Naunet said:While I value the idea behind a slow leveling pace (and want that), I disagree that the longevity of a game is only tied to how many ways the game can throw frustrations at you to artificially slow you down. When I think of longevity, I think of sticking with a game for years to come - not how many weights I can tie to my ankles. The things that make me stick with a game for the long-term are how engaging is the combat, how interesting is the story, how well designed are the world zones, does it let me (or even encourage me to) create tons of alts, how many challenging encounters are there for me and my friends to tackle and surmount, how much time can I dedicate to fashion... Etc, etc.
A game is about being presented obstacles to which you figure out ways to overcome them. That is the entire concept of what a game is. This you may find enjoyable (entertaining) or you may not, but that is what a game is.
Tanix said:A game is about being presented obstacles to which you figure out ways to overcome them. That is the entire concept of what a game is. This you may find enjoyable (entertaining) or you may not, but that is what a game is.
Nothing I said is counter to that. But WoW is going the route of "how much can we stretch out content through artificial limitations to increase time played", and honestly it's led to a game that isn't nearly as fun and engaging.
Obstacles like a difficult boss fight or having to navigate through a mazelike cave to reach a treasured artifact or the dedication necessary to complete a gear set are obstacles that add the kind of longevity I'm interested in.
Naunet said:Tanix said:A game is about being presented obstacles to which you figure out ways to overcome them. That is the entire concept of what a game is. This you may find enjoyable (entertaining) or you may not, but that is what a game is.Nothing I said is counter to that. But WoW is going the route of "how much can we stretch out content through artificial limitations to increase time played", and honestly it's led to a game that isn't nearly as fun and engaging.
Obstacles like a difficult boss fight or having to navigate through a mazelike cave to reach a treasured artifact or the dedication necessary to complete a gear set are obstacles that add the kind of longevity I'm interested in.
WoW chased QoL and the "15 min" play time crowd and attempted to balance the game around that concept which led to their result. Now they tried to retain their "gamer" crowd with the heavy raid and end game focus, but this was a very limited focus as well (WoW tended to get very "arcadish" at a certain point which turned away a lot of the old school cRPG gamers).
In my discussions, obstacles are not simply the literal tangiable one that are in your face, obstacles exist at multiple levels (travel time, down time to med, dungeon popluations, etc...), many of which were subtle elements that were lost over modern gaming, but are essential to the overall play experience that games like EQ crafted.
I wrote this back two years ago and honestly its due for a rewrite with my follow up thoughts but it is basically one solution to MMO longevity.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/7131/leveling-exponential-linear-or-logarithmic-increase/view/post_id/132025
Its a fairly complicated way of saying characters gain diminishing returns in power as you level distributed between additional stats, new abilities and gear gained. The basic formula is roughly you can solo a creature half your level using 100% of your resources and it takes a team of 6 to defeat a monster of your level using brute force only. This is for that non existent average character but in math it exists. In class based games when you design a class all classes start as the “average character then you zero sum change the character in different ways until you have a unique design, in a skill tree based game you put the diminishing returns into the tree tiers and leave people free to make terrible choices.
How this helps in the long run is characters gain most of their power by the midpoint in the leveling curve which is also when the time to level also begins to sky rocket. More than 90% of the time playing the character before max level ends up being between the midpoint and max level. This lets developers spend 90% of their time on this level range. The formula also makes even the mid level content still non trivial to max level characters.
To make up for the lack of power gain as you level abilities are given more situation options and in general horizontal progression of abilities. Likewise gear base magnitude doesn't go up by much but you change material types and defensive bonuses based on the content you are challenging.
On top of all that you can tack on a pretty brutal death penalty so that even when you get to max level its hard to stay there.
Like I said though I need to update the paper based on more modeling I have done in the last 2 years.
First off, thank you Dayhjawk for taking the time for such a great write up....
I think an MMO that creates longevity has a core system that naturally slows the game down. A good example of this would be quests, unique items, appearance gear, or other interests that rely on rare spawn / rare drops to complete. The system requires the player to invest their time and luck to complete something of interest. I believe Pantheon needs to create MANY interest In their model, and make them an investment to get. The RNG in rare spawns in this example naturally slows the game down and allows players to take in the game elements (Sound, noises, scenery, uniqueness o a zone etc...).
This is just one example. It is driven by “interest” in things other than leveling. There were MANY things of interest in EQ, more so than any other game i’ve played before. I truly believe these interests are why people slowed down their play, did not make the game all about leveling all the time. This all contributed to a bigger immersion in gameplay too.