What if MMOs limited levels/time?

[Olrod]

After reading the thread about how today's MMOs are mostly grindfests for players to max their character's level ASAP, I was thinking: What would it be like if there was an MMORPG that limited the number of levels you could get in a certain period of time?

For example, not matter how many monsters you killed, you could only gain one level every week or whatever an appropriate interval would be.

That's not to say there should be a limit on how much you can play, as I hate games that restrict you to so many "actions" per day, or games that force you to wait X minutes between every "move". (Or that you can only play them for 2 hours a day... *glares at Dragon Quest X*)

What I mean is that you can quest, kill or craft as much as you want, but the amount of actual XP you can gather, and so the number of levels your character can advance, is limited per time period.

The idea being to force players to actually play with their characters at these levels, so they experience the game, rather than just grinding XP in repetitive ways until they're at the maximum level "so they can start playing the game".

Would such an idea be workable, or even welcomed?

 

[Rack]

Unless they can make MMOs fun at all levels I'd just only play till I levelled then not play until the opportunity to level became possible again. Or more likely stop playing entirely.

Ultimately MMOs aren't games as much as elaborate skinner boxes. They work by triggering psychological impulses to trick you into playing them. Any method to stop people playing regularly is doomed to failure.

 

[skywolfblue]

Players should have the choice to decide how much THEY want to level, not have that chosen by some in game cap.

The idea being to force players to actually play with their characters at these levels, so they experience the game, rather than just grinding XP in repetitive ways until they're at the maximum level "so they can start playing the game".

The cause, the big reason why a lot of people grind instead of smell the roses, is that:
1) Most other players are max level already
2) Most new content is tailored to end-game

Putting a cap slows down the fastest levelers, but it doesn't fix either of those problems.

As to the actual solution to that problem, I don't know.
Maybe more low-level events, restricting gear to only drop for low level players, etc.
Better people then I have spent a lot of time pondering that and found no good answer.

 

[agent_of_avarice]

Eve sort of does this. SP more or less your experience points, accrue passively over time. The only way to speed up the process is via implants, even then the difference is at most 20%. I don't think an exp limit would really work in many games. Personally I wouldn't even play a game where my hard work was wasted via some sort of hard daily exp limit.

 

[fwiffo]

edit: ^ Beware of ninjas ;D, and welcome to the escapist!

Does EVE count?

You level up by sitting around, either in game or not. Everything else you do is up to you.

I hope the next big mmo won't have levels. It seems to be really tough to do without ending up as a cybersex thing like second life.

MMOs in general seem to be about fighting, farming, and fucking.

I just wish there was some way to encourage collaborative creation, without it devolving into millions of dick statues all over the world.

EVE is kinda like this I guess with corp stations and systems n such. It can just be sooooo boring at times. Maybe mmos for the masses will always be grindfests. Ok now I'm sad. I have no idea how to solve this.

 

[GundamSentinel]

A lot of people would hate it, myself included. To take myself as an example, I have 8 lvl 80 Guild Wars 2 characters. Why? Because I like to experience all the classes in end-level content like dungeons and PvP (WvW oriented guild). But after 2 max level chars I really couldn't be bothered to go exploring or play story missions. Leveling came to stand in the way of what I wanted out of the game. So fuck that, I crafted most of the others to 80.

Scaling content to appeal to all levels is a really hard thing to do in an MMO and I have yet to see any succeed. Having to grind even more to get to the fun parts will put a lot of people off.

Also, I don't really see the problem here. So what if people just grind to max level? Is that a problem?

Ultimately MMOs aren't games as much as elaborate skinner boxes. They work by triggering psychological impulses to trick you into playing them. Any method to stop people playing regularly is doomed to failure.

Very much this.

 

[00slash00]

im pretty sure final fantasy 14 did exactly that...and look how that turned out

 

[KeyMaster45]

*snip*

Cartoon Network actually tried something like this with their ill-fated browser MMO Fusion Fall. What I can only assume was their attempt to cut off claims of people's children never ceasing to play it, they had a daily cap of experience in place. To hit it though you had to play for a fair portion of the day, and after that your character would cease to gain xp until the daily reset.

Of all the various things that was wrong with that game I would have to say the xp cap was one of the things they did right; it was unobtrusive, there was no micro-transaction to "refill" it, and you truly only hit it if you played far more in a day than could be considered healthy.

WoW already kind of does this since they implemented gain caps to practically every progression related activity in the game. Though their caps border on insultingly annoying and restrictive, and are ultimately just a way of artificially prolonging end-game progression. This is mostly due to things like the top tier guilds clearing the initial raid content of Wrath of the Lich King in 4 days after the expansion's launch.

 

[Comocat]

People rush to level cap, at least I do, because for the most part leveling content sucks. It's not fun, it's tedious, and sometimes its even insulting (obligatory animal dropping quest). Show me an MMO where I can actually interact with other people and have some impact on the world before level cap, and I might be interested. Trapping your players in the doldrums of the MMO genre is only going to piss them off, there's no stopping and smelling the roses when the roses smell like ass.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I'd hate such an idea, and I am one of the few who actually read quest descriptions and all the lore, meaning I take my time. The simple fact is that most content is end game content, with everything else a way to get used to using your character, so you need to be able to level up, especially when you do have time to play for a long time (like, say, if you have a full day). Limiting this would be a terrible idea.

 

[BrotherRool]

As said above, I think FFXIV did it. Dust 514* also does it I believe, or did it at first and then they got rid of it/changed it. And WoW also does it in a slightly weaker form. The 'rest' XP bonus you get is actually a nerf to XP after X hours playing that they present as a buff to make the players feel good about it.

Which itself highlights the big problem. Players don't like to be told no. You'd need some way to dress it up so it wasn't a penalty. But if you could successfully do that, it might actually be an effective way to get people to play the game.


However I think the effect you'd get is lots of people logging off when they hit the barrier and waiting. And if people don't feel like they're playing your game whilst levelling up, that's probably more about the sad state of MMO game design. If you removed the end game divide then maybe that would solve the problem. Or maybe it means that the pre-end game isn't fun enough for some people?



*But I don't think they did it for your reasons. It was to try and keep it so the people who couldn't play umpteen hours a week didn't feel disadvantaged by that