09-18-2009, 04:10 PM
Yeah, it's not so much that it's killing MMOs, but rather, that it's really difficult to build a game for. How can you reconcile personal improvement with the need to be able to bring in new players and let them immediately join their friends? Or how can you make enough content to drive personal improvement from start to never-ending-finish? Excessive personal improvement would make that difficult.
But the "wargame" concept works well.
It's like an army assaulting a fort. Here's a sergeant that's on the front lines, blowing up the front gate and charging in. There's a sergeant that's on the back lines, overseeing the cooking of pork chops. In the RPG model, the front line guy should become ten times stronger and be rewarded with a solid gold rifle while the back line guy should be able to make pork chops that renders him invulnerable for 5 minutes and which he could sell on the auction house for $1500 each. In the wargame model, they would both just make sergeant pay, although the frontline guy might be a little better at shooting rifles and the backline guy might be a little better at cooking pork chops, it's not going to be extreme.
Overdoing personal rewards just ends up being really silly, if nothing else.
But the "wargame" concept works well.
It's like an army assaulting a fort. Here's a sergeant that's on the front lines, blowing up the front gate and charging in. There's a sergeant that's on the back lines, overseeing the cooking of pork chops. In the RPG model, the front line guy should become ten times stronger and be rewarded with a solid gold rifle while the back line guy should be able to make pork chops that renders him invulnerable for 5 minutes and which he could sell on the auction house for $1500 each. In the wargame model, they would both just make sergeant pay, although the frontline guy might be a little better at shooting rifles and the backline guy might be a little better at cooking pork chops, it's not going to be extreme.
Overdoing personal rewards just ends up being really silly, if nothing else.