[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[S. Patrick Gallaty]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 3:28 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)


>
>
> msew wrote
> on 19 February 2001 12:37
>
> > The Sword of Doom should take someone 12 hours of camping to get.
> > (ie 2 swords enters the game every day) The casual gamer will NEVER
> > get the Sword Of Doom from adventuring for it
[ ...]
>
> The problem with that though is that it becomes nearly impossible to
> throttle the speed the item gets into the game.

[ ... ]

I've heard this bogus argument before, from verant itself.  This is a
failure to design for the player experience by abstracting too far.  If you
are worried about meta-game issues, and looking at the macroscopic and
sacrificing the enjoyment of -each and every one- of your players for some
theoretical item introduction limit, you've definitely forgotten something
about what it was you were trying to do in the first place.

Not much verant can do about it now, but their problems in eq are more from
design that ensures mudflation than any bogus concept of enforcing abusive
downtime to control item economies.  EQ is designed around the geometric
advancement model.  Weapon damage/time ratios go from 7.0 time/damage
(newbie weapons) to 1.8 (high end weapons) - and have no level limits.
Armor is similar.  Thus, in eq your skills and character advancement matter
much less than the equipment you use (for melee characters), and the
potential for twinking newbies and 'powerlevelling' them isn't just a
problem, it's become totally integral to the game.

To this jaundiced eye, everquest is like the car.  A marketing success, but
an engineering failure.

The great danger I see however, and am seeing - is that other game designers
will try to emulate everquest's success without realizing that it's not the
game mechanics which make everquest.  Everquest succeeds in spite of its
design, not because of it.  It is a skinner box, with random reinforcement
and plenty of reward for compulsive/obsessive behaviour.

I've already seen one developer (Netdevil) working on a game with eq-esque
factors (enforced periods of downtime specifically) and justifying it as
acceptable.  EQ has done a lot to legitimatize some pretty obscene game
mechanics, and it'll take a while for this to work itself out in the minds
of developers, who want a piece of that pie.




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