Re: LF MUD with 'broadened' powercurve
It's to encourage people to move on to new challenges. If players had no incentive to leave Newbieville, they'd just stay there, killing the same old rats and worms, over and over - and that's when it starts feeling like a grind.
Yeah I agree it's silly to die to a rat, but that's really a cosmetic issue. You could rename the rats "bandits" without changing the underlying system - kill X, get stronger, move on to Y, get stronger, move on to Z. This is a tried-and-true way of getting players to gradually advance through all the content, one step at a time, so they feel as if they're making progress without being overwhelmed with too much at once. Most tabletop roleplaying games work this way as well - even in the World of Darkness games you mentioned, players typically face stronger challenges as they progress in order to give them a sense of achievement.
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