…picture starting in a prehistoric sort of world, and player achievement gradually raising the level of technology.

SWG had this feel for a short while after launch, as the first few generations of crafting tools/stations came about and people learned about resource values, gained experimentation points, etc. Ultimately it blew beyond its intended scale, but I suspect that is another symptom of such an early release (and large scale lot-swap agreements).

I hate level limits on gear.

I agree with Ramsay here in not liking levels in general. I’ll also take ay I’m not fond of gear with character stat mods all over it. There should be a decent blend of character abilities and weapon abilities, each with mods affecting their own realms. Weapon mods that affect damage or speed, armor with greater protection or mobility vs. character mods that affect strength and intelligence. It seems rather limiting to tie appearance and stat balance together, the result being even less personalization and uniqueness. I’m of the opinion that your character’s strengths and weaknesses should be independent of the gear being used. I also prefer crafted goods over looted (though perhaps with looted sub-components/recipes offering slightly better end products to encourage crafter/adventurer interdependencies). After all, my definition of endgame is when you are basically done ‘progressing’ from a stat mod perspective and can now go out and make an impact on the game world as a relatively equal participant. This model of constantly introducing another mountain of levels and gear to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ is getting stale, I fight 40+ hours a week to stay afloat in real life. I don’t need to pay $15/month for the virtual equivalent of that.

Thus ends my ranting on a week-old subject :9.

(by the way, as I’m writing this, I can’t help but notice the gold selling website on the bottom banner, grrr)

In a game, though, we rely on things being a bit hard. That’s where the fun comes from: overcoming challenges.

Of course, what’s missing from this is that, in the real world, there is a perpetual source of new challenges intrinsic in the complexity of the universe. That complexity is missing from MUD/MMOs: you simply do not see technological progress, and so the world is capped whether explicitly by levels or not.

And I really do mean technological progress. That is, progress resulting from the application of scientific knowledge. That is, knowledge gained through repetition and reenactment of phenomena. Or in our language, emergent knowledge. Not emergent behavior. Emergent knowledge.

But I guess you can’t. Because it’s a game, and a game can be mastered. It’s, *twists mouth*, a semi-bounded domain of contrived contingency.

I do recognize your point about being able to use only part of the item’s capabilities at lower skill levels; however that has the consequence of “needing” only one particular example of any item for a character. A “highly skilled” character trades the “uber widget” down to a “lower skilled” character and then… what?

Or perhaps you can do what the developers for SW:G’s NGE did, and make it so that weapon damage depended only on the “level/skill” of the character… something that was changed back after a few months due to players not liking it and saying so.

A Signature Item approach might also work, where you create/acquire an item and then upgrade it over the life of the character.

The balance issue isn’t a matter of technical difficulty… it’s a matter of developer time. There’s only so many hours in the day to track down bugs and create content, and only so much money you can afford to pay for a development staff.

Open, unrestricted item access works very well on the small scale, but poses problems on the large scale. I’ve seen it in MMORPGs, I’ve seen it in large organized pen-and-paper campaigns… Mention “Living City” to any long-time RPGA members you may know and ask them about item trading.

You have to remember that a developer isn’t developing for a small party with a very controlled subset of items, he’s developing for tens of thousands of people with time and energy enough to get access to the full set.

The thing is, every player wants their character to be “known” for something. Differentiated from the others. Because all the content is provided to all players equally (in theory), players go after anything that differentiates their character from the others. Items, badges, etc.

Sometimes I wonder if a game can be made more compelling simply by adding content that only a small subset of players can access. Everyone has the chance to get at and complete one of many unique adventures/missions, but only a few people will be able to solve, say, “The Caves of Fire and Air” or “Mr. Mysterious and the Hidden Circus of Doom”. Naturally, no player would be able to complete more than a few of these unique/restricted missions.