In one of their many interviews, Jagex confirmed that MechScape will not have XP (experience points) . This has its advantage, because in a lot of games that revolve around XP, RuneScape included, players have to grind through skill levels. Without XP, MechScape will be very different to any other MMO.

But what would be their alternatives? This is my idea.

Imagine you work in a space port. Someone has a dodgy hyperdrive that needs fixing. It requires level 30 Mechanic to fix it, while your level is 15. Messages like "You need a higher Mechanics level to fix this" would not exist in real life. Instead of the skill levels and XP system Jagex has in RuneScape, it could be things like "You take a look at the hyperdrive" and you have to fix the hyperdrive yourself using the mouse. You may need to buy new parts to fix it. This would enhance realism within the game and make the whole mechanics part more diverse.

It would be the same with combat and piloting. "you fly to a pliigi-occupied planet" "Congratulations! Your piloting level is now 5". NO NO NO! That is basicly Runescape in space! You would have to learn to pilot the ship from a NPC or even another player.

So... Waddaya think?

Well Jagex stated that it is not EXP, LEVEL or GRIND based.

So firstly this system will be flawed in some way.

If there are no levels or exp then it will be based on something else. Maybe the parts you aquire. However you'll have to grind to obtain these...
Maybe it will be money based? But you will have to grind to get this.
So maybe there will be absaloutely no grinding. That means that no one would do anything!?

There is always an element of grinding in any game and always a way of ranking players. If there isn't then we wont be seeing requirements. We wont be seeing any proof of all our work as Newbies can do exactly the same stuff as us. There will be no Highscores. Nothing.

Jagex need to think about it carefully.

As for doing things with your mouse?

Well thats basically the approach DS and Wii took to gaming. I doubt that Jagex will take this approach.

It's so confusing and I really wish that Jagex would either hurry up and release the game so we can see for ourselves or just come out and tell us.

The secrecy may be suited to some people but I tell you now that 50% of Jagex's followers are immensly pissed off. Me being one of them.

Interesting idea, quite similar to what I had.

My idea was that there will be "player built" blueprints to ships and vehicles. Perhaps a system that allows us to create our own custom ships and weapons, we would have to gather the materials, which would come in varieties of common, uncommon and rare.

But how would you explain the combat system without experience points? =]. Perhaps a "fable" type system? only time will tell.

It has to have some sort of grind otherwise the game will be mastered in an incredibly short period of time. I do agree though that the game will revolve a lot more around money and the equipment and parts you can buy not levels.

This probably makes no since at all, but, maybe it won't revolve around your in-game skill or level, but literally, how skilled you are at playing the game. Maybe they've made it in a way that when you start out, you have very little skill when it comes to playing, but you learn how to do things and how things work as you play the game. Instead of not being able to do something because your level won't let you, maybe you can't do it because you literally don't have enough skill to do it.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the skill could very easily be obtained from a help site like this...

To be honest you put that much simpler thasn I did

And yes, that flaw you pointed out would be a problem. I suppose if a system like this was put into the game jagex would have to find a way to keep it challenging. But I'm not sure how they would do that.

My thoughts are that most of everything is EASY to obtain.

While grinding is not the central part of the game, thus the game being a game focused on no grinding, Prestigious Awards are given out from Grinding... if you know what I mean.

Like, lets look at Steel Sentinels for a second, all your equipment is obtained for free by doing the missions. But if you want something like, a -Command Type Zaku Head-, just throwing random examples, you have to do the MW Federation Operation Ishu Province missions about 50+ times to be able to obtain this stylish head-piece, that does nothing but looks. Or perhaps, obtain a Gold Star, being the best way to finish the mission, which may take a few tries...

Ahem, anyways, equipment and money will be perhaps easy to obtain, other than the harder to get Prestigious items. Players will reveal themselves in customized outfits, for on-foot, mechs, ships, and land-vehicles.

As for actual skills, like flight, manufacturing, battle commanding, gathering, refining, combat, etc... It will be based on personal player skill, as said in prior posts.

I find the combat and other skills will be Action-Based.

You guys got it wrong, Grinding is doing the same thing over and over again. Jagex said that When we play this game we will always be doing something different, So it may not xp or levels, It will have missions for items perhaps

It does'nt count as grinding if it does'nt feel like grinding, or at least I that's what developers of another games have said and I agree. There probably is going to be something to keep us in game and keep us paying those subscriptions. Maybe questing? But I hope you don't get locked out of getting certain items based on your relations or interactions or something like that they said. Needing to know how to repair a ship by learning and your repairing instead of clicking *Repair ship* does sound cools though. Lol, no info does'nt mean people won't expect things from speculating. Now to be disappointed.

In Mech Scape, you don't have a skills screen, but your PDA will help you know what your chance of success will be when doing certain actions. However, most of your actions are influenced by a complex "karma" system. This Karma system will include 4-12 different parties, which would effect the general feelings towards you. Lets say two races, Human and Pliigi are having a war over extracting the rare fuel Rikzum. The Humans say no, but the Pliigi say yes. If you bring information about the Pliigi weaponry to the Humans, you would seem a bit secretive, so the other Pliigi would be naturally suspicious of you and be less willing to give out information, but the humans would be more receptive to you, yet still be slightly suspicious since you could be a double agent.

However, with four races, with "good guys" and "bad guys" on both of them, that would be 8 different "groups" with different types of Karma towards you. Your actions along with all of the actions of people in Mech Scape will affect the feelings of suspiciousness, fury, glee, etc. towards you. Changing those feelings towards you for one group would directly or indirectly affect all other groups.

This Karma system is extremely complex, and will change the enviroment, NPCs, the worth of currencies and items, and other things.

So, the tl ; dr version: A complex karma system replaces skills.

But this is just an assumption.

I personally like the idea. It would be fun to have some kind of puzzle or something to do a task like how you said to use your mouse to fix the vehicle. This may be because I really like IQ puzzles but... O well i still like the idea.

i agree you do certain missions and gain items that make you more powerful. my idea is that there will be missions the lead into other ones and constantly getting harder and the harder they get the more better items you get showing that you are not a "noob" that just started. But if it was only mission it would be almost like grinding doing missions constantly maybe there will be something similar.

there is going to be grinding, one way or the other. They can't completely remove grinding from the game because it wouldn't be possible, unless they do something so damn confusing that I can't get beyond the words "what the ****!" So yes, there will most likely be some form of grinding in the whole orpcess of what I like to call "Jagex's thing".

I wouldn't put it past them to think of something completely revolutionary though. It is a sci-fi mmo after all

I think that would be idea in my dream-game. Mechscape "not being like any other mmorpg" I'd expect it to be something, like this/what no one expects
We'll just have to see when the game comes out.

hmn...with no exp ther really is no real way of getting a higher skill/weapon set. Im not really sure what they use but it better be pretty damn good so that this game isnt a flop. To eliminate grinding the only thing you can do is basically saying you can only get exp from pvp in my opinion for fighting exp. for the skills such as "mechanics" or "piloting" it will be very hard to program a fair nongrinding system of getting a better skill (im not using level due to the fact in this scenario there are no levels).

I think that it will be quest based. Runescape already has plenty of examples like this:

To use a runes scimitar, you have to get your attack level to 40. BUT
To use a dragon scimitar, you have to get your attack level to 60, AND you have to complete Monkey Madness.

To get fancy boots, you must go through the stronghold of security. (Not a quest necessarily, but I still consider it "quest-based").

This list goes on and on... abyssal pouches, ghostly robes, ancients, god capes, any holiday item... you get the picture.


Perhaps MS will have a huge variety of small, large, easy, and hard quests to obtain various upgrades and items. Perhaps even quests that are not listed on any in-game guide, that you must figure out for yourself by exploring the world of Mechscape. You would never be doing the same thing twice.

My thoughts have always gone with this style... Missions, Quests, Exploration, etc... the completion of more harder quests and missions yields to more items available for usage, and more distinguish-ness from yourself to the new comers.

Honestly, I think items will be difficult to obtain, as well as money, but there will be no requirements to use them. In real life, I don't need 40 woodcutting and attack to hold a rune axe (if one existed). Actions will be based off player skill, much like in FPS games, where it's not so much about your equipment (it helps, no lie), but about your trigger and aiming finger and reaction time.

I agree it will probably have a lot to do with exploration and discovery. I think it would work well for characters to learn skills through aquiring a data pad from a remote location, completing a quest or puzzle, and through dialogue with an NPC. As you begin the game, your character is suffering from some sort of amnesia but as you progress and gain knowledge your skills return. Naturally, there will be areas of the game only accessible to those with a certain amount of knowledge in select areas. Once you have obtained all of the knowledge/skill information you have essentially maxed out your character.

I realize "knowledge" in my example is very similar to xp, however it differs when it comes to how it is obtained which is what I believe the topic starter was looking for.

Take a peek at Funorb's Steel Sentinels game. It might be like that in a way. There, you play missions and unlock certain things (weapons, chassis', parts, etc)...in multiplayer you get Solarite Cubes and you can use those to engineer certain (advanced technology) parts to use them with your sentinel.

Yes, Jagex has thought about having no exp so you won't have to do the same thing over and over again. They want you to do different stuff everyday so people will keep playing, like people in runescape got bored and stopped playing, but with no exp and different things everyday people will keep playing.

That's not true. What about ranks?

"You have completed (this) quest. You are now the rank of Captain! You can now wield (this) weapon!

This is a great suggestion and I think this topic will get lots of replies. If you could have player built blueprints then the realism in the game would be very high. Also if it is not built correctly then it will have some faults instead of not working atall.

Thanks.
Joee

Perhaps there really isn't a level cap? The levels wouldn't stop at 99 or 100, they would just keep going. Except you would earn the levels in a different way than xp...perhaps they have a lot, lot, LOT of quests, for that purpose. Perhaps you would have to do tasks...

To be frank, it doesn't make sense to me to not have xp, that's what I grew up on, from Final Fantasy VII to whatever the last RPG I played was...

Jagex stating this and making MechScape without any xp or levels is going to make this game alot different to other games. But I'm not sure and I think some other people are with me that this idea may make the game a bit harder to understand and maybe a bit harder to play. When the game is released we will just have to see how and it goes and what happens.

Thankyou!
Joee

A game that's harder to play is good. When cmpleteing a hard part of a game you will feel rather porud that you managed it. because it's so hard, you'll be determined to get past the part you're stuck on.

Yes, making a hard game is better in some ways but if it is too hard then no one will play it. This game is going to be alot different to other games

That's true. if a game is too easy then you get bored very quickly. If it's too hard you can get frustrated and not want to play. balance is the key. The middle is always best.

personaly i like this idea of learning from other players and npcs. Also i am getting ticked off about how secretive they are being about this game. if they just went out and told us about it i could decide if i would want to play to like it. Also i hope npcs are more interactive to what you can say to them, and you actualy can make them not like you or like you. Also they could wander around the game. Imagine the strongest monster wandering to the lumbridge of mechscape lol.