Why I Love Leveling.

Ding! I just reached level 30! ... awesome!

I find it quite interesting how much I love to level up in games. From a simple tower defense game where I am able to upgrade my tower's stats, to plotting a detailed and in depth course for a single character in an RPG, I simply love it.

I have to now ask myself, why do I like it so much? What makes it so appealing? Aside from getting into the nitty-gritty of different leveling processes and structures, I'd like to spend a moment to reflect what a leveling system actually does for a player.

My first thoughts on this matter is that leveling provides a structured way of defining progress. You can see at a glance who is likely to have an advantage of two characters simply by seeing who has the higher level. If I am having a hard time defeating a tough boss, I can go out and level up a couple times and I know that I have a better chance of winning.

The second reason why I think leveling is so fun is that it often provides opportunities to customize. In most RPGs I come across, a character cannot level up without getting a talent point to spend. So not only do I have a higher power level to strut around, but I am able to strengthen my character in a way that I think is best. I can take pride in seeing the effects of my careful spending of talent points and look forward to securing powerful combinations as my character's level increases.

The third reason why I like leveling is that it is a format used to dissolve barriers. For example, in Boarderlands, you can have a pretty sweet gun in your inventory that was given to you by a friend. The only problem is that you're character is level 24 and you cannot use the weapon until he is level 26. This may at first appear to be a turn off, but being introduced to that type of mechanic early on in the game helps ease the pain dramatically. Once you get to level 26, the gratification is astounding having that sweet new death blaster by your side. It's just like Christmas!

The fourth reason I enjoy leveling is the feeling of having paid my dues. As I am a weak little grunt wondering around killing giant rats in a cave somewhere, I will look forward to the time where I can just steamroll them. Being level 1 or 2 while in the cave will be a little challenging, but once I am level 12 or 13, I can just sit back and relax while my auto attacks do the rest. Hey, I already did my time fighting these guys tooth and nail, I deserve to chillie-whamp them. This is especially true if I have defeated a dragon or two in the meantime.

The fifth reason I like to level is quite similar to my third reason of dissolving barriers. In some games, you are limited in the opportunity to advance skills or abilities until you have reached a certain level. By reaching that level, you have simply increased your capacity to improve those skills, although you will still have to put in the effort required to actually build those skills.

So there are five basic reasons why I love leveling. Now I am going to through out some scenarios and questions for you to think about when it comes to the vast world of leveling.

What can levels control?

-The general statistics of a character. e.g. strength, hit points, intelligence ect.

-The availability of talent points for customizing characters.

-The availability of using powerful weapons, equipment or items.

-The progression cap of developing other skills and abilities.

It is no fun to level up when it hardly means something.

What do stats control?

When you level up, usually your basic stats increase. But why is this important? It is because stats are more or less that basics for how effective your unit or character is. A character can be 10 levels lower than me, but if his stats are off the charts, it doesn't matter, he can still beat me. Basic stats often effect secondary (or front line stats). For example:

-Strength affects damage (3 str --> 7-8 damage, 5 str --> 9-12 damage).

-Agility affects dodge, speed, critical hit chance. The higher your agility is typically, the more often you will dodge, and score a critical hit.

-Intelligence affects how much magic you have and often how powerful your magic actually is. (2 int --> fireball power of 4-5 damage, 6 int --> fireball power of 10-14 damage).

The thing to remember with stats, is that they are often an abstraction of the actual game mechanics, just as levels are an abstraction to stats in many cases. If your stats aren't affecting the game's outcome, then it is useless to have them.

So if we have level's affecting stats, and stats affecting other stats, can we have this go the other way? I can think of at least one game series that the level is affected by the development of stats. It is actually one of my favorite series.

If you can have levels affecting stats, and now stats affecting levels, what else can you do? Just as levels can abstract stats. And stats abstract other stats, can you set up a more complex abstraction system with five tiers or seven tiers and still make it fun?

If levels can control the use of talent points, would it be fun to design a system where you get 10 points with each level that go into four different talent piles to spend and customize your character? How complex can you make it and still make it fun?

I have played some games where a character is not eligible for a level up until his stats are in a suitable place. So leveling is more of a cycle of getting the experience points, and developing other skills, and the actual leveling. I wonder, how many steps can you put into a leveling system and still make it fun?

I'm sure all the answers to these questions depends on many factors such as the genre of game and the target audience. But I am looking forward to toying with some of these concepts in my future designs.

Final Fantasy X Exp Rewards.

I was talking to one of my friends about Final Fantasy X today. He and I agree it is an amazing game, but I told him of a particular flaw in the battle system I didn't like.

If a character participates in a battle, he or she will get full exp for it. It doesn't matter if you just sit back and defend for one turn, you participated. You can also swap out the characters you have in combat. This means that during any given battle, you can have everyone defend, swap them out for another set of characters, then have those characters do the killing and win the battle. Everyone will get full exp. So if one person wins a battle, and gets 100 exp, then seven characters could get 100 exp each from the same battle if they all 'contributed'.

So what is the problem with this? It encourages people to take twice as long in combat only to exploit a little mechanic to make sure their characters are leveling up evenly. It's not even fun swapping them out to do this, but I did it the whole way through both of my official playthoughs.

My friend argued that it is realistic that everyone who participates in a battle gets exp. I agree, but I don't think it should be full exp. I have a couple solutions to this problem, and they each have their own benefits and flaws. Depending on the context you apply these ideas will depend on the idea I would recommend.

One idea is to have a set value of exp a battle is worth. Then divide that up by how many turns it took to win the battle. Distribute the exp according awarding the most to those who took the most turns. That would solve the problem of encouraging a player to swap out his party members for one turn just so they could me included in gaining exp. But what about fast characters? Won't they level up faster?

This leads me to another suggestion. You could calculate the impact of an action. If someone moves fast, they are likely to not hit as hard as the stronger, slower characters. One big hit can earn as much exp from a battle as a couple of smaller hits. This will help solve the original problem with the battle system along with taking into account faster players. But there are a few concerns even with this approach. Would healing earn exp? What about item use? Some characters may be given to you when they are really weak. It would be very difficult to catch them up if the exp were awarded from effectiveness. This isn't to mention how big of a headache it would be to actually design the effectiveness rating of every action.

Perhaps the solution lies in a simpler idea. Again, make a battle worth a certain exp. Then DIVIDE the exp up between all who participated. So if one person wins a battle worth 100 exp, then seven people would get about 14 or 15 exp each for the same battle. Therefore, the overall party's exp would not grow any faster because you simply swapped out a character to defend for one turn. You are just as fair to fast, weak characters as you are to the slow strong ones. It wouldn't be a pain in the butt to get some of your weaker guys caught up to the rest of the clan, and you can save your battle designers the headache of balancing 'effectiveness ratings'.

Paper, Rock, Scissors.... Lizard, Spock?

We have all played paper-rock-scissors before. In fact, many game mechanics use its core element to achieve balance. But have you ever heard of paper-rock-scissors-lizard-Spock (PRSLS) before? If you are a game designer, than it is more likely you have.

PRSLS is a more complex version of paper-rock-scissors, where Spock destroys rock and breaks scissors, but paper disproves Spock. The lizard poisons Spock and eats paper, but is crushed by the rock and cut by the scissors. When you make all the comparisons, you notice two things. (1.) Every element is weak against half of the remaining elements and is strong against the other half. (2.) Each set of weakness/strengths are unique to each element.

This means that PRSLS is still a completely balanced mechanic in spite of its increased complexity. But can we add more elements and retain the same level of balance. As a matter of fact, you can, as long as the number of elements in the mechanic is odd. I got the following image from the good people of http://www.umop.com. This shows a 25 element mechanic perfectly balanced like paper-rock-scissors.

http://www.umop.com/images/rps25_outcomes.jpg will take you to the breakdown of how

each element interacts with each other. Now this is pretty crazy looking, and as a game designer, I must ask what good is all this? Can this added level of complexity serve a purpose? I've determined that it has some strengths and weaknesses.

One of the most obvious weaknesses is the complexity. How is a player going to remember all the 300 outcomes of this RPS 25? Sure a computer system can keep it all strait, but unless the player knows at least why things are happening, it will likely come across as random outcomes.

One of the biggest strengths of adding more elements in the paper-rock-scissors mechanic is that it reduces the chances of a tie. When playing with the tree elements, there is a 33% chance of a tie. When playing with 25 elements, the chances of a tie are drastically reduced to only 4%. I have come up with another way of organizing this mechanic to reduce the chances of a tie to 11% and keep the complexity to a point where it is very understandable. The following image shows the layout of this design.

As you can see, the elements are embedded in a super-element. Here, any elements found in the brown super-element will defeat any element found in the gray super-element and will be defeated by any found in the white super-element. But if both players chose something from the brown super-element, then the one choosing the brown element will defeat the gray element and will be defeated by the white element.

There is still one more weakness I must discuss when it comes to the paper-rock-scissors mechanic in all the varieties I have covered. Having 3+ players drastically increases the likelihood of a tie (or more appropriately, the cycle of defeat). I remember a time in grade school where six of us got together and played paper-rock-scissors. It took about 15 tries just to get the first person out! Unfortunately increasing the number of elements does not solve this problem. The concept of entering this cycle of defeat may not even be an issue if interactions in you game don't simultaneously consider three or more pieces.

In conclusion, there are ways to increase the number of elements in a paper-rock-scissors mechanic while keeping it perfectly balanced. Doing so increases the level of complexity for better or worse, but reduces the odds of a tie. No matter how many elements are in the mechanic, considering three or more players or units simultaneously will likely lead to an endless cycle of defeat.

The Epic Strut Through Town.

World of Warcraft is one of (if not the) most successful video game in history. With over 12 million subscriptions that generate $12-$15 each every month, they have proven that they can implement good game design. So what is so good about their game design? There are many to consider, but I'd like to focus on one today.

I think one of the most powerful things in the design of World of Warcraft is what I like to call "The Epic strut through Town". Perhaps this short story will help illustrate the principal in use.

There I was, a level 16 shaman standing at the gates of a capital city, Orgrimmar. I see a level 7 running past me, but I quickly catch up and pass him after using my Ghost Wolf ability which gives me +30% movement speed. I smile as I bask in this small, yet meaningful benefit my accomplishments lends me. I cannot be content though, as a level 25 character rides past me on a mount that gives him +60% movement speed. Only 4 more levels to go before I can enjoy that game changing benefit. I make my way to the trainer and see there a level 85 (max level) readjusting his skill set. He looks POWERFUL!! I know I have a long way to go, but with enough time and effort, I can become just as strong. Finally I work my way to the bank to pick up some gear I had been saving for this level. Just before I enter, a dragon swoops down and lands in front of me. The rider, noticing my surprise, waits a moment before dismounting. I had heard from a friend about the new dragon mounts that are only given to those who have completed the most difficult achievements in the game. This player has instantly earned a portion of my respect, and I believe he knows it.

So what can we learn from this small walk through town? I had both experienced satisfaction and anticipation while doing every day activities within the game. This both validated the time I spent in the game and encouraged me to continue to spend more time in it as well.

One of the things I love to do is to break down things like this into its most fundamental elements. In order to properly duplicate similar experiences in your game, you must have two components. The first is at least one common place where no matter what stage of the game you are in, you must go to that place. In World of Warcraft, there are multiple places: Class Trainers, Profession Trainers, Trade Vendors, Banks, Mail Boxes and Auction Houses. The second essential component is a way to make accomplishments visible to other players. Again, World of Warcraft does this splendidly with different gear appearance, seeing the character level and HP when you select them, titles, mounts and finally with the 'inspect' tool and Armory. Both the inspect tool and the Armory allows players to see details of that player including most of his accomplishments.

If I were to design an MMO of any scope (including Facebook games), I would hope to include a place or two where players from all power levels would need to go and provide a way for them to "show off" their current game standing.

I must be doing something right...

I had an interesting experience over the holidays. My brother-in-law, Ben, came by and showed us how to play a new board game he had just purchased. The game was called Tobago, and its premise is to hunt for treasure by placing clues and racing to it's location. It is designed in a way that allow all who contribute to finding the treasure to get a piece. Ben explained how the pecking order worked once a treasure was found, and we played the game with a niece and nephew of ours.

After the game, I thought about the rules and thought to myself of how to make the game more fun. I suggested to Ben that the next time we play, we reverse the pecking order of the treasures to help motivate player to race to its location.

A few days later, our nephew had received a copy of Tobago for Christmas. After reading the rule book, he informed me that the changes I had suggested in regards to the pecking order were really how the game is meant to be played!

As a young and budding game designer, I find it quite reassuring to know that not only can I detect were a game has a design flaw, but that I can find a suitable solution for that flaw.