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Do levels suck?December 16th, 2005 |
I’ve said in the past that levels suck.
A few things that have been written about lately, however, prompt me to dig a little bit more at that long-held tenet of mine, because while constant self-doubt is debilitating (trust me), it also often opens up surprising new doors.
My objection to levels in the past has been based around the following:
- The way in which they pull people apart
- The psychological impact of constantly pushing a lever for another pellet
- The huge content multiplier they impose
- The mudflation arms race they create
On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that levels provide a powerful incentive. Why do we have them? What good are they? And do they indeed suck?
A brief history of levels
Levels were pretty much ripped wholesale from Dungeons and Dragons. Richard Bartle has commented that he put them into MUD1 because they provided clear regular feedback on advancement. And that they do.
It’s worth looking at some of the things that changed as they came into MUDs, though. I don’t know how many levels there were in MUD1, but in D&D there weren’t very many. The very notion of having 70 levels (and in the case of many text muds, “remorting,” and in the case of EQ, “Alternate Advancement”) is silly when looked at through a D&D-circa-late-70s lens. Now, I got to D&D late, with the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set in the red box, and with the stack of AD&D books I still have, a mix of yellow spined and original editions of the 1st edition of the game rules. But a level 20 was nothing to sneeze at in those games. It was extraordinary, in fact.
D&D was notable in its advancement model for a couple of reasons:
- You got experience for anything the Dungeon Master thought deserved recognition
- You never, ever played with a widely disparate group of characters
These two elements were fundamental to how the game worked. In the translation to computers, however, the first was lost; going from analog to digital, from human to mechanical, XP became nothing more than a weighted count of creatures killed. This was a dramatic change in the nature of what we call “roleplaying games,” and the computer gaming industry has been fighting it ever since. A D&D game which was purely focused on advancement was derisively termed a “Monty Haul” game, and its players “rollplayers” (a pun which has surely been reinvented thousands of times by bored geeks).
I wish I could say unambiguously that the center of the pen and paper roleplay session was its narrative, not its numbers. But that Gamist/Narrativist tension (not to mention Simulationist, which has affected the design of a lot of pen and paper games) led to some classic D&D adventures on both sides of the fence: tournament play which was clearly Gamist in nature, pushing to beat a specific challenge (the referenced module actually ran on a time limit, and if you didn’t get your party out in time, they died from poisoned air); versus heavily Narrativist stuff like Ravenloft, which was such a popular story that it led to the creation of an entire setting. Either way, however, one thing is clear: even in the Gamist settings, you were not rewarded solely for killing.
In the early CRPGs, you often controlled a party, rather than a single character, and your party was tightly coupled in level as you progressed through the story. This commonality between pen and paper and CRPGs, however, was lost with the transition to muds and then massively multiplayer games: pen and paper games were geared towards narrow level ranges. You generally did not have an adventure with a level 1 and a level 10 character running around in the same world at the same time. You might have campaigns that were set up that way, but not individual sessions. Modules that were sold or designed by players were set up for tight narrow ranges of content drawn from a larger pool of available content described in the reference books.
Higher level did not imply higher difficulty either. There was a real effort to have the nature of game change as you advanced; the rulesets added stuff like followers, baronetcies, and so on at the higher levels of the game. But you could have a murderously difficult adventure with newbie characters, and a cakewalk one with high-level characters. Even though the amount of experience points needed for a level advanced as you played, the experience grants were scaled by storyline and play session, not by arbitrary number of kills.
In addition, the gap in damage-dealing power between a low-level character and a high-level one was not all that dramatic; a mage got 1d4 extra hit points per level, and even a fighter only got 1d8. I call this the power differential between a newbie and a maxed out character, as it scales the content that is required in the game.
Much of this changed with muds, and the changes have carried through to the MMORPGs we play today.
The common characteristics of muds’ use of levels are these:
- Levels are earned with experience
- The world holds characters of all available levels simultaneously
- More levels were added
- The power differential grew dramatically even between the lower levels
- Each level is harder to get than the previous one
The wrinkles here are many. For example, the ways to get experience have changed over the years. A focus on killing things developed, even though there had been in earlier games a collecting game (in early AberMUDs, for example, you had to gather stuff and drop it in the well to advance). In the early 90s, there was much emphasis on the notion of “exploration XP” — giving XP for entering particular rooms on the MUD, or tracking how many rooms a player had been to. This sort of mechanic never fully supplemented the XP for killing, but is sadly lacking in modern MMORPGs. “Quest XP” is also a very common mechanic that has been minimally used overall, although World of Warcraft makes heavy use of linearly directed quests and you can advance quite well through questing.
Because of the codebases used in many of the most popular muds, quests were difficult to implement, and having them was actually a major selling point in the first few years of the 90s. But puzzles and quests have a long tradition in the mud world, and they’re sometimes far more intricate than the stuff in the MMORPGs today, generally thanks to the immense flexibility that text can bring to the table. (If Legend wouldn’t freak out, I’d post the walkthrough of the Beowulf quest just to illustrate the point).
Despite the presence of quests, however, killing things became the primary mode of interacting with a virtual world despite the wide variety of possible interactions. The “XP run” was born… lacking the play-session scale of pen and paper gaming, levels were defined instead by using a baseline of “number of creatures to kill to get the next level.” Typically, like in D&D, the levels were given a larger and larger required experience point cost, but without the saving grace that rewards were scaled by the necessities of storytelling. Instead, what was rewarded was repetition: “I need 20 rats to level up.”
The second fascinating wrinkle is the way in which this had distorting effects on the reward scale. Increasingly, games came to treat level as implying a level of difficulty — or at least, tedium. While the first few levels of a mud were notorious for being difficult, the general design trend was towards offering bigger and bigger rewards as you rose through the levels, and thus requiring bigger and bigger enemies, often requiring bigger and bigger groups. While this trend did not receive its apotheosis until the days of “raids” in EverQuest, the seeds were clearly sown earlier: you leveled because it got you better stuff so you could fight bigger things that gave you better stuff that…
The result of this cycle is that more levels needed to be added to the typical D&D style progression, because that retained players more, offered more regular rewards (if you think about it, the reward feedback given by a pen and paper game was actually pretty sparse), and provided a direct point of comparison between games. Because the power differential was being increased, more levels needed to be added.
The long-term result is mudflation. Players reach the top of your level ladder, but you need to keep them occupied, so you add more levels, and with them, more powerful items to serve as rewards. But then you have these powerful items trickling around the game economy, so everything in the game gets a little bit easier. This makes people level faster to the top, which then results in your adding more levels…
Even aside from the classic mudflation effect, you also have what I call database deflation, which is the devaluation and redundancy of your statically created data, occurring simply by the fact that you added more levels, regardless of whether there are players present or not. Any given monster or obstacle can literally be evaluated as a % of the path needed to reach the maximum level; by adding levels, you are adjusting the percentage the monster is worth.
The upshot of all of this was three-fold:
- a common practice of engaging in regular character wipes or equipment wipes. (!)
- the invention of numerous systems to push players through the same content repeatedly without increasing levels. The best known of these was probably “remorting,” which allowed players to take a maxxed out character and start it over as a different class, but with the same identity and gear. I’ve constantly been surprised that this hasn’t been applied to the graphical games.
- the invention of a whole host of systems to prevent players of disparate power from playing together.
The latter is important, because it gives rise to twinking, to level limits on gear, to soulbinding items, to sidekicking and mentoring, to PK level limits, to PK zones and safe areas, to group level restrictions, and to the concept of level-limited geography.
That’s quite a host of side effects. Power differentials between levels are at the root of countless systems in modern MMORPGs. Twinking exists because godlike characters can help mouselike characters. Same for grouping level limits. Level limits on gear exist so that swords from Valhalla don’t fall into mouselike hands. Soulbinding exists for the same reason. And PK zones and level-limited geography exist so that godlike characters do not crush mouselike ones.
Lastly, sidekicking and mentoring, which I believe were first seen in City of Heroes — wow, what a brilliant hack! We’ll allow people to temporarily change level to get past all the barriers we just put up because we included power differentiating levels in the first place! It seriously is a genius solution (I mean that quite honestly) but it also points out exactly how many undesirable side effects have come about from levels over the years.
The upshot is that whereas in D&D levels were used to bring people together, in MMOs today they are used to keep people apart. In a pen and paper campaign, it was considered mere politeness to allow a newcomer to skip to the level of the current adventure; this is inconceivable in today’s distortion of the system.
If anything, this little history just illustrates the ways in which levels have changed over the years. It’s important to realize that most of these side effects didn’t exist in the original D&D model because it proceeded from different assumptions. Rather, they are all adaptations caused by the use of the model in a very different situation.
In the end, one thing tends to remain constant: a graph of population of characters at each level in your game database will generally show something that looks a lot like what you see when you hold up your left hand and try to make a V. If you have an uneven rate of advancement from level to level, you will get a slightly jaggier graph as players accumulate at the “hell levels,” but broadly speaking this graph always holds true. The start of the graph is your influx of newbies, the downslope in the lower levels is because of abandoned characters, and the spike at the end is where everyone ends up. The middle levels tend to have a far far lower population.
Seeing this graph, it’s clear why adding content at the top and causing mudflation is the typical path: it’s what would satisfy your customers. But it has huge implications on content creation costs and on the notion of user segmentation into “cozy worlds”.
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so I hope everyone has a good holiday season! Some required reading for everyone. The Death of an MMO Disabled Gamers Shut Out of Star Wars Galaxies Fantasy vs Mythology Fantasy Football Championship Robin Williams… actor and sniper Do Levels Suck? Homework = Play World of Warcraft? Enjoy!
Raph’s Website » Do levels suck?
Plagues Spread, Support Stopped, Gamers Dead Tiggs Leaves In a Huff, Learn 2 Play Free WoW, Spend the Night, Raph’s Got a Brand New Site Vanguard Beta, Red Moon, New Models, Real Estate Boom Levels Suck, Gold Bought, Fans Locked, Gamer Caught Heroes Hacked, Industry Smacked, NGE Cluster-Fuck I didn’t update my blog Now because I’m late This site’s a virtual paperweight I didn’t update my blog
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Whereas NPCs in pen and paper games are kind of central . . . Raph: Yeah, in WoW, they’re quest dispensers except they’re shaped like meat. Rather than shaped like a terminal. (Courtesy of Bruce Sterling.) Also of interest: “Do Levels Suck?” by Raph Koster (the “Raph” in the exchange above, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design), which among other things does a pretty good job of convincing me I’ve had most of the fun in World of Warcraft that I
I just read Raph Kosters website and an old article “Do Levels Suck
Do levels suck? [IMG ] Raph Koster asks, [IMG >>]Do levels suck? He refers to character levels in RPG games. He discusses the history of the concept, which starts from D&D and moves through MUDs into today’s graphical extravaganzas. He makes some really good observations about the side effects of levels, and the
content to the player quickly and efficiently for them to consume. FWIW, the ultimate thing for me with MMO’s is to wonder about how to change advancement. A good debate about this occurred last year over on Raph’s blog whereby he went through “why levels suck”. But a great rejoinder by HRose to a post Raph made about a medical MMO illustrates the problem really well. Raph proposed a game where you had to “heal” patients; HRose argued it was the same old, same old
will ask me to be a “creative consultant” on an MMORPG, so I figure it can’t hurt to have some actual play experience. Before hiking over to Fred Meyer to pick up the game client, I read a bunch of player and game designer blogs, and found some interesting essays.
not as fun to explore when everyone else already has walkthroughs or has done the quests you are on already and wants to get through it in the most efficient manner possible. Raph Koster recently went into detail about these and the many other reasons why levels suck on his site, and I would recommend reading that. Recent MMOs have tried “hacks” to fix the broken leveling mechanic. City of Heroes and EverQuest 2 introduced mentoring systems so you can temporarily change levels. I rarely see it used in EQ2, except
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Do Levels Suck?
Today I’m finishing reading the latest pending RSS feeds, and found some interesting game development related posts/articles. Here they are just in case you wanna read something about game dev today:Raph Koster’s “do levels suck?”
something that previously had value to become worthless? Trading is just as hollow when the items are arbitrarily worthless as when they are arbitrarily valuable. I like Raph’s blog. I like that he’s willing to question assumed gameplay devices likelevelsand gold. But as a gamer I really can’t follow him on this journey. You can certainly
[...] Addy on Do levels suck? [...]
[...] Raph Koster wirft in seinem Blog einen langen, kritischen Blick auf das Konzept der Level in MMORPGs. Ein sehr interessanter Überblick, zumal Raph dafür bekannt ist, ein klarer Gegner von Level basieren MMO’s zu sein. [...]
[...] Raph on Do levels suck? [...]
[...] Probably not a big surprise coming from his UO background, but interesting theory behind it all: http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 [...]
[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 [...]
[...] Quote Modify Recent thread on Raph Koster’s website. Interesting discussion of the function that levels serve in RPGs, both of the PnP and MMO variety. Particularly of interest to me was the fact that one of the major effects of levels in a MMORPG is to stratify the population, whereas in a PnP game everyone is more or less at the same level at all times. In light of that, does it make any sense for MMORPG levels to try to follow similar conventions as PnP levels? [...]
[...] They are ALREADY out of hand. But the problem is NOWHERE the high values as everyone is saying. The problem is that the power differential between those without loot and those with epic stuff is just CRAZY. There are weapons in AQ with 90 dps, where the average of someone dinging 60 would be 47 or so. Give a look to this. Reducing the damage at this point is just laughable in the same way Raph defined CoH’s sidekicking: Quote: [...]
[...] Raph Kosters site is also a must, especially his discusions (Part I and Part II) on Levels. [...]
[...] Pretty solid argument. Makes you give even more credit to Mythic which gave tanks skills that allowed them to actually mitigate damage from their party in pvp. Seems they understood the position based vs free moving pvp problem a little better. Group pvp revolves around who can kill the other teams priests first, and until theres a way to take your softest class off the front lines theres little hope for a consistently solid pvp environment imo. And on your original topic, the game has already reached insta-gib status. If my warrior gets on cloth, cloth dies. If mage’s CC holds, I die. Theres no counter to either that involves any sort of planning, thinking, or whatever. Just a trinket with a 3 minute cooldown. I also think Blizzard has created a paradox of a game. An MMORPG that you can PvE and PvP in. That just doesn’t work. The game is either item based, or skill based. Brad did the right thing throwing PvP out of the design of EQ, and he made a great raiding game. Having a game with lots of PvP content, with these ridiculous items Blizz has made, has ruined it. I know Sown will be with me on this, but environments where you lose your loot have created the best PvP experiences. People won’t be swinging ashkandis around if they know its just going to get looted. Imagine pvping in green gear. I honestly think it wouldn’t be bad. The fights would be slower and more calculated, less twitch based. Not 5300 pompyro lolyourdead. Being on equal ground with opponents isn’t a bad thing. Imagine that – having to actually be better, not just in a good raid group, to win a fight? UO was that style of game and the pvp in that game was better than anything since IMO. UO also avoided the priests = tanks flaw b/c there were no classes. You didn’t know what you were fighting until the fight was going, requiring reaction, not attacking X class b/c its habit. Classes, level grinds, item grinds, and now with 26% more faction grinding! These things can make great pve games, but they ruin pvp games. But damn they make a lot of money._________________Norolas//Warrior Do levels suck? [...]
[...] Anonymous: Bull on Parade [...]
[...] Raph Koster – Do Levels Suck? [...]
[...] Interessante berlegungen zum Thema von Ralph Koster. Teil 1 Teil 2 [...]
[...] Here’s something you might find interesting: http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 I personally prefer the idea of a skill based system. I loved Asheron’s Call’s system, and I reckon it would have been perfectly healthy to have taken levels out of the game and replace them with other indicators of standing which are a little more natural. I might come back and type something out in full later. __________________More on this later? Skarlath Silky Venom News Staff Want to know more about Vanguard? Silky Venom’s FAQ and Wiki can help! Report Post | IP: Logged [...]
[...] Three, condensed months of mmorpg discussions You are already used to this, no? Blah, blah, blah and blah. I have a new principle. Not only I want the story back. But I also want all the related content soloable *from the beginning to end*. And absolutely free from time constraints. The game should be enjoyable whether I have ten minutes, an hour or five hours. Duoing should be the norm. An handy solution for every problem I come from a five hours, incessant discussion with a friend about game design and mmorpgs. It was so absolutely useful to talk with someone in my own language. I could elaborate so quickly so many concept and I was able to summarize most of the work in the last three months. All at once. [...]
[...] En lecture complmentaire, un article comparant le levelling des MMORPG ce qui se passait dans le jeu de rle sur table. http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 [...]
[...] Do Levels Suck? Interesting article over at Raph Koster’s website: http://www.raphkoster.com/?p=214 He talks about the ways the concept of leveling changed when it made the transition from D&D to MUDS and MMORPGs. It’s really an interesting article and is something that I’ve thought about more than once. It’s always bothered me that in games like Final Fantasy, all experience and leveling does is hinder you from getting through tougher portions of the game, ie, you don’t have a chance at dungeon x until you’re at least level y. It seems like such an artificial and cheap way to provide more content. I always liked the way Zelda did it better, by using items and puzzles to provide access to various parts of the world, instead of just having to hack through monsters for hours. It’s also kind of a cheap reward system. Which is not to say I’m above it, I’ve hit level 88 or so in Diablo II, solely through doing Baal runs. Each level is a little bit of a thrill, but then it’s just on to the next one. I know I get addicted to it, I just don’t like it. I don’t mind it so much when it occurs more naturally though. For example, in Dawn Of Sorrow, you are limited to certain parts of the castle based on the abilities you have, which can only be acquired by defeating certain bosses. There is a leveling system in place, but you never really find yourself having to stop advancing and just grind, becuase you earn xp fast enough that as long as your killing say 75% of the monsters you encounter, you will be on a high enough level to get where you need to go (this doesn’t hold true for Julius mode so much, mainly because you can’t use healing items). So while in Diablo II I was always trying to level up, in Dawn of Sorrow it’s not really a motivating factor. He also talks a lot about the way players advance through levels in MMO’s, which should be interesting to anybody who’s played them. Anyways, highly recommended, Koster is an excellent writer and has some really fascinating ideas. [...]
[...] Raph on Character Levels in MMOs From the MUD-Dev mailing list this morning, but it’s actually the same text as his blog, so I’ll just link you there. For those interested in the subject, be sure to read both parts.–Mira LINK: “Do Levels Suck?” Discussion Thread: Expand Collapse Raph on Character Levels in MMOs (Mira Coran, 02/03/2006 05:58 PM) [...]
[...] Raph on Character Levels in MMOs From the MUD-Dev mailing list this morning, but it’s actually the same text as his blog, so I’ll just link you there. For those interested in the subject, be sure to read both parts.–Mira LINK: “Do Levels Suck?” Discussion Thread: Expand Collapse Raph on Character Levels in MMOs (Mira Coran, 02/03/2006 05:58 PM) Raph, Boylston, and I need to hook up. (Radaz, 02/03/2006 10:31 PM) [...]
[...] Ich habe zwar auch nur wenig Ahnung von Computerspielen, bin aber heute zufällig auf diese beiden – wie ich finde – interessanten Texte gestoßen: “Do levels suck?” Teil 1 und Teil 2. Da sind, gerade im zweiten Teil, auch ganz aufschlussreiche spieltheoretische Ideen drin. (Geschrieben übrigens von einem Gamedesigner.) [...]
[...] Do levels suck?By Raph Koster.Ive said in the past that levels suck.A few things that have been written about lately, however, prompt me to dig a little bit more at that long-held tenet of mine, because while constant self-doubt is debilitating (trust me), it also often opens up surprising new doors.My objection to levels in the past has been based around the following: * The way in which they pull people apart * The psychological impact of constantly pushing a lever for another pellet * The huge content multiplier they impose * The mudflation arms race they createOn the other hand, it cannot be doubted that levels provide a powerful incentive. Why do we have them? What good are they? And do they indeed suck?More … [...]