The Nethernet Community News

Huzzah! We’ve been changing a lot about PMOG lately and releasing those changes to you, the players, rather than selfishly keeping them. This means that you can continue to give us feedback as you have been. Today I’m writing to tell you about some changes to the way levels and associations work that will be trickling into the daily play experience.

First, some rambling about design imperatives

I have been trying for months to think of a better system than our current association calculation. On one hand, I didn’t want make yet another MMO that punishes multi-classing; on the other hand, I neglected the years of game design research that examines the emotional and psychological tie between the player and their preferred type. So we have a radical and yet imperfect current system in which the player’s assocation is decided by their tool use and recalculated every 72 hours.

As it turns out, this is a less-than-satisfying way to game. Not only do you get progressively fewer tools the more you level up, but then once you’re entrenched in the war between Chaos and Order it’s notoriously hard to stay who you are. (Feel free to mine me for that one.)

What the blazes am I rambling on about, you ask? Fear not. I totally have a point.

Really, I do have a point

We have an interim solution to the issue of not being able to purchase tools in the Shoppe outside of your association. Now you’ll be able to purchase un-associated tools at a higher price than the tools of your associations. But the Future holds even more excitement!

A new way to level up

PMOG associations will now be calculated only by tool use and you’ll be able to level up separately in each association rather than having a meta-level that is nothing more than metaphorically significant. This means that you’ll be a Level 14 Pathmaker, a Level 10 Benefactor, a Level 9 Destroyer, and so forth.

But the best part of this change is that, in keeping with the experimentation we’re doing with the interface, we’re also prototyping new game features. Now you’ll be able to level up in each association separately and get access to new abilities as you do!

The first new tool: Puzzle Crates

The first new tool that we’re releasing should only be available to Level 15 Benefactors. It’s called “Puzzle Crates.” If you deploy a crate as usual and have this option available to you, you’ll be able to “lock this crate” using Question-and-Answer fields. For example, you can lock 10 DP in a crate and ask people to answer: What are shoats made of? If the answer “bacon” is correctly answered, then the player who came across your crate will be able to loot it. If the player does not have the answer, they can “dismiss” the puzzle crate and will not have a chance to unlock it again.

Much more to come…

So the new association/leveling system is not yet fully realized, but in the spirit of Beta and developing in conjuction with our community we’ve decided to release Puzzle Crates and show you your new levels as part of the version .5.12 release. In the future expect new tools to be released using a similar schema.

As always, thanks so much for playing PMOG: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 10:58 and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

previous post: Minimum Level for Missions
next post: 0.5.12: DP return, the Shoppe moves in & Puzzle Crates!