Observable purpose. (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, December 27, 2017, 12:38 (2604 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

For example: When you hit a level threshold where it is no longer important and power creep is a moot point except for people liking that number going up, you are then allowed to have your choice of activities to pursue in the game world where you aren't level gated and it is much earlier than Vanilla D1 seemed to want you to have that.

I would argue that it's so early as to be pointless to even having levels in the first place.

Levels have always been pointless, IMO. I still believe that Destiny would have been a thoroughly more enjoyable experience if the 1-20 levels AND light levels had never been part of the game.

My personal theory is that levels in video games is a holdover from tabletop games.

Characters level up in tabletop games in order to simulate getting better at their disciplines. In real life, if you shot a bunch of arrows you'd get more accurate, your back would get stronger, etc. Because the people sitting down playing aren't actually doing this - levels were a way to approximate growth and training for the characters.

Early on, games were pretty primitive, but they could do math well. The unbridled imagination and scope of a D&D session was and still is impossible to program - so they ported over the level systems which run on numbers since computers could do that well.

Of course in a video game, the act of your character shooting an arrow is much more connected to your own skill. As are a lot of the things your avatars can do. Thus, you can actually have growth and learning.

There is a place for them where the interaction is not skill dependent. For example, increasing lung capacity in Deus Ex is fine, since the player is never asked to hold his own breath. Also notice how such an upgrade expands the scope of secrets and combat interactions you can have, rather than just making the game easier.

But far too often it is misapplied. It's a sore point in HZD for example…