When do levels get ridiculous?

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: When do levels get ridiculous? (Massively)

So here's today's question: When do level numbers begin to seem silly to you? Is level 80 pushing the bounds of too many levels, or is that thought specifically reserved for level 90? Is it a higher number? Or do level numbers cease to phase you at all at this point, as you've leveled enough in all of your games to be considered as level eleventy billion?

I have to admit that 50 levels are traditional and make the most sense to me (can be raised with expansions). Anarchy Online has a great level/skill hybrid system that I like a lot, but they have 200 levels in their basic game and that's just a silly number *laughs* 100 seems like an absolute maximum to me for leveling games.

[dotty]

If I cant reasonably attain it with casual play in a few months, it's too high. If a power gamer can attain it in under 4 days, it's too low. hehe

[Regolyth]

Jan 25, 2010 3:47:08 GMT -5 dotty said:

If I cant reasonably attain it with casual play in a few months, it's too high. If a power gamer can attain it in under 4 days, it's too low. hehe

This

I think MMOs should be one of two ways. The first, and most acceptable (and Gack saw this coming) is that games should be skill based, not level. However, I'm probably in the minority in this thinking, or even knowing that skill-based games exist; that levels aren't necessary.

The second is that level 50 should be the max, and I don't think that games should increase the level cap. Increasing the level cap in a game only creates problems in my eyes; and much frustration for casual gamers (which are the majority of gamers).

Let's take WoW for example. The original level cap was 60. It was really, really difficult to reach that cap. They didn't balance it out really well (I'll come back to this point). When Burning Crusades was released, the cap went up to 70. Suddenly, everything that had meaning at 60, didn't. You had green items at level 62 that were better than blue, and sometimes purple, items at level 60.

Not only did items have less meaning, but so did content. I could get to level 70 and go back and do level 60 stuff solo, that was meant for a group. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, the cap was raised to 80. At this point, I could go back to level 60 battlegroup content and solo it. That's just insanely stupid. Another thing is that the old world became meaningless. No one went there. Everyone was in the new areas (of course this is the natural progression of things).

Now, back to my earlier point. Now that people were getting to level 80, they had still had that horrible hard game from 48 to 60, where leveling was extremely hard. It was easier to get levels 65-70 than 50-60. So they fixed it, so that it was easier for people to level. This is a good thing, because it needed to be fixed. However, many players that leveled through those difficult levels felt jaded because it was so easy now.

My biggest concern with making more levels is out-dating content. That's bad for new players and old. I don't think levels should be added. It just destroys immersion when I'm equal playing ground as that once level 80 dragon.

[Morreion]

Good points Regolyth- I hate the fact that huge areas of a game world become 'obsolete' when expansions are released. This is indirectly due to the level system IMHO. I remember skill-based UO having both easy and difficult mobs near cities; those areas never became outdated, even with expansions.

[Regolyth]

Jan 26, 2010 11:10:52 GMT -5 Morreion said:

I remember skill-based UO having both easy and difficult mobs near cities; those areas never became outdated, even with expansions.

So true.

My favorite city was Delucia. Any new character I would create, I would immediately run them there. It had everything one could want. Within the city I could any type of ore I wanted to mine, and just outside the city were lots of cows, deer and sheep for skinning and sheering. If I need to work up a weapon skill, there were plenty of animals nearby, and once those were drained, I could run up to the undead city and practice on skeletons, or over to the orc fort and hit them up.

A person could GM most skills in this area. And you would see total newbs out there, as well as expert players. There were other cities with similar resources, but this was my favorite for whatever reason (probably because of the mining and nearby undead city).

Dungeons never got old too. If anything, it's the expansion areas that became devoid of players. People would set up shop in all of the old areas, and do most of the adventuring there, with once a week excursions to the new areas. There was also one expansion that added new things to the old areas (for those that played, I'm talking about champ spawns).