Rampant Games - Planning Obsolescence

Dhruin

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The Rampant Coyote tackles an interesting topic in his latest blog piece. I'll let Jay introduce the matter:
One of the problems that has existed since around 1982 (when Wizardry 2 was released) has been the issue of dealing with sequels and character power. Wizardry 2 was the first commercial CRPG I can think of that allowed you to move characters over from a previous game, but it was far from the only one. The problem is that your characters at the end of one game are usually pretty freaking buff, with killer gear and stuff. So what does the sequel offer when your character is already level 1 billion, and wields the Awesome Sword of Awesomeness? Up the level cap to a trillion and provide an Even Awesomer Sword of Epic Awesomeness? Do you drop the player's characters level down to a capped point and strip them of their best gear? And then what do you do with game three?
More information.
 
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IIRC alot of the good items didn't even transfer in the inventory, and Knight of Diamonds (Wizardry 2) was tough, as in I think even new characters non-transferred started off at a higher level with some magic items like the goldbox SSI AD&D game series as you moved on if a player didn't have the prior game or chose to start new chars.

Legacy of Llylgamyn (Wizardry 3) however, IIRC was easier than 2, but I recall absolutely nothing about character transferrence in that game. (I don't even remember in the Phantasie games transferred or the Wizard's Crown and Eternal Dagger transferred characters either.)

The MtG example was a bit lame as it's almost entirely out of context and would've been better suited to an MMORPG game that allowed transfer of chars from a predecessor and moreover allowed all of the items to transfer which it then would nullify by another new ability. The MtG example is called milking the cash cow (hi Blizzard!), while in CRPGs the only thing that usually applies is the initial difficulty and as mentioned above, they help mitigate it to a factor by limiting items that can be transferred and in some cases IIRC reset the characters to level 1 or some other lower level.
 
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Nice blog. Entertaining reading.
 
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The MtG discussion was just what got me thinking about it. A new block might appear with a new strategy (and an appropriate counter-strategy) that previous cards in the series might not be able to deal with very well. It doesn't necessarily mean that they can't play together, or that all those older cards are useless (unless you play in official tournaments, I guess... :) ), so you don't necessarily have to start over from scratch. But you may need to spend some serious effort (and, um, money...) to update your collection to compete with the newer strategies.

I just always relate game design approaches in other genres to what could be done with RPGs, because that's how I'm wired. :)
 
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The only card game I play is Bridge, that way I don't have to update my deck, just my system!! :)
 
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