"You Will Die" Difficulty... Can I Have It?

[fusional]

So the only course of action for a successful MMO is to treadmill the gear rewards? Just flat out make content that is impossible until you have the right gear, and have that content drop the gear you need for the next content, which drops the gear you need for the content after that, in perpetuity?

i never said it's the only course, and i'm not sure where you got the impression that i did. i didn't even imply it. care to clue me in to your thought process there?

but anyway, yes. gear and content progression is what keeps people playing, and people playing keeps communities strong. love it or hate it, it's the foundation of EQ's success, FFXI's success after it, and WoW's success after that. that's not to say that they can't improve on the model, but without it people simply jump to end, beat it, then never log in again until a new patch or expansion.

do you think the most casual players should be entitled to the best gear in the game? do you think they should be entitled to experiencing every bit of content that the most hardcore players see?

should someone who works four hours per week get the same pay and the same perks as someone who works 80? should there not be any perks for the person who works 80 simply because there are people who don't?

[IndigoDarkwolf]

i never said it's the only course, and i'm not sure where you got the impression that i did. i didn't even imply it. care to clue me in to your thought process there?

Well, here's two examples, one each from your previous post and your response to me:

they did the content, they got the stuff, and they can't improve their characters any further outside of cosmetics

but anyway, yes. gear and content progression is what keeps people playing

The content should be challenging, that's a good thing. The content should take a while to complete, that's a good thing, too. So why does tiered gear have to be tied to content unlocks?

There are only two differences between using tiered gear as a gating mechanism to new content and using key items or rare consumables as a gating mechanism to new content:

• Tiered gear creates an illusory sense of skill gains by making it possible to attempt content without a realistic possibility of completing it. When you do complete the content, it was because your gear was better, not you.
• Tiered gear leads to a power treadmill which excludes players from joining their friends until they have completed every shred of content between them.

I have nothing against quest arcs or storylines that take upwards of two months to complete. I agree that if content is too easy and completed too quickly, players will get bored and abandon the game.

I'm saying that, unless the ultimate motivation for players is gear that is unilaterally better than all gear before it, then the better solution for all players is to use a different gating mechanism. Using a different gating mechanism, however, means re-evaluating the reward mechanism, or else new content will be too easy on account of players' stats always going up.

If you're going to say that I'm on the wrong side of the conversation because I want players to be able to attempt an expansion's new content - to join their friends and have the opportunity to spend a few months figuring out how to defeat the new content, even if they never do as a result of time, money, skill, or other constraints - and to do so without having to first spend months of time catching up on previous content just to meet gear tier requirements or leeching while their friends re-grind the content for them, regardless of those new players' skill or potential, then we'll probably never see eye-to-eye on this issue. Stop reading, because nothing else I have to say will be of any interest to you.

If tiered gear is the only answer, that would actually be kind of depressing to me, because that would mean that MMOs are "solved" and the only route to success is to end up following the path of Dragonball Z. Just keep adding more power to the world until the subscriber numbers max out, then constantly scale back your development team to only cater to however many players are the most hardcore, until there's no longer enough players to keep the game afloat. Meanwhile, have the rest of your team work on your next MMO because people will just move to it, starting from level 0.

If content is a stronger motivator, then the question is how to gate the content appropriately so that it can't be completed too quickly. MacGuffins, disposable key items, bosses with puzzle aspects to their fight, etc. There are lots of ways to gate players, including sheer difficulty. This doesn't require a gear treadmill.

If challenge is a stronger motivator, then the question is how to make sure the content is challenging without a gear treadmill. Honestly, this seems like the easiest problem: Make the bosses' stat numbers bigger in relation to the players, and/or change their fight to favor the actions which required the most attention and fastest reactions from the players, that had the most opportunity to wipe the party in the event of a mistake. Van Darnus Hard, Garuda Hard, etc. This doesn't require a gear treadmill, either, in fact a gear treadmill negates whatever effort was spent here making a fight challenging, and all but ensures that the fight will eventually be trivial.