[MUD-Dev] [News] Virtual goods--Oh, the controversy!

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 24 May 2004 12:17:00 +0100
Daniel Harman <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com> wrote:
> Vincent Archer wrote on 14 April 2004 07:28 :

> Similarly with keys to new areas etc. Flags like that really ought to
> be done at an organisational level, not at the individual. Thus if you
> are in a guild, but take a break for a few months, you can return and
> get back to playing. Having to perform arduous quests to play with
> your friends again is a significant barrier to re-entry. Especially as
> you then feel obliged to your friends should they pull you back up to
> level and content access knowing what a pain it is for them.

Model:

  Give each character a slider control which allows them to pick any
  level for their character they want.  Upon choosing a level it becomes
  "provisional".  The character has all the abilities of the new level,
  but remains at the "power" of the old level.  Continued successful
  activity at the new level, using the new level's skills/abilities/etc
  asymptotically raises the actual character level towards the native
  level's values.  This merge process can be as long or as short as you
  want, perhaps as a function of the size of the gap.

First order problems:

  Content exhaustion occurs faster (the endless search for the "new"
  accelerates).

  Long term player retention will be lower and churn rates higher as
  game content and game goals exhaust[1] more quickly.

  Elder games occur sooner.

  Reduced obvious/immediate goals for new player and corresponding
  weakness in treadmills encourages initial game hook being weaker and
  initial player churn being higher.

Much as I like the idea and others similar to it, I'm not surprised the
commercials aren't leaping on it.

  [1] From a cynical perspective a large part of current game design can
  be said to centre around taking a given piece of content and
  repetitively running it past the player with minimal changes almost
  but not quite up to the point that he gets so annoyed with seeing it
  again that he quits.  (Based on the principle that "new" is expensive)
  Instead, as the repetition approaches the threshold a new, fresh,
  interesting item is brought in to begin the same deadening exercise.
  In this model the longer such treadmills can be run the less content
  and dangerous/complex/unpredictable design work needs to be done (ie
  lower risk) and the correspondingly higher the return on the
  development investment.  Similarly, the longer and more stretched out
  the chains of such repetitions can be stretched, the longer the
  half-life of the game in terms of player revenues.

  Of course the picture isn't quite that bleak or mechanical.  There are
  a few more feedback loops involved with a bit more complexity than
  that.

--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev