[MUD-Dev] RE: CoH and others

[Alex Chacha]

Russ Whiteman <russw99 at swbell.net>

> I seriously doubt that many devs get "insulted" when players race
> through the content.  It's just not that personal...at least it's
> not for myself or any of the others I know.  A more accurate
> appraisal could be that the players who race through the content
> only to find that there -is- no more new stuff won't be sticking
> around long after that, and that by slowing the race down, one can
> collect a few more months subscription fees.  Obviously, such a
> strategy can be taken too far, but unless you have people leaving
> early because they can't advance quickly enough, it's not likely
> to be "hurting the game" to stretch the customer-lifetime.

The drive there is to prevent people from getting to the apparent
end and quitting, but the mentality of powergamers is to get to some
end, whatever it may be.  They will dedicate all free time they have
to get there, this is akin to tuning a game based on play styles of
the few who have way too much free time.

There are few ways to address this problem.  At first one needs to
realize that the powerplayers are a small percentage of the
userbase, but they are also the ones that have the lowest ROI.  They
log longest hours and pay same as everyone else.  This is turn is
more cpu/db/network/etc cycles spent on them rather than a
non-powergamers.  If the cost scaled based on hours spent online,
then these would be the people that the development team can be
dedicated to, but it is not, the fees are flat and monthly.

The ideal users are the ones that pay the same monthly fee and log
in for a short duration, the cost of maintaining these types of
customers is far less, but the fees they pay are the same. So making
a change to accommodate a small percentage while burdening the
majority is shortsighted.

I would even wager that letting the power gamers get bored and
either start a new character or quit, while concentrating the
efforts on keeping the larger casual populace would be financially
more advantageous.

EQ made this mistake by releasing the Gates Of Discord expansion,
they catered to the tiny percentage of the people that have gotten
to the relative end of the game (last plane in Planes Of Power).
Everyone paid for the expansion, but only a small population of the
players got much benefit.  There were hundred's of threads
complaining about this, but nothing was done.  People started to
quit at a higher rate and when finally entire high end vocal guilds
quit, only then did anyone do anything. Months later, the head (or
whatever position Smedley holds) admitted at the summit which
invited people who run web sites and members of high end guilds
(will they ever learn?) that the expansion was the biggest mistake
they have made and last I read they were re-tuning the content to
allow more people to take advantage of it.  This is exactly the
problem of catering to the small high end player set and ignoring
the bulk.  Ideally the expansions would always be geared towards the
bulk of your users and have smaller portions for the other groups
(this is why Lost Dungeons Of Norrath was such a popular expansion,
some even called it the best one, it provided content for about 95%
of the players but using quasi-random level based generated
dungeons).  It is unfortunate that the silent majority is often
overlooked for the few vocal powerplayers and history is repeated.

I think CoH has a great premise and it is quite well implemented.
The game has incredible potential and I wish they would learn from
the mistakes the older MOGs have made and avoid them this early in
the cycle.  They have to avoid making the game a leveling treadmill,
the first 18 levels are fun, experience moves at a decent rate and
the lack of content is easily ignored for the proverbial
"carrot-on-the-stick" of a new power.  At around 18 you can get a
level with roughly 12-18 hours of gameplay and it gets longer and
longer every level.  This is where powergamers will succeed, they
have the time and don't mind killing 2000-4000 bad guys all day
long, the rest get tired and want variety.  If there is repetitive
content then the game starts to feel like a treadmill and will lose
people who do not posses the dedicated mentality. The best way to
see this is that people are now starting to complain that they don't
have enough slots on their account for the new characters, which
implies that most have player 1-12 and created a new character, not
wanting to deal with the grind that is just starting, the few that
made it to 20, have complained that other than mindless grinding
there is not much to do and start a new character.  This would imply
that people are enjoying the low end and not enjoying the higher
end.  Since I mostly read the message boards, I do not have the
internal database numbers, but maybe they should query for the # of
characters per account and average/median level to see what people
like doing and when things get a bit boring...

In the long run, if CoH can weather the WoW onslaught, they can be
extremely successful.
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