When levels in DIKU lineage games like EQ or WoW are mostly built on time investment, they serve little purpose but to keep people grinding and paying a sub fee, and actually stand in the way of letting people play together. Put another way, using levels to define gameplay via level checks on avatar skills and content access is a bit of a “cart before the horse” situation, while letting levels show the *results* of gameplay (*player* skill acquisition) can lead to a better sense of achievement and tighter pacing/challenge design.

Mainly though, this was aimed at those that say that a skills based system will cure all the ills imposed by levels. Skills based systems can help but they’re not a cure all.

You’re right the EvE analogy breaks down because EvE is so different from most MMO’s, the biggest being the fact that the players are the content for the most part. So yeah 2 alliances go to war, if one of them has a 20% larger army, even if that 20% is made of of relative newcomers, they have a better shot at winning. But then the question is how long will they maintain that numbers advantage. That 20% is basically cannon fodder and is being cannon fodder night after night fun? For some yes, especially if you can continue to grow while doing so and in this instance you’ll probably have a guild keeping you supplied so losing everything every night won’t be as painful. Not my idea of a good time but then nothing about EvE is my idea of a good time but I’m really happy it’s still there serving it’s audience.

The other thing that dawned on me was that even if the designers don’t implement a system that meets those goals, in a multiplayer environment at least, the players will evolve them. Again, look at chess. There are no rankings built into the core rules of chess, those came about as a result of more and more people playing the game.

Maybe we’re just wired to rank ourselves in comparison to others of the tribe whether that tribe is our our workplace, our community or our gameplace. Something to think about.

All of this is not to say that levels or skills or whatever system that meets those goals can’t be implemented in such a way as to overcome the primary objection most people seem to have to the current level based systems – I can’t play with my friends. It’s just that people saying scrap levels and put in a skills based system and all will be right with the world is off base. It’s not the system so much as the implementation of the system. If you go into the design with a goal of allowing your players to group with their friends no matter what then you’ll insure that whatever system you implement will allow that.

In short what needs to change isn’t the levels based system but the design philosophy.

I think you’re slightly off the mark here, though. The design goals I stated for levels: achievement, information, and pacing, aren’t unique to levels. I was pointing out the most common reasons for why game designers choose levels for their games. These are the reasons given by people who defend levels as being the best possible solution.

Looking at your EVE example: the 1 month player may not be able to go out to 0.0 space alone, but could that player contribute to a larger encounter? If you had two equal forces going to battle, would the scales be tipped if one side had 20% more players that had only played for 1 month at that point? Now, contrast this with WoW where you generally can’t even take a relatively low-level character into a higher level area in most cases. Even if you could take a level 20 and bring them to Dragonblight in Northrend, would they have any real effect at all? No, because the strict level mechanics restrict how effective they can be, despite any amount of player skill.

My own game,Meridian 59, doesn’t have overall levels like most other games. The benefit is that a relatively high level character and a relatively inexperienced character can still do some things together. As a character grows, it doesn’t necessarily gain more direct power, but they have more options to defeat challenges in their way.

Anyway, I’m writing up other posts. The next one will focus on the disadvantages of a strictly level-based system. Finally, I’m going to propose some alternate mechanics besides levels in a future post.