[MUD-Dev] Level Grind - alternative

[darksuit]

Brendan O'Brien wrote:

> Now, I certainly don't want to imply that this game should be the
> model for character advancement in a persistent world.  However, I
> saw enough similarities to start my mind working on how this could
> be applied to potentially grab players from outside the
> established rpg niche.  If I could design a game that my wife
> would get involved in, it should really be able to grow outside of
> the standard market.  Combining my tastes (as a competition-based
> gamer) with her tastes (one who enjoys a less-complicated but more
> fun game), this is a portion of what I came up with:

>   1) Characters are developed in a family-based system.  You
>   select the general traits you want for the starting parents, and
>   the game will randomly create children based on these stats.
>   Stats are not equal for all characters (some will be naturally
>   stronger or faster than others), but the player will be far more
>   important than the stats.

I think that the randomness of having different stats is one of the
things that makes the tabletop character creation system a little
more unique.  Knowing that all the characters in your party will
have different advantages and disadvantages. One of the things I
really liked about SJ's GURPS was that if you really wanted those
higher stats you had to take the disadvantages and flaws. This is
also one of the things that I liked about Fallout, and
Fallout2. That even you advantages could be disadvatanges.

The biggest flaw that I can thinkof to a system where you choose
certian things to gain a particular advatage or disadvantage is that
the Munchkins will figure out which stats are the better ones for
each class/race/character type. Those who will sit there and reroll
and reroll till they get the best stats that they can. SWG made a
good attempt to get around this by allowing the characters to adjust
their stats as often as they wanted, this helped with moving between
all the different types of professions.

>   3) Advancement: The initial advancement occurs during the
>   childhood of new characters.  While they would be too small to
>   actually adventure and hunt effectively, players could send
>   their children to various schools to help them develop.
>   Different schools would be focussed on different aspects of
>   their development, with some for mental research, some for more
>   physical activity, and some with a more broad spectrum.  The
>   idea is that much of the development of a character will occur
>   during the years of their life while you are not actively using
>   them.  In other words, the player could be out hunting orcs with
>   the father, while the son is studying to be a mage back in town.
>   They will continue to improve on their own until old age begins
>   to take its toll.  A character can be sent back to training
>   facilities to stay sharp or improve a bit more quickly, but he
>   would never need the training to get in the way of the actual
>   adventure.

One of the things that I really liked about COH is that when you end
the Training section you are already level 2. Numbers can play a
good role in manipluating the psyche of the gamer, the simple
preception of moving up levels quickly will go a long way to player
retention. Had your wife gone quickly up levels, even those first
few, do you think she would have stayed or been more excited. I
think at the core we all like the constant change of Character
devlopment. One of the old gripes in going from Table top to
Computer is that in the Table Top you could do just about
anything. Granted this is nigh impossible to simulate with a MMO, so
we work at limiting the actions of the players to make some things
predicable. This predicablity is really what we are complaining
about. The knowing of the fact that you are going to do the same
thing over and over again only to move on to the next thing that is
also the same thing with a new disguise. Same monster different
action.

>   4) Advancement part 2: While characters become combat-ready very
>   early, there are other types of advancement besides skills and
>   hit points.  Reputation and valor are significant goals in this
>   game design, as achievments by a given character are meant to be
>   very important.  Since all characters will die at some point,
>   what they do during their lives becomes more important.  Are you
>   Torrin the slayer of multiple dragons?  Perhaps Lourid, the
>   simple farmer?  How about Vayn, father of 3 who gave his life
>   protecting the town from an undead invasion.  Plaques, statues,
>   and family heirlooms are a small sample of ways you can enable
>   the legacy of the warriors to live on.  Instead of relying on a
>   boring treadmill to be the focus of the game, the purpose
>   instead is to have fun on dangerous adventures.

I think that this is a good point that what a character does in
his/her life is very important. It is what makes the character who
they are. If they are a PKer should they get a negative reaction
from the people in towns of the same race yet a good reaction from
the town of the opposing fractions. PK human gets a good reaction
from the Orcs and vice versa. This reaction is in the form of prices
of things need to be bought two or three times what they should
be. Or not being allowed to sleep at a particular inn or hotel. On
the other end do you give better prices rates and buy back prices
from those characters who go out of their way to help newbies, do
the quests that help a town. Do you have quests that are alignment
specific that if you do them they open up other alignment orinernted
quests, and having more than one outcome for those quests that will
branch. So that you can watch the quests that a character is doing
become more and more dark as they fall from grace, or strive to
reach closer to the light.

>   5) Power gamer vs. casual gamer: The common complaint is today's
>   games is how to balance the level grind between players who
>   spend 8-10 hours a day playing the game, and the casual gamer
>   who has nowhere near as much time on his hands.  In this design,
>   there is very little difference in combat effectiveness between
>   the characters of either player.  Without the treadmill, both
>   would be ready to go at a very young age, allowing the casual
>   gamer the opportunity to compete on a more even playing field.
>   Also, since characters age based on the time spent in-game, the
>   casual gamer would be able to enjoy his character for just as
>   much play time as a full time power-gamer.

I would like to believe that this is where the idea of instancing
has made a good deal of impact. As a causal gamer I can go into COH
and play a small instance and not have to worry about someone else
jumping in and getting in the way or training an evildoer into me
while I am not looking or AFK.

>   6) Power gamer part 2: Your typical power-gamer is generally
>   very competitive by nature.  In current games, they are far more
>   willing to spend the time on the treadmill because it is the
>   only way they can really differentiate themselves from the rest
>   of the pack.  With this design concept, the question must arise
>   as to how to keep them entertained enough in order to satisfy
>   their competitive urges.  While striving for valor and enhanced
>   reputation will help a bit, most gamers of this type need to
>   know there is some way they can be better at fighting than your
>   average player.  In current games, you see this come out with
>   character templates for both skills and equipment, along with
>   discussions on fighting techniques in games that actually
>   involve more player skill (such as Puzzle Pirates).  As my
>   intention would be to put less emphasis on skills and equipment,
>   with more importance placed on player skill, I would certainly
>   want the latter to be the hook to keep the competitive gamers
>   going strong.  However, by player skill, I do not mean
>   twitch-based fighting, as I have never really felt that was
>   appropriate for most rpg's.  The skill I'm looking for is more
>   mental, with a wide variety of combat strategies available for
>   the players.  The days of pressing the attack button and
>   watching the fight go by need to end, and there are a
>   significant number of ways in which to do so.  I won't go into
>   more detail on this particular item, other than to say it would
>   be extremely important to test thoroughly to ensure combat
>   remains both fun and exciting.  Since you don't need to kill
>   hordes of critters to level up quickly, you should be able to
>   allow more time to be spent in actual combat without frustrating
>   the players.  Most fights I have been in which took longer than
>   normal were much more fun in the end..  as long as we weren't
>   wasting prescious time from our level grinding techniques.  >
>   Yes Power gamers, Min/Maxers, and Munchkins are all a part of
>   the seven second attention span. How do you keep them
>   entertianed to reatain them with out alienating the casual. The
>   Avid gamer is going to spend lots of time doing the stupid
>   things over and over. I went back and looked at some of the
>   things that I used to do as a DM in the early days of playing
>   Table Top games about how I used to deal with these same people
>   in my own games. You can't always just say no i am sorry you
>   can't play. While it would be nice, its not saying a lot about
>   the skill of my own DMing skills. It was better to set up the
>   scenerios and let them off themselves being over zealous. Here
>   is where I do like the COH aspect of Debt. If you are going to
>   do stupid things then by all means do them but its going to take
>   you longer to advance then the person who is going to think more
>   about what they are doing.

One of the other things was that when you start playing a game at a
low level in a table top game you dont say to your self well I am
level one lets go kill some (insert monster type here) you did it by
taking on the adventure and going on the mission, whether it was go
investigate the locate dark tower and what might be lurking in it,
or spying on the local mob bosses. One thing that the newer D20
system has done is to go back and show that you call the monster
anyhting you want, the level and what it can do in comparision is
what matters.

As I am typing this out the one thing that NO ONE does at the moment
that might render all of the power gamers a moot point is going back
to a concept that we used to do in the old table top games. Start at
a Higher level.  The way this might work for a MMO is that a gamer
would be able to create a new character from scratch at a particular
level based on the number of months that they had been a member of
the service. This would allow a gamer who only played ont he
weekends and never really made it to a paricualr level to create a
character that started at a level equal to 1/4 of the total number
of levels attainable in a game or less. So after 3 months John has
been playing and has not really gotten more than 15 levels on this
Warrior, and would like to try a rouge but does not want to spend
another 3 months getting to 15 only to find out he doesn't like
playing a rouge. So John has the ability to create a new character
starting at 15 right out of the gate. Because he has been a member
of the system for 3 months. After 6 months he might be bale to
create a character at 30, then at 9 months he can create charactes
that start at 60, and after a year of being a part of the service he
can create characters at 99 . At the end of the Year he would be
able to start from any level he wanted. Some people do like starting
from nothing but others might like a small head start. It would also
give that guy or gal a way to experience the higher level missions
without spending lots of time, but the same amount of money.

Really when it all comes down to it, this is about player
retention. If you create a way or reason for the Casual player to
come back time after time then they will spend the money and stay. A
level reward for being a loyal customer might be a good way to keep
them coming back.

>   7) Death: As you probably noticed if you bothered reading this
>   far, death is permanent.  While I would never even consider such
>   a course in a treadmill-based game, it seems much more natural
>   in a game where characters will die from old age anyway, leaving
>   their children to carry on the family name.  The pain of losing
>   a favorite character would be offset by the opportunity to
>   continue on with his offspring (and not losing much if anything
>   in the way of combat effectiveness).  Furthermore, while death
>   from combat is possible, I would not want it to be very likely.
>   Most normal creatures would be satisfied to incapacitate a
>   player, without bothering to go through with the killing blow.
>   However, the most deadly and dangerous creatures could be known
>   for their ability to deal the death blow quickly and
>   effectively, making those who succeed in killing them truly
>   worthy of their valor.  In general, I would want the death blow
>   to take several seconds to land, with any hit allowing for an
>   interrupt to the process.  Therefore, if Joey falls while
>   fighting a group of orcs, the rest of his group can try to fend
>   them off while the healer drags his unconscious form off to
>   safety.  However, if they are unable to get to him in time, the
>   orc king may succeed in killing his long time enemy (likelihood
>   to be killed by a certain type of creature could be directly
>   tied in to your reputation for killing them).

Death really is a funny thing. One of the table top systems that I
can think of "Role Master" had a nice complex and realistic system
so that you could die of a hang nail. This is one of the things that
turned me off from the system itself. While in most systems people
like the idea of being super heroic and that the idea that they dont
have to worry about starting from scratch, allowing them to take
that little risk to do that stunt that they would normally not
do. Now in a table top game system, you only get the one life,
however you are also playing with a tight knit group of friends who
also understand that each person is a part of that team. Forcing
people into a gorup will not foster that same relationship
regardless of how hard you try. You would almost need a sort of
Match.com for game groups. Though there are also going to be those
who like to do the adventure alone. Pets and Hirlings are good ways
to help offset the power levels of those who dont want to group but
still want to do those missions.

--David
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