Scrapping a level system altogetherFollow

I'm probably going to show my age here when I say that I think it would be interesting if by a focus on the "growth of the character" Tanaka meant that there would be no level system involved, which was the old school way that Ultima Online did it. IIRC, the focus was on enhancing your character. You'd simply play your character, pick a skill (mine was Archery), and hone that. You'd dungeon crawl for a chance at a rare item that eventually broke on you and in general, you just enjoyed playing in the world.

I know it's probably hard to imagine a game without the grind. Since UO, I've played EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard, and EverQuest II. None of these games ever went back to what was a very simple, yet crucial aspect of what made Ultima Online such pure fun.

I'd be really interested to hear what people think of it, since for many of you, FFXI or WoW was your first MMO.

I do like that idea, being good at a job because you are actually good at it; not because your level says you are.

FFII basically did this too and I think they didn't like it since it was never seen nor heard from again. It does open up a lot of different possibilities for player customization though.

Personally, I do like having at least class templates to start from so jobs are varied.

Here's a variation from an old MUD back in the day:

You start as one of three base classes: Scholar, Warrior, or Rogue. Based on that you get your primary skills. Then you have 'jobs' you can join, and they reassign your skills into primary, secondary, and other, skills. While you are XPing, your skills raise, the primary skills raise the fastest, the secondary medium, and the other very slow. The jobs also give you unique abilities.

More advanced jobs then, take certain stat requirements to unlock

For instance, lets say you make a warrior class. In your start town 'lets say San d'Oria' there is a job in that town that basically requires you to be a warrior and citizen of the town, the Squires d'Oraguille.

When you join that job, your sword skill, your shield skill, your blade defense skill, and your parry skill get set as primaries, spear skill, dodge, medicine as secondaries, and whatever else you have are other (white magic might be an other skill)

A ways down your journey, you have 20 sword, shield, blade defense and parry, 15 spear, dodge, medicine, etc.

Now at this point you can join a new job by doing a quest that makes you the job 'Knight of San d'Oria' or you can XP some more, get your spear skill to 20 (at which your primaries are around 23 or 24) and do a different quest to become a dragoon. If you join knight, your sword and shield skills stay primary, but you get your horsemanship skill moved from other to primary, your medicine skill moved to other etc, and get new abilities that the strength of is based on your skills.

After that, there's more jobs that take more varied skills etc. Maybe Paladin of Altanna would require you to be a knight of san d'oria, have 100 shield skill, white magic at least up to 50 (from being the medic job which makes white magic and medicine primary skills (its not the white mage job))

As you can see, certain jobs would switch skills from primary to other or other to primary etc. Would people at some point way down the road end up with all skills maxed? Yes, like in FFXI down the road people can end up with all jobs maxed, and it should take about the same amount of time.

It was a very fun system! Some people would choose to go a long way on a support class then switch classes so they would have some stronger support skills, and other people would choose to specialize one class in order to have the strongest main abilities.

(I truely am fond of text mountains aren't I?)


The distinct advantages of this system are a) tons of customization of what kind of character you want to work towards, b) there could be a ton of jobs, some with very small differences based on nationality that might move just a few skills around or have a different skill, say if you start in Bastok, you might have the option of joining the Bastok Iron Muskateers instead of the dragoons. c) New jobs could be added quite easily, some might be very hard to join or have limited membership.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2009 4:55pm by digitalcraft

I absolutely loved Ultima Online. You could re-invent your character just by clicking an arrow and working on it. I quit playing when they introduced the scrolls that increased caps, because I wasn't hardcore enough to be able to get any. I felt that ruined the whole thing :(

I built a 'ranger'type by GMing Archery, healing with bandies, animal taming, sword, and threw in only a little magic ONLY to gate (I forget what the rest of my points were spread out in ...)

But with the system SE is using in FFXIV I'm not sure if it'd work, since wasn't it said there was a sort of job system in place in this game, too?

I have been thinking the same way as you, Pikko, even before this interview.

There are actually quite a few MMOs that do this. However, those games usually don't do so well. That may be because of complete separate issues with those games, but I can't think of one that has been successful with this system while I can think of failures.

Basically though you aren't removing character level from the game; you're giving characters a whole bunch of levels. Which can often mean far more grinding.

I have to ask though whether you want to simply remove levels or player class as well--you're simply a collection of your high level skills, with no real class? Is there a limit to the number of levels you can distribute between these skills cumulatively or does each one have its individual cap? How would you train each skill--by using it? Hurray block leveling monks?

There are a lot of potential problems with the system. It's like standing on a slippery floor covered in razorblades. If everything goes perfectly then the situation could be just fine, but it could easily go horribly, terribly wrong. I'd rather they not take the risk.

I believe SE comment indicates that there will be a greater degree of character customization than in FFXI, so possibly the sphere grid/wow talent trees.

That's what monk blocking is. It's a skill they get good at by leveling up, and it's incredibly painful to level up.

They'll probably do a new thing at these matters that we haven't thought sbout it, or seen in others games, really hope so.

Haha, nothing like fizzling when you're trying to Corp Por a PK too!

The problem with that is now you 5-6 parties roaming the zone, where do you go? You can't tell if a certain place will be a good spot to start because you will be moving around and you could find yourself in the middle of 4 other parties. So now you are just wondering trying to find 1 small mod that doesn't give you a huge return. Either that or now you have 500 mobs in a small area which would take away from any immersion you might have.

Well as far as Pikko's idea it seems nice but with the advent of the "modern" MMO i dont see it as likely they will eliminate leveling and permanent rare gear. People want to be better then others and levels and rare gear are physical representations of that.

If you look at a game like darkfall (Which I'm STILL waiting for) its looking to pull of the non level based combat because most of its combat skills are based around player skills and less about formulas. For instance to be good at archery you physically have to aim your weapon so if someone is a bad shot they could have perfect skills and still be a terrible archer. This game rewards players with actual skill at the game instead of levels eg. practice makes perfect.

UNless FFXIV adopts a system where there lays a physical reward for the player its unlikely to abandon the leveling system. Its simply the easiest way to contain growth and apease the groups seeking for "reward".

As far a sphere grid this seems interesting. I like the idea of "focus"ing your character. Perhaps everyone starts with a basic list of spells and abilities and chooses paths similar to skill trees from Diablo or dare i say it WoW. However make the trees broad in that say a 3 choice tiered system like this:

                                 Starter 
                                         | 
              _________________________________________________ 
               Melee                    Tank                    Mage 
                  |                       |                       | 
         Warrior    Monk        Paladin       Viking       White      Black 
 
                                         ETC

Overall I hope I'm wrong when I say I doubt FFXIV will stray far from the job system. Maybe a revamp with new systems within the class system would be good but I dont see not having predefined setups for classes.

However I hope they dont pidgeonhole jobs into one playstyle and offer options. A mantra in the Warrior forums is "Sh*t is situaional" and as much as people hated having to carry around a ton of gear it always gave you somethign new to strive for.

Heres to SE bringing us a soldid game

 
>>>--------> 

In UO it was limited to 700 points, 100 points per skill. You could be mediocre in a bunch, or 'grandmaster' in 7, or a mix of it. Same with the stats. You had only so many points to work with there as well. If this system was used, a cap similar to this would be introduced as well.

Yeah, Darkfall is like that. There is no leveling. You just level up certains stats and skills.

I'm not sure I'm ready for a final fantasy with no experience of any kind. My favorite FFs were ones with multiple types of EXP (FFVII-X). No exp at all might just blow my mind.

I think the idea is interesting, but in practice, it would be, in essence, just hiding the character's level from the player. There would still be quantifiable stats, I mean the computer has to keep track of your progress somehow, you just wouldn't know those stats. I prefer to know them, personally. I realize you're not suggesting getting rid of stats (STR, INT) but a level is a stat, just like anything, so it would effectively just be an extension of that principle. It's an interesting concept, but I think it would simplify things a little too much. One of my favorite things to do in those old FFs was manage my stats, and with hidden stats, that would just make that so much more difficult.

It would be so odd, also, if you couldn't see the stats on gear. Superstitions abound. Forget directional crafting, that's child's play superstition. Welcome to "OMG Kite Shield gives you Blacksmithing +7!" or some ridiculous thing.

Actually Romancing Saga used this system : http://www.fantasyanime.com/saga/rs3.htm

I guess no matter how you design things... in the end you will still have the situation where a leader will tell you... "I'm sorry.. i'd preffer a PURE DD build then your "Hybrid" build" and continue shouting for that said build.

They will argue.. exp/hour return.. and so on... so in the end no matter how customisable things get... you will still have the time when people will ask you to come COR/RNG and not COR/WHM, :P (just picking one scenario as an example) its a whole new game.. but its still the same players? ;)

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has played the Elder Scrolls series of games. That series uses a more "organic" level system where, rather than earning XP which grants levels, you instead simply increase your skills by using them, and every time you have gained a certain amount of total skill, you gain a level (which in turn allows you to distribute some stats).

Levels are not something that you try to gain in order to grow. You grow, and levels are simply markers along the path.

Applying something like this to the Job system might be interesting.

You got them backwards, dude! CORs like to play as COR/RNG but they are asked to come /WHM all too often, makes me wish party leaders leveled COR and figured out why /WHM is so dumb.

EndlessJourney, I read into that a little well, and I agree that it may mean something along those lines.

My interpretation is that leveling or developing your character/job or whatever, will be more a part of the things that you will be doing naturally in the game. So rather than grinding for six hours to level, killing the same mobs over and over again and waiting for them to regen, maybe as a part of mission x-x, you will transport thing y and protect it from different mobs on the way, similar to many other FFs, meanwhile gaining valuable experience.

I think it will be a major gamble to do away the level system. The system in UO, even is different than most games now, is still often grinding. In FFXI, the advanced job quests and plots sometimes but not always tied to main plot in the game -- like PUP, SMN, DRK, COR are VERY closed tied to main plot of the game, but BRD quest is just like... out there.

If there is one thing, the Genkai system does need reworking. How the heck smashing lichs has to do with the main plot of the game... Oh yeah may be it was the secret tricks that keep Maat still kicking butts (sarcasm)

Ok, that would be just about the most awesome thing imaginable.

Mind you, I love the gambit system and think that pretty much every game should have some kind of programmable AI.

I hope they come up with something new. I'm tired of this big focus on leveling which has spread to all mmos.

I can't say for sure what the new job/level system will likely be, or what I even want it to be, I'm just incredibly excited and looking forward to something new. I really hope SE knocks this one out of the park. I want it to be amazing and fun and innovative and just absolutely blow me away. I'm probably asking too much. Eh, I'm just looking forward to it either way.

With the developers making it a point about the "growth of the character", skills in this sense could be a replacement for leveling like Pikko stated for UO.

I've also heard that story progression might have to do with character progression to an extent.

For Example:
In FFXI you can't feasibly level past 50 without undergoing a certain quest or retain certain abilities (Weapon Skill quests). Perhaps they might be hinting that things like this may occur more often or your story progression may delineate a "high level" character from "low level" characters (level here is meant only as a progressive term not what we know as leveling).

This could be how the Job system becomes married to this new sort of system also. Maybe certain abilities can only be learned from certain weapons if you are playing a certain job or vice versa.

Again this is all speculation, I don't think we have nearly enough information to really get a grasp on what the character progression mechanic will truly be in the end.

Hopefully quest-driven doesn't make for some lame, linear storyline. I have no idea what they mean by changing weapons will be analogous to changing jobs or whatever they said. So.. I have an axe and I level increase STR, I switch to Stave and level increase MND?

Looks like Pikko's psychic.