[MUD-Dev2] [Design] [REPOST] Food in MMOs

[Ian Hess]

Lachek Butalek <lachek at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Yeah, well, see, that's just stupid, and part of the problem. Anyone
> designer who favoured any amount of realism in their game should not
> have players fighting birds with a sword - or potentially dying from
> it. The issue there is that players want (or, people *think* players
> want) to see drastic increases in character ability every few hours of
> gameplay. This leads developers to set the power scale in the game to
> range from "Slug" to "God-Like", rather than "Commoner" or perhaps
> "Hero-in-Training" to "Accomplished Hero". This would cause the kind
> of critters you would face to range from, say, "Giant Rat" or "Kobold"
> to "Troll King". This would not make for a worse, less fun game (in
> fact, it would make for a better game with more fun due to increased
> ability to suspend disbelief) but may require a wee bit more patience
> or at least appreciation for subtlety from the players.
>
<snip>

I've noticed Achiever personalities in particular tend to have
thresholds for perceiving growth or finding the time worthwhile to spend
for a goal.  

In quite a few games, I think you can measure a 5-10% threshold in
additional power to get an achiever excited about a new skill or piece
of gear.  I say this because of watching players interact with auction
house sales, analyzing the relative "leetness" of a new crafting
pattern, or how a quest reward might adjust the time to reward equation. 

One of the ways I look to identify achievers are the players who are
aware of time to return ratio of an activity in a game.  Even if they
aren't good at math, the difference between a standard 20-30 second wow
solo fight, and a 17-25 second solo fight is noticeable, either in terms
of the pace of repeating tasks, or the pile of rewards per kill x time
over an hour.  If you start looking at hardcore grinding, long kill the
foozle quests, or instance runs, speed and efficiency become easier to
track.

I found alot of this clearly illustrated listening to EQ and WOW healer
discussions and forum entries.  In Wow in particular, I've seen alot of
gearing discussions about healing per point of mana spent ratios.

I agree that retitling the foes or titles to mark progress would really
help present a "good" game environment.  However, I think the bigger
issue is how to have the many times compounded 5-10% power jump for
achiever content mesh well with the kinds of content other motivations
care about.

Ian Hess