That's cute

by kapowaz, Friday, August 09, 2013, 02:59 (3916 days ago) @ kidtsunami

With that out of the way, you begin to discuss the positives and negatives of various "player investment systems" without descending into myopia.

Here's how I see it.

There are no fundamentally bad game mechanics. There are only bad implementations. Reward systems aren't intrinsically bad. There are just bad implementations of reward systems. Player investment systems aren't intrinsically bad. There are just bad implementations of player investment systems. Seeing a pattern? The important debate or discussion regarding Destiny, then, is just how these reward systems and player investment systems are going to work, and right now we simply do not know. It's utterly impossible to judge them, not only because they've not been discussed in depth, but also because you can't look at them in a vacuum.

A perfect example would be World of Warcraft's badge system. Introduced in the second expansion, the badge system was a way of allowing players to gradually accumulate a currency (by running ‘heroic’ 5-man dungeons) which could eventually be traded in for gear of equivalent level to that which you might otherwise get from running the most cutting-edge 25-man raids. This badge system allowed players to progress independently of the raiding endgame, which necessitated a massive time commitment. I for one never did any 25 man raiding back then — you would have to join a guild and raid for 4+ hours straight, 3-4 times a week. Just not something I would ever commit to. But even for the players that would commit to this, it still had problems.

For those who aren't aware, WoW operates on a gradual progression of levels and gearing. The original expansion had a level cap of 60. Once you reached this, you ceased gaining new levels, but you could still make your character more powerful by gaining better and better gear in dungeons and raids. The progression then went quest gear => dungeon gear => raid gear, but with new ‘tiers’ of raid being introduced gradually over time. These new tiers would be even harder than the previous ones, and so almost always necessitated most (if not all) of your raid members to be geared with the previous top tier's gear. Each time a new one was released you'd find yourselves feeling barely strong enough to survive, then over time as you defeated more and more of the raid's bosses and accumulated gear, you'd get stronger and stronger and so on.

The problem with this system (along with the aforementioned raid commitments) is that it's a relentless treadmill; if you ‘burned out’ (as many players did) from the raiding schedule, and took a break, your friends would presumably continue without you, and when you returned you would no longer be able to join them in the top tier of combat because you were — comparatively — too undergeared. But because these friends were on their relentless raiding schedule, it was very difficult for them to take time out of that as well in order to help you get geared up: for most of the players in the raid this content would be old, boring and none of the rewards would be of use to them. This led to raiding player numbers gradually falling away towards the end of the expansion's cycle, and eventually only something like 2% of players got to participate in the final tier.

The solution in the next expansion was completely overhaul the badge investment system. It actually received two major changes throughout the lifespan of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, but I'll focus only on the second one, which I think was the most inspired. With this system, at any given point in the game there would be a current top-level tier of raid content, previous tier(s) of raid content and heroic 5-man dungeons. Defeating bosses in the top-level tier of raid content rewarded you with a currency called Emblem of Triumph; defeating bosses in either old raid tiers or heroic dungeons rewarded you with Emblem of Heroism. Emblems of Triumph permitted the purchase of gear of equivalent level to the current top-level tier, whilst Emblems of Heroism permitted the purchase of any other gear previously only available with Emblems of Triumph. Each time a new raid tier was introduced, every player's stash of Triumph badges would be converted into Heroism badges (and consolidated), and the purchase cost of previous top-tier items would be changed to Heroism badges.

The outcome of this system was straightforward: if any player took a break from the game, they could quickly and easily gear up to the level of the tier immediately prior to the current top-tier by accumulating badges, and they could do this in any of a number of ways (raiding, dungeons, daily and weekly quests). It also made it feasible for players to level up a second character class and quickly bring that player to a level where they could participate in the top-tier of content.

The point of this long and somewhat technical discussion is that how a player investment system works cannot be considered in a vacuum. It is fundamentally tied to the behaviours of players that arise from both the social side (burnout!) and the surrounding game mechanics, and unforeseen emergent effects (the tier system gulf). Was Blizzard's solution perfect? Almost certainly not — they've continued to iterate on it in subsequent years, replacing badges with a points system, and then ultimately replacing a system where you can buy ‘top-tier’ gear with one where you upgrade already-purchased gear. I've not played much in the current expansion so almost everything I know about how it works currently isn't first hand. As WoW continues to evolve, I don't doubt they'll change it even further in the expansions they're working on next.

As an aside, where Destiny is concerned, I am adamant that they will need to iterate and evolve as they go, which is part of the reason why I feel like Bungie's no comment approach isn't worthwhile; whatever they choose to reveal at release will inevitably change over the years, so they shouldn't feel like we're going to get too wed to shape it takes upon its final reveal.