Few In-Game Suggestions
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@grofire I said 1 week to give a number. Personally after 1 week and half of play I'm out of the young player protection, so that could be a good reference.
As for examples, the first ones that come to mind are UO and LoA. After you were "done" with your char, you played it for years without going after some kind of powerup, but simply because you were engaged in the competition. Be it PKing, guild competitions, trading or whatever you liked doing, you played day after day without any mind to vertical scaling. Also, don't forget that this game is an hybrid between an MMO and a MOBA, and in MOBA there is absolutely no kind of vertical scaling, yet players have been playing it for 10 years. If the game is fun, there is no need for that kind of carrot.
By the way, it isn't like this game has no big vertical scaling. You still scale with equipment. You equip yourself in primitive gear, then together with friends put together a city to make better gear. With that better gear you finally can face that big troll, take his toenail and use it for a +180hp enchant on your armor. All of this is scaling.
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@spoletta said in Few In-Game Suggestions:
@grofire I said 1 week to give a number. Personally after 1 week and half of play I'm out of the young player protection, so that could be a good reference.
As for examples, the first ones that come to mind are UO and LoA. After you were "done" with your char, you played it for years without going after some kind of powerup, but simply because you were engaged in the competition. Be it PKing, guild competitions, trading or whatever you liked doing, you played day after day without any mind to vertical scaling.
didn't play them so maybe some one else that did can come join the discussion.
Also, don't forget that this game is an hybrid between an MMO and a MOBA, and in MOBA there is absolutely no kind of vertical scaling, yet players have been playing it for 10 years. If the game is fun, there is no need for that kind of carrot.
MOBA is the worst example for your point, lets take dota 2, you start every game at level 1 and go up to 30.
level 1 is extremely weak, so weak that, 1 level 30 can kill probably infinite amount of level 1 players.
or take a real situation mid will be level 9 while offlane will be level 5 or 6, and level 9 will win every time.
so dota 2 is basically the ultimate vertical progression game. so as different MOBAs.
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No I think you are getting really confused here.
In Dota at the end of the game, you don't carry your level to your next game.
You don't play a game of dota to "progress".
You simply play it because it is fun.
Dota has absolutely zero progress.Players play a game for 2 different reasons:
- To progress
- Because it is fun
If the game is fun, then offering a progress isn't needed. I don't play a game of Warhammer because I progress, I don't play a game of LoL because I progress, I don't play a game of Overwatch because I progress and so on. If the game is fun, then there is no need to offer a progress.
It is a game and it is fun to play. That's it, it is working.Alternatively you can force someone to do something that they don't find fun (i.e. grind) because you offer something in return. That's a progress driven game. That's good and well, but that's not what me and many others here like.
And again, this game already presents a lot of possible "progress" in terms of equipment, so it's not like we are missing that aspect.
I often find that offering a progress is just the easy way out for a rushed job or a bad game design. You can't make a game fun so you need to grab player's time offering progress.No, I want more than that from this game. I'm greedy. I want it to be fun to play.
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@spoletta every game of dota is a vertical instance as i already shown by this example:
you start every game at level 1 and go up to 30.
level 1 is extremely weak, so weak that, 1 level 30 can kill probably infinite amount of level 1 players.
or take a real situation mid will be level 9 while offlane will be level 5 or 6, and level 9 will win every time.maybe you just do not understand what is vertical progression ?
and progress many times mean fun... progress = fun...
so i do not see your point.
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@grofire And not all Fun games include progress.
Ultima Online, ,arguably the first major MMO to come out didn't really progress beyond a certain point, as @spoletta said, yet people came back for years and years, and there are still people playing the game today.
Another example is SecondLife. SecondLife is a social game in the same league as The Sims, but other than amassing some in-game wealth, there really isn't too much progression in it. Second Life is a beloved game, that is played by many groups still. IMVU is a clone of SecondLife, and so it is probably similar (don't know, didn't need a clone)
Think of games like Pokemon games, not the Gotta Catch'em All ones, what about Pokemon Safari. A HUGELY popular member of the Pokemon franchise, that didn't really have levels or anything. You just wanted to collect all the pokemon...and then, once you did, you kept playing for the joy of playing, no progression needed.
We're all in agreement that some small bit of vertical can be in the game. Equipment is giving verticalness to the game. Talents give some progress, but it needs to be kept small.
Yes, @spoletta also mentioned the fact that brand new players have the young status for a little bit to get some variety in their builds, which will help, but the fact of the matter is, the starting abilities aren't too bad for any of the builds, and they are still playing around with them and balancing them too. We have a different set now than we had before. Magic Missile is still one of the best spells to acquire, and you pick it up during the little introductory guide questing. This is like the tutorial getting you familiar, and you pick that up. Other builds get other skills that help round out their characters. Point is, you could still play the game for years with JUST the starting skills and still be a perfectly viable character. The different skills give you choices, AND the ability to customize for specific mobs/opponents, but otherwise, your pretty viable. Your example, @grofire is more of one of those Rock-Paper-Scissors cases, where the Fire Resistance would counter the main attack of the Fire Bolt player...but that player would also have a chance to get Magic Missile during their tutorial, which is easily covered during the young status, shoot, it is unlocked in the first 30 mins of play for most arcanists. You can also attack with the Primative Mage Staff, which is just Magic Damage, not Fire, Lightning, Poison, etc... and you learn to make that in the first 30 mins too, from very common stuff.
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@GamerSeuss said in Few In-Game Suggestions:
@grofire And not all Fun games include progress.
Ultima Online, ,arguably the first major MMO to come out didn't really progress beyond a certain point, as @spoletta said, yet people came back for years and years, and there are still people playing the game today.
Another example is SecondLife. SecondLife is a social game in the same league as The Sims, but other than amassing some in-game wealth, there really isn't too much progression in it. Second Life is a beloved game, that is played by many groups still. IMVU is a clone of SecondLife, and so it is probably similar (don't know, didn't need a clone)
Think of games like Pokemon games, not the Gotta Catch'em All ones, what about Pokemon Safari. A HUGELY popular member of the Pokemon franchise, that didn't really have levels or anything. You just wanted to collect all the pokemon...and then, once you did, you kept playing for the joy of playing, no progression needed.
pokemon as hundreds of pokemon to get and fill the book, what do you call that if not progress?
sims you start from a blank page and make a city isn't it a progress ?
i didn't play UO but you said, that beyond some point there was no progress and then people stop playing regularly, and would play on and off....
progress can be in different ways, but no progress is no fun.
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I'm talking about Pokemon Safari, where you just took pictures of the pokemon. Collection games aren't progress games, you don't go up in level, gain abilities, there is no progress...your just collecting for the joy of collecting and taking great shots.
You also took what I said out of context. Your talking about progress, of the power scale type, and yet, we talk about progress of the interesting type, non-vertical, horizontal progress. Collection games would count as that, if you don't get any bonuses or advantages for what your collecting (other than in-game money/materials) and the SIMs had that kind of thing. SecondLife even more so, it wasn't about building a city, it was about playing your avatar because you enjoyed playing. (and your thinking more along the lines of SIMCity anyway and the various offshoots, The SIMs are more about just playing your character. You build a house, and decorate it, that's about it...in Fractured you can build a house and set your land up just fine, very horizontal)
Finally, you didn't listen about UO at all. I said they reached a point where there was no progress at all, and that there are still players to this day playing the game, with maxed out characters, purely for the joy of the game. Some still play regularly. Shoot, I was an AVID EverQuest player, went from Beta all the way through several expansions before I got tired of the game. What made me tired is they took a lot of the simple fun of the game away. The exploration, and even the social interactions I did enjoy. And you know what, for all the play I did of EverQuest, I never, once got a character beyond level 42, because I enjoyed going out and doing things far more than I enjoyed leveling. I didn't raid, I loved to explore, and I liked to play around with skills and build things, that's what I loved. I hated Quests, so I wasn't going into town for fetch quests all the time, and I wasn't joining powerleveling groups (and my guild offered many times). In fact, although I disliked much of the later content expansions of the game, because of them taking away some of the impetus to just explore, the one expansion I loved introduced the Shroud, that allowed higher level players to Level-down to travel with lower level friends and make it doable. People purposely reversing vertical progression for the joy of playing with their friends.
Yes, some people stopped playing UO, but that was mainly not because of lack of progress, but it was because they went on to the next shiny new toy with better graphics and different game play. Some people are more than happy to just play for options over playing for power.
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I think that at this point this discussion has run its course. We are now discussing semantics.
It is clear that we all have a different concept of what a "vertical progression" is, so trying to discuss how much of that is good for the game is fruitless.Thanks for the discussion, I'll see myself out.
