Friday, October 28, 2011

Dynamic Challenges

Dynamic challenges rely on the player's ability to subconsciously judge for himself what difficulty is right for him. They do not confront the player with a fixed difficulty level to overcome, but rather encourage him to achieve the same goals by accepting higher difficulty levels.

(1)
Different players prefer different challenges. That is why single player games have difficulty levels. With MMOs it is not that easy. While you could introduce debuffs that players select at character creation, and give out awesome titles, mounts, pets or achievements once they reach maxlevel, no company seems to be willing to do this yet. Of course, I am going to sue any company which does it now without asking me first. Naturally.

(2)
More immersive and arguably better for gameplay are dynamic challenges. Dynamic challenges automatically scale in a natural, immersive way according to the player's skill and mood. If you now think that this sounds too good to be true, think again. Wowlikes always had dynamic challenges. Kring recently commented on an older post
[..] Only the very first few mobs were yellow. There was this field full with red level 2 and 3 defias and you had quests for that place.
- Collect grapes which grew on the field.
- Collect a drop from the defias.

The fun thing was that this field had single mobs and groups of two and groups of three. It was impossible to kill such groups of 2 or 3 at level alone. But you could move around them. And if you pulled them by accident you could run away.

That was fun because after playing for about 10 minutes the game already told me that
- I have to be careful what I pull
- there are linked groups and single mobs
- you can run out of range from a mob
- you might have to move around difficult groups

That was amazing. [..]

This was a typical dynamic challenge, although not perfectly tuned. Perfectly tuned, Kring could easily have beaten one mob, groups of two after careful preparation, and groups of three only after careful preparation, consumables and flawless gameplay. He would have been rewarded for killing groups of two or even three with a little more speed and maybe slightly better drops. And, of course, the satisfaction of having succeeded. In a modern game the company would probably also give out an achievement; but I wouldn't want anything to do with something as unimmersive as this.

Dynamic challenges rely on the player's ability to subconsciously judge for himself what difficulty is right for him. They do not confront the player with a fixed difficulty level to overcome, but rather encourage him to achieve the same goals by accepting higher difficulty levels. Theoretically the company could also add a difficulty slider to each mob. But allowing the player to decide how many mobs to pull is much more immersive and results in more fluid gameplay.

(3)
But you don't want to give out too strong incentives. Ideally, the player who pulls one mob at a time never knows that he would be slightly faster if he were able and willing to do the same job at a higher difficulty. Ideally, the new player would consider groups of more than two mobs not meant to be beatable. This way he feels even better the second he tries and succeeds.

Often it is even unnecessary to give tangible rewards for achieving goals in a more challenging way. Very experienced players will automatically try to raise the difficulty level to prevent boredom. During my latest WoW experiment I automatically ended up trying to beat as many mobs simultaneously as I could.

There are other examples of dynamic challenges. For example, most dungeon runs in Wowlikes can be sped up. Players can decide to pull more groups at the same time. It's very similar to the leveling game.

Dynamic challenges can also be used in raiding. For example, loot that is necessary to beat the next tier can be given out slowly over the course of many weeks. The more skilled raid groups, which enjoy more challenging content, will move into the next tier faster with less gear, and thus face more challenging content. At the same time, less skilled raid groups move into the next tier later. They beat the same content as more skilled raid groups do, but they do it at their own pace and at a lower difficulty level, because they transitioned with better gear.

(4)
There are more reasons dynamic challenges are superior to static challenges. They are much better at keeping a player's mind busy, because he automatically ends up pondering the question which difficulty level he wants to attempt. In the mentioned example, he wonders if he could beat more than one mob, how to do it and how to circumvent groups of more than one mob. He plans potential exit strategies in case he fails. He learns different mechanics, like what it means that a mob resets. He has a lot more going on in his mind than just executing the slaughter of a mob by pressing 1,2,1,1,3.

Finally, dynamic challenges are more tolerant in the face of imperfect class balance. This tolerace is highly valuable for any MMO.

8 comments:

  1. You've successfully described the great failure of Cata WoW leveling and proposed a viable alternative. Kudos! Because all challenges are static in WoW and reduce in difficulty compared to a fast leveling character, there is no sense of increased challenge for increased rewards. Your example of a named mob at level 9 a few posts back was an exception, not the rule.

    Problems that could arise: How do you maintain challenge when grouping? Do you just accept grouping as a viable downshift in difficulty (and thus inspire raid-sized groups mowing through content), reduce rewards relative to the size of the group (a la WoW questing), or have the zone increase difficulty to match increased player activity/resources (a la Rift)?

    ReplyDelete
  2. A difference is, at least in WoW dungeons, that when the tank pulls faster the incresed challenge is on the healer. And when damage dealer pull additional mobs the increased challenge is on the tank (and healer).

    Do dynamic challenges work for (trinity) PuGs?

    ----

    Another good example, pre wrath (aka pre AoE), was the decision how many mobs to CC and how many to tank and cleave. The more you cleaved, the faster you progressed - unless you wiped.

    ----

    I think dynamic challenges started to disappear as early as in TBC.

    - Paladin tanking was one sign of that because more was always better. Even while questing or leveling.
    - Mobs in TBC often didn't run away (world and dungeon mobs) making pulling easier In vanilla (nearly) each and every mob run away. Stopping runners was an important job in a dungeon in vanilla.
    - Mobs could often be killed in groups. In vanilla nearly every mob camp had a mix of range and melee, making it hard to just AoE everything down.
    - TBC started the: If it moves it must be killed and you're guaranteed to already have the quest! That removed some careful pulling because you must kill everything anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How do you maintain challenge when grouping?

    I think it's no problem to have a group of 8 mobs stand around a chest with some treasure in the open world. This group is rather obviously not beatable alone. The single player can still pick of single mobs or groups of two, of course.

    ---
    (and thus inspire raid-sized groups mowing through content),

    Raids can't complete quests in WoW for a reason. Whether a gamey limit like this is necessary is another question. It may, however, simply not be worth the trouble to make questing interesting for raids of 40 people and Blizzard's gamey solution does a good job.

    ---
    reduce rewards relative to the size of the group (a la WoW questing)

    This is the worst gameplay possible. It penalizes grouping. There's no excuse for that in my opinion.

    ---
    or have the zone increase difficulty to match increased player activity/resources (a la Rift)?

    I would like to avoid such things, because they are too unimmersive/gamey. But it's something one can keep in the back of the head.

    ---
    Do dynamic challenges work for (trinity) PuGs?

    Yes, unless you have a random PuG whose players have no interest whatsoever in appealing to each other. If they never see each other again, and are doing a daily dungeon that is super-boring, such problems arise.

    I have a feint suspicion that Blizzard might rebalance the leveling game for MoP. But I don't care personally.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A difference is, at least in WoW dungeons, that when the tank pulls faster the increased challenge is on the healer. And when damage dealers pull additional mobs the increased challenge is on the tank (and healer).

    I would *love* to see this explored further (Kring? Nils?). I just can't find meaningful ways that would put pressure on dps that would socially manifest. Off the top of my head:

    Tank pressure idea:
    A spawn rate that exceeds the dps' ability to dispose of said spawns, forces a tank to gather and 'hold' them. Additionally, the healer shoulders a burden in keeping the tank up.

    Healer pressure idea:
    NPC abilities vary wildly in frequency and effect, forcing a healer to play on their toes, juggling the need to protect/heal against burst damage, while not overhealing, and managing a sustained rate as well. Additionally, the tank shoulders a burden in using abilities to help the healer out.

    DPS? Two problems with these guys:
    (i) Sure, introduce something arbitrary like an enrage timer that the dps must meet, but you still aren't putting heat on the dps, for two reasons: 1. if dps is lacking, the dps'ers can argue that healers and tanks could slap up DoTs and 2. the effect isn't immediate. If a healer or tank 'isn't doing their job', the effect is seen immediately. There are more opportunities for a healer or tank to muck up during a single showcase of dps having mucked up.
    (ii) The dps'ers in modern MMORPGs outnumber both tanks and healers combined. Challenge that is shouldered by a single person or smaller group is met with pinpointed criticism. DPSers can hide like zebras amongst each other. What's the solution? Shift some dps'ers into roles of debuffing/pure dpsers? If the debuffing dps isn't doing their job, it shows; likewise for the reciprocal.

    I think this would be better suited for a whole blog post exploring how dynamic challenges, applied to group settings could be best achieved. A post proposal [Kring/Nils]!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahtchu, I'd use all my resources to make the group feel as if they are in this together. It's really the easiest fix and has other advantages as well.

    To fix group play, in which players put burden on each other by putting artificial burden on everyone, seems less than perfect to me ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. You cannot be challenged if all you do is dealing damage. You have to add other tasks to the responsibility of the DD. The best would probably be to replace the DD in the trinity with support. And support would be various tasks like interrupting, removing mobs from combat, redirecting/preventing damage or healing.

    I think heroics would be more fun if everyone would have a dedicated job and dealing damage would just be a group task which just happens.

    The way to reach that would be to only add mobs which do more then just deal damage. They would have to have annoying abilities that must be controlled. If mobs have abilities like random aggro, interruptable instant kill spells, mana burn, push backs, charges, stunns, knockdowns, and other stuff they are no longer AoE-tankable because a tank can only soak damage, not all those abilities at once.

    Mana-Tombs heroic was such an instance which couldn't be brute-forced. And if you have to sheep one mob and kick the other to prevent him from casting it gets hard for a mage to hide behind the rogue if he didn't sheep. :)

    A good warlock was able to CC up to 3-4 mobs at the same time (fear + seduce/enslave demon + banish + AoE-fear). That was "putting pressure on a dd" - although he wasn't doing that much damage anymore. :)

    But I doubt that can be done with people that don't know each other. First you have to communicate to assign targets ans tasks. Then you have to trust the other person to be able to do that - it doesn't work without trust if peoply try to do other peoples job.

    And if you've asked a random warlock back in TBC to CC a mob he would refuse most of the time. Never did that, can't do that, won't do that. They didn't fear, they couldn't seduce. The game had developped a view after it's first few month that dealing damage was a privilege and you can't be forced to do minor tasks.

    Me: Hey, would you like to do instance XYZ?
    Mage: Yeah, but only if I don't have to sheep.

    Yes, that conversation happend. Not only once. Tells a lot.

    So yes, I think dynamic content only works for solo content of "guild content".

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Nils
    I'd use all my resources to make the group feel as if they are in this together

    I was hoping for the detailed approach, hence the post proposal. I can appreciate this stance, however.

    @Kring
    I think heroics would be more fun if everyone would have a dedicated job and dealing damage would just be a group task which just happens.

    This is an interesting proposal, indeed! And while I could poke holes at how this might be tweaked, I feel is a solid step in the right direction!

    it doesn't work without trust if peoply try to do other peoples job.

    The added social element, very true.

    The game had developped a view after it's first few month that dealing damage was a privilege and you can't be forced to do minor tasks.

    Clearly, this would need to be a design point of the game, to prevent dynamic content from existing only as a solo endeavour.
    Thank you for the insight and the proposed solutions as well as pointing out known flaws. It was the kind of post I was hoping for. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ahtchu, even though it may sometimes look as if I had the potential to write infinite amounts of posts. .. it's not actually true ;)

    Thanks to Kring for his ideas, of course!

    ReplyDelete