Thursday, October 27, 2011

Scenarios and the Open World

How can it be a waste of development resources if not every player sees all the content, but at the same time perfectly acceptable to throw away every raid instance of this and all prior expansions with every major patch?

(1)
The two announcements that impressed me most during Blizzcon and had certainly gotten all my attention if there hadn't been a certain new race, are scenarions and the open world.

MMO Champion notes
The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach max level.
World raid bosses will return!
Over time we have dungeons that existed in outside world, and there's a secondary thing to it. For example the stormbrew brewery where quests actually go inside/around the dungeon. Historically we have had to scale them to be smaller, here they are 1:1 scale so they have awesome impact to the zones.
Now, as much as I agree with the first quote, the specifics of this announcement are insufficient. While I appreciate world raid bosses, they are just a drop in the ocean. I liked Azuregos during classic, but I saw him perhaps five times in two years or so. World bosses are nice-to-have, no more.

The same applies to dungeons that exist in the open world 1:1. I like this a lot, but it is not sufficient to bring the 'world' back. I simply are left wondering how exactly Blizzard intents to “get people back into the world”. I suggested one simple, common-sense way a few days ago. This is not difficult to implement and Blizzard should just copy/paste me. I won't sue, promised.

(2)
The more serious announcement were scenarios. Scenarios could change everything. Finally Blizzard agrees that 5-mans and raids aren't the only possible endgame group content. You can have content for three players, or 7 or 11. This adds the one thing WoW requires on all levels: diversity.

MMO Champion notes
Scenarios are a new type of PvE challenge designed for groups of as few as 3 or as many as 25 players, depending on what is appropriate for the content. Scenarios require players to band together to complete a specific goal, such as defending Goldshire against a gnoll attack or storming a beach near a Horde fortification. Each scenario will have its own set of unique objectives, and in general they will offer a different type of gameplay from the trash-and-boss design of 5-player dungeons.
Scenarios will allow for more flexible group compositions than dungeons do, so parties won’t necessarily need a specific number of tanks, healers, or damage-dealers (though exactly what’s required will vary by scenario). And while a scenario may take place in a familiar location within the game world, each scenario will be instanced. In general, expect a scenario to take anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes to complete.
  • PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn't make sense in a dungeon content.
  • Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we've never seen before like PvE battlegrounds. 
  • They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.
  • You don't need the typical tank/heal/dps setup, you will just be able to enter and play your role no matter what it is.
  • It will be a staged experience where you will try to accomplish some greater goal
  • For example, a scenario might require you to kill 25 kobolds in stage 1, then find and return 4 goldshire children, and then kill the boss.
  • Developers would like to do PvE battlegrounds, where you will have to slay 50 alliance/horde soldiers, destroy 6 towers and the barracks, and then defeat the enemy General.
  • They could replace group quests.
  • It uses the same queue system as the dungeon finder
  • Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant.
Scenarios: Join up with some friends to achieve a common goal, such as mounting a defense against invading monsters, in a flexible new type of PvE challenge.
[..] or adding PvE Scenarios to facilitate the quick formation of smaller groups to take on a series of event-driven quests.
[..] Whether that's through Normal or Heroic raiding, queuing for a Raid Finder run, hitting dailies for rewards and VP, busting out a scenario with some strangers, or joining some buddies for a dungeon Challenge, we want you to be making meaningful progression on your character. [..]
Scenarios are going to be instanced and accessible by LFD. Blizzard explicitly said that you are going to beat them with strangers. First, this means that they will not help with “getting people back into the world”; quite the contrary. Second, scenarios will not be dramatically different from dungeons. The difference seems to be that they vary in the number of players/roles required and that you don't necessarily move through some kind of labyrinth. Instead, the mobs might come to you. This is a welcome addition and I like diversity a lot. I also understand the need to add 'content' that requires more damage dealers per tank and per healer. But I am not so blind to not see that this kind of content is also cheaper to produce.

To say that "Each scenario will [..] offer a different type of gameplay from the trash-and-boss design of 5-player dungeons." and at the same time present this example is impudent. Moreover, the two statements "[..] parties won't necessarily need a specific number of tanks, healers, or damage-dealers (though exactly what’s required will vary by scenario)." and "Since there is no role requirements, queues should be instant." don't seem consistent to me.

PvE Scenarios could change everything, that is halt WoW's ongoing decline, because they would finally give players some PvE content outside of random LFDs, raids and daily quests. But if the scenarios are all accessible via LFD, they will all be of similar length, and they will all be similarly difficult, because a LFD doesn't work otherwise. Blizzard has just painfully learned this lesson during the first months of Cataclysm.

If Blizzard created some scenarios that are not accessible via LFD, they were able to also add reasonably challenging content to groups of friends and more diversity when it comes to the duration of the scenarios. That would make a real difference. But it seems they are about to miss that chance.

Since we already have some "dungeons" that are nothing but a scripted event that plays in one area/room, the only thing really different about scenarios right now, seems to be the number of required players. While I welcome this, I'm not even sure it justifies calling them scenarios instead of heavily scripted dungeons with gimmick quests and more DDs per tank.

(3)
Finally, I still miss the announcement that Blizzard stops throwing away massive amounts of content. How can it be a waste of development resources if not every player sees all the content, but at the same time perfectly acceptable to throw away every raid instance of this and all prior expansions with every major patch?

I would love to have a reason to visit the Black temple, Ahn'Qiraj, Ulduar or Karazhan. While transmogrification is a first step - that is arguably a disaster for immersion - I would really wish to visit these many old raids. It would be great if old raids were reasonably challenging and consistent with Blizzard's rediscovered design maxim “[..] no matter what you choose to do, you'll be making progress.”.

I understand that Blizzard wants us to believe that changing the look of our characters is 'progress'. But it remains to be seen how many players agree after they got the look they wanted. Acquiring new looks by zerging through content also doesn't seem to be the best way to use these raids. And, if I may add, classic WoW's random loot system in combination with encounter-specific equipment was really good at making you progress all the time.

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PS: I just want to note that it is possible that you will need to walk up to a NPC to start a scenario. Without the LFD's teleport I like this much, much more.

12 comments:

  1. The biggest problem to get people back into the world is LFD. When the LFD offers you nearly instant access to 15 minutes dungeons and scenarios, there's no reason to go into the world.

    Back pre LFD there were days were you didn't feel like spending an hour to form a group and then 2 hours in the dungeon. Those were the days where you found something to do in the world.

    There's no reason to not run a dungeon every day. The game even used to punish you for not doing so (lost VP towards weekly cap).

    ---

    I wouldn't be surprised if they were mainly thinking of the pet battle system with the ability to challenge wild pets and NPCs when they talked about getting people back into the world.

    Visiting Elwynn Forest once in spring during the night when it's raining to challenge the wild pet that's only available in Elwynn Forest in spring during the night when it's raining doesn't bring the people back into the world. It's just a one time task.

    Challenging a goblin in Gadgetzan to unlock his mastery pet skill is not the same as bringing people back into the world.

    So, yes, they will fail.

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    You basically mentioned it in your last sentence: Scenarios already exist.

    - Escape from Durnholde Keep
    - Opening of the Dark Portal
    - Culling of Stratholme
    - Halls of Reflections
    - The boring thing in Dalaran which I'm not even going to call by it's name.

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    > they will all be of similar length, and they
    > will all be similarly difficulty, because a
    > LFD doesn't work otherwise.

    They should go away with the RANDOM daily and e.g. reward the VP for queuing for at least x out of y dungeons randomly. That way you could a little bit select which one you prefer today.

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  2. I'm not a big fan of those scenarions, the main reason is the x-realm automatic group finder.

    I don't see the reason why I would kill 10 rats again just this time with a few stranger who probably won't say one word and who I will never meet again.

    If they implement something like that as frequent events that appeares on the world, that would be great.
    Even if it's just like some kind of stationary quest giver on the map where you could go with a few friends and start that scenario, it would be way better.

    But just adding another looking for xyz tool does nothing but morphing the world even more to some great looking chat room lobby where the actual game is accessed via browser.

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    I think those pokemon pet battle system that they are implementing is their answer to the open world question.
    As far as I know you have to walk arround, explore, etc to find, train and catch those rare pok.. pets.
    They even talked about some kind of pet trainers arround the world to visit and fight...

    So, I think that's how they want to achieve it

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  3. How can it be a waste of development resources if not every player sees all the content, but at the same time perfectly acceptable to throw away every raid instance of this and all prior expansions with every major patch?

    Easy: only ~20% want to see the raid content, i.e. are raiders. If that 20% sees the current raid, there is no reason to spend a ton of development resources keeping it relevant into perpetuity. Meanwhile, if the current raid is somehow preventing a huge portion of the 20% of raiders from actually utilizing the raid content that was already designed for them, there is a problem that needs fixed; especially given that it is usually Blizzard's fault.

    Incidentally, this is why Blizzard moved from the linear raiding progression model to episodic. Naxx 1.0 and Sunwell were made for the 20%, but excluded all but 1-5% by their design.

    As for bringing people back into the world, we have talked about that before. I agree that LFD is keeping people in the cities, but the greater point is that most people don't want to be in the world, at least not once they have seen it. Given the choice, people use LFD. And if they wanted cooperation or something bigger than themselves, they raid.

    So I am not even sure who exactly we are trying to entice back out into the world, really.

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  4. You misunderstood me, Azuriel. I would, for example, support turning raids into dungeons that can be played through during leveling.

    All I am saying is that zerging through these raids for looks is not the best way to use them. As you know, I do not think that catering even more to raiders is a smart idea.

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  5. I think the contradicting information is evidence that the plan *still* doesn't have a cohesive vision. It's true, things change *during* development. But before you start developing, there's a period of planning and goal setting where you define the reasons you want to pursue any given feature.

    If they are pursuing putting players back into the world, I have no idea why they would want to make Scenarios LFD. I don't get it. That would not put players back in the world. Maybe I'm not understanding something here so feel free to clarify.

    @Azur: ...you never cease to amaze me with your statements :) Why do you assume players don't want to be in the world? Are you saying they prefer to sit in the cities? That given more options to be in the world, they would prefer the cities because they're tired of seeing the old world (which assumes they aren't tired of sitting in a city)?

    Zoom out. All of these features combined should have the grand effect of putting players back in the world. Scenarios can't/won't do it by themselves (and not at all if the LFD thing is true) and neither will old world bosses. Together, they can have a cumulative effect of making the world more appealing. So the key in my opinion is offering several world features which attract players out. There's no silver bullet for that kind of thing.

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  6. You misunderstood me, Azuriel. I would, for example, support turning raids into dungeons that can be played through during leveling.

    For... who? The people leveling up in groups? Leveling content already exists. I guess you could argue it gives people more leveling dungeons, but there are actually plenty for new players and old players are ones who likely want to level as fast as possible. Everything would have to be re-tuned in those raids to convert them; the only time savings at all would be from art assets.

    I kinda see the angle your arguing from, but I believe you are making an incorrect comparison.

    @Doone
    Why do you assume players don't want to be in the world? Are you saying they prefer to sit in the cities?

    I'm saying if the players preferred being in the world, they would be in the world. They're not, so they don't. Some people still form groups in Trade chat, but most just click the LFD button because they prefer to do so (whether that is due to preferring easy grouping or asociality or whatever is irrelevant).

    Again, what is the end goal of bringing players outside into the world? Based on prior posts, I assume so that emergent social activity takes place. To which I would respond: make it easier to find like-minded people, and cut out the middle-man of random world encounters.

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  7. Interessting Detail from the Q/A:

    Q: At Blizzcon it was mentioned that PvE Scenarios will be something that we will queue for...Will we be required to be in the area that the PvE Scenario will take place in order to queue, or will we be able to queue for them from the cities like we do for the Dungeon Finder. If they are instanced events how will this "get the players out into the world" other than standing around a specific area waiting for the queue to pop, or am I missing the idea?
    A: We are planning to only let players queue for scenarios from specific spots in the world (where the scenario is located), not in the cities. We want players out in the world, not spamming the queue button in cities.

    I don't believe that this combination will work or that they will stick to it, but it's interessting anyway

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  8. I just discovered this fact myself and added it to the bottom of the post, Lancore. I actually think this could work very well.

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  9. Ok so Blizz wants players to queue from specific hubs for scenarios and maybe even for dungeons or raids. They have a goal of getting players out of the city.

    Now on a PvP server this just might result in much more world PvP, but what happens on a PvE sever? To me all it does is force a lock to hoof it to a specific spot and summon in the rest of the raid/group. Or maybe there are the old summon stones nearby?

    So on a PvE server with no chance of getting ganked ot killed all it does is force a couple of people to travel while the rest wait in the cities.

    Just not sure how this solves the goal of getting players out of the cities. Or am I missing something?

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  10. @Good: I feel the same way. This is an obvious contradiction. "get out of the cities and go sit in booty bay to queue for groups instead!" This makes positively no sense.

    @Azur: I think you missed my question still. Players aren't sitting in cities because they prefer the cities to being in the world. There's no reason to be in the world. That's why they're not there. There's more reason to be in cities, but I dont think they sit there because they like it more than being in, say, Firelands. There's just no reason to sit in that zone.

    With reasons/incentives being added, players will absolutely be in the world more. Do you disagree?

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  11. @Doone

    If Blizzard put a bank, AH, portals, Trade chat and mailboxes in the middle of a field in Westfall, people would likely still stay in Stormwind (case in point: Ironforge/Exodar/etc still exist, basically ghost towns).

    If Blizzard removed all banks, AH, portals, etc etc etc, from Stormwind/all other cities and put them in a field in Westfall, everyone would be in a field at Westfall.

    What I'm saying is that many/most people in WoW are NOT the Explorer archetype, and incentivising them to go back out into the world would be exceedingly difficult. After all, the world already contains daily quests and gathering nodes; if someone likes neither, what would get them out? Forcing them out there "works" sort of like putting a gun to someone's head forces them to do what you want. It does not change what they want, though.

    The Scenario thing absolutely will encourage world PvP on PvP servers because gankers will know approximately where a large group of probably PvE-geared distracted players will be standing around. The Molten Front is pretty good gank territory, for example. And for a while, I thought the Scenario deal was clever because a common complaint in LFD is that you might get stuck with an undergeared imbecile. If everyone who queued for Alliance LFD had to be in a room in Stormwind castle to do so, you could do some pre-screening; same deal with the Scenarios in the field. Emergent social interaction, yeah?

    But I'm not convinced it could last. Scenario queues are MUCH shorter, the groups are smaller, and they are basically phased group quests so it kinda makes sense for them to be in the field. But 3 months after launch? I'm betting, at most, people form Trade-chat groups and fly out in the world long enough to get teleported away. Same with the solo-queuers, AFK in the the sky but close enough to queue.

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  12. "there are actually plenty for new players and old players are ones who likely want to level as fast as possible"
    There isn't a shortage of leveling instances, but a few more would add some variety. As for old players, did you miss all the complaints about leveling being sped up by too much?

    "I'm saying if the players preferred being in the world, they would be in the world."
    Unless the incentives all go against it.

    "incentivising them to go back out into the world would be exceedingly difficult"
    It's not as hard as you think. Unique crafting materials used to be out in the world. Reputation used to be outside. It took a lot of work to get people out of the world, so maybe it would take the opposite hard work to get them into the world again, but it's not an unknown area.

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