How do you feel about time based progression.

For instance, you don't level by beating monsters over the head, but instead just by spending time playing the game.

So you really could spend your play time doing anything and your character would still be progressing.

So I could load the game, go make a ham sandwich, catch some Family Guy reruns, walk the dog, and take a nap, and I would come back to a L99 uber character?

Technically something like that, but it kinda defeats the purpose of a video game doesn't it?

Do you mean you progress when doing something meaningful? Such as crafting an item, exploring a new area, or just fighting a monster but you don't progress from being idle?

Not really, I'm talking about just having the game running, and you're in the game not the menu screen or anything. So you could just let your character sit there and progress while you pick your nose or something but I don't see why someone would want to buy or play a game to do that.

It could be a way to make it so that someone who players 2x as much as someone else wont grow 2x faster, but it wont work if you just got to wait. There could be something wich might need a day to get done, and meanwhile you can do smaller things, so both the 1 hour/day player and 24/7 player get growth from the 1 day taking task but the 24/7 player also gets some extra from doing the small tasks.

Many years ago, a roommate and I played Gauntlet: Legends on the N64. It was a fun game, we really had a blast with it for a time. But then we discovered something. There was a particular level that had a staircase and a monster spawner at the bottom somewhere. Usually, spawners would become non-functional after a certain amount of time, but this one was bugged and would spawn indefinitely. Even though we had fun playing the game, there was something twisted about the both of us that compelled us to use rubber bands to fasten down the buttons of our controllers to make our dudes stand and fire indefinitely while we went to work.We returned to find uber-level characters. After that, the game simply was not even remotely challenging anymore, and soon we just walked away from it.

That's right. Even though we loved the game, we were still compelled to exploit it, and in consequence it became no longer fun. Now, possibly, most players won't be like this. (That is something I doubt, though, given the sheer prevalence of bug-exploitation that goes on) But I think that many will take the path of least resistance, and in a game such as you are describing, the path of least resistance is a path with absolutely no resistance at all. If the game offers even the slightest bit of challenge, many players will back off, make that ham sandwich, and just simply wait until the game becomes less challenging.

That, to me, runs counter to everything I believe a game should be. I honestly do wish that I hadn't found the exploit that spoiled Gauntlet for me, as the remainder of the game could have been enjoyable. Nevertheless, I think that if I had it to do all over again, I would still try to take advantage of that exploit. Guess it's just in my nature, even though the inevitable result is an overall lessening of my enjoyment of the game.

The game EvE has a passive progression system and I don't think it effects players too much.

I think it's fine if players want to progress just by not even playing they can, but they'll miss out on a lot of the game's content which defeats the whole purpose of even owning the game.


But I also think it defeats the reason that a lot, maybe most people play games, and that's to have some sense of achievement.

It takes no skill or ability to have progress handed to you.


Granted there could still be some other sense of achievement such as defeating a difficult boss or something, but it seems people today are all about the bosses shinies.


I've asked around and pretty much no one seems to like this method of progressing.... makes me wonder how EvE got away with it.