[MUD-Dev2] Players are shallow [was: The Future of Quests]

[cruise]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2009, Amanda Walker wrote:

> One part of that formula is that quest-givers and reward-givers are
> vending machines.  The story can be engaging or not (and some of them
> are surprisingly so), but the mechanics of the leveling/questing grind
> (which we've gone round and round about on mud-dev for years, possibly
> decades :-)) has become part of the genre, as have some others (the
> basic "health/mana" scheme, armor and weapons and "dps", etc.).

Players do not know what will be fun.
People naturally prefer easy and shallow over complex and rewarding. 
Unfortunately, things are worth what you pay for them, and so the easier 
something is to get, the less satisfying it will be.
This is a problem for anyone trying to produce a "popular" game, and hence 
we see the trend towards the grind and vending machine NPCs as the 
predominant gameplay element.

I too would love a deeper, more engaging world, but I fear such a thing 
will always be doomed to obscurity, simply because most people would not 
be willing to put in the extra effort required to access the content.