July 2007

• [JOB] Linden Lab Brighton Party 26th July Jim Purbrick
• • [JOB] Linden Lab Brighton Party 26th July Christopher Lloyd
• [BIZ] Forum software? Mike Rozak
• • [BIZ] Forum software? Caliban Darklock
  • • [BIZ] Forum software? Adam Martin
  • [BIZ] Forum software? Chan Yong Wei
  • [BIZ] Forum software? Michael Chui
  • [BIZ] Forum software? David Johansson
  • [BIZ] Forum software? Dana V. Baldwin
  • • [BIZ] Forum software? David Johansson
  • [BIZ] Forum software? Morgan Ramsay
• [DESIGN] Will players pay for public services? Nicholas Koranda
• • [DESIGN] Will players pay for public services? cruise
• [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Nicholas Koranda
• • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Tom Hudson
  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
  • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Travis Casey
  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Tom Hudson
    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Travis Casey
      • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
      • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
        • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
          • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
            • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
              • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
                • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Tom Hudson
                      On 8/21/07, Caliban Darklock <cdarklock@gmail.com> wrote:
                      
                      > Regardless of what you think about the grind, it is a solution, not a
                      > problem. Taking it away is not a matter of forcing the player to find
                      > a different solution. It is a matter of finding a new solution to the
                      > problem which the player finds preferable to the grind. You haven't
                      > actually solved the grind; you've simply replaced it with a new one.
                      > Now, instead of finding a place where monsters respawn quickly, the
                      > player must map out a complex path through the game where he never
                      > does any task more difficult than absolutely necessary. A list will be
                      > made and sold on EBay. Eventually, it will leak to a public web site.
                      > It will become common knowledge. The "power level" will no longer be
                      > "earn many XP quickly" but "efficiently restrict task completion".
                      
                      Caliban, I think you're still misunderstanding the proposal and
                      attacking a bit of a strawman, but I just wanted to provide a concrete
                      anecdote addressing this particular tangent, if RPG rather than MMO.
                      As Vincent has said several times below, this already happens in real
                      games. I was once so bored that I mapped out the ideal power-leveling
                      curve in the demo section of one of Spiderweb Software's Geneforge
                      games (I forget if it was I or II) - figure out when every quest
                      becomes available, what sort of minimal skills are necessary to handle
                      it for the ones that are skill-gated (conversation, trap disarming,
                      and partially lockpicking), and how its XP award decreases with
                      increasing character level at quest completion.
                      
                      Or for something more MMO-ish: it's easy in Guild Wars I (Prophecies)
                      to have quests left to do in an area, with substantial XP rewards
                      attached, where every mob in the area rewards you with zero XP, yet
                      still requires effort to kill and (if you pull too large a group) can
                      kill you. This is content that is really, really frustrating to
                      consume; the design assumption appears to be that characters will
                      advance the plot and move on to new areas of the gameworld without
                      cleaning out more than about half the quests available to them.
                  • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Aurel Mihai
                    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
                      • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
                      • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Michael Chui
                    • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                      • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                        • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                          • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                            • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                              • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
                                • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                                  • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                                  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                                    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                                      • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                                  • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                                  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
                            • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Michael Chui
                            • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                        • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
            • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
          • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... John Arras
          • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
            • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
              • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
              • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
                • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
                  • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
                    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Damion Schubert
                      • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... John Buehler
                      • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
                      • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
                        • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
              • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Acius
              • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
          • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Tom Hudson
        • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Tom Hudson
        • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Caliban Darklock
    • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Jarod Reid
    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Vincent Archer
    • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... cruise
    • • [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point... Travis Casey
• [DESIGN] Believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation) Nicholas Koranda
• [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Nicholas Koranda
• • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Travis Casey
  • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Jon Leonard
    • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Peter Keeler
    • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Caliban Darklock
      • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Peter Keeler
        • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Michael Chui
          • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Caliban Darklock
            • • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency John Buehler
              • [DESIGN] Active and Inactive Currency Johnicholas Hines
• [DESIGN] Expected value and standard deviation Nicholas Koranda
• • [DESIGN] Expected value and standard deviation Travis Casey
  • [DESIGN] Expected value and standard deviation cruise
  • • [DESIGN] Expected value and standard deviation Darryl Woodford