The only way to really not invalidate old content is to either 1) force-ably scale people down to the difficulty of the intended content (via levels, gear, skill points, what ever) or 2) make a game that isn't static content centric. (where content is constantly changing, evolving, adapting, and the game world is never the same two days in a row.) 3) Rely on 100% player generated content in the form of PVP & intra game polotics etc (eve, darkfall, minecraft, etc)
The first option needs to drop gear appropriate for the normal power level of the player. Be that level, damage, armor, or what ever. So that there is incentive to go back to older content. GW2 is sort of like this, but there's not a huge incentive to go back to older content unless your an achievement whore. There needs to be a much better reason to go back....
The second option just has never been done. I can't even imagine the programming systems that would be required to have new content constantly being added to the point where no two days would ever be the same. The closest thing I've ever heard of even coming close to this would be EQN, and we all know how that turned out...
The third option is tried and true, but it's definitely not for everyone, and frankly it's not for a majority of players. EVE has it's issues for sure.... but at least of these 3 systems... it's been done.
There is actually another way to make old content relevant years later. Its a combination of good itemization and having proper progression. If you can't kill mobs in x expansion without the items (both group and raid) from the previous, old content is suddenly necessary for any new guild. If items are unique, people will actually want to do older content as well. Perhaps mobs have ultra rare items, something with a clickable buff or damage modifier. In a game that revolves heavily around situational gear, that type of thing can provide a lot of incentive to go back to older content.
On the other hand, you shouldn't necessarily be bound to go all the way back to the beginning 5 years into the game. I think it should be about options, and if you want to gear up without raiding older content, you could focus on higher level group content. If you want to gear up faster, you raid low level content. Options.
Of course, both scenarios assume a very gradual level of item power increase. If everything from a previous expansion, or even 2 expansions back is worthless compared to the current items, there is no fixing that. No one will even think about doing old content.
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
So the plan is to allow players continue to cycle through levels if they wish, once you hit max level and complete everything you want to do, retire your character and start from level 1 with an extra enhancement or two depending on what you specialized in with the previous character, which could be Blacksmithing, for example, which being a Master Blacksmith and retiring, your new Progeny would have better knowledge of the Blacksmithing trade compared to a brand new level 1 player, which may grant faster experience gain, better chance at success, knowledge of a higher tier of blueprints/plans/recipe etc.
This also populates all areas at all levels, which keeps the game alive at low to mid range levels as these are usually the areas that suffer the most in group based games due to everyone being bottlenecked into max level aside from alts and brand new players who are usually overwhelmed and unable to find proper groups to experience the game with, the way it was intended.
We will release more information about this system as development continues, but I thought it would be good to mention for this topic.
Developers simply got super lazy and super cheap.Rather than create content to keep players coming back,they create new baited ideas based on chasing that one new weapon upgrade.
Not only is old gear being outdated VERY quickly so are the original zones.We really are no longer playing "GAMES" we are simply playing 1-2 zones where ever that one weapon we are chasing takes us and that is sad gaming.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
So the plan is to allow players continue to cycle through levels if they wish, once you hit max level and complete everything you want to do, retire your character and start from level 1 with an extra enhancement or two depending on what you specialized in with the previous character, which could be Blacksmithing, for example, which being a Master Blacksmith and retiring, your new Progeny would have better knowledge of the Blacksmithing trade compared to a brand new level 1 player, which may grant faster experience gain, better chance at success, knowledge of a higher tier of blueprints/plans/recipe etc.
This also populates all areas at all levels, which keeps the game alive at low to mid range levels as these are usually the areas that suffer the most in group based games due to everyone being bottlenecked into max level aside from alts and brand new players who are usually overwhelmed and unable to find proper groups to experience the game with, the way it was intended.
We will release more information about this system as development continues, but I thought it would be good to mention for this topic.
Sounds ok,... i do prefer the AA approach for advancement tho. Will we get both? :-) Also, if i date a really dark girl and have a child... and i "retire", will i be able to pick Necromancer as my class?
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
What about children of children? Do they benefit from parents and grandparents? How many times can you do this?
"My name is Inigo Montoya. Progeny. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
So the plan is to allow players continue to cycle through levels if they wish, once you hit max level and complete everything you want to do, retire your character and start from level 1 with an extra enhancement or two depending on what you specialized in with the previous character, which could be Blacksmithing, for example, which being a Master Blacksmith and retiring, your new Progeny would have better knowledge of the Blacksmithing trade compared to a brand new level 1 player, which may grant faster experience gain, better chance at success, knowledge of a higher tier of blueprints/plans/recipe etc.
This also populates all areas at all levels, which keeps the game alive at low to mid range levels as these are usually the areas that suffer the most in group based games due to everyone being bottlenecked into max level aside from alts and brand new players who are usually overwhelmed and unable to find proper groups to experience the game with, the way it was intended.
We will release more information about this system as development continues, but I thought it would be good to mention for this topic.
Sounds ok,... i do prefer the AA approach for advancement tho. Will we get both? :-) Also, if i date a really dark girl and have a child... and i "retire", will i be able to pick Necromancer as my class?
We have discussed AAs too so while not set in stone it could be an option alongside the Progeny system, we will have to wait and see.
Haha! I like your thinking, we have plans for Bards and Necros but as Brad has said in the past, they may not make it into release, it will depend on a lot of things but for now, we know how much interest is shown for these two classes
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
What about children of children? Do they benefit from parents and grandparents? How many times can you do this?
"My name is Inigo Montoya. Progeny. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
Multiple times, we are not sure if a limit will be set in place yet, this is a system we will need to test first for any imbalances but yes, we intend it to be children of children and so on but we will go into more detail later on down the track.
Maybe you could have a new Progeny every expansion. You would inherit all the items and various other perks of your previous character when you started your new one for the expansion.
Ok, so please keep in mind, I'm not intending to be rude to your personally with the following.
That being said, I'm utterly and completely sick of the "levels are the problem" argument. Skills are levels. It's simple fact. If you do more damage when you have 200 1h weapon skill than when you have 0, you're effectively level 200 vs level 0.
No offense taken.
Well, they aren't exactly the same but I do understand your perspective. A level 100 is level 100 with a 1h or 2h weapon. With skills he has to choose one or spread out his points between two weapons which in effect makes both weaker. Skill based system requires more planning.
There are so many drawbacks to skill point system of character development. The main one is that its incredibly hard to balance, and has mostly sucked in every game it existed. It also makes progression feel superficial. Sure you get new abilities, but for your time spent, they mostly give you more utility rather than power. While I don't think its impossible to create a point system that yields a diverse array of builds that are both unique and powerful, history shows its highly problematic.
In a PvP game where you want to keep players on a relatively level playing field, it can be useful. In a game designed around PvE, you must gate content behind levels by increasing the strength of mobs. Trying to balance that without levels would be (and has been) a nightmare. You end up with players banding together and steamrolling harder content because without levels, its not that much harder. The result is the same thing you were trying to prevent: players mostly focusing on the harder content as they would via levels.
Besides those things, you always end up with min/max builds in the point system. In UO for instance, you had mages and dexers. So many people played with almost the same build out. It was the same problem in Darkfall, which was exacerbated even further by a lack of a point cap. As a result, combat becomes a clone war and very stale. Theres far more interdependence and strategy with specific classes.
Regarding specific weapons and equipment for a specific fight, that should definitely be a thing. From what we've heard about Pantheon, they are designing the game around situational gear.
Min/Maxing happens with levels too. People will always try to min/max. In fact, simplicity of design makes for easier min/maxing. Complexity creates balance issues. The goal is to find a sweet spot.
With levels, players end up steamrolling content anyways. Isn't that why we have the term "trash" mobs?
Min/Maxing happens with levels too. People will always try to min/max. In fact, simplicity of design makes for easier min/maxing. Complexity creates balance issues. The goal is to find a sweet spot.
With levels, players end up steamrolling content anyways. Isn't that why we have the term "trash" mobs?
I know what you're saying, but "trash mobs" were originally not called such because of how easy or hard they were, but rather because they offered no loot and served as merely a barrier between the players and more valuable mobs.
Min/maxing in a class system at least preserves a variety of classes and roles. Min/maxing in a point system means players generally build characters which are nearly identical and serve the same purposes. Either way, its kind of a hypothetical argument, because most of the games that used point systems didn't intend for there to be various combat roles for the players to engage in (tank, healer, dps, support, cc, etc).
Kilsin said: ... we have plans for Bards and Necros ....
Oh hell yeah. Can we take this as a slight confirmation that Necros will be coming at some point?
I can totally see myself playing an altoholic and then settle down for necro once it releases. (Sooner would be better tho, because... who the hell needs a soulless summoner class? ;-)
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
From someone who follows the dev posts a lot. Yes that is my assumption at this point. I was basically told at one point that if they couldnt manage to get Bard or Necro in by launch then they would be expansion classes.
Dude!!! I love your posts but you are such a tease. This is of course great information. But it creates so many many more questions than it answers. LOL. I can think of about 20 questions off the top of my head that Ill just have to wait until the Progeny system reveal.
P.S. Please do include a AA system in addition to the progeny system. My suggestion: Make them available through and epic quests not just something you Ding! at max level.
I apologize ahead of time if i made a topic in this vein, but in some of the recent discussions, something came up that i feel needs addressed or brought to light.
One of the great things about original EQ and earlier MMOs is the lack of mudflation (or it having been severely slowed down, particularly in comparison to modern mmos).
What i mean by that is if you spent 1000 hours playing the game and got some really cool nice stuff, that stuff was still relatively good in the next expansion. So while the best 1h dagger in the game previous expansion might be say 20dps, the very best 1h dagger in the new expansion might only be say 24 dps. Definitely better, but not stupidly so.
(continued)
I trimmed down your opening post to keep it short. Nice post and nice thread.
This is a topic I've long been entrenched in. I don't know where to start!
Ok well, I'll start from the beginning. What's mudflation for? It's not necessarily to, as you say, appeal to the power addiction. Centrally, I believe, whether it's intentional or not, mudflation is to keep the community of players together, from the low levels to the max levels.
Without mudflation, new players face a staggering amount of content to reach the max levels. As the years pile up, level increases and additional forms of progression, like alternative advancement, can add up and become like a mountain, making the possibility of ever reaching max level remote for anybody new. The older the MMO, the worse it's.
This shouldn't be a problem, given we all play RPGs/MMORPGs to progress--what's bad about a big mountain of progress? Bring it on, some of you say! But history tells a bleak story. For one reason or another, players and companies do not like this big mountain of progression. A few possible reasons are below: * Sometimes a friend wants to player with another friend who's high level, but this wall of progress halts their advance. If the game doesn't have any kind of mentoring or deleveling mechanism or something similar then it's indeed a wall for some. * Sometimes a game isn't popular anymore, so there's almost nobody in the lower levels and everybody else is a high level, meaning new players feel alone. It may not just be a social problem. This is even more of a problem if high levels can't easily group effectively with low levels. If the economy is interdependent, new players might not be able to craft low level recipes because the population is not high enough to support it. ANY kind of interdependence is severely hurt if the population is not high in a select level range. * A company might want to incite low level players to buy the latest expansion or content. So they might throw handouts into it which're useful to low levels, like easy-to-get gear or powerups. This in turn might outdate prior gear or powerups. * The company might feel the old content is too difficult to update to justify its continued use as a primary source of progress. Whether it's low polygons, outdated scripts, improper or defunct strategies/tactics or mechanics, UI features being unused and others. If the company feels compromised by having to keep it updated, they might either make leveling fast, to reduce the exposure to it, or create a new set of content altogether. The end result is past content loses value. * New players who're competitive or accomplishment-oriented, might feel so weighted down they lose enthusiasm. They'll never be able to reach the high levels in a reasonable length of time. They just did not enter the game early enough in its life cycle. * The company has discovered most of its players are veterans or returning veterans and they're getting very few new players. So they spend mostly on high level expansions and on speeding up low level progression, since it's not justifiable to spend large amounts on low levels. The goal is to get low level players to high levels. At this point, the MMO is in life-support mode and anybody who's anything in game development will have moved on.
I'll not add more. That's good enough to make my point. Hopefully I made it.
That's all I"m going to do in this post. I'll post on another day.
I trimmed down your opening post to keep it short. Nice post and nice thread.
This is a topic I've long been entrenched in. I don't know where to start!
Ok well, I'll start from the beginning. What's mudflation for? It's not necessarily to, as you say, appeal to the power addiction. Centrally, I believe, whether it's intentional or not, mudflation is to keep the community of players together, from the low levels to the max levels.
Without mudflation, new players face a staggering amount of content to reach the max levels. As the years pile up, level increases and additional forms of progression, like alternative advancement, can add up and become like a mountain, making the possibility of ever reaching max level remote for anybody new. The older the MMO, the worse it's.
This shouldn't be a problem, given we all play RPGs/MMORPGs to progress--what's bad about a big mountain of progress? Bring it on, some of you say! But history tells a bleak story. For one reason or another, players and companies do not like this big mountain of progression. A few possible reasons are below:
*snip*
I'll not add more. That's good enough to make my point. Hopefully I made it.
That's all I"m going to do in this post. I'll post on another day.
I do get what you're saying, and i'm not going to respond on a point by point basis but in general terms.
All of that stuff you discussed is unfortunately was has lead us to the path we're at now.
There are other ways to combat those problems than mudflation. In a game thats older and top heavy, lets say 2 or 3 years, they can increase the leveling speed for the original levels. Lets say original level cap was 50, then 3 expansions later its 65. They can make leveling from 1-45 faster on the backend than it was when those people went through that content originally.
Also, if you look at EQ, because just about all items were tradeable and didn't degrade or get destroyed. New players got through that content significantly quicker because they were essentially being "twinked" by virtue of being able to get what originally would have been high end items, for basically throwaway prices because those items are no longer relevant.
Some of these things are unavoidable parts of an MMO's life cycle, and trying to ultra casualize it to get players "caught up" is part of what got us to the point we are at now in the MMO industry, i.e. with a bunch of faceroll easy, solo quest, on rails, get to max level in 50 hours, etc.
At some point you have to realize these things are going to happen, and do what you can to combat it, but not to the overall detriment of the game experience. I am personally a fan of using the community to help with these things. If you look back at EQ, if you convinced your friend to join the game, you usually supplied him with items, money, etc, to give him a headstart. Maybe you follow him around when you can to save his ass if he is gonna die, or to help him farm gear, or whatever. Perhaps you take this as an opportunity to create that alt that you've always thought about and you use that to play up with him, etc.
The second problem is you create a scenario where you're invalidating all of your previous content. So now you have all this content you've spent thousands of man hours creating, with all these cool mobs, and dungeons, and items, etc... and poof, you release an expansion and its all useless. If you create an MMO where even the idea of an "endgame" exists, where you aren't really playing the "real" game until you get to said endgame... that is where you run into these problems, it also contributes heavily to the idea of content locusts who only log on to play the new content you just released, and then immediately cancel the sub and go do something else until you release another expansion.
However, if you create a game that has enjoyable content, then people don't mind going through that content to get caught up. It's like saying you should be given a cliff notes on the first 4 song of ice and fire books just so you can get "caught up" to the 5th book, etc. It's stupid, read the books, enjoy the journey, that's the WHOLE point.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
You know a lot of the issues you guys are complaining about with gear and expansion content is generally centered around the focus of how the progression in the game works. When a game creates progress in the game to be focused around stat growth and scaling, then it does inevitably lead to issues of content relevancy, disparity in player skill and player power, and an extreme focus on "gearing" when level-progression has hit it's peak/stagnated. One poster mentioned it previously with the reference to vertical progression.
This isn't to say vertical progression is bad, but the reliance on the constant growth of player stats to signify progress attained in the game and to make players more "powerful" is a double-edged sword that most wield rather clumsily. You want to reward the players and show them how far they've gotten. You want to provide the players with regular feed of new abilities or power to greet both new and old challenges with. The simplest means to do this is to increase player stats in a global sense. It's much more understandable as a type of numbers game where the biggest numbers win.
Problems pop up rapidly from such a design though when developers realize that they have to continue to deliver content and evolve the game. If you leave all things the same, then people are going to be max level and fully geared and out of quests in the classical vertically-scaling design in games with rigidly defined narrative. They will have reached the "end" of a game that shouldn't have such a definitive end. And so content gets added to further that experience, but in doing so there is generally the division from everything that used to be. In order for new content to have interest it has to pose a reason for players to seek it. So the challenge is increased, the levels are raised, the gear is improved. It draws players upwards to consume the content, but it means that the bottom line has now moved.
When level caps in such a system doesn't migrate, it puts even more emphasis on the need to continue the vertical progression through secondary systems like gear. This makes the problems like the one the OP describes come to pass, by forcing new equipment to be the centerpiece of many player's focus. When this happens, the items are intentionally scaled so that they are the effective replacement of a player jumping up in levels.
It seems like it'd honestly be better to seek a solution to the more fundamental problem of making a core progression mechanic where characters aren't designed to grossly outperform the content. Or to put it more precisely, make a system wherein progress equates to deeper player control and customization rather than the primary focus being "having the biggest numbers".
Say, for example, if we take the traditional D&D stats.
Level 1
Str - 12 Dex - 10 Con - 14 Wis - 16 Int - 8 Cha - 14
Level 10
Str - 14 Dex - 16 Con - 18 Wis - 20 Int - 12 Cha - 16
Under a system with the focus on vertical progression we would see a gradual (or dramatic) shift as each level or every few levels happen where the core stats will raise. When that type of progression stagnates, or as compensation in the interim for slower overall progression, gear will offer bonuses to these stats to further increase them. This introduces the problem that inevitably what once "was" relevant very simply will no longer be. People will move past stuff and items will lose meaning constantly. Much of the game content will be designed to fuel the goal of becoming the "strongest", but afterwards no longer have any usefulness (save for maybe twinking a char to level them faster).
The alternative to vertical progression can be something more like horizontal progression.
Level 1
Str - 10 Dex - 10 Con - 10 Wis - 10 Int - 10 Cha - 10
Level 10
Str - 6 Dex - 8 Con - 12 Wis - 16 Int - 8 Cha - 10
Under a system with the focus on more horizontal progression, or to say on "unlocking" deeper control over player stats, the principle is that a character may start out relatively average, and as the level they can gain perks which takes from one stat to boost another. Gear would be meant to augment this with further rearrangement of stats. What this means for the scaling in the game is that the players are staying in more even terms to the challenges that may be provided as well, so content in general stays relevant. The downside would be that stagnation may be experienced instead by you haven't managed to "move beyond" any of the content offered in such a system.
It's not like these systems exist polar to one another either, as you could easily still say that there is a slight overall increase as players core levels go up, and gear only offers to re-balance stats (example, though you could take gear tiers into account and say that high-end gear does improve stats globally a small amount as well or offers access to special abilities). Point here being, the focus on vertical progression, and more prominently vast vertical progression (creating large jumps in statistical power) has become too much of a centerpiece, and it is not a good design philosophy. Problems with gear progression tends to be a byproduct of this issue, and it may be better to look for solutions to the root cause rather than the symptoms.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
@Deivos Well said. That sums up the problems with vertical progression fairly well. However, I feel that strict horizontal progression is rather superficial.
The fact of the matter is, old content is at some point going to feel... well, old. You can do things to make it relevant longer like a greater focus on horizontal progression and reducing stat creep by making vertical progression much more gradual, but at some point people will want to move on from the old content.
Having only played a little of FFXI, I feel like it had a good mix. There was a strong focus on maintaining different sets of gear in order to best perform using certain job (class) builds in a particular scenario. I believe Pantheon is also taking this approach with "situational gear."
Beyond those things, all you can really do is create a game where advancement is fun enough to play again. It has to be about the journey. VRI seems to understand this. They also intend to have a progeny system that allows players to restart the game with some sort of bonus, which together with alts, will hopefully provide new players with someone to group with and continue to keep old content relevant.
Another reason there do not have to be invalidating rewards in new content is the way gamers think.
If you have a sword that is +5 damage and I have one that is +4, these are not two swords that are one stat point part. No. You have a sweet EPIC sword and mine is utter crap. Anything that is not the very best is crap.
So you having a +100 new expansion dungeon sword and my having a +4 vanilla sword- in addition to the many other problems it causes - is completely unnecessary. As long as one thing is better than another, by any margin, it will be sufficiently prized to motivate people to consume content to obtain it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Downscaling in levels is a way to cope with at least a portion of old content becoming invalid, at least it's worked pretty well in GW2. Considering the daily quest design for PvE is still based in the old world, plus people still doing to old world boss train. Downscaling the character in lower level areas, while still able to receive appropriate level item drops has helped to keep the old world alive.
Ironically, I think most of old tyria is doing better than HoT tyria on your average map. Which comes from the fact that every zone is basically focused on a meta event instead of having other things to do. Hopefully, ANet can do a better job next time.
Our Progeny system hopes to mitigate a lot of this problem too.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).
So the plan is to allow players continue to cycle through levels if they wish, once you hit max level and complete everything you want to do, retire your character and start from level 1 with an extra enhancement or two depending on what you specialized in with the previous character, which could be Blacksmithing, for example, which being a Master Blacksmith and retiring, your new Progeny would have better knowledge of the Blacksmithing trade compared to a brand new level 1 player, which may grant faster experience gain, better chance at success, knowledge of a higher tier of blueprints/plans/recipe etc.
This also populates all areas at all levels, which keeps the game alive at low to mid range levels as these are usually the areas that suffer the most in group based games due to everyone being bottlenecked into max level aside from alts and brand new players who are usually overwhelmed and unable to find proper groups to experience the game with, the way it was intended.
We will release more information about this system as development continues, but I thought it would be good to mention for this topic.
This effectively creates almost a New Game+ option in an mmo, or could be viewed as a version of the old remort systems from the MUDs of yesteryear. Hopefully, I can keep my name so I can be Kaneth, son of Kaneth, grandson to Kaneth.
The Progeny system could also be a reasonable alternative to alts for many of us altoholics as well.
No matter what you do eventually content becomes moot, or at best it becomes a "beat it to experience it" thing. That's ok though, as long as you are not literally putting players on a WoW-style gear treadmill where every.effing.patch. invalidates the last. For the progression mechanic I feel like the progeny system could work very well, all depends upon implementation. For an example of what works well ESO's champion points are a good example of nearly constant progression. The bonuses and increases to things are not so broken that you can go around soloing dungeons but they definitely provide incentives. One thing from FFXI I liked was the idea of additional progression unlocking game-changing skills. Using the merit system you could unlock higher-level versions of key job abilities or entirely new ones that added great utility while (much like the champ system) not overpowering. For instance Ninjas had a ninjitsu spell that created "shadows" to create forced misses, there were two versions you got from normal leveling, "Utsusemi: Ichi" and "Utsuesmi: Ni", if I remember correctly the first one was...3 shadows and the next was 5? I can't remember any more lol. Anyhow through merits you could unlock "Utsesmi: san" which added a shadow or two, things like that.
Really this all comes down to how slow the leveling curve is, in my opinion, the slower the better, if we're 1 year in and only 10% of the population of the game has even achieved max level, that means that any expansions don't need to supercede previous end-game content, but rather just be more options, since most players have still not even gotten there yet.
The content must never be chewed through, even the top end neckbeards must always feel that they simply do not have enough time to stay ahead. This may make some of the casuals feel like they'll never get there, but in the end if the game is designed to be about the journey, it doesn't matter whether you "get there" or not, enjoy what you're doing when you do it.
If however we end up with a situation like almost every other game in the past 10 years has been, where 50+% of the player base is max level within 3 months, then there is no possible way VR can keep up with content, and we'll end up with the expansion that trivializes all previous content out of pure necessity.
I hope the leveling curve is slow enough that only the truly hardcore hit max level in less than a year, and even they require 6+ months to get there.
For me, the game has always been about the journey, not the destination. I don't want that journey to go by in a month long blur only to wind up in an end game that is strictly a choice between raiding or arena PvP.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. Benjamin Franklin
I do get what you're saying, and i'm not going to respond on a point by point basis but in general terms.
All of that stuff you discussed is unfortunately was has lead us to the path we're at now.
There are other ways to combat those problems than mudflation. In a game thats older and top heavy, lets say 2 or 3 years, they can increase the leveling speed for the original levels. Lets say original level cap was 50, then 3 expansions later its 65. They can make leveling from 1-45 faster on the backend than it was when those people went through that content originally.
Also, if you look at EQ, because just about all items were tradeable and didn't degrade or get destroyed. New players got through that content significantly quicker because they were essentially being "twinked" by virtue of being able to get what originally would have been high end items, for basically throwaway prices because those items are no longer relevant.
Some of these things are unavoidable parts of an MMO's life cycle, and trying to ultra casualize it to get players "caught up" is part of what got us to the point we are at now in the MMO industry, i.e. with a bunch of faceroll easy, solo quest, on rails, get to max level in 50 hours, etc.
At some point you have to realize these things are going to happen, and do what you can to combat it, but not to the overall detriment of the game experience. I am personally a fan of using the community to help with these things. If you look back at EQ, if you convinced your friend to join the game, you usually supplied him with items, money, etc, to give him a headstart. Maybe you follow him around when you can to save his ass if he is gonna die, or to help him farm gear, or whatever. Perhaps you take this as an opportunity to create that alt that you've always thought about and you use that to play up with him, etc.
The second problem is you create a scenario where you're invalidating all of your previous content. So now you have all this content you've spent thousands of man hours creating, with all these cool mobs, and dungeons, and items, etc... and poof, you release an expansion and its all useless. If you create an MMO where even the idea of an "endgame" exists, where you aren't really playing the "real" game until you get to said endgame... that is where you run into these problems, it also contributes heavily to the idea of content locusts who only log on to play the new content you just released, and then immediately cancel the sub and go do something else until you release another expansion.
However, if you create a game that has enjoyable content, then people don't mind going through that content to get caught up. It's like saying you should be given a cliff notes on the first 4 song of ice and fire books just so you can get "caught up" to the 5th book, etc. It's stupid, read the books, enjoy the journey, that's the WHOLE point.
Speeding up experience gain in old content is mudflation. It satisfies the goal of mudflation: to bridge the gap between low level and high levels. The older the MMO, the faster the experience gain. Imagine if you used to spend several days in a zone to outlevel its progression. There're lots of NPCs to see, items to loot and places to go in that zone. Years later you breeze through it in less than an hour, already outleveling it. You can't possibly see much in that zone, even after multiple runs with alts. It was designed to be consumed at a slower pace. The end result is you've essentially skipped the content.
(And note the higher your level, the less relevant a low level item is.)
I've noticed you know a lot about this topic. I give you a /nod.
Personally I feel the solution to mudflation isn't to refrain from it and change nothing else. This is because the goal of mudflation is valid: to keep the community of players together and relevant. Rather we have to look at different ways of keeping the community together. Some have mentioned vertical progression in this thread. Vertical progression is like a skyscraper without elevators and players at the top are vastly separated from those a the bottom. So we can see perhaps we should either make travel between the top and bottm fast or we should construct our progression differently, so it's not vertical. Or maybe there's omething else we can do to achieve similar.
And one final comment from me for today. Some posters have noted old content grows old and boring and this is unavoidable. This is true. However, in many MMORPG's we notice the old content isn't old for new players, it's only old for veterans who've already played through it. For new players, the old content is only old if it's either no longer relevant to the modern game or poor quality. Otherwise, it's new because they've never seen it before.
EDIT: DDO had something similar to the Progeny system. You could restart as a new character and get a small bonus or unlock something.
Speeding up experience gain in old content is mudflation. It satisfies the goal of mudflation: to bridge the gap between low level and high levels. The older the MMO, the faster the experience gain. Imagine if you used to spend several days in a zone to outlevel its progression. There're lots of NPCs to see, items to loot and places to go in that zone. Years later you breeze through it in less than an hour, already outleveling it. You can't possibly see much in that zone, even after multiple runs with alts. It was designed to be consumed at a slower pace. The end result is you've essentially skipped the content.
(And note the higher your level, the less relevant a low level item is.)
I've noticed you know a lot about this topic. I give you a /nod.
Personally I feel the solution to mudflation isn't to refrain from it and change nothing else. This is because the goal of mudflation is valid: to keep the community of players together and relevant. Rather we have to look at different ways of keeping the community together. Some have mentioned vertical progression in this thread. Vertical progression is like a skyscraper without elevators and players at the top are vastly separated from those a the bottom. So we can see perhaps we should either make travel between the top and bottm fast or we should construct our progression differently, so it's not vertical. Or maybe there's omething else we can do to achieve similar.
And one final comment from me for today. Some posters have noted old content grows old and boring and this is unavoidable. This is true. However, in many MMORPG's we notice the old content isn't old for new players, it's only old for veterans who've already played through it. For new players, the old content is only old if it's either no longer relevant to the modern game or poor quality. Otherwise, it's new because they've never seen it before.
EDIT: DDO had something similar to the Progeny system. You could restart as a new character and get a small bonus or unlock something.
First, I don't say the following to be insulting, and apologies ahead of time for the somewhat forward response.
That being said, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what mudflation is. Mudflation boiled down to it's most basic is item power creep and the subsequent devaluation of previous items.
A company like Blizzard purposely choosing to "reset" the playing field each expansion via itemization (rather than other means), is not mudflation, it's a specific design choice.
If you want to discuss design decisions and their impact on MMO's, we can do that. But don't conflate one for the other, it's disingenuous.
Getting to your point though, I think there are far far better ways to keep the community together than arbitrarily reseting everything each expansion such as what Blizzard does/did with WoW. Even blizzard admitted they went overboard with this idea as they essentially had to go through and cut all the numbers by 90% since people were doing hundred's of thousands of DPS and hitting for millions.
Its hard to be immersed in a game when you see, "Your Fireblast hits Grand Vizier Xhcblackel for 12,345,691 damage!" It's also hard to see the effects of an item upgrade when you're hitting for 12,345,691 dmg before, and 12,498,723 damage after equipping the item, etc.
Your last point is a good point, and you're actually speaking to why mudflation and also the blizzard idea of resetting content is bad for the overall game's health. A new player isn't experiencing the same game and the same "experience" as the "old" player, because they're being given artificial bonuses and consequently that means they may not enjoy the "old" content, and quit the game before they get caught up.
That's why I am a fan of allowing the community to be the controlling factor. Kind of like I was saying before, if you convince your friend to join the game, its kind of on your shoulders to do a bit of hand holding, showing the ropes, maybe tossing some plat their way, etc. Also, a regular thing that used to happen in a lot of MMOs, was people who had been around forever, and had amassed quite a large wealth, would toss items to lowbies just to be nice. I regularly would get to a point I didn't feel like selling an item that was say worth 300 plat, and would just /ooc Free "blah blah blah" item to the first person under 20 that finds me, I'm in the forest somewhere!". Or something like that.
Another thing we used to do all the time is help out lowbies by staying near a camp, and if things went south, stepping in and hosing the mobs so the whole group didn't die. This was common in east commonlands in EQ because there were several orc camps that groups would do, and people sitting around trying to sell items, or looking to buy items, would help these new players out, etc.
It's another advantage to not having people level via stupid quest hubs that they're running around doing solo. Quest hubs are one of the primary reasons why MMO's have almost no community prior to the "end game" where you finally join a guild and start raiding or doing dungeons and group content.
EQ had group content from about level 10 on, where it became difficult to solo (outside of certain classes like necros, etc).
Anyways, I'm rambling, but I think you get the point ;-).
Edit: I forgot to mention, I only used the speeding up XP of newer players as an example, I wasn't meaning to suggest it was a good idea, just that it's one of the methods that has been used historically.
If I had to choose between the two, I'd take the faster XP to catch up to the existing playerbase over the blizzard method of reseting any day of the week, however, there are other options.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Comments
The first option needs to drop gear appropriate for the normal power level of the player. Be that level, damage, armor, or what ever. So that there is incentive to go back to older content. GW2 is sort of like this, but there's not a huge incentive to go back to older content unless your an achievement whore. There needs to be a much better reason to go back....
The second option just has never been done. I can't even imagine the programming systems that would be required to have new content constantly being added to the point where no two days would ever be the same. The closest thing I've ever heard of even coming close to this would be EQN, and we all know how that turned out...
The third option is tried and true, but it's definitely not for everyone, and frankly it's not for a majority of players. EVE has it's issues for sure.... but at least of these 3 systems... it's been done.
On the other hand, you shouldn't necessarily be bound to go all the way back to the beginning 5 years into the game. I think it should be about options, and if you want to gear up without raiding older content, you could focus on higher level group content. If you want to gear up faster, you raid low level content. Options.
Of course, both scenarios assume a very gradual level of item power increase. If everything from a previous expansion, or even 2 expansions back is worthless compared to the current items, there is no fixing that. No one will even think about doing old content.
Progeny System
Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new characters, but these new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character (but not to the point that it unbalances things).So the plan is to allow players continue to cycle through levels if they wish, once you hit max level and complete everything you want to do, retire your character and start from level 1 with an extra enhancement or two depending on what you specialized in with the previous character, which could be Blacksmithing, for example, which being a Master Blacksmith and retiring, your new Progeny would have better knowledge of the Blacksmithing trade compared to a brand new level 1 player, which may grant faster experience gain, better chance at success, knowledge of a higher tier of blueprints/plans/recipe etc.
This also populates all areas at all levels, which keeps the game alive at low to mid range levels as these are usually the areas that suffer the most in group based games due to everyone being bottlenecked into max level aside from alts and brand new players who are usually overwhelmed and unable to find proper groups to experience the game with, the way it was intended.
We will release more information about this system as development continues, but I thought it would be good to mention for this topic.
Not only is old gear being outdated VERY quickly so are the original zones.We really are no longer playing "GAMES" we are simply playing 1-2 zones where ever that one weapon we are chasing takes us and that is sad gaming.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Also, if i date a really dark girl and have a child... and i "retire", will i be able to pick Necromancer as my class?
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
"My name is Inigo Montoya. Progeny. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Haha! I like your thinking, we have plans for Bards and Necros but as Brad has said in the past, they may not make it into release, it will depend on a lot of things but for now, we know how much interest is shown for these two classes
I like your quote lol
Well, they aren't exactly the same but I do understand your perspective. A level 100 is level 100 with a 1h or 2h weapon. With skills he has to choose one or spread out his points between two weapons which in effect makes both weaker. Skill based system requires more planning.
With levels, players end up steamrolling content anyways. Isn't that why we have the term "trash" mobs?
Min/maxing in a class system at least preserves a variety of classes and roles. Min/maxing in a point system means players generally build characters which are nearly identical and serve the same purposes. Either way, its kind of a hypothetical argument, because most of the games that used point systems didn't intend for there to be various combat roles for the players to engage in (tank, healer, dps, support, cc, etc).
Can we take this as a slight confirmation that Necros will be coming at some point?
I can totally see myself playing an altoholic and then settle down for necro once it releases. (Sooner would be better tho, because... who the hell needs a soulless summoner class? ;-)
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
@Kilsin
Dude!!! I love your posts but you are such a tease. This is of course great information. But it creates so many many more questions than it answers. LOL. I can think of about 20 questions off the top of my head that Ill just have to wait until the Progeny system reveal.
P.S. Please do include a AA system in addition to the progeny system. My suggestion: Make them available through and epic quests not just something you Ding! at max level.
This is a topic I've long been entrenched in. I don't know where to start!
Ok well, I'll start from the beginning. What's mudflation for? It's not necessarily to, as you say, appeal to the power addiction. Centrally, I believe, whether it's intentional or not, mudflation is to keep the community of players together, from the low levels to the max levels.
Without mudflation, new players face a staggering amount of content to reach the max levels. As the years pile up, level increases and additional forms of progression, like alternative advancement, can add up and become like a mountain, making the possibility of ever reaching max level remote for anybody new. The older the MMO, the worse it's.
This shouldn't be a problem, given we all play RPGs/MMORPGs to progress--what's bad about a big mountain of progress? Bring it on, some of you say! But history tells a bleak story. For one reason or another, players and companies do not like this big mountain of progression. A few possible reasons are below:
* Sometimes a friend wants to player with another friend who's high level, but this wall of progress halts their advance. If the game doesn't have any kind of mentoring or deleveling mechanism or something similar then it's indeed a wall for some.
* Sometimes a game isn't popular anymore, so there's almost nobody in the lower levels and everybody else is a high level, meaning new players feel alone. It may not just be a social problem. This is even more of a problem if high levels can't easily group effectively with low levels. If the economy is interdependent, new players might not be able to craft low level recipes because the population is not high enough to support it. ANY kind of interdependence is severely hurt if the population is not high in a select level range.
* A company might want to incite low level players to buy the latest expansion or content. So they might throw handouts into it which're useful to low levels, like easy-to-get gear or powerups. This in turn might outdate prior gear or powerups.
* The company might feel the old content is too difficult to update to justify its continued use as a primary source of progress. Whether it's low polygons, outdated scripts, improper or defunct strategies/tactics or mechanics, UI features being unused and others. If the company feels compromised by having to keep it updated, they might either make leveling fast, to reduce the exposure to it, or create a new set of content altogether. The end result is past content loses value.
* New players who're competitive or accomplishment-oriented, might feel so weighted down they lose enthusiasm. They'll never be able to reach the high levels in a reasonable length of time. They just did not enter the game early enough in its life cycle.
* The company has discovered most of its players are veterans or returning veterans and they're getting very few new players. So they spend mostly on high level expansions and on speeding up low level progression, since it's not justifiable to spend large amounts on low levels. The goal is to get low level players to high levels. At this point, the MMO is in life-support mode and anybody who's anything in game development will have moved on.
I'll not add more. That's good enough to make my point. Hopefully I made it.
That's all I"m going to do in this post. I'll post on another day.
All of that stuff you discussed is unfortunately was has lead us to the path we're at now.
There are other ways to combat those problems than mudflation. In a game thats older and top heavy, lets say 2 or 3 years, they can increase the leveling speed for the original levels. Lets say original level cap was 50, then 3 expansions later its 65. They can make leveling from 1-45 faster on the backend than it was when those people went through that content originally.
Also, if you look at EQ, because just about all items were tradeable and didn't degrade or get destroyed. New players got through that content significantly quicker because they were essentially being "twinked" by virtue of being able to get what originally would have been high end items, for basically throwaway prices because those items are no longer relevant.
Some of these things are unavoidable parts of an MMO's life cycle, and trying to ultra casualize it to get players "caught up" is part of what got us to the point we are at now in the MMO industry, i.e. with a bunch of faceroll easy, solo quest, on rails, get to max level in 50 hours, etc.
At some point you have to realize these things are going to happen, and do what you can to combat it, but not to the overall detriment of the game experience. I am personally a fan of using the community to help with these things. If you look back at EQ, if you convinced your friend to join the game, you usually supplied him with items, money, etc, to give him a headstart. Maybe you follow him around when you can to save his ass if he is gonna die, or to help him farm gear, or whatever. Perhaps you take this as an opportunity to create that alt that you've always thought about and you use that to play up with him, etc.
The second problem is you create a scenario where you're invalidating all of your previous content. So now you have all this content you've spent thousands of man hours creating, with all these cool mobs, and dungeons, and items, etc... and poof, you release an expansion and its all useless. If you create an MMO where even the idea of an "endgame" exists, where you aren't really playing the "real" game until you get to said endgame... that is where you run into these problems, it also contributes heavily to the idea of content locusts who only log on to play the new content you just released, and then immediately cancel the sub and go do something else until you release another expansion.
However, if you create a game that has enjoyable content, then people don't mind going through that content to get caught up. It's like saying you should be given a cliff notes on the first 4 song of ice and fire books just so you can get "caught up" to the 5th book, etc. It's stupid, read the books, enjoy the journey, that's the WHOLE point.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
This isn't to say vertical progression is bad, but the reliance on the constant growth of player stats to signify progress attained in the game and to make players more "powerful" is a double-edged sword that most wield rather clumsily. You want to reward the players and show them how far they've gotten. You want to provide the players with regular feed of new abilities or power to greet both new and old challenges with. The simplest means to do this is to increase player stats in a global sense. It's much more understandable as a type of numbers game where the biggest numbers win.
Problems pop up rapidly from such a design though when developers realize that they have to continue to deliver content and evolve the game. If you leave all things the same, then people are going to be max level and fully geared and out of quests in the classical vertically-scaling design in games with rigidly defined narrative. They will have reached the "end" of a game that shouldn't have such a definitive end. And so content gets added to further that experience, but in doing so there is generally the division from everything that used to be. In order for new content to have interest it has to pose a reason for players to seek it. So the challenge is increased, the levels are raised, the gear is improved. It draws players upwards to consume the content, but it means that the bottom line has now moved.
When level caps in such a system doesn't migrate, it puts even more emphasis on the need to continue the vertical progression through secondary systems like gear. This makes the problems like the one the OP describes come to pass, by forcing new equipment to be the centerpiece of many player's focus. When this happens, the items are intentionally scaled so that they are the effective replacement of a player jumping up in levels.
It seems like it'd honestly be better to seek a solution to the more fundamental problem of making a core progression mechanic where characters aren't designed to grossly outperform the content. Or to put it more precisely, make a system wherein progress equates to deeper player control and customization rather than the primary focus being "having the biggest numbers".
Say, for example, if we take the traditional D&D stats.
Level 1
Str - 12
Dex - 10
Con - 14
Wis - 16
Int - 8
Cha - 14
Level 10
Str - 14
Dex - 16
Con - 18
Wis - 20
Int - 12
Cha - 16
Under a system with the focus on vertical progression we would see a gradual (or dramatic) shift as each level or every few levels happen where the core stats will raise. When that type of progression stagnates, or as compensation in the interim for slower overall progression, gear will offer bonuses to these stats to further increase them. This introduces the problem that inevitably what once "was" relevant very simply will no longer be. People will move past stuff and items will lose meaning constantly. Much of the game content will be designed to fuel the goal of becoming the "strongest", but afterwards no longer have any usefulness (save for maybe twinking a char to level them faster).
The alternative to vertical progression can be something more like horizontal progression.
Level 1
Str - 10
Dex - 10
Con - 10
Wis - 10
Int - 10
Cha - 10
Level 10
Str - 6
Dex - 8
Con - 12
Wis - 16
Int - 8
Cha - 10
Under a system with the focus on more horizontal progression, or to say on "unlocking" deeper control over player stats, the principle is that a character may start out relatively average, and as the level they can gain perks which takes from one stat to boost another. Gear would be meant to augment this with further rearrangement of stats. What this means for the scaling in the game is that the players are staying in more even terms to the challenges that may be provided as well, so content in general stays relevant. The downside would be that stagnation may be experienced instead by you haven't managed to "move beyond" any of the content offered in such a system.
It's not like these systems exist polar to one another either, as you could easily still say that there is a slight overall increase as players core levels go up, and gear only offers to re-balance stats (example, though you could take gear tiers into account and say that high-end gear does improve stats globally a small amount as well or offers access to special abilities). Point here being, the focus on vertical progression, and more prominently vast vertical progression (creating large jumps in statistical power) has become too much of a centerpiece, and it is not a good design philosophy. Problems with gear progression tends to be a byproduct of this issue, and it may be better to look for solutions to the root cause rather than the symptoms.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The fact of the matter is, old content is at some point going to feel... well, old. You can do things to make it relevant longer like a greater focus on horizontal progression and reducing stat creep by making vertical progression much more gradual, but at some point people will want to move on from the old content.
Having only played a little of FFXI, I feel like it had a good mix. There was a strong focus on maintaining different sets of gear in order to best perform using certain job (class) builds in a particular scenario. I believe Pantheon is also taking this approach with "situational gear."
Beyond those things, all you can really do is create a game where advancement is fun enough to play again. It has to be about the journey. VRI seems to understand this. They also intend to have a progeny system that allows players to restart the game with some sort of bonus, which together with alts, will hopefully provide new players with someone to group with and continue to keep old content relevant.
If you have a sword that is +5 damage and I have one that is +4, these are not two swords that are one stat point part. No. You have a sweet EPIC sword and mine is utter crap. Anything that is not the very best is crap.
So you having a +100 new expansion dungeon sword and my having a +4 vanilla sword- in addition to the many other problems it causes - is completely unnecessary. As long as one thing is better than another, by any margin, it will be sufficiently prized to motivate people to consume content to obtain it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Ironically, I think most of old tyria is doing better than HoT tyria on your average map. Which comes from the fact that every zone is basically focused on a meta event instead of having other things to do. Hopefully, ANet can do a better job next time.
This effectively creates almost a New Game+ option in an mmo, or could be viewed as a version of the old remort systems from the MUDs of yesteryear. Hopefully, I can keep my name so I can be Kaneth, son of Kaneth, grandson to Kaneth.
The Progeny system could also be a reasonable alternative to alts for many of us altoholics as well.
For the progression mechanic I feel like the progeny system could work very well, all depends upon implementation. For an example of what works well ESO's champion points are a good example of nearly constant progression. The bonuses and increases to things are not so broken that you can go around soloing dungeons but they definitely provide incentives.
One thing from FFXI I liked was the idea of additional progression unlocking game-changing skills. Using the merit system you could unlock higher-level versions of key job abilities or entirely new ones that added great utility while (much like the champ system) not overpowering. For instance Ninjas had a ninjitsu spell that created "shadows" to create forced misses, there were two versions you got from normal leveling, "Utsusemi: Ichi" and "Utsuesmi: Ni", if I remember correctly the first one was...3 shadows and the next was 5? I can't remember any more lol. Anyhow through merits you could unlock "Utsesmi: san" which added a shadow or two, things like that.
The content must never be chewed through, even the top end neckbeards must always feel that they simply do not have enough time to stay ahead. This may make some of the casuals feel like they'll never get there, but in the end if the game is designed to be about the journey, it doesn't matter whether you "get there" or not, enjoy what you're doing when you do it.
If however we end up with a situation like almost every other game in the past 10 years has been, where 50+% of the player base is max level within 3 months, then there is no possible way VR can keep up with content, and we'll end up with the expansion that trivializes all previous content out of pure necessity.
I'm with Rallyd
I hope the leveling curve is slow enough that only the truly hardcore hit max level in less than a year, and even they require 6+ months to get there.
For me, the game has always been about the journey, not the destination. I don't want that journey to go by in a month long blur only to wind up in an end game that is strictly a choice between raiding or arena PvP.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Hrimnir said: Speeding up experience gain in old content is mudflation. It satisfies the goal of mudflation: to bridge the gap between low level and high levels. The older the MMO, the faster the experience gain. Imagine if you used to spend several days in a zone to outlevel its progression. There're lots of NPCs to see, items to loot and places to go in that zone. Years later you breeze through it in less than an hour, already outleveling it. You can't possibly see much in that zone, even after multiple runs with alts. It was designed to be consumed at a slower pace. The end result is you've essentially skipped the content.
(And note the higher your level, the less relevant a low level item is.)
I've noticed you know a lot about this topic. I give you a /nod.
Personally I feel the solution to mudflation isn't to refrain from it and change nothing else. This is because the goal of mudflation is valid: to keep the community of players together and relevant. Rather we have to look at different ways of keeping the community together. Some have mentioned vertical progression in this thread. Vertical progression is like a skyscraper without elevators and players at the top are vastly separated from those a the bottom. So we can see perhaps we should either make travel between the top and bottm fast or we should construct our progression differently, so it's not vertical. Or maybe there's omething else we can do to achieve similar.
And one final comment from me for today. Some posters have noted old content grows old and boring and this is unavoidable. This is true. However, in many MMORPG's we notice the old content isn't old for new players, it's only old for veterans who've already played through it. For new players, the old content is only old if it's either no longer relevant to the modern game or poor quality. Otherwise, it's new because they've never seen it before.
EDIT: DDO had something similar to the Progeny system. You could restart as a new character and get a small bonus or unlock something.
First, I don't say the following to be insulting, and apologies ahead of time for the somewhat forward response.
That being said, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what mudflation is. Mudflation boiled down to it's most basic is item power creep and the subsequent devaluation of previous items.
A company like Blizzard purposely choosing to "reset" the playing field each expansion via itemization (rather than other means), is not mudflation, it's a specific design choice.
If you want to discuss design decisions and their impact on MMO's, we can do that. But don't conflate one for the other, it's disingenuous.
Getting to your point though, I think there are far far better ways to keep the community together than arbitrarily reseting everything each expansion such as what Blizzard does/did with WoW. Even blizzard admitted they went overboard with this idea as they essentially had to go through and cut all the numbers by 90% since people were doing hundred's of thousands of DPS and hitting for millions.
Its hard to be immersed in a game when you see, "Your Fireblast hits Grand Vizier Xhcblackel for 12,345,691 damage!" It's also hard to see the effects of an item upgrade when you're hitting for 12,345,691 dmg before, and 12,498,723 damage after equipping the item, etc.
Your last point is a good point, and you're actually speaking to why mudflation and also the blizzard idea of resetting content is bad for the overall game's health. A new player isn't experiencing the same game and the same "experience" as the "old" player, because they're being given artificial bonuses and consequently that means they may not enjoy the "old" content, and quit the game before they get caught up.
That's why I am a fan of allowing the community to be the controlling factor. Kind of like I was saying before, if you convince your friend to join the game, its kind of on your shoulders to do a bit of hand holding, showing the ropes, maybe tossing some plat their way, etc. Also, a regular thing that used to happen in a lot of MMOs, was people who had been around forever, and had amassed quite a large wealth, would toss items to lowbies just to be nice. I regularly would get to a point I didn't feel like selling an item that was say worth 300 plat, and would just /ooc Free "blah blah blah" item to the first person under 20 that finds me, I'm in the forest somewhere!". Or something like that.
Another thing we used to do all the time is help out lowbies by staying near a camp, and if things went south, stepping in and hosing the mobs so the whole group didn't die. This was common in east commonlands in EQ because there were several orc camps that groups would do, and people sitting around trying to sell items, or looking to buy items, would help these new players out, etc.
It's another advantage to not having people level via stupid quest hubs that they're running around doing solo. Quest hubs are one of the primary reasons why MMO's have almost no community prior to the "end game" where you finally join a guild and start raiding or doing dungeons and group content.
EQ had group content from about level 10 on, where it became difficult to solo (outside of certain classes like necros, etc).
Anyways, I'm rambling, but I think you get the point ;-).
Edit: I forgot to mention, I only used the speeding up XP of newer players as an example, I wasn't meaning to suggest it was a good idea, just that it's one of the methods that has been used historically.
If I had to choose between the two, I'd take the faster XP to catch up to the existing playerbase over the blizzard method of reseting any day of the week, however, there are other options.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche