作者：Evan Jones

如今，经验值和升级已经成为了游戏中最广泛使用的系统。曾经只适用于角色扮演游戏的升级系统现在更是普遍适用于各种类型的游戏中，包括商业模拟游戏，第一人称射击游戏以及策略游戏等。而升级系统如此深受设计师欢迎的原因很明显：它让玩家在游戏过程中能够明确看到自己的进展，并让设计师能够轻松地预见玩家的行动。但是升级系统是否就真的是游戏设计中的最佳工具？

为了搞清楚升级系统存在的原因，我们就需要先明确它的起源：作为一种针对角色扮演游戏的系统，它最初出现于20世纪70年代，在《龙与地下城》游戏中表现得最为明显。这种类型游戏的环境和设置主要是仿效J. R. R. Tolkien（游戏邦注：英国语言学家、作家，因创作了奇幻小说《魔戒》三部曲而知名），Ursula Le Guin以及C.S. Lewis等作家的科幻作品。这些作品经常围绕着成长，进步与自主等主题展开——普通人因为一些伟大的尝试而变成伟大的英雄。而为了让这种仿效科幻小说的游戏变得更加真实，开发者就必须想办法创造一种伴随着角色发展的系统。

为了让角色的发展更有意义，设计师就必须确保玩家在游戏初期不会轻松攻克难关，而是在游戏最后才能最终战胜挑战。而如果游戏只是隔开了玩家与那些他难以克服的挑战，他们也很难感受到角色的发展；因为玩家只能面对那些接近自己能力水平的关卡，而不能真正感受到精通游戏的意义。这同样也意味着简单地分配内容的设置并不算合理使用升级系统，这种方法只是将角色的发展转变为一种是与否的二元判断——“游戏是否允许我这么做？”

elder-scrolls(from g4tv.com)

而如此便会像我们在《上古卷轴》系列游戏中所看到的那样，玩家很难感受到游戏的发展，因为在游戏的中后阶段，玩家本应该努力面临更加困难的挑战，但是游戏所展现出的却是不变，甚至较为轻松的任务。

我们还需要考虑角色与玩家间的交流。大多数升级系统都会以数字去传达角色能量增长的信息。例如，一个角色在第1级时发动攻击而造成5个破坏点，他有可能在第10级中造成20个破坏点。同时，为了保持游戏的难度，玩家在游戏中所面临的挑战也会不断上升。而这种模式所面临的问题就在于，我们很难区别5个破坏点对于拥有50个生命值的敌人的影响，以及20个破坏点对于拥有200个生命值的敌人的影响有何不同。因此，简单地随着玩家等级的提升而增加与角色能力相关的数据，并不能让人明显地感受到角色的发展。如此还不如让玩家自己控制角色能力的数值，并发挥策略和技巧的多功能性。

除此之外，升级系统的早期要求之一是，必须确保玩家能够轻松地理解其中内容：让玩家对整个游戏系统一目了然。这就意味着在电子游戏必须能够明确简洁地表达出升级理念。而如果不用升级系统就能够在游戏中清晰地传达角色的发展并让玩家集中于游戏挑战，那么设计师应该也会选择这种方法而不再将升级系统当成唯一选择吧。也许游戏可以更加自然地向玩家传达角色的发展，而不是使用数字表达去推动故事发展。

升级系统还具有一些明显的缺点。它在MMO中不合理地区分了不同玩家级别，导致玩家必须不断“追赶”好友的级别才能够与之共同游戏。它总是会将玩家禁锢在游戏中的特定场景里（游戏邦注：如玩家可能会疑惑“为什么我必须升到第10级才能打开这扇门？”）。它促使玩家通过不断刷任务来克服新挑战而不是通过自己独立思考解决问题。而最消极的影响应该是它同时也是一种针对于玩家的既定奖励程序，外在地强迫玩家持续玩游戏。

当然了，升级系统也有自己的优点。它帮助玩家能够清晰地比较两个实体在游戏中的威力（如《英雄联盟》中的对抗赛）。它让玩家能够在一段时间过后衡量自己的发展与进步（如果这是游戏设计要求的话）。在竞争游戏环境中，它让玩家可以无需考虑技能差别的情况下衡量不同级别的游戏体验。

与其它工具一样，对于设计师来说，升级也是一种有益的设计系统。然而升级的用途较为局限且更具有针对性，面对其当前如此广泛的使用率，开发者可以适时考虑一些替代机制，以便为玩家创造出更棒的游戏体验。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Ruminations on Leveling

by Evan Jones

The system of experience points and leveling has quickly become one of the most widely-used game systems in recent memory. Once restricted solely to the domain of role-playing games, leveling can now be found in almost every kind of game, from business simulations to first-person shooters to strategy titles. It’s obvious why leveling is popular among designers: it provides a clear path to player advancement over the duration of the play experience that is evident to the player and easily predictable by the designer. But is leveling really the best tool for the job it’s trying to do?

In order to examine why leveling exists, we have to look at its origins: as a system invented for the pen-and-paper RPGs that emerged during the 1970s, most predominantly Dungeons & Dragons. The environment and setting of these games echoed the heroic fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, and C.S. Lewis. These works are often centered around the themes of growth, progress, and self-mastery: ordinary people, by virtue of being exposed to great trials, are honed and tempered into extraordinary heroes. In order for a fantasy simulation game to feel true to the original stories, a system for character growth must be created and implemented.

In order for character growth to be meaningful, there have to be challenges that the player cannot surmount in the early game but can overcome in the late game. If the player is simply denied access to challenges he cannot overcome, a sense of growth is never really felt, because the player’s challenges are always at or near his level of ability to overcome and the player never feels any sense of true mastery. This also means that simply gating content based on level is not an ideal use of the leveling system – that decision turns the colorful continuum of character growth into a simple yes/no binary decision: “has the game decided to let me do this thing?”

A corollary to this rule is that “the world levels with you”-style systems such as those found in The Elder Scrolls games don’t often confer a sense of character growth because a middle-to-late-game player is likely to struggle more with challenges that appear identical to, or easier than, challenges already passed.

We also have to consider the way the character’s increasing abilities are communicated to the player. In most leveling systems, it’s common for numbers representing statistics to increase as the character grows in power. So, for example, a character who dealt 5 damage with an attack at level 1 might be dealing 20 damage with an attack at level 10. Of course, in order to prevent a loss of difficulty, challenges the player faces must scale up as well. The problem with this paradigm is that there’s no discernible difference to the player between dealing 5 damage to an enemy with 50 health and dealing 20 damage to an enemy with 200 health. Thus, simply scaling up numbers on abilities as the character’s level increases does not create a true sense of growth. It is instead preferable for the game to increase the number of abilities the player has at her disposal, as finesse and skill can be represented by versatility.

Furthermore, one of the early requirements of the leveling system was that it must be easily grokkable: the entire system must be able to be internalized by players in their heads without trouble.

What this means is that the concept of leveling may be needlessly oversimplistic for video and computer games. If it’s possible to achieve the goals of indicating growth and funneling the player into appropriate challenges without a leveling system, the designer should investigate these alternatives and not assume that leveling is the right approach for her game. Perhaps the story of the player’s growth can be told in a way that’s more natural to the player than allowing changes in numbers to drive the narrative.

There are a few more things that leveling is very explicitly bad at. It creates unreasonable divisions between castes of players in MMOs, leading to situations where a player may have to “catch up” before he is able to enjoy the game with his friends. It has a tendency to create scenarios where the player feels arbitrarily locked out of certain parts of the game (“why do I have to be level 10 to open this door?”) It encourages the player to grind to surmount a new challenge rather than develop an independent solution to it. In the most destructive case, it is used as a method of creating a fixed reward schedule in order to perform operant conditioning on the player and extrinsically compel her to keep playing the game.

Of course, leveling has its advantages as well. It provides a very clear way to compare the relative power levels of two entities in the game (see a single match of League of Legends, for example.)

It allows players to quantifiably measure their own growth and progress over a period of time, if this is design a requirement of the game. In a competitive game environment, it allows players to measure relative experience levels with a game without taking into account skill differences.

Like all tools available to designers, leveling is a useful system with many favorable purposes. However, its uses are few and specific, and its modern-day ubiquity might warrant intentionally reconsidering alternative mechanics in places where leveling would otherwise be used.（source:gamasutra）