[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Damion Schubert]

On 8/17/07, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
>
> Thus spake John Buehler...
> >
> > I'd love it if designers would stop expending their time and talent on
> creating yet another leveling treadmill and instead start working on how to
> bring greater depth to the experience through simulations of physics,
> economy, behavior and so on.  I've had enough of the grade school games.  I
> just can't play them anymore, and I figure that creating a rather more
> stable world environment for the designers to work in would help
> immeasurably.  Level games are just too great a departure from reality.


Realism is the Atalantan Apple of online design - a tempting distraction
from the goal
of making truly engrossing and compelling virtual worlds.


> Agreed. Levels are a crutch because we have lacked the technical
> abilities (or maybe just the will?) to create an engrossing world that
> doesn't use the treadmill hook to keep people playing.
>
> That should, can, and I hope, will change.
>

Levels persist because they are very good at what they do.  It's very easy
to fall into the
trap of thinking that players shouldn't be interested in personal character
growth inside
of the gamespace, and that the true growth should be around what happens on
the server.
In my experience, most players are interested in the goings on of world
games like politics
and city building, but only the top 1-5% of them (the movers and shakers who
can truly shape
the world with their actions) are invested in them.  Character advancement
schemes
make these games something where all players are invested.

Popular entertainment is, for the most part, about power fantasy.  This is
absolutely true
for music (heavy metal, rap, even Mozart) and movies (Die Hard, Lord of the
Rings).  This
is especially true for interactive media, due to the experiential nature of
video games.
Players play these games to visit fantastic places, and feel exceptional in
them.  They
most certainly don't do it to feel normal.  Even more, they don't want to
feel like they've
made no personal progress, with no clear path of getting better, and with no
way to make
a difference.  That feeling of aimless powerlessness is what they play video
games to
escape.  Focusing on realism is edging towards making niche games for
nihilists.

Incidentally, my talk at AGC was on the very topic of levels and experience
points in MMOs
and why they persist. In that talk, as I am here, I urge people to not do
levels and experience
points because that's what has been done before.  However, it's worth at
least understanding
why these models have been so effective.

       http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=713


--d