DGN: Emergent Behaviors spawned from - Re: [MUD-Dev]SOC:Willcompany sanctioned cheating hurt theMMOcommunity?

[Damien Neil]

On 7/20/05, cruise at casual-tempest.net <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> Which was pretty much my point - why is the only large-scale (ie.
> requiring several standard groups) content the enourmous
> several-hour long high-end raids? Why don't more games have
> smaller, easier, shorter versions for lower levels? If the answer
> is because the only reason for them is the loot drops, and players
> don't otherwise enjoy the process, then there's obviously a more
> fundamental question of why is your combat system so unenjoyable?
> Or, should you perhaps give out more than just loot and XP - a
> badge system (like AA or CoH) that records the acheivement long
> after any loot gained has been discarded.

It takes quite a bit of time and effort to organize enough people
for a large-scale multi-group raid.  Having the raid last a long
time helps ensure that you don't spend more time getting the group
together than actually raiding.

At any scale, it's frustrating to spend a couple hours gathering
people for something that's over in minutes.

Regarding enjoyability, players will generally seek the simplest,
most reliable, and fastest form of advancement, regardless of how
much they like it.  If they can advance farther by spending eight
hours camping a single spawn than by going on a four-hour raid,
they'll never raid--and they'll tell you that your game is boring,
even if the raid content that they never play is wildly
entertaining.

This leads to a vicious cycle where developers make raid rewards
uber enough to attract players, which forces them to make the raids
difficult enough to keep the power economy in balance.

               - Damien
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