World traveler: "gated content"

My only concern, and thus question to you, would be how players would preserve the feeling of 'progress'

"Progress" and "power differential" are directly proportional. My goal is to keep the power differential narrow through the use of a percent skill based system. That's a step.

Another step is about decoupling the progress from the simple character growth to the *story*. In a FPS, for example, the character development is zero, but there still can be a sense of progress through the game. The same for the Ultima series, the character growth and character development (and even the gameplay itself) were quite awful. Still the story gave a great sense of progress and accomplishment.

The possibility to kill a monster could come from the acquisition of particular powers or tools. This is again another simple pattern that offers "progress" without messing with the character.

RPGs can be extremely rich. The current trends have removed so many of their innate qualities. One of my goal is to recuperate those. Give back some complexity. (see my ideas on questing)

Btw, the world is NOT scaled. The persistence is obligatory and I hate when it is denied. Your character, though, can be scaled. As often as possible through excused means that are coherent with the setting and not as an out-of-character intervention (for example your magic could be weaker on a particular plane plane).

You continue to progress, but your progress is partly bound to yourself (so you bring it along, as skill values, stats etc...) and partly bound to a sub-world you have visited. If you enter a brand new dimension that you never visited, your progress there will be zero.

This is just an overall structure that should frame the game. Are the designers of each single world to decide when and how to use those possibilities. I'm just providing the scheme and the tools.

In theory you could start naked and without a single power on a new dimension. Then slowly grow your character there and gain powers that are going to work only on that dimension.

Finally there's the PvP (see the tripartite model). The PvP world is persistent and player-centered. My ideal game is focused in particular on this part. It's here that the players can see a concrete progress and be part of something.

[quote]The very fact that they can even conceive of taking story out of it suggests that it's worth considering what it means to have story in it at all.[/quote]

Because it is impossible to have repeatables in a world that doesn't have a beginning and an end, or a definite sense of linear progression. You cannot simply remove the concept of progression and still have people moving in any direction. What is the gain? What is the incentive to continue or do a parallel world?

MMORPGs that try to parse out a linear story while allowing a repeatable experience are exactly where we are right now. The answer is to just consider the *first* time you do a story and all the rest are the video-game repetition fodder - that don't make sense.

Whenever the story has attempted to justify the mode of experiencing the story in a MMORPG, it has an unsuccessful dissonance: "Yes, you didn't actually kill us, uh, you killed our weakened forms so that's why we respawn. Oh and you go back in time now... except, well, you keep all the treasures. Uh... yeah!"

You can't possibly consider that every bit of content in the game would only be visited once (as it is only relevant to a storyline the first time, unless you are unlocking content on each visit, say, like a Molten Core progression where you cannot win until you have a certain amount of faction, ie, clears up to a certain point needed to summon one of the end bosses).

Even in a "parallel universe" system of MMORPG narrative / progression, there is definitely a beginning (when you start playing), middle (when you are going through everything the first time) and end (when everything in the game is pure repetition).

Doesn't matter if its a progressive level lurch, or if you have no levels... you simply gain experience with the game and when content runs out you are at "the end" of the storyline.

In WoW right now, beat everything once and you're at the end. In "Parallel World Traveler" MMORPG, visit every Parallel World once and you're at the end.

In "Parallel World Traveler" MMORPG, visit every Parallel World once and you're at the end.

Creating infinite amount of content has NEVER been the goal of the idea about "gated content".

The idea was instead to give the players the possibility of choice without obligatory passages and selective content that you cannot access. So that those patterns that are usually confined and obligatory when you reach the "endgame", like raids, are instead ALWAYS open and NEVER mandatory.

The point is to valorize the content in your game so that the large public can experience it and focus, if they want, on the part they like more (like PvP or solo) without their characters being penalized.

And this "parallel worlds" idea is just one of the three layers (see the tripartite model). The other two, like the PvP conquest system, a much more open to the replayability. Since I agree that the stories HAVE to have a beginning and an end.

The point is: the PvP conquest system is ALSO part of the "gated content", in the sense that it is accessible right away and always. So you can dedicate to it completely, or ignore it.

It's simply a matter of repositioning these layers where they belong. This is what I'm doing. The PvP is appropriate as a "repeatable experience", while the "stories" aren't. This is why these two correspond to two different layers in the game.

I disagree that a character needs to progress. Assuming the story progresses or the parallel world moves forward then what you the player gets is progression.

True, the possibility that I've totally misread the arguments here exists but I'll attempt to put into a WoW perspective what I've taken out of Innsmouth's idea. (god i hope I'm not wrong).

The only thing in WoW that shows any progression is the avatar. You gain levels, you gain items but the world itself is static, ie no change whatsoever.

The premise of gated content or parallel worlds is to put each story into it's own setting and actually give it a conclusion and where is the loss in that? You put the defias quest chain into it's own world and there is no need to worry about a level because the story is the hook, the avatar progresses the story, not their own selves. At the end after killing Van Cleef there is a distinct change in the world. How often do you redo the deadmines in WoW after you've finished your goal? Get rid of respawn of mobs and you have progression straight away.

Right after finishing that world you move straight into the Onyxia quest chain world and move that story to it's conclusion.

Quite frankly the idea of a multiverse that is open to my choice is an incredibly heady idea and I'm quite taken with it. Taking my various avatars around the World of Warcraft I have no sense of accomplishment in the world; even the premise of two factions is useless because no action in the world has any lasting value. I could go take on the undercity but really, why would I?

Find me a way to progress a story and I'll sign up month after month after month because the story progresses with me then. My pace defines the experience.

Of course, there's every possibility I've totally misunderstood the ramifications of the original idea but on a personal aside, the greatest moments I've had in WoW have all been as a function of story and the ability to interact with any story at any time is powerful incentive to sign up.

If I could have accessed every part of World of Warcraft at any time, actually rid the mines of Kobolds, foiled the plans of the defias, tracked down the kidnapped king, destroyed Raz frostwhisper, helped reunite Tyrion Fordring and his son, saved little Pamela, discovered Onyxia in the throne room then the game would still have that allure; a sense of accomplishment.

Right now and again using WoW as an example, there is no sense of accomplishment because my character progression has stopped because I don't have the time or desire to raid high end instances.

Gated worlds offers up the possibility of world consequence for the avatar. Take the avatar away from levels and items and tie consequence to their action which can happen with a story driven world.

I may have gone off on a slight tangent there but I remember the thrills Planescape Torment gave me or star control 2. Yes they were linear but in both cases the story brought me into the respective worlds, furthering the story was why I played it.

Progression of story for me trumps progression of an avatar.

Mechanically, I've no idea how it would be done, but we're talking ideals and ideas here.

Ask the WoW playing population if the World Event of AQ was exciting and 95% will probably answer overwhelming negatively because for them it was a grind. Ask the 5% who actually did the quest chain (the raid guilds etc) and they'll probably say it was decent and I'd put that down to the story moving the events.

For me, the gated world approach allows the possibility of story driven consequence to be more central.

So in summation, there must be story and there shouldn't be anything to prevent you from entering that story. Create a hub and create 300 worlds that shift in and around that hub. In short form, for me, it would be Planescape. :)

-illaraphaniel