Red Kutai
Firstly, this is a beginner's MMO - the notion of presuming your audience has knowledge of "most games" isn't fair, in this instance.
Even so, most games I'm familiar with behave quite the opposite of how you describe - players generally only level the abilities that are relevant to their character build or class. When was the last time you played a game that encouraged Fighter archetypes to have anything but the bare minimum of Intelligence? And the reason for this is pretty simple, actually - that's what's natural. Players like what they like; they want to level what they want to level; and being forced to level things they don't want is a useless restriction.
Alright stepping out of the most games assumption: Let’s look at this as someone coming fresh from childhood or life. Growing up we’re always educated in such a manner that we should be balanced well rounded people. We learn literature, mathematics, science, physical education, social studies, and hopefully art (though schools seem to be cutting this). Education systems are keen on the rounded out set of skills.
Now stepping into the game world: My background is mostly “Build your own fighter,” Pokemon, and Dungeons and Dragons. In the build your own fighter games you could max out one stat: defense, health, or attack, or you could keep them about even and there are advantages and disadvantages. Maxing attack often sacrifices defense and or health, max defense sacrifice attack and or health, max health sacrifices attack and or defense. The max attacker tends to be very frail and if they get hit they go down, the max defense doesn’t take much damage but doesn’t deal much damage, the max health can sponge but may not be able to effectively attack. The well rounded fighter is often times more effective because he can attack, defend and has health. In the hands of a skilled player any of the three max builds can do wonders, but for starting out the well rounded is easier to use.
Translating that into zOMG, a “beginner’s mmo,” building a balanced ringset is more beginner friendly than going all out into one field. I see a ringset like a Pokemon team you can’t build an effective team out of just attackers (attack rings) or just tanks (buffs and healing rings), with higher degrees of skill you might be able to, but for most a balanced set is more simple.
When it comes to D&D, I see the campaign as the game and the different players as either a crew or at a micro level a ringset. Either of which needs balance. That being said leveling up in a balanced fashion seems reasonable and logical.
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Any feature whose explanation is "It's best just to ignore it" is uselessly complex. G'hi adds nothing to the game, but is still complex to fully understand.
While it doesn’t add much, it’s really not that complex as I see it. It levels up slowly by just playing the game and gives you nifty little passive effects for perks. The perks gradually level up themselves and their strength is tied to a separate gauge from other things. Might be a simplification, but in general that’s how it works, the thing that might be complex about it is how the gauge effects the strength of the perk.
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It's important to point out that the Pokemon series is very good at achieving what I was referring to, earlier; the game functions very much how one would expect (Water is good against Fire, Fire against Grass, Grass against Water) even for players who know nothing about the underlying mechanics. Greater knowledge of those mechanics allows players to make progressively more effective decisions, but the game is still perfectly sensible without it. zOMG!, conversely, opposes player instinct if they aren't appropriately aware of all the complex and nuanced mechanics in play - making the amount of information needed to play the game effectively much higher, relatively speaking...
And what I point out is mechanically, zOMG is not nearly as complex as Pokemon. Pokemon has elements, damaging moves, special versus physical, stat calculation, Hidden Powers, buff moves, effort training, capture chances, and a slew of other features and presents them simply, unless you choose to delve deeper. In zOMG you have buff, healing, attack, crowd control, health, stamina, and ghi. Each of those have their own divisions but it remains straightforward that damage done is compared to defenses you have. You can easily pick it up and become a good player without needing to understand much more than the surface details. Anecdotally, I was able to play through on two accounts without understanding much more than “buff A does effect x” and “attack B does effect y and has range z.”
Again, only as complex as you decide to make it on yourself. In my opinion zOMG isn’t complex to the point of needing to be simplified any further.
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