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! Continue reading An End to XP