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Progressionists vs. Qualitists
Sythion
Member Posts: 422
Reading the "where's the carrot" GW2 thread made me realize that there is a subset of MMOs players who want eternal progression from a game. They expect an mmo to last forever (or at least an unaccessibly long time), always advancing, always improving. Until the genre grows to allow quality non-scripted, dynamic storytelling, the only way to entice eternal play is the dreaded grind, hated by the a very different subset of players. This second group expects every bit of content to be unique, and expects as high of quality experience from their MMO as they would get from a AAA single player experience, with interactivity that makes it so being an MMO actually means something.
These subsets are not "Core" and "Casual", as both gamer types belong to each subset. I will call them "Progressionists" and "Qualitists" However, both of these groups are directly opposed to each other, because the wants of one detract from the other. Games have to balance between the two.
WoW, having the largest, least repetative progression is the hallmark of the Progressionists. It's hard for anyone to compete with the level of content, making it so many Progressionists devour the game and spit it out with enormous dissatisfaction.
GW2 really seems to be going after the Qualitists. They are not harmed by cancelling subscriptions (well, maybe the cash shop will be a bit), and their game play seems to have a focus on eliminating grind as much as possible. Unique content can happen through a single playthrough, and systems are involved to bring people together to play.
I think its important that a game pick one of these groups on which they want to focus, since the Progressionists and Qualitists are diametrically opposed. I think this is one of several reasons a majority of the new subscription based MMOs have massive dropoffs of play. The success of WoW means all games model themselves around it, but they just don't have the content to compete. In fact they are going after Qualitists with most of their slight evolutionary changes. Unfortunately, that's doomed to fail because Qualitists will not play a game for years, and Progressionists ultimately find unique aspects of new games to be just gimmicks to make the progression a little more palatable.
A hypothetical example of why the two seperate groups eventually start to dislike a certain game. I'm using SW:ToR in this example.
A Progressionist will complete the game's content within a few weeks or less, skillfully maximizing their effectiveness and genuinely enjoying and feeling proud of what they've accomplished. The story is kind of fun, but really, who cares? Some times it takes way too long to listen to dialog, and the stories don't really matter in gameplay anyway. Does every character really need to talk? Why does this game seem to take such little time to play? Soon level 50 is in sight, and a feeling of dread that the game will truly end begins to seep in. When he hits 50 and runs out of content that allows continued progression, he is disappointed and frustrated that yet another game failed to live up to his expectations. He unsubs and complains on MMORPG.com
A Qualitist will find themselves thrilled at the start. An MMO that actually manages to have an interesting story that can last over a hundred hours? Hell yes! Companions? Brilliant! This enjoyment fades as he reaches a couple of zones, and sees a certain pattern to the gameplay. It starts to feel just a little bit like WoW with talking dialogue. Are these quests really that cool? Does there need to be this many horribly irrelevant and uninteresting quests? Why do I feel like I'm still doing everyone's chores for them? Why does every zone I cross have essentially the same exact problems? Why does this game take so long to play? The important personal quests begin to feel more like rare pieces of popcorn in a bowl full of kernals. And when those pieces of popcorn end up being burnt he realizes with disappointment and frustration that yet another game is unable to stay consistantly fun. He unsubs and complains on MMORPG.com
So do you agree with these classifications?
Which are you?
Comments
Interesting thread, damn shame it fell by the wayside like that.
That said, there's one thing to keep in mind with "qualitists" as you call them, and that's that whilst they expect a degree of quality from a game, there are a lot of them. The idea behind a singleplayer game is that reviews, word of mouth, and so on will lead to extra sales. When you target people who like quality, that's what you want to go for. You want to concentrate on quality rather than quantity, and you want to make the game as amazing an experience as possible.
What happens then is that those people who played it go on to tell their friends about it, and they buy the game. Then those people return with their friends, and all of them will likely buy something from the cash shop. Now, returning quality-seekers will no doubt be hoping for some kind of replay value, not really giving a care about the 'end-game' (which is something for those who fetishise progression). They'll likely complete the game again with their friends, and then stop for a while.
After a while, they may be coaxed in for one, last run through until new content (a new campaign) comes along. But consider how many people you'll have going through this revolving door. That's going to bring in a lot of money, because there are undoubtedly millions of people looking for a game like this, and that's exactly what ArenaNet are counting on. Hopefully GW2 will lead to ever more and more MMOs appealing to the 'qualitists.'
If that happens, things may run dry for the 'progressionists' for a bit, but they'll even back out again eventually.
Could you have possibly written a more biased and opinionated post?
At this moment in time with the technology we have today and the knowledge of the developers we should not be forced to choose sides (progression vs quality). Every game that releases nowadays must have both or just dont exist at all.
Of course.
If you would like you repaint one side in a better light I encourage you to do so.
Could you possibly have written a vaguer response to said post? I mean dude, besides just posting your final judgment on how biased and opinionated this post is in your opinion, why don't you rebut it like a logical, objective person would do? And isn't mmorpg.com all about opinions?
@ OP: I'm definitely Q. Interesting analysis.
I don't want to. But I would have hoped that in recognizing the way someone else defines their own reward system as different that your own, you could at least do it in such a way that doesn't invalidate the reader who ins't like you and make them feel like what they play for has no value or is worth persuing in a game.
For the record, I am neither, I want to log into a game and work towards something. I want to build a littel something in my game. A virtual world, a little empire, maybe even a stroger toon. But something that has some (even if just an illusion of) of persistance. Weeks, months, years, who knows, but that's my reward system.
You made no consideration of that side of things. And the balck and white that you do differentiate is clearly good and bad.
Which is why you didn't understand why i said what I said
I think the OP is excellent and am sorry it didn't get as much attention as some of the other threads. It intelligently (if generally) summarizes with examples the two major types of players competing for attention from game developers today. And I don't see much bias in either description.
I do think most people in each style switch between the two from time to time, which is why we can all resemble those remarks a bit. From my own self-observation, I'm generally what the OP calls a Qualitist, yet when I get within a level or two of the next "ding", I become a Progressionist and put effort into achieving that milestone. Then I chill back to being a Qualitist and kind of level up as a sideline to exploring, crafting, questing through stories and generally enjoying the landscape.
I've been a progression raider and a raid leader, but over time the competitive striving of the Progressionist burnt me out pretty thoroughly. I can come up with that energy temporarily these days, but am far more comfortable with a more leisurely pace so I can stop to smell the virtual flowers.
I'm kinda with GeeTee here. In brekaing down the two groups, the OP made it clear he considers one trash. It's like me going to a produce market, showing you some fresh apples and oranges, and going "And here we have tasty apples, and some bitter orange things that taste like butt". He clearly portrays Qualitsts as being superior.
That aside, I agree in theory with what he's saying. one group of players prefers the sense of growth and direction a pregress treadmill gives; the other group doesn't actually care what they achieve in a game and plays it for the sheer fun of playing. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, and there's nothing wrong with that.GW2 DOES appear to be leaning towards the Qualitist side of things, which may hurt it. The moden MMO playerbase, thanks to EQ and its many successors (WoW being the strongest of course) are conditioned to look for that "Ding!" that indicates they just got a little better.
This once again reminds me of the George Carlin line: "My stuff is stuff. Your stuff is shit."
There are all sorts of progression systems. Doesn't have to just be about levelling up indefinitely, but setting that aside to avoid complicating things, I'll focus on the standard themepark formula.
To keep it going a really long time, does require a sort of grind after a while. What can help it not feel like a grind, however, is if the progression works on such diminishing returns, that you don't do it for the reward itself. It's more like a side-benefit, if a level 50+0.25 isn't that much stronger than a level 50+0.00. It'd be foolish to get obsessed with grinding that out, just for grinding sake, but it's nice to see some ongoing improvement at 50, if you do enjoy the (end)game anyhow. For some, it can even be vital, despite the otherwise fun gameplay. RPG content can just feel too pointless, without seeing some sort of progress for doing it.
Not sure what any of this has to do with quality, though. Any of this can be within the exact same content, same 5-mans, same WvW, or whatever. It's just a difference of what rewards players get out of doing it. Unless you're arguing against having any endgame at all, in which case, I think GW2 would be the wrong game to use as an example for that.
The only argument against endgame progression that makes any sense to me would be that the endgame should be balanced for PvP.. but coming from DAOC, a game so many people consider the best of MMORPG PvP, the benefits of RvR rewards seemed to greatly outweigh the balance disruption of people being at all different realm ranks. Sure, people complained about balance, but throw out all that diversity and disparity, to make it as balanced as possible.. and you end up with a boring niche game like WAR. Or look at EVE for another example, of how you can have practically endless levels of progression, yet somehow manage to be an incredibly strong PvP game. Balance is tragically overrated.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Interesting article. I fit somewhere in the middle. I play MMO for the (casual) progression. I love achieving a new level from playing, developing and building my character. But at the same time I like to experience new things. Its great when you can stop and craft. Not the raiding type as its too competitive but like a constant challenge and endless exploration.
I like the fact that there are a plethora of MMOs out today giving me ample choice to pick and choose what I want to play.
I am still waiting for my 'ultimate' MMO - one where I have a massive virtual world to explore and grow my character in. My sights are currently on ArchAge, but only time will tell.
Nice post.
Ultimately, the demands of the two sides aren't quite inherently contradictory. The way to satisfy both sides is with effectively infinite content. The qualitists ultimately aren't upset that it takes too long to reach the level cap. Rather, the problem is that they have to do the same thing too many times along the way. If you have massive amounts of highly varied content with no need to repeat any of it, then the qualitists are happy.
What the progressionists want is for their character to keep getting stronger forever. If you have effectively infinite content, so that they can go from one thing to the next and always get stronger at every step of the way, then they're happy, too.
The problem, of course, is where that infinite content comes from. And that's where you get the conflict. Throw in lots of grinding, so that rather than killing 10 rats, you have to kill 100 rats, and the qualitists are upset that it's too grindy. Don't throw in grinding, but just let people play through everything once and be done with it, and the progressionists are upset that they're done with everything too soon and now can't get any stronger. If you can't get infinite content, then you have to pick one or the other, and make at least one side unhappy.
But how do you get enough content to satisfy both sides? One approach is randomly generated content, with the randomness broad enough to make the content seem like it has a ton of variety, but not so broad that it wanders off into things so broad that it feels broken. Another is player-created content, with massive amounts of checking from the company to make sure that players don't find creative ways to offer unbalanced rewards--which is exactly what players will try to do, in order to provide incentives for others to do their content. Alas, what both of those approaches have in common is that they're really, really hard to do properly, and can completely blow up a game if attempted but done improperly.
To those upset with my word choice regarding Progressionists: I Apologize. I obviously have a bias myself, but I was trying to be fair to both sides that I saw. In rereading it I honestly cannot find where I need to change stuff. If anyone wishes to rewrite that portion of my post I'll edit it accordingly.
I don't consider either motivation "wrong".
Originally posted by Vhaln
The only argument against endgame progression that makes any sense to me would be that the endgame should be balanced for PvP.. but coming from DAOC, a game so many people consider the best of MMORPG PvP, the benefits of RvR rewards seemed to greatly outweigh the balance disruption of people being at all different realm ranks. Sure, people complained about balance, but throw out all that diversity and disparity, to make it as balanced as possible.. and you end up with a boring niche game like WAR. Or look at EVE for another example, of how you can have practically endless levels of progression, yet somehow manage to be an incredibly strong PvP game. Balance is tragically overrated.
Full excellent post. Thank you.
As a Qualitist, my argument against endgame progression is that it takes a lot of real-life resources to do right. WoW has been focusing very heavily on providing more and more content for their existing playerbase, to make it feel like they can continue to progress. This is wasted content to me, since I've never even reached max level in an MMO (except LoL and GW1).
I happen to agree that there does not need to be a balance cap against which games are balanced, unless you're going for an eSports sort of PvP. I just wish progression was based on more than just the amount of time spent playing the game (or for those B2P flamers, $ spent).
I think Progressionists are upset about killing 100 rats as well. They don't want to progress through endless numbers, they want to progress through endless content. That is why I consider WoW to be the strongest Progressionist game.
Originally posted by Quizzical
But how do you get enough content to satisfy both sides? One approach is randomly generated content, with the randomness broad enough to make the content seem like it has a ton of variety, but not so broad that it wanders off into things so broad that it feels broken. Another is player-created content, with massive amounts of checking from the company to make sure that players don't find creative ways to offer unbalanced rewards--which is exactly what players will try to do, in order to provide incentives for others to do their content. Alas, what both of those approaches have in common is that they're really, really hard to do properly, and can completely blow up a game if attempted but done improperly.
I'm actually hoping the industry moves away from custom content, and into the realm of dynamic storytelling. Where stories, quests, and even NPCs are all procedurally generated based off the player's actions and choices. Plenty of problems with this, but an area that needs to be explored.
In regards to player created content, what if content was created by players through a rule system, a la Dungeon Keeper?
That's why I felt GW2 to be a poor example - you seem to be suggesting that it will lack endgame content, when from what I can tell, it will have plenty of endgame content. It just won't be rewarding (in terms of character progression)
I agree that the WoW model encourages burning through content and always needing more, but I consider WoW's endgame to be terrible. A good endless endgame needs to be more player driven, so that it can be naturally dynamic and open-ended, instead of needing to be infinite. e.g. RvR or WvW. That way, it doesn't require such impossible quantities of real-life resources. It just needs a good enough foundation for players to want to be a part of it - but for some players, that needs to entail some sort of personal character-based motivation, too.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I log in to real life everyday and do the same thing and get very little progression. I do not need the crap in my video game also. GW2 just reminds me of real life too much. You get to the end and nothing really changes and sometimes stuff blows up, but it it loses interest as it gets repetitive.
Yeah ok GW2 will be great until you realize that like Rift the game most of you despise that there is a obvious pattern and the dyanmic events are not as dyanamic as they say and are extremely predictable. Then when you go looking for pvp and realize your playerbase is split between a open world zone and instanced battlegrounds with ridiculous queue's maybe ArenaNET will learn why their overlord NCSoft made Aion the way it was.
I am a progressionist. There has got to be some fair form of progression that allows a majority of your playerbase to move from content to content and feel they are getting stronger.
Very interesting thread here.
I'm not really interested in even reaching the "end game"; I'm more a fan of simply experience interesting and diverse content. For me, it's all about lateral exploration & development and not linear advancement & achievement. Games that focus everything on linear progression to specific ends bore me, but I accept that a lot of people love those kinds of MMOs.
I'm drawn to GW2 because they appear to be focused on the very thing that attracts me to an MMO: diverse, engaging, interesting content.
That's a concern of mine too. It's definitely possible that GW2's DE will begin to feel formulaic, or that they will reset so often they might as well just be a static quest. Of course, I believe GW2 is trying to make stuff far more interesting than Rift. All of the previews suggest that GW2 is the first game where DE are actually done right, but how right that is (and remains) we'll have to see.
Does other player's similar progression affect you? Does it make your achievements seem less impressive since you see other players at the same point everywhere around you? That's a pretty big immersion killer to me, and it doesn't really make it seem like I'm progressing in any meaningful sense. Unavoidable, of course.
I dont agree with the names you have for the categories and here is why.
Given your forumla i would be a 'progressionist' what I look for in a game is a deep 'system' be it crafting, skill progressions whatever. I also look at the world itself, is the world intresting visually with plenty of places to explore. I basically look at the 'framework' of the world itself. In fact (and this will expain my point) I look for the QUALITY of the world framework.
I totally agree that a story has quality too, but I also understand that game framework also has a quality. The use of the word quality implies bias and a lack of understanding the other persons view on your part.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Neither of them. I i think the old categories(Killer, Explorer, Archiever, Socializer) is really enough. (Bartle Test WikiLink)
Edit: And by the way, i think WoW really is a lot more to the progressionists, because of the endless item grind. It would be more Qualitists, if you cut off endgame.
intresting. I am without question explorer. In fact when I play a game its not uncommon for me to say to myself 'I want to study this game aspect or dungeon or game mechanic'. Sure I also like to achieve but its purely to 'study' what happens after success
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Personaly,
I'd be completely satisfied with a game that featured ZERO progression....that's right, your character has no greater inheriint abilities after 10 years of play then the day he came out of the character manager. But then again I'm also the type of player that enjoys FPS games or Wargames.
Different people find different things fun/appealing. I can understand that some people find progression fun...it's just not my thing.
Every game design choice/focus has some downsides that come with it.... Progression as a design Focus is no different. The 3 big downsides that I can recognize with progression are...
1) Segregates the player community based upon how much time they can devote to advancement. If you and I are friends and we want to play together...but I can only devote 1/4 of the time/effort to advancement that you can, very quickly we will no longer be able to play together unless we make some artificial arrangement to control our advancement through the game at an agreed upon pace. For example, you could make an ALT that you only played when I played...even then though, you'd likely be repeating content that you've already experienced when playing with me, the way most games are structured.
2) De-emphasizes player skill. This is mostly a concern in games where there is direct player competition (i.e. PvP). In progression based systems victory more often then not is determined by level and character power/gear then by player choices/skill. If, for example, hitting an opponent is determined by rolling a D20 and adding your attack skill and comparing that total to the defenders defense skill... If I have an Attack and Defense Skill of 20.....and you have an Attack and Defense skill of 100....the combat is entirely deterministic based upon our levels of advancement. Obviously this is a downside for people who enjoy both open world conflict and player skill/tactics being the primary determinator of success.
3)" The What Now" Factor. An often overlooked downside of open-ended progression system is what I call the "What Now" factor. With Open-Ended Progression systems, there comes the expectation that characters will gain ever increasing powers & abilities and be faced with an overcoming ever greater challenges. The problem comes from the designers continualy having to "1 UP" themselves in terms of what the character can do and what they are faced with. This eventualy not only leads to systems breaking but starts to enter realms of the absurd. If I can use D&D as an example... the traditional progression of antagonists might start out with kobolds and then move to orcs then maybe ogre's, etc.... So what happens when you get to Ancient Red Dragons....where do you progress from there? Demi-Gods, Gods, Major Gods....
So where do you progress to AFTER you've already defeated Tiamat and Zeus..... do you face Zeus's older brother Bubba...who's just like Zeus but is purple and carries a chain-saw & sawed-off shotgun and has 50 more HP's? Where do you progress to after you already have enough HP's to withstand an entire continent being dropped upon? The problem with open-ended progression systems is that eventualy they breakdown...either in terms of mechanics or in terms of believability/absurdity....with open ended progression a game that might have started out as gritty and realistic in atmosphere will eventualy, if it runs long enough...end up Monty Python-esque in atmosphere.....either that or the player ends up with "progression" that doesn't actual feel like progression...it feels like a gimmick (i.e. these orcs are tougher then regular orcs...because they are blue.....and the purple ploka-dotted ones are even tougher.)
The above is not meant to detract from the fact that progression is a legitimate way for a game to provide entertainment for a certain audience segment.... nothing wrong with catering to that segment....but like any game design choice...there are downsides to it as well.
I imagine the lion's share of players fall somewhere in the middle.
It's interesting to define the two sides, but realistically I think very few people exist at either extreme. The comment regarding GW2's progression probably has more to do with MMORPGs typically not having deep enough gameplay to survive purely on gameplay alone (although I've said before that I'd definitely play a game that was purely dungeon/raid-style encounters (since that's where the most interesting game mechanics exist for MMORPGs.))
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