Feedback talk:User/Silverdawn/No Levels

No

ArenaNET has already mitigated the negative effects of having levels through various means, which you could discover if you did some research (I'm not about to go looking for links). Secondly, if you knew anything about being a game designer, the goal is to make the game marketable to the widest possible audience. Removing levels completely would be unwanted for the MAJORITY of players, I don't know where you're pulling your current statistics out of but I'm guessing it's connected to your small intestine. What ArenaNET did (adding many levels, as well as keeping the level curve constant) gives players a real sense of achievement, and makes the grind much less horrendous as in other MMOs. Similarly, they ways their sidekicking system and COMPLETELY BALANCED PVP (levels are automatically evened, skills are evened, etc) makes this a moot point. Simply put, you are wrong and your opinion is wrong. — Omigawa 7:30, 29 Jan 2011 (UTC) 02:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

If you had actually bothered to read what I had written, you would have seen that I am not only well-versed in all the work that ANet put into removing the effects of levels, but I actually acknowledged and used it in my suggestion. Since you obviously don't have the patience to find things yourself, here's a link that will take you right to it. You would have also noticed that I didn't use statistics (I'm not sure what organ you pulled that notion out of), but I did scour the wiki for other posts relating to levels, and guess what? Even the problems described by posts that were pro-levels were in fact caused by levels. I know you won't read them yourself, but just so you know I'm not making this up, you can find them here, right in plain sight if you had read the post. You are right that ArenaNet's job is to sell games first and make awesome games second, but I believe that sometimes risks pay off (such as the risk ANet took with the philosophy skill>time playing in the first GW, something that is really popular with the playerbase) and if you make decisions that make the game better (for example, removing levels), people will buy the game. Granted, "no levels" is a controversial selling point at best (as evidenced by your frothing at the mouth and going to the end of your chain without even knowing what you're barking at), but this can easily be avoided by advertising "skill-based" or "next-gen" progression. If you couldn't tell by my response, I am a little annoyed by the condescending and disrespectful manner that you addressed me. In the future, I would appreciate it if you 1) read the things you were critiquing, and 2) keep it civil. This is about ideas, not about personal qualities of the author or who pulled what out of which body part. Thank you. --Silverdawn 09:16, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Well put! Usually I'm pretty wordy (if you've read any of my other posts), but I'll be brief here. Levels are a relic of the past that came into existence for two reasons; (1) they were emulating the pencil-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons games from the 1970s and (2) the computers of the early 1980s were too weak to represent increasing player proficiency any other way than a simple mathematical progression (i.e. levels). Sadly, Swords and Sorcery MMO games developers haven't bothered to challenge this paradigm for the last 30 years despite the fact that computers are now many times more powerful than computers from the 1980s. Levels are NOT instrinsic or even necessary in a Fantasy MMO RPG; as a matter-of-fact they are counter-productive as Silverdawn and other posters have pointed out in great detail. They are simply a habit that everyone got used to and haven't bothered to challenge or look at more meaningful methods of conveying player proficiency in a game. Guild Wars 3 perhaps 00:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

if GWW had a "like" button

I would press it. — Raine Valen 7:30, 29 Jan 2011 (UTC)

I hated the idea when I read the first paragraph...but after comparing Prophecies (takes a long time to level) to Nightfall (level before you have time to sneeze), I agree that if GW2 is anything like GW1 then what's the point of levels?

On the other hand, I don't think GW2 will be anything like GW1; I suspect they will have less in common with each other than Dervish 2009 does with Dervish 2011. So, I hope that folks at ANet review your idea and address the concerns behind it. I won't be disappointed if they remove leveling, but I'm okay if they keep it and avoid the grind seen in other games with 80 levels.  — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Some feedback

So I read about 2/3 of the entire post. Js.

The way I'd run a gw2 with no levels: Have a character start off with a particular set of weapons/equipment. Have a character choose their own skills. As the character moves through the game/storyline, they meet "mentors" or "instructors" who provide you with new traits, weapons, equipment, and skills. These mentors hold several choices for learning new things and you can only learn one new thing from each kind, One trait, one ability to use a certain type of weapon, a few more skills, "this armor is now be available for craft from this mentor". Mentors would be located in cities and importants towns, like Augury Rock, Rata Sum, Sunspear Great Hall, or Harvest Temple, for example. By the time the character has gone through the entire storyline, that person has learned mabye 4/5 of all the skills, traits, weapons, and armor unlocks. The other 1/5 will be unlocked by rescuing a village, doing good deeds, questing, or even exploring areas to find mentors. Of course, a play can just buy skills, traits, weapons, or armor unlocks, but they must've already beaten the main storyline.

Pros: No statements like "I'm higher level, I'm better than you, I'm stuck up and think im super cool because I've achieved level 80, What is this low-level noob doing here?" or other supremacist comments.

Cons: Players may feel they've already achieved maximum level, leaving them with less things to do. No evidence of player experience (age). --Eclipse143 01:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I'll see what I can do to organize things better so people can skip the parts that aren't important to them. Your GW2 with no levels is good, too. It has the benefit of more flavor than mine (if done right) but at the expense of less freedom. I'd like to include your pros and cons, too (especially the cons, 'cause I was having trouble thinking of stuff), but I don't agree with them. People will find other ways to be snobbish in level-less systems (Hero/HoM rank requirements to join parties/guilds etc as an example), and people won't expect level to equate with content if there are no levels. Also, level isn't evidence of player experience either, because some folks ride to the end of any game on the coattails of others. Nice try, though. --Silverdawn 07:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

eerrm

this is a bad idea - what kind of perosn plays a combat game where there is no levels involved? imagine you werte actually in the game, it would be like you just starting off and thinking 'right I've just learned how to cast a low level spell now im off to kill an elder dragon

to gain levels you need experiance - to gain experiance you need to fight or do quests could you seriously take on an extremely dangerous dungeon with hordes of enemies and an insanely powerful uber boss at the end simply by knowing 'flare'? if i was in that world, I'd like to know and bring more spells that i've actually improved over my time as an adventurer

with HP as you go along, running from foes, charging into battle being at your limit constantly, you would become fitter, faster and stronger. and as for MP firing spells and using your energy reserves to do so would help 'exercise', develop and increase the size those reserves

levels is just a way of becoming stronger and setting yourself goals if not, the game would become boring, no one would play it and anet would lose loads of money and dissapoint fans Getefix 20:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, if GW1 would start off at 20th level, it would not be bad at all. At max level, the game is just beginning. All of the interesting parts happen after you hit the level cap, including HM, most of Factions, and the missions in Prophecies that used to require some cooperation.

No levels does not mean "no progress". When you hit 20th level in GW, you are nowhere near able to take on something like Varesh or Kuunavang. Think of collecting skills, learning necessary tactics, and new concepts (well, new to GW) like getting reputation to access new areas or unlocking more fancy armor designs. That would not be a bad idea at all, but unfortunately I do not see Anet implementing it.

Also, get IE7 or Opera. They both have built-in spell checkers. Koda 21:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, there aren't any low-level spells/skills in a system with no levels. There are just spells/skills, some stronger, some weaker, but each with different advantages and disadvantages. A beginning character (in my system) wouldn't be a farm boy who didn't know the first thing about fighting; he or she would be a fully trained (but still green) professional. Experienced characters would be marginally stronger due to picking up traits and items, and much more flexible from learning new utility skills and weapon sets (which is also a form of power), but the lion's share of a character's power will come from the player getting better at the game. It's about relying on player skill rather than character statistics. Go back and read my suggestion a bit more carefully. You'll find it addresses a lot of your concerns, and who knows? You might actually like the idea. --Silverdawn 22:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, a level system does a great deal to water down any talent a player may have.

"with HP as you go along, running from foes, charging into battle being at your limit constantly, you would become fitter, faster and stronger. and as for MP firing spells and using your energy reserves to do so would help 'exercise', develop and increase the size those reserves"

This is simply not true. If you sprint 50 meters each day, as fast as you can, you will eventually reach a limit. If you're already in shape, you'll reach it sooner rather than later, and it will be only marginally better than your current level (read: not several times better). By removing a level system, we're going with the premise that players' characters, these adventurers, are not invalids and, rather, are somewhat competent at adventuring.

"levels is just a way of becoming stronger and setting yourself goals if not, the game would become boring, no one would play it and anet would lose loads of money and dissapoint fans"

Again, not true. No one that I know in Guild Wars said, "my goal is to get to level 20", but rather, "I must first get to level 20 so that I can begin completing my goals". As another counterexample, take console games. In the vast majority, characters do not grow much stronger from the beginning of the game to the end of it. Characters often learn new abilities are gain access to new items, but base character strength generally remains constant throughout.

There's no reason that a similar approach couldn't work in an MMO without subscription fees. — Raine Valen 4:26, 13 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and:

"what kind of perosn plays a combat game where there is no levels involved"

Sup Black Ops, sup MW2, sup BFBC2. Sup Brawl. Sup SC2. Sup the vast majority of competitive games. — Raine Valen 17:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Excellent Suggestion

I, too, am waiting for the day when a leveless MMORPG comes out. ArenaNet is probably the only game developer at present who has the potential courage to do so. For those who think that levels are intrinsic to MMORPGs, you are right, they are; if the game in question was developed in 1981.

Allow me to explain. Why do we have levels in the first place? To understand the answer, you have to understand not only the history of games development but also the history of the personal computer.

In the very first RPGs, levels were - arguably - a necessity. This is because computers of the day were far simpler and weaker in their computational power compared to today's computers. They did not have rich graphics, they did not have blazing fast processors, they did not have gigabytes of RAM, nor terrabytes of hard drive space. The only way to represent an increasing challenge for your stick figure hero composed of ten white pixels was to increase the amount of numbers assigned to the hitpoints of the ten white pixel, stick figure spider you were fighting. Otherwise, due to the limitations of the computers of the time, there was no other way to distinguish one enemy from the other or one level of difficulty from the other.

A white, stick figure, ten pixel spider on the first floor of the dungeon looked the same as the white, stick figure, ten pixel spider on the third floor of the dungeon. The only variable available to the game developer to differentiate a weak spider from a more challenging spider was increasing its hitpoints from 10 to 20 to 30, etc. Likewise, to keep the game "balanced" so your little stick figure hero wasn't being overwhelmed and killed too quickly, his hitpoints had to scale accordingly as well. And thus was the born the paradigm of the LEVEL in early RPGs. How do I know all of this? Because I am old enough to have actually played one of the very first computer dungeon adventure games on an Apple computer.

Sadly, this paradigm - though necessary in those early days - was carried on by those early game developers into the games they created in the 90s and then taught to the next generation of game developers in the 2000s. Fast forward to today when we have personal computers that are many orders of magnitude more powerful but we still find ourselves saddled with the legacy of the limitations of computers from the 80s. With today's computers, there is no need for levels; it's a relic of the past. But games continue to be made using that paradigm. Modern day computers have the capability of adding so many more layers of subtlety and nuance to a game, the characters within that game, and the game's mechanics. There are ways to represent increasing challenges and increasing proficiency without the need of relying on the simplistic method of linear and/or geometric mathematical progression. But yet that's exactly where we find ourselves with the outdated leveling scheme.

Consider this. I don't care if you are the toughest, meanest, most merciless, Special Forces killing machine ever trained by the US military. A bullet to the head (or - in the context of a sword and sorcery milieu such as Guild Wars - a blade to the heart) will kill you just as quickly and assuredly as the same bullet or blade to a 99 pound weakling. The idea that a member of the Special Forces has some magical, superhuman abilities that makes him able to withstand physical damage that would kill a lesser man is ludicrous. Damage is damage, dead is dead. I also know this because I work in the medical field. All that training permits you to do is run a little further, run a little faster, lift a few pounds more than someone else, or last a little longer in your endurance; that's it. It doesn't stop bullets (or blades), it doesn't reduce the severity of burns, it doesn't prevent broken bones. Action movies are so boring for me to watch because they are so unrealistic; people don't jump from 10 story buildings without breaking bones and rupturing internal organs, they don't get shot 10 times and then stand up to engage in hand-to-hand combat, they don't take massive blows to the head and remain conscious and able to fight back. The idea that someone in the real world is a higher "level" and thus capable of withstanding physical damage that would vaporize another human being is ridiculous. So, too, is it ridiculous in the context of a computer game when computers have finally advanced far enough that they no longer need to rely on "levels" as a means of conveying increasing proficiency in a game.

By removing levels from the game, you remove an outdated and contrived system of accomplishment. It served its purpose in the 80s and early 90s, but it's time to move on. With no more levels, the focus becomes player proficiency; not what number you achieved. Compare this, for example, to a FPS like Battlefield 2. Putting aside the difference in genres for a moment, let's just focus on the characters. In Battlefield 2, there are no levels. Heck, there's not even a *GASP!* numerical representation of your current health. You know when you've been hit by a bullet because you recoil from the shock and the edges of your screen become reddened. If you aren't killed outright by that one bullet, you also know you've got only about one or two bullet hit's worth of health left before you die; time to find a MedKit to heal yourself fast. And all of that feedback, information, and game immersion is accomplished without once seeing a bar or number indicating your current health. You can buy or earn (marginally) better weapons and buy or earn (marginally) better body armor. But your base character has no level and the health is the same for everyone (it can be modified slightly with an item but only by an increase of about 10% or so). Even with the slightly improved health and best body armor available, your character only gains approximately one to three extra bullets worth of damage resistance as compared to a non-boosted, unarmored character. Furthermore, well-placed headshots will still take out the best-armored, health-boosted character as easily as a non-boosted, unarmored character. So by-and-large, the playing field is leveled for everyone and no one has levels.

Does this mean the game is unengaging and without challenge or progression? Hardly; there is considerable challenge within the game and numerous accomplishments to gain. It's also quite easy to observe a "level" of proficiency among the players. How so? Because it is their SKILL at playing the game rather than what numerical level they've achieved that distinguishes them from someone new to the game. And yet there's nothing magical, superhuman, or extraordinary about that character within the context of the game; they will die just as easily as a newbie if shot the same number of times. It's the fact that they have learned how to avoid getting shot while getting really good at shooting others that sets them apart and is reflected in their number of kills, kill ratio, and various accomplishments. All of this without a single level.

Now let's bring this back to Guild Wars. Eliminate the level paradigm and now we have a game where it's about how good you are at playing that game rather than how long you have been around grinding your way up the level ladder to achieve some arbitrary number. That may be a testament to your endurance and tolerance for boredom but it is not necessarily a testament to your skill at playing the game. The game is designed to allow you to get to level 20 as long as you follow the storyline and grind on through. It's not an accomplishment; it's practically pre-ordained. It's also really boring and certainly not realistic for reasons already explained by the OP. If pointlessly grinding away at a meaningless task is the extent of your interest in video games, then I have the perfect game for you; it's called REAL LIFE.

Even WITH levels, the whole level paradigm makes itself obsolete in short order. Take a look around the game world of Guild Wars. If you've been playing the game from the very beginning with the release of Prophecies, think back to the start and reflect on the mix of levels of players in the game. You'll realize that back then you saw quite a variety. Today? Practically everyone is level 20 now. Almost everyone has maxed out; they've been everywhere, collected every skill, completed every quest. Their level doesn't set them apart nor distinguish them from other players; it would be no different than setting everyone's level to zero, or 1, or 1,000,000. It no longer carries cachet; level has become irrelevant. What has become relevant now that nearly everyone is the same level? How good they are at playing the game, that's what. So why waste all that time level grinding just to get to the point where the playing field is leveled and it becomes all about skill when you could have just done that right from the start of the game? Guild Wars 3 perhaps 01:29, 24 April 2011 (UTC)