I'm playing around in the DOMO closed beta while I have the stomach flu and it has been a very pleasant diversion. I guess that says that atmosphere really matters to me, and as long as they put a thin veneer on the grinding, I'm okay with it for at least a couple days. The game has a nice look and feel, classes are interesting enough, and quests will keep you busy enough, even though grinding is clearly more efficient.
Got me thinking about leveling skills, and games that allow for choice in which skills to upgrade. Should I put my points in level 5 poking or level 7 slapping? Or branch into a new skill? I think it is a very good design principle to separate out base abilities from incremental improvements. This could mean having class templates that dictate your abilities and then talent/gear systems to customize. But it could also mean having mix-and-match abilities, limited by total number and/or mutual exclusion rules, again with a separate system on top. Either way it manages the game complexity better than presenting the user with too many opaque, number-crunching choices.
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