Terry, over in the Computer Moderation thread you said (emphasis mine):
I was wondering, from a game design perspective, what were some tricks designers used to alleviate those issues? If we look at modern games, mainly MMOs, we see they use a ladder of "levels" to climb until reaching some level cap, where everyone is more or less equal. Of course then they run into the problem of creating enough content to keep the top levels interested.
From what I've gathered from reading about these games, it seems that they (SN, SNROTE, Starmaster, etc.) didn't employ an artificial cap; that is, a position could grow unbounded. Obviously new positions couldn't be near older, more established positions, so were newer players just destined to be forever behind and forever alone in a relatively unpopulated portion of the map/galaxy/universe?
Quote:Our style of games required a critical mass of players. SuperNova regions had a minimum of 150 players (I think) to start a game. Victory had a game setup processed at exactly 40 players, etc. To be an epic space conquest game you needed to have a lot of people to form alliances, bump into each other, etc. If the game was to live for years and years it required a lot of people to start with ([since few wanted to join if they are years behind the original players in technology).
I was wondering, from a game design perspective, what were some tricks designers used to alleviate those issues? If we look at modern games, mainly MMOs, we see they use a ladder of "levels" to climb until reaching some level cap, where everyone is more or less equal. Of course then they run into the problem of creating enough content to keep the top levels interested.
From what I've gathered from reading about these games, it seems that they (SN, SNROTE, Starmaster, etc.) didn't employ an artificial cap; that is, a position could grow unbounded. Obviously new positions couldn't be near older, more established positions, so were newer players just destined to be forever behind and forever alone in a relatively unpopulated portion of the map/galaxy/universe?