Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games
(this is a retoric question, dont answer it) what even is a "power level" in the context of an rpg?? like... surely a characters power cant be numerically represented as a single, comparable, value right? surely a character has multiple stats that you assign points to create a build unique to your playstyle right?
some mmos have "character item level" as an average of the item level of all gear you are wearing
destiny represents character power as a single value yes, it's not the only game to do it either
stat balance/itemization is separate
Yeah, in any actually good single-player RPG, that is absolutely the case, otherwise what's actually the point of all those numbers,
except no, in MMOs, gear and levels absolutely mostly, with some exceptions, just exists to be a linear/granular raw power curve. You could remove basically every number about from 'ilvl' (and the haste/speed equivalent) from gear in FF Online/XIV and literally half the playerbase wouldn't even notice bc ilvl and stats (that are mostly just borderline-illusory variants of Your Numbers Are Bigger Now) have meant functionally the same thing for almost the entire game's lifespan
its a really wack externality of the difficulty of the merging priorities of An RPG and the in-practice stuff of how broad scale multiplayer games play out in both development and player priorities (not to mention Destiny specifically also being a casual co-op shooter as discussed further down)
Power level in particular felt like one of those choices they made because RPGs have to involve grinding to increase your level. But because its also a shooter, if your above the level for the activity, you take the normal number of shots to kill things and all the power level does is determine how big the damage numbers that pop out on hit are.
back when i played destiny it felt like a needlessly complex system that did actually literally nothing. Which admittedly, the concept of level in a lot of MMOs feels like, but since destiny deleted the story campaign it didn't even serve the usual function of slowly unlocking game mechanics as you play the semi-tutorial campaign.
i feel like this is a step that any kind of mmorpg has to take at some point because as they continue to grow in size, so does the disparity between newer and veteran players
but i think there couldve been a better way to go about this?
Yeah, though I have a hard time thinking of a solution. They both want players to have the eternal feeling of progression but they also want Destiny to be a casual hangout game that you can pick up and play whenever. It’s the textbook definition of a cursed problem.
I'm a true believer in RPG mechanics, and it's really hard to tell when they're appropriate! I don't have very good instinct with it, and I don't think most developers do have a good instinct with it, even if they believe they do.
It seems immensely difficult to remove them from your game after it's already gotten popular, but I'd be very impressed if someone successfully did it.