11-16-2011, 09:47 AM
For myself, a game needs both elements to hold me. Probably my favorite MMO to date has been DAoC because it had both personal incentive and team incentive. A game that has only one of those two elements can be fun for me but its ability to hold me for a long time are questionable.
There is a thrill to improving your character whether it be through gear or through skill advancement through a system like DAoC's realm rank system or the new Planar Attunement added to Rift. It is a character advancement element that gives you something to be constantly striving for to improve yourself. I realize this has nothing to do with gear. It is an alternate path to character improvement and one I prefer to the gear treadmill. That was another thing I really liked about DAoC - you did not need a whole lot of gear obtained through rare drops from PvE content, player crafted gear could get you by just fine and pretty much any gear set, even at end game, was going to have player crafted gear as part of the set.
By the same token there is a thrill to achieving an objective that advances your side in a conflict. DAoC managed this through two different avenues. There was the whole Frontier system with the towers and keeps and the number of towers and keeps you controlled had an impact on your side. Then there were the relics which were yet another objective that had an impact on the side as a whole. This is where Rift currently fails - there is no driving force behind PvP or PvE beyond what it does for you personally.
I think that to have a real chance at holding people long term that a game needs both of these. Either one by itself, I think, will fail to hold a large number of people for an extended time.
There is a thrill to improving your character whether it be through gear or through skill advancement through a system like DAoC's realm rank system or the new Planar Attunement added to Rift. It is a character advancement element that gives you something to be constantly striving for to improve yourself. I realize this has nothing to do with gear. It is an alternate path to character improvement and one I prefer to the gear treadmill. That was another thing I really liked about DAoC - you did not need a whole lot of gear obtained through rare drops from PvE content, player crafted gear could get you by just fine and pretty much any gear set, even at end game, was going to have player crafted gear as part of the set.
By the same token there is a thrill to achieving an objective that advances your side in a conflict. DAoC managed this through two different avenues. There was the whole Frontier system with the towers and keeps and the number of towers and keeps you controlled had an impact on your side. Then there were the relics which were yet another objective that had an impact on the side as a whole. This is where Rift currently fails - there is no driving force behind PvP or PvE beyond what it does for you personally.
I think that to have a real chance at holding people long term that a game needs both of these. Either one by itself, I think, will fail to hold a large number of people for an extended time.
Zirak / Thanoslug in lots of MMOs
![[Image: homicidal.jpg]](http://www.thanoslug.com/images/homicidal.jpg)
"Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead." -Margaret Thatcher
"Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead." -Margaret Thatcher