Leveling increases grinding for next level

A level cap?

The numbers just... hurt my head.

Each level gained provides the same increase in power. Each level gained is slightly longer to accomplish than the previous. Leveling to the cap shouldn't take forever, but it should certainly take more than two days played. Don't rely on "levels" to determine the full capabilities of a character.

I think this is an unavoidable problem with leveling systems of any sort (and the same could probably be said about pretty much any stat progression system). Balancing it against time invested and power gained is going to feel wrong to someone, somewhere.

I'm a fan of linear progression though. X time invested = Y power gained, no matter how much Y you already have. This helps ease the pain of exponential time needed to gain a level, but has its own issues. Of the games that use this system in which I'm familiar, the game developers introduced monster leveling to keep enemies at a similar power to the player, which I detest. Why on Earth is that wolf now level 45 when yesterday they were all level 25?

I'm not really sure why this is necessary. I think the XP system of Final Fantasy VIII was close to what I'd aim for: it always took 1000 XP to level up, no matter what level you were. Killing enemies close to your level would give between 50 and 150 XP, depending on exactly what the enemy was. Killing weaker enemies gave less, but it would never take more than a couple hundred enemies to level up unless you were deliberately finding very weak things to kill (which was hard, as most enemies leveled with you). The problem with the game was that enemies leveled with the player, which as I said, I hate.

Stat progression in FFVIII was very strange, and I wouldn't recommend using it in any other game. Leveling up didn't do much actually (which is why some players played through the game without doing so, it made it easier because enemies were weaker), and most of your stats came from binding magic to them. You could have max stats at level 1 if you tried, and enemies would be crushed under your attacks in an instant. It was tremendously abusable.


Ok, rambling aside, how about something like this?

If you have a straight level = power system, it takes a set amount of XP to level up. Killing things close to your level gives X XP, so grinding takes about the same amount of time no matter what level you are. Gaining a level gives the same benefit at level 30 as it does at 2, adding the same amount of stats. Enemies are balanced for your expected level when you encounter them.

If you have an alternate state progression system (i.e. levels of strength, HP, whatever), then you do the same thing. You would encourage players to diversify their progression by keeping enemies from leveling with them, since eventually they will get diminishing returns on improving a stat. If you can kill all the enemies in an area in 1 hit, there's no point in improving damage any more.

your solution # 1 is basically like... saying each level takes 100 xp, and each kill nets you 1 xp. Why won't you do that instead, and make weaker enemies return no hp? that removes a lot of the complexity.
Feels to me like you've had too much WoW in you ;)

Think about it, the reason most rpg players quit a game after finishing its story, is because they "maxed" their character and there isn't anything else to do.
If you could continue leveling forever, with no caps, they will never get bored. However this will happen if the stats don't start to converge to a certain number.
If it takes 6 months to double my overall power then chances is that the player will give up the level grind.

So what we need is a controlled environment, where :
1) punishment : you cant kill target enemy if you arent level X.
2) motivation : Achieving level Y allows you to kill enemy X, however there is now enemy X2 to force to continue leveling.

The motivation part must happen in a reasonable amount of time that is always constant, e.g 1 day to reach this amount of power.

@Telgin
Yes its good to level at a guaranteed pace, but since stats per level are linear and you get the same amount per level, it means that the time needed to double your overall power will increase as time passes.
For example lets say i played for 8 months and i am level 5400, in 2 days i will go to level 5520. Total power increase 0.022% in 2 days.
Now lets say i am level 54000, in 2 days i will go to level 54120. Total power increase 0.0022%

Thus it cannot achieve the motivation aspect since the numbers "converge".

@Orymus
Basically what i meant with 1 is the following :
My lv 2304 player will gain 40-50 levels per enemy kill so that he reaches double potential at the set amount of expected time.


Ideas :
1) Maybe player chooses enemy level at stage start ?

Think about it, the reason most rpg players quit a game after finishing its story, is because they "maxed" their character and there isn't anything else to do.
If you could continue leveling forever, with no caps, they will never get bored. However this will happen if the stats don't start to converge to a certain number.
If it takes 6 months to double my overall power then chances is that the player will give up the level grind.

So what we need is a controlled environment, where :
1) punishment : you cant kill target enemy if you arent level X.
2) motivation : Achieving level Y allows you to kill enemy X, however there is now enemy X2 to force to continue leveling.

The motivation part must happen in a reasonable amount of time that is always constant, e.g 1 day to reach this amount of power.

@Telgin
Yes its good to level at a guaranteed pace, but since stats per level are linear and you get the same amount per level, it means that the time needed to double your overall power will increase as time passes.
For example lets say i played for 8 months and i am level 5400, in 2 days i will go to level 5520. Total power increase 0.022% in 2 days.
Now lets say i am level 54000, in 2 days i will go to level 54120. Total power increase 0.0022%

Thus it cannot achieve the motivation aspect since the numbers "converge".

@Orymus
Basically what i meant with 1 is the following :
My lv 2304 player will gain 40-50 levels per enemy kill so that he reaches double potential at the set amount of expected time.


Ideas :
1) Maybe player chooses enemy level at stage start ?

I saw what I put in bold and your thought process is extremely flawed. Leveling forever =/= unlimited fun. What game should EVER have 54,000 levels? Not even arcade games go that far.

Well a few things here.

For finite RPG's (A game that's meant to end, ala Final Fantasy sans 11), there's motivation beyond grinding to the next level to play. Typically there's some sort of story, or perhaps some sort of engaging mechanic that keeps the player interested in the play itself.

For MMORPG's, particularly EQ derived MMO's, the character progression is the prime motivation, or at least an inseparable aspect of motivation for play. If you want to competitively do arenas, well guess what you need to grind. Raids? Grinding. Battlegrounds? Hope you like grinding. Yeah, you can screw around in PvP on WoW for a while without high level gear and what not, but to truly be competitive there's a grinding aspect involved.

I think the issue here stems from gameplay itself in a lot of RPG's being fairly shallow or repetitive. Players do not particularly enjoy the act of playing the game, thus grinding is introduced to give a concrete goal that players can latch onto. MMO's in particular are often guilty of this as a result of their technical limitations, not always lazy design. While we'd all love the MMOFPS with 20k people on the same server providing a truly massive experience and skill based gameplay, that's not easy to execute.

Anyway, if you want grinding to be less of a pain, then you can do a couple things:

1) Rest Experience: I love this mechanic. It gives people who can only play for a little bit of time every day some extra incentive and reward without directly punishing people who can afford to play constantly.

2) Forgiving Death: This may come as a shock, but players hate dying all their own. Even if you don't put in any penalty for death, players will still avoid it due to the psychological aversion humans have to failure. Making heavy death penalties, especially those that affect your experience, are a big no no in my mind. It's just an underhanded way to force even more grinding.

3) Offloading progression into other character aspects: Ok, so maybe it does take you a while to level up. How about giving your players something else in the meantime? Look at the elements that makeup your character and see if there's a way you can bust some of those out of the leveling system so they can be dolled out an independent schedule. Loot and equipment is a good example of this. You could have bonus talents/feats that occur off-level, or skills that you purchase with some sort of currency, etc.

4) Flattening the Experience Curve: I don't like the FFVIII system, or really anything from FFVIII, so I wouldn't go with a totally flat leveling curve, but one that doesn't have an insane increase can be more accessible to players. Really, the only number that matters in any leveling system is TTNL (time to next level), and if you make sure this doesn't wildly grow out of control you'll make the grind less intense for the player.

Of course, my philosophy on grinding in general is to make grinding a tertiary incentive to playing the game. The player's primary motivation should not be to grind, it should be to play the game. I never had to grind in Call of Duty for unlocks because the act of playing the game was enjoyable in and of itself. Leveling up and getting a new piece of equipment was just gravy on an already fun experience.

(I may have got the wrong end of the stick so sorry in advance if I did)




I would never say that "most" players quit because they hit the level cap. Instead they quite because there is nothing else for them to do. Now depending on the genre those two things go hand in hand but my point is that never having a player hit the level cap doesn't mean they won't quite. If there's nothing for them to do but keep killing the same enemies over and over then i can't see a reason for the vast majority to keep playing.

I don't really see the problem you put forward. Surely the reason for such long "grinds" would be to keep the player playing said game for as long as possible, changing this formula may let the player kill said monster earlier but then what's the point of having such a system in the first place. You can simply put rewards closer together.

If you think about what the levelling system represents, the "WoW" system as you called it, makes perfect sense to me. It doesn't take long for me to become proficient at the process of stabbing someone with a knife but it takes a lot longer for me to master that process. I would also like to point out that the stats a person gains each level are not as important to the player as say the new things they can do/wear.

If your intent is to go for the classic levelling system, i.e. kill mob = exp, enough exp and gain a level which means you become more powerful, I don't think you can really improve on the basic mechanics. Instead its up to you to balance time/reward as best as possible and thus make it worth the players while to keep playing the game.

Choosing an enemy's level at the start of a stage is essentially changing the difficulty of the game (which most games currently do anyway). If it's not for the challenge but for maximum exp gain with the least hassle then you may as well choose the level for the player since they will most likely go for the most optimal.

(I could go on about theories as to which method is best depending on the situation but i think that would end up being dangerously off topic.)

Well I found that oversimplification made sense.
Rather than level, have the amount of experience points directly matter in your equations.
Damage = (insert math formula including experience as a variable).
etc.

Basically, your leveling is turned into millions of levels instead, and each matters.

Well I found that oversimplification made sense.
Rather than level, have the amount of experience points directly matter in your equations.
Damage = (insert math formula including experience as a variable).
etc.

Basically, your leveling is turned into millions of levels instead, and each matters.

Not a bad approach, but very fine incremental gains can feel unrewarding to the player. It's the whole frog in a boiling pot thing, it's often more gratifying to players to receive +20 hp after killing 20 monsters than it is to receive 1 HP per monster they kill. You're spending the same amount of time to get the same reward, but its presentation matters.

Not to say an incremental power progression can't work, it totally can, but you have to make sure the player actually feels like they're getting a reward for their effort, which is easier to accomplish with big leves.

If I were designing such a leveling system, I would determine a goal amount of time for attaining a level to take, and a goal amount of same-level monsters to be killed in that amount of time. Then I'd arrange the rest of the numbers as necessart to make every level over 15 take this same amount of time and monsters.

Who remembers "hell" levels?

They were extra rewarding once complete. A few of those can't hurt if the over all process is faster. All depends on the type of game though and I am not necessarily saying I would ever use them. I would rather add things to make a specific level more challenging rather than just making the level take longer.

I am gonna use @Orymus idea :

Battle Stat formula:

player_stats = player_level * stat_distribution
stat_distribution from [ 0, 100%].

enemy_stats = (1 + max(0, (enemy_level - player_level)) ) * enemy_level.

Lets take a look at it :
Example : player lv = 1351, enemy lv = 1351

player_stats = 1351
enemy_stats = (1 + 0 ) * 1351 = 1351. (A balanced fight)

Example 2 : player lv=1351, enemy lv = 1352

player_stats = 1351
enemy_stats = (1 + 1) * enemy_level = 2 * 1351
Which means that enemy has 2 times your stats, because he is one level higher.

Example 3: player lv = 1351, enemy lv = 2
enemy_stats = (1 + 0) * 2 = 2 stats.

Player level now matters, 1 levels is too much difference. Since 1 level doubles enemy stats.
Since player levels at constant speed, he will have the motivation to reach the next level goal, because if he doesn't he wont be able to beat the next randomly generated big bad.

Now if my thesis is right, "players only get bored when they cap their stats", then i will be able to create a game where players wont quit.

I am gonna use @Orymus idea :

Battle Stat formula:

player_stats = player_level * stat_distribution
stat_distribution from [ 0, 100%].

enemy_stats = (1 + max(0, (enemy_level - player_level)) ) * enemy_level.

Lets take a look at it :
Example : player lv = 1351, enemy lv = 1351

player_stats = 1351
enemy_stats = (1 + 0 ) * 1351 = 1351. (A balanced fight)

Example 2 : player lv=1351, enemy lv = 1352

player_stats = 1351
enemy_stats = (1 + 1) * enemy_level = 2 * 1351
Which means that enemy has 2 times your stats, because he is one level higher.

Example 3: player lv = 1351, enemy lv = 2
enemy_stats = (1 + 0) * 2 = 2 stats.

Player level now matters, 1 levels is too much difference. Since 1 level doubles enemy stats.
Since player levels at constant speed, he will have the motivation to reach the next level goal, because if he doesn't he wont be able to beat the next randomly generated big bad.

Now if my thesis is right, "players only get bored when they cap their stats", then i will be able to create a game where players wont quit.

I can already tell you that your thesis is only correct for a very small amount of the player population. A game has to be fun.

You might want to read up on the psychological aspects of game design and reward systems. For example, this older article from Gamasutra. It is not the leveling itself that is going to keep players playing. It's the rewards for playing that keep them on the hook. Gaining a level can be an example of a reward, but shouldn't be the only reward. As long as you keep the rewards on schedule, people will keep playing, no matter what the mathematical progression of your levels. Once the rewards run out or are interrupted, folks will drift away regardless of where they sit in the level progression. I think that you need to worry first about making the game fun, as people have suggested, and concentrate less on the actual mechanics of power progression. Once you have the "fun game" in place, you can iterate on the progression system and tune it to your needs. But starting with the progression system before you even have a fun game is putting the cart before the horse.

double level increase is an exteme stat gain. You will force players to grind current level content until they level up. When they do, the current level content will become instantly obsolete (way to easy).
Let's say Rift used 2x exponential gain. Your total power at lvl 1 is 1. Your total power at lvl 50 would be: [font="Arial"]1125899906842624[/font],

Let's say you improve power by 1.10 per level. At level 50 you would be 117.4 times more powerful than a lvl 1 player.

Actually exponential gain is alrady quite high. In Rift, my character got totally owned by a +6 lvl mob. Considering I'm usually able to beat 2 mobs my own level,
it's not unreasonable to say that the +6 mob is 3 times stronger than a similar lvl mob (or more). This would indicate an growth of 20% per level. Or power = 1.20^lvl.

I believe this is a very huge stat gain, yet it fails to make you feel like you're getting powerful`? Why?
Like most other mmorpg's you play in a certain region designatet for your area. You may be much stronger than a low level player, and you may easily kill low level mobs, but you're always fighting against similar level mobs. The appearance of high level mobs may be slightly more fearsome, but this is often very minor. Your power has little to no impact on gameplay, it's just that you're moving on to a new region.
The regions is the major issue here. High level players and low level players needs to become less separated. Having a high level player 100 times more powerful than a low level player, is to extreme though. It breaks immersion and gameplay. If you flatten the levelling curve you open up more possibilities. Consider a large scale open world pvp battleground.
You're supposed to have a minimum of players from the different tiers, but bots will replace those missing, to make both sides more balanced, but still give a slight advantage for having more players. Make this batlteground setup quite rewarding, /especially for low level players).

In a single player rpg. Make an open world, where more powerful enemies can be found here and there. In the start you're a nobody, and you get beat up by all, except monsters along the roeads. Once you level up you can explore more and more of the world. It's very satisfying to go back later and kill an enemy you couldn't take before. Gothic 2 is a good example there. Here you should definitely not have a to potent stat gain.

Now if my thesis is right, "players only get bored when they cap their stats", then i will be able to create a game where players wont quit.

So, you're leaving out all the players who quit before max level? A fairly large percent of players quit whenever they feel the game has gotten too slow or repetitive, regardless of how many more levels they could advance. Who cares about killing 100 blue wolves to gain a level if the result is just that you have to kill 120 red wolves? Aside from wanting to get more kickass at combat people play to explore, collect, and customize, so if you want to keep players playing you have to recognize that they want to do these things by providing them as goals and/or rewards.

...grind-o-rama...

Player level now matters, 1 levels is too much difference. Since 1 level doubles enemy stats.
Since player levels at constant speed, he will have the motivation to reach the next level goal, because if he doesn't he wont be able to beat the next randomly generated big bad.

Now if my thesis is right, "players only get bored when they cap their stats", then i will be able to create a game where players wont quit.

Knock yourself out, but there's already a game that does that. You take a calculator and hit "+1+. Then you do that over and over again, and eventually you will hit the largest number the calculator can display. Imagine how long the fun would last on a TI-89! Of course, once you hit that highest number, the fun's over-- but not before, right?


Others have already addressed this pretty well, but grinding is generally something people tolerate rather than seek. It's what you have to do to get the next thing in the game: the next area, the next cool equipment set, the next exciting skill. In an MMO, where you're basically playing a pretty excel spreadsheet, those things matter a lot. With little story, there has to be something more than a simple animation that plays while players click and type and a computer rolls dice for them.

This is especially the case for your game as I understand it, because with endless levels you aren't going to be able to supply endless unique skills/rewards or situations and gameplay will become impossibly repetitive. Besides, this design doesn't reduce grind time at all (repetition or no), it just pumps stats more frequently while monsters become stronger at the same rate.

There's a good amount of (disturbing) psychological manipulation in standard MMO grind schemes, but even so I wouldn't be touting the ability to grind forever (since that's what players apparently want) as your game's major feature.

Hello,
I took for granted in our discussion that the game will have an adequate amount of content "equipment, maps, enemies".

Also the game wont be about plain grinding. I just want to avoid placing a hardcoded maximum amount of allowed time.
For example, in final fantasy tactics the game instantly deleted your saved game when you finished the game, and killed your protoganist in a bad cgi movie, to make sure you wont be able to continue playing it.

On the other side, instead of providing new content I think it would be a good idea to have a "content hide system".
1) Less information overload.

For example the game has stats like dodge, parry, block, defense, armor, health, life steal, etc.
Instead of generating an item with all stats, it will add a new random "Prefix" to the loot table every 10-30min.
This way the player will be given enough time to realise what each stat does + mini tutorial screen on weapon pickup.

2) Global loot table means that i can stay in same area for 123hours and keep getting new rewards, items and better gear.

3) You dont experience all content at once but gradually, which means that the players will keep playing for a longer amount of time.

For a example a lv 1 goblin will be naked. a lv 6 will wear rags. a lv 12 will wear leather, a lv24 mail, a lv 50 plate, a lv 100 gold, a lv 200 crystal. The "random enemy appearance generation table" will expand as time passes.

4) New game mechanics "enchanting", "pet merge", etc are gradually unlocked.

What do you thing of this system ?

@Khaiy : all games are a "calculator" if you remove the graphics. Lets take for example "Recettear - An Item Shops Tale",
Gaining money from customers is the "+" button, but after a while the punishment balance comes -money taxes and you end with ~0 money at the end of the month.
So how does racetear balance this ? next month iteration, increases the speed the player presses the "+" button, still the player will end with ~0 money except if he is an omega ultra skilled economic freak that has finished the game before.

1) Its never a bad idea. Although in most cases, so long as the stats are self explanatory (e.g. life steal = taking life from the enemy and giving it to you) you don't have to take such extreme approach as you described.

2) Whats the reason for ever leaving an area then?

3) Thats a given in most games to be honest. The art is in finding the correct time to introduce new content to the player. Pacing can be very subjective though so ties in a lot with your target demographic. A lot of games just never get it right.

4) Again its a good idea and ties in with no. 3 really. Just be careful not to promise something to a player at the start and not give it to them till they have player for a few months, it will just frustrate people more than make them play your game.

My personal view is that games are a lot more than just calculators and i think that was Khaiy's point.

I am responding to you from a western perspective so i tend to conform to the view that grinding isn't a desirable element of a game. Other cultures (especially Asian) tend to take a different view on that though.