I was thinking again about the upcoming 40K MMO, and what I might do if I were designing it. One interesting sort of design question that I’ve been pondering is whether you could get rid of levels in an RPG, or in an MMO at all, for that matter.
Levels are a nice way to measure and reward player progression steadily. As long as players do stuff for which you give them XP (or whatever your leveling currency is), they will eventually level up, along with that nice heroin-shot-in-the-vein feeling that always accompanies a good ding. Levels also allow players to easily compare characters against one another, and they are a handy way to gate content, for example by only allowing characters of a certain level into various content.
Still, levels feel awfully artificial in the context of most fiction, and it’s the fiction that draws in people like me. Worse, XP in particular lends itself to grinding, that soul-sucking treadmill that so many gamers put themselves on in the course of turning their fun into work. I was pondering what you might replace levels and/or XP with, at least in the context of 40K, and began thinking about campaigns. Nobody talks about how many levels a Marine captain has gained, but they often mention how old they are. This doesn’t really have enough reward for player effort; you can’t get old any faster or slower than other people, and you gain age even if you don’t play at all. The other thing that often arises in a discussion of a marine’s history is what campaigns they have served in. Ding!
Why not a system that works a bit like a giant quest chain? Completing the proper series and amount of missions could award stats and gear per mission, with a campaign medal and accompanying rewards at the end. It would be more irregular than simple XP-based leveling, maybe more complex, but I think that might add an interesting texture to things. You could even gate content based on campaigns, e.g. you can’t begin working on the missions for the Aurelia campaign until you’ve finished serving in the Kronus and Kaurava campaigns.
There’s always the risk that this design philosophy could devolve into the old “go kill 100 orks and bring me their eyeballs” school of MMO design, but at least there would be no grinding. Actually, now that I think of it, this is an awful lot like replacing the XP system with an achievement-based system, along with whatever benefits and flaws that might have. Not that this is a bad thing. I like a lot of things about achievements: the way you can work on them in any order; the way they allow players to be funneled into playing the game as designed; and the way they add character and personality to the game system.
I’d kinda like to see the leveling system in DOW2 work this way as well, to be honest. It’s hard at low levels; you get 270-350 XP for each loss, and I don’t get a lot of wins. I’d much rather be gaining a level, say, after I resurrect 10 friendly commanders, or capture 30 generators without destroying them, or knock down 50 suppression squads; the possibilities are only limited by imagination and game balance. The XP system rewards you a bit for showing up, but otherwise doesn’t really provide any guidance. An achievement-based leveling system could beat the noob out of you by rewarding proper play and actively disincentivising bad play. Sit there doing nothing? Run around trying to kill turrets with a lone Slugga squad? You don’t get squat. Oh man, and imagine how fun it’d be to finally kill that 50th enemy hero you need in the same match that you get the credit for buying your 100th piece of wargear and also for using your 25th global ability, then hitting the summary screen and gaining three levels at once. Whee!
In the end I guess that could be interpreted as a different sort of grinding, but it would at least require you to really play and really do stuff int he match; as it stands I’ve had friendly players show up on the map and just sit there the whole time; presumably they sign up for the match, go get a sandwich and come back 15 minutes later with 275 XP they did nothing to earn. I say screw those people, and I say stop rewarding noobish ignorance. Noobs who fight and try and learn should be rewarded, and those who don’t should be stymied. I don’t demand that they win, but if they know that they can gain levels by doing the right things, I think real prowess will follow, and wins will follow soon after.
It’d require a lot of these achievements to be written up and tested out, but I think in the end we’d see a richer system of progression, and I think this could work – and be compelling – in other game types too.
-ssr