There are 2 great limiters, and a 'combined' limiter that affect MMOs:
- Event-driven progress. You must jump over the log. You can fail as many times as you want, take as long as you want, but the event of 'jumping over log' must be accomplished.
- Time-driven progress. Run for 3minutes. If you stop to allow your fatigue bar to diminish, or take the long way, it doesn't matter. The time of 3 minutes must be met.
- Skill-driven progress, or, 'do x event in y time'. You must jump over 10 logs across 400m in under 3min.
You must restrict one of the first 2 from happening if you want to 'level' the playing field. Max time a character can be online? 4hrs/day. Now, BobCasual only logs in for 2hrs a night, but his character gains whatever he's skilled enough to do during that hour. Now, SallyHardcore logs in for 8hrs a night, maxes out her playing time on one toon, logs onto the second and does the same. She's involved with the dynamic world but must split her experience between 2 toons. Typically people have 'PvE toon's or 'crafters' or 'PvP toon's anyhow.
Restrict play experience to 10 quests a day. Skill will determine that BobCasual will finish his in 2hrs. SallyHardcore will finish 10 on the first toon in an hour, then do another 10 on another toon.
But that's not fair! No system will be 'fair' across the board. But how do you allow a gamer who has less opportunity equal shot at the glory? You lock one of the variables in, so that skill plays a bigger role in the equation.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
They made games being all about power and then they cap it to two weeks and they call it an MMORPG
They make their games being all about power. To get power you do combat. To be better at combat you need power so you have to do more combat. There are quests - combat related: kill 100 rats. Kill wolfs untill you drop 10 wolf teeths.
They call it MMORPGs.
MMORPGs are not about combat.
Its all about freedom of choice and changing the story and world around you, living in a community.
When the hell things became all about being a mass murderer obsessed with power a MMORPG?
Then since the games are all about power, and they discovered the obvious: peoples time and effort spent are not balanced because... some play while others are logged off (yeah, because in persistant world, it doesnt stop or wait for you) they decided to cap progression (wich is a no no in MMORPGs), for the sakes of balance.
AGAIN
if the game is all about power, and power is acquired through time and effort spent in the game and some players do it more than others, we have to make it so those who dont play as much are somehow balanced, so they can compete, or else they quit and stop paying subscriptions.
In order to balance, or else people quit, they changed the whole design of MMORPGs, re-structuring everything around Balance, they had to create a panoptic system of controling peoples power, eliminating peoples freedom, using levels as objective measuring tools, classes to limit peoples powers at determined points (levels), etc and etc... Everything in MMORPGs sucks nowadays BECAUSE THE FUCKING BALANCE. They had to make it linear, so they could control it. The more linear, the less player freedom, the easier it is to control/balance everything happy happy. MMORPGs are about FREEDOM, stop the stupid balance paranoia, start making games that are not about power (vertical progression), games that are not about combat.
Reading all those Diablo 3 design decisions changes the "balance paranoia" comes to mind.
People think Im talking about different subjects, its because they are brain dead and cant understand how its a never ending cycle that is crippling our genre. Thats why suddenly all the games are the same, they all suck, we are all bored, everything in the future sucks and will fail, etc...
"I think character progression should be a little less vertical, but it needs to be there. I think SWG did a fairly good job of keeping things somewhat horizontal, but still gave a sense of character progression having an impact. If advancing your character has virtually no impact on gameplay, then it can get rather boring."
I'm not sure it needs to be there, in the sense of "I'm level 23" ... I'd sooner have progression indicated by things like... how much effort was put into upgrading your weapon or armor stats. Meaning if you've built up your ability to wear higher class armor or to weild higher quality weapons, other players (and the person themselves) would still see and recognize that they've progressed in comparison to a new player. However, it also adds more of an element of risk to things like random PvP, since players could choose to obscure their skill levels like Robinhood in the Archery tourniment by downplaying their clothing and gear appearance.
eg - You decide to target someone that is in simple plain clothing, unable to recognize at a glance that it is actually a high grade silk robe, due to "inspect" needing player consent, and asking consent loses the element of surprise. Maybe they're unarmed, if they had been you'd have shied away from a caster with some high end crafted glowing staff... but without it you make the call on if you're going to attack this random flagged player who is out picking herbs in a PvP zone. Makes for a more interesting risk/reward dynamic... which I would find less boring.
Weak example, I suppose, but right now it is very much a matter of e-peen measuring. "My level is bigger than yours, there for you are a nub," attitudes and the like. I'd sooner play a game that let me work up to great skills on a toon, but put on plain-style highend gear and walk around if I wanted to. Perhaps even running around with low-level folks, not in their group, but as a secret body guard offering protection services against ganking in PvP areas. I recall a similar trend in UO, if I'm not mistaken.
"Personally, I think pooling everything into one XP bar and then letting people pick anything is a lackluster system. I'm a big advocate of raising skills by directly using those skills."
Which is why I do support some xp going directly to the skill being used, like the weapon skill for whatever you have equipped as you hack away, but there are other intersting options that a general xp bar allows for. My personal favourite is the idea of being able to reward chunks of your main XP bar (before it reaches the end and becomes a skill point, leaving you with an empty bar again) and using that as a reward you can give other players. In my mind this would be useful for guild leaders and for roleplayers especially. Automation of roleplay seems to be neigh impossible, and as such it has been sort of squashed out of MMORPGs more and more. Providing a means by which players can reward one another for roleplay interactions would be a positive influence imo.
Not to mention that a newcomer with lower amounts in his weapons/craftign skill probably earns XP easier... while their lower skill levels also means they generally have a harder time gaining large amounts of money. For those instances where you're low level and someone high level shows you an act of kindness... the ability to offer that higher level player something more than, "Oh my god, thank you," would be nice. It would provide a community feedback of sorts.
Comments
There are 2 great limiters, and a 'combined' limiter that affect MMOs:
- Event-driven progress. You must jump over the log. You can fail as many times as you want, take as long as you want, but the event of 'jumping over log' must be accomplished.
- Time-driven progress. Run for 3minutes. If you stop to allow your fatigue bar to diminish, or take the long way, it doesn't matter. The time of 3 minutes must be met.
- Skill-driven progress, or, 'do x event in y time'. You must jump over 10 logs across 400m in under 3min.
You must restrict one of the first 2 from happening if you want to 'level' the playing field. Max time a character can be online? 4hrs/day. Now, BobCasual only logs in for 2hrs a night, but his character gains whatever he's skilled enough to do during that hour. Now, SallyHardcore logs in for 8hrs a night, maxes out her playing time on one toon, logs onto the second and does the same. She's involved with the dynamic world but must split her experience between 2 toons. Typically people have 'PvE toon's or 'crafters' or 'PvP toon's anyhow.
Restrict play experience to 10 quests a day. Skill will determine that BobCasual will finish his in 2hrs. SallyHardcore will finish 10 on the first toon in an hour, then do another 10 on another toon.
But that's not fair! No system will be 'fair' across the board. But how do you allow a gamer who has less opportunity equal shot at the glory? You lock one of the variables in, so that skill plays a bigger role in the equation.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
They made games being all about power and then they cap it to two weeks and they call it an MMORPG
They make their games being all about power. To get power you do combat. To be better at combat you need power so you have to do more combat. There are quests - combat related: kill 100 rats. Kill wolfs untill you drop 10 wolf teeths.
They call it MMORPGs.
MMORPGs are not about combat.
Its all about freedom of choice and changing the story and world around you, living in a community.
When the hell things became all about being a mass murderer obsessed with power a MMORPG?
Then since the games are all about power, and they discovered the obvious: peoples time and effort spent are not balanced because... some play while others are logged off (yeah, because in persistant world, it doesnt stop or wait for you) they decided to cap progression (wich is a no no in MMORPGs), for the sakes of balance.
AGAIN
if the game is all about power, and power is acquired through time and effort spent in the game and some players do it more than others, we have to make it so those who dont play as much are somehow balanced, so they can compete, or else they quit and stop paying subscriptions.
In order to balance, or else people quit, they changed the whole design of MMORPGs, re-structuring everything around Balance, they had to create a panoptic system of controling peoples power, eliminating peoples freedom, using levels as objective measuring tools, classes to limit peoples powers at determined points (levels), etc and etc... Everything in MMORPGs sucks nowadays BECAUSE THE FUCKING BALANCE. They had to make it linear, so they could control it. The more linear, the less player freedom, the easier it is to control/balance everything happy happy. MMORPGs are about FREEDOM, stop the stupid balance paranoia, start making games that are not about power (vertical progression), games that are not about combat.
Reading all those Diablo 3 design decisions changes the "balance paranoia" comes to mind.
People think Im talking about different subjects, its because they are brain dead and cant understand how its a never ending cycle that is crippling our genre. Thats why suddenly all the games are the same, they all suck, we are all bored, everything in the future sucks and will fail, etc...
"I think character progression should be a little less vertical, but it needs to be there. I think SWG did a fairly good job of keeping things somewhat horizontal, but still gave a sense of character progression having an impact. If advancing your character has virtually no impact on gameplay, then it can get rather boring."
I'm not sure it needs to be there, in the sense of "I'm level 23" ... I'd sooner have progression indicated by things like... how much effort was put into upgrading your weapon or armor stats. Meaning if you've built up your ability to wear higher class armor or to weild higher quality weapons, other players (and the person themselves) would still see and recognize that they've progressed in comparison to a new player. However, it also adds more of an element of risk to things like random PvP, since players could choose to obscure their skill levels like Robinhood in the Archery tourniment by downplaying their clothing and gear appearance.
eg - You decide to target someone that is in simple plain clothing, unable to recognize at a glance that it is actually a high grade silk robe, due to "inspect" needing player consent, and asking consent loses the element of surprise. Maybe they're unarmed, if they had been you'd have shied away from a caster with some high end crafted glowing staff... but without it you make the call on if you're going to attack this random flagged player who is out picking herbs in a PvP zone. Makes for a more interesting risk/reward dynamic... which I would find less boring.
Weak example, I suppose, but right now it is very much a matter of e-peen measuring. "My level is bigger than yours, there for you are a nub," attitudes and the like. I'd sooner play a game that let me work up to great skills on a toon, but put on plain-style highend gear and walk around if I wanted to. Perhaps even running around with low-level folks, not in their group, but as a secret body guard offering protection services against ganking in PvP areas. I recall a similar trend in UO, if I'm not mistaken.
"Personally, I think pooling everything into one XP bar and then letting people pick anything is a lackluster system. I'm a big advocate of raising skills by directly using those skills."
Which is why I do support some xp going directly to the skill being used, like the weapon skill for whatever you have equipped as you hack away, but there are other intersting options that a general xp bar allows for. My personal favourite is the idea of being able to reward chunks of your main XP bar (before it reaches the end and becomes a skill point, leaving you with an empty bar again) and using that as a reward you can give other players. In my mind this would be useful for guild leaders and for roleplayers especially. Automation of roleplay seems to be neigh impossible, and as such it has been sort of squashed out of MMORPGs more and more. Providing a means by which players can reward one another for roleplay interactions would be a positive influence imo.
Not to mention that a newcomer with lower amounts in his weapons/craftign skill probably earns XP easier... while their lower skill levels also means they generally have a harder time gaining large amounts of money. For those instances where you're low level and someone high level shows you an act of kindness... the ability to offer that higher level player something more than, "Oh my god, thank you," would be nice. It would provide a community feedback of sorts.