Is levelling in MMO's a tired old system than needs to go?

[mbit]

Thats funny because when i hear "MMO" (and especially WoW) i think "massive boring repetetive grindfest in the endgame". Yay lets do the same dungeon twice every week for a year straight. So much fun, so much variety.
WoW is fun until you reach the endgame, then it becomes a lazy, boring grindfest.

lvl 1-10 is the worst phase in any mmo. No buttons to press just delete braincells repeating killing boars and other dumb targets who cant fight back with 3 buttons.

[Yriel]

lvl 1-10 is the worst phase in any mmo. No buttons to press just delete braincells repeating killing boars and other dumb targets who cant fight back with 3 buttons.

Yeah but you get new abilities constantly, i think thats much fun, thats the most impactful progress you make in the whole game.

[Azerate]

Leveling's fine and needs to be left alone. Both as a process that makes sense for newer players to get used to the world and game systems, as well as a gate for veteran players to bring more capped toons to the endgame.

[Wyshbonez]

Honestly i miss the MMO scene like UO, sure its old as dirt now, but it was fun back in the day. No levels, No Dailys, (Ok i think the professions eventually got some things you could do daily to get better chances at special hammers and such) You just went out picked what you wanted your character to be and did it. You want to be a battle mage? Sure thing! You want to be a Mule, all you bud, you wanted to be a tamer? Can i buy a dragon off you? You wanted to be a brigand and kill anyone that wasnt red? You evil bastard but i like your style

[n7stormreaver]

Destiny has no character leveling, but in-season leveling that you do with every patch and it's doing just fine.

[Akka]

The old moral was, the real journey in an MMO was the levelling experience the journey to get there. Now days its all about getting there as fast as possible no one wants to level, its 'gotta get there, gotta get the gear, gotta go fast, gotta see that max level stuff'.

You feel levelling just needs to go or be replaced with something else? You feel like the gaming sphere has just moved on?

I don't really understand your reasoning. It'd make more sense to ask "should leveling be put again back in the center", wouldn't it ?

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't really understand your reasoning. It'd make more sense to ask "should leveling be put again back in the center", wouldn't it ?

What is more realistic: The game (or the whole industry) making a 180 and suddenly turning back to the days of yesteryear and changing everything or them just killing of the last vestiges of the old RPG paradigm that just doesn't fit with the rest anymore?

[Neuroticaine]

Leveling still has it's place. RPGs have pretty much always been about your character leveling up and getting stronger. However, the days of expecting players to put in 100+ hours before they get to engage in the true meat of your game is long gone.

[Akka]

What is more realistic: The game (or the whole industry) making a 180 and suddenly turning back to the days of yesteryear and changing everything or them just killing of the last vestiges of the old RPG paradigm that just doesn't fit with the rest anymore?

Are you asking what should be done or what is "realistic" (knowing that "realistic" means here just the lazy way, that isn't necessarily the one that would actually even be profitable) ? Because your title implies a question about value and interest rather than corporate profits, and as said even corporate profits can be surprising.

Industry tends to be dumb sheeps who follow the leader. If a talented dev teams makes a successful MMO that puts leveling at the center of the experience, then the industry will do countless clones of that. For now they just copy WoW because it's been the leader the last 15 years, but it's become pretty stale and it can changes.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Are you asking what should be done or what is "realistic" (knowing that "realistic" means here just the lazy way, that isn't necessarily the one that would actually even be profitable) ? Because your title implies a question about value and interest rather than corporate profits, and as said even corporate profits can be surprising.

I have literally no idea what you are talking about. My title? I'm not the OP.

[justandulas]

No, leveling is an essential part of any RPG.

Whether it's an MMORPG, table top AD&D, MUDs, or single player RPG's... if you remove the levels, improvements, etc... is it really an rpg?

MMORPG problem is they treat lvling like an afterthought and not the main event to some extent. SWTOR 1-50 did the best lvling i've ever seen in an MMORPG, but most of the time, levels are a mean to end which is why they feel so unrewarding.

On the flip side, to make them rewarding, they'd have to take longer to level up and it would slow the experience down for the average player who would be turned off by a slow, methodical leveling experience.

The ebst way to do it would be something like elder scroll single player games... with different skills that you work the skills themselves up, with no cap ever and harder and harder to level so that the very idea of reaching max rank in, say, 'targeted magic attacks" is simply an impossibility. Let people into raids from day 1 and lvl 1, but make it skill based so even if you are lvl 1, you could still have 100/500 ranks in 2 handed axe for example.

make the journey the adventure once more

[Cosmic Janitor]

Whether it's an MMORPG, table top AD&D, MUDs, or single player RPG's... if you remove the levels, improvements, etc... is it really an rpg?

The problem with MMORPGs is that they are not designed to end, so something finite like a leveling system doesn't make sense in the long run. I doubt there are many live D&D campaigns out there that are still stuck at level 20 and have been going for 15+ years. This is also the reason why we had various squishes so far, because the underlying structure of RPGs is fundamentally not suitable for ultra long running games that operate beyond their intended range. While you can argue that the content pacing should be different and more involved with leveling (practically what the secondary leveling mechanisms of Legion and BfA tried to achieve), at the end of the day it's still clashing with other design goals of leveling, like teaching you character, which is just no longer neccessary after having played 15 years.

[justandulas]

The problem with MMORPGs is that they are not designed to end, so something finite like a leveling system doesn't make sense in the long run. I doubt there are many live D&D campaigns out there that are still stuck at level 20 and have been going for 15+ years. This is also the reason why we had various squishes so far, because the underlying structure of RPGs is fundamentally not suitable for ultra long running games that operate beyond their intended range. While you can argue that the content pacing should be different and more involved with leveling (practically what the secondary leveling mechanisms of Legion and BfA tried to achieve), at the end of the day it's still clashing with other design goals of leveling, like teaching you character, which is just no longer neccessary after having played 15 years.

some MUDs use skills similar to Elder Scrolls games, and they have been going 30+ years without anyone hitting "cap" and people still play and level up fine.

Leveling isn't the problem, it's the execution that nothing else but max gameplay matters in MMORPG's, that is the root of the problem.

Imagine if it was all skilled based, rather than level, and instead of ilvl and max lvl it'd be like "LF DPS for gruuls, at least 200 ranks in primary magic and 100 in targeting magic". etc

they could keep it going for an eternity without removing the progression experience leveling provides, letting ANYONE in at any level if they met the requirements, and would never have to squish anything down.

Leveling isn't the problem, it's the soulless way all mmorpg's copy/paste wow's soulless leveling experience.

[Jervaise]

MMO's used to be one of the very few places where people can go online, meet new people and roleplay as someone else. People dated and got married over this game. However, these days we pretty much live online. So the game part of the MMO is here, but the charm is gone. Leveling is a time killer that hasn't got much to offer to most.

[justandulas]

MMO's used to be one of the very few places where people can go online, meet new people and roleplay as someone else. People dated and got married over this game. However, these days we pretty much live online. So the game part of the MMO is here, but the charm is gone. Leveling is a time killer that hasn't got much to offer to most.

This. the RPG experience is long gone, and exchanged for a more diablo 3/destiny 2 like seasonal experience where people come/go cuz it's just a game... not a living, breathing world.

there's a reason the classic realms are charming people in, because it offers a more RPG like experience that WoW has long since forgotten about, so much so that many don't even remember it or never experienced it.

[Kokolums]

I have said for years that the solution is leveling should be its own progression system with its own rewards, just like PvE and PvP. When you want to enter a BG or arena, you join a queue and warp in, play and then exit when you are done. You have a panel to show your progress and reward list. You just do that with leveling. When you want some leveling, you enter the game mode and get warped to the starting zone at level 1. You can play thru the leveling game as long as you want. You can then exit leveling mode at any time (let's say you made level 13) and get warped back to where you were at max level again, saving your leveling progress. 3 days later, if you want more leveling, you re-enter the game mode and get sent back to the spot in the world where you were and are level 13 again. There is a button to reset your leveling progress to level 1. There is a panel to show your progress and a reward list. You get rewards every time you hit max level.

[justandulas]

I have said for years that the solution is leveling should be its own progression system with its own rewards, just like PvE and PvP. When you want to enter a BG or arena, you join a queue and warp in, play and then exit when you are done. You have a panel to show your progress and reward list. You just do that with leveling. When you want some leveling, you enter the game mode and get warped to the starting zone at level 1. You can play thru the leveling game as long as you want. You can then exit leveling mode at any time (let's say you made level 13) and get warped back to where you were at max level again, saving your leveling progress. 3 days later, if you want more leveling, you re-enter the game mode and get sent back to the spot in the world where you were and are level 13 again. There is a button to reset your leveling progress to level 1. There is a panel to show your progress and a reward list. You get rewards every time you hit max level.

I don't think COD like prestige systems are the answer, either. I get what youre going for, but the game already has too big of an issue feeling completely seasonal and not expansional... a prestige system would just cement the seasonal system in place forever

[Wavebossa]

In many cases yes. In WoW it is completely redundant and serves little purpose outside of locking your character out of equipping endgame loot at a lower level.

But if you are going to have leveling, then you should get rid of some other systems as they do the exact same thing that leveling does

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I think it is pretty pointless in WoW anymore. Truth be told if they just released new 5 mans, raids, and bgs/arenas on the regular it probably would go a lot further for them then creating a new land most people won't visit much outside of the leveling experience. Could easily be snipped out. The game is more or less a lobby and you just travel to locations if you decide to do content at a certain difficulty level. That is really all the world serves anymore. If they just occasionally modded the existing maps in the game to add in current endgame level 5 mans and raids it would still serve that purpose without having to create 5-6 new zones every expansion. Would also open up the themes a lot more. You could have a new 5 man that is discovered in Pandaland that could revisit those themes. Then one that opens in Kalandor and uses those themes. So on and so on though the whole list. Instead we probably just end up with a lot of heaven/hell stuff in this expansion because it is totally jammed into it.

Then with how they can add items into the game these days that modify game play (think artifact weapons, set bonus, and even something like the bow off the last boss in the next raid) characters rotations and gameplay could be changed up and modified without the need of levels or tons of new spells. You just hardcore balance what exists and since you got forever it might at least get to a reasonable level. Then you add in modifiers that last for a "season" and switch those up over time. Keep things that work REALLY well.. trash those that don't.. expand the game without levels.

Problem is all this doesn't sell boosts. It doesn't sell copies of a game. It generates less money, less hype, and thus.. will never ever ever happen.

[Shakzor]

Leveling is still plenty fine, the problem is with games doing a bad job at making the leveling process interesting. "Go kill 10 boars" is just as boring on lvl 4 than it is on lvl 64 or lvl 100.
You often don't notice the level in itself in singleplayer RPGs, because you're invested in the story and want to see what happens next, whereas in MMOs, they often treat you like some lower being and random NPC X sends you to pick up poop to fertilize their farm. Admittedly it's not helping that many are skipping most questtexts, but there is rarely an incentive to read the random kill quest on some random npc in the wild.
SWTOR made an attempt with voicing every quest (atleast at launch, no clue how it is these days), but at some point, you notice how many of them are just "oh no, my sister is sick, please gather medicine from random monster" and start skipping aswell.