Was the OP leaning more toward the question of:

"Should we get rid of levels?"

     OR

"If we got rid of levels, how might that work?"

I took it at the later and so was thinking along the lines of alternate paths of progression.  As usual I advocated a dynamic, player driven world where players set their own goals.  Personally I would have some basic skills that do progress in an undisplayed level.  These would be far from the focus and not have massive effects.  Players would feel like they were progressing as they accomplished goals that they find fulfilling.  Some would have grand goals, and others would rather be told what they should do and then how they ranked because of it (as in the current systems).

For example: 

(remember none of these are designed content, but player set tasks which they set for themselves or are given by other players)

• Establishing a successful colony on an unexplored frontier.
• Gaining a true reputation as a military strategist.
• Rising in the ranks of a military organization for accomplishing missions.
• Becoming so familiar with a particularly dangerous part of the land that you are the go-to guide for any activities there.
• Being so socially influential that you are in-the-know as pertaining to all goings on in a certain area.
• Attaining a certain share of an economic market through shrewd business planning.
• Establishing a school of magic that produces loyal and responsible mages that work to better your area of the world.
• Working to create such chaos in a region that political turmoil and factionalism run rampant, thus paving the way for the revolution!

Since they are all player-established goals, rewarded not by any game mechanic, but by the simple perception of having accomplished them, or to be progressing in a perceived successful fashion, you can see that the possibilities are truly unlimited.

Originally posted by SwampRob 

This would most definitely not work.    You might as well say 'let students go to school where there is all the material they need to learn and they can teach themselves'.     It would be about as effective.      If this plan worked, games would be doing it.     No true MMO is going to work if players start at maximum powers/abilities.

Actually school in that form could be quite effective for those that really want to learn and most people learn most of what they really know and retain on their own. I know I didn't learn much in high school or at university besides what I researched myself. As if schools actually taught anything. But the flawed analogy is beside the point.

The outstanding part of this comment is the mention of a 'true MMO' and I would be most interested to know exactly what that is.

Character progression can be acheived in MANY more ways than arbitrary gaining of levels, stats, and items. If you don't believe that then this cannot be a very useful discussion to participate in.

As for why we haven't seen MMOs like this yet, it is because they are much harder to design and require the devs to have much less control. If done correctly they could be much more successful as well, and appeal to a wider audience in fact, than the current run of cookie-cutter games (which may be the definition of 'true MMO' as refered to above).

What would we do without levels or other artificial forms of advancement?

Easy:  For once let the interactions of players in a dynamic world create the content and let players set their own goals for accomplishment and then find the means to reach those goals. 

This would provide for a much more satisfying sense of accomplishment for most players, and for those that enjoy artificial rankings, those could still be a part of player created organizations and be awarded according to whatever criteria they deem fitting.

A big part of the problem is that people just throw out these words and assume the reader will have the same definition as they do. Of course this is rarely the case so they should take the time to clarify and qualify their statements, but few do, and even if they did, even fewer would take the time to carefully read and understand what was said.       tldr

Would most agree that with enough time any player of most MMORPGs can attain the level and items/gold they end up paying for from leveling services and gold farmers?

So if there is any gain over time then there will always be something to pay for beyond subscription fees.  If items and gold can't be traded, but characters gain skill and xp over time, then people will pay to save that time if the value of that time is worth more than the money required to make the payment.

Thus, all the suggestions of what can and can't be traded have no real effect if there is anything to be gained over time invested acquiring skills, xp, levels, gold, items, etc.

So at the root of the problem is the grind, and some people want to save time.  If there is no gain over time (and thus no time investment) then there is nothing to pay for, but you just have an FPS.

Therefore, I concede that beyond removing all time-based progression, this type of spending can not be stopped.  However, the title of the thread refers to stopping this activity from 'ruining your game' and that is something different altogether.

Many of the suggestions given to this point if taken with an entire design may to some degree reduce the negative impact of seller actions on the game, but I propose that a drastic change in the progression model be considered, not to the point of complete removal, as mentioned above, but to a point where there is no grind per say, and focus on actually playing the game is enjoyable, not as a means to an end, but as the end in and of itself.

In other words the entire focus of the genre would have to be shifted.  At this point the focus has become so much about gaining levels, skills, items, or whatever toward some idea of end game, or maxing out, or otherwise arriving at some point, and everything in between, no matter how fun or awesome the first 20 times, becomes tedious.  It is hard for many to image an MMORPG not based on this progression model.  Right now you grind mobs to get a more powerful character and more powerful stuff so that you can grind more powerful mobs to get more powerful stuff, and on and on again and again.

Some people want to skip this and go right to the end where they can do who-knows-what but it has got to be better than the repetitive content of most games.  If some payment to some seller can save them this unwanted experience, they will pay it, especially because once their character is leveled or they receive the gold or items there is absolutely no possible loss to them.  Would some of them pay for that gold if they could be robbed on the way back into town?  The answer is, yes, some still will, so again we haven't solved the 'problem.' but might have reduced it. It is a step in the right direction in my opinion.

However, the other thing we have to ask is how does the selling of gold 'ruin the game' for the rest of us. Is it because they get things faster than us? Is it simply not fair? If the former, there are always people ahead of us in the game, perhaps those that started at the same time but have more free-time to invest. If it is because it isn't fair, then are we admitting that the grind of the game is not fun, and that they shouldn't be able to skip it if we 'have to' experience it.

Let's think about that, and ask yourself what they would be missing if playing the game was the point and not playing through the game. If having a maxed character wasn't the goal, if the content of the game were not accessed through progressive levels or getting awesome stuff with massive amounts of gold, but rather through interaction with players and a dynamic game world, then, would we then finally stop the gold sellers? NO. But would we care? If they pay to get something that is not secure and is not the focus of the game, what do we care? If they pay to skip content that is the point of the game, what does it matter to us? It doesn't. In the end, the problem is solved not by stopping it, but by creating a design where it doesn't matter to us if it occurs, because the game itself, for once and finally, becomes fun.

(sorry it is so long, but it helps sum it all up for me)

Thanks to all for participating.

I wasn't quite sure on plasuma's post tho.  The progression model being driven at by the questions is supposed to remove arbitrary mechanics like grinding for loot and 100% secure inventory and storage (and even character), although they are gradually graded to see what effect different degrees of insecurity would have on spending.

In the end I realize this would be better as a branching survey where if you don't or won't spend you are led to questions to determine the reasons and then ask more questions based on those, and if you do spend it would lead to questions that might determine not only what factors would make it not worth it to spend and to what degree, but also what factors would lead someone who does spend for certain reasons to have no desire to do so.

The idea is for an MMO design that you just  . . . play.  You don't grind, it isn't focused on items.  I just wanted to see what reasons lay behind paying RL money beyond subscription and how both people who do that and don't would feel about a system where there wouldn't be much of a push for it.

The core of my design philosophy is to have a dynamic world where the natural functions of the world and physical limitations are set, but all interaction, building, etc. is based on the actions of players and the goals they set for themselves.  Mechanics are intuitive and naturalistic, never arbitrary or 'gamey.'

All design decisions are secondary to this and the setting of the world(s) it applies to could be varied.

This is a link to a poll in another mmorpg.com thread about spending time vs money to advance in an MMO:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/211482/page/1

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

The only way to stop 'gold' selling is to make all inter-player trading impossible.

If you mean to stop it as a possible action, yes, but to stop it as a viable money making venture is quite possible.  It has been touched upon, but to state it clearly, if an MMO existed that was not so item dependent and no item (gold or otherwise) was 100% secure then I don't think you would see large scale gold selling on an organized level.

Just think about it, if items are not the main focus of the game and things are fairly easy to acquire (and just about as easy to loose) then the incentive to purchase is low (because it is not that difficult to get what you need yourself) and the disincentive to not purchase is high (because of the risk of loss).

So even if the incentive becomes high enough, what do we care?  If we don't like gold selling, then take the gold from both the seller and buyer whenever you can.  That will be a real deterent to any viable business model that has to have predictability in projected profit over costs, and such a system wouldn't allow for that.

Anyway, I created a poll once on this and related subjects and I would be appreciative if those following this thread would weigh in as the more responses the more representative the data might be.  Check it out:  http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/211482/page/1

I just have to bump this, it's been nearly a year but I would really like to collect some more data from the new crowd on the Developer's Corner as it has changed quite a bit over the last year.

Please take the poll as you have time, more data would provide better answers.

Thanks.

Those advocating natural penalties are on the right track, but I am surprised no one has mentioned the single most important thing to make a classless system work.

Even with natural penalties, there will still be a best strategy and thus a best build for the content, and if all players are expected to experience the same content then that will be the build they gravitate towards and the beauty of the skill based system is wasted.

What is needed is a diversity of situations that require unique combinations of skills.  Not only are situations diverse, but also the set of situations that a player chooses to participate in based on their own goals (not an endgame or linear grind chosen for them).  Thus players will have to find what they will be doing and how specific or broad their skill set with have to be.  Also with the changes in situation they will often have to adapt that skill set, sometimes training for a specific mission, or changing tactics as the situation dictates.

The only way to have this diversity of situation with any amount of quality without programming far more content than is possible for an MMO is to have a dynamic world where factors from the preset variables of the game world (weather, terrain, creature behavior, etc) combine with the various interactions of players with the game world and with each other (in completely free form social/economic/political ways) to create virtually unlimited dynamic content. 

If that doesn't start you seeing all the possibilities I could enumerate them, but hey, I'm late for work.  i.e. that reason I haven't been seen here for so long and that I now have no stars :(  (laments)

I'm all for future applications of various input devices, but I agree that for now we just need to get the software and the connection speeds to the point where decent collision detection is even feasible.  Then we could have really great multi-directional input with the mouse and the keyboard like nothing we have ever seen before.

While I still advocate totally player run economies, I see it being supported by the possibility to hire and maintain NPCs to do the higher scale or more boring jobs (running the shop 24/7 etc.)  They are still under the direction of players, though I don't rule out the possibility of NPCs who are given no direction acting for themselves to meet their basic 'needs' and in fact I see all mobs/monsters as this sort of AI.  They should have goals and if intelligent harvest resources and build villages and weapons.  

So their drops are not just components, but also what they themselves have made, but it didn't come out of thin air, they had to come by it the same as anyone else.  In fact they may even have quite good stuff that was looted from destroyed player villages and such. 

The point is that the economy is a natural system with everything coming from somewhere.  This is what creates the many niches of interaction. 

Some worry that player run economies won't always have everything running in full swing as we have come to expect, but that would really be the whole point.  There would be different situations in different areas and at different times.  This even creates economic incentive for fighters to clear dangerous areas for settlement and for crafters to relocate to remote outposts in order to bring their products to players who have previously been in a situation where most things were hard to come by, and at the time that was a fun and challenging aspect of their game, but perhaps they are ready to move on to some different interactions as civilization comes to the borderlands.  Of course if they don't like that they move farther out into the frontier.

Problem is that most MMOs have no collision detection or physics systems of any kind.  They make the game board world map and instanced modules and slap spawned mobs in them that simply compare stats and probabilities for damage dealt and received.  Boring.  I agree we need traps and puzzles to navigate, but to have interesting things like this, you really need to work from the ground up in the variety of ways to interact with the physical world.

Alternately in a player driven game every interaction is a potential 'quest' or 'task' and there would be no shortage of such.  I'm not talking about player created quests, but missions that are given out by players naturally to other players in order to accomplish goals they are working towards in the game.  Even if it ends up being a monster extermination quest, it is because someone needs those monsters destroyed because they are destroying their town or blocking their trade route and when they are dealt with, that actually changes something in the world.

In such a world players could use their skills and resources to build traps and dungeons to protect their items and interests and other players could try to overcome these obstacles in an endless cycle of defensive and offensive progress.

The first rule of a good crafting system is for all production to be managed and directed by players.  Of course you must have a stable natural economy in place to begin with.

Originally posted by Kralizec

. . . directly better than every item below it in a senseless scale.

You know that really sums up my frustration with item focused games.  Once you are arbitrarily allowed to wield the next best sword, the one you used to use is virtually useless to you from then on.  What ever happened to the classic sword of all good myth that the adventurer carries into every battle from the time it was acquired to the last and glorious end?

We need less of a focus on stuff and more of a focus on what you and other players can accomplish with that stuff as you interact with the world and with one another.

And yes, that means more realism in some ways, but it is a balanced realism that layers the variety of interaction in such a way that leads to exponential possibilities within the game world.  A few simple, intuitive mechanics and freedoms when combined can result in a stunningly complex and self-sufficient system.

I agree with Cactusman that items should not be the focus as in most games, but as Midnitte says, I would really like to see the developments of having items exchange hands in a variety of ways, looting included.

I'd also like to ask how people would like in-game property to be handled as far as acquisition and loss.

Think of it as a spectrum:

On one end basic and useful items/equipment are relatively easy to obtain but can also very easily be lost by looting, etc. from inventory or even wherever you stored them because nowhere is 100% secure like most banking or storage systems in games.

On the other end of things, you see what we usually have where you grind for the decent stuff and then you really can't ever loose it until you level to the point where it is useless to you and you get rid of it.

So with the first option a see a few possibilities.  People will continue to spend out of game money if they want, but it doesn't give them all that much of an advantage since the same things could be reasonably acquired in-game, and in fact it with some planning it could be taken from the person that just bought it with real money.  Perhaps this wouldn't deter some, but others would simply not see the point in spending money on something they could just as well get in-game with a little effort and not risk real money on it.  If the design were done well enough it should actually be enjoyable to play the game, and gathering up basic equipment would not be tedious and would be part of the enjoyment.  In the old single player RPGs, I don't recall having to grind forever to get some good stuff when I wanted it.  There were many things to do to earn some cash, and then you just had to shop around and make a few decisions to get what you needed.

With the other (more traditional option) where advancement is a time sink, it is no surprise to me that many are willing to spend money to save that time.  People see the end-game content as much more enjoyable than leveling up, and since there is such an advancement curve, why shouldn't they want to catch up with their friends who just happened to start playing a couple of weeks before them?  Since most games don't even have looting in any form anymore and storage is 100% secure, it makes perfect sense to spend money when it suits you.

I suppose you could also have items hard to acquire and easy to loose, but that might be a bit too frustrating. You could also have things easy to get and impossible to loose, but what's the point?

So I suppose I have my opinion on the way I would like to see things, but what's your take on it?

(Remember this question is not for what you usually see in the games you have played, but for how you would like to see things handled in a game, even if you've never come across it.)

Thank you for participating.

Please post any comments this poll brings to mind, or reasons for answering the way you did.  Also any suggestions, etc. are welcome.

Since this is the Developer's Corner forums, perhaps you could post your view on spending as related to these questions.  In fact, it would be great to paste in some of the answers from the poll that align not with the way it was in most games you have played (as the question asked) but how it would be handled in the game you would like to play or design.

What would affect your spending the most out of the following items?