[MUD-Dev] Level Grind - alternative

[cruise]

Brendan O'Brien wrote:

> As I explained it all to her, I really began to listen to exactly
> what I was saying.  It became very clear that she would have no
> interest wasting weeks or months of playing a weak, boring
> character, just to get to the more enjoyable portions of the game.
> I think those of us who grew up playing in these environments tend
> to lose sight of how this actually looks to a newcomer.  We do our
> best to power through to beginning stages, because we both expect
> to be required to so and know that it really will get better
> eventually.  However, when confronted by the wife asking a simple
> question "Why?", I couldn't come up with a reason that even made
> sense to me.  "That's just the way it is with these games," wasn't
> about to get her excited about playing again.

> Well, a few months went by, and I had long since given up trying
> to get the wife into playing these games.  However, one day, while
> she accompanied me on a business trip, we went to a Dave & Busters
> type of bar / restaurant and found an arcade game called Derby
> Breeder's Cup (or something like that).  Essentially, in this game
> you start by picking the parents for your new horse and then begin
> to train it up from scratch, with races against computer horses
> and other players in between training sessions.  Your horse may
> not have much of a chance in the first race, but it would get
> stronger and faster as you improved its skills through training.
> Interestingly enough, the stats of the horse would be saved to a
> card, which you could take home with you and use to play at any
> other location with this game.  It certainly had enough
> similarities to saving a character in an on-line game that I began
> to take notice.  Not only that, but my wife sat down and played
> for over 2 hours and had a blast right from the start!

It seems to me the difference is the level of competition you
initially face. It's been commented on before, but being forced to
kill rats and rabbits for the first however many hours of gameplay
is not exactly a positive first impression. (at the risk of starting
the whole CoH debate up again, the fact you start out fighting "the
same" bad guys as everyone else is one of the good things about the
game). Whereas in this aracde game, you start off racing from the
beginning.

If I may ask, how long does it take to get to a competitive level in
this racing game?

>   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.

>   2) As your family evolves, children will grow older, get
>   married, have their own children, and eventually die.  Any
>   direct relative can become a player character, but only a
>   certain number may be active at a given time (probably in the
>   5-8 range).  Non-active characters may be sent into marriage
>   with other families, allowing players to arrange marriages with
>   families of other players for a variety of reasons (forming
>   alliances, friendship, money, etc).

While these certainly could be fun gameplay elements, I don't think
they're fundemental to the removal of the level grind - it's more of
an "alternative character creation" system, that can be attached to
any kind of levelling system.

>   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.

  = offline training. I think this has been tried/suggested
  before. Certainly an excellent way of dealing with the time
  requirements - though maybe with a diminishing return on time to
  avoid abuse, easily explained by needing to balance theory with
  practice. Certainly would help alleviate the time requirements
  somewhat.

>   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.

Whole-heartedly agree, and something akin to the system I'm
developing for my testbed MUD. Advancement is through fame rather
than actual skill - getting to an "average" level of skill is easy
and quick allowing most quests and gameplay to be accomplishable
within relatively short time-periods.

>   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.

Interesting concept, though I can imagine the power-gamers hating it
:P This probably would require the lineage system mentioned above,
as otherwise hte powergamers would quickly run out of people to play
as.  Actually, it's just occurred to me that the power-gamers would
suddenly have a whole new marker and reason for bragging - in crude
terms, studding :P If you can marry other player's characters, and
abilities can be inherited to some degree, I can see the
powergamer's family being highly sought after. That has a /lot/ of
pontential...

>   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.

Agreed, improving combat (or indeed, any other skill or actvity in
the game) to make it more involving would go a long way to improving
the treadmill feeling. Instead of 100 trivial battles, two or three
"epic" feeling ones would remove a lot of the repetitiveness.

>   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).

Again, perma-death coupled with inheritance (of stats and equipment
- "this sword is family heirloom") would mitigate a lot of the cons
of that approach. Players are associated with "families" rather than
characters, so the loss of one of them is not quite as damaging as
it otherwise would be. Again, not directly connected with the
level-grind, but certainly an interesting concept, and one well
worth trying.

----

It seems the underlying principles here are: drastically speed up
initial ability gain, provide advancement for skill-based
accomplishment and not time-sinks, and de-couple character abilities
from time spent online.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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