I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.
Now even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?
You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.
Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.
Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.
Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.
Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?
@EA selling virtual car for $100:
I was initially shocked, but then I remembered previous examples: Battlefield Heroes rents virtual weapons for real money, WoW has players selling in-game gold for real world currency. Heck, TF2 has a whole economy based on virtual goods.
All these examples point out that there is a lot of spare cash, and enough people having it are willing to spend it on whatever they feel it is valuable.
Hey, Jordan, I proposed a similar measure (tax sales from virtual goods) in episode 240 😛
@Modern Warfare 3 beats Avatar:
Well, I wouldn’t say that the gaming industry beats the movie industry, just based on one game. I think we (or at least I) will need to check more numbers.
One thing to be noted though: Activision made that money, not the original dev team (they left Activision after MW2). So, I’m sorry to say that, but the devs just found out how easy they can be replaced, without major losses from the company …
@Move to next-gen is “terrifying“:
… really? PCs already are next-gen, they always were. And the XBox is always very close to the PC, because of the hardware and software similarities. Terrifying? Yeah, but only for Sony and Nintendo, because they failed to understand the importance of a good platform/framework/API.
@Man sues Sony for ToS update forbidding suing:
Ha ha ha! 😀
Well, you can always choose to not use the console … As for Microsoft doing the same thing (forbidding class action suits), shame on them.
As for the size of DynamicJul’s country, yeah, there are a lot of small countries: Monaco, Lichtenstein, Faroe Islands, San Marino …
@QOTW: a game in the STALKER universe.
:)) so apparently there will be no show until mid January … anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
My country is the actually the small island of Malta.
@Naughty Dog: Move to next-gen is “terrifying“: I think that if the PS4 is released in the near future, it will have a launch just as hard as the PS3. Just like Naughty Dog, I think that developers have only just started using the PS3 to its extent and anything new will definitely be a challenge.
@Nintendo only showing E3 Wii U demos at CES 2012: I don’t think this really means anything. I think that they’re just holding everything for E3. First of all, I think that E3 is the most known and the hype that would come from releasing all the information in a few hours would be much greater rather than if they released it over a couple of months.
@QOTW: As far as games that have already been announced, it’s Mass Effect 3. I have already pre-ordered it and hope that it will get me through my GCSEs without me playing any other games.
@Next-gen Hardware:
Maybe they’re skipping a few numbers and working on the PS9 from the PS2 days (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRJXLu3YVpM).
@Paul: Congrats on the move and reuniting with your partner. It’s great to hear queer perspectives on gaming, and I think a lot more people should be coming out as gaymers. 😛
@ ea selling virtual car for $100
I’m not surprised coz most companies do this ,i mean they won’t lost anything physically and its just virtual
@ modern warfare 3 beats avatar
This doesn’t prove that gaming industry is better than the movie industry ,its just one game
@ qotw
I’m most interested in the upcoming transformers game
I wish my classmates know what’s the difference between a flashgame and a title coz they keep teasing that I don’t know games but they’re wrong ,wth they think godswar is a cool game and they compare it to world of warcraft wtf ,btw godswar is a Facebook game mmorpg
@ ea selling virtual car for $100
Yeah virtual items purchases can get real crazy, specially in Online worlds with micro transactions.
About the Entropia Universe space resort the article refers to, it matters to say that those real estates are sources of income. Other players pay a % of their revenue generated on the asteroid. The estate owner could also sell shops and apartments to other players. “Neverdie” announced a few years back that just 6 months after the purchase of the asteroid, he and his investors were already on profit. Personally I felt worse when I saw people spending 30k $ in a handgun.
@ Next-gen and Naughty Dog its not the first time a developer comes out and expresses concerns about how fast we’re moving to a possible next generation of consoles. I think it was last year that Ubisoft said that every time a new generation of consoles comes out, games get more expensive to develop.
Game developers and publishers would like a few more years in this generation before bumping up the investment.
@Star Wars Old Republic
Nice to see its going well for them, but this game was a huge disappointment for me. I was kinda hoping for a massive sandbox mmo like SWG but ah well, just another game that doesn’t really bring anything new other than the conversations with multiplayer.
@Question of the week
Since Skyrim is already here, I’ll go and say Darkfall 2.0 if it ever gets released. Darkfall is a mmorpg sandbox-ish game, with full open pvp and full loot. It is a brutal game where you never feel safe, where you loose whatever you were carrying if someone kills and loots you. One of those games that tried to follow the steps of Ultima Online.