[MUD-Dev] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Vincent Archer]

According to Matt Mihaly:

> I'd suggest just looking at the evidence first, which is pretty
> clear-cut, and then drawing your conclusions: Many, many players
> enjoy the grind.

...

> I think a lot of people on this list want to believe that everyone
> in the world wants to play like he or she wants to play.

Note that I don't think everybody full understood the original point
of the thread.

Rewarding achievements instead of XP grinding is extremely elitist.
It's not really a mass-market friendly system. Having time isn't
enough; you need time *and* some skill at the game. If you lack
time, you're going to progress more slowly, but if you lack skill,
or the will to explore and take risks, you will eventually stop
progressing *before* the maximum available level.

People complain often that they don't have enough time compared the
"kiddies" who play 12h a day, but, with a time-based xp system, they
do have the illusion that, sooner of later, they're going to "catch
up". It takes them a year of slow grinding, but they can do it.

Of course, it's a fallacy. The 12h-a-day crowd hasn't stood still,
they've gone and improved themselves in ways that are orthogonal to
the level. The casual Everquest player says to himself "I'm 65 like
the others", where the others are 65, plus 600 AA (the XP equivalent
of 50 additional levels), and have also accumulated enough raid
equipment to have twice the hit points, AC, mana, resists, whatever.

But that's a different discussion (having a good metric to measure a
character's strength, using all of its abilities/extra spells/uber
equipment), for which I have a completely incompatible approach.

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)
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