Decoupling player appearance from progression

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Sunday, March 31, 2013, 22:24 (4040 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by Ragashingo, Sunday, March 31, 2013, 22:32

Your problem is one of extremes.

Many if not most of us agree that a progression system should not, and cannot, be the focus of a game. That developers should entice players to play with fun and with interesting gameplay. They should not rely on the grinding of x to get achievement y to be the thing that brings player back. Gameplay, and immersion, and wonder should be king, not some progress bar that advances a little each time you do some minor thing. We agree with you on that.

But then you just keep going and keep going. Soon, according to you, any hint of stat tracking or handing out rewards for anything becomes something that ruins games, full stop, no debate allowed. You've said, paraphrasing of course, that Destiny itself, the game we know almost nothing about, will not be worth playing if it has any kind of progression or investment system. It gets to the point that players who enjoy it when developers include challenges for them to accomplish, regardless of how good or bad the rest of the game is, are called losers by you.

You start more or less in the right place, but your apparent need to go to such extremes combined with your "my way or the highway" approach to definitions and points of view makes it an absolute pain to read your posts much less try and discuss or debate with you. And that's a shame, because your core arguments are, as I said, something I think many of us agree with.