Quote:Original post by kingy
I think that people can be perhaps five times stronger than the average person (this is very loose, I once saw a documentary about a real vigilante strong man who made this claim about himself)

While that's true for particular things like power lifting, it doesn't translate easily.

Starting at the age of 14, I did 5 years of Jujutsu followed by 6 years of Wing Tsun (5 times per week). I was good, but I was certainly not the "toughest guy" in the world.

Now, I've stopped exercise over a decade ago, and while I don't consider myself a weakling, there is absolutely no doubt that out of 10,000 fights, I wouldn't win a single one if I had to compete against my younger self. Heck, I wouldn't stand for 5 seconds.

As for game levels, it matters a lot what system you want, of course (as others have already said). Personally I think that one level difference shouldn't make such a difference. Even though 2 is clearly twice as much as 1, it's still only just one level difference. The fact that it's twice as much is due to resolution.
On the other hand, if you have a level 52 character fighting a level 70 character, and the level 52 character still had, say, a 50% chance of winning, then you will probably see all your level 70 players puke. Even though 52 is 3/4 of 70, it's a whole 18 levels of difference. Players want to see a reward for working off their ass gaining those 18 levels.

Right, make it 520 and 700 then :-)

Unless levels practically "fall from the sky" every 5 minutes or so, people will be quite unhappy if they are 180 levels higher than someone else and still lose their fights half of the time.
Losing, except maybe once in 1.000 fights, just doesn't translate to the 6 weeks (or 10 weeks) they spent getting these extra 180 levels.

You'll have to move away from the conventional CRPG notion of levelling, particularly in the modern WoW model, where a level 68 can wtfpwn two level 60s and not even need to be healed afterward

I'd like to see a game where you don't actually become more bulletproof as you "level", but I'm sure that's an unpopular concept.

One of my favorite ideas is Clonk Planet's, where units level based on their work done and time alive. It's more of a rank system than anything, but once you've got some Commanders, you really feel the benefit. They're more mobile, can carry more, swim faster, have more HP, etc. But in a fight, an elite warrior can only really handle two or three weaker guys (equipment notwithstanding, I once stormed my buddy's castle by firing one guy out of a cannon over his wall, armed with my entire budget worth of armor, javelins and healing items) before he's got to take a break and get healed up, and if the other team has three good archers on a tower, he's going to just keep his distance.

So I think the idea you've got here would work if the uberness of units was measured on more of an RTS scale, rather than an MMO scale.