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Why the current level system is not good

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Velvet:

--- Quote from: GeoRmr on May 17, 2014, 07:18:53 am ---If this were the system you may as well display the number of matches a player has played rather than a level. Without the current achievement system I think we will see a decrease in the number of mobulas, squids, spires; and as the xp system is purely derived from wins, more frequent lobby stacking.

--- End quote ---
Honestly I don't think achievements deserve much credit for ship variety - at least in its positive form. Pretty much every enjoyable mobula, squid or spire I see is flown by someone who likes that ship and is good at it. The ships where it's flown because the pilot is doing it for an achievement and/or doesn't know what they're getting into detract from my game experience, I don't know about yours.
GOIO has a joy in its variety but that is something in itself. It doesn't need people to be incentivised to discover it, it IS the incentive. It's pointless, it even deprecates from that variety, to push players towards specific loadouts. It's awesome that there's a huge choice, you can fly one of many different ships and then from there discover an endless depth of potential strategy and hilarity through guns, tactics, crew loadouts, your ally's ship and composition, playing on different maps... pushing players to sample the variety in little pieces, to give up their freedom to choose in order to maximise their progression is, in my opinion, not a positive effect.

I did actually address your concern about lobby stacking. Matchmaking is coming. Lobby stacking won't be a thing - or if it is, players will have no choice or ability to control it so it's irrelevant whether or not the XP encourages stacked lobbies. Because it's impossible to intentionally create a stacked lobby. Even if we ignore matchmaking, I'm sure it's not beyond Muse to build a system to gauge the "difficulty" of a lobby/team to decide XP rewards. simply averaging the levels of players on each team and multiplying winner's XP by the ratio of Loser:Winner, while rough, would be effective enough to make stacking generally unrewarding.

As for Dementio's argument... achievements don't enable you to do anything. They encourage you to do things. Don't suggest that players wouldn't try unusual builds or tactics without achievements because that's simply not true. I think imagination and seeing other peoples' strategies are far more important in creating new and interesting situations.
However the unfortunate case with achievements is that the rigid, linear structure of the achievements paths means that players are encouraged to play in specific ways, before they are ready to try such a strategy, or when such a strategy is plain BS (eg. gunner with a Mallet or gunner light flak achieves).

You don't NEED to level up, no. However you don't NEED to play the game, or NEED to do any of the many things that you choose to do in your life. It's all a matter of encouragement. Hunger encourages rather than forces eating, however it's widely acknowledged that people aren't just going to ignore hunger. The desire to level up, to find some way of progression within the game, to acquire a nice number by your name that stands as an instant and clear testament to your experience... yes, it's a much lesser force than hunger. However it's evidently pretty important to a great number of people so I think it stands that it shouldn't be just dismissed. It's not at all a case of "Yes the system has some weird consequences but you don't NEED to level up so it's fine". We can't ignore the significance of the levelling system, its importance and power has to be acknowledged and I think it would be a great benefit to the game and its community if that force was harnessed for good rather than left in its current sorry state.

I think the core, greatest problem of the achievement based levelling is its inherent selfishness. In an XP based system, a victory would result in a benefit for the whole team - your teamwork has achieved mutual gain. I've already explained how I feel this would also encourage players to discover the importance of teamwork sooner as it is by far the strongest way of playing to win. In the current achievement based system, at best, a player quietly and privately finds a ship that suits the requirements of their achievement and gets to work. At worst, the player will demand changes to the ship or make choices for their own loadout that reduce their team's efficiency, refusing to co-operate with other players because they won't progress if they do. This is a really bad thing in such a teamwork based  game. I feel everything should be done to encourage teamwork and intuitively get across to new players the most fun and effective way to play the game whereas right now the level system, such a key motivator for some people, is optimised to be entirely divisive in nature.

The fact of most achievements being no fun, while in my opinion entirely true and yet another reason to scrap the whole system, is nothing like as important as the role of the levelling system in influencing how people play the game.

JaegerDelta:
are we doing this again?

i think you guys are looking at the levels from the wrong angle. they are not your rank, they are not an indicator of skill, they are infact an indicator of renown within the world.  as you preform more and more amazing feats of skill, word of your name spreads in the world, and you "level up"

this is reflected in how the unlocks are handled and even in how the community treats levels.

you only unlock cosmetic items, those cosmetic items are things you have collected in your travels, perhaps given by greatfull people you have helped or looted from towns you have raided. a "higher level" person, i.e. someone who has performed more amazing feats has clearly spent more time traveling and therefor has more cosmetic items.

as far as how people treat levels in game. they are taken as a mark of experience and skill; high levels are assumed to be good, while low levels are assumed to not know what they are doing untill they prove themselves.  Is this not how a famous person, regardless of actual skill, would be treated in the game world?  their actions have spread around the world and their reputation precedes them.  someone not as famous, lower level, would not have that same reputation and thusly assumed to be just an average joe untill they show their skill. 

with no unlocks that affect gameplay being a part of leveling up, an achievement based system is the only way a level system makes sense at all. you just gotta get your heads out of cod land.

furthermore, i think you are overestimating the segment of the population for whom leveling up is a main motivator.  secondary or tertiary sure, or they want a certain unlock so they have to level up to obtain it. but to have leveling up be THE reason they are playing the game, i just find it hard to believe that is a very large segment of any game.

Velvet:

--- Quote ---furthermore, i think you are overestimating the segment of the population for whom leveling up is a main motivator.  secondary or tertiary sure, or they want a certain unlock so they have to level up to obtain it. but to have leveling up be THE reason they are playing the game, i just find it hard to believe that is a very large segment of any game.
--- End quote ---

I'm not suggesting that. I'm suggesting that the levelling system is an influence, not necessarily the main motivator - and that currently the way it is designed the influence is neative.

CoD is not by any means the only game to utilise an XP based levelling system. Same way 3D graphics are used in CoD - it doesn't mean 3D graphics should only be used in shallow CoD clones.

I don't think supposed "realism" is particularly important in game design and I strongly disagree with your contention that a player's level is considered to have anything to do with their fictional standing within the game world - particularly since it's been stated Adventure Mode will have a different levelling system. But to continue the idea, I think people would be more impressed if a pilot has won 1000 evenly matched battles than if said pilot has fought a few impractical battles at extreme range and got some fancy but inefficient kills against novice pilots with a minelauncher. If you care about lore plausibility, an XP system is a huge step up from completing a miscellaneous set of arbitrary tasks.

the heart of my point is that the achievements don't add a lot to the game and possibly take something away. Do people disagree that encouraging people to win would encourage them to discover that teamwork is the best way to play the game? cause I seriously can't believe that people could think that more teamplay for new players is bad thing, or less valuable than the purported increase in ship/loadout variety caused by achievements.

Omniraptor:
Adding extrisnic motivations for playing the game is just bad design. The way to make people try new tools is to make them fun to play, instead of showing them a carrot on a stick. We didn't have this problem before- blame the idiotic in-game popup window, one of the worst UI decisions muse has made in recent history. The worst part is that they mostly reward you for individual actions instead of teamwork.

The achievements were bad even before they started getting shoved in people's faces, but now people who otherwise wouldn't care about leveling do stupid un-fun things for stupid un-fun reasons. I actively resist leveling and achievement farming, and even I get distracted by the popups. Achievements used to be a small, semi-hidden part of the game that only a few people cared about and actively worked towards. They were still bad and un-fun, but until the in-game achievement window was added the effect was small. Now everybody has a direct on-screen incentive to act selfishly.

personally I would scrap the current leveling system, and replace with one based solely on wins against teams of equal or higher level. Specifically, everyone has a number of xp-points. If your individual number of xp-points is less than or equal to the enemy's team average xp-points, you gain an xp-point when you win a match against them. You never lose xp-points.

This system is dead-simple, easy to understand, promotes teamwork, prevents team stacking/farming n00bs. Sure, the rate of leveling slows down as you run out of high-level people to play against, but that just encourages you to participate in tournaments.

JaegerDelta:

--- Quote from: Velvet on May 17, 2014, 02:09:20 pm ---CoD is not by any means the only game to utilise an XP based levelling system. Same way 3D graphics are used in CoD - it doesn't mean 3D graphics should only be used in shallow CoD clones.

--- End quote ---

do you have to scare some crows away from your crops? why did you build this straw man?

no where did imply that cod is the only game with an xp based leveling system.

look, whether you agree with the renown approach or not, the fact remains that an xp based system is inappropriate for this game as there is no possibility for progression everything that matters in the game is already available to everyone. you will just have arbitrary numbers increasing until they reset to zero and start increasing again. it will be a measure of playtime more than anything else.  If an xp system is inappropriate then you have to use something else or not have a leveling system at all.

With the achievement system already built into the game and people already investing their time into it, there is no way to get rid of it without pissing people off. its here to stay in skirmish, thats just how it is. i personally dont care about the achievements either, but i dont think its as big of a problem as you guys are presenting it as, i very rarely run into anyone that is not willing to work together in favor of doing their achievement.

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