Char progression and player engagement

[venatorvenator]

Next world our characters' stats will be capped, at best, at 200. People have been complaining that this kills their motivation to play, since the endless quality grind was a goal in itself - either as a self-challenge for hermits or as a reason to compete globally as a trader or pvp'er.

That's an important feeling to address, I think, because it affects how much we'd care about our characters and how far from a RTS the game is. What sense of progression will the players have after their character has reached the cap? In other words: in the new system, what would make our characters meaningful and unique?

Devs, do you have plans to add means to give us that feeling of uniqueness and/or progression (non-stat based)? Old age, dynasty and heritage, char customization, personal achievements and awards etc have been suggested before and could be used to that purpose. But is that something you'll be considering seriously?

[Granger]

Next world our characters' stats will be capped, at best, at 200.

This is a proposal which had been put up for discussion by the devs, there are thread to discuss.

[venatorvenator]

They said they were going to try that, and what I'm interested in is not whether that's a good feature of not, but rather if there will be measures for players to actually care about their characters beyond the cap.

[Granger]

It'll in any event be a while until the reset actually happens, so feel free to throw any and all reasonable feedback, concerns, thoughts and questions at us, until then, and we'll try to modify the plan to take reasonable feedback into account. I assume there'll be a lot of mixed emotions about this, and we want to be as considerate as we can.

[venatorvenator]

^^And yet they had said a hundred words earlier that they already have a system ready for stat cap and would be trying that. Again though, not the point I'm trying to make in this thread.

They did comment on this tangentially elsewhere though, suggesting that instead of making one character meaningful, the solution could be making alts.
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=46598&start=90#p607016

[Amanda44]

They did comment on this tangentially elsewhere though, suggesting that instead of making one character meaningful, the solution could be making alts.
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=46598&start=90#p607016

Personally I wouldn't want to do that, I have alts, never many but they are for specific purposes, holding keys, travelling on. I like having just the one main char and this world made it easier to do that, I honestly don't see the point of having multiple mains, in any game your char is the most important asset because it's an extension of you, so it doesn't appeal to me. Raise one char to cap level, raise another to cap level, rinse and repeat ... Why? When do you stop? What are you going to do with them all?

It's content and tons of it that may have a chance of keeping players engaged after reaching the cap, atm doing the chores just isn't enough, it's boring and takes double the time and effort that it did in legacy.

The best thing this new version has going for it is the extensive design experience with terraforming, builds, variety of stones, plants, etc, so that is another area that can be extended upon.

[Vaku]

Why? When do you stop? What are you going to do with them all?

I think the same point can be made about infinite stats:

1,000 ranks in UA? What are you going to do with them all?
5 alts with 200 UA? What are you going to do with them all?

With a lower threshold for players to think they've done all they can, the sooner they branch out to other activities—the goal, however, is that they need to branch out into other activities in THIS game, and not OTHER games altogether.



One solution is definitely,

content

Whether or not it needs to be TONS of content is debatable, but the content should be, in the very least, entertaining, so that it keeps yielding lots of fun—at least as much fun as raising stats infinitely (which seems to entertain at least a quarter of this population).

I would say tons of content doesn't matter so much as polished content does. As an example, imagine a game you've enjoyed.
Did the best part of that game involve repetitive elements, or was there novelty or newness that you enjoyed most?

If it was novelty around every corner, then tons of content will appeal to you.
If it was some repetitive element, then refreshing content will be more appealing.



I think it's worthwhile to breakdown what you do repetitively in HnH, versus something you do once, or very infrequently (but may still find pleasurable).

Assessing your engagement in this way may give you a better idea of what to suggest as needing improvement.

[Amanda44]

^^ posted elsewhere;

It's not so much that I'm totally against caps, Potjeh made me think about them in the past and I do think unlimited growth gets a bit silly in a very long world but this idea, tied in with the payment model just won't work, the cap is too low for those prepared to sub and then when reached there is not enough in the game to make it worthwhile continuing when you can't see a return from your investment. It may work at some point in the future when the game has more content and meaning on other levels but it just doesn't have that atm.

[Granger]

Here is what will happen with skill caps as suggested by Jorb (50, 125, and 200):

Two toons meet and talk, one of them asks: 'What kind of account do you have?'
Possible developments from here:
'free' ==> punch, punch, chop
'verified' ==> punch, punch, chop
'subscription' ==> 'in to kill some freebies?'

[Potjeh]

Unlimited progression gets in the way of other content. When you don't have to worry about keeping up with the Joneses you can take a week or two for just doing a large construction project, or taking a tour of the world, and not worry about wrecking your FEP/LP income. I for one know that I hated worrying about curios and good food while I was working on leveling the town.