Traditional RPG system

[DARKB1KE]

I enjoy the traditional RPG system. Fight more enemies, get XP, rank up, get stronger.
Repeat this action and you level up higher and higher and become quite powerful.
I enjoy the feeling of becoming so strong that enemies are killed with one attack.
This can be known as "vertical progression" right?

Games for example:
FF7
Pokemon

So why doesn't this system work in online games?
Why is it okay in single player, but when moved to an online game people are vehemently against it?

 

[TankHunter678]

Because when people reach the end of the content they desire more. They demand more. More abilities, bigger numbers, bigger badder bosses to fight, more story, more everything. Even while they leave behind everyone who was not there when it started. They also leave behind content. If it is not the current content it's worthless, a waste of time.

Ultimately it is a case of mentality. If it does not directly contribute to their progression and preparation for the next content patch then it was a waste of developer time that detracts from that content patch to give more progression.

 

[Squid Boss]

Because when people reach the end of the content they desire more. They demand more. More abilities, bigger numbers, bigger badder bosses to fight, more story, more everything. Even while they leave behind everyone who was not there when it started. They also leave behind content. If it is not the current content it's worthless, a waste of time.

Ultimately it is a case of mentality. If it does not directly contribute to their progression and preparation for the next content patch then it was a waste of developer time that detracts from that content patch to give more progression.

You could also argue; "I've done this content to much it's worthless." - The feel has worn off and the repetitive nature shines brightly in mere moments without a lengthy purposeful personal goal/achievement marker.

So why doesn't this system work in online games?

It does. MMO's wouldn't exist in bulk as they do right now if it didn't.

 

[Sn0wfIak3]

Must resist.... Must... nope.

Ah come on Dark, now you're just baiting. On itself there's nothing wrong with getting more powerful in an online game. However diagonal progression beats vertical at its own game. If you have most of the progression in cool downs, run speed, etc. You still get exponentially more powerful but since the powercurve is more spread out you get all of the benefits without the drawbacks.

Same way a highly mobile Assault was way more powerful than a base one or a highly tanky Mammoth was than the base one.

It's not like a T4 mammoth felt weak or the same as a base one. It didn't. However this allowed new players or players of any level to join the fight. Imo the 2.x powercurve was already a bit too much.

It's all about balance. Eat too much candy, become a vegan or find some middle ground.

There are other ways to gate content, other than powa.

 

[Beemann]

Vertical progression is inherently anti-competitive. If you want a game based purely on skill, you cannot also have a large grind to reach viability. While this is more important in PvP, nobody likes being useless as fuck in PvE scenarios, and you will still get competitive elements there (I can finish X fastest, I can beat Y the most efficiently etc)

There's also the fact that fighting enemies that just have massive health pools and damage just isn't all that fun. Try playing Warframe with under leveled and under modded weapons against mid-high level enemies sometime. It's just not entertaining in the slightest, and the methods of cheesing it aren't particularly fun.

 

[Vladplaya]

Because the whole point of online game is interaction with people, and you can't do that very well in neither PvP nor PvE when power level of you and your friends is to far apart.
There are systems that mmos trying to use today, like handy capping or boosting characters in certain zones or in parties. Or having your stats don't matter in pvp completely. At which point you just have to ask why have vertical progression at all?
WoW introduced pay option to insta max your character, by passing all the unnecessary grinding in between.
It's like everyone understand that this system is just not working very well, but it's easy to make and people still like it because it is easy, it's mostly time based and there is a lot of rng, so other than spending time, you don't really have to put much effort into getting powerful.

Of course none of that is problem in single player game. AI doesn't care how op you are, and you don't have to be balanced for group play. In the single player games you just play at your own pace and enjoy the story.

 

[Daynen]

Another reason the "traditional RPG" formula is bad in online games is that they're persistent worlds; growing so strong that most of the game can no longer challenge you means that most of the game world is of no interest to you. Mark said it simply in an old column article: "95% of MMO real estate is wasted." The RPG formula is precisely why.

The proper use of vertical progression is to gate challenges and prepare a player to proceed to greater ones. In a game where there's as much direct control as Ember, i.e. strafing, flying, shooting, aiming, taking cover, etc etc, this gate is less necessary to prepare a player; thus it becomes more of a crutch in design. Indeed it can often hold a game design back more than advancing it, as the mindless need to simply accumulate XP eventually trumps the actual gameplay itself. Add to that the rapid obsolescence of content too low level for your now maxed out character and it should be plain to see how wasteful the formula is. In a linear story with a clear beginning, middle and end, the progression can be an excellent pacing mechanic when used smartly. In most other cases, it cheapens the experience of the game.

I enjoy the traditional RPG formula too, in it's proper place, but that place simply isn't in a persistent world that demands new experiences and replayability on a daily basis. If the formula isn't adapted and allowed to evolve for the game in question, then we get stuck with first-gen MMO's and first gen MMO problems; I don't really need to go into THAT list, do I?

 

[Beemann]

@Daynen there are actually some interesting designs that do re-use content from lower levels, but they usually aren't open world. PSO2 is actually a good example of this. Everything is made of tilesets, and there are higher and lower level versions of these tilesets such that you can gain XP or good weapon drops from the tilesets you want at just about any given level (once you've unlocked everything). Warframe works on a similar basis. The MMO format just isn't utilized to its fullest at this point in time, and it's the matter in which the mechanics are used, rather than the mechanics themselves, that are to blame

That said, the rest of your post is spot-on

 

[Vladplaya]

@Daynen First gen mmos, seems like we have never moved on past that in the last two decades. Even latest mmos with all their improvements are more like gen 1.8
FireFall beta was probably as close as we ever got to see gen 2 mmo. Let's see if Ember will fulfill that destiny.

 

[EvilKitten]

@Daynen got it right in the very first line (the rest is just some icing). A single player game is designed to have an end. In most games the developer can know exactly how powerful a player should be at a certain point (or at least a range) and design their content around that point. Non linear single player games that don't follow this path suffer from the same problems of vertical progression that MMO's do.

The other major problem with MMO's is not just that the world is persistent, but that it is utterly unchanging. At no point does anything you do have any impact on the game world outside of a few NPC lines here and there. All of your vertical progression matters for nothing if the world does not change to reflect your more powerful state. MMO's are not the only games that suffer from this problem, I refer to Sandbox games as single player MMO's. Take Skyrim, beautiful game that kinda fails because you are the last Dovakin who has absolutely no impact on the world around them, and your vertical progression is matched by the entire game world making yours kinda pointless.

 

[DARKB1KE]

You could also argue; "I've done this content to much it's worthless." - The feel has worn off and the repetitive nature shines brightly in mere moments without a lengthy purposeful personal goal/achievement marker.

Yeah, a game without end becomes repetitive by design too.

 

[Squid Boss]

Yeah, a game without end becomes repetitive by design too.

Yes, but with the option to revamp everything on something of a clean slate you can change a lot without reinventing the game. In the end they all play the same regardless and offer repetitive action; Rinse and repeat.

 

[Vladplaya]

Game without an end can work fine for a while, it just needs something that will keep players engaged and wanting to play it. Few gameplay options with good depth in the mechanics usually do the trick, that's exactly how PvP games can last for years and years on minimum content. The whole Counter Strike is basically people playing Dust_2 for twenty years, it's insane.
Options of fun gameplay and depth in mechanics, and PvP, so you can do different things, you can always learn to be better or do something different, and you are always challenged against thinking opponents. Most mmos lack those (or such content lacks quality and just poorly implemented), and simply try to compensate by massive content dumps, and most still fail, because when it comes to content, it's all about matter of who been around the longest. That's why it's so hard to beat WoW, if you are not doing anything different, you sure as heck better out perform it in the amount of content, and that's hardly possible.

 

[Beemann]

Game without an end can work fine for a while, it just needs something that will keep players engaged and wanting to play it. Few gameplay options with good depth in the mechanics usually do the trick, that's exactly how PvP games can last for years and years on minimum content. The whole Counter Strike is basically people playing Dust_2 for twenty years, it's insane.

This. Gameplay depth can keep people going for a surprising amount of time. The trick is to get that gameplay to be compelling to a large enough number of people.

In other words: fun movement and gunplay please

 

[Luisedgm]

I enjoy the traditional RPG system. Fight more enemies, get XP, rank up, get stronger.
Repeat this action and you level up higher and higher and become quite powerful.
I enjoy the feeling of becoming so strong that enemies are killed with one attack.
This can be known as "vertical progression" right?

Games for example:
FF7
Pokemon

So why doesn't this system work in online games?
Why is it okay in single player, but when moved to an online game people are vehemently against it?

It does work, but since online games does not have an ending you usually get bored after several hours of playtime, sometimes you get even hours more than you would get from a single player game, but since there is no climax and no proper finale you don't notice it.
Either way, Ember is a whole different beast, maybe you never played a "horizontal progression" game, since they are so rare, but im sure you will enjoy!

 

[Vladplaya]

@Beemann I'd say good AI for PvE is pretty crucial, but making it good in a mmo might be pretty tricky. I know FireFall had pretty mediocre AI with multiple issues that probably were caused by the limitations of the engine.
I am sure Unreal is much more versatile though and hopefully it will work pretty well for Ember.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

Why is it okay in single player, but when moved to an online game people are vehemently against it?

A lot of people find it boring in singleplayer just as well, only in singleplayer if you don't like it you can always mod it out, I ended up editing the hell out of any fallout/borderlands game i got my hands on to skip to max level and start the first playthrough on the hardest difficulty and never regretted it and had a real blast every time, there's nothing to be said for the leveling slog in my opinion but that's just a crutch to artificially extend a game's duration.

 

[Beemann]

@Vladplaya you can get away with trash AI if you have complimentary roles. Doom and Serious Sam are good examples of this. Enemy behaviour is very simplistic in both, but the challenge comes from managing combinations of enemies that have different and sometimes contradictory counters

@Bl4ckhunter vertical progression is best when used as a sort of resource or earned advantage. Think about how the overall strength of your base increases in an RTS, and how the journey there is as important (if not moreso) than the end result. The best RPGs focus on this aspect moreso than grind for the sake of grind (and in some cases, as with Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song, grinding actually makes you weaker, whereas completing quests and treating your playthrough like a journey rather than a sports montage will make you stronger)

 

[SSH83]

Because most people get tired of the treadmill and they hop off. Of course, many people (as WoW stands as testament to) will stay on that treadmill forever, but... we would not be wanting something like Ember if we're one of those people.

Also another thing. Why do you think GameFreaks keep making brand new pokemons? That's horizontal progression. Without it, Pokemon would suffer similar fate to Digimon and Monster Rancher.

 

[Bl4ckhunter]

@Bl4ckhunter vertical progression is best when used as a sort of resource or earned advantage. Think about how the overall strength of your base increases in an RTS, and how the journey there is as important (if not moreso) than the end result. The best RPGs focus on this aspect moreso than grind for the sake of grind (and in some cases, as with Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song, grinding actually makes you weaker, whereas completing quests and treating your playthrough like a journey rather than a sports montage will make you stronger)

The issue is not exactly the vertical progression itself, it's having to do the same thing over and over again, if i get to the end of the game by playing the game that's not an issue but if i end up having to run the same £$%& dungeon 25x times or needing X item with a 0.5% drop chance to progress then we do have an issue (mainly an issue of me bursting a blood vessel and smashing the keyboard cursing).
What can i say, i went through leveling to character to 70 in a shitty korean MMO once (The local version of ace online, where you had to grind in secluded story mission instances otherwise, i kid you not, you had to compete with other people to grind and call spots) and devenloped heavy intolerance to levels and XP mechanics, the only reason i stuck around with firefall after they went back to levels was that i ended up being grandfathered to max level in like three quarters of the frames and the grind wasn't too horrible back then.