Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.

From: desj@ccr-p.ida.org (David desJardins)

Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1993 22:28:10 +0000

John Sloan <js138@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:
>> I don't like this idea because the player who's built up a big empire
>> ends up being penalized, not for incompetence, but for competence, which
>> in my view is a totally perverse and irrational thing to do.

> You can view it this way if you feel you must, but I find it a perverse
> way of looking at the world.  The challenge is to sustain as large an
> empire as possible - the more competent you are at organisation, and at
> keeping your subordinates loyal, the larger your empire and sphere of
> influence will be.  Compare with any sport where the better you are,
> the better the quality of opposition you will end up playing.

I agree with John.  There is nothing wrong with creating additional
challenges for players who get too strong.  Frankly, I feel that large
players can be penalized for success in Atlantis.  Once you get too
strong, there is eventually not much to do but drop and start over.  I
would welcome some additional challenges.

But I don't see an easy solution either way.  If players keep getting
stronger indefinitely, eventually they are too much stronger than new
players, so there is little challenge left in the game.  On the other
hand, if players saturate in strength, so that eventually they can't get
any stronger, then there is also little left for them to do except
maintain their present level, and so also little challenge left in the
game.

I'm not sure there is any ideal solution, which is probably why I've
never played an open-ended game for any long period of time.  Of the
solutions I've heard of or thought of, the ones I like best are
"ratings," which can give players something to strive for even though
their strength has saturated.  You can rate players in different areas,
from military prowess to magical knowledge to wealth, so giving players
at least a limited variety of directions to pursue.

But to make any of this work you have to make the disparity between new
and old players not be too large.  And, as John suggests, by far the
most successful mechanisms for limiting players involve limits on the
number of independent units that a player can control, or actions that a
player can initiate, or orders that a player can give.  These all have
the beneficial side effect of helping the game to remain playable rather
than growing to a scale where it just rewards investment of time.

David desJardins

References

Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 12:53:42 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 19:52:12 +0000
Ongoing Strategy Games.
js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 03:24:37 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 12:53:42 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 19:52:12 +0000
Ongoing Strategy Games.
js138@cus.cam.ac.uk (John Sloan)
Sun, 04 Jul 1993 03:24:37 +0000