Was having a discussion about Player Power Progression and wanted to collect my thoughts and ended up making an essay, lmao.
(Btw i have no idea what tags are relelvant to this and the tag selection is very finnicky so i didn’t add any)
Before i start i wanna clarify my focus is on player attention and interest while playing the game not actual player power itself.
Also so we are all on the same page when i refer to:
Player- i mean you the physical person
Character - whatever in game character you are playing
Lets begin
Why do people play ARPG and specifically Diablo-like games?
In my opinion it’s about Power and making the most powerful version of a character you can.
It’s the appeal of the genre. You can play a specific ARPG for whatever reason whether it be related gameplay, story, visual or whatever but the Genre as a whole you play to make Cool Characters and get them to achieve their full power potential and you stop playing them at that point. That’s the idea at least but more realistically you play them until you get bored.
What i was trying to poorly explain before is that my focus is not on balancing how powerful a character is by the end of the game or that the increase in power should remain the same at all times but that there should be enough increases in power as the game goes along to keep the player interested until the natural end of a character in the End game phase
Character Power increase in an ARPG and specifically Diablo-like games is integral to the players continued input and appeal in a game. They want to feel like their actions are directly making their Character Stronger.
Character Power increase comes in many forms like for example:
Stronger Gear
Stronger Components
Unlocking new skills
Strengthening pre-existing skills
Increasing Raw stats (e.g. attributes)
This is most likely a non exhaustive list because i definitely forgot something but they probably one way or another feed into one or multiple of these forms,
These forms aren’t mutually exclusive and some lead into others (e.g. new gear increases raw stats or getting enough raw stats to put on better gear)
Imagine if you will a hypothetical graph with the Y axis being the Collective Power of a Player’s Character and the X axis being the Time Played
(The graph is completely abstract for the purposes of this metaphor so no need for any actual values)
Now imagine at any point you were to gain an increase in power you were to plot it corresponding to your new Character power against the time played.
Don’t imagine the intersection of the axis as the beginning of the player this very abstract so instead imagine this as a singular section of the full journey of a Character.
Different events increase your power at different rates and that’s good that adds variety and makes certain increases feel better than others which takes away from the repetitive nature of the game
The ‘issue’ with progression in power is that a lot of the types of increases in power rely on chance from drops which can lead to potentially really long period of time with barely any increase of power just because the right gear, craftable or component didn’t drop
Arguably the only consistent source of power that doesn’t really rely on random chance is leveling up because everything gives xp and gets you closer to a new level which gives you new skill and attribute points. These are especially as the game goes on very minor boosts in power but guarantee that the player doesn’t go too long without an increase in power for their character.
Players that go too long without any increase in power may get fatigued,frustrated or just bored (not all players but i would say enough including potentially me)
My concern with the new expansion is that with new areas added resulting in you reaching your max level even earlier in the game play loop then without introducing either more levels or alternative consistent trickles of power through the higher difficulties players might get bored and frustrated by their sudden much slower improvement over much longer periods of time and give up before reaching end game.
The frequency at which the Power increases appear in the game (the distance on the x axis from one point to the next) should stay relatively the same throughout the whole game whereas the amount that power actually increases (distance on the y axis) is much less important
Imagine if you didn’t have levels at all in this game from the start
That you just got the abilities for your character completely leveled up to begin with and all you have is just item drops. That doesn’t sound nearly as appealing or fun. That’s the issue that arises in the mid and late game. You lose an element of progression that you had before that kept things constantly moving forward and basically nothing really fill in that gap. You solely rely on random drops to finally achieve end game and output randomness alone isn’t that fun when you keep failing the rolls
Hope you enjoyed reading this product of intense autism because i sure as hell did not enjoy whatever Eldritch being compelled me to write this