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Grinding Time - On MMORPG Character Advancement
An anonymous reader alerted us that "Starglade has an editorial about character development systems, where the author discusses the two most common types of character improvement (classes & levelling, and skill based improvement), and makes some suggestions for future systems in MMORPGs."
The level grind is always a difficult issue in RPGs and particularly in MMORPGs. It does put a lot of people off and, yes, even I, a fairly avid MMORPG player, get pretty sick of it sometimes.
The problem is that all things considered, it's probably the "least bad" way of handling character advancement in a MMORPG. Ultimately, a sense of advancement is one of the best ways of keeping players interested in a game. If you could max out a character after a couple of days, you'd probably lose interest in the game pretty quickly. No matter how wonderful the quests and other content might be, you're going to start thinking "but why should I bother"? Moreover, given that it takes the developers a considerable amount of time to design quest-related content, you're never going to be able to get enough quests to allow them to replace the level-grind as a long-term option. The challenge for developers is to make the level grind as painless and even enjoyable as possible.
My MMORPG of choice is Final Fantasy XI. I think I can maybe shed some light on what I mean by pointing at some of the things it does right and wrong with regards to the level grind. First of all, the jobs system is a huge plus; being able to change to one job without losing my work in another is a huge plus and means that if I need a break from the level grind on my main job and there aren't any job specific quests I can go and do with it, I can switch to another job for a while and do some of the quests for that. I don't "do" crafting myself, but the skill system there seems fairly sensible; you gain skill in it by actually practicing making stuff, but there's a cap placed on your skill by your character's level, so advancing tradeskills requires a mix of practicing crafting and level grinding. The weapon skill system is similar; a level 50 character who's never used an axe before will be no better at using an axe than a level 1 character, although due to his high level, he'll learn more quickly if he tries. The requirement to form parties is also a big plus, in my opinion. Only one of the jobs in the game (Beastmaster) is capable of levelling up past about level 20 without being in a party. Personally, I don't get why people would play a MMORPG and then spend most of their time solo; if I wanted to do that, I'd be playing Morrowind. Interaction with party memebers is one of the best ways to take the sting out of the level grind, even if it can become time-consuming to put parties together at the higher levels (50+).
That's the good stuff. Now for the areas where I think there's room for improvement. By far my biggest gripe is the fact that you'll never be fighting anything other than the same few types of enemies on the level grind. There's a huge bestiary in the game, with some really great monsters, but as most players are so risk-averse, they'll happily go from levels 1-60 fighting nothing but bats, worms, crabs and beetles. Just to point out how stupid this gets; a level 60 beetle has the exact same abilities as its level 1 cousin. The only difference is that it gets higher stats. It would be nice if the game would force you to fight more exotic and difficult creatures as you got more advanced and if... shock horror... fights actually started to need more skill at the higher levels. As it is, the only times I get to fight the more challenging creatures are when I'm on a quest. Also, I'd like to see smaller penalties for dying. It's not so bad at the lower levels; a death there might set you back about 5 minutes worth of levelling. But a death above level 50 can set you back an hour or more of work. This contributes to players being so risk-averse. I understand the need for some kind of penalty for dying, but I think that being over harsh takes a lot of the fun out of things.
Anyway, to wrap up, the level grind is here to stay, but developers have a duty to do whatever they can to make it as fun as possible.
A large part of the attraction to MMORPGs for the core players is the ability to distinguish themselves from everyone else. By having the biggest level, the baddest weapons, the toughest armor or the most exotic clothing, if you compare two people who've been playing the game for two years next to two months, the person who's been playing for 2 years expects a little something to show for their time and effort.
People absolutely get bored of fighting the same monster over and over again. I think reusing monster models for both high and low level content is an extremely easy way to shoot yourself in the foot. Variety in dungeon settings and monster types helps. And it helps even more when developers go with a theme that makes sense. Everquest had a Frog dungeon in a swamp, a haunted undead house tucked away on a bleak oceanside cliff, and an orc encampment on the border of elven territory. Good examples with good thought put into them. DAoC would have you fighting fire breathing lizards right next to undead barrow wights. Anarchy Online would have you fight a single mob type (heckler) for literally hundreds of hours to advance in level. Very bad examples there.
As far as I can tell, there are two types of ways to distinguish players from one another. Time investment based and skill based. Mix them how you will, but those are your options. Either players are going to be rewarded for playing 2 hours a day more than everyone else as in most MMORPGs, or players are going to be rewarded for being just a little faster and a little more accurate as in most FPS games. Outside of PvP, I can't think of any MMORPGs that require any level of skill. Sure, there are some classes in some games, like the calmer or healer, that require a small bit of brain power, but thats a far cry from minutia of skill making a difference.
So the trick of MMORPGs so far is to make the time sinks interesting. And thats accomplished with variety. Variety in monster, in dungeon, and the method of experience reward. Until we start seeing hybrid systems, where both player skill and character stats matter strongly (simliar to Deus Ex) then this is what we are stuck with.
Though I am looking forward to the day when there is a good MMORPG that uses both stats and player ability, I suspect it's a long ways off.
Regarding tweaking the rules for PnP: Ah, but a large part of the rules in a CRPG is that they are transparent and understandable by the player-making everything more complex would pull away from that.
Regarding the lack of a DM: This is a problem computer games have, period. However, they have two things to resolve this: good game design(ie, giving you the key to that lock) and saved games. The first resolves inability issues(missed that clue, can't open that lock), and the second solves the overmatched battle problems, as the combat in question can be replayed.
Regarding lack of character options: Try 3e, which does allow for all of that.(Keep in mind, 3e is what we will be seeing for awhile-good luck getting WotC to licence the 2e rules for a computer game).
Regarding Wizards not sweeping the battleground: They do-at higher levels. Playing a mage in D&D is always a trade off of short term gain for long-term power.
Regarding shouts artificial: I'm sorry, but D&D is a game, not a simulation. It is tied to its PnP base, and that group always chooses simplicity over realism. If you want realism, go play Shadowrun. Also, again, play 3e, which addresses each of your concerns-don't think directly, think of the abstract concepts the game terms represent. Sniper with the guns? I have a phrase for you, it's Base Attack Bonus.
Regarding fun to play: This has jack all to do with the rules-you get varying experiences with PnP DMs. Also, if the game rules are just background, then why do they need to be so realistic? Also, one of the two games you cited is from D&D.
D&D is the id engine of RPGs-used like crazy, scalable, and more concerned with a good game then realism. If that doesn't appeal to you, go play Counterstrike and a rules-heavy pen and paper system.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
... the alternatives don't yet seem viable.
(Initial caveat: posting while drunk, apologies in advance.)
Grinding is dull and pointless. It's a competition between players: who has the most patience? who has the least life outside a computer game? It was dull in LPMUDs and it's dull in the modern generation of online RPGs. There is more than enough tedium in the real world. Why on Earth do you want to do it in a game that is supposed to be fun?
In every online game I've played or seen so far, one starts off being totally incompetent. The 'mangy rat' is a challenge. Who wants to play someone who has trouble dealing with mangy rats? Those who persist and reach the end-game are orders of magnitude more powerful. Their in-game skills are incomparably better than the starting character. This is their reward for sheer bloody-mindedness.
Characters should develop and change over time, but they should start off being able to affect the world. To matter. To be someone. Otherwise it's either dull or a huge stretch of the imagination.
Case in point: take City of Heroes. You play a superhero. Yet when you start you have 3 powers, which are probably two attacks and a defence. You then run fleeing from all but the most innocuous of petty street thugs. By the end of the game, one is fighting off alien invasions and world-destroying foes, but at the start you are decidedly un-heroic. No one can even fly until 14th level. And City of Heroes is one of the least bad offenders. What's with this?
The big problem is that designing and implementing a world where people's online alter-egos can actually matter, is really hard. AI for the NPCs is not up to the task of creating a community in which the PC can shine, and it's unreasonable to expect a starting player to immediately make a splash in the community of other PCs. That coupled with possibly hundreds of thousands of players makes it especially difficult.
Nonetheless, until people can feel like they matter, the MMORPG is going to have limited appeal. The policies against auto-leveling and other forms of programmatical advancement simply exclude another class of players who would rather a machine take care of all the tedious aspects so that they instead can concentrate on the bits worth playing. Why is it so bad that someone skip 17 hours of mindless clicking? Where is the appeal?
Until AI tech and automated story-telling is vastly improved, MMORPGs seem stuck with this terrible grinding aspect. I'll play them as long as the other rewards make up for this huge deficiency, but the technology just isn't there yet to appeal to players who don't have a certain masochistic streak.
One huge exception comes to mind: Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. There your character doesn't improve, you improve. You the player get better at doing the puzzles, and your ability in the game improves conmesurably. This is extremely cool, and is one of the reasons why Y!PP is such a damn fine game.
For me at least, the time based advancement is even worse than grinding....
If, as a fairly new character, i want to make some money, i can go mine or kill or whatever...or i can just ignore the game for a few weeks while i level up, and then come back and mine or kill 2-3x as effectively...except i never went back.
It seemed to me that there is pretty much no reason to actually play Eve for the first month or so, aside from building faction, and making enough money to buy a few skills.
Also, the implementation in eve was even worse about dedicating your life to advancement than the usual grind : the only way to advance efficiently was to make sure you are available at any random time of the day (setting alarms to wake you up as needed) to log in for 2 minutes to start a new skill training. With grind based games, if i want to spend an excessive amount of time playing, i can at least decide when to spend it...
The concept that you start off fighting rats and snakes for a long time until you become "powerful" and can have fun fighting tough opponents is fundamentally flawed.
What defines a powerful opponent? Is it their hit points, their armor class, their level? For most characters in most MMOs a powerful opponent is one more than a couple levels higher than them, since those opponents will be able to kill them very quickly.
Perhaps it's just that "rats" are themselves boring, and don't seem powerful because they are rats. What this suggests is that it's important to pit players against interesting opponents at lower levels. There's nothing that prevents a low level monster from having all the characteristics of a higher level one, just at a lesser power to match that of the weaker character. There's nothing that forces the low level MMO game to be less fun than the high level.
I'm not suggesting there are no problems with leveling based system, but that section of the article does not identify a fundamental flaw with leveling systems.
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I support spreading santorum
I have lots of recovering Evercrack freinds (and a number who are still hooked). I still don't get the appeal of a game that would be so tedious at the lower levels that leveling is required. The only MMOG I play is Aces High. Version 2.0 will have a specific character that levels up depending on performance, and I'm not interested in that.
The current 1.0 version puts virtual pilots in a big (or a mid-size historical) arena, where you sink or swim based on real, between-the-ears experience. There is a ranking system. You can join a squad, particularly if you show a willingness to do team work and grunt work (like flying C-47s to resupply fields and mobile units). You can fly some of the higher-powered aircraft if you earn perk points (based on landing kills, not just getting kills). Ironically, many of the top-tier pilots don't fly perk planes because they're seen as too easy.
Newbies do get waxed every mission for the first week or two, but most players "get it" and start functioning as part of an official or ad-hoc team. Some don't, and that's fine. By and large, though, your experience is real, not something that can be automagically leveled without your intervention.
I guess I just don't get the appeal of games that require that sort of behavior. And, the funny thing is that none of my Evercrack freinds really seem to like playing. It's some sort of preference, definitely. And, I'm not deriding it (the call it Evercrack... I just picked it it because that's a funny way of looking at it). I just don't get it.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I think a good idea would be to separate players out into divisions and conferences.
As a new player, you could start out in a low division, but then to go up a division, you would have to be eligible (be on-line for long enough) and also complete a set of tasks that show that you are a good enough player now to qualify for the next higher division. Maybe have some adventure (or set of adventures) that require certain quick-thinking and problem solving skills to prove that you are now a better player and good enough to move up divisions. Ther would probably have to be a mechanism for forcing players up a division in order to keep them from being a big fish in a small pond.
A conference is formed to put certain players in direct competition with certain other players in the same division. You might not be the best guy on-line, but you could have a fair shot at being the best guy in your conference. This is not the same thing as a guild. A guild is typically more of a friendly establishment. Conference members are usually rivalries (think Georgia/Florida, Texas/Oklahoma, Ohio State/Michigan, etc).
As you become a better player, you would be able to get into better conferences. In NCAA football (where I'm taking this example from), there is a vote amongst conference members to determine who can join or who gets kicked out of a conference. This happens because most conferences would want to be the l33t conference by having the best l33t players in it. Now the best way to determine which conference is better than which other conference is get those conferences to compete with each other on a regular basis.
This system isn't perfect and it does require a good mechanism for competition amongst similarly qualified players, but I think it would be better than deciding who is best by who sits around and plays for hours on monotonous adventures just to get their level up.
Part of the dilemna is that most rules of real life contradict the first rule of video game design: If a feature detracts from the 'fun' aspect of a game, it's not a good feature.
Exceptions are made for this rule...I think that WoW's resting is going to be a good thing, it will prohibit people from power leveling. You make some good points about weapon proficiency, things that I've often considered were bad as well...why can't prowess in long swords be applied to short shords, if not in full then partially? I don't know why games haven't done it yet, but shouldn't a class/subclass system of proficiency be used? i.e., you have a weapon proficiency, sword is a subclass of that, longsword is a subclass of that. Using a long sword gains you X proficiency points in longsword, X/2 in swords and X/4 in weapons.
Anyways, a lot of simplification is done in games because the developers want the average Joe Sixpack to be able to play it. Anyone remember Ultima? Anyone remember having to remember or read from the manual the rune words for spells? In order to cast a spell, you had to mix specific ingredients for that spell ahead of time, then say the right words to cast it (In Flam was fireball, I think...Mas Flam was fire wind, or something along those lines).
It certainly added a more complicated aspect to the game, but would a game embodying those aspects be popular now? Hell, games have all but done away with making the user map areas...I must have had 2 tablets of Bards Tale maps sitting around my house at one time.
--trb
Offline advancment is basically progress quest. Again, it's trying to fix a flawed system.
In an mmorpg, you need to differenciate yourself through looks and then somehow establish that you are better then other people. Or you just want your guy to look cool and kick ass.
I don't mind level grinds, as long as I can progress to a new area with a new skill and technique to use on the next monsters in a timely fashion, I'm still having fun playing.
But really what frusterates me about these games (besides the 15 a month AND expansion prices) is the problem with playing with people. Every game they say it is designed to be played with other people and force interaction. Great. I want to play with my friends. Too bad, you are level 30, they are just starting, you can't play together unless your friend plays by himself for a month.
I tried for a time to get into the achaea mud. This was my first mud, but I relized that to do it, I had to pay even less attention to the real world around me then in the graphical games. The scrolling text takes a lot of attention to read.
Anyway, they had some really interesting concepts there. The first of which is the status based pvp system. I didn't get far enough to really do anything in the game, but i read enough about it to get a feel for how it works. But there were a ton of status effects to inflict on people and a ton of ways to cure them. The way to kill someone off was to basically lock their status effects in such a way that they couldn't cure themselves and died from poison or something like that.
So a pvp system like that would make a phenominal game. But then some people hate pvp and don't want to have anything to do with it.
Another thing to implement, is to remove levels entirely. I get in the game, and I'm at max power. Basically I jump into everquest at level 65 or whatever the max is. Sort of like I bought a character on ebay. Except the game is massive, because all the content was designed around the idea that you have powerd up characters. Give me some skill points to allocate in the beginning to define a unique class or unique powers. Give me a lot of options for race and body type so I can look unique.
Make the game about aquiring items. Make the game in such a way that to get items, it takes a lot of work. I want a troll hat. I have to go get the keys from the 4 surrounding goblin cheifs to get into the troll layer where I can get the troll hat. When I get the troll hat, it looks cool, and I can parade around with my badass troll hat.
Give everyone a keyring that keeps track of areas they have unlocked. My avatar only has 3 of the 4 keys, the rest of my party has 4, but we need to get the 4th key for myself. But that's ok, because it's fun killing guys, and I don't ever see experience points anywhere. Give a way to change your class/skills, but make it take a long time.
Basically I want a sandbox where I can try everything out. My reward to show how long i've been playing are cool looking powerful item. Maybe I can win the look of an item, then I can go capture spirits of monsters to put in to the item to give it unique powers.
The thing that keeps me coming back to the mmorpgs are the fun of killing and exploring and interacting with people and improving my avatar. So why limit content and who I can play with and what skills I can use? Why don't you just give us all content that everybody can do, that is challenging and will require a group, and I can start playing with friends immediatly and forever.
Just make sure that everythings challenging enough to do that you won't blow through it all in 40 hours.
I hate level advancement for the sake of level advancement.
You've worked a 10 hr week grinding away at killing rats, and have what? Woot, now you can grind away at orcs. And after that, maybe ogres, onwards until the mud/mmorpg runs out of content.
Lame. Boring. Doesn't live up to the potential of the game.
You've got thousands of people all playing the same game, but beyond an immediate group and the vendors most of those other players effect your character's personal world not one bit. You might as well be playing on a server with just 10 friends.
Ditch level/skill advancement and replace it with social advancement. The whole idea of having a 120th level fighter/mage on a mmorpg instead of a solo game is so it can be compared with other players' characters.
So make it official: social standing is the attribute improved via gameplay. Every meaningful action rises your character up a social ladder. Skills and powers stay in the same ballpark as a brand new character.
Fights and other moments of excitment wouldn't be end-goal, just the obstacles. For example, you might gain standing in the Explorer's guild if you visit an espicially dangerous location. You'd also get standing via leading other players to these same special spots (which might be points of interest to their profession).
You'd gain standing in the crafting guild by making a rare object...even a starting character would be able to build these rare objects if they have the tools and materials. The adventure would be finding the exotic materials and tools required to make the object. The character's who made the best object of type B (the best sword, the armor, etc.) would receive the most social points, and down the line from there.
High social standing would give your character more access to the poltical aspects of the game, as well as perks. The top tier of the explorer's guild might recieve access to a cool mode of travel, for example.
If you're an MMORPG and you want a skill OR level based system, or a hybrid, you're going to have a hard time breaking new ground.
Know what I'd sign up for? Q3 as an RPG.
I spent like 18 months, maybe 2 years playing Q3. I started off bad. Challenging was finishing the same single player on the middle of 5 modes. Deathmatch online? Good luck... if I got lucky, I might manage to finish in the middle of the pack of 20+ players. (And I had superior hardware and bandwidth)
But fast forward 18 months... and I'm at Quakecon in 2002, and I am delivering a spanking to the whole con. My railgun back-to-back hit-o-meter is popping up every few seconds (28...29...30 in a row) as I adjust to the LAN environment. *My* skills have improved enough that I'm dominating a 75-person server. (Actually, I was running slightly ahead of a guy I played with constantly of my 'main server' back at home, who was sitting right next to me)
I've been playing City of Heroes lately. And frankly, I find it irritating that there's a lack of skill. If I play my tanker, I turn on my fiery aura, walk up to something, and spam my axe attack. Sure, in a big group taking on purples there's a little bit of strategic decision making, but it's obvious there's a pretty solid "ceiling" on where you can go with your own skill... and your own skill applies ~0 to your early progress, where the few powers you have available makes any decision making moot.
CoH without a respec suffers additionally -- since if you learn from your mistakes building, you're currently forced to go through the grind again with a new build if you think it's better... that should be over come "Sep/Oct" when the 2nd update pack will introduce a respec, but still.
If you played Q3, you may have run across a pro. Despite my LAN domination at Qcon, I wasn't one, and didn't nearly have the skills...yet. And it was the coolest thing. These guys had the aim, but they had the skills to make the most of it with other things like movement and strategy to gain the upperhand against you. That's how my games against pros typically went -- start off even, we each get some power ups. Maybe I get a frag or two early, but before long, I show up a second too late to grab some key item, and that's it... I never score again, and I'm ground into the dust. But you knew when you went up against these guys that they were better. They outplayed you.
In City of Heroes, when some L50 flies along, it's clear he has a lot more time on his hands than you do... especially when you're me, without 10 hrs a day to play, and you're crushing the xp/hr rates that people report on the forums... and it's *still* "taking forever".
Someone needs to come up with something that has the fun eye candy of CoH, but adds "player skill" to the "character skill". I'm not saying make Q3 into an MMORPG... why not just play Q3? But make player skill ACTUALLY count. Make attacks more powerful as you level up, but force players to actually AIM.
It's going to come out sooner or later. And you know what? People aren't going to stop playing it. It's not going to get boring. Because when you stop and think: hell, it's been 3 hours and I've only got half a level?... you're going to realize your aim is improving. And you're going to smile and press on. (And it will make PvP a lot more interesting)