[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Michael Sellers]

Craig Huber wrote:

> My question is, why does the vast majority keep circling back to
> the class/level/hp paradigm in spite of the aforementioned
> obstacles?  Is it a case of "Better the devil you know..."?  Is
> there a sense that there are no other titles/paradigms that have
> merit?  Is there evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that D+D's
> hallmarks of narrowly defined roles and geometric (if not
> exponential) power growth are "what the typical player wants"?

Because it's what we grew up with.  And it's what everyone else has
done.  It's what players (who aren't all that good at innovative
game design) loudly demand.  And overall, re-conceptualizing the
genre isn't easy.

> ... I guess I keep hoping someone will channel inspiration from
> that neighboring alternate timeline where Gygax and Co. decided
> that there really wasn't much money to be made in RP after the
> Greyhawk supplements, and titles like Traveller and RuneQuest went
> on to dominate the genre instead.

I don't know that that's looking far enough afield.  There have been
science fiction MMORPGs of course -- though none (yet) that borrow
from, say, Traveller's mechanics.  But even if they did, I don't
think that'd make a huge difference in the players' experience in
the game.

FPS games have the "mean time to crate" rut-metric.  I'd suggest
that MMORPGs have the "dog killing" (from Lineage II, but it fits
every single MMORPG out there, up to and including, say, City of
Heroes) rut-metric and the by now ubiquitous "grind."  We've done
the narrow mindless grind-design so many times that we've convinced
ourselves that that's what people want to play, and even in some
cases that that's the "right way" to set up the dynamics of MMP
games.

IMO, the current successes in the MMPORPG market notwithstanding,
this isn't a long-term tenable way to do business -- much less to
design creative games.

Mike Sellers
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