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The Secret Life Of MMOG Characters
An article at Gamasutra pines for MMOG characters to have their own lives. Specifically, the author wishes that over a very long period of time xp would accrue for parked characters. From the article: "Here's what I'd like to see: instead of Vanille Ice and all the millions of unused characters sitting on their collective tookuses, why not imagine that each day they venture forth and do some low-level crime fighting (orc slaying, etc.) just to, you know, 'stay in shape'. Now this workout wouldn't actually happen in any way visible to players logged on, but these characters would earn nominal amounts of experience each day. And in three months time, presto, a new level."
It'd be funnier if they *didn't* work out, and grew a bit broader around the midsection as a result.
A tale in the desert lets you perform "Offline tasks", after you've done them sufficiently in game. If you've collected 500 units of grass in your lifetime, you can set your character to collect grass while you're offine. Or, you can accrue "run time", which you can use for instantaneous travel (the idea being that you did that running while offline).
(for those who don't play WoW, leave your char logged off for a few weeks and when you come back you get double experience up until your next level or so)
And besides, the power levelers are going to run circles around "casual" players any day of the week.
(Guess who just got -1 redundant! Oooh! Oooh! I know! I know!)
If you remain logged off for an extended period of time, leveling up happens 100% faster.
The MMO that I play is Vendetta Online, and it is currently in the process of some significant overhauling. The biggest focus right now is on rewriting the client, but the devs are also working on improving the AI of the NPCs, so that they'll live their lives much the same way the player characters live theirs. But rather than "this workout wouldn't actually happen in any way visible to players logged on", the actions of the NPCs in Vendetta Online are very much going to be visible to players. If there's a trade mission being offered, and a player doesn't take the mission before an NPC shows up where the misison is being offered, the NPC will take the mission. And when a trade mission is taken, either by a player or an NPC, a Pirate mission might be made available from a competitor, which can also be taken by either players or NPCs.
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I have several alternate characters in WoW, whose sole purpose is to hold items for me. I make/buy them large bags to hold lots of extra items that I don't need now, and will need later. So technically, they don't need to level at all, and would be a waste of server resources if they leveled regardless of my interaction or not.
There are other games that develop these ideas as well, but I don't think it's a serious article. Any article that mentions Progress Quest obviously thinks of MMO's very highly. heh
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
That's what I get for posting before RTFA. He was refering to player characters continuing their lives while the player is offline, not NPCs living a life similar to a player characters. As it happens, the devs of VO have mentioned plans to eventually have actions players can set their characters to performing while they're offline, but that's a bit more of a long-term goal.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
What would be nice is if MMORPG gamers had their own lives.
Offline skill-based "leveling". The author of this article needs to check out EVE. Your character trains while you're asleep, while you're playing, heck, even if you cancel your account and leave a long skill running it will keep training!
It really makes for great gameplay because no matter how much someone grinds the game, they won't train any faster than me (unless they can get some uber implants which assist slightly in the speed at which you can train skills). But basically in EVE I can start a new character and within about 2 months or so compete and kill players that have been playing for 3 years because you can specialize - take many things to level 4 in a specific subset of skills (there are 5 levels to every skill) intead of that last "level 5" that takes eons to train (like over 23 days for some skills).
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
So that means by now, perhaps my level 24 Swashbuckler in EQ2 would be maxed out. I haven't played that one since a month after its release.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
How the hell is this newsworthy? A lazy player wants something for nothing. News at 11. What a lamer.
Just what I want to see when I login: When I pop into the zone, I'm in my house... but I'm not alone. There's a level 93 quadruple-classed Ninja/Executioner/Assassin/Brawler named "Chok Norissss" giving me a red-assed beatdown! As I lay there bleeding to death, Chok explains himself... Apparently, while I was logged out for a few days, my toon decided that he would go pork Chok's in-game life partner, repeatedly...
Long Live Sig Vicious.
Wow's idea that you could spend a week (at least at launch) with that toon being offline and end up with 1.5 levels of 2x experience worked. It was incentive to bring your alts out once in a while, and have them gain a level fairly quickly, then put them back in the closet for a week or two.
But you still had to do stuff to gain that experience, and quest rewards weren't doubled. Only actual mob experience doubled. You had to work for it. It was just easier to get somewhere on that less used toon.
But just gain experience while off-line? What's the point in rewarding people for doing nothing? Next you are going to ask that you be given a stipend for not playing that character? The character should get free currency because they weren't played?
No offense, but you play MMOs to accomplish something. I don't want to accomplish something by NOT playing.
Or, as Herm Edwards, former coach of the NY Jets put it, "You PLAY to WIN the GAME".
I love how there are a lot of solutions to the problem that the basic act in most MMPORPG's is boring. You grind away, killing baby spiders of tenderness or sickly sewer rats until hours and hours later you level, at which point you can go buy a bunch of new spells and some new abilities. Then you test them out in combat, and head back out to grind for another 6 hours to level one more time.
Combat always seems to be too straightforward. I've been playing world of warcraft dwdfor about 80 hours, and so far I've found one enemy that I couldn't kill with a default strategy. Sure, towards the endgame I could group up and do interesting things, but for now it is a grindfest. At least they don't make you sit down for a half hour like Everquest did: 60 seconds or so of wasted time is enough in WoW.
If your game can be easily scripted, you haven't made an interesting enough game. Every single MMPORPG out there suffers from this.
Free leveling would be a great way of drawing people back in to play if they haven't been on in a while, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that what you're asking the player to do should be fun.
The ______ Agenda
Online I'm a busty, easy, cleric maiden giving freely of her body to any adventurer she comes across. Offline I live in my dad's basement on welfare and am posting this to Slashdot. It's funny because it's true!
Coranon Silaria, Ozoo Mahoke
It's called progress quest.
You beat the final boss and rescue the girl?
No. Don't tell me. The princess is in another castle.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
The writer wants to have characters do something while the player is offline. WoW tries to address this with "rested bonus".
What I always thought would be a better idea is to have characters get tired the longer they grind. The first two hours of "work" each day you get 100% XP. After that it's a linear roll off until at 8 hours, you cease to make any XP gains by grinding (still get XP from questing).
Then people would have a dis-incentive for "power levelling" and just go out and enjoy the world and, you know, put the RP back into MMORPG.
what if you gave the characters a day job, like some folks do in D&D campaigns. say, you have to make your character go to a business, get hired, and then, when you're not out adventuring, you can be said to be doing the "day job." day jobs probably don't provide much advancement, but certain jobs could be based off of skills. in one campaign, a character got a job as a 'blacksmith'.. and after finishing a particularly long dungeon exploration, we decided that "the next adventure happens two months later, when you're all summoned to the village elder's house....." in that two-month's span, they got a salary (based on their chosen job, and if any of their 'skills' seemed like it would make them better at performing that job), and recieved X amount of money for 2 months of labor. nothing much, granted, but enough to seem reasonable and provide a more interesting level of immersion.
WoW however also enjoys the fact that hitting level 60 isn't that hard at all so some friends of mine who play it say its not really worth it since people generally fall into two catagories. A) they play so infrequently or in short periods of time that the xp boost eventually just caps out and is 'wasted' or B) they play 'hardcore' enough that rested bonus just isn't worth the 'downtime'.
Wow. Take it to the next level. Whenever you're not online, your character has some other personality that actually works towards a _different_ and possibly contrary set of goals--instead of grinding XP, maybe he goes out and harvests fish or shoots puppies or something. Of course, the more time you spend online, the harder your character works against you when you're offline (just to keep it fair for the casual gamer). Man, that'd be hard to balance, but why do games always _require_ that you're in more or less total control of your character? If you're going to give them an "offline" life, why not do something _interesting_ with it? Imagine logging back in only to find that some naked newbie's character is locked in your apartment's bathroom. Total riot.
MMOGs are all about using all the wrong parts of normal video games, removing the part that makes them "games". The best solution in my mind would be to start everyone off with all skills and spells, but unaware of their full use, and being able to freely create a certain kind of item at any time as soon as you've found it once somewhere, or taken it from a monster (unless it's a unique item...). This includes weapons and armour too. If the only thing limiting one's talents in a MMOG were one's knowledge of the game, I'd personally enjoy them a lot more.
But don't take my opinion, my favorite way of "leveling up" occurs in Mario 64. The correct measure of a game, in my mind, is that you can come back to the beginning of the game after having played through it, and you'll be able to progress at least 100% faster due to skills accessible but not taught at the beginning.
However, these don't, I think, adequately balance the playing-field; in WoW even with the rested bonus countermeasure, those that grind constantly still have a significant edge in arms and armor, and it is this issue that must be addressed. Perhaps, as 'Time Goes By,' you could tell your character to pursue various tasks; somewhat like the training option in sports simulations that allows your character to focus on a single aspect of the game (shooting, tackling, tactics, etc) or in Homeworld Cataclysm in which the Beast mothership can focus on one aspect of her being to accelerate it (building, researching, firing, defending). Similarly, one could instruct your character towards a course of action on log-out, dependent on your locale and skills.
For example, Yassi the Night Elf hunter could be instructed, upon log-out, to hunt low-level wild beasts, with her skinning skill and also make bags with the leather recieved, so that when I log back onto Yassi, she'd have made a lot of bags, and improved her skinning and leatherworking skills in the process. Or, if Yassi was miles from home in the Barrens, she could be instructed to make her way back to Darnassus; when I log back on, she's got less silver (for hippogryph fare) but she's back in Darnassus. Or she could even grind against low-level monsters and merely collect their drops. In this way, one could automate some of the more mundane parts of the game, and allow greater freedom for offline characters.
Of course, it would be mightily important to ensure that only one character per account could use this ability (otherwise each player would just create tons of mules to harvest stuff) and that the benefits recieved would be much lower than the benefits of doing it one's self; I'd say between ten and twenty percent.
Any thoughts?
games journalism blog
For those who haven't tried it; IMHO it's the first MMORPG that provides all the best excitement of everquest without any of the tedium.
Your objection is certainly hilarious but is also certainly an extreme one. It is possible that your PC might make such a choice independently and in direct contravention of your plans/wishes/desired but only if you were using an incredibly naive AI and, crucially, learning system.
In other words, _it_ is possible for your PC to learn to successfully interact with game characters independently. Certainly there would be some overhead in terms of time - that is, the PC cannot immediately, out-of-the-box infer your "wishes" but requires some learning time - and in terms of computation - obviously! - but modern AI (such as in the game my partner and I are working on *ahem*) can do this in a way that is nearly transparent from the perspective NPCs and other PCs and is not cumbersome to the player to learn or use.
More interestingly, though, this opens up questions about the identity of RPGs (i.e. at what point does it stop being the denoted interaction and start becoming, say, "role-assigning")? And, more importantly, would that be enjoyable?
In any case, don't ask me how; I plainly won't tell you.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to know anything about, well, anything.
.02% to the player's "to hit" probability percentile -for that skill-, per unit pre-purchased, but at the cost of being -kept- offline for 9.5 hours AND 100 gold pieces.. value dependant on exchange rate.
.05
.. roll the dice ..?
Sure, getting XP modifiers and offline cash and breast plate, etc. -while- absent is fine.. but why should you? What incentive does the ever-giving, limitless-supply, disneyworld factory conveyor belt of the MMORPG world have to fork out this stuff? Tax those that wish to -take advantage- of these systems..
This is just an example of -one- application. The variables, adjustments and angles are limitless. You could SkillShop (TM)(R)(C)(patent pending) Foul Language. In this case, it would add
Choose skills you'd like to -invest- in while offline. Not just expect a return for showing up. Like being a deadbeat dad and coming back to a brand new house.
Multiple benefits in that the worlds will be less crowded with AFK'ers, who will be 'active' in the world, but identified as offline (maybe even with a countdown counter for all to see), who, for a fee and some time to read or cook or walk or enjoy a movie, or find a real life mate, could enhance everyone's online experience and fill pockets at the same time.
Those in it for a quick boost give the server less time to rest but the local economy benefits from the higher rates and the need for (?) trainers, facilities, materials consumed, produced or processed, etc.
Logoff options:
Combat:
[ ](42m/5g) [ ](24m/15g) [ ](15m/35g) Flame Punch +.15
[4](44m/7g) [ ](27m/18g) [ ](15m/35g) Spinning Kick +.12
[6](90m/5g) [ ](45m/14g) [2](15m/35g) Foul Language +.02
General:
[ ](32m/7g) [ ](17m/16g) [ ](15m/35g) Legs - Running Skill +
[ ](47m/8g) [ ](19m/15g) [ ](15m/35g) Arms - Grab/Climb Skill +.03
[ ](48m/9g) [ ](19m/13g) [ ](15m/35g) Mind - Dodge Skill +.01
Collected funds could be rerouted back into the community, providing a pool of earnable offline income. As a "Foul Language Master" you could offer rogue non-NPC training at lower (higher?) rates (in remote areas or 'villages' with no trainers). Rare skills can be got by meeting (and paying/partying with) strangers. Bartering Skills/Product?
2D avatar chat could be offered as a waiting-room or lobby experience. parlor games, voice chat, etc. etc. etc. without the hangup of walking long distances, grinding away at mobs or other repetitive tasks.
Now, mix in the model of 'play for free, upgrades for Real Money' and the game companies might have a new cash cow. Deep pocket heroes. An uber-skilled, well-funded player who is hardly ever online due to constant offline-training-time.
but, whatever happened to
Right, sure. Lets take the MMO out of the MMORPG for a moment. Would you think say a game like Baldur's Gate was as much fun if you first had to grind you way to level 20 before getting on with the game proper? No.
In single player land we want the game to be fun regardless what our level. Levelling up is just a way to give you a few new toys to play with. Just because the level 18 spells are really neat doesn't mean it is excusible that the level 1-17 spells suck donkey balls.
In short I think MMORPG's should be fun to play regardless your level. Removing levels completly is not going to be acceptable but I think they should be far less important. If the casual player who after a year is still a low level can have as much fun as the power grinder (or perhaps even MORE fun) then you got a game that people will not cancel because they find themselves all alone unable to find a party. Current games suffer to much from the fact that a new player is in a world with everyone else at high level being bored.
But frankly I think it is impossible to achieve this. The only way I can think of doing it is to make combat far far more complex. Stop it with the simple D&D crap and get some real strategy and tactics in there. Perhaps where the difference between a low level and a high level isn't just special moves but plain experience. Then adding difficulty would be easy. Just increase the number of attackers. With real AI and real combat you could then easily have mixed level groups. Imagine this scenario. High level fighter keeps the center position, a low level fighter stand by his side attacking only one enemy being protected from being overrun by the high level who can fend off multiple attackers.
Current combat ALWAYS runs like this. EVERYONE attack the biggest threat and then work their way through the mob. This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies.
Yeah yeah, I am rambling. I just think that a game that I am expected to play for years should be more challenging then a single player game I finish in a week. For me the problem with all the MMO's I have played is that I grow fed up with the combat wich is boring and repetetive. Change this. Make it so a cellar filled with rats is fun. Scale the dungeon for total group level. So 1 level 1 player gets 1 rat. 2 level 2 players get 2 rats. But a 2 level 1 and a level 10 get 12 rats. Now they have to work as a team, perhaps with the level 10 just concentrating on keeping the enemies at bay and the low levels picking them off one by one.
Tada! Fun for everyone. Sadly it ain't going to happen, the current move is to arcade like combat with it becoming more about twitchy turning games then cool strategy and hot tactics. MMO the world of lag and everyone is going for combat that requires instant reaction.
DDO is particulary bad, you got to block manually. Oh sure, that is fun. For the first day. But after you played a year and blocked a million times it might get a bit repetitive.
Sadly I am in a minority, I actually prefer it if my avatar is not under direct control but rather takes instructions and carries them out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A system that rewards people who not play it is detrimental to the motivation of the gamers. Why should anyone grind on when all they have to do is create a dozen alts that can sit unused and slowly but steadily gain level? Too many shortcuts or 'easy roads' means that fewer will be interested in the difficult road, and soon enough fewer will be interested in the game.
So, the reverse would be better, or in my mind at least more interesting. A system where experience steadily decreases while you are away, at least down to the most recently reached level. This would more accurately reward dedicated gamers, thereby making an interesting game.
Of course this is a difficult balance issue. WoW for instance could never bring this into game, because they would loose a lot of their customer base. It doesnt matter to them that those who stayed would be even more dedicated.
In a game like WOW which has a level cap, offline leveling would only let players reach the maximum (and i think most broken level) faster. The rested bonus is a much fairer way of doing it, and also helps the game last longer.
i'd also add that eve is different in that its skills your learning and not XP gaining and as some skills can take months to level up, it doesnt make frequent players feel less valued.
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
I would like to see a somewhat harsher game... I mean, I play ArcticMUD off and on and that is one harsh game... you die, you lost immense amount of exp, all your gear, suffer stat damage for a week or more, etc etc etc... so harsh i usually let the character die for good (good roleplay) and take a few months off before playing again... sounds unfun? problem is, I keep coming back... the point becomes, in a persistant world, when you log off, your character should still be int he game as an NPC... lets say we have an unnamed game in which the ENTIRE economy relies on player/npc crafted goods... the only items that can be looted from battles are those that at one point HAD been made by players... this would make such items as swords and armor and arcanery intrinsically precious... not like in WoW where you discard your sword every couple of days or so; So anyways, lets say your character has blacksmithy skill... you spend your online time experimenting, coming up with new formulas, new designs, trying to achieve a new plane of skills or such... and offline, except for sleep time, the npc version of yourself is hard at work filling orders and quotas for more basic but needed swords, armor for the town guards, etc etc etc... making money, building up crafting experience, etc... sure, there'd be the danger that your town could get sacked and you'd die... but then again, all the more incentive to keep the town guards well armed, giving a real NEED for crafters (over the hobbyist level that you find in current games), and guards and ... gasp... ROLES to play...
anyways...
it is not the toon that needs to stay in shape to adventure, it is the gamer. If you haven't played a character in a while, whether you were just offline or if your primary is a mage and your alt is a tank, you need to practice your own skills on greenie or even gray mobs. What are your best combos? is your hotbutton bar optimized for your current level and the types of mobs you are facing? what tactics work best vs. casters? vs. the snare+range types? vs. BAF melee types who run for help before you expect them too?
I know I haven't played my warlock in a while, so there were several things I needed to relearn, like emergency tactics to disengage when I'm over my head... like when I've accidentally pulled a couple adds, and the blue guy isn't holding aggro like he should, then perhaps aoe spells are more trouble than help. (todo: acquire more healing potions...) Also, how does a warlock fit in a group setting? The mage's nukes really can pound on a target before my first DOT can cast. About all I can do is make sure the proper curses are on the proper targets--demonspeak on the casters, weakness on the melee types, recklessness on the BAF types, agony on everyone else. And by then the fight is usually over anyway. If there is a better way I can only find it by _actually_playing_. Characters staying in shape offline indeed...
Furthermore, it wouldn't hurt for the gamer himself to stay in shape. turn of the computer once in a while and take a walk in the fresh air. You'll have more stamina for those weekend gaming marathons if you work out during the week.
More music, fewer hits
There's also idlerpg
Anti-script code of the reply page?
I must be missing something -- I'm looking at the reply page right now, and I'm not seeing any sort of anti-script code. Do you post a lot with out signing on or something?
But I agree with you about the quotes on the bottom of the page. I never used to pay much attention to them, but lately there have been a few that were either eerily related to the subject I was writing about, or such gigantic non sequiturs that they made me laugh.
Does anybody know where they're being pulled from, or who puts them in? Is there some fixed number, or do they get ripped off the net somehow?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Let's take it a little further -- rather than just having one human player per character, why not trade them around a little?
Every time you log on, you get dropped into a character that somebody else has just logged out of. Feel like doing something anti-social? Violent? Cannibalistic? Go for it! And the best part -- once you've gotten the character in jail / being chased by hundreds of angry players, log out and let somebody else take over. It'll be HI-larious.
After all, you can only program a script to be so evil. Allow other people to run your character when you're away? It's virtual Ted Bundy time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Many MMORPGs struggle with accommodating both casual players and power gamers. If gaining XP is too easy, the power gamers complain that their accomplishments are essentialy meaningless. If it is too hard, casual gamers complain that they will never have a chance to build up a worthwhile character.
The early MMORPGs made the mistake of tweaking only the difficulty of gaining XP, not the duration. Later on, they started taking duration into account as well. A good example is Ultima Online's "guaranteed gain" system. Instead of having to churn out 1000 swords for that elusive 0.1 skill gain, they made it so that every so often (increasingly less frequent as your skill level went up), you would be guaranteed a skill gain on the first sword you made. After that, the regular grind system applies.
Casual players do not have less time for grinding, they often have no time at all for this, if they want to have any time left over to do fun stuff. But a casual UO player could log on, make 1 sword and get their 0.1 gain, then get on with actually playing the game. It would take him perhaps a year to get to Master Smith that way, but eventually he'd get there. And powergamers would still have an edge on him; by grinding they would get their Master's title much faster.
The system described is similar in that it offer the player a tradeoff between duration and difficulty: either wait a long time for your "free" skill gain, or work at the grind to get your skill faster. I think it's a good way to cater to casual players without taking away the accomplishments of the power gamers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'm not sure that this would pan out -- the critical problem with WoW economies is that there's a totally unlimited supply of money, and unlike fiat currency in the real world, it's printed without much control at all.
E.g., when you complete a quest or kill a monster in most games, you get some money. (Don't ask me why that boar I just killed had 15 Copper on him, I don't want to know.) It's being created all the time, if there wasn't some way to take it out of the economy (objects getting destroyed, "bound" items being sold for less than market value) the economy would hyperinflate.
So you'd have to also come up, I guess, with a totally different way of making money and keeping everyone employed. In effect, you'd have to have a central bank in the world that would regulate monetary policy just like we do IRL.
I guess it wouldn't be impossible to do, given that we do it in the real life, and the admins of a MPG world have truly godlike control over their universe (if they want to stop adding money to the economy, or change the value of an item, they can just do it without any real effort). It would certainly be an interesting experiment.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Trust me, I understand about what TFA was talking about. Heck, my wife and I duoed in WoW all the way to 60, with rarely grouping with our guildies due to time constraints on our part. My wife is working on her masters degree, and I do some editing on the side. We played most nights, but only for about 3 hours a night. Weekends may have been more.
From lvl 10 through lvl 50, we were almost always in XP bonus. We weren't power gamers. We took our time, and we had fun with it. And due to that bonus we were almost always under, we reached lvl 60 about a week after the power gamers in our guild did. That week happened to be mostly due to us taking an actual vacation.
So, as I said, WoW did it right. You were rewarded for having spent some time offline. At low levels, the impact doesn't last as long, because it is easier to get through a level. But that one week off while we were in our mid 40's; that XP bar was blue for more than 2 weeks afterwards. But the reward had limits, in that it could only reach a maximum of 1.5 levels worth of blue XP.
There has to be limits on it, or folks will create a character, and then eat XP.
Besides, you could earn real XP in AC, at least early on in the game, due to it's pyramid helping system. There were folks that assisted various newbs by the hundreds, then earned 10% of whatever those newbs earned in XP. I knew guys that wouldn't play their toon for a week due to being away, and come back to find they levelled. Pyramid schemes were the rage up to the point I quit about 3 months into the game.
It'd be funnier if they *didn't* work out, and grew a bit broader around the midsection as a result.
What's sad is the ammount of players who would frantically try to keep their character in shape, while completely ignoring their real body!
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
What would be fun and cool is if you could get new skills or new quests every level and that you could easily do reach said level in a few hours instead of a few months. It wouldn't even have to be a set skill or rewards. Maybe one level you get a new spell. Maybe one level the reward is a new shirt or a bundle of cash. Perhaps give the player a choice of keeping these Quest items or turning them in for something else so it doesn't feel like you're nothing but a Fed Ex service for medicore gear. (I still maintain the Fulborg rod quest is one of the coolest thing in WoW and it serves no purpose whatsoever.) Perhaps they do nothing to improve your stats or gear but you can get cool things to change or improve your appearance. Vanity works in a lot of games why not MMOs?
If you keep a player busy enough and keep them focused on the short term goal they casual players will be content with the level they're at now and want to reach the next level soon without ever thinking about end game.
Levelling up was never my goal in all the black isle games. I was playing it for the story. Silly me I guess.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"This is not 'real'. In real live the heavy would take on the heavy and the low levels would take on lower level enemies. One on One. Just imagine how different fights would look. Rather then a dozen models all meshed together they would be spread out more. Rather like a big fight in the movies."
What real fights do you watch, where people end up slugging it out one on one? Beatdowns in the street are usually gang vs solo. Police and other people trained to fight wait until they have overwhelming numbers before going in to subdue even the weakest prisoner. Military tactics emphasize dropping one enemy through mass fire before turning to engage others. Even barfights turn out to be "gang up on one guy" rather than the bare knuckles stuff you see on TV. Your last line says it best, there - "Rather like a big fight in the movies" That's because movies need to be entertaining, not realistic.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Conquer Onlinehttp://www.conqueronline.com/ does this via an in game Training Grounds area that your character will automatically gain skills and experience at. It doesn't work while you are offline, but it's a pretty small client and easy to keep minimized. Lord of the Rings Onlinehttp://lotro.turbine.com/ is also tentatively planning on a passive leveling system. The idea is that some skills would level over time, while some would require direct intervention. Whether this will make release or not is difficult to say, as there has been a significant amount of redesigning so far.
is that it is simple, and doesn't do crap like that.
Why would you [punish the casual player like that? or punish players who like to try lots of different stuff?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You get 'rested xp' when your character is in a town when you log off. I didn't play WoW for a couple months, and yes its on a decreasing scale, but I got to play my nest two levels at double xp before I could see the end of it.
It wasn't what effectively brought me back. That happened to be the news of the expansion sounding pretty fun. Additionally the fact that some of my friends play religiously still. Sadly my new lifestyle just doesn't give time to something like WoW, atleast to the point where it's worth $13-$15 per month.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
i have been a fan of offline mode for played characters for a while. my idea is that you could give the player a scripting interface that would allow the player to dialog, adventure, work while you are offline depending on how much you were willing to risk your character getting killed or not while you were gone. bleh, here is an old post i made on the subject http://www.kaneva.com/forum/forumThreads.aspx?topi cId=1147&communityId=896