*Edit*
12/06/17
I put some effort into writing up the simplified outline of the logarithmic character growth and its benefits and a basic implementation model.
Logarithmic Character Power Growth by Level and its Effect on MMO Game design
Logarithmic Character Power Growth, over linear or exponential power growth, enables a larger cross section of players to meaningfully play together, utilizes a much larger percentage of developed game world, removes the value of a mentor system, limits mudflation, and eliminates the need for continual level cap content development.
Logarithmic Character Power Growth is characterized by a short period of very fast power growth, followed by a short period of linear power growth, ending with a long and very shallow power growth period extending to level cap. When coupled with an exponential increase in the number of kills required to level 80%-90% of character play time occurs while in the shallow power growth period. This makes designing game zones for the shallow power growth period the most efficient use of development time.
To differentiate between the beginning and end of the shallow power growth period characters gain situational utility powers of increasing complexity rather than increasing the magnitude of primary offensive/defensive/healing powers. To make these utility powers meaningful Monster tactics and environmental effects would grow from simple tank and spank at the beginning of the period to extremely challenging dynamic battle field conditions and monster mixed unit tactics at maximum level.
This focus on utility powers, over significant magnitude increases, for the shallow growth period has two primary effects. First while a fully developed character may have up to 20% higher magnitude over a character just beginning the shallow growth period the primary abilities that differentiate either end of the shallow growth period will not come into play when fighting content created equivalent to the beginning of the period. This will permit characters to play down to earlier zones within the shallow growth period without removing the challenge or danger, it will just be easier. Conversely characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period could meaningfully participate in content tuned to the end of the period, assuming they had the required gear to participate, but without the situational utility skills odds of death significantly increase and other party members will be required to cover for the combat responses typically covered by the under leveled player’s class.
To further facilitate the natural progression of the logarithmic power growth the initial fast power growth period can be contained within the starter zone which doubles as an in-game tutorial. The starter zone can be designed for solo or small group play so that a player is introduced to each of the primary abilities that define their character class and how to use the GUI.
The linear growth period can be sub divided into a beginning and end phase. The beginning phase geographically can take you from the tutorial zone to the closest city. This major city can be used to introduce common in game interactions and things such as trade skills. By the time a character is more or less done with the first city and it’s near vicinity the character can be encouraged to travel to the nearest capital to receive their final primary skills.
The trip to the capital and the required class quests will mark the end of the linear growth period and the beginning of the shallow growth period. Ideally the final class quests will introduce challenging group content that will require characters to form groups to complete the quests. This simple grouping will hopefully prepare the players for the shallow growth period where virtually all content will require a group of some kind and the higher level content will require well balanced groups with increasing abilities and player skill.
Most of the “paths” between the different capital cities and the nearest of the smaller cities should be tuned to the end phase of the linear growth period. This way characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period can travel solo to the small city they wish to adventure out from. Cities further from the capitals will likely require specialized skills or groups to reach safely. This structure will prevent the ghost town effect as player’s level out of the linear phase and into the shallow growth phase as the primary leveling areas are also the primary over land travel routes. Other than the tutorial zone, and its path to the nearest city, characters of maximum level would have compelling reasons to be in all the remaining zones in the game. Players who are also primarily interested in crafting, RP and trading would be able to stop leveling their characters at the beginning of the shallow growth period without isolating themselves to just the starting zones allowing for alternative play styles.
From a game marketing perspective the trial period of game could extend up to but not through the finally class quest, doing the final turn in will require the account to be a full account. Additionally all further expansions can be broken down into new story lines and sequels to existing story lines. New story lines would signify a new sequence of zones and challenges from the beginning to the end of shallow growth period. Sequel expansions can add additional maximum challenge content and or new environmental and combat challenges while not increasing the magnitude of the character power at maximum level. A combination of the two expansion styles would be taking an already created sequence of zones and updating the look and feel as well as the in zone story lines while also introducing new styles of challenges at the end of the shallow growth period.
I have made a google spreadsheet with nice graphs and break downs of the different power curves both for players and Monsters as an example of the background math.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PLlPGFOgdNjdN-33D4SrCq4rjd4cB5TBklMUI3mWwLU/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for reading the recap,
*Edit end*
I must apologize for letting my inner math nerd showing but game and system design is so heavily based on mathematical models that it is hard to talk about one without using the other.
To my knowledge all modern MMOs and most gaming systems are either exponential growth or steep linear growth. Off the top of my head only original SWG had a shallow linear power progression before unlocking Jedi, GURPS has a logarithmic power progression and 4th Ed D&D has a moderate linear progression with a high Y intercept but every 10 levels had a step like power jump similar to the initial high y intercept.
The problem with exponential or steep linear growth systems is that it is just not sustainable without an equal growth in challenge. I call this the “Jumping the Shark Paradox”, How do you keep something interesting without Jumping the Shark and making all previous material less entertaining by comparison? When challenges grow at an exponential rate only a narrow band of levels can engage the challenge without making it too hard or trivializing it. This in the end creates a lot of low to no return development time and each expansion negates the previous expansion content. This is all assuming that the goal is to reach the highest level as fast as possible and gear up as fast as possible, which to be fair is the mindset of most gamers.
A basic example of exponential growth is if a character starts with 100 HP and can kill something in 10 hits with the same amount of HP then they do 10 damage a hit. If the character gains just 10% each level then at level 50 the character would have 10671HP and would do 106 damage a hit. (lvl 10 – 235 HP, lvl 20 – 611 HP, lvl 30 – 1586 HP, lvl 40 – 4114 HP)
Moderate or Shallow linear growth can be much easier to control but over a long enough growth period you will still have a significant number of zones of content that are of no challenge to characters at the maximum level. If the character gains just 10% of the first level of power each level then at level 50 the character would have 590HP and would do 59 damage a hit. (lvl 10 – 190 HP, lvl 20 – 290 HP, lvl 30 – 390 HP, lvl 40 – 490HP)
If you have not already guessed what is most interesting to me is logarithmic growth. For those less mathematically minded folks out there logarithmic growth can be split into three zones, a rapid initial growth followed by a standard linear growth then changing to an extremely shallow growth that trends toward no growth at all. Logarithmic growth also happens to be the most common type of growth in nature, partially due to supply and demand.
A way to model logarithmic growth in a game would be as follows. You start at level 1 with 100 hp and each level you would gain 10*((Max level – Next Level)/Max Level) rounded up. This would play out to be the following scale; lvl 10 – 183 HP, lvl 20 – 256 HP, lvl 30 – 309 HP, lvl 40 – 342 HP and lvl 50 – 355 HP. If the majority of the content is tuned for level 30 characters then a total of 30 levels of play would be within plus or minus 20% of the targeted power level of the challenge. In this way a level 20 could group with a level 50 character without being completely out classed by several orders of magnitude.
If the number of kills to level is equal to the HP values in the exponential growth example then 95% of kills required to reach level 50, 116391 kills, will be in the targeted level range. Very little of the game world will need to be dedicated to the lvl 1-20 range and could be restricted to the cities and newbie areas. Conversely areas tuned to level 50 characters will also be rare and intended to be handled by multiple groups of sweet zone characters to handle.
When creating zones the monster level can be created as if looking at a topographical map of a mountain pass such that the main travel path is the lowest elevation and the lowest level mobs are close to the path. This way weaker groups can stay close to the roads to increase the chance of survival but groups consisting of higher characters level and or higher skill level can leave those lower elevations.
Now comes the hard part, why level if you don’t increase in power? The answer is simple, complexity. Even if by level 20 you have all of your basic abilities and can really stand on your own in a fight that does not mean you are a master or can do anything with finesse. Knowing how to hold your spear and stand shoulder to shoulder in your shield wall makes you a soldier, it does not make you Cuhullin.
Game wise while a level 20 spearman with a Steel Spear would do 25 damage and a Level 50 Cuhullin with the Fabled Gae Bulg would still only do 36 damage but Cuhullin would have so many more options. Cuhullin would know how to fend off multiple opponents keeping them at bay as he focused on a single target. Cuhullin would be able to move through his opponents spotting weakness and exploiting them and in so doing control the positioning of the battle. Lastly in his hour of need Cuhullin could choose to call down his battle frenzy knowing it could mean his life, but not before his enemies lay bleeding at his feet.
Additionally from a game mechanic standpoint the complexity of mob AI, density and spawn rate of mobs, and manipulation of extreme environmental conditions by the mobs could all be functions of tuned mob level. The mobs in different areas could have various types of damage reductions and resistances and would require special gearing and tactics to defeat them. These challenging areas could be added both at launch and down the road without negating the areas already created. Each new area would need to have story and flavor reasons to face it but again that shifts developer work from making the next ride in the amusement park to writing immersive stories for the players to experience.
Hopefully this post was worth reading and is not yet another thwak on the equine skeleton.
Trasak
Iam a fan of (i think) exponential curves for experience progression im general. This allows for the pace of leveling to decrease the farther you go, while the experience rewards for encounters can still scale up in a linear fashion, rewarding people for seeking out tougher challenges.
For character power, I think a linear or sub-linear power curve is best, where gains get a little smaller as you level up, to help avoid mudflation.
Disclaimer: I would need to actually look at some graphs to make sure I am using the terms right here. Leveling should take longer at higher levels even though rewards from encounters increase. Power growth level to level should be less at higher levels than at lower ones.
My ln2 gp :)
Iksar said:
Sounds a lot like scaling from ESO.
I'll have to take your word on that. On paper ESO appears to be your standard level all the way to 50, invalidating 75% of the content, to start your end game grind. Ill be honest though, despite being a huge Elder Scrolls fan I could never get into ESO. Between the story on rails, the lack of consequences to your decisions, the general pvp focus and the annoying cash store it felt like trying to walk around in your favorite slippers only to find a stone in them you cannot seem to get out.
vjek said:
Linear please, given how the other options have turned out, historically.
I could get behind a very shallow linear progression with a high starting power, at least after the newbie quest zone. My worry is that without a much larger development team it will be difficult to make enough content at all leveling levels and that much again at maximum level to feel fully immersive. I also have my doubts that, at least at first, PROTF will have the player population to support reliable group making at all content ranges, given the need for true Tank+Healer+CC+DPS*X combinations for a viable group.
Anistosoles said:
I like your ideas, but I am not certain they would work for this game. Now, if you were designing your own game with the methods you described, that would be interesting to try out. I think the vast majority of PROTF fanbase prefer the way EQ1 did it.
In some ways I really do wish I could make my own game but that ship sailed unfortunately and a chunk of money and months of time sailed away with it. Additionally could say the Log scaling is more like: 1-30 are actual levels, 31-50 are bonus AAs with diminishing returns, nearly all zones are level 30 but of different difficulty tiers, you can contribute in level 30 zones at level 20, and getting to level 20 is 5% of game time.
It is a bit different than EQ1 was but when you consider that even during its hey day the majority of leveling was done in 1 or 2 zones per level range when there were as many as 5-8 options if you knew the game well enough. This was largely due to ease of access, group availability, and risk vs reward (some of those zones were bloody HARD at level). The majority of players ended up floating around in the 40-50 or 55-60 range depending of which expansion was out and those were the level ranges with the most options. Come to think about it until the Luclin end game raids(which I was never in a big enough guild to do) over all items other than epics did not have individually huge in game effects.
All that to say, I think you have good points and good instincts.
Porygon said:
I honestly read all of that. And understood maybe 75%.
See my response to Anistosoles. I simplified the primary points.
Nephele said:
Iam a fan of (i think) exponential curves for experience progression im general. This allows for the pace of leveling to decrease the farther you go, while the experience rewards for encounters can still scale up in a linear fashion, rewarding people for seeking out tougher challenges.
For character power, I think a linear or sub-linear power curve is best, where gains get a little smaller as you level up, to help avoid mudflation.
Disclaimer: I would need to actually look at some graphs to make sure I am using the terms right here. Leveling should take longer at higher levels even though rewards from encounters increase. Power growth level to level should be less at higher levels than at lower ones.
My ln2 gp :)
I would define that as an exponential increase in kills to level which is just to say x% more kills to get to 31 than it took to get to 30.
As far as power curve what you described is logarithmic behavior in general but possibly truncated so that you don't get as close to the asymptote 0 limit. . . . I did it again, sorry. I'm really not trying to give a calc 101 lecture.
We have all seen the effect of mudflation and the damage it can cause to otherwise great content.
I appriciate everyone taking the time to read my wall of text and respond. I have definately been enjoying the level of positive interaction and feedback on these boards.
Trasak
Edit: Fighting board formatting, and I loose again.
Trasak said:Trasak
Trasak,
Excellent post, very well written. I understand completely your three proposal but you left out some variables that would affect this part of your thesis: "In this way a level 20 could group with a level 50 character without being completely out classed by several orders of magnitude." You forgot the relationship between player level and NPC level. While on paper a level 20 could group with a lvl 50 because their HP and DPS might not be that different, a lvl 20 attempting to attack a lvl 50 mob would see that lvl 20 character applying near zero DPS while hits to that character would nearly always been at the damage cap of the NPC.
NPCs are always stronger at a given level than a same-level players. This is necessary because NPCs are not truly intelligent. Not to mention it is usually 1 NPC vs 6 players. For your logarithmic power increase would require NPCs to follow that same pattern thus being far too weak individually.
There is also the need to spread out the population, too many players competing for limited content is going to cause nothing but endless whining, demands of instancing and whatnot because instead of only 47-50 being able to go into a given area, you've now got 20-50 able to go there. That's over half the level spread capable of all going into what should be the area which is the reward to those who worked their way to 50 first.
Eventually, no matter what, old content will end up just that..old. Unused. Keeping all content relevant is unnecessary, what you just want to avoid is a 'Plane of Knowledge' from appearing.
oneADseven said:Progeny will help with keeping all content relevant. I see dead zones as a non-issue for Pantheon if progeny pans out.
Not only this, but the more popular games typically have a longer lasting "low end" population level wise. Combine that with the style of game Pantheon "should" be (and the progeny system) and I think you will see a very healthy population at both higher levels and lower.
Porygon said:oneADseven said:Progeny will help with keeping all content relevant. I see dead zones as a non-issue for Pantheon if progeny pans out.
Not only this, but the more popular games typically have a longer lasting "low end" population level wise. Combine that with the style of game Pantheon "should" be (and the progeny system) and I think you will see a very healthy population at both higher levels and lower.
Add to this games with a slow leveling speed tend to have a longer lasting population spread across all levels and when grouping is mostly required to progress (and death/mistakes punished) many players will find that trying to rush to the "end game" is like trying to run in waist deep water.
Vandraad said:
Trasak,
Excellent post, very well written. I understand completely your three proposal but you left out some variables that would affect this part of your thesis: "In this way a level 20 could group with a level 50 character without being completely out classed by several orders of magnitude." You forgot the relationship between player level and NPC level. While on paper a level 20 could group with a lvl 50 because their HP and DPS might not be that different, a lvl 20 attempting to attack a lvl 50 mob would see that lvl 20 character applying near zero DPS while hits to that character would nearly always been at the damage cap of the NPC.
NPCs are always stronger at a given level than a same-level players. This is necessary because NPCs are not truly intelligent. Not to mention it is usually 1 NPC vs 6 players. For your logarithmic power increase would require NPCs to follow that same pattern thus being far too weak individually.
There is also the need to spread out the population, too many players competing for limited content is going to cause nothing but endless whining, demands of instancing and whatnot because instead of only 47-50 being able to go into a given area, you've now got 20-50 able to go there. That's over half the level spread capable of all going into what should be the area which is the reward to those who worked their way to 50 first.
Eventually, no matter what, old content will end up just that..old. Unused. Keeping all content relevant is unnecessary, what you just want to avoid is a 'Plane of Knowledge' from appearing.
Vandraad,
Thank you for the kind words. My writing skills are far behind my math and reasoning skills and I am constantly worried that I come across as a second grader with a crayon scratching on the walls, you don't want to know how long it took me to write the original post.
I am inherently an external processor so as I communicate my ideas to others and hear their feedback I am constantly refining my thoughts. Your words do high light an areas that I only glossed over without going into too deeply. At this point I can see holes in my original idea anyway so I will present my iterated thoughts.
The “to hit” formula is usually a very complicated formula tied into monster level, attack skill level and defensive skill level. There are two ways to make the “to hit” system operate that I see. One is to have the “to hit” scaling cap out at level 30 so that all characters level 30-50 have the same chance to hit any monster level 30-50. The second is do away with the standard “to hit” formula entirely and have chance to hit be based on character class vs mob class regardless of level and just let the difference in DPS and HP take care of what is an appropriate target.
In my original vision only Damage and Hit points scale on mobs after level 30. The real boost to a mobs over level 30 is by using the additional AI that VR has been programming, thinking that up to level 30 they use standard dumb mob behaviors.
Boiling it down further, level is just another way of saying challenge rating. When preparing an encounter for my table top group I have many options on how to create the encounter difficulty and in turn its effective level. I could have 2 level 8 hobgoblins jump the party of level 5 adventurers and it would be a hard fight where if unlucky one could easily die. I could also send a lvl 7 caster, 2 level 5 fighters and 4 level 1 dogs and it would be about the same difficulty but the tactics to win would be completely different. I could also throw them against a level 11 adult dragon and proceed to watch them roll up new characters, my players never understand when to run away.
I see no reason that level could not be a function of mob base statistics, mob AI and encounter design. In truth level 50 encounters can and should be reserved for raid boss encounters. These level 50 raid boss encounters should be doable by say 60+ level 30 characters but you would still need 45 level 50 characters to pull it off.
As far as monsters of a given level relative to a character of a similar level I thought vanilla WoW did that fairly well with a few changes. A base mob of equal level should push a player to 25% of resources remaining. A veteran mob of equal level should take 3 characters down to 25%, assuming if its 3 DPS they have some way to trade agro, a mini boss should do the same for 4 and the boss all 6. I would also add in minion style creatures that do not give experience or loot but do cause complications but do not have much resilience and must be dealt with quickly.
For raid settings I would use the same scale but exchange characters for groups on the scaling. Higher level raids than the average character would intern require an appropriate increase in number of groups.
In response to the population bottleneck I failed to properly explain my thoughts. If say 100 areas were created, big zones could have 4-6 areas, only about 5 of those areas would be for level 1-20 and only 5 areas would be level 50 raid areas. The entire other 90 areas would be inhabited by monsters a level 49 can gain full exp from and a group of level 20s can kill a single loner standard mob near the roads. This would open most of game world up to most players. The caveat to this is that due to the new player and alt curve the 1-20 areas could get massively over populated easily and may need a larger percentage to balance out actual expected character live cycles.
I know I am still failing to explain what I am thinking. I'll see if I can come up with some good visuals. I am usually better at those but they take even more time to make.
Porygon said:
oneADseven said:
Progeny will help with keeping all content relevant. I see dead zones as a non-issue for Pantheon if progeny pans out.
Not only this, but the more popular games typically have a longer lasting "low end" population level wise. Combine that with the style of game Pantheon "should" be (and the progeny system) and I think you will see a very healthy population at both higher levels and lower.
Porygon and oneADseven,
I have played a fair amount of DDO which has a very similar Reincarnation system to the general effect of what the Progeny system has been described as and as Kilson pointed out we don't even know what the Progeny system will really be. The main goal that I have seen expressed though is that Progeny is another sub system to help players enjoy the early game content again. Most players in DDO found the Reincarnation system to be tedious and often you could sit for long periods of time without finding a group. To be fair the tedium and lack of groups may also have been a function of it being DDO. If anything I see the logarithmic power system being a very good compliment to the Progeny system especially if it includes needing to retire your main.
If your main finally reached a point that you were ready to trigger the Progeny system but you didn't want to spend months if not half a year leveling back up. If it typically takes 2000 hours to reach level 50 it would only takes 100 hours to get back to lvl 20 which you could at the very least be back to playing with your level 50 friends if not going on raids until you at least hit level 30. This would make the retirement portion of the Progeny system much less painful.
Trasak
Iksar said:
Add to this games with a slow leveling speed tend to have a longer lasting population spread across all levels and when grouping is mostly required to progress (and death/mistakes punished) many players will find that trying to rush to the "end game" is like trying to run in waist deep water.
That is one of those statistics that the VR team may have from back in the early EQ days. I have seen others mention not being able to progress quickly due to needing groups as a good thing. To me I found not finding a group in my level range to be extremely frustrating and often logged off after several hours trying to find groups without success. My Karana server account had at least 5 characters between level 20 and level 60 when I quit and only my monk was level 65. This was in the PoP era and most of those alts were abandoned due to hitting the soloing limit for that class and not being able to find groups. When I did find groups though the levels would relatively fly by compared to soloing. In short leveling slowly due to too much time sitting on your thumb is not a good thing but needing to be social to effectively level is. The key is to create a system where groups can be made effectively and quickly without breaking the immersion factor.
TLDR - sorry.
I like how these guys did it in original EQ. Not all classes had the same lvl rate. I agree. Not all classes are equal. In fact I would go so far as to say NO classes are equal and that they should not be. I think the most horrid thing I see in every MMO is the concept that all the players have to be equal. Equal in PvP, in PvE, equal in everything. I hate that idea.
In EQ the players had to level up their toon with XP. Penalties could cause you to actually de-level ( I aprove and hope this is how we go). Other things we may have overlooked is that every level you get your other attributes that can level up 5 times. Things like Piercing, Bashing, etc. I would like to see artificial blocks on leveling your toon based on whetehr or not your character has also maxed out those or a combination of some of those attributes. I would also like to see some sort of requirement directing a main attribute (Str, Wis, Cha, Int, Agi, some others we havent inveted yet) or in some cases, multiples of those. For instance, an Enchanter levels up to lvl 12. But he doesn't actually level up because his CHA is too low by 1, his INT is too low by 2, his piercing for lvl 11 is only at 11 of 15, and he hasn't charmed ANYTHING lvl 11. Or a Warrior hits lvl 12 but can't level because his Shield is not maxed, his STR is too low, and he has still not met with the Fighter's Guildmaster in . Don't get me wrong there, I do not think he needs to hit the same guild master for every level. In fact I would make him meet a new guild master every Nth level. Let him learn a new trick or two or do a small series of quests for the entire range of N and then moving on to anotehr location.
I think this would be a great way to do things. There is going to be some pushback though. Folks who park their 2nd box toon in a place while you power level them would hate this idea. But to be fair, I don't want thier second toon to get lvl 50 and never have actually done anything but leach the XP from a PL.
Thanks so much for your clear-minded posts, Trasak!
The scenarios you've presented over your several posts certainly seem to represent a world of more realistic combat and grouping dynamics. Maybe the realism challenges a player's desire for reward and comparison with other players a bit too much, though. The advancements in level 30-60 would have to be suitably impressive, for all their subtlety. Could those things be coded in an MMO today?
I love the possibility of either 60 level 30s or 45 level 50s taking on a level 50 raid encounter. And it'd be more likely for more level 30s than 50s to die in that fight.. right?
And good assessment of ESO! Hah!
Trasak said:
That is one of those statistics that the VR team may have from back in the early EQ days... To me I found not finding a group in my level range to be extremely frustrating and often logged off after several hours trying to find groups without success... This was in the PoP era and most of those alts were abandoned due to hitting the soloing limit for that class and not being able to find groups. When I did find groups though the levels would relatively fly by compared to soloing... The key is to create a system where groups can be made effectively and quickly without breaking the immersion factor.
It definitely is a key system to get right. Here is a bit of an interview Brad recently did: (full interview)
The key to success for any MMORPG is an active userbase, one loyal enough to continue playing for the long-term. This depends heavily on that social aspect McQuaid is so interested in and the organic relationships that develop between players irrespective of their feelings about the developer.
However, studios today can't afford to sit back and hope that friendships are forged. McQuaid's solution for Pantheon has been a matchmaking interface that allows players to enter as much personal information as they like in the hopes of finding similar players.
"We can't leave that up to the player, we've got to be proactive," he says. "Onboarding players into a social grouping MMO is probably the most important challenge we face.
"Basically [Pantheon's] the opposite of World of Warcraft, where when you do an instance it teleports in a bunch of randoms, everybody runs through and disappears and you probably didn't even say anything... We're going to do everything we can to facilitate you finding online people who are really your friends."
He jokingly refers to the system as 'pHarmony', pointing to the similarities between how Pantheon's matchmaking works and the premise of a certain popular dating website. We can't help but resist asking if there's more developers should be learning from online dating.
"Yeah, because it's similar," McQuaid explains. "You're finding people that have the same interests, when do they play, how do they play. Then you have the social gamers that are a big part of it, and they talk about interests outside of the game. Some people don't; they just want to roleplay or focus on the game, but there are people that love to just sit and chat about their hobbies. It's all up to the player, however much information they want to give to help us find a match."
I really agree with what he seems to be proposing here. I feel that the system of bringing people/groups together is something we shouldn't worry about breaking the immersion factor... or rather: no matter how matchmaking is put in it will help immersion. People are major factor in a world feeling rich and alive so any system that can help bring similar gamers together and possibly make new friends to share the grind with is a major boon. Be proactive about helping players build community to (hopefully) blossom each server to life.
I'm hoping that would also ease some concern around differing level/power growth between character levels and give players a good tool to find others/friends without having to widen the level range for grouping.
Nephretiti said:...I would also like to see some sort of requirement directing a main attribute (Str, Wis, Cha, Int, Agi, some others we havent inveted yet) or in some cases, multiples of those. For instance, an Enchanter levels up to lvl 12. But he doesn't actually level up because his CHA is too low by 1, his INT is too low by 2, his piercing for lvl 11 is only at 11 of 15, and he hasn't charmed ANYTHING lvl 11. Or a Warrior hits lvl 12 but can't level because his Shield is not maxed, his STR is too low, and he has still not met with the Fighter's Guildmaster in . Don't get me wrong there, I do not think he needs to hit the same guild master for every level. In fact I would make him meet a new guild master every Nth level. Let him learn a new trick or two or do a small series of quests for the entire range of N and then moving on to anotehr location.
I feel like this is more like modern MMOs, is it not? If I am a warrior (or any class) then I'd much prefer to be master of my own destiny with my warrior and his journey, not follow the same exact path of every other warrior like we all just went through the same basic training.
Not too sure about a metric to determine if you are allowed to level based on stats... say another player and yourself are in the pit of gnoll burrow and both slay 100 gnolls, the first guy levels and you don't because you are a couple stats off. Doesn't make sense, you both passed the test, both overcame the same odds, and you both had the same experience of killing 100 gnolls...except you managed to pull off the same feat with slightly smaller muscles.
oneADseven said:Progeny will help with keeping all content relevant. I see dead zones as a non-issue for Pantheon if progeny pans out.
If progeny is required to "max out" a character I could see myself just not bothering and quitting the game at the point I would have to reroll in order to stay competitive.
There is a reason I don't make alts... It's because I don't want to regrind out those lower levels, I just want to keep on progressing my main character without 2 steps back 1 step forward gameplay.
IMO the real winner would be a well thought out Mentoring system so the choice to delevel is not such a permanent one.
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
Don't be so sure Kiz. I think it all depends on how the system gets implemented. I guess everybody has their own perspective on things but one of my favorite memories in other games was the leveling up process. Once you get to max level, you have a set amount of potential places to explore ... but at the same time, a lot of the older content has become invalidated. Just give it a chance. I don't want to speculate too much because I don't know the specific details ... but at the end of the day, progeny can really help with keeping the entire world relevant. The main pain point I have seen is having to retire your main. What if that isn't the case? What if you can interchange between parent/progeny until the progeny becomes max level and then the parent has to retire? With so much emphasis on horizontal growth, I want to make sure I have the chance to go back and engage in level appropriate content that I may have missed while still achieving a sense of progression.
Nephretiti said:
TLDR - sorry.
I am going to work up some tables and graphs today that should convey most of the details in a quick glance. I can also tell by your response that when I had to truncate my post title the fact that I was focusing on the power curve and not leveling mechanic was lost.
Alexander said:
Thanks so much for your clear-minded posts, Trasak!
The scenarios you've presented over your several posts certainly seem to represent a world of more realistic combat and grouping dynamics. Maybe the realism challenges a player's desire for reward and comparison with other players a bit too much, though. The advancements in level 30-60 would have to be suitably impressive, for all their subtlety. Could those things be coded in an MMO today?
I love the possibility of either 60 level 30s or 45 level 50s taking on a level 50 raid encounter. And it'd be more likely for more level 30s than 50s to die in that fight.. right?
And good assessment of ESO! Hah!
Thank you for the kind words Alexander. I am a fairly firm believer in the “Why climb a mountain? Because it is there.” concept of player motivation. Despite that incentivising a player to level/gear up from Level 30 in high quality steel gear and 80% of maximum power to Level 50 in all rare drop magical items is going to be hard, especially if the time to get to lvl 30 and geared is around a tenth of the time it takes to get to 50 and fully geared. If you look at a players power level over the life time of an expansion and the time spent at max level and near max gear the power vs time graph is actually logarithmic so players are already used to that feel, it is just not usually presented in the same way.
As far as the raid of level 30 players against a 50 raid boss you are right. There would be a significantly higher number of deaths both due to lower hitpoints but also due to having fewer situational tools, weaker buffs and debuffs and fewer or less efficient healing tools. If a raid challenges 36 level 50 players of good skill then it may take as many as 100 players of level 30 characters to prevail and thats if they are willing to have half their number die even on a perfect victory.
I am working on some visuals to explain more of how the system work on the math side but I will work on a full spec and ability tree for my “Spearman” to show what I mean by situational tools rather than power increases from 30-50.
Iksar said:
It definitely is a key system to get right. Here is a bit of an interview Brad recently did: (full interview)
I really agree with what he seems to be proposing here. I feel that the system of bringing people/groups together is something we shouldn't worry about breaking the immersion factor... or rather: no matter how matchmaking is put in it will help immersion. People are major factor in a world feeling rich and alive so any system that can help bring similar gamers together and possibly make new friends to share the grind with is a major boon. Be proactive about helping players build community to (hopefully) blossom each server to life.
I'm hoping that would also ease some concern around differing level/power growth between character levels and give players a good tool to find others/friends without having to widen the level range for grouping.
I fully agree with the idea that grouping will need some tools and incentives to get us into groups with people we do not already know and like. After all most of us are computer nerds and in general we are neither gregarious nor charismatic.
Angrykiz said:
If progeny is required to "max out" a character I could see myself just not bothering and quitting the game at the point I would have to reroll in order to stay competitive.
There is a reason I don't make alts... It's because I don't want to regrind out those lower levels, I just want to keep on progressing my main character without 2 steps back 1 step forward gameplay.
IMO the real winner would be a well thought out Mentoring system so the choice to delevel is not such a permanent one.
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
Kiz,
I am also in the “focus on one main” camp. I have yet to find an early game experience that I found truly rewarding. There are some that are certainly more fun than others but I rarely read a book a second time unless it is one of my all time favorites and even then usually several years between readings.
On the mentoring system I have a half written post combining a mentoring system with a sort of a troll tracker system to give in game benefits for nice people and penalties for really toxic people but I could not come up with a system I was happy with. I am still thinking about the system but the type of mentoring system needed will heavily depend on what the leveling speed and leveling power systems are.
oneADseven said:
Don't be so sure Kiz. I think it all depends on how the system gets implemented. I guess everybody has their own perspective on things but one of my favorite memories in other games was the leveling up process. Once you get to max level, you have a set amount of potential places to explore ... but at the same time, a lot of the older content has become invalidated. Just give it a chance. I don't want to speculate too much because I don't know the specific details ... but at the end of the day, progeny can really help with keeping the entire world relevant. The main pain point I have seen is having to retire your main. What if that isn't the case? What if you can interchange between parent/progeny until the progeny becomes max level and then the parent has to retire? With so much emphasis on horizontal growth, I want to make sure I have the chance to go back and engage in level appropriate content that I may have missed while still achieving a sense of progression.
This is really the main reason I made my original post. There are so many moving parts that are still very much up in the air and until we have a clearer picture we cannot even give feedback to VR. We can speculate and brainstorm but for all intents and purposes we are really just talking to each other until we have a frame of reference for useful feedback.
Trasak
The leveling curve is, of course, not something that stands in a vacuum. Two of many design decisions that greatly affect how the leveling curve should work are (1) the effect of mob level on experience and (2) the effect of groupmate level on experience.
Let us hypothetically assume that both players and mobs have levels, and killing a mob more than one level below you gives no experience at all. A flat leveling curve doesn't incent you to stay in low level zones killing things since although you don't need much experience to level you get *none*. Of course this is a somewhat extreme hypothetical.
Similarly let us assume that if anyone in your group is higher level you bet no experience. Another extremely unlikely hypothesis but it also reduces the amount of experience you will get and reduces the need for a steeper leveling curve.
I am not suggesting any particular design here, just noting that many things affect whether leveling "curves" should be flat, moderately curved or steep.
Or, as was just said, this:
This is really the main reason I made my original post. There are so many moving parts that are still very much up in the air and until we have a clearer picture we cannot even give feedback to VR. We can speculate and brainstorm but for all intents and purposes we are really just talking to each other until we have a frame of reference for useful feedback.
I despise leveling. A level 10 rogue is a different character when compared to a max level rogue. I don't want to play a never 10 rogue again.
The only way I could get on board with progeny being required to max your char would be if you created the same class/ race then you get to keep all of your abilities!
(new on forum\game etc. so maybe some already discussed \did not read everything yet)
I would summerize that there are a few things to take into account:
1. not level faster then your ability to understand or use a class
2. level faster then before to get back to your friends
EQ1 uses faster AA on lower AA amounts
EQ1 used LDoN to group up with lower levels and gain loot your level, but that is in instance only
Now you wouldn't let someone level faster the first time, just to have them join friends if they worked hard for it. Is here a case for exams(quests) of a class guildmaster? That could mean downtime between levels, unless the game detects your ability to play the class (heroic effort proc?)
A mighty trick could be in such dynamics of group composition (class\level), the content\target of the zone\npc, and the effort a player puts in understanding a class. And what would the loot system be like then? You'd need to see what a piece would be if you were the one looting it.
Then being of higher level would need an incentive to group anywhere aside the (new) higher zones...
Ppl are curious\social and need satisfaction by nature (most of the time). so to curb the curious \ need satisfaction aspect at the cost of the social one.
progenity? die of old age?
The newbe didn't earn it yet. So make changes in the "old" zones\npc\loot?
logarithmic sounds fine with me for progenity or newbe's if old content is static, because it allows for class insight in lower levels, time for class learning in the intermediate levels and effort to give fairness to others
Finally I have most of the base math done. Here is the link to the google spreadsheet with nice graphs and break downs of the different power curves both for players and Monsters
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PLlPGFOgdNjdN-33D4SrCq4rjd4cB5TBklMUI3mWwLU/edit?usp=sharing
Key points to remember
I am assuming that:
Hit is base solely on Character class and Monster class rather than a weapon skill vs defensive skill roll that can reduce a hit to 0 damage
Monsters give full experience if they are within plus or minus 25% of the power curve
Monsters above lvl 30 will have the special AI VR is creating and Characters will gain situational tools after level 30 to combat the advanced AI
A pawn mob can be soloed by all classes but are the wandering ones and twos in the wilderness. Most actual camps will be knights with a few rooks while dungeons will include mini boss queens and boss King.