This is a reply I wrote in a thread at Grimwell about the /con system used in EQ2. My conclusions suggest a completely different approach to rediscover the genre and its mechanics.

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Argh, I really dislike the title of this thread. In particular when I always fight to have a better newbie experience.

Can I make an analogy? It’s the same as asking if the night in the game should be relevant or should be nerfed out of any effect like in WoW. This is a design issue, in its purest form. It’s not a good or bad choice on its own. The same for the use of “guidelines” to nerf some core mechanics.

As I wrote already in the first EQ2 thread, I consider this con system simply retarded. The main mistake about these considerations is that you are messing the mechanics with the learning process (setting aside the playerstyles as we discussed weeks ago).

A good tutorial or a good newbie experience isn’t about making the game easy or dumb. A good tutorial is about the ACCESS. It’s all about HOW, not WHAT. “What” is irrelevant on this level. The point is that in EQ2 the designer have accepted to nerf the gameplay, not its accessibility.

Your argument about Allakhazam, imho, is pointless. I completely agree that if the game needs you to read spoiler sites, the game is broken. But the way to fix this isn’t only to integrate that site inside the game.

The point is to really design something from the ground up. This is how you can innovate and build something strong. As an example lets just take DAoC’s character creation. You /need/ a spoiler site, even then it’s still HARD to not screw your stat and your initial spec points. But what this adds to the game? Nothing. It’s well known how irrelevant is that choice. There are just forced choices that you can only screw. This is why WoW, during the character creation, gives you just the control of what you can manage: how you look. We have lost the possibility to choose and the possibility to further differentiate the characters, but is this really relevant? Not at all.

Instead what is happening in EQ2 is the opposite. They aren’t removing a broken, useless mechanic. Instead they are dumbing down the game, they are removing relevant mechanics. The point now is simply to consider if these mechanics CAN be transformed or rethink to be fun, interesting and, in particular, self-consistent (as we discussed weeks ago, remember?). I think this IS possible and it’s also absolutely needed. As I wrote in other forums the duty isn’t to imagine fancy solution with loads of creativity, I think the genre (as fantasy genre) must be re-discovered. Re-read. We need to go back and push back in the adventurous aspect and not chase the fun by simply reducing all the gameplay into a subpar arcade. CoH demonstrated how important is FUN gameplay, but this doesn’t mean that creating an arcade is the only way possible to reach that fun.

And this is a link to Raph’s book that also ties to what I believe. There are different types of fun, I think the most relevant between these types is the learning process. Fun here doesn’t mean that the game is accessible because it’s stupidly simple. It’s the opposite, it’s about offering complex mechanics and also the tools to access those mechanics. /How/ you access the complexity is what must be developed. Not whether the game should be complex or not.

Imho what EQ2 did was about fixing the consequence of the problem, instead of addressing the real reason. Bandaids are the reasons why games finish to crumble or become weak and bland.

You know? You gave me an idea, removing names from the mobs could be interesting. I wonder if it’s really possible to develop a completely immersive mmorpg. I think it is, in fact I once played with a wonderful D&D gamemaster and he used to describe in detail the monsters, without EVER reaveal directly the names. And it was great.

But one last point. You CANNOT follow what I write here above and take EQ2 or WoW and simply remove the con system pretending they will be better games. This is a viable path ONLY if you start to develop a complete new system. The point is to trasform the “Out Of Char con system” we have now in a “In Char con system”. This transition will make a better game, but if we simply remove the first without adding something else we are simply breaking the game itself.