Philosophy II : On leveling

When it comes to RPGs, a character advancement system is something of a big deal. For some reason, I think there's very little quite as awesome as an interesting, rewarding system of character growth and advancement (then again, I think coding is fun, so feel free to take that with a massive grain of salt...).

So, naturally, it bugs me to no end when game developers screw everything up.

Okay, maybe I threw down that gauntlet a little too hard without qualification. Let me back up a bit.

Character advancement is the process by which your character's statistics and abilities increase as the game progresses. In an action game, this might be finding new weapons as you go through stages. In a metroidvania or adventure game, this will be finding upgrade items as you explore, or getting new types of powers by going through the game's intended sequence. In an RPG, this is pretty much always some version of leveling up.

By far the most common style of leveling up is the experience-level model. In this style, the player accrues experience points until their total number crosses some threshold, at which point they "level up" and all their core stats get incremented (which implies the increase of their derived stats). Experience points are almost always awarded by killing monsters or some other form of combat. Usually nowadays there's other ways to gain XP, the bulk of which is obtained through quests. Notable examples of this style: most Final Fantasy games, Mass Effect, NetHack

A rarer style of leveling up is the skills-based model. In this model, the player gets incrementally better at any of his numerous skills only when actually using said skills. Each skill can have its own level and experience, or skills can have non-discrete values. Examples of this style: Oblivion, Elona

The experience-level model is technically a holdover from the pencil-and-paper era, when computation was a pain because you had to do everything by hand, so the numbers were simplified to make things easier on the GM. Nowadays it makes little sense to use d20 mechanics for a videogame because the computational gruntwork is done by a lightning-fast CPU. As such, video games have developed evermore complicated combat and advancement systems to take advantage of this. That said, they still follow the highly-discrete experience-level model.

Which is not to imply that Rouge will do anything else in that regard. While technically a richer role-playing experience that builds a character organically to have the strengths you choose vis a vis utilization, the skills-based model fails to offer the extremely-satisfying reward gained under the experience-level model when you finally "ding". Thus, in keeping with previous axioms, complexity is not more important than fun.

And speaking of fun brings us right around to where we started, out of the history lesson. Specifically, leveling up can be fun. The feeling of reward any long-term RPG player feels at each next inevitable "ding" is nothing short of palpable.

Unless of course, the designers screw everything up.

The biggest biggest way designers screw everything up is by making enemies scale with the character's level. They screwed this up in the most in Oblivion, where enemies level up with you and the equipment they carry levels up with you too. This leads to the hilariously-grating scenario of fighting a troupe of lowly bandits who are more skilled than the last champion of the Arena wielding blades forged by the gods themselves. They did it in Mass Effect too, and it's one of the few gripes I have with an otherwise-superb game (as far as I know, they didn't do it in the sequel). Mass Effect's autoleveling enemies are mitigated by enemies not using the gear they drop, so as you level up you do outstrip them in terms of power because you get better gear. Fallout and Dragon Age do it, but they do so within a range, so they're partially excused.

Anyway, the reason this screws everything up is because of what leveling up means in terms of game balance. Put shortly, leveling up is the automatic "make the game easier" button. Game designers fret about how hard Hard should be and whether Easy is too easy and whether Normal strikes a solid balance (I mean, there's the people who aren't that good but refuse to switch to Easy because of pride who'll get frustrated as things stand now...), but in an RPG there's usually just one difficulty setting. If things are too hard you level up more. If things are too easy you move on to the next area where there's harder enemies who are more fun to fight (and give better rewards!).

When enemies level up with you, this totally screws everything up. Now if an enemy is too hard, Tough Shit says the game, you've got to play better. This is an Appropriate difficulty says some guy who does nothing but program video games for his day job and play video games in his free time (I Wanna Be That Guy, by the way). There's no way to balance out the difficulty (aside from the difficulty slider in the options menu but that's artificial and CHEATING), and there's no satisfaction from a low-level challenge game because the game doesn't punish you for it at all. In Final Fantasy VIII, it was actually the powergaming strategy!

MOST importantly, there is NO sense of character advancement because a bandit will always represent a similar level of threat to your character. You'll never have an episode where you return to an area, meet a particularly-tough enemy and laugh as you roast him instantly with your new Ultra fireball that you didn't have last time. There's no recognition for being a veritable god among men when every ferfuggin' bandit in the world has on-par skills and equipment!

This is the cardinal sin in RPG design, and if you commit it I guarantee that you will burn in hell.

Or, y'know, I'm being dramatic.

Long story short ("too late" I hear you say), leveling everything with the player takes away every single advantage of leveling up, in fact reducing it to a useless sideshow of its self as the central mechanic that defines the genre of videogame that we grace with the distinction R.P.G.

Shorter still: An action-RPG where leveling is useless is just an action game with a veneer of complexity.

So that's how you can screw everything up, if you're so inclined. If you want to just screw up, but less spectacularly, read on. There are two other more minor ways to screw up leveling. The first is by stretching the distance between each DING out as far as human patience will allow in what I'm going to call "MMORPG syndrome". The second is by arbitrarily limiting the player's leveling for no good reason.

It is no secret that I have almost no patience for MMORPGs. "But Jacob," my friends tell me, "you're all about the grind. Surely you'd like this?" Well no. While it's true that I like the Disgaeas, it's because they know how to make leveling up fun. And yes, while some of the post-game challenges require you to field a team of level 9001 units, leveling up from 7000 to 7100 is extremely quick (unless of course you're Doing it Wrong) because the developers realized that without constantly increasing the numbers in their massive spreadsheet game, players would die of boredom long before they even bothered with the first thousand levels.

In Disgaea, going from 7000 to 7100 can be done in a single turn if you're actively grinding. And when you're not, there's various things you can do to otherwise increase your already-massive power levels. In Silk Road Online (free Korean MMO), going from level 20 to 21 requires the experience from a quest to kill six hundred of the same enemy, the experience from killing six hundred of that enemy, and then forty percent more experience, gained by killing that same kind of enemy, because they're the only level 20 enemy in the game. The next-strongest enemies are level 22, so they take waaaay too many resources to bother for an extra 25% experience over the much-safer level 20 enemies. But I'm playing with some friends and so I stick it out and after about three days I get my much-coveted DING and a single frelling skill point for it. Woo. But at least I can stop slaughtering Chakjis all damn day and maybe move on to something else. Except, just kidding, the quest for this level is to kill a thousand of the little bastards. And getting to level 22 takes about twice as much experience as getting to 21. And now these same enemies give about 20% less experience because they're slightly weaker comparatively.

FUCK. THAT. SHIT. I inwardly scream as I log off, never to return.

On the other side, Final Fantasy X does a fantastic job of avoiding this, where at the end-game the AP needed to get another sphere level becomes constant, so enemies in the hidden dungeon would give you two or so levels per fight, more with AP boosting equipment.

In short, one way to screw up is by dragging out the leveling process for far, far too long before giving the player any reward at all.

Another way to screw up is by limiting the player's level based on story progression. Chrono Cross did this and I hated it. Final Fantasy XIII does it and that makes me nervous, but it's also taking a few steps away from RPG as well so I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt (until I play it, then we'll see). In short, see points made in how to screw everything up to see why capping the player at regular intervals is something of an SFI.

Aside: SFI sounds somewhat like it might be a venereal disease.

Second aside: I need to stop blogging after midnight.

This is more a personal preference than a way developers screw up, but I'm honestly opposed to level caps in general. That's the second trivial reason that ultimately convinced me to write a goddamn game: I want to level up to 300 and kick the everloving shit out of the final boss. And with a roguelike with its ability for nigh-infinite content...

"Jacob," I hear you asking, "aren't roguelikes supposed to be extremely freaking hard?" Yes! Yes they are. Traditionally, anyway. Although I've heard that Moria and some of the *bands are fairly relaxed about how long they let you just dick around and level up.

Anyway, bringing it all back to thesis:

I do hereby solemnly swear that Rouge will do the following:

1. Let the player level up ad nauseum
2. Not protract the leveling process needlessly
3. Never, under any circumstances, level anything to match the player

I think I'm just going to shut up and code for the next week or so.
Next post: current state of things, immediate future plans, maybe some blatant lies