| Steinhauer's Opinion: Killing Experience, Part 1
No rest for the holidays, Jonathan Steinhauer keeps his MMO design column on schedule with part one of "Killing Experience". In this, he looks at the primary form of advancement in every major MMO: combat.
Why is it that the dominant method of character growth in almost every game in existence is through the killing of monsters and villains? Whether you are looking at the oldest of pen-and-paper games, your mainstream single-player RPG, or the newest MMO, character growth always seems to boil down to "I killed that goblin warlord so I get 100xp." On the other hand, if the same goblin was hacked and beaten to an inch of its life and then left alone to recover (which usually averages less than thirty seconds), the same player would get zero experience from the battle.
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Steinhauer's Opinion: Killing Experience, Part 1
No rest for the holidays, Jonathan Steinhauer keeps his MMO design column on schedule with part one of "Killing Experience". In this, he looks at the primary form of advancement in every major MMO: combat.
Read more after the click.
Read Full Article