[MUD-Dev] Buying benefits

[Kevin Littlejohn]

Neil Brown wrote

> I used to play Magic: The Gathering. I was never very avid, I just
> played for the fun of it.  However, I found myself getting
> trounced time and time again by some players because they had
> spent loads of cash buying all these super-rare and powerful cards
> to put in their uber-decks.I finally stopped playing because the
> game no longer felt like a test of skill on even ground - it felt
> like a test of investment size with a small dash of chance thrown
> in to make me feel better.  It really went against what I look for
> in a game.

Have seen this argument a few times - I find it interesting that
it's M:tG and similar that get picked out, because they're, um,
well, successful ;)

Maybe the old "it's not fair on the casual players" thing is
stopping the next pokemon-on-the-net craze?  Players actually _do_
seem to enjoy getting hooked into buying M:tG or Pokemon or
what-have-you, where the amount of investment does directly relate
to your success.  I know I own almost all the NetRunner cards, and a
fair swag of random other cards from random other games, and really
enjoyed wandering into the local gameshop to buy another few
boosters periodically.

Maybe if a game is built where online purchases of unique bits of
equipment etc. - in a collectible manner - is encouraged, we'd find
the loss of players who dislike that sort of thing is far far below
the gain from players who love it.

Just an idle thought as I wake up ;)

KevinL
--
Internet techie                    Obsidian Consulting Group
Specialising in proxy servers and traffic measuring/billing.
http://www.obsidian.com.au/           darius at obsidian.com.au


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