CommentStreams:0d770b849bcda35944d8d24aadefcb62

This really reinforces how shortsighted the devs are. Most games like this have to overcome the inherent challenge of power creep. As the top tier of players get visibly and increasingly stronger, newer players feel underpowered by comparison, and they get turned off by the wide gulf that they have to overcome just to catch up. But Smutstone is the only game I can think of where they keep directly weakening less advanced players to correct their power creep.

I suppose this wouldn't be the most terrible choice--sacrificing growth in new players and funding your game by extracting a ton of money from an increasingly small group of veteran whales actually does work for other games, at least for a few years.

In light of the recent addition of Guild Wars, though, these choices seem particularly stupid. Most pay to win games depend on free players to effectively be content in multiplayer. Smutstone's never had to worry about this because we've had no meaningful multiplayer interaction, except events and tournaments that are supplemented by bots. Guild Wars, for all its horrible design flaws, brings more meaningful interactions into the game, and this will just highlight how small the active population is.

These games are sustained by guys willing to pay to unlock interesting content and beat other players, but how many will keep paying to dominate a sandbox that's increasingly empty of other players?