The Daily Grind: Do MMOs coddle us too much in the early game?

I suppose I can see that. I quit Rift around level 30 and didn't have my typically strong desire to level.
I think one thing I would have liked would have been something more than a "go finish a rift" quest to gain access to more souls. But I suppose that defeats the whole purpose of the free and open soul swap system.

I once found in a blog a list of entries about "fun".
Two of them:

1. If I have to do a lot of things that are not fun, to have fun at some later date, the net result is usually a deficit of fun over the total financial quarter.
2. If a thing is described as character building, it is generally as an apology for it not being fun.

I think, as with most things, this is a balancing act.

You want to dangle a carrot out for players, but you don't want to keep dangling that carrot (or worse, keep showing a bigger carrot every time they feel satisfied and finally gotten something and rob their sense of accomplishment; my advise is just to go with a completely different carrot, possibly an orange or cake or pie slice. In other words, a different system or different unrelated reward).

I level very slowly (and I find myself soloing a bit too often unfortunately). In early WoW (even after Vanilla) is vexed me to have a mount out of my reach at Level 40 (I also tried alts). Furthermore, it vexed me that the mount was so expensive (at that time).

I think there is a value to giving, at the very least, the "starting basics" in a game fairly soon, but holding out some rewards is needed (like a speed boost to said mount or more mount choices).

Yes, game developers do now a days tend to give out too much at once and have reduced the merit concept of risk/reward. Which basically means that you the player don't tend to value what your earning in a game anymore.

It is one thing to design games that are made to be picked up and mastered in a couple hours, the fun factor pay off is much sooner. MMORPGs are supposed to be long play design games, but when you change the design perimeters into that of what is expected from other game genre games, then you ruin the true long term fun factor of what makes an mmorpg an mmorpg.

You also lose player retention as they now view an mmorpg as a sort of quick and temporary fun distraction. One that they quickly get bored of and then move on to the next. The game design philosophy that has become the norm since WoW is in my opinion hurting the mmorpg genre.

No thinking, no figuring it out, no risk, no required team work for various aspects of the game as you level up, equals a boring mmorpg game experience.

It is a problem, driven by $$ like everything is. [and if you bear with the explaination I do propose a solution near the end]

The unique nature of the MMO development and customer environment (immediate feedback and constant patching) makes these types of things inevitable in and almost unique to MMO's vs other games. With RIFT it happened before the game even launched, with other MMO's it happened over time as the population grew and the devs reacted/responded.

A game can start out with a vision for a certain type or level of challenge (lets use our old standby, WOW, for convenience) with things like long quest chains to secure components for epic class mounts or gear, difficult faction grinds, or long quest chains to acquire amulets or "attunement" to unlock unique raid content. These are design decisions that many many people enjoy, they give you a reason to push harder, strive for accomplishment your article describes.

Then bring a few million (or even a few hundred thousand) players on board into a game environment that is heavily driven by regular "patching" ... and suddenly the distinctive game designs, patch by patch, and complaint by complaint, get patched out of the game. The $$$ that hundreds of thousands of players bring in is more important than then holding to the integrity of the original vision for the game. And so because the game is fluid (through weekly /monthly patching)... it flows invariably toward a soft, mushy compromise of original ideals into a - "the paying customer gets what they want, as easily as they want it" design philosophy.

A possible solution is to expand the number of server rule sets from just the standard PVP, PVE, and RP-PVE, into actual REAL rule set and feature differences. Again, using WOW, set up some severs that run on vanilla, 2.0 , 3.0 (for example), etc. rule sets and features with the bugs patched out. Let people play the game they originally bought and loved. Lots of people want rule sets kept in the game, like the way factions worked, and the attunement earning processes, etc. So let those that like those rule sets (or features) keep them, rather than patching everyone into the muddle mushy middle where everyone gets access to everything the instance they ding the required level. Or the talents and class are homogenized into indistinguishable bland copies of each other.

WOW might regain a million or two subs if they brought back BC or pre-BC features on a couple dozen servers. Bring back epic quest chains, attunement, class differentiation between factions and between each other, etc. Many people don't want to play the mushy middle, they want distinct challenges.

It goes both ways. Some games don't give enough at low levels to encourage you to play. Or they don't show you what you can get or strive for in a meaningful way. I had that issue with SWTOR. I didn't see any goals past my advanced class to strive for. Same with FFXIV,

One might argue in SWTOR's case, that mounts/vehicles is your next progression goal after you get your advanced class. But with how the 20-30 zone progression is given, one doesn't see much point in mounts at all considering how small the zones feel. Same applies to ships. It just seems pointless to do since you can't choose your ship or even decorate it. So I end up asking myself, what's the point? Story? I guess but even that is slowed down due to the massive amounts of redundant sidequests that every class has to share.

Anyway, the above is just an example of how goals need to be paced perfectly throughout a game. I like how FFXI handles goal setting. You always have something to strive for in all aspects of their game mechanics from getting to level 18 for you sub job, doing city quests for fame to get items you can sell or will actually use/need, to your chocobo liscence quest at 20, to making the trek to jueno at 20, to your advanced jobs at 30, making the trek to other areas in the rest of the game, unlocking teleports with supply runs, doing major quests to unlock your level cap, quests to get class armor, etc. Plus quests for major storyline with city missions. Sooo many goals, it never gets old.

When I played Aion, it was a good example of how not coddling doesn't work. I don't know if its different now, but you didn't ascend to daeva status till L10, and it takes a good few hours to get that high, longer than any other game I have played since FFXI. Theoretically it was supposed to make it meaningful, but I was just going through the motions by level 8, and was starting to get buyers remorse.

Sadly I should have bailed, because that was a preview of how tedious the rest of the game was. FFXI also was very bad about not coddling, and I remember losing 3/4 of the people I came to the game from EQOA with because they hated not being able to do things like have a decent mp pool or heal other players without resting every three seconds. If you survived valkurm you were hooked, but FFXI was notorious for a massive churn rate as people burned out early on.