I for one agree with your thoughts and (think) I understand them. Not sure if 'gated content' is the word to describe one of the ideas you have, perhaps something such as 'parallel content,' with a deliberate reference to the concept of parallel universes... A gate to me implies some sort of barrier, where with parallel content there's the concept of a seamless transition between content areas.
Being able to live multiple storylines in whatever order a player chooses without having to mindlessly grind faction/resist gear/reputation/experience/anything at all would be wonderful.
My only concern, and thus question to you, would be how players would preserve the feeling of 'progress' -- the ability of a level 60 to come back and single-handedly destroy a newbie town is important for some folks, especially in terms of seeing a visible change in power. If instead that level 60 is 'scaled down' so that that newbie town is once again challenging for him, he might feel cheated of all his effort? Or is that merely an artifact of the old worldview that I haven't yet quite freed myself from? An example of what I think is this problem in action lies in Oblivion, where the world is dynamically scaling around you (rather than your idea of the player scaling to the world) and thus nothing is easy but nothing is impossible...
Have been reading your site for several months now ever since I stumbled upon it.
Re: World travelers: "gated content"
Hey --
I for one agree with your thoughts and (think) I understand them. Not sure if 'gated content' is the word to describe one of the ideas you have, perhaps something such as 'parallel content,' with a deliberate reference to the concept of parallel universes... A gate to me implies some sort of barrier, where with parallel content there's the concept of a seamless transition between content areas.
Being able to live multiple storylines in whatever order a player chooses without having to mindlessly grind faction/resist gear/reputation/experience/anything at all would be wonderful.
My only concern, and thus question to you, would be how players would preserve the feeling of 'progress' -- the ability of a level 60 to come back and single-handedly destroy a newbie town is important for some folks, especially in terms of seeing a visible change in power. If instead that level 60 is 'scaled down' so that that newbie town is once again challenging for him, he might feel cheated of all his effort? Or is that merely an artifact of the old worldview that I haven't yet quite freed myself from? An example of what I think is this problem in action lies in Oblivion, where the world is dynamically scaling around you (rather than your idea of the player scaling to the world) and thus nothing is easy but nothing is impossible...
Have been reading your site for several months now ever since I stumbled upon it.
All the best,
Alcaras
subcreation.net