Do we still need levels? #GuildWars2
A couple of weeks ago I finally crossed the first big threshold on Guild Wars 2, and reached level 80 with my first character, my Charr Ranger. It was nice to finally get there, but… well, am I alone thinking that reaching level cap on this game feels like an non-event, compared to other MMOs? Mrs. K told me the same thing when she got there (before me), and that got me thinking: what makes finally reaching the End Game® on Guild Wars 2 feels so ordinary and banal?
The answer is pretty simple: levels not only don’t matter, but they actually detract from this game. Think about it, if you have reached level 80, what did change to you? Now you can play the game on the order you wish, explore every area without getting worried about what Heart should you do first, the only direction that matters to you is “that one, because I want to see what is there”.
Guild Wars 2 is a game that begs to be explored at your own pace, but the level carrot keeps pushing you towards other areas you don’t necessarily want or need to go. Heart vendors keep reminding you that you’re moving too slow when you out-level areas, rewarding you with items no longer adequate for your current level. Your Personal Story bounces back and forth between feeling too easy or too hard, when you respectively outpaces it or lag behind it, and it’s a constant reminder that the game wants you to be somewhere else. Dungeons send you mail to tell you when its time to start with them, but are not really adequate to go after until you’re done with the leveling game, because while the story can be interesting for some, many players only care about the gear you can acquire, but that require a massive farming effort that doesn’t fit next to the leveling metagame.
The irony is that once you’re done with leveling, you can finally play the game the way it feels like it wants to be played, and aside from the out-leveling of Heart/Karma Vendors mentioned about, there’s not a single part of the game that suffers from it. Which begs the question: why wasn’t the game designed like that from the start?
Picture this version of Guild Wars 2:
- There are no character levels, but you still gain XP the same way it exists now at level cap.
- Every time your XP bar fills up, you gain one skill point. You can also gain skill points through skill challenges, as it exists on the game.
- You will not gain trait points until you buy a trait book from your trainer. It would cost a price that any reasonable player could acquire after a few levels, to make sure they understand basic gameplay concepts before messing with traits. “Hardcore” players or those creating alts could easily get the necessary amount earlier, even up to level 1, avoiding the “forced tutorial” trap MMOs tend to fall to.
- Overall mob difficulty remains the same on every area. Areas can be made more difficult by having more Veterans, larger groups, or mobs using stronger skills, but killing one creature doesn’t feel terribly different between, for example, Queensdale to Orr.
- Personal story would not have a level requirement, players can do each step when they want, be it wait until they have 100% World Completion, or do the entire storyline before they unlocked 10 skill points (however suicidal that might be). The story becomes a way to help players experience the world by suggesting next locations, instead of telling them what area is adequate for their current level. Dungeons would work the same way. Optionally difficulty recommendations could be given to players based on how many skill points they now have.
Benefits of this design are plenty: players would no longer out-level content, and by consequence feel forced to stop exploring to keep up with areas of their level. Playing with alternative content wouldn’t make players level faster than the recommended level for their main content type (I won’t explore the map so I don’t out-level dungeons; I won’t craft so I don’t out-level the Personal Story, etc). Adding new areas to the game makes them instantly available to all players regardless of how long they have been playing, and doesn’t require adding new levels or making previous content obsolete, i.e. the curse of World of Warcraft expansions.
I think the worst part of coming to this realization is noticing how obvious it is, and how baffling it is that considering how easy it would be to implement it on the game, with little-to-no downside, ArenaNet decided not to do it, or worse didn’t realize they could do it. However, if you think I’m missing some problems with this design, please let me know on the comments.
Agreed. The only reason I could justify levels in a game like Guild Wars 2 would be to give some direction to people and serve as a sort of gate-lock so people don’t do stuff that the developers would consider too hard for a newbie (like some of the more tricky dungeons).
Still it does feel like a very weak reasoning and why they went with it despite that is beyond me.
The other reason I could think of is “because RPGs have character levels”. Which is even a more silly and weak reasoning.
I think Guild Wars 1 also had similar problems as the game didn’t feel particularly different once you reached the cap. And that only had 20 levels too.…
Rakuno recently posted: [Guild Wars 2] Random Thought: What would happen if…
Exactly, on both cases it sounds like an “but all games work like this” explanation that simply doesn’t make sense considering how far the game goes into breaking standards from the genre.
I’ll tell you why it’s a bad idea. Complete unfamiliarity to people used to the WoW way of doing things. With no level-breadcrumb guidance and a shallow standard of comparison (“lol, Guild Wars has 20 levels, WoW has 80!”) they’ll quit the game without ever learning to appreciate alternate ways of doing things or worse, dismiss it without trying. (The font size similarity of the combat popups is unlikely to be an accident, imo. It has to feel familiar at first to bring people somewhere different.)
On a more general note, levels help to solve the dilemma of overwhelmingly way too many choices in a sandbox game, which can lead to choice paralysis and not doing anything at all, which may lead to quitting the game. If all the areas were open to you at the start, where would you choose to go?
Where will the bulk of the population be at any one time? Think they’ll go exploring organically? I think it more likely that a majority will end up camped at the most optimal xp producing spot they can find.
That said, you are right in that levels are essentially meaningless for the GW franchise, beyond providing direction and the feeling of progression. That was their point by setting GW1 at max level 20 — the game still went on and held players through story/area progression. But I do think some people weren’t comfortable with the shallow cap and that’s probably why they addressed that with the arbitrary level 80 cap in GW2.
They did do something very interesting with levels in GW2 still, though. The xp curve isn’t. It’s not exponentially harder to get to the next level the higher you go. With that, I think they got their point through in the end, that a max level is quite arbitrary. As players accumulate 200+ skill points beyond level 80 for their legendaries and other stuff, they may possibly come around to the “levels are somewhat meaningless” perspective after all.
Jeromai recently posted: GW2: Living the Living Story
While I do appreciate your point of view and can see where you’re coming from, I disagree completely for three reasons:
1. It’s unfamiliar to WoW players: that was the exact same reason why many said GW2 shouldn’t have done things like removing the combat trinity, making the level progression linear, replacing quest givers with dynamic events, and so on. That did not stop ArenaNet from working on those innovations, and Guild Wars 2 is a much better game because of it. If something isn’t broken, don’t touch it… but if it is broken, we shouldn’t keep it broken just because people are used to it like that. MMOs can do better than WoW, and developers should relish the opportunity of getting away from old mechanics if they can come up with something better.
2. It would overwhelm players and halt exploration: exploration direction is not being given by the presence of levels. Guild Wars 2 already suffered from this problem when the concept of dynamic events first was implemented, and that’s why they created Hearts as points that concentrate events allowing players to find them more easily, and Scouts as guides to what hearts are available to players. From that point on, having levels or not is mostly irrelevant since there are more hearts than what would be necessary for a linear progression, which is what motivates players to start exploring. And as I said on the post, your personal quest can be the most direct compass to where you should go, in case you need directions.
If anything, levels on a game such as Guild Wars 2 only make the problem of exploration worse, since they provide the information “YOU ARE ON THE WRONG PLACE” every time you find yourself on an area with mobs of a different level. There is no real exploration if you need to constantly check your map to see if you can go somewhere or not.
Additionally, the success of games such as Skyrim show that letting players roam free does not detract from the experience once you remove levels from the equation. Yes, I know that Skyrim has character levels, but they don’t influence where you can or cannot go, only the progression of the character itself. Exploration on Skyrim is directed very lightly by your quests, but most of the time players just go in any direction they want. Since on GW2 max level is, as you mentioned, mostly arbitrary since down-leveling keeps content always challenging, levels could be easily be detached from exploration (no levels for areas or mobs), or removed completely the way I described on the post.
3. Players will try to find optimum spots for farming: yes, except that is already true on Guild Wars 2, and the changes I propose would not change the optimum path for progression. Events are what the devs want you to try to do to level, and by good design choices they are also the most efficient path. I see no reason to change that.
i agree and so does this “little known” individual, at least in a general sense.
http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2013/QBlog180213A.html
Yeah, that’s pretty much the same point of view. His solution might be slightly different, but he’s looking from a general MMO design point of view, while I’m looking specifically at Guild Wars 2.
Thanks for bring that to my attention.