20 June, 2011

How to avoid the MMO Timesink

There are a few aspects of games like World of Warcraft and other MMORPG games out there that I personally really don't like.  One is the amount of time those games require in order to stay a competitive player. Level caps rise, gear classes increase, you have to get a set of armor that has a .001% chance of dropping per piece from a boss at the end of an 8 hour long instance, the list goes on and on.  Someone put it well that those games are designed to be played to the exclusion of all else, including eating, sleeping, work, you name it.  So one of my main goals in this game is that a beginner right from the start will have a fighting chance against the person who has spent the hundreds of hours playing.  Skill based games, like FPS tend to be, give a nice level playing field, and that is something I think a lot of players really appreciate.

I have also found that player vs player in the big MMORPG games is not so much a question of skill, but a question of how much money and time (or hacking ability) a person has devoted to the game.  So a leveling system if put into this game will need to be horizontal giving only minor improvements as levels increase.  The possible problem that can arise from this is a loss of player attention due to a perceived lack of goal, which I hope to fill with the constant struggle happening in the game.

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