I'll add my agreement to the idea that one player progressing another is always bad.

[color="#1C2837"]When you come up with an idea you should be asking yourself who does this benefit and how? And is this superior, equal, or worse than the commonly accepted model?
And this idea benefits no one and is a worse model than the current ways of doing things...[/quote]


The benefit would be from establishing a stronger connection with other players. That's a significant benefit. It would also help bring out the good in players and shift the progression to favor showing that instead of the opposite. Basically progress comes from helping others and then possibly being helped back. It is not a typical win/lose/I'm-better-than-you ordeal. In fact if anything it's a response to the shallowness of the market and how a players perspective can expand beyond his own character.


I really don't think it's difficult to see the mental differences and the changes in perception and how they would change the experience (and benefit in many ways).

I could ask the same question of the way that any game is played and you wouldn't really be able to find a more concrete benefit. Things become very perceptional to how the player responds to the experience. What's the benefit of being alone in Shadow of the Colossus? I'm not sure I could specifically answer that objectively, but the difference certainly was necessary for the experience.

What if you had two "linked" characters controlled by a single player? Perhaps the gameplay could be based around the idea that the player has to alternate between playing the two characters.

I don't know how fun that would be to play, but it would fix the problem of "Player A plays 30 hours a week, Player B plays 3."