Powerleveling ruined my day

[ViolentDjango]

How much does the game company you work for pay you to design games for them?

Oh, that's right. You aren't a game designer.

Thank goodness for that.

Seriously...

I wrote about why games have steep leveling curves in my blog a few days ago. It has nothing to do with the economy or anything ridiculous like that. Its almost entirely for the hedonic treadmill, i.e. giving players a carrot to chase after while developers work on new content.

It has NO effect on anything other than the amount of time players invest into a game. When its taken you a year to get to level cap, you're more likely to stick to the game even when you're fundamentally unhappy with it because you've already invested so much time and effort into it. Leveling curves make this happen by dangling a goal infront of you, then slowly increasing the difficulty of the road you're walking down until you finally get it.

Its the same basic treadmill all video games are built around. Each level in Super Mario Brothers is designed to be more difficult or at least more complex than the previous because once you achieve a certain level of success, achieving things of similar levels become progressively less thrilling due to hedonic adaption.

Leveling is the first stage of the MMO treadmill, High level gear and end game content is the next. Its a basic formula to keep people interested.

[Challenge] => [Reward] => [Challenge]+1 => [Reward] => [Challenge]+2 = [Reward]

In the case of leveling it goes like this:

[Grind EXP] => [New Ability] => [Grind More EXP] => [New Ability/Gear] => [Grind Even More EXP] => [Level Cap] => [End Game Treadmill]

The only problem created by power leveling is the issue of players circumventing the hook and snagging the bait. People who rush to level cap don't get reeled in by the treadmill, and it makes them less likely to stick to the game if no new content is produced aimed at them. That's why developers dislike Power Leveling, because it allows people to get to the end of the game more quickly than they intended and the treadmill effect doesn't kick in.

On the player side, the only effect power leveling has is a result of either PL'd players complaining about lack of content -- which they have no right to do, since they sped through all of the content that's supposed to keep them occupied; or nonPL players complaining because they feel Power leveled players are /cheating/ which they are not.

The real problem is that developers use leveling as a crutch when they should focus on challenging, substantial content as a means to keep players in their games. Granted, I understand that's a terrifyingly difficult thing to achieve, but frankly, its what we should be demanding for our time and money.

This also goes on to explain why FFXI's community started to taper off, just like WoW's is. The treadmill stopped working. The goals presented in FFXI and in WoW these days are significantly LESS difficult and compelling than the ones previously introduced, and there's nothing they can do to fix that because the games are so old and each iteration of new content supersedes the previous in largely uninteresting ways.

FFXI and WoW are dying because all games die. You can cite other games that have lived for ridiculous amounts of time, but honestly, most of them have lasted because of modding and open-ended content, or because they are maintained by a cult following the likes of which neither WoW nor FFXI will have. Frankly, on the subject of WoW, Blizzard only managed to maintain it because of the social magnetism it managed to garnish -- a massive number of those millions of subscribers were casuals who used the game as a social outlet.

Fun fact, the end game community of a game is seldom larger than 10% of the games population.

Clarification: The treadmill effect and the attachment are separate things, the attachment just happens to feed off of the treadmill. The hedonic treadmill is a reoccurring lust for new challenge due to the human brain's tendency to adapt (hedonic adaption) to the extremes of joy (Experienced from success) or conversely sadness (experience from loss) and our desire to hunt down higher levels of success to recreate the previously experienced high -- the resulting attachment to something is from retrospective analysis of time spent. (not sure if there's really a name for it, but this occurs with a lot of things, including physical fitness, as people feel attached to their developed bodies and thus seek to maintain and improve their physical condition almost obsessively) They aren't the same, but in my post I related them to each other in my reference to "the treadmill effect" because they occur symbiotically.

[Tsuga]

Snip.

Basically this. Once people are able to get all of their classes to 50 in a matter of days, it cheapens the game.

This game doesn't have enough end game content as it is to support the people that got to 50 legitimately. If people are getting rushed to 50, they could potentially get bored of the end game really fast, and they won't have the attachment to their character, or the game that working to 50 would have generated.

This is also a problem for crafters. Low and mid level gear will be pointless to craft if everyone is getting rushed through those levels.

Lastly it's a problem for new players that don't have anyone to PL them, because they will have less and less people to play with.

Edit:

The real problem is that developers use leveling as a crutch when they should focus on challenging, substantial content as a means to keep players in their games. Granted, I understand that's a terrifyingly difficult thing to achieve, but frankly, its what we should be demanding for our time and money.

Agreed. The problem is that so many people got to Lv50 so quickly that they started demanding end game content. Now the devs are struggling to keep the end game crowd happy, while giving less substantial content to the low level crowd, which makes the low level crowd just want to rush to 50, and skip the "grind" that's in place due to a lack of low level content.

Basically the end game is killing the mid game. If there were more of a focus on the early to mid game, then there should be no reason that power leveling would even be necessary at all because ideally there would not be the perceived "grind" that we currently have.

[Jasper]

I will cancel my account SE if the PL is not fixed, This is my 2 weeks notice SE!!!!!

[Eekiki]

I will cancel my account SE if the PL is not fixed, This is my 2 weeks notice SE!!!!!

I've heard this a million times.

"If SE doesn't fix X, I'm canceling my account and never playing a SE game again!!!1"

one month later:

"If SE doesn't fix Y, I'm canceling my account and never playing a SE game again!!!2"

[Anapingofness]

This is hardly cheating.

Making a small aspect of the game better is a good thing. Even Yoshi-P stated that leveling isn't the main part of the game.

So as long as people can choose what they want to do everybody should be happy.
Furthermore, yes, it does suck when you have a level 50 player killing your mobs but you know, it's why we have words. Ask that person to move or something. It's not guaranteed to work but the more community based this game becomes the less assholes you have to worry about.

People need to get used to the idea of sharing camps or zones, it's really as simple as that.

[Anapingofness]

Basically this. Once people are able to get all of their classes to 50 in a matter of days, it cheapens the game.

This game doesn't have enough end game content as it is to support the people that got to 50 legitimately. If people are getting rushed to 50, they could potentially get bored of the end game really fast, and they won't have the attachment to their character, or the game that working to 50 would have generated.

This is also a problem for crafters. Low and mid level gear will be pointless to craft if everyone is getting rushed through those levels.

Lastly it's a problem for new players that don't have anyone to PL them, because they will have less and less people to play with.

Edit:


Agreed. The problem is that so many people got to Lv50 so quickly that they started demanding end game content. Now the devs are struggling to keep the end game crowd happy, while giving less substantial content to the low level crowd, which makes the low level crowd just want to rush to 50, and skip the "grind" that's in place due to a lack of low level content.

Basically the end game is killing the mid game. If there were more of a focus on the early to mid game, then there should be no reason that power leveling would even be necessary at all because ideally there would not be the perceived "grind" that we currently have.

You are correct in what you say. We need more content to fill up the gap from lvl 1 to level 50. Even with PLing still available in the game the fact that there is so much there content wise will keep people from rushing to lvl 50.

However, that is not the case and personally, I find grinding loathsome. I'm glad that they gave people the option to level up to 50 quickly.

As far as having nobody else to play with well... people need to go out there and meet new people, it sounds mean but it's true. I'm guilty of not doing that but right now I don't really mind it. I'm not on long enough for that to matter. Once I have more time I'll make friends and it won't be an issue.

[AkayoAkayu]

Agree with OP, needs to be fixed asap. Of course ppl who dont really care like PL, but SE needs to listen to the hundreds of ppl saying its bullcrap.

[neorei]

if powerleveling brings my friends back to this game, then i support it.


Friends > haters


my powerleveling brings all the girls to the yard

[Denmo]

.

I cannot agree with this guy's post more. May you receive many thumbs up for the time you took to clarify the issue.

[Eekiki]

Agree with OP, needs to be fixed asap. Of course ppl who dont really care like PL, but SE needs to listen to the hundreds of ppl saying its bullcrap.

Yes. Don't listen to the thousands who are playing the game and enjoying it right now. Listen to the hundreds complaining about it here.

EDIT: divide all units by 10