Since current MMORPGs seem to become more boring every day, I decided to have a look at The Elder Scrolls series. It turned out that there's actually TES:V coming out in November this year, if everything goes as planned, that is.
I found this preview interview.
And here's my review of the preview:
1) "Exploring temples, helping townspeople, and dueling dragons are all part of a typical day in Skyrim."
That's 0/10 points for the headline. Either it is a marketing lie or it is true. A marketing lie would be ok. But if it is true, than chances are good I won't buy the game. The last thing I want in a fantasy world is to fight dragons on a regular basis. That's like Christmas every day.
2) "In brief, you character's left and right arms are mapped to two separate buttons; in this case, the left and right triggers on the Xbox 360 controller because the demo was on an Xbox 360."
I know they like consoles. I don't. Let's hope that they make use of the sophisticated interface that is a keyboard.
3) "Compared to previous Elder Scrolls games, combat in Skyrim seemed much more involved"
Marketing non-sense. This is what you get from professional game magazines.
4) "Our Nordic-looking hero was constantly sidestepping around his opponent to better position his shield against oncoming attacks or to find a way around the enemy's own defenses."
Let's see how it works with more than one enemy
5) "Once the first bandit was dispatched, a second appeared to avenge his friend's death."
Ah, that makes sense. Instead of helping his friend, he waited in the shadows to avenge his death once it happened. Moreover, it allows us to fight one enemy at a time. A win-win situation .. not.
6) "In her weakened state, the bandit could do little to defend herself when our character swooped in for the kill with a stylish execution move, which involved a sword through the chest."
Finishing moves. Never liked them. They make you feel like flourishing in the humiliation of your opponents instead of paying them respect and being happy to have survived the fight.
7) "Instead of just being a spreadsheet that comprises names and numbers, the skill screen displays your skills as star constellations in the sky above"
What ?? Does that mean that I descended from heaven and my growing skill changes the stellar constellations? That's getting ever worse..
8) "Basically there are a number of skeleton quests that have been planned out in broad strokes, but have some of their characters or plot points left blank. The system then dynamically populates these blank areas with people or objects you've encountered during your journey."
That must be the first thing I liked.
9) "He also noted that the number of voice actors featured in the game has been greatly expanded, so that players won't run into the same handful of voices time and again."
That's also good. Either you don't do voice acting, or you do it right.
10) "Our journey took us up along a mountain pass where we learned that some creatures--such as a lumbering giant--aren't out to kill and won't attack on sight."
Credible monsters? Yes, please!
11) "Others--such as an angry frost troll--still wanted to rip our head from our shoulders but were easily dispatched with a blast of fire magic."
Grea.. - what? Does it say "easily" ??? I hope not!
12) "We weren't sure what they were discussing, but it mattered little after we blew one of them away with a headshot from our longbow."
Except for the fact that it seems too easy, I like it.
13) "The second jumped to her feet and began frantically searching for our hiding spot in the shadows. Stealth in Skyrim has been tweaked from previous games so that the transition from the alert state of enemies (where they are looking for you) to their danger state (where they are attacking you) is more gradual depending on what you do."
Great!
14) "At this point, our character decided to forgo melee weapons altogether and rely solely on his magical abilities. In one hand, he equipped the circle of protection, which warded off the undead foes; in the other, he equipped chain lighting, which blasted foes to pieces."
I know a lot of players like this flexibility. But for me it always diminishes my character's identity. However, I know that TES games have always been like that. I would just hope that specializing actually pays off.
15) "Once the Draugr were defeated, our character studied the tome and mastered the fireball spell, which he then paired up with a one-handed axe."
Learning skills in a (more or less) credible way, instead of 'going to a trainer'. Great.
16) "Items in your character's inventory can be viewed as 3D models, from the simplest herb to a shining elven glass sword. Certain books, such as the journal we recovered, can even be read page by page in this mode"
Cool!
17) "Once the creature was killed, our character--being a dragonborn--absorbed its soul."
Why do I always have to be special by heritage or developers' arbitrariness? Can't I just become special due to my deeds for once?
18) "From what we've seen, it doesn't look like Bethesda Softworks is trying reinvent everything we know about The Elder Scrolls with this game. Instead, it has listened to the comments and complaints from the community and has crafted a sequel to be more of what fans want."
Seems like that sentence describes the entire games industry nowadays.
19) It's not in the review, but only in the interview video: They will stick to their scaling difficulty. That is, enemy mobs scale in power with you. I can't say how much I hate this. In fact, this was one of the reasons I liked MMOROGs so much. The nature of MMORPGs forces the developers to put monsters in the world that have a fixed strength.
Concluding, The Elder Scrolls is still the best shot for an open-world RPG. I will buy it, I will probably enjoy it. But I already know that it could be so much better *sigh*.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Why I played the first 100 hours
Playing The Witcher 2 for the last few days, I remembered, why I like MMORPGs so much. And, no, it's not the fact that they are massive. And it's not the fact that they are multiplayer, either. In, fact, it's not even because they are online.
Before instances and teleporting were at their current level, MMORPGs had vast landscapes - that made sense visiting. Also, you could never save a MMORPG - instead they had (more or less) credible consequences for death. So, as hard to believe as it may be, I used to love MMORPGs, because their nature made them better at the simulation aspect than single player games. Also, you can just play a MMORPG. There is no story that is suddenly finished. In some way, original World of Warcraft was a really big Elder Scrolls game. Much worse at immersion, much better at gameplay, but still a really, really, big virtual fantasy world. This is why I fell in love with it.
The most fun activity I know in a RPG setting is to explore a dark dungeon, trying to survive all on my own. There are no AAA single player games that offer this experience for some time now and MMORPGs just used be reasonably good at it.
For some reason, dungeons in MMORPG are nowadays all group content, but there is still the open world. Of course, this one has been destroyed for all practical gameplay purposes in WoW, but in Rift the open world is still on health support. That's better than nothing.
Interestingly, I never played MMORPGs solely for the simulation aspect. About ten years ago, I used to play first person shooter multiplayer deathmathes for hours on end. This had nothing to do with role playing or immersion, of course. It was just a game, a distraction. MMORPGs managed to join my deathmatch playing habits with my love for RPGs: Battlegrounds.
I probably spent more time in battlegrounds in WoW than anywhere else. And I never had a problem with them being instanced or hardly credible, because I never played deathmatch for simulation purposes in the first place. I played them for the flow of it.
Nowadays I find that I play MMORPGs almost entirely for the battlegrounds. Which is, obviously, a shame. The Witcher remembered me how much fun a dungeon crawl can be - especially with nowadays graphics and sound technology! But I finished The Witcher now and the dungeons are just too limited to be fun a second time. In fact, the dungeons aren't even a major part of the game and the gameplay is too lacking to play the game after you know the (brilliant) story.
You might be surprised that I didn't mention my guild and online friends so far. The truth is that these were great motivators to keep playing for a long time. But they weren't the reason I started to play MMORPGs. They weren't the reason to play the first 100 hours.
Before instances and teleporting were at their current level, MMORPGs had vast landscapes - that made sense visiting. Also, you could never save a MMORPG - instead they had (more or less) credible consequences for death. So, as hard to believe as it may be, I used to love MMORPGs, because their nature made them better at the simulation aspect than single player games. Also, you can just play a MMORPG. There is no story that is suddenly finished. In some way, original World of Warcraft was a really big Elder Scrolls game. Much worse at immersion, much better at gameplay, but still a really, really, big virtual fantasy world. This is why I fell in love with it.
The most fun activity I know in a RPG setting is to explore a dark dungeon, trying to survive all on my own. There are no AAA single player games that offer this experience for some time now and MMORPGs just used be reasonably good at it.
For some reason, dungeons in MMORPG are nowadays all group content, but there is still the open world. Of course, this one has been destroyed for all practical gameplay purposes in WoW, but in Rift the open world is still on health support. That's better than nothing.
Interestingly, I never played MMORPGs solely for the simulation aspect. About ten years ago, I used to play first person shooter multiplayer deathmathes for hours on end. This had nothing to do with role playing or immersion, of course. It was just a game, a distraction. MMORPGs managed to join my deathmatch playing habits with my love for RPGs: Battlegrounds.
I probably spent more time in battlegrounds in WoW than anywhere else. And I never had a problem with them being instanced or hardly credible, because I never played deathmatch for simulation purposes in the first place. I played them for the flow of it.
Nowadays I find that I play MMORPGs almost entirely for the battlegrounds. Which is, obviously, a shame. The Witcher remembered me how much fun a dungeon crawl can be - especially with nowadays graphics and sound technology! But I finished The Witcher now and the dungeons are just too limited to be fun a second time. In fact, the dungeons aren't even a major part of the game and the gameplay is too lacking to play the game after you know the (brilliant) story.
You might be surprised that I didn't mention my guild and online friends so far. The truth is that these were great motivators to keep playing for a long time. But they weren't the reason I started to play MMORPGs. They weren't the reason to play the first 100 hours.
Games are about Death
I really just want to promote this very nice post at What Games Are. The Blog, generally, has very good posts. Few, however, are as thougt inspiring as this one. I don't actually agree with it completely. But it certainly is a very unique perspective.
However games depict change, not stasis, and a key part of understanding change is the perception that in some ways, yes, life is indeed cheap. It is an inescapable facet of existence that we see death all around us every day, and since art is a mirror that reflects existence, death tends to be a game’s inner subject. As love is essentially the inner subject of all songs, and the quest is the inner subject of all stories, so death is the inner subject of all games.
Dear developers, believe in yourself!
The Witcher 2 has this moment when you really want to save somebody you really care about. I don't want to get more into the details and spoil it for you. But this moment is a great story-telling moment. Time is of the essence, obviously. But I first needed to complete some side quests.
If you read the last sentence and didn't stop thinking, you played too many of the standard-RPGs in the last decade. The problem in the Witcher 2 was that the story was told so well and was so credible, that this problem became even more apparent.
I stopped playing back then and called it a night. The next morning, after some considerations, I skipped the side quests. I wasn't happy about this, but knew that I had done the right thing.
But most of all, I was condemning the game and its developers that put me into this immersion-breaking situation in the first place. (It's not like doing the side quests first would have had any consequences).
This is unnecessary and diminishes the experience. And ironically it's even more problematic, because the game is as good as it is. I am sure there are ways to tell the story and prevent the situation. In fact, I can think of several ways.
Point is that CD Project didn't seem to care; even though they went to great lengths to otherwise keep the story consistent and often handed in explanations later for why characters acted the way they did!
The developers are no idiots. They are smart guys who wanted to make a great game. And they audaciously did break with several other standards of the genre! It almost seems as if they didn't have the strength to break with even more current absurd rules of RPG creation.
This also applies to the economy. Merchants buy at about one hundredth of the price they sell. However, this is only necessary, because there are chests and boxes and armoires everywhere. And you can freely loot them - even in the presence of their obvious owners. In addition to that you can carry with you immense amounts of stuff. I really don't know why it is even limited in the first place. From a simulation point of view, the limit makes about as much sense as no limit.
And from a gameplay point of view I don't think that deciding what to carry with you is such an interesting decision. Sure, I could calculate the worst money/weight items and sort them out first. But who does that? It's just annoying - especially considering the amount of stuff you needed to check! And how do I actually know the exact prices of the item without haven even spoken to the guy who wants to buy it?
So, we have a lose-lose-lose situation that the developers picked. Merchants need to have ridiculous buy/sell prices, because players have ridiculous weight allowances, which are only necessary, because they can - and at hard difficulty need to - loot everything they see. There's even a "loot all" button, because the developers know that players couldn't care less about what is actually in the chests they loot. The only explanation I have is that the developers copy/pasted this feature from other games. Just like they copy/pasted ridiculous side quests that immensely disturb the immersion into the story.
You can say similar things about the item progression. I could find no credible reason for why merchants later in the game sell better items and enemies drop better items than their earlier counterparts. And it's not necessary to enjoy the game, anyway. Perhaps the developers thought that there are 'achievers' out there for which a credible story doesn't mean much. But how enjoyable can achievement be in a single player game? And would the Witcher 2 be a game for them in first place?
Or they thought that some people are just too dumb to realize how ridiculous the item power progression is. I don't know. Point is that it diminishes my experience; and for what? What do I gain? It wouldn't have been hard to put a few good drops into places that make sense. Like some dungeons that you need to visit. This way you could have some item power progression, but a reasonable one.
I could go on with the traps that make no sense. From a simulation point of view they are laughable and from a gameplay point of view they are annoying. They look like a bad compromise.
Thus, my request for The Witcher 3: Please make a consistent game. This is a great franchise you adopted. I am not a fan of story-focused RPGs (in contrast to open-ended ones), but I really like it! Please find the courage to follow your vision of a credible, immersive experience for a mature and smart audience. I know you cannot be happy with many of the points I mentioned above. Don't listen to the copy/paste guys. Have some trust in yourself and your abilities to make great games!
If you read the last sentence and didn't stop thinking, you played too many of the standard-RPGs in the last decade. The problem in the Witcher 2 was that the story was told so well and was so credible, that this problem became even more apparent.
I stopped playing back then and called it a night. The next morning, after some considerations, I skipped the side quests. I wasn't happy about this, but knew that I had done the right thing.
But most of all, I was condemning the game and its developers that put me into this immersion-breaking situation in the first place. (It's not like doing the side quests first would have had any consequences).
This is unnecessary and diminishes the experience. And ironically it's even more problematic, because the game is as good as it is. I am sure there are ways to tell the story and prevent the situation. In fact, I can think of several ways.
Point is that CD Project didn't seem to care; even though they went to great lengths to otherwise keep the story consistent and often handed in explanations later for why characters acted the way they did!
The developers are no idiots. They are smart guys who wanted to make a great game. And they audaciously did break with several other standards of the genre! It almost seems as if they didn't have the strength to break with even more current absurd rules of RPG creation.
This also applies to the economy. Merchants buy at about one hundredth of the price they sell. However, this is only necessary, because there are chests and boxes and armoires everywhere. And you can freely loot them - even in the presence of their obvious owners. In addition to that you can carry with you immense amounts of stuff. I really don't know why it is even limited in the first place. From a simulation point of view, the limit makes about as much sense as no limit.
And from a gameplay point of view I don't think that deciding what to carry with you is such an interesting decision. Sure, I could calculate the worst money/weight items and sort them out first. But who does that? It's just annoying - especially considering the amount of stuff you needed to check! And how do I actually know the exact prices of the item without haven even spoken to the guy who wants to buy it?
So, we have a lose-lose-lose situation that the developers picked. Merchants need to have ridiculous buy/sell prices, because players have ridiculous weight allowances, which are only necessary, because they can - and at hard difficulty need to - loot everything they see. There's even a "loot all" button, because the developers know that players couldn't care less about what is actually in the chests they loot. The only explanation I have is that the developers copy/pasted this feature from other games. Just like they copy/pasted ridiculous side quests that immensely disturb the immersion into the story.
You can say similar things about the item progression. I could find no credible reason for why merchants later in the game sell better items and enemies drop better items than their earlier counterparts. And it's not necessary to enjoy the game, anyway. Perhaps the developers thought that there are 'achievers' out there for which a credible story doesn't mean much. But how enjoyable can achievement be in a single player game? And would the Witcher 2 be a game for them in first place?
Or they thought that some people are just too dumb to realize how ridiculous the item power progression is. I don't know. Point is that it diminishes my experience; and for what? What do I gain? It wouldn't have been hard to put a few good drops into places that make sense. Like some dungeons that you need to visit. This way you could have some item power progression, but a reasonable one.
I could go on with the traps that make no sense. From a simulation point of view they are laughable and from a gameplay point of view they are annoying. They look like a bad compromise.
Thus, my request for The Witcher 3: Please make a consistent game. This is a great franchise you adopted. I am not a fan of story-focused RPGs (in contrast to open-ended ones), but I really like it! Please find the courage to follow your vision of a credible, immersive experience for a mature and smart audience. I know you cannot be happy with many of the points I mentioned above. Don't listen to the copy/paste guys. Have some trust in yourself and your abilities to make great games!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Plastic Rear Spoilers
Bhagpuss just posted two links into Tobold's comments section.
(1) and (2).
So, the average MMO player is in his 30s and has a comparatively good education. Seems I am average for a change. Nice.
...
After having played The Witcher 2 for some time now, I just wanted to resubscribe to Rift. Rift is my 'current MMO' right now, although it does have its many problems. I mostly just level up 50 and then make a new toon. I also do excessive BG-PvP. I don't really play it as a RPG, but more like a distracting PvP-action game. Not at all the kind of MMORPG I'd actually like to play, so I take long breaks. I always unsubscribe just after I resubscribed - just in case I forget it later.
So I just wanted to resubscribe again for a month and do some cheap, distracting BG-PvP without any emotional bonding to my character or even much social stuff going on. But I didn't.
I didn't, because Trion first told me about my
River of Souls Event Reward Pack.
Thanks for spoiling the rest of the evening for me. And making me write a rage-blog post instead. This is ridiculous! I get rewarded with a soul-reward-pack!!?
For what?
This is like buying a new BMW and just before I buy it, you tell me that it even has this plastic rear spoiler in rainbow colors !!!
And not enough. After that I got told that I can update to the collector's edition and get exclusive in-game items. Reading this my body temperature rose by 1° and I rage-quit the re-subscription process.
Most players are my age and similarly educated? I feel this is hard to believe looking at these ridiculously cheap psychological tricks that seem to work on them while diminishing my gaming experience. I feel offended.
(1) and (2).
So, the average MMO player is in his 30s and has a comparatively good education. Seems I am average for a change. Nice.
...
After having played The Witcher 2 for some time now, I just wanted to resubscribe to Rift. Rift is my 'current MMO' right now, although it does have its many problems. I mostly just level up 50 and then make a new toon. I also do excessive BG-PvP. I don't really play it as a RPG, but more like a distracting PvP-action game. Not at all the kind of MMORPG I'd actually like to play, so I take long breaks. I always unsubscribe just after I resubscribed - just in case I forget it later.
So I just wanted to resubscribe again for a month and do some cheap, distracting BG-PvP without any emotional bonding to my character or even much social stuff going on. But I didn't.
I didn't, because Trion first told me about my
River of Souls Event Reward Pack.
Thanks for spoiling the rest of the evening for me. And making me write a rage-blog post instead. This is ridiculous! I get rewarded with a soul-reward-pack!!?
For what?
This is like buying a new BMW and just before I buy it, you tell me that it even has this plastic rear spoiler in rainbow colors !!!
And not enough. After that I got told that I can update to the collector's edition and get exclusive in-game items. Reading this my body temperature rose by 1° and I rage-quit the re-subscription process.
Most players are my age and similarly educated? I feel this is hard to believe looking at these ridiculously cheap psychological tricks that seem to work on them while diminishing my gaming experience. I feel offended.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Review: The Witcher 2
A few days ago I received the Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. There's so much wrong with this game. I hate it.
And more than anything else this proves its quality. In fact, The Witcher 2 is probably the best story-focused RPG I have ever played. Which is exactly why I care so much; and why I hate it.
Let's start with why I care. The story is mature. Not teenage-mature, but truly mature; credible. Its direct competitors, the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series pale in comparison. Having played The Witcher 2, they reveal themselves to you in their true form: stories for children.
"You are my hero",
"You are our leader",
"Please love me" ..
This is a Bioware story. Read my Dragon Age review, if you want.
The Witcher 2, however, has a complex and deep story which is truly epic. Not because you are epic, but because the world, you are in, is. Perhaps most importantly, the characters are credible. They have their own goals, their own feelings, their own reasons. They love you or hate you, but mostly want to use you to their own ends. At no point do you desire to give them 'presents' to make them like you! Whenever you can make a decision, it just feels too important than to use it to suck up to somebody. Characters are not superficial at all.
Oh - and there is no hand-holding. If you insist on doing (and saying) stupid things, you will die. Without further warning, in fact! The coices you make do matter!
The game has four difficulty levels of which three can be taken seriously: "easy", "normal", "hard". "Insane" means perma-death and it is even harder than "hard". My guess is that only a handful of people on this planet have the dedication and skill to finish the game at "insane".
I play at "hard", as usual, and within the first few minutes I started to make decisions not to increase the power of my character, but to stay alive. This feat alone were actually enough to declare the game the best story-focused RPG of all time!
Moreover, at many times in the game I started to walk, not run, because running felt wrong! Think of that! I've never done that before. In a dark forest, I wouldn't run, because it is too dangerous. Who knows, what you run into, what is behind the next tree? In a tavern I would rather walk, because running feels not appropriate. As you see, I love this game and, yet, I hate it.
Because, why the hell, can't I jump down a 1 meters slope?? Why, the hell, can't I walk through this scrub? Why do caves appear and disappear depending on whether you have a quest to do in them? Why am I flooded with quests when I arrive in the first main city. Haven't we outgrown this?
Why can I loot the chests in peoples' houses while they look at me? Why are there coins in every stupid chest? Why do the merchants sell at 100 times the price at which they buy? Why is there a herb at every second step? Why can I carry about 1-2 metric tons?
Why does this game require an item-power progression? Why does it change into a stupid arcade-reaction game at times? Why is the best way to do 90% of combat to fanatically click your left mouse button?
Why do deadly looking bear-traps reduce my health by about 5%, even at "hard"?
Why, oh why, does the game have scripted boss-encounters? ahhhhhhhhh!
The Witcher 2 is the best story-focused RPG I have ever played, but it's not really a game. Honestly, and absolutely seriously, I would have been just as satisfied, if not more satisfied, if I could just have skipped the entire combat (the game) and experienced the interactive story. Because this interactive story, with decisions that really matter, characters that are perfectly credible, a world that makes sense and an adventure that feels epic and at times amazing: This is why I "play" that game.
The actual gameplay is average - at best. Sure, your character's sword does not cause an explosion whenever it hits an enemy. Nowadays this is a something you need to mention as outstanding. But otherwise, The Witcher 2, even at hard, does not have a deep or even polished gameplay. The reason I stopped playing at "insane", with perma-death, was that the game doesn't allow me real control over my character. In fact, it takes control away on a very regular basis - even during boss fights: ridiculous. I have died more often due to the insufficient character-control than to anything else!
The Witcher 2, in some way, is the opposite of World of Warcraft. While WoW focuses on gameplay, gameplay, gameplay and lacks any credibility and immersion, the Witcher 2 lacks good gameplay, but excels at creating a world. Now, we just need to take the best of the two and merge it. But, I fear, there are technical obstacles here. Have I mentioned, that the graphics are phenomenal, even at "high"? I couldn't play at "ultra" settings - which means I'll probably need to buy a new computer soon.
And more than anything else this proves its quality. In fact, The Witcher 2 is probably the best story-focused RPG I have ever played. Which is exactly why I care so much; and why I hate it.
Let's start with why I care. The story is mature. Not teenage-mature, but truly mature; credible. Its direct competitors, the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series pale in comparison. Having played The Witcher 2, they reveal themselves to you in their true form: stories for children.
"You are my hero",
"You are our leader",
"Please love me" ..
This is a Bioware story. Read my Dragon Age review, if you want.
The Witcher 2, however, has a complex and deep story which is truly epic. Not because you are epic, but because the world, you are in, is. Perhaps most importantly, the characters are credible. They have their own goals, their own feelings, their own reasons. They love you or hate you, but mostly want to use you to their own ends. At no point do you desire to give them 'presents' to make them like you! Whenever you can make a decision, it just feels too important than to use it to suck up to somebody. Characters are not superficial at all.
Oh - and there is no hand-holding. If you insist on doing (and saying) stupid things, you will die. Without further warning, in fact! The coices you make do matter!
The game has four difficulty levels of which three can be taken seriously: "easy", "normal", "hard". "Insane" means perma-death and it is even harder than "hard". My guess is that only a handful of people on this planet have the dedication and skill to finish the game at "insane".
I play at "hard", as usual, and within the first few minutes I started to make decisions not to increase the power of my character, but to stay alive. This feat alone were actually enough to declare the game the best story-focused RPG of all time!
Moreover, at many times in the game I started to walk, not run, because running felt wrong! Think of that! I've never done that before. In a dark forest, I wouldn't run, because it is too dangerous. Who knows, what you run into, what is behind the next tree? In a tavern I would rather walk, because running feels not appropriate. As you see, I love this game and, yet, I hate it.
Because, why the hell, can't I jump down a 1 meters slope?? Why, the hell, can't I walk through this scrub? Why do caves appear and disappear depending on whether you have a quest to do in them? Why am I flooded with quests when I arrive in the first main city. Haven't we outgrown this?
Why can I loot the chests in peoples' houses while they look at me? Why are there coins in every stupid chest? Why do the merchants sell at 100 times the price at which they buy? Why is there a herb at every second step? Why can I carry about 1-2 metric tons?
Why does this game require an item-power progression? Why does it change into a stupid arcade-reaction game at times? Why is the best way to do 90% of combat to fanatically click your left mouse button?
Why do deadly looking bear-traps reduce my health by about 5%, even at "hard"?
Why, oh why, does the game have scripted boss-encounters? ahhhhhhhhh!
The Witcher 2 is the best story-focused RPG I have ever played, but it's not really a game. Honestly, and absolutely seriously, I would have been just as satisfied, if not more satisfied, if I could just have skipped the entire combat (the game) and experienced the interactive story. Because this interactive story, with decisions that really matter, characters that are perfectly credible, a world that makes sense and an adventure that feels epic and at times amazing: This is why I "play" that game.
The actual gameplay is average - at best. Sure, your character's sword does not cause an explosion whenever it hits an enemy. Nowadays this is a something you need to mention as outstanding. But otherwise, The Witcher 2, even at hard, does not have a deep or even polished gameplay. The reason I stopped playing at "insane", with perma-death, was that the game doesn't allow me real control over my character. In fact, it takes control away on a very regular basis - even during boss fights: ridiculous. I have died more often due to the insufficient character-control than to anything else!
The Witcher 2, in some way, is the opposite of World of Warcraft. While WoW focuses on gameplay, gameplay, gameplay and lacks any credibility and immersion, the Witcher 2 lacks good gameplay, but excels at creating a world. Now, we just need to take the best of the two and merge it. But, I fear, there are technical obstacles here. Have I mentioned, that the graphics are phenomenal, even at "high"? I couldn't play at "ultra" settings - which means I'll probably need to buy a new computer soon.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Quests
Wolfshead has one of his posts online; a strong opinion that inspires everybody who agrees with him anyway, and alienates anybody who doesn't. If he were the leader of a political party, this were the kind of speech to mobilize his followers and frighten his opponents. It were a bad speech to convince undecided voters.
As usual, I am more a follower than an opponent of his opinions. And I can understand his change of mind very well, because I also changed my mind.
Quests seemed so great! Ten years ago nobody would have dreamed of a game with thousands of quests. And then World of Warcraft proved to everyone that you can do it. You would just need to invest enough money and time and it would pay off. So nowadays all MMORPGs offer quests like crazy. And, as it happens so very often, we should have been more careful about what we wish for. Those quest-genies just don't want to get back into the damn bottle.
In contrast to Wolfshead, I don't want to get rid of quests completely, and maybe that is not even what he wants. Quests are great. If they are memorable.
My problem with quests nowadays is that I care so little that I don't even remember them when I try. My brain is just too good at filtering unimportant information and every try to convince my brain that these quest-texts actually matter is .. slammed. My brain just seems to know that the quests don't make any difference at all and focuses on what is important: .. mmh .. in the past the "rewards" were important, but that's not true anymore. I honestly don't care about them and I regret this. What is important for me nowadays is to tick off my to-do list. How long until my brain decides that this is totally absurd, too, I wonder?
So how do we make quests memorable again?
1) Telling a great story. But Blizzard tried this and failed with Cataclysm. Maybe Bioware will succeed, but I wouldn't bet on it.
2) Making them matter. Great suggestion, but how? Phasing is too immersion breaking (and my brain is too smart for it, anyway).
3) Cutting down on the number of quests. If there were only a few, you would remember them.
4) Making the player choose between which quest he wants to do: mutally exclusive quests. Maybe this could work ..
Any other ideas? Because, I don't think just removing quests is the solution. "Farming" enemies in groups was a nice gamey community-strengthening feature, but it never made much sense to me. I want an immersive reason to kill 'em. I just want a good one. And I still want to play the MMORPG for hours on end for years .. *sigh*.
It seems to me the only way is to depart from the themepark MMORPG and make a sandbox.
As usual, I am more a follower than an opponent of his opinions. And I can understand his change of mind very well, because I also changed my mind.
Quests seemed so great! Ten years ago nobody would have dreamed of a game with thousands of quests. And then World of Warcraft proved to everyone that you can do it. You would just need to invest enough money and time and it would pay off. So nowadays all MMORPGs offer quests like crazy. And, as it happens so very often, we should have been more careful about what we wish for. Those quest-genies just don't want to get back into the damn bottle.
In contrast to Wolfshead, I don't want to get rid of quests completely, and maybe that is not even what he wants. Quests are great. If they are memorable.
My problem with quests nowadays is that I care so little that I don't even remember them when I try. My brain is just too good at filtering unimportant information and every try to convince my brain that these quest-texts actually matter is .. slammed. My brain just seems to know that the quests don't make any difference at all and focuses on what is important: .. mmh .. in the past the "rewards" were important, but that's not true anymore. I honestly don't care about them and I regret this. What is important for me nowadays is to tick off my to-do list. How long until my brain decides that this is totally absurd, too, I wonder?
So how do we make quests memorable again?
1) Telling a great story. But Blizzard tried this and failed with Cataclysm. Maybe Bioware will succeed, but I wouldn't bet on it.
2) Making them matter. Great suggestion, but how? Phasing is too immersion breaking (and my brain is too smart for it, anyway).
3) Cutting down on the number of quests. If there were only a few, you would remember them.
4) Making the player choose between which quest he wants to do: mutally exclusive quests. Maybe this could work ..
Any other ideas? Because, I don't think just removing quests is the solution. "Farming" enemies in groups was a nice gamey community-strengthening feature, but it never made much sense to me. I want an immersive reason to kill 'em. I just want a good one. And I still want to play the MMORPG for hours on end for years .. *sigh*.
It seems to me the only way is to depart from the themepark MMORPG and make a sandbox.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
A Rift Rant
As much as I liked the classic feel of Rift while leveling, I cannot get myself to play my max level character. Neither can I motivate myself to play through the leveling again. The role system just makes me switch back and forth without giving my character any identity I could emotionally connect to. As a Firemage he is impressive and, of course, totally over the top when left untouched. But if forced to move around or hit he is annoying to play.
As a chloromancer/warlock he is a hyper-optimized war machine that cannot die in non-elite PvE ever, was repeatedly insulted in PvP for the overpowered nature of the specc, and generally is most effective if he aoe's everything to death with instant aoe dots while keeping himself healthy due to the damage he does. Did I mention that this is one of the most effective mage-healing speccs while also killing PvE mobs the fastest?
As a Stormcaller he is about 10x as good at destroying stuff with lighting as Zeus and rather fucked up if somebody shoots back at him.
As an Archon he is only good in raids and then only if there isn't another Archon already. .. Yeah. Exactly.
Fun thing is, I am pretty sure I could enjoy each of these roles. But the possibility to switch on the fly somehow makes me switch back and forth without really liking anything, always focusing on the negative side of each specc. I think that it would have been much better if I had had to work for each of the speccs. But, obviously, that is not compatible with the WoW-like architecture of the leveling game.
Oh, and before I make another post out of it: I don't get why collecting the millions of artifacts is fun. If there had been a few hundred hidden in the basements of some of the impressive caves and castles in the game, it could have been great. But to find one every step of the way .. I stopped dismounting for them quite a time ago, because it felt utterly pointless. Minipets, my ass.
This development isn't really a big surprise. And I will not go back to WoW, because this time, for once, there just isn't anything I would look forward to be doing. Sorry, Michael. It's just unfortunate. Rift is too much like WoW to be able to support good open-world content. And the explicit focus on "rewards" in the game is really, really, really going on my nerves. If they at least had the dignity to hide the fact that it's "just rewards".
To say it bluntly, I think the best way to encourage me to kill mobs right now is to threaten me to give me rewards if I don't.
Optimization and Player Segregation, Part II
Keeping my last post in mind, I want to venture a bit further.
First, a side trip to World of Warcraft. In this recent post I had written down six ways to combat the optimization problem, or the inefficiency phobia, whatever you want to call it. However, the last post reveals another way to look at it:
WoW is, without doubt, easy to learn and hard to master (1). If you think differently, please stay away from my blog. In addition to that, it also makes a lot of difference in WoW how skilled you are (2). The difference between a very good player and a credibly bad player is tremendous. These are really two different dimensions and need to be looked at separately!
It is clear that this combination of characteristics in a game induces a run for efficiency in the player base. This run turns into a social drama, because WoW also (practically) forces players of all skill levels to play together (3) in the LFD or to raid as a guild that was not originally estabilished for raiding.
All three characteristics together create the drama, and changing any of them will reduce it. You can either make it very easy to master WoW. In that case, everybody plays rather perfectly and there is no drama. Or, you can make it hard to play perfectly, but have the benefits of doing so be low. An example would be an extremely complicated priority system in boss fights, that is 3% more efficient than a one-button spam. In this case, only few players would play perfectly, but those who did would be oblivious to those who do not. And finally, you can segregate the players according to their skill.
Now, leaving the WoW example behind, how realistic is each of these measures?
Is it feasible to make a game that is not easy to learn and hard to master? I don't think so. This characteristic is about exploration of the game and as long as there is still something to explore, players like to stay. It is about mystery. Also, one reason playing soccer at medium skill is fun, is because there are people who play at a world championship. The celebrities enrich the game - especially for the people who play at much lower skill. So, no, a good game should be easy to learn and hard to master; even if most players don't actually master it.
Is it feasible to segregate players according to their skill? Yes. The nature of the segregation can either be natural, that is, players look for similarly skilled players to play with. This is how things work in most of today's games and sports. Alternatively, or in addition to that, you can use a measuring system, like the Elo rating that is most prominently used in chess, but also by the WoW PvP match-making. These systems have several hard limitations, like requiring a high number of wins / losses to accurately determine a player's skill. There is no known system to guess the skill of a player without clear feedback, like wins/losses, by the way. Warhammer Online, as well as Rift tried to implement such systems into their public quests, but failed miserably. Rift gave up on it soon after release and now gives out 'rewards' for participation alone.
Finally, you can try to keep the benefits of mastery low, but still have the game be easy to learn and hard to master. Of course, the benefits must not be too low, otherwise the players don't care for mastery, and in that case, the game could as well not be hard to master. Also, this is incredibly difficult to design! Firstly, it is hard to measure skill in the first place. Secondly, the benefits of skill are hard to measure. Finally, in a non-boring MMORPG, there are lots of strongly connected activities that skill can be attained in. To balance such a system against other classes/speccs/skill combinations is already hard. To also balance them carefully for benefit of additional player skill in various connected activites, is probably a nightmare.
Finally, I'd like to say that not all activities in a MMORPG have the mentioned problem, in the first place. Take in-game economics as an example. Imagine a player-run economy that offers a very easy-to-use interface to the economically non-interested player, but offers a complicated and deep buy-order/sell-order system to the interested player. In this case, additional player skill isn't a problem, due to player expectations. Since players know from the real world that making less money is perfectly ok if you are economically less skilled, they don't complain about it in-game at all! That is funny in so far as the gold coins in a MMORPG are, of course, gameplay-wise indistinguishable from any other arbitrary points. But from a simulation-aspect point of view, it is a currency. And players have very specific expectations about currencies. For example they expect their wealth to decrease from time to time and have no problem with it at all.
Another example are organization skills. Similarly to the economics example, players have very strong expectations about the influence of organization skills in-game. Nobody complains that the student has an advantage at organizing 40 people, because he has more time. While this is obviously the case, it is also, obviously, impossible to change. So expectations cannot be messed up by the developer here.
Conluding the last few paragraphs, it is possible to have activities in-game that are
- easy to learn hard to master,
- bring along powerful benefits for mastery,
- don't segregate the players,
- and don't create a drama
as long as these activities befit from strong already-estabilished expectations.
Segregation also, doesn't necessarily mean that players have no contact with each other. On the contrary: the hard working organizer has contact with a lot of people and plays a very complicated and deep game with its own benefits for mastery. But he doesn't play against the other players, but together with them. The better he is at organizing, the better off are the players he organizes.
The same applies to the skilled and hard-working in-game merchant. The real-world expectations about currencies and economics are mentally transferred and keep players from complaining about his 'unfair benefits' from skill. At the same time, everybody benefits from the liquidity he creates and indirectly interacts with him.
---
Check out Klepsacovic's posts on a very similar topic.
First, a side trip to World of Warcraft. In this recent post I had written down six ways to combat the optimization problem, or the inefficiency phobia, whatever you want to call it. However, the last post reveals another way to look at it:
WoW is, without doubt, easy to learn and hard to master (1). If you think differently, please stay away from my blog. In addition to that, it also makes a lot of difference in WoW how skilled you are (2). The difference between a very good player and a credibly bad player is tremendous. These are really two different dimensions and need to be looked at separately!
It is clear that this combination of characteristics in a game induces a run for efficiency in the player base. This run turns into a social drama, because WoW also (practically) forces players of all skill levels to play together (3) in the LFD or to raid as a guild that was not originally estabilished for raiding.
All three characteristics together create the drama, and changing any of them will reduce it. You can either make it very easy to master WoW. In that case, everybody plays rather perfectly and there is no drama. Or, you can make it hard to play perfectly, but have the benefits of doing so be low. An example would be an extremely complicated priority system in boss fights, that is 3% more efficient than a one-button spam. In this case, only few players would play perfectly, but those who did would be oblivious to those who do not. And finally, you can segregate the players according to their skill.
Now, leaving the WoW example behind, how realistic is each of these measures?
Is it feasible to make a game that is not easy to learn and hard to master? I don't think so. This characteristic is about exploration of the game and as long as there is still something to explore, players like to stay. It is about mystery. Also, one reason playing soccer at medium skill is fun, is because there are people who play at a world championship. The celebrities enrich the game - especially for the people who play at much lower skill. So, no, a good game should be easy to learn and hard to master; even if most players don't actually master it.
Is it feasible to segregate players according to their skill? Yes. The nature of the segregation can either be natural, that is, players look for similarly skilled players to play with. This is how things work in most of today's games and sports. Alternatively, or in addition to that, you can use a measuring system, like the Elo rating that is most prominently used in chess, but also by the WoW PvP match-making. These systems have several hard limitations, like requiring a high number of wins / losses to accurately determine a player's skill. There is no known system to guess the skill of a player without clear feedback, like wins/losses, by the way. Warhammer Online, as well as Rift tried to implement such systems into their public quests, but failed miserably. Rift gave up on it soon after release and now gives out 'rewards' for participation alone.
Finally, you can try to keep the benefits of mastery low, but still have the game be easy to learn and hard to master. Of course, the benefits must not be too low, otherwise the players don't care for mastery, and in that case, the game could as well not be hard to master. Also, this is incredibly difficult to design! Firstly, it is hard to measure skill in the first place. Secondly, the benefits of skill are hard to measure. Finally, in a non-boring MMORPG, there are lots of strongly connected activities that skill can be attained in. To balance such a system against other classes/speccs/skill combinations is already hard. To also balance them carefully for benefit of additional player skill in various connected activites, is probably a nightmare.
Finally, I'd like to say that not all activities in a MMORPG have the mentioned problem, in the first place. Take in-game economics as an example. Imagine a player-run economy that offers a very easy-to-use interface to the economically non-interested player, but offers a complicated and deep buy-order/sell-order system to the interested player. In this case, additional player skill isn't a problem, due to player expectations. Since players know from the real world that making less money is perfectly ok if you are economically less skilled, they don't complain about it in-game at all! That is funny in so far as the gold coins in a MMORPG are, of course, gameplay-wise indistinguishable from any other arbitrary points. But from a simulation-aspect point of view, it is a currency. And players have very specific expectations about currencies. For example they expect their wealth to decrease from time to time and have no problem with it at all.
Another example are organization skills. Similarly to the economics example, players have very strong expectations about the influence of organization skills in-game. Nobody complains that the student has an advantage at organizing 40 people, because he has more time. While this is obviously the case, it is also, obviously, impossible to change. So expectations cannot be messed up by the developer here.
Conluding the last few paragraphs, it is possible to have activities in-game that are
- easy to learn hard to master,
- bring along powerful benefits for mastery,
- don't segregate the players,
- and don't create a drama
as long as these activities befit from strong already-estabilished expectations.
Segregation also, doesn't necessarily mean that players have no contact with each other. On the contrary: the hard working organizer has contact with a lot of people and plays a very complicated and deep game with its own benefits for mastery. But he doesn't play against the other players, but together with them. The better he is at organizing, the better off are the players he organizes.
The same applies to the skilled and hard-working in-game merchant. The real-world expectations about currencies and economics are mentally transferred and keep players from complaining about his 'unfair benefits' from skill. At the same time, everybody benefits from the liquidity he creates and indirectly interacts with him.
---
Check out Klepsacovic's posts on a very similar topic.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Optimization and Player Segregation
In the past, you have often seen me argue against player segregation. When I started playing MMORPGs, my experience was that the new players were welcome by the more experienced players. And I liked to play with the more experienced; and later I liked to play with the less experienced. In this scenario, segregating players was not only unnecessary, but actually detrimental to everybody's fun.
But over time things changed. Surprisingly one root of this change was a design principle that I always supported: "A game should be easy to learn and hard to master". There also were other causes, like anonymity and focus on raids in WoW. But let's ignore them for once, in this post.
All good games are easy to learn and hard to master. Klepsacovic won't like me, but I'll still discuss soccer and chess as examples, fully aware of the fact that there are differences between these games and virtual worlds. In fact, these differences are crucial and discussed at the end of the post.
The reasons this design principle is so important are player retention and new-player attraction. Both are needed for any good game. And so you see soccer players of all skill levels. Even 35 year old men often play soccer or chess (or any other well-known game) at all skill levels. And they have fun. Sure, at times we wish we were a second David Beckham, and maybe we occasionally thought about training more to really show the others our superiority.
But mostly we have fun playing even though we cannot win the world championship, even though we are not rewarded with millions of Euros and even though our reputation as a soccer player is negligible compared to our reputation as a dad, as a friend or as a professional. We still have fun.
Why?
Because we understand that to be more we'd have to invest much more time and effort - and pain. And because we understand that the time is past. In this life we just won't become a soccer star anymore. And even those of us who strongly believe that we are all flesh and no soul and will rot under the earth (or the sea?) eventually and for eternity .. they just accept this inevitable truth. It's not fair, but to say it bluntly: Somebody perfectly managed our expectations. Thanks.
Now, this is something you cannot say about Blizzard. World of Warcraft changes all the time. It feels as if somebody told the developers to not change the golden goose too much, but since this is a large and motivated team they just cannot stand idle. So, the lead system designer muses about critical hits instead of real innovation. And rightfully so, if we look at the kind of 'innovation' that came along with Cataclysm.
Anyway, since our expectations were that badly managed, we evolved a sense of entitlement. In the past, I never cared much about that I couldn't access all content. In fact, this made the game world more credible for me. But since WotLK we think that we deserve to see all the content. Spare me the "we all pay the same price" argument, please. Point is that this is just a matter of expectation management and a harmful sense of entitlement can evolve if it is neglected or even ignored.
So the answer to the question that I haven't asked yet: why do different skill levels work in most games, especially sports, but not in some others?, is expectation management. It is something that happens quite naturally.
This is also why it is so very valuable if the designers state clearly what they want the game to be and what not. When Ghostcrawler said clearly that they don't balance arena on a 2:2 basis, he did something very smart (without knowing?). Players now know what to expect. CCP does it much more often. For example they state clearly that if you get ripped off, it's your fault. Now, you can disagree with these design intentions, but knowing what you can expect helps immensely with enjoying an activity - any activity, really.
If I climb up a mountain, perfectly certain that there is a very comfortable hotel at the top, the whole trip can be ruined if there is just a basic campground. Compare that to finding a basic campground where you didn't expect anything! Fact is that, within a certain limit, we can enjoy a lot of things, if we just know what to expect (or, alternatively, if we are pleasantly surprised).
So, how are expectation management and player segregation related?
Player segregation can help with expectation management. If you are part of a group of soccer players who just play 'for fun' and you also 'just play for fun' yourself, this is great. However, if aspirations differ too much, it is harder to have fun. This is not only an effect of comparisons with peers: You can have more fun as a below-average player in a good team than as an above-average player in a bad team. It's not necessarily the case, but it is quite possible. For example, even the worst player in the soccer-world championship is happy to be there. Even if he doesn't play a minute. He wouldn't trade this against playing somewhere with good friends and just having fun.
If we believe in the "A game should be easy to learn, hard to master" design principle, we also need to face the consequences: the more we succeed at implementing the principle, the more important does it become to empower players to choose the correct groups; to allow them to segregate the community. This segregation doesn't have to be total. Players of various skill levels and expectations should still occasionally have contact with each other! But to force these players to play with each other is a recipe for frustration.
And how does this relate to the debate about optimization?
There is an endless amount of readily available material about how to get better at soccer and chess. Now, we don't know how good these games were if this material was not available, but what we do know is that it's not much of a problem. Why?
Well, firstly, because of the mentioned player segregation that comes naturally to these games. If your peers don't read up on soccer strategy, you can have fun without doing it, too.
And secondly, because the challenge is not alone in the execution: not in soccer and certainly not in chess. In both games, donkeyspace plays a very large role. And this is true for most successful games. Actually, I am hard pressed to come up with even one very successful game for adults that focuses on the execution challenge alone. Do you know any?
So, I have changed my mind. If your game is easy to learn and hard to master, you might need to empower players to segregate into groups of roughly similar skill and aspiration. Watch the expectation management: if all players feel like they have a right (or important reasons) to be in the top group, it's your mistake.
It is maybe not a surprise that this problem occurs in a MMORPG. While you might be able to segregate the community in a game like WOW, in a better virtual world, you don't usually have this luxury! And that is a major problem. If you want a group of 5 players to literally destroy a group of 20 players if they are more skilled, you better (somehow?) make sure that the group of 20 doesn't develop an aspiration to not be destroyed. Because if they do develop this aspiration, they either try hard to get better or leave your game.
And thus, I reach a conclusion that nobody is more surprised about, than me:
If, in your game, mastery makes the players much more powerful, and, if your game is easy to learn and hard to master, then segregating the community is necessary.
But while this is an option in WoW-like lobby games, it is much harder in a virtual world. And thus, a virtual world either requires a lot of finesse (for example, geographic segregation of the community along skill levels/aspirations), or it may just not be that easy to learn and that hard to master. Alternatively you could try to develop a virtual world that is easy to learn and hard to master, but doesn't much reward mastery. I cannot say if this would work.
But over time things changed. Surprisingly one root of this change was a design principle that I always supported: "A game should be easy to learn and hard to master". There also were other causes, like anonymity and focus on raids in WoW. But let's ignore them for once, in this post.
All good games are easy to learn and hard to master. Klepsacovic won't like me, but I'll still discuss soccer and chess as examples, fully aware of the fact that there are differences between these games and virtual worlds. In fact, these differences are crucial and discussed at the end of the post.
The reasons this design principle is so important are player retention and new-player attraction. Both are needed for any good game. And so you see soccer players of all skill levels. Even 35 year old men often play soccer or chess (or any other well-known game) at all skill levels. And they have fun. Sure, at times we wish we were a second David Beckham, and maybe we occasionally thought about training more to really show the others our superiority.
But mostly we have fun playing even though we cannot win the world championship, even though we are not rewarded with millions of Euros and even though our reputation as a soccer player is negligible compared to our reputation as a dad, as a friend or as a professional. We still have fun.
Why?
Because we understand that to be more we'd have to invest much more time and effort - and pain. And because we understand that the time is past. In this life we just won't become a soccer star anymore. And even those of us who strongly believe that we are all flesh and no soul and will rot under the earth (or the sea?) eventually and for eternity .. they just accept this inevitable truth. It's not fair, but to say it bluntly: Somebody perfectly managed our expectations. Thanks.
Now, this is something you cannot say about Blizzard. World of Warcraft changes all the time. It feels as if somebody told the developers to not change the golden goose too much, but since this is a large and motivated team they just cannot stand idle. So, the lead system designer muses about critical hits instead of real innovation. And rightfully so, if we look at the kind of 'innovation' that came along with Cataclysm.
Anyway, since our expectations were that badly managed, we evolved a sense of entitlement. In the past, I never cared much about that I couldn't access all content. In fact, this made the game world more credible for me. But since WotLK we think that we deserve to see all the content. Spare me the "we all pay the same price" argument, please. Point is that this is just a matter of expectation management and a harmful sense of entitlement can evolve if it is neglected or even ignored.
So the answer to the question that I haven't asked yet: why do different skill levels work in most games, especially sports, but not in some others?, is expectation management. It is something that happens quite naturally.
This is also why it is so very valuable if the designers state clearly what they want the game to be and what not. When Ghostcrawler said clearly that they don't balance arena on a 2:2 basis, he did something very smart (without knowing?). Players now know what to expect. CCP does it much more often. For example they state clearly that if you get ripped off, it's your fault. Now, you can disagree with these design intentions, but knowing what you can expect helps immensely with enjoying an activity - any activity, really.
If I climb up a mountain, perfectly certain that there is a very comfortable hotel at the top, the whole trip can be ruined if there is just a basic campground. Compare that to finding a basic campground where you didn't expect anything! Fact is that, within a certain limit, we can enjoy a lot of things, if we just know what to expect (or, alternatively, if we are pleasantly surprised).
So, how are expectation management and player segregation related?
Player segregation can help with expectation management. If you are part of a group of soccer players who just play 'for fun' and you also 'just play for fun' yourself, this is great. However, if aspirations differ too much, it is harder to have fun. This is not only an effect of comparisons with peers: You can have more fun as a below-average player in a good team than as an above-average player in a bad team. It's not necessarily the case, but it is quite possible. For example, even the worst player in the soccer-world championship is happy to be there. Even if he doesn't play a minute. He wouldn't trade this against playing somewhere with good friends and just having fun.
If we believe in the "A game should be easy to learn, hard to master" design principle, we also need to face the consequences: the more we succeed at implementing the principle, the more important does it become to empower players to choose the correct groups; to allow them to segregate the community. This segregation doesn't have to be total. Players of various skill levels and expectations should still occasionally have contact with each other! But to force these players to play with each other is a recipe for frustration.
And how does this relate to the debate about optimization?
There is an endless amount of readily available material about how to get better at soccer and chess. Now, we don't know how good these games were if this material was not available, but what we do know is that it's not much of a problem. Why?
Well, firstly, because of the mentioned player segregation that comes naturally to these games. If your peers don't read up on soccer strategy, you can have fun without doing it, too.
And secondly, because the challenge is not alone in the execution: not in soccer and certainly not in chess. In both games, donkeyspace plays a very large role. And this is true for most successful games. Actually, I am hard pressed to come up with even one very successful game for adults that focuses on the execution challenge alone. Do you know any?
So, I have changed my mind. If your game is easy to learn and hard to master, you might need to empower players to segregate into groups of roughly similar skill and aspiration. Watch the expectation management: if all players feel like they have a right (or important reasons) to be in the top group, it's your mistake.
It is maybe not a surprise that this problem occurs in a MMORPG. While you might be able to segregate the community in a game like WOW, in a better virtual world, you don't usually have this luxury! And that is a major problem. If you want a group of 5 players to literally destroy a group of 20 players if they are more skilled, you better (somehow?) make sure that the group of 20 doesn't develop an aspiration to not be destroyed. Because if they do develop this aspiration, they either try hard to get better or leave your game.
And thus, I reach a conclusion that nobody is more surprised about, than me:
If, in your game, mastery makes the players much more powerful, and, if your game is easy to learn and hard to master, then segregating the community is necessary.
But while this is an option in WoW-like lobby games, it is much harder in a virtual world. And thus, a virtual world either requires a lot of finesse (for example, geographic segregation of the community along skill levels/aspirations), or it may just not be that easy to learn and that hard to master. Alternatively you could try to develop a virtual world that is easy to learn and hard to master, but doesn't much reward mastery. I cannot say if this would work.
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Real Thing
They understood something, Blizzard still has to learn :)
Link
The modern trader is playing the most sophisticated, dynamic, immersive game in the world. Here's how it works -- and why your job might be the next to turn into a massively multiplayer experience.
They try, in other words, to capture as much as they can of the dynamics driving our world, not for the sake of verisimilitude itself, but because it just so happens that the "realer" things are the more fun players seem to have.
Link
Sunday, May 8, 2011
First and Third Person View
This is a little spin-off from my last post.
There is an interesting discussion about first and third person view at Kotaku.com.
I have been struggling with this, as well. And I disagree with Danc who tries to summarize the entire discussion with "In 3rd person you can see (and thus empathize) with a visualized character and in 1st person, you can't. ". But he is right that this is the core of it.
The problem is that at first glance, 1st person view seems to be more immersive - for obvious reasons. Only at second glance do you realize that in first person view you have a much worse feeling about the body of the protagonist. You don't know exactly where your feet are, you don't know exactly where your arms are. Shooters have an advantage, because you can run around with the hands (and the gun) just in front of your eyes. But this doesn't really work with a sword.
Also, from other media we are not used to a first person view. Our brains are wired in a way that we can put ourselves very well in the position of other humans that we see from a 'third-person' point of view.
Stand up and look down. You see much more than just your feet, because your eyes move, too. Something which is (almost) impossible to realize in a game. Look straight forward and hold your arm straight forward, too. What do you see? A silhouette of the arm, something that cannot be shown in a game.
Last but not least, the "flying" and strafing in 1st person view annoys me. Doom, Quake and their successors were good games, they weren't good simulations.
And then again, I actually think the debate is mostly superfluous. Immersion is influenced by a lot of things. The perspective may seem important at first, but actually you can be immersed in either way. I guess it is mostly a matter of getting used to.
There is an interesting discussion about first and third person view at Kotaku.com.
I have been struggling with this, as well. And I disagree with Danc who tries to summarize the entire discussion with "In 3rd person you can see (and thus empathize) with a visualized character and in 1st person, you can't. ". But he is right that this is the core of it.
The problem is that at first glance, 1st person view seems to be more immersive - for obvious reasons. Only at second glance do you realize that in first person view you have a much worse feeling about the body of the protagonist. You don't know exactly where your feet are, you don't know exactly where your arms are. Shooters have an advantage, because you can run around with the hands (and the gun) just in front of your eyes. But this doesn't really work with a sword.
Also, from other media we are not used to a first person view. Our brains are wired in a way that we can put ourselves very well in the position of other humans that we see from a 'third-person' point of view.
Stand up and look down. You see much more than just your feet, because your eyes move, too. Something which is (almost) impossible to realize in a game. Look straight forward and hold your arm straight forward, too. What do you see? A silhouette of the arm, something that cannot be shown in a game.
Last but not least, the "flying" and strafing in 1st person view annoys me. Doom, Quake and their successors were good games, they weren't good simulations.
And then again, I actually think the debate is mostly superfluous. Immersion is influenced by a lot of things. The perspective may seem important at first, but actually you can be immersed in either way. I guess it is mostly a matter of getting used to.
Game Criticism
Danc, over at Lost Garden has a furious criticism of game criticism online. Let me say first that I do hate stupid game reviews as much as anybody. Most prominently, the kind of player-designer perspective mix that goes along the lines of: "If you make me more powerful in the game I'll have more fun".
I also hate all the developers who repeat again and again that they are themselves "gamers" and how much they focus on the gamer point of view. A good game is created by an enthusiastic game designer, not an enthusiastic player! That doesn't mean that you should ignore your customers, it just means to interpret their opinions very, very, .. very! carefully.
Having said this, I do disagree with Danc. For good criticism, you don't need to know how to make a game, organize all the different parties involved, manage the budget, please the investors, write good code, etc. Even if Blizzard has used 7 years on polishing and balancing Starcraft 2, that doesn't make me more fond of it - and it shouldn't. Sure, they might have complete numerical simulations and sophisticated mathematical models to balance the game; impressive. And still not worth more than a single statement in a good review.
Game design is the top level of this art. You don't need to know in detail how stuntmen work to make an action movie - you have specialists for that. I don't need to know how much time and money and effort Blizzard spent on their voice-chat to know that it was a waste of time on the PC platform and why.
I also don't always need empirical evidence. That's not only impossible to get at a statistically meaningful magnitude, but also useless most of the time: 679 of 1000 players like third person perspective more than first person perspective? I bet this would change drastically depending on which was the last game your audience has played!
I also don't need to read all the stuff of the past. Let's face it: Game design is an impossibly broad subject. A criticism of Civilization is a completely different thing than a criticism of Rift. You don't ask a professional boxer to comment fencing, either. Also, the more academic work is mostly quite useless in practice.
Now, I do agree with lots of points Danc brings forward and I really do suggest to read his blog. But this post being a criticism of a criticism of game criticism, I focused on the few parts I wanted to criticize.
On a side note: I quite agree that you shouldn't introduce yourself as a "PhD candidate and a pretty smart guy". That's just silly.
I also hate all the developers who repeat again and again that they are themselves "gamers" and how much they focus on the gamer point of view. A good game is created by an enthusiastic game designer, not an enthusiastic player! That doesn't mean that you should ignore your customers, it just means to interpret their opinions very, very, .. very! carefully.
Having said this, I do disagree with Danc. For good criticism, you don't need to know how to make a game, organize all the different parties involved, manage the budget, please the investors, write good code, etc. Even if Blizzard has used 7 years on polishing and balancing Starcraft 2, that doesn't make me more fond of it - and it shouldn't. Sure, they might have complete numerical simulations and sophisticated mathematical models to balance the game; impressive. And still not worth more than a single statement in a good review.
Game design is the top level of this art. You don't need to know in detail how stuntmen work to make an action movie - you have specialists for that. I don't need to know how much time and money and effort Blizzard spent on their voice-chat to know that it was a waste of time on the PC platform and why.
I also don't always need empirical evidence. That's not only impossible to get at a statistically meaningful magnitude, but also useless most of the time: 679 of 1000 players like third person perspective more than first person perspective? I bet this would change drastically depending on which was the last game your audience has played!
I also don't need to read all the stuff of the past. Let's face it: Game design is an impossibly broad subject. A criticism of Civilization is a completely different thing than a criticism of Rift. You don't ask a professional boxer to comment fencing, either. Also, the more academic work is mostly quite useless in practice.
Now, I do agree with lots of points Danc brings forward and I really do suggest to read his blog. But this post being a criticism of a criticism of game criticism, I focused on the few parts I wanted to criticize.
On a side note: I quite agree that you shouldn't introduce yourself as a "PhD candidate and a pretty smart guy". That's just silly.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
A Lost Decade
This blog post won't be about MMORPGs. If you've been watching a lot of U.S. media the last 10 years you might also find this text a little .. offensive? I think you could call it a rant, by the way. I won't bother with many references. Go find them yourself.
First, let me congratulate the U.S. government for finally locating Osama bin Laden. Wasn't easy it seems. I think it is good that my chance to die due to a terrorist attack organised by him is now reduced to 0. Even though I don't think it was ever distinguishable from 0. I mean, I don't even live in a big city.
Anyway, 310.955.497 people had their revenge. I wouldn't exactly call it justice, unless you are a supporter of qisas and the sharia instead of the bible where Jesus is reported to have said:
In my opinion religion is fairy tales, anyway. So it's just ironic. The German judiciary system, at least, is not about revenge. And I think that's a good thing.
When I heard the news of Osama being dead, I didn't really care that much. But then I read about celebrations on the streets and "We are the champions" in front of the White House and I was thinking to myself
The last decade was lost for the American people. Real wages declined and the country suffered immensely in two wars. Just read today's Atlantic. But these wars did not only cost something between 3 and 6 trillion dollars (plus interest).
That is 30-60 international space stations or $10.000-$20.000 in cash for every U.S. citizen, by the way. Many of whom are happy about every single meal nowadays.
These wars also cost thousands of additional American lifes and hundreds of thousands of lifes in total. Do you think this distinction makes sense?
How many wedding parties have been bombarded? How many innocents deported? Have the 183 waterboardings of Chalid Scheich Mohammed satisfied you? How many men were stripped of their clothes and tortured and posed with and killed in Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and all those prisons that the public never has heard of? And never will, because they were in Mubarack's backyard.
How many revolutions have been delayed, how many billions given to dictators? How many people struggled to explain to their friends that freedom and democracy are not inherently bad ideas, just because The West preaches them?
And don't you feel a little bit ashamed for celebrating death? Don't you fear the collateral damage of killing people by government executive order - without any checks and balances at all? Did you really think civil liberties don't a have price in blood?
What do you think China learns from you?
Things are on the move and I'm a bit afraid.
First, let me congratulate the U.S. government for finally locating Osama bin Laden. Wasn't easy it seems. I think it is good that my chance to die due to a terrorist attack organised by him is now reduced to 0. Even though I don't think it was ever distinguishable from 0. I mean, I don't even live in a big city.
Anyway, 310.955.497 people had their revenge. I wouldn't exactly call it justice, unless you are a supporter of qisas and the sharia instead of the bible where Jesus is reported to have said:
You have heard, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.and
‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
In my opinion religion is fairy tales, anyway. So it's just ironic. The German judiciary system, at least, is not about revenge. And I think that's a good thing.
When I heard the news of Osama being dead, I didn't really care that much. But then I read about celebrations on the streets and "We are the champions" in front of the White House and I was thinking to myself
"This is exactly what is wrong with the U.S. for 10 years by now. Hopefully it will end now."
The last decade was lost for the American people. Real wages declined and the country suffered immensely in two wars. Just read today's Atlantic. But these wars did not only cost something between 3 and 6 trillion dollars (plus interest).
That is 30-60 international space stations or $10.000-$20.000 in cash for every U.S. citizen, by the way. Many of whom are happy about every single meal nowadays.
These wars also cost thousands of additional American lifes and hundreds of thousands of lifes in total. Do you think this distinction makes sense?
How many wedding parties have been bombarded? How many innocents deported? Have the 183 waterboardings of Chalid Scheich Mohammed satisfied you? How many men were stripped of their clothes and tortured and posed with and killed in Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo and all those prisons that the public never has heard of? And never will, because they were in Mubarack's backyard.
How many revolutions have been delayed, how many billions given to dictators? How many people struggled to explain to their friends that freedom and democracy are not inherently bad ideas, just because The West preaches them?
And don't you feel a little bit ashamed for celebrating death? Don't you fear the collateral damage of killing people by government executive order - without any checks and balances at all? Did you really think civil liberties don't a have price in blood?
What do you think China learns from you?
Things are on the move and I'm a bit afraid.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
I got loot?
Just realized that in Rift leveling I don't care about green loot. I have AE-auto-loot on and all loot is collected in my bags. Then, later, I go to a merchant and sell everything. click,click,click. I get a few coins that I could very well do without, but why waste it?
I sometimes try to make sure that I don't sell an upgrade, but mostly I cannot be bothered.
Now, am I old, strange or just too lazy to play Rift? I somehow feel like green loot while leveling has no appeal after level 10. And I cannot imagine this being a design intend (?)
---
Check out this unrelated blog if you haven't already.
I sometimes try to make sure that I don't sell an upgrade, but mostly I cannot be bothered.
Now, am I old, strange or just too lazy to play Rift? I somehow feel like green loot while leveling has no appeal after level 10. And I cannot imagine this being a design intend (?)
---
Check out this unrelated blog if you haven't already.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Combat Meters
A post on combat meters is overdue, I think. A combat meter is a tool that processes the combat log in real time. The most popular use of combat meters are dps rankings. But they can also be used to find out who healed whom, who did take damage or even who was 'active' for how much during an encounter.
Many players will claim that combat meters allow them to play better. And this is true. I have used combat meters myself during my raid-leader days (TBC) and they are very useful.
Combat meters help an organizer to organize. They help to distinguish the good from the bad players and enable you to tell the bad players what they do wrong. You don't even need to talk with them to find out. Just one glance at the combat meter: "You mangled and never used shred ???"
Combat meters allow the segregation of the player base. And while some players say this is exactly what they want, I say this is exactly what I do not want. Matter of opinion, it seems. I want different players to work together and work for each other in a game. And, yes, I said 'work'.
What I would like to talk about right now is the connection of combat meters and the inefficiency phoebia. A lot of players say that disallowing statistical tools doesn't help with crowd sourcing. I disagree. It helps, it just doesn't solve the problem completely. My proof is the successive introduction of combat meters, export of combat logs and finally the armory with its interface in World of Warcraft. There was always theory-crafting and min-maxing, but it was never as dominant as in Wrath of the Lich King.
Besides the pressure to optimize, combat meters also have a very sinister effect on players: instant feedback.
How often do you think about your bill at the gas station? A lot? And how often do you think about your bill of your supplier of electric energy? Not so much?
If you are the kind of person that tries to refuel at the gas station with slightly lower prices, you are not alone. Nor are you if you still haven't changed to a cheaper supplier of electric energy. And that is although the latter would most probably save you a lot more money. But the bill only comes once a year.
Sure, we all know that we should interrupt and play smart and not die and so on. But we mostly get instant feedback on our dps. I know from time to time I have ignored the "smart play" and went for all out dps. Of course only during unimportant encounters ;)
Instant feedback is powerful. And although theoretically all feedback is useful, and especially instant feedback, it corrupts. This is not really news. Instant gratification is so popular, especially because it is instant and powerful.
Some days ago I went into a leveling Rift dungeon. We went through pretty well and Rift being new nobody had a combat meter. When we finished the party talked about how well we had done and how fast the boss had just died. I was pretty certain that this was due to me. But maybe so was the rest. Without knowing who was the champion, everybody was - or thought he is.
I disagree with Mr. Zuckerberg: Perfect transparency is not always good. In games, perfect information can lessen fun. It can even make players play worse! As long as there are challenges in a game, developers cannot prevent players from optimizing. But they can choose the battlefield! Shall it be statistics? Maybe even Excel and C++? Or shall it be personal communication and estimated guesses?
The process of optimization is fun for most players. What is not fun for most players is exporting combat logs to Excel and discussing differential evolution techniques. By not allowing combat meters and statistics, developers can make the players communicate to find the best way to overcome a challenge. This doesn't solve the whole problem. If the challenges are static, they will still be broadcasted on the internet. But at least you have to talk to a player to tell him what he does wrong.
While I do like number-heavy theory crafting from time to time, that is really not why I play MMORPGs. Combat meters give the players an advantage to overcome challenging content. An advantage they wouldn't need in the first place, if the content were tuned for players without combat meters.
So, while I do see that it is desireable for a developer that most players are at one skill-level, I don't think it is worth it.
Many players will claim that combat meters allow them to play better. And this is true. I have used combat meters myself during my raid-leader days (TBC) and they are very useful.
Combat meters help an organizer to organize. They help to distinguish the good from the bad players and enable you to tell the bad players what they do wrong. You don't even need to talk with them to find out. Just one glance at the combat meter: "You mangled and never used shred ???"
Combat meters allow the segregation of the player base. And while some players say this is exactly what they want, I say this is exactly what I do not want. Matter of opinion, it seems. I want different players to work together and work for each other in a game. And, yes, I said 'work'.
What I would like to talk about right now is the connection of combat meters and the inefficiency phoebia. A lot of players say that disallowing statistical tools doesn't help with crowd sourcing. I disagree. It helps, it just doesn't solve the problem completely. My proof is the successive introduction of combat meters, export of combat logs and finally the armory with its interface in World of Warcraft. There was always theory-crafting and min-maxing, but it was never as dominant as in Wrath of the Lich King.
Besides the pressure to optimize, combat meters also have a very sinister effect on players: instant feedback.
How often do you think about your bill at the gas station? A lot? And how often do you think about your bill of your supplier of electric energy? Not so much?
If you are the kind of person that tries to refuel at the gas station with slightly lower prices, you are not alone. Nor are you if you still haven't changed to a cheaper supplier of electric energy. And that is although the latter would most probably save you a lot more money. But the bill only comes once a year.
Sure, we all know that we should interrupt and play smart and not die and so on. But we mostly get instant feedback on our dps. I know from time to time I have ignored the "smart play" and went for all out dps. Of course only during unimportant encounters ;)
Instant feedback is powerful. And although theoretically all feedback is useful, and especially instant feedback, it corrupts. This is not really news. Instant gratification is so popular, especially because it is instant and powerful.
Some days ago I went into a leveling Rift dungeon. We went through pretty well and Rift being new nobody had a combat meter. When we finished the party talked about how well we had done and how fast the boss had just died. I was pretty certain that this was due to me. But maybe so was the rest. Without knowing who was the champion, everybody was - or thought he is.
I disagree with Mr. Zuckerberg: Perfect transparency is not always good. In games, perfect information can lessen fun. It can even make players play worse! As long as there are challenges in a game, developers cannot prevent players from optimizing. But they can choose the battlefield! Shall it be statistics? Maybe even Excel and C++? Or shall it be personal communication and estimated guesses?
The process of optimization is fun for most players. What is not fun for most players is exporting combat logs to Excel and discussing differential evolution techniques. By not allowing combat meters and statistics, developers can make the players communicate to find the best way to overcome a challenge. This doesn't solve the whole problem. If the challenges are static, they will still be broadcasted on the internet. But at least you have to talk to a player to tell him what he does wrong.
While I do like number-heavy theory crafting from time to time, that is really not why I play MMORPGs. Combat meters give the players an advantage to overcome challenging content. An advantage they wouldn't need in the first place, if the content were tuned for players without combat meters.
So, while I do see that it is desireable for a developer that most players are at one skill-level, I don't think it is worth it.
The Enemy is not Optimization
I think people mix two things up when it comes to fear of inefficiency and optimization:
The process of optimization and having an optimized character.
Let me say very clearly that the process of optimization is not only unavoidable, but actually desired in MMORPGs. The whole point of offering customization of characters on a power-level, is to encourage players to optimize; to engage in interesting, meaningful decisions. And I love it.
The problem with WoW and Rift is not this. The problem is that the process was removed; removed by crowd-sourcing. While I leveled, I tinkered around with my builds in Rift and I had a few nice ones. But when I was almost max level I couldn't resist my curiosity and had a look at RiftJunkies and the official forums. I was bombarded with highly optimized builds that, I have to admit, were sometimes significantly better than the ones I came up with. And then: game over.
I remember in classic WoW and sometimes TBC when a new item dropped I would do some calculations on my own about how much of an update it would be. I had done my own little theory-crafting; without tools for statistical analysis and without differential evolution techniques for numerical optimization. These rules of thumb worked nicely.
Then, when I returned to WotLK, this game was over. Instead of optimizing myself I started RAWR and let it run an (almost brute force) simulation of my gear. I found out that I wasn't so far off with my rules of thumb. But, of course, RAWR was better.
To make things worse, there were the raids that required me to specc in a different way, because they didn't understand the speccs, but just copied them. That probably was even a logical way to handle things for them. But it also destroyed my fun at optimizing myself even more.
So let me say this very clearly: The enemy is not optimization. The enemy is crowd sourcing. And the more tools you give the crowd (like export of combat logs), the worse the problem will become. Hey, even as a part of ElitistJerks this wasn't fun anymore! You would just do the statistical analysis and numerical optimization. As difficult as these may sound: once you have figured it out, it's boring.
---
This kind of post cannot go without this Extra Credits video.
The process of optimization and having an optimized character.
Let me say very clearly that the process of optimization is not only unavoidable, but actually desired in MMORPGs. The whole point of offering customization of characters on a power-level, is to encourage players to optimize; to engage in interesting, meaningful decisions. And I love it.
The problem with WoW and Rift is not this. The problem is that the process was removed; removed by crowd-sourcing. While I leveled, I tinkered around with my builds in Rift and I had a few nice ones. But when I was almost max level I couldn't resist my curiosity and had a look at RiftJunkies and the official forums. I was bombarded with highly optimized builds that, I have to admit, were sometimes significantly better than the ones I came up with. And then: game over.
I remember in classic WoW and sometimes TBC when a new item dropped I would do some calculations on my own about how much of an update it would be. I had done my own little theory-crafting; without tools for statistical analysis and without differential evolution techniques for numerical optimization. These rules of thumb worked nicely.
Then, when I returned to WotLK, this game was over. Instead of optimizing myself I started RAWR and let it run an (almost brute force) simulation of my gear. I found out that I wasn't so far off with my rules of thumb. But, of course, RAWR was better.
To make things worse, there were the raids that required me to specc in a different way, because they didn't understand the speccs, but just copied them. That probably was even a logical way to handle things for them. But it also destroyed my fun at optimizing myself even more.
So let me say this very clearly: The enemy is not optimization. The enemy is crowd sourcing. And the more tools you give the crowd (like export of combat logs), the worse the problem will become. Hey, even as a part of ElitistJerks this wasn't fun anymore! You would just do the statistical analysis and numerical optimization. As difficult as these may sound: once you have figured it out, it's boring.
---
This kind of post cannot go without this Extra Credits video.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The Phobia of Inefficiency
Tobold laments the fear of being sub-optimal in MMORPGs, and especially World of Warcraft. Just like about everybody else, I agree. Actually, even Ghostcrawler identified this problem.
Rift is also running straight into this trap at high speed.
So what can we do to fight this challenge?
1) You can make it harder for players to optimize. For example, by disabling the export of combat logs for statistical analysis. Or by disabling combat/dps meters, the armory, inspecting other players, etc. Evidence from MMORPG-history shows that this helps to a degree.
2) You can remove one-dimensional goals. In WoW, a damage dealer is exactly as good as his damage-per-second. Of course, he should also try to interrupt, but in the end everybody looks at the dps meter. That's concrete and readily available feedback. If a damage dealer had to do much more important things than dps during a fight, it were harder to optimize a build. If fights were completely different and not as similar as, for example in WoW, it would also help.
3) You can make content less predictable. A procedurally generated dungeon with or without traps, with or without undead, would make it much more reasonable to take a specalists for traps/undead with you, even though there might not be any such challenges. Of course, this also requires that players can chose to evade some encounters that they just aren't prepared for. This would add a completely new interesting decision to the MMORPG; and a new minigame: information gathering.
4) To make perfectly balanced challenging PvE content, you need to know how many players are going to try to beat it. However, this also leads to every non-optimized player being a problem. Now, in a non-instanced MMORPG, every additional player would help. Players would love to add more players to their groups, because more is better. Of course, this also helps with immerison.
5) And, finally, you can disable any 'interesting decision' that changes the efficiency of the character. If the game offers enough interesting decisions in other domains, this might even be a good solution.
Also have a look at my post last year Cookie Cutter Speccs. I realize that this blog is now old enough that I have written about almost anything more than once already ;)
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Edit:
6) There is a sixth option. You can reduce the challenge of content. The less challenge, the less incentive to optimize.
[..] I know you need some basis to evaluate potential recruits or even pug members. But I do wish there was some way to turn around this virtual phobia of inefficiency -- this terror of being WRONG -- that we have managed to instill in our player base. I honestly think it's one of the greatest challenges facing the game.
Rift is also running straight into this trap at high speed.
So what can we do to fight this challenge?
1) You can make it harder for players to optimize. For example, by disabling the export of combat logs for statistical analysis. Or by disabling combat/dps meters, the armory, inspecting other players, etc. Evidence from MMORPG-history shows that this helps to a degree.
2) You can remove one-dimensional goals. In WoW, a damage dealer is exactly as good as his damage-per-second. Of course, he should also try to interrupt, but in the end everybody looks at the dps meter. That's concrete and readily available feedback. If a damage dealer had to do much more important things than dps during a fight, it were harder to optimize a build. If fights were completely different and not as similar as, for example in WoW, it would also help.
3) You can make content less predictable. A procedurally generated dungeon with or without traps, with or without undead, would make it much more reasonable to take a specalists for traps/undead with you, even though there might not be any such challenges. Of course, this also requires that players can chose to evade some encounters that they just aren't prepared for. This would add a completely new interesting decision to the MMORPG; and a new minigame: information gathering.
4) To make perfectly balanced challenging PvE content, you need to know how many players are going to try to beat it. However, this also leads to every non-optimized player being a problem. Now, in a non-instanced MMORPG, every additional player would help. Players would love to add more players to their groups, because more is better. Of course, this also helps with immerison.
5) And, finally, you can disable any 'interesting decision' that changes the efficiency of the character. If the game offers enough interesting decisions in other domains, this might even be a good solution.
Also have a look at my post last year Cookie Cutter Speccs. I realize that this blog is now old enough that I have written about almost anything more than once already ;)
---
Edit:
6) There is a sixth option. You can reduce the challenge of content. The less challenge, the less incentive to optimize.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Big Four
Right now there are four big MMOs:
1) WoW, 2) Rift, 3) SWTOR, 4)GW2.
The former two have been released. Rift took the scene by surprise, but most people agree that it is not the grand future of MMORPGs.
SWTOR gets amazingly bad press lately. The good previews by the professional magazines don't help.
And GW2 somehow managed to aquire a place in the sun. Most people believe it to be different and new. Of course, GW2 also has its problems, but looking at the copy/pasting that Rift and SWTOR (seem to) do, GW2 has quite a chance.
The AAA-sandbox MMORPG, however, is still not on the horizon.
1) WoW, 2) Rift, 3) SWTOR, 4)GW2.
The former two have been released. Rift took the scene by surprise, but most people agree that it is not the grand future of MMORPGs.
SWTOR gets amazingly bad press lately. The good previews by the professional magazines don't help.
And GW2 somehow managed to aquire a place in the sun. Most people believe it to be different and new. Of course, GW2 also has its problems, but looking at the copy/pasting that Rift and SWTOR (seem to) do, GW2 has quite a chance.
The AAA-sandbox MMORPG, however, is still not on the horizon.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Trade
I wanted to write about trade for along time by now. Trade in a MMORPG without item teleports, in fact without character teleport, either. Trade in a MORPG with a player-run market; that is buy-orders and sell-orders that can be used by the casual player to buy and sell easily while also rewarding the dedicated player with a deep experience.
But the obvious problem with trade is that it is boring. While the thought might be "romantic", the actual process involves nothing but walking. This might be fun for the first few times, but then it becomes really, really repetitive. Or, does it?
Some time ago Bhagpuss commented on Tobold's blog:
I like to use the word "fun" differently than he does. For me "fun" is everything I want to do in a MMORPG. However, his main point is of utmost importance, I think.
In the past, many people have thought about how trade can be spiced up. But that would be a grave mistake. One can never make trade as action-oriented as combat. Even if one could spice it up to be as action-oriented, players would probably still rather do the combat. The important thing to understand is that many people play MMORPGs for something else than challenge and action. More than any other genre, people play MMORPGs also to relax. Repetition is not detrimental to this, in fact repetition supports this play-style.
To advance your character or help your guild, doing something useful while you relax is a rewarding experience. Challenge or action are unnecessary and even harmful. That doesn't mean that MMORPGs should have no challenge or action. It just means that there can, and should be activities that are not challenging and do not focus on action.
Of course, trade can also feel very tense if the trade routes are in dangerous territory. And there is a demand for this kind of trade. But simple repetitive trade can also be feature. To allow players to choose how they want to trade, different routes should be available; dangerous and safe routes. Obviously, the safe ones need to take longer. That would be an interesting decision.
---
Added "The road much less traveled" and "How to recapture the wonder of MMOs" to the link storage on the right
But the obvious problem with trade is that it is boring. While the thought might be "romantic", the actual process involves nothing but walking. This might be fun for the first few times, but then it becomes really, really repetitive. Or, does it?
Some time ago Bhagpuss commented on Tobold's blog:
I play MMOs for many more reasons than "fun". For example, I play because MMO gameplay includes a lot of repetitive actions and repetitive actions are soothing and reduce stress. I also play because I stand up all day at work and my feet hurt so although I'd like to go walking in the evenings I'm too tired; traveling through a virtual world works well to negate my conflicts over staying in or going out.
I have scores of these reasons for playing, few of which I would label as "having fun. I'm pretty certain that the success of MMOs relies heavily on satisfying other needs and desires than the simple quest for a fun time.
I like to use the word "fun" differently than he does. For me "fun" is everything I want to do in a MMORPG. However, his main point is of utmost importance, I think.
In the past, many people have thought about how trade can be spiced up. But that would be a grave mistake. One can never make trade as action-oriented as combat. Even if one could spice it up to be as action-oriented, players would probably still rather do the combat. The important thing to understand is that many people play MMORPGs for something else than challenge and action. More than any other genre, people play MMORPGs also to relax. Repetition is not detrimental to this, in fact repetition supports this play-style.
To advance your character or help your guild, doing something useful while you relax is a rewarding experience. Challenge or action are unnecessary and even harmful. That doesn't mean that MMORPGs should have no challenge or action. It just means that there can, and should be activities that are not challenging and do not focus on action.
Of course, trade can also feel very tense if the trade routes are in dangerous territory. And there is a demand for this kind of trade. But simple repetitive trade can also be feature. To allow players to choose how they want to trade, different routes should be available; dangerous and safe routes. Obviously, the safe ones need to take longer. That would be an interesting decision.
---
Added "The road much less traveled" and "How to recapture the wonder of MMOs" to the link storage on the right
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Switching off the Mob Indicators
Since I am lazy I will paraphrase one of my own comments.
A mob indicator is any gamey indicaton of the location of a mob. For example a box or red text. It floats above or below the mob. In the case of text its function is not so much to be read, but rather to give you a fast tactical overview.
The main information a player needs when entering any new area is how many mobs are where. With mob indicators active, you start to scan the screen for red text. It becomes very natural and most people don't even realize doing it. It also, however, is largely responsible for not watching the scenery. It makes 'natural stealth' impossible in PvE and PvP.
Have you ever noticed that you went through a dungeon, but couldn't remember what it looked like? Or, have you ever looked at the art in the dungeon on your 20th run and wondered, why you haven't seen that before? It was, because your brain scanned for red text. Switch it off and you suddenly start to look at the scenery.
It can also make the game a bit more annoying, of course. Especially the WAR/Rift engine is not very good at contrasts; so you will sometimes find that you have no idea how many mobs are attacking you. Whether that is more fun is really a matter of expectation. If you expect to see all mobs at one glance, switching the indicators off will not suite you. If you expect gaining a tactical overview to be part of the challenge and part of the simulation, you will enjoy playing MMORPGs without mob indicators a lot more.
Developers should know that if they plan to disallow mob indicators, the graphics need to support this. A bad example is a fire rift in Rift with fire creatures on top of the lava. They are generally impossible to localize without mob indicators. Also, a developer should know that although you can make indicators optional, players don't have a real choice if the content is too fast paced and challenging, like PvP typically is.
Last but not least, the indicators are necessary, because in modern MMORPGs players and creatures can move very rapidly. It is considered cool to jump and charge and blink through the battleground. In the case of such a furious gameplay, the human eye and brain were incapable of following the events without the gamey help of mob indicators.
A mob indicator is any gamey indicaton of the location of a mob. For example a box or red text. It floats above or below the mob. In the case of text its function is not so much to be read, but rather to give you a fast tactical overview.
The main information a player needs when entering any new area is how many mobs are where. With mob indicators active, you start to scan the screen for red text. It becomes very natural and most people don't even realize doing it. It also, however, is largely responsible for not watching the scenery. It makes 'natural stealth' impossible in PvE and PvP.
Have you ever noticed that you went through a dungeon, but couldn't remember what it looked like? Or, have you ever looked at the art in the dungeon on your 20th run and wondered, why you haven't seen that before? It was, because your brain scanned for red text. Switch it off and you suddenly start to look at the scenery.
It can also make the game a bit more annoying, of course. Especially the WAR/Rift engine is not very good at contrasts; so you will sometimes find that you have no idea how many mobs are attacking you. Whether that is more fun is really a matter of expectation. If you expect to see all mobs at one glance, switching the indicators off will not suite you. If you expect gaining a tactical overview to be part of the challenge and part of the simulation, you will enjoy playing MMORPGs without mob indicators a lot more.
Developers should know that if they plan to disallow mob indicators, the graphics need to support this. A bad example is a fire rift in Rift with fire creatures on top of the lava. They are generally impossible to localize without mob indicators. Also, a developer should know that although you can make indicators optional, players don't have a real choice if the content is too fast paced and challenging, like PvP typically is.
Last but not least, the indicators are necessary, because in modern MMORPGs players and creatures can move very rapidly. It is considered cool to jump and charge and blink through the battleground. In the case of such a furious gameplay, the human eye and brain were incapable of following the events without the gamey help of mob indicators.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
WoW is dead, long live Rift
The title says it all, doesn't it?
My relationship with Rift was problematic from the beginning. I first watched a video at Keen's place back in August 2010. I saw trainers, instances, the guy talking about that they have all what nowaday's MMORPGs have; he meant World of Warcraft, of course. In the presentation, I also saw him jump from stairs some 100m down into water just to be quicker; a total turn-off. If even the developers themselves don't use stairs, don't play like being in a fantasy world ..
I decided that Rift was a WoW clone - probably a bad one.
Many months later, in February, the hype machine started. Bloggers all over the planet found Rift to be quite polished and with some interesting quirks. I had played WoW: Cataclysm from November until February, with a long Christmas break in between. At the moment Rift came up, there was no MMORPG in my life. It's a little bit like not being in a relationship, I guess (OMG! :).
So, a week after launch I got Rift. I disliked and still dislike the general intro video. (Much worse than WoW's orginial one that focused more on atmosphere and less on combat.) I also didn't like the Deviant’s introduction video very much. My first session was about 2 hours and left a bad taste. It was 100% WoW, with more "cool stuff" like 20m jumps as a racial. I stopped playing for a week.
Next weekend, I gave it another try. A Guardian this time. I really liked the Guardian introduction video! I also liked the tutorial. Nothing special; but nice. Most of all, I liked the music! Especially when you finished the tutorial and get put into the real world. Holy shit, literally!
For about three weeks I made some six characters on two servers. I leveled all of them to about level 20. While it felt a lot like WoW, the invasions were nice. It was great to see mobs in the real world that I couldn't defeat by mashing my head on the keyboard. What was even greater: There were mobs that I couldn't defeat alone, no matter what I did! Nothing special, you might think, but Wow has patched these 'inconveniences' out of the game a long time ago.
I like the public questing. It makes sense to help a fellow Guardian at whatever he does. From a simulation point of view, it isn't always necessary to talk. We all know we are Guardians and what we are here to do.
However, after three weeks I stopped and let the subscription run out. My cleric was boring. As a healer he couldn't do damage as the mobs grew tougher and he went oom. As a tank he couldn't die no matter what I did; but he also took forever to level. As a spellcaster DD he died too easily. Did you just see me admit that I quit the game, because it took too long to kill mobs? I'd say it is more complicated. It's a problem of expectation management .. anyway. The questing became boring. I really forced myself to read all the quest texts, but found that even though I "read" them, I couldn't remember them. I still didn't know why I killed what I killed.
Also, the whole time I didn't really feel at home in Rift. It was responsive. It was polished. The user interface made sense. Still, I felt uncomfortable. Were the icons a little bit smaller than in WoW? Maybe. They didn't feel right...
I decided that I was suffering some kind of diabolic WoW curse; probably engineered at Blizzard and eating up all their money, so they cannot spend it on the game.
I made a break for several weeks, exactly waiting until the world event was over. Then, during Easter weekend, I grabbed an old level 20 toon: a guardian mage. I leveled him to 37. And I had a blast!
Now, let me tell you: Rift is so much better than WoW .. while leveling 25-37 at least. You ask why?
I have helped out several dungeon groups by now at healing. I have been invited to a nice guild. I have a friends list of about 20 people and I am probably on even more peoples' friends lists. I have explored dangerous caves with groups of enemies that I had to leave out! I have explored hidden quests. For example that giant tree, where we needed to first claim it for us and then catch leaves. Five players happened to have some quests there, too. They stopped and started to help me; just like that. We finally figured it out (took about an hour). There was no complaining, no efficiency drama. Nothing. It was simply fun.
I have fought back random invasions of a monastery of sorts, testing my new AoE specc.
I have spent hours on figuring out how to play another specc. This is nothing for kids, trust me. My brain still hurts from trying to figure out how to play a Dominator. Imagine: at level 35 you get a new specc. This specc includes about three bars full of complicated(!) abilities and now you need to organize yourself and play it efficiently. Not easy, not easy at all!
Rift also uses a better map technology. There are many, many, many caves. All different .. how many different WoW-caves are there? You can see a mountain side and decide to go there. Many minutes later you are where you had set out to go. Compared to Rift, WoW's maps are just flat and boring. And there are even mobs of different strength all over the map - not one kind of standard mob with standardized HP and normalized damage output!
Generally, you can say: Rift has brought back the world into World of Warcraft .. erm into Rift .. whatever. Leveling 1-20 isn't fun as a long-term WoW player, because it's all too similar. But 20-37 are phenomenal. You appreciate anybody out there who would like to help you. You help people yourself, because playing together is fun. Killing the occasional elite by kiting him around the world or by healing my own tanking elemental with a heal/elemental specc is just pure fun.
This is not a review of Rift. There are a lot of things I don't agree with. I don't agree with the entire concept of no-consequence gameplay. I miss trade and a meaningful economy. The open-PvP is a joke. The equipment-achivement-mindset and "rewards" out of nowhere alienate me. I am certain that balance will be a hell of a problem. I am not sure whether I want to do an item treadmill at maxlvl. I really cannot figure out what is so good about artifacts; six years of WoW have turned me into a cute-pet hater! These fireworks that people pull out of their pockets to celebrate me are silly. Rift could be so much better with a compressed CPP! In the future, I hope Trion focuses on the open world and not on instanced "boss mobs" ..
...
However, there is this theory that you will always like your first MMORPG more than any other. It has been proven wrong: I'd prefer the Rift leveling to the classic WoW leveling anytime.
Rift, level 20 upwards, is what WoW could have been if the developers had went into the right direction! It is not even a big step forward; it just appears big, because the competition made so many steps into the wrong direction over the years.
-----
Have you ever tried to switch off the text on top of enemy mobs? It makes the world really come alive! You suddenly watch the screen and don't just scan it. I'll make a blog post about it eventually ...
My relationship with Rift was problematic from the beginning. I first watched a video at Keen's place back in August 2010. I saw trainers, instances, the guy talking about that they have all what nowaday's MMORPGs have; he meant World of Warcraft, of course. In the presentation, I also saw him jump from stairs some 100m down into water just to be quicker; a total turn-off. If even the developers themselves don't use stairs, don't play like being in a fantasy world ..
I decided that Rift was a WoW clone - probably a bad one.
Many months later, in February, the hype machine started. Bloggers all over the planet found Rift to be quite polished and with some interesting quirks. I had played WoW: Cataclysm from November until February, with a long Christmas break in between. At the moment Rift came up, there was no MMORPG in my life. It's a little bit like not being in a relationship, I guess (OMG! :).
So, a week after launch I got Rift. I disliked and still dislike the general intro video. (Much worse than WoW's orginial one that focused more on atmosphere and less on combat.) I also didn't like the Deviant’s introduction video very much. My first session was about 2 hours and left a bad taste. It was 100% WoW, with more "cool stuff" like 20m jumps as a racial. I stopped playing for a week.
Next weekend, I gave it another try. A Guardian this time. I really liked the Guardian introduction video! I also liked the tutorial. Nothing special; but nice. Most of all, I liked the music! Especially when you finished the tutorial and get put into the real world. Holy shit, literally!
For about three weeks I made some six characters on two servers. I leveled all of them to about level 20. While it felt a lot like WoW, the invasions were nice. It was great to see mobs in the real world that I couldn't defeat by mashing my head on the keyboard. What was even greater: There were mobs that I couldn't defeat alone, no matter what I did! Nothing special, you might think, but Wow has patched these 'inconveniences' out of the game a long time ago.
I like the public questing. It makes sense to help a fellow Guardian at whatever he does. From a simulation point of view, it isn't always necessary to talk. We all know we are Guardians and what we are here to do.
However, after three weeks I stopped and let the subscription run out. My cleric was boring. As a healer he couldn't do damage as the mobs grew tougher and he went oom. As a tank he couldn't die no matter what I did; but he also took forever to level. As a spellcaster DD he died too easily. Did you just see me admit that I quit the game, because it took too long to kill mobs? I'd say it is more complicated. It's a problem of expectation management .. anyway. The questing became boring. I really forced myself to read all the quest texts, but found that even though I "read" them, I couldn't remember them. I still didn't know why I killed what I killed.
Also, the whole time I didn't really feel at home in Rift. It was responsive. It was polished. The user interface made sense. Still, I felt uncomfortable. Were the icons a little bit smaller than in WoW? Maybe. They didn't feel right...
I decided that I was suffering some kind of diabolic WoW curse; probably engineered at Blizzard and eating up all their money, so they cannot spend it on the game.
I made a break for several weeks, exactly waiting until the world event was over. Then, during Easter weekend, I grabbed an old level 20 toon: a guardian mage. I leveled him to 37. And I had a blast!
Now, let me tell you: Rift is so much better than WoW .. while leveling 25-37 at least. You ask why?
I have helped out several dungeon groups by now at healing. I have been invited to a nice guild. I have a friends list of about 20 people and I am probably on even more peoples' friends lists. I have explored dangerous caves with groups of enemies that I had to leave out! I have explored hidden quests. For example that giant tree, where we needed to first claim it for us and then catch leaves. Five players happened to have some quests there, too. They stopped and started to help me; just like that. We finally figured it out (took about an hour). There was no complaining, no efficiency drama. Nothing. It was simply fun.
I have fought back random invasions of a monastery of sorts, testing my new AoE specc.
I have spent hours on figuring out how to play another specc. This is nothing for kids, trust me. My brain still hurts from trying to figure out how to play a Dominator. Imagine: at level 35 you get a new specc. This specc includes about three bars full of complicated(!) abilities and now you need to organize yourself and play it efficiently. Not easy, not easy at all!
Rift also uses a better map technology. There are many, many, many caves. All different .. how many different WoW-caves are there? You can see a mountain side and decide to go there. Many minutes later you are where you had set out to go. Compared to Rift, WoW's maps are just flat and boring. And there are even mobs of different strength all over the map - not one kind of standard mob with standardized HP and normalized damage output!
Generally, you can say: Rift has brought back the world into World of Warcraft .. erm into Rift .. whatever. Leveling 1-20 isn't fun as a long-term WoW player, because it's all too similar. But 20-37 are phenomenal. You appreciate anybody out there who would like to help you. You help people yourself, because playing together is fun. Killing the occasional elite by kiting him around the world or by healing my own tanking elemental with a heal/elemental specc is just pure fun.
This is not a review of Rift. There are a lot of things I don't agree with. I don't agree with the entire concept of no-consequence gameplay. I miss trade and a meaningful economy. The open-PvP is a joke. The equipment-achivement-mindset and "rewards" out of nowhere alienate me. I am certain that balance will be a hell of a problem. I am not sure whether I want to do an item treadmill at maxlvl. I really cannot figure out what is so good about artifacts; six years of WoW have turned me into a cute-pet hater! These fireworks that people pull out of their pockets to celebrate me are silly. Rift could be so much better with a compressed CPP! In the future, I hope Trion focuses on the open world and not on instanced "boss mobs" ..
...
However, there is this theory that you will always like your first MMORPG more than any other. It has been proven wrong: I'd prefer the Rift leveling to the classic WoW leveling anytime.
Rift, level 20 upwards, is what WoW could have been if the developers had went into the right direction! It is not even a big step forward; it just appears big, because the competition made so many steps into the wrong direction over the years.
-----
Have you ever tried to switch off the text on top of enemy mobs? It makes the world really come alive! You suddenly watch the screen and don't just scan it. I'll make a blog post about it eventually ...
Friday, April 22, 2011
Careful with Brenda's Quote
Tobold tries to justify him only playing Rift for about 10 hours with Brenda's quote
(1)
If you want to review a game completely you have to test every aspect of it. In the case of Rift that includes all dungeons, quests, tutorial, raiding, BG-PvP, open-PvP, etc. That doesn't mean however, that you are not allowed to have an opinion before you tested it completely. If the first 10 hours weren't fun, that is certainly valid and interesting information. It just isn't a complete review. In Tobold's case that is perfectly alright. He isn't a professional game tester, after all; he's a blogger.
Now, you should be a bit careful about a final score, of course. Saying that you tested a game for some hours and claiming that it isn't fun (I am talking abstract now) is not acceptable. What you can say is that the aspects you tested weren't fun (for you, but that's obvious).
(2)
About Brenda's quote. It doesn't apply to this situation. Brenda gives an advice to developers. She knows that players stop playing very fast if a game isn't fun on even very short time scales. That is the reason for rogue-likes being so unpopular today. They are still a hell of a lot of fun once you managed to get into them. But to get into them is really hard, because the graphics are so much worse than what we are used to.
The quote cannot be used as justification to not test a game for longer than a few minutes. As a developer you have to fear that if your game is not fun for the first 10 minutes, players stop playing forever. As a player, however, you have to fear that you quit a game after 10 minutes, although it could have offered hundreds of hours of fun once you have played for 10 hours. And this is exactly the kind of information I want the tester to give me: Should I invest a lot of time, because the game becomes really, really fun later on?
(3)
Moreover, don't interpret Brenda's quote in a way that every single individual, isolated activity has to be fun. Fun Fallacy, you remember? Millions of players got to level 60 in classic WoW, because the second-to-second and minute-to-minute gameplay was fun. However, it wasn't fun if you looked at it isolated from the rest of the game.
If you, as a developer, had employed some testers and given them the second-to-second gameplay without a world, without talent trees, without other players. Just the pure, isolated, immediate gameplay and if you had asked them whether they looked forward to do this for 300 hours /played...
Well, you get the point. The second-to-second gameplay has to be fun, but must not be looked at isolated from the rest of the game. The fact that you can explore a world, access higher levels, explore your character's abilities, meet other people and, yes, even gain equipment, is essential.
Humans like to invest much more than to they like to consume. The feeling of building / creating something is the most powerful incentive in MMORPGs. It gives the game more (subjective) meaning than single-player games. The anticipation of future fun is fun in itself.
(4)
In no way should the quote be used to design games as a chain of seperate, inherently fun pieces. Take the WoW-LFD. Even if you ignore the social consequences of the anonymity and the immersion-breaking teleports, the LFD has a fundamental problem: It is just too much candy all at once. Dungeons in WoW are (were?) fun; unless you run 10 of them in a row - or one every day. By cutting out the supposedly unfun elements, Blizzard allowed the player to get as much candy as he wants whenever he wants. This leads to players grabbing as much as they can and then throw up.
Just like cooking is fun due to the pleasant anticipation of eating, the dungeons were fun, because you looked forward to do them. It is the same with shopping: Buying the 20.000 € kitchen in itself is not fun. The pleasant anticipation (of showing it off ?) is.
We need some time between fun events to appreciate them. Chrismas every day is not fun. Chrismas every 365 days, is. For most people, Christmas is also the perfect example for anticipation of an event being much more fun than the event itself.
Pacing of fun events and variety make a fun game. Even the most fun thing in the world becomes tedious and boring if you do it again and again in short succession. Developers should not trust players to know this or even hold themselves back. (They certainly should not offer cookies for chain-eating other cookies!) It is the developer's responsibility to create a fun game, not the player's responsibility to play it in a way that is fun. At least, for your own sake, that is the point of view you should assume as a developer.
Focus on second-to-second play first. Nail it. Move on to minute-to-minute, then session-to-session, then day-to-day, then month-to-month (and so on). If your second-to-second play doesn’t work, nothing else matters. Along these lines, if your day-to-day fails, no one will care about month-to-month, either.
(1)
If you want to review a game completely you have to test every aspect of it. In the case of Rift that includes all dungeons, quests, tutorial, raiding, BG-PvP, open-PvP, etc. That doesn't mean however, that you are not allowed to have an opinion before you tested it completely. If the first 10 hours weren't fun, that is certainly valid and interesting information. It just isn't a complete review. In Tobold's case that is perfectly alright. He isn't a professional game tester, after all; he's a blogger.
Now, you should be a bit careful about a final score, of course. Saying that you tested a game for some hours and claiming that it isn't fun (I am talking abstract now) is not acceptable. What you can say is that the aspects you tested weren't fun (for you, but that's obvious).
(2)
About Brenda's quote. It doesn't apply to this situation. Brenda gives an advice to developers. She knows that players stop playing very fast if a game isn't fun on even very short time scales. That is the reason for rogue-likes being so unpopular today. They are still a hell of a lot of fun once you managed to get into them. But to get into them is really hard, because the graphics are so much worse than what we are used to.
The quote cannot be used as justification to not test a game for longer than a few minutes. As a developer you have to fear that if your game is not fun for the first 10 minutes, players stop playing forever. As a player, however, you have to fear that you quit a game after 10 minutes, although it could have offered hundreds of hours of fun once you have played for 10 hours. And this is exactly the kind of information I want the tester to give me: Should I invest a lot of time, because the game becomes really, really fun later on?
(3)
Moreover, don't interpret Brenda's quote in a way that every single individual, isolated activity has to be fun. Fun Fallacy, you remember? Millions of players got to level 60 in classic WoW, because the second-to-second and minute-to-minute gameplay was fun. However, it wasn't fun if you looked at it isolated from the rest of the game.
If you, as a developer, had employed some testers and given them the second-to-second gameplay without a world, without talent trees, without other players. Just the pure, isolated, immediate gameplay and if you had asked them whether they looked forward to do this for 300 hours /played...
Well, you get the point. The second-to-second gameplay has to be fun, but must not be looked at isolated from the rest of the game. The fact that you can explore a world, access higher levels, explore your character's abilities, meet other people and, yes, even gain equipment, is essential.
Humans like to invest much more than to they like to consume. The feeling of building / creating something is the most powerful incentive in MMORPGs. It gives the game more (subjective) meaning than single-player games. The anticipation of future fun is fun in itself.
(4)
In no way should the quote be used to design games as a chain of seperate, inherently fun pieces. Take the WoW-LFD. Even if you ignore the social consequences of the anonymity and the immersion-breaking teleports, the LFD has a fundamental problem: It is just too much candy all at once. Dungeons in WoW are (were?) fun; unless you run 10 of them in a row - or one every day. By cutting out the supposedly unfun elements, Blizzard allowed the player to get as much candy as he wants whenever he wants. This leads to players grabbing as much as they can and then throw up.
Just like cooking is fun due to the pleasant anticipation of eating, the dungeons were fun, because you looked forward to do them. It is the same with shopping: Buying the 20.000 € kitchen in itself is not fun. The pleasant anticipation (of showing it off ?) is.
We need some time between fun events to appreciate them. Chrismas every day is not fun. Chrismas every 365 days, is. For most people, Christmas is also the perfect example for anticipation of an event being much more fun than the event itself.
Pacing of fun events and variety make a fun game. Even the most fun thing in the world becomes tedious and boring if you do it again and again in short succession. Developers should not trust players to know this or even hold themselves back. (They certainly should not offer cookies for chain-eating other cookies!) It is the developer's responsibility to create a fun game, not the player's responsibility to play it in a way that is fun. At least, for your own sake, that is the point of view you should assume as a developer.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Rift, stupid. And, Facebook ?
First:
Dear Trion, there are two ways to have mobs dismount you: always or never. Anything in between encourages players to try their luck and be annoyed if they fail. Either you force players onto the roads. That is very good for immersion - make mounts faster on roads if you want. Or you accept the already gamey nature of the whole feature and, while mounted, make players immune to aggro of mobs that are x levels lower. Everything in between is the worst of two worlds.
Second:
Usually I hate facebook-like features in MMORPGs. But earlier today I came up with something, and I quite like it: Every player can rate any other player. They can either be neutral, like him or dislike him. Now, before you start flaming me, wait a second.
From a simulation point of view this actually is very good. It makes sense that you have some fame in the world and this system allows other players to create that fame in the most simple and elegant way. And, in contrast to facebook, the "dislike" button is very useful: It allows you to dislike players that molest you in any way (e.g. open-PvP). And if that player continues to offend you, you can ask your guild to dislike him, too.
Player groups that are at war don't count in this system, for obvious reasons.
Make somebody, who is liked a lot, have more influence in this system. So, if you are liked by a lot of players it has more impact if you (dis)like somebody. This is also a reason to want to be liked.
Now, calculate some reputation from the likes/dislikes and you have a perfectly immersive reputation system. In a really big world you can have players near you count more towards your reputation. Anyway, this is a hard number that the designer can use for a lot of stuff. For example, upon death, disliked players could respawn in the wood (outlaws) with very bad equipment, while liked player could spawn in holy places and are supplied with relatively good equipment by the priests.
Merchant prices can be adjusted. Really hated players could be attacked by city guards. Really, really hated players could be hunted by head hunters. Make life hell for them; they wouldn't want it any other way.
Now combine this with an one-account-one-char-system (no twinks) and things like open-pvp become much easier suddenly, don't they?
Dear Trion, there are two ways to have mobs dismount you: always or never. Anything in between encourages players to try their luck and be annoyed if they fail. Either you force players onto the roads. That is very good for immersion - make mounts faster on roads if you want. Or you accept the already gamey nature of the whole feature and, while mounted, make players immune to aggro of mobs that are x levels lower. Everything in between is the worst of two worlds.
Second:
Usually I hate facebook-like features in MMORPGs. But earlier today I came up with something, and I quite like it: Every player can rate any other player. They can either be neutral, like him or dislike him. Now, before you start flaming me, wait a second.
From a simulation point of view this actually is very good. It makes sense that you have some fame in the world and this system allows other players to create that fame in the most simple and elegant way. And, in contrast to facebook, the "dislike" button is very useful: It allows you to dislike players that molest you in any way (e.g. open-PvP). And if that player continues to offend you, you can ask your guild to dislike him, too.
Player groups that are at war don't count in this system, for obvious reasons.
Make somebody, who is liked a lot, have more influence in this system. So, if you are liked by a lot of players it has more impact if you (dis)like somebody. This is also a reason to want to be liked.
Now, calculate some reputation from the likes/dislikes and you have a perfectly immersive reputation system. In a really big world you can have players near you count more towards your reputation. Anyway, this is a hard number that the designer can use for a lot of stuff. For example, upon death, disliked players could respawn in the wood (outlaws) with very bad equipment, while liked player could spawn in holy places and are supplied with relatively good equipment by the priests.
Merchant prices can be adjusted. Really hated players could be attacked by city guards. Really, really hated players could be hunted by head hunters. Make life hell for them; they wouldn't want it any other way.
Now combine this with an one-account-one-char-system (no twinks) and things like open-pvp become much easier suddenly, don't they?
Not enough time, but
"When we asked for randomly-generated content, we didn't mean our party members!"
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sthenno's Comment
Every once in a while somebody writes such a wonderful comment that I feel like making a post about it. Sthenno just wrote a comment that deserves nothing, but to be quoted in full. I decided to put it on the front page.
I don't agree completely. But this is very well written and he certainly has a point.
---
Added "Eat your Tanking or you won't get your Ice-Cream" to the Link storage.
I don't agree completely. But this is very well written and he certainly has a point.
I haven't been here for a while so I just read all the PvP posts at once, and I think a very important point has been missed regarding why people do and don't kill each other in games and why they do and don't kill each other in real life.
In real life, everyone is living a life. If you think that you are playing a game instead of living a life then you have a mental illness. The primary reason we choose not to kill each other is not the punishment we'd get (stronger and weaker punishments don't affect murder rates), and the fact that nearly everyone agrees that killing is wrong cross culturally suggests that it isn't really just a cultural thing. We see other people as being like us, and we know that no one wants to die.
In a game there are two equally valid points of view on the matter of killing other people: 1) we are playing in a virtual world and so we treat our character as having a life for the purposes of the game; and 2) this is just a game.
When you create a persistent virtual world you want to encourage the former way of thinking. Allowing PvP seems to do this because it makes the world more like life. However, nearly everyone who actually wants to run around ganking random people is playing the game purely as a game. They probably are just as appalled and terrified by the idea of murder as you are in real life. But this is game, not life, and for many of them the fact that someone on the other end of the internet is upset by being killed just makes it more fun: after all, that person is overly emotionally invested in something that is "just a game."
You can't put in restrictions to prevent these people. If they kill someone they risk punishment from the community? Who cares, it's just a game. Anyone who has played Grand Theft Auto for long enough has at some point gone on a murder spree to get the army after them so they can try to steal a tank. The penalties imposed on these people by the community are not going to be any different. It may scare away some people who aren't that great at games, but a lot of these people will probably just relish in the challenge.
Part of your solution is to make it not that bad to get ganked by making cheap starting equipment serviceable for most purposes. That just means that it isn't that bad for the ganker to get killed back, since they can readily run out and kill people in cheap starting equipment. The difference, again, is the gankee suffers both in game and emotional loss when they die. The ganker suffers only in game damage since it is emotionally equivalent to falling into a hole in Super Mario Bros.
The reason to disallow open world PvP in a virtual world is because this kind of PvP attracts the sorts of players who would rather play a game than a virtual world. The greatest possible threat to a virtual world is to have a player base full of people who don't want a virtual world, but would rather just have a game to play. If you attract these people to your game, no system of punishments and balances will fix the problem. Just tell the would-be gankers to go play counterstrike.
---
Added "Eat your Tanking or you won't get your Ice-Cream" to the Link storage.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Fate
There are two (subjective) ways to beat content:
- using your ingenuity,
- doing what you are supposed to do.
The latter feels a lot less fun. But the latter is also the trap designers necessarily run into when designing perfectly tuned challenging content. There is no way to design very challenging, but still beatable content without having a way in the back of your mind about how the player is supposed to beat it.
The feeling of having overcome an enemy not by use of your ingenuity, but by doing it the way you were supposed to do it, is disillusioning. You are not free, but bound to an artificial fate.
- using your ingenuity,
- doing what you are supposed to do.
The latter feels a lot less fun. But the latter is also the trap designers necessarily run into when designing perfectly tuned challenging content. There is no way to design very challenging, but still beatable content without having a way in the back of your mind about how the player is supposed to beat it.
The feeling of having overcome an enemy not by use of your ingenuity, but by doing it the way you were supposed to do it, is disillusioning. You are not free, but bound to an artificial fate.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
PvP in Sandbox MMORPGs ?
There have already been three recent posts on this topic. So check out (1), (2) and (3), if you're interested in a bit of context.
Gordon from WeFlySpitfires comments on his blog
And he's right. In fact, he got it very right. Reading this I suddenly understood something that you might have understood from the beginning, but for me it was kind of a revelation: The problem with PvP in sandbox MMORPGs is not so much to allow it and then deter players from doing it. This is trivial. Simply punish players who score a killing blow against another player with experience/skill loss. Alternatively, if you like a less gamey solution: Put a reputation penalty on the player killer that prevents him from interacting with shop keepers for 1 week. Any player he trades with inherits this penalty. Problem solved.
Most systems have a bit of trouble distinguishing the bad guy from the good guy, but if the behavior is disincentivised enough, this isn't much of a problem.
The real problem is much more difficult to solve: The designer (and the community) need to make up their minds according to how much PvP they actually want! Roq has pointed it out before: Being surprise-attacked by your neighbor while mowing the lawn is not fun - nor is getting attacked while you do (most) PvE content in a MMORPG.
The point is that we (at least me) want players to be able to attack each other for simulation-purposes. It just doesn't make sense if you cannot. Also, I think that open-PvP can enrich the game world. The transport of supplies to a castle under siege can be a hell of a lot of fun.
As Gordon says, the problem is the right mix. We need incentives that are freely scalable and make sense in every situation. Every extra rule detracts from the goal to make it as little gamey as possible.
That having said, I think that a PvE Sandbox would be a great success. The Mankind vs. Nature theme can very powerful and creates strong bonds in the player base; which is exactly where the market gap is nowadays. The one elegant gamey decision to disable all PvP might be worth all this. So, if it were my decision I'd probably run for a PvE Sandbox. Open-PvP and the balancing it requires (!) just isn't worth the trouble. If you want revenue and profit, go for the PvE Sandbox!
But if you are a die-hard open-PvP fan, like Max, I'd suggest to write down all those situations in which open-PvP occurs. Then make up your mind: in which situation is it desired and in which is it undesired? Then use the tools discussed in the last few posts to design incentives accordingly.
Gordon from WeFlySpitfires comments on his blog
Nils pontificates the place of PvP in sandbox MMOs, something I have often pondered myself. One day I’ll come up with the perfect concept for mixing PvP and PvE in sandbox games, I’m sure. !
And he's right. In fact, he got it very right. Reading this I suddenly understood something that you might have understood from the beginning, but for me it was kind of a revelation: The problem with PvP in sandbox MMORPGs is not so much to allow it and then deter players from doing it. This is trivial. Simply punish players who score a killing blow against another player with experience/skill loss. Alternatively, if you like a less gamey solution: Put a reputation penalty on the player killer that prevents him from interacting with shop keepers for 1 week. Any player he trades with inherits this penalty. Problem solved.
Most systems have a bit of trouble distinguishing the bad guy from the good guy, but if the behavior is disincentivised enough, this isn't much of a problem.
The real problem is much more difficult to solve: The designer (and the community) need to make up their minds according to how much PvP they actually want! Roq has pointed it out before: Being surprise-attacked by your neighbor while mowing the lawn is not fun - nor is getting attacked while you do (most) PvE content in a MMORPG.
The point is that we (at least me) want players to be able to attack each other for simulation-purposes. It just doesn't make sense if you cannot. Also, I think that open-PvP can enrich the game world. The transport of supplies to a castle under siege can be a hell of a lot of fun.
As Gordon says, the problem is the right mix. We need incentives that are freely scalable and make sense in every situation. Every extra rule detracts from the goal to make it as little gamey as possible.
That having said, I think that a PvE Sandbox would be a great success. The Mankind vs. Nature theme can very powerful and creates strong bonds in the player base; which is exactly where the market gap is nowadays. The one elegant gamey decision to disable all PvP might be worth all this. So, if it were my decision I'd probably run for a PvE Sandbox. Open-PvP and the balancing it requires (!) just isn't worth the trouble. If you want revenue and profit, go for the PvE Sandbox!
But if you are a die-hard open-PvP fan, like Max, I'd suggest to write down all those situations in which open-PvP occurs. Then make up your mind: in which situation is it desired and in which is it undesired? Then use the tools discussed in the last few posts to design incentives accordingly.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Let's Blog about Blogs
Third post this Saturday. I've learnt a lot about PvP rules so far, but I also feel that I should have thought more and posted less. Anyway - let's have a little break from the serious stuff and talk about blogging itself.
First I'd like to encourage you to check out two new blogs by Max and Gilded. While Max is a long time commenter on my (and many other) blogs, Gilded joined us some weeks ago.
Max's blog: Armchair Design
Gilded's blog: Alt Notes
Now, about this blog. I officially started in September 2009, but had a break from from Januar 2010 to April 2010. Tobold had encouraged me to stop overtaking his blog and put my thoughts into my own blog. A good advise. We're not exactly friends *smile* and disagree on more than we agree. But, for what it's worth: Thank you, Tobold. :)
The first few tries were rather disappointing. Although I got a HUGE jumpstart thanks to Tobold, it waned off just as fast. Also, I wasn't exactly sure what to blog about. The first try was to write down my perfect MMORPG split up into many, many blog posts. It failed miserably. I deleted that blog soon after. MMORPGs are extremely complex. Writing a complete design document is a full-time job. One that shouldn't be undertaken alone. You need people to discuss things with; intelligent people.
So I concentrated on picking specific topics. Which worked. Often I got the creative impulse from another blog. With time I learnt that breaks come and go - as do those periods during which you write and write and write and write. Like today. I'm not restricting myself in any way. The aim is not to make a successful blog, but to blog as much as I want and get a successful blog by the way. So far it works.
So, how popular is this blog exactly? Fortunately there is Google Analytics. I started to use it about a year ago in June 2010.
Here are five graphs:
First I'd like to encourage you to check out two new blogs by Max and Gilded. While Max is a long time commenter on my (and many other) blogs, Gilded joined us some weeks ago.
Max's blog: Armchair Design
Gilded's blog: Alt Notes
Now, about this blog. I officially started in September 2009, but had a break from from Januar 2010 to April 2010. Tobold had encouraged me to stop overtaking his blog and put my thoughts into my own blog. A good advise. We're not exactly friends *smile* and disagree on more than we agree. But, for what it's worth: Thank you, Tobold. :)
The first few tries were rather disappointing. Although I got a HUGE jumpstart thanks to Tobold, it waned off just as fast. Also, I wasn't exactly sure what to blog about. The first try was to write down my perfect MMORPG split up into many, many blog posts. It failed miserably. I deleted that blog soon after. MMORPGs are extremely complex. Writing a complete design document is a full-time job. One that shouldn't be undertaken alone. You need people to discuss things with; intelligent people.
So I concentrated on picking specific topics. Which worked. Often I got the creative impulse from another blog. With time I learnt that breaks come and go - as do those periods during which you write and write and write and write. Like today. I'm not restricting myself in any way. The aim is not to make a successful blog, but to blog as much as I want and get a successful blog by the way. So far it works.
So, how popular is this blog exactly? Fortunately there is Google Analytics. I started to use it about a year ago in June 2010.
Here are five graphs:
A Counterattack
Introductory remark: To understand the context of this post it is helpful to have read the previous two.
1)
When trying to make the players behave in a specific way there are two basic methods.
- The elegant one and
- the messy one.
The elegant one consists of a few very-easy-to-understand rules that make players behave in the desired way. The messy one consists of a lot of rules that mostly exist to close loopholes and side-effects that wouldn't even exist without them.
Obviously, if anyhow possible a designer should always use elegant rule sets. An example for a non-elegant one would be World of Warcraft's arena rating system. Look it and its history up, if you are interested. I cannot explain it here, because it is too complex. Which is exactly the point.
Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no elegant solution, but you still want players to behave in a specific way. In these cases you can try to keep a messy rule set as un-messy as possible; how? By trying to have rules that work independently from each other. Never try to fix loopholes with rules that potentially open up other loopholes. This is most often a race to the bottom. In the end one loophole found out by one IQ:164 student, with enough time at his hands, is enough to destroy your entire system.
If there are some loopholes left, always consider to use a “It's not a bug, it's a feature” strategy. Be warned that any try to keep rules hidden will only work for a few weeks – if your game is successful.
2)
So, let's get to the meat: An open-PvP, full-loot MMORPG that makes players police themselves and makes them want to be nice to each other. *taking a deep breath*
The approach uses a lot of independent features and rules that each stands on their own. Each of these measures is meant to decrease the significance of the problem without solving it completely. What remains of the problem will be declared “not a bug, but a feature” and will be dealt with by expectation management.
Here's the list:
- Accountability: Just one character per account. You want another one, buy another account or delete your previous character. Paid name/appearance change possible once per account. Just one world-server.
- Strong horizontal character power progression. A very powerful player is at best 2x as strong as a relative newbie.
- No teleport.
- Restrictive weight limit. To take with you all the belongings (especially armor) of another player, requires that you didn't carry with you anything, but armor and weapon to begin with. If you want to transport more, use a cart (slow, requires a street/path).
- Impossible to figure out the 'power level' of another player before attacking him.
- Impossible to know who somebody is, unless he introduced himself to you or you recognize his face / shape (modern graphics ftw).
- Basic armor and weapons are cheap – especially the ones used for open-world resource gathering.
- Special mercenary/bandit skills to better track down players in combination with specific equipment that needs to be used to access and improve these skills. This equipment is expensive.
- Players don't automatically kill you. They first defeat you. To take your stuff, however, they need to kill you after you have been defeated. If they don't, you revive five minutes later with low health. If you want, you can kill yourself in that time.
- Should you be killed by a mob, it takes all your stuff / eat your body / tear you apart. You won't be able to get your stuff back.
Explanation: There's no hoping to not die by the hands of a mob. Mobs are meaner than players. Also, you are used to lose stuff. Mobs always attack non-defeated players first.
- Looting another player takes time during which you are very vulnerable.
- No teleport, except due to death: death means you resurrect near a holy place. You respawn with basic equipment.
These are the basics, now some special features:
- Parts of the map can be claimed as influence regions of groups of players. These regions are tied to central player-group-owned buildings, like castles. Within the influence region, the members of the owning-group receive a 10% combat bonus; enemies receive a 10% penalty. The leadership of the group can declare an infinite amount of players / other groups as "not-welcome", persona-non-Grata. Should one of them enter the influence region, all members of the group in control that are in the vicinity, are notified about who entered their region where. The whereabouts are broadcasted repeatedly while the intruder is in the region.
Player-employed guards attack non-welcome players on sight.
- After having been killed by a player in defeated mode, players can mark any player in their vicinity as "murderer". Marking a player 'murderer' has a seven-day cooldown. The mark is removed after half a year. You can remove the mark before half a year is up. Once somebody has been marked a murderer, he emits a frightening aura whenever he is in the vicinity of the location where he was marked. You cannot mark a player of a group that your group is at war with. You can only become member of a group once per week. (little race to the bottom, once again ..)
Effect of the aura: other players are notified that somebody scary has entered their vicinity. Nearby patrols are attracted to a marked player that enters the vicinity of the marking. These guards are hostile and not to be joked with.
- Guards in NPC-cities and other important places. In NPC-cities and many other places you need to sheathe your weapon / caster staff / etc. If you draw your weapon the guards give you a 10s warning. If you don't sheet the weapon in time, they attack you. Guards are about as powerful as a very powerful player. Guards can call for reinforcement that spawns quite far away. Players survive long enough that no single murderer can possibly kill another player before he has been killed by the guards himself. The guards snare the player and knock him down. The best option is to just not do anything if you are attacked.
- Expectation management: new players run through an extensive tutorial that explains the world and the consequences of one's actions.
So, what do you think? Overkill? Or still not enough? Do you see unwanted side-effects / loopholes? Or do you have an idea of an additional feature to fight Lunatic-PvP?
Edit:
This was a non-iterated brainstorming. I've already found two ways to abuse these rules. But I also have a few more nice ideas. For what its worth: I'm still interested in as much feedback as possible ;)
1)
When trying to make the players behave in a specific way there are two basic methods.
- The elegant one and
- the messy one.
The elegant one consists of a few very-easy-to-understand rules that make players behave in the desired way. The messy one consists of a lot of rules that mostly exist to close loopholes and side-effects that wouldn't even exist without them.
Obviously, if anyhow possible a designer should always use elegant rule sets. An example for a non-elegant one would be World of Warcraft's arena rating system. Look it and its history up, if you are interested. I cannot explain it here, because it is too complex. Which is exactly the point.
Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no elegant solution, but you still want players to behave in a specific way. In these cases you can try to keep a messy rule set as un-messy as possible; how? By trying to have rules that work independently from each other. Never try to fix loopholes with rules that potentially open up other loopholes. This is most often a race to the bottom. In the end one loophole found out by one IQ:164 student, with enough time at his hands, is enough to destroy your entire system.
If there are some loopholes left, always consider to use a “It's not a bug, it's a feature” strategy. Be warned that any try to keep rules hidden will only work for a few weeks – if your game is successful.
2)
So, let's get to the meat: An open-PvP, full-loot MMORPG that makes players police themselves and makes them want to be nice to each other. *taking a deep breath*
The approach uses a lot of independent features and rules that each stands on their own. Each of these measures is meant to decrease the significance of the problem without solving it completely. What remains of the problem will be declared “not a bug, but a feature” and will be dealt with by expectation management.
Here's the list:
- Accountability: Just one character per account. You want another one, buy another account or delete your previous character. Paid name/appearance change possible once per account. Just one world-server.
- Strong horizontal character power progression. A very powerful player is at best 2x as strong as a relative newbie.
- No teleport.
- Restrictive weight limit. To take with you all the belongings (especially armor) of another player, requires that you didn't carry with you anything, but armor and weapon to begin with. If you want to transport more, use a cart (slow, requires a street/path).
- Impossible to figure out the 'power level' of another player before attacking him.
- Impossible to know who somebody is, unless he introduced himself to you or you recognize his face / shape (modern graphics ftw).
- Basic armor and weapons are cheap – especially the ones used for open-world resource gathering.
- Special mercenary/bandit skills to better track down players in combination with specific equipment that needs to be used to access and improve these skills. This equipment is expensive.
- Players don't automatically kill you. They first defeat you. To take your stuff, however, they need to kill you after you have been defeated. If they don't, you revive five minutes later with low health. If you want, you can kill yourself in that time.
- Should you be killed by a mob, it takes all your stuff / eat your body / tear you apart. You won't be able to get your stuff back.
Explanation: There's no hoping to not die by the hands of a mob. Mobs are meaner than players. Also, you are used to lose stuff. Mobs always attack non-defeated players first.
- Looting another player takes time during which you are very vulnerable.
- No teleport, except due to death: death means you resurrect near a holy place. You respawn with basic equipment.
These are the basics, now some special features:
- Parts of the map can be claimed as influence regions of groups of players. These regions are tied to central player-group-owned buildings, like castles. Within the influence region, the members of the owning-group receive a 10% combat bonus; enemies receive a 10% penalty. The leadership of the group can declare an infinite amount of players / other groups as "not-welcome", persona-non-Grata. Should one of them enter the influence region, all members of the group in control that are in the vicinity, are notified about who entered their region where. The whereabouts are broadcasted repeatedly while the intruder is in the region.
Player-employed guards attack non-welcome players on sight.
- After having been killed by a player in defeated mode, players can mark any player in their vicinity as "murderer". Marking a player 'murderer' has a seven-day cooldown. The mark is removed after half a year. You can remove the mark before half a year is up. Once somebody has been marked a murderer, he emits a frightening aura whenever he is in the vicinity of the location where he was marked. You cannot mark a player of a group that your group is at war with. You can only become member of a group once per week. (little race to the bottom, once again ..)
Effect of the aura: other players are notified that somebody scary has entered their vicinity. Nearby patrols are attracted to a marked player that enters the vicinity of the marking. These guards are hostile and not to be joked with.
- Guards in NPC-cities and other important places. In NPC-cities and many other places you need to sheathe your weapon / caster staff / etc. If you draw your weapon the guards give you a 10s warning. If you don't sheet the weapon in time, they attack you. Guards are about as powerful as a very powerful player. Guards can call for reinforcement that spawns quite far away. Players survive long enough that no single murderer can possibly kill another player before he has been killed by the guards himself. The guards snare the player and knock him down. The best option is to just not do anything if you are attacked.
- Expectation management: new players run through an extensive tutorial that explains the world and the consequences of one's actions.
So, what do you think? Overkill? Or still not enough? Do you see unwanted side-effects / loopholes? Or do you have an idea of an additional feature to fight Lunatic-PvP?
Edit:
This was a non-iterated brainstorming. I've already found two ways to abuse these rules. But I also have a few more nice ideas. For what its worth: I'm still interested in as much feedback as possible ;)
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