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

[Orby]

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?

[Big Thanks]

Hot Take:

MMO's nowadays only have leveling because the companies want to sell level boosts in the shop.

Not a conspiracy theory.
Actual truth.

(in my brain )

[Acidbaron]

Orby i think that fully depends on the format or type of MMO.

There used to be relatively more to do while leveling up in MMOs of that old era, in Anarchy Online for example items from level locked dungeons could last you a long time and the leveling process was relatively long with 200 levels 20 shadowlevels and even more perks and things later on.

Now why i think some form of leveling has to stay and that is to breakdown the game so that complex systems can be introduced slowly, or even skills in games where you get everything faster or everything is available to all, such as seen in the secret world you noticed a lot of players ending up with a build that simply made it very hard for them to progress.

I do think leveling is made rather pointless with how much focus eventually comes on an endgame level, especially the older a MMO becomes. But as you say i do find the journey important, for story elements and gameplay elements. But it does suffer from the rushed attitude people have in games.


Edit: there are also MMOs which strong selling point is leveling, Runescape being the probably most know MMO in that category.

[Fencers]

Nothing needs to go in video games- everything and anything can work if it's gameplay.

[Airlick]

The problem is the quality of quests and story-writing. Noone cares about fetch quests, and even KOTOR, praised as it was for its story, had trash levelling because quests themselves were boring and repetitive (at least in the base game, never tried xpacs). 2 minutes of engaging dialogue don't make up for 15 minutes of grinding the proverbial boar livers. So you need engaging gameplay (both in terms of combat and quest format) and story-writing.
Then there's also the attitude problem, some MMOs make it clear the moment you set a foot in that levelling doesn't matter and the game starts at max level. And so the quests are trash and every character you meet feels like NPC#14461.

I don't think there has been any MMO that got the balance right. Then there's the question of whether players blowing through content ASAP is the cause or the symptom of why levelling in so many games sucked.

[Attackrabbit]

I wouldn't class KOTOR as an MMO but maybe that's just me

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've been adamant that leveling just doesn't make sense in MMOs and should be removed.

1. It's an artificial roadblock towards reaching "endgame" in most MMOs. In most WoW-esque MMOs, the core content you're supposed to be doing is raiding. Why timegate people from raiding by forcing them to grind to level cap?

2. Levelling makes no sense in the story. What's the difference between a level 1 frog, and a level 90 frog in an endgame zone? They both take 5 seconds to kill at level, but then if as a level 90 character you go back to the level 1 zone, you will 1 shot the level 1 frog. Why can't you one shot the level 90 frog, then? The level 1 and the level 90 frogs are both frogs. It feels incredibly gamey and arbitrary and is immersion breaking.

[aarro]

Not at all, I love levelling in new zones. The only thing that they could change is alt levelling as in some way.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Not at all, I love levelling in new zones. The only thing that they could change is alt levelling as in some way.

Do you love seeing arbitrary numbers going up, or do you like questing content? Because I love (good) questing content and do it without any motivation to see numbers go up, but I hate levelling.

[Rogalicus]

Some limited leveling or similar system to spread ability acquisition is fine. But I think that MMOs should have more interesting progression systems than just grinding XP or any other arbitrary shit like artifact power in WoW.

[khazmodan]

I've been adamant that leveling just doesn't make sense in MMOs and should be removed.

1. It's an artificial roadblock towards reaching "endgame" in most MMOs. In most WoW-esque MMOs, the core content you're supposed to be doing is raiding. Why timegate people from raiding by forcing them to grind to level cap?

2. Levelling makes no sense in the story. What's the difference between a level 1 frog, and a level 90 frog in an endgame zone? They both take 5 seconds to kill at level, but then if as a level 90 character you go back to the level 1 zone, you will 1 shot the level 1 frog. Why can't you one shot the level 90 frog, then? The level 1 and the level 90 frogs are both frogs. It feels incredibly gamey and arbitrary and is immersion breaking.

There are more people that buy the expansion pack and level up a character then get bored in endgame and stop playing than people that are all about the end game experience.

On the other hand I understand that there are a lot of players that hate leveling and just want to go straight to end game, there are also a lot of people that don't like the idea of grouping up but they want gear progression so what do you say to them?. You say tough it out and earn the gear through the grind or leave, welcome to the trades we make in an mmo.

As for immersion; if you want immersion, watch a movie or cinematic or play a single player game because any long grind in an mmo or killing a boss after 100 attempts or pretty much any multi player game where people can be trolls or have a unique modern personality breaks immersion.

[yuze]

levelling should be a way to teach you about mechanics, spells and gameplay to prepare you for max-level.

most people who get to max-level know nothing about interrupting, dispelling, or even know half their spells because they use same rotation from level 20

[ro9ue]

It needs to be reimagined.

Leveling and, generally speaking, vertical progression in its current incarnation is a terrible, treadmill-like activity. It segments the player base and it quickly makes older content irrelevant (even patch to patch these days in games like WoW), and most of these companies offer a paid boost to skip which tells you all you need to know about the value on that experience. However, character progression and filling a bar is a proven mechanism that's psychologically satisfying.

I think the result will look something like taking the foundations of an end game progression system like EQ AAs or ESO CPs and removing the baseline 1-50, 1-100 or whatever experience but transplanting the "end game" stuff right at the beginning. Like ESO CPs... having a limited number of slots to reign in excess power with some optional point dumps (as EQ aa does) and maybe even some seasonal bonuses like the D2 season track or Artifact / EQ PoP wooden figurine.

GW2 was probably the closest to succeeding in the leveling just being some kind of bonus progression / fun unlocks where you can still go anywhere with anyone and level, but you're just expanding out your toolkit.

What I'd want is say you're a Wizard with 1000AAs and your buddy started the game with 0AAs. You both have a baseline kit to work with and can go anywhere together to level, but the 1000AA Wizard brings much more experience and a vastly expanded toolkit to handle more mechanics and make particular challenges easier.

You both started with a spell called Fireball. And you're both casting it on the kobolds in the cave you're in, but the 1000AA Wizard has a few modifiers they unlocked to their Fireball, one that splits it into 3 mini ones that explode on different targets and one that maybe adds a 3 second stun or more burning DoT damage.

[Osmeric]

It's the cold dead hand of Gary Gygax.

[Rockefellah]

The problem is the quality of quests and story-writing. Noone cares about fetch quests, and even KOTOR, praised as it was for its story, had trash levelling because quests themselves were boring and repetitive (at least in the base game, never tried xpacs). 2 minutes of engaging dialogue don't make up for 15 minutes of grinding the proverbial boar livers. So you need engaging gameplay (both in terms of combat and quest format) and story-writing.
Then there's also the attitude problem, some MMOs make it clear the moment you set a foot in that levelling doesn't matter and the game starts at max level. And so the quests are trash and every character you meet feels like NPC#14461.

I don't think there has been any MMO that got the balance right. Then there's the question of whether players blowing through content ASAP is the cause or the symptom of why levelling in so many games sucked.

*SWTOR; they fixed it nicely with allowing you to level with only your main story line (given you have a subscription and the XP boosters). This way leveling goes rather fast, you don't have to grind the proverbial force sensitive boars, and you still get a decent amount of story so you know who is who and what is what.

Games like WOW however do not have that, which indeed seems to make the leveling (if you rush it with a "I need X amount of XP/Hour" style) redundant. I'm having a blast though leveling a blood elf paladin on my own pace, now that I also have a full time job, my own company and family to take care off. The only thing I dislike is the spamming /4 :P

[Polybius]

I don’t think leveling should be removed, but mayhaps compressed. Every game wants to reach ridiculous numbers while also planning to add expansions.

You still want indicators in a game to show player progress, or with a modern issue, where you are in the main story. Take GW2 for example. One problem you encounter when removing levels is how you balance endgame gear without requiring new players to grind old tier.

[XDurionX]

MMO? No. MMORPG? Yes.

[Lothaeryn]

It needs to be reimagined.

Leveling and, generally speaking, vertical progression in its current incarnation is a terrible, treadmill-like activity. It segments the player base and it quickly makes older content irrelevant (even patch to patch these days in games like WoW), and most of these companies offer a paid boost to skip which tells you all you need to know about the value on that experience. However, character progression and filling a bar is a proven mechanism that's psychologically satisfying.

I think the result will look something like taking the foundations of an end game progression system like EQ AAs or ESO CPs and removing the baseline 1-50, 1-100 or whatever experience but transplanting the "end game" stuff right at the beginning. Like ESO CPs... having a limited number of slots to reign in excess power with some optional point dumps (as EQ aa does) and maybe even some seasonal bonuses like the D2 season track or Artifact / EQ PoP wooden figurine.

GW2 was probably the closest to succeeding in the leveling just being some kind of bonus progression / fun unlocks where you can still go anywhere with anyone and level, but you're just expanding out your toolkit.

What I'd want is say you're a Wizard with 1000AAs and your buddy started the game with 0AAs. You both have a baseline kit to work with and can go anywhere together to level, but the 1000AA Wizard brings much more experience and a vastly expanded toolkit to handle more mechanics and make particular challenges easier.

You both started with a spell called Fireball. And you're both casting it on the kobolds in the cave you're in, but the 1000AA Wizard has a few modifiers they unlocked to their Fireball, one that splits it into 3 mini ones that explode on different targets and one that maybe adds a 3 second stun or more burning DoT damage.

Horizontal or tertiary progression is the only logical step up from there i can think of. Such as unlocking skills doing quest content itself, not through arbitrary leveling brackets with experience.

If you want an example of it, Metroid is kind of one. Samus' powerups (sans beam upgrades for obvious reasons) don't make her literally stronger, but she unlocks new techniques with each powerup, allowing her to progress to new locations she was unable to access before.

In an MMO setting, this means a solo player playing for the first time cannot access all the content immediately, they still need to progress through standard gameplay to unlock the powers needed for higher tier content. But in a scenario like this, another player who already DID the content, could theoretically carry that player through those obstacles and help them unlock those powers early, essentially "power leveling" them to cap instead of forcing them through arbitrary experience gates to achieve the same result.

The #1 issue with such a system is content balance and designing your progression systems and content deliberately around this type of system, which is why most devs lazily default to traditional Trinity RPG design instead. Its just cheaper and easier to develop every time.

[Tylanthia]

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?

No. FF14 does leveling perfectly fine and has a large player base that enjoys the journey of going through a story.

[exochaft]

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 think you're viewing it the wrong way, or rather asking the wrong question. For many games outside of MMO's, the experience is all about the leveling process (even if they aren't necessarily your classic RPG). If we look at other non-MMO types of RPGs, most of the games are completely about the story and leveling along the way.

Typically with MMORPGs, I believe the leveling process has become less appealing and more of a chore by design. Assign whatever reason you want, but the focus has shifted to end-game (typically max level) content. If I had to give reasons, the first would simply be it's way easier to keep an MMO going via expansions by just creating end-game content. If you take WoW as an example, every expansion does add some leveling, but it almost always feels like it could easily be removed and nothing about the game would change much, as the focus is almost always end-game content. However, just because it's easier to implement doesn't mean it's necessarily the right answer. As such, you run into problems various issues depending upon how you design your end-game, which almost always makes the leveling process suffer.

Another reason is derived from the leveling process itself in current MMO's: there are no meaningful choices, or even the illusion of choice. If you play a standard table-top RPG game, one common theme is that there's TONS of way to tackle even the same campaign that could give you various outcomes that can ultimately change your game. For example, one game I'm playing right now I have to infiltrate a castle to get an item, and there's multiple ways to do it: barge through the front door, stealthily get the item I want, persuade/intimidate/trick/distract my way through... and beyond that, there's tons of optional boss fights along the way where I can make similar choices, which can alter/impact my future choices based upon the actions I choose. If you go to your typical MMO, you don't get any of this. Almost every MMO is basically linear in terms of progression and/or how you tackle your leveling content. You may get the occasional illusion of choice, but it's almost always extremely rare... and having an actual choice is usually even rarer. If we take current WoW as an example, Covenants were an actual choice, but the problem was the system was completely designed with the end-game in mind (amongst other design flaws with WoW right now).

Tied into my previous reason, another important reason the level process tends to be terrible in MMO's is that there's usually no challenge or adversity. If we take WoW as an example again (although this is certainly not exclusive to WoW as an MMO), the players almost always cannot fail during the leveling process. I remember someone saying (I think it was Ghostcrawler), paraphrased, that players tend to not rise to the challenge. However, there's another side to this statement: not challenging the players at all will bore them to where they might not play or quit. Everyone has their own threshold, however the bar tends to be set really low just to funnel everyone into the end-game content... and that's not fun at all. In the end, if you cannot challenge players enough during the leveling process, the MMO basically becomes a single-player game. You have to keep in mind that the leveling process isn't always about just gaining levels and learning your character for an MMO, it's about interactions with other players, especially in an RPG. Lack of adversity doesn't stimulate nearly as much socialization as some reasonable sense of challenge would.

I could keep listing off reasons, as well as delving/explaining my reasons even further, but I promised myself I'd keep this post short.

If I had to make a summarized statement, I'd say leveling isn't the problem with MMOs, it's all about how it's designed and implemented in the game as a whole. Making an actual RPG system with consequences and real choices would actually engage players, however the single-minded focus on end-game content doesn't allow for this in the current development mindset of companies.