Re: Turbine pondering to sell gold/items

Ham Pastrami wrote:
If more money is what they want, maybe they should try, you know, making
better games? Better yet, maybe they should figure out how to build an MMO
where prowess and prestige is measured by skill rather than loot, and
eliminate the basis of contention. Or am I being too old-fashioned?

How else will we measure our virtual *** size, if not by stacks of ph4t l3wt? :P

The "grind" so many attribute satisfies a particular player type, the goal-earner. On the opposite side of the field is the Shiny Toy player. One aspires to a character defining, constant upslope kind of play, the other focused on novelty and ease of play.

MMO's can't possibly cater to both sets at the same time, and so the objective is to strike a happy balance between the two; odds are most players will fall on some medium, and tolerate the grind while appreciating and focusing on the new content their play unlocks.

So long as there exists humanity, there will be people who find the grind too arduous and want someone else to provide them their Shiny Toys. This will meet with (perhaps rightly so) uproarious damnation by the crowd devoted to the journey, not the destination (whom will then suggest the grind be made harder and/or the other group be banned/removed/muted/deleted/etc.). The developers will forever be caught in the middle, afraid to upset either group by doing much of anything. And so the carousel revolves...

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Of course, if prowess and prestige were measured by playing skill, they'd never get the anal-retentive stat-tards to play the game, under accusations of "twitch" gameplay. If any MMO dared move faster than a game of bridge, it is to be utterly shunned as "unplayable"; if any kind of meaningful progress were available in a moderate amount of playtime, it is considere'd "shallow". A game mechanic easily understandable, "simple", an exploit unavailable, "boring".

Players love spontaneity, but only as far as they remain in complete control, like a rollercoaster. They always want to know that they can stop the ride at any time if things aren't looking up for them, that everything they have is always safe, regardless of what the other guests want/think. Adding in the level of unpredictability player skill would bring to the table upsets this key tenet of MMO play.

TheSmokingGnu
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