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

[ceo]

Matt Mihaly wrote:
> Travis Casey wrote:

>> This isn't unique to MMORPGs; you can see it in classic D&D as
>> well.  The "Monty Haul" campaign is an expression of it -- the
>> PCs are set up to be able to take down even gods with massive
>> overkill, and rack up treasure and levels as if they're points in
>> a video game.

> Yep.

Uh, but Monty-Haul campaigners tend to grow out of it, don't they?
Sooner or later, they realise that what they are doing is dull and
boring, and one of the conclusions is that this is because it lacks
challenge.

Ditto with mainstream games and "trainer" patches and cheats: the
many people I've known who've used these to get full access to
everything in games have very very rapidly grown weary of them, and
either stopped playing entirely or gone back to the "traditional"
game because it may be less instantly rewarding yet it is much more
"fun" in the long-term. Random observations suggest a fully cheated
game runs out of replayability in around 20 hours of gameplay,
whereas the non-cheated one is replayable for around 200 hours or as
much as 2000 (these approximate values and ratios I've seen in
everything from RTS's to traditional CRPG's to monty-hauls like
Diablo, across a wide number of players).

Actually, a lot who simply stopped returned to the non-cheated game
a year (or several) later, and shied away from the cheats. As they
get more and more expert at the game (not just playing it, but
understanding it) they may use the cheats in a very limited way -
e.g. to circumvent or correct a particular design flaw
(e.g. imbalance in character abilities) that was realised
post-release of the game and never patched.

> The difficulty is that you can't fool players forever. If they
> always win, they will pick up on that and the illusion disappears.

(which is what I was just describing)

> If they don't always win, they complain. I think the

But...don't they quickly learn, given the opportunity, how shallow
it is, and then stop complaining? Or is it just random chance that
most (I think in fact "all") those I've seen have eventually learnt
it?

> grind as implemented in most games does a decent job of catering
> to what players want. Yes, they theoretically can die in many
> encounters and perhaps if they didn't drink enough coffee that day
> they'll fall asleep at the keyboard and it'll actually happen.

I agree it does something of a good compromise job (c.f. previous
post tonight), but I still think surprisingly many players would be
happier with more challenge if they were forced to try it :).

Adam M
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