If they prefer combat, more than.

What’s interesting is whether they would still enjoy it more if they got 10% more XP for taking the cooking option.

Richard

Had and have - they’ve not gone away. Some of the Skotos and Iron Realms products are cutting edge, for example.

>I’d be interested in reading up on the 8-type model, especially since I think understanding how players change over time is important for increasing retention. Do you have any links you could refer me to?

It’s described in my book and in Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2.

>I’d also appreciate any input you could give on the central concept of my post, that being that avoiding forcing players along activities that they don’t want to do is a good idea.

I’m a great fan of the open-ended approach: give people a world, fill it full of rich and interesting things, and let their imaginations do the rest. Sadly, too many of today’s players seem to want to run on rails. Hopefully, with time, they’ll come to seek the freedom that’s on offer.

>Sometimes a sense of achievement can be gained by having to complete unpleasant tasks to reach the goal.

There has to be a challenge. If there’s no challenge, why play? Asheron’s Call 2 famously sold itself on the basis of removing all the things players didn’t find fun, thereby removing all the things the players did find fun; it wasn’t a success.

Richard

I’d be interested in reading up on the 8-type model, especially since I think understanding how players change over time is important for increasing retention. Do you have any links you could refer me to?

I’d also appreciate any input you could give on the central concept of my post, that being that avoiding forcing players along activities that they don’t want to do is a good idea. On the surface it certainly sounds reasonable but I do have to wonder at what is lost. Sometimes a sense of achievement can be gained by having to complete unpleasant tasks to reach the goal. Is the loss of this sense of achievement among some players worth it? In the case of tabletop games where the GM knows the players, gets instantaneous feedback not just in language but in subtler messages such as posture and facial expressions, and the game can be adapted on the fly it can be a wonderful tool but in a larger scale setting with so many players I have to wonder if it isn’t better to play it safe and avoid such tactics.

They were possible in many textual worlds. Some MUDs had levels of detail that graphical worlds have yet even to dream about.

>This means that a lot of possible player activities (and the archetypes associated with them) aren’t discussed because there were no players conducting those activities

No, it doesn’t. The model looks at WHY people are doing things, not WHAT they are doing. Example: someone joins a guild, becomes a helpful, friendly player, always there when needed, always willing to lend a hand, who gets to become an officer and is the person trusted to lead a group of guild members into a dangerous, high-level PvP area which requires a lot of expensive preparation. Is this player an achiever? Maybe a socialiser?

No: they’re a killer. When the guild gets into the area the player leads them into an ambush, trains bosses on them, then teleports out taking a stack of potions and magic with them. Their entire playing pattern for 99 days looked for all the world as if they were an achiever, but their actual motivation was that of a killer.

So it is with crafting, creating content, or running a business. You have to ask WHY they’re doing it. Why are they crafting? Why are they creating content? Why are they running a business? From the answer, you can figure out what player type they are.

The 4-type model is superseded now, by the way. There’s an 8-type model which explains things a bit better, in particular how players change type over time.

Richard