Monthly Archives: December 2005

This is how MMORPGs die

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I tried to correct Raph’s graph because it doesn’t show what actually matters, from my point of view.

Raph’s graph isn’t supposed to figure out why some players leave the game. It should just compare the volume of content available with the volume of players. And what is relevant in THIS context is the volume of players at the same time. Also because it’s what matter to make the game accessible, bring the players together and enjoy the game. Something that is NOT POSSIBLE if all the players are spread thin around a desert.

So yeah, I’m not interested to find out why the players are leaving. Or maybe I am, but I think that another perspective will tell me a lot more about this specific argument.

Following this line of thought, Scott Hartsman wrote a “defense” of level-based games, as it is plausible considering that he is EQ2 producer and he must believe in what he does:

All of that “database deflated” content is called “shared experiences,” and they’re critical to a game’s success in the era in which they’re relevant. In the long run it loses value. That’s a given.

However, it’s absolutely critical to have it there in the short term, in order to get a game to the point where it can actually lose that value. That’s a problem of success. We should be so lucky to have that content beginning to lose its original value. We’ve both seen what happens when games (intentionally or no) appear to assume that success is a foregone conclusion and skip straight to “Aha! It’s going to lose value anyway. We’ll think ahead and not do as much of it in the first place, saving long term pain!” I’ve got all the proof I need to even more firmly believe that it doesn’t work that way if the goal is to satisfy those who enjoy character growth.

Here I believe that the only mistake Raph did in that article is about the title. I don’t think he is trying to prove that “levels suck” and that the successful games we have now are crap that shoud be thrown away and replaced. I just believe that he is trying to explore and delve in the mechanics that make levels fun. See their origin, discover their flaws and finding out if this research can open the path to something different that could solve or improve some of these aspects.

It isn’t about going “against”. It’s about creating a debate to use as a source. A source that is useful to improve and explore new possibilities more than rinse and repeat models that are now consolidated and “safe”, but that are still problematic. Are there possibilities to do better? Are there better solutions available?

The point isn’t about devaluing the current games. The point is perceiving possible developments and use the experience as a ladder to reach something else. It’s about taking risk. In this industry it’s *fundamental* that the risk is excused and motivated so that it is plausible and justified. This is why it’s overdue to analyze the flaws and propose ideas that MUST start from those problems and offer valid answers.

My idea, about what Scott wrote, is that the current level mechanics are killing these games, in the longer term. So an apparent, superficial “lesser issue” is, instead, CRITICAL for the future of an online world.

—
Here are my graphic leet skillz:

Now, the first graph represents the situation on a server a few days after the launch. The blue line traces the *activity* on the server in a set moment and not the number of characters created that never come back. In the first weeks all the players are concentrated in the first levels and then slowly decrease. During this phase there’s overcrowding and if you were in WoW at launch or at the launch of a brand new server you know how this is absolutely true. Everyone is running around the newbie zones and only a few players that never log out are able to reach an higher level compared to most of the other players.

Do you remember all the queues that lasted for multiple hours during the first days and all the players raging against Blizzard? That wasn’t simply the server load, it was because all the players were packed in the newbie zones and the early levels in general. The red line here shows the volume of the content available targeted at those levels. At the beginning of the graph there’s more of it to accomodate the number of players, but it’s still not enough. There’s more of it compared to the mid-levels because each race has its own newbie zone and content.

(the graph still doesn’t factor the “time” needed by each level, or the first levels still wouldn’t compare with the amount of content in the mid-levels, since each level takes more time and so requires more content available)

The second graph, instead, shows the situation of the server after a few months. Only a few new players are active at the same time and 99% of the game is emptier and lonely even if the game remains hugely successful. There’s basically more than enough content for the whole level curve. At the exclusion of the last few levels where all the players start to amass. If you notice, the red line at the end of the graph rises more than the red line of the first graph. This because Blizzard developed and added more “endgame” content. But as you can see, even after this effort, the content is still nowhere enough for the number of players that are hoarding at that end.

And this is why right now we have all the complaints about not enough raid content, or not enough viable progress for casual players after level 60.

Now what even Raph seems to overlook and that from my point of view is the BIGGEST problem, is that the situation shown in the second graph gets worse over time. Till the point it becomes a plague for the whole game. A plague that will just shatter the game in the longer term, creating a number of unsolvable side-effects that will slowly kill the game. Till the point where it will need a replacement because broken beyond repair. As I said the inequality between the content available at the mid-levels and the few players populating those zones is still somewhat bearable and a non-issue in WoW because the game is still hugely successful and, between alts and new players, even the early levels are kept somewhat playable and fun.

But what would happen if the game wasn’t a so huge success, and what will happen in the longer term? That the early game will be totally DESERTED. Only a few alts will dot the graph here and there, having an hard time finding someone alive to group with and, maybe, do those instances that were so popular the months before. The consequence of this trend is a recursive aggravation where less and less players enjoy the loliness of the early levels, deserting them even more till they won’t become just a lonely “desert”, but a swamp that you won’t be able to cross anymore.

And here we hit something bigger that was again always overlooked. Why the possibility to solo is considered so fundamental today? There are surely various reasons, but the main one is that the possibility to solo is a somewhat effective antidote to a deserted game. So, even if there aren’t enough players or if you cannot play during the peak time, the game remains playable. You won’t crash against impassable barriers because the content is still accessible. It’s not because playing solo is more fun. It’s because, after the gap between the players grew so huge, the solo play becomes the only viable solutions when playing with your friends is not anymore possible because the game put a WALL between you and them.

The huge gap that was created between the veteran players and the new ones will transform into an impassable barrier that will progressively isolate the game and the community (the elitism will to the rest). Slowly killing it in the longer term.

This is how MMORPGs die.

It’s true that extended treadmills and character progression are effective mechanics to retain the subscriptions. But it’s also true while going in that direction you progressively isolate the game from new players. It’s as conservative approach that aims to preserve the current situation as long as possible but that is still cruising toward an unavoidable collapse.

An healthy online world that slowly *grows* instead of slowly collapsing, is one where new and old players are brought together and not cut apart. A type of game where the content is experienced together and brings life to a world, and not burnt and thrown away as junk. The difference between a place where you live and one that you colonize and leech till there’s nothing left.

Perfect mirrors of the American capitalism and colonialism.

Junk and deflation – how to kill a world

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In the second part of “Do level suck?” Raph delves some more in the concept of mudflation or “database deflation”, as he defines it. Something that I ranted about on my site rather often, recently after the announce of the rise to the level cap in WoW.

One point that I always underline is that this mudflation isn’t always a side effect of a somewhat broken model that seems to not have a viable solution. Sometime the mudflation is created and used directly by the process. It’s a deliberate choice more than just a secondary, unwanted side effect.

The point here isn’t just about the volume of content required during the peak:

You can think of it this way: When the initial population of players came into the game, it was a little higher than the level of the red box. There was some attrition and some slow levelers and some reaslly fast ones, but these distribute along a bell curve. Then the bell curve moves through the levels just like a wave. The red box is the “high water mark” of this wave of players moving through the levels. In order to provide a lack of competition for resources throughout the leveling process, the developer will have had to provide content that fills the volume shown in the red box, so that the peak population of a level band was always accomodated. But the mature playerbase’s need is only the area under the curve. Compare the area of the two spaces.

I don’t think that the mudflation corresponds to a decreasing usage of content equal to a decreasing number of players around those levels. This is why I use the concept of “function”. In the greed for “more content” the function is often overlooked. What I criticized in the model of the mudflation is the fact that the new content is deliberately created to *replace* what was used before. As I pointed in other occasions the mudflation is an “erosion” of content. A loss. It is negative when the content loses its function and justification and is left just as “garbage” to litter the world. Used and forgotten.

WoW is a perfect example because the upcoming expansion will do exactly this. Erase most of the endgame content that was being developed till now to replace it from scratch. The excuse here is that the players themselves demand for content. But why does this happen? Because at level 60 the “natural” progress was stopped, or, more precisely, it had to change direction. What we discovered is that WoW had nothing to offer beside that constant growth. When the characters reached level 60 Blizzard had to excuse the long term appeal of the game through alternate forms of advancement. So by readding what was apparently removed.

Everyone playing the game knows perfectly how the power curve rises sharply starting again at level 60. You would expect the “power differetial” to even up. Instead it increases considerably (as also written here). This again because there was the need to excuse the character progression through loot and compensate the lack of level up mechanics.

All the raid and group content that was being developed and that the players still feel lacking exists to offer advancement past level 60 and despite no new levels are being gained. Now, with the release of the expansion, the premises that are justifying the content that is being developed right now will simply vanish. Once the dam that is blocking the players at level 60 will be pushed back to level 70, all the content that was amassed at the previous cap will be deserted. We will assist to a migration. Not because that content lost quality or because the volume of players is just shifting (as explained by Raph in the quote), but because its function will be lost. It’s not a problem of decreasing usage. It’s about a complete desertification.

The function of the current level 60 content, both raid and semi-raid, was to justify further character progression and fill the void left by the level up mechanics after you reached the cap. But once the character progression will be plugged back in the game, these two types of advancement will overlap and the current one will lose both its function and value. It will exit the system, becoming obsolete and fading out. This, of course, will have a stronger impact on the new players more than those that already used and enjoyed that content when it had a function and a purpose.

What will happen to those epic level 60 quests for paladins and warlocks to obtain their epic mount when they’ll be able to do them while being powerlevelled in a group of level 70 guildmates?

The risk to comply to the rules of the mudflation isn’t just a risk to “overspend” and waste precious development resources. That’s the lesser, even if more evident, problem. The long-term risks are about wearing off and weaken the fabric of the game, making it age till the point it will start to lose pieces and crumble. Till it will need to be replaced because beyond repair.

If you aim to create a world that can remain healthy and consistent in the longer term and remain accessible for new players, the mudflation is not a viable model to reply.

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The world, upside down

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While I (re)read.

rewards were scaled by the necessities of storytelling

Today the rewards are scaled to prevent the storytelling (oops, there’s nothing. So repeat 20 times). This says a lot.

Let’s see. The reward is the drug (our brain produces drugs, this is no news). In the past the drug was excused by a necessity. Today we have the drugs, and more elaborate (because artificial) drugs. But this is not anymore excused, just exploited. We got rewards but not reasons for the reward.

Lastly, sidekicking and mentoring, which I believe were first seen in City of Heroes — wow, what a brilliant hack! We’ll allow people to temporarily change level to get past all the barriers we just put up because we included power differentiating levels in the first place!

Ahah. Just brilliant.

The upshot is that whereas in D&D levels were used to bring people together, in MMOs today they are used to keep people apart.

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A broader, rigorous definition of “content”

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This is the very best one, ripped right from Raph’s blog.

It isn’t really usable for the day to day discussions since it doesn’t consider “content” in the same way of the players. But it opens interesting considerations and clarifies many design “nodes”.

—
Mike Rozak

A comment about having players create content for one another… Content that is not seen as good by players is not content. (However, players that create the content are certainly having fun, and might well consider the act of creation to be content.)

Likewise, adding a generic dungeon with armies of generic monsters is not content.

One (of the many) requirements for new content is that it must be backed up by new systems. Take for example, the gravity gun and physical modelling. It is a new system that has breathed life back into FPSs, and allows all sorts of new content (rooms with things that can fall) that weren’t possible before.

Basically, content is a variation on systems. (Which is what raph said.)

You can only produce so much worthwhile content using a given system without having the player say, “It’s just another fedex quest, except I’m delivering jelly babies instead of flour” or “This monster is really just and orc with a different 3D model.”

The first gravity gun is really fun. The second game finds a few twists for the gun that the first didn’t explore, and it too is fun. All subsequent games using gravity guns are rehashing old territory.

.. Which is also why player-created content is also. Morrowind and NWN provide toolkits that allow users to create their own content. Unfortunately for the skilled players that might be able to produce good content, the skilled Morrowind/NWN content creators squeezed most of the variations (content) out of the engines before the players got a chance at the tools.

Likewise, new IO devices enable new/varied systems, which enable new/varied content. Text + keyboard + floppy = Zork. CD Rom + 256-bit graphics = Myst. 3D accelerator + 32 kbps modem = Everquest.

—
My notes:

In my tripartite model describing the process of “fun” (which was then validated in Raph’s book) I focused on the concept of “learning” as the essential one.

In the case of the frustration, the “lesson” or pattern to learn is too hard. The lesson is like a “wall” we have to overcome, but we may lack the tools (the ladder), or the wall is too high for our possibilities, so we crash against it. This is a barrier that denies us the possibility to learn. So the frustration. This is a failure for both the player and the designer. Many of the design discussions about the “death penalty” have their roots on this concept.

In the last case, instead, the lesson is too weak, or already mastered. Too trivial. It becomes predictable and we don’t have fun because we already “grokked” this system. This is the case where the definition of “content” plugs in. My idea is that both the content and the fun have personal components. This is a concept I’ve already vaguely introduced (near the end). We don’t learn just everything. We learn only what we are interested about, what we feel the need to learn. This is why both content and fun are subjective (and strictly tied together). In order to have fun, I need to be interested in what the game is going to teach me. In that precise type of lesson. There must be an acceptance already before. If this interest is not present, we cannot learn and we cannot have fun.

This ties back with the first line: “Content that is not seen as good by players is not content”.

Predictable content can also be not content and the players can cut off entire chunks of a game. For example, while for some players the questing in WoW is content, for other players it’s not. It’s a void. They are bored already after reaching level 20 or so and they do not need to “do every quest in the game” to know that the game has already told everything it had to tell them. There’s a point where you start to anticipate what is going on and what the game will deliver next. An experienced player or a developer get bored way faster at these games because they have gotten better at “pattern matching”.

WoW can have thousands of quests, but the unique patterns it uses are just an handful (kill, collect, fetch, plus all the mechanics about the encounters, rewards and so on). After a while you identify and group them (consciously or not). So they stop to matter as separate entities and lessons. We see past the courtain and discover the mechanical engine behind the apparent magic.

Sketches for a magic system

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Quick notes from some brainstorming I did while too lazy to get up from bed. Those are the best. Not really “design” ideas, just practical implementations.

*Bring back precasting, beyotch!*

The spells will be broken in two “moments”:
– the actual casting time
– a “ready” time

During the casting time the spell is being prepared and the caster should remain still. The movement doesn’t break the casting as in other games, but it doubles the casting time and halves the ready time (this “malus” will be clearly shown graphically if active). This “ready time” represents how long the caster can keep a spell, already prepared, ready to be used. Only some of the spells can be readied. The ready times are supposed to be generally short and also available for healing spells.

The spells may have different “stages”. These work on a basic level as power ups. For example there could be a fireball with three “ranks” where each rank represents the increasing power. In order to cast the higher rank fireball, the caster will need firstly to cast the first rank, then cast the second and, finally, the third. Then the fireball will be ready at its maximum power, ready to be casted on a target (depending on the “ready time”. If not casted in time, only a small part of mana used will be returned to the caster). In some advanced magic schools (and relative specialization paths) these “ranks” can also used to “bundle” different types of spells into one (so mixing different effects). And in the most advanced version of this system (tied to the battle system) different casters will be able to work on the same magic “flow”, creating collaborative spells (“rituals”) that may affect a whole area and an army of men.

Since I’ve already explained that I want immersion and I don’t want to see the screen cluttered with buttons and multiple quickbars, the game is supposed to be playable with a joypad. So that the controls are smooth and don’t become a nightmare. I chase the simplicity and the ease of use so that the combat can be more naturally fun and lively, opposed to clunky and confused. The control scheme is definitely not satisfying enough, but this is what I decided for now:

directional keys (left and right): switch targets
directional keys (up and down): switch between enemies or friends for target selection
L1-R1: cycle spells (on a row) under the same magic school/type (for selection)
L2: switch schools (columns)
R2: macro button, it activates/deactivates a custom made row of spells
cross button: starts casting the spell, if tapped again before the casting time ends, the following “rank” is activated (the spell icon shows a “2” in a corner). This only for spells that have different “ranks” available
circle button: cancels the spell that is being casted or that was readied. It can also be used to reset a “rank” back to the previous stage
square button: releases the spell on the target. Instant spells and spells that cannot be readied, don’t need the square button to be released
triangle button: switches in/out of combat. When out of combat the other three keys will be used for other standard actions (jumping for example)

(the players are supposed to only change the order of the spells in a school, the macro button works instead as a quick custom hotbar)

Accessibility in Eve-Online, some vague ideas

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Just saving a short discussion on Dave’s blog about Eve-Online’s accessibility and the gap between the tutorial and what is only “supposed” to come later and that too many players hear about and aspire but never manage to actually see (myself included, heh..).

—
Abalieno:
I believe that a lot could be done in Eve to make it more accessible and to bring the players more near to where the fun is (I know this because it’s already a big accessibility barrier for me).

I’m one of those that need something linear to follow before having the courage and knowledge to move on my own and Eve is the opposite of linearity (which is where it’s the quality). But my belief is that, while you cannot have a freeform game within a linear one, you can still have linear, leading paths (and more than one) within freeform games (not too differently from what Raph writes here). Eve could do a whole lot from this perspective.

Another example would be about organizing the categories of the ships, which is another part of the game that I still have no clue about. You can give a look at the ship page like I did but there isn’t a clear definition of the roles, scale and how they compare with each other. It’s hard to understand which ship you need and can afford next and what are the main roles or purposes of each type so that you can make your choice.

There’s enough space here for the documentation to improve (outside the game) and the linear paths I described above to help the players understand all this directly in the game. That’s what I would develop in the game. Instead of a tutorial that explains the UI and the basic types of gameplay, I would add linear careers, semi-scripted, that you can follow and switch (or quit) at will. So that you can learn progressively the game at your pace or just go on your own.

That’s what I think should do a good freeform game. Take the players by the hand if they don’t feel ready to go on their own, while giving them total freedom to forget about the linear path and search the luck in their own way.

—
Lydia Leong:
EVE is initially accessible, from the standpoint that the tutorial is magnificent (probably the single best MMO tutorial I’ve played through, and I’ve played through a lot), and help is more readily available than in practically any other game. The raw tediousness of mining (as well as travel through higher-security space) ensures that everyone has plenty of time to chat. Getting staked as a newbie is critical, but seems to be relatively commonplace.

Where it falls down in accessibility is probably around ten hours into gameplay, when you’re really running out of more directed things to do and find the world to be a fairly bewildering place. You have the awareness that fascinating things are going on elsewhere, but you have no idea how to become a part of them. The gap between the newbie game and the corporation game is just too vast.

—
Abalieno:
Yes, that’s what I think too and what I meant with my suggestion to add some linear careers. The purpose is to have something to do past the tutorial and that makes you explore with more depth the other parts of the game if you feel still too intimidated to go explore on your own and set your own goals. Also giving a longer term motivation to excuse the progress.

It could be done as an expansion to the mission system, but by making it more cohesive and articulated in the longer term. Bringing also some fun in the “empire space”.

It would also offer the possibility to set many different progressive ranks that could work like levels to bring the players together, for example by creating some hubs around the world where more players at the same “rank” would meet to take some group-tailored missions (a problem in EvE I have is that I NEVER grouped with anyone. Mostly because the game does very little to bring people together in a natural, seamless way).

DDO: Gauntlet

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F13 has a very good review of Dungeons & Dragons Online, one of the two most powerful licences (the other is the Lord of the Rings) that Turbine was able to bring home.

From the sound of it, it’s more a D&D-themed version of Gauntlet than a game taking advantage of innate qualities of the genre where it pretends to sit. There’s no “give life to a world”.

Without any sort of sandbox mode or potentially interesting endgame, I really don’t know where it is trying to go. If this is the game that they were trying to make, it could have been more appropriate as a single player one with an online extension, like Dungeon Siege or Diablo. Instead I’m believing they stuck it in the “mmorpg” genre just to leech the trend and be cool. The whole game just taking place inside dungeons could also bring to a rather tiring, claustrophobic experience.

Port those controls to Guild Wars and we would have a way better game. It will be hard for DDO to justify a monthly fee and maintain a reasonable subscribers retention with that complete lack of worthwhile hooks and community focus.

My opinion is still the same. Expect a complete lack of coverage here.

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WoW breaks the 5 million mark

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But without saying much that would be worth a discussion:

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® SURPASSES FIVE MILLION CUSTOMERS WORLDWIDE

Customer base reaches new heights as Blizzard Entertainment®’s MMORPG continues its growth in North America, Europe, and Asia

IRVINE, California – December 19, 2005 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment®’s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

It sounds more like a pitch for the expansion and a revindication of market leadership.

These reports don’t tell much anymore since we have no clue about how the subscription numbers are divided between the zones. So we cannot know what actually would matter:

Given the nature of the business, of course, no company will post any useful numbers… But I bet they’d be interesting to compare between games. Especially the meta-data such as churn rate, return sub rate, etc.

The last relevant news were released at the end of August. Considering the last press release it’s possible they reached the top.

Eve-Online victim of its own success

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And now Eve-Online is growing too fast:

Max Headroom

Red Moon Rising is out and as you have probably noticed we are still dealing with issues from the deployment. RMR is a rather big change, in many aspects close to Exodus in scope, especially at the lower levels. RMR contains many optimizations and improvements behind the scenes to deal with EVE’s continued success (BTW thank you so much for that, EVE owes much of it’s success to you the EVE Player community).

As the game grows and we stubbornly maintain our goal of one cluster, we have to take a more drastic approach to platform management than before. The gradual addition of hardware and on going software optimizations are not able to keep up with EVE any more. Oveur recently did an excellent blog describing our efforts.

The urgency of the situation becomes evident when we do updates of the scale of Red Moon Rising. The margin of error is virtually non-existent as we are already so close to the glass ceiling of our current cluster architecture that the smallest mis-configuration leads to us banging against it. This causes effects which we just witnessed at 15:00 GMT today.

We have been doing research into how we can considerably increase our headroom, the first step was the Ramsan, the next step involves a move to 64 bit architecture. We have brought Christian Tismer, the godfather of Stackless Python to Iceland and him and porkbelly are here at the office busy figuring out how to squeeze all potential power out of the x64 AMDs we are planning to build our next major cluster upgrade on.

Next to them Papasmurf and Dr.J are feverishly calibrating all pistons of our current cluster to focus all computing resources in the right areas so that RMR will hold the 25.000 PCU we seem destined to achieve before we manage to have the new super cluster hardware assembled, delivered, installed, tuned and tested.

The hardware needed to increase our headroom isn’t something you can go to the store and buy. We have world experts assisting us and after everything has been completed the EVE cluster will probably be the first game related cluster site to rank on the Top500 list.

Anyway I wanted to offer my small reassurance that we are focused on backing our commitment to single cluster for the world wide market (The China cluster is a whole different ballgame which warrants a separate blog) and we fully realize that seriously increased hardware and R&D investment is required to back it and that will be done.

In the short term we have world leading experts in MMO development working around the clock here at the office, ignoring all other commitments (which understandably are considerable this close to Christmas). I remain in constant amazement how committed our developers are to make sure we pass each hurdle, commitment that is only matched by the understanding of their families.

In the long term we will build a completely new cluster utilizing all modern day technology to construct something at the scale needed to simulate nuclear explosions or the earth’s weather system.

So this is blog is our plea to you, the EVE Player community, to yet again give us a chance to resolve these matters and to explain that we have long term and short term goals to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

Of course EVE Online is a commercial venture but seeing what we have achieved together often makes you think otherwise. We here at CCP remain committed to keep up our end of the bargain. With your help we’ll take MMOGs to the next level.

Maybe someone still remembers all the claims about the support for more than 100k “PCU” (aka “Peak Concurrent Player”, CCP’s definition for the maximum number of accounts logged in at the same time) back in beta. Heh…

The subscription numbers are growing at an impressive rate. Really, I expect a collapse because this is going beyond every expectation. Basically *everyone* is now giving it a try or discussing it. If anything, this confirms how important is our community and the true impact we can have on these games. This market is starting to belong more to these communities. We decide who succeeds and who fails and I’m not sure game companies are going to like how unpredictable (and unfaithful) we are.

EVE has over 100k active accounts, including trials. Active subscriptions are now over 86k.

This Sunday the number of contemporary logged in accounts was above 20k.

The 100k mark could be reached much sooner than expected. I’m actually hoping things will slow down, or this may burn both CCP and the future of the game.

Commercial success is corrupting.