Saturday, April 07, 2007

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #2

Meaningful Leveling
I don't know how many of you guys have played MMORPGs where you have to kill 100s (and at later levels 1000s) of enemies just to gain a level where you get just ONE stat point to allocate. This is extrememly frustrating because I really don't have the time to "farm/grind" that much just for one measly stat point.

On the other end of the spectrum we have games like AD&D where you can see a significant performance increase with every level counts and each opens up a variety of new skills, spells, etc. The disadvantage of such a leveling system is the amount of work the game developer and designer needs to put in for the levelling system. You also can't have as many levels.

MW1 gave you 3 stat points per level, increased the damage of the supers moves and unlocked new super moves at certain levels (5 and 15) but I'm wondering if that was sufficiently rewarding for amount of grinding needed.

Since we're introducing new skills and changing the overdrive (super moves) system I think we can work out a more "meaningful" levelling system that will ensure you get alot of bang-for-your-buck for each level. We can also have more quest experience.

BTW we will try to release a beta trial for MW: Tactics Command for mobile phones somewhere next month. It's meant for phones but we'll try to put it in a package you can play on PC. I'll post some screenshots and artwork after my exams are over next Saturday.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked the way MW was set up to level up, but the thing I didn't like was how much you had to fight to gain a level once you got over level 14 or so. By the time I got Laura, my MAWs were all 20 (Due to the Gold Clock Creep Bug), so Laura was essentially useless, even though she's got the/one of the coolest MAWs out there.

Cervantes de Leonard said...

Laura came a little late because if we added her somewhere in between we'd need to change alot of the story (add dialogue for her, etc).

For MW2, you'll encounter the bonus character early in the game but you won't be able to recruit that character unless you've got premium.

I hope we can make grinding almost optional for MW2 by giving more quest XP. Grnding should be more to earn money to buy powerful equipment to make boss fights easier.

Anonymous said...

I think it should have a skill system, along with stat points, where u get points for skills to increase overdrive damage and learn new overdrives

Anonymous said...

Just wondering - What Island Continent is this on?

Cervantes de Leonard said...

The biggest landmass on the right side of the map.

We halved the relative size of Acero Isle, so the continent will be alot bigger than it looks like on the current map.

Anonymous said...

Can you make a thing where we upload our saved files from MW1 2 MW2 so we can start with all the same things and stuff?