Monday, July 20, 2009

regarding my last entry, and progression...

First, before anyone points it out, I know that my last entry is not a boat-rocking masterpiece of design. However, I made a statement a couple of entries ago that I was sure that some brilliant designers could come up with something that would work for player-generated content. I was certain it could be done. An anonymous poster rightly called me out on this. After all, who am I to say that it can be done if I cannot do it? That’s a load, and not worthy of my own respect, let alone yours. So, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and come up with a basic structure for player-generated content (see my last entry if you care to read it). It is really the only aspect of next-gen MMOs that I haven't felt I've been able to fully flesh out. To be honest, I haven't seen a whole lot of people give it a shot, but would love to read other ideas. I don't think mine is really a bad start. The way I see it, there will likely always have to be some developer-made content, but if we can keep it to a minimum, and keep players themselves the primary content as much as possible, then we have succeeded in creating something new and outstanding.

Second, for those curious, I would like to define my ideal progression system. It is a skill-based system that, at first, appears to be level-based.

It's important to understand that levels mean nothing in my system other than to allow the player to gain more skill points, which can then be utilized to train new skills. Any skills. There are no classes. A level means two things and two things only: that your total experience pool is between x and y, x being the lower limit of total experience for that level, y being the upper limit just before you reach the next one. The other thing your level indicates is how many total skill points you have earned. That is all.

So, a level 5 player will have earned 5 additional skill points, and a total of between 20,000 and 25,000 xp (assuming those are the upper and lower limits of xp for that level). Beyond that, you would have to be the player to know the precise xp level. This means that the player may have spent those 5 skill points to unlock (aka train) a new skill of any kind that requires 5 skill points or less, as well as upgraded any of their trained skills with 20,000 to 25,000 total worth of xp. They may have put all of their experience into one skill, we'll assume sword, and completely neglected every other trained skill they have. Hence, a level 20 who has put all of their experience into sword, could still have higher sword skill than a level 50 swordsman who split his experience between sword, acrobatics, tracking, smell, and a magic school. Thus, in pure sword, the level 20 would have the advantage in that ability. The player’s "level" itself means nothing, other than that the level 50 has probably unlocked more skills, and has put more experience points into his skills in some completely unknown manner.

If the level 50 spent 90% of his experience on jump, then he may be able to jump like an Olympian, but that's about all he can do.

It should be clear why no one is actually pigeon-holed at all, even though this system utilizes "levels" in a very superficial way. It is really a skill-based system. “Well then what is the point of this system?” you, my astute reader, may ask.

The advantage of this system is the way it causes macro'ers to behave. You see, in pure skill-based systems, where skills are raised only by utilizing said skill, macro's of extreme simplicity can be created that are actually far more efficient than playing the game. Creating a macro that, for example, swings the sword repeatedly is just as efficient as playing, if not more so. Creating a macro that runs in circles in order to up player run skill is at least as efficient as running in circles yourself. So why play the game at all? Nothing you do will be as efficient as a good macro. This is exactly what I saw, and in fact did, in Darkfall. Playing that game helped me to see that this flaw is inherent in such a skill system. You can add constraints that say "you must impact with sword for skill to increase." Believe me, it doesn't work. My friends and I had a macro in a single day that stood at respawn making our characters kill each other repeatedly. There was no reason to play, because this was far faster.

The advantages of levels are several. First, to gain significant experience, the player must either kill other players, kill mobs, or complete quests – all of which must be equivalent to his level of power to mean anything to him. All of these require much more sophisticated programs than “skill-based” macros to automate. Second, the player must be modestly equipped in order to hunt and kill mobs, players, or complete quests, even if they have a macro sophisticated enough to do it. This means that another enterprising young player who happens upon a macro has a very high incentive to kill and loot it, and the macro'er thus has an incentive not to macro. Furthermore, the efficiency of macro'ing in level-based PvP games is virtually never as high as actually playing, which tends not to be true in skill-based ones. Level-based MMOGs are inherently more resistant to macros in full PvP worlds, I say this based both on experience, and sound theory.

The level-based design I have described is at its core a skill-based system, but employs levels enough to curb macro's and provide a way to allow characters to unlock new skills over time. Those are its only functions. Is this what you think of when someone says "level-based MMO?" I doubt it.

So, you probably found yourself wondering a little bit earlier: “If the level 20 has more sword skill than the level 50, what does that mean for him?” Good question. What it means is that the level 20 may have more pure sword moves unlocked than the level 50, and that he is able to utilize well crafted swords to their full potential, or at least more so than the level 50 with less sword skill. This means his base sword damage can be better, assuming he has a sword good enough to take advantage of it. I would like to note that this damage increase would not be massive. The level 50, however, if he were more well rounded, may have things like backflips, wall-jumps, rolls, and other sophisticated acrobatics, he may be able to smell the level 20 from a distance (an ability that I may reveal in a future entry), he likely has some spells to influence combat, as well as possibly some mana-using sword-based moves that are only unlocked when a certain minimum of both sword and magic skill is present. So, who has the advantage here? The level 20 with a high sword skill, or the well-rounded level 50? It depends on how well each knows their character, their limits, and the limits of their opponent. It also depends on how much practice they have.

This system is thus actually ability-based. Players evolve by primarily gaining additional abilities, or tools. Levels are superficial representations of overall experience gained, and skill points accumulated. In a pure skill-based system, assigning players a number based on how many total skill points they had increased over the life of their character would be equivalent, and yet the system would still be “skill-based.” Thus, do not be fooled by the presence of “levels” in this system into automatically believing it is your standard level-based progression system, because it isn’t.

Cheers.

3 comments:

Will Armstrong IV said...

Just so we are clear on what your concept is, I'll attempt to explain it back to you.

A player, let's call him Bob, has earned 23,551 experience, which is above the 20,000 experience threshold for level 5. Thus, Bob is now level 5. This in itself means nothing, only serving as an indication of what Bob has the capacity to do.

Assuming he hasn't spent any of them until now, Bob will have 5 skill points to spend on learning new abilities, and 23,551 experience to spend improving those abilities.

Leveling up, in your concept, does not increase a player's stats or improve the character in any way, other than granting players more skill points to improve their stats. I assume you only earn skill points when you level up, but can spend the experience you have earned at any time?

I think your use of the terms "levels" and "experience" will throw people off, just because of the way those terms are built into the collective consciousness of gamers, especially MMO players.

That said, assuming I have understood your system correctly, I don't see any other ways to describe them.

One thing I would comment on is your figures for experience, though I have a feeling you just threw random numbers out there for the sake of the article. I would suggest keeping the numbers as low as possible, if only for the sake of never hearing the following;

"Oh man, I need to earn 2 million points to improve this skill!". Keeping the numbers smaller means keeping the numbers more manageable.

(Don't mean to nit-pick, just something I noticed).

I look forward to a fuller explanation and more details in the future.

Zenodotus said...

You are exactly correct on all fronts.

What I didn't mention is that secondary attributes (dexterity, coordination, strength, whatever) and primary attributes (hit points, mana, stamina, whatever) are increased in the same manner as skills - with experience points.

You could be level 50 and never have spent a single xp point or skill point, and be equal to a lvl 1, if you were a masochist.

I agree with your view that xp should be kept low, and I was indeed throwing out random numbers. Also, I didn’t mention that skill points aren't necessarily gained every level, it may be that after lvl 10, they come every 2 levels, after 30, every 3 levels. This is all balancing of course, which would be designed to ensure no player gained absolutely everything (soft cap).

I've actually designed all of the primary and secondary attributes as well as many skills. I'm a bit weary about sharing everything though, for reasons I know you understand. Perhaps I’m slowly coming out of my shell though.

I’m curious as to what you think about the way macro’s tend to be treated in the system I described above vs a pure skill system (skills are only gained by using said skill). You did say level-based systems utterly fail in your post (I know you didn’t mean my system exactly). I’m very curious about your ideal progression system.

Will Armstrong IV said...

If you're weary about sharing ideas, there's always a private access blog.

I must confess that I had not really considered the use of macros very much, but my experience with use-based skill systems is somewhat limited. It sounds to me like your solutions would work.

My ideal progression, in terms of advancing within the game, is chapter-based. Lord of the Rings Online featured a similar system, though not quite what I have in mind. Ideally, the gameplay would advance at the same rate as the story. This is something I think Bioware is attempting with The Old Republic, I hope they are. I'd hate to see ANOTHER tedious quest/grind based MMO.

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