Sierra Kilo

A friend of mine paid an online service to play his character on World of Warcraft. He paid them to gain 11 levels. When I asked why, he said, “…the game’s fun, but I was behind.” “But there shouldn’t be a ‘behind’,” I said. His answer: “You’ve got to have ‘aheads’ and ‘behinds’ or you don’t have a sense of accomplishment.”

While I agree that you need to have a sense of accomplishment, I wholeheartedly disagree with the methods that have been used to-date. This is a very personal subject for me because when I play online games, I am always “behind” my friends. A small part is my play style, but the largest part is because I don’t invest the same amount of time at the same pace.

When I played WoW, I would read through the quests. Maybe I’m more of a roleplayer than I thought, but it doesn’t make sense to power through the game when there’s not and end-game goal. Maybe I just like the journey more than the destination, who knows. My point is that just because I choose to play differently shouldn’t keep me from playing with my friends. Restricting content based on levels is a poor way to design a roleplaying game. If your level is too low, the content isn’t even available to you. If your level is too high, you don’t get rewarded for your efforts. So, it forces player groups to play at the same pace. This harms the social aspect of the game. Take MySpace, for example. If once you got 5 friends, anybody with less than 5 friends couldn’t view your page, how well would MySpace do as a social networking site?

So we don’t restrict content by level. What’s stopping a first time player from wandering into a dragon’s cave and getting slaughtered? Well, the best option would be location. The “high-level” content shouldn’t be close to the “low-level” content. Star Wars Galaxies did a good job with this concept. Early in the game’s life, you had to run a long way to get to the more difficult missions and creatures. Not only that, but shuttle costs prohibited new players from even reaching the “high-level” planets. And if they did get to one of those planets, they still had to run a long distance because the shuttle port was located in a “low-level” area.

So, content is seperated by location instead of levels. There’s still nothing to keep a new player from running through increasingly more difficult content to reach the dragon’s lair, entering, and dying on the spot. This is where you leave it up to common sense. You’ll need to make character death a costly event. If character death requires the player to buy new equipment or re-train skills, common sense should keep the player from straying too far from his level of difficulty. A system of incapacitation would be a good warning for players who venture too far into difficult areas. Players who ignore the warnings pay the price. It’s as simple as that. Most players are old enough to understand risk vs. reward. Plus, this offers more of a challenge for those who want it.

So, how do we determine difficulty? Well, since the character system in my game would be skill-based, the non-player characters would be bound by the same rules. Each would have an archetype (collection of skills) and an experience level. The experience level simply means that the NPC is equivalent to a player with the same skills and level of training. For example, a soldier archetype could have a sword skill of 50%. That means that he is equivalent to a player with a sword skill of 50%. Simple. They’ll both have the same chance to hit and have the same attacks. A wizard character might not have a 50% sword skill, but he might have a 50% spellcasting skill which gives him the same advantage. Or, the character could have a 25% sword skill and a 25% spellcasting skill. He has less of a chance to hit, but more options as to how to attack. He could cast a spell to slow the attacker’s movements, giving them the same advantage with swords. This is not necessarily bound to combat, though. Locks could get more and more difficult to pick, but would give higher rewards. The ground might get more and more difficult to farm, but would bear more (quantity or quality) crop. The same would be true of mining ore, skinning animals, etc.

So, the higher the risk, the higher the reward. But what about the new player who is friends with the seasoned veteran? How can they play together? It’s a game of averages, really. Say the newbie’s sword skill is 10% and the veteran’s sword skill is 90%. Their average is 50%. This means that combined, they will hit an enemy 50% of the time. 90% of the damage will be done by the veteran, 10% by the newbie. So, how do the players gain a sense of accomplishment? After all, the enemy will only hit 50% of the time, so how will the veteran be challenged? Well, the number of combatants could be increased. After all, seeing your buddy getting beat up by two guys, you’d want to jump in and lend a hand, right? So, the content scales based on the size of the group. The average may be 50%, but the total is 100%. So, instead of one enemy with a skill of 50%, there will be two enemies at that level. The player doing the most damage will get most of the attention, of course. That will ensure that the newbie doesn’t get slain immediately.

It’s all about balance. Some say that balance is impossible. True balance might be impossible, but you can get in the neighborhood fairly easily. The scales might be tipped in one direction or the other sometimes, but that’s what makes it fun. Will it be a turkey shoot or a beat down?

This concept isn’t specific to monetary rewards, either. In a system where characters improve their skills by use, they will be rewarded with better skills. As skills improve, they are able to take on more difficult challenges. They can now reach the summit of the mountain to fight the dragon. They can now reach the fertile lands and build their home. They can now reach the mithril caves and mine the ore to forge a more powerful sword. So, the sense of accomplishment is still there. Plus, it allows friends to adventure together regardless of level. There are still some holes that need to be filled, but the idea is sound.