I fully agree with the OP. I highly dislike the levelling systems found in most current games - including many single player games.
They are out of place in competitive shooters, but the same logic applies to any kind of competitive game. More experienced people are already more skilled than beginners. Giving them more health, better weapons, or more gadgets on top of that just makes life even harder for beginners. The only thing I find acceptable is to offer a wider variety of guns and gadgets, as long as none of these guns and gadgets are outright better. And, of course, cosmetic rewards - cool outfits, titles and stuff. That's motivating people plenty enough in other games.
I find levelling in its current form also very problematic in MMOs. Guild Wars 2, who tried to improve here, just killed it in terms of absurdity for me. Progression works like everywhere else here, but if you go back to low-level areas, your level is scaled down to the level of the area. This in itself is good - it makes visiting low-level areas worthwhile, and you can also play together with friends that have lower levels. However, it is also absurd: You gain levels, but effectively you never really become more powerful - no matter where you go, your enemies are always as strong as you are. Well, your character does become a bit stronger, so you will have an easier time in low-level areas, but it's much much less pronounced. So I was really wondering: why include this levelling system in the first place? Why make your character start out with 500 hit points at level 1 and end with 50 000 at level 80, if it doesn't make a difference at all? And, by the way, how realistic is it that an experienced warrior can endure 100 times more punishment and dish out 100 times more damage?
Why not start with 500 and end with, say, 1000 (and analogously for the other stats)? This way, you would still have level progression, you would still become more powerful over time, but you could still play with friends and have fun, you could still find challenges in the easier areas. But you would have an easier time balancing the game.
And, again, you could also provide a sense of progression by giving access to a greater varieties of weapons, spells, tools and what not.
And there are other ways to prevent level 1 characters to access all areas right away, to direct characters to follow some story or something like that. Like, you need to gain a certain reputation, or finish some quests, before the ruler of city X allows you to enter.
And mind that Guild Wars 2 is already a big step forward compared to older games. If I have to play dozens or hundreds of hours before the actual fun content is accessible, in the end game, that's just crap. Like the OP said.
And the aforementioned EVE has the worst progression system of all in my opinion. Let's say you're a relatively new player, and you want to fly a certain space ship you don't have the skills for yet with reasonable efficiency. What can you do to achieve that goal? Nothing, absolutely nothing. If you're unlucky, you have to wait several real-life weeks until you can fly it. This game actively dis-incentivices playing it.
This game disadvantages new players worse than any other. If you're an experienced player, you have the advantage because of your experience, of course, but you can also earn magnitudes more money per hour, every ship you fly has better stats, you can equip every ship with better equipment, you can fly a much larger variety of ships, and you can fly much better ships of a similar type. You're just much better off in every single way.
Level progression in single player games often goes wrong too. A game should become progressively harder the more you play from both a gameplay and a story point of view: you get better at playing it, and you want to overcome worse enemies as you fight your way to the villain. But what happens in many games that a game gets easier over time because the developers didn't manage to balance it well.
I understand if levelling is necessary for games like Skyrim. But if story and gameplay mechanics are not enough to motivate a player to continue playing story-driven games like Mass Effect 3, then you're doing something wrong.
They are out of place in competitive shooters, but the same logic applies to any kind of competitive game. More experienced people are already more skilled than beginners. Giving them more health, better weapons, or more gadgets on top of that just makes life even harder for beginners. The only thing I find acceptable is to offer a wider variety of guns and gadgets, as long as none of these guns and gadgets are outright better. And, of course, cosmetic rewards - cool outfits, titles and stuff. That's motivating people plenty enough in other games.
I find levelling in its current form also very problematic in MMOs. Guild Wars 2, who tried to improve here, just killed it in terms of absurdity for me. Progression works like everywhere else here, but if you go back to low-level areas, your level is scaled down to the level of the area. This in itself is good - it makes visiting low-level areas worthwhile, and you can also play together with friends that have lower levels. However, it is also absurd: You gain levels, but effectively you never really become more powerful - no matter where you go, your enemies are always as strong as you are. Well, your character does become a bit stronger, so you will have an easier time in low-level areas, but it's much much less pronounced. So I was really wondering: why include this levelling system in the first place? Why make your character start out with 500 hit points at level 1 and end with 50 000 at level 80, if it doesn't make a difference at all? And, by the way, how realistic is it that an experienced warrior can endure 100 times more punishment and dish out 100 times more damage?
Why not start with 500 and end with, say, 1000 (and analogously for the other stats)? This way, you would still have level progression, you would still become more powerful over time, but you could still play with friends and have fun, you could still find challenges in the easier areas. But you would have an easier time balancing the game.
And, again, you could also provide a sense of progression by giving access to a greater varieties of weapons, spells, tools and what not.
And there are other ways to prevent level 1 characters to access all areas right away, to direct characters to follow some story or something like that. Like, you need to gain a certain reputation, or finish some quests, before the ruler of city X allows you to enter.
And mind that Guild Wars 2 is already a big step forward compared to older games. If I have to play dozens or hundreds of hours before the actual fun content is accessible, in the end game, that's just crap. Like the OP said.
And the aforementioned EVE has the worst progression system of all in my opinion. Let's say you're a relatively new player, and you want to fly a certain space ship you don't have the skills for yet with reasonable efficiency. What can you do to achieve that goal? Nothing, absolutely nothing. If you're unlucky, you have to wait several real-life weeks until you can fly it. This game actively dis-incentivices playing it.
This game disadvantages new players worse than any other. If you're an experienced player, you have the advantage because of your experience, of course, but you can also earn magnitudes more money per hour, every ship you fly has better stats, you can equip every ship with better equipment, you can fly a much larger variety of ships, and you can fly much better ships of a similar type. You're just much better off in every single way.
Level progression in single player games often goes wrong too. A game should become progressively harder the more you play from both a gameplay and a story point of view: you get better at playing it, and you want to overcome worse enemies as you fight your way to the villain. But what happens in many games that a game gets easier over time because the developers didn't manage to balance it well.
I understand if levelling is necessary for games like Skyrim. But if story and gameplay mechanics are not enough to motivate a player to continue playing story-driven games like Mass Effect 3, then you're doing something wrong.
