vbGore Free Online RPG Engine

That's a nice idea, but how does it cut down on power leveling?

Surely all it does is discourage players from doing anything that might get them killed, such as PvP, dungeons/instances, fighting higher level monsters etc. Which would pretty much force them to stay away from other players and focus on killing monsters around their level and lower. Hmm...where have I heard of something like that...oh yeah! Powerleveling!

Yeah pretty much what Zanval described would actually encourage grinding from level 70 onwards. The point is not to give penalties for dying so people will actually bother fighting the bosses, but then you have another dilemma, the fear factor is gone and it becomes a bit more boring.

In knight online, there are bonuses for fighting higher levels (than you) and penalties for lower levels. Still you ended up grinding, just on higher level monsters. So its pretty much exactly the same.

If you really have to have leveling, one way to get rid of power leveling... hang on i forgot while editing the first bit... oh yeh now i remember... is not to have random quick spawning NPC's to give exp, instead only give EXP on party quests and bosses. I dunno about you, but i don't go around fighting random people on the street every 15 seconds, only Russel Crow does that. Maybe have training grounds but you can only access them in certain parts of the day and will only bring you up to a certain level. My point is give meaning to training, i whether you swing your sword at a goblin or a wooden post shouldn't matter, you don't actually learn anything.

Atleast if its just bosses, EXP would actually be a good descriptor of the amount of experience the player has with difficult tasks, teamwork, and boss handling.

well up to level 70 it shouldnt be too cruel on a player.
basically anyone can reach lvl 70.
if they "want to power level", so be it...at lvl 70 which everyone will reach,
they are the same.

the places where lvl 70+ can "train" would be PVP, dungepns etc.
in parties.

theres no real plans for any solo grounds above lvl 70.

lvl 70 to 80 will be like a small bonus.
their hp and mp get a little higher, and they get 3 stat points/lvl
(have a max_lvl and min_lvl variable. down and releveling wont work that way )

also we will have a ****load range of items with different specialties
in the dungeons so people will often go there just to find stuff ^^

@ Knight Online:
All I ever did there was powerlevel...
The bosses were "just for fun"
no big loot or exp from them.... it was pointless... (Still, I killed the harpy queen with some buddys xD)

@ Pristontale:
A game also full of powerleveling, but in higher levels when it became a ****,
powerleveling looked different...
Nice parties in areas called "hellspawns"
basically, the mobs were "too many".
minimum 2 enemies per player, thus very good teamplay was needed
with area of effect attacks etc

god i miss those hellspawns, it never got boring...
exp shot up (and down if your team wasnt good enough, happened often)

OK, I'm sorry if this has been said before, but I really need to get this concept out of my system before I forget it.

How about adding a good and evil system to your game, and use it to your advantage, so that higher level players are going to be hunted for their actions? E.G. Imagine, you've just raided the princesses palace and stolen her possessions. Well, if people know it was you, then a bounty can be put up for you, and other (good or neutral) players will hunt you down for the prize. This would give them a good point boost and it would make it that the harder, more high level tasks have their risks.

Or, just pure and simple make death penalties worse as you get better, like before level 70 you might need to make your character carry 10 rocks from pile a to pile b, but beyond level 70 you need to kill 50 Hellhounds, which are incredibly strong.

I think this is probably only going to encourage power levelling. People are going to want to stay away from things that are going to get them killed (and incur a big death penalty) or get them hunted like that.

They're going to stick to mobs a couple levels below theirs and just grind, because it's safe - powerlevelling,

you can have it set so the amount of exp gained from a monster of the same level will be LOW, while tougher monsters will have tempting exp. lower level monsters will offer very little if none at all and monsters about 5 levels below you will take away a small portion of your exp. (a good example in real life is if you are doing simple tasks a lot, and not challenging yourself at the task, you do not get better and might lose a bit of experience doing whatever you are doing over time.)

Along with this:

A level 30 would have to HELP the level 40 character fight 40-45 monsters in order to raise the potential exp gain. For example, in a party fight, at the start of a fight everyone but the initiator would get 0% exp, whereas the initiator would get 100%. If a player were to aid the initiator, it would add a counter to that player allowing them to get a certain percentage of the gain. The more you help, the more potential exp you get.


This will cause several things to happen:

1. Players will want to move on in the game... but won't move to quickly due to possibility of death. They will have to take chances and continue onward if they are to get anywhere... unless they are trying to quest... then they will be getting quest exp and will be moving along at around the same pace as the people interested in just killing monsters.

2. It will prevent higher level characters from trying to boost lower level characters. If they are really playing with a friend, or another player is paying (in-game gold) for their services or whatever, then that higher level character might not worry about losing a little exp for one-hitting lower level monsters. The player who is being boosted would have to attack a considerable amount of times prior to the higher level character finishing it in order for it to be worthwhile.

3. Level of challenge goes up and both grinders and questers will be able to keep doing what they are doing happily, but with a little more effort put into an end result. Unless they are lazy, this will be satisfying to them because they will feel as though they have accomplished more. Both grinders and questers would be able to move roughly at around the same pace if balanced carefully.

4. Team play would be just as important as individual play. Using the counter system, everyone would be encouraged to aid their teammates. If the team playing is a group of friends that choose to play together throughout the course of the game, I'm sure they would help each other level at an equal rate, while temp groups won't have to worry too much about leveling at the same time since they may be together for only a level or 2.

I personally don't know with certainty if this would work, but it sounds good in theory and I think I will try it with my game to see what happens.

That's pretty much how knight online does it.


Easiest way is get rid of leveling, it was designed for single-player RPG's and single player RPG's only. MMORPG is a misleading term, i can't recall a game that is classified as an MMORPG that is actually an MMORPG, actually Lunia is the only one that comes to mind (ironically its a hybrid between arcade / light visual novel / rpg, even tho its closer to an RPG than other MMORPGs).

Hmmm...
This discussion leads me to thinking about the purpose of (massive multiplayer) online games.
Well, be honest, why do you play online games? Because you think you can accomplish something in them and not only that, you want to accomplish things fast and easy. People play them because they seek the (self?)acknowledgment the don't get (or don't get easy enough) in real life. And thats exacltly the Reason why players like the games where they can accompish something like levels.
I'm looking very positive on this discussion, because it's not your real intention to prevent power leveling, your intention has to be a change in the image of online games. Most of you guy are "game creators" so your purpose of a game is that of a "piece of art".
You seek self-actualization through creating that kind of art and that requires a whole different thinking than just about thinking of levels and mobs etc...
Things like levels etc... thouse are just there to trick people in spending money and time in a game --> making you rich, just like selling drugs to people that make them feel better for a certain amount of time.

Do you realy want to create something like that?

I would be glad if this discussion leads to a whole new idea/concept of online games.
In this context it may help everybody of you to think about personal reasons for creating a online game(think carefully/feel carefully)!

For myself i came to the conclusion, that creating a orpg in the current manner can't be a possibility of self-expression. I'd rather write a book or create a Single player game or a Film.

At their current state, i can't find a deeper purpose in mmorpgs & co than earning few people very much money and tricking many children in a unreal world, destroying their last bit of self awareness/phantasy and intelligence, just frightening.

proove me the opposite if you can.

EDIT:
There may be one way to stop the problem: Character wipe on dying and limiting the world's ressources, in other words, making the virtual world as close as the real world.

Things I'd do would be:

1. Design the NPC's levels/strength asymmetricaly, so that leveling proceeds in plateau, not as an even progression. This would cause the players to level up to a point, then slow down as they hit harder NPCs and be forced to form groups or progress at a crawl.

2. Have cut-off levels where certain NPC's stop dropping items, or drop items of lesser value. I played a game once where all the NPCs dropped half-value items if your level was higher than it's level was.

3. Lots of group quests & activities.

why are we thinking of "forbidding" or deactivating powerleveling?

hell if people are as stupid/bored as to kill 1 mob for 16 hours....
why is it our fault?

its our fault if that is the best way to play the game

if questing, pvp, dungeons, etc *insert ideas here* are more beneficial than powerleveling,
let the koreans have their pleveling fun while we play a game

Well branching away from the constant grinding was the original idea of the thread, but I think it since progressed to "making power-leveling more than just boring ass grinding" and "make the game fun without having to do boring grinding". I personally enjoy grinding at times, usually when I only want to play for a little bit. But if I am playing longer or have been playing a while, I like to do something other than kill.