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Content killing
Vagabond80
Member UncommonPosts: 36
So I've been noticing a trend in end games lately... A lot of games tend to raid focus at end game to keep people busy while they develop new content. Then when the new content is delivered the level cap goes up and the old content is obsolete. Going to use LOTRO as an example here but it works on many more game. Moria was released the level cap went from 50 to 60 and suddenly entire regions of the world are barren. Certain dungeons/instances went from being performed 20x a day to being performed maybe once a week if a kin feels nostolgic.
My question is, what is the solution to this? Sandbox vs themepark aside since this would only occur in a themepark game. However, anyonw know why devs/companies keep grinding out content like this when all it really does is kill your old content and simply move the line a bit further 'up' in level?
Does content really have to be less than the sum of all the parts?
Comments
I don't see it as a problem.
The old content is suppose to become obosolete. It hurts new players. But the core gamer have grinded the old content so much and want to move on.
The answer is quite simple in theory, hard in appliication.
It starts with choosing your maxium power tier(DPS, HPS, CC ability, and similar) and never ever raising that bar.
To aid this you're also going to go with a skill based system, Then severly limit how many skills you can use in the battle(IE weapon requirements, energy requirements, magi focus requirements, time, and investment requirements) the goal being that a person only brings around 5-6 skills and a few dozen abilities that they can use at any one time. Of course the sole reason for being skill based isn't to be hip and trend, it's so that people can keep leveling if they choose to(even if they can't use everything at the same time), and to make it so when you decide to expand your game you just expand utility(add new skills) and the number of ways to do things.
edit: you also can not screw yourself over in the two ways that EvE did: with passive skills that have no requirements for their bonuses, and with 15 some layers of skill requirements(keep it at 2 or 3).
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
This makes sense if the only person you care about is yourself. As games get older they need newbies a whole lot more than they need 'core' gamers. Killing content with each new patch doesn't affect the core gamer much but it discourages new players from trying the game and limits the content that they can perform. The game basically has the same content as it did at launch for them, it just takes longer to get there. The older the game will get the more 'core'' gamers it will hemmorage(sp?) and the new gamers have been discouraged from playing which is a net disadvantage for both the company and the community.
Well the actual game mechanic causing that isn't "killing content", but rather the gap between beginning and endgame for a new player, and any motivating factors for veterans to return to the content in the middle of the gap (ideally with some form of COH-like Exemplar system so gameplay isn't utterly ruined by the presence of an overpowered character.)
I dunno, WOW has done alright. If you're a new player, 1-57 is faster than ever, getting you to the more interesting 58-80 expansion quests.
It would be reasonable to suggest WOW re-uses some of the old dungeons as new max-level content (as they've done with Onyxia). Especially at the start of a new expansion, where new dungeons are outnumbered by the old ones.
It would also be reasonable to implement an Exemplar system (like COH) where a level 80 can join up with the level 40 char doing a level 40 dungeon. While there, the level 80 character will have his damage/stats nerfed to level 40 levels (so the gameplay of the dungeon isn't utterly ruined.) The reason for the level 80 char to do this is to earn tokens from each boss that go towards a unique set of loot (just like many of the other token systems in WOW; perhaps it even yields the same type of tokens.)
But overall I don't see "content killing" significantly hurting a game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This makes sense if the only person you care about is yourself. As games get older they need newbies a whole lot more than they need 'core' gamers. Killing content with each new patch doesn't affect the core gamer much but it discourages new players from trying the game and limits the content that they can perform. The game basically has the same content as it did at launch for them, it just takes longer to get there. The older the game will get the more 'core'' gamers it will hemmorage(sp?) and the new gamers have been discouraged from playing which is a net disadvantage for both the company and the community.
I'll felt more discourage as anew player if I need to get through all the old content to catch up.
What does it matter anyway, with new patch there's enough new content for new player too.
They could build the world vertically instead of horizontally. They could have rewards other than material rewards, such as items, that do not become obsolete, perhaps even shifting bonuses if it was a faction-based PvP game. Basically you have to make the journey more fun than the finish. Terrain or dungeons that are randomly generated, or whole worlds that reset at certain intervals. I don't know, just spewing.
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