PiCroft said:
Arcanum had one fo the best levelling systems I've seen and to date is the only game that geniunely allowed you to choose between being a gunslinger, mage, burly sword-swinger, sneaky thief and so on. It did, however, suffer from the reverse of point #3, vis a vis dumping points on the player near the start and forcing them to become dependent on skills from the start before they really understand what it means...
Arcanum's system was still, in my opinion the single greatest example of a levelling system and skill system ever, but there is such a thing as pricing the ability to survive a fight a little too high for a player whos just starting out.
Arcanum's leveling was almost completely free-form, save for the health and fatigue boosts gotten by leveling. It, however, was poorly balanced, and it ended up centering around slaughtering hordes of monsters by yourself to level up. Followers were mainly useful to drag items around because they sucked so much exp if you actually let them fight in combat, but quests still did give a decent amount of experience. Aside from balance issues, it was excellent.
Oblivion had a horrible system because the developers didn't resolve many of the issues that came with auto-leveling monsters, and because the combat power of a player could be so easily out of whack with his actual level (you can literally gain levels from running in place after all.) Morrowind's was better because they didn't rely so much on auto-leveling. Fallout 3's was best of Bethesda's recent games because it actually gave benefits for levels beyond abstract stat boosts.
In any case, I do want to comment directly on the article, because I disagreed and agreed with parts of it.
Shamus Young said:
How game designers muck this up: They put in too few levels.
I disagree with this. The basic problem is hours of grinding to get to the levels, not the amount of levels themselves. Putting in more levels means that you need to give more benefits out of those levels; if you can't do that in a way that feels significant they just become empty. World of Warcraft had this problem up through 1-60: literally half the levels gave no powers. You can also see the problems of too many levels in Morrowind or Disgaea in that they quickly become insignificant.
Shamus Young said:
How game designers muck this up: They deny the player a way to judge how tough an enemy is.
Agreed.
Shamus Young said:
3.It lets game designers start simple and introduce new gameplay elements gradually instead of throwing new players into the deep end.
How game designers muck this up: They dump all abilities on you at level 1 or (even worse) during the character creation process.
I suppose that it's been a while since I've seen games that screw you up in your character creation from Day 1. I tend to find that there isn't a lot of significant character choices in most games outside MMOs (and they tend to be forgiving frequently.) Not introducing new abilities gradually isn't so much the problem as not introducing them well is (they do tie together strongly though.)
Shamus Young said:
4.It lets the player customize both their character and the gameplay to focus on the parts they enjoy the most. "I hate sneaking around in the dark. I'd much rather just lob fireballs at these guys, so I'll put more points into magic."
How game designers muck this up: Too often, games will offer single-solution challenges.
That's more an issue of gameplay rather than the leveling system. It's a really big problem, I agree, but leveling is rarely the only way to customize your character in a good game. Equipment, tactics, and how you built your character during creation frequently do come into play as much as the leveling system does in this regard.
It ties into the Big Question in video gaming: how can one construct a non-linear narrative when all the literature that its based on fundamentally linear? Games which try to be non-linear generally succeed in doing so but don't do well at everything else as a result.
Shamus Young said:
5. If done right, leveling can let players seek their own challenge level without needing to fuss with the difficulty slider. "Whew. These guys are really hard. Maybe I should level a bit before moving on." Or "Man, these guys are a cakewalk. I think I'll skip this dungeon and find something a little tougher and more rewarding."
How game designers muck this up: The biggest way to mess this up is with auto-leveling foes.
I agree. One of the best uses of leveling is that it permits masterful players to challenge themselves if they want to while letting less astute players spend a bit more time grinding but still be able to progress in the game. Auto-leveling not only screws this up but also murders immersion and mocks the reason for leveling in the first place: to be able to be more effective.
