Submitted by Abalieno on July 26, 2006 - 00:32.
"N" is a very nice and well done platformer, hard to master and quite addicting after you "get" the controls. For a 1.3Mb download I was really impressed.
It was linked on Q23 and at the beginning I didn't find it so great. Then I started mastering the controls and discovering new tricks and it became much more involving :)
In particular I like a lot how the whole application was made. Lots of polish and well designed. You unlock levels progressively but you can also download highscores online and then replay other people's games. It was an useful feature because it's by observing those replays that I started to figure out how to move properly and all the tricks that are possible.
The game isn't shareware or limited in any way, there are 100 chapters, with five levels each, so a grand total of 500. You can have fun trying to beat your own or other people's time records, or continue to unlock all the levels without caring much about your performance. Then it's not even over because there is even an editor (press ~ from the menu screen) that is really simple to use and you can even download new levels directly from within the same application.
The game itself is a platformer with wall jumping and all based on a physics simulation. Mastering the jumping and movement isn't exactly easy but the help page within the application does a good work at explaning and teaching all the possible actions. With only three keys you'll start to have a lot of control and fun over what it is possible to perform.
After the relatively easy start the other levels are definitely challenging when you have to dodge chaingun, laser turrets, mines and drones all at once. The game is built only around a small anf finite number of elements, but the possible variations are amazing.
It can also be terribly frustrating ;)
Observing it from the perspective I've described here the game is addicting because it does both "moments" really well. The first moment requires you to solve the level by "reading" it and then planning a course, the second moment is then about the quite challenging execution and the mastering of the movement.
Both of these together keep the game fun and varied, letting you experiment new solutions and then slowly improving and getting used to the control scheme.
This game is a small gem.
P.S.
I wonder if Valve's Portal will also have the two "moments". The first where you have to figure out and solve the puzzle, and the second where you have to master some dynamic elements. If it's just about discovering the right trick without any particular good execution then the game could feel tiring (the Narbacular demo is, in fact, exactly because it lacks the "execution and mastering" moment).
Submitted by Abalieno on July 25, 2006 - 20:06.
So again with The Escapist, I'm reading this description about John Romero and I couldn't stop to think about it as an omen for Brad:
McQuaid's game was Vanguard. It was intended to be larger and grander in scale than any videogame ever made, and was heavily advertised as the game that would make you, the player, Brad McQuaid's "bitch."
That Vanguard eventually sold 200,000 copies - a smashing success by some standards - is irrelevant. Costing more than $10 million and taking three years to develop, Vanguard would have had to do far more than make you its bitch to have been considered a success. Since day one at Sigil, McQuaid and Co. had set their sights on EverQuest-like sales figures, and in what was certainly the greatest example of star-driven, game industry hubris, had been completely surprised by their failure.
Sigil's Carlsbad, California office, rocked by political in-fighting (which led to a near-complete walk-out of McQuaid's Vanguard team) was closed in 2007 by SOE following a bail-out deal in which the publisher had acquired a controlling interest in the hemorrhaging game company.
Hey, maybe it could work like a lucky charm ;p
Submitted by Abalieno on July 25, 2006 - 18:53.
The interview with Raph on The Escapist has some interesting passages:
"I do all this writing to clarify things for myself," he says. "I put it out there afterwards, figuring maybe it'll help other folks, but the initial drive comes ... because I am banging my head against a design problem. So, the theory is a tool. You write it down so you don't forget it - it's like having a toolbox full of screwdrivers, wrenches and whatever."
In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Koster defines "fun" as a function of learning and mastery. As we explore a new game, we learn to recognize its challenges and exploit the tools offered to overcome them - that is, to gain mastery over the game environment.
Heh, I wrote again about this recently. I dared to point out something, though: "This is a basic schematization that can help to understand how games essentially work, but that doesn't really help to make better games."
Now notice the contrast:
Koster's current book project is A Grammar of Gameplay, an ambitious attempt to symbolically describe the component "atoms" of games. The grammar would be a tool to reverse-engineer and notate individual game ingredients, such as topology ("the operational space for a given asset"), core mechanics ("ludemes"), depth of recursion, cost of failure and many other abstractions. Using the grammar, a designer could quantifiably assess a game's difficulty, range of challenges and required feedback mechanisms.
Other passages:
"I really like my [MMOGs] to embody user creativity. I also dislike cliques, so I have tried to design so people who wouldn't normally hang out together come to realize each other's importance in the world, the value of their roles in the society, that sort of thing. So I try to have interdependence as a key feature - people relying on each other, not in the moment-to-moment sense, but in the sense that our modern lives would fall apart if there weren't people in a zillion jobs doing things we never think twice about, from stocking grocery shelves to manufacturing pens.
UO inadvertently popularized several now-familiar online dysfunctions - especially player-versus-player (PvP) griefing.
"A big part of why I fought the PK switch was because it meant we were trading away player self-determination for security - echoes of today's political situation, in some ways! UO often felt like long days of taking out things we had put into the game because players found ways to hurt each other with the toys we gave them. But the goal was still self-determination and freedom.
If we had gotten to the natural next step, which was player cities with control over PvP within their territory, I think the real nature of PvP in the game could have emerged.
It's interesting how for a large majority UO was pure experimentation, with the designers having to figure out solutions for those kinds of "dysfunctional" berhaviours. But in the end it's what made UO unique and deep.
"On the other hand, in terms of what I expected players to do with it, I think [UO] exceeded every wildest expectation. The players don't care about what you wanted there, about what the dreams were - they only care about what they have in front of them, and then they proceed to do things you never imagined. And in UO's case, a lot of what they managed to come up with was truly amazing and not at all something I had ever pictured.
I don't actually like experimentation and lack of control in games (vaguely explained here, I want direction) but I believe that the goals of the game (that "self-determination and freedom") are something precious that is missing today. So the idea should be about developing a game with them in mind, and not have them happen in the form of exploits and unexpected outcomes.
That last idea about player cities for control over PvP is also very good. But it still has a major flaw: get rid of NPC-only cities. The players should control Britannia or Trinsic, not a bunch of houses crowding the wilderness. No more shantytowns, thank you.
UO and SWG housing (and player cities) sucked, imho. If you want to give the players the control of the towns, then let them. But radically.
I also do not think that "what went wrong with SWG" was the lack of content. The real problems where somewhere else.
Plans for the future?
"I am working on a startup company, but we're running quiet for a while.
"I really wanted to get back to working hands-on on a game, and I also have firm ideas about the next directions online games are going to take.
His ideas I won't quote and don't completely agree with. I don't believe in any magic "techniques that reduce the costs". Interesting game design and focus on what matters, yes. But not really believing into "techniques".
"I don't doubt the DikuMUD-based game we're all still playing will have legs as long as there's people who still haven't tried it out, but it won't keep the current players happy forever. That means new sorts of virtual worlds have to come into being, or else all those folks will just flow right back out of the market. It's way, way past due that we get out of the tank-healer-nuker game I got bored of back in 1993.
Sadly, what we are today will shape the perception of what we will be tomorrow. I just finished to comment this from what Dan wrote: "There’s an ever evolving sense of tastes and ever shifting marketplace".
This also mean that our expectations are defined by what we play, and our desires will be shaped around what we play. The power of influence. And hegemony.
THERE IS a concrete risk that WoW will have an hegemony on what players are going to *desire* and expect from future games. The power of influence. So beware, because only a small minority of players could develop a refusal of current game mechanics, while a majority risks to adhere so much to them that they won't accept anything else anymore.
--
Interesting interview, but I cannot help myself not to think that Raph continued to bail off on projects as things were starting to become interesting. It happened with Ultima Online, it happened with Star Wars Galaxies and it probably happened even with LegendMUD.
It's too easy to say "I would have chosen a very different way" years later.
*I* can do that because I'm not there with the privilege of doing things concretely. But he had it instead, and he kept fleeing away from those kinds of responsibilities.
(I know that there may be millions of reasons. I'm not judging the person, just the designer)
So people will continue to mock him because SWG wasn't "fun", while I'll continue to criticize him because he refused (for good reasons or not) to commit and take on those responsibilities.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 25, 2006 - 13:27.
I was reading a rant linked by Jeff Freeman and written by Dan Rubenfield (who apparently has a long experience in the mmorpg industry and recently left SOE in search of something different). I liked it quite a bit. I agree on most of those premises.
Dream games. All developers and designers have them. In fact, everyone has them.
But we never make them. We all want to but don’t have the time or the resources.
So all designers have dream games. We bandy them around but tend not to talk to them while employed as there’s always a fear of “losing your idea” to your parent company.
Well, I'm not sure that I understand this. I would love to "lose my ideas" to make them possible, myself. In fact I expose them often when I write. So I see that trend described as really counterproductive. Why you should hide your ideas when employed? And what's the work about then?
See ideas becoming real should be the most rewarding experience ever. The "parent company" is supposed to valorize the people who work within and let them express at their very best. Put them in the condition to do so. If instead the devs shy away it means that something is going really wrong.
Making a mmorpg is about harmonious teamwork. You dedicate yourself to the game and everyone contributes with what he does best. Competition inside the same team is a bad thing. But this is a digression.
Currently nobody’s making anything new for MMO development. There’s a smattering of small developers pushing the envelope but the majority of the big publishers out there (Except Blizzard) isn’t doing shit.
There’s a palpable sense of fear and terror amongst mmo developers right now. They’re scared shitless of WOW. They see it, believe it’s insurmountable, tuck their tails and go the opposite direction.
What does that mean?
It means you’re going to have company after company fucking around with smalltime, smallscale free products. Myspace Killers, Habbo Killers, Runescape Killers, you name it.
It’s going to be reactive, marketing driven, and for the most part, failure after failure.
It’s going to be company after company saying things like “We’d like to focus on the Casual market instead of the hardcore”.
Dan considers the "casual market" as a "null" one, since it is made by non-gamers who will never really cross the line to become gamers and true supporters of this industry:
(about casual gamers)
We should figure out how to craft and sell games to the people who legitimize us before dorking around with people who don’t buy or enjoy our products.
Continuing on the same rant:
Everyone looks at MMO development as “Competing” with WOW. And nobody wants to do it. They’d rather scrabble for the detritus that falls from their pockets. They’d rather go for spillover and for some fucked up reason, focus on the Non-Gaming market.
And once again, I ask “What The Fuck?”. We haven’t figured out how to reliably create and sell games to the people who buy games and we’re fucking around trying to sell games to people who don’t even play games?
We’re once again not using the strength of the medium, once again not asking the questions that need to be asked. The people who hold the purse strings aren’t interested. They’ve retreated into their developmental shells in an attempt to go for the “untapped potential” market.
The thing is, we’ve seen this happen over and over historically. If you single track your product lines like this you’re going to end up fucked. You’re might see some short term success but long term you’re going to end up in very bad financial shape.
We’re not in a static environment of game players, game developers, game sales, game platforms. There’s an ever evolving sense of tastes and ever shifting marketplace. Our marketing efforts and development dollars tend to use history as the basis for choices. Unfortunately this is only part of the equation.
We should be looking historically as well as looking forward for future trends and desires.
Like I do, he hopes for games that expand their sighting, new approaches, different paradigms. The current rules in the market are just consolidated and conventional, but not absolute.
So the market is incredibly malleable. It can be shaped. This is the correct perspective to see it. Hystorical rules are just consequences of what is being made. Different things being made would lead to a different types of market and completely different influences for future products.
It is important to understand the market, but not react to it passively.
The part where I don't agree with Dan is where he is over with the analysis and proposes an alternative:
Everyone’s piling into that rowboat because we’ve convinced ourselves that WOW is insurmountable.
And to a degree we’re right. WOW is not something you can ever compete with. So DON’T.
I will bold this yet again.
STOP TRYING TO MAKE THAT SAME FUCKING GAME.
Raph made a comment a few years back that WOW was going to set our industry back 10 years. It wasn’t meant as a derogatory statement about WOW but instead about the reactive, bullshit nature of us.
And you know what? He was right about that too.
From there he starts to pitch his own game idea that I want comment (but it's good enough).
I don't agree with him even if I agree with all the other premises because I see things from a different perspective.
What I strongly believe is quite simple: it is possible to make new and different games IN the "fantasy genre".
From a side Dan proposes to start from a different game concept, from the other to push a different pricing model that relies heavily on RMT.
I heartily *hate* the second part for reasons I won't explain again (in short: real money should stay OUT of the game, it doesn't belong there), while I see the first as not the obligatory solution.
I'm between those who really dreams and wants completely new and different games. Focusing on the immersion, with a true ongoing, dedicated, passionate development to shape and nourish a *world*, and not bouncing devs and resources between a bunch of mediocre projects or sequels that won't leave any sign and will be obsolete and forgotten after a few months or years. Ambitions and myths. Not consumer society.
But I also believe that the "fantasy genre" is far from being just WoW. Or pinpointed by it. Different games are possible. And not only possible: successful. And the same for different genres. I would love to design a Space Opera mmorpg, or a steampunk based world (think to Myazaki's Nausicaa), but you aren't forced to abandon a genre because you blindly believe that nothing else is possible within it.
I just refuse to believe that WoW has now the monopoly of the fantasy genre. And I refuse to accept that you are now forced to make games into different genres if you want to survive.
Hell, even the same Warcraft could be made into completely different games.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 24, 2006 - 15:06.
Inspired by the Nautilus in Verne's "20000 Leagues under the Sea".
Since I'm downloading X3 I started to think about what I would really like to play in this genre (which is another I have a passion for). The result is entirely, purely single-player load of fun. As I would design it. For a change no ambitious world-like sandbox-y plans. Just frenetic shooter, focused on a few elements that I think should be at the core of this type of fun.
- "Comet Ramming" (see description below)
- Swarms of enemies
- Grab & use loot/weaponry from enemy ships you blow up
- Squad-based combat
- PC and NPC character development
- Insane flying speed
--
- "Diablo in space" means that I want to carry over the basic mechanic I described here. Instead of having prolonged 1 vs 1 dogfighting, the idea is to set the player against SWARMS of enemy ships all at once. Totally outnumbered. Then you give the player's ship much more resistence, faster speed and overall mobility. This with the goal to focus on the movement and perception and use of the space. The 3D space is your environment, total freedom, with both speed and maneuverability to make the movement the real core gameplay. Maneuvering around enemy squadrons, huge motherships or stations and so on.
- Think to a 2D sidescroller shooter. The idea is to port those crowded situations to a space sim and 3D environment. I want total chaos and superheroism.
- Think to Macross (another source of inspiration). This is again the model to aim for. Massive battles with the players against an insane number of enemies. Missions divided into different stages and objectives one after the other. In open space, around stations or against bigger motherships. Rescue missions, patrols, escort or timed attacks. All kind of possible variations, but with multiple events triggering during the course of the same mission. So with a variation of gameplay without interruptions in between.
- Story. The story is functional to the combat. The overall setting borrows one standard theme of the space opera: the exodus. The player commands a big mothership through the space, leading his people toward a possible "salvation" or tranquility, also offering a strategical side to the game. The goal is to bring the mothership and people inside till the end of the journey. Along the way the player has a degree of freedom about where to move, to get resources and develop (enable) new weapons, systems and ships. The path is still linear, though. The exodus represents the course of the game itself, so with a definite conclusion but story-wise the game will end with a sad revelation: when you'll reach what you chased along the whole game you'll discover that it's not what you hoped, so your people will have to continue the "endless journey". No "happy end", your destiny is to continue to fight and hope. The mothership represent just a context, while the whole combat action game will be about the player flying with small fighters.
- Squad based. Think to Jagged Alliance 2. On the mothership you will be able to meet a number of NPCs, with their specific story, personality, statistics and skills. 20/25 of these. Each will enable side-stories and mini-quests that you can discover through the course of the game. The objective is about creating a squad of 5 other NPCs, so you have to select between those 30. The higher number will provide the game some interesting replayability. When a NPC is hired not only it will fight along with you (squad-based combat) but you'll also have control over their "character development", select their ships and load out, improve certain skills, tactics and so on. Some traits and tendencies will be fixed to that specific character though (for differentiation and gameplay variations, like picking different NPCs in your party in Baldur's Gate).
- The player will fight in a small, insanely fast ship. There will be five classes of ships with three ship types each to open different strategic possibilities. Hitpoints, shields, types of wepons that can be used and so on (both ships and weapons need to be slowly unblocked along the course of the game). The game will have a RPG side where you have to develop certain skills (not helping you to aim, but for example affecting damage you deal, speed, shields and so on). Skills are also used so that you have access and can use new weapons. Your 5-man NPC squad also fights along with you, they have an higher number of skills to manage since they are AI-driven, so with the possibility to have skills that deal with fire precision, for example (and yes, Comet Ramming should be a skill).
- Einhander Too Cool idea to not be taken. Each ship you fly will have a turret, or better, an "arm". The mechanical arm is used to get "loot" from the enemy ships you blow up (it's Diablo-inspired after all). The arm moves by itself so you only need to just pass close to the loot you want to grab and the arm will take it for you. So instead of developing new weapons you can steal them directly from your enemies and then research on the mothership to "enhance" them. The loot is about weapons, ammo and energy "potions".
- Some of the loot you steal from enemy ships cannot be used right away, you may need to research and develop the skills for that type. Once you have met the requirements you can then steal and use the loot "on-the-fly", literally. The arm can use only one weapon at once. It can drop the current weapon to grab another, but it doesn't use an inventory where you can store and pick the weapons you want. If you need another weapon type you'll have to identify and blow up an enemy ship that carries it (realistic loot! as Titan Quest). So you'll have to make your choices.
- During combat the goal is to provide to the player an OVERFLOW of possible targets and a pure laser tempest to dodge. Impression of velocity, speed. Massive stations and motherships to be used as reference to not make feel speed relative (it happens when you don't have references in open space). The slower movement of the enemy ships will also help to "feel" that speed.
- Powerful collision system. This is a key feature of the game. Ramming should be one of the best attack patterns available. *CLANG!* Strong metallic impact sound, with different sound types for every different ship you impact with. The sound is supposed to be "visceral" and give a particularly satisfying feel to the ramming attacks. It must feel violent. After the impact with a much bigger ship your own could get slung in space, spinning like crazy, strong perception of impact, loud sound, screen shaking. With even the possibility to get stuck into the bigger ship and needing a few seconds to manage to refloat (think about aiming for a space station, going full speed against it, powering the afterburners and then impact, making a small hole into it and having to use reverse engines to get unstuck from its structure while a swarm of fighters is shooting at you).
- Afterburners. Slow recharge time (2 minutes or so, due to the already crazy default speed of the player's ship). When activated they multiply the speed to an insane level. The afterburner lasts only 3 seconds or so (or even less if the player releases the key). When activated the sound should be like an "hiss", with the ship wailing and shaking. With the afterburners active the player cannot move the ship and just fly in a straight line. Mostly used as the Ultimate Ramming Device, or to move quickly away from a too hot fight. To enhance the "feel" the afterburners should trigger a graphic effect with the ship "getting on fire" (suspension of disbelief! Now!) and leaving a glowing trail in space visible from a long distance. Comet ramming!
- "Carom" types of collision. Think about ramming an enemy fighter at full speed and send it flinging against another enemy ship to destroy it as well, or flying right through an enemy squadron to blow up an entire row and create an hole into it. Pure destructive power. The player may completely lose control of his ship after an impact with a bigger ship (see the description two points above) but the gameplay and "main feature" of the game requires that his ship is nearly immune to collision damage, while enemy ships are highly vulnerable to it.
- Complex damage models. For example smaller ships could start to become incontrollable, or shake, lose precision as they shoot, collide with other ships and so on. The motherships and stations should be covered by destructible parts (turrets, junctions, systems and so on). The fun is about blowing things up. Lots of things.
- Fast-access turret/arm fire. Mouse button 2 works like a fast switch. Keep the button pressed and you get instantly the "turret view", release it and you go back to cockpit view. Hold down and move and you have mouselook on the turret. Press mouse button 1 while 2 is pressed (so both pressed) and you fire/use the turret. The turret moves as fast as your mouse do, with just a *slight* lag (shown through the viewfinder).
- The "arm" can carry weapons but also other types of items. For example you could replace the turret with a directional shield. The mechanic is the same so you can hold down the mouse button 2 and quickly direct the shield exactly in the position you want. For example moving it to cover your back while you have enemies on your tail.
- 1st mouse button when not in "turret view" will fire the front mounted weapon (that cannot be moved).
- Alternate fire (lock-on seek missles, straight missles etc..) available through keys or 3rd, 4rth mouse buttons.
- Since the two buttons of the mouse are taken (left for front weapon, right for the turret/arm toggle) the "barrel roll" will be available through a key toggle. As you press it the ship will start to spin already at a good speed, then it will continue to progressively accelerate the spinning speed till you press the key again to deactivate it. As it is disactivated the ship will come to an abrupt stop, with a slight adjustment oscillation.
- Sounds. I don't care about realism but I want the player to feel inside a small and super fast ship. It must feel dangerous. The sounds can help a lot to give that impression. For example by making the ship *wail* when performing sharp turns, feel sounds from laser beams passing so close to the ship, explosions all around and shaking the ship, etc..
- Constant radio chatter for immersion and mood. Coming from mothership (announcing events, like the arrive of new enemy swarms or change of objectives during a mission, scan mission stages) and, mostly, from your group, with each member describing what they are doing (converting AI actions into speech) and outcomes ("enemy squadron 1 destroyed", "shield down", "need assistance" and so on).
- 3D cockpit that moves slightly on the screen with the movement of your ship, vibrates on fast speed. But with the front weapon pointer still fixed in the center for usability.
- Fancy graphic effects. If the technology is able to support it: motion blur. (again the focus of the game is the visceral perception of speed and impact through collisions).
- Title of the game: "Comet". Simple, short, appropriate (again about "comet ramming" as a the Coolest™ feature). Epic enough, "celestial". You could add an "h" at the end for "flavor", but I think keeping it plain and simple is a better idea.
The concept of "Comet" comes from the idea that accelerating and ramming things can offer spectacular gameplay and an unique type of visceral fun. Add to the mix the possibility to steal weapons from enemy ships (as a wink to Diablo), swarms of enemies to fight at once, and the squad-based combat with some interesting character development... and you can see what was my goal.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 24, 2006 - 00:29.
The real news is that X3 is now disinfested from Starforce. Which was a good reason for me to not buy it when it was released.
Now the game and its previous chapter (X2) are available on Steam. The price is also quite good since X3 is being sold for $17.95 (will be $19.95 after the 28 July).
These days we don't have many space simulations and the X series is a very ambitious one (and planning a mmorpg as well). I haven't played the game yet (downloading more than 3Gb will take a while here...) but I know it has accessibility issues and the graphic engine is absurdly laggy even if it shows some of the best graphic ever. It's not a well-polished, well-designed game nor easy to get into, but my experience tells me that these kind of games are very rewarding if you give them enough time. It won't be perfect but at least it offers something that you cannot find somewhere else. Huge scope and completely open ended.
I mean, if you like these kinds of games what is left is this one or... Derek Smart.
The way they keep working on the exact same project, fixing problems, adding new ideas, expanding some parts and so on. I love it. It's so close to the ideal "ongoing development" of a mmorpg. A "world" (universe, in this case) to make and develop that never ends and continues to be perfectioned and expanded.
Bring on more sandbox-y games!
Submitted by Abalieno on July 23, 2006 - 17:47.
Premise #1: I thought that by the time I had the occasion to write about this, it wouldn't be anymore a news. Instead I still don't see anyone talking about this significant news about Vanguard, not even on FoH.
Premise #2: my brain is currently *fried* by the heat, so don't expect very bright comments from me these days.
What is the news about? The "death penalty" in Vanguard is changing and going through significant revisions.
There arer currently quite lengthy posts from Brad on the official forums trying to explain the philosophy behind these latest changes. Or better, trying to justify them against the hardcore fanatics of CR (corpse recovery) that Sigil cultivated and nourished along these years.
Since Brad wrote a whole lot as always, I'll try to simplify as much as I can:
- Levels weren't enough. So the idea to add a parallel "con system" (to consider the difficulty of an encounter) that could provide a variation that, in their opinion, wasn't possible using just the levels:
Now is the time (beta 3) to take the con system and death penalty to the next stage and make it even more dynamic.
In general you evaluate the difficulty of an encounter by checking the level of the monster/s. WoW and EQ2 already complicated this pattern by adding monsters that were flagged as "elite" to better identify a "group" encounter (I'm tired to do all the work. Someone in the blog community could write an article about elite mobs and describing exactly how they work from a game design perspective?). Vanguard will (obviously, since they are hardocore) go further and add a "threat level" on top of the standard levels.
Simplifying. A monster could be the same level of another. But it could still have a much different "threat level".
The threat level is based on "risk Vs reward" mechanics. An high threat means that the monster is stronger (has more hitpoints, skills, better AI etc..) and also carries better loot (the "reward" part). This is all still quite conventional. The news is that an higher threat doesn't just correspond to higher difficulty and reward, but also to different death penalties (risk).
So if you attack a mob with an high threat level not only you risk to lose because he is stronger. But you'll also incur into an harsher death penalty.
This also means that CR runs won't be the standard when you die (as it was before this last announce), but instead will become just ONE of the cases possible. While the death penalties corresponding to lower threat levels should be milder.
High threat: the moster is stronger (higher HPS, more skills, better AI, etc..), but it drops better loot. While if you die you'll have to suffer harsher death penalties.
Low threat: the monster is weaker, soloable, poor loot, mild death penalty.
About the death penalty "cases":
But in general, the death penalty can range from a money sink, to some exp lost but able to be regained, to exp lost period, to dropping a corpse with all of your gear but having that gear respawn after X number of hours real time at an Outpost, to a corpse that drops with all of your items that has to be recovered or dragged out by a friend, to even more severe penalties (for example, perhaps a corpse cannot be dragged, or even you have to defeat the mob that killed you in order to have access to your corpse (for example, a giant worm that eats your corpses, and until it dies, there is no corpse to loot)).
This obviously leaded to "core players" accusing Brad to give up on these core concept:
Now, before anyone panics, does this mean we are dumbing down the game? No, I really don't think so. We *are* making deaths from mobs with a lower threat level easier, but then we are also making deaths from mobs with a high threat level as hard or even harder than before. And then we have options in-between. What we are doing is making the game more inclusive and less exclusive – players with different playstyles, tolerances, varying contiguous play times, etc. will all have plenty to do, again regardless of their level. No, we’re still not trying to make a game that is all things to all people, and yes, our primary audience is still the core gamer and we won’t make decisions that hurt what makes it attractive to our core audience. But there is a middle-ground – we can and are making a game where solo/casual, core, and hard core/raid gamers can co-exist.
My comments (in short, I ran out of time):
1- "Now is the time (beta 3)..." No, "now" is not the time. You don't make these kind of significant changes so late in beta. This belongs to the very beginning of the design phase.
2- I always thought that "Risk Vs Reward" has never been a really fun mechanic to use because it encourage players to aim lower instead of higher (the game punishes experimentation, I call it fun Vs frustration).
3- Linked to the previous point. The players will tend to "game" the system. Instead of supporting different playstyles, most of the "harder" content will be simply ignored and people will just grind their way up (to boredom). Challenge not imposed isn't a challenge.
In a treadmill the point is reaching the top (sadly). If killing easier monsters is simpler and risk-free, people will do that and outpace the lack of good loot (supposedly the motivation to do the harder content) through the acquisition of higher levels (like in DAoC where it's the norm to go around with "grey" equipment while you grind the task dungeons). Instead if they try to make the harder monsters much more desirable, then it means the game will be insanely grindy for solo players who are "stuck" at killing those simple, worth-less mobs.
Moreover I'm not really "getting" the design behind these changes. Why use a "threat level" instead of the standard level to just give a monster more HPs, skills and all the rest? Why the need to "double" it? If the goal was about differentiating "group" content, why not just reusing WoW's and EQ2's elite flag (which I consider already superfluous)?
Linking "good loot" to "group content" and then to "harsher death penalties" is also a very dangerous idea. You want to promote grouping, not to punish it. It's already not a simple task to put a group together, not even always possible (actually I always thought that grouping shouldn't be "promoted", as it is supposed to happen spontaneously. The point is about removing the *barriers*. Not to force the players in a direction). As we have already seen, dying is a very good incentive to log out of the game and go do something else (see Prey's fix attempt). It's a ticket out. You don't want the players to do that. You want them to get addicted and keep going, breaking the flow as less as possible. If an higher threat level will lead to grouping incentives, while also leading to harsher death penalties, then you are really risking to punish grouping instead of encouraging it. While also making the game incredibly frustrating for those who don't have access to another type of content.
A short exchange on FoH:
Laerazi: If it takes 2x as long to level on easier mobs, than it does on more difficult mobs, as well as the harder mobs dropping better loot, I think it would be worth the risk to try more challenging content; plus fighting easy/predictable mobs isn't exactly fun.
Abalieno: Let's see.
The goal behind these changes was about promoting different playstyles. Or, as Brad says:
"What we are doing is making the game more inclusive and less exclusive – players with different playstyles, tolerances, varying contiguous play times, etc. will all have plenty to do, again regardless of their level."
So you think it's a good idea to support soloing by making the game INCREDIBLY GRINDY for solo players?
What I mean is that the original goals behind Vanguard are about promoting grouping and the community, and then supporting different playstyles:
1- With a link between "better loot", "group content" and "harsher death penalty" then the risk is about *discouraging* groups.
2- When there will be the need to promote content flagged with an higher threat level, then the risk is that the rest of the content will be incredibly grindy and dull for those players who cannot "afford" a better "risk Vs reward" ratio (because it's not a choice).
Both basically mean that there's the risk that those changes will be counterproductive instead of realizing the goals why they were made.
Bottom line is: do we really need all this sophistication? Is it really necessary?
EDIT: interesting perspective
Submitted by Abalieno on July 23, 2006 - 15:24.
Sometimes I repeat in my mind things I already know for a better (excessive) schematization and simplification. And to find and underline some specific aspects.
Months before Raph published his book about the "Theory of Fun", I had already figured out the most important point on my very own (precisation: I don't claim to be smarter. Raph talks in the book about a million of other things. I got one, Raph got the remaining 999.999 that I really could have never hoped to understand and explain so well):
- "Fun" is the result of a learning process. So "learning" is the key.
There are then two possible situations in a game:
1- The game is boring because it is too simple, or repetitive, or doesn't match the interest of the player.
2- The game is frustrating because it is too complicated (cannot be "read") or too hard (performance).
"Fun" is essentially a state of equilibre between those two positions.
Game Design is essentially about finding that balance.
A game is a problem to solve. A given situation with its rules that requires a solution.
Playing a game and solving those problems is divided into two moments: acquisition/reading and mastering.
There's a wall. I need to pass it. I start to poke it.
The first moment about the acquisition/learning is about starting to observe the type of wall. You observe its shape, thickness, height. What you do is about trying to define the type of obstacle starting from what is already part of your experience, so confronting this wall with the wall types you already know. First you look for similarities, then you look for differences. You start to poke it as a form of experimentation, to check consistence, to look for passages. To understand the differences and finally add the new discoveries to your "system of competences", a pool of knowledge and abilities. So even this fist moment is divided into other two:
1- Use of competences that the player already has.
2- Acquisition of new competences.
The second moment of the learning process is then about the "performance" or mastering. What you do is about acquiring a practice and getting better. Becoming a well-oiled system, being able to react to and identify obstacles more promptly and so on.
This is a basic schematization that can help to understand how games essentially work, but that doesn't really help to make better games. In the meantime I was thinking that the system I described is not closed at all. And this is definitely important. What I mean is that when a player begins a new game he doesn't start from a "tabula rasa". Instead he brings along all the competences that he has developed in previous games. This may be one good reason why games are often derivative.
In fact I'm quite sure that modern FPS are much more complex and "hard" overall than the FPS we had years ago. The "target" of these games (and the majority of games in general) isn't a noob. But an experienced player that, for example, has already a very good competence about moving in a 3D space using two hands at the same time to use a keyboard and a mouse. It wasn't easy at all when I moved from Doom to Quake and the new configurations with +mouselook stareted to become popular. It wasn't even "fun" because I was struggling with the controls instead of enjoying the immersion (non-immersive FPS suck).
Today we see that games that focus on accessibility (like WoW) can be largely successful because they go back to absorb those players that weren't already part of the sub-culture and sharing its competencies. WoW is laregely derivative, so very familiar for veteran mmorpg players, but at the same time it is built to rely on competencies that are shared by a larger pool of players ("gamers" in general).
So I started to think about derivative games and mechanics, feedback, competences required from other games, subsets, accessibility issues and so on. And there's a point where this model breaks: the immersion, once again.
The immersion is a way to break out of "games". Like the debate about "mechanics" and "metaphor". Think for example if you aggro a monster. The monster start to chase you and you run as fast you can. You could find an house and close yourself inside, trying to block the door while the monster starts to ram it. Or maybe you can try to climb a tree and move out of reach. Or, if the monster is big, trying to move in a point where the forest is more intricate. In a mmorpg you would already know that noone of these are possible. You know that a mob can run right through a tree, you know that terrain doesn't affect run speed, you know that buildings have no doors, you know that you cannot climb a tree.
The problem is: we can build a game to rely on itself, on its subset of rules that you slowly teach and impose to the player, or draw from previous experience when the game is derivative. But maybe we can also "jump" these specific competences and leverage the audience through immersivity. The immersion could be the very best accessibility key. Free of artificial mechanics that you have to study, free of GUI.
How can you make a game with that approach? Maybe by using game mechanics that only draw from immersive elements. (will return on this. Comments on Lum's blog, simulation and so on)
I was thinking: is more accessible a mmorpg with the standard aggro mechanics we already know, or one with more complicate animal behaviours but where monster behave and react more realistically?
The point is that current games have become incredibly sophisticated, but they seem to have lost the tie with their very origin. The original myth and culture. The shared values. These games don't talk anymore about this world we share. They talk about themselves only. In the meantime we have developed so much practice with these artificial, sophisticated worlds that aggro mechanics and whatnot are incredibly familiar and foregone.
You know what's this process? Games becoming autoreferential. They don't need anymore to talk about something out of themselves. Because the myth we share is now the myth that these games have built. They are now so complex than their system is autonomous.
But, while doing so, I think these games are also losing contact with a greater public, and with that desire for "something else" that even the "gamers" share. So the possibility to talk and seduce outside their niche (big and growing, but still niche).
What I mean is that there's now a gap between the fantasy genre and the mmorpg genre. The mmorpg genre was a representation of the fantasy genre. But now they are two different and autonomous systems. With the risk that the fantasy genre will become a subset of the other (movies and books made out of games). And I don't think I like this scenario.
Vanguard is a perfect example of incredibly sophisticated game built around those concepts that were created right within the genre, instead of outside of it. The most derivative game you can imagine. As Lum said:
various subtle game systems and UI improvements that would only make sense if you were staring at a combat screen forever, such as pre-built combat macros for common tasks, inherent friendly - and enemy - target differentation and the like.
Where's the immersion?
Submitted by Abalieno on July 21, 2006 - 17:31.
I don't care much but I didn't see any thread on the forums I use to browse. So here's the news:
These new developments with the Draenei and Blood Elves mean that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will allow Alliance players to create shamans, and Horde players to play as paladins, using the newly uncovered races.
Source is european forums. A few minutes ago also confirmed by american community guys. So it's official.
Full text/fancy justification/lore spin:
As we draw closer to the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, more of the secrets shrouding the Draenei and Blood Elves are being revealed. One legend involves the noble leader of the Draenei, Velen, and his vision. Velen’s vision was given substance in the form of Nobundo, a one-time Draenei priest who had devolved while the orcs decimated his race and tore the planet apart. Like his fellow Broken, Nobundo had lost contact with the Light, and so he ventured far into the deserts of Outland to meditate and pray for guidance.
After decades of silence, an unfamiliar voice finally answered his prayers. It was not the Light that whispered to him, but the wind. The breeze spoke to him of lost truths, of the might of the elements--of the delicate balance of power embraced by the shaman. Nobundo listened eagerly and learned all he could. When he judged the time was right, he departed the desert determined to use this knowledge to help the Draenei race.
Meanwhile, the Blood Elves busied themselves by establishing the fearsome Blood Knights. Their founding was made possible through the capture of a naaru from Tempest Keep by Prince Kael’thas Sunstrider. Kael’thas delivered the naaru to Silvermoon, where Magister Astalor Bloodsworn began months of study and experimentation on the naaru. Eventually, Astalor and his fellow wizards learned how to manipulate and corrupt the naaru’s luminous energies. In the end the wizards devised a process by which the powers of the Light could be transferred to recipients who had not earned such abilities. Instead of feeding upon the naaru's magic, the blood elves would wield the naaru's Light-given powers themselves.
Lady Liadrin, formerly a priestess, had recently renounced her vows, for she felt the Light had abandoned her people. She learned of the wizards' achievement and volunteered to be the first to bend the stolen powers to her will. With her decision a new order was born: the Blood Knights. These renegade paladins are able to harness the sacred powers of the Alliance’s noblest heroes.
These new developments with the Draenei and Blood Elves mean that World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade will allow Alliance players to create shamans, and Horde players to play as paladins, using the newly uncovered races. The ability for players of both factions to use any class opens up exciting new gameplay opportunities, with fresh group-play dynamics. Those who have faithfully pledged their allegiance with one faction or the other will finally have the opportunity to try out a class that was once unavailable to them. While Alliance shamans and Horde paladins mostly share the same talents as their counterparts across the battlefield, they will also enjoy some unique abilities to themselves, similar to the priest class’ racial specialties. Stay tuned to wow-europe.com for more information.
This was quite expected and already rumored. In fact I remember Cosmik anticipating exactly that (yep, here and here). After all the bitching about PvP/PvE balance between Horde and Alliance, here's the fix.
Mythic learnt with Camelot that striving for uniqueness between the PvP factions is a quality with a very high price. Blizzard preferred to lower the risks and balance issues by just adding some minor perks in the form of racial traits and one "gimmick" class for each faction. Just for a spark of originality and uniqueness.
It seems that they gave up, and proceeded to uniform the game even on that front.
This also means that for the first month the expansion will be out about 80% of the new characters will be either Blood Elf Pallies or Dranei's shamans. My God, the game will be totally unplayable in the new zones, completely desert in all others. Of course Blizzard will realize how significant are these dangers only when it will be too late.
Expect the servers to crash and burn, like at release. Just worse.
I think I'm the only one left in the world who thinks that asymmetry in PvP is a quality that is worth keeping. No matter of the costs.
Also: think of Starcraft and how different was the gameplay between Terran, Zerg and Protoss. Or even Warcraft itself. I guess those developers are not somewhere else.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 21, 2006 - 09:46.
Raph is prototyping a game about a bird (first version here).
His son commenting the game:
As my son said, “this would be awesome if you had a ray gun. All good games have enemies and ray blasters.” Sigh.
Hahaha! Yeah, go tell him the mechanics are more important than the metaphor ;p
Submitted by Abalieno on July 19, 2006 - 09:44.
It's from a while that I believe that "prototyping" is an overrated design approach. I always believed that a game should be done exactly as it was imagined, as close as possible to the idea that sits in the mind of the designer. I believe in a strong "vision" and direction and I don't accept that a "prototype" is going to tell me what works and what doesn't. I think it's just a way to get fooled.
In short I think that prototyping is a bad way to figure out whether an idea works or not, whether it's fun or not. In fact I believe that the conclusions coming as a result of those tests will likely be misleading.
To explain myself better I could oppose to that approach its theoretical negation: take the worst concept and reiterate long enough, and I'm sure you can make something fun out of it.
That's what I believe making games is like. You persist doing something that just doesn't seem to work, trying instead to make it work as you imagined it. It's a strife. A prototype will just tell you that the idea sucks. But persist long enough and I'm sure you'll finally reach your goal, and suddendly everything will start to work exactly as you imagined. Making a great game that finally can be recognized by everyone else. "Recognizing" is the key because that's the function of a prototype, and, still, it's what that approach does worse.
I believe that "game design" is "working against the odds". A designer is a fool that noone can understand what he is saying. Someone who speaks in a tongue you don't understand. A stranger. But, one day, he arrives and shows what he meant for all that time. And a standing ovation explodes, like an epiphany.
Game design is an epiphany. It's a concrete way to let people step in your head and finally understand and participate. It's an happy end. A catharsis.
And you cannot "test" a catharsis. You cannot anticipate an epiphany. Those things only happen when there's a strong will behind.
This is why I believe that game design should always start from a strong *necessity* and that should always follow a definite direction. It's a volitional act. NOT experimentation. The experimentation is just for the scientist, for someone who cannot shape anything in his own mind. For a designer in search of ideas.
But the "true" designer isn't in search of ideas. He has an overflow of ideas.
I believe that prototyping is necessary only in the measure it becomes an "enabler" for the reiteration: a prototype is often something self-contained, so offering the requirements for the reiteration to start and refine the model. It's about execution, not about the concept. The concept is a "black box". It should never be tested, never doubted. It's... faith.
--
All this after the announce of Valve's Portal. It's not really something that Valve built, but more something that Valve bought (the company website is currently down due to high bandwidth usage).
I tried the concept demo (mirror) but I wasn't so impressed. It gave me a strong nausea right away (due to the inertia in the walking movement more than the portaling stuff, most likely) and I had to stop just past the third or fourth room (the one with the boulders). It's a quite simple puzzle game, without some dynamism it's just about discovering the right trick to move to the next room. Immersivity is next to none.
Then dress it up with a retro sci-fi/realistic mood, add a portal-shooting gun, add some more dynamics elements, picking things on the fly and a more realistic physics system and... wow! It's simply awesome.
Great idea to time this on the release of Prey, like if they are mocking them by using the portal technology for something way more innovative.
It's time to go develop a netcode for that. Multiplayer madness.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 18, 2006 - 22:48.
So there is a new expansion planned for September that will even break the naming convention of "noun of noun". SHOCK!
As Ubiq wrote the interesting part is that it will provide content for all levels (also implicitly answering to Loral). A sub-world that is suppposed to be self-contained, with the possibility to level there from 1 to.. uhm.. 75? Must be a rather HUGE zone. Or maybe it's the new frontier of the Pure Grind, like DAoC did with those horrible Task Dungeons.
I don't know, but thinking about going back to EQ for this expansion looks like a very bad idea to me. If you want a brand new experience there are many other better games, EQ2 included.
Instead the only real interesting thing going on EQ Classic are the "progression servers". Not only because they are alive, packed with players, but because they provide an answer to EQ's greater problem: the mudflation.
And that's also the tie between the progression servers and the new expansion in development. The new expansion is no less than the triumph of the mudflation. 10 years of expansion pack content? The truth is that EQ has now LESS content than the average mmorpg. As we already examined, content is subjective. It doesn't exist if there isn't an active interest. It lacks consistence. It doesn't matter if the content is potentially there and maybe even in a playable state. What matters is that the content is for the large majority inaccessible because of the shifts of interest of the community. Content that exists, but that is now completely useless and that it would be just impossible to actually experience. Content without an use. Without an audience.
How much of that content is really accessible today? How much is desirable? How much is soloable so that you won't have to remain flagged LFG for a month to do a quest that noone cares about?
With that new expansion they are basically cutting out another 95% of the whole game. A loss of function and "use" that is now so widespread to become an existential problem for the whole game. Why EverQuest still exists? What is its place?
It's in sharp contraposition to those questions that it can be interesting to observe the dynamics of the progression servers. The progression servers are no less than obligatory paths, ways to find an use and purpose to content that lost them long ago. There are two basic points to consider.
- The first is that the content isn't anymore mudflated as on a standard server, but is instead "aligned". The idea of "progression" comes from a series of objectives that must be completed before you can advance. It's all focused to be a solution to the mudflation. This new server type is just a way to remove the rust from content that has been ignored for a long time. Find a purpose, an use, a motivation. A way to refresh the memories and restores those qualities that the game has but that have been erased by the "progress" of the mudflation. A way to answer that existential question that plagues the whole game.
- The second interesting point is the "community effort". The sense of participation. Not only in the fact that the zones are alive again, but that everyone is going to contribute and participate in a communal effort. While the great majority of the mmorpgs focus on a personal power growth, the idea of "progression" on the progression servers becomes a shared concept. The idea of progression is extended to the whole community.
And this is the strongest mechanic that a MMORPG can aspire to.
I have repeated and supported this for years. Doing something just for yourself, in a personal instance, can be fun for a while. But it's when you become truly involved in the community, when you feel a sense of real participation, that this leads to an escalation of fun. Being part of something becomes the strongest motivation you can have. You don't play anymore to kill some spare time, you play because you want to be there. You want to be part of something. You want to belong. You want a memory.
That's where the potential of a community really is: participation, motivation and memory. Being part of something bigger than you and that unites all players. Something to share and remember. Without this, games are meaningless.
This is why I consider the progression servers as the most interesting thing happening to the game. EQ is a game that is losing its identity and motivation. It is losing pieces because of a lack of "answers". The progression servers basically provide an use and meaning to the content in the game and, as a reflection, to the whole game. People come back because EQ regains its identity and purpose, the game "remembers" (and the progression servers also rely a lot on the nostalgia) who it is. The game regains a motivation and this motivation is understood and inherited by the players.
But there are also some basic weaknesses that undermine those ideas. The biggest problem is that the progression servers are only a temporary solution. They are transitory. The motivation is strong if you were there from the very beginning, but the majority of players won't be able to keep up with the pace and will have to deal with the reality quite soon, which is much different from their expectations. People will be excluded from that sense of progression and, with the time, the players will trickle off as they understand that their hopes aren't realistic and that it won't be easy at all for them to be part of that community.
So the progression servers have done the miracle of giving EQ back a soul, identity and meaning. But these answers are only a temporary and the motivation will only work for a minority of the players. And then less and less.
The conclusion is that these servers have revealed interesting dynamics but that are limited by their transient, ephemeral nature.
Why we cannot design games starting from those important goals, instead of having them just as afterthoughts? Why we cannot have a sense of participation and motivation that can really aspire to integrate the majority of the players and that can be persistent in the game instead of just temporary?
I have some ideas. The point is to start designing games as concrete answers to those needs. That's what I try to do, start from the need and then try to find an effective solution.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 18, 2006 - 21:14.
Zonk on the hypothetic sequel to FFXI:
With several expansions to the original game already released, and the title available on three platforms, Square/Enix is finally talking about a sequel to Final Fantasy XI.
Finally?
Anyway, Square pushed out a press release to confirm that they are working on something, but not directly as a sequel to FFXI:
As the Company announced in May 2005, it is currently developing an online title for next-generation platforms including game consoles and PCs; however, this title is being developed as a completely new MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online RPG).
Quite expected. They aren't going to announce anything without an appropriated, dedicated event (that won't be anytime soon, knowing how slow they are). And it's obvious that they are going to start something from zero instead of consolidating and strengthen the world they already created.
I guess this news was supposed to tranquilize those players who started to worry about FFXI, but the truth is the exact opposite. That announce is no less than the announce of the end of FFXI, we don't know when, but we know it will happen. With a completely new game in development it just means that Square's resources are being moved and that they don't believe anymore in the value of FFXI.
Stupid as everyone else. Worlds with expiration dates.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 18, 2006 - 10:16.
There was a rumor yesterday about a Final Fantasy Online sequel:
July 17, 2006 - Japan's Nikkei Net news service reports today that Square Enix is currently at work on a sequel to Final Fantasy XI. The next generation massively multiplayer online RPG is being developed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows Vista formats. Further details are not provided.
Square Enix has previously shown trailers for a next generation MMORPG engine, without actually announcing a final product based around the engine. It's unclear if the FFXI sequel is going to be the game to use the new engine, or if Square Enix has another title in development.
The "next generation engine" they talk about is the one that Square presented during the E3 2005, which was nothing more than a flyby around that place you can see in those screenshots. It was for them just a test for the XBOX360 hardware, so it's not sure if those art assets will be used or not, or if they'll even reuse that engine.
That a new mmorpg was in development based on their main franchise was already known as Square hinted about this possibility in many interviews. It probably became a stronger need as they see FFXI subscribers slowly decreasing and the 360 version deluding and not taking off as expected. I'd say that the game is crippled more by awful game design on certain aspects than the real need for "new", but if nothing has changed significantly along these years then it means that Square "doesn't get it".
So this news about the sequel is nowhere surprising, but still disappointing. Mmorpgs sequels are DUMB. But I'm writing about this because what is interesting is the possible transition.
Some players on the forums are already complaining since the development of a sequel means that their world of choice will be made obsolete soon, and all their invesment will lose value as the "new" will be hyped. I wonder if Square will be smart and handle the transition in a new way, or if they'll be dumb and just repeat the mistakes of every other mmorpg sequels.
I think I just felt a hint of existential anguish.
What am I doing?! I've had this game for two years and my highest level is 42. I have yet to experience CoP or Zilart missions, Sky or Sea, HNMs or Dynamis!
And soon, it will all be obsolete!
Why am I not playing now!? My mortality is apparent and the end is nigh! Repent, repent!
/panic
My idea is that if you really want to develop a "sequel" then you need an "exit strategy". What I mean is that the sequel should really replace the previous title and not try to co-exist as SOE tried to do with the EverQuest. You may think that is much more convenient from the commercial point of view to keep two worlds alive till they are both profitable (and the experience also taught us that sequels still have a very hard time to affirm themselves over their elders. This is valid for EQ as it is for Counter-Strike) but I have a different way to see at this scenario.
The idea is to create a real sense of progression between two titles, so that the players won't be encouraged to try to keep a foot in both, but instead move to the new game with a strong motivation and bond with the game world and their characters. The risk with a sequel is that when a player is forced to look for something else it's not granted that he'll chose what you are going to offer him. It's more probable that he'll chose a completely different world, or nothing at all, to never return again.
When you encourage your community to move, you risk to lose them as customers.
This is why instead of a lax policy that aims to keep both worlds active, I believe it would be a better strategy to plan a smooth, deliberate transition. With strong incentives so that the players get even more attached to their character and presence in the world. Want to make a mmorpg sequel? Okay, then have the balls to really develop a replacement and advance the world. Moving your whole playerbase over.
Keep the "elder" game alive for a year or two. Develop the new one as a "remake" set in the exact same game world and locations. You can create a completely new system, but the goal should be about porting over at least 70% of so of the content of the previous game into the new one, with the remaining 30% being brand new. The new world should be familiar and new at the same time and I believe that the proportion I'm suggesting could be a good compromise. Porting the old content would be about reevaluating all the content in the old game to only select the best, and then polish and adjust it to the new standards. It would be interesting for all players to experience the content for the first time or even what is already familiar to then to discover what changed.
The goal would be about porting the characters directly to the new world (maybe set slightly in the future to excuse some compelling twists in the plot and the aspect of the world), offering them even an incentive to accept the transition. No need to reissue billing infos or resubscribe. Maybe even a refund of $20 if you move from the previous game to the new over the cost of the box, so that you would pay for about the same the price of an expansion to have your characters move to a brand new game, without losing progress and with still the possibility to access the large majority of the content that you could expect in the previous game (due to the port of content).
This is how I think you can create a strong bond between the game world and your community. The sense of progression would be lead by the content ported over, the slight progression in the timeline, the new content and continuation to the events to discover, along with the possibility to not lose your own progress and continue seamlessly with the character that you played for so many hours.
Instead of feeling that sense of loss because the world that you love for so long is being made obsolete and replaced with something that you feel distant, your character would become your tie and bond with that world. A way to reaffirm your presence and participation. An incentive to continue on that incredible journey instead of that sense of loss that would encourage you to look for something entirely different.
So progression and persistence could become a strong motivation to be part of that world, to renew the bond.
In short:
- 70% of old content ported and revised. To let the players continue to experience the content that they still didn't see and preserve a sense of familiarity. Along with a strong sense of progression and discovery (new content, timeline advancement, new plot twists and slight changes around the world to discover)
- Possibility to port (copy) old characters. Again to create a bond with the game and not lose any of your progression on your character. Nor your "identity" and feeling of "belonging".
- Semi seamless transition. Install the new game, log in with your old account, insert the keycode and select "upgrade" to have your characters automatically ported. The monthly fee is the same you continued to pay, no changes needed.
- Single monthly fee to access both worlds. For the one/two years that the "elder" game is kept online a player with an "upgraded" account can still log in the old version to play with friends. Since the characters data is ported to the new game as the account is upgraded, all the progress made in the old world past that point will be likely lost. This will be compensated through a form of "currency" to which you can convert/recash your progress (loot, money and exp, for example) and that can be transfered to the new game. (recycle exp/money/loot gained in the old game by converting them into "currency" -> transfer currency between the two games -> convert currency into progression in the new game)
- Concrete incentives for the transition. $20 refunded on the price of the full new game if you use the key code as an "upgrade" instead of creating a brand new account.
This, I think, could be a recipe to make a successful "sequel" that isn't dumb and that would retain the former community without worriesome losses, while also attracting many new players.
Sadly I don't even remotely hope that these ideas will be ever used.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 17, 2006 - 11:44.
The World Cup is over but Eve-Online decided to organize its own version and host an official tournament involving the best alliances in the game and done through 5 Vs 5 battles.
I don't think it's the first tournament they have, but what's new and cool is that this time they launched an "Eve TV" that is streaming all the matches. Complete with commentators durning and after the events.
My bet for the final is Lotka Volterra Vs Band of Brothers.
More useful links:
- The rosters for the tornaments ordered by date or group and with all the results.
- Finals (I think they should have staggered these more, to build some hype and wait, and also to let people to download, follow and discuss the matches instead of rush everything in one day)
- Some recorded battles to download.
- Torrent files for the full three days. (go, go, smart use of pirating resources)
I think the only thing missing are the replays. The action is actually quite confused, the videos a bit blurry and it's kind of hard to figure out the dynamics. But it's still incredibly interesting and I'm quite addicted.
It also makes me wish, as it always happen. I don't think that what they are doing is the very best way to present that type of content. Official touraments are a great idea (and one that I'm suggesting from a few years) but they need a different execution to be really enjoyable.
Idea for an Eve-Online TV client
Think for example to an "Eve TV client". As a standard Eve-Online client to play the game, but modified to be public and become just a front-end to watch the matches.
You would have the option to stream the matches as they happen, or download them from players' repositories and then load in the Eve TV client to watch even while offline.
Not only you would solve the problem of the blurred image and confusing action, since you would see directly in a perfect client, rendered by your PC. But you would also have the possibility to replay scenes from different points of view, watch a full match from the perspective of a particular ship and even "enter" one to see the modules that are being activated. So that it would be easier to figure out and learn the tactics that are being used.
Streaming a match in that way would also spare a *huge* amount of bandwidth because you would only need to send the movements and actions of the ships, plus maybe the voice commentary. But it's still something quite manageable and even on this site I could easily host for download the whole tournament.
It would be a great idea, and also a wonderful way for CCP to publicize their game.
Guild Wars has the support for something similar (the "Observer mode"). You can watch the most important matches directly with the game client, but the limitation is that there's no way to save them to watch them later. So you can often just see one once, shortly after it happens, and then it's over.
Developing that sort of technology is easily doable, even if it would take some time. So it's just about deciding the convenience of taking some resources from the actual game to make this possible. I think it would be worth it, and it would even contribute to the popularity of the game.
Better than waste those resources to found new mmorpgs as unnecessary replacements, in my opinion.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 15, 2006 - 22:50.
So, Prey is quite short. Moreover, it has zero replayability.
There's a long debate taking place in different forums, but those two points seem well recognized and accepted.
The problem about the replayability is due to the design of the game. Prey relies heavily on interesting level design and puzzle-solving. Thanks to the new tricks, that's the very best part of the game:
sluggo: I think the death walk partially saves Prey, because the combat is so bland and filled with "gotcha!" deaths that having to reload over and over would have made it an annoying, unenjoyable mess. The death walk is basically a license to zoom through the uninspired combat so you can spend more time soaking in the crazy level design.
But after you have completed the game in those eight hours or so, all the fun coming from the puzzles and crazy level design is spoiled. So what's left for the replayability? The combat. But the combat isn't so challenging.
--
I have now something to criticize/suggest about the "death walk", since I believe it would lead to a better game and also to a more fun nightmare/cherokee mode.
The reasoning behind my proposed changes is that the death walk, as it is designed and implemented in the game, removes completely the challenge since it's exactly like a god mode. You don't win a combat by fighting well, you win it exclusively through persistence.
The reason why death walk was introduced wasn't to trivialize the game, though. But to avoid to break the action through reload/saves. And avoid to encourage the player to repeating a fight because it wasn't done in an optimal way (instead of keep going). In two words: no downtime.
Proposed "death walk" changes
- (Normal difficulty) Instead of just respawning the player, all the monsters spawned and still alive would have their hit points completely restored.
- (Nightmare difficulty) Add stacking power-ups to the monsters (hitpoints or resistence) after each consequent death of the player in a short time span (a minute should be good).
The first change doesn't break the original mechanic. It just restores the health of the monsters so that you have to actually kill something when you respawn if you want to progress.
The second one instead isn't as harsh as you may imagine. Not only you would have to kill monsters between each death as in the normal difficulty mode (and that I believe is the BARE MINIMUM for a death mechanic). But you also have to pay attention and try to survive at least one minute after each death so that the monsters don't get a slight power-up on their hit points (a 10% would be too much?). Maybe with a countdown displayed on screen so that you know exactly how long you have to resist and with the monsters hitpoint buff capping at 70-80% of their orginial hitpoint value.
Showing the countdown and even the hitpoint percent buff of the monsters on screen (Guild Wars-style, like the morale/death modifier appearing in the upper left corner of the screen in that game) would be definitely an immersion breaking element. But it would be limited to the "nightmare" mode, which is only accessible after the first run through the game, so with a definite more "arcade-ish" connotation.
The next possible step would about allowing the player to customize the three values of the nightmare difficulty before starting a game: the duration of the countdown, the mobs hitpoint buff and the hitpoint buff cap. So, for example, I could set the countdown at 1.30 minutes (the time I need to survive after each death to not trigger the mobs hitpoint buff), the hitpoint buff at 15% and the maximum value of the buff at 150% (of the original hitpoint value for that monster type).
I don't think it's unreasonable. It just ups the difficulty slightly as a nightmare mode is supposed to. Or not?
It's something I believe could significantly improve the game, but I fear it wouldn't be trivial enough to implement to hope in a patch from the developers, nor I think it could be achievable through a mod.
But you cannot stop me from wishing, can you? ;p
P.S.
This idea would also lead to two significant problems. The first is about having to attack regenerated monsters with less and less ammunition, the second is about making boss encounters un-winnable if they regenerate health completely after each player's death.
Both of these could be easily addressed, though. The first by regenerating some ammo after each death (and also respawning healing sources on a timer), the second by regenerating only a portion of health of a boss.
--
Think about WoW.
It was praised because of the mild death penalty. No xp loss. But the way Prey works it would be like respawning on the place with the hitpoints restored.
Come on, how's that different from flipping the god mode on? If you like that sort of thing why don't you just pull down the console and type GOD in every other FPS. You can have a "death walk" in every game.
It's kind of obvious that "challenge" isn't a flaw to remove from a game. What was to remove was the *downtime*, not the challenge. Prey's implementation of the "death walk" removes BOTH.
My idea instead removes the downtime without completely removing the challenge.
A mob spawns and starts to shoot at you? Who cares? You can just sit there and make a face at it. It doesn't really matter. If you want you can even go around with the pipe wrench and finish the game with just that.
In these kind if games you used to be cautious when you entered a room. You are on your toes. And that IS fun.
At the end a fight is something you need to overcome. If I intend you to prevail on a 1 vs 1 encounter than you have to figure out a way.
For God's sake, if you remove that, you have NO GAME. It's just an interactive movie that requires you to press a "NEXT" button.
The current implementation of the "death walk" in Prey doesn't make a fight *possible*. It makes it trivial. You don't have to be good at anything at all because the mobs will eventually die.
A game is about a given situation that you need to figure out. Something you learn and then re-apply till you master it. This from Tetris to Pac-man, World of Warcraft or Prey. All games are like that.
The death walk in Prey trivializes too much the combat difficulty because it doesn't require you to actually learn anything. While the puzzles and environments are fun exactly because they are elements that you cannot skip. If a door is closed you have to figure out how to open it. You HAVE TO do it. You cannot just say, "okay, I pass anyway". That's a game. Something that requires from you an active brain usage.
Restoring the health of the mobs who have survived is really a small change, but one would keep the difficulty at least more consistent. Without taking away ANYTHING from the original idea.
--
This is what George Broussard (3DRealms) said about the death walk and its purpose:
George Broussard: Nobody likes dying a lot and losing progress. It's the thing that makes you stop playing a game and take a break.
People like to say "prey is short" or that they finish it in one sitting. Something to think about is the fact that it did not frustrate them enough to stop playing, and that maybe doing things like adding DeathWalk, while possibly making the game shorter by removing re-playing areas, made the game more enjoyable overall.
His other comments aren't as smart, though:
You can achieve the same results with lots of quick saves, even during a boss fight. If you quick save every 10 seconds, you will never lose progress in a game.
There is a massive audience of gamers out there that haven't played FPS games for 10 years. It's about time we started thinking about them.
All DeathWalk does is keep you from losing progress. It does make the bosses a little easier, but then again, most people are frustrated by really hard or complex bosses.
--
DeathWalk is not God mode at all. It's simply a persistant quick save. You don't lose progress. You still have some time penalty for dying (10 seconds or so - more if you try to shoot Wraiths to get full spirit or health).
This is false. If you reload a saved game you do lose progression, but in particular you are bound to your current state. Reloading doesn't restore your health as the death walk does. At the end you can save and reload all you want, but you still need to fight well if you want to win an encounter.
This is not the case in Prey, and is the only reason why I proposed those changes.
Well, Prey was designed to be approachable to more than just core FPS players. That's why it has dynamic difficulty and DeathWalk. In hindsight, we should have allowed a slider to core players could make the dynamic difficulty system harder. That was an oversight.
But still, the goal was to have everyone be able to finish the game. The worst thing you can do is make a game and people stop 50% through it. I'd rather more people finish, than not, and error on being too easy, than too hard.
Most people play games to see and do cool things, and not be challenged at a very high level, by combat.
I wonder if it's possible for me to play a game without having gripes about its design and/or getting ideas that I think would made it much more fun (and consequently runing my fun in the actual game since I keep thinking at the better version that I will be never able to play).
Submitted by Abalieno on July 15, 2006 - 18:46.
This is something that has always been in my wishlist. Try to design the mobs in a game as creatures, with a background, specific behaviour and so on.
What I don't like is having one pattern only. Where aggressive mobs pretty much react only to the player's level and range. I always though that in a game the mobs shouldn't be just generic entities with different statistics. Differentiated not only by a model, a texture and different attacks, but also by different behaviours.
Here you can see how this way of thinking (because it's really about an overall approach to a genre) is linked to all the critics I made against the linear content progression typical of level based games. Instead of "killing the bigger foozle" as you progress, you wouldn't just deal with stronger mobs, but you would have to learn and recognize their different behavious. Something that, even in this case, is much more "systemic" than the linear progression. Less forced in a obligatory sequence and MUCH more appropriate to a "world", where different creatures have their own individuality and aren't exclusively functional to a power progression.
A few games tried to go in that direction, but without much success. Ryzom has creatures that come to watch you and even migrate in packs from zone to zone. SWG also had creatures that approached you. But what really misses is the variation. The possibility of reaction to a number of different variables, both coming from the player and the environment. So that the concrete gameplay will be then much less predictable. And also much more interesting to discover and learn.
It's also again not a wish for complex, reactive AI systems. I repeated in the past that advanced AI isn't something that these type of games should waste lots of resources on. Both Dave Rickey and Raph Koster are strongly against me on this front. But I continue to think that we only need some more complexity, but not necessarily reactive AI, with the hope that it would help to auto-generate content. I have a desire for identity and specificity, but not automation. I would just like to see worlds that are more interesting to explore, more immersive, interactive. Rich.
Less predictable. Feeling not all coming from the exact same mold. But in THIS genre. Not in another. A fantasy world, still, but seen from a new point of view that would make it feel as a totally new experience. Standing out between the rest.
It's an approach that, despite applied to a similar genre and world, would be the exact opposite of WoW and all the other similar games. Instead of simplifying and reducing everything to the essential, the goal would be about delving, adding details. Rediscovering aspects of this genre that have been purged. Similarly to how Diablo "boxed" the RPG genre, making it lose a lot of unique qualities.
We are used to mosters that simply aggro at a range. It's even incredibly annoying if you are traveling and start aggroing all sort of critters that in a few cases can even stun and snare you. What if instead the creature would start growling if you walked too close? What if some creatures could be attracted by a light, or scared by it? Or attacking only to defend their lair? What if some wolves would attack you only if you were alone, while runinng away if you moved with a party? What if they would attack you only when they feel the smell of your food? What if the game could simulate the mechanics of a real hunt?
With zones designed to be more organic. Mobs with realistic loot.
That's the approach I'd like to see. Richer, immersive worlds. Without the need to move away from the fantasy genre to do something different.
(Then if you tell me that is already daunting enough for the servers to check aggro ranges and pathing without adding more variables, okay. Let's make treadmills all life long... *sigh*)
Submitted by Abalieno on July 14, 2006 - 15:45.
It looks like the patch notes for the next WoW update were leaked again. They seem legit, but remember that I've been fooled in the past (only once, though!).
Follow the first link and read them from FoH, because I'm not backing them up here.
Beside the cross-realm BGs that were announced and confirmed a while ago and the world PvP objectives that I commented yesterday, there's some of the very best bugfixing EVER.
Here are some highlights:
--
- Your Friends List and Ignore List has been expanded to hold 100 players.
- Reputation loss from killing NPCs has been drastically decreased across the board, and applies only to the players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.
- Fixed a bug that caused the sound level to increase when alt-tabbing in and out of the World of Warcraft client.
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes result in player names being magnified.
- Dishonorable Kills now apply only to players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.
- You will now be placed in a raid upon entering a battleground.
- Players can now see how many battleground instances are running, but are not able to choose specific instances to join. (Abalieno's note: it will make harder to arrange a match)
- You can now leave a battleground from an option on the scoreboard at any time.
- Token systems have been implemented in Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. Tier 1 and Tier 2 Class Armor sets are now acquired like the Tier 3 sets are through turn-in quests. Bosses that previously dropped the armor have had their loot tables revised. In addition, new items that appeal to a greater variety of playstyles have been added to ALL raid instances as both quest rewards and drops!
- Meeting stones no longer automatically search for party members. Instead, joining a meeting stone for a dungeon now adds you to an interactive list (sorted by name, level, class, etc) of players looking for a group. Groups can be formed by contacting players through this interface. The meeting stone queues for all dungeons can now be accessed from any meeting stone in the world.
- A Guild Calendar has been added to streamline guild management. Upcoming raids and other events can be posted for all guild members to see.
- NPCs that repair now have a Repair equipped items button.
--
Too good to be legit? Probably.
That radical switch in all the raid instances to a token system made me a bit suspicious. No more armor and weapons drops? No more public, immediate catwalks?
I also have to point out that at least two lines from these patch notes are directly taken from the patch notes leaked in September of the last year and that revealed to be fake"
- Dishonorable Kills will now apply only to the players responsible, rather than to their entire party or raid.
- You can now exit a battleground from an option on the scoreboard at all times.
- Meeting stones no longer search for party members. Instead, joining a meeting stone for a dungeon now adds you to a viewable list of players looking for a group. Groups can be formed by contacting players from this list.
Exact same phrasing. Plus a lot of similar changes.
EDIT: Yep, confirmed as fake. With a funny detail:
First and foremost, they're being spread by "Spybot", the same guy who faked the 1.8 patch notes.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 13, 2006 - 18:12.
Mythic is looking to bottom-feeding their team:
If you want to be a game artist, you need to have studied art. Ditto programming. But if you want to be a world builder and work your way up to designer, the best way in is to start in customer service and impress everyone with how smart, creative, and hardworking you are. We're about to have another round of promotions from the CS pool, but we can't promote those deserving men and women until their replacements are trained. That replacement could be you... and it could be you moving to building and design in 2007. So apply, already.
So, if you want to be an artist you need to study art, if you want to be a programmer you have to study programming. ...And if you want to be a designer you need to bend over and do customer support for Mythic. Duh?
No, really. I cannot stress enough how this isn't just an awful practice (back to what Anyuzer wrote long ago, I don't believe that QA and CS are good places where to cultivate good game designers) but it's also a very bad example to give.
It isn't written anywhere that if you are good at customer support then you can be a good game designer. Nor that you can be good at customer support if you are good at game design. It goes beyond every logic, in fact. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the announce denigrates the important work that people do in customer support and QA. That's not the ghetto of gaming, it shouldn't be publicized as something devalorized that is only done by people without any other talent, rejected from other "prestigious" roles, or exploited while they hold tightly onto the remote hope of climbing the social treadmill.
You are really going to risk to fill CS with wannabe designers who have had very bad luck with other opportunities and are now RABID to trample on each other and take advantage of every possible chance. People that couldn't care less about CS and will NEVER do a good work for that simple reason. The very best feeling that they can get out of that work is just a whole lot of frustration. Because their goals don't coincide with their position. They aren't there to do a good work, but to endure it and hope they can make some friends at the higher levels so that they can be promoted among the envy of the other 99% of co-workers.
This type of competition cannot lead to anything good. It's inacceptable to propose jobs with false, remote promises as if the job was a lottery that rewards only one over hundreds. People are gullible, but taking advantage of that is shameful.
So. Good luck with your new position. I can already see an appeal queue. DAoC players are dying to see how smart, creative, and hardworking you are with your replies.
Jessica Mulligan: It isn’t enough to just get a job in customer service at game company and then work your way up the ladder while experimenting with different types of games. Those days are gone.
Submitted by Abalieno on July 13, 2006 - 13:25.
There. I've said it.
They started with horrible game design (post-launch with the Honor system, before it was great), and they will never get out of that hole they dug.
I'm really surprised about how well the game design is on certain aspects, and how completely retarded it is on others (LFG system, PvP, faction grinds).
IGN has an article about upcoming changes to WoW's PvP. In particular they reveal how Blizzard plan to revitalize the world PvP. Something that the players have been waiting from a long time and that Blizzard kept hyping still without giving out any concrete detail. As you could guess from the title, the result is terrible.
The big news today is the scoop on world PvP objectives.
The new world PvP content will take place in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, although it may eventually branch out to other areas.
In Silithus, the objective revolves around collecting dust, called "silithyst," and players will activate the geysers to collect the silithysts. You get a nice "buff" (stat boost) when you turn in the resources, but you'll be flagged as a PvP player as soon as you pick the stuff up, making you attackable by anyone in the opposing faction while you attempt to make your way back the Field Duty camps associated with the Cenarion Hold faction quests. If you manage to turn in enough of the dust, all of your fellow faction members in the zone will gain a buff as well, including those in the "AQ20" Ahn'Qiraj dungeon.
Eastern Plaguelands. There are several towers in this zone, already standing, that will be converted to captureable bases. You'll need to control and defend each tower, and the faction who possesses all four will gain zone-wide benefits like in Silithus.
Increased damage against the many undead creatures there (and in Stratholme).
So, uhm. Travel back an forth beween a resource node and an NPC to fetch back stuff and get a buff in Silithus, and control four towers to get another buff in Eastern Plaguelands.
The motivation is nothing deeper or more involving than a buff, that also risks to be PvE oriented.
I guess the players are so desperate for PvP that even a so bland objective and context could be enough. But it will get old super-fast. It's really nothing more than a minor gimmick, risking to be exploited instead of becoming an excuse for a fun and lively PvP environment (as it should).
The article doesn't say if those objectives will also lead to honor and/or factional points. I guess they will since those two are what keeps alive the shrinking PvP crowd in WoW. But even if they will, Blizzard is still forced to keep the rewards small to not compete with the BattleGrounds.
It's quite obvious that the PvP will never improve till they don't address what fucked it up: the honor system.
Anyway. None of the new changes is particularly interesting or bright, nor I think players reading about them get the desire of playing that. It's again another missed occasion. Nearly two years from release and the PvP still sucks despite the strong demand and the promises from Blizzard (the PvP world objectives were on the "on development" page since release, then they were removed along the war machines). With uninspired and dumb ideas incoming that won't change a thing.
I hope you weren't one of those waiting expectantly about the awesome new changes that Blizzard has hyped on for so many months. Because the result couldn't be more deluding.
It's also not so encouraging that a similar style of world PvP objectives will be used in the zones of the new expansion.
(my counter proposal)
P.S.
On FoH's someone noticed another important potential problem:
Doing PvP in zones with a lot of potentially annoying mobs isn't exactly attractive too.
dunno but I can't wait to pvp in silithus. Where every inch of that god forsaken zone is covered in snaring, rooting, stunning, charging mobs. JFC It'll BE SO MUCH FUN
The irony of choosing Silithus is that most PvP servers have had an unspoken truce in Silithus for months. With all the triggered mob spawns, faction/xp grinding and questing going on it has been more logical and reasonable to leave everyone to their own devices and not have constant, all-out pvp going on.
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