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"Players will optimize the fun out of the game" You are damn right.

The line of progression following clouds hair is the best thumbnail gag ever.

The level progression systems that I hate, especially in RPGs, are the ones where the enemies level up with you. It completely defeats the purpose.

I always think back to The World Ends With You, where the quality of loot you get from enemies are proportional to how *low* your level is. A slider lets you control where your level currently is from the ones you added, and the game gets challenging even when your level is on par for where you're at in the story, so the level system becomes an built-in difficulty meter that rewards you for mastering encounters enough to not need the stat bonuses.

I love how the Monster Hunter series works with progression. It's got the story stuff where you slowly fight bigger and bigger monsters but you use their stuff to make more powerful equipment to become more powerful yourself. Not to mention how your own skill as a player increases as you go on, making it feel as though you're really mastering the monsters

Something missing from this discussion is being over-leveled or under-leveled. The amount the player scales with levels determines how much enemies scale in power. If this amount is too great, individual levels will make too big of a difference and the player will regularly be over-leveled or under-leveled. Just look at Pokemon. The stat gains, new moves, and evolutions from leveling up can cause fights to go from difficult to trivial in just a few levels. On the other hand, Dark Souls has each level give a very small bonus on top of having those bonuses get smaller over time. This makes it so that enemies can also have a slow progression in power. Being under-leveled or over-leveled only makes a small difference in dark souls so difficulty can be consistent. If you go to a late game area under-leveled, you'll have extra challenge but it's possible to beat the area. If you go to a lower level area, enemies still provide a challenge if you get careless. Reducing how much levels increase the power of the player also allows for games with leveling up to be open ended. Dark Souls once again is a good example of how small amounts of scaling in levels is helpful. Areas can be done out of order and it hardly ever feels like you're under or over-leveled. However, in a game like Pokemon, they usually can't be open-ended without extra systems to adjust levels. Pokemon Gold and Silver tried to be open ended; however, the levels of many areas ended up being way too low. All the possible areas the player could go when the game opened up were set to a level they can handle at that time. However, once the player has completed one of the areas they could go to, they become too high in level for the others. Sadly, if the area's levels are increased, then it'll become hard for the player to actually tackle the areas out of order since they won't be able to handle higher level areas. It's not impossible for games with leveling up systems to be open-ended even if levels cause higher increases in power. A good example of an open ended game with levels that give a larger amount of power is Monster Sanctuary. It's a monster taming RPG similar to Pokemon that's going to release later this year. It has level scaling similar to Pokemon except each monster has its own skill tree. Additionally, all fights in the game scale based off of how much of the world you have explored. This allows for the game to be a completely open ended metroidvania. As long as you don't skip fights in the game, you won't be under-leveled and all fights will keep up with you in difficulty unless you specifically go out of your way to grind. I highly recommend checking it out.

I think the Mario and Luigi rpg games like partners in time, and bowser’s inside story do a good job with leveling up.

I really feel like you should've talked about the downsides of point allocation, specifically as it pertains to ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile, where a beginner player can essentially make their character unusable by investing in the "wrong" stats/skills. With such systems, I think it should be standard that resetting your allocated points should be doable at any time, or at least fairly easy to do. This would encourage experimentation, while avoiding discouraging players who might end up with a sub-par build after spending many hours on a character.

Nice video, but very surface level. I would argue it spends very little time talking about what makes a leveling system GOOD, and spends the majority of the video simply defining the terms. While there's nothing wrong with that, it is a bit misleading, and it's something I've noticed has become a general trend with Design Doc videos. In an effort to speak to the broadest design elements, there's a distinct lack of depth. Paper Mario's design failed because it decoupled the leveling from the game progression. Okay. But the entire rest of the video was just designed to highlight examples of what games have done -- not necessarily what they have done well. Is FF9's system of leveling up your inventory good or bad? Is a point allocation system better when it's simple and direct like Castle Crashers' or when you have a massive set of choices like Path of Exile? When you aren't playing a traditional RPG, how much do you want to commit your game to RPG elements and why? Which of the examples in your video have a great feel and which feel clunky or simply serviceable? Is it better to give the player LOTS of levels and/or points so that the game is consistently incremental, or give them only a few very concrete moments where they can upgrade their character, like in Mass Effect 2? These are all points that could have given this video some depth. As it is, we're really just watching a big checklist.

Also worth noting about Lost Odyssey, it's probably the best RPG at encouraging you to use *every character*. The linking system with your immortals is part of it, but each map has a "level cap" as well. Once you hit the level cap of a specific map, your experience gains are *significantly* reduced, meaning that it's better to change party members out once they hit that level rather than letting all that EXP go to waste on characters who are having their progression stunted.

What has to be my least favorite leveling system is the one where XP earnings per character is determined by how many/what actions they made during battle. It usually ends up in a situation where a couple of party members get stronger and carry the team, even worse if kills are too important a factor meaning support characters and healers may get disproportionately less XP than the attackers even though that heal they did was key too them surviving another round.

"Players will optimize the fun out of the game" Like every god damned game I see where you can level up money drop rates, or experience gains, or "luck" Quit giving that as a stat. Also false choice trees. Those times where you can choose between upgrades in your stat tree, but instead of adding new options, what they do is just increase multipliers. I want to see "Now your wind spell creates a wind tunnel for a while that makes you move faster in that direction, which is cool and helpful but you might also want to try that ice spell." I don't want to see "Now your wind spell has rocks in it that increase the damage by such a high amount, you're NEVER going to level up your ice spells again."

FINALLY someone talks about the broken design of FFXV's exp caching!!! I was so frustrated for the whole game because I loved the atmosphere and experience of camping, but I always felt like I was losing exp by not using at least the 2x hotel. I missed out on basically every camping side story and didn't actually know they were a thing until I was almost finished the game. Truly terrible design from the ground up.

Final Fantasy X's sphere grid was a brilliant customizable leveling system.

My favorite leveling system is from The World Ends With You. You level up, but you can choose to level down anywhere from 1 to your current level. If you do, your HP drops, but the drop chance for items is multiplied depending on how many levels you reduced. Other stats for combat are determined by food, clothing, and your pins (abilities) so it's still possible to beat those tough enemies at Level 1 and get a rare item.

There's a game an steam called hylics and its got a really unique progression path where there's no real levels, and dying just sends you to an area where you keep everything you had when you died. The only way you get stronger is exchanging and finding items in the overworld. Its really cool.

Although the Fire Emblem series as a whole has pretty good level-up systems, I think Three Houses really took it a step further. Every single character has their own growth rate in each stat (the chance for a stat to increase every level-up), and every possible Class has both its own growth rate and base stat modifiers. The mid-tier classes and above also have up to 3 class abilities that will always be equipped so long as a character remains in that class. Combined with the fact that any character can train in any weapon or skill and are not limited to class branches like previous FE games (aside from gender-locked classes), you can truly mold your team to be anything you want them to be. The only thing limiting you is each character’s own max stat caps and how quickly you can train a character’s skills to meet Class requirements (most characters have Strengths and/or Weaknesses in certain weapons/skills that speed up or slow down how quickly they can rank up in those specific weapons/skills). Every character also learns different amounts of different Magics, Abilities, or Combat Arts at different ranks, even when concerning the same Weapon/skill- One character may learn 5 magic spells and another may only learn 2. But to encourage you to stay in your Class for longer instead of immediately jumping into a higher tier Class, you can increase Class experience until you Master the class in order to learn a new ability or Combat Art. Some characters may want a Class Mastery Ability more than others. For example, characters who struggle to deal damage may want to go through the Brigand Class and Master it to get Death Blow, which increases your Attack by 6 if you initiate the battle. With all these systems in place, you’ll hardly every run out of goals. You’ll never get the same playthrough twice, even with the same route, team, Classes, and weapons, and all of the work you put in ranking up weapons/skills and Class Mastery can all carry over into a New Game+. I haven’t even touched upon things like the Professor Rank, Budding Talents, Crests/Hero’s Relics, instructing, instruction drills, how YOU rank up differently than the other characters, etc.

One of the unique things I love about Fire Emblem is that EXP there is a limited, finite resource. Combined with its perma death feature. EXP is also quite risky to distribute, since the underleveld character who need it the most die so easily while the stronger, overleveld characters get diminishing EXP returns.

I always felt that the "players will optimize the fun out of a game" quote a bit accusatory. Playing optimally is, on its face, one form of fun that's derived from the game. The thing is that when it comes down to when a player needs to make a gameplay-specific choice, usually "play optimally" (maximize rewards, minimize downtime) is the obvious, immediate solution to any given problem. In order to see the content that comes from playing suboptimally, players have to give up the fun of playing optimally. And if playing optimally sucks out other kinds of fun from the game, it creates this weird clash of priorities. "How am I SUPPOSED to play, if not optimally?" Just telling them to have fun and not worry about optimal play smacks of misunderstanding actual player priorities. (especially when it's still possible, or the player might suspect it's possible, to play suboptimally all the way to an irrevocable game over). Yes, there may be other forms of fun to derive from a game, but these needs to be clearly communicated to the player, as well as actually be supported by the gameplay, before they invest themselves in Playing Optimally. The main solutions to this are to make suboptimal play inevitable (no truly optimal strategies), make lots of clearly stated trade-offs to optimization, or simply make the optimized path the most interesting one.

What about a "Good Design Bad Design" series about level up systems?

I always really like low number rpgs like bug fables, where early-area enemies can still be deadly if you aren’t prepared.

Me: *Scrolls through progression bar to see if there’s any games that I’ve played, sees chess* 👁👄👁

Ah yes That intro jingle again! So many lovely memories!

That thumbnail is glorious.

Mobile RPGs also have their own spin on level up : since you usually collect dozens of characters that all start at level 1, fighting doesn't give you xp directly, but xp items that you can spend on whatever character you want. That way you can clear content with your strongest ones and use the rewards to get the new ones up to speed. Alas, it also enables the developers to get grindy with it, since the content you have to do to get xp and the content that progresses the story are usually separate.

Really felt that more could be covered for this topic.

FF9 also has a "hidden" level up mechanic for certain abilities that are tied to the character's job. Stealing with Zidane strengthens Thievery, which deals damage based on how many successful steals Zidane has done. Freya has Dragon Crest, which is strengthened by defeating dragons. It's pretty smart stuff.

I love how you put cloud in the thumbnail, but didn't mention ff7 once in the vid lmao

I liked the way Hollow Knight let you upgrade your nail. Basically, you have to collect certain amount of geo (from defeating enemies) as well as Pale Ores. This gives the player another reason to keep fighting regular enemies as well as exploring the world looking for Pale Ores.

Shoutouts to Chrono Cross who took the EXP out of the game and made level ups happen only in boss fights, and *still* managed to make random encounters worth fighting.

For as amazing as Final Fantasy X's level-up system is, I feel many people ignore X-2. Choosing the skills you want to grow on each different dressphere, on top of the normal linear progression gives a similar feeling to FFIX, where you feel a tangible sense of progression nearly every other battle. Choosing which dresspheres to use, the skills they learn, and which characters use them on which garment grid makes X-2 feel incredibly customizable and unique. At the end of my 50+ hours with the game, I genuinely felt like the build that I did for each character was entirely unique, and it's that feeling that makes the game incredibly replayable.

Thanks, you reminded me that we still have no modern port for Lost Odyssey again ;_;

Persona 3 tarot cards system where you level up by intereacting with characters has this intrinsic and extrinsic value to me. It helped me get better personas sure, but I mostly did it because it was fun interacting with the different characters and see the evolve over time.

I gotta say: Skill trees are overwhelming for me. They get me too stressed on what ability i should pick everytime

God I am loving all the Bug Fables representation. That game is so good

I loved Xenoblade 2 leveling bonus when overkilling enemies. If you have a difficult time with a boss, just use everything as soon as you can. But if you want that sweet xp, you can set up everything while fighting to make a complete overkill of the guy when he reaches something like 5%, which makes the fights harder but also more interesting as you have to keep track of what you've done before. And then you do the overkill, with all the overdrives and other crazy mechanics you can, stylish cutscenes play while you hammer your enemy into oblivion, and you do enough damage to kill that same guy 5 times over if he was full life, and you get crazy amount of XP. It felt so good, even against end game bosses. ESPECIALLY against them. Every fight would end in a climatic showdown of skill and destruction. It was glorious!

If there is one, ONE, thing that i would love to see on your channel, it would be the progression/equipment system in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days. Optimizing the space in this tetris-like, resident evil briefcase-like was my favorite when i was kid. Also, the trinity of Fire Emblem 3H progression through equipment, stats through levels and class unlocking and special abilities through mastering is quite cool.

Great video as always! I also appreciate that you always upload your videos with subtitles day one. It's the little extra effort that makes it feel a lot more... professional? That seems a bit exaggerated, especially since a lot else about these gives that impression! Keep up the good work!

Also, LOVE what you did with the thumbnail. Clouds Hair being parallel to an arrow going up was genius!

Thank you for all the hard work that you put into these videos. It's a truly fantastic channel with a lot to learn. Also, is that the Tales of Symphonia dungeon music I hear in the background? If so, that's just awesome.

"What did they do to you?" "They leveled up."

This is why I personally enjoy Fire Emblem's leveling system. Because each stat has a certain percentage chance to grow, each level up feels very involved, wanting to see which stat improves, sometimes getting nearly every stat up, sometimes getting completely empty levels, and sometimes that one crucial stat that only has a 20% chance to grow, does and it's exciting!

I think this is one of your best videos yet. Everyone has covered progression systems, but you still managed to do it better. Loved it!

Showing love for CrossCode, I'm currently playing it and it's a great game, so pleasantly surprised you chose to include it in the video! :)

Eternal Sonata has my favorite progression system! You get new equipment once in a while from going through the story and exploring, you have the traditional level ups for stats and new special moves, but my favorite idea is the party level system! At key points of the story, you will level up your party level, which makes you more powerful, but for each level up, it also demands more and more of the player... The game has two main "time" ressources at the start; tactical time and action time. Tactical time is an amount of time you have to think about your moves before starting the action time, and action time is how much time you have to make moves before your turn ends. At first, you have unlimited tactical time, and action time only decreases with actions taken, so at any point you can stop and think about what to do next. However, as partylevel goes up, it rewards you with harmony chains, where you can power up special moves, and even link them together, but in return, the game starts taking away your "time" ressources bit by bit. Where at first you could sit for hours and plan your moves and take breaks between actions at party level 1, party level 2 still let's you plan moves before battle, but as soon as you move for the first time, the action time starts going, and it doesn't pause anymore, but as a reward, you start getting Echoes when you do normal attacks, which powers up your special attacks! The game even switches up some mechanics with the levels, where level 3 let's you use two dark and two light special moves. Level 4 now let's you counterattack enemies and chain special attacks if you save up Echoes into a Harmony Chain. Level 5 increases your movement speed in battle by 50%, and level 6 makes the biggest change of all: It actually changes what your buttons do while in a Harmony chain, so everything but your item and movement buttons can jump around, so that the buttons for normal attacks, special attacks and guarding change while you are in battle. But in return, you build up chains very fast, can chain up to 6 special attacks, and even keep the Echoes you have built up between battles!

What about Tales series Intrinsic and Extrinsic mix of levels, skills, and comboing the shit out of enemies?

Excellent video, I love your analysis of gaming mechanics like this. Also, props for putting the Triple Triad theme from FF VIII in the background while explaining intrinsic progression ;)

Another feature of the levelup mechanic is that it allows a developer more wiggle room with game difficulty. In a game with no character strengthening, a player's only option to get past a difficult part of the game is to "get good." By allowing a player to make their character stronger instead, another path through a difficult portion is revealed, which reduces player frustration. On the flip side, a horrible difficulty spike in a game with level-ups may force a player to level up because getting good is impractical. Then there's also the approach of having enemy power scale to your character's level. This makes the game more skill focused, and leaves the role of leveling up to being able to execute more complex gameplay maneuvers rather than acting as a difficulty balancer. This approach is particularly appropriate in games that are designed to have a lot of options in terms of what order you complete different events in.

0:28 Oh wow, I haven't seen Puzzle Quest in quite a few years

Morrowind uses an unusual level system. You get experience in each skill separately by using it. For example, your trading skill gets better by trading, your jumping skill gets better by jumping, and your armor skill gets better by getting hit while wearing armor. When you used your skill enough - say you made 20 purchases - you level up the skill. When you level up your skills 10 times combined, your character gets a level up. By leveling up your character, you get 3 attribute points that you can put in general attributes like strength or social skills which will boost all skills of the corresponding attribute. Each of the 3 invested attribute points can provide more value if is spent on an attribute that you leveled skills for. And you actually only level up when you go to sleep, so you can postpone any level up to increase your skills further to get more out of your attribute points. en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Level

This is one of the best videos you've done in a while. It's professional, the segway to the Skillshare ad wasn't awkward, and the content of the video itself was quite engaging! The only thing that could improve is that you should use more text while explaining your ideas: I got so distracted looking at the gameplay footage that I couldn't pay attention to some of the ideas that you were saying. Keep up the good work!

The "Trails of" series has a nice take on leveling, the actual level of characters is pretty dynamic with the progress of the story: lower leveled characters receive bonus XP and overleveled ones get less, trying to stay in a chapter even. There is also the quartz system that relies on little crystals called sepith to compose stat changing and skill granting items that fit in a grid-like system, one that can be more grindy although not a bore. All towards crafting a compeling yet not punishing experience.

"Pokemon is a real plain vanilla leveling system" me, thinking about EVs and IVs which are also tied to the leveling system: 👁️👄👁 granted, he does mentions it, and its true the game plays itself without the need of them, but once you learn about them, you can't ever look back

Loved seeing clips of Crosscode in this vid. It blends the level up systems of action games and JRPGs well.

At first, I thought about doing a stat point system with a skill point system, but just stuck with skill points. Some abilities will be locked behind story progression, special transformations, and even some item boxes or events, but I still wanted to give more freedom in building characters. Plus, if there's something like an enemy that's weak against Ice or physical damage, you have multiple ways to attack it, even if you never learned any skills or magic beyond what's given to you.

A lot of those games that rely on Intrinsic Progression are what I've coined Encounter Games. You know, they're the ones that you sit down to play "a game of", like how you'll play a game of Chess, you can play a game of Magic, of Hearthstone, of Rocket League, or many other games where you play against another player (sometimes you can play against AI opponents though). Some of these games, the digital ones or digital versions of them, can also have level up systems, but they mainly seem to give you cosmetic items. The ones that tend to have Extrinsic Progression are what I've coined Timeline Games, where you play through a whole timeline or campaign of events/story/whatever.

I really like that Celeste is entirely intrinsic. There's no level up system, so theoretically I can start a new file and burn through it in a couple of hours. But when you play it for the first time, you have to learn all of the mechanics and build muscle memory for the trickier jumps. Celeste is THE game for making you feel like you're really improving all on your own merits.

"It also helps take what would be a dizzying array of moves and parcels them out slowly, so players don't get overwhelmed by having to learn everything at once". Did you hear that, game companies that sell us experience/progression points with real money?

Dude you gotta do a video where you talk about some of your background. Your videos are so informative and useful. I am just so curious where you have developed all of this

In a Game Development course right now. This is a great reflection of the many different possibilities for leveling characters in a game and a chance to compare and contrast what works.

Well, firstly you need levels... and then you increase them.

You forget to mention the level up system in Lost Odyssey, where it actually discourages grinding.

The one leveling system for new skills I loved was Rogue Galaxy. I loved the factory, I loved tracking items to know what I could learn asap.

Thanks for the clip at the end with Three Houses. I’ve never been able to enjoy the game due to the bombardment of choices for my “level-ups”

You mentioned Pokemon’s leveling system, but there’s more to the progression inherent in it: the Pokemon themselves. Each area gives you new Pokemon to catch, each trainer previews what new species may be just around the corner, or even shows off new things about familiar faces you might’ve missed (like new moves they have at higher levels). The process of catching a new Pokemon also does a good job of demonstrating what they can do, as harder to catch Pokemon will continue to fight each turn you fail to catch them, letting you see a sneak peak of their moves and abilities in the process. Always having that excitement attached to reaching a new area adds to the player’s enthusiasm for exploration and continuing through the game, even before getting to mixing and matching different team compositions. This customization both of individual Pokemon (picking different moves, split evolutions, etc) is the same driving force behind collectable/trading card games. There’s a reason “Gotta Catch’em All!” is a catchphrase that managed to ingrain itself into so many different childhoods.

"skill trees provide new abilities for each step on the progression ladder" *shows borderlands* In a serious note: I feel that, although everything you said is true, the video was kind of all over the place and with no real conclusion. Also, I think that the topic itself was way too broad to go into specific examples so thoroughly. In consequence, I think you missed out many other aspects of leveling systems, and it wasn't clear what's the difference between a good and a bad leveling system. What about the games that gatekeep content through leveling systems, be it gear or story? What about games where players can level up asymmetrically (Coop or live service games)? Plus, it feels like the things you mentioned that make up a good leveling system are just things that apply to games in general; makes me think that those games could let go of their leveling systems while keeping the tangible stuff and players won't feel like they're on a treadmill. Not to mention that devs have a bad habit of making enemies stronger by increasing their level without any mechanical difference.

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!!

16:00 Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk did something similar to this as well. Later on in the game you can unlock the ability to stockpile exp after a fight. It's not mandatory but doing so consecutively will increase the exp earned and the multiplier increases after every successful battle in the chain. However, getting wiped out or not cashing it in before you leave a dungeon entirely means that it's all gone (I think fleeing from combat might break the chain as well but I'm not sure). It can be incredibly helpful since dead units don't gain exp so if you barely scrape out a win against a boss or tough enemy, you can stockpile the exp, revive as many allies as you can and then enter a smaller battle to cash the exp in on more characters. I think it's a really interesting risk/ reward system that is helped by a lot of the games other systems. The in-depth customization of units from the start, the various covens (team set-ups with differing skill sets) earned as you explore, the large number of units you can have at any given time in battle and supporting in covens as well as the varied passives gained on level up and class synergies reincarnating brings usually means that something is always improving after every battle.

In a potential follow up, I'd like to see some discussion of how Level Up systems could be misplaced in games that really don't need them, and end up bloating what would otherwise have been a much tighter and well focused experience. The biggest offender on my personal list is the Dynasty Warriors series since, let's be honest, character growth and making creative character builds are not the selling points to games in that series. Yet for some reason, KoeiTecmo feels the need to keep shoehorning in Level Up systems into their games, which only end up serving to restrict players by not giving characters their full movesets right away (without the justification action games like DMC and God of War have of those movesets being overwhelming if presented all at once), and increasing the grind required to make multiple characters usable for more difficult missions later in the games. The kicker is that KoeiTecmo have basically admitted these systems don't add anything to the games via having ways to circumvent at least the basic exp threshold system in most of the recent titles; Hyrule Warriors, Pirate Warriors 3 and 4, and Gundam Reborn all give the player the ability to buy exp for their characters with in game currency. These level up systems also contribue to making it difficult to tailor the experience of playing these Dynasty Warriors games. There's the exp system governing their base stats, most games have an equipment system that also factors into each characters' attack power and gives a variety of bonus effects, some of which serve to increase the attack power of certain moves. In addition, most Dynasty Warriors games have two seperate difficulty settings that determine how powerful enemies will be within a given battle: the "star" system which makes battels later on in a campaign more difficult than earlier ones, and the player-set "easy, medium, hard" difficutly on top of that. These things make it nearly impossible to tell how a given character will do on a given stage before the fight starts, so players wanting an easy-medium difficutly run the risk of making it _too_ easy and getting bored, and players who want a difficult time run the risk of making levels basically impossible to complete. Fate Extella LINK provides an excellent contrast to this, doing away with (most, not all) the unneeded progression systems in favor of an upgrade system that makes progression universal across the playable cast, and a system that allows characters not being played as to be developed through completing tasks in battle.

A video about leveling and no mentions to Disgaea, where the max level is 9999? Heresy

Hearing CrossCode music right at the start made me really happy

One of my favourite weird systems for level up is Dragon’s Dogma. Dragon’s Dogma uses 2 types of currency for level up: Experience, and Discipline. Experience goes towards traditional level ups: these raise your 6 stats: strength, defence, magick, Magick defence, health and stamina. Discipline is used to buy skills for your current vocation, as well as unlock other vocations. (Total discipline earned while in one vocation ranks up said vocation, unlocking new skills for purchase, even if you spend 0 discipline points in that vocation outside of unlocking it.) You get Discipline for getting experience, but the percentage you get is inverse to the amount of experience you get. This means getting a big chunk of experience, from say, a quest turn in, doesn’t reward you with much discipline, but slaying a bunch of mobs will. In addition to this there is also a gear system, which has its own upgrade system, which involves both money and material investment, but also has the quirk of killing dragons supercharging your gear.

"For a different spin on traditional level up systems..." Oh, man, is he gonna bring up any of the games in the SaGa Franchise? Scarlet Grace recently came out and it's such a breath of fresh air compared to-- "...try Final Fantasy 9." Welp. You tried. The problem is that the linear levels you gain from fights never afford you anything interesting. The abilities you earn from items WOULD serve for a neat system, but the game is so sparse with offering new gear that by the time you can get a new ability, you've already learned the last one. There's never any real decision when it comes to 'builds' as the passives on offer are either too sparse to merit a 'build' or you can just equip all the ones worth using and avoid the several that aren't. There's an illusion of agency, but the game so slowly trickles out what you have available to you that it aught as well be a strictly linear system. I don't think there's a single system in Final Fantasy 9 that's executed well at all, for the record. That game is a mess, from a design perspective. At least you brought up Lost Odyssey, since it does the same 'learn from gear' system but actually gives the player a ton more in terms of decisions and agency. Seriously, though, if you're interesting in a Japanese RPG that actually does tons to reward player agency, SaGa Frontier is such a gem to highlight, with how there are multiple races that all progress differently and how much each fight can contribute to how you're building a character.

I think the SaGa series has a pretty unique leveling system, hope its given a look next time

I love how you used CrossCode's soundtrack. It's one of my all time favourites!

Seeing that Cloud with an LvUp Arrow, remind me of that one user who Leveled Cloud and Barret up to Lv99 during the 1st mission after get off the train and go down the pipes,(just before the boss) and farm it all there.

i feel like pokemon has the best of both worlds in this "intristic vs extrinstic" definition. the extrinsic results of being able to use more powerful moves and of being able to ohko enemies who once were at least a somewhat threat? amazing, stupendous, i love it. but those powerful moves mean nothing if you dont have at least a basic understanding of how the type matchups work or what the different pokemon are better at doing both yours and the opponents, at least in an even matchup. and even then, that's intristic too. Knowing when you'll be overpowered or underpowered is a skill gained over time, and as your own skill level improves, those levels shift.

Bug Fables progression is both intrinsic and extrinsic, and the way you build your team matters and no way is worse. (Except those all-HP loonies)

One thing you didn't mention with Devil May Cry is that the levelling up system in that game is also an intrinsic system as you can level up how stylish you can make your mission runs, redo missions and use all of your experience to get higher and higher mission rank results. You can go from mashing Melee to doing Guard Flying and Star Rave

Another great use of experience points is as a resource, Fire Emblem being a great example. Balancing between winning the stage in the short term and improving your characters in the long term.

I love Disgaea, such a unique leveling system and to beat the postgame you need to exploit the mechanics of the game and grind 😁

I loved Lost Odyssey. Totally agree.

I'd like to see another one of these! Very interesting stuff :)

I hope my own level up system for my game will be included someday in ur videos

No level up system is the best system. Something like Monster Hunter has is the ideal, letting equipment dictate your character strength, with multiple sidegrades possible, but above all letting the player's own ability dictate effectiveness instead of just increasing his avatar's strength, which can quickly lead to the trivialization of large parts of the game by optimization or excessive grinding on the player part (sometimes unintentionally, even). Of course this is not always possible (and significantly difficult in turn-based combat), but it's a good goal to strive towards.

"What makes a good level up system?" Not Pokemon Go, that's for bloody sure!

I've always loved the Final Fantasy X giant skill tree where all the character start from different point on the grid and you can earn skill and stats boost by moving around the skill tree and you can go anywhere you want giving you the freedom to build your character

Great video. You just earned yourself a new subscriber =). I also HAD to comment for the blatant shoutout to Lost Odyssey - my favorite game ever, as well as THE most underrated JRPG of the Wii/XBOX360/PS3 generation. Keep up the good work!

FF9 is still one of my favorite leveling systems

I'll tell you what DOESN'T make a good level system, RANDOM CHANCE (angrily glares at Crisis Core FFVII)

There’s also the incentive for level grinding which usually includes grinding for other things such as money, items or materials needed for crafting. But sometimes exp just comes as a byproduct of grinding most of the time

Gotta love how KH(mostly referring about 2FM) uses extrinsic progression to get you acquainted to the game mechanics and help you develop a play style, then you go to critical lv1 and it becomes intrinsic

Honestly, I'd argue that FF9 is NOT a good leveling up system. Especially with the abilities being tied to gear. The point of "Low level gear having a point" is honestly the worst thing about it. On paper, it could very well work wonders (as Lost Odyssey does it better), but in execution each normal battle gives so few AP and the skills cost so much AP to learn, that unless you go out of your way to grind, you're likely not going to have the skills you want to learn finished by the time the next better piece of gear comes up. This hamstrings magic users in particular, as their spells are also tied to equipment instead of learned naturally, and so the most vulnerable characters with the biggest hitting spells are usually trying to finish learning spells and/or abilities while making them more vulnerable and less effective in combat because they don't have the better gear, making the game feel less like being rewarded with something every couple battles, and more like trying to run 5 treadmills at once.

Personally, i love the way Underrail handles its leveling (specifically oddity). The way that it divorces xp from basically only murdering things, the way you get new features every other level, the way that the stat increases have tangible immediate effects, and how it encourages exploration both of new locations and new builds are all awesome.

Im so happy at the CrossCode clip at the very start

That Cross Code music is so amazing, such a great game with a soundtrack to match

A much awaited and glorious video... and thumbnail ^_^

I'm a big fan of the system in the Bravely Default series. Each character has their own levels and exp bar as usual but you can assign each character a main and sub job/class that you unlock as you progress through the story or do side quests. The main job has it's own levels and exp bar tied to each character and you can use most of the skills that the character has unlocked when set as a sub job. Gives you a lot of customization options and the anticipation of unlocking new and unique jobs keep you hooked and makes you want to do side quests and bonus content to unlock them. Let's say you had a character set as a white mage to be your primary healer for a while. You later unlock the black mage job which you can then equip to that character to make them more offensive. But since that character had some experience as a white mage, you set it as a sub job and now they have both offensive and support magic that combos well since both jobs have a stat distribution that favors MP and magic stats.

One of the more fun level up system I have seen in the games I have played these days is the one from tales of the abyss for putting an example. In there you get "cores" what are equipped on your character and gives bonus stats to your character, depending on the number of battles. The cores have certain stats assigned to them, and when a certain Stat gets to 40 core points or so you get an extra combat ability(back step, enhanced casting etc) Take this with fun combat, a number of abilities that you can level up and searching the balance with the cores (leaving the other stats behind is not the best idea), and you have a combat that makes you go out of your way to find battles. Valkyria chronicles is also a good example, it's a srpg but all your troops level up by clases not by character, making the loss of one of them less punishing than in fire emblem for example. I would love to see more of this theme, as you said it can be done really porly but it can be also be bland, for that seeing the games that takes risks with it is really interesting to me