You can say the same thing for the levelling/upgrade system though. It doesn’t inherently add anything to a game and I find quite often hinders design, because it’s yet another mechanic to balance over an entire game and likely one that will incorporate different difficulty levels. You have to either constrict upgrades to a set path (in which you may as well not have them at all), ensure every possible upgrade path is balanced or otherwise try to make a game that doesn’t become unplayable by your target audience given the worst possible upgrade path and simultaneously doesn’t become too easy just because of an optimal upgrade path. This stuff is really hard to get right and designers frequently don’t get it right. It needs to be used very thoughtfully in order to add value to a game.
Yes, the upgrade paths have brought with them their own set of issues. In the God of War series, for example, if you upgrade anything other than the chain blades, 90% of the time, you’re only hurting yourself, cause those orbs are hard to get, and the non-chain-blade weapons generally suck.
That actually kind of illustrates the point I was making, though 
Because so many games are just throwing the levelling system in there, it can cause issues. In R&C, for instance, the levelling system changes the way I play: when a weapon maxes level, I basically stop using it. Using max-level weapons wastes the XP you should have been getting. The design herds me to stop using weapons that are the ones I’d like to be using, because in the long run doing so makes you weaker. Why can’t they allow me to level the weapons the way I want to, so the ones I like using most keep improving?
So the levelling system - while being an improvement to the old-school design by and large - actually has its own set of issues. Ten, twenty years from now, people will look back at these levelling systems and complain about how primitive they were, and my god, did we really use that crap? This game is terrible! How did it get a 95 Metacritic score?
To say that these kind of levelling systems must be OK, because that’s what the standard is – well, yeah, it’s just as flawed as saying 'Kill X of Y" must be OK, it’s the standard
I think my point wasn’t exactly clear, so let me try that again
You should never say that a game design element is “the standard” and so therefore it can’t be critiqued. That is the road to stagnation.
That’s not quite the same as a leveling system in what is largely an action game. That is rooted in a more fundimental aspect of quests.
Almost every quest can be broken down to 1 or more of 6 categories:
kill/defeat quests - either a boss or many creatures
fetch quests - either by fetching item(s) from a location or monster or making them in some way
meeting quest - go talk to someone about something
stat/level quests - increase something by a certain amount be it a stat or level on yourself or an item
Exploration/scouting quests - reach a certain point (and sometimes report back)
Escort quest - making sure something, usually an NPC (though it can be an item), makes it to a location
Anything beyond that is generally game gameplay specific to that particular game. There are only so many ways you can package those 5 types of quests.
leveling weapons is stupid imo and I’m all for RPG approach. Leveling you use in a specific weapon is one thing, but leveling a specific weapon is another. Also though, I always felt that the whole scheme was off. I’ve wanted to design a system whereby to get better you have to specialize which means you can continue to progress along a certain path, but at the cost of never being able to be as a good in something as another. I even had some preliminary game proposal drafts on it.
There’s also the “problem solving quest” – guess the password, do an equation, or move/click the cursor/keyboard in some sort of sequence/pattern deal. Was all the rage when games were MUD. Mostly a novelty thing nowa days…
Well yea, I guess I was talking about modern games. I guess the PW one is still seen in Myst type games, but those are are usually the special exceptions that I mention could fall outside due to specific game mechanics.
