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| Nice, Comments | |
| Posted By: Cody Miller <cody@halo4.isnotcanon.net> | Date: 3/1/13 2:16 a.m. |
In Response To: Micro-transactions and character progression (pete_the_duck) You are so close, but I don't think you quite dig deep enough into the difference between the Legendary badge and custom armor. One represents a skill you've acquired. The legendary badge says "I have the skill required to finish Legendary". The armor simply says that you put in the time to acquire XP, which doesn't really have any particular skills attached to it. The time required to get the XP can;t be gotten back, and if something happened or you started a new account you'd have to do all that over again. But for the legendary badge, you don't have to relearn the skill to beat legendary: you already, and always will have it (baring decay from inactivity). One represents an accomplishment that is meaningful because it cannot be taken away from you and is a permanent alteration in the world (in this case, your brain wiring). The other, is meaningless because it has no real impact and is not permanently manifested. If a game is good, it should be fun to be played, and continue to be played, with all of its elements available to the player from the beginning.
There is a place for avatar progression in games, so long as the progression is limited, and offers genuine depth to the game. Deus Ex did this right with augmentation canisters. There's only so many in the game, and each one can be used to raise one of two skills. So right there, you have a trade off. Do I use this canister to add combat strength, or an EMP shield? The supply of canisters is limited, so you need to make the choice matter. The game is designed so that you can tackle it differently depending on your augmentations, so what you choose has a large effect on how the game plays and what you are able to do. If you had all the augmentations at the start, it would not be as interesting since you could simply do anything, and the element of tuning to your play style and the tradeoffs would be eliminated. Now, this only works because the augmentations are limited. If you could get them by farming enemies, then the system would be ruined. It would be ruined because there would be no downside, other than time spent, to upgrading yourself fully. Players would probably try to do this, and game balance must take this into account. This is why every JRPG superboss requires you to be extremely high level. In Megaman, you start with no special weapons and acquire them by beating robot masters. This adds depth because you can pick the stages in any order. You get Item 1 from Heat Man and that helps in the Air Man stage, but you get item 2 from Air man which helps in the Heat Man stage. What do you do? You pick the order that best suits you. If you had every weapon to start with, this element of the game would be lost. And again, this is okay because there's a fixed humber of special weapons and you eventually get them all. You can farm enemies and make your weapons more and more powerful. Another good example is the weapon level up system in Vanquish. These systems present meaningful choice, and that is why they are valuable.
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| Replies: |
| Micro-transactions and character progression | pete_the_duck | 2/28/13 11:53 a.m. |
| Great read. | Gravemind | 2/28/13 6:40 p.m. |
| Re: Micro-transactions and character progression | Revenant1988 | 2/28/13 6:51 p.m. |
| Nice, Comments | Cody Miller | 3/1/13 2:16 a.m. |
| Re: Nice, Comments | Cody Miller | 3/1/13 2:19 a.m. |
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