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I wonder how they intend to handle isolation (by levels)
zethcarn
Member UncommonPosts: 1,558
They have stated quite a few times that this game will be group heavy. In other words, if you solo (intentionally or forced) your XP will suffer greatly in comparison to a good group. This is great and all, but look a few years in the future and not everyone will be a newbie. The gap between veterans and new players grows and grows (look at EverQuest) and sooner or later newbies and middlemen become 'isolated' where they have a really hard time finding groups.
Just a thought.
Comments
Maybe we will just see server wipe after server wipe...no don't do that. Just make sure you get in quickly so it doesn't happen to you
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The issue of MMOs becoming top heavy in time is one of the fundamental problems of the genre. The easiest way to solve it is, a few years down the line, making the lower levels substancially easier in order to allow lower lvl players to catch up. A good example of this is EQ, where the new tutorial/monster missions allow new characters to level relatively quickly.
Yes, this is definately a challenge, especially for games that plan on the very long term.
Now I think this issue was addressed pretty effectively in EQ with the alternative exp and abilities. At the time I really found this very clever and it worked very well.
For one in was no longer about what level you were, it made the whole thing deeper than just that; it was also about the alt exp, and how you invested it, and this meant something different for every class. It became more exciting to plan your progress, with times when levels were better to get for some spells or abilities, and at other time when getting mor Alt Exp and advancement was more important. Advancement became a topic of discussion with other characters of your class, and your character became a little bit more unique.
Also, as time tells, these alternative advancement can always be extended in the future.
Another important factor to keep a game atractive is the class depth. If classes aare deep to explore and vary importantly one from the other, most players end up starting a new character of a different class once they think their main character's class has given them most of what it could, or just to vary their game experience. To a certain degree this applies to all MMOs, although the replayability between MMOs with very different classes (like in AO or EQ) and very similar classes (like in EQ2 IMHO) can be very big.
Then of course an important retention factor of MMOs in the community features. A large set of guild tools and features are key, so that you also play to meet your old time friends. Over time your guild acquires its own history and lore, having participated in "building" the guild hall, and earned your guild coat of arms helps making the world your home.
All these features are not new, but were proven over the last few years to be effective and fun. Personally I'd like to them appear again in next generation MMOs.
The only mechanism mmorpg´s have to cope with this issue is to try and keep new players coming in. WoW achived this despite the fact that its a purily endgame based mmorpg, you have a constant stream of new players coming in that provides grouping oportunities troughout the game.
Vanguard will never have that mass market effect and a few months down the road it might become dificult for new players to fit in, but i´ve "heard" that there will be a memtoring system availble, where older players can mentor new players and receive some nice bonuses, but i dunno how that will work.
I think the only logical solution to this is to provide decent and atractive solo content that will fill the gaps when you cant find grouping oportunities.
All ur Mountain Dew is belong to me.
Keeping new players coming in is good for the "youth" of the game, meaning you always have people of all levels playing. Now it doesn't do much for retention ratio or real long term gameplay.
Assuming Vanguard really is the new EQ, we are talking about the hard core gamers that get into the game knowing it will take 3 years of dedicated play to go through most of the game content. The game would depend mostly on depth of content, and not much on obvious content that jumps at you and brings short term satisfaction.
I like the idea of mentoring, it would certainly be a major advantage for new players to get into a world populated by veterans.
I think that this is basic design flaw in all level-class MMORPGs games. Maybe biggest reason why these games are slowly losing their subscription numbers, if nothing is done for it.
"Additional alternative levels" with expansion package seems to be most popular solution. Maybe most intresting would be subclasses, but problem with subclasses is that it would broke holy damage-healer-tank trinity.
EvE-Online and Second Life seem to actually gain more players when their games slowly improve (both are missing skills and classes). It is going to be intresting to see is this going to happen also for Pirates of Burning Sea and Darkfall (both are missing levels).
"I know I said this was my last post, but you my friend are a idiotic moron." -Shadow4482
These are very intersting points here, thanks Resetgun for your insights.
A couple of comments:
"WoW have constant flow of new players and leveling is fast in that game - so it isn't big problem there. "
That can't really go on forever though. I thought WoW main strength was the constant introduction of new features, lke the new battlegrounds, that are free and therefore immediately available to anyone.
"Anarchy Online did introduce free subscription model to ensure that there is enough new players."
This sounded to me more like survival of the game than really a clever strategy.
"DAoC has tried "additional alternative levels" (master levels) to keep at least maximal level players in game. Adding of new levels would have caused that higher levels players would have also seperated. Also Anarchy-Online has tried this model (Shadownlands and Aliens)."
Sounds pretty much like the EQ Alternate Advancement, most excellent feature (at least it was in EQ, I didn't try them in the games you mention). Are they similar to the EQ AA?
"Subclasses - new DAoC expansion."
That sounds interesting, can you explain more? It sounds like it wouldn't quite work in a class centered game.
"Expansion packs to get more players intrested from game and get some press. SOE's standard strategy."
Yes, although it entirely depends on the quality of the expension itself. It seem I always read people saying "Eq was the best, until XYZ expension came along". this is a difficult trade off, as you want to change some things of the game to keep people interested, but if you change too much, people are lazy to make the effort and go away.