I really want to see an MMO with no leveling or gearing.

[Dawnshadow]

Going to play Game Designer for a moment here, describing the MMO I'd like to play.

On character creation, you choose your initial role. Your character starts in a tutorial zone made for that role, and you unlock your starting abilities through the course of the tutorial. At the end of the zone, you've unlocked all your abilities and have been introduced to the storyline-- at this point, every bit of content in the game is now open to you. Questing, PvPing and completing dungeons and raids gives you points that you can use to unlock alternate skills and even skills from other roles, eventually allowing you to spec into other roles on the same character; you gain versatility over time, which is desirable, but not direct power. (This is actually close to how The Secret World plays; I was very happy with its character customization system.) There would probably end up being optimal ways to build for certain roles because perfect balance is nigh impossible and minmaxers tend to make a mountain out of a .5% DPS increase, but my hope is that there would be options and not the One True Build for any given roles.

Endgame progression is purely skill based-- the introductory level dungeons are very easy, the hardest ones in the game are difficult. But the only thing that is keeping you from pugging into the hardest raid in the game as soon as you leave the tutorial zone is your own personal skill, not some artificial barrier where you have to grind LFR for a month to get a high enough item level to be accepted into a normal mode group. The rewards for completing content are cosmetic-- unique armor, titles, pets, etc. Questing also has the secondary reward of letting you see the storyline (and if you find this boring, it's optional.)

This basically would create an MMO with no grinding for gear, leaving a game that's played solely for fun-- I'm honestly thinking closer to a MOBA in terms of being able to jump in and play, but with the ability to play in PvE content and quest through storylines in addition to PvP matches. And honestly, at this point, I think I'd prefer it; I'm sick of having to do content I'm not really interested in just to keep my gear at an acceptable level in case I decide I want to jump back in later.

[Angarin]

Wasn't TSW like this? Or was there gear in TSW? Its been awhile since I played it.

[Zaqwert]

You can dream up all the great games you want, but quite simply none of them will ever be made unless a company thinks it will be profitable to do so.

[Valeron]

Wasn't TSW like this? Or was there gear in TSW? Its been awhile since I played it.

TSW has talismans and weapons, and they had a gear level requirement which you had to level up in your skills. So essentially it had gear and levels even if it appeared to be something else entirely

[Saiona]

Second Life?

[ChaosWolf]

so you want a game whose entire genre and playstyle is based on progression and upgrading... to have neither progression nor upgrading?

[Vyadore]

I think there was a game website discussion (PC Gamer or some such thing) that did a study and concluded that MMO and the heirarchy that comes with toon and gear progression is one of the key motivating factors to the genre.

Without that, you have basically a FPS or some such game.

The article went on to say that is why pay-to-win games may inherently fail once people just buy their "progression" and tire of the newness of their gear they quickly leave the game but the players that work at their toon progression (through competition or basic time traded) are more dedicated and have a higher chance of staying or returning to a game.

I'll have to google this up now...grrr...

[thedingleberry]

Learn to code really well, and build it yourself. Anyone can learn.

[Vargur]

Going to play Game Designer for a moment here, describing the MMO I'd like to play.

On character creation, you choose your initial role. Your character starts in a tutorial zone made for that role, and you unlock your starting abilities through the course of the tutorial. At the end of the zone, you've unlocked all your abilities and have been introduced to the storyline-- at this point, every bit of content in the game is now open to you. Questing, PvPing and completing dungeons and raids gives you points that you can use to unlock alternate skills and even skills from other roles, eventually allowing you to spec into other roles on the same character; you gain versatility over time, which is desirable, but not direct power. (This is actually close to how The Secret World plays; I was very happy with its character customization system.) There would probably end up being optimal ways to build for certain roles because perfect balance is nigh impossible and minmaxers tend to make a mountain out of a .5% DPS increase, but my hope is that there would be options and not the One True Build for any given roles.

Endgame progression is purely skill based-- the introductory level dungeons are very easy, the hardest ones in the game are difficult. But the only thing that is keeping you from pugging into the hardest raid in the game as soon as you leave the tutorial zone is your own personal skill, not some artificial barrier where you have to grind LFR for a month to get a high enough item level to be accepted into a normal mode group. The rewards for completing content are cosmetic-- unique armor, titles, pets, etc. Questing also has the secondary reward of letting you see the storyline (and if you find this boring, it's optional.)

This basically would create an MMO with no grinding for gear, leaving a game that's played solely for fun-- I'm honestly thinking closer to a MOBA in terms of being able to jump in and play, but with the ability to play in PvE content and quest through storylines in addition to PvP matches. And honestly, at this point, I think I'd prefer it; I'm sick of having to do content I'm not really interested in just to keep my gear at an acceptable level in case I decide I want to jump back in later.

Infinity: The Quest for Earth.

And basically many open-world sandbox games.

[Archaeon]

so you want a game whose entire genre and playstyle is based on progression and upgrading... to have neither progression nor upgrading?

This is bs though. If you're talking about MMOs in general, then obviously that's completely irrelevant, considering how MMO simply means massively multiplayer online... as long as you have hundreds of players in the same game world then that's covered. As far as RPGs are concerned, they're about roleplaying, not about leveling up and getting phat lewt or whatever.

[May90]

It's my dream to have such a MMO, where you don't have to grind repeatable bosses or quests in order to be allowed further. Something like purely skill based RPG, where the more experienced player will live easier and be able to defeat stronger enemies, just solely by his skills, not by his character wearing a set of tier 10 legendary items.

But such a game won't sell very well. You see, people keep subscribing WoW for many years exactly since it's a grinding game, since they can't do the hardest challenges there is faster. If a game has no grind to offer, then people will leave the game when they get bored since there is nothing to achieve after that - and then people will play for, at best, 2-3 months and quit.
WoW is an absolutely dumb and boring game, but it still holds a lot of people who actually hate it, but keep playing as they have already invested so much time in the game that now they have to go to the end. A game with no gear and levels won't have such players.

[Racthoh]

they had that in the first guild wars. sort of. toons created for pvp were instantly max level and access to the best gear. but you could only pvp on them.

[Deleted]

There isn't really such a MMO, but EVE Online comes very close to it

Basically, with a lot of knowledge of the market you can have more money than 80-90% of the veterans
With very good connections to the top alliances, you can take the shortcut to endgame which usually takes 1-2 years of learning the game
All that with a basic week/two of training skills (trading/manufacturing/advanced frigs are more than enough, everything else is optional)

[Solidito]

Those are like the two features that keep me playing MMO's lol. No thanks.

[Deleted]

It's my dream to have such a MMO, where you don't have to grind repeatable bosses or quests in order to be allowed further. Something like purely skill based RPG, where the more experienced player will live easier and be able to defeat stronger enemies, just solely by his skills, not by his character wearing a set of tier 10 legendary items.

But such a game won't sell very well. You see, people keep subscribing WoW for many years exactly since it's a grinding game, since they can't do the hardest challenges there is faster. If a game has no grind to offer, then people will leave the game when they get bored since there is nothing to achieve after that - and then people will play for, at best, 2-3 months and quit.
WoW is an absolutely dumb and boring game, but it still holds a lot of people who actually hate it, but keep playing as they have already invested so much time in the game that now they have to go to the end. A game with no gear and levels won't have such players.

We call it real life. You don't need an app for that. Just go make name for yourself in the world. No skills? Aww too bad, now get back to grind gear and levels. If you have skills, be somebody, if not, post angry letters on the internet, like everyone else.

[Magruun]

I don't think this game will keep people entertained for very long because they will soon reach a hard cap on what they can reach and no reward.
what works so well in WoW is that you can keep progressing your character and eventually beat everything eventhough a level of skill is involved.
Gearing works as a reward for players, you put in an effort and get stronger items which help you to kill harder bosses and get better gear etcetera etcetera.

if you make progression skill based a player might be able to kill the first 5 bosses and maybe with a lot of practice the 6th but it ends there.
Now there's nothing to do for that player anymore but keep killing the first 5 bosses for no reward but bragging rights and no way to get past the 6th.
That just isn't fun and people will stop playing very quickly.
Rewarding the player new skills is something that will either take too long to stay interesting or cause an enormous bloat in abilities and be an absolute hell to balance for PvP and PvE

That's my main problem with your design, there is not enough reward to keep people playing.
it's close to being a singleplayer story you just have to complete with other people but will only be able to complete if you are really good and able to get in a group with other good players.

[uopayroll]

Questing, PvPing and completing dungeons and raids gives you points that you can use to unlock alternate skills and even skills from other roles

So as long as they are not called experience points it is not grinding?

[CandyCotton Marshmallows]

rewards can be vanity; sets for looks, pets, mounts, on use items, housing items, etc etc. It doesn't have to be player power. It has been proven that a lot of people enjoy the aesthetics game. People want housing in WoW. People use transmog. In other games, people use dyes. In most of the games, people go crazy collecting mounts and pets.

If you want to think of it another way; pet battles in wow. Those are not gear based. You do level them; but that relates more to comparative pet power and unlocking abilities.

The current paradigm is the carrot on the stick scheme; while the genre as a whole doesn't have to follow that so rigidly and can break into a new paradigm; while still finding a bit of ocd/dedicated player base ... what I think you'd find in general from a community in that sort of game is a much friendlier and helpful crowd; instead of elitist and separatist.

Leveling has problems; especially when a game lasts a very long time. Some games had levels exceeding 200. That is daunting and prohibitive to new players; especially once they hit that first real struggle for the next level up. If it slows down too much too early; they'll just quit (esp. pay to play). This is what WoW is approaching getting close to 100. That triple digit is a psychological barrier that would affect people more than say 99. This is why you see things like gas prices at 3.99 instead of 4.00 (and the 9/10th of a cent). (Blizz should do a level squish with the item squish).

I may not like all the ideas the OP put forth, but the general suggestion I think could work if done right.

[Valeron]

they had that in the first guild wars. sort of. toons created for pvp were instantly max level and access to the best gear. but you could only pvp on them.

well pve had a very low level cap as well, there was practically no leveling and hardly any gearing there as well

[blackblade]

Only way I could see it working would be to have a strong PVP environment (like a MOBA), and cosmetic rewards for completing difficult content.

If it was done as a F2P, you'd probably never make money without some arbitrary restriction that requires people to pay you some money (IE: Stash tabs in Path Of Exile) or if it was a sub based game, you'd need to have a team constantly expanding the game and adding more options.


On the other hand, without the gear treadmill, there's no reason to continue playing after you've completed the hardest content.