Firefall vs Planetside 2: Character Progression

[Tatwi]

Red5 put up a nice blog detailing the character progression in Firefall,

http://www.firefallthegame.com/2012/...n-in-firefall/

and I thought it was interesting how different it is from Planetside 2, given how both are "modern FPS" games that will be release around the same time as each other. I was wondering what other people thought of the level-less design?

Personally, for years I have felt that levels in MMOs only serve to make "lower level content" obsolete and underused (like so many of the great dungeons in WoW that just go unused, because most people are max level and those dungeons no longer grant new things for their characters). But I have also felt that levels, or at least a lot of levels (more than 20), also serve as a barrier to entry for new players or "casual players".

I remember thinking one night, as I ran around a WoW starting zone leveling up alt # 5 million, how I would remake WoW and one of the first things that came to my mind is that I would completely do away with the concept of levels and leveling. Instead, I would make it so that each region or theme had its own gear and ability progression, such as Outland would progress players through the story line and dungeons but the super uber gear earned there would only translate into modest gear in another theme, like Blackwing Lair. This way players could progress sideways into whatever content happened to interest them (and their friends) without feeling like they are doing irrelevant content.

I figured that for PvP in my remake of WoW, there would only be one "level" and there would not be a huge gap in power between new players and seasoned ones. The point would be to have fun fighting and trying to win and for the serious folks, it would be to achieve higher ratings and to play against other highly rated people. Prestige, rather than a gear treadmill, would be the driving force for the competitive people. More battlegrounds, rated battlegrounds, and a return to places like the original, objectives based, Alterac Valley were some of the things I felt would be fun to experience on a level playing field.

Anyhow, in spirit that's essentially what Red5 has done with Firefall, which is pretty neat. A person can hop into the game for the first time and take part in whatever they like without being at a severe (or impossible to overcome) handicap. Yet the game allows players to progress and diversify their characters and it does this without removing more and more "lower level content" from the player as he plays.

In comparison, Planetside 2 has both a level system and a secondary advancement system. However, in PS2 players NEVER level their characters to a point where there is content that is meaningless to them. That's awesome for players (and a great use of SOE's resources I might add). So with that in mind, even though PS2 has levels and what could be called "skill based progression" through certs and purchases, it does not have those issues I mentioned that plague traditional level based MMOs, which makes PS2's character progression similar in philosophy to Firefall's.

That said, Red5 had this to say about why they chose to do away with traditional levels,

Let me answer the most obvious question first: There were a number of reasons why we felt that our character progression system needed a change. One of the most prevalent was that we simply weren’t happy with the time that elapsed between different rewards during progression that the classic leveling system allowed, and we wanted to increase the number of choices that were available to players within their progression.

It's here that I feel the character progressions of PS2 and Firefall diverge.

Smed has stated that to get anywhere deep into Planetside 2 people are going to have to "put in a lot of time" and that doesn't sit well with me for a number of reasons:

• It's a game, not an occupation or lifestyle.
• As we've observed, all the content is accessible to a new player.
• In many cases, the progression offered in PS2 are quality of life improvements rather than game play changing or fun abilities.
• By making progression a huge time sink, but selling shortcuts potions, SOE wants to make a lot of money by selling us our own time rather than actual products/items.

Why take this approach? Especially in a game where 100% of the content is other people, players are granted access to all classes and vehicles upon character creation, and none of the locations or activities are gated in any way. It doesn't even make sense to take this approach, because SOE's giving away all of the important things at character creation...

When one boils it down, the fundamental difference between the character development in PS2 and Firefall is that Firefall respects people's time and PS2 does not. Firefall's character development system offers real game play changing personalization, where as PS2's is mostly fluff, because SOE already gave everyone almost everything at character creation.

I look forward to the next round of changes to the cert trees and hope that SOE takes an objective look at what people are really getting for their time. PS2 should be a game where people play to have fun playing a game with their friends and get some cool rewards along the way. PS2 should not be a game where people do everything they can to "game the system" to get as much XP/min as possible, because not doing so is a brutal waste of their time.

Honestly, I think SOE is giving way too much away at character creation and that character development suffers for it. What's left to build upon is too fluffy. This might seem contrary to "respecting people's time", but it's not, because I am not saying, "lock all the classes etc. behind a huge grind". I am saying, "maybe locking the classes and vehicles behind a reasonable, enjoyable amount of actual, normal game play might enhance the sense of character development".

Ps. This was a "pre-coffee" ramble.