Been away for a while, have a few ?'s about the "new FFXIV"Follow

The more I think about it, the more this has me very worried.

They are not going to re-release a game without an Auction House, are they?!

There is a very large percentage of potential players who will not even touch this game if it does not include a real Auction House. By real, I mean you can buy items from the item serach menu, no walking involved.

Is this game going to go down as "FFXIV: Still-No-Auction-House"?

Maybe I'm just not "getting it", but to me what you described sounds just as artificial as a leveling system. You are just replacing be X level to fight the dragon with get X key, then get X sword, then kill the dragon. It's basically the same linear progression as leveling, you are just taking the number out of it. Maybe I'm just being too analytical about it. Regardless, I completely agree with you that gated content isn't fun when it interrupts the natural flow of the game.

Design-wise, everything is artificial, so yeah, it is fundamentally not so different. But it's the player experience that matters, and that is quite different, because without the artificial pacing, the player progresses through the content without artificial stoppages. It's difficult to see the appeal if you look at the game as a linear experience, but just to use a familiar example, think of a game that is something akin to a Zelda MMO (the less linear ones), and it becomes easier to understand the difference. You never have to stop and level up Link to get to the boss, but there are several tasks you'll need to complete. Sometimes you can go almost anywhere in the world and tackle the dungeons in whatever order you prefer, where other times you might not have the tool to move forward beyond certain points.

Design-wise, the main difference is that "level" is used as a catch-all checkpoint. Your level single-handedly determines if you can: learn abilities, use equipment, access areas, accept quests, use certain services, etc. It's a very convenient universal pacing tool for the designer, but doesn't always work out for the player. Compare to Zelda, where there are plenty of challenges between you and your goals, but being the right level is never one of them. Now, to dilute the Zelda example a bit, gameplay in Zelda games (at least the classic ones) is nothing very sophisticated--far simpler than in an MMO or even single player RPG.

I see what you're getting at, and thank you for the Zelda analogy as that put it more in perspective as to what you were talking about. I was still thinking of it from a purely mmo standpoint.


Edited, May 20th 2013 10:40pm by BartelX

No problem, I was happy to have the chance to explain it better. I get so caught up in the abstract mechanics sometimes and could probably save myself a lot of trouble with some concrete examples... it took me a minute to think of the Zelda example.



Well, that's the definitive tradeoff of using levels. The main thing that they do for the developers (stretch out the game artificially) is the thing that most players don't like (adding excessive repetition). But they generally kind of work because some people are satisfied by the feeling that they're working towards something better. It stops working when the player realizes that there is nothing better... just more repetition.

Equippables are just an example, though it is possible (and pretty easy) to design infinitely horizontal equipment systems where the player can never have all of the equipment that they'd want to have--and you can definitely include abilities in that list. Many quests can be predicated upon the completion of earlier quests (that's pretty much a given in any narrative). Area access can also be used, though should generally be relied upon less often--reserved for special areas. Other gameplay features and UI, travel options, etc. are other possibilities.

Speaking very generally, you need players to fight their way through dangerous battles to reach their objectives. Large zones and lots of things to do in them. Getting from A to B is the challenge. Think about how much real estate is wasted in the average MMO today--the places that have no real purpose for you to be there. Now think of games like Zelda and Metroid. Was there ever a room or a screen that you DIDN'T need to go to? Not many. Were the monsters a credible threat for most of the game, or were they pointlessly weak after you had become strong enough? If the game is sufficiently difficult, players won't complete it too quickly.

And with a system like this, you can still do levels. But you might only do 5 or 10 levels. They can still serve the exact same functions if you really need to gate some content.

But ultimately the question shouldn't be, "How will we get players to keep playing without levels?". What we should ask is, "Why don't players want to kill our monsters? Why do we have to give them XP and levels to get them to do it?" In most cases, it's because they've failed to make the combat fun, so they're relying on the carrot to get you to do it.