Satisfying Combat in MMO - Doing More with Less

Most MMOs focus on power creep / gear grind to extend the relevance of combat in their game. This results in a corresponding need to create challenging content to match, or constant rebalancing to keep content "relevant" to the increase in character power.

Obviously the underlying plan is to keep players playing.

Then rewards are scaled according to difficulty, which is theoretically gated behind power creep -- you have to "qualify" with power gain in order to have a proper chance of clearing the content.

Clearly the obvious progression is for players to grind for power until the hardest content can be cleared easily.

Players who do that too quickly end up bored. It's simply not as satisfying when combat is too easy. They could make it more challenging by limiting their resources, but there is no incentive at all because rewards are static.

What is missing is tying rewards with satisfying combat.

Under this paradigm, we tie rewards not to difficulty, but to a combination of difficulty and power.

When difficulty is high, rewards are high. The benchmark is set by the content (e.g., a particular instanced encounter that is designed for a particular level of player power / level / gear).

But when difficulty is reduced because player power is high, then rewards are REDUCED.

Conversely, when difficulty is increased because players deliberately try to clear it with less power and less resources (e.g., group content in smaller teams, solo content with less gear or no consumables), succeeding is rewarded by MORE rewards.

So, the player demographic then becomes:

• Casual - They want to take their time, they don't necessarily want to grind to chase power
• They can still gain power and clear content, but it takes a bit longer because rewards are less.
• They are not locked out of content, it just takes longer -- which is fine for their relaxed rate.
• Elite - They are really good players
• They can quickly get rewards because they can clear content with less power and gear because of player skill -- they have deeper knowledge of the game and personal aptitude in situational awareness or tactics.
• They can access special rewards for clearing content with less power/resources.
• They can decide how much to challenge themselves by voluntarily taking on content with less power, and they have a reason to because more and/or special rewards are locked behind doing so.
• Grinders - They just want as much as they can as fast as they can
• They can basically do what they like and adjust their rate of treasure gain according to what they can handle.
• The tricky part here is to make sure some of the rewards do not lose relevance once they are at or near the current power cap.

By tying rewards to BOTH difficulty and player-controlled power scaling, power creep can be slow yet "unlimited", such as a diminishing returns scale. Then, players who want to clear content (and, for example, progress in the story or do group content in smaller teams or solo) can work on power creep until they can clear it, accepting reduced rewards for being overpowered for the content benchmark -- but still making progress.