It has been 3 months since I started Eve and I have gotten into the groove of NullSec activity: avoiding roams, killing stuff on roams myself, playing the market, fighting in wars, navigating the waves caused by Drama, and so forth. Recently, some members of KiteCo (including myself) have felt burnt out on Eve and begun playing weird MMOs on the side as a diversion. Last week, it was the Korean fishing MMO; this week, it's a French strategic MMO (think World of Warcraft with Final Fantasy Tactics' mechanics). Yet playing these different MMOs after a quarter of a year on Eve has just made the things Eve does right stand out more. To me, Eve is the MMO-iest MMO out there. But why?

I'm writing these quick blog entries over the course of a few weeks to figure that out. First, we need to answer a particular question:

What is the defining trait of an MMO?

Interacting with hundreds of other players. The one advantage MMOs have over every other gametype out there is sheer numbers, with all of the drama, complexity, and conflict that ensues. Anything that hampers a player's interactions with the broiling masses is undercutting the main selling point of MMOs.

And levels, that holdover from single-player RPGs, are the prime culprit.

Levels Segregate, Levels Kill

While levels were originally used as an indication of how powerful a character was, in MMOs they have also turned into a gatekeeper for content, a sign reading "You Must Be This Powerful to Enter This Dungeon". Low-level players are only allowed to access the weak dungeons (and weak rewards), unable to get to the hard dungeons/loot until they grind their way past a particular experience level. High-level characters don't want to run low-level dungeons because their loot's bad, and low-level characters can't run high-level dungeons with their high-level friends because the game tells them they're too weak to.

If a new player wants to play with his high-level friends, he needs to put in overtime grinding up to their level. Or have his friends escort him through a few low-level dungeons out of pity. Or have them start new alts and level up alongside him. But these are workarounds for a problem that shouldn't even be there. In Eve, I was flying frigates alongside the big boys, helping them tackle and blow up enemy ships, just days after starting.

And it's not just because there's no artificial level requirement. It's because the power curve is gradual compared to the steep increases found in games with levels. A novice in Eve is 50-80% as effective as a years-old veteran. Meanwhile, a Lvl. 10 player in WoW is just a speed bump to a Lvl. 90 player; the veteran could probably kill him in one shot by sneezing. The mere existence of a numerical power gauge starting at 1 and increasing to some arbitrary number encourages the exponential increases in power that make novices worthless in comparison to veterans. Don't believe me? Then read this:

"A Lvl. 1 player is 75% as powerful as a Lvl. 40 player."

Did your mind instinctively think "that doesn't make sense" when you read that? We have been conditioned to assume high-level players can wipe the floor with enemies that would utterly crush low-level players; that causes a level system to encourage a steep power curve merely by existing. The resulting steep power curve makes novices nearly useless in a veteran group, to the point they're more hindrance than help. This encourages the developers to lock away dungeons, equipment, and even entire zones until players reach a certain level, which hinders their ability to group up with other players, which is the entire point of an MMO.

In short, level systems segregate players. Level systems actively kill MMOs by working against their defining trait, like a cancer killing its host. The sooner MMOs excise the level system and start experimenting with other methods of progression, the better.

Yup, like Jeff stated in some recent bombcast, that thing in particular where low level players can't even damage higher level enemies is particularly annoying to me.

I think Defiance did some really interesting stuff with that at launch, where leveling up only gave you more ability points, but all the gear had same stats for all players - a new player's machine gun would do the same amount of damage as a level 3000 guy (Defiance has a really incomprehensible level system with a cap at around 3000 or so, but you gain about 20-50 levels when the experience bar fills up, and you randomly go up in level as you do stuff), but the higher level guy would get bonuses to proc special status effects and stuff like that, thanks to the abilities they had unlocked. Seems like that system wasn't popular among people though, since shortly before the game went free to play, they switched to level based gear. Still not quite as ridiculous as other MMO's, since you can always damage higher level enemies, but a level 10 gun does about 1/5 the damage of a level 3000 thing, and if you take on a way higher level enemy, you're generally dead if you're hit twice.

I hope that more MMO's will try to play around with this stuff, maybe skip leveling altogether, since as you say, it really only gets in the way of what MMO's should be about.

Always sad to see the lie perpetuated that being a new player doesn't suck. You need to spend years in eve, before you stop being disadvantaged at every encounter and every trade. Lesson 2: Everything that is "common wisdom" in Eve is a lie.

You know what killed MMO's and EVE in particular? - Multiboxing, the requirement to run several PCs, accounts and clients at once. Players figured out that rather than having other guys around it's more efficient to have a 2nd, 3rd and 4th account. It's no fun at all, but because EVE is competitive people will do anything to get an edge. But I'm skipping ahead, that's lesson 3, I believe.

@eurobum: Perhaps you have limited roles to begin with as a new player, but that in no way means you are useless. You can be an asset to your fleet from day one. Anyone who argues otherwise is wrong. A newbro can be in a fully T1 fit tackle frig or ecm frig on day one. I don't know how much you know about the game but a newbro tackling a guy and keeping him on field, jamming him and keeping him from fight, dampening, tracking disrupting, etc. is very useful.

Our corporation is in an alliance founded with the central idea of being about new players and making sure that they have a good entrance into the game and have fun from their first day. Judging by the size of the alliance, which is in the thousands, I'd have to say that they might disagree with your opinion that being a newbro sucks.

Also, I find it kind of strange that you claim that Dave is perpetuating a lie. He is a new player. He is telling you how he doesn't think it sucks. That's pretty cut and dry.

Having multiple accounts is fairly common, but it totally is not necessary. I played for well over a year before I even considered a second account. Even now it isn't used simultaneously with my first account. And have you ever tried multiboxing? It definitely isn't more efficient. Trying to manage multiple clients as one person is not ideal.

To me the "RPG" part of "MMORPG" is just as important as the "MMO" part, if not moreso, so taking out the level and gear progression removes a significant amount of appeal for me. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think that could be a universal solution. At least not without alientating people like me.

I think you can progress in more interesting ways though. Trying to get back into WoW just out of curiosity, and the progression is just not that interesting. Most of it is just "you get more damage." The numbers change but the ratios are the same, and it takes a long time relative to the total journey to 90 to get interesting progress.

I mean, I agree, I just think that "you get stat boosts to everything ever level" is a minor part of the progress loop that people enjoy. Just let me do new stuff and I'll be happy.

EVE is a great game, but I don't think any other MMO should be taking lessons from it.

I wish people would stop referring to MMORPGs as MMO and ignoring the whole RPG part.

I guess? I would instead say "Lack of Feeling Progress Kill MMOs". MMOs that fail have "grinding phases" that go too long or the pay off either visually or tactically is too low.

Lets take WoW for example, the idea of the level process is partly a tutorial to understanding more of the game to ease the process into endgame. Its obviously WAAAAYYYY too long to be the only reason for it however it does make a pretty large difference, it takes quite a while to learn what each ability does and the way they synergise with each other in any given boss fight. The recent level 90 boost options has shown what actually happens when people haven't leveled a character up slowly, on average they produce around 20%-50% the DPS/HPS of an equivelently geared player that has actually learned their class through the leveling process.

That and the leveling up process on WoW takes a day or two game time, I have a substantially geared character on Eve which I don't play anymore and I would shudder to think how long it took me to get the (I am guessing) 6 odd million skill points on eve, let alone the amount of time I spent getting isk.

Another thing I didn't like with low level eve play in PVP is how useful you actually feel, even in lower leveling dungeons (if everyone is your level of course) in most Trinity MMO's you feel somewhat important at any time, especially if you play a healer or tank. I went into some small corp skrimishes in eve at lower levels and I felt almost bored, I was just targetting who I was told too and press the jammer, get targeted by the large ship in question, get blown up. I felt like the speed bump for the much larger ships to hide behind, hardly like the battle hinged on me. Every time I heal in any level equivelent dungeon in an MMO I feel important to the team and as I work into the end game, I become far more important just like everyone else on the team with me.

Maybe that is just the sacrifice of larger PVP battles however the feeling is still there, I die in a raid in WoW and unless we are right near the end or we massively over gear the content ... its all over. I just never felt that way in most eve battles.

There can be power progression without making it a hardcoded barrier to entry. For instance, I just got enough Skill Points to start flying Interceptors in EVE; that's power progression. But there's nothing in EVE that states I can't enter Location X until I can fly Interceptors.

The crux of your post is comparing a PVP experience to a PVE experience between two completely different MMOs. If you've never flown in a five man gang I can understand how you might not feel important. Flying in a large fleet is more comparable to vanilla WoW Alterac Valley matches. It's a huge amount of people clashing that depends moreso on tactical knowledge and outmaneuvering large groups of people than individual skill. The smaller the group you are playing with the larger your individual impact.

Addressing your first point is explaining the concept of vertical versus horizontal progression. WoW offers no horizontal progression while EVE offers very limited vertical progression. You improve your character in WoW by leveling and acquiring gear. You don't ever expand your skillset, but you increase the power of your predetermined skillset. EVE begins with a limited skillset that you expand overtime. You can gain more specialization in each skillset, but this has a hard cap. Each game allows you to experience significant amounts of progression, but in different ways.

in most Trinity MMO's you feel somewhat important at any time, especially if you play a healer or tank.

In most trinity MMOs, the healer or the tank takes way more attention and skill to play. This isn't different in EVE. It takes a lot more effort to successfully maintank a raid in WoW than it does to play DPS rogue on the bench #2. Try coordinating logistics in a small gang and swapping rep cycles between targets or commanding a fleet. Flying ECM and jamming a few guys is definitely a less intense activity, but it's also what you make of it. Get targetted while jamming? Warp out. Pull aggro from the tank? Feign death, cloak, or die.

Classic stawman argument. I never said you couldn't be useful. Anybody could be useful, given the right circumstances.

As far as him liking new player experience, this post is clearly an attempt to drum up some motivation or rationalizations for himself, good on Mike the OP to put it out there. I would encourage him to explore those creeping suspicions that arise a couple months into Eve, rather than inviting others to drink the Kool aid.

Almost forgot, there is such a thing as overall Level in eVE, it's the first thing people check, it age and employment history. It's even more separating than a level number, because there are all those alts that are lumped in with new players than need separating.

@eurobum: It seems like at some point EVE greatly wronged you in the past I'm not really sure what your history is because you really don't justify the way you feel in any of your posts. Why is everything you say so aggressively worded? Whats your EVE story that makes you so against anybody enjoying the game and telling others its a game they might enjoy as well.

In regards to your most poignant point about levels I gotta say part of me really sees where you're coming from.

Getting back into WoW recently the game lets you go through levels much more quickly so that you can get new stuff for your class, but by leveling more quickly you are left with content you can't really experience as it was meant to be because you've leveled to fast for it, so in the end the restriction of levels actually makes it so less content is available to you at any one time. World of Warcraft is at a point right now where it has the most stuff in it then any point in history, but until the next expansion comes out max level players have the least amount of stuff they can do that matters to their characters ever. Levels do have a place in mmo's, but making them so rigidly tied to content and making the future progression of the game just raise the level cap makes it so an mmo is never actually growing, it's just getting longer and more frail.

@jesterroyal: To be totally honest, I actually agree with one of his points: multiboxing kills the game at mid-high levels of play if you aren't willing to go ahead to do it yourself. It disadvantages single-client players massively, and it's become so prevalent that it's basically encouraged by CCP. There's a class of people who can run multiple alts to scout, spy, haul, run missions, just otherwise get around the most obtuse & annoying parts of the game. Instead of somehow improving these issues for solo players, CCP threw up their hands and rolled with the multi-account solution.

I can't blame them, it makes the company way more money from the game's hardcore population. But if you aren't one of those people, you're a second-class citizen. It's very limiting, in my opinion too much so. This is the biggest factor which eventually drove me away from the game, I just wasn't willing to become a multiboxer in order to play "catch up" with our enemies in lowsec space.

A little late to the discussion, but this is the exact reason why I stopped playing EVE. I think that I had the most fun I have ever had in a single game in EVE, but to get to those parts was almost a hassle. Those parts though are what make me almost want to go back. Then I realize that I would have to have multiple accounts again, have to deal with multi-boxing and everything else EVE is. The final straw is I remember that I haven't been skilling in almost 2 years. I am now behind the curve. The only way to get back to where I would have been would be to buy PLEX, sell my account and use that ISK + Plex to buy a stronger character. Damn the game was great for a long time though. I do wish more games would do away with a leveling system, but I understand why it is there.

Wat?

Half of the guys in Kite Co. have barely over a year old characters and can fly a huge range of ships and fill multiple roles. Our entire Alliance (the Brave Collective) is based around the kind of power even the least skilled characters can wield. Mentality and player experience are far, far more important than skill points. If you already have years of training under your belt, you are likely going to be well ahead of the curve.

@sadisticwolf: You're probably right with Kite Co, as I was in a completely different Corp and alliance. It was way to elitist, but it sounds like the GB Corp is awesome from what I've read, may have to re sub to join!

@sniper26: Well, if you decide to give it a shot, all you need to know is right here: http://www.giantbomb.com/eve-online/3030-14447/forums/giant-bomb-eve-corp-and-community-new-duders-welco-569155/#625

Without getting too deep into what is a game and should we force people to enjoy things how we wish they would enjoy them, I find that people have a preferred range of freedom of choice & direction they want in games, and for many that level seems to be a mostly straight path with a few detours. That's why leveling systems as gatekeepers is currently so popular.

I've been guilty of this myself. Although I used to love spending days / weeks getting lost in stuff like Dwarf Fortress, I recently found myself frustrated when playing Divinity: Original Sin when I got to the 2nd major area and the game lost an immediate sense of direction. I was quite frustrated at first, and it was only after realized what I was doing and embraced the chance for exploration as opposed to being mostly guided through a set story path that I really started to enjoy the game again. It's quite possible a lot of players would never have come to that realization, especially after being accustomed to a more guided experience early on.

I agree that MMOs could be better (for me and people who like EVE) if they dropped leveling systems and embraced something more like EVE, but unfortunately I don't think many businesses are going to remain happy appealing to more niche audiences when they see a golden goose like WoW raking in billions of dollars. So the cycle is aim high, don't deviate too much due to risk aversion, and fail only to learn the wrong lessons.

I think the lesson is there for smaller, scrappier companies that have people who truly love games running them, but I think many of those companies are more interesting in Minecraft-like survival games or more innovative indie concepts like This War of Mine than something that takes a lot of money and infrastructure to support. Which is sad, but the nature of the business.

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Then again, another part of it could just be people like being dicks with outrageous power advantages over other players, which would explain the emphasis on the absurdly tuned PVP builds and blatant hacking that goes on in online games. So perhaps another appealing aspect of the leveling systems for some people is that it can make them feel superior to 'dirty noobs.' /shrug

Levels act as a way for you to get to know and slowly learn your class over time while you are leveling them. They are a gatekeeper and for good reason would you want new players who don't know how to properly play their class flooding end game raid content? Yes, it separates the wheat from the chaff and that is how it should be.