10 May, 2013, EzBreezy wrote in the 1st comment:
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I figured that I would come out of lurking to ask this question. In my spare time, I'm still putting ideas to paper for my own MUD. I'd like this to be a more RP-heavy game and put less emphasis on leveling. However, I do want the normal things, like questing, hunting, crafting etc. I just would like to remove the grind. This got me thinking. What other ways are there to level up. For this game, I'm basically taking the best things (IMO) from other games and trying to make them work together in my project. So, here are a few systems that I like from other games:

  • DragonRealms - You gather experience by doing things and it fills the skill's pool. This pool is slowly absorbed and the skill levels up.

  • Age of Wushu - Everything you do gains you experience. Every tick, a certain number of experience is turned into cultivation points. You pick which skill that you'd like to level and then you will cultivate those points into skills. The speed this happens depends on what you are doing at the time (Fighting the in arena, doing school patrol, etc) and where you are, as certain locations allow for speedier cultivation.

  • Glitch, Eve, Maiden Desmodus (I think) - Set a skill and it levels, you can cut the time off the level with buffs that either bought, learned from other skills , etc.


I do this every time. I had a few more, but by the time I listed the above, I completely forgot the rest. I'm pretty sure it'll come to me later. I was actually favoring the above passive systems - that's is possibly why I can't think of the others.

I've been thinking about this for a while now and figured I'd bring it to you all for discussion.
10 May, 2013, Idealiad wrote in the 2nd comment:
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I've heard about the DR system a couple of times and I still don't really get it. So you're saying that you grind something for XP, which fills up a pool, and then that pool trickles the XP to you at a fixed rate over time? Or it trickles directly into a skill? What does this accomplish other than possibly limiting how much grind you can profitably do in X amount of time (and is that indeed its purpose?).
10 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 3rd comment:
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BatMUD used a simple experience system of "Free XP" and "Spent XP". All skills, spells, character attributes, etc were purchased with experience from your Free pool, as the player prefers. If you die, all experience in the Free pool is lost (although a fraction can be recovered if another player ressurects you).

If your character is respec'd (by choice, or because one of your classes was redesigned), your Spent XP is refunded into your Free XP pool.
10 May, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 4th comment:
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Idealiad said:
I've heard about the DR system a couple of times and I still don't really get it. So you're saying that you grind something for XP, which fills up a pool, and then that pool trickles the XP to you at a fixed rate over time? Or it trickles directly into a skill? What does this accomplish other than possibly limiting how much grind you can profitably do in X amount of time (and is that indeed its purpose?).

One argument I've heard in favour of such an approach is that it encourages people to stop killing and just hang out for a while - socialise, roleplay, etc, without feeling they're losing out on potential exp from more grinding. Of course there's nothing stopping people from just idling instead, but I still think it's an interest idea.

In Last City I awarded daily exp for logging on, and more exp for playing for an hour. You could also earn exp for your first 100 kills, but that didn't take long to achieve, so mostly people would just on regularly and hang around, socialising, playing with the crafting, etc.

I'd originally considered some sort of roleplaying exp, but that's very difficult to do fairly, and if automated it's easily abused. So I figured I might as well just reward people for spending time online, and let them decide for themselves how they wanted to spend that time.
10 May, 2013, Tavish wrote in the 5th comment:
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I removed experience completely and went to an entirely currency based system. Advancement that typically is based around experience is now bought (and in some cases sold) in much the same way as items. Levels, skills, stat gains, etc are part of the common marketplace instead of being an internal mechanic for each individual. I'm still working out some of the balancing for the system but so far I have been happy with the change.
10 May, 2013, Chris Bailey wrote in the 6th comment:
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Tavish said:
I removed experience completely and went to an entirely currency based system. Advancement that typically is based around experience is now bought (and in some cases sold) in much the same way as items. Levels, skills, stat gains, etc are part of the common marketplace instead of being an internal mechanic for each individual. I'm still working out some of the balancing for the system but so far I have been happy with the change.


Does your capacity to earn this currency increase as you spend it? Seems like more powerful characters would just power level low level characters once a few reached a point where they could farm currency effectively.
11 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 7th comment:
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It's interesting that people consider power leveling a "problem", actually.

When you "power level" someone, you are depriving them of content. The game only has so much content, and people who skip past all the lower level stuff have less to experience. Further, if you're power leveling someone who will either become competition for content, or possibly direct PvP competition, you're making your own experience that much more difficult.

Now, I get the idea of making real-world money by doing so, but we're talking about MUD's here. Are there really people still around who'd pay real world money to have someone power level their character on a text MUD? Can I get their names, so I can sell them land deeds to bridges in Jersey, or maybe flood insurance in death valley?

Hell, I grumble about leveling too fast in most modern MMO's, because I have to skip content as it "greys out", or stubbornly slog through it for no useful rewards, just to see it.

So, anyways, while I can think of a few schemes to try and limit this, I guess my real question is… why bother?
12 May, 2013, Tavish wrote in the 8th comment:
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Quix pretty much nailed my approach to the situation. Under my system it is certainly possible to give a new player enough resources to max level and do a full scale build within minutes of joining the game. Resources are not extremely abundant so it certainly isn't a menial task to do, but not out of the question. With only having a few players/testers I guess I lean towards actually encouraging the behavior moreso than I likely would with a larger playerbase. I would rather have everyone similar in power level as much as possible in order to have more opportunities for shared experiences. I try and use levels and skill gaining more as a way to ease new players into the game so that they are not overwhelmed with choices from the start.
13 May, 2013, Chris Bailey wrote in the 9th comment:
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Well that makes a lot more sense then.
13 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 10th comment:
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One potential way around the issue is to normalize risk/rewards so low level players need the same amount of currency (be it experience, coins, or whatever) as high level players.

I believe the old ROM Dikurivatives did this, in making each "level" take a base of 1000xp. If a level 1 player kills a level 2 bunny, it might be worth 50xp. If a level 5 player kills a bunny, it's only worth 5xp. At some point, it's worth nothing.

Now, if xp is tradeable, sure you can boost a low level player by handing them 500xp, but now you just spent half a level to give THEM half a level. Do you *REALLY* want to do that?
13 May, 2013, Chris Bailey wrote in the 11th comment:
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I think that is an excellent idea Quix. I'm of the mind that when leveling becomes little more than an introduction to the real game (the endgame at max level?) it is time to evaluate whether or not you should even have it. Would it not be prudent to allow all characters to start at their full potential and include an in depth tutorial of how to play?
13 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 12th comment:
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That depends on what kind of game you're making. For a PvP-centric game, leveling serves no real purpose other than teaching mechanics. However, a story-driven game usually spreads the content (storyline) out over the level range, and thus it provides an ordering so the players experience the chapters in the correct order.
13 May, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Chris Bailey said:
I think that is an excellent idea Quix. I'm of the mind that when leveling becomes little more than an introduction to the real game (the endgame at max level?) it is time to evaluate whether or not you should even have it. Would it not be prudent to allow all characters to start at their full potential and include an in depth tutorial of how to play?


In depth tutoriel is…the leveling part :)
Only thing I agree with is to make it painful to people that dont need it. I played a only a few muds (Rom based), but never found it really hard to reach the end level really fast once I did master the end game.

Quote
Now, if xp is tradeable, sure you can boost a low level player by handing them 500xp, but now you just spent half a level to give THEM half a level. Do you *REALLY* want to do that?


I woudl say it all depends in how fast you get a level depending on your level. As a player of my old mud, I was so used to level at high level than I actually leveled faster in the end game than in the lower level. In the end it always is a matter of time invested.
14 May, 2013, Tavish wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
For a PvP-centric game, leveling serves no real purpose other than teaching mechanics.

I don't recall offhand the name of the MUD (or if design was even unique to that MUD) that did a full character wipe every 48 hours. It was heavy PvP and the first few hours were spent power leveling and making equipment runs. There were 3 different cities that a player could belong to, each with fairly similar access to leveling areas. The arms race to get max leveled groups out attacking the other cities many times had as much tension as the actual PvP had.

I agree that usually the leveling system in PvP games are mainly just a leftover relic from where the game began or maybe just something familiar that some designers create because it feels like what you are supposed to do. But if done well I do think the mechanic can add some gameplay depth.
14 May, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
It's interesting that people consider power leveling a "problem", actually.

When you "power level" someone, you are depriving them of content. The game only has so much content, and people who skip past all the lower level stuff have less to experience.

The problem is that a large percentage of players will advance as fast as they possibly can, even if it means skipping all the best content. So you end up with players who don't feel they've invested anything in their character (because a friend "gave" them max level), and don't have anything to do (because they already skipped all the content). They're not going to hang around, they'll just complain the game is boring and quit - and they'll tell other people the game is boring as well.

Now you could reasonably argue that the players have spoilt the game for themselves, but the end result is the same - you're losing players and receiving negative publicity, and at that point it becomes your problem. I guess one could draw parallels with using the auction house in Diablo 3 (rendering drops obsolete, and effectively removing much of the incentive to actually play).

quixadhal said:
One potential way around the issue is to normalize risk/rewards so low level players need the same amount of currency (be it experience, coins, or whatever) as high level players.

I believe the old ROM Dikurivatives did this, in making each "level" take a base of 1000xp. If a level 1 player kills a level 2 bunny, it might be worth 50xp. If a level 5 player kills a bunny, it's only worth 5xp. At some point, it's worth nothing.

Now, if xp is tradeable, sure you can boost a low level player by handing them 500xp, but now you just spent half a level to give THEM half a level. Do you *REALLY* want to do that?

If it works like that you'd create several characters (to bot/grind the easy content) and have them give all their gold to your main charcter.

quixadhal said:
For a PvP-centric game, leveling serves no real purpose other than teaching mechanics.

Leveling is just one way of handling character advancement. As well as helping teach mechanics (by breaking them down into more easily digested stages), character advancement also provides an important role in building up the playerbase - because it gives players a strong incentive to hang around even when there are no other players online.

If your mud only has PvP content, then there's no incentive for players to remain online if nobody else is online. This makes it much more difficult to build up an initial playerbase.

You could add other forms of content, of course, but advancement offers an additional benefit: investment. Players who feel they've invested in their characters are far more likely to hang around. And once again, if your game is designed around PvP, you need the players to hang around - because without players, you don't have PvP.

Advancement itself isn't necessary for PvP, but players are, and advancement helps you retain players.
14 May, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
quixadhal said:
It's interesting that people consider power leveling a "problem", actually.

When you "power level" someone, you are depriving them of content. The game only has so much content, and people who skip past all the lower level stuff have less to experience.


So you end up with players who don't feel they've invested anything in their character (because a friend "gave" them max level), and don't have anything to do (because they already skipped all the content). They're not going to hang around, they'll just complain the game is boring and quit - and they'll tell other people the game is boring as well.


Right, but that's a design problem with your content, not (necessarily) with xp being tradeable. If you know people will do this, you should put your content AT max level, assuming there IS a max level. There's also nothing saying you need to have such a cap. See below.

KaVir said:
quixadhal said:
One potential way around the issue is to normalize risk/rewards so low level players need the same amount of currency (be it experience, coins, or whatever) as high level players.

I believe the old ROM Dikurivatives did this, in making each "level" take a base of 1000xp. If a level 1 player kills a level 2 bunny, it might be worth 50xp. If a level 5 player kills a bunny, it's only worth 5xp. At some point, it's worth nothing.

Now, if xp is tradeable, sure you can boost a low level player by handing them 500xp, but now you just spent half a level to give THEM half a level. Do you *REALLY* want to do that?

If it works like that you'd create several characters (to bot/grind the easy content) and have them give all their gold to your main charcter.


You're assuming lower level content is easy. Why should it be? If rewards and normalized, why wouldn't difficulty also be normalized? In fact, lower level content might be more difficult, simply because the lower level character has only a handful of skills to use. A lower level fighter has to hack their way through content, whereas a higher level character has situational attacks that make dispatching things much faster, if used correctly.

Maybe the botters don't care, but if you're desiging your game around them, you've already lost. IMHO, that's the same as negotiating with terrorists.

The other point I would add is that it's also quite possible, especially if your system supports scaling, to simply not have a max level. If you leave things open ended, it now becomes a true case of you having to surrender your own progress to help others (or your alts). If you want to discourage it a bit more, add in a tax of some kind, so the recipient only gets 90% of what was sent.

It's also possible to combine the two ideas, scaling rewards and a rising xp curve, but it takes a bit of juggling, and you might need to employ the dreaded level ranges on gear.

If you always get (approximately) 100xp for killing an "even con" npc, you could still have an xp curve so that low level characters only need 1000xp (10 kills) to level, while higher level characters may need 10x or 100x that, however you want to slow progression. The key is, you have to retain the same relative speed of xp gathering to make it not worthwhile to trade xp just to power level people. If the high level character can gain 1000xp in 10 minutes, and it takes a newbie an hour… the market for power leveling is ripe. If it takes the same hour for the high level player, there's little point.

I believe you can do that by balancing skills and gear in such a way that a properly equipped high level who knows how to play their class will gain xp at about the same rate as a newbie. The XP curve would only come into play if you want higher level combat to be faster paced (IE: killing more things in the same amount of time).
14 May, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
KaVir said:
quixadhal said:
It's interesting that people consider power leveling a "problem", actually.

When you "power level" someone, you are depriving them of content. The game only has so much content, and people who skip past all the lower level stuff have less to experience.


The problem is that a large percentage of players will advance as fast as they possibly can, even if it means skipping all the best content. So you end up with players who don't feel they've invested anything in their character (because a friend "gave" them max level), and don't have anything to do (because they already skipped all the content). They're not going to hang around, they'll just complain the game is boring and quit - and they'll tell other people the game is boring as well.


Right, but that's a design problem with your content, not (necessarily) with xp being tradeable.

No, it doesn't matter how you design your content, it's a side-effect of the competitive nature of many players - and if you're running a PvP mud, which is inherently competitive, those same players are likely to be your target audience.

quixadhal said:
If you know people will do this, you should put your content AT max level, assuming there IS a max level.

How can people advance to "max level" if the content is only available at max level? They need content to reach that point, unless you remove advancement (which then introduces the problems I mentioned earlier).

quixadhal said:
There's also nothing saying you need to have such a cap. See below.

Endless advancement is synonymous with endless grind. See here: It looked good on paper! Feature 4: Unli...

quixadhal said:
You're assuming lower level content is easy. Why should it be?

Because when someone first plays a game, they have no real skill, but the more they play it the more they learn, and the more experienced they become. A challenge for a new player will probably be mind-numbingly boring for a veteran, while a challenge for a veteran may well be frustratingly difficult for a newbie.

Some games place very little emphasis on player skill, but they're unlikely to appeal to a PvP audience.

In theory you could also use a handicap system - keep the content at a consistent difficulty, but start the characters very powerful and weaken them over time. However that's unlikely to make the players feel invested in their characters.
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