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

[John Buehler]

Damion Schubert writes:

> 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.

I wonder how many replies here have countered a point that was never
made.

"Too great a departure from reality" was my attempt at saying that the
use of levels as the primary structure of entertainment in games is too
limiting.  It departs from reality *so severely* that any attempt at
employing many other entertainment structures simply goes down in
flames.

> > 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.

Yes, levels are very good at what they do.  The same could be said of
concrete and steel to hold things together.  When you want to bend
something, all that concrete and steel begins to get in the way.  In a
world dominated by concrete and steel, nobody even thinks about fluid
movement. Thinking is dominated by robot-like joints, elastic collisions
and such. Levels are too restrictive.

> 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.

I have zero problem with achiever schemes.  I think that achievement is
a perfectly viable means of entertaining people.  However, it should not
be the backbone of a game's structure.  Because it is too damaging to
the game designers' ability to add other types of entertainment to the
game.

Everything in level games becomes a level game.  It's nearly impossible
to have non-achievement entertainment in level games.  Explorers can't
explore because the monsters are far too dangerous in most of the world.
Socializers can't socialize because their friends are the wrong level.
Crafters never actually craft because they are bound by the same rules
of 'power' as the levelers.

My summary means of saying all that was that level games are too great a
departure from reality.

In contrast, consider a game that doesn't use levels as they are
employed today.  So you have a human character that does things.  How
can achievement be entertainment in such a game?  Well, how about king
of the mountain in duels between characters?  How about the best time to
reach the top of Mt. Foobar?  How about most orc kills?  Richest
character?  Having a complete set of Gorbil stones?  Highest political
position?  Largest land owner? Fastest ship?

The number of ways that achievement can be worked into a game are
countless - but only if the game isn't fundamentally structured around
levels.  A "real" world isn't a necessary step in having a game with
many types of entertainment in it, but a non-level world sure seems to
be.

> 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.

I can only disagree.  You see power fantasy and I see a spectrum of
other motivations.

> 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.

There's a lot of truth to what you say because there are people who play
for those reasons.  There are also people who play to socialize,
explore, compete, build and to have many other experiences besides. 
None of those things require a level treadmill.  Yet the level treadmill
is the very essence of current games.

> 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.

I'll certainly try harder to understand  :)

JB