Experience without the points

Since I'm against monotonic (always increasing) progression, I have to answer the question of what players are playing for. My answer is experiences. No, not XP, actual ones. It's a form of progression, but it puts the onus on the developers to create something that is worth spending time on. In the early stages of WoW there were plenty of experiences - getting a new ability to try out, seeing a new part of the world, following a new story line, meeting new people. As the game went on, however, it became less and less fun. Why? I'm going to say it's an even split between the constraints of keeping people playing (see last post for ranting on that) and simple, somewhat shallow game play becoming less interesting over time. Newness wears off, it just happens.

So the challenge in my mind is for a game to take its efforts away from keeping people playing through grinding progression and put them into keeping the game fresh and interesting.

Without going to far afield, let me throw out that such an effort begins with making the environment more dynamic. Now, there's a camp that says full PvP, player economy, player towns and all that goodness is the answer, and it certainly is an answer. But not, apparently, for the majority of players who like their more predictable PvE experience. No, I'm talking about dynamic PvE here.

Simulating the world isn't a hard thing, what is hard is getting it to play nice. NPC factions can gather resources, build things, attack each other, raze towns and all that RTS type goodness and how great would it be to have a world story that actually does something? But, such a story disturbs the individual characters' stories. Players don't like their quest objectives to change out from under them.

But what if you did log in and find that some faction you are aligned with, from who you reap certain benefits, had been wiped off the map? They now exist as a guerrilla presence harassing the factions in power. Is this a bad thing? Sure, there might be some inconveniences, but it opens up a new experience, to play as part of the oppressed group and fight the man. And perhaps a month later you shift loyalties or they regain ground and you get to play as the man.

Meanwhile, there are quests and goals of your own that do not rely on the shifts of power in the world. They provide a steady experience when that is what you are looking for. By giving players options, the game lets them choose for themselves the trade-off between dynamic experiences and control.