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Old 08-29-2010, 10:49 PM   #9
silvarilon
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Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: Veterans of Roleplay Intensive MUDs

We also need to take into account how hard it is to hold onto veterans.

If games don't change, then they stagnate. They will either be great stand-alone games that you can explore until you get tired and leave, or they will be as great as they always were, but fall behind in comparison to newer games (How great is Doom? It's still great, but I'm not going to play it through again, I'll play something newer with more features and better UI)

So that means adding in new features, and updating game design. And isn't it the case that we can't please all the players all the time?

So what we end up doing is layering more features and systems on top of an existing game, making it more and more complicated. This is great for the veterans, it keeps things fresh for them, and continues to give them opportunities for advancement. It's not great for the new players, the ones who now arrive find a more complex game, and have a larger barrier of entry before they can compete with the existing players - they have a harder time as a new arrival than the veterans did.

So if we want to keep the game "equally easy" for a new person to join as it was when the veterans first joined, we need to simplify some things, give 'easy ins' for the new arrivals, etc. - which leads to veterans feeling that things are dumbed down.

No win situation? Not quite. It's quite possible to add more systems & options without adding to the complexity for a new player.
Imagine a scenario where a new player can be a ranger, with a fully functional hunting system. You add the ability for new (and old) players to be miners, with a fully functional mining system. It's not really any harder for a new player, since if they choose to be a ranger or a miner, they still only have one system to learn. They need to make a choice of which career, but it's pretty obvious what sort of activities they will be looking at.

But it's still hard to get that right. How will mining impact the game economy? Will profit from digging up gold be balanced well against profit from killing animals? Will you just be splitting the player-base between twice as much area as before (especially with less players where the player-base should be consolidated...) and so on. It's possible to get it right. Just not easy.

And every time you make a mistake, you'll risk loosing players. But you also risk loosing players if you don't take the risks and chances.
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