Submitted by Abalieno on June 9, 2006 - 08:46.
Not really talking about mmorpgs, but rather pertinent with what I'm writing these days. From an interesting interview about the design of Ep1 (part one here):
Gabe Newell: What we try to do is get people through as much entertainment as possible. This is an argument I have with Warren Spector; he builds a game that you can play through six different times. So that means that people pay for the game, but don't get to play five sixths of the game, which I feel is a mistake. You spend all of this time to build stuff that most players will never ever ever see, and I feel we try to maximise... I mean, I understand the exploration impulse and we try to make people happy doing that because it's an important part. Exposition, exploration, combat and so on are things that we need to make sure are present, but if only one per cent of your customers see this cool thing that takes five per cent of your development budget, that's not a good use of resources.
This other part also fits quite well with the discussion about accessibility barriers and "noise":
Gabe Newell: It's one of the critical things that playtesting shows. If there's a capability and 80 per cent of people aren't figuring it out then that's probably a defect in the design. Not to be heavy handed, but the most ridiculous example is to have a hole with a Zombine hand sticking through with a grenade. You'd catch on pretty quick! "You know, I'll do something to that thing!" I mean, you'd never do that, but that's a kind of approach you use to get people to understand that there's now a new choice available to them at that point in the game.
Erik Johnson: That's why playing catch with Dog with the gravity gun was so important to the whole game.
Robin Walker: If you look back at Half-Life 2, many of our training things were doing multiple stuff where you might be learning a new gameplay element, but at the same time you're learning about a character that you're interacting with who might be telling you something about the world, and the relationship between you and the character you're dealing with. For example, the cop who tells you to pick up the can, which we want you to press use, but at the same time you're learning about the relationship between the Metro Cops and the players, and the way they use civilians. But at the same time you're building this animosity between you and this character that eventually you'll be able to deal with when you get a weapon, and so on. Our training is all there throughout the game, but it's fairly well disguised with you doing multiple things at the same time.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2006 - 23:43.
From Eve-Online's dev blog:
While we're in the technical design stages, I get to write crazy things about wanting to completely rewrite the turret system and do stuff like make turret animations miss.
While you are at it, what about scaling the "shake" effect on a missle hit with a % calculation on the damage done to the ship?
Crazy things, indeed.
P.S.
And physical missle launchers. So that missles come out of the launchers instead of spawning in the air. Maybe with pwetty missle-shooting animation/effect?
And better graphic representation of the damage states.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 8, 2006 - 04:39.
Again on the concepts of "gated content" and "permeable barriers".
In the second part I tried to explain that the idea of "gated content" didn't negate the possibility to have stories, but instead enhanced it. But that's just one inherited application of the model. Originally the idea wasn't about "parallel worlds", each with its own rules, progression and story, but about general patterns. Like "solo" play, PvP, groups and raids.
So not only the different parallel worlds are accessible because "contemporary" (with the player "gated" from one to the other), but the general patterns on which they are based are also "contemporary". The player has a choice about which *type* of content he wants to experience. The rule is: experience the type of content you prefer without your character being penalized.
This is why I started to describe this model by analyzing the "endgame". There's no need for an "endgame" when finally all the different gameplay patterns that the game has to offer are always open. There's no "before" and "after". There are no obligatory passages. There are no barriers between the players that prevent them to group and enjoy the game together.
This possibility not only offers an open choice to the players without penalizing the characters they play, but it also leads to a game where the players will be much more inclined to take advantage of the different types of content the game offers. When you can easily "switch" between the different gameplay models, then you are also much more inclined to experiement with all the game has to offer.
Which is the real original goal behind those ideas: start with a familiar single player style of experience that a vast public can grasp and recognize with, and then "branch up" the game, progressively, slowly opening and disclosing all the different patterns and possibilities the game has to offer. Like the PvP sandbox. One part is used to "gate" the players to another without scaring them. Without crippling these possibilities with huge accessibility barriers or high prices of admittance.
Mass market, to me, means the possibility to absorb that public by making the game as accessible as possible. Without slapping them in the face with an insane amount of "noise". The idea of "gated content" and parallel worlds is about the possibility to layer different complexity levels, one on top of the other, so that you can slowly convince the player to experiment and learn with all the various possibilities offered.
Which is why "gated content" and "permeable barriers" are strictly tied together and have similar purposes. Educate, "lead" the players through the complexity of a virtual world.
From another perspective: you cannot hope to have a commercially successful PvP game without a PvE side that slowly convinces the players to look over to the other part. The goal is to make that transition as smooth as possible, still without forcing the players, but instead *encouraging* them to switch freely between the parts. Following their own preference.
My idea is: if switching between the gameplay patterns is simple and without penalizations, then the players will be naturally inclined to "cross the lines" (the permeable barriers) and see what's on the other side. And then consider where they want to be, making their own choice.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 6, 2006 - 13:00.
I return again on the fancy term "gated content" to focus more on some concepts that were misunderstood.
It's already frustrating not being able to convince the few who care to read what I write. Even more frustrating when I discover that not only I didn't convince anyone, but that what I wrote was also completely misunderstood and that I'm being criticized for things that I didn't even thought. In particular because I put a lot of effort trying to explain what I mean in the most clear and direct way. Receiving critics is always good, it's less good when what I write is misrepresented. There's no worse failure for me than that.
In these two articles I associated the definition of "gated content" to the "endgame" and the "world traveler" concepts. To understand things better you could also use this reference (tripartite model).
1- There is no "endgame" in this model because the idea of "gated content" erases a "before" and "after" in the flow of the game. What your character does and the different gameplay patterns he can have access to are defined by a personal choice. Your own preference. Not impositions. Not obligatory passages.
One of the steps to reach that goal is about removing "level mechanics" in favor of a skill system. The purpose here, as it is widely known, is to reduce the power differential, but, in particular, to remove the bad habit of using levels to decide the content that you can access and the content that is out of reach. With a skill based system there may be still a significant power differential between a newbie and a veteran, but it is at least possible for people to group together without the game mechanics getting in the way, crippling the experience you gain, limiting the loot you can use and not allowing you to be in certain places. The gap is narrower and more natural. The game doesn't put artificial barriers between you and your friends. This is the part that should be more familiar of the idea.
The other part involves the content in the game. "Gated content" means that there are "contemporary" realities. The "world traveler", aka the player, can switch between these realities following his own preference. While in other games you move from solo to groups and to raids, in my idea I separate the direct ties and make all those "contemporary". As your character is created you can decide, for example, to solo, to group, to PvP or to raid. Do only one of them, do only those you care about or all together. It's your choice. The game doesn't force on you a pattern, nor it cripples your character because you didn't do a specific thing.
2- I've been accused of being willingly to remove the story component from mmorpgs and since this cannot be more FAR from the reality, here some precisations in that direction.
Quoting myself again:
I NEVER wrote that the stories should be removed. This cannot be more false since it's NOT what I think.
The point is that a mmorpg shouldn't be about just ONE story with a start and an end, because simply that's not what a mmorpg should do.
Story elements CAN and SHOULD be integrated in that "world traveler" model, aka the "gated content".
EACH WORLD, or sub-world can have its story. The character IS YOU. You don't need other characters to experience more stories, and those stories in those worlds CAN and SHOULD "end". But not the game and not your character.
Each "gated" world, each reality, correspond to a different story that you can live. A different character that you can become.
The "game", as the overall structure that supports and contains all these worlds/realities, never ends. The NeverEnding Story. The real ideal behind these games. It's over only when there aren't anymore ideas, when there aren't anymore players who want to hear and be part of fantastic stories.
Instead the stories you can experience within each of these worlds WILL and SHOULD end. They can be linear and represent finite story lines. Maybe where to return one day when something new happens that destabilizes the temporary calm you achieved in a previous mission. When the designers of the game decide to move that particular story onward. You step in the gate and become once again that hero in that world. Like when you went back to Britannia with each new chapter of Ultima.
In WoW you cannot go in the Deadmines or Gnomeragon with a level 10 character. When the flying isle of Naxxaraxxwhatthefuck will be released with the next patch you won't be able to see it and play there if you aren't already part of a selected group.
Imho it make sense when your devs puts months of work to release a new zone to let it being experienced by as many players as possible. Instead of cockblocking it behind severe accessibility barriers.
With the model I'm describing you can. There are no barriers separating you from your friends. Everything in the game is offered. And it's you to determine your experience by making your choice. You could just PvP, just soloing, just raid if it's what appeals you. But it's your own choice and all the other possibilities would be always open to you in the case you decide to try something else.
The "gated content" is a model used to actualize the possibility of contemporary realities.
The player "travels between worlds". A world traveler.
You can travel to a world and become a knight, travel to another and become an adventurer, and then a merchant, an hunter, a member of a revolutionary movement that is trying to overthrow a regime, a partisan, a diplomat, a crusader, a paladin, a jester, a doctor, an exiled, a "stranger in a strange land", a demon from another world, a spy, a noble, a soldier taking part on a large siege, a thief, a treasure hunter, an explorer, an archeologist, a wayfarer, a beggar, a mage in search of knowledge, a sailor, a pirate, a revered king, a fugitive, an outcast. A predator or the prey.
A level 50 character or a level 1. All these things at once.
No, you don't "shapeshifts". But the dwellers of these worlds can see and treat you in many different ways. They can have many different points of view and offer many different perspectives. In some worlds your powers don't work, and in others they are much stronger.
These realities preserve their linearity if it's needed. In the case of the world where you are part of the revolutionary movement maybe you cannot just start the revolution as you put your foot in that world. You'll have to first organize things and all the rest that the story is setting for you. They can then be independent from each other or intertwined. For example you could need a special key to reach some place that can only be obtained from another dimension.
Such is the multiverse.
But the most important element is that there are no "you need to be this tall to enter" accessibility barriers.
If you want an even simpler definition think about a game as an aggregator of multiple, possible stories. That is my sandbox ideal. The early Ultima RPGs had already a beginning and an end, but in between they aggregated many different stories, characters and situations that you could discover, learn about and interact.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 4, 2006 - 06:58.
The release of "Prey" (the FPS) is approaching.
In about twenty days 3D Realms will release a free demo that will show both the multiplayer and the single player portion. From the rumors it seems to be a very good demo with a lot of content in it (I miss the shareware days). The actual game is going to be released for the beginning of July.
The reason why I write about this is because this game is not "just another shooter", but one that is adding some quite innovative features that will add some new patterns and break some conventional ones. I'm interested to see how all this will work out. I think the demo is a perfect opportunity to have a peek at how those new features will impact the "flow" of the game and see if they'll really add to the fun.
I wrote already in the past about the game because I believe in those ideas and, if the technology is solid as it was publicized, it could really open so many new possibilities.
Previous articles - here and here. I think the only part I haven't commented is that the game will also have an option to dynamically adjust the difficulty while you play. Just another interesting (and optional) feature to throw in the mix.
A summarized feature list taken from my old post on a forum:
- Portal tecnology opening at every angle breaking the euclidean space
- Different gravity/physics systems active at the same time (ceilings, walls, planetoids etc..)
- Environmental hazards and mobile rooms (the environment moves and can hurt you. No static or fixed)
- Gravity flipping (entire environments flipping upside down with you inside)
- Wall walk (switching orientation, no ladders)
- Spirit walk (switching to a spirit world where you just can use a bow but you can move through impassable barriers in the physical world)
- Death walk (instead of "game over" you enter the spirit world killing flying demons with a bow to quickly regain a decent amount of health before being thrown back into the action)
- Adaptable difficulty system (as you play the game monitors your performance and tries to dynamically adapt the difficulty, this can be turned off)
And I would even add a good HUD design and all sort of imaginative "alien" weapons to that list.
From the latest weekly update, about the innovative approach:
Back in the old days with Doom, ROTT, and the like you had just left and right to contend with. Quake introduced up and down to the mix, and it's pretty much stayed that way until now. While Quake allows for incoming fire to come from almost every direction, the base play remained the same, as you had to be "on" something - up and down were constants for the most part, despite the Z axis now being brought into play. Prey changes that with gravity flipping and wall walking.
And some interesting updates about the delivery system (that I think and hope will be also used for the demo):
One other section that has been tested a lot is the Triton delivery system. Sure, you can go to the store and buy a box, but you will also be able to buy the full game over Triton, and this needs testing. The last few beta builds we got at 3DR have come through Triton, which is kind of cool. What's nice about the Triton system is that you don't have to wait for the entire title to come down to play. After a certain percentage of the game has been downloaded, you are asked if you want to start playing right away. You can choose to start playing (depending on your download speed) after a short while, and the remainder of the game will be streamed to your computer in the background while you play.
My hope is that they don't screw this. First worry is whether this is supported worldwide or just NA, because it would suck if it's limited. Then I hope the final game, and maybe even the demo, will be preloaded at least a few days before, as Valve does with Steam. It's a convenience both for them (spread the server load on more days) and the users (have time to download even on slower connections).
In the meantime I got Half-Life 2 Ep1. It took me almost two days to finish the download on my slow connection, but I was oddly able to play when it was still at 87%. While I was waiting I also got the Darwina demo that was only 20Mb or so (and what is fun is that those are 20Mb of sound files, since all the graphic is generated, and sooo pretty) and five minutes later I was already buying the full version. Right now I'm more hooked up in Darwinia than HL2.
That said, the new chapter to HL2 is really good, with an even stronger cinematic feel. As they defined it, it's a great "rollercoaster". Everything is still on rail, heavily scripted. Plenty of "whoa" moments, cool stuff, wonderful ideas and decent plot. The starting sequence (when you have already the control) is simply amazing and I watched it with a grin on my face. The commentary system is also interesting for those who love the dig the design, even if they seem to end exactly when you would like to hear more details.
The new technical bits aren't so noticeable. The HDR is pretty but it's also heavy on the framerate. After the magnificence of Oblivion and Quake 4 the textures seem less impressive, but the overall level design is still good. The animation system was also reworked but I didn't notice the difference to be honest. In fact I think the animations still aren't on par with the cinematic feel and still look rather faked and awkward.
I think the main innovation about the episode is the presence of Alyx and the "single-player co-op", as they defined it. The interesting part is that she isn't just a bot following around, but a fully scripted character that has possibilities different than yours, so enhancing the interaction and possible variations in the game. As other people have wrote the annoying part is that Alyx sometimes pushes you around as she tries to run past you.
There was a lot of discussion also about the price, which I consider a bit too high. As written on Q23.
With much lower production costs I think Valve's first goal should have been about reaching a much larger audience by making the price more convenient and accessible. But that's just me striving for ideals as always.
Submitted by Abalieno on June 2, 2006 - 06:08.
There was a discussion about EQ2's UI on the FoH's forums and it made me think that too often people tend to completely ignore the most obvious things. While they tend to consider what is instead absolutely irrelevant.
So here why WoW racked up millions of subscribers worldwide and why it dwarfed every other mmorpg:
First Postulate on Mmorpgs Subscriptions: If you suddenly double the minimum hardware requirements, then even your potential subscribers base is HALVED (if not worst, considering the scaling).
There, I said it. WoW's success is for the biggest part contained in that line. No need for thousands and thousands of pages and design researches. Just one fucking line.
Hello? Accessibility barriers. The GREAT MAJORITY of people on the internet have computers that SUCK. This is why browser-based games are popular. Not because they are "casual" games, but because they embrace a MUCH BIGGER potential subscribers base.
Crappy internet connection, instable, badly configured system, old drivers, conflicts, incompatibilities. All these are the NORM for PCs. Not everyone is a geek who assembles his computer, runs benchmarks, reads hardware reviews and figures out obscure quirks in the Bios of the motherboard. This is also why the consoles are much more popular. Not everyone has the patience and dedication to swallow that. In particular after having spent considerable amounts of money for that hardware and STILL managing to see games running like crap.
WoW broke the market in three moves:
1- Low hardware requirements, wider compatibility (here)
2- It launched EVERYWHERE, localized and with a good support (here)
3- Game design all focused to simplify a genre and make it accessible/usable (here)
WoW became so popular because it lowered the accessibility barriers. BOTH from the hardware requirements perspective AND the game design. It's accessible. Its engine is the best out there. It runs more smoothly and without incompatibilities compared to any other mmorpg, old or new. And in nearly all the cases IT EVEN LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER.
Seamless world, smooth framerates with tenths of players on screen each with particle effects and perfect animations, no jerky LOD, impressive environments and clip plane, beautifully painted textures, consistent art direction throughout the game.
Not only it is a charming experience because it runs great and doesn't stutters or crashes all the time, but it even looks great.
And here we come to that discussion about EQ2's interface:
--
I don't know if it's a Nvidia vs Ati issue but the UI simply eats a lot of resources. I use the standard EQ2 UI + maps here and I can be in a zone with 30+ FPS or another with 15 or so, the UI still eats up significantly processing power.
Arguably WoW has the most powerful and flexible UI out there, but where it really shinies is in the fact that it takes nearly zero resources. I can have the barely needed on display or I can open hundreds of buttons, windows, features and energy bars and the game maintains roughly the same amount of frames per second.
It's obvious that it's a matter of how the UI in EQ2 and WoW are engineered at a basic level and rendered on screen. It's surely not a matter of "optimizations".
The point is that in other games the UI really does not impact the framerate. In EQ2 it does sensibly. Now it could even get optimized but the fact that it takes resources will hardly change if it's not recoded at a very basic level, I suspect.
And don't bring up the "focus to support hardware for the years ahead". Slowing down the game just because people have more powerful hardware is not an argument. If I'm buying new hardware it's because I want new possibilities supported, not so that I can swallow horrible engines.
If your hardware requirements are high, then the game better demonstrate that the slowdown is worth it (and it usually never is). Instead of just an excuse for a crappy engine.
--
EQ2's engine is already heavy enough without the UI slowing it down even further. One thing is about supporting better graphic possibilities and advanced engines, another is having high hardware requirements because the engine is not so great. Here the competition is stronger because these things CAN be easily compared.
The same applies to Vanguard. If it looks like crap, then better run *very smoothly*. Because noone swallows extremely demanding engines AND overall deluding graphic quality.
Which is also why I have that terrible nightmare.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 31, 2006 - 01:14.
There are a few concepts in here that I consider particularly important and that have been recurring in what I write. The beginning of the reasoning was an article about the future of the "endgame" over at Nerfbat and it became a good occasion to explain better two terms that I created and that I keep reusing. They are two general design principles that come as a result of my observations and I consider them important because they are more like philosophies that effect radically the way a game can be designed, even if on the surface they are easy to grasp.
These are the two terms and a general definiton for both, then I'll go more in detail about the second:
- "permeable barriers". While the concept is rather broad and extended to the theme of the "accessibility", my definition follows the idea of "lines drawn on the ground". These lines define and regulate a space, but at the same time the player has the possibility to cross them. So they don't transform into "cages". Concretely the idea of permeable barriers offers a single character the possibility to change class, use different skill-sets, switch faction, travel between servers, develop special affinities and proficences and so on. All these "states" define what a character is and can do (think to a class), but they are never completely permanent and definitive and they can be reverted. The "betrayal" quest in EQ2, is a concrete example of the application of the concept of "permeable barrier".
- "gated content". This is specifically about the "content" of the game. In particular it refers to the *types* of content, so, implicitly, the variety that the game offers. It's an idea particularly suitable for a sandbox game, but not only. Each "gate" corresponds to a different pattern available. It is woth noticing that a "gate" here is a conceptual idea, not an actual gate in the game that leads to different sub-games. The main idea of "gated content" here refers to the coexistence of these patterns and the possibility of the player to choose what he *prefers*. One type of content doesn't exclude or preclude another. Not only each type of content available isn't forced on the player (you are at "x" level and have to do "x"), but it also always exists and remains accessible, valid and pertinent throughout the life cycle of that character. Without getting replaced. Instead of passing from casual content to hardcore raids as two distinct and exclusive moments, all these content types coexist as parallel lines. (btw, even here there's a drift of the term, since I also use it for the accessibility when I use a type of content as a "door" on a different type. Not only to switch content types then, but also to integrate them.)
The first point is that the whole idea of "endgame" is silly. A division between two different games, the "main" one and the "endgame" has no reason to exist.
The very first question should be about which one is better and more appealing. In some cases (DAoC) the endgame is where the fun is, you have to endure the treadmill so that you can finally reach it. In other games (WoW) the "main" game is much more appealing, while the endgame is a complete change of pace that not many players enjoy (but tend to endure).
Why this division?
We basically have two ways to play the game. The only motivation to this distiction is that it adds "variety". Okay. Then, if this distinction is about adding variety, a much better design choice would be about INCORPORATING that variety in the same model. So that you aren't bound to a "before" and "after", but instead the two patterns cohexist and you can switch them based on your preference.
The original model here is the sandbox. Or the idea that says that adding variety to a virtual world is a winning choice. The one that accomplishes more the "mission" of these kind of games and enhances the fun. The variety always adds to the fun when the players are NOT ENFORCED into a one-way, obligatory path.
So the idea to have different patterns available in the same game is not a good one. It is an *essential* one. But an essential one that needs to be presented to the players on the same level. And not separated in two moment. The "before" and "after". Univocal and selective.
The "main game" in WoW, the one that is responsible to its success thanks to its accessibility and polish, is all focused on "progress". Not just in character power, don't let the appearance fool you. But also and in particular in "escalation". This is something that WoW does MUCH better than EQ2, for example. Meaning the way it leads you around the zones and then progressively adding more and more elements, with the world really starting small and then branching up. Sense of wonder. It's a sense of progression that follows the whole game and that really involves much more than the character. It involves the world outside and the way the game, step by step, adds elements to the puzzle. Brush strokes that progressively realize an impressive painting. This hooks the players better than everything else because the game not only gives you the correct amount of short-term goals, but also long term expectations and revelations.
There's a problem in this model, though. It gets spoiled. The first time you go through it is really the best experience you've ever had, but once it is spoiled, the sense of wonder and perfect progression don't work anymore. You can create alts, explore the starting zones you haven't seen yet, but it's never like the first time through. After three-four alts it even starts to get annoying. Blizzard is planning for new races and starting zones in the expansion but just adding those won't work. It's the model of the game that gets spoiled and you know already what type of progression and what kind of content you are going to see. "Reskinning" this experience won't do the trick because the experienced player has already generalized all that type of content (kill ten rats, get ten pelts, these are generalizations). He knows already how things work, he knows already that type of "escalation".
The game doesn't impress anymore, it loses its original, strong emotional impact.
The strength of WoW, and the reason why it will continue to be successful, is that for the brand new players this type of perfect progression is retained at no loss. You could have started to play when the game was released or start to play now and you aren't going to miss anything. The game is so carefully balanced that it will be preserved perfectly, while other mmorpgs age horribly and become nearly impossible for a brand new player to get into. Impassable barriers that isolate the "before" and "after" of the community. Which leads to a stagnation and the consequent slow drift into oblivion. It's not just about the "retention" of the subscriptions. It is rumored that WoW has a rather bad retention but one year and half later and it still sells more than 50k boxes each month just in NA. Without new players a mmorpg doesn't go anywhere and old mmorpgs don't lose those new players because they look old. But because the accessibility of the game fell to pieces as a consequence of bad design choices and models.
Often the "good" endgame is about the PvP. The majority of the ideas on Nerfbat, in particular those that I consider valid, are about PvP. It's not a case. "Stalling" is a good mechanic for PvP. Similarly to how the convergence is much more appropriate than divergence in PvP. If every couple of weeks there's an alien invasion on the world that completely destabilizes the PvP scenario, the players would be pissed off. Because the best mechanic for a PvP environment is a "stall". A fixed situation where then the players can manipulate some elements and play their game. But something under their control, not something impromptu or surprising. The "endgame" works in PvP because it is a stalling situation. Finally no other elements come to disrupt the conditions and the players "converge" in a similar situation. PvP needs this sort of "space" to exist. A set situation that reunites the players instead of dispersing them.
What's the endgame in WoW? Well, you cannot gain anymore levels so what is left to do is improve your gear. As a design model it doesn't seem really motivated, it is a silly idea. So why we arrived to it? The biggest game out there cannot be founded on something completely unmotivated, it would be crazy.Well, we arrived to that model not as a design choice, but as a productive one. A "progression" game is like football. You move horizontally, as a front. You cannot move backwards, it would be an heresy (see how hated are exp losses on a death). You are doomed to go on. At some point the game ends because the developers could add only so much content, it's always a finite space (and randomly generated content is also still finited) so, eventually, you arrive at the end. And what then? What am I chasing? The "endgame" here isn't a "necessity" of game design. It's just a necessity of the production. An excuse so that, despite the game is over, the players could feel motivated to continue to play and pay. "Raiding" is in this case the perfect choice to bind that request with a type of content that is structurally redundant and vain.
Think to the "main game" as a bait. Once they "fished" you they can throw you in a bucket of water and keep you there for a long while. Raiding is that "bucket of water".
The absurdity that I often underlined is that this model that is supposed to "preserve" content, since it's the most precious and scarce resource in the game, does exactly the opposite. It *erodes* content and removes it from the game since it's heavily based on the mudflation. Instead of valorizing ALL that the game has to offer, this kind of model just keeps devaluing and replacing constantly. As a continue, counterproductive reaction that finishes just to put a strain these worlds till they collapse.
So is this really the best model to use? Or maybe it is just a spontaneous drift and negative "maturation" (sophistication) of a genre that has lost track of its true principles and drive?
Let's imagine a different scenario and let's say that the content team has finished a small zone with all its quests, dungeons and overall story arc that unifies the various parts. A month later the zone is patched in the game but this time ALL the players can enter and experience it. The player who just bought the game and has been playing for a week as the veteran player who has kept an account for two years. And hopefully they'll even play side by side.
This doesn't mean that the sense of progression should be completely lost since all the content is always accessible. See for example these ideas. My idea is more like a collection of story lines. These can be totally independent or connected. But, while separated, they would retain their own linearity. In a game like WoW this already happens. There are story lines and themed quests, think for example to an instance and all the quests that are linked to it to form a story. Where that model doesn't really work is in the fact that those stories (even a bit too limited in potential) are limited by level. If you skip a part, going back wolud be rather silly. So my idea is about freeing these storylines so that the content never gets obsolete and remains always interesting for the same character. With no distictions between the "endgame" and the rest.
And yes, at the end there could be those ideas vaguely outlined on Nerfbat. But not as a "BAM! endgame". Not as a sudden event that completely changes the game you are playing. But as an evolution from the current model to one that contemplates all these possibilities right from the start. My idea of "gated content".
The idea of the player (and character) as a "traveler of worlds". Who passes smoothly (the idea of "permeable barriers") thorugh different types of content (PvP, group, single player, raid etc..) depending on his personal preference more than external imposition.
I imagine the design concept of the "gated content" visually like a number of portals that can be opened and that lead the character exactly to that type of gameplay he is looking for. A number of "opened doors". Possibilities available. The character is an "enabler" but the lack of a level system keeps the choice always "flat" and valid instead of higly selective. The "traveler of worlds" is the idea of a character that isn't strictly defined, but a roleplay point of view. Ideally that character could enter a portal and become a level 1 guy. Or enter another portal and become a level 50. Or enter another again and become a merchant. The same from the point of view of the content. Dungeons runs, epic raids, PvP territorial conquest, tournaments, storylines. These elements should work like portals that should never be dependent on a obligatory, imposed choice. The game shouldn't cage you into one pattern or one role. It's the player who decides what he wants to experience.
In a sandbox all the options should be available and valorized. And not as in SWG where the game was trying to lock you in one role to preclude all the rest the game had to offer.
These realities should coexist as possibilities.
There are four main points that should be at the center and that I continue to repeat:
- Accessibility
- Immersion
- Gated content
- Permeable barriers
What's the concrete consequence of all this? How concretely changes the game? For example the raid content wouldn't be anymore the obligatory "endgame", nor the only option you have past a certain point. The raid content would be just one *type* of content always available and always valid (and if you want to know concretely my idea of raid content, motivations, execution and reward, look here). Along with all the other types of content/patterns that the game has to offer.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 30, 2006 - 18:06.
In the last few days I've been idle here because, beside being sick, I discovered another geek paradise. The Napster of comics.
On the internet you can really find whatever you want, if you know where to look. The problem is always about finding it. In my case I was frustrated because it's more than a year that I keep waiting to read "Avenger disassembled" (one of the lastest Marvel crossovers). I own every single issue to this day (published over here, not the originals), "House of M" is starting and I'm still stuck to a year ago. This because I miss two issues of Thor right at the beginning of the story arc and decided to wait till I was able to get them. I'm quite picky about these things. The problem is that the crossover was published on a not so popular comic book series, over here, and I was never able to find the copies in a normal newsstand, nor from a specialized shop since they sold out and the publisher still hasn't decided to reprint them. One year and I still have holes in the plot.
So I decided to look on the internet to see if I was able to find a place where I could read the issues I was missing and maybe even find a correct "reading order" so that I could read the whole crossover linearly. I KNEW that there was somewhere a super-organized place archiving meticulously all that was being published. It happens for everything that is vaguely part of the geek world, games, manga, anime, movies, music, pr0n. You would be amazed about how some of these places are organized through a bunch of complicated .cvs lists, directory structures, CRC checks and so on. Beside the moral and legal implications of their questionable activities, the dedication and care of the internet pirates is amazing. They create museums and encyclopedias. So often you find things you have been looking for years without success. It's really not so much about getting stuff illegally to avoid paying it, but more about an *opportunity* to experience things that you wouldn't have otherwise. It's similar to the feeling I was having as a kid when I was riding on my bike for two hours during the summer to reach a city nearby and pass another couple of hours in a book shop finding sci-fi and fantasy books (Van Vogt, E. E. Doc Smith, Heinlein, Moorcock and, of course, Lovecraft were some of my favourite authors). A discovery, a world disclosed. The money is just the opportunity but the world you are interested about is elsewhere. The money is a barrier between you and that world. We aren't interested in the money, or to spend. The consumer mentality isn't the one of those who have interests and passions, but in the one of those who rise barriers in the culture. We are naturally meant to share experiences and to communicate. If I draw a comic I would ideally like it to be read by as many people as possible, and not have an high cost so that only a small group has access to it. This is the mentality of the internet pirates.
Of course it doesn't work. It's a silly utopia. If I'm an author I need my stories to sell or I wouldn't able to get what I need to continue to create them. If the pirates distribute my stories freely they steal my work and kill what I do. They kill me and my possibility to continue to communicate. It's kind of obvious that this model is wicked because it gets legitimation from a system that inhibits the original purposes. I'm here to communicate, but the only way to communicate is to create a barrier around what I do, so that only a limited number of people can have access to it. It sucks! I know it's inacceptable and I know that this world was designed by an idiot. But things work like that and our very reality is based on compromises.
The internet, as in other cases, brings up some basic contradictions of our real world. It happened with the music. You cannot stop people to hear and enjoy the music. It's a *perverse idea* to pretend to transform the music into a commercial product. The music is meant to be heard by the largest number of people. The music shatters paradigms, it shatters barriers, overthrows governments, it changes the world. You cannot confine it. You cannot create borders, lines of separation, barriers. The music is meant to cross them. It's its very nature. Nothing does that better than music. An artist ought to know this, but at the same time he cannot comply with his principles and the principles of what he does, because our real world imposes a value, a price on everything. A quantification of everything. A silly idea of the private property, even if everyone was born on this world and should have the right to walk everywhere.
These are all contradictions and we are all victims in a way or another. Our practical compromises want everyone to conform and comply, with the contradictions and everything. There aren't real answers. But we know that we all have inclinations that aren't exactly going in the same direction this world is. And so we'll keep dragging behind us those contradictions. We ought to love our world, even if it sucks.
So I was looking for those two numbers of Thor. It's wasn't a problem of money. If I read something I want to sit on my armchair, not in front of the PC. Reading doesn't work on a computer. It's a year that I try to find those two friggin numbers but they are sold out and it looked like that I had to start reading without the beginning of the story. So I started to dig the internet to see if I was able to locate one of those corners where you can find everything you ever desired. And I found it.
This time it's not about hidden chat channels, newsgroups or torrent sites. The pirate comicdom lives through a program called Direct Connect. Here some linear instructions to step into this wonderful geek paradise who can offer more than you ever desired.
You can get the latest version of the client from here. The installation and configuration is rather straightforward. This type of peer2peer is based on themed hubs/chatrooms where the users share their hard-disk directories. The most important step is to find the right hub and be able to access it.
These hubs usually have three requirements that you have to satisfy if you want to enter them and stay. The first is about sharing a minimum amount of content before you join the room. It can go from zero to 15 Gigabytes, so the real problem is about having already something to share before you can become a cog of this machine. The second requirement is about sharing content appropriate for the hub. So if you share 5Gb of pr0n and the room is about sharing music you risk to be kicked out as soon as someone spots you. The third requirement is the simpler one and is just about opening enough upload slots on your client. The more hubs you join at the same time the more slots you have to open, which is not recommended since one hub has more than enough stuff to keep you occupied for months. You can increase the number of slot from the "file" - "setting" - "sharing" screen.
To find a good hub and start this journey you go to this site. Here you can search for the public hubs available. In this case we are looking for comics so you type "comics" in the search field on the right and press the button. The list you'll get is a good place to start, but remember that you need to meet the requirements. Here I'm on a ISDN connection, which is barely better than a modem. If I was able to lurk and get enough stuff to meet those requirements I think everyone can.
The best hub for sharing comics seems to be megaman.gotdns.com - if you cannot connect at all it means it is down (it was yesterday for a full day). If you can connect but cannot manage to enter it, the error message should give you enough hints about why you cannot get in (not enough slots open, not sharing enough content). The requirements for this hub are 5Gb of comics or "cartoons". You can then read in the detail the rules when you join.
If you don't have those 5Gb you could find other rooms who have lower requirements. Another very good one is comicshack.no-ip.info which wants you to share 2Gb. And the one with the smaller requirements I could find is thewatchtower.no-ip.info:1411 - which requires only 1Gb but that is also much smaller. The idea is that you start to grind the treadmill so that you can get access to the better hubs. At the beginning I didn't have enough "on topic" content, but you can easily gain some time by sharing other stuff and hope you don't get reported. I know it worked for me :) Other options could be about getting initial content from torrents or newsgroups.
When you are in the hub you can start browsing the legendary library of Alexandria. Whatever has been published is probably available in a way or another. Old, new, it doesn't matter. You can find everything, it's amazing. If you know already what you are looking for you can just use the search function. For example if you want the issue 80 of Thor (one of the two I needed) you just type "Thor 80" in the search box. The client will start looking for all the users in the hubs where you are connected with that issue. The great majority of the files are in a .cpr format. This is something like a faked format, you can manually change the extension of these files to .rar or .zip and unpack them. Or use a particular program. Inside there are just simple .jpg files. In my case I just unpack them somewhere else and use an old version of ACDSee. An issue of 24 pages is usually around 10Mb or so. Quite agile even with a not so fast connection.
When you have the list of the files you can order it by size so that you can see what's the more popular format and get it. Sometimes the scans have a variable quality but in general they are decent. Another good idea is to check the "slot" field on the list. If the first number is not zero it means that the user has an upload slot available, so you can start the download right away. No waiting queues. Since the sharing happens between just two users the download speeds are good.
While you download a file it is possible that the user disconnects or that you lose the connection, but the program allows you to resume the downloads. To do this you just need to go in the "download queue" window, click on the file in the queue and "search for alternate". This system will check the CRC of the file, so even if the results have different names you can be sure it's the same file. If the previous download was interrupted you can take it here from another user and the program will automatically resume the download on the same file. Quite simple.
The other way to find the files is about clicking on one of the users in the chat and "get file list", this will download the full directory list with everything he is sharing at the moment and here you can start to explore and get some suggestions. Like entering a library and starting to browse what is exposed.
And a whole world discloses in front of you :) Things that I would never be able to find over here. Past issues of Astro City, the first issues of Grendel, Dave Sim's Cerebus, Jeff Smith's Bone, the first mini of Longshot drawn by Arthur Adams that I lost so many years ago, the delicious Alan Moore's "Lost Girls", De Matteis superb (and unfortunate) "Seeker Into the Mystery" mini, Warren Ellis' "Transmetropolitan", Rising Stars, Grant Morrison's "Kill Your Boyfriend" (I bought and lost this one TWICE. One lost to school friend and another to a.. uhm, girl. I simply love that comics, it inspired my adolescence) and, yes, even those two issues of Thor that I was desperately looking for a year. Finally I can start reading the crossover and I was even able to pull a complete reading list order from an user who had all of it organized :)
See, it's all stuff that I thought I had lost forever, or that I had no hope to find. Things that aren't being translated over here and that I don't have the opportunity to read. Tomorrow I'm going again to a specialized shop to get some other things that I had ordered. I am not going to stop reading comics because I found a well with no end on the internet. In fact this has lighted my interest again. I think I'll never download things that I can buy because a scan on a monitor just cannot compete with really reading. In fact it could happen that I go buy something that I initially discovered online and that I want in my hands.
Another example is the DC universe that here has been published randomly. Now I can finally dig those absurd crossovers like "Crisis on Infinite Earths". I had never thought that I would have the possibility to read it. Here I discovered crazy reading orders that group more than 700 issues. From the original crossover to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. These comics don't arrive here and for sure I would have never had the possibility to read them and all those tie-ins. Money or not, it just wouldn't have happened.
I don't know how many of those "pirates" that share up to 500Gb of stuff are avid comics readers, but I suspect a lot. I suspect they are some of the most passionate fans that Marvel and DC have and that still buy real comics on real paper. Of course this is always dangerous. I was thinking about why Marvel or DC don't support these kinds of archives directly, offering themselves directly high quality versions of those comics, for example as a service with an accessible monthly fee as it happens for mmorpgs. This wouldn't become a way to make a lot of money, but it surely would extend the reading public and would also give more life to old comics that are still worth reading but that everyone ignores. The archive is bottomless, it's sad that all that stuff doesn't get read anymore.
I guess this doesn't happen because nothing stops a pirate to take even that material and made it available to everyone else for free. That would be a real piracy. Not anymore about sharing a passion and let people read things that would be ignored or forgotten otherwise, but just stealing to avoid to pay even a small fee. Again the ideals don't work really well and we are left to lurk in the illegality to nourish a passion.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 28, 2006 - 17:25.
There's a comment from J. (Vs Jessica Mulligan, hehe) that I really enjoyed:
Yeah yeah, I know, players eat the content, they should be allowed to make their own. No argument there. So why are so many of the supposedly ground-breaking attempts by developers to put the tools in players’ hands so they can make their own content done for games that have user bases that are marginal at best?
I’ll have to take your word on whether Nevrax planned Ryzom Ring from the beginning, but whether they’re being given away free doesn’t make much difference to me, because I don’t know anyone who plays Ryzom. I’ve been wrong about such things before, but unless someone builds some pretty impressive stack of Legos, I doubt much noise is going to be made of any of these projects other than they exist and are available for someone to get busy making more fun, because there’s not enough fun to go around.
I’m not trying to look “edgy.” Rather, I’m annoyed that what many assume is a grand corner-turn in the business of making games looks like one big excuse on the part of developers to shove the business of making games wholly onto their player base. Yeah, it works sometimes. But the developers end up adding a new discipline to their works: Publisher. And that always works well, when a developer decides they’re good enough at business to rely on the work of others, right? No reason to question their motives or future success, right?
Cut me a break, here.
Then let's talk about PvP :)
Submitted by Abalieno on May 28, 2006 - 16:56.
I started writing a lengthy post to explain more in detail some ideas that I consider particularly important and dear to me but now I'm rather tired and I don't have the strength to edit it in a final state.
As a teaser I'll say that it is about the "endgame". What it is, why we have a word to define it, what is its design purpose and role. How to solve radically the problems it presents. Then ideas and comments on the raid content and one important reason about why WoW's PvE is still much more "powerful" and successful compared to EQ2, even if it gets old rather quickly.
You can do your homework and answer those questions on your own :)
I started writing after reading on Nerfbat "The Future of the Endgame". He wrote from a general point of view. I'll do what he cannot do and go in the concrete details. And solutions.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 27, 2006 - 06:15.
"Epic, heroic, pe-petuual struggle..."
Some leftover still from the E3. In this case an hilarious video interview with Paul Barnett (a "design manager", something along the lines of a Mythic - Game Workshop coordinator) who explains what the Warhammer universe and Mythic's game will be about.
Now I know who Paul Barnett really is.
Ramus from Lunar: Silver Star Story!
That small sound clip is an almost perfect parody of Mythic's plan with the game. Sneaking in the cave where the WoW dragon is sleeping without waking it and get back what is legitimate of the Warhammer franchise.
"Now that the warm weather has melted the ice near the dragon's cave, there isn't any time to waste getting started on our big adventure! If we hurry, we may be able to sneak in without waking the dragon. Then we can get a fantasitically huge diamond from its lair worth thousands and thousands of silver, making us filthy stinking rich and very popular in the process!"
The first line is a reference to the time that has passed since WoW's release, with Blizzard having secured their position and success with the game. Thinking they don't need to do much else to continue to tap from that bottomless source of money, not fearing any competition. The dust settled, it's all calm. "If we hurry" is about the correct timing of the launch for Warhammer. And the huge diamond is the symbol of hopes and dreams (popularity! money!), of something that is being stolen back and forth to the point that noone knows anymore to who it legitimately belongs. WoW stole from Warhammer setting and lore, and Warhammer is going to use WoW as a direct ispiration and open antagonist to lure back those players that WoW brought in the genre.
...Or, in other words:
--
Three reasons why Warhammer is a great licence for a MMO:
1- Iconic look
2- An excuse to smash the living crap out of each other
3- A-pe-pe-cciual work with no ending from where to draw from (lore, backstory etc..)
Three "devices":
1- Zone story arcs - With the theme that defines a contested zone
2- Racial story arcs - Race vs Race
3- World story arcs - Between the races, plots, trickeries, "convoluted excuses" to fight etc..
"Everybody fights everybody, for-ever! That's all we are interested in."
Race cliches:
"The greenskin are soccer hooligans. All they do is wander around, pick up sticks and try to hit other people. There are no long term plans, no long term concepts. There's a group of soccer thugs, on the march to glory."
"The dwarfs are the northern(?) working class of England. They live down mines, all they want to do is get drunk. They just want to fight people who call them "short". They have no money, they are very proud of their holes in the ground."
"The high-elves are British posh people. Never done a day working in their lives. Don't understand about "doing the washing". Have had too much time, so they read the la-dee-dar-dee books, get really good with the swords and doing special magic."
"The dark-elves are English posh people who have taken drugs. Basically Lord Byron. They've got money coming out their ears. They have taken a load of opium and have decided that they can run the goddamn world and can have it any way they want."
"The humans. The empire is basically humans. You know, wonderful dreams, terrible nightmares. They don't really pay attention, build huge amount of technology. They like to explode and destroy the world. Cut down all the forest, they don't really understand it."
"The Chaos is humans that have been totally corrupted, tentacles, crab claws, extra eyes, horns. Some people get confused and think Chaos is like the devil. No, no, no. It's not fire and brimstone, it's chaos. It's custard falling from the sky. It's an arm that turns into a sword. It's the ability to cut open your arm and mice(?) pour out rather then blood. It's chaos, it's corruption."
"It's not a computer game. It's a total hobby experience. We want you to buy this game, and never buy another one."
"We want you to spend all your time playing it. We want it to involve: skill, commitment and imagination.
- The more skill you put in, the better the game is, the better you feel.
- More commitment you put in, you got piles of money, you got a great(?) of played, the more the game rewards you.
- Imagination. Over in America they call it "immersion". It's not immersion. Immersion is playing Half-Life and not realizng the house is burning down. And your wife's left you. And you haven't slept for weeks. Imagination is: I played the game and then I want to talk about it, go to the websites, draw pictures about it, have t-shirts, I wanna think about what I'm going to do when I play next week, I talk to all my friends about it.
If you get skill, commitment and imagination, you get a total hobby experience. And a hobby experience should grab you to the core of your being and be the only thing you want to do.
That's the game we're making."
Submitted by Abalieno on May 26, 2006 - 06:13.
Here's a poll I've noticed on EQ2's forums (need to be subscribed to answer):
In other words 76% of those who answered the poll prefer to play up to a full group, while a small 14% likes larger groups.
I bet that in WoW the raid lovers would be even less in comparison.
--
Adding some comments. I'm often (more often than you imagine) a "solo" player but I don't like this general trend. In fact I believe it's pretty negative for the solo players, the community and the overall game.
It's important to understand these trends and not just dismiss them superficially. In this case the situation is not encouraging. And that poll could be considered more as an "alarm". Something that is also generalized to all mmorpgs, so not a specific problem of EQ2.
Stealing a comment from Darniaq that has some implications in what I'm describing:
* Sometimes, yes, people just want to get in for 15-30 minutes to kill some stuff. So forced-grouping is a problem for them.
* Other times they're just shy. They want the opportunity to see other people, and experience the economy, but they won't want to openly interact.
* Other times they don't match the requirements of a group. Like, how many guilds would let a pickup raider join them on an AQ run if that raider still had green equipment?
* Other times someone just rubs them the wrong way, but leaving ostracizes them from the larger group.
I think there are design implications if the players start to deliberately avoid group content. It's a symptom that needs to be considered seriously because it may say that something in the game doesn't work too well.
In my case I said I'm often a solo player. But the real truth is that what I do depends above all on the *game* and not on my personal preferece of a playstyle over another. There are mmorpgs where I NEVER grouped with anyone even if I played for months. There are mmorpgs where I passed the majority of my time in groups and got even quite involved in the community.
Are solo players growing consistently in the genre because they really don't want to bother with other players, or because they bump against accessibility barriers and design models that aren't exactly encouraging and rewarding the cooperation?
Is "solo play" a real necessity or just a reaction to a lack of accessibility?
I have my answers as always and I know about these problems rather well since when I started playing mmorpgs I could barely write some words in english. Being "shy" isn't a small detail, in particular when you face something completely new to you. Game design can do a lot in these cases, to overcome those "barriers".
In fact I think there's noting more important and pertinent to game design than that.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 26, 2006 - 02:22.
Haha, this one is really fun.
SirBruce's E3 report was linked on Vanguard's forums beside other places and it got the attention of Brad. The result is great.
Both with their usual shortcomings. SirBruce desperately attempting to defend his credibility with the result of ridiculizing himself more than what everyone thought possible and Brad continuing to use EQ1 as a quality standard (combat more action oriented than EQ1, beta longer than EQ1).
Two noteworthy passages, because I'm mean:
Actually with the gamespace growing my estimate has grown too. I said in the past that we'd likely do 250k-500k. I think now we could on the more optimistic side go north of 500k.
Along with Turbine with MEO and Bioware with the undisclosed project, they are the third company now to consider the 500k at arm's reach. Fun how WoW is feeding silly dreams. Everyone wants a slice of that pie.
And:
heck, I took back Lum to see everything and his report was pretty positive
That's just because Lum is now always nice and optimist :)
--
EDIT: More from Brad:
We do need enough subscribers such that Vanguard is a profitable venture such that Sigil can go on, making expansions and the like, as well as achieve meaningful profit sharing with our employees.
As I've said, however, to achieve that requires around 200k. I think given the appeal of the game, it's design and focus on immersion, long term gameplay and retention, freedom, etc., the size of the audience we are targeting, how much the gamespace has grown, the assertion that a significant number of people for whom WoW was their first game will find themselves wanting a game like Vanguard for their next MMOG, and the fact that because of our pedigree that we will attract a significant number of EQ 1 and EQ 2 players (and I don't mean just existing subscribers -- EQ 1, for example, while it peaked at between 450-500k subscribers, also has sold 2-3 million boxes -- so there are a huge number of people who played EQ 1, for example, over the last 7 years that while they aren't currently subscribers, were at one time, and are likely to be looking for the 'next' EQ)... I think if you consider all of that, a very conservative number for Vanguard is between 250k and 500k, a likely number 500k+, and a more bullish number one that approaches a million.
And from Lum:
More to the point, Vanguard is a game aimed at a very specific market: people who played Everquest 1 and wanted "more Everquest". I don't think it'll make the 500k+ numbers that Brad McQuaid's talked about, but it will make enough to carve out a respectable niche, much like Eve. There's easily 100-200k ex-EQ players out there who miss Vox raids. (Most of them post on FOH's boards, I think.)
Honestly, niches are where you're likely to see originality and new design ideas, not in World of Warcraft version 2.4.
I did warn the Sigil guys at E3 that the people who post on beta forums are not the people who are going to be playing when the game goes live, more often than not. I've yet to see an MMO where the message board traffic didn't drastically change as the game transitions from beta to live. Expectations change, massively. The game is no longer a dream or an ideal, it's a service.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 25, 2006 - 08:44.
It seems that Ubiq isn't going to miss Shadowbane:
Back to the pixel mines I go. Today is my first day as the Lead Combat Designer for Bioware Austin.
In the jobs page at Bioware it is interesting to notice one of the "skill sets" recommended:
Familiarity with fantasy role-playing games is a must.
From SirBruce (attendible or not):
In a surprising statement at E3, Rich Vogel says they are aiming for 1 million subscribers, with 200K – 400K being at the minimum of what would be considered successful. This should give us an indication of the potential scope of this game and the resources BioWare is committing to it.
It seems also that the game will have a focus on the "story" (also confirmed by this request), which doesn't really appeal me since I'm waiting for more interaction, PvP and sandbox-types of games more than content-driven.
This is all I've gathered till now. Only one thing is sure, we won't see much for at least another couple of years:
BioWare, like Blizzard, does not rush things.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 25, 2006 - 07:03.
I was reading the second part of an article on the evolution of level design in 3D games (mostly FPS) and it made me think that the game design has always evolved after new technology was available. In the FPS history the big titles have always corresponded to brand new engines and features. Significant advances in the technology to support new means of interaction.
This brings me to an older post:
One (of the many) requirements for new content is that it must be backed up by new systems.
Basically, content is a variation on systems.
You can only produce so much worthwhile content using a given system without having the player say, “It’s just another fedex quest, except I’m delivering jelly babies instead of flour” or “This monster is really just and orc with a different 3D model.”
Game design is and should be strictly connected to software development. Innovative games will need to be based also on significant progresses on the client and server technology. And this is also why innovation is more likely to come from consolidated, veteran companies instead of indie game development. Right now it looks like to have a mmorpg you just need chat functions, a trerrain engine, a pretty render for the water, a skybox, monsters and combat systems.
The high number of clones of mmorpgs is also due to the fact that the software development is much more complex and it barely progressed. Both EQ2 and WoW are supposed to drive the genre forward since they can take advantage from their many resources, but their upcoming expansions add very little on the front of software development. New levels, new zones, new monsters, new skills and spells. Stagnation. Maybe only the flying mount in WoW is something new.
I'm also thinking to Guild Wars. The second chapter is supposed to have roughly the same amount of content of the first chapter, in fact it was sold at the same price. But when the game came out I didn't buy just the content. But also all the new technology that made the game possible. Technology that was then reused for the second chapter with very little improvements or additions.
The same with the upcoming release of "Episode 1" for Half-Life 2 (1 June). It isn't expensive because they want to sell roughly six hours of content for 20$. But because the game is based on old technology (beside new filters like HDR) that is being reused, so the final price should also reflect this aspect. The production costs should be much lower. So the price.
It's undeniable that when you pay for a game you also pay for the technology that made it possible. Episodic releases and expansion packs more and more cut to zero the software development and still pretend to be sold at a full price. This doesn't sound right to me. Content isn't "time wasted". Content is variation and support for variation.
Beside the considerations about the costs, the main point is that the game design cannot progress without being integrated with an active software development. This is a CRITICAL issue for a mmorpg, whose technology research and progress is often completely abandoned just after the game is released (beside bug fixing).
It's quite ovious that the limited life cycles of the current mmorpgs are a consequence of this behaviour. Software development stops and you can only stretch the game systems so far before the players see that there's really nothing new beside cut&paste of the same stuff. The downward trends aren't a rule. They are the consequence of a stagnation that comes as the result of a lack of support on the game. Even if mmorpgs continue to release expansions there's often little to no development on the technology to support new features and evolve the game.
Immobility -> Stagnation -> Downward trends
The cause is still the lack of a true support.
At the same time this has also brought to the useless "sophistication" of the latest mmorpgs, with Vanguard as the most glaring example: aggro lists, multiple targets, complicated relationship and intergaction between the skills. All kind of GUI-intensive gameplay that I defined as a direct byproduct of the meta-game we are forced to play.
The way Raph rewrote my point:
he argues that the traditional healer role that exists in the modern MMORPGs only exists to fill a need in the core combat game system; that it is, in other words, purely mechanical, and present merely as a formal system, not because it captures the spirit of healing in any way.
Along those lines the current evolution (or better, convolution) of combat systems with the insane multiplication of hotbars, buttons, triggers, colored bars and pop-up messages.
It's like if we hit a wall and are trying to compensate the lack of advance through the sophistication of what's already available. A "specialization" of a genre out of its natural context and evolution.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 25, 2006 - 04:03.
I noticed that Aggro Me linked a video with EQ2 players doing crazy jumps around Freeport. It reminded another video that I saw the day before about a totally insane domino setup made in Oblivion.
"Empowering the players", or: things you cannot do in mmorpgs.
Try for example to do those jump in Guild Wars, or, in the case of the domino example, try to give the players the possibility to dig holes in the terrain. The day after the whole world would be transformed in a Gruyere.
When I was imagining my "dream mmorpg" and thinking about focusing on the interaction, I got the idea of allowing players to "push" each other. Well, a simple feature like this would be already a disaster, but also "magic". Think for example of sitting near a cliff, watching the panorama. A player passes by and pushes you down the cliff. See ya. It's already a mini-game!
Add a platform as a limited space, add five players on it and then let them toy with the "push" function to see who's the last one to remain standing on the platform.
It could be already a fun model that could lead to add some variation in a game and add to the experience. For example those thoughts lead me to imagine the "inferno" zone. A full PvP zone mingled with PvE where squads of players have to move around with flying platforms. Through a simple physics model these platform can bend in a direction (depending on triggers or players' position) and the inclination would affect the physics model. Add both PvE and PvP combat to this situation and you would have the most crazed experience ever in a mmorpg.
There are lots of possibilities. During WoW's beta you could create fireplaces to cook stuff, it's still possible in the game. But during beta these fireplaces had collision on and the players learnt to use them to create absurd piles as ladders to reach unreachable places. I remember insane piles in Ironforge going up to the roof where the gryphon passes right now and people sitting on top of the auction house. The result? Blizzard removed the collision from the fireplaces so that you couldn't stack them anymore.
While it's not possible to give the players "control" in a game, all these tools can be extremely innovative and precious *in a mmorpg*. Not in a single-player game. These features aren't a limit in a cooperative game, they are a potential that must be governed. It's when you can affect other players that things become interesting, that what you do achieves a meaning. The interaction becomes the focus of the game. A game-world becoming consistent and moving steps away from game-y environments where you can only follow what is strictly part of the game. The overall idea of a "world" as opposed to just a game.
3D is powerful even for that reason. You can look around and turn in the direction you weren't supposed to look to. Or jump and reach places where you weren't meant to be.
At the end the driving purpose of these mechanics was the "immersion". Or the possibility to shape an environment coherently with the expectations of the player. Or: self-consistence.
If it isn't possible to give the players the control, it's still viable a modular approach. The video from Oblivion suggested me some interesting possibilities for a "trap system". Think for example to a PvP environment where the players can conquer territories and castles. It could be possible to build a simple trap system made modular so that a castle would have a number of hook points where you could place triggers and related traps. With a good modularity (different triggers, different traps, linked triggers and traps etc..) it could be easily possible to remove the predictability and obtain a system that still plays within the rules while adding variance to the game. Think about then letting the players set traps in the forests, set alarms and so on.
All these tools would add very little to a single player game, but they could become truly interesting in a game where you have more ways to interact and affect other players. With rules so that these systems cannot be used out of their context.
Adding this type of "variation" and focus to other types of interaction beside combat and enhanced treadmills, are ways to shape an immersive world. Think about going to hunt in a forest, and have the animals not react just to aggro radiuses, but to sound and line of sight, so that you would have to sneak in slowly and pay attention to not scare your prey and let it run away (instead of suddenly charge against you in every case).
These are ways to make the experience richer and more immersive. To create truly interesting and FUN virtual worlds. This is the "variety" I want to see. Consistent and immersive. Not penguins and metaverses.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 23, 2006 - 11:27.
I noticed on mmorpgdot something about "Mourning", one of those vaporware mmorpg projects that exist only to demonstrate how people are gullible and that mmorpgs are the new cult (just open a website saying you are working on a new mmorpg and the forums will get swarmed with goons). If you search for "mourning" on this site you can find some fun about its launch a year ago.
Here's some recent fun:
Nuanced Entertainment to develop Age of Mourning.
Based in Greenville, South Carolina USA , with additional staff located all over the world , Nuanced Entertainment is focused on the development and research of Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming. Nuanced Entertainment consists of a tightly knit group of seasoned professionals which have held positions with such organizations as Electronic Arts , Blizzard Entertainment and NCsoft in the past and have been involved in many of the higher profile titles in the MMOG genre such as Everquest , World of Warcraft and lineage 2 as programmers and artists bringing with them an indispensable wealth of knowledge.
It looks like now everyone and their sister has Blizzard devs in their company. Come on, I really cannot believe that someone working for one of those three companies prefers to start a contractor studio to work on that sort of crap that will never get released. Is this really the only way for emergent developers to find a place? Nah, I don't think it is, the situation isn't that awful.
This is definitely a complete waste of resources. If you give a look at the website you can see that they are supposed to work on three/four projects at the same time (one is a MUD?) and that "Mourning" is being co-developed with another studio called "Loud Ant".
But the most fun comes from the description of the game and main goal:
Age of Mourning is about your deeds and continued struggle to carve out your name within the world. Age of Mourning is about your bloodline. Most MMORPG's claim to be realistic online worlds when in reality they are nothing more than static level treadmills that eventually only cater to the high end player base. Once you have "leveled up" and experienced all the low end content; there is really no purpose for it any longer and it rarely if ever gets any attention so it remains a useless forgotten experience when it could be much more. In Age of Mourning our world is truly dynamic and always changing. Because of our bloodline system, players have the ability to experience not only new high end content but also new low end content because of the endless life cycle of being reborn and dying while continuing their bloodline or lineage. This endless cycle allows us to concentrate on both the low end and high end experience and no longer makes the low end gaming experience useless over time. No longer is there a high end cap. Players will experience all the game has to offer continuously in a changing , endless , real world gaming cycle.
Eheh, yes. You have read it right. Their world is "truly dynamic and always changing" because you have to regrind all over again all the content every time you die.
They are trying to sell this as a quality. It's incredible how many amateurish projects out there can reach those peaks of design stupidity. It's really all on the most basic and elementary level possible. And they have no clue. Less clue than a player randomly picked from the battle.net community. I'm in pure awe.
I'm writing about this essentially because I already examined this silly point of view. And defined it "selfstabbing".
See also this other shorter point of view.
That goal they want to reach is actually possible. But you don't reach it through permdeath. You reach it through sandbox models and a flat power growth on the characters (no levels). Aka: permeable barriers.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 20, 2006 - 18:25.
Even Eve-Online has its own Battleplan. You can read it in the dev blog feed I've set up (scroll down).
Oveur is probably the most competent mmorpg producer currently in this industry but the recent announces didn't please me much (the delay to the Factional Warfare and the support for voice chat, for the most part). With this battleplan he goes in great detail to explain what are the reasons behind those choices and I think I'll be back already in September if everything goes as they are planning (I expect delays). They haven't lost the ambition, even if I don't share some of their choices.
Most of what's written in the Battleplan is what they already announced at the E3, but there are a few relevant changes about their schedule.
Actually, from the forum posts I read, the main point of Kali's delay isn't such a bad thing. TQ is doing well and a good stable Kali release is the best thing for everyone. However, Factional Warfare seems to be the main object of frustration. While it's great to see such enthusiasm for a single feature within EVE, there is a boatload of reasons for the segmented release.
Yes, there's another delay. Initially the DirectX 9 engine upgrade was planned to be released around September, with the first segment of the Kali patch scheduled for a late June/early July release and Factional Warfare not sooner than next year.
The new plan pushes back the engine upgrade to April 07, if not later, even if Oveur says that it may arrive sooner. While the first segment of the Kali patch won't arrive before September and with the Factional Warfare that should be ready before the end of the year.
The reason of these delays, in particular about the first Kali patch, is the launch in China:
China is a very big project. We realized that it would be big, but never this big! The China release was not supposed to have any effect on Tranquility - and to try and ensure that, we doubled the number of developers here at CCP. We're now up to 96 people.
Still, because of EVE's complexity, there is a need for a lot of the talent to work on the China release at some point in time, which has caused a cascade of resource shifts. With the expectations of the China market and the nature of the MMO industry over there, you only get one chance (the China MMO market alone is bigger than its entire western counterpart).
We therefore switched the focus points of a number of core developers to make sure we would be successful. And I'm sure you would ask why; how can EVE China be in a position to cause delays for Tranquility projects?
It's really simple at its core. If EVE is successful in China, the revenue which would become available to fuel the evolution of EVE would skyrocket.
--
We tried to prevent EVE China from affecting the Tranquility release schedule and diverted considerable sums of our revenue into trying to ensure that. However, it still happened. Fortunately, EVE China will get launched over the next month and the effects of a successful EVE China will bring EVE to new station-dancing, planet-bombing, asteroid-bursting heights.
So the launch is planned for June and they seem to have high expectations about it. I hope everything goes as planned but launching a product in a bigger market doesn't mean that it will automatically scale with it. We have already plenty of examples of mmorpgs launched in different zones and with much different results.
Lineage didn't go anywhere in the western market, WoW was extremely successful in the eastern market and EQ2 didn't even manage to successfully launch. It's extremely hard to find a pattern. Summary: unreliable results.
It will be interesting to see how the eastern market will react to a completely different product like Eve, but at the same time I would keep the expectations realistic. It's extremely hard to predict how this launch will go and how it will affect the future of Eve.
About the delay to the "Factional Warfare" (announced for next year at the E3) it seems I wasn't the only one deluded:
Prioritize, dammit! Factional Warfare is God!
As much as I agree with this point, it's also the most risky project we have done for a while. We don't want a situation where 120.000 subscribers start doing Factional Warfare only. (Remember level 4 agent missions?)
Likewise, there are a number of core features that need to be in place for us to be in a position to release Factional Warfare. Better Combat Organization is one, the Contract system is another. This simply needs to be taken in steps.
The main frustration comes from the timeline, since the path to Kali spans the next year from now and Factional Warfare would be at the end of that. Well, this isn't exactly how it is today, but plans tend to change.
"Plans tend to change" and here is the new planned "best effort" schedule:
Kali One Release - September 2006
This is what we're aiming to release in Kali One. The list is created from a number of criteria, the main factors being a "Prerequisite for future release", "low risk, short development, big bang" or "we really need to get this done" project.
* Contracts
This is the most extensive addition in this release, something which will affect players of all ages. Gives you the ability to manage corporations offline and create "missions" for players and corporations alike.
* Combat Organization
The new seamless map with new system scanning, new gang features and better facilities for situational awareness.
* Exploration
Rewarding exploration of space, utilizing new system scanning and the new seamless view (see above), enabling you to discover escalating paths. This is a prerequisite for Next-Gen R&D, which will be used for gathering a plethora of R&D items.
* Next-gen Research & Development
We're opening up this aspect of EVE with Reverse Engineering and Invention, enabling you to create Tech II blueprint copies by gathering knowledge and technology through various means, such as exploration.
* Combat Boosters
Creates regional uniqueness for 8 regions, from 0.0 COSMOS constellations with unique resources to mini-professions and specialized starbase structures. A whole value chain will be created around these items, enabling players of all "ages" to be part of the bigger process.
* Ship Upgrades & Salvaging of Shipwrecks
This instantly creates content throughout the whole EVE universe. By making all destroyed ships - player and NPC alike - drop new ingredients, which are salvageable with the right profession skills and tools, we create a massive market for ingredients and ship upgrades, which the average EVE player can now utilize to further upgrade his own ship.
* Tier-3 Battleships
The third battleship will be added to all races. Battleships are one of the most frequently used ship classes in-game and the class has only had 2 ships for each race. It's time for the third Tier.
* Tier-2 BattleCruisers
This popular ship class receives its second battlecruiser to all races.
* Eight New Regions
We'll be opening up the eight existing but closed regions in the "top right" section of the universe (No, not Jove, just below them). They won't be owned by any NPC faction and there will be no conquerable stations, only ore and stuff. This is done to make room for more players. It will include various rogue NPC entities.
This is our goal for September. Some of this will in all likelihood not make it, but now you have an idea of our intentions and what we want to achieve.
Kali Two Release - December 2006
Factional Warfare. Nothing else.
Kali Three Release - April 2007
Our final graphics engine upgrades and a similar feature set to Kali One.
The "contract system" is probably the most interest feature they are going to add and that I commented along with the Factional Warfare as they are strictly connected (it's the backbone of the mission system that will be used dynamically by the NPC factions to assign tasks to the players). But I don't think it will have a so huge impact on the game during this first stage.
The other features aren't so clear but there will be more dev blogs coming in the next weeks with exactly the goal to go in great detail about each change. In the meantime there's this older post with some more details. The most important point is to understand how they'll be integrated with the game and made accessible to the players. They say that some of those features will have an impact on everyone, we'll see if this is true and how the players will react.
I just wish they took some time to add formations (I'm waiting them since they were promised in beta) and a better combat representation. Those are still my pet peeves along with some smaller bugs and inconsistences that are in the game since forever.
The delay to the Factional Warfare is unsurprising and expected. As Oveur explains it depends on many other systems and it could easily become the most radical change in the game since release. The potential is HUGE and I really hope they get it right. My disappointment about the delay was mostly because this is a system so complicated and rich that it will become more a "thread" for all the future updates than just a system that is being added and then left behind. I see it as a whole new direction for Eve. A new beginning that should become an overall structure where every other part of the current game will be relocated and reorganized. So it was better to start this as soon as possible because I saw it as an ongoing project that will absolutely need to be segmented by itself. There's a first step and then all the rest to add more "juice" to it (professions, new missions, new relationships, careers and so on).
Probably the biggest challenge is about putting player corporations and NPC corporations in the exact same condition and potential, so that the overall Factional Warfare structure will include both seamlessly and without discriminations (in the sense that the "logic" of this system won't make any difference between a player corp and an NPC corp). If this happens it will be easier to integrate the current corp activities in the new overall scheme without disrupting them. This is how I would plan to solve the problem outlined by Oveur, instead of nerfing the impact and potential of the whole system:
We don't want a situation where 120.000 subscribers start doing Factional Warfare only.
Instead I think they should. But continuing to do what they are doing already WITHIN the context of the Factional Warfare. I see this system as an overall organization. A "motivation". Rules and possibilities that will apply in particular to the corps that are already active in the game.
I don't mind the delay by itself, but I think that the accessibility of the game should have the priority and I hope that the Factional Warfare won't be limited to just a weak attempt without fulfilling its true potential or really starting to move the game in that new direction. It's both evolutionary and revolutionary. It's important that it won't be rushed out, but at the same time it is important that it can become an overall structure for the game, and not just a sidetrack.
Before it was wishful thinking. With the added resources and the growing playerbase this is becoming a necessity for the game. It needs to evolve to support what will come next.
After having said all this, I'm going to criticize what Oveur says about the voice chat. In particular about the implicit accessibility issues:
Sure, not everyone wants it. That's one of the main reasons why only those that do want it will have to pay for it. It's optional. There will be opportunities for a corp to enable it for all its members, which is really our main target group.
Nobody is forcing you to use it.
Well, this is far from reality. Voice chat can discriminate and when you are not alone like in a mmorpg you are never really free. You'll have to adapt. If you can.
Simply put: some can and want to use it, some cannot. This will become another selective process and it will become another barrier. Who is in and who is left out.
The optional support for the voice chat WILL create reasons for a discrimination and WILL divide. This is never good for a mmorpg, whose main purpose should always be about integration.
As I wrote, selective processes are THE WORST OF THE WORST for a mmorpg.
Quoting Darniaq again:
What actually matters is the rules players set. You can mock and sneer all you want, but if 39 people use Voicechat for Raiding or PvP or just dicking around at the Auction House, the 40th person is going to use Voicechat too.
Players make the rules. Everyone else decides to follow them or gets excluded.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 20, 2006 - 14:38.
I gave a quick look at the notes for the next patch 1.11. I guess we can expect this one to go live by the end of June if everything goes well. They'll need some time to test all that hardcore stuff if they don't want to repeat the mistakes of the previously released epic dungeons.
The 1.10 patch went live at the end of March. It looks like WoW definitely settled for three-months path cycles. On the positive side I have to admit that they are doing more than everyone else with the live patches and the detail with which they address the game problems and inconsistences. They are still doing a very good work from this perspective. In particular if you consider this insteresting point (from Tigole's interview at Gamespot):
The exact same team building the expansion is also building the live content updates.
What I strongly criticize is instead the direction of the whole game. The excecution continues to be excellent. And the decision to keep the team together instead of splitting it between live and expansions is another of those ideas that the mmorpg industry still has to learn.
Other two unrelated highlights from the same interview:
The flying mount can run on the ground faster than epic mount speed.
We know that sometime in WOW's lifetime, we're going to upgrade the graphics engine.
Let's continue with some highlights from the 1.11 patch notes:
The cost to unlearn talents will now decay over time.
A good, long overdue change.
After a disconnect from the server, it is now possible to log back in immediately, instead of receiving the message, "A character with that name already exists."
Asking this on every game since forever. I wish Mythic would copy them here (in DAoC you not only cannot log in if you lag out, but you need to restart the whole client after every attempt).
As a note: EQ2 is still superior here. I can disconnect and then quickly reconnect and the game would recuperate without even disconnecting.
- Chain targeted spells and abilities (e.g. Multi-shot, Cleave, Chain Lightning) will no longer hit stealthed or invisible units unless visible to the caster.
- Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on player targets as on non-player targets. In addition, Intimidating Shout now follows that player versus non-player distinction, while previously it did not.
- Periodic Healing: Spells which do periodic healing will now have their strength determined at the moment they are cast. Changing the amount of bonus healing you have during the duration of the periodic spell will have no impact on how much it heals for.
- Reflection: Effects which cause reflection will no longer reflect triggered effects separately from their base effects (eg. Impact, Improved Shadow Bolt, Aftermath, etc.)
Good bunch of consistence fixes. In other mmorpgs these would be just "working as intended" and ignored.
Optimization code known as "M2Faster" is now enabled by default. M2Faster can improve performance in crowded scenes when "Vertex Animation Shaders" is turned on.
I had this enabled when they introduced it a couple of patches ago. But on my Geforce 6800GT it barely made any differece.
To enable this manually you need to add the following line to your "config.wtf" file in the WTF directory of the game:
SET M2Faster "1"
Or type in the game chat: /console M2Faster 1
It should save the variable in the config file automatically.
Alterac Valley
Most of the NPC guard units have been removed.
Creatures that remain in Alterac Valley have had their hit points reduced.
Another long overdue change.
As I wrote a while ago: NPCs in PvP aren't a bad idea on its own, but only if the respawn timers are really long. This is not the case in WoW.
Overall it looks like a good patch from the game design perspective. Beside what I quoted the patch has:
- New catass raid instance (Naxxramas)
- Tier 3 armor sets for all classes
- Bunch of class changes that I won't comment
- Key rings
- Some changes to the cooldown timers on potions and items that seem to make sense
- Nature resist recipes with the Cenarion Circle rep for the catasses
- UI improvements to the raid interface (ported some standard features from CTRaid)
- Flight paths added
- Some PvP Honor armor sets upgraded
- Removal of bijous and coins in ZG (?)
This last one leaves me perplex after what Tigole said in the NY interview before the E3. As I highlighted there, he said that a token system + reputation don't work well together and they were thinking about changing it. I wrote that I was expecting this to be an intention only for the new content that will be added in the future but the changes in this patch refute my theory (which is good). At the same time I don't understand the logic behind the changes.
This is what Tigole said specifically about ZG:
ZG was supposed to be a stepping stone into raiding. So you take a guild that has little experience and they go into ZG and for a new group, it’s going to take them a few tries to down the first boss, Venoxis. And they finally kill Venoxis and what do they get? Probably one blue item and then this token item. But even using that token item might require Honored reputation, and so they feel like they’re not being rewarded.
I had that happen to me on one of my characters and I was like, “This is just broken.”
Here I underlined the part that Tigole explained not working really well. It looks like the problem is the reputation being a cockblock on the equipment (what a surprise), preventing you to get the loot even if you won the encounter. But what are they changing with this patch?
Armor quests now only require a Primal Hakkari piece and appropriate faction with Zandalar.
They removed the smaller tokens but not the faction.
About the PvP Honor armor sets, it is interesting to notice that they were upgraded, but not retroactively, nor it's possible for those who have the old armor sets to return them for new versions. You'll have to re-grind all the ranks all over again. FUN! FUN!!
Btw. I heard a rumor that with the 1.12 patch they are reworking how the groups for the PvP BGs are being made. If this patch will coincide with clustered servers then it's possible that they'll create two different queues for those who join as a group and those who are randomly picked up.
Guild Wars anticipated this since the very beginning.
Overall a good patch with a good execution. But it leaves untouched all the problems that plague this game: satisfactory and accessible endgame content, worthwhile alternatives to raiding and a PvP system that isn't completely fucked up.
Submitted by Abalieno on May 20, 2006 - 06:18.
What I wrote here below about the "bolts" was a complete misunderstanding on my side.
They aren't talking about crossbows (who still suck, btw) but the spell "bolts", like fireballs and such.
Ugh.
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