MMOG Creators On The Levelling Treadmill

Thanks to RPGVault for their article discussing the problems of repetitive gameplay in MMORPGs. The article defines the issue as "...the so-called "levelling treadmill" that involves repetitive play, often combat against NPCs that present little real challenge, in order to advance [the player's] characters" Representatives from NCSoft, Microsoft, and Auran offer their opinions, which range from "...levelling in and of itself is not evil" to "...levelling has to become dull or the level-up reward would lack value."

Comments

"Levelling must become dull"

[deemah]

I don't understand why levelling must be a dull process for the reward to mean anything. The main problem with the majority of MMO*s is that combat is the main focus of levelling. The game then devolves into a "who can get to the spawn point fastest" competition.

Star Wars Galaxies has gone some way to remedy this with experience granted for other skill use but in doing this they've neglected the section of their playerbase who want to fight hordes of creatures.

What's needed is a balance between the two - have the tunnels of orcs or caves of tuskan raiders for players who want to go all out hack'n'slash to haunt but also have experience/level points awarded for other actions. Neverwinter Nights is one that balances these very nicely but then it's just a translation of the D&D rule set.

Re:"Levelling must become dull"

[MrResistor]

I don't understand why levelling must be a dull process for the reward to mean anything.

I think the guy who said that has it exactly backwards. Levelling in my pen-and-paper D&D game certainly isn't dull, and even then the main focus is often (though not always) combat. Then again, we generally are fighting opponents that are actually appropriate to our power level.

Star Wars Galaxies has gone some way to remedy this with experience granted for other skill use but in doing this they've neglected the section of their playerbase who want to fight hordes of creatures.

What's needed is a balance between the two - have the tunnels of orcs or caves of tuskan raiders for players who want to go all out hack'n'slash to haunt but also have experience/level points awarded for other actions. Neverwinter Nights is one that balances these very nicely but then it's just a translation of the D&D rule set.

Morrowind has an excellent system, I think. You raise level by increasing your skills, which you can do either by using them in "real world" situations or by paying for training. The important thing is that EVERYTHING is governed by a skill (or more than one in some cases): Your ability to hit with a weapon and the amount of damage you do are effected by your skill with that type of weapon, your movement rate and endurance are effected by your skill with the type of armor you're wearing, etc.

Anybody can learn any skill, and that gets balanced by having class skills be worth more in terms of gaining levels, so you can have a fighter that casts spells but he won't gain levels as fast as a fighter who just focused on his weapon and armor skills.

And again, even the fighter who just focuses on weapons doesn't have to just go out and kill stuff to level up. If he manages to get ahold of a good sum of money somehow, he could get a bunch of training and level up that way. Note that a trainer can only train you up to a certain ability level, which varies from trainer to trainer.

game based on FUDGE?

[Tirel]

I found the role-playing system called FUDGE (the docs can be downloaded for free here wondefull. It has no concept of levelling at all, but a skill based system and is far more realistic than say, ADND. The only problem is that is relies on the GM more than other systems, but that could be changed. If they're trying to remove levelling (to an extent) they should definately check fudge out.

If you found levelling evil, boring, whatever

[jsse]

you can pay people to level for you. In Taiwan you can pay less than 2 bucks per days to hire someone who happens to hang around in Internet shop all day. Those kids are so willingly to do what they love to do while earning a little wage and staying in shop for free. It's becoming popular as those 'power gamers' you hire can level much better than you. :D

You don't approach those 'power gamers' directly rather you pay the Internet shop owers to hire them for you. The shop owner bascially charge no commission in this deal but he'll charge you internet access fee for the gamer(s) you hire.

It has already become a social problem in Taiwan as that actually encourage kids skipping classes and social life. Besides, this is an awful sweatshop practise, though the employees seem to be very happy about it, but not their parents. :)

I've been told similar business has been found in Korea. Anyone knows?

Re:Quests can be as bad as the Treadmill

[Allen Varney]

Sure, there are some people who really get off on reading all that carefully-scripted NPC chatter, paragraph after paragraph of it, like you find in a lot of NWN modules, but most of us don't fire up a High Fantasy Adventure game so we can read pre-generated text.

I recently finished a six-month contract on a high-profile MMORPG, scripting missions and writing NPC dialogue of exactly the type you disdain. The company's polls show that about 5% of the player base enjoys reading the dialogue. With that figure, text is certainly not a priority for any design team -- but if you've got the resources, why not include the text? A MMORPG tries to be all things to all players, or at least as many things as possible to as many players as you can get. The text entertains the 5%, and the other 95% ignore it.

From the company's viewpoint it's just an incidental nicety. Because -- believe me! -- compared to artists and coders, writers are cheap.

Re:If there is no levelling

[MrResistor]

It's interesting to consider how a system would work without levels at all (neither hidden nor visible)

It's been a while since I've played it, so I could have some details wrong, but IIRC the origional Call of Chthulhu game by Chaosium was pretty close to that. Basically, if you used a skill you put a mark by it and if your character survived the session you would then get to make a role to see if the marked skills went up (Make a skill roll and if you failed you got to add 1d6 to it I think). I don't remember there being any levels at all.

Then again, the game concept does NOT include the idea that the monsters the characters are facing should be in any way defeatable by them.

MMORPGs and the Big Problem

[skyknytnowhere]

I used to play AO and now I play Planetside, so I like to think I've tried both sides of the equation.

The thing about AO was that you had a character to upgrade and advance in a multitude of (albeit tiny, almost meaningless) ways to get an overall better character. This persistent character can then go around and have fun in the world, killing monsters and gaining levels. There was permanence, my characters cool stuff stayed with him, and if you took over a section of Notum mining you kept it and the bonuses.

But you still had to play for hundreds of hours for all those tiny, meaningless improvements to mean anything, and to do anything really cool.

This is the same idea in EQ, you gain levels to use the burny swords and the glowy armor.

On the opposite side of the field, you've got Planetside. In just a few hours, a player can any equipment in the game, and blow up the people that have played the game since the beginning. This is the point, of course, and one of the reasons the game is so much fun.

But nothing ever CHANGES. You capture the same base night after night, fire the same guns, get killed by the same enemies guns, and get run over by the same vehicles, every day. It's not a level treadmill so much as it's building sand castles in front of the rising tide. No matter how much progress you make during the night, it will all evaporate guaranteed. Being a high level doesn't mean anything, save that you don't have to log out and log back in to play with different toys in-game.

Now, I don't think it'd be possible in the AO/EQ/DAOC style of gameplay to make lower level characters worthwhile, they are designed against it.

But I'd love to see higher level characters given new toys/a different paradigm of gameplay in Planetside, and the inevitable games like it. I think making even beginning players worthwhile to a conflict in an MMORPG is vital to making it fun, but at the same time, gaining levels should reward the player with more/better/different ways of playing.

Actually, after I wrote that, I realized that someone already wrote an article to that effect, though about a different era of online games. But his point remains the same: Gamers of all dedication/skill level/hours of free time available should have fun things to do, that at least they percieve as worthwhile.

yes, that email at the bottom is my 15 year old self.

skye

Re:Quests can be as bad as the Treadmill

[Golias]

Well, I'm not calling for RPG story-text writers like you to be fired off. I'm just saying that not every frikken game has to take the exact same approach to making their content richer.

Also, forcing the other 95% of players to follow the path of that 5% is not the way to make your MMORPG a richer experience. The reason why most people don't bother with it when it's "optional" is because most people don't find it all that much fun.

Remember how flipped out we all were when Quake added 360 movement to the FPS? When EverQuest added graphics and movement to the concept of a MUD? When Descent divorced flight-sim physics from space combat gaming? When Warcraft liberated computer strategy games from "waiting for the other players to go," in favor or RTS? The mid-90's were chock full of interesting new ways to play games on a computer. I miss that. I just can't get excited about SWG, because there really isn't anything new there. There hasn't been a FPS that turned my head since Jedi Knight.

I even miss the failed experiments from those days. "Die by the Sword" was a combat game in which you swung your weapon by using a complex set of key strokes to specifically "move the sword from upper-right to middle-left, while extending the arm."

Now days, it seems like PC game developers would rather chase after duplicating past successes than come out with anything new. All the really interesting gambles are happening in the console gaming world, which has it's share of stagnant "me too" games, but also seems to have plenty of room for new ideas. "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball," for the X-Box, as an example, is a delightfully weird hybrid of Japanese dating sims, a simple sports game, cartoon pin-ups, and cut-out dolls. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's certainly a lot more interesting to discuss than the whatever next iteration of "Left vs. RIght fighting" will be.

Anyway, I'm starting to stray way off-topic. My original point was that, before I spend my hard-earned money on yet another MMORPG, I want to see some real innovation from somebody. The current favored approach to making them more interesting ("let's slap some 'missions' content on that thing!") is not going to cut it with me. Nor, I suspect, with a lot of other people.