Originally Posted by Malorn
Progression is not what keeps people playing. You don't need to give people handouts of power for playing their game. Gamers aren't a bunch of panhandlers waiting to see what minor carrots a game will give them and flock to it.
Most of us played planetside for years and we didn't need that crap. The reason we stopped playing is typically because the game got stale, not because they didn't give us "progression". It's unnecessary if the game itself offers good compelling gameplay with variety and freshness.
If a game is fun to play, provides meaningful challenges and enough variety in the gameplay to keep you interested then people will keep playing.
This idea that you need to give people stuff to keep them interested is a bunch of horse poop.
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You really don't see the flaw in your own reasoning, do you? It's not really that it's flawed, per-se, more like your impression of what people/sheep in general want.
Yeah... they DO need that carrot. That next goal is what drives a lot of players. Simply shooting someone for the sake of shooting someone and taking land for the glory of our empire only works for so many people (like us.)
An actual, felt form of progression gives people a sense of accomplishment. As a fresh face, the mere concept of Planetside is eye popping. Yeah, they'll take their licks, and some may quit, more often than not because they expected to dominate and can't stand to get dominated, not because I'm putting out an extra point of damage per round, but the ones that stick around will be keepers as they see all sorts of customization open up for them as they play the game. That in itself is a form of reward for effort.
There are very few popular FPS' on the market that I can think of, that don't involve some form of "powering up." Obviously, it's a popular, working and acceptable model. Applying it to PS2 should be a no brainer. MAG, a PS3 game with up 256 players on one map, has all sorts of skills that increase weapon accuracy, reload times, even maximum health pools. Newbs don't exactly shy away from it for that reason, it just never sees updates or advertisements... ever. The influx is far outweighed by the bored outflux that have vetted between the 3 factions 70 times by now.
Face it, PS2 is going to see some slight power differentiation, but nothing the masses would be discouraged by as a whole. Some maybe, but we'll see more than we'll lose, otherwise again, how is MW2 so popular
still? It only supports 6v6!