Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Advancement systems, at least in the vast majority of MMORPGs, are a piece of the core element that makes up our favorite past time. The thrill of announcing "Ding!" to your guildmates hasn't dwindled in the years since its origination in EQ, and every mainstream MMO to date has had some form of progression.

Therefore, the selection of a game's advancement system comes with a great deal of pressure behind it.  Development teams need to pin down exactly how players are going to be progressing in the early stages of pre-production, and so I thought it would be appropriate to ask our gathered panelists to give us their reasoning behind why they selected their particular advancement systems and why it was appropriate for their title.

Of course, all of the answers rang with a similar sort of tonality that stated, "This is the game that we're making, and this was the advancement path that fit that our product." It seems like most of the designers had a specific idea or setting in mind, and thus their core systems fell in place around the product. Fallen Earth's lead game designer, Lee Hammock, was the first to chime in with this notion.

"On a very basic level one of the goals of Fallen Earth was providing players with choices," Hammock said. "We have a huge world that players can explore, ten crafting skills they can pursue, and six factions to ally with (and change their allegiance) among other features, so a classless system seemed the logical extension of that overall design philosophy.  Also the post-apocalyptic genre does not have the strong archetypes that the European fantasy tradition or the fantasy RPG ancestors of most MMOs do (wizard, warrior, rogue, etc.). Instead you’ve got more multi-skilled characters that fit into narrow roles less easily."  

The Bulgaria-based Earthrise's CEO Atanas Atanasov had a - not surprisingly - very similar answer. Although Fallen Earth and Earthrise are completely different games, their pseudo-futuristic, reticule-based combat systems almost appear to lean more heavily towards skill-based, open option systems.

"The skill-based system's particular strength is in the freedom of choice and the versatility of the character," Atanasov commented. "In level-based games, players often feel confined within set archetypes and their only choice is to accept it or not; they cannot define their own character around their own actions. While developing Earthrise, we have decided to encourage our players to experiment with all available options and to evolve their character as their play style changes over time. One of the greatest benefits of skill-based advancement is that we never run in a situation where the player may not like the direction their character is moving towards and can always change it. "

On the other hand, NetDevil's Jumpgate Evolution and ArenaNet's Guild Wars are games that focus on level-based gameplay, but both sets of development teams seemed eager to point out the variety of achievements players can explore while they're leveling or after they've reached the level cap.

The folks over at ArenaNet had a very interesting take on the dilemma, which is what you'd expect from a team that put together one of the most unique and innovative titles on the MMO era. Here's what Isaiah Cartwright had to say about their initial development strategy:

"When making games for a large number of players with different play styles, it’s important to make sure your advancement route has plenty of reward opportunities for all," Cartwright answered. "In Guild Wars, we tried to break the mold a little by having the power curve cap quickly, so high-level PvE and PvP players could focus on improving their skills over time rather than increasing their character’s power over time. In addition to high-level PvP and PvE, we offered many other ways to play the game and feel rewarded—collections, titles, weapon and armor skins, story completion, lore. We played around with different styles and different ways of doing what we did in Guild Wars, but all of our ideas were very different from the normal level-based system."

Among all the developers, it seems like allowing for player choice is an important aspect to their development philosophies, although the importance of those player decisions seems to be something that varies from studio to studio. Those that give players the option to choose their own skills rather than simply setting them on a level-based appear to have the belief that giving players the options to determine their own future - for better or worse - is the correct course to take.

However, studios like NetDevil are sticking with the leveling formula to keep their core advancement system simple. Hermann Peterscheck, producer for Jumpgate Evolution, is always vocal about what he thinks are the correct and incorrect ways to approach game development, and he weighed in on this topic.

"We chose [a level-based system] because we thought it best fit with the kind of game we're making," he explained. "It really is that simple. I think it's a bit silly when developers think about unique advancement strategies outside of what makes sense for the game. I think that we should focus on making a great game and that they systems and features should support the game, not the other way around. That being said, it's fun to try new things and see where it leads and I think that this is a natural impulse in creative people; so as there is an increase in parity there is pressure for diversification. Level advancement is easy to understand and well established so it has the advantage of not requiring much explanation. We started with a level based system and never had any reason to change it. That being said we have lots of alternate advancement methods in the game such as licenses, crafting, faction ratings and so on. What we encountered is that people need to feel like they are progressing as much as possible. Level is just a nice easy way to show that."

Finally, we heard from the folks at EVE Online, specifically Game Designer Matt “CCP Greyscale” Woodward, who really took his time with each question and cogitated on all possible aspects of our questions.

"I’m not in a position to comment on the exact reasoning behind the original decision, although it’s reasonably public knowledge that there were a lot of UO players involved in EVE’s gestation – the skill-driven system we have today may owe something to that fact!" he answered. "That said, EVE’s system hardly represents a “standard” implementation of a skill-driven progression system, with the biggest departure from the norm being the real-time skill advancement. That is to say, once you select which skill you want to advance, it continues to improve at a set rate per day until it either reaches the next level or you switch to a different skill.

"This delivers several advantages over other skill-driven systems," Matt continued. "For example, by removing the ability to affect your progression rate, we also remove the compulsion to constantly work to maximize that rate, which in turn frees you up to do what you want to do rather than what will maximize your progression – but without also losing the sticking power you get from persistent progression systems. It also lets us bypass some persistent issues of use-based skill systems, such as the encouragement of repeating mindless tasks to progress and the macros that inevitably follow. As with all systems, it has drawbacks too – it’s an oft-repeated maxim that EVE’s system means newer players can never compete fairly with veterans, and while this is largely untrue (due to the relatively small number of skills applicable in any given situation and the relatively low cap on progression in a given skill) it’s a perception we have to work against constantly."

So which do the players really prefer? Among our polled gamers, there didn't seem to be a major consensus, although the major set of thinking - and I paraphrase - that there just hasn't been any major contenders in the skill-based advancement category.