Quote:Original post by robert4818
How would you handle this in a full RPG style game? In a sceario of 2 equally skilled players were fighting 1v1 a newly made character would have about a 70/30 chance of winning a fight against an "end game" character?

I think this is a typo or something.... As written you are saying you want new characters to have a 70% chance to beat end game characters?

Anyway, typo aside, Guild Wars has a system like this:

1) Game advancement involves unlocking skills account wide
2) A default "n00b" character only has access to a few dozen skills
3) the more you play, the more skills you open up
4) you can only bring 6 of your skills to a PvP match

So. A n00b can create a max level character for PvP but only has access to some of the skills. They are fully competitive with the end game characters ability wise, they just don't have access to the full bag of tricks

You play more to unlock more skills to have more options for builds in PvP.

-me

Well, to do this you would have to get rid of nearly all player advancement and rely only on player skill. This, in an RPG, seems sort of counter-productive.

I can think of one way to do it: Have a library of skills the player uses to fight other players. Balance them well. Give the players a number of skill points which allows them to master very few of these skills, and even doing so reduces the player's flexibility. This would force them to be a jack of all trades or a very specialized fighting machine. This way, a new character (who would start as a jack of all trades) could adapt to techniques of an applied character and perhaps win, provided the new character has a great deal of skill.

The idea is that instead of actual progress, you trick the player into thinking they are accomplishing something. Example: player is a master swordsman. Newbie has platemail, swords don't hurt platemail. Player does not know how to use maces as well as he used to, so Newbie has more chances to hurt Player before Player stabs Newbie in the throat because he forgot a gorget.

Simply disguise your forms of progression to have less to do with actual progress and more to do with fitting in to a well oiled machine somewhere (like in raiding or a PvP team).

In this case you've answered your own question. You have skills, just as standard. However you adjust them so their impact is minimal: at most a 30% increase in power for an experienced and skilled player. Will be tricky to balance and limit correctly, especially while allowing players to think they are progressing steadily.

it rather simple actually make there hp=10 rather than the usual hp=3000 or whatever thats out there. That way if they take a hit or two they will die reguardless of the other characters powers. Then they advance by learn skills and abilities only or there hp only go up a little every so often. then in order to win a fight they will have to be smart about it using the right skills.

Levels and skills are automatically associated with RPGs. Fortunately, RPG stands for Role Playing Game. You play the role of the character, despite what kind of system is used.

In FPS and RTS games, everyone usually has access to the same things that everyone else does. No one is inherently stronger, and there is more strategy involved. In an RPG, I see no reason why you can't rely purely on player skill. I know that the majority of time in MMORPGs is gaining strength and experience, but as long as there's something constructive to do if you took away the grind, would you really miss it?

Perhaps the newbie zone would be gaining all the skills, but in a grindless MMORPG, you should be fully loaded when you leave. Then, possibly you could fight over armor and such, but everyone's the same when naked.

Go for player skill only when you can figure out what to replace the grinding with. If you can do that, then perhaps I'll dish out that monthly fee.

-Humblest of Hobos

Role Playing Game != Character Growing Stronger Game.

We need to spawn a new genre name here. Oh, wait, MMOG is already being used for many games - they've dropped the totally false Role Playing bit. Role playing doesn't mean growing stronger. Until people start to realise that, discussions about (MMO)RPGs are going to be rather one dimensional... (For an analogy, look at how some games are more accurately describing themselves as RTTactical games, rather than RTS, which is often misused).

Anyway, GW's solution of making advancement (after level 20, which is easy to get to and can be jumped straight into for PvP) mean more options, not stronger, is one method. Another is to give the player trophies or something to brag about (WoW has after some of the longer quests an announcement to the whole area about you kicking boss X's ass).

Advancement is primarily done PvE. This is then used to give a PvP advantage. I see no real purpose in this; why not just, for the purpose of PvP, have everyone equal?

Because people like to easily cut down new players because it makes them feel powerful.

This means if you are going to remove that feeling, you may as well go the full way and fix the game mechanics for PvP power so they make sense, and don't get boosted by killing 300 kobolds.