What if, instead of levels, we simply gained a little health from fighting?

What if we only increased magika, but bonding with skyshards throughout the game?

What if we only gained stamina from doing strenuous activity like swimming jumping and lots of running?

What if, you only gained skill advances from using them?

What if, we have starting stats like str const intell dext and each player gets a set amount of points to divide up amongst their ability. Each ability affects the speed at which you gain certain skills. Lets say you want to gain health faster, you have a higher con. You want to be a spell caster you give yourself a higher intel and gain much more magika from skyshard bonding than someone with a low intl and have stronger spell effects. Str helps you gain stamina faster and a small effect on your health gain too. Dexterity would obviously affect how fast you learn combat skills or your chance to hit with both weapon and spell, and intel would affect how fast you learn magic skills the most, and only affect how fast you learn combat skills by a little. I could get more detailed here but I think you get the idea.

You go out at the start of the game and lets say you want to be a warrior.. You take your starting weapon and go fight mudcrabs. After you kill some mudcrabs you get a message saying that you feel tougher and you look at see that your maximum health increased slightly. You also gain some skill ups in your weapon and defense. After awhile of fighting mudcrabs they become no challenge and no longer make you tougher.

You go to town and find an NPC who needs the service of an adventurer. You take the job, and run to the cave of bandits to retrieve the stolen goods. While running and jumping there you get a message that you have become more phyisically fit and look and see that your stamina has increased.

On your way to the cave you spot a shiny glowing rock up high on a cliff. You climb up there and find a skyshard, you bond with it and gain a little more max magika

You want to be a warrior with high health? You gain it by getting injured. In this way, a mage would not be as tough as a warrior because mages wont get hit as much, unless they take the time and have a high con a mage could never be a tough as a warrior. having a high con means sacrificing intl and dex

Basically, this would give us an entirely skill and exploration advancement system where questing mainly rewards you with gear and gold and reputation and actual adventuring gains you power. I could go into much further detail if the devs entertained my idea.

This kind of system would be much better than a leveling system. And from what i have seen in ESO so far, leveling doesnt really have much point to it other than a number that everyone can see representing how far you have progressed in the game. I personally would rather not have enemies in pvp be able to just look at me and see what my lvl is.

I've played a few games without traditional overall levels and they are a lot of fun. Sadly, however, levels function as a concrete reward system and most gamers rely on the feeling of being rewarded in order to continue playing a game.

I always say that if you reach max level in a game and you feel like you're done with the game or there's nothing left to do, then that is the game's fault, not the player's. I have felt that with almost every MMO I've ever played save for pre-NGE SWG, UO, Darkfall, Mortal and other games with no overall levels.

My ideal system would be as such:

Attributes (traditional TES 8)

Skills (capped by related attribute)

Traits (Health, Stamina, Magicka - derived from Attributes)

Learning skills would be done through books, trainers or by simply doing the skill (in some cases not possible).

There would be a limited number of skill points you could use so that you could only ever master, let's say, 1/5th of all the skills at any one time.

Respeccing would be handled by a plus-minus-lock system where you can set each skill to either PLUS (increases as normal, default) MINUS (decreases as other skills increase) or LOCK (doing actions related to skill does not increase skill).

So if you run out of skill points and decide you no longer want the marksman skill and want Destruction magic instead you can set it to MINUS and as you work on Destruction it will take points from Archery. So it's like unlearning over time.

If I were to design my own game (oh wait, I am) this is a very rough overview of what the system would look like.

PS I would also love what you described.

I know I link this guy's stuff like I'm his paid hype man but he and I just see eye-to-eye on so much game-design-wise: http://www.raphkoster.com/2005/12/16/do-levels-svck/

@raben to me this sounds like a level system but instead of a character level you are leveling everything individually

Yeah that's all skill systems are, instead of an overall level, each skill gets its own leveling track. You can however calculate an overall level based on that, especially if there's a skill point cap.

This is true, but instead of the go out kill 20 mobs gain a level simplicity, it becomes more complicated and focused, and slower to progress without actually giving the illusion of it being a slow progression because of the constant skill increases you gain in whatever you 'train'

Gotta have the skinner box, otherwise not enough people will play to get the return they want on their investment.

What is a skinner box?

Actually to me it becomes more of a grind. There is a reason why macroing was so rampant in UO and many other games with a skill based system. It was simply flat out tedious to level each skill until they reached a point of relevance.

Penny Arcade had a video that explained it quite well.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-skinner-box

There's a lot of debate about the topic of games like MMOs being like in a skinner box too: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/psychology/are-video-games-putting-you-in-a-skinner-box-t3669.html

The system used in skyrim and obilivion is fine!

Indeed, but skill-based systems are actually much more effective at creating operant conditioning, since their rewards are far more numerous, but just as scheduled.

If you go from level 1-100 that's great, but level 1-100 in 55 different skill lines, and attributes? Yeah, exponentially more rewarding, and if you add a skill point cap the conditioning schedule becomes infinite as long as the player wants to keep trying out different skills.

My point is that there is always a number label right next to someone's name in the game. The level. The skill levels aren't there unless someone actually looks into their profile. However, the inclusion of it does no real harm. The system that has skill levels and character levels is alright.

Ah I see you're talking about the reward of it relative to others. The prestige of being max level, the "show-off" factor. Gotcha.

Yeah and TES has been doing levels+skills for years with no problems. Can work like that too.

There will always be players who find ways to exploit a game. It happened the first day of the most recent beta. The "grind" as you put it should not feel tedius if there is frequent skill ups.

Think about it... Level based game, you "grind" for a long time, then get a lvl up and all your stats increases at once. then have to "grind" again for the next level.

In a skill based game like I proposed, you are gaining stat increases very frequently. When this happens, it doesnt feel like a grind at all, and you focus more on the explorative gameplay, the roleplay, and the pursuit of wealth and social activity. In a level based game, all that matters is getting that next level, and the next... until finally you hit the cap, and then what? You start a new character and repeat? You roam around looking for pvp? You do 'raids' with groups to find better loot? Alot of players think thats the way its spose to be and they are missing out on a much more rewarding experience.

Why do you think TES single player games dont feel grindy? Because of the contant "skillups" and the huge amount of content to experience while hunting and exploring.

I don't know, like you said, skyrim has levels but doesn't feel tedious. I would say that's the sandbox though..if you can go anywhere at any level it doesn't feel restrictive..but if you have to wait until a certain level to go places like in an mmo it feels grindy...on a new dawn guard play through I was sure getting antsy.

Even if you level by skills..it would be just as frustrating stuck in the same area doing quests trying to get out..

i would say its because of the scaling more than anything. being said i found morrowind to be a very grindy game for me but that is because the skill system was really flawed

I have never felt the need to "grind" in a single-player game. I just play and get better organically, especially in games as immersive as TES. The only thing that makes me feel like I need to grind is the presence of other people who are also grinding, in an MMO, to stay competitive with them.

That was the whole thing that eventually turned me off of the original Darkfall: the ubiquitous necessity for unattended macro'ing. Barely anyone was playing the game, unless their was some big PvP event, they were just macro'ing the whole time. It made the whole thing feel very stale and annoying to play, honestly.

Sounds a lot like Ultima Online - no levels, you had 3 stats (Str, Int, Dex) that went up when you used skills that were linked to the stats.

Pretty much! We do have one of the original UO devs as creative director so it's not like the idea is totally foreign to them.

with morrowind it was just me having the old min/max mentality. i was one of those player that only selected skills i would not use so i could determine when i would level and ensure i got my +5

Let me just say 99.9 taming. Enough said.

HAX!

Dayamn! Man...now I want taming in ESO...dammit!

LOL, I loved my bard with the provocation skill and the instant invis items....treasure hunting and dragon fights were a blast!

I think the main reason why it doesn't feel as a grind or as tedious, is cause you're never comparing and rivaling with other players, which you are in an MMO. Content that is for specific levels or gear that has prequisites in the shapes/forms of lvl's/attributes drives people to their goals faster and the longer it takes the more frustrated it usually makes players. This goes up especially for pvp'ers/min-maxers cause they see a challenge in making the best out of their character.

And developers from DAOC too I hear. All good stuff. Sounds hopeful.