[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Freeman, Jeff [mailto:jfreeman at soe.sony.com] 

> There are two distinct, incompatible playstyles at odds here:
 
>   -- The first group are the players who roleplay a variety of
>   characters depending on their mood.  This is also the camp into
>   which powergamers fall: Who don't *want* a character who is good
>   with a blaster, great with a chef's apron and handy with a whip.
>   They want three distinct characters that they level-up from
>   awful to deific: The Blaster Guy, The Chef Guy, The Whip Guy.  I
>   think the more hardcore a gamer is, the more likely they are to
>   fall into this group, prefering Multi-Char Servers.
 
>   -- The second group are the players who pretty much just play
>   themselves.  Every game they play, every character they play, is
>   always the same guy, and probably uses the same handle that they
>   post to message boards and newsgroups with.  They don't want
>   three distinct characters, they just want the one guy, with a
>   variety of skills to suit their one and only personality.  I
>   think the more casual a gamer is, the more likely they are to
>   fall into this group, prefering Single-Char Servers.

> Mixing the two mostly sucks for the second group.  Their one
> character has a third the total skills as the guy playing three
> characters.  Using a skill system: Their one character isn't as
> good at Anything as the guy playing three characters.  The MCS
> players enjoy more "diversity" as individual players, but at the
> expense of seeing as much diversity in-game: Because their
> min-maxing boils your skill system down to what is essentially a
> class-system.

I think in disregarding the axis of time, you've missed a variable
in the equation. Power gamer behaviour changes over time.

When a power gamer first starts playing a new game, they've already
read all the skill guides, character creation guides, message boards
& alternative information sources. They will already have a clear
idea of what class/skills they want. At this point, they couldn't
care less about multiple characters - time spent on them, is time
that could have been invested in getting your primary to the top.

Meanwhile, I suspect that the less achievement orientated will be
playing around with different skills, and where permitted multiple
characters. After all, its not like they can make a character with
the handle they wanted. The powergamers got all the good ones by
spamming the login server as it came up. They probably won't feel
too embittered about SCS, but I'm pretty sure that if MCS is
available, they'll be using it more than power gamers at this point.

Fast forward...

The non powergamer is still pottering around, has probably seen
about 30% of the game by now and looks forward to logging in every
Wednesday night for 3 hours.

The power gamer maxed out his character a few months ago. He's been
enjoying the high end content, but is getting a little bored with
it.

This is the inflection point where the power gamer starts to want
MCS.  They've spent a long time in game, made a lot of friends, have
no interest on playing on another server, it's just their character
bores them. This is an opportunity for exit. A big one. After all,
they aren't going to (de/re)skill their primary - he's the optimal
'Blaster guy'.

Note that the casual players were marginalised long ago, if they
spread their skill points wide. The problem Jeff describes occurs as
soon as 3 different power gamers have made 'blaster guy', 'whip guy'
& 'chef guy'.  There is already an ability disparity and it has
nothing to do with MCS.

However, the fact that the game is about to lose the bored power
gamer has everything to do with MCS.

I've followed this pattern myself in several games, and the only
thing that kept me going was having an alt character to keep my
interest up (in some occasions generating sufficient renewed
interest that I bought and ran extra accounts). I wouldn't do that
in SWG, which one might think is a shame for SOE.

Still, I don't know why anyone is getting het up about this
issue. There are so many fantastic looking games coming out, it's a
good thing if you want to move on after a year.

Dan
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