Brand Loyalty (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Requirements for MM (wasComp lexities of MMOG Servers))

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Dubious Advocate [mailto:dubiousadvocate at hotmail.com] 

> It's possibly a seperate discussion but I think it's possible to
> have character advancement and a way for the competitive to keep
> score without a treadmill.  All while maintaining a profitable
> business.  FPS are one example implementation.  The original
> concept of roleplay is another.

I (and a number of others) believe this can be achieved by migrating
away from character skill based systems to player skill based
ones. It dilutes the pure essence of what an RPG is currently
accepted to be, but it's a worthwhile change imho.

You don't have to completely remove treadmills and character
stats/skills, but if they can be marginalised by player ability, I
think a lot of the negative aspects will be ameliorated.

This has been discussed before, especially in the context of
non-deterministic combat systems. Personally I can't wait until
peoples achievements in these games can no longer be dismissed with
the assumption that anyone could do it given sufficient time.

Dan

N.B. I'm sure there are plenty of MUDS which do this (Achaea springs
to mind from Matt's descriptions). I'm just waiting for a game with
a pretty graphics engine. I believe they help aid immersion and give
spacial awareness, both of which can be leveraged to imbue combat
with deep complexity.


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