Empty Levels: Difference between revisions

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But wait a minute! Those [[Hit Points]] don't even add up to one more hit from my enemies. And my stat increase didn't take my sword out of [[Scratch Damage]] range. And why did the game start throwing all of these [[Goddamned Bats]] at me? I was doing just fine against [[The Goomba|The Goombas]]! Gee, the Wizard seems to be enjoying his new spell; maybe I should have put my levels in that.

This is the essence of [[Empty Levels]]. Many games [[Dynamic Difficulty|increase in difficulty]] as [[Character Level|you advance in levels]] to accommodate your [[Taught By Experience|increase in gamer experience]] and [[Level Grinding]], but this isn't always the case. In mild or temporary cases it [[Beef Gate|may be a sign]] you haven't done enough [[Level Grinding]]. In worse cases the although your characters' stats are indeed increasing with each level, the monsters' stats and abilities are increasing ''faster'', ultimately making you weaker by comparison. This might be a programmer's way to say [[Anti Grinding|lay off the grinding]]. Maybe its only a [[Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards|relative problem]], a Wizard gets a different powerful spell each time... a Fighter can poke things with his sword a little better. This is a risk of any game that uses [[Level Scaling]], or similar systems, though is by no means limited to such.

This is the essence of [[Empty Levels]]. Many games [[Dynamic Difficulty|increase in difficulty]] as [[Character Level|you advance in levels]] to accommodate your [[Taught By Experience|increase in gamer experience]] and [[Level Grinding]], but this isn't always the case. In mild or temporary cases it [[Beef Gate|may be a sign]] you haven't done enough [[Level Grinding]]. In worse cases the although your characters' stats are indeed increasing with each level, the monsters' stats and abilities are increasing ''faster'', ultimately making you weaker by comparison. This might be a programmer's way to say [[Anti-Grinding|lay off the grinding]]. Maybe its only a [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|relative problem]], a Wizard gets a different powerful spell each time... a Fighter can poke things with his sword a little better. This is a risk of any game that uses [[Level Scaling]], or similar systems, though is by no means limited to such.

If you start getting these late into the game, you have a [[Parabolic Power Curve]]. [[Inverted Trope|Inversion]] of [[Unstable Equilibrium]], where doing badly leaves you further behind. That's not to say that this is always a bad trope, especially if one can exploit it by beating the game [[Low Level Advantage|while avoiding level-ups]]. [[Multiple Endings]] provide a way to reward skilled players that can still win with higher-than-normal levels. [[Fake Difficulty]] to the extreme. Big factor in creating the [[Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards]]. In rare instances creates an [[Unwinnable]] situation.

If you start getting these late into the game, you have a [[Parabolic Power Curve]]. [[Inverted Trope|Inversion]] of [[Unstable Equilibrium]], where doing badly leaves you further behind. That's not to say that this is always a bad trope, especially if one can exploit it by beating the game [[Low Level Advantage|while avoiding level-ups]]. [[Multiple Endings]] provide a way to reward skilled players that can still win with higher-than-normal levels. [[Fake Difficulty]] to the extreme. Big factor in creating the [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]]. In rare instances creates an [[Unwinnable]] situation.

See also [[Dynamic Difficulty]], [[Level Scaling]], [[Rubber Band AI]], [[Anti Grinding]].

See also [[Dynamic Difficulty]], [[Level Scaling]], [[Rubber Band AI]], [[Anti-Grinding]].

For actual empty game levels/rooms, see [[Empty Room Psych]].

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== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ==

* In ''[[Battle Garegga]]'', the [[Dynamic Difficulty]] increases the further you go without dying, the more you shoot, and the more you power up, etc. If your rank is too high, the later levels may become [[Unwinnable]].

* The arcade shooter ''Twin Eagle'' can suffer from this, due to its piss-cheap and unbalanced [[Dynamic Difficulty]] system. For example, if you make it to the high-speed sequence fully powered up, there's a great chance you will encounter the [[Demonic Spider]] red jets, which will often deliver unavoidable death with their missiles and rapid-fire bullets, making these sequences a [[Luck Based Mission]]. And the game has [[Unstable Equilibrium]] too, which means you lose all your powerups if you die, meaning you are fucked in the later levels. And those [[Goddamned Bats|goddamned mini-choppers]] appear a lot more often and shoot more rapidly on the higher dynamic difficulties, also often causing unavoidable deaths.

* The arcade shooter ''Twin Eagle'' can suffer from this, due to its piss-cheap and unbalanced [[Dynamic Difficulty]] system. For example, if you make it to the high-speed sequence fully powered up, there's a great chance you will encounter the [[Demonic Spider]] red jets, which will often deliver unavoidable death with their missiles and rapid-fire bullets, making these sequences a [[Luck-Based Mission]]. And the game has [[Unstable Equilibrium]] too, which means you lose all your powerups if you die, meaning you are fucked in the later levels. And those [[Goddamned Bats|goddamned mini-choppers]] appear a lot more often and shoot more rapidly on the higher dynamic difficulties, also often causing unavoidable deaths.

== [[Turn Based Strategy]] ==

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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' is the [[Trope Maker]]. While early-edition clerics and magic users could gain new spells with every few levels, fighters and thieves were mainly stuck with the standard increase in attack bonus, saving throws and hit points that everyone got upon leveling up, in addition to increase in skill percentages if you were playing a thief. Combine this with increasingly-horrifying supernatural enemies against whom sharp-sword-swinging was a decreasingly recommendable tactic ([[Demonic Spiders|powerful undead in particular]], whose [[Level Drain]] attacks didn't care a whit about your armor and [[The Virus|turned anyone they killed into more of them]]), and it wasn't too long before the [[Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards]] thing took hold (course, there were some enemies that were very resistant if not immune to magic, so the casters weren't immune either). Each edition has attempted to fix this, but ultimately only succeeded in making the problem worse. It is such that in 3rd/3.5 if you are not a caster you are required to take short dips in many different classes - something that only works because the martial classes are front loaded in addition to being loaded with empty levels. In 4th you might get features, but rarely are these features actually meaningful in any way. So not only are you required to heavily optimize your character just to keep your attack up at the same rate that enemy defenses scale, but you are most likely still using low level abilities to do this as the higher level abilities are not even necessarily better!

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' is the [[Trope Maker]]. While early-edition clerics and magic users could gain new spells with every few levels, fighters and thieves were mainly stuck with the standard increase in attack bonus, saving throws and hit points that everyone got upon leveling up, in addition to increase in skill percentages if you were playing a thief. Combine this with increasingly-horrifying supernatural enemies against whom sharp-sword-swinging was a decreasingly recommendable tactic ([[Demonic Spiders|powerful undead in particular]], whose [[Level Drain]] attacks didn't care a whit about your armor and [[The Virus|turned anyone they killed into more of them]]), and it wasn't too long before the [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]] thing took hold (course, there were some enemies that were very resistant if not immune to magic, so the casters weren't immune either). Each edition has attempted to fix this, but ultimately only succeeded in making the problem worse. It is such that in 3rd/3.5 if you are not a caster you are required to take short dips in many different classes - something that only works because the martial classes are front loaded in addition to being loaded with empty levels. In 4th you might get features, but rarely are these features actually meaningful in any way. So not only are you required to heavily optimize your character just to keep your attack up at the same rate that enemy defenses scale, but you are most likely still using low level abilities to do this as the higher level abilities are not even necessarily better!

** Also literally an empty level is Rogue 20 (the Level Cap) in edition 3.5- unlike almost every other level or ''class'' in the game, you get actually nothing for it. The standard bonuses to health, accuracy, and defenses are given to all classes, so Rogue 19/Anything 1 is better than Rogue 20

*** Even worse was Fighter 5, the absolute most pointless level in the game, which only increases attack bonus, hit points, and the minimum possible number of skill points, with no class features an no increase in saving throws. The only reason to take it is to get to Fighter level 6, and a serious optimizer only has about three reasons to do that (two specific 20-level builds or a particular alternative class feature at level 6). On the other hand, serious optimizers seldom recommend taking Fighter past level 2...

*** The "Truenamer" class from the ''Tome of Magic'' splatbook was perhaps the most sorely afflicted with dead leveling. It's core ability was based around using a skill check to invoke its powers. The problem is that skills have a maximum rank of 4+level, and the difficulty of said check increases by 2 each level, meaning that the Truenamer winds up getting further and further behind each level. This could be ameliorated by buying skill boosting items or taking levels in a few Prestige Classes that would make the checks easier--but those resources could have been spent elsewhere if Truenamer levels weren't so worthless.

** [[Pathfinder]] took a look at 3rd Edition and carefully designed the revised base classes so that all of them get something new (either a class feature or a new range of spells) at each level. The aforementioned fighter is the best example. It used to be that every odd level (except for first) was a dead level but the added armor training and weapon training abilities gave fighters a huge bump taking them from the what was regarded as the most boring class in the game to a class that truly stood out in its category. It's made even less boring by various archetypes (specialized sub-classes) that give it more flavor, such as gladiator, crossbowman, roughrider, corsair, etc.

*** Sadly, being a d20 based system based on D&D 3/3.5, the game still suffers from [[Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards]], so they're still bad. Just not -as- bad.

*** Sadly, being a d20 based system based on D&D 3/3.5, the game still suffers from [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]], so they're still bad. Just not -as- bad.

** 4th Edition went to great lengths to avert this, with a standard level progression for all classes, PC and monster attacks and defenses scaling pretty evenly (although characters generally need to spend a few feat slots to keep up with the 'expected' progression, leading to the much maligned 'feat tax' abilities), and the paragon paths and (especially) epic destinies adding new and (usually) awesome powers for all high level characters. As a result the game is pretty balanced for most classes across most levels.

* With the introduction of Levelers in [[Magic the Gathering]] this trope is intentionally invoked, as your creature could in theory gain levels ad infininum, but will only gain abilities at certain thresholds. These usually have a small gap (usually 1 or 2, and rarely 3) for the first effect, and large gaps (sometimes reaching 12 or more) for the second ability. Everything else in-between does nothing but chew up your mana for the turn and since the levels are marked as Counters, a simple counters-wiping effect can ruin your effort.

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[[Category:Tabletop Games]]

[[Category:Empty Levels]]

[[Category:Trope]]