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

[Adam]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> Adam Martin wrote:

>> Ouch. That is very contentious. I humbly (yet with total
>> conviction) submit that this is not true at all. Most players
>> *are afraid* of challenge (unaccustomed challenge == investment
>> of effort to break-even == possibly wasted effort if the
>> end-result turns out less than expected, or if breakeven is never
>> achieved) in a very minor way (so much so that most don't
>> recognise their negative reaction as fear); most players enjoy
>> challenge *iff* they are captivated just long enough to hit the
>> break-even - or at least to become personally convinced that the
>> break-even is coming and that it'll be worth it.

> But that argument is self-defeating in an MMORPG. If, as you
> contend, challenge = entertainment for most players, how do you
> continually raise the level of challenge such that they -never-
> hit the break-even point.  After all, if they've hit the
> break-even point and can do so consistently, where's the
> challenge? I think

(long delay in reply from being out-of-office)

Sorry, that was me being lax with terms. By "break-even" I meant
"the point at which the amount of effort invested to overcome the
challenge is paid off by an entertainment reward" (although your
interpretation of what I said may be more interesting than what I
was trying to say :)).

For instance, if a game is extremely difficult to play but is no
more fun once you've spent 50 weeks becoming intermediate at it than
a game that takes 20 minutes to become intermediate at then people
who play games more than a tiny amount will react with "Dude, this
sucks. So hard, so much work, so little [entertainment value]
reward".

I was trying to capture the concept that players are afraid of
challenges they see as being competitions not worth participating
in. I know people who IRL consider every "competition" (conceptual,
not literal) worth it, just for the thrill of winning. I know others
who consider very few "competitions" worth it and generally are
considered extremely uncompetitive by their colleagues - yet these
are competitive people, it's just they're cynical and look at a lot
of stuff and say "No, the challenge in that is unrewarding and yet
highly demanding" (i.e. it's going to be painful/stressful/a
time-sink yet give almost no payback).

For instance, if you play enough open-source games you will
encounter a fair few hack-n-slash games that are simply dull. You
can see how interesting they might get at high levels, but look at
the effort to get there and realise it's just not worth that much
effort for that little end entertainment (the means to the end being
sufficiently dull or frustrating or just plain irritating GUI etc in
itself that it's definitely a minus not a plus).

> what you're talking about works ok in games (particularly games
> without human competitors) that are meant to entertain for
> relatively short amounts of time but in a MMORPG, it seems that
> you'd have to constantly keep the players away from the break-even
> point, for hundreds or thousands of hours. I'll contend (with

(working with your understanding of the break-even concept)

...or simply have many short-lived challenges in sequence. Which,
incidentally, is what was being proposed some time ago in this
thread with the non-trivial quest-based levelling rather than
XP-based levelling.

I'm no psychologist, and pretty exhausted right now, but I'm pretty
sure there's well-trammelled ground (and IIRC it's been discussed
on-list before) on the extent to which people enjoy a series of many
challenges, each sufficiently different as to be interesitng
(pleasantly surprising?) and yet each giving a positive boost to
morale by bringing feelings of accomplishment etc. Especially true
in the stress-heavy modern world (one of the causes of stress being
the lack of small self-contained tasks, the inability to feel you
are getting traction/advancement, and the lack of accomplishments
racking up on a daily basis. (I vaguely recall that going to bed
thinking "I've achieved nothing today, but after 10 more months I'll
have achieved one big thing" is pretty bad for your state of mental
health, long-term, whereas going to bed feeling "I've done 10 tiny
things today, and I have another 1000 to do over the next 10 months"
is pretty good).

Adam M
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