Watch as I amazingly bring this entire post about a first person shooter full circle to talk about MMO’s and wrestle a bear! But probably less about the bear!

With a little over 16 hours soaked into the game so far, one thing that has really grabbed me about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the level and unlock system. In the past couple iterations of the game, you were given a choice of what class you wanted to play, but each class gained separate levels. It makes sense to a degree, but hurt when you gained a bunch of levels on one class and then decided to move to another. You simply did not feel as effective. BF:BC 2 has refined the progression quite substantially. Your account gains levels, and each of the classes in the game have “mini levels” at the end of which grant you a new weapon or device. I honestly feel like it’s one of the best progression systems in gaming, not just in First Person Shooters. DICE has evolved their formula by making a couple big changes:

Balance – One thing that I’ve found to be a breath of fresh air in BF:BC2 is how well balanced the classes, and for that matter, the weapons are. The game only has four classes; the Assault, the Recon, the Medic, and the Engineer. Each of them has been given a mix of weapons and gadgets that make them extremely dynamic. For instance, the Medic not only acts as the med pack dropping reviver of fallen comrades, he also steps up to the plate and fills part of the role that the support class did in Battlefield 2 by wielding a slew of machine guns. The remainder of the support role – being the mobile ammo distributor – has been given to the Assault class. So now, not only does the Assault get some of the best weapons for getting up close and personal, they get the ammo to get the job done. This idea of giving fewer classes more options is distributed across all four in the game. On top of this, the weapons have been fine tuned to give the player a feeling that each has merit and flaw. Recon sniper rifles for instance, each do varying amounts of damage, but the more damage usually means a longer reload time, or maybe a shorter range. It really comes down to the player to figure out which one works best for their play style.

Ooh Shiney! – Most games anymore have taken the leveling tropes of MMOing and built in a carrot on a stick to keep gamers working towards a goal. Many games fail at the implementation though and put those baby carrots on the stick….ones that have been sitting out on the counter for a few days. Really great games have systems that keep you wanting more every time you play. BF:BC2 does that with the unlocks. Every night I play, regardless of what class I choose to deal death with, I am working towards a new piece of equipment. After each mission you can check your unlock progression and watch the bars of each class inching towards their next goal like the horse race game at the county fair. It’s highly motivating when you see that you’re three quarters of the way towards a new boom stick. So you go back in once more (even though you should be going to bed) so you can get it. Then a lot of times you get it right at the end of the mission, so now you have to do another mission so you can try that baby out!

Hey, here’s where I make an obvious correlation to MMO’s!

So this whole balance of classes and unlock progression thing has really got me thinking. Have MMO’s, the genre that arguably added those addictive bars of experience to many of the other games we play, not been keeping up? Most of them still offer a vast world that many other games can’t compete with, but I wonder if the addiction train is leaving the station. I get far more addicted to games that give me a quicker form of gratification on a stick. Not to say that leveling up a character over the course of weeks or months isn’t satisfying, but the rungs of the ladder that get you to the top shouldn’t be spaced out horribly. That’s not to say I want to get a new level every night, but maybe MMO’s should offer other means of character advancement within the levels, much like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 does. Maybe you should still gain levels to improve your stats, but your abilities and usable equipment come by other means.

Something that Mythic has done with Warhammer Online has made a step towards resolving my problem. You are now bolstered to the level cap for every tier you enter. When you fire up a level 1 character and step into open RVR or a scenario, your bolster level is capped at 11 instead of 8 like it was before. So you get more meat on your bones and a higher damage output. The only things holding you back are your equipment, and your abilities. As you gain real levels, the disparity between your abilities and those of someone else dies down to simply being player skill. This change and the general feeling that the classes are more balanced than I ever remember them being makes it feels like I can compete from the onset. So now the thing that I wanted WAR to be all about, the Realm versus Realm combat, is finally getting to be all you really have to play to get a great experience.

I hope that future MMO’s look beyond what is happening within their genre, see games that captivate players to keep coming back, and adopt different forms of progression. I really think it’s something holding them back right now because people are getting bored of it.

Oh, sorry, almost forgot about me wrestling the bear. Here ya go!