Progression (Price of Admission)

[Slamz]

In my "living world" theory, I'm speculating that "world advancement" can replace "character advancement" almost entirely.

That is, you'll be so happy with your progress in the war effort, expanding your faction holdings, etc, that you no longer need much character advancement.

But SOME character advancement seems necessary. A soldier who has seen a thousand battles seems like he should have some advantages over a soldier who is in his first battle, and I mean this on the character level, not just the player level. On the other hand, a character that's innately superior to another character can make for very unhappy PvP moments where, realistic or not, it's not much fun to just get cut down by someone who has played 3x more than you.


So I'm not sure where to go with this.


Perhaps "diminishing returns"? After 1 hour of gameplay, you are vastly better off than when you started. After 2 hours of gameplay, you are better off, but not twice as good. After 20 hours of gameplay, the amount of personal gains you can make start to become very limited and factional advancement replaces character advancement.

Perhaps "customization"? Maybe there are 20 game skills and each skill can go from 0 to 100. You start the game with 1000 skill points (enough to max out 50% of the game skills) and that's all you will ever get. These points start off distributed in a certain way and all you can do from then on is work to redistribute them. Like you can specify "-magic" and "+sword" and as you swing your sword, it will take points from your magic skill and put it into your sword skill.


Basically what I DON'T want is to get a new fireball spell at level 25 and then have to spend the next two hours leveling to 26. I don't need two hours of practice with this ability before I'm ready to advance.

But I'm not positive that "factional advancement" will be enough to satisfy the RPG crowd.

[Hoofhurr]

Are you trying to tell me that socialism should replace individualism as the motivating force in a virtual world? That's almost heretical! Seriously though, I agree that a very large segment of your gaming population is going to need something closer to personal advancement to keep them playing everyday. Any sort of perceived contribution towards one's own faction is usually fairly limited and not a strong motivating factor for most. Whether that's because ultimately no single individual has a large impact on the game or the feedback mechanism informing the player about the significance of his/her impact is simply inadequate, I'm not sure.

[Slamz]

My idea is that people will identify with their faction, so that an improvement they helped make possible at Vampire Village Alpha will be seen in the same light as a new hat that they looted from a bag: something that they worked for and earned and can now reap the rewards of.

Rather than placing the reward in their inventory, it's placed on the ground for everyone to see. Possibly it looks like a building. Perhaps a new mine. But they can identify it as a symbol of their personal accomplishment since they helped make it possible.


EVE and World War 2 Online both do something like this. Planetside did, too, but not on any lasting term.

Like I participated in a particularly awesome fight in WW2O a couple days ago, where we saved a German town from capture by the skin of our teeth in a 4 hour battle. Two days later I could log in and see that we still held the town and that's my "Flowing Black Silk Sash". My 4-hour camp basically gave me a town on the map.

Of course, the association isn't that strong because that town doesn't do anything personally for me, now that I helped save it, but in our "Living World" game, there would be some very distinct benefits for saving a town from enemy takeover, or perhaps even just fighting to TRY and save it, even if it ultimately falls. (Your favorite blacksmith is dead, but the blacksmith in the next town appreciates your effort to try and save him.)