Have gamers forgotten what levelling is?

[Stark]

This is largely in reference to Bethesda/Bioware games and upcoming Borderlands, and specifcally ignores MMOs (where obviously everyone understands leveling).

In the old days, games had levels, and levels were totally central to progression. If you were levl 10 and went to a lategame area, you fucking died. The levels were meaningful and necessary and were the most important description of your character's power.

The current batch of 'adventure' 'story' 'nerd silliness' games, however, have been using levelled content for some time. This means that in Oblivion you can kill Jesus at level 1, that Super Mutants aren't dangerous, and you don't really need to level up to fight giant robots. This is obviously about making the story more important and the 'experience' rather than the player having to make decisions about risk, preparation etc and removing grinding.

Now look at Borderlands. Whilst it looks like a shooter, it's really a Diablo game (not that most fucking 'gaming journalists' are smart enough to catch on). However, people are complaining in previews that you can't kill some enemies without levelling up, and that you can shoot guys and have them not take damage because you're too low-level (bear in mind this isnt a to-hit issue, it's just a damage/level issue, as the game uses FPS stuff for accuracy).

Is this a reflection of how everyone has gotten too used to 'levelled to the player' games, where the game is always easy on you, even in genres generally driven by levelling? Is the idea of playing a random, mob-killing, character levelling game and actually having to level to do things an absurdity to modern gamers? Can anyone remember games that still have meaningful levelling that aren't jRPGs?

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, leveling up that actually affecting how much damage a non melee weapon does makes not one fucking lick of sense at all so I can’t say I miss it. Less accuracy, slower reloading I can live with. Its much more logical to me to primarily limit what a player can do by simply giving him inferior weapons and ammo (big one, since you can easily have 5 useful types of ammo for 1 gun in real life) and armor (lack of long range accuracy to avoid counterfire making these limits more telling) and making him find better ones then to have magic points that somehow make the same rifle/cannon whatever work better just because. This would also be reason for game developers to put more thought into all types of inventory items, something I find more and more lacking.

Also just increase the numbers of enemies and give the same types of enemies improving weapons because hey, if some new guy is running around massacring Ultra Goblin outposts, they are rather bound to call for reinforcements. That was one thing that really pissed me off in Fallout 3, you only had a couple points on the map with a decent number of enemies and if you wiped them out they didn’t come back, even at the retarded radioactive super mutant base which was supposed to be plaguing the entire region.

[Stark]

That's actually totally irrelevant. Nobody gives a shit about whether skill systems etc are 'realistic'. I posed the question 'have PC gamers become used to meaningless levels in games with levelled content', to which 'lol levels suck roffle' is a worthless reply.

Ironically your ignorant screed highlights something else people outside of MMOs don't understand; the difference between focus on player levels or skills and item quality. In many games (F3 for instance) player level is basically meaningless and item quality is 80% of your ability to kill anything. In aggressively levelled games with more innate abilities (like Diablo) the balance is very different. Thus again, people being sad about not being able to kill whatever megabeast they want is amusing, because if the balance is toward itemisation low quality/rarity is going to really hurt your combat ability.

Sorry, Diablo games aren't realistic.

[Eleas]

At first I took your question to be "have gamers forgotten that 'no levels' = you can kill the end boss at the start of the game. Guess it wasn't, though.

Though it's an interesting question. I think I'll go the cynical route and say that what goes under the misnomer "fantasy cRPG" - and what should probably more justly be named "derivatives of WoW coin-op, but with credit card" - is the result of two mutually exclusive influences. Both are tried and true concepts, but their juxtaposition can only have been brought about by the unholy practice known as focus groups.

Firstly, you want the gamers to feel progression dribble out. It's classic Skinner conditioning, as I've mentioned a time or two. Basically, fighting for rewards doled out in discrete lumps give a more positive response (and, more to the point, create a psychological urge to do it all over again) than fighting for a slow progression upward. Levels are the recognized code for a suitably dramatic improvement of your situation, and therefore, cRPG designers follow it slavishly because they know it activates all those lovely instincts that cause gamers to drop their brains and pull out their wallets.

The second concept, though, partially opposes the first. It's in the idea that a game has to be accessible. This was made a buzzword by drooling morons striving to imitate the makers of WoW in the vain hope of earning similarly obscene amounts of cash; Blizzard, being less dumb at the whole 'coding for a purpose' bit, knew exactly what they were talking about. It described a situation necessary in online community-based grindathons, after all; you can't create a game where the beginner must continually pay, and not let him see enough of the game (and kicking enough ass) in the first stages to actually want to continue. Another aspect of this is that you want to provide an even difficulty curve; even in supposedly open games, the fights can't be too easy, or too hard, or the gamer will feel persecuted or something like that. So you make the game accessible. This makes perfect sense. In WoW.

Fuse these two concepts, and you get the meaningless leveling of Oblivion. The paradigm then mutates in the developers' mind. It becomes something even worse. The gist of that?

"Players want to win. We must make it so easy they can't possibly do anything else."

[Stark]

What are you talking about? Levels are deeply meaningful in wow, and the whole fucking game is divided into areas of different levels. It doesn't level-match like Beth games, and I'm expressly not talking about MMOs for this reason.

Levels have gone from primary indicator or power to literal irrelevance. Nobody thinks they can't kill a million supermutants at level 5. Even Diablo-em-ups likes Sacred 2 level content these days (although power is dependent on where you spent your levels so you can still be spanked). It just strikes me that the idea of a game having threat you have to rise to - rather than a threat fixed to your level - is so old fashioned people simply don't understand it anymore. Someone told me Borderlands has enemies many levels above the player they can't kill solo, and were STUNNED when I told them thats not unusual.

[Oscar Wilde]

Shit, the more you describe Borderlands, the better it sounds strak.

[Eleas]

What are you talking about? Levels are deeply meaningful in wow, and the whole fucking game is divided into areas of different levels. It doesn't level-match like Beth games, and I'm expressly not talking about MMOs for this reason.

No, you're right. I was being unclear. I was positing Blizzard, or rather persistent gameworlds as a whole, as starting the whole idea about games needing to be playable by both "newbies" (who step into a game where the opposition has to be geared to match players above them in power) and "veterans" (who need commensurately powerful enemies in order to be challenged). Someone took that concept, applied it to single-player games, and ran with it.

In retrospect, my theory has more than a few holes in it.

Levels have gone from primary indicator or power to literal irrelevance. Nobody thinks they can't kill a million supermutants at level 5. Even Diablo-em-ups likes Sacred 2 level content these days (although power is dependent on where you spent your levels so you can still be spanked).

No argument there.

It just strikes me that the idea of a game having threat you have to rise to - rather than a threat fixed to your level - is so old fashioned people simply don't understand it anymore. Someone told me Borderlands has enemies many levels above the player they can't kill solo, and were STUNNED when I told them thats not unusual.

I haven't seen that attitude first hand, but it wouldn't surprise me. If I'm to use any of my earlier argument as an explanation, it is this - I think the growing focus on the "casual gamer" as a core group has led to a lot of dumbing down, lowering of difficulty, and just generally an imperative to cater to immediate and easy gratification.

[Stark]

It's even the idea of difficulty curves; these 'not really levelling' games get dramatically easier as the game goes on, rather than harder (forcing the player to grind for levels to stay competitive). Games like F3 and Mass Effect have levels that do absolutely nothing but unlock perks. Hell, people even responded against this trend - mods for most Beth games existing to remove the NPC levelling and actually make different parts of the game have different difficulties.

[Havok]

Stark, I feel it is a reflection on the American need to have everything now.

[Gasphemer]

*hands out canes*

[Eleas]

It's even the idea of difficulty curves; these 'not really levelling' games get dramatically easier as the game goes on, rather than harder (forcing the player to grind for levels to stay competitive). Games like F3 and Mass Effect have levels that do absolutely nothing but unlock perks. Hell, people even responded against this trend - mods for most Beth games existing to remove the NPC levelling and actually make different parts of the game have different difficulties.

The reason may be because games today have adapted. They're no longer being played by comparatively few people who exploit the shit out of them and mock them if they're poorly made and lack longevity. They're played by truckloads of "casuals" who will buy a game on the strength of a few glitzy superficially awesome selling points. Those people will not care that the story is moronic or that they, if they only progressed past part 3, would get an error message and a quick kick out to Windows for their troubles. They want immediate gratification. Today, that, for mainstream games, is a much bigger selling point.

[RedImperator]

I always thought GTA:SA handled the issue pretty well. There are no levels, but you do have skills, and the way you improve them 1) feels natural and, 2) provides realistic benefits. Especially with the vehicles. You can do some crazy shit in GTA...but only if you've been driving for a while.

[Stark]

I always thought GTA:SA handled the issue pretty well. There are no levels, but you do have skills, and the way you improve them 1) feels natural and, 2) provides realistic benefits. Especially with the vehicles. You can do some crazy shit in GTA...but only if you've been driving for a while.

But GTA games aren't built on the idea of scaled threat; cops don't get better as you go through the game. On the same token, cops don't suddenly have RPGs just because you have them (or every beat-cop having a minigun, as would be the case in a Beth game).

The issue isn't why Beth keeps numbered levels around when their own skill system means it's irrelevant. It's the fact that people are apparently shocked that in a genre BUILT on leveling, incremental improvement, looting etc, you can't go anywhere and kill anyone without considering your capabilities. It makes me laugh to think how the market will react to D3 (although based on other Diablo-em-ups it's possible D3 will be heavily levelled anyway). It's somewhat amusing that the most popular games of all time (things like WoW and Sims) are built on levelling, but the PC market has been using 'leveled content' to reduce the impact of this in RPGs for years.

[charlemagne]

They're played by truckloads of "casuals"

I really don't think that these mythical "casuals" even exist. As far as I remember, back when Oblivion came out, pretty much anyone said "that's stupid" when the silly concept of the whole game levelling with the player was explained to them, mainly meaning that the game actually got harder as your character levelled, because you encountered harder enemies who took longer to kill. And that's not even talking about every suckass bandit using high-end armor and weapons. On PC, pretty much everybody used a mod who did away with the auto-level-tables.

The issue isn't why Beth keeps numbered levels around when their own skill system means it's irrelevant. It's the fact that people are apparently shocked that in a genre BUILT on leveling, incremental improvement, looting etc, you can't go anywhere and kill anyone without considering your capabilities.

This is pretty interesting. To be honest I had no idea that there's gamers who don't equate "RPG" with "level your dude to get better".

But thinking about it, I think the last big open world RPG I played where levelling was essential was Morrowind. Games like The Witcher railroad the player through level-appropriate playfields, so you don't get a real sense of "oh hey, now I can kill those guys I couldn't kill 10 levels ago". Games like KOTOR also only throw stuff at you that you can handle.

In my opinion, the question is: are most players nowadays really that discouraged by "come back later to kill this type of enemy" that they would stop playing instead of playing more to level up and come back later? Or is this mindset just some stupid marketing thing?

[Dooey Jo]

I really don't think that these mythical "casuals" even exist.

Who do you think keep buying all those "new" versions of Guitar Hero, SingStar or NHL 20XX that comes out five times a year? The casuals exist, but I don't think they play the games discussed in this thread, which makes those companies' possible attempts to pander to them even more misguided.

[charlemagne]

Who do you think keep buying all those "new" versions of Guitar Hero, SingStar or NHL 20XX that comes out five times a year? The casuals exist, but I don't think they play the games discussed in this thread, which makes those companies' possible attempts to pander to them even more misguided.

Alright, I guess that's kind of what I meant, then.

I think many developers misunderstood what made e.g. Morrowind "hardcore" - it wasn't that you had to level or that there were places you shouldn't go at level 1. It was - at least for me - mainly a bad interface, like the horrible quest journal that made it really hard to keep track of things. Streamlining the interface is not a bad idea at all, it just means that you don't have to fight the game itself. But instead of just making playing the game easier, they "dumbed down" everything.

I mean, where did this trend of thinking that levelling is bad even come from? Who bought an RPG and then complained about one of the central gameplay mechanics so much that devs changed that?

[Stark]

Yeah, linking things like 'the game has a good flow and an effective interface' and 'strip all the guts out and make it easy' isn't really valid. If you look at games like F3 and Oblivion, they have pretty poor interfaces and work flow by being mechanically simple.

[PainRack]

Perhaps RPGs and other games no longer protray levels as being part of the storyline and access to new stories/difficulties anymore? It seems to me that in new games, levels= being able to equip new gear nowadays.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

I'd argue that mods like OOO or FWE, for Oblivion and Fallout 3 respectively, indicate that no, they haven't. On the PC at least. Bethsoft implemented their crappy scaling system, and one of the first things people did was try to replace it with something more like Morrowind. When doing that is a central feature of some of the most popular mods in existence, it's a fairly big indicator that people like more traditional leveling.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Perhaps RPGs and other games no longer protray levels as being part of the storyline and access to new stories/difficulties anymore? It seems to me that in new games, levels= being able to equip new gear nowadays.

Picking up on this point - even that seems like a relic of the "hard" level boundary days; I think originally the reason for those limits on equipment must have been to stop players "breaking" the game by, through luck or exploit, getting an extremely powerful weapon that allows them to access areas they should not yet be able to go.

Now in a multiplayer environment where players of different skill levels can trade items this would be a legitimate problem, because even the crappiest weapon that a level 10 player finds in the level 10 area is going to be awesome for a level 1 player - and they will trade. But in a game like a singleplayer Bethesda RPG where there is no trade and enemy toughness matches your level then... what's the point of a level-limit on equipment exactly? If you pick-up an awesome laser rifle at level 1 then its still going to be just as potent at level 20; you get the ridiculous situation where a weapon which you aren't allowed to use yet due to level limits turns out to be worse than the gun you have already been using for half the game.

Now honestly I might be misrepresenting Fallout 3 here as I don't remember how bad the problem was in it specifically, but I do remember on my playthrough I only ever changed my weapons because I had become bored with the "critical hit" kill animation of my current one.

[Eleas]

I mean, where did this trend of thinking that levelling is bad even come from? Who bought an RPG and then complained about one of the central gameplay mechanics so much that devs changed that?

Bingo. I think you encapsulated the problem in a nutshell here. It's not that this trend has come about as a result of the core audience complaining. It's that the developers, watching the success of other games (the Sims being a good example, if we're not to talk about WoW), wanted to appeal to a larger audience. They wanted to emulate the power of those games to attract some inferred and semi-mythical everyman, making people who normally "don't play video games" into actual buyers.

So no; in my eyes, actual complaints from gamers have nothing to do with this. No, this is a poorly made attempt to "get with the times" and anticipate the needs of the everyman. They're making a desultory bid to attract the largest group of people possible, paradigmatically only defined as consisting of people who are not gamers and generally don't really like to spend a lot of time doing that crap.

EDIT: And, picking up on Stark's original point, why do the younger gamers accept this sort of faux leveling system as the way to go? Because it is a paradigm, is my guess, and one that has a short-term appeal. Because if there's any truth to the abovementioned paradigm, it is in games today being a lot less punishing. I have never heard a kid today crowing about how he "beat Crysis" in quite the same way as someone would talk about Mario or the like. Because todays games are trivial to beat, and only require time and grind to do so. Today, I get the feeling that a challenging game is seen as it somehow "holding out on you." You only need to read the complaints about difficult (or "bullshit!") missions in GTA San Andreas in order to see the point. I want to advance to the next part goddammit, and that's my right as an American!

[Darmalus]

Could this be linked to the lack hardness selection? In a way, even DOOM had levels, the levels were Easy - Medium - Hard - Nightmare, but they were different sets of difficulty curves. I see a lot of games have no hardness selection anymore, which means they are trying for the curve that everyone can do, which means "Easy". Games with leveling systems had only one difficulty curve, but if you really sucked, you could grind until you out-leveled the area, effectively putting the game on "Easy". Beth seems to have spawned some sort of brain-damaged hybrid of these systems, only one difficulty curve and levels that don't do anything.

[Eleas]

Could this be linked to the lack hardness selection? In a way, even DOOM had levels, the levels were Easy - Medium - Hard - Nightmare, but they were different sets of difficulty curves. I see a lot of games have no hardness selection anymore, which means they are trying for the curve that everyone can do, which means "Easy". Games with leveling systems had only one difficulty curve, but if you really sucked, you could grind until you out-leveled the area, effectively putting the game on "Easy". Beth seems to have spawned some sort of brain-damaged hybrid of these systems, only one difficulty curve and levels that don't do anything.

Good observation! It may well be. A fad that grew into being not too long ago was that games should be self-correcting in terms of difficulty. Maybe we're seeing its logical development.

[TheFeniX]

The current batch of 'adventure' 'story' 'nerd silliness' games, however, have been using levelled content for some time. This means that in Oblivion you can kill Jesus at level 1, that Super Mutants aren't dangerous, and you don't really need to level up to fight giant robots.

In fairness, what old games were analogous to the current genre of First-person action/RPG games like the three you listed? Besides Squeenix games, I'm coming up with Eye of the Beholder, Wizardy, Baldur's Gate, and other games like it for straight RPGs that require no actual dexterity to play.

Off-hand, I can't think of many games that even fit the mold besides Dues Ex (which is tenuous).

Can anyone remember games that still have meaningful leveling that aren't jRPGs?

Nothing that hasn't been out of mind for years. I believe even KOTOR had a (broken) leveled content system. What about those couple of RPGs that came out for 360, like Lost Odyssey? Never played them though.

Because todays games are trivial to beat, and only require time and grind to do so. Today, I get the feeling that a challenging game is seen as it somehow "holding out on you." You only need to read the complaints about difficult (or "bullshit!") missions in GTA San Andreas in order to see the point. I want to advance to the next part goddammit, and that's my right as an American!

I should have the option to advance through a game with little difficulty if I chose to play that way. Ultimate Alliance 2 (while stupidly fucking broken and boring) had a good concept: Easy mode is basically watching a movie as your characters easily plow through the entire game. No unlocks, no levels, no achievements. From there, the difficulty level can be modified by the player.

Prototype was hard enough, then getting gang-fucked in a corner by 4 hunters on Hard mode was enough to just put them game down. Sidenote: fuck "cross-country driving simulator" also known as GTA:SA.

I see a lot of games have no hardness selection anymore, which means they are trying for the curve that everyone can do, which means "Easy".

Eh? I can only think of one game I recently played that didn't have a difficulty level: Assassin's Creed. Games are just as hard as they used to be. People just need to quit playing on normal. I can't remember the last game with a difficulty level I didn't immediately set to one level higher than normal, except those that won't let you.

[Stark]

Holy shit where did my post go? Anyway, I think Aaron has a point wherein light levels are a single-player only game issue.

In fairness, what old games were analogous to the current genre of First-person action/RPG games like the three you listed? Besides Squeenix games, I'm coming up with Eye of the Beholder, Wizardy, Baldur's Gate, and other games like it for straight RPGs that require no actual dexterity to play.

Off-hand, I can't think of many games that even fit the mold besides Dues Ex (which is tenuous).

So there are none of them... except dozens of them? Fucking Buck Rogers Countdown to Tuesday is analogous, because in the early 90s nobody expected first person anything. Nobody expected to be able to beat the final boss at 'whatever level they happened to be at' either; FF8 specifically changed to a levelled system.

And what the fuck does needing dexterity to play have to do with jack shit? You're not one of these 'oh noes clicking is hard' nerds are you?

Nothing that hasn't been out of mind for years. I believe even KOTOR had a (broken) leveled content system. What about those couple of RPGs that came out for 360, like Lost Odyssey? Never played them though.

Although I haven't played them I count the 360 jRPGs as jRPGs, because what I've been told suggests they play the same way.

I should have the option to advance through a game with little difficulty if I chose to play that way. Ultimate Alliance 2 (while stupidly fucking broken and boring) had a good concept: Easy mode is basically watching a movie as your characters easily plow through the entire game. No unlocks, no levels, no achievements. From there, the difficulty level can be modified by the player.

No, difficulties should be meaningful. MUA2 is fucking laughably easy on hard (even non-gamers like Hav think so) and by the time you unlock legendary your guys are so good it's STILL easy. Games can cater to five-thumbs nobodys and actual players easily, without totally sacrificing the idea of 'challenge', ESPECIALLY in a leveled game where challenge is easily measured by the giant '14' hovering over badguys.

Prototype was hard enough, then getting gang-fucked in a corner by 4 hunters on Hard mode was enough to just put them game down. Sidenote: fuck "cross-country driving simulator" also known as GTA:SA.

Prototype was only hard due to primitive bosses, and how is 'driving a lot' difficult in GTA? How is that even relevant when neither of those games have leveling?

Eh? I can only think of one game I recently played that didn't have a difficulty level: Assassin's Creed. Games are just as hard as they used to be. People just need to quit playing on normal. I can't remember the last game with a difficulty level I didn't immediately set to one level higher than normal, except those that won't let you.

With respect to games with levels, things like Oblivion, F3 and Mass Effect really didn't get any harder on higher diffs. Level-matching more aggressively in Oblivion just made the game ever flatter.