Info > Feedback and Suggestions

Why the current level system is not good

(1/10) > >>

SeraphZ:
Hypothetical situation:
I'm an Engi on Dunes in the middle of a battle, and our hull armor is just about to go down. I hit Q and see 'Rebuild 30 Hull Armor on Dunes 29/30'. Rebuild Hull Armor... not repair... repairing this will do me no good. But if I let it get destroyed first... then I could level up.

While ideally a player would say "I'm sure this will be destroyed soon enough" and repair instead of rebuild but it's an issue of motivation. As a game designer you never want to motivate your players to not do the right thing.

I do appreciate that the game doesn't have a boring simple XP system. I really like the idea of leveling being for what you do in game instead of just playing. But it only supports achievement hunting, instead of playing the game because it's fun, which is a shame. Take care, I really do like the game a lot.

Squidslinger Gilder:
You haven't seen nothing yet till you get past level 10. Heck level 15 achievements literally cannot be done without tons of hours spent for just the right moment to happen, or arranged farming. All the 15 pilots you see in game pretty much had to do that to hit 15. Heck I had to arrange farming on Firnfeld and I think one other.

Crafeksterty:
They become crazy. And for new players arent a good thing at all. They give you rewards though.

Velvet:
xp level system would be brilliant imo and not at all boring. Instead of getting rewarded for some inane tasks that are detrimental to you and your team's enjoyment of the game you are instead getting rewarded for playing to win - which has the indirect effect of encouraging teamwork, because that is by far the surest way of achieving victory. Levelling systems, like it or not, are important to many players and play a role in motivating them to continue to play a game and are influential in how they play that game as many people try to level as fast as possible.

Currently the levelling system encourages players to play selfishly, to complete their own set of tasks which often means playing in a way that is detrimental to their team's enjoyment of the game. It forces you to shape the environment of a match to suit the needs of your own personal set of achievements - coming into conflict with other players who want to change the environment to suit their own achievement requirements or who want to have fun.

Whereas an XP system would reward players for two simple things - playing the game, and winning matches. It's a well known fact that, at least as far as pub matches go, the deciding factor is pretty much always teamwork; both on ship and ship to ship. Which means to win matches to maximise XP gain, players need to work together as a team. So they are playing the game as I can only imagine it was envisaged, co-operating to achieve mutual success rather than manipulating the situation to maximise personal gain.

I think most issues with regards to the applicability of an XP system to GOIO have pretty simple solutions. Yes, it'd be pretty rough as there's no good way to track a player's individual contribution. But that's fine - you reward players as a team, because they achieved as a team. Sometimes there will be dead weight who get XP for other players' work.. and sometimes there will be great players who are dragged down by a bad team. But on the whole it should even out.
Measuring the difficulty, and XP value of a match, would also be kind of tricky. But once matchmaking is implemented, it could be assumed that every match is basically equally matched and that therefore the XP value of each match is the same. Although this wouldn't be universally true, if the matchmaking system is any good it will even out; since a good matchmaking system will on average produce balanced matches. Averages are pretty important here; XP rewards would always be on occasion more or less than deserved - but afaik that's pretty normal in any game and it always holds that in a good system, things even out in the bigger picture.

SeraphZ:
Velvet I think you're absolutely right - a normal XP system is the only thing that motivates players appropriately.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page