Slashdot Mirror
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?
From the article itself:
"To ensure that we're being absolutely crystal clear, this article isn't focused on the discussion concerning the differences between the pure RPG leveling system versus "player skill-based" games. That's a completely different conversation altogether, and - unfortunately - some of our paneled public and developers thought that was where the discussion was leading, and thus some answers from particular teams won't be printable...at least in this article."
FPS: Knowing where the power weapons are on the map. (Halo 3: Shotgun whore wins)
MMORPG: Its knowing which class is overpowered. (Vanilla WoW: Nerf Warlocks)
RTS: Its all about who is Korean. (I'm new to SC, want to play? I'm a nub go easy)
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.
The problem with too many RPGs is that easy encounters are easy, and hard encounters are impossible until you level up, at which point they are easy. It FEELS like you are gaining skill at the game, which is enjoyable, but in fact your character is just tougher. You didn't learn shit.
It makes sense for your character to change over time: that makes the game keep feeling new. But the best system of all is one where your new characteristics are a tradeoff, and every player's capabilities remain somewhat balanced. Success should be from solving a problem in novel ways, not grinding. Like TF2, StarCraft. It is of course very hard to build games like this.
This has come up for me playing crap iPhone games. Since there isn't enough development time for them to put in real challenge, every goddamned thing has a level up mechanic. And certain things are just unbeatable until you level up, and then they are beatable through button mashing. It is lame as hell and apparently the customers don't care.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
One simple change could be to make progression depend on skill, not trivial success and grinding.
Or, in simpler terms, something that every dofus could do should give no XP at all. And yes, that includes the death of a monster. Instead, why not give XP for successful attacks, combos, or whatever defines your class? Balancing would be a lot more difficult than the current "monster is worth 123 XP, share between party members" system, but it could be more fair and more rewarding, and eliminate grinding.
What if combat would not give you XP for killing monsters, but for how well you fought? You get XP for every attack, depending on your skill of execution. Of course, that would require replacing the simple "click here for an attack, you'll automatically hit" system. But it would allow you to gain your XP slowly by very low XP per boring standard attack, or more rapidly if you know how to fight. Healers, mages, etc. would get XP for their successes, i.e. healing wounded party members, etc. - again, not on a flat system, healing someone who really needed it would give more XP than the standard "I'm throwing a group heal around, just in case anyone needs it".
Absolutely non-trivial to implement and balance, so it's probably not the end of the idea. But it might be a start.
Basically, imagine Oblivion where your athletics skill doesn't increase just because you bunny-hop through the world, but only if you actually use it for something useful.
Reward not use, but useful use.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Along those lines... chess is just about knowing how to move pieces around the board.
Once again I think this is an area where Guild Wars does well. There is a lvl20 cap on all players. The game mechanics become very important, it's all basically rock, paper, scissors. Everything has a counter. It makes for a much "tighter" pvp game if that makes any sense. Basically all you have is what's on your bar, and it's only eight skills max, and in pvp you want one of those skills to be resurrection signet. It becomes a game of how much power you can pack into those by "chaining" them together. There's no changing armor in pvp, no potions or elixers to boost your health; those have to be fit into your skillbar as well. I think it's a fine balance that takes so much of the grind out of the game, at that point it's all up to how you like to play, and GW gives you tons of options there through different ways to pvp, pve, and in some circumstances pva(all).
put the what in the where?
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
The article is talking about skill-based character progression systems in RPGs (e.g., Elder Scrolls), not player skill in the general sense. There's a goddamn paragraph on the first page that clarifies this, but apparently that wasn't enough.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
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
My kid plays Runescape and anytime he as a quest (or whatever the hell it's called) to complete he pulls up walk-throughs on the web and follows them to get past it. Besides fighting other players or the standard NPC's he doesn't figure out anything on his own. It's very frustrating for me. I can't even watch him play. Hate to get all geezer here but when I was a kid playing Ultima IV for countless hours on my IBM PCjr I had to figure out all that stuff on my own. For me that was where all the fun was. I completed it, I figured it out, and I thought I was awesome because of it. I wouldn't get so nuts about him playing the way he does if I could just figure out what he's actually getting out of it. It's not just Runescape either. When he gets a new game he immediately pulls up some site that has the cheats. I don't mind cheats that give you cool skins or something that doesn't alter the difficulty of the game but he'll cheat for step 1. On top of that he's baffled that I won't use the cheats. Your cook vs. master chef analogy fits us perfectly except my cook thinks master chef's are dumb.
This is offtopic but while I'm ranting about my kids game play I have to get something off my chest. When he and his friends get together and play they often like to play something called "Super Smash Brothers". For you guys as old as me out there, it's a fighting game with all the Nintendo characters as the fighters. When you play the game your damage is counted up as a percentage. Except, get this, wait for it...., you don't die at 100%. In fact there's no set limit you die at. The game just decides it's your time to die. Sometimes their damage is at 150% or higher. WTF is with that. I can't even be in the same room when they're playing that. I go friggin nuts. The game itself makes me nuts because of what I just described but the bulk of my frustration comes from him and his friends not recognizing and acknowledging that there is something screwy about it. They look at me like I'm nuts.
Maybe I am nuts. Before you post a bunch of "lighten up psycho" messages know that I'm not this crazy controlling freak. I've just always been a gamer (not hardcore, just a gamer) and I always looked forward to sharing that with my kids. The way gaming has changed came as a surprise to me.
MG
Actually, I think the problem is that the summary makes a hash of it. The "advancement through skill" from the quoted part, is not the same meaning of "skill" that the following submitter rant uses.
The "skill" in the "skill-based vs level-based MMO" debate, is not about the [b]player's[/b] skills, but about the [b]character's[/b] skills. _Major_ difference.
A "skill-based MMO" (or MUD) does _not_ mean you have to learn to circle-strafe or be a cyber-athlete or anything. They can be just as mindless affairs as WoW. (And I'm actually not saying that as a bad thing: I actually like WoW.) They just mean it has no levels, but they have a bunch of skill numbers and you spend your xp directly on the skills and stats.
Heck, you could even make a turn-based skill-based games if you wanted to, and in fact some have actually been made.
A good example of a skill-based system is Vampire: Bloodlines. It doesn't have levels at all. You get some xp and you spend it directly on raising your strenght, or your dexterity, or your melee skill, or your lockpicking skill. Having more experience doesn't automatically make you tougher at some point. You could buy only social abilities for a long while for example, and be an elder vampire that can't fight worth Jack, but could probably convince the Pope and Arafat to get married to each other. Or instead you could be the toughest kung-fu master but unable to talk even your best friend into seeing things your way. Or learn a lot of spells right from the start. Or anything in between.
A good example of a level-based game are most old D&D games. You inherently have a to-hit modifier or access to spells based on your level. Inherently being higher level makes you better.
And Fallout 3 is actually a hybrid rather than just level-based. At its heart, what matters are your character skills, not your level. The level just gives you points to put in your skills.
Or if you want an example based on WoW, imagine a game that plays exactly like WoW, but has no levels. Instead of your sword skill automatically raising its cap by 5 points each time you level up, you don't level up, but spend xp to buy more sword skill. Or instead of getting a new spell every 2 levels, you have no levels, but buy spells with xp. You don't get +1 this stat, and +2 that stat, etc, when you level up, you buy stat increases with xp.
That would also mean that all restrictions on equipment have to be skill based instead of level based. In a skill-based game you don't have some sword that requires minimum level 39, you have a sword that requires, say, minimum 195 sword skill. If you want to use it, you dump your xp into sword skill. If you want to be a mage, you dump your xp into spell skills instead and don't get to use that sword too soon.
That's really what a skill-based MMO would look like.
But other than that, the game would still play exactly like WoW. You wouldn't need any more player skill to go do the Lakeshire quests in that setup, than you need in the real level-based WoW.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
" Except, get this, wait for it...., you don't die at 100%. In fact there's no set limit you die at. The game just decides it's your time to die. Sometimes their damage is at 150% or higher"
The problem is you haven't played smash brothers, smash brothers is in fact a skill based game. The more damage you take the easier it is to ring you out, the idea is to take the least damage as possible because the more damage you take using special moves at higher damage percentages will ring you out instantly for a win.
You just have to learn which moves will ring out and smash people out of the screen at high percentages.
The damage system is actually innovative in that you *do* increase your risk of dying by people who actually attempted to understand the game.
Ironically your complaint that your son didn't try to figure it out himself, when you didn't try to figure out smash brothers system is itself a bit humorous. :)
The class-based system lets the developer balance whole sets of skills at once, which means that the advantages of one skill could be offset by the disadvantages of a lack of skill or even a penalty in a class. This means that not every skill has to be balanced relative to each other; only the classes themselves need to be balanced.
Disadvantages include stuff like, inability to wield bladed weapons, or inability to wear armor, etc.
Disadvantages are difficult to incorporate into a purely skill-based system because nobody is going to pick a disadvantage unless forced, and so the developer has to arbitrarily staple them onto a skill. Like, wielding weapons means you suck at casting spells, or wearing armor means you can't sneak around. Congratulations, you've just implemented classes in a skill-based system.
It seems like most games these days are using primarily a class-based system with some "accessory" skills, which is essentially a class-based system with some extra flavor. It's because people haven't really figured out how to balance a purely skill-based system.