Progression: Levels and Equipment

In my own RPG designs, I favor having slow progression where you only level a couple times throughout the game, with your character being mostly defined by their attributes and skills at creation. Combat progression is mostly based on gaining access to stronger equipment and items at important stages in the game, usually as enemies do.

What do you guys think about this design approach to progression? Is is something you would like, or do you prefer crunchy systems where you level up frequently, regularly increasing your attributes and skills, and constantly finding better equipment?

I would say slow levelling but with obvious benefits. Many games get this right to me, like the infinity games, PoE, Arcanum, Fallout (at least the originals). I think ending a game at level 10-20ish is great, lvl 987 not so much.

I would not like your design. I want to level much more frequently than twice in a game. As Tom Ron said, games like Baldur's Gate and others strike the right balance.

It's like the Goldilocks principle. (which is a real thing, btw -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_principle
It can't be too fast, and it can't be too slow either. But, just right...

Personally I'm an odd puppy but i prefer lots of leveling with different dimensions of change on level. What I mean is that if skills are broken out into different category you might get a point or two in a few category but not all cateogries per level. Then you can experience the joy of frequently level (original sin 2 is an example of how to break things into different categories).

What I want is for the gameplay & combat to change over time. Whether that's done via levelling or handing me different types of equipment, I don't really care. If you have me gain a level every 10 minutes but all that happens when I gain a level is that my weapons/spells do more damage then I'll get bored.

Ideally I'd like to level 5 or 6 times tied to story progression or other significant event. I HATE rapid levelling with level-scaling... what's the point then? So I'm not opposed to what you plan.

My sweet spot is 6-8 levels centered around progression of the narrative, however…

- It's a freeform system, so there are no limitations on how you build your character.

- Progression heavily emphasizes fun/roleplaying over number crunching. There are dozens of skills among different categories, and while some of them have combat applications, everyone of them is designed primarily for interacting with the world outside combat. This also includes magic.

- At every level you get to choose a perk, which again, emphasizes fun/roleplaying over number crunching. To give an example, a perk that gives you night vision, a perk that makes aggressive animals friendly to you, or even a perk that lets you scream and terrify regular people into running away. While these can affect gameplay as well, they're more interesting than '20% more damage with assault rifles.'

So even though you only level up a couple times throughout the game, each one is intended to be fun and meaningful, rather than just number crunching.

I like when small numbers make a noticeable difference. Baldur's Gate did it very well IMO, with both loot and leveling. Upgrading weapon skills is satisfying. Just wish there were more skills to invest in like NWN. Knowledge skills, etc.. Loot was near perfect too. Rarish unique magical items with lore and properties that could mean life or death in a given battle. Just my 2.

I've been playing Monster Hunter World and in that game you don't level up at all. All progression is through gear.

You do still have a "hunter rank" number which feels like your level which other players can see and an XP bar that goes up after every hunt, but other than opening more optional quests at HR30 and HR50 it doesn't actually do anything. The main campaign ends at HR15 too.

It's actually a really good system and I've spent hours swapping around gear trying to squeeze as much into my build as possible, but there's always a tradeoff.

In MHW armour items give you a point or two in a skill. Late game items can also have slots to put skill gems in and some of these skill gems are VERY rare.

For eg. Health Boost skill is the only way in the game to get more hitpoints. It needs 3 ranks to max out. Rank1 is +15hp, rank2 is +30hp, rank 3/3 is +50hp. (Health is 100 by default with an extra +50hp from eating food or nutrient potions and 200 max. Health boost from bard songs is a replacement for health boost and not eating.)

Most of the game I felt like Health Boost was a must have skill that I'd never remove, but eventually you think "I don't need extra hitpoints if I don't take damage!" and decide to become more squishy but do more damage.

Anyway, point is, making a leveling up screen is more effort than it's worth if the player only uses it two times. You can definitely make meaningful progression that gets you obsessing about builds through items alone. MHW late-game is a great example of that and one of the most fun and balanced systems I've played.

Some pics might give you a better idea….

This first build is what I was using to farm an easy event. I was using a Bandit Mantle which makes enemies drop gold when you hit them plus Tool Specialist to lower the cooldown time on the mantle, plus lots of critical hit and damage skills.

https://i.imgur.com/Mae0pa2.jpg

This build is probably my main one and based around the Lance weapon and countering status effects like Stun and Roar.

https://i.imgur.com/38ckEV9.jpg

The game has a massive amount of ailments. Knockback, knockdown, trip, wind, roars, flinch, stunned, etc, etc.

You can see I have over 3 pages of builds but it's more like 5 and a half, at this point.

Having few level ups that induce meaningful changes (beyond just increasing numbers) is a good idea. The combination of both is kind of a necessity: Meaningful changes would be incredibly hard to do for many iterations. At some point things either are not balanced anymore, or the progression becomes pointless.

That said, the number of levels probably should also respect the expected overall play time, as well as the impact of other modes of progression such as gear.

My system is unique in that there are only roleplaying skills and perks at level up, with only one category of skills having indirect combat utility. That means there's no way for a character to become unbalanced as the game progresses, unless an "adventure" favors certain skills over others.

That doesn't mean the combat's shallow though. It just relies more heavily on strategic and tactical ability, than your character's attributes and equipment.

Players hunt for content. A progression system based on many levels dilute the content and allows rewarding frequently. It keeps players focused and meets their greed.

I think it's an interesting topic. As a matter of game design, we don't usually want a game to get easier as we progress. What we do want is for gameplay to expand, and different kinds of challenges and solutions to arise. So, to me, levelling and progression should be thought of in that way - it should provide new tactical possibilities, and then present new challenges that require you to explore them. In a way, rather like the way a Mario game unlocks new abilities as you go along, giving you new ways to approach a level, or reach areas you couldn't before.

I think it's a very difficult challenge to get it right in a cRPG, where there's a proliferation of interacting elements, and particularly difficult in more open-world types of games.