Should traditional levels be abolished with Tamriel One?

starkerealm

Other and here is why

Hallothiel wrote: »

Ok ignoring my dislike of battle-levelling, I have a genuine question on the mechanics.

One of the reasons for doing this is apparently so people can run with their friends, no matter what faction or level. So how will battle-levelling work if you are CP501 running with someone who is level 10, say?

It can't be that everything will be matched to your individual requirements as surely the programming to do that for a online game would be immense? Or is that that they are doing? Will the higher level be fighting the boss as matched to him whilst the friend battles the same one at the same time but for him it is a lower level one? Really? So every single potential opponent will be individually matched to your level - including all the mudcrabs?

Or if running with someone will it be more like a dungeon where someone has to be the leader & it levels to them? Who chooses the level?

Please - can someone explain how it's meant to work as I just can't see it.

It's going to move the characters toward a unified level of power, rather than scaling the individual enemies.

Qbiken

ZOS turning ESO into easymode. The overall feeling of gaming these days (no matter what genre) is that new players shall be able to reach endgame content within hours/days. One Tamriel is nice that you can move across different zones free but battleleveling at each zone is just garbage...

notimetocare

No and here is why

Cryptical wrote: »

It's this universal battle leveling that deeply disturbs me.

Ann is a level 49 breton templar. Bob is a level 3 breton templar. Identical race, identical class.
Battle leveling bumps Bob's amount of magicka and stamina and health up. Ann's hard work leveling her character is worthless, because the system just hands out the same increases.
My opinion: Someone who has leveled up SHOULD have that effort plainly visible when comparing attributes to an otherwise identical lower level.

Both wear level-appropriate light armor, no traits or glyphs or sets, so there is no disparity between their own level and their clothing level.
Level scaling bumps Bob's stats up. Ann's hard work farming level-appropriate clothing is worthless, because the system just scaled Bob's comparative jute rags up to match her farmed ebon thread robes.
Opinion: Higher level material should ALWAYS outmatch lower level material.

Both Ann and Bob hold swords. Ann, at level 49, wields a sword that matches her level, made of ebon ingots. Bob, fresh off the boat at level 3, also swings a sword that matches his level that is made of plain iron. But Bob is battle leveled up, so the system hands Bob all the oomph that comes from swinging an ebony sword without any of the work. Ann, once again, is seeing all of her effort be counted as so much worthless button mashing.
Opinion: Higher level material should ALWAYS outmatch lower level material.

Yes, the argument has been made that Ann would kick Bob's arse because Ann has skill points invested in various abilities and passives, but that misses my point. My point is that Ann's character should be able to laugh off ANY attack that Bob throws at her. Ann's higher level armor should be reflected in an ability to stand there and shrug off Bob's attack. Ann's higher level health should be reflected in an ability to recover health for any scratch he manages to inflict almost before he can swing his sword again. But this universal battle leveling appears to be just one half-step short of making all character stats equal.

So... You want thw old system backnwhere being low lvl meant you never won? Thatbstopped being interesting years ago in vanilla WoW

logosloki

Other and here is why

starkerealm wrote: »

I think it might be a good time to seriously reexamine how gear is handled, to bring it more in line with how the single player games handle itemization. Such as doing away with the 8 different tiers of iron gear, and simplifying that to, "you can have a piece of iron armor, or a piece of steel." It might also be time to ditch the reported level on enemies, unless there's some reason that's going to be kept.

Otherwise? No. Or at least probably not. I payed TSW. If you pull levels from the mix, it'll just shift over into gear being your effective level, and ultimately make advancing to endgame a bit RNG. So, that's a non-start, really.

This does sound like an idea that they could implement. Make the materials like Food and Potions where they scale slightly.

On Topic: If you remove levels then there will need to be some other system to dole the skill points. In some ways though we already have a level-like system to replace leveling - Champion Points.

starkerealm wrote: »

If you want a crazy ideag, here's one: do away with level prereqs for items.

Solariken wrote: »

ESO should have been designed without traditional levels from the beginning. There are many more interesting ways to offer character progression than the tired WoW-like system.

Yeah, how dare AD&D copy WOW's leveling system. I bet they even stole the classes. There's nothing original about any of that. But, they're not the real offenders. How dare Diablo rip off WoW from the future. Does Blizzard have no shame!?

( ._.)

...right.

So, this may come as a surprise, but World of Warcraft was kinda innovative at the time, but it was still working within an existing Genre.

Also, having played MMOs that tried to strip out the level progression system entirely, the results are not that great. Unless there's literally no way to indicate progress, players will find a way to assess their relative power. Levels and CR make that convenient, but stripping them out is not a panacea.

EDIT: The worst possible outcome is gear based progression, in which case players are literally dependent on RNG in order to "level up." Which, quite frankly, *****. Again, this is coming from personal experience.

AD&D had: Asymmetrical leveling (some classes leveled up faster than other classes), Race locked classes, Race locked multi-classes, maximum levels in classes based on race, almost all races other than human couldn't level up to 20 anyway and all other such oddities.

Hallothiel

@starkerealm

But that sounds absolutely awful & removes one of the main reasons for playing the game! I want there to be a progression of difficulty, so I can learn & plat better.

Maybe someone should make a medieval fantasy version of The Sims so people can play without the challenge. .....

Tipsy

I have been wondering myself if it wouldn't be better to just remove levels & classes.
But I guess thats more for tactical games where everyone is supposed to be same playing field & where environment is used to gain a tactical advantage?
For the moment I have no strong opinion for yes or no.
But a few thoughts that crossed my mind

-Make itemization more like the single player TES
doing away with the 8 different tiers of iron and simplify that to iron armor(expert heavy armor level 60) Steel armor (master heavy armor level 80) and fancy-lore dragonbone or something specific for region or race
(grandmaster armor level 100)

-removing classes from the game and introduce different magical schools (conjurations,illusion,alteration,...)and other diciplines (like unarmed) again.
Since levels and classes would be removed there needs to be something different,like a perk system where choosing one advantage could also give you a penalty to another area
Like the bodybuilding perk would automatically give a penalty to flexibility (avoiding attacks)

-make "starter sets" out of all current dungeon gear since its too easy to obtain & requires little actual ingame effort
(so perhaps they can only have blue or purple level)
while introducing artifacts that require you to obtain certain fragments scattered across Tamriel,related quests where you have to fuse parts,certain places you have to do rituals for a chance to finish a stage in the forging process of getting the artifact.
(requiring ingame effort and attention to game environment to obtain an artifact,like you'd be able to imbue a certain fragment only if the position of the sun is right or a werewolf artifact could only be forged under the red moon)

Sylveria_Relden

Hallothiel wrote: »

@starkerealm

But that sounds absolutely awful & removes one of the main reasons for playing the game! I want there to be a progression of difficulty, so I can learn & plat better.

Maybe someone should make a medieval fantasy version of The Sims so people can play without the challenge. .....

Don't go bringing common sense into this, they're on a roll with the back-slapping here.

Seriously though, they should just watch a movie- to get that "story" they want so badly without having to put any work or effort into a game whatsoever. Every time I see ideas like this, it reminds me of people who use "cheat codes" and such.

What's the point of playing a game if you don't want any "challenge"? If there's no "metrics" involved, how do you know what the challenge is? Here, I'll just create a game that you can open up and click an "I WIN!" button and you can feel like you accomplished something, k?

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

Kalifas wrote:

Levels along with Champion make the game easier than it was before. Levels have no real purpose once One Tamriel drops. You say gear is a bad progression? That is not always true, all a CP or Level tell you is that someone played the game long enough doing whatever which has no relation to what kind of skill or dedication a player brings to the game.

starkerealm wrote:

Gear progression is bad because it creates a situation where, for players to advance, they're entirely dependent on RNG. The equivalent now, would be if at each level, the game randomly chose how much XP you would need to reach the next three levels. Potentially you could skip levels, or you could be caterpulted forwards two or three at a time. Now, you're left sitting there, randomly grinding out content hoping that, "no, really, this time, it'll be enough to get some advancement."

There has to be a hybrid of drop a wee bit of tokens and a bit of range luck. I am not saying running content with pure rng is good. Here the player has something to look forward to in surprise or they are making progress if they are unlucky with tokens.

Kalifas wrote:

Where as a gear based progression can tell you right off the back what someone has accomplished. With no numbers sometimes, just off visuals alone. If you see a gear that is top of the line and untradable, you know that player is one of the best players on the server. His CP or level could not give you that straight forward info on where or how he earned it.

starkerealm wrote:

Actually, it doesn't. It only tells you how lucky someone is. A player, right now, can run vWGT once, completely fail, drag the team down, and still get a Kena helmet, because RNGesus favored them on the boss drop. It doesn't mean they were actually up to snuff for running it, just that they got lucky. Someone who is a very experienced player can run it every couple days for months and walk away with nothing if they're unlucky.

Or, someone could have spent 100k gold, they got from zerging WBs and getting malacath pages on The Golden, and gotten an infused Kena helm.

Or, another example, my main is in 5pc V16 Hunding's Rage, with 3pc Night Mother's. All nine pieces of gear are gold. So, from that, tell me, how many times have I run vet dungeons? How many trials have I completed?

No, if you cannot complete a content and the gear is rare meaning untradable, then it has nothing to do with luck.A hybrid drop fixes your worry of an experienced player never earning something.

Kalifas wrote:

Now the bad form of gear progression does exist. Which is........

Ilvl type: Small incremental raises with slightly better stats, usually have to reacquire better gear every 2-3 months, usually grindy. Like CP gear cap is currently

starkerealm wrote:

Actually, that's not the bad form of gear progression. The worst possible form would be gear progression where there are significant power jumps between tiers of gear. Because there are no levels, you're simply rolling the dice hoping for higher quality gear, rather than it being automatically aimed at your level. (IE, you ran this PITA content, here, have some level 46 purples and blues for your trouble.) Because those significant jumps will effectively serve as a gear check, preventing anyone from advancing through the content until their luck changes.

And, yes, I have seen MMOs that do exactly this. Where you were expected to rerun the dungeons endlessly in the hopes that you'd get very rare drops which would push you a little bit further, and any progression beyond that was impossible.

Small incremental increases over time, even when it is grindy, are far better because it doesn't effectively gate players off from participating in the game. For example, if you still have your V14 gold sets from back when that was a cap, they're still statistically superior to purple V16 gear you can obtain right now. So, if you're gearing up an alt, and saved those old sets... now you have a use for them. You can still run content in that gear just fine. It's not BIS, but you're still allowed to play the game. When your gear based advancement represents a significant power jump, players who are in the process of grinding back up suffer disproportionately.

I already showed a way that the range gods don't punish any players. In the end you are running dungeons more than once regardless of which system unless you get drops 1 beat content= get drop per run. But if it was 1 for 1, you would exhaust content way too fast and ZoS could never create content fast enough to give players a reason to run content.

Kalifas wrote:

Progressive Tier: Substantial raises with substantial stat increase,occasional new stats to widen options, usually stay relevant 9-18 months, and zone/content acqusition tells the story of dedication.

starkerealm wrote:

If you're talking about non-random distribution of gear as quest rewards... look, it's not impossible to design a game around gear progression. But, that would require a complete redesign of ESO's itemization to make it happen.

I am not talking of anything except that level should be removed. Whether they are or not is up to ZoS regardless of my opinion, even if it is right or even if it is wrong.

I do know that incremental upgrades are worse than longer term upgrades becaus the goal post is always moving and players do not get the joy of using their new found shiny gear long enough.

starkerealm

Other and here is why

Kalifas wrote: »

There has to be a hybrid of drop a wee bit of tokens and a bit of range luck.

Good luck with that idea. We've been asking for a token system for years.

EDIT: @Kalifas, like I said earlier, I don't think gear based progression is a complete non-start. There are ways you can design your game to accommodate it. The problem is, ESO wasn't set up with those in mind, and retrofitting it into the game would require the developers to abandon a lot of design choices they've held onto pretty rigidly.

starkerealm

Other and here is why

logosloki wrote: »

AD&D had: Asymmetrical leveling (some classes leveled up faster than other classes), Race locked classes, Race locked multi-classes, maximum levels in classes based on race, almost all races other than human couldn't level up to 20 anyway and all other such oddities.

I'm fully aware. I've lived through the tyranny of THAC0 at 3am. Again, I was giving someone flak for citing WoW as the origin of character levels and classes.

If I'm honest, I'm kinda depressed how many people missed the sarcasm entirely, even with an emote..

starkerealm

Other and here is why

Hallothiel wrote: »

@starkerealm

But that sounds absolutely awful & removes one of the main reasons for playing the game! I want there to be a progression of difficulty, so I can learn & plat better.

Maybe someone should make a medieval fantasy version of The Sims so people can play without the challenge. .....

Yeah, I don't even know what you're talking about on the second paragraph. The concept is the game will remain challenging regardless of your level. Of course, that's crap, and we both know it. Because once you get your CR above 160, everything you're fighting against just falls further behind you.

But, hey, at least you can actually choose if you want to assign your CP, you can't choose to not level up.

As far as I know, the system will still have progression. Even if your gear and stats are normalized, a newbie from cold harbour won't have high quality set gear. They won't have a full range of skills for the situation they're in. Their options will be much more limited.

If you honestly want to see the system they're talking about, you can experience it right now with the three DLC zones. Go in, see how battle leveling affects low level characters vs high level ones.

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

starkerealm wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

There has to be a hybrid of drop a wee bit of tokens and a bit of range luck.

Good luck with that idea. We've been asking for a token system for years.

EDIT: @Kalifas, like I said earlier, I don't think gear based progression is a complete non-start. There are ways you can design your game to accommodate it. The problem is, ESO wasn't set up with those in mind, and retrofitting it into the game would require the developers to abandon a lot of design choices they've held onto pretty rigidly.

Oh I know that game devs who don't offer options such as token and go purely range have one goal and one goal only. To keep you playing longer even at the cost of your comfort or enjoyment.

That might work on extreme hardcore players if the content is deep and difficult. Most casual to midcore won't even touch pure range with a ten foot pole.

starkerealm

Other and here is why

Kalifas wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

There has to be a hybrid of drop a wee bit of tokens and a bit of range luck.

Good luck with that idea. We've been asking for a token system for years.

EDIT: @Kalifas, like I said earlier, I don't think gear based progression is a complete non-start. There are ways you can design your game to accommodate it. The problem is, ESO wasn't set up with those in mind, and retrofitting it into the game would require the developers to abandon a lot of design choices they've held onto pretty rigidly.

Oh I know that game devs who don't offer options such as token and go purely range have one goal and one goal only. To keep you playing longer even at the cost of your comfort or enjoyment.

That might work on extreme hardcore players if the content is deep and difficult. Most casual to midcore won't even touch pure range with a ten foot pole.

Exactly, which is why you cannot afford to gate content behind a progression system based entirely on gear.

Again, that is an option, in a properly configured game. Hell, I love the STALKER games to death, and their progression systems were strictly item based. But, working within the framework of an MMO, it's extremely tricky. Retrofitting that on to ESO at this point would be a mistake.

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

starkerealm wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Kalifas wrote: »

There has to be a hybrid of drop a wee bit of tokens and a bit of range luck.

Good luck with that idea. We've been asking for a token system for years.

EDIT: @Kalifas, like I said earlier, I don't think gear based progression is a complete non-start. There are ways you can design your game to accommodate it. The problem is, ESO wasn't set up with those in mind, and retrofitting it into the game would require the developers to abandon a lot of design choices they've held onto pretty rigidly.

Oh I know that game devs who don't offer options such as token and go purely range have one goal and one goal only. To keep you playing longer even at the cost of your comfort or enjoyment.

That might work on extreme hardcore players if the content is deep and difficult. Most casual to midcore won't even touch pure range with a ten foot pole.

Exactly, which is why you cannot afford to gate content behind a progression system based entirely on gear.

Again, that is an option, in a properly configured game. Hell, I love the STALKER games to death, and their progression systems were strictly item based. But, working within the framework of an MMO, it's extremely tricky. Retrofitting that on to ESO at this point would be a mistake.

Content should have character progression per zone and an item progression with range and tokens. The incremental cap geared updates are the 100% complete opposite of what ZoS should strive for.

But enough about content. This thread is about removing levels from ESO. And imo that should happen since One Tamriel is coming. Makes no sense battle leveling when removing levels would remove the need for battle leveling. Then an option for level synching down Champion and gear strength for players to participate in content at lower levels without having to be spoon fed difficulty and progression.

Elsonso

Hallothiel wrote: »

Ok ignoring my dislike of battle-levelling, I have a genuine question on the mechanics.

One of the reasons for doing this is apparently so people can run with their friends, no matter what faction or level. So how will battle-levelling work if you are CP501 running with someone who is level 10, say?

Right now, I think that they have a calculation that "scales" the Level 10 to Level 50 and compensates for Champion Points up to 150 or 160. I don't think this really works well because my CP 350 characters significantly out-perform a CP 0 character at level 10.

In any case, if Champion Points are "the thing" and they just scale to compensate for not having them, not only will level be irrelevant, but Champion Points will be irrelevant, too.

It will be interesting to see what they do. I can certainly see a game design that completely negates any reason for playing the game and simply dumps everyone, even new players, into an "end-game" where you just wander the world doing quests between WGT runs or when not in Cyrodiil. It sort of depends on what their internal design priorities are.

notimetocare wrote: »

So... You want thw old system backnwhere being low lvl meant you never won? Thatbstopped being interesting years ago in vanilla WoW

Yes. Please. Low level characters are lower level characters. I don't decide today that I am an Olympic athlete and trot down to Rio and compete in the Olympics expecting to get a Gold Medal. The purpose of an RPG is to build to that. There are other game formats for the people who want to jump in at parity and win.

CapnPhoton

No and here is why

No. The 1-50 then champion points works well and is how the game should be...

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

CapnPhoton wrote: »

No. The 1-50 then champion points works well and is how the game should be...

No it doesn't work well. And alot of things were how the game should be, but things change like Tamriel Unlimited, like Tamriel One, like racial passives, like sands through the hour glass this is the days of our lives.

Say yes to removal and no to battle scaling!

Shadesofkin

No and here is why

I am currently unconvinced that One Tamriel is a good idea, let alone that levels should be removed.

ThePaleItalian

No and here is why

I am not harping or even mad at ZOS. But before we make all these changes and become so extremely easy to level like WoW does with heirlooms, or making a lvl 1 toon automatically about to be on the same scale or lvl as a vr16, 800 CP player who has played from the start.... fix the bugs in the game now. I would rather have 6 months of a non buggy, working game before even thinking of things like this.

With 500+ CP my lower lvl toon just wreak everything anyways. I remember when this game first started on PC of course. It took multiple people to take out world bosses and dolmens.

I love the world bosses in Wrothgar. Taking a team of people to take it out. I feel like if lvls were gone there is no RPG element anymore. Here is a max character, best gear right from the start. Go enjoy our game for a month and then get bored.

At least the system now has after 50 its CP. I am fine with that. I done even mind the zone havent a lvl scale in place. Are you going to end up having players farm a world boss in the same starting zone and killing it over and over again because it raises it lvl with yours? I would hate that.

Also, if I am max lvl, I should be able to go to starting zones and just wreak things. That makes a player feel that powerful and the fact that they have completed the end game content and being able to destroy everything.

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

One Tamriel is happening whether we like it or not.

If levels were removed and Champion Points started being applied at level 1, then any player could begin playing with others right off the bat in content that is the right difficulty. Then by the time they got to the current Champion Cap they would be at the right difficulty. Zones could stay like they is with higher level content added for revisits.

ZakuBeta

Other and here is why

Use the level of the skill to determine what Items you can use, and the damage modifiers.

Make the 3 main stats:

Stamina: determines the resource pool, and affects physical resistances

Health: determines HP, and affects the regeneration rates of all resource pools

Magika: determines the resource pool, and affects Magical resistances

Allow lower tier materials to create max level gear with ever larger material cost. Use a higher base statistic, and lower modifiers for increases.

MasterSpatula

Other and here is why

starkerealm wrote: »

Depending on how you flatten out the level curve, it could be a massive step forward towards making the game feel like an Elder Scrolls title....

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

. . . but then they will get people complaining that they cannot truly freely explore Tamriel because they are underleveled. As a veteran MMO player I actually appreciate venturing too deep too soon and being outclassed as a result, but this is The Elder Scrolls, and they don't want to roll like that...

Why do people think this? Morrowind, in many ways the best of the series and the template for the latter games, wasn't like this at all. Sure, the world was open, but if you went to Solthsheim or the Grazelands at level 1, you were going to die a quick and horrible death. Likewise, if you went to the cave outside of Seyda Need at level 20, you were going to obliterate those smugglers.

You could go wherever you wanted, but there were places it was stupid to go because you simply weren't ready. This was a good thing.

Then along came Oblivion. I don't know what they were thinking, but I suspect it was something like, "We've got the RPG fans hooked. Time to increase our sales by totally pandering to action game fans by scaling everything to your level. Nothing will ever be too hard or too easy. We'll make a mint."

And perhaps they did, but it was utterly deplored by long-term TES fans. There's a reason why the single most popular variety of Oblivion mods were mods to adjust or hide the level scaling. Bethesda may have made their mint, but they did so by making a lesser game. It was a bad thing.

You need to be able to measure your progress by being able to beat enemies you couldn't beat before. If you don't have that, you don't have an RPG. You have an arcade game. Arcade games are fine, but not what I'm here for. There is a joy in beating an enemy you couldn't beat before. Losing that joy is a bad thing.

Hallothiel

@MasterSpatula

Agree. As said earlier, Skyrim was open world but there were opponents that obliterated you if you were too low a level. And there was immense satisfaction in being able to get better & then return & slaughter them. That's why you played!

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

MasterSpatula wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Depending on how you flatten out the level curve, it could be a massive step forward towards making the game feel like an Elder Scrolls title....

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

. . . but then they will get people complaining that they cannot truly freely explore Tamriel because they are underleveled. As a veteran MMO player I actually appreciate venturing too deep too soon and being outclassed as a result, but this is The Elder Scrolls, and they don't want to roll like that...

Why do people think this? Morrowind, in many ways the best of the series and the template for the latter games, wasn't like this at all. Sure, the world was open, but if you went to Solthsheim or the Grazelands at level 1, you were going to die a quick and horrible death. Likewise, if you went to the cave outside of Seyda Need at level 20, you were going to obliterate those smugglers.

You could go wherever you wanted, but there were places it was stupid to go because you simply weren't ready. This was a good thing.

Then along came Oblivion. I don't know what they were thinking, but I suspect it was something like, "We've got the RPG fans hooked. Time to increase our sales by totally pandering to action game fans by scaling everything to your level. Nothing will ever be too hard or too easy. We'll make a mint."

And perhaps they did, but it was utterly deplored by long-term TES fans. There's a reason why the single most popular variety of Oblivion mods were mods to adjust or hide the level scaling. Bethesda may have made their mint, but they did so by making a lesser game. It was a bad thing.

You need to be able to measure your progress by being able to beat enemies you couldn't beat before. If you don't have that, you don't have an RPG. You have an arcade game. Arcade games are fine, but not what I'm here for. There is a joy in beating an enemy you couldn't beat before. Losing that joy is a bad thing.

Exactly. And having a system scale you to be way stronger than you are to be able to do content way higher is a bad thing. Now downscaling as an option, I am ok with because this is an mmo and you should be able to help someone weaker. And perhaps having that option to down sync to him is good so he doesn't have to watch content while you slaughter everything.

It's not like it takes a long time to get strong enough so you can do elder content in this game. Why lessen the world or shortcut things. With a finely tuned/nerfed Champion System with passives not providing such big gains, it could work without levels. 10% max passives for 100 points,501 max CP and 176 per constellation.

Elsonso

Kalifas wrote: »

One Tamriel is happening whether we like it or not.

At least we won't have to PAY for it.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Morrowind, in many ways the best of the series and the template for the latter games, wasn't like this at all. Sure, the world was open, but if you went to Solthsheim or the Grazelands at level 1, you were going to die a quick and horrible death. Likewise, if you went to the cave outside of Seyda Need at level 20, you were going to obliterate those smugglers.

You could go wherever you wanted, but there were places it was stupid to go because you simply weren't ready. This was a good thing.

And... this is how One Tamriel should be. I do not think they have this in mind.

"We have a lot of players who will play for two or three weeks because they want to get through a zone and then stop. Then they come back two months later for another month, because there’s no pressure to play all of it at once."

This tells me that they want to make a game where players who come and go can easily consume the content while they are here. I call them vacation players because ESO is not their main game and they are just passing through. For that type of player, you don't want to have to grind because you are not around long enough to do it. Of course, ZOS knows there will be long term players in here grinding, but the vacation players don't want to have to do this.

One Tamriel means they can just wander the game doing whatever quests they want, playing with other vacation players who might be at different levels, and never have to worry about bars that prevent them from accessing content. The upside is that the make the grind easier for the longer term players, too.

They want to remove the barriers that prevent players from accessing all of the content. I think that is what One Tamriel means to ZOS game designers.

The process for doing this will be to make sure that, no matter what level you are, no matter how far your character has progressed, the world is always precisely and exactly the right difficulty, with the right rewards, and the right resources, for you. A vacation player's paradise.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Then along came Oblivion. I don't know what they were thinking, but I suspect it was something like, "We've got the RPG fans hooked. Time to increase our sales by totally pandering to action game fans by scaling everything to your level. Nothing will ever be too hard or too easy. We'll make a mint."

And perhaps they did, but it was utterly deplored by long-term TES fans. There's a reason why the single most popular variety of Oblivion mods were mods to adjust or hide the level scaling. Bethesda may have made their mint, but they did so by making a lesser game. It was a bad thing.

You need to be able to measure your progress by being able to beat enemies you couldn't beat before. If you don't have that, you don't have an RPG. You have an arcade game. Arcade games are fine, but not what I'm here for. There is a joy in beating an enemy you couldn't beat before. Losing that joy is a bad thing.

Bethesda learned some of their lesson from Oblivion and at least Skyrim didn't scale everything up to the character. It was still right at your level when you arrived, though.

Fallout 4 follows the Skyrim model, I guess. I stopped playing regularly. No matter where you go, the world is just the way it should be when you first arrive.

I think that some game designer has written some sort of Game Design Law that stipulates that the player should always be greeted with level appropriate challenges. To do otherwise makes your game too hard or too easy. The Goldilocks Principle of Game Design.

Kalifas

Yes and here is why

lordrichter wrote:

And... this is how One Tamriel should be. I do not think they have this in mind.

"We have a lot of players who will play for two or three weeks because they want to get through a zone and then stop. Then they come back two months later for another month, because there’s no pressure to play all of it at once."

This tells me that they want to make a game where players who come and go can easily consume the content while they are here. I call them vacation players because ESO is not their main game and they are just passing through. For that type of player, you don't want to have to grind because you are not around long enough to do it. Of course, ZOS knows there will be long term players in here grinding, but the vacation players don't want to have to do this.

One Tamriel means they can just wander the game doing whatever quests they want, playing with other vacation players who might be at different levels, and never have to worry about bars that prevent them from accessing content. The upside is that the make the grind easier for the longer term players, too.

They want to remove the barriers that prevent players from accessing all of the content. I think that is what One Tamriel means to ZOS game designers.

The process for doing this will be to make sure that, no matter what level you are, no matter how far your character has progressed, the world is always precisely and exactly the right difficulty, with the right rewards, and the right resources, for you. A vacation player's paradise.

Those quotes sound similar to the director of FFXIV. I am confused. I want to spend a lot of time in my favorite franchises, the single player versions are awesome but can't offer more than a few hundred hours. I hear about one of my favorite franchises going mmo, and I see a ray of light. I can actually spend hundred to thousands of hours playing in a universe I love dearly and it has infinite content for at least a decade instead of vacationing myself playing in franchises I don't love as much. Then due to wanting to be mainstream, the developers go to the greatest lengths to cut down your reasons to be here for a long duration. Suddenly unlike the offline versions where the hardcore fan is extremely important, the quest for the love of vacationers becomes the ultimate goal.

I guess rather than fester on how much things go south. I either have to become a vacationer or be let down over and over again. Hopefully this battle scaling works something like Dark Souls, the more and more you progress the enemies hit harder and harder and harder. I proposed removing levels and nerfing the Champion System because even though most games have power creep, this game gets there very fast.

starkerealm

Other and here is why

MasterSpatula wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Depending on how you flatten out the level curve, it could be a massive step forward towards making the game feel like an Elder Scrolls title....

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

. . . but then they will get people complaining that they cannot truly freely explore Tamriel because they are underleveled. As a veteran MMO player I actually appreciate venturing too deep too soon and being outclassed as a result, but this is The Elder Scrolls, and they don't want to roll like that...

Why do people think this? Morrowind, in many ways the best of the series and the template for the latter games, wasn't like this at all.

Because, as amazing as Morrowind is when it works, it is far from perfect. To be fair, you can get advice from NPCs telling you that wandering into bandit dens is probably a bad idea at low levels, but if you have bad luck they can just prattle on about the utility of healing spells, how the Mage's Guild and House Telvanni are at each other's throats, or musing on Silt Striders, instead of explaining how to judge the dungeon you're looking at.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Sure, the world was open, but if you went to Solthsheim or the Grazelands at level 1, you were going to die a quick and horrible death.

As I recall, Grazeland's leveled lists started at 5 (it might have been 10). I know Solstheim's started at 5. So, you're right, at level 1 it would be a death sentence, but level up a few times and it would be level appropriate.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Likewise, if you went to the cave outside of Seyda Need at level 20, you were going to obliterate those smugglers.

You could go wherever you wanted, but there were places it was stupid to go because you simply weren't ready. This was a good thing.

Then along came Oblivion. I don't know what they were thinking, but I suspect it was something like, "We've got the RPG fans hooked. Time to increase our sales by totally pandering to action game fans by scaling everything to your level. Nothing will ever be too hard or too easy. We'll make a mint."

Oddly enough, it was in fact a response to fairly vocal criticism about the level scaling in Morrowind being idiosyncratic.

This is the point where, I've got some bad news for you. Morrowind actually used the same level scaling system as Oblivion did. In fact, Morrowind's level scaling system was very similar to Skyrims.

There were some differences. Skyrim was the first game that could adjust the value of items found on the ground to your level, so in Morrowind all the weapons and armor left lying around were generated by hand, in Oblivion they all defaulted to iron or rusty iron (I forget which). (I think I remember reading this was, in fact, a bug in Oblivion, and they were supposed to level, but didn't query the player's level correctly, but I could be mistaken about that.)

MasterSpatula wrote: »

And perhaps they did, but it was utterly deplored by long-term TES fans. There's a reason why the single most popular variety of Oblivion mods were mods to adjust or hide the level scaling. Bethesda may have made their mint, but they did so by making a lesser game. It was a bad thing.

The problem with Oblivion's level scaling wasn't that the entire idea was bad. It's that the level scaling used in Oblivion was poorly tuned, so that you never felt like you were getting anywhere. It was so badly configured that there are idiots on the internet, to this day, that believe that level scaling always looks like Oblivion, and can never look like a game where it's been implemented well, and coherently.

MasterSpatula wrote: »

You need to be able to measure your progress by being able to beat enemies you couldn't beat before. If you don't have that, you don't have an RPG. You have an arcade game. Arcade games are fine, but not what I'm here for. There is a joy in beating an enemy you couldn't beat before. Losing that joy is a bad thing.

So, this would be a bad time to point out that I have, in fact, gone through the Grazelands at level 1.

RPGs are about one of two things. And, unfortunately, the genre isn't terribly focused on one point. It's either placing you into a world and asking you take on a roll, or it is about statistical growth of your character over time.

In ESO, between your class, and gear choices, you're setting a role for yourself. I don't mean in the tank/healer/DPS sense.

The real question is, with this system, if there will be statistical growth over time. If there isn't, that's a problem, but it doesn't stop the game from being an RPG anymore. It would still be an RPG, just one with progression issues.

starkerealm

Other and here is why

Kalifas wrote: »

Content should have character progression per zone and an item progression with range and tokens.

God no. Have you ever seen an MMO with a heavy token system? You end up with entire inventory pages that are clogged with nothing but tokens. I can understand the desire for one token system (with the keys being repurposed), but stacking those up? That's a mess waiting to happen.

Kalifas wrote: »

This thread is about removing levels from ESO. And imo that should happen since One Tamriel is coming. Makes no sense battle leveling when removing levels would remove the need for battle leveling. Then an option for level synching down Champion and gear strength for players to participate in content at lower levels without having to be spoon fed difficulty and progression.

Well, ignoring that you're now already accusing the game of being "baby's first MMO..."

You can design an MMO to be levelless from the begining. You can remove some levels from a game further down the road, or add others. What you really can't do is strip out the entire concept of leveling from a game without radically altering what it is. You're suggesting an NGE style overhaul of ESO... that's not going to fly. Developers have, somewhat, learned about completely overhauling MMOs after launch (and no, One Tamriel isn't a complete overhaul in that sense). Most players will probably notice a difference, but they won't perceive One Tamriel as a completely different game. Strip out leveling entirely, and they will get irate.

logosloki

Other and here is why

starkerealm wrote: »

logosloki wrote: »

AD&D had: Asymmetrical leveling (some classes leveled up faster than other classes), Race locked classes, Race locked multi-classes, maximum levels in classes based on race, almost all races other than human couldn't level up to 20 anyway and all other such oddities.

I'm fully aware. I've lived through the tyranny of THAC0 at 3am. Again, I was giving someone flak for citing WoW as the origin of character levels and classes.

If I'm honest, I'm kinda depressed how many people missed the sarcasm entirely, even with an emote..

To be honest, I was just having one of those arguments with someone else about AD&D and pen&paper in general and my emotions spilled out onto this board as well. Completely missed the emote.

I_killed_Vivec

No and here is why

I see it all as part of the "dumbing down" of the game.

I remember ages ago we had a discussion about how easy the game was becoming and someone said that the game wasn't menacing enough... you should be scared to go into the woods, to leave the main footpath. There are monsters lurking there! I remember with fondness the claustrophobic atmosphere of Morrowind, where you'd be wondering what was round the next corner.

But with the latest DLCs who cares? I've enjoyed the quest lines, but I don't have any fear running willy-nilly across Wrothgar. I don't have to worry about anything that might be lurking there. I just don't care, I don't even bother with food buffs. When Gold Coast was about to drop I was excited because they'd said there were nasties waiting to get you if you left the road... they talked about Minotaurs, mini-bosses who would be a serious challenge!

Whip might hit like a wet noodle, but a noodle is OP against a minotaur.

I won't even mention Doshia...

If you have battle-levelling across the board then there is no progression. There is no sense of having to go away, get better and then return and have another go. Tamriel would become like Wrothgar already is, where anyone can skip into the woods without a care in the world about what they might meet.