MMO levelling systems

Now I'm not going to mention any games but I've been wondering, what other ways are there of progressing a character in an MMO beyond the following:

1) XP = levels = New abilities:
The system City of uses along with many other MMOs. Now this is a good simple way of doing things. It's by far the easiest to balance content around since at any given level you'll know, roughly, how powerful the player should be.

However the problem with this system is that it isn't very dynamic and doesn't allow for a lot of player customisation in their abilities, normally limiting them to specific Classes (aka Archetypes).

2) Time = skill points = New abilities:
This system is used in a few places and does allow for a vastly more dynamic levelling system.

I'll use a random and completely made up example.

Lets say there's a Third person Zombie Survival MMO (which sadly does not exist). Now every player would start with a certain allotted number of skills points to tailor their character from the off. This system allows that person to go the combat route and spec into Melee Combat, Fitness (character is tougher, stronger and has more stamina) and basic Firearms training. However they can also go down the route of Repair, Weapons production and scavenging which allows their character to make their profit purely through finding, repairing and then selling on items to other players.

Now the problem with this system, as I see it, is that this system can be kind of unrewarding. While your character does progress, there's not the same sense of reward which comes with getting a new level. This also means that content has to be based around earning equipment and currency rather than XP, making it much harder to balance as someone who is purely a crafter is going to have a hard time surviving out in the wastelands of a Zombie infested city.

So far those are the only two levelling systems I can think of, each one has its advantages, disadvantages and neither is really best, both suiting certain types of games.

I'm curious if there is really any other way of doing it though.

The best levelling system I have seen belonged to a MMO based off a popular sci-fi franchise. That system is now gone however after the developers made some rather insane design decisions.

Basically, there wasn't any levels. Every action you took gave you some xp of a particular variety which you could exchange for an ability in the corresponding skill tree. Everyone had access to every skill tree but every skill had prerequisites which made certain combinations more cost effective than others considering there was a cap as to how much xp you could spend.

For example, mixing multiple melee sets was more efficient due to having corresponding prerequisites than mixing ranged and melee and vice versa.

That is what actually brought me to CoH - the customization available via pool powers and such was a watered down version of what I enjoyed so I figured it was close enough.

There are also mastery systems. Where using a skill increases your abilities in that skill. Increasing a skill (or combination of skills) to a certain point can unlock other skills (both skills that branch off from the initial skill or new categories of skills with their own branches).

Hmm a good point, hadn't thought of that actually.

So while a dedicated combat character could take a sledgehammer to a Zombie and do what they do best in one or two hits, the Wrenchmonkey would take 4 or 5 take to out your basic walker type Zombie.

This dynamic also helps breed stronger player ties. That Wrenchmonkey may not be good in a combat situation but it's good to bring him along because he can spot and scavenge all the useful stuff from an area, turn it into weapons and armour to make the Combat Specialists better at their job.

Obviously the higher up in skill you go, the more points it costs, the longer you have to wait to put points in. This is a balancing factor in itself, you can either be really good at something and not skilled in a lot of things, or a bit skilled in everything but not master anything.

Now lets throw a spanner into the works shall we.

Lets say there there isn't just humans involved in this imaginary Zombie MMO but the option to play the big old walking corpses themselves.

Now I imagine that Zombie skills would obviously be different from human skills, however Zombies are purely combat focused, they're there to munch brains, delicious, nutrious brains.

To me this would lead to having Zombie skills lean more into granting abilities.

For example, lets say you start out as your basic walker, alone you're not that much threat to player characters, in huge hordes yes because you can overwhelm.

Now the skills would personally see as leading down various Zombie archetypes which crop up in gaming. While there should always be a generic skill pool for Zombies to take from (basic increased toughness, shuffle speed etc.).

It's the balancing of these two which has me puzzled.

From a design point of view, I'd think that having a class system is easier to balance versus a complete sand box system.

It's rather like what happened with CoH. There were the most general class system and it was more or less an origin for role play reasons such as Gagetear (uses tech etc...).

However, I enjoy the aspect of sand box skills over those of powers for other games.
I'd probably like to see something where you choose your class, which then determines which skill categories you're better at than others.

Then I'd do away with xp and grant skill points based upon completion of tasks. Missions could have multiple tasks or side quests (wether known or hidden) within them and different classes could earn individial skill points and then upon mission completion, each member of the mission could gain a mission completion bonus. No xp, no levels, just skills.

I personally would do it where the more you do something you get better at it, or based on story lines.

There are only two general "leveling" systems that exist; Vertical and Horizontal.

Vertical is what just about every game (especially RPGs and MMOs) uses as their primary mode of growth. You have a level 1 and you increase to max number, each level getting progressively harder with less or equal returns as previous levels.

Horizontal is what just about every game (especially RPGs and MMOs) uses for their secondary mode of growth or is used very early on. You have a skill and that skill unlocks other skills at a certain point or more skills are added as you progress or new ways to use said skills are added.

Vertical growth uses 2 psychological tricks to make you continue playing... #1 reward garnered from a set amount of work that can be measured easily #2 slowly building on the length of time to achieve the next tier. This system is used especially in MMOs because they are subscription based (and it's also why a number of MMOs are ridiculously stupid about their low level cap and how easy it is to get to it) game play. The developers want to to stick around but they also want you to be able to progress so you get attached. (ie I already got a character to level 10 I should see what happens next) So the low levels are designed to get you "into the game" while the higher levels are designed to make you take a long time to get to the next tier.

This has many flaws such as when creating new content you have to create it for a level range because each level makes a character stronger and stronger and this separates the player base and increases the amount of work the developers have to do to provide content for every body. Or the flaw that eventually the time to next level gets too long and you get players dropping out because there is no more visible gain. (PSO level 200 it was more about saying you did it than anything else. The highest level armor was lvl 160 and you could max your char long before that)

This is a dying mode of Primary character growth because MMOs are going free to play, they are becoming "casual" which really means a less than 30 day start to max level span, they have more or less realized the problems with the higher levels, and in a genre where community is key separating the player base is stupid. It doesn't have to be taken out completely but we need to make it the Secondary growth method rather than primary.

The Horizontal growth model on the other hand is more or less used by every game out there at their max levels, but badly, and they don't take full advantage of it. At max level Vertical Growth is changed to weak Horizontal growth or Mutated vertical Growth with Equipment taking the place of Levels. You work to get the equipment (which is a form of horizontal growth) but all that has changed is the stat gain is random and associated with a piece of armor rather than innate.

My solution is that you associate skills with every action and you level via growing skills which in turn unlocks other skills or more advanced skills or higher levels of the same skill. IE mastery of the basic over had katana chop makes it more powerful but also allows you the skill of say a cross slash.
Taking actions raises and lowers your stats over time while having base line and max stats you can reach that you are in the process of growing to or losing which are roughly equivalent to all the mobs in the game.

Some of you might say where is the growth?

Well, that's simple, knowledge and skills combined with gear gotten over time makes you able to deal with certain mobs easier than if you were a starting character. Various skills might be more useful in situation but not in others. Knowing how this all works allows the challenge to grow/shrink as time goes on. Likewise it allows high level and low level players take the same content on meaning a new area added is for everyone and not just a fraction of your user base... and building a better community because the players can interact with whoever they like. There is no longer a "well my friend is at level 10 and I'm lvl 60 so we can't really player together" This allows them to play together regardless.

Further when we displace the vertical leveling to the secondary growth mode we return it to what is meant to be there for. You can see actual growth over relatively short amounts of time, but also you have multiple areas you have that you can work on and multiple tiers that drive that psychological stuff to make you addicted a little bit easier ^.^

Along the same line the multiple skills allows for a customization which makes the player feel connected with their character which means it less likely they will stop playing... even when they are ostracized from the community which will also be harder to do because they'll have a much larger community to play with.

Basically this is more friendlier to the player and the dev team...
You know how every time there is a new piece of armor it has to be balanced for that class and such? Well that's a lot of dev time because each piece has to be balanced against multiple classes and if you only give it to one then you are favoring that class so the more classes you have the more pieces of armor you have to make to achieve the same effect as adding 1 item to the game for every player...if you have 9 classes that is 9 items you have to add to essentially add 1 item. Make a more horizontal growth system and you only have to balance 1 item and every player gets its benefits.

* be aware that when I say balance I'm talking about in two different ways... "classic balancing" which is in my opinion crap and just makes everything stale and boring by way of equalizing stats/effects (fireball and iceball are the same thing just different status effects) and what I call balance which is which is neutralization of forces which allows much more freedom to the characters and development by way of creatively exploring ways to Neutralize an opposing force (ie a firebal and an iceball would have different stats and effects because they are completely different...a neutralizing force would be an ice shield or flame breath)

We're moving more towards what what I'm promoting as better design already... it's just a matter of time and how willing developers are to look outside the box.

A good pen and paper system is that of attribute and skill management. So if in your zombie game scenario, your Wrenchmonkey may be strong, but not necessarily that smart.

So you have a system of points spending that governs the dominant ability (in this case strength) and combine that with the skill (in this case a melee ability). This way you have a demonstrable and measured amount of both natural ability and learned skill. Any advancement in the character is then measured by an allocation of points per mission or mission arc that the player then can allocate to the areas of their choosing, creating a dynamic and organically growing character, all the while having upper limits on both governing attribute and learned skill.

Add to that then a higher point cost for specialized skills (so the Wrenchmonkey has a melee ability, but is really good at using a wrench to beat on zombies) will allow people who wish to min/max to do just that without unbalancing the system. Such specialized characters will of course not be as good in as many areas, but that is the consequence of the decision.


S.

On the pen&paper side, I have always liked the systems that pair mutable and immutable aspects to measure how well you can do things. Granted, rarely are these truly immutable - so call it attribute/skill pairing.

At setup you assign your attribute and skill starting points @ creation.

Skills would be wielding the hammer, shooting a gun, scavenging, etc. Earned points in play would allow improving existing skills, or selecting new ones.

Attributes being things like strength, agility, wisdom, etc. Earned points later cost more to increase attributes, making changing these more difficult.

OK, having level set my preferred approach - probably essentially bucketed in the XP-Skill category RemusShepherd mentioned, and maybe not that far from SuperOz's comments.
(Incidentally I have drafted something based on this approach on my desktop for a tabletop superhero miniatures skirmish game...)

Archetypes/Class is how some of the balancing questions could be tackled - they could be as loose as defining base starting skills and suggested attributes that you then can modifiy before starting, or perhaps only certain specialized skills are restricted to certain archetypes (which you could say was based on background/training pre-zombie-OMGalyspe, such as military, police, scientist, etc.)

Zombies as an archetype would then enter in... starting points focused on constitution/resistance to be insanely durable compared to a human and earned points to work a different skill tree - movement speed, etc.

To the question of balance, though... in tabletop work what I've done before is define to units/figures exactly the same, then give each one different power and play out the results - scored the result and cost them accordingly when you finish your combinations. There has to be a better way for computer game/testing/modeling, but you would need to work out that x-point increase in zombie speed provides y improvement in zombie survivability. In a team/buff environment that gets wonky - which I seem to recall the CoX devs discussing before.

Frankly, I'd probably make a zombie player an MM-style AT... to convert and absorb humans into their 'character'. Each individual zombie less than a human but get several of them together... Lose a couple, gain a few, lose a couple, gain a few...


((I think I'll quit rambling now. I hope on the whole it added to the discussion.))

Hmm with the Zombie survival MMO example I was thinking along the lines of what Clave was suggesting.

Humans = adaptable and versatile, can be good in combat or other areas.

Zombies = Combat focused but varied in that focus.

Lets say you start out as a Walker, you're weak one your own but able to take out NPC humans in groups of 1-3. From there you can progress down several paths with their own wider skill set focused to that path.

Groaner: MM style controlling a horde of zombies, skills would focus on improving horde.

Crusher: aka TAAAAAANNNKKKK big, hulking zombie that focuses on smacking the crap out of anything in its way, hits slow but hits like a truck, very resilient though.

Stalker: Mix of Witch (high melee damage) and Hunter, able to scale buildings and even ceilings while it waits for prey, hits very quickly for high damage not as tough as regular zombies.

Meanwhile all Zombies would have an additional pool of skills available to all no matter which specialisation they picked or if they indeed bothered picking a specialisation and instead focused on the general skills while remaining a walker.

That's all I've got for the moment, sure I could think of other skills set styles for Zombie, just throwing things out there.