No Levels and flat Progression - a better open world experience

[Jinal]

No Levels and flat Progression - a better open world experience

Hi there,

i posted this suggestion in the old thread a few days ago, and someone encouraged me to post it here too. The title is a bit misleading, because my idea does not only affect levelling and xp-gain, but probably every other mechanic in the game (this is why i made a new thread instead of posting it in the xp- and levelling sticky). Thus it would be increadibly hard - and maybe even impossible - to realise this in a mod. And it would need immense work on balancing.

The idea behind this:
Witcher 3 i s different from the previous Witcher games. Geralt is no longer recovering from amnesia, his abilities are restored and he is - again - a fully trained Witcher, an expert. Also Witcher 3 is to some extent an open world experience. I think the idea of having levels and levelling up does not really fit this type of game. It would be fitting if we would have to develop a new, unexperienced character from the ground (as you do in Skyrim), but that is not the case in Witcher 3. An open world experience does in my opinion also mean that you should be able to explore it right from the start (or after the tutorial area, i don't care), and - besides from story or quest related content - you should not be restricted from entering certain areas and locations. I know, witcher 3 does not prevent you from exploring and taking on higher level monsters, but if you do, you still get the impression that you are "not supposed to be here yet", and some areas are not accessible from the start, such as the skellige islands. Then, and this is a different story, to me the level restrictions and the levels itself feel somewhat arbitrary and unrealistic, even immersion breaking. I simply don't get why a simple drowner near Novigrad is twice as strong as one in Crookbag Bog, or why Geralt should be unable to use a rusted Sword, just because of level requirements - it is still a sword, no?
So to me, levels and level requirements are not adding to this game, it simply does not feel right. But an RPG without character progression wouldn't be much fun, and the gear hunt is a very important mechanic to keep us interested and motivated. And because i am not really a friend of Level Scaling (because of difficulity issues, and again immersion and realism), i came up with a different approach: removing the levels and levelling mechanics entirely, without removing the progression and character development.

Character Progression, Skillpoints and Character Development:
What levelling currently does is giving you a skillpoint and enhancing your basic stats. Most of the skillpoints are then again used to enhance your stats (more adrenalin gain, less toxicity or enhancing signs and duration of potions...), and only some skills really give you new abilities or alter the abilities you already have. Besides that we have mutagens, runes and glyps, and also 3 types of armor (heavy, medium, light) that directly influence our stats. Now how would this be done if we would remove the levels?

Skillpoints and Skills:
We would still get skillpoints from places of power, and maybe from some main-story quests and from some consumables you find in the world. But the variety of skills would be smaller. All (or at least most) the skills that simply enhance your stats would be removed, we would have a smaller but more meaningfull skill tree. (A different method would be an xp-system of some sort where you would still get xp, and once you reach a "level up", you would gain a skillpoint, but i would prefer the first idea) Now how would we be able to get stronger in a meaningful way?

Mutagens:
Mutagens would work differently. Instead of equipping them or using them as potion ingredients, Geralt would be able to consume the Mutagens. This would cause mutations, depending from the strenght and type of the mutagen. If Geralt would consume a lesser red mutagen, Geralt would get a very low improvement of attack power, for example. If he would consume a griffin mutagen, he could gain resistance to piercing dmg aswell as an improvement of attack power (or different effects, there are many possibilities). A fire elemental mutagen would enhance his resistance to fire damage and igni power and so on. Mutagens would permanently enhance Geralt's stats, and thus become more meaningful - they would also have to be rare or at least less farmable, or maybe there should be a restriction on how many mutagens of any type Geralt is able to consume. (a different method would be using the mutagens to enhance the skills, so that you would be able to spend certain mutagens to learn or unlock the skills we already have in the game. Of course 1 Mutagen would not simply resemble 1 Skillpoint)

Runes, Glyphs, Gear:
Without levels, there wouldn't be level-restrictions anymore. Geralt could use every armor or weapon he is able to get or he has the required materials for. Right from the start. This would mean that the gear-stats would need a massive improvement regarding variety and specialization. Geralt would be able to alter and enhance his stats by using different gear, fitting different playstyles. Rare and really good armor and weapons would come with rune/glyph slots, and there would have to be a wider variety in glyphs and runes. We would have to prevent the player from getting the best gear early in the game. Either by make the gear Crafting-Only and have really high material requirements (10 draconid leather, 2 flawless diamonds, monster drops from hard enemies, for example), or hide it in the guarded treasures, making sure the chest does only open until you have killed the guarding monster. If you are able to kill a really hard foe early in the game, then you would have earned the reward, and you would be able to use it. But you will probably not have the adequate runes or glyphs to really take advantage from the high-end gear, but he would look cool early on, and have something that fits his playstyle.

-->in short: there would still be skillpoints, but less and more meaningfull skills to unlock, and the stat increases are done by the usage of mutagens (permanent) and specializations in gear, runes and glyphs (flexible)

Difficulty, indicators and pacing:
This is the most difficult part. Levels do not only serve the purpose of character development and progression, but serve as indicators telling the player where he is - or is not - supposed to go next, or how easy or hard it would be to kill an enemy somewhere in the world. With the removal of Levels, how could we make sure that
- players can not simply kill the hardest enemy/ get the best loot right from the start?
- players don't feel lost or overwhelmed because of the lack of direction or indicators on difficulty?
- the character progression and the difficulty is linked in a meaningful way, and helps the player to understand what he is able to do?

Indicators:
We would need indicators of some sort, because otherwise a player is not able to identify the difficulty of a certain enemy or quest. We would probably have to mark the monsters somehow (toggable skull- icons or different colors for hard enemies, for example), and also for quests. There could be very easy, easy, medium, hard and very hard labeled quests. In the very easy ones the player would not get involved in fights, or only face very easy enemies. In the very hard quests, the player would face the real hard enemies. In the easy quests, preparation for a fight would not be that necessary, while you would not be able to complete a hard or very hard quest without potions or specialized gear. Here it would be helpful if the Bestiary would be even more informative, telling the player what sort of damage he will have to deal with (thus, what resistances would be nice to have), and so on.

Difficulty:
We would have to make sure that you can not become too powerful but powerful enough that you feel the progression and difference from better gear. I would say it would be fine if the player would be able to one-hit wolves, standard drowners and bandits at the end of the game ("best" gear, all skillpoints, important mutagens...), and that even some of the harder enemies would be not very hard to kill without potions and oils (standard griffin, forktail, water- and grave hag). But some of the hardest enemies would still be much harder without proper preparation and equipping the right stuff (archgriffins, higher vampires, royal wyvern, poisonous aracha..), even if you have reached the "endgame". And the player should be able to complete the easy and very easy quests right from the start everywhere in the world, thus, after a while, gain enough mutagens and new gear to be able to take on the medium quests, but not the hard ones yet. You would still be able to "outlevel" stuff, because if you would complete every very easy or easy quest in the world, you would gain many mutagens and maybe collect some skillpoints and gear that allows you to complete the harder stuff too without huge problems.

When should we be able to do what?
This is a hard one. First, we have the tutorial area where you have to kill that griffin as part of the main story. In my idea of removing the levels, the player should basically not be able to do that, because a griffin would be one of the stronger enemies... i would assume there should be an exception, so that players would be able to complete the tutorial zone without huge problems. The tutorial zone should introduce the no-levels-gameplay in a nutshell, basically. So the player should be abe to kill the griffin once he completed the other side-quests, he could also try to kill it earlier, but this would then be very very hard, because he would not have consumed any mutagens (some basic ones and the noonwraith's) or found the good gear. As it is now, basically.
But after the tutorial, the player should be able to explore the world, find and complete the easier tasks, find some nice diagrams and recipes and gather the materials needed to gear up, consume mutagens regularely and thus become stronger and stronger.

How would it feel?
If it is done well, it would basically feel like this: once you leave white orchard, the world is open to you. You would find things to do everywhere, and you would be able to travel everywhere. But you would also encounter really strong enemies in every part of the game, thus you would feel the need of becoming stronger, and every hard enemy you kill would give you some useful loot, at least one special mutagen enhancing your stats. You would no longer find relic Gear in standard chests or in hidden treasures that don't involve fighting. You would be able to wear and craft everything, as long as you have the required materials, and you would get a good impression of easier and stronger foes. And in the end you would still become very powerful and experienced.

Probelms:
besides from the actual difficulty of actually creating a mod that removes the levels, balance things and test every little bit, there are other problems. For example that many people can not imagine a witcher game with no levels. Or an RPG with no levels. Maybe we are very much used to the levelling mechanic. And even if someone would like it and do it, there could still be some real issues with the main-story progression, and the fact that Geralt has to deal with a variety of human enemies (in this idea, humans would all be equally strong, of course with some differences regarding equipment, shields and skills they use) I think, a mod like this is not even possible. So in the end, it is a (nice) utopia i am thinking about, nothing more.

 

[BWB]

I completely get what you are saying. Levels as we know them in games seem like a redundant idea in W3. Geralt is an experienced Witcher from the start, not some wronged peasant with hidden talents out for vengeance. Geralt is pro and knows what he needs to get the job done. I say scrap levels and abstract ability points altogether. The reward for completing quests, destroying strong monsters should be mutegens that can be used to make geralt stronger, signs more effective and so on. The handing out of xp and leveling up for an ability for completing quests is a sledgehammer of a game mechanic.

For example at no point does an quest giver, book or monster mention an experience points, ability point or player level. But they certainly do mention rare equipment, mutegens, potions and so on. It would be so much more fun to build my character through those rewards than to have artificial ability points, experience points and levels.

 

[Smurfin]

I have a similar idea that I posted in other thread about ditching level completely, I'll quote myself for it so I don't have to type it again. I like your approach better since your base is the current TW3, while my base is a Zelda game. But either way, it might be hard to implement since the game had already been made and released with level based in mind. The possible solution for now without making too much changes is by scaling the enemy's levels too. I don't mind if the combat will become hard as long as it's doable and not impossible, TW3 seems to lack enemy encounters, and we can just skip it entirely if we're only passing by.

Agree on the Question Mark quests, they're a boring chore especially after finishing the mainstory, though some of them are not, like Places of Power and rescuing villagers, these two are ok.

Imo Zelda game's RPG elements are more fitting with TW3, than level based. Sometimes I wonder why RPG has to be level based, Zelda is a franchise that keeps reusing its own rpg elements without leveling and it works, but no other rpg games seem to use it. Instead of level, it promotes exploration, in Zelda it's for finding new gadgets to access new areas or just for powerups, but it has a lot of other possibilities. Like in TW3 if it's not level based, exploration can be used to empower Geralt in many ways, and the gigantic world backs it up. For example :
- put some bosses or minibosses guarding diagrams, it doesn't have to be new monsters, they can just reuse existing monsters and give them name like they did with various sidequests/contracts.
- Weapon upgrades such as items for increasing durability and damage by using special monster's body parts.
- Vitality upgrades (like pieces of heart in Zelda game) by mixing monster blood with Witcher potion for example.
- Special mutagens for increasing Geralt's weight carrying limit permanently.
- Armor upgrades. Like the sidequest for armor mastercrafter, Geralt has to extract Archgriffin's acid or something to harden Nilfgaardian armor against bolt piercing.
- Crossbow upgrades by upgrading it's string with special monster's muscle.
- Various swords or armors with different/unique stats from each other.
Of course Geralt doesn't have to hold the powerups he found like Link usually does and with catchy sound playing in the background

, but I don't mind if Geralt does it too LOL.

 

[balparmak]

I totally agree, although I'm still waiting on a couple of major patches to start a playthrough, open-world or skyrimness of the game bothers me. I wish cdprojekt was able to take such a bold approach and introduced a unique open-world approach. Much more lore friendly-much more meaningful

 

[Jinal]

Thank you guys,
I don't have a problem with the open world experience in the end, because i think it really fits the Witcher 3 game setting. Of course you have all the open-world game problems, and there always is this fine line between freedom and linearity. Witcher 3 is always different from Skyrim, for example (and i absolutely like that it is not the same), because Skyrim is much more sandboxy (it lets you kill random NPCs, for example), while in Witcher 3, the open-worldyness is much more an illusion. The game basically tells you "yeah, you can go anywhere, but you know what? I would not, you will die.". The levels are the main reason behind this. They restrict the player from exploring until he reaches a certain level. This makes the game linear again, what is sad. An example: right at the start you get 3 hints of possible locations of Ciri. If there would be no levels, the player could decide where to look first: in velen, novigrad or skellige. It would - regarding the story - lead to the same outcome, it would just need a tiny bit of additional dialog. Now, every player will go to velen first, then visit novigrad, and finally travel to skellige.
In the end, an open world game should not restrict you, and if it does, it should not restrict you by levels, but by story.

Scaling is a bit a different approach. I said in my OP that i am not a friend of Scaling. This is only half the truth. I absolutely hate upscaling or environment Scaling (so that the levels of the environment fits the actual level of the player), because then you know that you can basically do anything at any point of the game. If you would attack a forktail at level 4, it would maybe be level 5. If you attack it at level 30, it might be level 32. A bit above you, but not unforgivingly hard. This, in my opinion, takes the challenge away, because you always know that the game makes sure that you are able to do anything.
What i like better is downscaling (you level up normally, but once you go back into low-level areas or take on low level quests, the player is scaled down, the stats are lowered to some extent, thus, the fights are harder again). I have only seen this in one single game so far, and i quite liked it. Here you don't have to scale the whole environment, but the player only, what makes it easier to implement., and makes sure that every quest is a challenge and rewards you with adequate experience points.

in the end, i think levels are a quite old-fashioned mechanic that roots in pen & paper RPGs, where you had to make the character progression and strenght of enemies visible and calculable somehow. I think most RPGs have it because it works well, everyone understands it and all the players are used to it. it is unquestionable one of the most common mechanics in RPGs. As are classes, stat points and other meta-game mechanics. I hoped that modern games would get rid of the "meta" game once, because we do now have the ability to make those things visible and experiencable and we would no longer have to rely on numbers and dice rolls. But as far as i see, no game developer has ever tried to get rid of this entirely. Sometimes, even game developers have to take a step back and look at those things, ask themselves: do we really need this or can this be done in a different way? But there is the problem of the market. Would people buy an open world rpg with no levels, no classes, no character creation?
They would, if it would base on real world altering choices (for example if the player could not only decide who wins the war, but would actually see the troops moving and the battles, the villages destroyed he visited earlier, the npc's dieing you have previously met...), but this is not really the case. Only thing left is beautiful voice acting and brilliant quests-scripting. Still worth it, but a reason to not mess around with things people are used to.

 

[Smurfin]

Downscaling feels kinda weird, I like no level better like Zelda game, or Shadow of Mordor, a skill based game where we buy skills with points we get from exploration, it's a good system but I don't like the points coming from memory fractions scattered around the map like collectibles, but it's a good system, a sword is a sword, a dagger is a dagger, a bow is a bow, the main char just gets better at each with game progression.

Level is okay if done properly within a good pace, it has to make sense. The main problem with TW 3 is the later mainquests boost it by a lot and make Geralt too OP, even at highest difficulty. Imo DA:I did it better than TW3 in level design.

 

[Jinal]

i agree.
my main reason for not liking levels in witcher 3 is that it does not fit the lore. Geralt does not need to develop to that extent. He already is awesome and OP (compared to humans), because he is a witcher. Of course, also the consumption of new mutagens would not fit the lore, but i could agree on that because RPGs need progression of some sort, gear and buffing only is not enough, and regarding realism, also gear has it's limits.

To me, levels are absoultely fine if the fits the game and if it is done well. But especially in open world games i always had my problems with the levelling and xp-mechanics. This is absolutely a fantasy RPG problem. Other generes with open world settings don't have those problems (GTA, for example), levels do simply not make sense there, and no one misses them. Progression can be done in various ways, without levels. i really hope we will see open world RPG's in a fantasy setting without levels in the future.

 

[SeikanDShi]

For me this would also be an essential mod, since I discovered modding quite a few years ago with Kotor, i've had the tendency to look for an alternative for normal leveling.

In kotor in particular my approach consisted of boosting weapons and armors as to make the character stats have a lesser impact on the difficulty, I did more damage, and enemies too, it made combats against random enemies quite faster (Sometimes it could be a matter of 1-2 hits for weaker enemies), and i would give particularly big boost to bosses and strong enemies, with the best weapons, and more hp, it gave me a quite satisfactory gameplay.

Then came Skyrim, here I never got so much into modding it myself, skyrim being more complex than kotor it wasn't as easy to quickly edit item properties and implement them in enemies, the scaling system along with their equipment seemed like too much effort to me, so I mostly downloaded other people mods exept some particular changes. And of course one of the most important things to me was finding a good mod to get rid of lvl scaling.

So here we are now with the Witcher 3, I just finished it, and would really love to have a flat progression for the next time, so i'll add the ideas that come to my mind:
For what you said about pacing and difficulty of humans:

I don't think this part would be much of a problem, mostly a matter of self control, we're talking about a mod, people installing mods will mostly be people who already finished the game once, they know the theoretical order you're supposed to play through Velen, Novigrad and Skellige, so how much narrative coherence they want to maintain would be up to each one, it's not gonna be an official release, you don't have to satisfy everyone, mods consist on changing what you would like to change and sharing with those who would like the same changes.

When it comes to human enemies, we can always take some freedom, with the current system it already makes no sense at all, you find peasants that are stronger than drowners, why would they need witchers then, if measly humans can kill the so called monster hunter so easily?
But then you've got trained and seasoned warriors, you've got magic, so we can easily justify a difference in stats between people, some random looters or deserters might not be as strong as proud Skelliger Raiders, Witch Hunters would be stronger than generic soldiers, in the books you do have people who can kind of face Geralt, while others get killed in the blink of an eye without being able to stand to the witcher's speed, so you can absolutely have stats differences for humans, even tough they would of course never be as strong as an Archgriffin, anyways, I believe there are also different AI depending of difficulties, so we could also play with it to differentiate humans, have the peasants have an easy difficulty AI and the stronger ones a death march strong human AI, but with similar damage.

Now moving for general difficulty, i would personally enjoy a really challenging system, my favorite fights so far have been the duels against enemies that were about 5 to 8 levels above me (mostly those kind of lone monsters without health regen, and sometimes slow like golems...).
For me the way to make combats exiting, is for the enemies to have very high damage, so any hit without Quen would put you in danger (around 50-75% base health) so you would have to concentrate a lot on dodging, then enemies health would be so that you can kill them even with a rather bad sword (kind of like when I was fighting some guards with the stunt sword from dandelion quest and had no idea why they were so hard... It was insanely hard, but I finally managed to get them by being extra careful and using everything at my disposal), and better swords would make it so that you can kill them lets say.... 30% the hits it takes you with a regular sword (let's say 10 fast attacks for a normal griffin?) but their damage would still be huge, so even if you can kill them faster, they can still kill you pretty easily if you're not careful.

Or Golems, rock trolls, would have a lot more health that would be compensated by the fact that they are rather slow.

Then drowners for example, would make them stand around 3-4 fast hits with a bad sword (and around 1-2 with a good one), being enemies usually found in packs etc... and have the named and quest related ones slightly stronger,their damage would be rather high too, around 35% of the base health, so you can kill them fast but remain a big danger unless you have good armor. Random humans would have about 60& of their health, or so...

Those are just general ideas, of what I think should be the kind of difficulty to aim for: some dangerous enemies that you can defeat rather easily, and quick, being a "Master Witcher" and all, like Low class Humans, Wolfs Drowners, Nekkers, Harpies, but would still be lethal if you're not careful (like one of the books stories, where Geralt kills hoards of small monsters with one hit but ends up half dead), then you have stronger enemies that are harder to kill and take more time, like draconids, hags, normal vampires, Bears, and would of course deal a higher damage depending on the monster, and finally the boss type monsters, it would include some of the named monsters from contracts and quests, chosen by common sense, we would have things like elementals, arch griffins, Relics (Chorts/lechen/fiends) they would be almost impossible with bad gear, and still very hard with good gear, they would require, everything at your disposal.

So now if we want monsters that force us to use everything at our disposal we need to improve three things in my opinion:

-The Crossbow, it was really useless apart from making monsters fall from the sky, but bolts damage was rather ridiculous, have you ever tried killing anything with it? it takes ages!!! even drowners, or humans, crossbows are supposed to be rather deadly as long as we're not talking about golems, or huge monsters.
Bombs: Same problem as before, i ended up not using bombs outside of the ocassional dimeritium or moon dust, because their damage was rather bad, every time i thought about using them i ended up rather disappointed.
Signs: Here again, i think they're not up to the task in most cases, in my opinion using Quen, attacking until it breaks then cast it back usually allowed for much more damage than using igni, and Ard is find for ground executions, but besides that you're more likely to just stick to quen, i just don't see enough benefit to them as of now, unless you have a build specially for that one sign, when we see the damage Igni can do in the cinematic end of a certain fight in the game we wonder why it barely scraps a human, or a wolf (they are probably more effective in low difficulties, but then it's a walk in the park), again an elemental, or troll I can get it, but unshielded humans should loose about 40% of their health from it if you've got a few intesity upgrades, Ard should also be unforgiving towards humans and small enemies to just shake them, remember than yellow Ard in witcher 1 intro?

For items, i would indeed implement a crafting requiring certain ingredients from increasingly strong monsters as to make it hard to get, it could be so the master's armorer and master smith quests actually gives you something worth it, like an improved version of the Staring armor's improvement, could use a mod to make it look slightly different, and add an improvement schematic somewhere, so it's on par with the other witcher gears that IMO should be the best gear, and for the sword part, get rid of the serpentine swords in the prologue and add them there as an improved version too.

For skill points I think that if removing some skills is a good idea overall, in think we also should get rid of the skill slots system, and make them permanent, removing some skills would allow it not to become overpowering, but then you would really have more variety to your attacks, instead of being limited by arbitrary skill slots, if you've learned to use a sustained igni, you should always be able to use it and not forget how to do so misteriously...

Anyways i should stop writing so much and go to sleep. But as a conclusion, I think the Witcher has a very nice combat system that gets limited by the leveling system, as soon as you do too much side quest you outlevel the main quest and end up having over easy "boss" fights and getting killed by drowners of some random high level area, and the nice possible use of signs and specials skills gets limited by skill slots, etc.... So this would be the most important mod for me,, and I really think someone will eventually make it if the Redkit is flexible in that regard, I just hope it gets out there soon.

 

[SolemnXII]

I was sold on the op's idea at first however, it just seems more practical gauging strength with a number.
Scaling lower level proxy enemies to Geralt's current level as he progresses would share a similar purpose.
The scaling approach can be witnessed in-game from a few of the bosses...so it can be done.
This would be a simpler task than redesigning the current game system with new indicators; altering mutagens/gear functionality etc.
The higher the difficulty, the closer weaker enemies will be a matched with Geralt (over scaled for a hellish mode if desired)
For a faster modding approach this would have a similar overall outcome for balanced difficulty while not throwing off the current player base.

 

[SeikanDShi]

This would be a mod by players, not an official change, CDPR is never going to change the leveling system, that's clear as day, so we don't really have to worry about any player base, those who like the idea would download the mod, those who don't wouldn't, no one would be thrown off, it's like saying not to make a fanfic of Geralt romancing Philipa because it would thrown off current base: it wouldn't, it's a fanfic, it's not official, and they don't have to read it.

For the complexity of the modification, Modders are perfectly capable of doing it as long as leveling system, skills, and mutagens aren't hard coded, if the Redkit allows adding new skill slots, and that kind of things, it would mostly be a matter of patience, since it would be a lot of files to edit, but i've certainly seen modders do this kind of stuff with games that don't even have a good flexibility when it comes to combat mechanics.

 

[Hicks233]

The level restrictions on weapons and armour - something not present in Witcher 1 and 2 were a needless irritation which was a kick in the teeth when you go to the effort of finding and crafting better equipment.

Having some of the beasties be a much higher level than you I found fine. Daunting and challenging but fine. The arbitrary damage penalty you recieve for taking on an enemy the games mechanics deem to be above you though was not fine. Let the fight rely on the players skill.

I'd have been happy if all weapons and equipment had the level requirement removed or set to one and the damage penalty against higher level opponents was removed. The less numbers that get in the way of the players action the better for me.