Summing up: accessibility and long-term viability

Saving a part of discussion that started from here (original source)

Raph:
Actually, I touched on that here and here, but lord knows I’ve said it enough other times too. :)

The first link discusses again possible ways to optimize the production of content. That has nothing to do with what I tried to say. My point is that the more you stretch the treadmill the more the game risks to break. And it will. The problem is not one of quantity, it’s the one of accessibility and viability.

If new players join a barren world and have no ways to reach their friends or where the whole community currently is, the game will die over time. No matter how good are your “retention mechanics”. It’s destined to collapse sooner or later.

WoW will collapse later because it is more easily soloable, so accessible. But the model is still doomed.

The second link only passes by the issue without getting it (it’s mostly a problem of economy and dynamism that I somewhat discussed here).

Newbies are reduced to one or two areas per level range, and the entire process of levelling up is seen as just “the prelude to the real game.”

This is true but, again, what I’m saying is not that the newbie experience is blander compared to the resources and value put on the endgame content (in WoW the endgame content is actually worse than the early game). what I’m saying is that, overtime, the newbie experience degenerates till the point the game becomes completely inaccessible because there aren’t anymore players around to group with, enjoy the game and experience what requires more than one player available and well balanced groups with all the classes represented. Which is what you said in the first article (that I liked more): “they (levels) are used to keep people apart” And spread thin, I would add.

Till the point where the “latter” game is completely isolated and anymore accessible. Or you are ALREADY part of it, or you are out. If a mmorpg is a flow of water, this equals to cutting off the fount. You will still have the players gathering at the end like in a pool (I often use the image of a dam at the level cap) but the water will stagnate and it won’t last for long.

So you can switch “overlook” with “not pinpointed well enough”.

Actually, what you write in the second link is the opposite of what I’m saying. You point out the problem of twinking and increased knowledge that brings to trivialize some parts of the game. While I’m saying that with less players around and without a strong community supporting the early levels, the newbies will find the game *too hard* and inaccessible to be viable and fun.

This is a general trend. I always totally agree on your premises and those articles are wonderful. But then I disagree on the conclusions, and, most likely, on the possible solutions.

Lum:
Ah, but statistics without context will make liars of us all. Take the first graph you posted, a typical WoWCensus readout. By this metric alone, we’d decide OMG WOW MUST HAVE 99% OF THE CONTENT FOR LEVEL 60S!!! (which, not coincidentally, is a common forum refrain).

Yet one of the reasons WoW is currently selling 3 copies for every man woman and child on the Internet is the game’s breadth and depth of content. Although on older servers many players have progressed to the end of the level curve, the fact that there was no lack of content getting there is not insignificant. It delivered MILLIONS of people to the end of that curve. That it doesn’t then continue to provide huge swatches of content doesn’t mean the game is poorly designed, it means that however huge the development budget, it can only deliver so much content, and the development team chose to concentrate their efforts on the “missing curve” that you dismiss.

I really don’t know where you are trying to disagree here. I took those premises (like the “not enough endgame content”) to prove them wrong. Not to consolidate them.

Imho, WoW wouldn’t be a better game if it had another 10 instances at the current endgame. That’s not what I’m trying to prove. I’m just trying to say, as did Raph, that this model brings directly to an UNSUSTAINABLE siituation. And the game WILL collapse because of this.

1- The developers cannot keep up with the *increasing* demand for content.
2- The players need more content to remain in the game and have “things to do”.
3- The more content added at the endgame and the more the treadmill is stretched, the less the game will remain accessible for new players.
4- This can last till a point (stretching and more stretching). Then it breaks.

Lum:
You said that the problem is that there’s not enough content at the far end of the curve. There will *never* be enough content, because the time spent by players at the endgame dwarfs any development team’s ability to create challenges.

But that’s my point as well! I’m not going against that idea, I’m proving it.

Lum:
This is why there’s so much attention paid to procedurally generated content and player-generated endgames (political, combat, cooperative, whatever) because no matter how much content you create, you not only aren’t going to keep up, you also with every addition run the risk of invalidating large swatches of the rest of the game by throwing off the power curve somehow. (Treasure that results in players becoming exponentially more powerful, for example.)

And here’s another point (where I strongly disagree with Raph and Dave). The generated content and AIs are *chimeras*. They will never work. Going in that direction won’t bring to any result. The demand for (that type of) “content” can only be delivered in that way. You cannot magically (algoritmically) produce content. You won’t fool anyone if not yourself (see Mike Rozak’s splendid definition of content).

As I said from MY point of view (the whole thing I’m saying here) is that quote I took from Raph: “they (levels) are used to keep people apart”

A solution to the problems I pointed is about possible, different models that could bring the players TOGETHER instead of apart. Levels, today, are used to chunk the community (which can also be good as I pointed to Raph) but also to shatter it.

You already summarized my “view” on these games when you said I see them as “living worlds”. I’d add that the model I would like to see is the one of a circle, where the whole game is self contained. Opposed to the current model that is just a lineear, endlessly stretched string that is viable only if you start at the same time of everyone else and are able to “keep up” with them.

If you join late, you are out. If you lose too much terrain and cannot keep up, you are out. (this is what Raph overlooked from my point of view)

Then there’s the sandbox game. Here we move away from a single-player game because the focus is more on the actors as active subjects more than a linear, fixed story that is narrated or re-enacted. In the sandbox you can fit pretty much everything, even the whole game of the first type. But, in general, the sandbox has “toys” into it that you can use freely and “creatively”. The player here can have different roles and the model is particularly appropriate for the myth of “satisfying repetable content”.

The other way is what I have as an ideal: the living world. A living world is a sandbox, or a complex system. In a complex system all the elements have a precise function that isn’t “replaced” or “mudflated”. All these elements are tied together, forming a complexity and shaping up a “world” that is self-consistent and self-contained. Where you just don’t need “more space” to justify more content and where you don’t need to mudflate and replace anything because every element has a purpose and is justified.

This model ideally allows the system to never age. Both new and old players exist on the same level and play together, not far away. There’s no need to build barriers since the game itself takes advantage from the ties between the elements. The development can go on at the same time on all the levels without leaving out either side.

Can you see that I’m pointing to the same problems you pointed too?

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