Level discussion. Read, think and then tell us your opinion

[Steff]

MesoX: Well, the first thing to decide is maximum level and how will people get it.
Deep6ixed: Agreed
Steff: I thinked about this some time now
MesoX: Will be maximum level based only on experience, as it is in normal wow? Or will player need to make some skills, get some spells (not from trainer) first before he can go on?
Steff: I think to much levels are stupid.
MesoX: well, I guessed 10 is enough, but well, some guys wanted 20 and it seems to be ok for me
Steff: But you can use them to seperate heigher leveled ares from lower once. On the other side waht give us levels
Deep6ixed: I think beyond that we should start on a standard for game design and content.
Steff: Some palyer stats rais up
MesoX: well, you can do 1 area = 1 level
Deep6ixed: I was thinking quests and no xp from kills
MesoX: when you will do all the quests in certain area, you can level up
Steff: And what the player do if he reached max level. Or other how will we then add story
MesoX: Well, I would go for max level 10 for now and we can later raise it
Steff: If we dont use levels and jsut power up player with stat rais during training and skills we can seperate reagions with special items quests and skill levels
Steff: But then we will stay in same problem like blizzard
Steff: every new patch will rais level
MesoX: well, whole wow is based on level system so we should at least use it too
Steff: Why
Steff: Its an discussion to find aly points
Steff: what do levels do?
Steff: ow?
MesoX: sec, longer post is coming
Steff: Oh Oh
Deep6ixed: Why raise levels on expansions?
Steff: Why rais before
MesoX: Level is simple way to measure player -> I would vote for having only few levels and that players must gain some kind of skills, do some quests, gain some abillities ( I guess we don't want all the abillities to be taken from trainer) before they can get level up. When we will remove level indicator, we will still need to find another measurment indicator for all players to seperate them.
Steff: Wait til Mesox posted
Steff: for all players to seperate them.
Steff: Seperate for what
Steff: Wat do levels do now technical
MesoX: for zones, battlegrounds, available quests, current status tracking and so on
Steff: on level up you gain skill points
MesoX: I don't wonder about such things now
Steff: you can make zones pending on itmes because we use portals
MesoX: I talk about levels at general
Steff: you can quests depend on titel?
MesoX: yes
Steff: The question is can we not just use other stuff beside level to do it
Steff: Or can we hide level and dont do such much progress in stats so we can use level again for things
MesoX: sure we can, but then we will just blindly exchange level for some other "skill indicator"
Deep6ixed: Look at the condition table in the database, you can make quests conditional on drunkness level
Steff: Ok funny
Deep6ixed: I agree with MesoX, as my post online played out
Steff: The question is simpel. Waht brings us the levels and what problems the do make
MesoX: ok let me answer it
MesoX: It's up to US, how, when and why will player get new level -> we can limit it to skills and so on -> good thing on this is that WHOLE WoW interface already uses level indicator, if we don't use it and create own, what's the advantage of it? At the end, even if you remove levels and you will measure player's real skill, you will make some kind of "skill indicator" fromm all these values, so you can measure players with it -> and that's the same how level indicator works in most RPG games (not in wow)
Deep6ixed: Did you read my gameplay ideas on the forums
Steff: Why i have to measuer players.
Steff: Excuse my hardnes
MesoX: np, - as i already told - i guess we will want to make them fight against, so for PvP you will need to measure them
Deep6ixed: Cause if you don't, they will find a way to do it themselves
Steff: for bgs for example
Steff: Yes thats a point
Steff: Because for PVE you dont need to measuer them
MesoX: if you dont measure them, you will then make just new player fight against skilled pro player?
Deep6ixed: No levels also would make PvP highly unbalanced
Steff: Yes and only pvp
Steff: Thats why i dont get the point I am no pvp player
Steff: I did 3 fights my full wow life
Steff: boring
Steff: So i only thought in pve boarders
MesoX: 1. Thing is that every player is happy when he reach something new. So every level is kind of gift for him
Steff: And there i can use story items skills titels to manage the gameplay road
Steff: I always find levels stupid. Did you ever get a level up in rela life
MesoX: isn't easier to give them levels instead of titles, items and so on?
Steff: As rp player the nerved me a long time
Steff: Loved that dsa4 killed them
Steff: Yes but its nicer for good story telling
MesoX: but RP is something different
Steff: You can now access this ruin because you are level 3
Steff: wow
Steff: M)
Steff:
MesoX: look, you still get levels as they are in WoW
Steff: You can now acces this ruin because you found the wisdom stone of opening
MesoX: but we can do whatever we want wit hthem?
MesoX: without "?"
Steff: Yes i understand your point and we need levels to have a seperation of players for PVP
MesoX: I also understand your point of view, just I don't understand why to remove them off
Steff: we can do levels even 10 or 20 but the only thing we should do is NOT rais the body atributs so much
Steff: What do you thunk
Steff: think?
MesoX: That's what I am trying to tell you all the time
Steff: My thin is we set max level to lets say 10
Steff: Now we build all the story and cotennt and players get 10
Steff: Now we want to extend the game
Steff: Waht we do now
Steff: We have no more levels left
MesoX: it's up to us, what we will do when player levels up. You can even don't give any skill points, any talent tree points nor any HP boost or so
Steff: now we have to implement the new sutff without them
Steff: That was my thing in mind
MesoX: Steff but it's called progress and this happens in every RPG game
Steff: Yes and every RPG game die if endgame is reached
MesoX: if you want to make clear RP online game, then rip off whole PVP, all those things and you can turn of levels
Steff: No i dont wont to do pure rp only game
Steff: Its also stupid
MesoX: well then lets make levels infinite!
Steff: Hate such we do rp server without any other mechanism
MesoX:
MesoX: and the true is that if we don't measure players in some way, they will find how to do it themselves
Steff: The thin is to think about it and perhaps find some other way beside the system others have already done
Steff: they will find how to do it themselves
Steff: And that meens then what
Steff: Still wait for first strike
MesoX: I would rather do such measurment system myself, so we can use it for our advantage

[deep6ixed]

I think that I've stated my opinion more than one once, but I'll say it to make it clear:

We need a leveling system in some form.  Now there are several ways that I can see to do this, so I'll put them down and we can see from there.

1.) Levels based on skills:  Like TES: Skyrim where once you use any combination of skills and raise any of them by ten total points you level up.  the higher a player level, the better they should be at the game, the more skills they should have unlock etc, the downside is, like skyrim, sometimes you have to drag through skills you don't really use just to level up.

2.) Leveling by a specific source: like xp just from quests or kills, or both.  Pretty similar to wow, but we can vary somethings in there.  

3.) Level by Zone: Script the player so that when the player completes a specific plot quest chain for each zone, he gets bumped up in level and moves on to the next zone.

As for the level cap, we want some breathing room where we aren't forced to pack eveything into a small set of levels, but yet we don't want to have it where gaining a level no longer means anything.

MY vote is leveling similar to skyrim, with a max level of 20

[Steff]

If we use levels then the xp system is ok. But it should be more feeded by questlines and so the story instead of killing trash mobs.

I understand now that for PvP we need a leveling system to measure players and get them fitted for PvP arenas.

[deep6ixed]

So what do you think the max level should be at?  

Fine tuning leveling from quest XP, isnt that hard to do.  The question would become, how often do we want someone to level?  Every zone a new level or just when they get to a specific plot point?

I tend to think that the current state of levels in WoW has gotten out of hand, with too much focus on making the numbers higher.  One of the biggest turn off's was grinding, the endless hitting of buttons over and over just to keep killing some pointless trash just to ding the next level, then after every two levels, go find a trainer somewhere just to spend more gold to gain the next skill rank to repeat the process over and over.

Would daily and repeatable quests have XP or would they just offer some other reward for completion?

[MesoX]

I would vote for level 20, even I guess our final level will be maximum of 5 in demo we are planning, so don't worry now .

[axel0099]

im for MesoX

[Mr. DK]

I heavnt read everything of tzhe posts but i will an add other things later...

First of all. We need levels like it was said we need something to compare players with each other...

But what do we need levels for and comparison.

1. PvP dont need do explain that
2. PvE we need a sort of basic we can work on. For example a Raid. You can not do a propper boss fight if the forst palyer has 20 Hitpoints and the second one got 900. If the first one can evade stunbs the second one cant. The thing is players will allways compare each other so was ist with item level in wow and so it will be in our game.

3. The fun in leveling. Progress my friends . okay okay. Progress is one fawking important word for every rpgmmo. Players want to reach goals. Theya want go on and become faster harder better stronger then anyone else. Thats what made wow logendery and thats the reason no other mmos can hold against it. Like Gw you level and after the story your done... boring. Like warhammer online you level and nothing works and if it works you deal with it in 5 seconds... boring. Like star wars. You level and at max level nothing works.... boring. WoW could be dead by now if they accepted what players want. There are a few things every mmorpg player expects and wants in a game. Levels, Gear, Story, a own character, and other players. Please dotn ttry to make fancy things noone wants that killed many good studios liek Biowar, mythic, relic ... You know what I mean. So give thgem levels god dmn for progress to live!

[Steff]

Wen decide to have Levels. We only do not want to habe such. Much as blizzard.

[Mr. DK]

But you must have at least 20+ so the DING! LVL UP YEAH!  feeling comes into play

[Steff]

Yes we have set 20.

[Mr. DK]

20+

20 +++++++

[axel0099]

hehe 25?
i like 20+ ding too
you feel like... I got the powa.... im up for some more if it's dat easy

[Mr. DK]

One of the most disliked thiong about cata besides the simple raids where that they only did 5 more levels... The players felt like blizz was not trying top give them a long term experience like in bc or wotlk

[Jiushi]

1.) Levels based on skills: Like TES: Skyrim where once you use any combination of skills and raise any of them by ten total points you level up. the higher a player level, the better they should be at the game, the more skills they should have unlock etc, the downside is, like skyrim, sometimes you have to drag through skills you don't really use just to level up.

This fits my opinion the most but i think we should it do absolutly without lvls only with skills! (yeah you can compare players also by skills not only by lvl )

for example: "you can do this if you have 500 skill points" or "you can do this if you have 100 skill points on swords"

in theorie its really simple we say every player can have max xyz skillpoints  and depending on class some skills can be better or not and all max skills need more points than max aviable

for example: max skillpoints 1000 class warrior can have max 300 skillpoints at ability close-combat and mage can only have max 100 skill points at close-combat and on other skills its contrariwise but both classes can not skill everything on classmax with this 1000 point so we have also a difference between two maxskillwarriors or maxskillwarriors.

we can also say that  quests give skillpoints in some sectors so the player also need to do quests to get stronger

pros:

-more freedom to skill
-even on maxlvl power not only depends on gear and maybe player
-two chars on the same lvl (ans same class) can rly be different
-game becomes more complex

contras:

-its more difficult on technical side


but if we still want lvl i think we should make abou 50-100 lvls BUT not blizzlike lvls!!!
so at the end its the same as if we have 10 lvl just that we divide the effect of 1 lvl (in 10 lvl system) to 5-10 lvl (in 50-100lvl system) this gives us lot more freedom and flexibility and the player has more the "lvl up" feeling

another pro point is (if dont use skills) that we have lot of talents and so maybe we also can make some talents like "increase strenght 10%"

[Jøk3r]

I dont like the idea of 100 levels.
Id prefer 20 lvls. It doenst look that much and you may not just have the goal to get fast to max lvl. In my opinion its better to havr less lvls than more. You dont get "afraid" by a huge amount of levels.