Why Everything Is Trying To Be An RPG Now
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We're big fans of small talk but levelling is a serious matter, so we go straight down to it with our first question: why add levelling to a game such as Bad Company 2? And how does it work in a game with a more traditional RPG such as Torchlight?
Erich puts it like this, (I think the primary purpose of a levelling system is to provide a regular reward system for the players in the form of a series of not-too-distant goals. As players gain experience levels, they grow in strength, receive customization options, and gain access to new equipment and areas to explore.)
DICE's Sebastian views it thus, (On a very, very fundamental design level it's a way to tie together separate gaming sessions into one coherent, meaningful experience for the human mind. [When you add a levelling system] you're really playing one game [over] separate points in time.)
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Players of the original Baldur's Gate will probably all remember the mysterious stranger whose only line of spoken dialogue was, (Hello Friend) before he fired off a magic missile spell at your fragile level one character. For a mage or rogue this had the potential to be one of the hardest fights in the entire game as it was almost certain to do more damage than you could have hit points, arbitrarily killing you to bits.
Then, as is the case with Mount and Blade, once you play through the harshness of life as a low level character suddenly the challenge falls away. You find yourself armed to the teeth, better armoured than a bank vault and with enough knights at your back to reshoot the climactic battle from The Two Towers. If you keep on raising a player's power level pretty soon you run out of places to go with it.
So, is levelling up an inherently broken mechanic? One route is suggested by the STALKER series, which applies incremental upgrades to your guns but not your character. The game demands you improve in order to succeed in the latter stages. The challenge curve goes neatly from fairly easy to relentlessly tough, but at least when the going gets tough you've got some custom military hardware to lay down the law with.
