06-01-2009, 10:26 AM
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.
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.