What is the best method for infinite character progression?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It feels a little bad to hit level cap in a MMO. It feels like for the most part, the journey is over. Sure, you might have a lot of raid tiers of gear or main story questline to progress through, but it feels like your character isn't going to become innately more powerful or learn new abilities anymore. This feels the worst in RPGs where you can switch classes on your character (ie FF11, FF14, GBF), so it feels like you are wasting the exp you are getting and shouldn't be playing your favorite class, but instead switch to an alt class so you can level them up at the same time you are playing. Is there a way to resolve this?

The only ways I can think of:

A level cap that you will never reach. I am thinking Space Cowboy Online/ACE Online/Air Rivals here, where around level 50 or 60 the exp hill required to reach the next level starts becoming steep. I remember my dad spent an hour or two each night for months on end exp farming the mobs in the asteroid zone, and then eventually at some point after an hour his exp bar would have only moved like 2%. So most of the veteran players were at around level 60 to 80ish (with 80 being VERY high end), with only a small handful of no-lifers who had somehow managed to reach the level 90s. Now I don't think the diminishing returns should be this absurd. Spread the hill across hundreds of levels rather than 30. Another example is LotRO, where IIRC the level cap is 190 but people who have been progressing through the story for years are barely able to get to like the 110s by Minas Tirith.

You hit level cap, but then begin obtaining Merit/Paragon/Mastery/Champion Points etc. Basically how it is in FF11, Diablo 3, GBF, ESO, etc. These points can be allocate to improve your stats or an ability (be it raw damage, reducing cooldown, and/or adding new functionality) or to learn new abilities. Typically the raw power boost is not quite as powerful as a real character level up, but at its something. Typically you accumulate hundreds or thousands of these points. IIRC the highest end solo D3 player hit 10k paragon levels.

[DrSneed]

Money is a superpower

[Norfleet]

It feels a little bad to hit level cap in a MMO. It feels like for the most part, the journey is over.

On the contrary, hitting the level cap in an MMO means you finally finished building the car and now the journey can BEGIN.

so it feels like you are wasting the exp you are getting and shouldn't be playing your favorite class, but instead switch to an alt class so you can level them up at the same time you are playing. Is there a way to resolve this?

Yeah, go help noobs powerlevel so they can start playing the game.

You hit level cap, but then begin obtaining Merit/Paragon/Mastery/Champion Points etc. Basically how it is in FF11, Diablo 3, GBF, ESO, etc. These points can be allocate to improve your stats or an ability (be it raw damage, reducing cooldown, and/or adding new functionality) or to learn new abilities. Typically the raw power boost is not quite as powerful as a real character level up, but at its something. Typically you accumulate hundreds or thousands of these points. IIRC the highest end solo D3 player hit 10k paragon levels.

Yeah, that's basically how you add "number go up", without it turning into something that locks people out of playing the game. With your typical level progression in an MMO, you effectively cannot access the game or your class abilities proper until you hit the level cap. With "bonus levels" that don't factor into these, you can give people their Number Go Up without turning it into a barrier that stops them from playing the game.

[anvi]

I hate reaching the end game in MMOs, it's like the fun is over. Especially seeing as most of them require raiding at that point which I don't like. The main attraction to EQ for me is that if you play it legit, no cheating or twinking, then it's a long process that's almost endless. Low levels you go hunting basic stuff like Mino Axe and maybe some bronze armor or blackened iron. Then around 20 you can start getting better gear, weapons with procs on them like the Polished Granite Tommahawk that gives you Berserker Strength. Or a whip with stun, etc. And the bronze armor is heavy as hell so you start replacing it with a few better pieces from places like Upper Guk.

Eventually you go to Lower Guk and get good gear, and then you've got a bunch of expansions to work through. And you can do it all in sequence and using "era appropriate" gear which makes it hard and every upgade matters. And you need a lot of upgrades. There's also the Epic Weapon quest which is a huge quest and a huge reward. And that's all still in the first expansion, there's still another expansion even if it's oldschool P99 era. If you play the other emulators there's another several expansions to play through.

The idea of "game starts at max level" ruins most of this. Especially if people twink their characters with higher level gear. It just trivialises everything. On the main EQ emu server there are about 10 expansions and people follow a guide that rushes you to the end. They advise you skip ahead and get some uber quest armor from planes of power and then level up to 70 and go back and crush everything that was designed for level 60s in weaker gear. But doing this just ruins the game. You can do everything and max everything out in a fraction of the time, but if you play through it in a legit way it is a huuuge game.

Back on topic... I never understood why they don't just design these games for infinite levels. It's only maths right? A whole bunch of formulas and ****. In EQ you get some extra HP and stuff each level, and so do the mobs. So it kind of scales all the way through 50+ levels already. Surely they could have just designed it so you keep on leveling. There are MUDs that have players with hundreds of levels already. Kinda baffling that they didn't design EVERquest to be like that. In fact they designed it specifically for 50 levels and then when it got super popular and they needed to add more levels, it was a big problem for them. It took them years to hack it and then rewrite the whole thing basically. In the meantime they added Alternative Advancements as a bandaid which people liked, but I always thought was goofy. They should have been part of leveling already.

There would be hard things to solve with infinite levels though. Mobs would have to either scale to you or there would need to be hundreds of levels of mobs all over the place. It could also make grouping harder. It was hard enough to get groups in EQ even when most players were in the level 40-50 range. Imagine if there were hundreds of levels. Super high level players would only be able to team up with other sweatlords. A level 35 might never find a group when there are hundreds of levels.

[Valter]

Yeah progression ought to always be possible

[LemonDemonGirl]

GW2 does it right

[Vaako]

I never understood why they don't just design these games for infinite levels.

You wont attract many new players if the gap between veterans and newbies is unreachable. Especially in games with pvp. Nobody wants to get farmed or die in 3seconds just to someone who plays nothing else than that one game. Only thing you can do then is have seasons and the old toons you can still play on a special server where all the retired toons end. But the new seasons have new content/balancing maybe a xp buff for all that new players can also join in without feeling very underpowered.

Progression systems for mmorpgs are all terrible especially if you have to balance arround pvp. And you still need to provide new content for pve players. If Eldenring had Dark Souls 3 invasion mechanics that you can still invade solo people but 2+ get higher priority if they are arround your level you could make a decent mmorpg. You can level pretty high there. Just cant have item trading or it low level twinks in invasions would be pretty op.

[Breathe]

I hate reaching the end game in MMOs, it's like the fun is over.

This is how I’ve played most MMOs. Get to end game and stop, unless I want to pvp (which is rare). IMO it is best way.

[J1M]

If an MMO doesn't offer the carrot of being "best in slot" at least for a temporary but meaningful amount of human time I can't distinguish what the point of obtaining upgrades would be. BiS is an accomplishment. What's the point of grinding for better equipment to play the same content with the same enemies scaled up slightly? The gameplay is the same.

So, assuming that BiS is obtainable and no other endlessly scaling systems subvert this, I'd say the answer to your question is levelling up other jobs/classes/professions to experience the game from other angles. Preferably on a single character the way FFXI does.

[rusty_shackleford]

I really hate "horizontal" gear progression.

I really hate "horizontal" gear progression.

Why? I rather prefer the idea that the gear I worked hard to acquire will actually last me quite a while. I hate working hard to acquire high ilevel only for it to be rendered irrelevant come the next patch when it introduces even more powerful gear that is easily acquired.

Because it typically means the best gear is very easy to achieve otherwise it wouldn't be horizontal anymore

'horizontal' progression is antithetical to the concept of RPGs. What you want — and are likely referring to — is linear(or less) growth. If you're seeing actual growth from new gear but it's just small growth, then it's not horizontal progression.

Might as well remove gear altogether if you can get the best gear from just playing for a few hours.

[aimlesshealer]

On the contrary, hitting the level cap in an MMO means you finally finished building the car and now the journey can BEGIN.

Agreed. Early levels are for training new players, slowly acclimating them to the game's mechanics, world, and culture. Start with "run around, click the boar, and punch it" and build from there.

Is infinite character progression really desirable? Overcoming challenges at max level is progress in a more general sense. Faction goals and guild progression are also an option. There are plenty of other goals that can open up at max level to keep the game interesting and rewarding. Hitting max level just represents acquiring all the tools in your toolbox.

[Norfleet]

'horizontal' progression is antithetical to the concept of RPGs.

Untrue. Characters progress horizontally when they gain new functionalities. Characters progress vertically when number-goes-up on existing functionalities. If my character has a "hit stuff with a sword" functionality, gaining things that improve my numbers when I thrash my enemies with a metal stick is a vertical progression. A horizontal progression is if I also gain the ability to shoot them with a bow, while my ability to stab them remains unchanged. As a rule, vertical progression tends to result in straight power gain, with no intrinsic diminishing returns, yet no real qualitative change in gameplay: I fight 50 hitpoint monsters by hitting them with my metal stick for 5 points of damage 10 times until they die, then later I hit them a 500 hitpoint monster with a shinier metal stick or flashier moves for 50 points of damage. Nothing actually changes, except that I have no chance of playing with my newly-recruited friends because them poking my monsters for 5 points of damage does **** all and they get oneshot instantly.

Horizontal progression, on the other hand, lets me learn new abilities that I can use, but the power progression has a distinct diminishing return: I can hit things with a sword, or I can shoot them with my bow, but I'm not doing either of these things any better than someone who can only do one of these things, and my power increase is purely because I am more potentially flexible. Learning to do more things will make me increasingly less better because learning to use 3 different weapon/attack types does not make me do 3x as much damage.

There's nothing un-RPG about this.

Is infinite character progression really desirable?

Number go up makes monke brain feel good. That's basically the driver here that makes the entire thing attactive.

Overcoming challenges at max level is progress in a more general sense. Faction goals and guild progression are also an option. There are plenty of other goals that can open up at max level to keep the game interesting and rewarding. Hitting max level just represents acquiring all the tools in your toolbox.

That's how I view it, yes. It's a "now we can finally play the game" moment. Of course, games that focus on the monke-brained aspect of number-go-up may not HAVE any game beyond that point.

[anvi]

I liked the idea of some horizontal progression just to stop people racing through the levels. In EQ it used to take so long to reach max level, everyone had explored every inch of the world and did everything, saw everything, because it took so insanely long.

Then they kept making leveling faster. Especially post WoW. Now people just blitz from 1-50+ in weeks and only go to the few best xp zones. But they miss out on about 20 great dungeons and lots of interesting lower level content. I would stick some killer items or important components or something in most of those dungeons to make people go there at least once. Vanguard had some good ideas with that. Like you could learn unique spells from mobs so some places you would go to hunt mobs just to learn a spell. I would liked to have seen some unique items spread through the world too. Like journeyman boots and things you can click. To encourage people to explore more as they level.

In EQ I remember wanting some kind of achievements screen that people could see from other players. You can right click someone to look at all their gear, but I'd like to see it list quests they had done and maybe some unique items they had found or something. So you can inspect a level 50 and see if they rushed to 50 or took their time and got good gear along the way. Also I like titles. If you see someone like Drakos the Slayer of Froglocks. You know they had a done some ****. Hero of Kvatch xD

[rusty_shackleford]

Untrue. Characters progress horizontally when they gain new functionalities. Characters progress vertically when number-goes-up on existing functionalities. If my character has a "hit stuff with a sword" functionality, gaining things that improve my numbers when I thrash my enemies with a metal stick is a vertical progression. A horizontal progression is if I also gain the ability to shoot them with a bow, while my ability to stab them remains unchanged. As a rule, vertical progression tends to result in straight power gain, with no intrinsic diminishing returns, yet no real qualitative change in gameplay: I fight 50 hitpoint monsters by hitting them with my metal stick for 5 points of damage 10 times until they die, then later I hit them a 500 hitpoint monster with a shinier metal stick or flashier moves for 50 points of damage. Nothing actually changes, except that I have no chance of playing with my newly-recruited friends because them poking my monsters for 5 points of damage does **** all and they get oneshot instantly.

Horizontal progression, on the other hand, lets me learn new abilities that I can use, but the power progression has a distinct diminishing return: I can hit things with a sword, or I can shoot them with my bow, but I'm not doing either of these things any better than someone who can only do one of these things, and my power increase is purely because I am more potentially flexible. Learning to do more things will make me increasingly less better because learning to use 3 different weapon/attack types does not make me do 3x as much damage.

There's nothing un-RPG about this.

If you're actually getting stronger it's not horizontal progression.

Feel like most people using the word at this point haven't even played GW2

[anvi]

I loved the skill point things you could find in GW2. At the far end of a zone you would have to go out your way a bit to get it. But they are worth it. I loved that for making people explore the whole region.

[TKVNC]

More content that is built on old content. No catch-up mechanics at all.

Simple as that

[DemoGraph]

EVE Online kind of way.

You progress vertically for a while, until you can serve as a grunt (fly a frigate). Then you become useful or independent.
(WoW levels end here.)

Then you specialize to be able to get into some areas (resistances, etc.). Or be able to use better gear (ships). You expand "horizontally".
(WoW doesn't have it.)
"You don't have enough poison resist to get into Wet Swamp? Don't sweat, you can buy all the frog spit you want from other players! Don't forget to get some boar farts for trade instead!"

If you want to progress vertically, you combine several horizontal powers to be more powerful but also get weaknesses.
"You can fly both cruiser and carrier and have some skills on top? Congrats, you can fly dreadnought now! Now go build an industrial base to make it! You've built it? Great! Grunts would always be more cost-effective, but you can concentrate that premium power now! You probably want to join a clan to not be gangbanged, though."

The mechanics are actually easy from design standpoint. But most devs don't optimize for them.

If you want to be more creative with RPG formula, add char permadeath.
You don't play a character, you play organization (family, guild, corp, w/e; or maybe you send clones or drones into the wilds). You lvlup your char and your org separately. Lvling org allows you to create better new chars when the old one dies.
Add family tree or history and some respawn cooldown, so that players wouldn't just throw their chars away and you're golden.

Feel like most people using the word at this point haven't even played GW2

I haven't. What's the gimmick?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I haven't. What's the gimmick?

The expansions - instead of raising the level cap or adding higher tiers of gear - instead added Masteries. Once you hit the level cap of 80, the exp you gain start filling up your mastery exp bar and eventually gives you mastery points. MP can be spent on mastery tracks of your choosing to learn new and higher tiers of certain masteries, which have varying degrees of usefulness. For example, you can learn the gliding mastery, which allows you to press spacebar when falling to deploy a glider. You can use more MP to learn higher tiers of glider, like being able to move faster, use updrafts to ascend, and eventually be able to be carried by magical ley lines while gliding. These masteries gave HoT a bit of a metroidvania feel as you unlocked new areas to visit. There is a mastery that allows you to breathe poison and thus be able to enter the poison gas caves in HoT. There is a mastery that allows you to use bouncing mushrooms to ascend the multilayered jungle zones. There is a mastery that allows you to use vines to climb the walls inside a huge volcano. Etc. The second expansion PoF's masteries were for the mounts. But then after PoF, it felt like the revolving door of devs had ran out of ideas, and the masteries became overall forgettable and useless.

[Norfleet]

If you're actually getting stronger it's not horizontal progression.

Feel like most people using the word at this point haven't even played GW2

Horizontal progression also makes you stronger. It just has a strong diminishing returns for doing so, since the strength comes through opening up more potential options and combinations rather than direct number-goes-up. At the point at which I've unlocked my ability to use a third melee weapon, in THEORY, I am stronger because I can now benefit from using any of those weapons in a situation where they're most helpful, but the benefits are rather muted given I still only have two hands, and therefore, would struggle to actively incorporate 3 melee weapons into normal play.

[Norfleet]

The expansions - instead of raising the level cap or adding higher tiers of gear - instead added Masteries. Once you hit the level cap of 80, the exp you gain start filling up your mastery exp bar and eventually gives you mastery points.

That's just smoke and mirrors. Levels by another name. A level 80 swordsman is more powerful than a level 10 swordsman. Similarly, a level 80 swordsman with 80 points of sword mastery is more powerful than a straight level 80 swordsman. The only difference is that we're allowing the latter two to play together because they're both level 80 and thus allowed to queue for endgame (read: actually relevant) content, while the level 10, or even the level 79, is turned away because YOU MUST BE AT LEAST AS TALL AS MY BEEFY ARM TO RIDE, and therefore, remain trapped in tutorial hell, unable to play the game. It is no different than if we simply declared "level 80 is sufficient to be allowed to play the game, but you can keep gaining levels all the way to 9001". Every such game ultimately divides itself into two brackets: "The Extended Tutorial" and "The Game Proper".

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The expansions - instead of raising the level cap or adding higher tiers of gear - instead added Masteries. Once you hit the level cap of 80, the exp you gain start filling up your mastery exp bar and eventually gives you mastery points.

That's just smoke and mirrors. Levels by another name. A level 80 swordsman is more powerful than a level 10 swordsman. Similarly, a level 80 swordsman with 80 points of sword mastery is more powerful than a straight level 80 swordsman. The only difference is that we're allowing the latter two to play together because they're both level 80 and thus allowed to queue for endgame (read: actually relevant) content, while the level 10, or even the level 79, is turned away because YOU MUST BE AT LEAST AS TALL AS MY BEEFY ARM TO RIDE, and therefore, remain trapped in tutorial hell, unable to play the game. It is no different than if we simply declared "level 80 is sufficient to be allowed to play the game, but you can keep gaining levels all the way to 9001". Every such game ultimately divides itself into two brackets: "The Extended Tutorial" and "The Game Proper".

In GW2's case, there was only one single mastery that made your character more powerful in combat. All of the masteries was for non-combat related stuff like map traversal (gliders, vine swinging, poison cave access, teleporter access, etc), ability to craft legendary armors, etc. It was not until the third expansion that we got a mastery that actually improved your character's combat capability with the Jade Bot, which allows you to get 30 seconds of every buff in the game each time you enter combat outside of an instance. That was pretty tremendous powercreep and allows groups to skip meta event boss phases like on Mouth of Mordremoth.

[Norfleet]

In GW2's case, there was only one single mastery that made your character more powerful in combat.

Right, and that one would be your vertical progression "level".

All of the masteries was for non-combat related stuff like map traversal (gliders, vine swinging, poison cave access, teleporter access, etc), ability to craft legendary armors, etc.

And those would be more forms of horizontal progression, yes.

So essentially, all this really is, is having horizontal progression and vertical progression paid for out of a single point pool. It slightly obscures the way you functionally still have "levels", it's just that people have come to see "levels" as "progression that block you from playing the game until you get it" vs. "progression that increases your power or available abilities without restricting your ability to play the game".

[swbgtoc]

1. No level/stats cap. It goes up logarithmically but infinitely. And have the end game grind be about collecting stylish gear, crafting material to build your house and magical artifacts to display in it while you slowly acquire more power naturally. Basically bragging material and to show off to other players. But it will inevitably devolve into an anti-social solo game over the years without other systems enforcing social interactions.

2. Low level cap + regular perma-death. To maintain all players in the same level range and have them able to play together at all times. Because yeah I get the appeal of having your character grow more and more powerful over the years but all MMOs eventually suffer from having their entire playerbase and thus the multiplayer content out of reach of new players. And you can still have permanent progression in the form of your family/House properties that accumulate stuff from your previous char1acters.

[Stack of Turtles]

How about we just do away with the idea that characters should improve. Instead, everyone's stats are always decaying unless you work as hard as you can just to stay in the same place.

[TKVNC]

How about we just do away with the idea that characters should improve. Instead, everyone's stats are always decaying unless you work as hard as you can just to stay in the same place.

Interesting idea, but it was tried with WoW vanilla PvP with expectedly awful results

[Breathe]

How about we just do away with the idea that characters should improve. Instead, everyone's stats are always decaying unless you work as hard as you can just to stay in the same place.

I don't think that would be preferable for the majority of people, psychologically. It makes maintaining feel like work and not a reward. Personally, I like the idea for some type of mmo.

[Norfleet]

2. Low level cap + regular perma-death. To maintain all players in the same level range and have them able to play together at all times.

I've thought about this concept of encouraging players to have a constant stable of characters that advance, possibly die, etc., to achieve semi-persistent goals beyond the individual character, so that some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.

[WaterMage]

DDO reincarnation. You reincarnate and get passive bonuses.