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The Dilemma of Level vs. Skill In MMOs
Karen Hertzberg writes "Since MMORPGs became a mainstream medium, players have debated the two primary methods of advancement. Which is better? Is it the level-based system that is so dominant in today's MMORPGs, or the lesser-used skill-based system? This has been a strong subject of debate on many forums, blogs, and gaming sites for as long as the genre has existed. Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye investigates the two concepts and gathers input from some of the brightest minds in the gaming industry about their thoughts on the two systems of advancement."
Relatedly, I've seen a growing trend of players saying that such games don't really take much skill at all. The standard argument is that it just boils down to "knowing how to move" or "knowing when to hit your buttons." In the MMO community, people often make references to FPS or RTS games, saying they have a higher skill cap. However, the same complaints also come from within those communities, with comments like "you just need to know the map," or "it's all about a good build order." At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
It sounds like the article is talking about character advancement mechanics being based on skills (you use a sword, your guy gets better with a sword) instead of levels (you character suddenly gets better at everything). The editor writeup, however, is a commentary on player skill.
Along those lines... chess is just about knowing how to move pieces around the board.
If you are able to do something you have a skill in it. If you can pump gas into your car then you have a skill - pumping gas. Some skills are easier then others (pumping gas vs replacing your breaks). But everything that is not automatically done for you (e.g. your heart pumping) requires a skill.
/. :)
Now going a step beyond that there is a difference between a person who is skilled at something and a person who is skilled and innovative. A skilled player can go online and read/watch tutorials on how to beat the hardest monsters in a game and then execute those (we call that person a cook). They have a skill - they know the game, they know their characters and the know how to follow instructions. Just like the cook who knows their kitchen (the game setting), knows their tools (there characters), and knows their recipie (the tutorial). Great let them back us a cake. The skilled innovator is the person who goes into an unknown situation, say a boss that nobody has ever encountered, and figures out a way to beat it (we call that the master chef). They have a skill - they know the game, they know their character, and they know how to solve puzzles.
I would rather be the skilled innovator but both types have skill.
The original article is just a way for someone to get posted on
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
You had levels which gave you experience points which you used to buy up skills with. The levels gave you points in which to buy skills. At first the points to buy skills come quickly but quickly tapered off to 1 skill point per 5 levels, the highest priced skill was 16. Since not all skills shared the same attributes you could not be totally reckless with your points. Also, buying up the skill also slowed as each point cost more and more experience.
What did it lead to that was negative. Well since both stats and skills cost experience to raise people would have absurd starting stats. You initially were given 270 points to spend across six stats (or was it seven?) which meant that 10/100/10/10/100/100 combos appeared. (think strength endurance quickness coordination intel and self:wisdom) . It was easy to over come the low stats with just a few levels worth of experience to bring them up to comfort levels. The reasoning behind this was that there was a cap to what you could spend experience wise in any stat - once it was hit no more could be bought so you started it as high as possible. Stats contributed to the base rating of each skill you bought - which again had a cap on how much they could go up.
Overall it was a great classless system. It however was placed in a world of great lore but the mobs were different enough to keep people from readily connecting to it. Tradeskills worked just like any other skill so it was not uncommon to have trade only characters who got experience by pass up through allegiances. Initially allegiances acted like the worst MLM, the guy at the top got a portion of everyone below, at different ranks in the chain you got percentages of everyone below you. They tweaked it later to prevent the huge trees people built out of allegiances to exploit experience pass up.
By giving people distinct classes and levels it does provide an ease of entry for new players. They know their role and how to progress. It does make for a simpler game - which hopefully has complexities elsewhere to make up for it . Think WOW. While many begrudge the ease of play they ignore the complexity of raiding.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Iduno. TF2 has done this very very well. Character determines many things, including how high you can jump. If you spend a lot of time at the game, you get new capabilities. But every new capability is a tradeoff, and a beginning player using your items wouldn't necessarily do any better than without. If there were RPGs where time spent provided you more very well balanced tradeoffs to choose between, that would be perhaps interesting. And hard to develop.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
At what point does intimate knowledge of a game's mechanics make a player skilled?
I'd say that this is the definition of skill for an online game.
Oblig. Bruce Lee quote:
Knowing is not enough, you must apply.
I disagree, there IS "skill". It's probably not a useful quantity outside of the game, and unlike some athletic events there is probably a point at which you cannot be more skilled than another person, but there is a huge gap between some players in ability, you can call that skill. Also hardware, latency, etc. also can blur the line between skill and wealth. The problem with this topic is what "skill" means to various people.
The latest trends in MMOGs (which WoW still seems to want to be the frontrunner) is mashing keys fast. The entire design of the latest expansion is the concept of "rotations", be it dps, healing (previously a relatively cerebral job) and tanking. On one hand they've added an element requiring players to mash buttons faster and more accurately (throwing in some proc effects that require you to adapt your rotation periodically). On the other hand they've almost entirely eliminated strategy and situational awareness. But yeah, it plays a lot more like an FPS and there is "skill" in mashing your buttons fast, clicking fast and turning fast.
Then there's FPS skill, which has traditionally been being prepared, fast and accurate, usually in that order.
Skill is increasingly being defined, across genre's in a one size fits all way: a) competitive player versus player, b) a measure of reaction time and ability to manipulate the UI/interface well, c) familiarity with the content (and practice within it) and to a somewhat lesser extent d) familiarity with the boundaries of the simulator in question (not exploits, just how far the rules bend).
Other things that skill could be, and in some genre's should be: a) adaptability to dynamic, unknown situations, b) coordination across groups of people, c) preparation for encounters for which a few datapoints are known, d) how to combine/synergize abilities across classes, and how to make trade-offs as a unit, etc. I play MMOGs primarily for this concept of "skill", although it's been in serious decline.
So I guess I want to undermine the entire thesis of the article. People bitch about "level systems" versus "skill" systems, but often because they aren't playing the same game. Levels in MMOGs are supposed to be about lumping people into similar categories of character ability level, gear and progression, at least in theory. The idea behind levels is a social tool from game designers that helps people identify others with similar interests, to get together and collectively tackle content that is otherwise too difficult for them singly. This is also, not coincidentally, the idea behind the class system! You know for a balanced group you need some tanking, some healing, some slowing (in EQ) and a mix of damage (melee and magic, usually). The class system worked well for helping people identify what element they needed to round out the group, and provided enough class differentiation to make it interesting. This works well in traditional MMOGs where the game is primarily PVE, and where game designers go out of their way to use levels appropriately and define classes well. WoW blurs this a lot, and IMO, screws up the game a lot. In any event, in context of MMOGs, levels != skill. You can have one without the other, and it's absolutely OK.
On the flip side, in an FPS where you are primarily engaged in PVP, it makes a lot less sense to rank people by arbitrary factors such as level (i.e. time spent killing monsters, content completed, etc.) and more sense to lump them into categories that allow like people to interact with like people. A tournament system works here. Of course not all contestants are in the same league as one another, some have better hardware, lower latency connections, more playtime, etc. You don't want people to feel completely outclassed. In boxing/wrestling/etc. you have the concept of "weight class". Perhaps grouping people with similar characteristics and ranking them within their class makes the most sense, providing a good level of adequate comparison of skill, bracketed within boundaries that seem rea