Keeping the ratings separate. (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, March 31, 2016, 17:03 (3431 days ago) @ Cody Miller

In short: Levels are how RPGs can automatically adjust difficulty to individual players' skills.

This is only tangentially true and not the main reason.

Levels and stats are a way of indicating your avatar has gotten stronger. This made sense in tabletop games, because your character would get more skilled as he or she adventured in terms of the role playing. Because you are interacting through an abstracted system, you aren't actually improving your sword skills for example, but your character in the game world would be. Hence, levels.

In early games and most RPGs, the interaction with the game is primitive. MMO and JRPGs are very simply strategy games if you remove levels from the equation. Like, stupidly simple. Thus, because the systems are easily mastered, levels are added in to counteract that and give the illusion of difficulty and progression.

But in an FPS environment where you direct control your character, and a great deal of how you perform is up to YOU not your avatar, leveling has no place at all. Leveling was always there for an in world narrative reason, never for challenge. It became a challenge issue because early RPGs were crude, and thus the only challenge it could really provide were from over leveled enemies.

Using levels in this way is a crutch for bad design, but necessary because the games would suck otherwise. Better solution in action games is what we have had for years: selectable difficulty levels.

Avatar progression in action games is not always bad, but it must make the game more challenging rather than making it easier. The more skills you get, the tougher and more diverse the challenges you face.