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Opinionated Post #1: A Case for a Non-advancement MMO
Opinionated1
Member Posts: 22
Greetings to all...
You know, out of all the MMOs I have played, it seems to me that one of the biggest complaints is about advancement. Either it's too easy or its too hard. It's too much of a grind. Whatever the case may be. People complained that mindless grind-killing of NPCs and MOBs was a drag and wanted meaningful paths to advancement. So WoW and games (that have become) like it introduce quest/mission-based grinding of the same NPCs/MOBs with a little story blurb in the description and call it meaningful...
The truth about advancement, in my OPINION, is that advancement serves little more in an MMO than to give the developers breathing room to develop expansions. In their mind, I think, they believe that it should take their subscribers X months to level up to the current max level, and when at least 2/3 of the player base that fits in the hard-core 4-5 hour-per-day player demographic, we'll release the next expansion that will give them 20 more levels to grind through with a new land and new monsters to do it in.
After about the 3rd expansion, MOST players start to realize that it's all a pointless cycle. A number of those whose eyes are opened leave the game. And of those whose eyes are opened who remain, most of them do so because they have friends in-game and that is the real appeal. A few don't really care one way or another, as it just gives them something to do to escape the pain of reality for a while before having to get up the next morning and partake of the real grind...
So what can be done?
In My opinion, I say cut out the entire process of character advancement through XP and Leveling. There is a difference between character DEVELOPMENT and character ADVANCEMENT. The former is defining who the character is in the gameworld based on the choices of skills he or she uses, how he/she dresses, what role he/she plays in the virtual community. The latter is simply a long, drawn-out process of tweaking stats and numbers that ultimately end rewarding only the hard-core players who have the time to play for hours-on-end to max out as quickly as possible. The casual player who enjoys the idea of the game but has limited time to play would love to be able to experience all of what the game has to offer, but because of his limited time, he is more than likely to not be able to before real-life commitments require him to quit.
Anyone remember the original Legend of Zelda? Remember what it was like exploring the gameworld, discovering secrets, and essentially just having fun? The enemies we fought in that game had fixed stats. They weren't really level-based, so much as they were on a difficulty scale, some being impervious to some weapons while others having a critical weakness to other weapons. Now remember beating it the first time, and thinking it was the end, only to discover that a second quest awaited that was more challenging than the first one? Anyone remember wishing that there was a THIRD quest?
No, I am not proposing that someone make a Zelda Online (though for some that might be cool). What I am suggesting is essentially have a MMO that allows us to create a character, custimize its appearance, select its skillset (from preset architypes with skills that are optimal for that type to custom types). From there, we can enter the world as the character we created based on the types of things we want to be able to do with that character. For example, a crafter will have a skillset composed of primarily (and in some cases, nothing but) trade and crafting skills. A fighter will have almost all combat skills.
When killed, the character is dead, truly. That's right... Permadeath. However, rather than having lost months and months of grinded out stats, all that happens is the player is given the opportunity to reroll his character and try a different approach (additions to the game would include new skills and abilities for maximum replay value. Of course they could reroll as the same exact character type. They can even keep the same name, even if they want to play a different type of character... Break out your phone directory. Look up "Smith." Then look at how many with that last name have the first name of "John". Now, I do believe that a character's name should be unique to a player. I may be able to play two consecutive characters named John Smith, but nobody else could claim that name unless I give it up by naming my next character something else. All characters would be tied to the account id, so if someone reports me for bad behavior in-game, even if I kill my character off and take a new name for the next one, it would be my account name that is logged in the complaint.
In fact, I would go so far as to say the activity log should look like this
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "You are stupid and you shouldn't be playing this game"
[JoeGamer]Bob Thomas says to John Smith, "Whatever..."
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[JoeGamer]Bob Thomas says to John Smith, "You are harrassing me and spamming."
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[JoeGamer]Bob Thomas says to John Smith, "That's against the TOS, so I am going to report you"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[JoeGamer] [Reports (Opinionated1) for (TOS Violation ( (Harrassment) (Spamming) )]
[JoeGamer] [Leaves Area 123]
[JoeGamer] [Enters Area 124]
[Opinionated1] [Leaves Area 123]
[Opinionated1] [Enters Area 124]
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[JoeGamer] [Adds Opinionated1 to ignore list]
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
[Opinionated1]John Smith says to Bob Thomas, "Lamer!"
Anything in [brackets] would show up on the CSR's logs but would not show up in the in-game chat window.
So that solves the identity crisis.
So what should the game be about?
Obviously it should be about a story, or multiple stories. To continue my Zelda analogy, the story of Zelda was essentially that the Princess was captured by the evil Gannon, who shattered the magical triforce into 8 parts, knowing that only one who reassembles it can stand against him. Link must find the pieces, assemble them and confront Gannon to save Zelda.
A simplistic storyline but enough to explain the who what where and why questions. Now imagine a MMO where hundreds or thousands of these simplistic but sufficent storylines were set up on an on-going basis. Now imagine that they are grouped into classes so that the require certain skillsets to complete, but you won't know what skills will be needed until you face the circumstance. If you don't have the required skill, you can find an NPC or PC who has it and learn it. However, this will require removing an existing skill from your skillset so that the new one can be obtained.
So how would these hundreds or thousands of simplistic but sufficent storyline quests work?
Each Quest activates a plugin which substitutes areas in the game world with their quest-specific counterparts. Essentailly, creatiing an instance consisting of the areas pertinant to the quest. As long as the quest is active (not abandoned or completed), any time the player enters an area used by the quest, he/she will experience whatever content is placed there by the quest author. The instance would only exist so long as a player running that quest is in it. Any player running that quest can enter the instance. Every quest will track the player accounts who complete it. So If you complete it once, you cannot complete it a second time, though you could join a party of players who have yet to complete it.
Abandoning a quest would cause any progress made on that quest to be lost. A player could only be able to have one quest at a time. The Questgiver NPC would merely greet the player like a normal NPC if he's already running a quest.
You mentioned Crafting?
Yes. Some players may not want to run a quest at all, but would rather support those who do. In the non-quested world, they may hunt animals, search for plants, kill monsters for skin or meat, and may use the components to make things. What things they can make will depend on which crafting/trade skills they have chosen. For example, for every tier of herbalism selected durring the character creation process, (a maximum of 4 tiers), a character can combine that many resources plus one together to make potions. The Master (tier 5) Herbalist would require a character who is a total herbalist to undergo the Herbalist's Quest. Any character with 1 tier in herbalism can undertake this quest, but only a 4-tier can benefit from the quest reward, which would be a tome of ancient knowledge that would impart Tier 5. A tier 5er could create the strongest poison or the strongest healing potion. Tier 5
What about Player Housing?
Yep. What kind of MMO would it be without some form of player housing? Remember in Zelda, the screens you could only progress through if you took a certain path? Like the Lost Woods with its North, West, South, West path? Well, player housing (or player-made quests) would make use of a similar system. What if NWSW is the path through the forrest, but NWSS leads to a glade with an exit to the S W and E. These would each lead to a cluster of screens from which players can go to to stake a claim to their own overworld screen. Exiting the glade to the north would return the player to the Woods, from which they can go east (back to the normal eastern areas, or take the NWSW path to the normal West areas.
NNNN would also lead to a similar glade. So would WWWW and SSSS Essentially every 4 non-east directions which do not backtrack (SNES, for example) would unlock a glade
The Lost Hills would work similarly, except that it would be any non-west path that doesn't have any backtracking, and NNNN would lead to a normal area. So SSSS, EEEE and any other forward-going path would lead to a transitional area similar to the glade.
So there could be a massive number of houses, dungeons, shops, etc that could be placed by players in areas off the beaten path.
I can make a dungeon? How?
The dungeon would be similar to housing, but the player would have to earn the right to add areas. And they would do this by helping their fellow players. Every skill taught to another player earns a community point. Every item put up for sale that another player buys (Items put up for sale on a player's Merchant will not show up for one hour to prevent exploiting) earns points. Every quest completed while traveling WITH a group but not leading it earns a point.
Every point is worth a block of data. A Dungeon room would cost 144 points. That room can be edited however the player wants for unique layouts. The rules would be that there could only be one set of stairs from the room, which would in turn lead to another room requiring an additional 144 points. Monsters or NPCs could be placed in any room as long as the number of them does not exceed 1/4 of the number of empty tiles.
Okay.. I've rambled on long enough. I'll let you all muddle over this and respond. Please let me know if you like the idea of this kind of MMO, or if you hate it. Please share what you might add to build upon it if you like it. If you hate it, please tell me tell me what you might add to make it better.
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
Comments
Thanks for the link. I've bookmarked it and will check it out tomorrow. Getting tired and ready for bed.
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
Thanks for the link. I've bookmarked it and will check it out tomorrow. Getting tired and ready for bed.
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
no problem
Neverwinter Nights is not a MMORPG, but this sounds like a persistant world I played in (called Haze). The game is based on Dungeons & Dragons, a new player arrived to the game as level 2, and I don't think anyone ever passed level 5. A new player didn't feel he had to kill rats to reach a more action filled level, but were thrown into "end game" adventures from the start. He could gather a group of allies to overthrow a higher level despot. The game had permadeath which meant the players were more willing to give their characters quirks and faults, as they are not really worth anything to anyone else (i.e. no value on E-bay).
Question is, can it be done in an MMO? If so, I'd play it.
I believe that it can. Technically, NwN could BE an MMO if the hard-coded limit of 64 players is removed.
You know? sticking to my descriptions, if the hypothetical game I describe was made to play exactly like the original Legend of Zelda, but with 32-bit color depth, .wav sound effects and MP3/OGG format music, I think that I would play. I might even consider paying to play it if its live team focused on providing new episodic quests every month...
2D, sprite-and-tile based games may be old, but they can still be fun. Sometimes, I find myself longing for games like Legend of Zelda or Dragon Warrior for the 8-bit Nintendo, even compared to the graphically superior games of today. Thos old games made up for their inverior and limited graphics with fun (in my opinion) gameplay.
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
Have you been reading my mind? Your ideas are very close to what I've been thinking about for some time.
Your character develpment is essentially finished at character creation. No need to grind to level up or gain skills. There would be some equipment upgrading but nothing ridiculous.
I would go with a family line system so that equipment could be passed on to the next character but would also have equipment be destructable rather than guarantteed permanant.
Permadeath when your character dies. But because you aren't grinding for levels/skills it wouldn't be that big a deal.
But players need motivation.
Your idea of players earning points to build dungeons is something I also thought about as a way to provide motivation. But expand on that. Game ponits earned could be used to for all sorts of things. When I thought about this I thought that maybe they could be used to "buy" more advanced quests. Like a quest to found a new player run city. Or a quest to "summon" some non-human character which would then become a playable character on your account.
For example you might spend your game points to "buy" a quest that, if you succeed, would give you a Hill giant to play. Tougher than a human but also subject to perma-death and if he dies you can't have another unless you do another quest for one.
Ok, let me throw another idea out there and ask what you think of it. At character creation you have a certain number of skill points/stat points or whatever to use, right? But then that's it, your character is what he is and you make the best of it.
Alright, what do you think of this: The longer your current character survives the more skill points you get with your next character. But within reasonable bounds. There would be an upper limit so that the most skilled characters wouldn't be ridiculously better than a standard character. This is just something to provide a little extra motivation to not die. When you die you don't really lose anything that you were grinding for it's just that if you had lived a little longer your next character would have a few more skill points to use. There is a little more to this but I'd like to know what you think of the basic idea before I expand on it.
Really, I love that other people are thinking about this sort of thing.
People like numbers. They like a guage of how far to the next , whatever.
From The blog of Raphael Koster
In the first post,
I outlined my reasons for having disliked levels for about ten years
now, and then marched through a discussion of how levels were distorted
as they were adapted from pen and paper games into CRPGs and then MUDs.
It seemed like a fairly damning case against levels, but it wasn’t the
whole picture even of the bad parts. It was also far from a picture of
the good parts, which present a compelling case for having levels
anyway.
Levels and feedback
The usual case for having levels is made on the
basis of feedback. Now, the very first thing we need to get out of the
way here is to clarify that we are discussing here what the MUD-Dev
mailing list terms “goal-oriented play.” This is what Bettelheim
classifed as “games” rather than “play,” and it’s effectively the
dominant mode for most games designed today. It’s not, however, the
only mode. Games such as Animal Crossing and online games such as There demonstrate that free-form or low-pressure environments can succeed and attract an audience.
But since it’s the dominant mode, let’s consider what it means. One of the main things it means is that levels push towards cooperative rather than competitive play.
The reasons really require another essay, but suffice it to say that
disparate power levels are incompatible with fun competitive play. In just about every competitive game throughout history, players are given equal footing. The very few asymmetric games are ones where the metrics are not standard defeat, such as Fox and Geese, where the geese win by entrapping the fox, but the fox wins by attrition of geese.
In
the world of software-based games, of course, asymmetric games are not
only common, but are by far the most typical sort of game. Just about
every videogame you play is likely asymmetric in its core mechanics.
The player has different capabilities and different statistical traits
than the challenges they seek to overcome.
Asymmetry is what really opened the door to levels.
In symmetric games, it’s simply not a likely design to choose. But in a
cooperative game (or a parallel game of competition, rather than one of
direct competition) where one wants to track relative progress of
multiple participants, it makes perfect sense, and hence the origin of
levels in pen and paper games.
The notion of levels as feedback is important here. Many have claimed that contemporary MMO designers are consciously creating Skinner Boxes:
that in effect designers are making conscious use of operant
conditioning, most specifically with random reinforcement schedules.
Frankly, I haven’t even been in a design meeting where that was
discussed as a tactic to use, though I have frequently had
conversations after the fact where designers have evaluated their designs and concluded that what they were doing had that effect.
Whether
it’s intentional or not, there’s a host of powerful psychology effects
that levels as currently implemented give, and it’s not all about
Skinner Boxes:
— once you have a few, you figure you’re in for the ride and may as
well finish off the ladder. People don’t tend to like leaving things
half-done.
Levels are publicly displayed, and serve as a significant social marker
of status. And humans are hardwired to seek status and validation.
many many times that people want what they haven’t got. Just as clubs
will intentionally create lines outside a door to drive traffic, and
just as it’s a time-honored technique of retail and carnies to hire a
claque of folks to make the business seem popular, exclusivity in
online games is a powerful motivator. Levels effectively put content
behind a velvet rope, which just makes us want to get inside.
Levels promise increments to a player’s health, their damage per
second, and so on. People like feeling more powerful — it’s not social
validation, it’s the game system itself giving them validation.
Ironically, it’s this last one that causes all the
other systemic problems in the game. You could have random
reinforcement without upping hit points. You could have exclusive
clubs, gated content, publicly displayed status, and a treadmill of
ranks to climb, without changing the power differential between levels.
The worst thing is that in many cases, it’s a lie.
Until the fairly recent advent of flat level curves, the common
practice was for each level to require a bit more kills than the last.
A typical way of balancing level systems is to say, “Level 2 will
involve killing 20 even matches, Level 3 will involve killing 21 even
matches,” and so on. The XP value is then set for each level based on
formula that provides more XP for higher level mobs, but keeps to this
boundary. When done correctly, it then provides a fixed and
straightforward scalar factor you can use to reduce the amount of XP
granted for kills of creatures of lower level. The result is no “hell
levels,” a very gradual increase in “grind” with fairly rapid feedback
at low levels, and (ironically) a net reduction in actual player power against even matches.
In terms of the levelling game, an even match is worth less — to keep
at the same pace of advancement, a player is put at an increasing
disadvantage.
Another common way in which players get weaker
as they go up in level is the difficulty of what is considered an even
match. It is not uncommon for the targets intended as an even match to
be groups of enemies (which means a force multiplier), to require
groups to tackle; to have absurdly out of scale hit points; to have
special attacks beyond the norm of the equivalent level player; and so
on. Of such things are raids born, forced grouping bred, and guilds
spawned.
The “grindier” games are ones where this level curve
and accompanying power differential is more extreme; rather than a
linear increase in number of kills required, they may actually involve
an exponential rise. Even where the level curve is fairly flat, as in
World of Warcraft, the use of increasing difficulty remains.
The reason, of course, is not feedback — it’s content.
Levels and content
Flatly, levels are a content multiplier.
Look
at the dilemma faced by the level-based games which try to minimize the
grind by providing a flat advancement curve. A player must engage in 20
kills of an even match to advance a level. The next level, they must
engage in 20 kills of an even match. The next level, they must engage
in 20 kills of an even match.
What the designer needs to change to make this fun is the definition of an even match. Because games are about learning,
the player must be given an increasingly complex situation to handle.
In a level-based situation, the increased variables are generally the
following:
the challenge (which is expressed by increasing the enemy’s hit points
by a factor larger than the increase in player’s damage per second).
You can think of this as directly analogous to making you have to
remember more and more colors when playing Simon.
Compare to Tetris, where only one variable
increases: speed. Or compare to typical symmetric competitive games,
where the sole variable is the skill of the opponent in using the
abilities they have, and where tactical situations are emergent. This
is almost an embarrassment of changes to make. The fact that so many
variables are required speaks to the poverty of the basic combat model
to serve as an entertaining game in its own right.
If you think I am saying that typical RPG combat sucks as a game, you’re right.
So
now the designer is obliged to create scenario after scenario with all
these variables. This is the process of creating content. What
exacerbates it, however, is those pesky power differentials that levels
generally imply.
In order to prevent players from doing the
sensible thing and maximizing their return on time invested by
minimizing deaths and maximizing predictable advancement (also known as
“bottomfeeding”), developers of level-based systems must create their content in bands.
It’s typical to see that for a given player level, the available
dataset of challenges is +/- a few levels from the level they are on. A
level 10 character may be able to fight a level 6 for minimal XP gain,
and may be able to tackle as high as a level 15 and get lucky.
Everything else is out of reach either from a reward or a feasibility
standpoint.
This would be the point at which I suggest you read another old thing I wrote. Go on, this will still be here when you get back.
OK, now, what you just read contained a number of points about how these games are played:
a level band cannot offer significant statistical variation (by
definition, since otherwise the content would be in another band), this
means that the content variaitons within a band will likely have to be in the form of narrative, tactical situations, or something else — something that is not merely power differential.
Now, the amount of content required is driven, in the
end, by your player population and distribution across levels. Time to
pull out that graph again…
we see here is that in order to alleviate competition, you’ll need to
provide a huge amount of content at the highest level band in your
game. The effort you went to in order to provide a lack of competition
to account for the initial surge of players moving through the middle
levels will become obsolete, as the simultaneous population in the
midlevels will drop over time. The single largest wave of
mid-level players you will ever have, most likely, is in the first few
months after launch. After that, you’ll have something like 50 times
the “bandwidth” for mid-level players as you will actually need.
This is a massive overspend.
You can think of it this way: When the initial population of players
came into the game, it was a little higher than the level of the red
box. There was some attrition and some slow levelers and some reaslly
fast ones, but these distribute along a bell curve. Then the bell curve
moves through the levels just like a wave. The red box is the “high
water mark” of this wave of players moving through the levels. In order
to provide a lack of competition for resources throughout the leveling
process, the developer will have had to provide content that fills the
volume shown in the red box, so that the peak population of a level
band was always accomodated. But the mature playerbase’s need is only
the area under the curve. Compare the area of the two spaces.
This is why there are vast echoingly empty adventuring spaces in most mature MMOs.
It’s also why the pressure to add solely at the top is so overwhelming:
to reduce contention, you have to keep adding variations. Pretty soon,
the only way to do that is to add more levels, because you’ve exhausted
all the other ways to provide ongoing learning and therefore ongoing
fun. Hello, mudflation.
Now you see why I call it “database deflation”.
Not only do you end up rendering the expended time players have
invested thus far worth less as a proportion of their total
advancement, you are also letting the air out of your accumulated
content. You are pushing players through a learning process which
renders each level band less challenging for them. You are likely
introducing new ranges to the power differential in the game, often
attached to items which trickle down and effectively shrink the lower
content bands, often to nothing.
You also see why remorting
into a different class, and “altoholism,” are so common. They allow
re-use of this content in a manner that presents different puzzles by
giving different abilities to the player, thus rendering every problem
somewhat fresh (not totally, mind you). The more diverse the tactics
available to classes, the better this will work.
There is one very nice side effect of this, though. Player segmentation.
Levels and cozy worlds
One of the things that works the best in level-based
games is the sense of camaraderie with players who are levelling at the
same rate as you are and started at around the same time. World of
Warcraft makes excellent use of this, as did EverQuest in the early
days. In a nutshell, the segmentation in player power caused by levels
also meant that a given zone was a cozy world:
a welcoming, reasonably sized community where most everyone knew each
other. By isolating players both geographically as well as with power
differentials, a “movable feast” community was created.
At the
higher levels, this breaks down, of course, as the population at max
exceeds the capacity of any one place. But if you’re not in a guild at
that point, you’re unable to enjoy the content anyway, and the guilds
become the cozy worlds instead.
So it is that the greatest
weakness of levels — the fact that they prevent people from playing
with one another — can also be their greatest strength; arguably
more powerful than any of the Skinner Box sort of bits of psychology.
Group identity is routinely cited by players as the most powerful
retention factor in online games.
The question is whether one
needs levels to accomplish this. Let’s consider the factors that seem
to go into creating a success. Leaving aside the basic question of
whether you have fun gameplay at a core systems level, the things that
have been listed throughout this article are:
worlds created with players segmented based on when they entered the
game and the rate at which they leveled; or self-selected by players
Bottom line: none of these need hit points to go up.
None of these need the traditional notion of levels as we know it,
actually. Nor do they need any of the other sorts of
“levels-in-disguise” things like skill trees, actually. Power can be
satisfied with a number of things, including collection mechanics,
customization, and yes, even actually increasing player power relative
to challenges on a separate axis from their comparison to other players. (A game where as you rose through level, you levelled faster? Horrors.)
How
cozier can our worlds get if we remove the artificial barriers that the
legacy of levels from a 30 year old game system has given us? Can we
satisfy those players who want the ding? I suspect the answer is yes,
but I’ll leave the actual systems design to you. Most systems people
tend to propose leave out hitting the full set of bullet items above.
So,
my answer in the end? Levels don’t suck in every way. There’s plenty of
good stuff they bring to the table. But if we’re smart, I think we can
have all that stuff without levels themselves.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
WoW has ruined most chances for complex MMOs to really take a foothold again. Unless they are independently developed, because the corporate mentality will always dictate a move towards the path of least resistance and most potential gain. WoW came on the scene and instantly attracted a massive following. That being the case, whatever Blizzard did is what the rest of the corporate-run development slavehouses will pretend to do. That's what SOE did to SWG. The slapped a half-baked WoW-like interface on to an already bugged game (without removing a lot of the bugs) and claimed they were doing something new.
The so-called masses (who are tangible in the case of WoW) have demonstrated that simplicity is the best way to go.
What I have suggested IS a simple solution to a complex problem: How to draw and hold both hardcore and casual players? By removing all the intervening long drawn-out grind sessions and simply allow the player to create and play exactly the kind of character he would otherwise grind out. It seems that all the best content for players to experience is geared towards the high-level or master-level players. The Hardcore players will be able to reach and experience this content relatively quickly, while the casual player will be abong the last to do so. This is not acceptable. I believe that content should be equally available to the full audience to experience as they see fit.
These advancement-based grindfests operate under a law of diminishing returns. People put more and more into them and get less and less out of them. What is the point of powergrinding up to beat this NPC dude which is worth enough XP to max out your level, when you are rewarded with a waiting period for the next expansion, only to continue the cycle of Kill, Loot Level-up, rense and repeat. What is really gained?
Under the system I propose, each quest will have a unique goal, could be large enough to take several hours to complete for even a hardcore player (due to the sequence of events the quest must follow. No leveling up. Focus would be on PLAYING the game rather than breaking out a calculator and a slide rule to see how tweaking this stat is going to increase that skill bonus in order to make a character 1337 enough to Pwn all teh Noobs.
Tomorrow evening I will be posting my second Opinionated Post, entitled "Comparative Indirect Competition"
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One