Here are a few ideas for levelling in an MMO. No overall level to be identified by. You have stats such as Strength, Speed, Wisdom, etc. that level up as you do things such as for strength you could punch a punching bag or work out in another way that would add to it or just fight, putting your life on the line for your increase in strength. Nobody could see your "level", but the gear you wore could give it away, and you could even hide your gear through clothing like in Morrowind. For noncombat skills such as mining, you wouldn't level up, but would be taught the proper technique to free an ore and then be able to do that. If the skill is cooking, you are taught recipes. You wouldnt spend hours gathering ingredients and then cook one thing over and over to gain experience. Also, you could equip anything, but if your strength is low and your armor is heavy. Your speed and endurance will be hurt. This means that it is POSSIBLE to wield anything but it may not be wise.

You have a couple ideas but there is nowhere near enough thinking there to cover edge cases and construct a fun & balanced game.

Problem the 1st:
If it's just a stat that I train then your game becomes another type of grind:
you sit at a punching back and click attack 200,000 times and now you're max strength
you then move to a dart board and throw 200,000 darts at the wall. now you're max dexterity


Problem the 2nd:
What in your system is the tradeoff? Generally when I choose to be a mage it means i die fast in melee. Generally when I choose to be a fighter I die fast to spells. In your system it appears that I can grind all skills to max level and now I'm the best at everything. Typically, by not forcing the player to give something up or close off options when they make a choice you take away fun because everything is risk free.


Missing:
What is the mechanism of teaching skills? What is the user cost to learning: money, time, etc?


The wield anything idea is a good one and it's how Dungeons&Dragons works. Anyone can wield any weapon but there are significant penalties for wielding something in which you are not proficient.

This is the simplest form of the idea. If you want the complicated balances and all that then sure I'll post it.


Problem the 1st Fix
Like in real life, punching a punching bag will only get you so strong. You need other things to fully power yourself. The same goes for this, simple programs can make it so levelling stops from something at a certain point and something else is needed to keep levelling.

Problem the 2nd Fix
While a mage could theoretically do that, their skill would be with casting spells and therefore their melee would be destroyed by that of a warrior. To assure this, each class could have different stats that levelled higher than average. If max level was 100, then a warrior could level strength to 200 or something like that. That would be the simplest fix.


Missing Fix

To learn a skill, an NPC or player will have to teach you how to do it. Money would be the likely payment. Now, for the whole profession thing to tie in well, you would need a fundamental like the MMO I am currently designing where little "minigames" you do will decide the outcome of what you are working with, not just a message saying "You made a plank of wood" or "You failed to make a plank of wood" based on level to difficulty ratios.



Thank you for the feedback.

Here's another idea for balancing the stats, taken from some RPG on the NES I can't remember the title of:

Combine all of the primary stats into a single number with some sort of equation. Just adding up the numbers might work if you intend to stick with small numbers. Then give this number a maximum value based on experience. If a stat levels up enough to make that value go over the maximum, make opposed stats drop until it's not any more.

Example:

Bob the Dragonslayer has Strength 3, Dexterity 2, and Endurance 2. 3+2+2 is 7, which also happens to be his maximum combined skill level.

After a long day of dragonslaying, he levels his Endurance up to 3, which puts his total at 8. To remedy this situation, his Strength is automatically lowered to two, leaving him with Str 2, Dex 2, and End 3.

Bob slays a few more dragons and levels up. Now his maximum is at 8, so when he levels up his Strength, he doesn't need to compensate and he's left with Str 3, Dex 2, and End 3.

Very nice idea whoever you are but I want a system without that level. I want player actions to determine who you level up, giving more options than just combat.

Quote:Original post by Nytehauq
This is kinda reinventing the wheel. UO had a skill upping based system and lots of games, even games not of the RPG genre, have skill upping based on performing activities instead of just killing things. Aggressive Inline for the Playstation 2 based skill upping on performing moves.

The question to ask isn't how to implement such a system. The question to ask is why such systems seem to have fallen out of the limelight and whether or not their popularity is a good measure of their merit, and then whether or not the flaws of their prior implementations are of a systemic nature or are simply due to limited implementation.

Of course, even that is old news. Skill upping systems, player collision, and other similar novel ideas existed in Ultima Online way back when. They fell out of popularity not because they had gameplay flaws: they are based on the relatively universal principle that practice makes perfect. They were discarded because developers found it easier to implement other systems that may or may not have been better, along with other reasons.

Suggestion: try and implement some of these concepts yourself in a small project and see how it turns out.

I have to say that UO's system is my favourite in any MMO to date. The flexibility, and uniqueness of your character really is second to none. It really annoys me when I see another MMORPG being released that you gain levels and as soon as your 2 levels above someone they can no longer compete. I think UO's system, with heavy tweaking could be made to be de-facto again.

The problem, as I see it, is the same problem WoW etc are having now. The game begins and ends when you reach the skill/level cap. In WoW everyone's trying to reach level 60/70 - that's their goal. Then they reach it and there's really nothing interesting going on. There's no reason to interact with people lower level than you and all you can do is get better gear to compete with other players. There's no advancement whatsoever.

In UO you grinded/macro'd out your skills to their cap, finished up your character then began to play. The difference here is that you -can- compete with players with higher skill than you. Just because you haven't maxed out your magery skill doesn't mean you don't have a chance if you're a better player. However on paper the opponent should win.

Basically I think there needs to be some balance between these two states: Bonus from maxing out and no advancement, and not being so good but having somewhere to go with your character. There needs to be a game to play before your character is maxed out.

...yeah, sorry... < /threadDerail >