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Is the "Guarantee of Progression" a good or bad thing?
DrDread74
Member UncommonPosts: 308
In most newer MMOs there seems to be what I will call a "Guarantee of Progression" Where no matter what you do or how badly you play you will always progress somewhat and you will never ever go backwards or truly lose anything except maybe some time.
I ask you all if this is a good thing or bad. And let me clarify.
It is generally bad game design to make a game where you spend enormous amounts of time to build up your game and then lose half of it to some BS when you're not even online. I also don't think you should lose half your game due to lag or a gang of trolls who are 10x more powerful then you are because you've only been playing a week. These are losing scenarios that that you have no control over except luck and I don't think anyone wants that.
But I do think it's a good idea to allow players to decide on how much risk vs. reward they want to engage in. Some people want to farm and craft with the worst thing that can happen is that the crops go bad. Others want drink 4 mountain dews throw on there headsets while blaring Metal Music and literally slam keys until they destroys someone else's entire summer vacation of progress or lose their own trying but the payoff could be huge.
If the game is short, like 5 minute counterstrike game, then loss of progression can be catastrophic and it's no big deal, but when the game is played over the course of 1000 hours you can't make loss of progression be anything but a prick or people will get frustrated quickly.
I feel the best approach in an MMO style game is to have a major part of your game, say your character level or stats, always progress even if its slowly and it even progresses when you are killed or just exploring. But then have other parts of your character ebb and flow in relation to how well you're doing and at a scale determined by how much risk you are willing to take. Perhaps this is money, Items or reputation in the game you're playing assuming those things have meaningful weight.
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
Comments
You can keep wiping on dungeons & raids, and never get that piece of gear you are looking for. While it is true that you will never go backward (which is great), you can get stuck and never move forward either.
Guaranteed progress is hardly new. What's relatively recent is games that save whether you like it or not; with offline games, you could go back to your last save point and not save over it.
Even apart from that, almost always making progress isn't a new thing. Remember how in Super Mario RPG, even if you wiped, you still kept any experience points gained since the last save point?
SOE actually had a great idea in allowing players to LOCK their level advancement,we just needed a better and/or more reasons than just AA's.
I feel each level should be encouraged to progress very slowly,like an aging process.Each level should carry with it skills to be learned and each skill has a skill level within itself.
Example you want to learn PARRY,you would need to use a class that can parry.So you might choose to level up a Warrior and a Sword,then you might need a sword skill level 10 before you can learn Parry.The same goes for Shield and learning Shield Block or Shield Slam or Shield stun.You would need to raise your shield skills before you can learn those added abilities.
Now to get rid of speed leveling,we need a system or systems to allow players to lock their character level so that he/she can learn all the skills and abilities level 1 offers.I don't like to completely alienate a player so what i would do is after your character levels to 2 you will learn level 1 skills at a much slower pace,perhaps 50% slower.This would allow a player to simply speed ahead if they want but if you do you will learn previous skills at a much slower pace.This would not stop a player from eventually learning all the class has to offer but would encourage you to do it wisely instead of in a race.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It worked well and it kept you humble that's for sure. You didn't try taking on Mobs you couldn't handle or randomly die you way through zones.
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
I have an idea for a mech mmo swimming in my head and one of the ideas to it would be temporary gear. The game would have limb specific damage, so enmies can shoot off your limbs. If a limb is shot off, it's gone. The idea would be to balance that out by including a full loot system. When you take down an enemy mech, you get all their parts rather then just a chance of getting one. The idea is the same bit in dead rising where your swapping out old weapons for new ones as they get damaged.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to enter a game in which the world is never the same twice? That rabbit down the hole you killed yesterday is now an elite mob... that rat you just smacked gave you the plague... swimming beneath the surface yields a underground cave to you one day but nothing but a sandy bottom the next.
My idea of progression is seeing/doing something different... because in the real world, the earth revolves around the sun and it's never the same exact orbit. Anything less isn't progression, it's repetition.
A rogue-like game like darkest dungeon are built around adventurers dying and without the drops in progression the game quickly becomes shallow. A game like wolfenstein the new order are built around each sub-area being an encounter, if you allow save scumming it becomes a far worse game because of it so the auto-save function works great for that game. Without the chance of your ship being destroyed Eve loses its charm but if the chance for your ship being destroyed is far too high it just makes people quit.
Mmorpg's struggle with their MUD roots. MUD's had huge XP loss and full drop of gear because it was "more realistic" yet in most cases the gameplay benefits was mostly non-existent. It simply forced people to grind more and have replacement gear. Since gear in those games had little to no value loss of gear didn't really matter. It also made people avoid actual challenges since the risks usually outweighed the rewards.
Dying in arpg's like path of exile wasn't so bad though, the EXP you lost was usually regained in 1-2 dungeons and since you couldn't delevel there was a cap on your loss. Since you didn't lose EXP on your gems you still kept part of your EXP progression. Also, at endgame gear mattered far more than your level so losing bit xp was just a light slap on your wrist.
City of Heroes was good. The "XP Debt", as it was called, was a fun mechanic. It not only reminded players that they needed to play smarter, but also gave each player a kind of "brake" for their leveling speed. On my server, there was a whole Super Group (Guild) called "The Debt Collectors", who kept their debt bars very high to slow their progression down. Basically, what "debt" did was double the XP needed, or halve what you received, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
VG
What happened in the beginning of the game does not really matter .. at least to me.