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

[brian at thyer.net]

Devin Smoth <devin.smoth at gmail.com> wrote ..

> Can you tell me what GM's and DM's are? I am not sure as to what
> those terms mean.

> Yeah, so who wants to pay for this? :)

Game Master..Dungeon Master..table top RP terms.  Basically someone
who, often, sets up / designs a story, adventure, quest for the
player(s) to go through..then leads them down said path.

In an MMO format it would / could be someone who designs a story
arc, a series of quests...an ingame adventure.  A small team of
dedicated individuals doing *this* job with the right tools could
crank out (I would think) a decent handful of quest per month.

But you'd need rules, standards, etc.  Some of the quests
would/could use existing art, models and ingame items.  Some (maybe
a set % per month) would require new models art textures and such
which would draw on the other resources.

It's a scaling cost....the *better* it is the more expensive it is
which does lead to your second question, "who wants to pay for
this".

The consumer both *does* and *doesn't* want to.  They're willing to
pay for the MMO experience, for access to the game the game world
and the designs created by the design team.  But while they always
expect more from the next game than they got from the last game,
they're almost completly unwilling to pay more for it.  What a
wonderful society.

So..it falls to the designers to pay for it, or not.  Maybe not pay
for it monetarily, but find a way to make it work.  Again I'm no
kind of professional designer so my ideas and suggestions are and
should be taken as amature and inexperienced.  But maybe
finding/looking for ways to build good world builder tools as part
of the games original design and development.  Hiring game and story
line managers who can double with other jobs while creating X number
of new stories / quests in the game.  Implement small amounts of
data mining to see which quests are no longer being explored so you
can relieve them (because while implementing new quests is a good
way to breath new life into the game..too many old quests can aide
you in reaching a saturation point).  Finding new ways of organizing
and structuring the time of development staff to reserve X% of hours
per week of modelers and artists to work on some of the new
requirements for content.

One thing that would probably help is a content buffer.  Meaning a
few months inbetween when a quest / story arc is built and when the
consumer plays it.  For instance, let's assume every month there's
new content released (though I would think spreading it out every
week or every few weeks would be maybe better).  So if a new story
arc is releasing December 1st you'd want to start working on it in
July.  Have it "done" by October giving a good month to two months
(depending on when in October it was done) to be tested.

I guess what I'm saying is the answer to "who's willing to pay" may
have to be the "developers" and in "time and effort" rather than a
financial situation.  I realize time is money, etc, etc..so again,
just my opinion unexperienced as it is.

 - Brian
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