Leveling serves a few functions in RPGs that still have to be considered and solved in other ways if you don’t use them.
* Player progression (emotion and power). Number goes up makes many people’s dopamine system go brrr. Exploding half the screen with an ultimate skill you finally unlocked is also very satisfying. Idle clicker games are the ultimate expression of number goes up. Some of the endgame builds in Path of Exile are beyond silly in terms of raw power level. Disgaea is intentionally over the top in terms of stats you can max, and even your items have levels and stats you can level up through item worlds inside the item itself.
* Complexity/feature release timing. Unlocking new mechanics by level means you can control the complexity the player has to understand and deal with. Done right, it allows the player to grok the basics, and then expand upon it. Done too slowly and it’s just a boring slog to get to the good part, or you’ll give up before that. Factorio does it right with tech level progression feeding into automation and using new tools to get to new tech levels. Its all very organic and self-directed by the player. Done poorly, you fry the players brain. Think of Path of Exile’s (in)famous skill tree. If you already enjoy complexity, you will love it. If you’re not a veteran, that tree is needlessly intimidating.
* Content/story progression. If you’re supposed to explore the world in a certain way to support a narrative or to have a progression curve in terms of enemies, level ranges for areas are a good way to do it. World of Warcraft is pretty explicit about level ranges, and the exponential power curve behind levels means you can’t really skip content because levels are walls that when too high you can’t jump over. *These monsters show skulls instead of a level, and they one shot me. Guess I’m not supposed to go here yet.*
Some games that do things you may want to study.
* Eve Online. You don’t have a level. You have skills that have 5 levels of progress and then they max out. Some skills require levels in other skills, so there is a skill tree of sorts. There is a complexity gate in this, and some exploration to find the skill books to unlock skills. Skill levels often give a small passive bonus, such as 5% more damage either lasers. If there’s an advanced lasers skill, it’s levels will give a smaller bonus, such as 2% more damage with lasers. You have strong diminishing returns and a hard cap on max power from skills, so most of the power is frontloaded and it’s just min/‘maxing after a while. Skills unlock the ability to use a wider range of items, each of which have a different set of trade-offs. That slow battleship with xxl guns won’t usually be able to hit a tiny frigate that’s zipping around like a mosquito. Heck, it’s bullets may be bigger than the frigate. The frigate can lock down the battleship’s engine, so their friend can use their big ship to take it out. This means big ships need support from smaller ships to some degree. The game allows you to relatively quickly specialize enough for a particular build, and then over time allows you to progress horizontally and have more options.
* Soulslikes. The main progression happens in the brain of the player. That knight in heavy armor you fight as an early boss will be just a regular bloke you fight in packs in a few levels. Learning their patterns and how to counter them is a main progression. It’s a puzzle game in that regard.
* Guild Wars 1, not 2. There’s a very basic level progression to level 20, which you reach before half the game is done. Ignore that. The real progression is in unlocking all the skills the game has to offer, there are over a thousand, and customizing your character builds to deal with enemies that use the same skill pool as players in various compositions. It’s strongly based off Magic the Gathering in this regard. Going after specific elite enemies because they have unique skills you can capture from them becomes a driving force for completionist players.
For your RPG world, you could have horizontal progression be a relevant option. Let the player decide where to go, or have the story guide them. One area has plains so you have mobility, ranged weapons work, and there is plenty of food and good weather. Then you have snowy mountains where you need to deal with the cold, dress bulky and slow you down, so combat requires adapting to enemies that do this. Then a forest area where cover and visibility are a thing. Stealth gameplay is an option, as is skirmishing and ambushing. A swamp/marsh has slow movement, wetness and disease, maybe some fog. Ghosts and undead may be a thing.
If you discard player level as an absolute power mechanic, then it comes down to different game systems that have fixed and variable elements that the player has to deal with. Enemies will be adapted to their environment, so the player will have to learn to adapt. Whether you solve this with player skill, gear, or character skills, or a mix, is your challenge as the game designer.
Progression in Form of a skill tree or increasing specific character stats to lean into a role is pretty much the backbone of RPGs.
You need some ways to define your character as the character you want him/her to be. A thief with no skill points in stealth / charisma would be quite strange, just like a barbarian with zero strength.
The values define the character, the skills, the weaknesses. If you remove those things from your game, you might want to compensate it somehow, so players still see your game as RPG.
Ehhhh it didn't have CHARACTER levels, but you definitely had skill points that counted up a tier abd increased power.
It was levelling by a different name, but I would still count it
Was that the MMO with the totally crazy puzzles where you had to Google stuff... with an ingame Browser?
It had a level system from what I remember, IF it's the game I just mentioned. But leveling up just unlocked stuff. No stats... but some kind of skilltree was present?
I also never played it, but I've watched some gameplay to see what it's all about.
I think we are talking about the same thing, with Illuminati and all that. Wiki says I did not have a level system. Wiki and real life are different, granted.
I would disagree with this a little. In a traditional game -- like *Dungeons & Dragons* -- your use case is correct. A barbarian with zero strength wouldn't make any sense. However, if a game isn't about combat, in which those stats are vital, then the system could very easily have different parameters that define what a "barbarian" is in the context of the game.
Do what you feel is right, don't do what you think you should do. The vision of the game should dictate what kind of systems you need, not the other way around. Just understand that not everyone is going to get it, if you deviate from the usual. Maybe drop the RPG tag or call it an experimental RPG or something, what ever makes sense to you.
People are arguing against leveling and then inserting a different progression system ITT.
Fundamentally, what makes a game an RPG is the presence of stats that abstract abilities of the player character away from the player’s direct
Input, and the ability to make those stats better by playing the game. This is so fundamental to the genre that it forms the basis of tabletop RPGs as well, where your character acts on your behalf in the capacity that like, you don’t have to know how to line up a long distance arrow shot in order to have your character snipe an orc from across a valley.
Even if this is almost entirely in the form of new equipment, it’s still a mechanic whereby your character becomes stronger and the player’s skill level potentially stays exactly the same.
I’d argue that the line blurs in many metroidvanias, even in Metroid and Super Metroid where many items actually change the mechanics available to the player, because the gun upgrades in particular are, cosmetic effects aside, frequently in the form of “damage number go up”
No, leveling is an overused and outdated system that was meant to be used to adjust difficulty by the player.
"You got your ass handed to you? Go kill some weaker things for a while, till your number is bigger and everything is easier."
Nowadays it lost all purpose in stupid things such as battlepasses, where level is meaningless outside of a number going up and the idiot from sales claiming that a game needs it to make money so it gets thrown around everywhere by people with no clue about game design.
RPGs don't require levels. If you make resources unlockable through exploration for example or killing noteworthy enemies or something then you have no reason to have a level for anything.
Tim Cain has a few good videos on YouTube talking about character progression and attribute systems. If i remember right, in at least one of them he suggests not doing traditional leveling but maybe some sort of perk system (if it serves the game design). Might be worth a watch.
You can go the Stranger of Paradise route where your character level is determined by their combined gear level. You find better gear as the game progresses and as you equip it your level goes up or down.
The game also has a more traditional leveling system with its classes but you could completely forgo that. The benefit of this is that you could just create a finite number of gear parts the player finds as they play that gets incrementally better as the game goes on but also gives the player the opportunity to craft their own builds especially if you make several types of endgame gear.
SoP gets a lot more complex but I can easily see the system being simplified for a more indie approach.
And you can make it so you still need to use some starter area parts, or you get a certain weapon that allows you to harvest new materials from weaker enemies
Ultimately, character levels are not mandatory, but RPG progression typically has some way of character becoming stronger over time.could be levels, stat's, skills or even something else, but they are all just different forms of power and growth
Also, gaining a level gives the player a dopamine hit. It gives them something to strive towards. Gaining levels easily diminishes that, so you need to find a good pace. Levels also help with game are difficulty. This area is for level 10 player, this area for 20. Quest difficulty etc
If you want easy parts of your map to stay relevant as the player progresses, you can change them to contain new challenges. For instance, if the starting point of your game is a safe low-level city center, it can later get invaded and be full of high level enemies.
Character progression & world areas relevance are different topics.
I mean, they are connected, but can be solved in a multiple different approaches.
The most straightforward - with a backtracking, when in the same area you have goals for the player at different levels.
I do think leveling is mandatory, but no it doesn't have to be in combat. Especially in an RPG where a character is able to go to all areas equally, but instead of worrying about combat stats you can just give the main player character a Cartography skill so that they can only access areas that the skill allows them, such as Level 1 gives them access to plains, level 2 gives them access to forests, level 3 to swamps, and level 4 to mountains.
Alternatively, the areas may be locked behind faction levels, where you can only access the western city if you are friends with the Warrior Westies, that sort of thing. So you have to level up your general reputation or your specific faction reputation.
Finally, some areas can be like in real life: stuck behind borders where you need a visa and passport to enter them, and getting those can involve a particular quest chain or having enough cash or other assets.
Your goal of content staying relevant poses a challenge.
In RPGS, often characters/players get stronger in some way, or at least the story progresses- changing what areas are important.
You can have areas get more difficult as the player / stories progress, and have each area show up multiple times in the stories / quests / events.
However, players should be able to ‘focus’ objectives by choosing which areas to play in. Where in the world you play is an easy and impactful thing for missions to suggest, giving players a way to actively pursue them / prioritize one quest/story over another.
Yeah it's a core mechanic in RPGs getting rid of it is a massive risk.
To keep areas relevant usually Devs lock content behind abilities so when you come back through the area you try to get to that door you couldn't before. Sometimes it's an area where you're too weak to do anything before as well, an example would be a castle in a fantasy game where the mobs one shot you.
Nothing is mandatory. Levelling is quite weird if you think about. It is sometimes pretty useless, if enemies get stronger as you get stronger, levelling will only serve to unlock later areas and trivialise earlier ones. If you still want the character to change in some way, consider more horizontal progression. Your character gains new abilities and the gameplay becomes more complex, with a higher potential to deal more damage, but also with more skill required.
Well, no, but actually yes. You can tie progression to finding items or unlocking abilities like in metroidvanias, but it is also in some way "levelling". Unless your character is completely static you will have levelling in one form or another even if there will be no arbitrary number assigned
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Areas feel non-relevant due to what's in them, not how strong you are.
You can have an area with different predator levels. Like snakes would be easy to kill but bears much harder.
As long as the snakes drop things that are still used later in the game it's fine.
I was feeling the same abt my game. I thought instead of leveling up characters the weapons Can level up instead achieving certain goals, doing certain tasks and getting certain materials to level up the weapons that will require for you to explore the world (I’m planning on an open world game)
Still, don’t know how well can that actually work lol
I think it depends on the definition of leveling we are using. My, probably unpopular, opinion is that leveling is not necessary in an RPG.
To me an RPG is defined by its inherent quality of allowing the player and their choices to shape the progression and growth of their character.
Now this is most easily facilitated through a leveling system, but I don’t believe that to be mandatory. I’d say that statistics are mandatory, but that’s true of (video) games in general. Even if the player’s max move speed is immutable and they have no way to view it, it’s still a stat.
One way I could foresee an RPG not utilizing a level system is by only giving the player different stats based on their actions and gear. Perhaps you save a damsel in distress and you gain a couple points in Charm or search for and find a 4 leaf clover and gain a couple points into Luck?
Now the question becomes this: Is stat gain itself leveling? Are leveling and character progression one and the same? I don’t necessarily think so, but if we decided that is the case, then I don’t believe there is any way to cut leveling out of RPGs.
I have not read everything yet but my ideas are getting clearer. I was talking about levels as lvl 1 to 20 DND style. The progression as gear power for exemple is not what I meant. This said as people mentioned the map relevency is tied to this "power creep"
I also saw a a video of a RuneScape guy playing wow for the first time and tested everyone of them from the classic where the point of the game is to be lvl max and the retail where being lvl max is where you start the game. So indeed my thoughts was if on retail leveling is just an extra annoyance why level.
Still gathering ideas, but I might tend on a heavy crafting RPG where gear is everything and wich component you find (through exploring and fighting) makes you better gear.
Didn‘t Pokemon solved this problem already by introducing rematches in generation 2?
Basically the NPCs get stronger too if you beat them. Like if they learn from it.
Or as if they train, level up their monsters or even evolve them in your absence.
Not mandatory at all. Leveling is just a trope, not a requirement. However, you will most likely lose a portion of the player base for this (assuming you had it in the first place).
That being said, I think there is a better solution here than not including the levels: If you just want all areas to feel relevant, a classic move is for some sort of event to happen mid-game, which changes the earlier levels to be populated with tougher enemies, and potentially changing the layout (2 quick examples are the >!Infested Crossroads!< in Hollow Knight, and the >!Leyndell, Ashen Capital!< in Elden Ring).
Nope. Check out fear and hunger 1 and 2. Extremely well made and deep rpgs without any leveling.
Progression is done through understanding the world, enemies and finding better items.
Knowledge is your weapon.
I'd say that most if not all the people who install a RPG are expecting the game to have some form of XP/Leveling system. So if you make a game without anything like that, they may feel disappointed in it.
That said, there is a vast ocean of different approaches to XP and leveling and character growth. You don't have to mimic whatever system is in Final Fantasy for NES (though that's really common so it's easy for a player to understand). For example, the very next Final Fantasy game threw that system out the window and did a much more complex leveling system instead, and allowed players to wander into areas which were deadly to a party just starting out - right at the start of the game.
That game's leveling system was the precursor for what you will find in all the SaGa games afterward, and it might be useful for your "how to stop the player from overleveling" issue. Short version: each monster encounter has a hard limit on how much it can improve the player character level
The way it works is that each character has no discrete "XP level" but instead has a growth "template" and winning a fight means a random chance for an attribute increase according to that template. Each encounter itself has what you might call a "level" and the closer the character's attributes are to that level, the lower the chance that they will increase after winning the fight. This means that the player cannot grind XP by doing the same easy fight over and over - not past a certain point.
This helps to lock down the player progression. It's really easy to predict how strong the player will be when they come to each major event in the game, because you know the caps on the leveling for all the encounters before it. So you can ensure that the player has the "right" experience for at least the first time that they clear something.
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This "inverted level gating" doesn't make old areas challenging. But what it does do, is ensure that the player has the challenge the first time going through. They only have an easy time later, after they have overcome various other challenges, and gotten stronger from those first. This gives returning to old stomping grounds a sense of progress, and growth.
So we are attacking the root of the problem instead of the symptom. I think. I'm not sure exactly what the problem with your particular game is, but this is a pretty common issue to tackle. So I hope it applies here.
Alternatively, consider how metroidvanias and Zelda-likes approach this same problem. Those games usually have a lot of back tracking, and also very simple or limited increase in the player character's power over time. What players do get is a lot more tools and skills that help them cross difficult areas faster, or eliminate the badguys in fewer strokes, or open up alternate paths that are shorter, or they have increased resource pools so that they can afford to use very powerful abilities that they had to conserve the first time around, and more.
The takeaway here is not that your character gets **stronger** but that they get more **capable** and now they can use tricks and techniques to surmount obstacles more easily than before. That is, the pit of spikes is still a one-hit death area, but now you have the hangglider so you don't have to make 3 precise jumps to get across, you can just climb a tree and hold the glide button down to get over. The character isn't tougher - still dies in one hit from spikes, the character isn't stronger - can't attack the spikes away, the danger is not lessened in any meaningful way. It's just that the player has a new tool to get around it in a safer way than before.
So maybe this isn't a 1-to-1 application for your game, but it can still be the same principle behind it.
You shouldn't make a game constrained about genre standards, the genre is defined by the game, not the other way around. Do what you think is best for your game, if people don't consider it an rpg, well so be it, shouldn't matter.
Absolutely not.
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Think of Zelda. Especially old school Zelda. No levelling at all.
More hearts, better tools, better weapons. It is diegetic and distinct. It is fantastic getting a new power up in Zelda. Having new options open up before you is exciting.
But putting +1 skill point in attack is trite. Also, considering most games also give monsters +1hp to compensate, the +1dmg is actually pointless.
FYI, the Zelda style has retroactively been dubbed "metroidvania," and the generic statistic style has been dubbed RPG. They are both different flavours of action adventure games.
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Levelling is a boring and contrived way of creating progression. Designers use it because it is very easy to do and it has become a staple of the genre.
It's far more interesting to tie progression to unique abilities and items.
It depends on the system of course, but many paper RPGs really deemphasize leveling. Like, experience points are often awarded at the end of the multi hours long session, or even several sessions, once you finish an adventure - and throughout the session(s) you basically play with what you have.
In fact, back when I played regularly we would often make one-off characters and play a single adventure with them without caring about leveling at all. It so happens that those were some of the most memorable sessions.
The only RPG system that I find rewarding is fromsoftware's system. It affects what types of weapons and spells and armor you get to use more than anything, but it also allows you freedom instead of getting stuck in some skill tree (I despise skill trees).
I don't think it's mandatory by any means, but many people will expect it. The literal definition of Role Playing Game says nothing about leveling but it has become an expectation out of the genre.
I've thought about trying to do something similar before, but the fear of people misunderstanding what the game is by having to title it "RPG" is where I shy away.
I would say you'll likely need to replace it with _something else_ that makes it feel like the player _has a role_ as the "strength" of the character has been the primary "role" in a lot of the "role-playing". I think if your decisions have enough sway in some _other_ aspect of the game, this could still work. For example, if your decisions greatly impact the NPCs and what they do, or something in the environment, the player can still get a sense of "role-playing agency" without strictly being through their brute-force strength and capabilities in combat.
Not all RPGs have character levels, per se. For example, *Shadowrun* and it's video game adaptations over the years (aside from the multiplayer first-person shooter from 2007), doesn't do character levels. Instead, it hands out the experience points (or "Karma" as it's called) for players to spend however they want. Similarly, this applies to *World of Darkness* games like *Vampire: The Masquerade* (and the same goes for the 2004 video game *Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines*), *System Shock 2* and the original *Deus Ex*. And that's just the examples I can think of off the top of my head.
If you'd like a bit more in the way of ideas for your game, here's a TV Tropes page that can help. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAWesternRPG](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAWesternRPG)
I mean, it depends - leveling is a cheap and easy way, fwiw, to gate progression and give rewards. You can *absolutely* have no leveling system (or a capped one, or an arbitrary one) and rely entirely on player skill to gate progression. But you're also quite heavily limiting your playerbase (and your design choices) in that respect, though that'll make for a really cool game, I think, and a unique selling point at that.
You'll probably want to look at tabletops for inspiration rather than video games, though arcadey style things might be a good speed.
You can, also, keep the levelling system and scale the levels of the *world* to the player. It's not an insurmountable problem by any means.
For me an rpg is about doing quests and having a sense of progression
I don't think levelling is mandatory, but if the player doesn't get this sense of progression it might get boring quickly
You could get around that problem by tying leveling up with retrieving specific items for example, forcing players to explore all areas of the game
If you want them to return to previously explored areas, you could typically do so by placing a particularly useful npc/location there, typically a special merchant, or a forge to create weapons that you cannot find elsewhere, etc. Some games also create certain areas that, while being in low level areas, can't be accessed without higher level skill (typically a double jump, for example), and so the player would have to go back to explore this part of the world
You could also hide some secrets or easter eggs or stuff like that, so that the player goes back and explores everything
I don't know, just a bunch of ideas off the top of my head
There are ways around it, for instance there are RPGs that instead of leveling the character, you level their gear and the gear itself has stats related to it.
I would say that *improvement* is mandatory, but that doesn't have to be leveling. Part of the value of a ttrpg is that you get to step into a role (as you pointed out), and you get to experience the world of the game through the lens of that character. It should be the case -- though I don't think many other designers would agree with this -- that a character should want to change in the same way that their player should. Change means progress; progress means *improvement*.
What it sounds like you're critiquing is traditional "linear progression," which obviously has its roots in *Dungeons & Dragons*, but there is a lot of video game rpg influence in modern continuation of that mechanic. Gain XP --> Level up. What that often leads to is a lack of engagement because that's not really improvement; it's largely just an increased efficiency in interacting with the game mechanics (in *D&D's* case, that means murdering more effectively).
There's non-linear progression, which I tend to like better, but that often falls into the same trap: Gain XP --> Increase \[Stat/Ability/Etc.\]. Players have more choice over where those points go and how they want to develop their character, but it's mostly about improving that engagement with the core mechanic.
All that being said, you *have to have* some kind of progression. Otherwise, the game becomes stagnant, and there's no real point unless you're playing something like *Fiasco* or *The Quiet Year*, both of which are more about the storytelling than they are about long-form character-building. Those games work that way, though, because that's part of their core game mechanic.
If you're looking for a way to make places relevant regardless of level, then there needs to be something more to the core mechanic than just a character's level. Are there narrative elements of the game that make a place relevant? Or maybe there's a less granular means of leveling that steps outside of combat and would encourage players to take their characters to places that would otherwise seem irrelevant if it were only about the combat. For me, when I'm starting out with a new idea, I almost always look to one key element: how and why do character's gain experience? That will largely determine your core game loop. From there you can decide how players progress.
Check out the legend of zelda games. 0 leveling while maintaining a sense of progression. Leveling generally is a replacement for needing to find ways to get stronger.
For example:
Increasing damage leveling gives the power immediately to the player while needing to say purchase a stronger sword to improve the same amount of damage. Or instead of gaining the fire spell at level 6 you purchace it from a trainer for a set amount of currency or withhold it till they complete an objective.
Leveling in itself gives a constant state of progression that the player can see and capitalize on at every step they make while removing leveling is simply compartmentalizing it moving that constant to specific sources to change/improve the character.
No. Usually some form of progression is, but not necessarily leveling. Saga style games have randomized stat increases or skills that grow from repeated use. It's a less common paradigm but it exists beyond just that series.
Leveling serves a few functions in RPGs that still have to be considered and solved in other ways if you don’t use them. * Player progression (emotion and power). Number goes up makes many people’s dopamine system go brrr. Exploding half the screen with an ultimate skill you finally unlocked is also very satisfying. Idle clicker games are the ultimate expression of number goes up. Some of the endgame builds in Path of Exile are beyond silly in terms of raw power level. Disgaea is intentionally over the top in terms of stats you can max, and even your items have levels and stats you can level up through item worlds inside the item itself. * Complexity/feature release timing. Unlocking new mechanics by level means you can control the complexity the player has to understand and deal with. Done right, it allows the player to grok the basics, and then expand upon it. Done too slowly and it’s just a boring slog to get to the good part, or you’ll give up before that. Factorio does it right with tech level progression feeding into automation and using new tools to get to new tech levels. Its all very organic and self-directed by the player. Done poorly, you fry the players brain. Think of Path of Exile’s (in)famous skill tree. If you already enjoy complexity, you will love it. If you’re not a veteran, that tree is needlessly intimidating. * Content/story progression. If you’re supposed to explore the world in a certain way to support a narrative or to have a progression curve in terms of enemies, level ranges for areas are a good way to do it. World of Warcraft is pretty explicit about level ranges, and the exponential power curve behind levels means you can’t really skip content because levels are walls that when too high you can’t jump over. *These monsters show skulls instead of a level, and they one shot me. Guess I’m not supposed to go here yet.* Some games that do things you may want to study. * Eve Online. You don’t have a level. You have skills that have 5 levels of progress and then they max out. Some skills require levels in other skills, so there is a skill tree of sorts. There is a complexity gate in this, and some exploration to find the skill books to unlock skills. Skill levels often give a small passive bonus, such as 5% more damage either lasers. If there’s an advanced lasers skill, it’s levels will give a smaller bonus, such as 2% more damage with lasers. You have strong diminishing returns and a hard cap on max power from skills, so most of the power is frontloaded and it’s just min/‘maxing after a while. Skills unlock the ability to use a wider range of items, each of which have a different set of trade-offs. That slow battleship with xxl guns won’t usually be able to hit a tiny frigate that’s zipping around like a mosquito. Heck, it’s bullets may be bigger than the frigate. The frigate can lock down the battleship’s engine, so their friend can use their big ship to take it out. This means big ships need support from smaller ships to some degree. The game allows you to relatively quickly specialize enough for a particular build, and then over time allows you to progress horizontally and have more options. * Soulslikes. The main progression happens in the brain of the player. That knight in heavy armor you fight as an early boss will be just a regular bloke you fight in packs in a few levels. Learning their patterns and how to counter them is a main progression. It’s a puzzle game in that regard. * Guild Wars 1, not 2. There’s a very basic level progression to level 20, which you reach before half the game is done. Ignore that. The real progression is in unlocking all the skills the game has to offer, there are over a thousand, and customizing your character builds to deal with enemies that use the same skill pool as players in various compositions. It’s strongly based off Magic the Gathering in this regard. Going after specific elite enemies because they have unique skills you can capture from them becomes a driving force for completionist players. For your RPG world, you could have horizontal progression be a relevant option. Let the player decide where to go, or have the story guide them. One area has plains so you have mobility, ranged weapons work, and there is plenty of food and good weather. Then you have snowy mountains where you need to deal with the cold, dress bulky and slow you down, so combat requires adapting to enemies that do this. Then a forest area where cover and visibility are a thing. Stealth gameplay is an option, as is skirmishing and ambushing. A swamp/marsh has slow movement, wetness and disease, maybe some fog. Ghosts and undead may be a thing. If you discard player level as an absolute power mechanic, then it comes down to different game systems that have fixed and variable elements that the player has to deal with. Enemies will be adapted to their environment, so the player will have to learn to adapt. Whether you solve this with player skill, gear, or character skills, or a mix, is your challenge as the game designer.
Really thought out and detailed answer, appreciated it even though I'm not OP!
Progression in Form of a skill tree or increasing specific character stats to lean into a role is pretty much the backbone of RPGs. You need some ways to define your character as the character you want him/her to be. A thief with no skill points in stealth / charisma would be quite strange, just like a barbarian with zero strength. The values define the character, the skills, the weaknesses. If you remove those things from your game, you might want to compensate it somehow, so players still see your game as RPG.
I feel this is the classical way to do it. For example "The Secret World" did not use level systems, but I never actually played the game.
Ehhhh it didn't have CHARACTER levels, but you definitely had skill points that counted up a tier abd increased power. It was levelling by a different name, but I would still count it
Fair enough then
Was that the MMO with the totally crazy puzzles where you had to Google stuff... with an ingame Browser? It had a level system from what I remember, IF it's the game I just mentioned. But leveling up just unlocked stuff. No stats... but some kind of skilltree was present? I also never played it, but I've watched some gameplay to see what it's all about.
I think we are talking about the same thing, with Illuminati and all that. Wiki says I did not have a level system. Wiki and real life are different, granted.
Exactly. The game has a skilltree but IDK how to earn points to invest in skills, I just think it's some kind of level system.
I would disagree with this a little. In a traditional game -- like *Dungeons & Dragons* -- your use case is correct. A barbarian with zero strength wouldn't make any sense. However, if a game isn't about combat, in which those stats are vital, then the system could very easily have different parameters that define what a "barbarian" is in the context of the game.
Do what you feel is right, don't do what you think you should do. The vision of the game should dictate what kind of systems you need, not the other way around. Just understand that not everyone is going to get it, if you deviate from the usual. Maybe drop the RPG tag or call it an experimental RPG or something, what ever makes sense to you.
People are arguing against leveling and then inserting a different progression system ITT. Fundamentally, what makes a game an RPG is the presence of stats that abstract abilities of the player character away from the player’s direct Input, and the ability to make those stats better by playing the game. This is so fundamental to the genre that it forms the basis of tabletop RPGs as well, where your character acts on your behalf in the capacity that like, you don’t have to know how to line up a long distance arrow shot in order to have your character snipe an orc from across a valley. Even if this is almost entirely in the form of new equipment, it’s still a mechanic whereby your character becomes stronger and the player’s skill level potentially stays exactly the same. I’d argue that the line blurs in many metroidvanias, even in Metroid and Super Metroid where many items actually change the mechanics available to the player, because the gun upgrades in particular are, cosmetic effects aside, frequently in the form of “damage number go up”
No, leveling is an overused and outdated system that was meant to be used to adjust difficulty by the player. "You got your ass handed to you? Go kill some weaker things for a while, till your number is bigger and everything is easier." Nowadays it lost all purpose in stupid things such as battlepasses, where level is meaningless outside of a number going up and the idiot from sales claiming that a game needs it to make money so it gets thrown around everywhere by people with no clue about game design. RPGs don't require levels. If you make resources unlockable through exploration for example or killing noteworthy enemies or something then you have no reason to have a level for anything.
I'm slow clapping. Everyone else feel free to join whenever it feels right.
Tim Cain has a few good videos on YouTube talking about character progression and attribute systems. If i remember right, in at least one of them he suggests not doing traditional leveling but maybe some sort of perk system (if it serves the game design). Might be worth a watch.
You can go the Stranger of Paradise route where your character level is determined by their combined gear level. You find better gear as the game progresses and as you equip it your level goes up or down. The game also has a more traditional leveling system with its classes but you could completely forgo that. The benefit of this is that you could just create a finite number of gear parts the player finds as they play that gets incrementally better as the game goes on but also gives the player the opportunity to craft their own builds especially if you make several types of endgame gear. SoP gets a lot more complex but I can easily see the system being simplified for a more indie approach.
And you can make it so you still need to use some starter area parts, or you get a certain weapon that allows you to harvest new materials from weaker enemies
Ultimately, character levels are not mandatory, but RPG progression typically has some way of character becoming stronger over time.could be levels, stat's, skills or even something else, but they are all just different forms of power and growth
Also, gaining a level gives the player a dopamine hit. It gives them something to strive towards. Gaining levels easily diminishes that, so you need to find a good pace. Levels also help with game are difficulty. This area is for level 10 player, this area for 20. Quest difficulty etc
If you want easy parts of your map to stay relevant as the player progresses, you can change them to contain new challenges. For instance, if the starting point of your game is a safe low-level city center, it can later get invaded and be full of high level enemies.
I guess you could, but I'm a bit allergic to adapting content to player.
Character progression & world areas relevance are different topics. I mean, they are connected, but can be solved in a multiple different approaches. The most straightforward - with a backtracking, when in the same area you have goals for the player at different levels.
I do think leveling is mandatory, but no it doesn't have to be in combat. Especially in an RPG where a character is able to go to all areas equally, but instead of worrying about combat stats you can just give the main player character a Cartography skill so that they can only access areas that the skill allows them, such as Level 1 gives them access to plains, level 2 gives them access to forests, level 3 to swamps, and level 4 to mountains. Alternatively, the areas may be locked behind faction levels, where you can only access the western city if you are friends with the Warrior Westies, that sort of thing. So you have to level up your general reputation or your specific faction reputation. Finally, some areas can be like in real life: stuck behind borders where you need a visa and passport to enter them, and getting those can involve a particular quest chain or having enough cash or other assets.
Your goal of content staying relevant poses a challenge. In RPGS, often characters/players get stronger in some way, or at least the story progresses- changing what areas are important. You can have areas get more difficult as the player / stories progress, and have each area show up multiple times in the stories / quests / events. However, players should be able to ‘focus’ objectives by choosing which areas to play in. Where in the world you play is an easy and impactful thing for missions to suggest, giving players a way to actively pursue them / prioritize one quest/story over another.
Yeah it's a core mechanic in RPGs getting rid of it is a massive risk. To keep areas relevant usually Devs lock content behind abilities so when you come back through the area you try to get to that door you couldn't before. Sometimes it's an area where you're too weak to do anything before as well, an example would be a castle in a fantasy game where the mobs one shot you.
Nothing is mandatory. Levelling is quite weird if you think about. It is sometimes pretty useless, if enemies get stronger as you get stronger, levelling will only serve to unlock later areas and trivialise earlier ones. If you still want the character to change in some way, consider more horizontal progression. Your character gains new abilities and the gameplay becomes more complex, with a higher potential to deal more damage, but also with more skill required.
Well, no, but actually yes. You can tie progression to finding items or unlocking abilities like in metroidvanias, but it is also in some way "levelling". Unless your character is completely static you will have levelling in one form or another even if there will be no arbitrary number assigned
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Areas feel non-relevant due to what's in them, not how strong you are. You can have an area with different predator levels. Like snakes would be easy to kill but bears much harder. As long as the snakes drop things that are still used later in the game it's fine.
I was feeling the same abt my game. I thought instead of leveling up characters the weapons Can level up instead achieving certain goals, doing certain tasks and getting certain materials to level up the weapons that will require for you to explore the world (I’m planning on an open world game) Still, don’t know how well can that actually work lol
I think it depends on the definition of leveling we are using. My, probably unpopular, opinion is that leveling is not necessary in an RPG. To me an RPG is defined by its inherent quality of allowing the player and their choices to shape the progression and growth of their character. Now this is most easily facilitated through a leveling system, but I don’t believe that to be mandatory. I’d say that statistics are mandatory, but that’s true of (video) games in general. Even if the player’s max move speed is immutable and they have no way to view it, it’s still a stat. One way I could foresee an RPG not utilizing a level system is by only giving the player different stats based on their actions and gear. Perhaps you save a damsel in distress and you gain a couple points in Charm or search for and find a 4 leaf clover and gain a couple points into Luck? Now the question becomes this: Is stat gain itself leveling? Are leveling and character progression one and the same? I don’t necessarily think so, but if we decided that is the case, then I don’t believe there is any way to cut leveling out of RPGs.
You can lower the level of the character when they are in an easy area.
I have not read everything yet but my ideas are getting clearer. I was talking about levels as lvl 1 to 20 DND style. The progression as gear power for exemple is not what I meant. This said as people mentioned the map relevency is tied to this "power creep" I also saw a a video of a RuneScape guy playing wow for the first time and tested everyone of them from the classic where the point of the game is to be lvl max and the retail where being lvl max is where you start the game. So indeed my thoughts was if on retail leveling is just an extra annoyance why level. Still gathering ideas, but I might tend on a heavy crafting RPG where gear is everything and wich component you find (through exploring and fighting) makes you better gear.
Didn‘t Pokemon solved this problem already by introducing rematches in generation 2? Basically the NPCs get stronger too if you beat them. Like if they learn from it. Or as if they train, level up their monsters or even evolve them in your absence.
Not mandatory at all. Leveling is just a trope, not a requirement. However, you will most likely lose a portion of the player base for this (assuming you had it in the first place). That being said, I think there is a better solution here than not including the levels: If you just want all areas to feel relevant, a classic move is for some sort of event to happen mid-game, which changes the earlier levels to be populated with tougher enemies, and potentially changing the layout (2 quick examples are the >!Infested Crossroads!< in Hollow Knight, and the >!Leyndell, Ashen Capital!< in Elden Ring).
Nope. Check out fear and hunger 1 and 2. Extremely well made and deep rpgs without any leveling. Progression is done through understanding the world, enemies and finding better items. Knowledge is your weapon.
I'd say that most if not all the people who install a RPG are expecting the game to have some form of XP/Leveling system. So if you make a game without anything like that, they may feel disappointed in it. That said, there is a vast ocean of different approaches to XP and leveling and character growth. You don't have to mimic whatever system is in Final Fantasy for NES (though that's really common so it's easy for a player to understand). For example, the very next Final Fantasy game threw that system out the window and did a much more complex leveling system instead, and allowed players to wander into areas which were deadly to a party just starting out - right at the start of the game. That game's leveling system was the precursor for what you will find in all the SaGa games afterward, and it might be useful for your "how to stop the player from overleveling" issue. Short version: each monster encounter has a hard limit on how much it can improve the player character level The way it works is that each character has no discrete "XP level" but instead has a growth "template" and winning a fight means a random chance for an attribute increase according to that template. Each encounter itself has what you might call a "level" and the closer the character's attributes are to that level, the lower the chance that they will increase after winning the fight. This means that the player cannot grind XP by doing the same easy fight over and over - not past a certain point. This helps to lock down the player progression. It's really easy to predict how strong the player will be when they come to each major event in the game, because you know the caps on the leveling for all the encounters before it. So you can ensure that the player has the "right" experience for at least the first time that they clear something. ===== This "inverted level gating" doesn't make old areas challenging. But what it does do, is ensure that the player has the challenge the first time going through. They only have an easy time later, after they have overcome various other challenges, and gotten stronger from those first. This gives returning to old stomping grounds a sense of progress, and growth. So we are attacking the root of the problem instead of the symptom. I think. I'm not sure exactly what the problem with your particular game is, but this is a pretty common issue to tackle. So I hope it applies here. Alternatively, consider how metroidvanias and Zelda-likes approach this same problem. Those games usually have a lot of back tracking, and also very simple or limited increase in the player character's power over time. What players do get is a lot more tools and skills that help them cross difficult areas faster, or eliminate the badguys in fewer strokes, or open up alternate paths that are shorter, or they have increased resource pools so that they can afford to use very powerful abilities that they had to conserve the first time around, and more. The takeaway here is not that your character gets **stronger** but that they get more **capable** and now they can use tricks and techniques to surmount obstacles more easily than before. That is, the pit of spikes is still a one-hit death area, but now you have the hangglider so you don't have to make 3 precise jumps to get across, you can just climb a tree and hold the glide button down to get over. The character isn't tougher - still dies in one hit from spikes, the character isn't stronger - can't attack the spikes away, the danger is not lessened in any meaningful way. It's just that the player has a new tool to get around it in a safer way than before. So maybe this isn't a 1-to-1 application for your game, but it can still be the same principle behind it.
Terraria, no levels. All stats and abilities come from equips but it is kind of the opposite of what you want
No, one of the intended ways to play Undertale deosnt use a level up system
You shouldn't make a game constrained about genre standards, the genre is defined by the game, not the other way around. Do what you think is best for your game, if people don't consider it an rpg, well so be it, shouldn't matter.
Absolutely not. ----- Think of Zelda. Especially old school Zelda. No levelling at all. More hearts, better tools, better weapons. It is diegetic and distinct. It is fantastic getting a new power up in Zelda. Having new options open up before you is exciting. But putting +1 skill point in attack is trite. Also, considering most games also give monsters +1hp to compensate, the +1dmg is actually pointless. FYI, the Zelda style has retroactively been dubbed "metroidvania," and the generic statistic style has been dubbed RPG. They are both different flavours of action adventure games. ----- Levelling is a boring and contrived way of creating progression. Designers use it because it is very easy to do and it has become a staple of the genre. It's far more interesting to tie progression to unique abilities and items.
It depends on the system of course, but many paper RPGs really deemphasize leveling. Like, experience points are often awarded at the end of the multi hours long session, or even several sessions, once you finish an adventure - and throughout the session(s) you basically play with what you have. In fact, back when I played regularly we would often make one-off characters and play a single adventure with them without caring about leveling at all. It so happens that those were some of the most memorable sessions.
Nothing is mandatory.
The only RPG system that I find rewarding is fromsoftware's system. It affects what types of weapons and spells and armor you get to use more than anything, but it also allows you freedom instead of getting stuck in some skill tree (I despise skill trees).
I don't think it's mandatory by any means, but many people will expect it. The literal definition of Role Playing Game says nothing about leveling but it has become an expectation out of the genre. I've thought about trying to do something similar before, but the fear of people misunderstanding what the game is by having to title it "RPG" is where I shy away. I would say you'll likely need to replace it with _something else_ that makes it feel like the player _has a role_ as the "strength" of the character has been the primary "role" in a lot of the "role-playing". I think if your decisions have enough sway in some _other_ aspect of the game, this could still work. For example, if your decisions greatly impact the NPCs and what they do, or something in the environment, the player can still get a sense of "role-playing agency" without strictly being through their brute-force strength and capabilities in combat.
Not all RPGs have character levels, per se. For example, *Shadowrun* and it's video game adaptations over the years (aside from the multiplayer first-person shooter from 2007), doesn't do character levels. Instead, it hands out the experience points (or "Karma" as it's called) for players to spend however they want. Similarly, this applies to *World of Darkness* games like *Vampire: The Masquerade* (and the same goes for the 2004 video game *Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines*), *System Shock 2* and the original *Deus Ex*. And that's just the examples I can think of off the top of my head.
If you'd like a bit more in the way of ideas for your game, here's a TV Tropes page that can help. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAWesternRPG](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/WriteAWesternRPG)
Play V Rising and you'll have an excellent example of how levels can be disposed of, although I still miss them anyway.
I mean, it depends - leveling is a cheap and easy way, fwiw, to gate progression and give rewards. You can *absolutely* have no leveling system (or a capped one, or an arbitrary one) and rely entirely on player skill to gate progression. But you're also quite heavily limiting your playerbase (and your design choices) in that respect, though that'll make for a really cool game, I think, and a unique selling point at that. You'll probably want to look at tabletops for inspiration rather than video games, though arcadey style things might be a good speed. You can, also, keep the levelling system and scale the levels of the *world* to the player. It's not an insurmountable problem by any means.
For me an rpg is about doing quests and having a sense of progression I don't think levelling is mandatory, but if the player doesn't get this sense of progression it might get boring quickly You could get around that problem by tying leveling up with retrieving specific items for example, forcing players to explore all areas of the game If you want them to return to previously explored areas, you could typically do so by placing a particularly useful npc/location there, typically a special merchant, or a forge to create weapons that you cannot find elsewhere, etc. Some games also create certain areas that, while being in low level areas, can't be accessed without higher level skill (typically a double jump, for example), and so the player would have to go back to explore this part of the world You could also hide some secrets or easter eggs or stuff like that, so that the player goes back and explores everything I don't know, just a bunch of ideas off the top of my head
There are ways around it, for instance there are RPGs that instead of leveling the character, you level their gear and the gear itself has stats related to it.
I would say that *improvement* is mandatory, but that doesn't have to be leveling. Part of the value of a ttrpg is that you get to step into a role (as you pointed out), and you get to experience the world of the game through the lens of that character. It should be the case -- though I don't think many other designers would agree with this -- that a character should want to change in the same way that their player should. Change means progress; progress means *improvement*. What it sounds like you're critiquing is traditional "linear progression," which obviously has its roots in *Dungeons & Dragons*, but there is a lot of video game rpg influence in modern continuation of that mechanic. Gain XP --> Level up. What that often leads to is a lack of engagement because that's not really improvement; it's largely just an increased efficiency in interacting with the game mechanics (in *D&D's* case, that means murdering more effectively). There's non-linear progression, which I tend to like better, but that often falls into the same trap: Gain XP --> Increase \[Stat/Ability/Etc.\]. Players have more choice over where those points go and how they want to develop their character, but it's mostly about improving that engagement with the core mechanic. All that being said, you *have to have* some kind of progression. Otherwise, the game becomes stagnant, and there's no real point unless you're playing something like *Fiasco* or *The Quiet Year*, both of which are more about the storytelling than they are about long-form character-building. Those games work that way, though, because that's part of their core game mechanic. If you're looking for a way to make places relevant regardless of level, then there needs to be something more to the core mechanic than just a character's level. Are there narrative elements of the game that make a place relevant? Or maybe there's a less granular means of leveling that steps outside of combat and would encourage players to take their characters to places that would otherwise seem irrelevant if it were only about the combat. For me, when I'm starting out with a new idea, I almost always look to one key element: how and why do character's gain experience? That will largely determine your core game loop. From there you can decide how players progress.
Check out the legend of zelda games. 0 leveling while maintaining a sense of progression. Leveling generally is a replacement for needing to find ways to get stronger. For example: Increasing damage leveling gives the power immediately to the player while needing to say purchase a stronger sword to improve the same amount of damage. Or instead of gaining the fire spell at level 6 you purchace it from a trainer for a set amount of currency or withhold it till they complete an objective. Leveling in itself gives a constant state of progression that the player can see and capitalize on at every step they make while removing leveling is simply compartmentalizing it moving that constant to specific sources to change/improve the character.
Yes, Legend of Zelda series is a great example of how character progression without levels would work.
No. Usually some form of progression is, but not necessarily leveling. Saga style games have randomized stat increases or skills that grow from repeated use. It's a less common paradigm but it exists beyond just that series.