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

[John Buehler]

Aurel Mihai writes:

> John and Damion both brought up a lot of good points a short while
> ago.. Levels and experience in gaming are unrealistic because there
> really aren't any numbers in nature.

Note that my comments about realism have nothing to do with numbers.  Nature
is chock full of numbers.  Pick up any physics book and you'll be inundated
with them.  The root difficulty with current games is that the entire game
experience is stratified.  To a degree, it's almost like playing a series of
completely different games.

> I suppose this could bring up two questions: how is this different
> from experience/levels and why is it better. It's different because
> the user doesn't see the numbers.

At the gym that I go to, we hear little public service messages from time to
time.  One of them is "What gets measured gets improved".  I'm a fan of not
showing numbers to the player.  Apart from that, there is the question of
whether or not the numbers are significant to the player's behavior.

Imagine World of Warcraft without any numbers displayed to the players.  It
would still be World of Warcraft.  It would operate the same way.  There
would be more experimentation and analysis, just as there is in the real
world, but ultimately it would be about advancing skills.  Without the
numbers to guide them, many players would be unhappy because they were
"wasting time" killing monsters that were too low for them.  Or getting
killed by monsters that were too high for them.  The analysis-minded players
would have a field day publishing guides for this or that system, but
ultimately the game remains about levels.

So it's not levels and experience per se.  It's that stratification thing.
It's an awesome way to let players feel a sense of accomplishment.  It is
letting a player feel superior to other players when there's no actual
superiority.  Vain self-glory is a powerfully-tempting sin and the games
industry leverages it very well.

Unfortunately, once stratification becomes the core of a game experience,
entertainment apart from achievement is very difficult to present.  Move
achievement to being a peer of other forms of entertainment and you've got
the next step in the evolution of massively multiplayer gaming.  Achievement
has to step aside and make room.

JB