Hello there o/ ,

I am working on a persistant browser based MMO (so mostly a spreadsheet) , and wondering about gap between old players and a newcomer.

As MMOs are games that players having progress continously, gap will be widen in time, after enough time passed, a newcomer will see that he/she can't catch a veteran anyway, so won't stay at a game.

Though this seems a problem of not-so-near future, still wondering design considerations regarding this. So would love to hear from you.

Best regards,

It depends what kind of game economy there is. If the goal of the game is to make money so you can shop for things, some items will become ridiculously rare but you would be regularly introducing new common ones, so there are still things for newbies to enjoy buying. If there are minigames, adding more minigames over time can increase the amount of money a player can make per day. If it is a pet breeding game, the price of pets always decreases over time so a new player can buy the same pets with less money than an older player needed to spend. If it is the kind of game where you build up an army, then you either need to cap the max army size or cause regular attrition to armies or arrange it so that only attacking someone with an equally big or bigger army is rewarding.

My recommendations.

1) Make old content easier or less time consuming as you add new content to the game.
2) Non linear progression, if a player can get to a competetive level reasonably quickly it won't matter all that much if veterans have a slight advantage.

It depends what kind of game economy there is. If the goal of the game is to make money so you can shop for things, some items will become ridiculously rare but you would be regularly introducing new common ones, so there are still things for newbies to enjoy buying. If there are minigames, adding more minigames over time can increase the amount of money a player can make per day. If it is a pet breeding game, the price of pets always decreases over time so a new player can buy the same pets with less money than an older player needed to spend. If it is the kind of game where you build up an army, then you either need to cap the max army size or cause regular attrition to armies or arrange it so that only attacking someone with an equally big or bigger army is rewarding.

Oh my bad, I was mentioning a stat like (well I don't know terminology of MMOs like WoW etc :) ) attack ? , (think as Age of Empires a better unit hits more)

Its ok if newcomer is 1 and veteran is 100 can catch sometime but when it comes to like 1 to 10.000 it is practically impossible.

Perhaps make it like diminishing returns, at higher level you will received less stats compared to lower level, so new player can catch up easily until sweet point, and at higher level is merely a bonus.

Progress is measured by how close you get to a goal (which may be infinitely far away but whatever)

Change the goal over time so newcomers will not be pursuing the same goal as the veterans.

This can be implemented as starting a new world every once in a while (or expanding the world and putting new players in the new regions), but you could come up with something that works in a single world/place. Like a new branch of magic to pursue that is slightly better than the old one when people start getting too good at the old one.

It might make the game remain interesting for longer for the older players too as they have to keep 'adapting'. Or it might just annoy them when their work becomes less and less worthy if they cling to it.

Its ok if newcomer is 1 and veteran is 100 can catch sometime but when it comes to like 1 to 10.000 it is practically impossible.

Keep those players apart (don't make it possible for the extremely high-level players to kill novices).

Perhaps make it like diminishing returns, at higher level you will received less stats compared to lower level, so new player can catch up easily until sweet point, and at higher level is merely a bonus.

I also favor diminishing returns but worrying at the same time if it discourages people to advance after certain point.

Progress is measured by how close you get to a goal (which may be infinitely far away but whatever)

Change the goal over time so newcomers will not be pursuing the same goal as the veterans.

This can be implemented as starting a new world every once in a while (or expanding the world and putting new players in the new regions), but you could come up with something that works in a single world/place. Like a new branch of magic to pursue that is slightly better than the old one when people start getting too good at the old one.

It might make the game remain interesting for longer for the older players too as they have to keep 'adapting'. Or it might just annoy them when their work becomes less and less worthy if they cling to it.

Pity adding a new world or something is not an option , but other than that your suggestion highly conforms to my plan of using "technology" but less cruel than you (starting over new stat) :)

Its ok if newcomer is 1 and veteran is 100 can catch sometime but when it comes to like 1 to 10.000 it is practically impossible.

Keep those players apart (don't make it possible for the extremely high-level players to kill novices).

My concerns are not only for PvP but also of aggregrated attack of a faction. Newcomers will lose interest at the point they see not only they can win but also can't contribute to the cause at all.

If your game is designed around a grind and around incremental progression with no real variation, then the gap between grinders and casual players will constantly increase.

But if the game is designed so 'real world skill' carries more weight than equipment or stats, then a different kind of gap occurs, but one that is usually less wide, and where newer players can still have a good time and contribute, if proper-match-making occurs. Also, it allows newcomers to get 'up to speed' quicker.

Examples of 'real world skill' includes tactical thinking and decision-making carrying more weight in battle then merely a more powerful sword. Chess entirely depends on real-world skill (several different branches of real-world skill), since opponents are always evenly matched in terms of in-game skill.

Another example of real-world skill is most first-person shooters. I'm not a very good FPS player, but occasionally I'll jump on Modern Warfare or another FPS, and usually while not being the best player (or even in the upper 50% of the team), I can still enjoy myself enough to keep playing, because I can still kill the enemy some of the time. It's not a guaranteed defeat merely because the enemy has epic gear spike armor and is riding a fire-breathing dragon.

Modern Warfare did a really good job of adding advancement and customization, but also keeping things balanced.

Though RPGs should definitely have more customization and more in-game advancement than Modern Warfare, they could stand to learn a few lessons from it as well. Infact, the developers of World of Warcraft, after their Cataclysm expansion, admitted they botched part of WoW's design where it comes to player choice and customization, and then praised Modern Warfare 2's design as better. Ofcourse, it helps that both WoW (Blizzard) and Modern Warfare (Activision) are owned by the same parent company (Activision-Blizzard).

(Despite what it sounds like, I'm not a huge FPS fan, nor am I a huge Modern Warfare fan. Even among FPS's it's not my fav. I just admire the balanced craftwork that went into the three 'Modern Warfare' games)

It sounds a bit like the sort of situation that I found in a couple online games I tried. Players controlled a kingdom of sorts, you built your buildings and units and then went out and attacked other regions, some of which were computer controlled and others were player controlled, to build onto your kingdom. When you join late in the game, the players that started early are so entrenched between their technology level, alliances, and units they've built that you don't have a hope of surviving long at all. Figuring that the game was all about being social and co-operating with other players, at one point I tried to strike up an alliance between other new players so that we'd try to defend each other. But as it turned out, when I sent units to another player's town to protect it, that just ended up costing the other player resources to support the units and they didn't actually help defend against an attack at all.

Having no understanding of the things you can do to try and survive in an impossible situation made it even less inviting to even bother trying.