I created this post to spread awareness of how a skill progression concept can be detrimental without refinement. Balancing skill progression and PvP at the same time is extremely difficult because there are factors based on the decisions of an individual player. Without damage scaling, it's not balanced.
This why I have argued for fixed skills because it decreases the number of factors: the common denomination of these factors is how much time a player has to playing the game. It is unfair for one player to gain a significant advantage because they simply have more time to play.
If a PvP game requires time and effort to raise damage and protection for an advantage, one of the fair ways to implement this kind of game is to give every player equal playing time. This is the case for Moba games for example: every player has the same amount of time. Every decision you make is important, and every decision you make comes at an opportunity cost.
But let's say there are two players: one player has 4 hours to play and the other has 8. The quality of decision making goes to the player with 4 hours to play to keep up with advantage. If both players are engaged in the same activity, the player who can play 8 hours will hold an advantage over someone who has 4. Therefore, the quality of the opportunity cost is lowered and is less meaningful.
And this gap only gets wider when you have players who are able to play 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, 16 hours, etc.
We cannot judge them because they are in a different situation than people who have less time to play. At the same time, failing to address this imbalance is one of the reasons why, I argue, that these types of PvP games lose their player base.
It's time to look at PvP games that facilitate PvP through skill progression and levels. What are some that work? What doesn't work? And why?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/comments/tte3xi/valheim_pvp_why_fixed_skill_levels_are_important/
