Persistant or Rounds?

[Rimmy]

Sorry if this has been created before, but I wanted to know if more people preferred games that reset or games that don't reset. This way, I have a better idea of how to implement my game idea.

[Zeggy]

I think it's different with every kind of game.
If your game has lots of different routes to be explored (rpg: different characters/races, strategy: different technology routes), and you can only choose one, then I'd prefer either having rounds or being able to create multiple characters/accounts.

For other games I prefer persistent, because you get the time to explore everything, and you don't lose all your progress in the end.

[Rimmy]

Well, I personally prefer persistent games because I hate losing everything that I've worked on for such a long time. It just feels wasteful.

[foxumon]

I prefer persistent games myself.  I'm not a fan of games with rounds or ticks.

[Rimmy]

May I ask for your reasoning behind that opinion?

[raestlyn]

it purely depends of the game.

In a game like Utopia rounds are great because that way you can play different race/class combinations that can be adjusted in every round to make the game more intresting, but in pure RPG I like persistance.

[Rimmy]

Okay, that makes sense to me. Thanks for the input.

[Rimmy]

Does anyone else have anything to say? I see more votes, but not that many people are posting...

[stickdevil]

My favorites are:  :ah:

Kingdom of Loathing - a cool stickgame MMORPG which always gets new content. The best game ever! I've been playing it for 1 year...cool.

Twilight Heroes - Another funny MMORPG with heroes.

Urbaniacs - Other Funny hero game with minigames.

 :O I have a bunch more in my blog - 1DeadChicken

  hehe...

[leZourite]

I think both have their pluses and minuses, like :

Round :
+ Games resets so if you have failed to build something the first time you get another chance, to get better.
+ It's heavily strategy based most of the time (though it's still bigger army that wins most of the time)
+ Great control with economy
+ Feature complete
+ Usually these games are "beautiful"

- Sometimes overly complex
- Rounds that resets after 5/6 months are very difficult for new players (the big guys at the top will stay there)
- Gets somewhat repetitive due to length of game play

Persistent :
+ You can take all your time, some games can be immersive so the pace to play can be very slow (at leveling/building up the avatar)
+ A lot of PvP, be it interactive or computed
+ The game can be either for individuals or groups (with guilds, alliances etc)
+ The players drive the economy, so usually there are games inside the whole game
+ New players can be more or less power leveled rapidly
+ There is a wait time depending on the action (deaths, trains etc) but this time is fix contrary to round games (the strategy ones, not the pimp)  where the more you lvl up the more you have to wait for your buildings to come up
+ Lots of content can be added, that are actually side content (like races, and other types of minigames)

- Gets more repetitive than a good round game with good strategy
- 98% of the games are fugly, really, just buying (or stealing) a script and put it on a webserver won't make it a big hit overnight...
- The economy is easy to mess with...
- The pvp side can be very difficult to balance (One shot kills, or terribly long fights)
- No or very little strategy (depending of the game from full fledge RPG or "mafia game types")
- This is not totally relevant to persistent games but, they are usually bug ridden ...

[Boozerbear]

Kingdom of Loathing - a cool stickgame MMORPG which always gets new content. The best game ever! I've been playing it for 1 year...cool.

Heh, I've played KOL for over 4 years now, and I admit that persistent games have their attractions:

1) I'll always keep my account active there, being that my character is mindbogglingly rich and practically legendary, even if the gameplay itself is no longer all that interesting to me. In varying degrees, this applies to any level of account - once you have a lot of stuff, it's hard to let your account just go inactive.

2) although this isn't exclusive to persistent games, the community aspects tend to be very active and people tend to stick around. Basically it becomes a place where everybody knows your name, and the Cons are always an incredible party.

3) In persistent games, the market in items can become very lucrative. This has both an upside (it's very weird when you discover that your inventory on an online game is worth upwards of $100,000 if you wanted to be an asshat and sell it on Ebay) and a downside (a great many items are simply unavailable to players who join a persistent game late in it's run, which can be kind of unfair).

In the end, when I started my own game, I decided I wanted to go with a "game win" scenario, with a reset after each successful game win. Ideally I wanted to have resets occur in 3 to 6 month cycles. I catered a bit to the "item collector types" by making a small subset of reset-safe items which are mostly items gained by donating to support the game. I feel that the benefits of having cyclic resets after a game win condition are:

1) it's far more competitive. you can't rest on your laurels and still wield the kind of power that a rich player in a persistent game does. Someone who joins 5 years into the game's lifecycle has just as much chance at becoming top dog in a few months as a guy who's been playing for 5 years. I don't think it encourages people to stick around forever, but it ensures that your game is constantly refreshed by new and motivated players. You can address the stickyness issue with community-building, which is where that issue belongs anyway, IMHO.

2) the economy is vastly more controllable. In persistent games, exploits and bugs tend to leave huge and persistent footprints in the game's economy. Inflation for desirable items puts those items pretty much permanently out of reach for most players. In a game that cycles its economy every 3 to 6 months, even bad mistakes in game balance or a huge influx of AICB or duped items/cash can be rebalanced very quickly. (in fact, the worse the problem, the faster it is solved, because the game gets won and reset faster). Also, while in persistent games rare items must drop vanishingly rarely in order to keep them rare (in the order of 1 drop to several million clicks), in a cycling game you can afford to keep even rare drops in the 1:1000 range so everyone gets a chance at getting one eventually. For each game cycle the item may be rare, but over the course of several cycles, thousands of them are dropped and lots of people get to have a chance at owning one for at least one or two cycles.

3) You retain a lot of flexibility in introducing new zones or mechanics. If they flop badly or are unbalancing, you can rip them out in the next cycle when the game starts fresh.

4) I think it's highly motivating to have a game winning scenario that essentially requires players in factions to communicate and plan with other members of their faction in order to co-operatively win. When winning requires a group effort, you are basically committing to building a social network. You're motivating people to make friends. In the end, it's the social network you create that will keep people coming back after they've done your quests a dozen times.

[ZadoAsh]

I have owned both Presistant and Round based games


My presistant one being: http://extreme-skate.net/ Which was attacked by hackers and I gave up on it in the end, I didn't have the money to support it then. Recently I've decided to let a friend open it up and he's the developer.

My round based one being: http://familiesofnewyork.com which is my current success lol It's going well I get donations at the start of the rounds and during the middle towards the end people think "whats the point"  I've decided to add a jackpot to it so the winner of each round wins the jackpot! Jackpot being $2 from every donation going into it. Paid out via PayPal. That will be implanted round 5(this upcoming round)

I don't have any personal preference, which doesn't explain my vote for Round based Besides that its the game that became a small success for myself.

[Kimmybwoy]

Persistant, Helps Alot , All Hard Work , End Of The Month , Man I Worked All Month On That , Ill Never Be Top Again,

Heres An Idea , Both In One , They Play Persistant , and get the chance to enter a round , there account is reset at the end , but they win a donators weapon e.g

[Waizujin]

I can't vote because I don't know what kind of game you have.
It all depends on what kind of game you have. If it is a game where you fight other players and that's about it, then reset. Otherwise it is usually best to NOT reset and generally people don't like their game reset unless they get advantages for being a special rank or something.

Sincerely,
-Marcus