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

[Vincent Archer]

According to Caliban Darklock:
> Changing "eventually" to "immediately" is not even remotely
> revolutionary. It's a minor change to the existing system. It doesn't
> even solve or fix anything.

It's not a minor change, it's a qualitative change. In the achievement
system, you get a mark for doing something exactly once, and no more.

You can repeat it, and find a way of getting something for the repetition,
cash, crafting materials, items, but that's not going to be in the form
of level.

> That's black and white thinking. If ANY of the enjoyment comes from
> the advancement, it's now less enjoyable. You're trying to decouple
> advancement from enjoyment, but to the vast majority of players, the
> advancement IS the enjoyment. For those who don't enjoy advancement,
> this kind of game is usually stupid and pointless

Actually, real achievers hate the kind of activity you're advocating.
Slaughtering hordes of unchallenging mobs for the "ding" sound is not
remotely interesting. The ONLY reason they keep doing it is because it
happens to be the fastest way they found of getting their next power-up.

Games that feature an xp-based advancement system have tried a lot
of contorsion to remove the kind of mechanism you seem bent of pushing.
Since my original post (which was in sept. 2004), games like World of
Warcraft (which debuted the month after) or Lord of the Rings Online
have done all they could to offer the player a path of minimum repetition.
They've pushed the concept of quests, non-repeatable ones, as the best
path, in terms of level/hour.

> IT'S A NAIL.

No it's not.

If you persist at wanting the game to reward you every single minute
you spend in-game, then my umbrella is a real poor hammer: it's not
going to give you what you want. My level is not the level you want.
Your level is the reward for time spent in game. My level is the
reward for things done in game. See the difference?

I *do not want to reward time spent in game*. That's the furthest
thing from my mind. Merely spending time, doing things that are trivial
and even easily automated should not have any form of reward. If you
want them to have one, my umbrella is not going to hit your nail very
well, because I do not want to hit your nail.

Now, before you start again:

> treat" system we use with dogs - and your system looks very much like
> a "bad dog no biscuit" method of forcing players into the behavior you
> find desirable.

... my goal was never to make WoW2. If I want to make a mass appeal
game with 1 million subscribers, I'm going to use tried and true methods,
with as much variety of possible behaviours I can reward. And using the
well-known methods to hook players - which is good, nice, steady stream
of rewards. XP.

However, if I want a game that is extremely elitist, in which high-level
characters are in fact high-skilled players, that's what I'm going to
look for. As originally said:

> Some players will also find themselves locked out of higher levels.
> Unless they manage to master enough aspects of the game, it is
> physically impossible for them, no matter how long they can play per
> week, to access the higher end of the game

Note that the above is already true in games like WoW. A lot of people
can't access the higher end of the game - because that higher end is
no longer level-based. At one point, the level system breaks down as
a measure of your progression, and you resort to other mechanisms, like
item-based progression.

-- 
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)