The time I found out I don't like leveling in games

[videogamestashbox.com]

First off the title is admittedly a bit misleading, it's not so much that I "dislike" leveling in games it's just that I don't view it as abstractly / inherently good outside of any given context.

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This hit me back when I used to play Final Fantasy 11 ...fantastic game btw. I would venture around get into all kinds of situations grind out a level or two and just generally do me.

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Then one day I got on an air ship and traveled to a jungle heading for a new leveling spot.

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In the port town they said hey you have to goto the volcano, all visitors to the island really should visit the volcano. I'm thinking hey if the volcano is "da spot" out here, I'll go. Soon as I walked out of town I found that, while the immediate foes were fine ...for me to follow the story and get to where I needed to go I would have to grind out multiple levels.

Now upto this point I had been banging out levels from time to time at my whim, but levels never kept me from traveling anywhere I wanted. Then it hit me that this situation is a ridiculous piece of game design or rather I personally don't care for this type of design. Realization that there exist a context in which I don't like leveling caused me to look back on why I ever liked it in the first place.


What could lead me to like leveling in one case but not in another?

Thinking about it for awhile lead me to the position that... it's not so much leveling that I liked in and of it self but the constant gaining of new abilities as you leveled and the ability to find a good spot then level / power up your character at any point by playing a certain section or fighting a certain enemy over and over. Basically level systems allow you the freedom to augment your character at your will as oppose to having to wait until you reach a developer designated location for you to receive an ability. That said as you organically make your way through the games story you naturally get stronger without any extra work, leveling "just happens" in the back ground. You only focus on it for strategic moves.


So what happened with final fantasy 11?(basically all MMOs)

You aren't able to organically move through the games story and it's locals. Everything has to arbitrarily / artificially stop so that you can gain the ability to go further. This is as opposed to me already being strong enough to proceed by virtue of having made it this far. It's kinda like a weird throughput problem where there isn't necessarily a bottle neck but an oversize reservoir. There isn't enough exp coming in from the foes in one area to fill and exit the player level "reservoir" by the time the player makes it to the next harder set of foes. This doesn't happen normally in regular RPG games.


What I'd like to see in MMO games instead

Let the player reasonably go anywhere the story takes them and fight anything. Instead of the player leveling let the players town, faction, etc. do the leveling based on the player(s) actions / missions completed. The player can get new gear, items, abilities, and missions based on the state of those town/faction levels. Include a "warm up" system that acts like a leveling system in most RPG games I.E. you organically get strong enough for the next segment as you get farther afield(with the option not necessity to stop & train your character). Then let your character "cool down" when you make it back to a town / rest spot.

I would much more prefer something like that to having to stop and grind out levels before I go further.

 

[Ciggavelli]

Grinding is a part of the MMO marketing strategy. Look at WoW. They made it hard to level up quickly, because they wanted you to keep paying every month.

I hate that kind of grinding. That's when I look online for farming spots.

But grinding in something like Borderlands 2 is actually fun. You want those special abilities and weapons. I grinded and farmed for 300 hours on that game and enjoyed all of it

RPG grinding is inherent in the genre though. I liked how Witcher 3 did the leveling actually. You got XP from completing side quests and missions, not from killing thousands of enemies. I think more RPGs should take that approach to leveling. The arbitrary grinding in MMOs is not fun for me either.

 

[Rarely-Wrong Liggins]

I need you to go to Skull Warrior village and slay the Three Headed Skull warriors therein. Bring back ten skull warrior skulls as proof.

*Defeats 50 three headed skull warriors, still needs seven more skulls*

 

[ORDER_66]

God I hate MMO's....

Destiny & The Division can Both

 

[roxxthe96er]

FF11 the goat MMO... I remember playing that shyt on ps2 all day man

 

[666 ReVeNGe 666]

Grinding is a part of the MMO marketing strategy. Look at WoW. They made it hard to level up quickly, because they wanted you to keep paying every month.

I hate that kind of grinding. That's when I look online for farming spots.

But grinding in something like Borderlands 2 is actually fun. You want those special abilities and weapons. I grinded and farmed for 300 hours on that game and enjoyed all of it

RPG grinding is inherent in the genre though. I liked how Witcher 3 did the leveling actually. You got XP from completing side quests and missions, not from killing thousands of enemies. I think more RPGs should take that approach to leveling. The arbitrary grinding in MMOs is not fun for me either.

I agree I thought The Witcher 3 did a great job and it made it actually fun to level up

 

[Zebruh]

God I hate MMO's....

Destiny & The Division can Both

 

[It is a mystery]

I'm not the biggest fan of mmos, but calling the division an mmo...

 

[itsyoung!!]

I need you to go to Skull Warrior village and slay the Three Headed Skull warriors therein. Bring back ten skull warrior skulls as proof.

*Defeats 50 three headed skull warriors, still needs seven more skulls*

thats the old MMO way where it was like a 10% chance to drop the quest items even though it was in the mob you were killing..

"gather 10 zombie livers from zombie dogs" *kills 100 zombie dogs, has 9 livers*

thats old way though, long passed now and now if its a quest like that, its pretty much 100% drop rate

God I hate MMO's....

Destiny & The Division can Both

nothing MMO about either.

Grinding is a part of the MMO marketing strategy. Look at WoW. They made it hard to level up quickly, because they wanted you to keep paying every month.

I hate that kind of grinding. That's when I look online for farming spots.

But grinding in something like Borderlands 2 is actually fun. You want those special abilities and weapons. I grinded and farmed for 300 hours on that game and enjoyed all of it

RPG grinding is inherent in the genre though. I liked how Witcher 3 did the leveling actually. You got XP from completing side quests and missions, not from killing thousands of enemies. I think more RPGs should take that approach to leveling. The arbitrary grinding in MMOs is not fun for me either.

its called the "Carrot on a stick" - always a motive to keep playing. Leveling is a small part of that, but for the casual crowd maybe a big part. But if theres no motive to log in or play, then defeats the purpose of the game I miss it

 

[videogamestashbox.com]

Grinding is a part of the MMO marketing strategy. Look at WoW. They made it hard to level up quickly, because they wanted you to keep paying every month.

I hate that kind of grinding. That's when I look online for farming spots.

But grinding in something like Borderlands 2 is actually fun. You want those special abilities and weapons. I grinded and farmed for 300 hours on that game and enjoyed all of it

RPG grinding is inherent in the genre though. I liked how Witcher 3 did the leveling actually. You got XP from completing side quests and missions, not from killing thousands of enemies. I think more RPGs should take that approach to leveling. The arbitrary grinding in MMOs is not fun for me either.

Grinding in and of it self isn't the point of contention. My concern is having to stop mid adventure/story to grind out levels so that you are strong enough to continue. As mentioned above if grinding is in the game ....fine, but let it be to level your city, faction, guild, etc. I want to be able to move anywhere the story takes me. Simply let the stories / scenarios available be dynamically dependent on the state of your city, faction, guild, etc. then you "grind" to alter it's state.

Examples:
In strategy games the individual characters can go where ever on the map they want at any time. But they are limited in their gear based on the state of their home town. The grind is to level the town not any individual troop.

Example 2:
Another odd example would be Way of the samurai series in which you don't actually level your character you level the weapons on each play through. The better the weapon the easier to survive a given scenario on subsequent play throughs. You could take a system like that and make weapon/gear levels dependent on your factions level not on fighting with that weapon as in "way of the samurai" or grinding out levels for your character as in most MMOs.

Conclusion:
...again grinding in and of it self isn't the problem. Stopping the progression of movement through the environment and story is the problem.

 

[daze23]

I feel like some times all that grinding isn't really necessary, but people do it to become over-leveled, and make the game a little easier

 

[videogamestashbox.com]

I feel like some times all that grinding isn't really necessary, but people do it to become over-leveled, and make the game a little easier

Exactly! and that's the good part about leveling ...player control over the state of their abilities.

Where MMOs go sour for me is when grinding is made mandatory to proceed to the next couple scenarios as opposed to an optional choice to OP your character a bit before moving on to the next couple scenarios.