Advancement Theory

It has become clear in the months since the world of Ultima Online came into being that traditional role-playing game (RPG) theories do not always apply to this new genre. One of the most basic facets of normal RPG game play is character advancement, but even this simple concept cannot work in a massively-multi-player persistent on-line world like the one in UO. Character and world longevity, player familiarity with the advancement system, and other features inherent to this environment mean that no matter what is done behind the scenes, character advancement as we understand it cannot be made to work, despite a variety of mechanisms that attempt to make it functional.

The stat and skill caps, exponential advancement curves, and proposals for stat and skill loss on death for all characters are the solutions that we see in UO that keep (or propose to keep) the problems with traditional character advancement to a minimum. By making it time-consuming (for the player) and expensive (for the character) to advance to the highest levels (and impossible to advance beyond those levels), the designers keep characters within reasonable limits. This allows new players and veterans to co-exist on the same shard, fighting the same monsters and playing the same game.

The problem with these solutions is that players quickly learn what they need to do to advance their characters to the maximum level. Whether through careful but legitimate game play or using bugs and external macro programs, high-level characters are the rule, not the exception. Unfortunately, this isn't fun for anyone involved. The players behind those characters get bored and turn to player killing for amusement, or just leave the game; neither of those is particularly desirable for the designers. Newer players (or those less interested in advancement) find their characters badly outclassed by these advanced characters, and either join them or (again) leave the game. Many of us who have been playing since the beginning reminisce fondly of the early days of the game and the beta, when constant server wipes and crashes (as well as our limited experience) kept our characters in a constant newbie state. Even fairly weak monsters were an exciting threat, Recall was not widely used, money was scarce, plate mail and Master Warriors were rare (let alone Master Warrior/Mages), and in retrospect life may have been more fun than it is now. The problem is, we can't go back to that; the server wipes would no longer be acceptable, but more importantly, we all know how to build up that plate-clad Master Warrior/Mage in no time at all.

What about making advancement more difficult? Aside from the obvious problem with negative player reactions, this wouldn't help in the long term as players again determine the quickest way to advance, and pounce on it. Remove the stat or skill cap, and replace it with a system of advancement that makes it extremely hard, but not impossible, to advance beyond those levels? Again: players are smart enough that I think we can rest assured that characters would quickly achieve "perfect" characters.

Part of the problem here is that, short of becoming a bounty target and suffering stat loss on death, no character is ever in danger of losing their stats or skills. Origin has stated again and again that stat loss on death will eventually affect everyone, pending fixes to lag and other out-of-game problems that make it infeasible now. Unfortunately even if the servers were perfect, this would still be a problem (as we know all too well). The disparity between survivability for a player with a fast computer and high-speed connection versus a player who meets the minimum requirements is quite significant, so the requisite "fixed" state for lag will never be reached. Furthermore, even with meaningful death (which, as you may know, I really believe in), the situation will be far from resolved. Players will simply focus even more on keeping their characters fully advanced, through macro programs or boring, repetitive game play ("Just one more earth elemental and I'll have 92.5% Magery again!"). I am eager to see the new Reputation system implemented partly because it does have a penalty for death (fame loss) for everyone, but I am very doubtful that this will solve the larger problems with character advancement.

The unique nature of UO that makes advancement tricky also lends itself to some very interesting solutions to the problem. And, of course, the constant evolution of the game means that it's not too late for the designers to do something about the problem.

The massive and diverse population of the Ultima Online world and the quest-based history of the Ultima series in general suggest some potentially exciting ways to handle advancement in a way that would work far better than the simple repetitive-action algorithm used now.

At its most basic level, my idea goes something like this: the titled advancement levels (Neophyte, Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Adept, Master, and Grandmaster) would gain significance. Each level above Novice would require you to be a member of the appropriate NPC guild, and you would have to find the guildmaster to advance to the next level. The guildmaster might require money or (ideally) the completion of a quest in order to advance the character. Within a level (i.e., once granted the title by the guildmaster), advancement would occur normally. Once you achieved the maximum skill for that title (59.9% for an Apprentice, etc.), however, advancement would be slowed drastically, to the point where it would be nearly impossible to advance that skill without learning its secrets from the guildmaster. Perhaps an informational message could appear once you reached that level and every time you earned 0.1 skill thereafter: "You manage to discover something new about [the skill], but you really must find the guildmaster to unlock its secrets."

Certain skills -- the weapon skills come to mind -- might rely mostly on the current system of "practice, practice, practice" for advancement. Other skills -- such as the lore skills -- might require extra money or a more complex quest to earn the knowledge necessary to allow further advancement, but require less practice (i.e. macroing) to advance to the next level. (This pairing of knowledge and practice (or proficiency) forms a system that has been referred to elsewhere as the K/P model of advancement. It is very flexible in that some skills can be heavily knowledge-based and others heavily practice-based, and the model supports that distinction. UO can easily implement this model as described above.)

This also opens up some very intriguing possibilities for encouraging character diversification and otherwise making the game more interesting and challenging. Perhaps the guildmasters would be reluctant to talk to murderers, thus limiting their advancement capability significantly. The guildmasters might enforce fame restrictions for certain titles ("You? An adept swordsman? I've never heard of you…"); in combination with the 10% fame loss on death, this would actually make death significant without being excessive, since it wouldn't actually lower your skills -- it would merely make them harder to increase without further advancement on the fame ladder. Of course, the fame restriction would apply more heavily to some professions (warrior) than others (tailor). Certain guildmasters could be "snobby" and refuse to grant titles that the designers view as somewhat contradictory: for example, attempting to become a Master Mage while already a Master Warrior might cause the mage guildmaster to complain that warriors are not welcome in the mage's guild. Also, using macros could be discouraged by limiting frequency of advancement, if necessary ("You have only just learned the secrets of the Expert, I shall not grant you the title of Adept today!").

Eventually, control over this system could be turned over to the players. At the very least, since the title of Grandmaster is already largely symbolic, the last 0.1 skill points of advancement to that level could be controlled by a council of existing Grandmasters. If that works well (i.e., issues with abuse, nepotism, etc. are worked out), perhaps it could be extended to less-symbolic titles: Journeyman smiths could take on Apprentices, for example. Initially, however, this would be far too exploit-prone, and I would prefer to leave advancement in the hands of the NPCs.

In order to reduce complaints about this section, I would like to note that aging really isn't an integral part of the overall idea here, merely a related note. I realize this idea is unpopular...*grin*. Feel free to comment on it, of course, but I'm really hoping for feedback on the other parts of the essay, which are mostly being ignored by readers because they don't like this part. One reason that character advancement is an issue at all is that characters currently benefit from or are penalized by the amount of time a player is able to devote to the game. Although nothing can really solve this problem, one thing that might help to address it would be a concept of character aging. I have discussed this idea at length in another essay, but the gist of it is that characters would age based on the amount of time they spend in the game, and their advancement rate, stat/skill caps, and overall effectiveness would change based on their age. For example, a character would start young, advance quickly, have an effective career (lasting hundreds or thousands of game-hours), and eventually retire due to age-induced stat atrophy. This might also provide another opportunity for a reasonable death penalty: repeated deaths could literally take years off a character's life. In order to provide for various types of players, perhaps a character could be set as "immortal" and not age (like current characters); in that case, their stats and skills might top out at 95% of those of an aging-based character at his peak.

The idea of aging leads into another very interesting possibility: the ability to create an advanced character. Perhaps a character could be allowed to start at any age in life, with stats set accordingly (low for young characters, but with plenty of time for advancement; high for older characters, but with a more limited future). Naturally, to reduce anti-social behavior, these "instant characters" would need to be limited. Having the character's stat and skill caps vary inversely with their initial stats would probably be sufficient.

Yes! As always I am very eager for further comments on all of this; please e-mail me with suggestions and criticisms. I hope to continue to flesh out these ideas and I need as many contributors as possible; I'll be more than happy to credit you if you have an idea you'd like to add to this page, or a link to your own related site. I'm going to go ahead and thank Bob Hanson already, since I'm pretty sure most of these ideas started from discussions with him.

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