[MUD-Dev2] Reasons for Play [was: City of Heroes tangent]

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

> Thus spake Michael Hartman...
> > The presence of a levelling grind badly exposes the lack of variety in
> > gameplay in CoX. Grinding out your 400th warehouse mission in a row is a
> > lot more glaring of a problem when it is what you have to do in order to
> > make that next level. Pursuit of badges and completion of task
> > forces/strike forces would be a more rewarding element of the game if
> > you didn't have to worry about grinding xp.
>
> I think this is the reason we disagree, and is something many MMOG's
> have lost sight of.
>
> I'm not playing through my 4000th (no typo :) warehouse mission for that
> next level.
>
> I'm playing through it because it's fun. The actual activity involved in
> "subduing" the various opponents is, for me, inherently enjoyable. I
> couldn't care less about the XP. I still play my maxed level 50 in
> simple zone sweeping. Purely because it's fun, even after 3+ years.
>
> I'm not motivated by achievements; goals do not make me play if the
> activity required to achieve them is uninteresting.
>
> Players have become trained in CRPG's to treat the reward as the reason
> for playing. There was a thread recently on the CoX boards asking for an
> XP boost for a certain class of enemy, because fighting them is (and I
> do agree here) somewhat dull, and they're being ignored.
>
> Surely the correct reaction should be to want the fight to be interesting?
>
> Current games are focused entirely on the rewards, without making the
> actual gameplay itself satisfying, and players are now apparently
> educated to expect this type of game.

Hear, hear!

Here's a sincere question for anyone who has been involved with developing a
published game in the action genre: why are combat systems the way they are?
Is it inertia from the past, failure to find a new sweet spot, simple
enjoyment of things the way they are, difficulty in producing anything much
more involved than exists today, something else?

The systems that spring to mind for me invariably cannot be done in a
massive setting because of the computational demands and/or the inability to
trust the client.  Are developers in the game outfits toying with new combat
systems, or do they like to spend their play time on other areas of game
development?

JB