The Bar Brawl: Moving On Up
By The Bar Brawl ~ 17th May 2011
Storage! If there’s one thing you all could agree on, its that there wasn’t enough of it. Thanks for the multitude of responses to last week’s rumble and congratulations to those of you picking up the awards. This week they include Laurelbeard, who gets a Gold Star for pointing out how much I fail at times when it comes to lore (seems the Xunlai’s role has been greatly reduced in Guild Wars 2), and Shongaqu who gets the Norgu Seal of Approval for his RP response. Also getting a look in are Matt, who gets a Diamond Pick for sparking a debate based off a single sentence, and Christian gets an Iron Pick for fleshing that out. Book offered our first emailed in entry, offering his vision of nested storage which was also brought up by several others including Louden. Other popular themes included tying storage to player housing (thank you Bottle) and dedicated armor storage (thank you Greibach and Jado Cast). For a full report, check out the upcoming aural offering.
On to this week…
Your typical MMO story will follow the progress of a character from a nobody of varying talent to the saviour of their civilization. Tracking the training and progression of your zero to hero has always been a difficult task to tackle. Do you mimic real life where its likely that a person would need to spend hundreds if not thousands of hours training in weaponry and magic before they could hope to take down the bad guy? Or do you suspend any sense of realism and hand out levels like they’re candy?
We know that ArenaNet have decided on a relatively flat levelling “curve” for Guild Wars 2, but will you lament the loss of the logarithmic trawl to the level cap or say good riddance and skip to victory? Is there valuable gameplay in the slow trudge to the cap? Have levels replaced experience points as the reward for our participation or are both relics (pardon the pun) of the past?
Let us know your thoughts by calling us at 708.202.9262, emailing in your mp3 responses at [email protected] or leaving your response below.
I say good riddance to bad rubbish! I will skip, jump, and walk while I level, and due to the various types of content available, there is valuable gameplay there, because I get to play how I want. As for the rewards for participation, there’s XP, karma, gold, gear, and crafting materials, not just levels on the way to the cap. If it wasn’t for level restrictions on skill tiers, I wouldn’t even care what level I was.
To put it simply- no I will not lament the loss of the mega-grinding of levels to get to the end. Guild Wars already proved that I could have great fun without feeling unaccomplished by a low level curve. I find enjoyment from doing different things in MMOs, and finding challenge. Having an arbitrarily long level time feels stagnating because instead of being able to explore the world, you are constantly gated off by your level, and you must do repetitive tasks in order to do something new.
As an adult with a social life, housework, and a full time job, if I want to escape to Tyria I want to be doing something new, something fun, or just hanging out. Hanging out doesn’t change with level time because it is just time I am sitting around, but if I have already explored the area I am in and am not high enough to leave it, then it feels like it will be another chore AND THEN some fun, and that is what ANet wants to avoid.
I know that of course we already know the level curve is flat, and that there is sidekicking, but I am more speaking to the comparison between GW2 and other MMOs where the level-gated areas and grind exist. I know that some will say that they feel that leveling should feel like an achievement, and making leveling go fast defeats that feeling because “everyone has it”. To them I say that time spent is not an achievement in my eyes, its the end result that counts. Player skill is the greatest achievement in my eyes, and grinding out levels does not indicate that. If someone told you that they spent 100 hours on making a 3d model, does that mean that it is more of an achievement than someone who spent 20 hours making a better looking model? It shows dedication, sure, but not achievement. To those who want to have special rewards that aren’t as widely available, I submit that there should be difficult content to test themselves against, and only good players will be able to complete it (this is for dungeons, not regular content). The items that they get should not be stronger; I don’t want people to be gated off from power, but to those who want the status symbol of “working for something” then a unique skin is certainly a status symbol.
If we want to talk about story elements of how you can become so powerful so quickly, there are several answers. You can just consider the game to be an abstraction of the epic tale. You can consider the time that you are not playing as longer periods in the game world, so that your character’s story takes the appropriate amount of time. You could simply be the chosen one, a powerful person who just unlocked their inner awesomeness and was that powerful all along, merely learning to access it as time goes on.
And let’s talk about Alts. I’m something of an altaholic. I like to have one of every class in the game. That is more than many, but fewer than some altaholics who want 15-20 characters. Games with immense level curves heavily discourage alts, and I can only see that as a bad thing. By playing multiple classes, and more importantly different combat roles (front line, back line, support, “bruiser”, squishy DPS, etc) a player gains several important things: perspective, understanding, and prediction. When you have played as a class, you know much better how its timings go, how it views the enemy and the allies for attacking/supporting, how fine of a line they walk between life and death, and what are good strategies from their points of view. It is true that you can essentially glean all of these things through an enormous amount of play time and observation, but I feel that personally it still has more impact having actually played said other classes. In games with long level curves, I quite simply have to give up on the idea of having lots of alts, and not only does that make me feel like I am worse at the game overall, it means that I have fewer options available to play. I play under different mental and emotional states, and each class speaks to a different frame of mind for me. If I am feeling mischievous and like trolling, I will PvP with a Mesmer. If I feel like having combat where I am watching a lot of things, I will play a Necro or Dervish. If I want to just smash a face off, I will play a Warrior. If I want to be on an organized team, I will take up other roles from time to time, or play one of the aforementioned. If I only have time to make 1-2 characters max level, then all of the times I would have been playing those alts, I would simply not be playing because I am not in th mood.
Finally- I don’t like being not-max-level. I don’t mind doing some leveling, but a character is incomplete before it hits max level. I don’t care that the game is fun; if I am not max level it is constantly nagging. To clarify, I want the game to be fun all the time, but part of that fun is being able to be max level. This isn’t out of a need for “accomplishment” as I spoke of earlier, it is out of a desire to have all of my tools available to me. It isn’t that I need to be max level instantly, but if the game takes TOO long to level, then I get really tired of being level X, and am ready to be done leveling.
Holy crap! Get out of my head!
/signed and seconded
Very well said… well done.
*looks around for a tinfoil hat*
Levels are relative indicators of skill. Real life professions have these indicators: technical writer III, executive producer, junior sanitation engineer, etc. As with most professions, one has to work very hard to obtain the top tier position. Thus we are all not CEO’s. That being said, these are GAMES! Games are a form of entertainment like movies and novels. The chapters and scenes in other storytelling media do not get longer and more difficult as the consumer progresses. Character leveling in a game is a way to hamper a consumer’s progress because of: lack of storyline, content deficit, or absence of an end-game. GW2 is trying to address these issues. I hope anet succeeds.
Skip leveling, make it a montage. Then we feel accomplished but we only spent a few minutes showing months of hard work in our movie…I mean game.
Personally I think XP is more important than the level. I’m not certain how gear, traits, skills, etc.will be available to players as you gain XP, but for me levels are just the title for how much XP is earned. I do agree that XP should be earned as you progress and gain more skill at playing with your profession. I’m very eager to see what Anet ends up doing with the leveling system. Based on GW, I don’t think they are all that caught up on making you grind levels, its more about story, progression, and getting to the end game for big events, dungeons, and PVP. I wonder if they keep to the same concept?
Oh wow i can finally comment!
Anywho,
to answer “do you suspend any sense of realism and hand out levels like they’re candy?”
Who is to say that a fast leveling curve cannot be made realistically?
Just because you hit level 80 from 79 just as quickly as 9 to 10 the “epic” feel of progression does not have to be lost. Time spent is not the sole factor in how grand a journey is.
If you live in Miami and drive 3 hours to go to Disney World it’s still as awesome for you to be there as someone who flew in from Australia and you will have just a good a time, if not a better time then anyone else.
i have full confidence that Arenanet will make a natural feeling level progression that is for more “epic” than any other MMO because of the personal storyline.
One could argue that there are other ways to level besides personal storyline and it is true, but at the same time I trust it will be just as natural.
What better way to strengthen oneself then to fight your greaters? (PvP)
Why is it that those who face strong adversities always rise to the occasion when given to opportunity (dynamic events)
Actual time spent leveling has a relatively small relevance when it comes to the feel of progression.
On a side note, I’m surprised Arenanet kept leveling at all.
I have a strong feeling they kept it around for the people that think it would be ridiculous for an MMO to not have a leveling process
Greibach and Evee expressed most of my own thoughts on this subject quite eloquently. So, there is really only one small point I would add to what they have already said;
Leveling provides an opportunity to the player to become familiar with the total arsenal of their character’s abilities a little bit at a time, instead of all at once. While the character is progressing through their leveling curve the player is generally advancing through an “experience” curve of their own – except – every player’s learning curve is different, while every character’s leveling curve is essentially identical.
So, leveling does serve a purpose other than merely blocking/gating content but, that purpose is more, or less, noticeable depending on how closely the leveling curve matches your own learning curve.
I would also suggest that it’s human nature to not be truly happy unless you’ve got something to gripe about… and leveling fulfills that niche admirably for most gamers. Shared commiserating about the “ordeal” of reaching the next level is just something silly gamer type people actually find a sort of twisted enjoyment out of. Not saying it’s right (or wrong) …. just saying it is.
However, in all other respects I agree completely with the sentiments expressed by Greibach and Evee;
flat level curve = good… “hell” levels and general leveling grind = bad
I’ve reached the point in MMOs where I can’t even bring myself to grind out levels. It’s a chore, it’s boring, and the rewards (in my opinion) generally aren’t worth the effort.
I started playing Allods Online recently, and while I liked the art assets and tutorial area of the game, the real substance of it was in grinding levels and armour. Couple that with the multitudes of tedious “kill ten rats” and fetch quests, Allods lost my interest swiftly.
With ArenaNet’s venture, they’re scrapping not only the grind, but also the boring quests that come along with that grind. Already, they’ve hooked me with their levelling and dynamic event systems; they’re making progression fun and engaging. The flat levelling curve doesn’t bother me, if it’s entertaining to progress through the game, I’m onboard.
Well, that’s the PvE side of the game, anyway. PvE is entertaining for some players, but what about the PvP side of Guild Wars 2?
Well, you can level up through PvP, too. This is an addition that’s sure to bring in a lot of other gamers that otherwise wouldn’t give Guild Wars 2 a second glance. ArenaNet’s original plan for Guild Wars was to make PvP the end game. Of course, much of the player base hasn’t gravitated to PvP, and so much more attention has gone into PvE.
With Guild Wars 2, however, the system is in place to make level progression in PvP completely standalone from PvE. Having an alternative form of character levelling like this will make the game accessible to gamers who enjoy the more competitive side of MMOs. Of course, if you enjoy both aspects of the game, you can level with PvE in conjunction to PvP – there’s something for everyone!
Also, now there’s a reason, for me personally, to make a PvP-only character for more than just title grinding (I’m thinking of you, Zaishen title). Oh, and my PvP character would have to be a Charr, naturally.
Why Charr? Is it because you want to be a bad ass? LOLz
Well, that’s one reason.
I’ve wanted to play a Charr with a steampunk alchemist feel for a while now. This profession is the best fit for that.
*this new (engineer) profession. Forgot to clarify.
Woo! Gold star! ^^
As many others here I see levelling more as an indication of player skill (or time spent playing at any rate) than as a measure of the character’s development in the storyline. The levels of the player and monster have always seemed an abstraction to me. Why are the enemies at the beginning of a game (and I’m talking about games in general here) a lower level than those at the end? Wouldn’t the villain be better off putting his higher level minions in the heroes’ path right at the onset and be done with them? Levels then, to me, are a way to keep skills and abilities away from the character until such time as the story would have her able to use them, and not any indication of the absolute puissance of any given PC or NPC. Best of all would be a game without levels, but where you unlock skills as you progress through the story, rather than when your experience points reach a certain arbitrary number.
What I would really like to see in terms of levelling curves (as far as I want to see them at all) would be one that loosely follows the three-act structure of the story (assuming that model can be applied to the story). When it slows down, so does the rate at which you gain new powers, when things start moving faster, so do your skills. I only thought of this idea after I started writing this comment, so I’m not 100% sure if it’s really a good idea, but I would like to see a game where it’s tried.
I agree with this, but I’m not sure for the same reasons, so tell me if this is partially your line of thinking. In the days I played a lot of GW Prophecy, I remember being in Elona with people spamming questions in the outposts like how do I open my inventory panel? How do I change my 2nd profession? And I use to think, how the hell did they get here and not know this stuff? Or I would be in Sorrow’s Furnace and they would ask questions that were beyond Noob for being at that point in the game, and I mean Noob in the nicest way. Now these are extreme examples, but in the same sense some people do not know how to properly put a skill bar together, (which I think is the reason some of the freedom was taken away from players in GW 2 so that couldn’t happen any longer, but I digress) so I think it’s important that people progress slow enough to understand the mechanics of their profession and how to use their skills as they go through their story and dynamic events and then later, they are proficient at the different play styles their class offers. That’s basically what I was trying to say in the post above. XP is at a certain pace (and time is subjective to each person’s learning curve but if done well, the basics are learned in due course) needed to improve your skills and flush out the profession so by end game you have a grasp of how to play it properly. I think these are lessons learned from GW; a la the Assassin and Mesmer, where nobody wanted an assassin in PVE groups when factions release because they were so poorly played by so many as they just didn’t understand how to use them properly early on in game. I think the same could be said about Mesmer in Prophecies early on in GW. Sorry for the long reply, but I just couldn’t say this succinctly.