The studio choose to combine player skill and gaining more abilities to ‘level-up’ instead of hand-holding with floating numbers on monsters. It’s a ”natural feeling of becoming stronger.”
They’ve also got an ”easy to learn and hard to master” system in place of character classes, where damage can be ‘hammered out’ but those who learn it are rewarded.
”Levels are a very good mechanic for keeping people on a track. So when you make a game that has levels, it’s very easy to make sure that people are fighting the monsters that they should be fighting because they have the right number over their head; the same one as the player,” said lead content designer Joel Bylos, in an interview.
”So they can think, ‘oh, this is the right monster’. It’s also a way of trying to stop players from going back to areas to exploit the content. Part of the challenge of creating a level-less game is, first, making sure that people feel like they’re getting more powerful. And secondly, making sure that people feel they can go to new places and do different things without a number being superimposed telling them what they can and can’t do.”
The Secret World prefer to use more ‘subtle’ means of guiding players around their world, and not use the glaringly obvious methods that World of Warcraft employs, they say.
”There’s a mission called supply run, where you pick up stuff. That’s a very simplified way of looking at the mission – yes, you do pick up stuff – but in addition, you learn the layout of the town. You learn where you can go and where certain things are located. That’s just one of the ways in which we guide you, but we try to use subtle methods,” he said.
”I think I said before that I believe World of Warcraft uses a very heavy hand to guide players. It says, ‘pick up this stuff here, go and do these missions in this place here, do all the quests then go this place here and do the quests there’.”
”That’s very heavy handed. In our game, we try not to be as heavy handed. It’s much more of a light touch and comes through in the places you visit and the people you meet.”
So there are no levels to be grinding for or, technically, holding us back either. How does The Secret World hope to survive with no character class system though?
”It’s all about progression. We want to give players a sense of development, to pull them further into the world without those numbers above players’ and monsters’ heads. It seemed to be working really well,” said Marten Bruusgaard.
”We feel we have created a system that is easy to learn and hard to master. You will be able to do damage from the get-go just by hammering buttons, but if you invest time in learning the skill system and feeling the depth of it and taking time to sit down and read what the powers do you will be rewarded for it. We’ve always said that would be important – if players learn the system they shall be rewarded,” continued the lead designer.
”And it should be like that, right? We’ve made a comparison to Magic: The Gathering. A lot of the game is won in advance of combat, taking the time to sit down and decide what a deck should do. And then going out and executing it correctly. We put a lot of emphasis on that, allowing multiple layers of synergy. It’s there in the states, the triggers, the weapons and it’s a system that allows people to play around and have fun.”
”If you don’t want to invest too much time, you can just mash buttons and you’ll be able to get through some of the content like that. You won’t be able to do everything. As you progress through the game, things do become harder and harder. Eventually, you’ll need to bring specific ‘effects’, as we call them. But then we’re talking endgame.”
”To me, it feels right not to be locked down to a class. I play every MMO out there and I’m done with re-rolling. First thing I always roll is a healer and then after some time I want to play a different class but have to play for months to get to the point I want to be at. We’ve been able to do away with that and it’s working,” concluded Bruusgaard.
Does an MMO devoid of character levels and classes appeal to you, video gamer? Check out the full interview between Marten Bruusgaard, Joel Bylos, Ragnar Tørnquist and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
