Progressive and exponential skill system

[MrWeed]

Hello,

I couldn't find the specific sub-forum for suggestions. It would be cool if we had an exponential skilling system that is not capped in any way, just gets harder as you progress.

There's no need to cap it, you can keep getting levels on different professions becase the progression is exponential and gets incredibly hard as you level up. The thing is sometimes a new item appear that only super high level players can use, that pushes everyone else to keep skilling.

It also opens a new paradigm for endgame, because let's face it once you reach endgame and grind all your gear, complete all your dungeons/bosses most people abandon the game becase it's not rewarding anymore.

So, if you need me to be more concrete.

1. Add levels for professions/skills
2. Add level requirements for gear/items
3. Release new higher level gear when a % of players have reached some level bracket.

What I mean by exponential is for example, getting from level 0 to level 50 costs as much as leveling from 50 to 60 (just an example).

Also, I would like to point out that you could add a very cool feature: To publicly congratulate players that reach a high enough level or tier, this can be done by global messages in chat.

If the game, hopefully, is alive for years it adds a lot of new cool stuff that could be done at higher levels, and a very specific purpose/objective for new players.

Cheers, sorry if my explanation is not very clear english is not my first language.

 

[Thorp]

This is very similar to Elite Ranks in Firefall except in this scenario the ranks apply to professions and acquiring future endgame gear.

My problem with players being able to build beyond a normal level cap is it creates a gap between people who have the time and people who do not. Rather than having a community of equal stats the hardcore players will disrupt the accessibility of the remaining playerbase. The boosted hardcore players will outshine other players in pve, crafting, economy, ect. Their gear, stats, or whatever hardcore players acquire beyond the level cap will outclass other players unless the devs heavily control and restrict the benefits. (As you can probably guess I wasn't a fan of Elite Ranks)

Furthermore I do not believe slowing the hardcore players down is going to keep them around. I'd image they'd reach the cap before new gear comes and they'll jump ship anyway. Ideally I find it more reasonable to make a game that people want to keep playing rather than hanging a reward in front of them.

 

[Terricon4]

They sort of did this with elite ranks in Firefall at the end... I could have gone better to put it lightly. I'm a fan of a shorter more horizontal approach to progression. A giant vertical never ending grind can cause some serious issues, not to mention power imbalances as some people will take it to the extreme.

Give me horizontal expansion in options instead, at any one given point in time I don't want X person to be able to get more potent than Y as long as both put in some decent time. Instead just let X person maybe have more options available to him.

 

[EvilKitten]

Um...you are suggesting a vertical progression system in a game that Mark has stated will be largely horizontal with a little bit of vertical. We really shouldn't have levels of anything at all, or much by way of skill points per say. Progression in terms of gear should be about unlocking a larger variety of items to optimize your loadout, and a lot of the progression is going to be community wide by repelling the Tsi-hu and unlocking new area's. Firefall already tried WoW with guns and it was so sad, let us not go down that route again.

 

[Biz]

You are assuming that the game will be so unengaging that it would need to have artificial life-support, in a form of a level grind, and instead of just being a visual thing - would also carry direct benefits of level restricted gear.

The game as far as I can tell from what devs said as well as info on the site etc will have either a flat or a slight power curve - where item progression goes into better fitting players and their playstyle through tough choices rather than straight up damage increase. Player skill in utilizing gear they have would be the factor that makes good players stand out, not how long they have been grinding.

"Progression" is also meant to be tied to state of the world, if you terraform an area and build it up sufficiently then you will unlock the higher tiers of technology needed to craft yourself a gun that shoots just the way you like it to shoot, rather than cookie-cutter gun that does the damage but lacks in some other important respect. This also means that progression might fluctuate day to day. You are never "done", same way you are "done" when you finish Diablo 3 for the 9006th time and all that is left is get that one axe with +30% instead of +29%.

Unlimited "progression" that did work in a flat power curve game would have been found in Guild Wars 1 where after level 20 you are given +1 skill point for every 15k exp that can be used to buy new skills - that while not making you stronger, can give you more options in what 8 skills to take into combat.

 

[Terricon4]

Ya, it should be more like Warframe. A new player can get solidly powerful fairly quickly, and then it slows down with the potatoes and such, before you hit actual max with a full loadout. The key part is you can get up decently powerful fairly quickly, and that the vast majority of the time working in that game goes to leveling alternative equipment/frames/weapons/pets. I feel they are a bit too vertical in Warframe myself, but overall that is a good direction imo.

 

[MrWeed]

It's true but I didn't mention how fast it should be, maybe they let us level super quick from level (let's say) 0 to 100 when you have everything unlocked, and then from 100 onwards it's more difficult and only a few non-vital elite gear requires levels past 100.

My whole point is that I tend to grind, max out and leave a game very quickly if I don't have objectives past endgame. And by objectives I'm not talking about hats, paints, clothes or a flashy new DLC that is more of the same... That's why I suggest a skilling system like this.

I really want Em8er to last years and not a few weeks, that was my main problem with Firefall.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

And there are peoples like me, where grinding is an instant turn off. Reason why I uninstalled warframe. I reached a point where it start to get too grindy. Same goes for guild wars 2 and other games, i only go online to play with 'friends'. No questing, not for achievements, not even farming to craft, but to have (social) fun with others.

As in Ember, ya'll might mostly find me in invasion areas. I have fun shooting rabbits in the face and survive as long as possible.

I'm all for survival and EXPLOSION

 

[Thorp]

And there are peoples like me, where grinding is an instant turn off. [...] Same goes for guild wars 2 and other games, i only go online to play with 'friends'. No questing, not for achievements, not even farming to craft, but to have (social) fun with others.

As in Ember, ya'll might mostly find me in invasion areas. I have fun shooting rabbits in the face and survive as long as possible.

Same here. I would have stuck with more games, specifically Firefall for forever if PvP and Amazon weren't botched. I'm looking for the gameplay and non-repetitiveness. Once I start caring about "endgame gear"...turns me off immediately. Gear and endgame bonuses should be a customization tool and not a requirement. Firefall had it right at the start where they kept numbers small and players could easily craft biorifles that either did either +% healing or +% energy efficiency. The customization didn't make a huge difference ingame but it was noticeable to me and it made my character special to me without a grind to get it. ...Accessibility for all so we can play the game, not the grind.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

Same here. I would have stuck with more games, specifically Firefall for forever if PvP and Amazon weren't botched. I'm looking for the gameplay and non-repetitiveness. Once I start caring about "endgame gear"...turns me off immediately. Gear and endgame bonuses should be a customization tool and not a requirement. Firefall had it right at the start where they kept numbers small and players could easily craft biorifles that either did either +% healing or +% energy efficiency. The customization didn't make a huge difference ingame but it was noticeable to me and it made my character special to me without a grind to get it. ...Accessibility for all so we can play the game, not the grind.

AND NOT TO MENTION THE COMMUNITY RETARDIDATION OF FORCED REQUIREMENTS/GEARS. CAN'T WE PLAY THE F*CK WE WANT TO HAVE F*CKING FUN. WITHOUT BEING FORCED TO BECOME AN RETARDED-BRAINLESS-META-ZOMBIE-B*TCH. I HOPE WE AS A 'FREE' COMMUNITY WILL TURN THOSE "META" PLAYER INTO SORE LOSERS.

 

[HumanTrainingBot]

TL;DR: EXP in Em8er (in my opinion) would incentivize players to make numbers go up instead of encouraging them to explore, capture, and protect our new home.



While I love the idea of infinite scaling, I don't think that system will work well in Em8er. In fact, I think experience as a resource should not be in Em8er.

The goal of Em8er is to fight a massive war against aliens to capture, protect, and reclaim territory on an alien world. Adding an experience bar would give players the incentive to go wherever they can to earn the most experience instead of protecting valuable areas of the map.

Could the game be tweaked to always have the greatest experience gain where the most important battle is? Yes. However, Em8er is supposed to be a dynamic game. There will be resources that spawn in, stay for a while, and (possibly) despawn. Aliens will attack bases. Who knows what else will happen? It seems to me that there would be a lot more computing power necessary to periodically calculate where the greatest experience gain should be and then display the result to the players to draw them towards that objective.

There would also be the frustration of players when experience rewards for doing the same task keeps changing in an unpredictable manner. Finally, players will always find some way to grind out the most experience possible in the shortest time. These players would either figure out a system to get the greatest experience reward or leave Em8er to look for another game.

Not including experience points does carry a risk, however. Eliminating experience points means that the players have to be trusted to understand the necessity of harvesting resources and the importance of gaining and losing territory without a bunch of numbers appearing on the screen to tell the player how well he/she did. The payoff, however, gives developers greater freedom to build more and different encounters into the game. Actions and events which may have a strategic advantage without a tangible reward for successfully completing these events.

For example, successfully defending a mountain pass from an enemy patrol. This gives some resources from defeating the enemies, but it also keeps a shorter path back to a refinery available for player use when thumping.

If experience is a resource, then the player fights to get experience. If experience is not involved, the player fights to defend their new planet. The game becomes less of a Skinner Box and increases a player's personal investment in the game.

 

[EvilKitten]

Again I will ask, why do you keep talking about player levels and XP, these are purely meant for vertical progression systems. Are gamerss so entrenched in this style of MMO that they are incapable of imagining a game without them? Either of these components would spell the death knell of Ember before it is even started (in my opinion of course). I assume that Mark would naturally avoid as many traditionally vertical progression components as absolutely possible in order to break the cycle and introduce a new style of gameplay to revitalize and reincentivize gamer interest.

EDIT: BTW, one of the biggest draws of early Firefall was that you could basically start with a fresh character and jump right into the fighting, you didn't have a level, you were roughly the same as any other player with maybe a 20-30% power range between starter and high end gear.

 

[MrWeed]

Because we can have both, and a lot of people like the challenge of vertical progression. And by a lot I really mean a lot, if I'm given everything from day one I wont last a week.

I played Firefall since the first closed beta, and after they removed the original PvP I left the game for this very reason. Nothing left to aim for besides repetitive shitty PvE.

Can't be alone in this I don't think, but it's just a suggestion.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

challenge of vertical progression.....
Nothing left to aim for besides repetitive shitty PvE.

UHM WHAT? THOSE 2 SENTENCES DOESN'T FIT TOGETHER.
KILL SH*T-DO QUEST-LEVEL UP..... WHERE'S THE CHALLENGE IN DOING REPETITIVE SH*T?

PLAY DIABLO 2 ON HARDCORE. THE GAME DOESN'T GIVE A FLYING F*CK ABOUT YOUR LEVEL. ONCE YOU'RE DEAD. YOU STAY DEAD. FOREVER. NOW THAT'S CHALLENGE.

 

[MrWeed]

Is your caps lock broken? I don't like being shout at.

 

[Torgue_Joey]

Is your caps lock broken? I don't like being shout at.

I'M NOT SHOUTING. I'M TALKING IN F*CKING CAPITAL LETTERS. SHOUT IS AN ACOUSTICAL SH*T. AND CAN YOU HEAR ME? NO.
AND I'M TYPING ON A G910. THAT'S ONE PIECE OF A SENSITIVE B*TCH.

 

[MrWeed]

The caps lock troll has arrived, quick everyone give him the attention he so desperately needs.

 

[Terricon4]

That's just Torgue_Joey, always typing with gusto.

 

[Thorp]

[...] I'm given everything from day one I wont last a week.

Naw that's not the issue. The issue is in allowing people to progress beyond the typical player caps. Exponential sinks will actually not stop players from reaching that limit. These higher ceilings, no matter how low creates a gap between players within the playerbase. As an extreme scenario people will develop "godlike" characters in either Crafting which devastates the economy as only they provide the best stuff, or in pve/pvp as the godlike characters eclipse the difficulty and smear it with ease. In the long run these godlike characters will then become the standard requirement for everything within the game. Raid groups will require minimums that typical player hours can't accomplish and then cry out for higher difficulty thus increasing the gap, demand for more bonuses, more stuff to make them more godlike.

Elite ranks in Firefall was just a ticking time bomb to destabilize the community. Imagine new players at level 60 jumping into the Firefall Amazon only to find other players at Elite Rank 300 one shotting entire drop pods and drop ships; too EZ, need higher difficulty and more ranks...Amazon difficulty is then increased and requires Elite Rank 300+; leaving the majority of the population out of the content that is "the best".

Players should be capped at some point. What players need is something to make the character their own. The remainder of the game needs to be content that players Want To Play. At the end of all things, if players don't Want To Play even with an unending progression system...they will eventually leave. Certainly easier said than done; it is an ideal goal to create a game that people Want To Play without leveling/progression.

Closed Beta Firefall was great because it took some time to choose the spells, craft them, adjust them to the bonuses you wanted, then at the end you had your character against the meta of the playerbase. The meta changed in small quantities and player changed in turn with small adjustments, the game was living on it's own without progression. (Splatoon is another good example).

I suppose the term I'm referring to is "Power Creep"

P.S. It has already been said Ember will not have PVP. *I'z sad panda*

 

[Nunaden]

The best way for infinite progression: No progression! All you are going to work for is perfection, and try to find that m8.
And then we need just the DEVs to act like blizzard and throw around some minimal balance changes that totally end up in strategic changes. >