Originally posted by charlesr
View Post
I think you've got your two basic classes of Shmup players - people who are good at them, trying to get better, and always shooting for that next high score... and then people like me who can't play them to save our lives, but who like to slap them down to easy mode, turn on unlimited continues and watch things explode for a while.
Obviously I should never show up on any kind of online ranking or leaderboard At the same time, though, a company who doesn't cater to my "I want to watch the pretty explosions!" taste has lost a sale.
To get back to the original question in the thread... I think that, if the benefits of playing for a long time are plainly attainable to anyone who can put in a reasonable amount of playtime, new players will start playing for as long as there are other players of the same level to play WITH. If it becomes a matter of "everyone's level 50, you should have started playing 2 years ago if you wanted to find newbies"... then that's not good for the longevity of the game.
That comes from a seven year Everquest veteran and high-end raider. Before I managed to kick the habit, I got to see the server I was on go from massively overcrowded to ghost town status to merged with another server (which helped the population quite a bit, you could find people to group with again)... and then back to ghost town status again. That's a game where a new player is looking at literally hundreds of hours put in before they can even think about playing with the majority of the player base, which is overwhelmingly max-level people.
Comment