Whatts your favorite lvling system?

#21 I liked Asheron's Call.

You got better through experience gain in battle, but also by using your skills. Individual skills would slowly get better with use, so you didn't just level up generically like everyone else. Your skills over time would customize according to what you did.

I also like Legends of Kesmai. You could go to a trainer and pay for training like in a real school. However, the trainer's instruction could only go so far. You then had to practice what you learned out in the world before you could learn more.

I've always wanted to combine the two.

#22 I thought dungeon siege did a good job, it's a bit simple for me though. Unlike some people I actually like the numbers, min/maxing is part of the fun for me. I guess i liked the flexibility of the system, the same with FFX. you really can do whatever you want which is a lot of fun to me.

#23 I'm with Brian on that one...

#24

Quote:Think about it this way: What gives you more satifaction in a game... Going up a level ? or finding a newer, better, cooler item ?

an interesting philosophical problem to be sure... does one desire the increase of personal ability of one's avatar in the game, or the collection of more and better possessions? Then again, isn't the avatar just another posession of the player, really?

#25 Part of the problem with many leveling systems is the exposition of the spreadsheet of the game, and the ability of players to find exploits in the system to make "better" characters by choosing the "correct" upgrades. Shadowbane had huge problems with this, as new spells and skills would replace old ones, so any additional points spent on a spell/skill beyond the absolute minimum to get its successor was a complete waste of experience.

Rant: Surely there are good solutions that allow you to specialize without becoming overly powerful - perhaps having more powerful skills create penalties in other areas. Again, you must face the fact that such a system needs to be balanced, and there will always be some guy out there who finds a perfect combination that totally breaks the system... then posts it on the internet so everyone else uses the same character progression... sigh.

#26 I liked Fallout's system.

It had the standard "gain-a-level, get-more-powerful" stuff, but it had something more: perks. Every time you gained 3 levels (or 4 if you have the "Skilled" trait), you choose a new perk that does something cool.

The problem with it is that some perks are alot better than others. And some perks are better off taken earlier in the game (e.g. perks that give you bonus experience points). If you want to make the most powerful character possible, you don't really have that much of a choice when choosing perks.

#27 You want a good levelling system? Go check out the Pen and Paper RPG HarnWorld by Columbia Games. While it's now at version 3 and I personally liked version 1 the best (2 was crap), it's a pretty much levelless game and you advance skills, not levels. You use your broadsword a lot, that goes up, you like to dance a lot, that goes up...

Asheron's was pretty close to this setup and I found it one of the better online games, but to me they're all now just level treadmills. The whole purpose of the game becomes making that next level which destroys the fun for me...

#28 I liked the system in morrowind as i didnt feel the need to rush around killing monsters to advance. Although a lot different i also like the idea in the last 2 GTA games where things like fitness and weapon skill increase as you use those skills, and without feeding back numbers.

#29 True, the need at any point to stop and "farm monsters" is a sign that theres something wrong. XP is just a means of regulating new powers and player progression.

Theres really no difference between "You gain lvl 4 and get the power Super Ninja Jump" and "You have finished stage 4, you can now Super Ninja Jump". If the game makes you go and farm more monsters for level 4 before you can get Super Ninja Jump to get past Sumo Gomer, its just like if you had to go and redo stage 4 again for no reason. Don't bash the xp system just because someone implemented it badly. (which says much about why online game - level treadmills are such a pain)

Something I thought would be interesting would be a system where making friends with the NPCs (ie doing things for them) was just as important for character development as a bodycount.

#30 I kinda like the idea of no lvling system, instead you earn the points and pick skills. If you wanna have more HP, then it'll cost this much, if you wanna have SUPER BAMMER HAMMER skill it'll cost this much.

After starting this thread, I started to play FF 2, and I hate that whole system. In it (as far as I can tell, I have no book) you increase your weapon skill, and each character can have any weapon you desire. Thats fine by me. The sucky part is that the part of increasing STR, HP, Magic is all random. I've played it for about 5 hrs and decided that I don't like it at all. >_<

#31 There are some muds which use a system where instead of lvling, xp is like a currency you can use to buy more stats/skills. Sadly there is still a bashing mentallity in those games. I once thought about building a mud which wouldnt feed back anything like xp or any stats at all, i hoped this would stop the whole bashing mentality and make people play the game instead. Anyway, i didnt bother with it, but i'll prolly look into using the system if i ever need a way of "lvling" in the future.

#32 Think, Deus Ex (the Original)!

#33 I like the idea of being able to "farm monsters" sometimes. I sometimes like to go to the next area and overpower the monsters there. But to have to do that everytime you go to a new area would definately be challenging. I think it's ok at some point to just drastically increase the difficulty of the monsters in an area, but if it does that drastacally for each new area... welll.


FFX did a good job with that. i don't think i had to run around an kill things mindlessly unless i wanted to.



I hated it alot... but anyone play FF8? it made it so that the monsters got harder as you progressed your levels. Like you go be level 50, and go back and try to kill some weak monsters and they're ALOT stronger now. The downside was that some monsters just got too hard to beat.... and you needed to do so to progress... Perefect example was where you get bahamut. he had some dragon guards that spit fire and hit for 9999, killing everyone in one attack. and i was only level 60.

#34 Reminds me of the level'd monsters in morrowind whos difficulty is set by your own characters level, although i liked the idea. I was thinking at work today about why i didnt feel the need to go bashing in morrowind. I think it may be less to do with the system used, and more to do with the fact that if a quest is too tough, there are about a dozen other things you can do until you get bigger and have some better weapons.