Persistent Progression - So noobs can feel better about themselves

A lot of updates recently, mainly because so many stupid shit is happening at once. What is persistent progression? Persistent progression is when the more you play the more achievements or unlocks or progress you get. For example, TF2 and its million of hats. This is different than experience points for MMOs. This is literally, the more hours you log into a game, the bigger your penis gets. A lot of people swear by it while others hate it. If they don't have any kind of progress whats the point of playing right? Whether its for unlocking that spiffy avatar or getting runes for LoL, its something that people can look forward to. A carrot in front of their head basically.

These can be done right, or they can be done wrong, most of the time though its done wrong. When you play a game, what is the most important thing when playing multiplayer? Fairness. Sure you can argue that skill is superior to progression but sometimes the advantage gets so big theres no point in trying. Its like fighting a max level guy as a brand new guy in a MMO. No matter how skilled you are, if you have to hit him 2000 times to kill him and he can kill you in 1 hit from across the map, you're fucked. An extreme example but unfortunately its not that far off. Look at something like League of Legends. A free to play dota-like made by the creators of the original dota. They wanted to innovate the game and added in persistent progression. The more you play, the more summoner (player) levels you can gain. Each time you gain a level you unlock a rune slot to add in permanent stats for all your champions and talent points to boost your champions. The more you play you can buy runes from the shop from points earned from playing the game. With these both you have a huge advantage over someone new, someone who didn't play as much as you. So high that they can literally kill you in 2 hits 20 seconds into the game while he can shrug off all your hits from the massive runes and talents he has. This makes it impossible to win.

What is the point of that? Why not have a skill based game rather than a MMO. If I want a game where I get more powerful the longer I play then I'll play a fucking MMO. Even FPS nowadays add shit like 10% more damage to guns or other retarded upgrades. Even if you think it looks tiny and insignificant, it can easily skew the game in your favor. Hell I talked about how Bloodline Champions completely fucked themselves over by adding persistent progression. It was a game where it advertised skill based arena style gameplay with no RNG. But they caved to the people begging on the forums. After adding that patch and milking money, most of the people quit. When the advantage is that big what can you possibly do to fight people that have already played for so long? All it does is alienate new players. What if tomorrow SC2 added a new talent tree that gives you permanent +2 damage +2 armor with 10% move speed for all your units for people who played over a year. Then double that bonus for people who played for two. How in the fuck do new people compete? By playing more? Eventually catching up them?

Another thing people insist on having is achievements. These are also part of persistent progression. The more you play the more you unlock these achievements to feel good about yourself. It may be something to do when you're bored, other times it unlocks items, but the biggest reason is to show off to all your friends. A bigger achievement completion means you have a bigger penis. This is what it all comes down to, E-Peen. People like persistent progression because it makes them look pro. It lures them into a false sense of superiority. And to reward them with a false sense of superiority are achievements that congratulate you every time you do something correctly like an aide for a retard. Each time the achievement pops up your friends and everyone around you go "congratulations!" and clap for you. Why? They're mocking you. You're a big fucking retard and you don't even know it yourself. And every time you do this they'll give you a little toy. A better toy than the other kids because you're special.