You seem to have forgot xp system like Shinning force exa that is somehow clever since it's capped by area level, it's a good idea overall but not pushed far enough, it reduce farming/grinding and avoid abuses while staying fair, it reward early exploration so you may choose to cheese the game.
@Design Doc - I completely agree about Lost Odyssey, it’s definitely doesn’t get its due recognition and praise. It’s my personal favorite generation seven JRPG.
Final Fantasy 2. The Japanese one, not the American one that was actually 4. A lot of people hate FF2J, but personally, I think those people are dumbasses who can't see that it needed polish, not complete throwing away. And yes, that frustrated response even extends to ProJared, the Final Fantasy King Himself.
Shoutouts to Chrono Cross who took the EXP out of the game and made level ups happen only in boss fights, and *still* managed to make random encounters worth fighting.
Chrono Cross had an EXP system (it was just hidden) - it just kept the level cap dynamic, based on story and boss progression. It was pretty easy to hit the cap in most areas, which made fighting normal enemies kinda pointless, especially since I didn't notice any problems in obtaining resources nor money (mostly due to the magic system always healing me to max for free after most encounters). Personally, I felt it was probably among the worst ones, since it made most combat encounters a waste of time (especially when tied to 30 second transitions in and out of combat)
@@Dumbird0 That's exactly what he said. Personally I think they could have taught the player how to optimize combos better across the vast numbers of characters. Having bosses gate huge leaps in power meant that you basically had to relearn your party after every boss, it's a lot of learning cliffs instead of gradual curves.
Eternal Sonata has my favorite progression system! You get new equipment once in a while from going through the story and exploring, you have the traditional level ups for stats and new special moves, but my favorite idea is the party level system! At key points of the story, you will level up your party level, which makes you more powerful, but for each level up, it also demands more and more of the player... The game has two main "time" ressources at the start; tactical time and action time. Tactical time is an amount of time you have to think about your moves before starting the action time, and action time is how much time you have to make moves before your turn ends. At first, you have unlimited tactical time, and action time only decreases with actions taken, so at any point you can stop and think about what to do next. However, as partylevel goes up, it rewards you with harmony chains, where you can power up special moves, and even link them together, but in return, the game starts taking away your "time" ressources bit by bit. Where at first you could sit for hours and plan your moves and take breaks between actions at party level 1, party level 2 still let's you plan moves before battle, but as soon as you move for the first time, the action time starts going, and it doesn't pause anymore, but as a reward, you start getting Echoes when you do normal attacks, which powers up your special attacks! The game even switches up some mechanics with the levels, where level 3 let's you use two dark and two light special moves. Level 4 now let's you counterattack enemies and chain special attacks if you save up Echoes into a Harmony Chain. Level 5 increases your movement speed in battle by 50%, and level 6 makes the biggest change of all: It actually changes what your buttons do while in a Harmony chain, so everything but your item and movement buttons can jump around, so that the buttons for normal attacks, special attacks and guarding change while you are in battle. But in return, you build up chains very fast, can chain up to 6 special attacks, and even keep the Echoes you have built up between battles!
RPGs part of the adventure is defeating enemies, and feeling the "kill" on each defeat. The level up is their fruit, showing storywise that they can match up to a Level 80 boss at the end of the main story. Pokemon is interesting because the level progression is simple -- each species has given Base Stats and are doubled, where Level is really the percentage of progression (i.e. come Level 50, you get what's the Base Stat + 5, except for HP which is different). Yet what makes a stat dynamic are the IV's, EV's and Natures, all of which isn't tied to level progression (while defeating enemies do give EV's, they're independent). The customization is on which build of a Pokemon you get (and at the case at times w/ finding the right IV and Natures, replacing a party member altogether, which kinda still ties in encourages the catching gameplay) plus the right moves (which vary in type, power, category and effects). Paper Mario 64 & TTYD are interesting as they're anti-grind -- that means there will be a time a weak enemy doesn't give you reward for beating them anymore. It all ties in the consistent 100 Star Points limit, meaning they cannot make an enemy classic have consistent experience yield. I think Super Paper Mario should've had more customization -- do items do bigger damage, do other characters have special moves, etc. -- but there is still a need to defeat enemies because later enemies do have more HP and Attack power. I think the problem here are the stats of the enemies themselves, where some should probably be bigger than they should to feel the stat differences do matter. It does apply a more grindy system where the next level is in a bigger increment although it doesn't feel balanced enough. Although for some, the platformer aspect may be the most important and the level ups are just a bonus.
Another problem I have with leveling up systems is the grind. Feeling that you're "underleveled" can be discouraging, at least for me, because I now have to get away from the main story just to do about 40 battles to finally be at the level I'm "supposed to be at" to finally have a bigger chance at fighting the boss. It isn't fun, it's just extremely tiring and bothersome. That's why I prefer games with a skill tree whenever you level up, as it gives me more of an opportunity to pick stats that I fight better with, and abilities/spells that help me more in battle. A great example of this is FFX.
Fantasy Life has a pretty good set of levelling systems. There's the traditional XP earned by defeating monsters, and each level both increases HP and gives you points to put into your stats. Different stats increase attack, magic attack, defence, magic defence & crit rate in different formulae. There's also skills, which level up as you use up SP with that skill, and this includes sprinting and sneaking, which use SP slower as they level. And the Life system levels up too, as you do sidequests for specific NPCs associated with that Life you can use better equipment and learn new skills. Because the Life system is so varied, with combat, crafting and gathering lives, there's a huge amount of variety to stop you from getting bored. There's even a progression system using achievements - Bliss can be earned by completing the story, levelling up your character, skills and Lives, and reaching milestones like earning a certain amount of money or playing for a certain number of hours. Bliss is then used to purchase Bliss Bonuses which add perks like more storage, better selections in shops, and even playing cutscenes and music from your room. There's a thriving and very welcoming community around the game, and plenty of us have sunk well over 100 hours into it, and the amount of progression is a not insignificant part of that. The DLC even increases almost all the level caps - the XP level cap increases from 99 to 200, there's two new ranks in the Life system, and even the level cap on some skills increases. It even adds a levelling system for the NPC allies. Fantasy Life is such a fantastic game and I'm so pleased it's getting a sequel! That godawful gacha mobile game just wasn't the same, to the point the international version only lasted six months.
3:02 I love how you put Color Splash in that and how kinda ruins the game not having real levels. Because seriously, the first two Paper Mario had maybe THE BEST exp system period. Is simple, can define how you will play, has no wrong choices overall and one of them (the badge one) even can unlock an simple system of spells in battle, making you effectively gaining better spells over time, but only if you wanna those ones, because you can defeat every enemy with Hammer, Boots and partners.
While the progression in chess Is mostly intrisic the ELO system Is probably One of the prototypes for the leveling system .If you compete in chess ,on the board or online, you get a rating that represent your strenght and if you are serious about chess you Will spend your whole Life trying to improve it .
I think Dugtrio's design is better than you're crediting it to be briefly when mentioning Pokémon's evolution at 7:40. Diglet is inspired by whack a mole machine pegs and thus is why their simplistic in design and we never see the bottom of them. Dugtrio is a natural progression with there simply being more Diglets as would be present in a whack a mole machine. it's simplistic design but i don't believe that makes it disappointing as an evolution.
Gotta be careful with skill trees too. What I personally hate in games like that, is they dump 30 multi-rank things in front of you and you're a fresh Level 2 newbie and you're looking at ALL. THIS. STUFF. and you're supposed to know how many of these are reasonably purchasable during the whole playthrough...... is my max level 50 and there's 100 nodes on the tree, is my max level 30 and there's 100 nodes, if I go down this path, can I also go down that path or will I run out of points? etc. And a lot of players will look up guides on how to "best" build their character because as WoW taught us with the Pre-Mists of Pandaria talent trees, there's thousands of combinations, but only a few dozen viable ones and the rest are just broken heaps of garbage that produce extremely weak characters and "respeccing" is (or was) expensive. Some people lament the loss of this system, but personally, I like the new system they added in its place: every X levels, you choose 1 of 3 options and you can swap those by going to a town/save point/etc type system. Personally, I think that's a far better, and far easier-to-balance system.
What about games like Skyrim where skills level up by using them? I have not really actually played it but know that like using swords, you level up sword skills and stuff Other thing is with stat allocation is sometimes they are not implemented the best sometimes it's like "hey you leveled up, put 1 point in health, attack, defense, or speed" but enemies scale in a way that if you didn't put in attack for the next area, then it's a slog to fight them or whatever just because you wanted more health, but then you put in attack after and suddenly that doesn't matter, next area is just too speedy and now you're too frail I just dislike when it's obvious they wanted a static stat progression but gave the player choice just to be "modern" and so you spend your equipment slots having to make up the difference from your apparent bad choice in stats and you're just average at best and only on a repeat playthrough do you grind a bit so you are above whatever and then it doesn't matter
Then developers should have pre-made challenges more often, letting players see what they're missing out on. YOU HEAR THAT GAMEFREAK? GIVE US THE BATTLE FACTORY BACK, YOU LAZY CURS.
@@shinaikouka FF14 implemented flying in an interesting way. In the first expansion, you had to earn the ability to fly on a map by exploring and story progression, while the original story areas didn't have flying until just a few months ago. That's a story-based reward for beating the final boss before the first expansion. So you still get the story experience, and a means to expedite growth in other classes/jobs as a further reward.
@@Fleshbag453 Well, yes, but most developers don't create their games with the mindset of "let's spend years designing enemies, scenery and music, just so people can go through the whole game in a single afternoon." And when they do, it's usually a dedicated mode like boss rush.
I like to prioritize the fun in a game, however those kind of bonuses for specific activities make me feel obliged to do them, because after all, being weaker than I should or less strong than I could is not fun.
Nice video, but very surface level. I would argue it spends very little time talking about what makes a leveling system GOOD, and spends the majority of the video simply defining the terms. While there's nothing wrong with that, it is a bit misleading, and it's something I've noticed has become a general trend with Design Doc videos. In an effort to speak to the broadest design elements, there's a distinct lack of depth. Paper Mario's design failed because it decoupled the leveling from the game progression. Okay. But the entire rest of the video was just designed to highlight examples of what games have done -- not necessarily what they have done well. Is FF9's system of leveling up your inventory good or bad? Is a point allocation system better when it's simple and direct like Castle Crashers' or when you have a massive set of choices like Path of Exile? When you aren't playing a traditional RPG, how much do you want to commit your game to RPG elements and why? Which of the examples in your video have a great feel and which feel clunky or simply serviceable? Is it better to give the player LOTS of levels and/or points so that the game is consistently incremental, or give them only a few very concrete moments where they can upgrade their character, like in Mass Effect 2? These are all points that could have given this video some depth. As it is, we're really just watching a big checklist.
I notice this about Design Docs as well. I wish there was a bit of theorycrafting or brainstorming on how to build these systems with some blueprint graphics on screen or something
100% agree. Cool info on the different types of level up systems but I got to the end of the video and my only question is, "So what actually makes a good level up system?"
@@Har0x: i think it's one that makes a difference by the end of the game but not one that makes it so that a gap of "just a couple of levels" is debilitating...KH is a good example of this and older Ys games are bad ones imo
I always think back to The World Ends With You, where the quality of loot you get from enemies are proportional to how *low* your level is. A slider lets you control where your level currently is from the ones you added, and the game gets challenging even when your level is on par for where you're at in the story, so the level system becomes an built-in difficulty meter that rewards you for mastering encounters enough to not need the stat bonuses.
Twewy also juggled a number of level up systems besides the actual character level, between leveling pins and the slower stat bonuses you got from meals over time. Definitely made for an interesting mix.
Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded gave you multiple difficulty sliders that effected loot. You could modify game difficulty, Max HP, and (I think) enemy damage. I think it’s such a neat and simple way to reward self-imposed challenge.
Also changing the difficulty affects the drops from noises, playing on a harder difficulty will net you more exp. and also better pins while easier difficulty will give less exp. and not so worthy pins (mostly being money ones)
I love how the Monster Hunter series works with progression. It's got the story stuff where you slowly fight bigger and bigger monsters but you use their stuff to make more powerful equipment to become more powerful yourself. Not to mention how your own skill as a player increases as you go on, making it feel as though you're really mastering the monsters
as some people i know say , the monster is your teacher not just a threat (nah i made that up) but hey at some point you get stuck at a monster , and when you do you gotta learn something new , just like khezu in mhfu teaching you not to fight close to walls or else...
Something missing from this discussion is being over-leveled or under-leveled. The amount the player scales with levels determines how much enemies scale in power. If this amount is too great, individual levels will make too big of a difference and the player will regularly be over-leveled or under-leveled. Just look at Pokemon. The stat gains, new moves, and evolutions from leveling up can cause fights to go from difficult to trivial in just a few levels. On the other hand, Dark Souls has each level give a very small bonus on top of having those bonuses get smaller over time. This makes it so that enemies can also have a slow progression in power. Being under-leveled or over-leveled only makes a small difference in dark souls so difficulty can be consistent. If you go to a late game area under-leveled, you'll have extra challenge but it's possible to beat the area. If you go to a lower level area, enemies still provide a challenge if you get careless. Reducing how much levels increase the power of the player also allows for games with leveling up to be open ended. Dark Souls once again is a good example of how small amounts of scaling in levels is helpful. Areas can be done out of order and it hardly ever feels like you're under or over-leveled. However, in a game like Pokemon, they usually can't be open-ended without extra systems to adjust levels. Pokemon Gold and Silver tried to be open ended; however, the levels of many areas ended up being way too low. All the possible areas the player could go when the game opened up were set to a level they can handle at that time. However, once the player has completed one of the areas they could go to, they become too high in level for the others. Sadly, if the area's levels are increased, then it'll become hard for the player to actually tackle the areas out of order since they won't be able to handle higher level areas. It's not impossible for games with leveling up systems to be open-ended even if levels cause higher increases in power. A good example of an open ended game with levels that give a larger amount of power is Monster Sanctuary. It's a monster taming RPG similar to Pokemon that's going to release later this year. It has level scaling similar to Pokemon except each monster has its own skill tree. Additionally, all fights in the game scale based off of how much of the world you have explored. This allows for the game to be a completely open ended metroidvania. As long as you don't skip fights in the game, you won't be under-leveled and all fights will keep up with you in difficulty unless you specifically go out of your way to grind. I highly recommend checking it out.
On the other hand, low-impact leveling systems, and especially Dark Souls, take most of the actual punch, and thus fun, out of leveling up in the first place. In the TTRPG's video gaming gets leveling from, leveling up is exciting! How will I decide to add to my character? Will I continue to level in Fighter or will I start grabbing Wizard levels now? What new abilities will I pick up to grant myself radical new options? And then in Pokemon, like you mentioned, you have the question of what new flashy move your digital friend will pickup, will they evolve into a stronger friend, etc. It's swingy, sure, but its also fun and exciting. Pokemon's other woes with level scaling are a fundamentally different problem, and mostly come down to Pokemon being baby's first JRPG, but at least leveling up feels good. Meanwhile, in Souls, leveling up gets me incrementally closer to using an incrementally better weapon/spell, and that's the best case scenario. In the worst case, it gets me an imperceptible amount of higher Stamina, Carrying Capacity, HP, or worst, Resistances. Leveling up in Souls is never exciting. At best it's, "Well, now my arbitrary restrictions against using this weapon have been lifted." Incremental growth is just not sexy. It works in Souls principally because Souls isn't actually an RPG, it just uses RPG mechanics to give the death mechanics weight. Death needs to have a weight behind it for the tone the game is going for to work, and so they chose the game's EXP/currency, something gamers are inherently more attached to than their waifus. At the same time, if leveling up is a Big Deal, a particularly bad Soul loss would be too punishing, so the levels are kept incremental. T he RPG mechanics are thus stapled on backwards, which again, does work for what Souls is going for, but is not necessarily an example to follow for everyone (much though it has become a trend many are currently following).
This is why i've been starting valuing horizontal progression so much There's little to no reason to make vertical progression other than giving the feel of being stronger, but is that worth sacrificing the mechanics? The idea is that when your overall stats barely change, but you gain more options Robocraft did this fairly well, as you level up you gain access to weapons that are slower and deal more damage, these are harder to use but have a bit more DPS (at the cost of higher energy consumption) So a lvl 1 player has the same capacity for combat as a lvl 100 player, but the lvl 100 player has more options for making vehicles
I love that you used pokemon & dark souls as examples here, because not only does it show the (in)competence of the devs, but also who these styles are targeting. Dark souls is a very skill-heavy game that REQUIRES you to know the ins and outs, because you can't just overlevel for easy win. Pokémon on the other hand can just be beaten with a level 90 starter or legendary, which often overshadows the skill depth that the system has.
i do prefer static difficulty over scaling, but basing it off how much you explored makes far more sense than the rest of the world levelling with you. either way, it means you can't go to Area C before Area B, get curb-stombed, buy the best weapon you can, die some more, maybe grind a bit and then overcome it through skill and persistence and i like low scaling myself personally; level 2 shouldn't literally double my HP just because it's twice as high as level 1 (Legend of Dragoon *literally* did that)
"Pokemon Gold and Silver tried to be open ended; however, the levels of many areas ended up being way too low. All the possible areas the player could go when the game opened up were set to a level they can handle at that time. However, once the player has completed one of the areas they could go to, they become too high in level for the others. Sadly, if the area's levels are increased, then it'll become hard for the player to actually tackle the areas out of order since they won't be able to handle higher level areas." The solution to that would be to make the remaining areas increase in level when you get a badge from one of the other areas. I don't know if that would have been possible in that game, though. That's how a modern game should handle it though. Also, Pokemon sucks at the level balance in general. Played Red and Brilliant Diamond this year... Both times, even though I ran from wild encounters and only fought trainers, I was easily overleveled for the entire second half of the game. And then you hit the wall of the Elite Four + Champion and suddenly you're underleveled, and need to grind. What's the intended solution here, game? I could have fought every random encounter too, but then I'd be even more overleveled for most of the game. Or I could fight less trainers so I stay more in line with the levels of the trainers I do fight, but then I'm even more underleveled for the end game, and going back to all the trainers I skipped won't give me an amount of XP that's worth it anymore. And of course the Elite Four and Champion themselves are another example of Pokemon doing it wrong. The Champion is always 10-15 levels higher than the first of the E4, which makes a HUGE difference in Pokemon. So what happens is the player has to grind to a high enough level for the Champion, and now the rest of the Elite Four is too easy. Granted, I could go off all day about how I think Pokemon is doing practically everything wrong. They just throw in difficulty spikes with stupid high levels, and make so much stuff come down to RNG. Playing/replaying these as I've gotten older has really exposed so many flaws in these games. I always knew these games were for children, but I guess I never really noticed how heavily they were targeting only that audience until now. You pretty much have to ignore the campaign entirely (or power through it knowing it's not good) so you can get to competitive battling if you want any enjoyment out of this game as an adult.
I think it CAN work if the player get's new abilities, moves or whatever at a constant rate through those level ups or in parallel with them. Sure enemies level up with you but your obtaining of new moves makes them easier to kill regardless.
@@legendarytat8278 I don't think that's a good trade of. The hall point of the leveling system is to get stronger and not weaker. When you upgrade not very usefull skill in RPG with a static enemy levels you are not getting better, but at least you are not getting weaker at a cost of your time and exp.
"Players will optimize the fun out of the game" Like every god damned game I see where you can level up money drop rates, or experience gains, or "luck" Quit giving that as a stat. Also false choice trees. Those times where you can choose between upgrades in your stat tree, but instead of adding new options, what they do is just increase multipliers. I want to see "Now your wind spell creates a wind tunnel for a while that makes you move faster in that direction, which is cool and helpful but you might also want to try that ice spell." I don't want to see "Now your wind spell has rocks in it that increase the damage by such a high amount, you're NEVER going to level up your ice spells again."
To be fair, the Mario and Luigi games have luck as a Stat (called moustache), but they do something interesting. You can choose a specific Stat to level up over the rest, but picking the same Stat over and over will give Swverely diminishing return, so it encourages you to have a balanced build.
Yeah, the remakes don’t though. I was so completely overleveled in the BIS remake, I had Rainbow Rank before the last bosses when I never had it in the original (I know you get it earlier in the remakes but still) despite me actually avoiding enemies instead of killing them all like in the original. The rank-based skill tree in that game is also way too OP and you just can’t turn these game-breaking abilities off. Plus they also removed the challenge mode, so that game can’t even be challenging if you want it to. It was honestly better when it was just a simple leveling up system with a little stat bonus you can pick.
@@rainpooper7088 but couldn't that be our muscle memory as well? I mean you can dodge basically all damage in that game, if you've learned all the tricks. I could probably beat cackletta with 10 hp at this point for instance.
What has to be my least favorite leveling system is the one where XP earnings per character is determined by how many/what actions they made during battle. It usually ends up in a situation where a couple of party members get stronger and carry the team, even worse if kills are too important a factor meaning support characters and healers may get disproportionately less XP than the attackers even though that heal they did was key too them surviving another round.
FFX did an annoying version of this, if a character didn't do damage in a fight, they wouldn't get AP. Yuna could personally protect/revive everyone in the party 10 times over, but if she didn't summon an Aeon (which clears the rest of the party off the board) or boop someone on the nose with her stick (hilarious, but ineffective), she would just earn nothing (sometimes it wouldn't count so i have no idea what the specifics are) even worse is the fact that leveling up and getting stats are practically your ONLY way of getting stronger, since weapons/equipment only give multiplicative buffs, if your base stats aren't high, they won't help you. and on TOP of that there's one character you get halfway through the game, who starts at (the equivalent of) LEVEL ONE, meaning they are completely useless in general combat (aside from their character gimmick, which for some reason is the single most busted skill in the game) Also the Dedicated offense mage is weaker than the Healer if you just build the healer for offensive magic, which is hilarious (though that's more the fault of magic increasing both healing and damage, and Yuna's sphere grid start has more magic nodes on the way to offensive magic than Lulu)
Fell Seal uses that system pretty effectively (believe me when i say i'm not a fan of it, but they did it really well) Basically healing and buffs/debuffs receives a nice xp bonus, while kills also give bonuses and any double action-type ability gets diminishing returns At the end, all classes level up at the same rate as long as they do something each turn(which should always be the case since you equip 2 classes at once, giving you extra tools for when you don't have any abilities on your main class to use)
@@robonerd125 can we also talk about how drawn out the summoning animation is. At first it was cool but when grinding? Hell no. Godbless for the fast forward button on the remastered 😇
@@robonerd125 That's untrue, you need to perform any action with a character to get AP. It's definitely annoying to be forced to do so or else they don't get anything, but you can easily swap people in and guard (which has much faster recovery on the timeline)
I really feel like you should've talked about the downsides of point allocation, specifically as it pertains to ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile, where a beginner player can essentially make their character unusable by investing in the "wrong" stats/skills. With such systems, I think it should be standard that resetting your allocated points should be doable at any time, or at least fairly easy to do. This would encourage experimentation, while avoiding discouraging players who might end up with a sub-par build after spending many hours on a character.
I think this is about making characters not dependant on the skill points and making the progression less steep and more horizontal (power level stays the same, but you still unlock more stuff, so you can still tackle more powerful enemies at a disadvantage of lacking the tools intended for it)
I think it's worth considering that freely allowing reallocation can make the decision-making less interesting, as it removes the stakes in it, and can encourage players to just slap points into one stat until they feel a deficiency in some other area. Leaving decisions at least somewhat immutable encourages players to think ahead, and plan a cohesive character from the start. Of course, not everyone wants to be constantly planning ahead, and so both approaches can be reasonable depending on developer intent. As far as misallocating points, I think in some ways that's more a problem with the stat system being used, rather than the allocation. Ideally, either the game should make it very clear what stats are worth investing in for a given class/build, or it should strive to ensure that every stat is worth developing in some way.
I had a really bad experience with this in Valdis Story. The specifics are fuzzy now but basically the different "main" stats all give boosts to secondary stats as well and the Luck stat was consistently showing the most total gains each level so I just kept dumping points into that. Unfortunately this apparently left me with an exceptionally low base attack during the final boss, which had a regeneration mechanic that made it unrealistic for me to ever actually kill it (a more experienced player with that build probably could do it, but as you said this type of thing punishes beginners). It was bad enough that it was actually easier for me to just start a whole new save file with a pure strength build to just rush back through the entire game again, since there is a very low level cap that had already been hit and I don't think I had found the NPC which allows respecs at that point. TL;DR: If you let players pick piles of numbers, expect new players to pick the bigger pile of numbers and balance all the required content around that pile as a minimum.
@@KarhsXII No, not at all. In almost every game where I planned from the start... it doesn't work at all. I've had to reset or ended up with a weak character. Unless you know what is actually good/bad to use in game you have no way to know. ...then when I know how the game works? It is a complete joke and I'm OP decimating everything. But hey, I can play again for 30 hours and change 1 stat on my original character for 1 level and suddenly they are good. "Stakes" of being unable to do much of anything are not good.
@@KarhsXII "I think it's worth considering that freely allowing reallocation can make the decision-making less interesting, as it removes the stakes in it, and can encourage players to just slap points into one stat until they feel a deficiency in some other area. Leaving decisions at least somewhat immutable encourages players to think ahead, and plan a cohesive character from the start." That's true in theory, but in reality what you get is people quitting the game when they realize they've allocated points incorrectly and can't continue the game. Remember, you can't think ahead your first time playing the game. You literally don't know what works and what doesn't to be able to think ahead until you've played it. You're basically asking the player to be psychic. That's no good.
FINALLY someone talks about the broken design of FFXV's exp caching!!! I was so frustrated for the whole game because I loved the atmosphere and experience of camping, but I always felt like I was losing exp by not using at least the 2x hotel. I missed out on basically every camping side story and didn't actually know they were a thing until I was almost finished the game. Truly terrible design from the ground up.
Yeah, which is why i only stayed at the hotels if only there weren't any campsites around. I knew i was missing out on exp, but i'm not playing the game for leveling reasons; i was there for the characters.
and seriously, levels don't add as much weight as gear and AP, and by the end game, exp is not even a thing anymore of how easy it is to get. But thats the magic of rpgs: play then as you like and are having fun.
Also worth noting about Lost Odyssey, it's probably the best RPG at encouraging you to use *every character*. The linking system with your immortals is part of it, but each map has a "level cap" as well. Once you hit the level cap of a specific map, your experience gains are *significantly* reduced, meaning that it's better to change party members out once they hit that level rather than letting all that EXP go to waste on characters who are having their progression stunted.
It also helps that every character is unique enough to justify using. You'd normally want to just use your immortals, especially since they are also able to revive themselves after a few turns if things go south, but the mortal characters you do have are great with support, and even has one that is the only non-mage ranged attacker. That is pretty cool to me.
It also helps to encourage strategy in boss fights by preventing the ability to grind over the challenge. If the player gets stuck but has reached the cap, they need to learn the games mechanics better rather than brute forcing their way through.
Came here to find this comment, glad I wasn’t the only one. Was expecting at least a mention of 7/7R based on that thumbnail. Still a good video though.
FF 7 has a very basic system, and not that good either, having levels be focused on individual items wasn't the best idea, also, the number inflation is real (what's the need to make you deal triple digits of damage at lvl 1?)
One of the unique things I love about Fire Emblem is that EXP there is a limited, finite resource. Combined with its perma death feature. EXP is also quite risky to distribute, since the underleveld character who need it the most die so easily while the stronger, overleveld characters get diminishing EXP returns.
Yes this! Also, in the one FE game I've played, advancing your character's class to their higher-tier class causes them to count as a much higher level for this purpose--so the longer you wait to do it, the more EXP and higher stats they'll ultimately have. (And if I remember right it also reset their "level" to 1, so waiting longer would also give them a higher level cap)
That sounds insanely stressful to me, and makes me glad I never got into the series. ^^; I've heard more recent entries make perma-death opt-in but I still don't think I'd find a strategic relationship simulator that interesting...
Sounds like a pretty redundant system Why let you choose who gets EXP when it's clear that everyone should get equal amounts to be more effective? why do they give you the option to boost specific characters into overdrive and let the others behind, doesn't that encourage not using the other characters? what happens if the character you over leveled so much dies, do you get softlocked because the rest are so under leveled? That system comes with a LOT of problems
Ah, FE As a kid, I once played a FE game on Gameboy advance, which has female main character. At the time, I had no idea about the exp management, but I did notice EXP is limited, so I put them all on my big horse guy. I won battle with human army, invaded castle, battled with wizard army. Then. This new stage. My group was on a small island, surrounds by lava. A small group of dragon riders attacked my group. Not a single character in my group can fought with them, healing and magic included. Tried to replayed the stage a few times before quit. The game is hard.
@@ngkn2008able I played a bunch, they aren't hard, they just have poor design choices If the game lets you softlock that easily, there's a problem right there
There's a game an steam called hylics and its got a really unique progression path where there's no real levels, and dying just sends you to an area where you keep everything you had when you died. The only way you get stronger is exchanging and finding items in the overworld. Its really cool.
Although the Fire Emblem series as a whole has pretty good level-up systems, I think Three Houses really took it a step further. Every single character has their own growth rate in each stat (the chance for a stat to increase every level-up), and every possible Class has both its own growth rate and base stat modifiers. The mid-tier classes and above also have up to 3 class abilities that will always be equipped so long as a character remains in that class. Combined with the fact that any character can train in any weapon or skill and are not limited to class branches like previous FE games (aside from gender-locked classes), you can truly mold your team to be anything you want them to be. The only thing limiting you is each character’s own max stat caps and how quickly you can train a character’s skills to meet Class requirements (most characters have Strengths and/or Weaknesses in certain weapons/skills that speed up or slow down how quickly they can rank up in those specific weapons/skills). Every character also learns different amounts of different Magics, Abilities, or Combat Arts at different ranks, even when concerning the same Weapon/skill- One character may learn 5 magic spells and another may only learn 2. But to encourage you to stay in your Class for longer instead of immediately jumping into a higher tier Class, you can increase Class experience until you Master the class in order to learn a new ability or Combat Art. Some characters may want a Class Mastery Ability more than others. For example, characters who struggle to deal damage may want to go through the Brigand Class and Master it to get Death Blow, which increases your Attack by 6 if you initiate the battle. With all these systems in place, you’ll hardly every run out of goals. You’ll never get the same playthrough twice, even with the same route, team, Classes, and weapons, and all of the work you put in ranking up weapons/skills and Class Mastery can all carry over into a New Game+. I haven’t even touched upon things like the Professor Rank, Budding Talents, Crests/Hero’s Relics, instructing, instruction drills, how YOU rank up differently than the other characters, etc.
ok real talk, FE has great customization and stuff, especially the newer ones, but the whole growth % thing sucks. every time I hear "if character X gets good level ups" it just hurts. what's even the point? the best characters are almost always the ones that don't need to bother with growths anyway.
alexander martinez Actually, I prefer having the growth percentages over fixed growth (ie +1 Strength every 3 levels). A lot of characters are great because of their growths, but even they aren’t ALWAYS good. I’ve heard of someone who got stat screwed with Felix several playthroughs in a row. Personally speaking, Bernie has always done way better than Shamir for me, even though the only thing Bernie has over her is a little bit more speed and less strength. Funny thing is, she and Ingrid both have the same base Strength growth, and Ingrid should actually get more Strength growth boosting from her class progression than Bernie. And yet, guess who’s always struggling to kill? A lot of “best” or “top tier” characters are also based on personal preference and how they fit your own play style. When you combine stat growths, class progression, Abilities, and Combat Arts all together, you can get wildly different results, which is why nearly every Three Houses tier ranking you see is different, with only a few characters almost always at the top (the main lords, Lysithea, Felix, and Petra).
@@ShinyKyu oh, modern FE has all of those things. the games got better not becaue growth % is a good mechanic, but because with all of those other options growths matter less and less. would it really not be better if instead of some characters randomly being better than others everyone just got the "good" level ups every time? (assuming they brought enemy stats up to par, knowing how easily FE tends to break).
I mean, ehh. Compared to something like the Materia system though, it feels lazy. It's basically just an overglorified skill tree. Once you start to fill it out with all the characters beyond their own set path, the characters start to feel homogeneous, and the distinctions between each character that made the first part of the game fun cease to be, and it just devolves into spamming Quick Hit every turn. I think X was on the right track in terms of the CTB system, and the series really should have stuck with that, but it's definitely not my favorite ability system compared to some of the others in the series. It didn't feel like you needed to adjust anything per battle, like setting up different Materia combinations or equipment combos for late game battles.
@@knightshousegames I mean it's only true on the post game (I'm agree with you the engame is grindy as fuck and less strategic sadly). ff7 character feel homogeneous from the start (even if the materia system is fun).
@@theflashgordon193 I just like the endless possibilities of the Materia system, you can make completely crazy stuff happen if you understand to rules, like you can just counter attack with like 7 Omnislashes every time you get hit if you know what you're doing. The homogeneity of VII is relative though, every character has access to all of the actions, but only a limited number of them at a time because of materia slots. It's less about the actions and more about how you spread them out across the party and in what combinations. You can build and re-build your characters for every battle if you want. In the game I'm working on, I'm developing a system that tries to accomplish the best of both, the feeling of customization per encounter, as well as the sense of permanent growth, without that sense of homogeneity. It's a tough act to balance, but it's an interesting challenge.
@@knightshousegames I understand you (even if I never fully exploited the materia system) but ff7 is honestly too easy you never really need to exploited well the materia system and I'm not that much fan of the design of the post game boss. I hoped the game you developed will have in mind the player that seek challenged. I'm curious or you working in a big studio and can you tell me the name of the game ?
My favorite leveling system is from The World Ends With You. You level up, but you can choose to level down anywhere from 1 to your current level. If you do, your HP drops, but the drop chance for items is multiplied depending on how many levels you reduced. Other stats for combat are determined by food, clothing, and your pins (abilities) so it's still possible to beat those tough enemies at Level 1 and get a rare item.
I always felt that the "players will optimize the fun out of a game" quote a bit accusatory. Playing optimally is, on its face, one form of fun that's derived from the game. The thing is that when it comes down to when a player needs to make a gameplay-specific choice, usually "play optimally" (maximize rewards, minimize downtime) is the obvious, immediate solution to any given problem. In order to see the content that comes from playing suboptimally, players have to give up the fun of playing optimally. And if playing optimally sucks out other kinds of fun from the game, it creates this weird clash of priorities. "How am I SUPPOSED to play, if not optimally?" Just telling them to have fun and not worry about optimal play smacks of misunderstanding actual player priorities. (especially when it's still possible, or the player might suspect it's possible, to play suboptimally all the way to an irrevocable game over). Yes, there may be other forms of fun to derive from a game, but these needs to be clearly communicated to the player, as well as actually be supported by the gameplay, before they invest themselves in Playing Optimally. The main solutions to this are to make suboptimal play inevitable (no truly optimal strategies), make lots of clearly stated trade-offs to optimization, or simply make the optimized path the most interesting one.
Yeah, maybe that came out more accusatory than I meant it. In FFXV's case specifically, though, the 'optimal' way to play with the hotel XP bonuses actively excludes seeing some of the extra conversations. Ideally, 'optimal' play shouldn't lead to missing chunks of the story in a story-driven game.
I think optimizing the fun out of the game is essentially the problem of modern pokemon games, to be more precise any amount of optimization (like always choosing a super effective type move) and a sort of balanced team comp takes out all the challenge in the game. Competitive pokemon is so much fun because of all the ways everyone is trying to optimize, in team building, choosing very peculiar moves, switching up expected roles of pokemons etc. I feel that the phrase makes sense as an accusation, but only when the game doesn't account for optimization like in the case of modern pokemon (for the record also the past pokemon games didn't account for optimization but my nostalgia googles are too thick)
The problem is when the most rewarding (as in, extrinsic rewards like experience points) way to play is also not fun; players usually bite the bullet and do the boring grind if it's more efficient than playing the game normally. A good design should specifically reward the player for playing the game in the most fun way, to encourage them to keep doing it. One way to fix the FF15 issue would've been to give a one-time bonus EXP multiplier the first time you use any given rest spot: now players would be encouraged to seek out every last one of them instead of always going back to the same inn every time, and also be encouraged to do long dangerous expeditions that really challenges their resource management instead of playing it safe by resting every 5 minutes to always be fully stocked on magic, so that they get as much use of those one-time bonuses as possible.
players will optimize the fun out only if the dev REALLY messes up. like giving unreasonable bonuses in ff15 or making the game insultingly easy like pokemon. or making you reset for decent level ups in old FE.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz This is actually what I mean; Fire Emblem games keep getting easier because the games were built on perverse incentives that promoted savescumming. It IS literally possible to lose too many units or not get good enough level up bonuses to continue playing your campaign altogether. In FF15, you spend a lot of time going to the same hotels for the bonuses specifically to *save time* you'd otherwise spend on having to grind for the equivalent experience points. Pokemon specifically has lost a lot of interesting gameplay choices EXCEPT in super high-level play, and if you want to play high-level you have to do a bunch of extremely boring stuff in the game to get there, it will not be a natural consequence of playing the game normally.
For as amazing as Final Fantasy X's level-up system is, I feel many people ignore X-2. Choosing the skills you want to grow on each different dressphere, on top of the normal linear progression gives a similar feeling to FFIX, where you feel a tangible sense of progression nearly every other battle. Choosing which dresspheres to use, the skills they learn, and which characters use them on which garment grid makes X-2 feel incredibly customizable and unique. At the end of my 50+ hours with the game, I genuinely felt like the build that I did for each character was entirely unique, and it's that feeling that makes the game incredibly replayable.
X2 has customization as long as you're not actually trying to be good at the game. buuut as soon as you try via infinito and the hard tournaments (where you actually HAVE to be good) you'll see the true face of the game. and by that I mean magic users are trash, dark knight and alchemist are OP, and psychic/mascot are cheat codes so those don't count.
The lack of cross-classing is what kills it. A lot of options unlocked from grinding out dresspheres are too niche to be useful or on a job that's not useful enough to actually have out in combat. The infrastructure is there to be something that competes with the Sphere Grid, but in practice is weaker than FFIX in every mechanical way. A lot of the changes in the roguelike spinoff were interesting and could seriously have made X-2 superior to others, but they never wanted to go back and redo things.
Even if you do get a copy, you can't get one of the DLC because it was a pre-order only bonus outside Japan. So one of the games most useful skills and one of the 1000 years of dreams stories are locked forever.
Mobile RPGs also have their own spin on level up : since you usually collect dozens of characters that all start at level 1, fighting doesn't give you xp directly, but xp items that you can spend on whatever character you want. That way you can clear content with your strongest ones and use the rewards to get the new ones up to speed. Alas, it also enables the developers to get grindy with it, since the content you have to do to get xp and the content that progresses the story are usually separate.
But sometimes (especially in gacha-ish ganes) if you onky join a few years after the release you will get an humungous amount of chraracters and so many exp items that you can level your party to the max brfore the first boss (in a final fantasy I got almost a hundred characters in my first hour and the ability to max level about 30 of them, which would lead to me utterly destroying the firstfive bosses, taking the fun out ofthe game)
Final Fantasy Record Keeper is interesting; Fighting gives you xp, but you can also get special xp-up items to boost your levelling. However, acquiring a character's particular item boosted their stats, and at max level, you could still go with them more into battle to get ability points that you can use to specialize your character's improvements. I think they've done well with late-game levelling.
True, but he did a 17-minute long video with what was covered on this video. Maybe it would be better to make a Part 2 where he talks moreabout leveling up systems.
@@DeronHargrove GMTK has a whole video on skill trees alone, if that's what you're thinking of. He talks about traditional leveling systems in that one too iirc but it's been a while. I really like that video because it's more than just black-and-white "skill trees good" or "skill trees bad", he really dissects what makes a good skill tree functional.
@@crimsoncat8244 It was a series, wasn't it? But yeah, those are probably the best videos about skill trees I've seen. I know some game design videos can be pretty biased but GMTK does a good job at being objective in those videos
lol, for me it is the contrary, I think it is really boring when my character just learn everything in a predetermined path, a lot of times making me feel like leveling up shoun't even be in the game...
Perhaps limit the amount of future upgrades you can see, and you can see more as you level up. This should limit choice paralysis, and also allow some degree of planning ahead. This should make players more excited to level up, because besides getting stronger, they also get rewarded by unlocking more upgrades that you can see, thus getting them more excited to get the next upgrade.
Personally i love having options. Characters learning the same exact skills through level up or side quests means no variety, but when you have some customization at your disposal it can become a lot more interesting assuming it's not like ff6 where your characters don't matter in the endgame as long as they have ultima
"For a different spin on traditional level up systems..." Oh, man, is he gonna bring up any of the games in the SaGa Franchise? Scarlet Grace recently came out and it's such a breath of fresh air compared to-- "...try Final Fantasy 9." Welp. You tried. The problem is that the linear levels you gain from fights never afford you anything interesting. The abilities you earn from items WOULD serve for a neat system, but the game is so sparse with offering new gear that by the time you can get a new ability, you've already learned the last one. There's never any real decision when it comes to 'builds' as the passives on offer are either too sparse to merit a 'build' or you can just equip all the ones worth using and avoid the several that aren't. There's an illusion of agency, but the game so slowly trickles out what you have available to you that it aught as well be a strictly linear system. I don't think there's a single system in Final Fantasy 9 that's executed well at all, for the record. That game is a mess, from a design perspective. At least you brought up Lost Odyssey, since it does the same 'learn from gear' system but actually gives the player a ton more in terms of decisions and agency. Seriously, though, if you're interesting in a Japanese RPG that actually does tons to reward player agency, SaGa Frontier is such a gem to highlight, with how there are multiple races that all progress differently and how much each fight can contribute to how you're building a character.
I'm late, but not as late as SaGa Frontier's developers were when the game was released. In all seriousness, SaGa Frontier was awesome, but it reeks of wasted potential. I haven't seen any other game like it, though. Not even the other SaGa games.
"skill trees provide new abilities for each step on the progression ladder" *shows borderlands* In a serious note: I feel that, although everything you said is true, the video was kind of all over the place and with no real conclusion. Also, I think that the topic itself was way too broad to go into specific examples so thoroughly. In consequence, I think you missed out many other aspects of leveling systems, and it wasn't clear what's the difference between a good and a bad leveling system. What about the games that gatekeep content through leveling systems, be it gear or story? What about games where players can level up asymmetrically (Coop or live service games)? Plus, it feels like the things you mentioned that make up a good leveling system are just things that apply to games in general; makes me think that those games could let go of their leveling systems while keeping the tangible stuff and players won't feel like they're on a treadmill. Not to mention that devs have a bad habit of making enemies stronger by increasing their level without any mechanical difference.
I loved Xenoblade 2 leveling bonus when overkilling enemies. If you have a difficult time with a boss, just use everything as soon as you can. But if you want that sweet xp, you can set up everything while fighting to make a complete overkill of the guy when he reaches something like 5%, which makes the fights harder but also more interesting as you have to keep track of what you've done before. And then you do the overkill, with all the overdrives and other crazy mechanics you can, stylish cutscenes play while you hammer your enemy into oblivion, and you do enough damage to kill that same guy 5 times over if he was full life, and you get crazy amount of XP. It felt so good, even against end game bosses. ESPECIALLY against them. Every fight would end in a climatic showdown of skill and destruction. It was glorious!
And in the case of some games, numbers for levels can get high. Star Ocean stops at lv255, the game I'm making stops at 300, Disgaea stops at 9999, and the fanmade Touhou Labyrinth games... I don't even know if those have a cap on levels...
I liked the way Hollow Knight let you upgrade your nail. Basically, you have to collect certain amount of geo (from defeating enemies) as well as Pale Ores. This gives the player another reason to keep fighting regular enemies as well as exploring the world looking for Pale Ores.
@@ozymandias8523in hollow knight theres only 6 pale ores hidden around the map, and they're usually hidden behind hard platforming challenges or bosses, so you take on a challenge to get a damage upgrade
If there is one, ONE, thing that i would love to see on your channel, it would be the progression/equipment system in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days. Optimizing the space in this tetris-like, resident evil briefcase-like was my favorite when i was kid. Also, the trinity of Fire Emblem 3H progression through equipment, stats through levels and class unlocking and special abilities through mastering is quite cool.
FF9 also has a "hidden" level up mechanic for certain abilities that are tied to the character's job. Stealing with Zidane strengthens Thievery, which deals damage based on how many successful steals Zidane has done. Freya has Dragon Crest, which is strengthened by defeating dragons. It's pretty smart stuff.
Persona 3 tarot cards system where you level up by intereacting with characters has this intrinsic and extrinsic value to me. It helped me get better personas sure, but I mostly did it because it was fun interacting with the different characters and see the evolve over time.
Just because Disgaea is full of such high numbers doesn't make the game more interesting than other level-up systems, if anything I'd even say it scares people off.
@@sockknight3927 I'd say it's very much worth mentioning in a video about level up systems. Most of the Disgaea gameplay is based around leveling. You level up your character, you level up your items, you level up innocents (stuff that lives inside an item, increasing its stats), and you level up your abilities. There are many, many systems in the game that play around Leveling up. * The cheat shop, where you can increase enemies power, so that they give more xp, or give up on some rewards like money in exchange for more exp. * A certain innocent that can increase exp gain by a maximum of 900%. * A squad system, in which one of them works as an "exp share". And that's just for character leveling, items have another completely different way of leveling them up. TLDR: I really think Disgaea was worth mentioning in this video, maybe for the second part, if Design Doc makes it!
@@sockknight3927 as Red says, Disgaea is a very important example because it turns the act of grinding and the different methods you can pursue for progression as part of the game. You game the system, and that in itself is fun. Various methods can be better in efficiency, while others plug up weaknesses that can be exploited if you're caught in a bad tactical position or map.
"Pokemon is a real plain vanilla leveling system" me, thinking about EVs and IVs which are also tied to the leveling system: 👁️👄👁 granted, he does mentions it, and its true the game plays itself without the need of them, but once you learn about them, you can't ever look back
@Manannan anam not quite, Digimon Cyber Sleuth extra points are an example of how EVs and natures could be simple Pokemon aren't, first off, there's a total limit of 510, with an individual limit of 255 for each stat, you get 1 extra point for each 4 EVs but this extra is programmed to level 100 they aren't given immediately, on top you don't know what pokemon gives what EVs without a guide or trial and error, and of course all of these numbers are hidden, all you can get is an idea on how much the Pokémon has but not exact numbers Now if i explain Digimon's, the max extra points your Digimon can have is 50 plus half of it's ABI, you get points by training, by which it gets points based on it's personality and the leader's personality, and you can always see the exact extra points your Digimon has
Samuria natures still have a pretty noticeable impact even on the story for the average player. Natures that negatively impact your best stats especially when dealing with cases where the ability doubles that stat like huge power maril line can massively harm that Pokémon. Sure evs aren’t very impactful on the casual play but natures actually have a lot of impact. Also evs can occasionally be worth going for In nuzlockes after a particularly unlucky gym fight though I wouldn’t call challenge runs casual ( for instance in emerald normally flannery starts insanely powerful with her stab overheats but gets progressively weaker due to the move dropping special attack crits ignore stat drops though so while switching a fire resist mon tank her first mon till it’s at lower special attack then setting up on it can work if she suddenly bypasses double team and hits your maxed attack ninjask after barely surviving then healing it up and critting half your team to death can be brutal at that point I usually just ev train anorith from the claw fossil after a near party wipe getting about ten attack per level.)
Samuria eh I mean sometimes people will do ev training in games with super training just for the items given by the secret super training. Like if you wanna get an evolution stone or something. Most likely in omega ruby and alpha sapphire since hoeen region is pretty barren on ways to get evolution stones.
This is why I personally enjoy Fire Emblem's leveling system. Because each stat has a certain percentage chance to grow, each level up feels very involved, wanting to see which stat improves, sometimes getting nearly every stat up, sometimes getting completely empty levels, and sometimes that one crucial stat that only has a 20% chance to grow, does and it's exciting!
The only issue i have is the fact the game never tells you which stats have better or worse odds on each character. you can guess based on arc-type or some lore (a character that's chronically unlucky having bad luck growths) but often you have to look on a wiki to see what the data miners have sussed out. i thinks the fire emblem games could be improved if they gave better indicators of what characters have what growths in game. for example, there could be a page in their stats that give a x/5 star rating on their growths. the other issue is when good characters get screwed by constant bad levels but you can argue that's part of the fun/a natural consequence .
Same and i think it's really hard to get rng screwed level wise. The games give you so many options to win a chapter, people even do 0% growth challenge runs.
In a potential follow up, I'd like to see some discussion of how Level Up systems could be misplaced in games that really don't need them, and end up bloating what would otherwise have been a much tighter and well focused experience. The biggest offender on my personal list is the Dynasty Warriors series since, let's be honest, character growth and making creative character builds are not the selling points to games in that series. Yet for some reason, KoeiTecmo feels the need to keep shoehorning in Level Up systems into their games, which only end up serving to restrict players by not giving characters their full movesets right away (without the justification action games like DMC and God of War have of those movesets being overwhelming if presented all at once), and increasing the grind required to make multiple characters usable for more difficult missions later in the games. The kicker is that KoeiTecmo have basically admitted these systems don't add anything to the games via having ways to circumvent at least the basic exp threshold system in most of the recent titles; Hyrule Warriors, Pirate Warriors 3 and 4, and Gundam Reborn all give the player the ability to buy exp for their characters with in game currency. These level up systems also contribue to making it difficult to tailor the experience of playing these Dynasty Warriors games. There's the exp system governing their base stats, most games have an equipment system that also factors into each characters' attack power and gives a variety of bonus effects, some of which serve to increase the attack power of certain moves. In addition, most Dynasty Warriors games have two seperate difficulty settings that determine how powerful enemies will be within a given battle: the "star" system which makes battels later on in a campaign more difficult than earlier ones, and the player-set "easy, medium, hard" difficutly on top of that. These things make it nearly impossible to tell how a given character will do on a given stage before the fight starts, so players wanting an easy-medium difficutly run the risk of making it _too_ easy and getting bored, and players who want a difficult time run the risk of making levels basically impossible to complete. Fate Extella LINK provides an excellent contrast to this, doing away with (most, not all) the unneeded progression systems in favor of an upgrade system that makes progression universal across the playable cast, and a system that allows characters not being played as to be developed through completing tasks in battle.
"It also helps take what would be a dizzying array of moves and parcels them out slowly, so players don't get overwhelmed by having to learn everything at once". Did you hear that, game companies that sell us experience/progression points with real money?
Morrowind uses an unusual level system. You get experience in each skill separately by using it. For example, your trading skill gets better by trading, your jumping skill gets better by jumping, and your armor skill gets better by getting hit while wearing armor. When you used your skill enough - say you made 20 purchases - you level up the skill. When you level up your skills 10 times combined, your character gets a level up. By leveling up your character, you get 3 attribute points that you can put in general attributes like strength or social skills which will boost all skills of the corresponding attribute. Each of the 3 invested attribute points can provide more value if is spent on an attribute that you leveled skills for. And you actually only level up when you go to sleep, so you can postpone any level up to increase your skills further to get more out of your attribute points. en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Level
Indeed, I was looking for someone mentioning the elder scroll's style of leveling. It is my personal favorite kind of leveling, but can turn out very grindey if tuned to be so (Like in Runescape). The combination of perks at certain levels in Oblivion or the skill tree system in Skyrim can add a lot of depth to that particular style, and I wish more games utilized it.
@@kalsaraan Skyrim's Skill tree is solid, but you couldn't focus on non-combat skills and become a stronger fighter (although you could bump up your health and stamina). Oblivion and Morrowind let you do that, and reserve your level-ups for later.
Speaking on skill-based levelling, I do like the idea that you make the character you want by utilizing the skills you regularly would in gameplay, but it does force you to use things you normally wouldn't, only because it because useful to you after a certain point.
TES has a pretty good one, but having to spec into all skills to level up consistently is pretty dumb, it got to the point where, to keep leveling in Skyrim, you have to delete your skill points, which is an even dumber solution imo ofc you can just focus on the skills you actually want, but it's way faster to level up those skills you rarely use
Great video as always! I also appreciate that you always upload your videos with subtitles day one. It's the little extra effort that makes it feel a lot more... professional? That seems a bit exaggerated, especially since a lot else about these gives that impression! Keep up the good work!
Most RPGs use chance, even Pokemon and most FFs use chance for level ups, sometimes they have a small impact, other times it's pretty massive I remember FF Tactics A2 had a system where you have a CHANCE of increasing speed by 1 each level up (depending on the class used during lvl up) So if you got lucky, your tanky soldier(48% chance per lvl) could be always act first while the ninja(90% chance/lvl) could end up with really low speed and not get to act nearly as often
@@rompevuevitos222 no, I mean when leveling up itself is random, not stat distribution, because in Crisis Core you had to get all 7s in the slot machine thing when you are about to trigger a limit break in order to level up
@@rompevuevitos222 ikr, and while there is a hidden "exp counter" it simply increases the chances of getting all 7s, WHY NOT JUST HAVE THAT COUNTER DO WHAT IT USUALLY DOES IN YOUR GAMES?!?!?!
I mean it's not completly random apparently you have a invisible EXP that increase when you kill monster. when you have enough XP only then you can level up with the slot machine.
The "Trails of" series has a nice take on leveling, the actual level of characters is pretty dynamic with the progress of the story: lower leveled characters receive bonus XP and overleveled ones get less, trying to stay in a chapter even. There is also the quartz system that relies on little crystals called sepith to compose stat changing and skill granting items that fit in a grid-like system, one that can be more grindy although not a bore. All towards crafting a compeling yet not punishing experience.
That is what most MMORPGS do. It essentially boils down to only one path having 'optimal' xp vs time. That is why I don't like it. The thing is that these games allow for an open world like gameplay, but then they contradict themselves by having mechanics that let you know there is only 1 true path to take: the one the designers thought out for you.
I really like that Celeste is entirely intrinsic. There's no level up system, so theoretically I can start a new file and burn through it in a couple of hours. But when you play it for the first time, you have to learn all of the mechanics and build muscle memory for the trickier jumps. Celeste is THE game for making you feel like you're really improving all on your own merits.
At first, I thought about doing a stat point system with a skill point system, but just stuck with skill points. Some abilities will be locked behind story progression, special transformations, and even some item boxes or events, but I still wanted to give more freedom in building characters. Plus, if there's something like an enemy that's weak against Ice or physical damage, you have multiple ways to attack it, even if you never learned any skills or magic beyond what's given to you.
Actually, tanking isn't that bad, specially if you block well But yeah, pretty sure the game was originally intended to only award MP when leveling up (since there is even a cheat code to enable that mode)
@@rompevuevitos222 Full HP investment in Bug Fables is inflexible and doesn't have much compatibility with an assortment of strategies, leading to an item-heavy playstyle that requires even more grinding than an RPG would reasonably expect
@@CabeliotCometier Obviously it isn't a good idea and you'll be greatly limiting yourself in combo potential and as a result limiting yourself on damage dealt But it's a usable strategy outside of hard mode Not good, but certainly not useless, you can always re-spec before the final and most difficult zones anyway
i feel like pokemon has the best of both worlds in this "intristic vs extrinstic" definition. the extrinsic results of being able to use more powerful moves and of being able to ohko enemies who once were at least a somewhat threat? amazing, stupendous, i love it. but those powerful moves mean nothing if you dont have at least a basic understanding of how the type matchups work or what the different pokemon are better at doing both yours and the opponents, at least in an even matchup. and even then, that's intristic too. Knowing when you'll be overpowered or underpowered is a skill gained over time, and as your own skill level improves, those levels shift.
No level up system is the best system. Something like Monster Hunter has is the ideal, letting equipment dictate your character strength, with multiple sidegrades possible, but above all letting the player's own ability dictate effectiveness instead of just increasing his avatar's strength, which can quickly lead to the trivialization of large parts of the game by optimization or excessive grinding on the player part (sometimes unintentionally, even). Of course this is not always possible (and significantly difficult in turn-based combat), but it's a good goal to strive towards.
Semantics: you use "intrinsic" for something that is outside of the game but inside of the person. It's not obvious which way that's supposed to be. Better terms would be "player progression" and "game progression". But anyway, there needs to be a balance of the 2. Not everyone is interested in both kinds of progression. For that matter not everyone is interested in agency (sometimes it's nice to play a game you don't have to think about). Games that rely a lot on player skill (rather than in-game skills) can start either too easy or too hard so there needs to be a way to adjust for different people. For online game that's a matter of match making but that's tricky for story based games (adjustable difficulty is a complex thing). For example someone who's played bullet hell games might find no challenge in Undertale which may make the game play boring (even if the story is good).
Warframe has a fairly basic, but incredibly diverse level-up system. During each mission, your character is allowed to equip up to 3 weapons: 1 primary ranged weapon (such as a rifle, bow, or shotgun), 1 secondary ranged weapon (such as a pistol or some kunai), and 1 melee weapon. They also MUST equip a "Warframe", as that is basically the "character class" they will be using. Killing enemies will grant "affinity" to both the weapon that was used, and your current Warframe. The main purpose of ranking up is to increase the item's mod capacity, up to 30 at rank 30, but Warframes also improve their basic stats, and unlock or improve their 4 abilities. Mods can be acquired, upgraded, and equipped to compatible equipment to vastly increase its stats, give it elemental damage, or even augment Warframe abilities, and many mods consume more than 10 capacity when they are fully upgraded. All weapons and Warframes start at rank 0, and once they reach rank 30, you can opt to "forma" it, which resets it to rank 0, but atunes a mod slot to a specific polarity, making mods of the same polarity only consume half the capacity they normally would when equipped to that slot. On weapons that have the ability to "overlevel", this also increase the max rank by 2, up 40 after 5 formas. Furthermore, weapons and Warframes can be augmented with single-use items that permanently double their mod-capacity. In short, the game's EXTRINSIC level up system can be used by all, and all will benefit, but only those who INTRINSICALLY learn how to mod their weapons properly, and invest time and resources into enhancing them, can get the most out of it. However, what I really want to talk about, is the game's "prestige" system, which it calls Mastery Rank. Every time you level up a weapon or Warframe, you gain Mastery Points; 100 for each weapon rank, and 200 for each Warframe rank, for a maximum of 3,000 per weapon and 6,000 per Warframe. (note: duplicate or forma'd weapons and Warframes do not give Mastery, and there are other ways to get Mastery Points, such as quest and map completion) After certain thresholds, you become eligible for "Mastery Tests". If you pass, your Mastery Rank will increase, up to rank 30, increasing your minimum mod capacity. If your Mastery Rank is 12, like mine, then any weapon that is rank 12 or below will have a mod-capacity of 12, because of your Mastery Rank. So, if you get a new weapon, or forma an old one, instead of having 0 mod capacity, it will start with 12. Having higher mastery ranks is beneficial in several other ways, such as unlocking more powerful weapons, increasing the amount of standing you can gain with in-game factions each day, and more, so it is always a good idea to try new weapons and Warframes to increase your mastery rank.
You mentioned Pokemon’s leveling system, but there’s more to the progression inherent in it: the Pokemon themselves. Each area gives you new Pokemon to catch, each trainer previews what new species may be just around the corner, or even shows off new things about familiar faces you might’ve missed (like new moves they have at higher levels). The process of catching a new Pokemon also does a good job of demonstrating what they can do, as harder to catch Pokemon will continue to fight each turn you fail to catch them, letting you see a sneak peak of their moves and abilities in the process. Always having that excitement attached to reaching a new area adds to the player’s enthusiasm for exploration and continuing through the game, even before getting to mixing and matching different team compositions. This customization both of individual Pokemon (picking different moves, split evolutions, etc) is the same driving force behind collectable/trading card games. There’s a reason “Gotta Catch’em All!” is a catchphrase that managed to ingrain itself into so many different childhoods.
Another feature of the levelup mechanic is that it allows a developer more wiggle room with game difficulty. In a game with no character strengthening, a player's only option to get past a difficult part of the game is to "get good." By allowing a player to make their character stronger instead, another path through a difficult portion is revealed, which reduces player frustration. On the flip side, a horrible difficulty spike in a game with level-ups may force a player to level up because getting good is impractical. Then there's also the approach of having enemy power scale to your character's level. This makes the game more skill focused, and leaves the role of leveling up to being able to execute more complex gameplay maneuvers rather than acting as a difficulty balancer. This approach is particularly appropriate in games that are designed to have a lot of options in terms of what order you complete different events in.
FF Tactics A2 uses the same system, except (since you can have up to 36 party members trough recruiting) they are locked to each class instead of character But you can change classes at any time (provided the class is available for the race of the character)
@@varsoonhks3211 You are gonna upgrade equipment anyway, getting a skill alongside the stat increase isn't that bad, it's also better than having to choose between a new weapon and a new skill ALSO, you get to keep the skill I wouldn't choose it myself, but it isn't nearly as bad as it looks like
@@varsoonhks3211 It's customizable without being too complex. It lets you utilize older or weaker weapons by gaining abilities from them. Each character has different restrictions so they don't all become just the same types of stats (I'm looking at you FF8). It flows well with the game and I just really enjoyed playing with it. What's your favorite?
Good level up system : unlock more game content and do more stuff with higher level, makes game more fun to play. Bad level up system : forcing you to grind just because there is a boss that unbeatable unless you pass certain level, it makes game boring because you need to do the same stuff over and over just because you want to beat 1 boss.
Honestly, I'd argue that FF9 is NOT a good leveling up system. Especially with the abilities being tied to gear. The point of "Low level gear having a point" is honestly the worst thing about it. On paper, it could very well work wonders (as Lost Odyssey does it better), but in execution each normal battle gives so few AP and the skills cost so much AP to learn, that unless you go out of your way to grind, you're likely not going to have the skills you want to learn finished by the time the next better piece of gear comes up. This hamstrings magic users in particular, as their spells are also tied to equipment instead of learned naturally, and so the most vulnerable characters with the biggest hitting spells are usually trying to finish learning spells and/or abilities while making them more vulnerable and less effective in combat because they don't have the better gear, making the game feel less like being rewarded with something every couple battles, and more like trying to run 5 treadmills at once.
I really don't think FF IX's system gives players "a ton of agency" like the video says. Yeah, you choose what skill to learn next by what you equip, but generally equipment is restricted to a single character, and the game chooses when to give you specific equipment based on when it wants you to know certain skills. So for the most part it just feels like a traditional, Pokemon-style leveling system with extra steps. A better example of giving the player agency would be something like the Fallout games, where you can allocate skill points however you want, or the FF Tactics series where you can switch jobs... Really most RPGs would be a better example imo
Wow I'm just a little late, huh? Anyways, Disgaea's level up system is pretty good imo It focuses on the idea of "people like big numbers, right?" So even though you can beat the games at about level 100 on average, you can continue to level up to level 9999. Then, you reincarnate back to level 1 with increased stats, level back up to 9999, then repeat until you're either tired of it or beat the post-game super bosses. The games have crazy high stat caps, and apparently they're only going to get higher in Disgaea 6, considering the game will start the player at level 9999
A lot of those games that rely on Intrinsic Progression are what I've coined Encounter Games. You know, they're the ones that you sit down to play "a game of", like how you'll play a game of Chess, you can play a game of Magic, of Hearthstone, of Rocket League, or many other games where you play against another player (sometimes you can play against AI opponents though). Some of these games, the digital ones or digital versions of them, can also have level up systems, but they mainly seem to give you cosmetic items. The ones that tend to have Extrinsic Progression are what I've coined Timeline Games, where you play through a whole timeline or campaign of events/story/whatever.
It somewhat works on a intrinsect level, but to be honest, it fails due to an annoying and pointless time limit. Puzles needs certain time to be resolved, and putting time limit is only adding extra stress but not due to you being in risk.
I think Birth by Sleep has one the best ones I've seen. Since passive skills are only gained from active skills leveling up, it really encourages you to use all the skills, and the best part is the skills level up so fast you won't be stuck with one you don't like for too long. The only downside is like BotW it encourages you to not play the way you like, because it isn't the most efficient. If Birth by Sleep was a single campaign, I'd say it was perfect, but since it's three shorter campaigns that you start from scratch each time, the system doesn't reach its full potential.
Theres also the way monster hunter games do it- no leveling, no experience points, player character power increases with crafting better equipment and SKILL. not every game can do that, but its nice when its done well.
etrian odysseys level and skill tree systems have me on the fence… on one hand, no two members of the same class are alike and they can be unrecognisable from each other. the skill tree allows for a LOT of gimmicky builds alongside more balanced builds. plus some games have a sub-class system, allowing for even more options (like a hunter that can dual-wield bows). …but its so awful to be a beginner to these games. basically, the penalty for resetting early characters and late-game characters skill points are the same: lose 5 levels. and it feels like exp requirememts dont scale to the same degree as monster strength (so you have to fight more high level monsters to level up a high level character, than you would fight low level monsters to level a low level character). so by late-game, a beginner will have a badly optimized party that is too weak to fight endgame enemies… yet it doesnt feel like its worth it to reset their skills now that their levels are so high. (…this is why i still havent beaten the last dragon in eoIV lmao)
Dance Dance Revolution has one of the best progressions. No, really. It's intrinsic, but its rating system gives you those nice little breadcrumbs even if you can't beat other players, and it's very easy to understand.
My problem is deciding on a curve that is easy to calculate, but not too hard to each lvl 100 with and not too easy. At first I tried the simplest, every new level would need twice the exp from the previous level. Of course, that is fine at the start, but gets ludicrous quickly. Then, I did the first 10 levels needed previous exp*1.1, the 10 levels after that *1.2, etc, but this was insane too. Ending up needing 81,512,233,285,442,400,000 to go from lvl 99 to 100. Changing the curve every 20 levels instead is better, but not much better. any tips? I've never tried to design a level curve before and I kind of expected the video to cover that xD
It depends on various factors. Why does your game have a level curve in the first place? What are you trying to accomplish with it? How long do you expect the game to be? From a mathematical perspective you can look at different formulas that will give you different progressions. For example, Pokémon use mostly cubic formulas. I can try to give you some examples of you want me to, but I’ll propose something else instead. Before I go on with the example, note that there will always be arbitrary numerical choices. A system where you gain 1 XP and need 10 to level up works the same as one where you gain 10 XP and need 100. Besides psychological and stylistic questions, you’ll always have to choose some numbers arbitrarily. However, some choices may seem arbitrary, but aren’t. For example, how often does combat happen in a RPG is up to the developers to pick, but it changes how the game feels. Furthermore, two games where you get into fights at the same rate will be different if battles are easy or hard, and how long each battle takes (picture ten fights against tanky enemies that have no way of actually harming you; doesn’t sound fun). Suppose the game is a RPG and that you gain XP from combat. Pick a number: that’ll be the average number of combats in a dungeon. Say you want the player to gain 10 levels from every dungeon. Finally, choose an arbitrary number, say, 50. That’s the average amount of XP you gain per combat. Make it so 50 times the number of combats from the first dungeon is enough to get the player from level 1 to level 10. Note you can, for example, make the player be at level 7 at the halfway mark instead of level 5, if so you wish (technically an arbitrary choice; we still haven’t decided how powerful each level is, so you could make two slightly different games where level 5 in one is level 7 in the other). Continue by repeating this process for each dungeon. A small tweak is increasing the number 50 by a fixed amount (say by 50, so you go 50, 100, 150, etc.) as you go, which means grinding at the dungeon you just beat won’t be as good as going to a new dungeon. I think this would make your curve quadratic. Compare to Pokémon’s cubic curve. Well… there’s some caveats: some mathematical technicalities (it’s different if you go 50, 100, 200, 400, etc.), and some semantical ones (I don’t know if Pokémon’s curve is “XP to next level” or “accumulated XP”).
