vbGore Free Online RPG Engine

Koreans don't have jobs

Hmm, one game that is currently in beta (Atlantica Online) has nice concept system for leveling. If you are in party, you get more experience points and I think that you get richer drop as well. That makes people join in parties, what is step back for power levelers, becouse they are alone usualy.

Next to that, there is strange stamina system. On start you have 100 points and after killing a mob, it takes one point away. When you have 0 points you can't recive EXP or loot from mobs. every day at 6:00PM stamina points resets.

If you are in party, I think that you can still get exp and loot even if you have 0 stamina points. It is stupid, but it prevents power leveling

Power leveling isn't the problem, its the fact that you have to be one in order to get to a decent level.

Hmm, I like the group idea but the thing about stamina sounds really stupid. A lot of the time when I'm playing WoW there's nobody on to play with, but I shouldn't be punished for that and only be able to kill a certain number of monsters..I'd seriously give up on the game if that were the case. There's just some times you wanna quest solo or go hunting for loot by yourself.

I know...on start, there was no stamina system but now, they inserted that into game. We'll see what will happen since people are not satisfied with it. It's an option to prevent powerleveling but it's not good one, not at all...

I have two ways.

1. Make bosses, or other significant monsters give majority of the xp, there fore in order to level up people will do more interesting things such as killing bosses. In most games, the bosses give nowhere near the xp worth killing them for.

2. Make levels less significant as opposed to items. But this depends on how items are gotten in your game.

You could make it so that in order to complete a level you have to make it through a certain dungeon or complete a certain quest, that way you can sort of have a main storyline that players have to follow if they want to level up. The problem with this is that it sort of ties them down to one path if they want to level, which is something I personally might have a problem with.

To me, you can't have an emphasis on levels and still be free of power leveling - it just doesn't happen. Although I don't think the problem is strictly related to levels. Things can still happen when currency is at stake as well ; ) . It's not just a matter of game development either, because even great RPG's like 'Mario RPG and the 7 Stars' had power leveling. In order to gain levels, you had to kill a guy over and over again. It's never fun, but the rewards seem... worth it? Anyway to get rid of this power leveling, you just have to rid the emphasis on levels. There was a great RPG for the game cube called 'Custom Robo' - made by the creators of Super Smash o.0 . Anyway, it was more of a fighting game really, nothing really was emphasized on killing the same monster over and over again, but more, getting past the increasingly difficult AI. Same goes for one player fighting games, First person shooters, and Real time strategy games (just to name a few). Now, in terms of an mmorpg - this is accomplished through emphasis on pvp AND NOT gears/levels/how many potions you can spam per second/etc... If you can incorporate a balanced pvp system that eludes any sort of monotonous mindless killing to achieve those things listed previously, then you're golden (I heard Guildwars accomplished this fairly well).

There's one other thing I'd like to add as well. Power leveling is looked down upon because it is usually necessary right? In WoW for example, you're very limited in what you can do unless you're a higher level character. What if there were things that weren't necessary to progress through the game though? I can see people arguing with me on this one, but personally I think if you create some dope looking hat and it takes a long ass time to get, then power leveling to get it shouldn't be a problem. As long as the hat has no affect on any meaningful stats, then the user had no obligation to get it. These items are then available to everyone (not just high ranks), and yet, they don't break the pvp. Those who aren't the greatest at pvp can invest time elsewhere, and show for it. In my view, you're keeping everyone happy : )

In the end its all about balance, something that is yet to be accomplished in Game Design. A game which had a little bit of everything would be awesome. Unfortunately because of lack of passion, or money, and peoples inability to not judge a game on its screenshots, they tend to just copy what they had before and increase the graphics.



Maplestory

The problem with forcing people to do stuff to progress is that they have to do it to progress. The quests in many games, I prefer to just not do, since either way I am going to end up grinding, but the quests involve a hell of a lot less virtual creatures dieing per second.

Dynamic quests are something I haven't ever seen, and don't think I have ever heard about. Redmoon Online tried this I believe, but never got anywhere on it. Only reason I even knew about it was since there was NPCs randomly with a yellow name. But anyways, an example of a dynamic quest could be that you are just killing monsters in a cave and a little kid runs out with a bunch of monsters chasing him. If you want, you can save the kid, protect him while you lead him out of the cave, then bring him to safety. Or you can have him be a distraction while you pick off the monsters one by one for easier killing.

The advantage over a static quest is that for one, its unique. Who cares about a quest that millions of other players did before, or that you did on your other characters. Also, it introduces a quest in an area you are already in. Power-levelers often choose if a quest is worth it or not by if it can make them earn experience quicker than grinding. But since the quest takes place where you already are, there is no worrying about excessive amounts of boring traveling, or getting pitted against a bunch of weak monsters since you didn't realize the quest existed 30 levels ago.

Unlike static quests, dynamic quests also have the advantage of being much easier to make the world dynamic in result of what you choose to do. After you save the kid, he could just run around town, praising you, until he is stupid enough to run off again. Or if you let him die, his mother could be running around town, asking where her retarded offspring went.

You can even let this go into more quests. Once you bring him out of the cave, you could choose to follow him home, or to let him run home free. Following him home will obvious take you away from your killgasm, but you may have wanted to go to town anyways, or you were getting bored of killing (as blasphemous as that sounds). So you follow him home, take him to his mom, she gives you a little reward. If he didn't get hurt on the way up, the reward could be better for accomplishing a more difficult task. You can then get another quest, from the mom this time, to find materials to make a paddle to beat him since he clearly needs it. Now you are doing a more town-like quest. Being the psychopathic killer you are, you decline, and go back to killing, so the mom goes around town, advertising the need for these quest items. Now someone else has a dynamic quest. To make things more fun, she can even say who brought him back, how long ago, etc.

Now lets say the kid did get hurt on the way up. As you take him back, his mom feels bad since he got hurt, so she wants to heal him instead. Now you are in the same position, but with a slightly crappier reward and you have to get some medical supplies instead. Again, you can do this, or someone else in the game can. And again, if the player declines and another player helps out, the mom and kid can tell the story with the proper names.

So now, we have move on from a retarded NPC who stands at (x,y) and asks for X amount of item I from monster M. Our quest instead involves a random appearance of a town child in any area around the town. You can save him, or not. When you save him, the rewards and following quests involve weather he was hurt or not (could also give better rewards for how quickly you save him, etc). You can continue the quest if you want, or let other people continue it for you. Townsfolk start telling stories about you, and you actually become part of the game.

Damn, that would be sweet. In fact, ignore this post completely - this is what my game's quests are going to be comprised of!

Maplestory steals all my ideas

Honestly, there is no way to prevent power-leveling altogether; in fact power-leveling isn't even the main problem. The reason people power-level is because--like others here have said--all of the "fun" content tends to exist (or is more fun) at end-game. The only way to truly remove this logical error is to remove the concept of "end-game". This could include having no level or skill cap. Sure, people will still power-level to some extent, but it will no longer be a problem. It will be impossible to "race" to the top because there is no top.

Having no level cap means a variety of other changes must take place, however. For instance, NPC enemies could no longer have levels and experience yielded (if this is an aspect of the game) could not entirely relate to player level versus NPC enemy level (or difficulty, or whatever). The game itself would be more player-based at this point putting less emphasis on levels and more emphasis on the person behind the player. While levels would still be important to being a strong player, it would all boil down to your skill playing the character.

A good example of a system like this would be Tibia. While Tibia has a plethora of other flaws--graphical and content--they have succeeded in eliminating the inescapable need to reach end-game content, by eliminating the "end" of the game. In Tibia, players still power-level skills and levels, but it is less relevant to the outcome of your character as in a game such as World of Warcraft. In Tibia, it is not uncommon for a level 60 player to defeat a level 120 player depending on level of skill. In World of Warcraft, it is nearly impossible for a level 60 player to even land a hit on a level 80 player.

So, in a nutshell, the only way to eliminate the need to reach end-game content--which is the drive of power-leveling--is to eliminate the concept of end-game content. Be advised that going this route creates tons of new problems that you must face as a developer including level gaps, boredom, and stagnancy, to name a few.

There are a few ways to prevent power lvling. I would go with;

You add a stamina function. That's based on a timer, let's say 20 hours. It starts ticking down when you enter combat with a foe(npc). When you get below the 15 hours mark you get 75% less exp, 10 hours 50% less exp. There is only one way to refill your stamina and that's by being either offline or in town (protection zone).

2 hours offline = 1 hour refill
I would also add premium players get faster refills (not alot faster)...

There are tons of way to prevent power lvling, you don't want to stop lvling overall you just want to slow down ppl that invest way to much time. Those ppl can easily break your in game economy, which is already a big problem in most old MMORPGS.

Btw I'm Vachan, been scouting around here for ages so I thought why not join... <3

How to stop power leveling -> Take a lesson from FPS's

Except now you have power achieving, or achieve whores, but you can still win quite easily without them.

my attempt is having a realistic level cap.
this level cap is for example, lets say 70.

now you dont lose any exp before lvl 70 (or maybe a little)

but over level 70 the player would lose 10% of his exp per death, or maybe much much more.
with down-leveling, but not below 70.
would also be implemented in a PVP system of gaining and losing EXP.


this is a rough idea, might heavily be modified.

also I pro the "boss give exp" greatly....
in most games bosses are stupid for leveling,
although when i beat a boss i want uber exp for my level