There's no shortage of looter-shooters around and honestly the genre is getting stale. Everyone's doing the same thing with battle passes and seasons and ways to get the player to completely restart and thereby extend play time.
Of course getting better loot and becoming more powerful is part of the allure of this genre, as well as finding good builds. But what also happens is people settle into "meta" builds (generally the most efficient combinations) and the game struggles to challenge them. Then they get bored from the ease and repetition and motivation to keep playing goes down. At that point new systems to refresh or re-motivate players are introduced, but the underlying issue remains.
In this article we present a way to:
- Keep gameplay exciting by encouraging players to challenge themselves constantly.
- Keep the focus on finding excellent builds but avoid settling into a stale meta for the game.
- Encourage players to repeat key content and try all aspects of the game.
- Reward long-term commitment by not wiping progress with "Seasons"
- Take that data to discover what needs to be adjusted so that all character classes and subclasses can be equally viable.
- Player-controlled NPC scaling ("Monster Power Adjustment")
- Replace Player Level with a Training Regimen
- Build Power score
- How to give out loot
- Seasonal Leaderboards
- How to rebalance
Player-controlled NPC scaling ("Monster Power Adjustment")
Trying to scale NPC levels to players generally doesn't work simply because there are too many variables and potential synergies in the various game elements such as class skills, perks, gear modifiers, and such. So instead, let's just put that in the hands of the players. They can increase the level of the creature they face as much as they like. (And if they want to roll over the enemies just to see the story, they are free to ruin their experience that way.)
To reduce the connotations of the word "level", we will refer to this player-controlled adjustment as "Monster Power Adjustment". Monster Power is not a flat number but a modifier. It can be negative (easier) or positive (harder) and the upper value is unlimited. Obviously this means there has to be an internal scaling for monster stats.
Replace Player Level with a Training Regimen
Delete the concept of grinding character levels entirely. Instead, players are put through a one-time Training Regimen to hopefully ensure they know how to use their class skills, through a system of Achievements where they must use various skills to perform various feats in order to unlock more skills to learn and higher limits to core attributes they can add to their Build if they choose. This learning curve would be account-wide, so every character of the same class will receive all unlocked options.
Build Power score
Everything a player has active requires a rating to accumulate a final score. If they have more skills active, if they have more maximum health, more attributes, more modifiers on their gear... everything. This gives a rough value for their build.
What they can put on their character is determined by how much they have completed the Training Regimen for their class, but they are not obliged to use all of it. For example, they might have an upper limit of 10000 Maximum Health but they don't have to have all of that on their build and therefore have a lower Build Power.
For gear, there also needs to be a way to turn OFF modifiers. For example if there is a modifier for more damage with melee weapons but the player's build does not rely on melee weapons, that modifier would inflate their Build Power in an irrelevant way, so players should be able to turn it off.
Build Power becomes the new "player level" against which NPC levels are compared. Suppose a Build Power of 10.00 units is roughly what is intended to face level 10 NPCs. That becomes the benchmark and from there the player-controlled Monster Power adjustment is applied.
How to give out loot
Although we have focussed on the player getting "optimal builds" (highest Monster Power Adjustment for lowest Build Power Score), we do want to retain all the excitement of collecting gear. This also rewards long-term commitment to the game where the more you play, the more intriguing pieces of gear you can collect, broadening your Build variety.
Loot is given out according to what is needed to overcome the current challenge. If the player's Build Power is roughly equal to the NPC level, then they get mostly mediocre loot that will generally be converted into currency, and a low chance of slightly better loot. On the typical grey < green < blue < purple < gold < red chart, this might mean mostly grey loot and a chance of green loot.
As players increase the difficulty by increasing NPC levels, the possibility of better loot becomes unlocked. For example, to have blue loot enter the loot table, they might need to have NPC levels be at least +2 higher than Build Power.
Some players might never be able to handle a very high NPC level adjustment, so a secondary system such as crafting or NPC merchants should be implemented to give access to higher-quality-tier gear.
Seasonal Leaderboards
To further encourage players to increase Monster Power Adjustment, introduce seasonal Leaderboards for many categories. For example, there could be a leaderboard for defeating a particular Boss.
For that Boss, the leaderboard would be sorted first by the highest NPC level adjustment, then by the lowest Build Power. Therefore if there are two players who managed to beat the Boss with a Sorcerer and a level modifier of +20, the one who did it with a lower Build Power would be higher on the leaderboard. Their entire build is attached to their entry so that anyone can examine exactly what they had.
Furthermore, for that Boss, there would be separate Leaderboards for whatever fixed variable the devs are interested in examining. For example, one where a Boss Leaderboard is filtered to show only players who used Sorcerers wielding Melee weapons; or one where players managed it with a Build Power of no higher than X.
Each leaderboard lasts only for one Season, assuming that each Season comes with a rebalance of the game. Since this would make builds perform differently in the next Season after adjustments, the Leaderboards would need to be adjusted.
How to rebalance
Looking at the Leaderboards can give developers a good idea of what is overtuned or underpowered. If only one class can achieve a very high NPC level modifier, or if certain gear modifier synergies resulted in too easy success, then those can be adjusted in the next season.
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