Is leveling really needed?

[Shink]

take out the RPG in MMORPG, then leveling won't be needed at all

[Samoflange]

If you take leveling out, something has to replace it to keep players entertained. It's all smoke and mirrors as far as I'm concerned, it all comes back to actual progression. As long as your character continues to progress, it's all fine regardless of whether or not it's levels (stats & skills), gear, AA, paragon levels etc., and any combination thereof.

[Venziir]

No, leveling isn't needed. Just a familiar device.

Leveling is pretty overused in single player games. Somewhat tedious in modern MMOs where the max level is an absolute goal to access content.

Secret World did level-less MMORPG fantastically.

Guild Wars 1 did leveling spectacularly.

Just as an example of how two MMOs can have level/level-less systems and do so extremely well. Stuff like SWTOR, Rift, WOW is quite tiresome and dull though. Leveling goes on for too long- making the game a 50/60/80 level long tutorial. Pretty bad design.

They really didn't. They had the same kind of leveling system as any other RPG; kill enough or complete enough quests and you'd earn AP and SP, that's exactly the same as leveling up, they just called it something else.

[Socialhealer]

ugh the thought of no leveling in mmorpgs....sounds like a bad game i'd avoid.

[YouAreAllWrong]

I don't know about leveling but we need to move on from the idea of "end game" in MMOs.
The fact that the very broken game design of "you spend your leveling only to reach max level and suddenly the game completely changes" or "you need to rush to max level that's where the content is" became so popular is beyond me. It's 2013 seriously...

[Achaman]

Have you played The Secret World? Sure it doesn't use the typical level model other games use. But it has a more rewarding way to do it, via gear, new ability's and Weapon skills. I would argue that it is a way of "leveling", only a smarter and more exciting way to do it.

And it did not fail big time at all. They make money of the game with the new model and their players are quite happy with the game.




OP: I agree. I some games leveling just seem to me like a thing they make you do to keep you longer in game. I find the model you're talking about more interesting.

that game kinda showed up out of nowhere then news came that they didnt get as many players as they expected to so they removed the sub
honestly it sounds like it kinda failed

[Skulljin]

that game kinda showed up out of nowhere then news came that they didnt get as many players as they expected to so they removed the sub
honestly it sounds like it kinda failed

Imho, The Secret World was mostly a marketing fail, the game itself was fine at what it did and does.

Leveling is a good thing as long as it is entertaining and rewarding in some ways.
I would have loved to level in Star Wars for example if all I would have needed to do was play through the class storys. Sadly, they were only around 10-20 percent of the quest experience whereas the rest was very much boring and self repeating.

[Ferocity]

Leveling is part of RPG, remove it and it won't be really RPG genre at all. And as some people mentioned, leveling preCata was just about right and did feel like a journey.

What I would like to see is that next expansion wouldnt add leveling at all. Sort of "mini expansion".
You would have storylines, sure. But no leveling. If you bought the expansion you would be able to unlock new raids and zones - but you could just hop there straight up where you wanted. Want to raid first second? Go right ahead, try. Storylines would give gear tho.

Would that even work with wow?

Nah. So those storylines would award what? Like before - gear only useful to vendor it or to cheese ilvl reqs? Gold? Many people don't play game exclusively for storylines - there are books for that. Character progress would be pigeon-holed exclusively into dailies/raids? It would be terribly boring. At least during leveling you are visiting different zones and dungeons. When you hit max level, you just do same things over and over again. And, sure, as my lv90 tankadin I can hop wherever in the world I want, but there is no sense in it at 90, as mobs are too fat and I have to pay more in wear-and-tear repairs than what pathetic loot I get from them if I don't kill daily mobs. So it is all about AH and raids. Seriously, same WoW has so much problems atm, and no leveling (or raid-centric expansion) would just become lethal strike.

And it would be great if companies would stop labeling their games as RPGs, those games which have features like automatic side-kicking, auto-scaling enemies or no leveling altogether. (C)RPGs are much about stats, and "level" is one of most important ones.

[RoninaThorstone]

Eh.

Sometimes leveling can be nice.
Other times it can be pointless.

Its good for immersion in stories where your character is SUPPOSE to be becoming more powerful as they go through the plot.

The problem is when you have to do things that you can't see a reason in doing, and then it becomes a grind.
Imagine if swtor were boiled down to your personal quest and the primary planet quest to get to 50 or if leveling in gw2 only took completing your story quest to get to 80. That would be decent. I can be motivated to do that much.
Helping random dude with random problem because I need X more bars of exp is always demoralizing.

[Holyshnikies]

Reminds me of Final Fantasy.

[Itisamuh]

I don't know. On the one hand, I agree that having the story unfold through leveling just makes people rush through it to end game and not pay attention, which is a shame. But on the other hand, if you didn't have to have a story mode at all, a lot of people simply wouldn't bother. Game developers do want players to experience their story. I'm not sure what a good balance would be. Star Wars had fantastic story, but I'd enjoy it a lot more if it wasn't tied to levels and experience.

[ZakAtack]

I think it's useful for teaching people how to play their class. Even if you've already got 3 L90 Shaman, I don't think that justifies you getting a free L90 Warrior. Things like this just boil down to people wanting more convenience in everything.

Also, Eve Online may not literally have levels but I think the skill training system is a close approximation. You can't just jump into the biggest baddest battlecruiser, you have to train the right skills first. Character progression, just like WoW.

[Seezer]

You could just remove levels but have the player go through X amount of quest chains to gain the abilities needed for participating in the end game, as such learning their class.

That's just one way of doing it...

What is the difference then? They both require you to do shit before you can do endgame. Both doing quests. People seem to forget, while they're pissed off leveling their 30th alt, there are new players starting the game.

[RoninaThorstone]

You could just remove levels but have the player go through X amount of quest chains to gain the abilities needed for participating in the end game, as such learning their class.

That's just one way of doing it...

Hmm... No leveling but attunements.

I like it.

[Seezer]

Eh.

Sometimes leveling can be nice.
Other times it can be pointless.

Its good for immersion in stories where your character is SUPPOSE to be becoming more powerful as they go through the plot.

The problem is when you have to do things that you can't see a reason in doing, and then it becomes a grind.
Imagine if swtor were boiled down to your personal quest and the primary planet quest to get to 50 or if leveling in gw2 only took completing your story quest to get to 80. That would be decent. I can be motivated to do that much.
Helping random dude with random problem because I need X more bars of exp is always demoralizing.

Look at all of your alts. No wonder you're demoralized. Like it or not, the leveling experience doesn't need to be removed because people who are rerolling their 15th class want to get at max level in a day.

[jasoncb]

Actually if anything games should take a leaf out of the secrets worlds book. The levelling had a lot less boring "collect these" and "kill these" quests. The problem is wow has not deviated from this model of questing and each expansion has merged into a blob of repetitive quests.

Yes they add fancy things like lfd, lfr, combat pets etc but the core of the game is stagnant.

[Thelxi]

I'm over leveling too, I'm just over it and have no patience for it. I can imagine gamers that try out MMOs for the first time will actually get much more out of leveling, I dunno. There should definitely be a shortcut in WoW though, for the people that have gone through the leveling process many many times.

[Redblade]

What is the difference then? They both require you to do shit before you can do endgame. Both doing quests. People seem to forget, while they're pissed off leveling their 30th alt, there are new players starting the game.

Yes they both require you to learn your class before taking part in end game with other players, the difference lies in the amount of hoops you have to jump through and what kind of hoops it is. Think about it for a second, when you design quest chains that's sole purpose is to get you a new ability you can center the quest and it's difficulty around learning that very ability, if you played vanilla WoW think Lok'amir/Benediction chains for example.

At the end of the day you will have to teach new players about the class they are playing and how their abilities work, hell even old players picking up a new class usually needs to use the class for a while to get the hang of it. Doing it this way means you can cut any unnecessary quest out from the required progression path and have them as optional if you still develop the same amount of quest, hopefully the developer would find some better content to spend their time on though.

---------- Post added 2013-03-16 at 03:41 AM ----------

Look at all of your alts. No wonder you're demoralized. Like it or not, the leveling experience doesn't need to be removed because people who are rerolling their 15th class want to get at max level in a day.

I have all WoW classes pre-MoP at max level, if I recall correctly it took me around 4-5 days to level and gear a new class to be raid ready with heirlooms, the pointlessness of that journey might as well be 1 day as it achieves nothing. Now if leveling a character would be as it was back in vanilla then it's another matter as it took you weeks back then and actually meant something, now it's so watered down it's just a mindless obstacle before the actual game.

[RoninaThorstone]

I have all WoW classes pre-MoP at max level, if I recall correctly it took me around 4-5 days to level and gear a new class to be raid ready with heirlooms, the pointlessness of that journey might as well be 1 day as it achieves nothing. Now if leveling a character would be as it was back in vanilla then it's another matter as it took you weeks back then and actually meant something, now it's so watered down it's just a mindless obstacle before the actual game.

Ugh. Yes. 100% yes.

You just memorize the quest path after your first character and then plow through it over and over and over while watching a series on netflix on a movie or w/e. In less than a week you were leveled up and in heroic gear or better.

It's completely meaningless. It's not even challenging! It was easy to level up without really knowing your class. IE: demonology warlock? I think I had to look at the screen about 10% of my play time while leveling.

Leveling is a decent story telling device for when there's a personal story. It's a carry over from the RPG games that MMORPGs were essentially spawned from. In story based mmos it works... usually. Unless they go over board with the random ass quests like "collect 10 troll toenails because I like collecting them and will give you 10 silver and 235 exp"

[Nuvuk]

WoW-style leveling needs to go, especially with the whole problem of outleveling quests. There should always be character progression but its ridiculous that you either lose half the storyline or blow through it mindlessly at high level because you outlevel shit. Trivial questing is no fun.

Or have quests scale to lvl. That is something I am kinda hoping for. It might not work with the game mechanics though because of low lvl vs high lvl players.