It is time once again for an article about character advancement. We’ve covered some of the normal ways to progress (levels, skills and traditional AAs) and even some crazy ideas like Endless Grind Points. Today I want to look at another alternative to traditional progression. This concept is another one of those on the “far left” when it comes to advancement.
In the simplest of terms Heroic Levels would be additional levels beyond or in parallel to the traditional leveling scope. They should be viewed as “non-traditional” progression and would clearly define the history of the character who possess that level of advancement. What does that mean exactly?
I imagine heroic levels to be achieved only through actions. I’m not talking about grinding mobs or doing quests either. These levels would indicate immediately where a character, and by association, a guild stands in the progression of the end game (just an example, it could be any criteria). To illustrate this lets say that to achieve HL 1 you need to defeat six two group raid mobs. When you do so you level up. To reach HL 2 you will then need to best three additional two group raids and a three group instance. This would progress until you defeat the final content for an expansion or time period.
The benefit to this is that the levels don’t have to be as powerful as traditional levels. They are heroic in deed, not in power. Of course they could be both. It would also help developers channel players through content as they intend. It would help reduce excessive content jumping if the power you got from a heroic level was of some benefit to defeat the next tier of encounters. I want to stress that the heroic level shouldn’t be a necessity though. Skill and tactics should always prevail.
Beyond keeping players on the straight and narrow the biggest benefit I see is that this is a true method by which “bind on pick up” can be eliminated. I’ve frequently heard developers say they do not want players to get raid rewards without raiding. I’ve suggested many things in the past as compromises on the issue (see bind on guild). Heroic levels fit this bill far better. Items can be level restricted by heroic levels and then made bind on equip. Sure, you could sell a top tier item to another player but unless they did the raid themselves they’ll never be able to use it.
This would also spur competition and reduce the amount of false claims that go along with it. After all, it would be hard to claim you defeated Tarinax if you didn’t have the associated heroic level. As an additional feature I think it would be great if the game tracked when a character achieved the heroic level (and for that matter any level) like EQ2 did. When it came to the power curve developers would know exactly where players stood at all times. Raid encounters can be designed with a certain heroic level in mind. Players would also know which content they were intended to do and recognize that to do other content it will require a lot more skill and ability. At least in that sense it is win/win.
The only words of caution I would give is that these levels should also make the character at least slightly more powerful. I say this because of the generally poor reception that was received by the ward system of Warhammer Online. Progression was literally delayed by making wards not a benefit but a necessity. No amount of skill could overcome the ward system and once you had five wards almost all the encounters were beyond trivial. Heroic levels are meant to be a reward for achieving content and not a barrier to it (other than the items that are generated).
It is just one more of those interesting (to me) ideas I’ve had. I’d love to hear some feedback about it as I did with EGPs. I just think there should always be some form of noticeable progression for characters. A little bar keeps me going. As soon as it stops my play time declines to just “when we’re raiding” or “when we’re doing an instance.” This wouldn’t quite help that but, like EGPs, it is another facet of engaging the player.
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Ok, you need to be building an MMO right now… Every article you write nails it on the head. If nothing else I think Mythic or Blizzard or someone needs to hire you as a consultant. I’d prefer Mythic because I prefer Warhammer. Even with the bugs and issues I’ll take it over Bored of Warcraft any day.
I think it is a dangerous path. Especially if you want to use HL as a way to channel your players through content. Wether HL are necessary or not for advancement in endgame, players and guild will soon make it mandatory. After all everyone wants to stack as much bonuses as they can. So if I’m in a guild and want to do down Tarinax wich is HL3 content for example, I will want to make sure the group is HL2 at least. I don’t want to bring a HL0 that even if he could technically do it, will bring less than a HL2 player.
What will happen is that players in endgame will get sorted by HL tiers. While it may works fine at first where most of the player base is still progressing through endgame (at release of content for example) it will become a barrier for new players who start playing later.
Let’s say someone start playing with a 6 months delay. I heard from his friends the game is great and picks it up. Something you want to happen after and someone you want to keep playing your game. He makes his progression through the leveling content and at some point gets to endgame with no HL. Now let’s say he’s in a small friendly non-raiding guild with friends. He now has to jump to a raiding guild. All current good raiding guilds are HL4 at the end of content. Current HL0 raiding guilds are few and mostly populated by people who failed at raiding, drama or new players like him. Our new player can’t join the HL4 guilds since they have no interest in tagging him and finding a HL0 guild who has what it takes to progress will be very very difficult. Most likely the new player will be stuck at the beginning of endgame without possible advancement. Over time your game becomes more and more top-heavy and words spreads that its near impossible to start in your game.
This scenario has already happened in other MMO before. Final fantasy XI with all his attunement quests makes it next to impossible for a new player to progress unless he knows people in the right guild who will spend time to help him catch up. WoW is starting to suffer from the same problems with achievements. On some servers it’s impossible to get in a raid group for certain raids/guilds unless you already have the achievement saying you already did it.
In short you are replacing gear cheacks/quest checks with another kind of check. I sincerely believes the next big step in mmo will be to rethink the whole endgame progession.
You make a valid point Lono but I think it is more about how you implement the heroic levels than the idea itself. In your instance you’re assuming that they offer an above average or significant increase in power and will be difficult to get. In that, I very much agree. The system doesn’t exactly mandate that however.
What if a heroic level literally gave you five points to each stat. A small upgrade but not a huge one. Perhaps to get the first few levels you only have to do content that six or twelve players can achieve in a night. This would preclude exclusion and being “stuck.” This is even more so if there were only five or so heroic levels total.
The examples you listed are good but they offer tough barriers of entry much like flags did in EQ1. That said, people did get the flags and guilds did go back to do them for new members. The key is just how steep the slope to achieve the levels is. Which is true for anything: gear, quests, flags and regular levels.
I think a simple solution would be to have multiple ways of achieving the heroic levels. What if someone could do it by raiding, or a special quest chain? maybe a combination, reputations, etc… In short open up the options for someone to reach said heroic level. Like you said you want that bar ticking and you don’t want someone to feel locked out.
Guilds going back to do stuff for their members works well when the player pool is more limited. Let’s say you mmo is crazy sucessful and lot of people are playing there is less incentivce to do so. By having multiple path of progression your newer players have a way to catch up even if it’s slower or incomplete.
“I’ve frequently heard developers say they do not want players to get raid rewards without raiding”
This attitude needs to disapear. I strongly believe we need to move beyond that. Let’s say you put the coolest weapons in raids. To get said weapon you need to do a tier3 raid. To do the raid you need gear, HL3 and a good guild. If all your progression is in raids then your force your player to go through A-B-C and so forth.
Instead, make part of the armor attainable by crafting and HL levels can be also done by hard mode 5 man instances. Our newer player is still missing key rewards from raids (weapons) so he has incentive to go there. However he can bring himself to a power level high enough where he can join a guild working on the particular raid.
PS: I’m playing devil advocate a bit here too
not trying to say your wrong
Oh I completely agree here. I just used raiding as an example. They could be achieved in any way the developer saw fit.
No disagreement here. I’m a huge advocate for “bind on equip” and a totally open market. In my eyes if a guild wants to sell weapons to the competition. I’ve never made any headway with developers on that though.
I didn’t take it that way! I love when people disagree and agree with me. If I was afraid of taking fire I wouldn’t post or allow comments!
I don’t like the concept of HL. They seem too similar to the Flags in EQ1 or just another progression level to advance your character. I also don’t like (gee I sound like a negative person) the complexity game designers tend to always add when they create expansions. It seems like they feel they need to create a whole new skill/ character advancement mechanism when expansions come out. To me (a casual gamer) it always seems like an uncessary step change in the learning curve after I played the game for a year or more. If they would start with a good character advancement system to start with I think this would be unnecessary.
On a personal note, I would like to see games use a faction system in conjunction with normal experience for character development. A faction system seems more real world to me. I could envision using the faction system in obtaining skills from trainers where experience could be used for gaining levels. I always like the EQ1 faction system even though it didn’t do too much, but I haven’t see new games build on the concept. Levels could give you options to increase your character’s main stats (str, stm, int, etc.), maybe give visual benefits (scars, larger physical size, etc.), along with base increases. Having two systems in parallel I believe opens a lot of creative ways for character advancement. Grouping may give a experience penalty but not a faction penalty which could promote groups. Given content can be more faction or experienced based. If you maxed your level, you could still gain faction to get additional skills. Similar to your idea of endless grind points. As you gain all your main skills (think of all three trees in WOW), you could go into other skill pools, some could be utility skills, some could be skills used by other classes.
p.s. Great job on the website and the articles!