[MUD-Dev2] Specialization

[Fred Pseudonym]

> "cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
>
> I don't consider it breaking my game - I consider that /the/ game. A 
> game is about overcoming obstacles. An obstacle that can be overcome by 
> anyone, easily, isn't an obstacle.
>
> It's not success if everyone has it all.
 
Thus you have identified the art of the game designer.   A game that is too easy then people will get bored and/or finish it too quickly as no obstacles results in no fun; basically you have a very elaborate novel in a medium that simply isn't very good at telling complex stories.  A game that is too hard will frustrate most players who will then get bored and quit, leaving only the truly hardcore to blunder to the finish.  The great game designers will use pacing, story and rewards to draw the players through difficult challenges, motivating them to work through the obstacles to obtain the feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing something difficult.
 
But do not kid yourself; they want everybody to make it through those challenges so that everybody can "finish" the game.  Why spend the time to lovingly create content that you won't let a portion of your playerbase ever use?  Why do you want to frustrate some players just to try to make others feel a greater accomplishment?
 
The problem, of course, is that different players have different levels of ability and motivation which the designer has to somehow accommodate.   Non-persistent worlds can adapt to this either adjusting, either manually or automatically, the difficulty of those challenges.   Persistent worlds can't really do this because it would be odd (and likely difficult given the computational power available) for challenges to alter their difficulty based on the abilities of the people involved.   So they either keep difficulty of the challenges very low and hope the players will find some way to increase the challenge on themselves or they, much more often, simply remove skill from the equation completely.
 
D-
 


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