 200 while clearly underleveled. I loved that.
[/quote]

But how much is Mount and Blade like real sword fighting. I submit to you that Mount and Blade makes sword fighting far easier. I do not deny that many people like skill based systems, fighting games are a testament to that. But swordfighting in mount and blade is super simplified and unrealistic.

But how much is Mount and Blade like real sword fighting. I submit to you that Mount and Blade makes sword fighting far easier. I do not deny that many people like skill based systems, fighting games are a testament to that. But swordfighting in mount and blade is super simplified and unrealistic.

Then, case in point, the discipline known as "langen schwert" (german for long sword I believe) is impressive to the point where I'd rather watch that than a replay of Starcraft 2 (and I used to be pretty hardcore about these). I've been trying to find someone aroundhere to teach me that discipline. This is an insane mix between martial art using a sword and... well... geometry? I doubt you could implement this in a game without actually simplifying it, but I think it goes to show that swordfighting in and of itself is fun and a resource we can still improve on gameplay-wise.

I think we've gotten a little OT.

So the main challenge would be designing enough varied and possible challenges for players to utilize what abilities they have to succeed. When you look at it that way, linear numerical progression looks like an incredibly lazy way to design a time-sink.

Agreed?

If the objective is eliminating grinding, it follows that challenges need to overcome by performing well rather than by growing until the obstacles are small enough. This implies that the level-less game is going to be much more puzzle-like than a common RPG: complex plans, subtle tactics, peculiar equipment and skill configurations instead of straightforwardly bringing adequate offensive and defensive resources to the fight. A stronger puzzle orientation requires, in turn, more trial and error: loading games freely after failing, or failing in harmless ways, is necessary.

In OD&D that comes from CHAINMAIL, each level for a character represents the strength of 20 men. That means a whole lot more than being ordinary characters. Of course, the characters are 20 times stronger than an average soldier (man strength). Extraordinary strength is expected in RPGs, and RPGs that try to bring the players to normal human strength has failed to realize that bringing the character to human strength requires to increase the strength of monsters by a large factor. It will become impossible to defeat monsters straight up in one-on-one combat. The problem with puzzles is that casual players will end up looking the walkthrough, and that's why there's not a lot of puzzle games. Random puzzles don't have consistant difficulty level, and that will be unfair in an RPG.

I'll admit that a tactical challenge can in some lights be viewed as a puzzle, but would anyone consider X-Com a puzzle game? That's the kind of challenge I'm looking for. It's only unfair if it violates player expectations. Sometimes X-Com seemed rather unfair, but who can deny that was a great game?

And as far as failure is concerned, I like how the PSP Tactics Ogre does it: You can quicksave during battle, and you can even take back moves (back up the whole battle) but the RNG sequence is unchanged; You can't reload until you crit on a specific action.

I think in order to best explore a game that doesn't have leveling you have a to explore a wide variety of combat and skills. Something like FFtactics. Although leveling did matter to the main storyline, the grinding combat had the monsters level up with you which meant you needed to win tactically by knowing the skills you have, knowing what the enemy is weak against and knowing where to be on the map.

I can see why this is being compared to a puzzle game because the answer to combat needs to be worked out based on the rock, paper, scissors of what beats what to win (ie ice guy is weak to fire) instead of the number crunching of most RPGs. I think the ideal way to handle that is to implement skilled ability (timed and aimed skills) that give rock the ability to rip through paper. If you get my meaning.