This works for S4 League because, while the player character starts with every weapon and ability, the player himself or herself needs time to develop his or her understand of the game’s mechanics, and other players and areas start to generate new concepts and challenges on their own. It’s still an RPG, with stats, levels, equipment, and areas reached based on level, but the levels themselves don’t do much.

I’ve not seen many other games try that. I’d be interest, though; from S4 League and Phantom Dust, it seems like a good opportunity to keep the interest of both hardcore and tween players, and move rewards closer to the gameplay itself.

Limiting the choices to a lower number to reduce complexity and screen usage will simply cause the general FotM (players only use the ‘good’ ones).
Removing the choices completely, or just mostly, is going to take that simple ‘POP!’ out of leveling.

I figure part of this comes down to if ‘things’ hit the widest targetable audience and that’s the intended plan or if something I’d consider a more elegant solution would be capable of capturing the same audience. (We could just be dealing with needing a smaller scope on your target audience, but I haven’t played a major MMO release in a while that wasn’t trying to target everyone possible)

What I’m observing these days more so than in the past is that online games are increasingly clique oriented. They’re becoming hugely guild-based, or raid-based, or at the very least something less than universally social – unless you’re talking about tween/teen games. You get in, get your feet under you, join a group of like-minded individuals (if you didn’t already subscribe with your guild) and have at it. Interplay between these cliques occurs closer to the end-game (forming raids/alliances) rather than at the beginning (the classic RPG dynamic). How to make leveling matter for individuals vs. individuals in the same manner that it matters for groups vs. groups is a challenge. Most of the games out there have, say, 50-100 options per class, of which only 10-20 are really used because groups are less about playing the MMO than beating it. I think that changes how devs should think about levels in general, too.

The concept of horizontal vs. vertical expansion is especially interesting. The “vertical” power band might be fairly narrow, but the horizontal breadth of abilities, specialities and such would give players even greater opportunity to define themselves by their skills and interests. This is appealing to me as a way to make a game world relatively open, with skill-based PvP, yet have plenty for players to do.

We see some of that with WoW’s talent system, but it seems to me that pushing things even further might make for stronger design. Guild Wars leans more in that direction, with a narrower power band, but a wider horizontal breadth. Interestingly, it also gives players more customization options, with skill hunting, dye and heroes.

In the end, the game really does need to focus on what it wants to do, and you’re right, it can never be everything to everyone. I do tend to think that more MMO innovation will come from the GW lineage rather than the EQ/WoW line, mostly since a narrow power band will tend to appeal more to a casual audience. Players don’t get too far ahead of friends, or too behind their enemies.

Of course, that’s mainly approaching the DIKU game type. Puzzle Pirates has a completely different take on things, where “levels” are defined by player skill, and players of any skill can play together and wind up contributing. Of course higher skill is more effective, but the dynamics are such that the PvE system tunes itself to whatever your current group dynamic is. It’s a different sort of game, but it’s a very interesting one.