Chambers167's page

I was wondering just how far in development this game is in terms of the basic fundamentals of gameplay. I understand that in terms of PR you wish to release the information in a slow fashion to build hype (although with your scaled back staggered launch it hardly seems prudent?) but i would like to ask about the leveling system in place.

I think that a typical leveling system such as those contained within SW:tor, WoW, GW (the list goes on and on....) is such a severe hamstring to developers and players a like in a much more obvious and restrictive fashion than the financing and development cycle you talk about in your blog.

It has a few typical advantages such as a more streamlined and direct leveling service and gameplay experience, a "cut and paste" leveling format that is applying throughout various expansions and new content releases thus increasing the speed these can be deployed (because the developers are familiar with the format). The main advantage of this system is that its easy to understand, bigger numbers mean more power, it is able to direct a player with ease and say in less than a second "this quest is too advanced for you", "stay away from this player he will kill you quickly".

Buts drawbacks are also numerous and imho they FAR outweigh the positive points. The first drawback from a developer stand point is that content becomes obsolete. When a dungeon is completed at level 9 and you become level ten that dungeon no longer holds interest for you, you instinctivley know that the items contained within will likely be a downgrade and to complete content in general below your "level" is not worth the time you put into it. Recently we have seen attempts by Blizzard to "re-do" several areas, instances, quests and even raids(!) so that a larger part of the player base experiences these things. Recognizing these failings why would any developer restrict there content in such a way in the future? Why would you consign months an in some cases YEARS of work to just be written off and ignored by a large part of the population and an INCREASING part of the population if the game is succesfull and grows?

The second drawback is that a finite leveling system forces people into "endgame", a series of repeatable instances/raids/quests/areas which must be added to every several months in order for the game to justify the subscription charge. It forces a cycle of development that almost CANNOT under any circumstances be diverged from (look at reaction to WoW's cataclysim expansion; revamping the "old world" heavily frowned upon because of less endgame content). In fact in most mmos that follow this formula the game before the endgame may as well not exsist, for all intents and purposes lvl 1-9 could be super mario brothers and then the real game starts when you hit level 10. The creative freedom of the developers is restricted towards how inventive new boss fights are and even then diversity is normally frowned upon.

The third drawback is the speed at which players digest said content. As time goes on and fan sites develop and players become increasingly more familiar with the game and its mechanics the rate of consumption will increase. A boss fight such as shannox in WoW considered to be "faceroll" even on heroic mode would likley have been dubbed unkillable in vanilla wow had he taken the place of lucifron (the original first raid boss). The developers are restricted more and more to create challenging fights within a severly restricted framework and severe deviation from said framework (which is no insult or slight towards the so called "holy trinnity") becomes impossible because you would essentially be changing the genre of the entire game. In a year or even three years down the line what will be the cost attached to developing a new raid tier that is bigger and better than the last tier yet will be consumed at a faster rate? When taking into consideration my first point (that content becomes obsolete)you are now looking at a considerable figure (likely the entire budget of the game each quater) of money that each 3 months is dwarfed by its sucessor while at the same time making said predecessor totally obsolete.

If a level system was eschewed content would stay relevant, as long as rewards were offered in some form. The cost of content would not increase on such a exponential rate because "out doing" older content would not be an issue. activities alternative to typical "raiding" (which is all MMO's are these days), such as exploring, crafting, political games, would offer true "alternative" styles of play as opposed to minor or simply inferior styles.

As opposed to leveling up you could allow for a stat system rooted in a base, say 10 str, 10 mag and 10 con. Each time you achived an objective, complete a full quest line, explore a hard to reach location ect a new stat point is granted up to a certain number, say 10 more stat points. When the player has achieved a total of his/her 30 base plus an extra ten specialisation can occur whereby he can reduce his mag by one to increase his str by one. Not only would this keep leveling at bay it would also allow newer players to catch up in a relativley short time, somthing that is impossible in game like darkfall or eve.

But anyway i wanted to talk more the theory of systems than recomend my own systems which im sure are also flawed to hell and back! What do you guys and gals think of the problems i have mentioned with typical leveling systems?

Having been a MMO player since ultima online (although i had only a very brief stint in the game) i looked upon the blog posts discussing your "business" plan and became very intrigued. The first part of my post is just somthing i wanted to say but the second part is the actual question/problem i wish to pose.
Ever since i played WAR i always wondered why the developers of that game chose to develop such an absolute mass of tiered content that excluded other content at the same time. It seemed to me a terrible waste of resources. Had they developed just one scenario (order vs chaos for example) and then tuned or changed the other tiers to respond to feedback from the first they would have;
a) reduced development time by 1/3rd
b) ensured a massive amount of players funneled into the areas that need a critical mass of players ( i.e pvp areas, which is similar to your observation that a sandbox title needs a certain mass of player in order to function correctly)
and c) ensured a steady release of content of absolutley mammoth size tailored to your existing player base.

On to the problem i would like to mention, it relates to games such as darkfall, ultima, eve, and even to a lesser extent somthing like wow (and EQ?). If player intakes are so stunted what effects will this have on the game itself? although you listed all the positives in your blog such as a controlled income assuming a high drop out rate of subs, steady population size which is a help for developing content as well as hardware configs and increased feedback to which your game may be tailored (how many times have i heard a mmo PR say that they will listen to the players....), i feel you are either ignoring or blanking out the negatives of this point.

The first and most obvious observation would be; who will the intital X amount of players be? Its likley they will be the very same people who have already racked up dozens of posts on this very forum assuming they hold there interest. This creates a problem because if the developers are true to there word and listen to these players then the game will already be tailored towards them and if the first intake consists purely or mostly of these people feedback will be limited, dissappointing and biased.

The second point comes from a much more financial stand in regards to how to turn players AWAY from your mmo. If you have your active forums and your initial player intake it is inevitable that by "listening" to the player base the devs will likely continue to turn, at an ever increasing rate, to the more vocal memebers of the intial community, the people they feel they have built a rapport with. This is both obvious and natural. Prime examples of this would be the CSM in eve (although that particular body appears to work extremely well), the fact that a lead designer in WoW got his job through being in a guild with a blizzard employee (i know its a very naive way to say it but anyone in the know should understand my POV), In darkfall the top guilds were regularly quizzed on how to improve the game, Again in WoW players early on were given chances to see future content and go on private test servers just for being in a top guild, infact the first wave of beta invites for warcrafts second expansion (after FnF) were to the players in top guilds. Now this is all well and good but the problem i have is; why start a game that has a small family community where the devs listen to the players if as has become the norm numerous times, the players who are listened to are always the earliest adopters, the strongest players, the fastest levelers, the biggest guilds ect ect. Why would i WANT to play a game like darkfall or EVE when i know there are people in a standing both in game and "politically" that i can never surpass or match?