The Elder Scrolls Online: Progression as Longevity
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The obtaining of items is fun, but along the way in a level-based game it is ancillary to the more meaningful progression of your character. Getting new skills, new abilities, and so forth is a lot more compelling to me as a gamer. And were gear hunting not such a grind of repetitive content at the max level, I might not have any trouble with it. I understand that just as a developer can't give players infinite levels, they can't give players an infinite amount of stats, skills, and abilities. I would actually question why you can't let players level infinitely, if content and competitive play was scaled and capped at certain levels (think GW2), but that's a whole other column for a different day.
No, today I'm writing this to say that I think the lads and lasses at Zenimax Online Studios are onto something quite suitable to my tastes with their character progression and leveling. There is still a level cap of fifty, and you will only have as many stat points as can be gained to assign in those fifty levels, but your character can grow laterally and obtain a whole set of different skills and abilities long after the traditional level cap has been reached. You might have leveled your two-handed swords all the while through the game, but there will still be several other weapons to progress through. There will also be the other armor types to level up, since any class can wear any armor and each armor has skills tied to it as well.
