Author Archives: Abalieno

Four smaller things that WoW did best

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Yesterday I was taking some notes about minor details and design bits in WoW and here’s a list with smaller things, often not noticed, that this game does FAR better than every other mmorpg in the market. I think the Blizzard’s care and unmatched execution can become particularly evident from these smaller details, that are often more than details.

– Great terrain textures. Blizzard’s art direction has been praised many times, but in this case it’s the particular of the ground textures that I noticed and that I think is a demonstration of a wonderful work. No other game has beautifully painted textures as WoW (to compare with the dullness and variable quality in EQ2). It’s one particular piece taken out of all the graphic in the game that isn’t easily attainable. The one that better demonstrate the talent of Blizzard’s artists. You could criticize the cartoonish style of the art direction or take graphic bits from other games to demonstrate that something better is possible. But the ground textures are absolute, unmatched masterpieces with all the other games widely outperformed.

WoW ground texture gallery

I think the ground textures represent the very best part of WoW’s art. This becomes particularly evident when you compare the game with other games that can rival with it when it comes to render impressive environments, like Guild Wars, whose ground textures try to imitate WoW’s style but still failing to match the art quality. People may find silly that I point out a detail like this one, but the ground textures have an extremely important role on the graphic impact. Often in these games the ground textures are just repeated patterns that give a strong sense of dullness. In WoW the environments are immersive not only because of how they are modeled and varied, but also because the dull effect given by the “tiles” is removed for the most part.

The beauty of these textures is then not also due to the work of the artists, but also to the way the graphic engine was engineered. High-res textures on the terrain and long clipping planes are often enough to cripple the framerate in games with expansive outdoor locations. In WoW the textures on the terrain retain a decent resolution, the clip plane is amazing and the performance is still great. From this perspective you cannot desire more. These textures also take advantage of a pretty “shader” effect (I think it’s a specular mapping) that makes the texture “highlight” under the sun at a certain angle. Even here Blizzard’s choice is a very good and solid one. This effect is used consistently on all the textures for the terrain in the whole game, it’s doesn’t cripple the framerate at all compared to other shader effects that you can see in other games and it is also really well used to add detail and realism. So they always keep an eye to the performance of the engine, while only selecting those “fluff” effects that really contribute to the graphic impact, to then reuse them consistently.

Even when it comes to the design of the graphic engine all the smaller details are examined carefully and then added to the game only when they are truly excused and relevant. And not just thrown into the mix casually and without much though. Which corresponds to the overall philosophy used by Blizzard: toying with less elements, less “crowdedness”, less noise. But with a much higher quality standard to pass before something makes through to the game.

A game-y approach. Instead of adding complexity and delving in it, WoW took the mmorpg genre and put it under a magnifying glass to carefully examine it, simplifying as much as possible, radicalizing some elements, removing the bad-habits and the superfluous, and continuing to polish while striving for “perfection”. A model of a game where nothing is unjustified or experimental.

A detail of the graphic engine as the one I described is just a confirmation of the recipe used.

I’m also worried about “The Burning Crusade”. I fear that those artists that did those masterful pieces of art could be between those who left Blizzard to join one of the companies that recently spawned. So let’s hope that I’m wrong and that the talent is still strongly in Blizzard’s grip. Those arstists are priceless. Whoever they are.

– No artificial linked encounters. In EQ2 the designers, following a similar mindset used for Vanguard, decided to “expose” more and more the “wires”. While in other games like DAoC you can never easily tell those mobs that are “social” (so that aggro you by bringing along other mobs) and those who are independent, in EQ2 instead you can target the mob you are going to pull and the interface tells you directly if there are other mobs linked or if your target is detached and can be pulled safely alone. Actually in DAoC the “social” reaction of the mobs was often, in fact, a reaction. If you pulled solo you could get just one mob, while if you were grouped you could get more than one. In both EQ2 and WoW the pulling mechanics aren’t “reactive” in the sense that they vary depending on how many players are in the pulling group (in WoW the level of the characters affects aggro radiuses, though), but it’s here that WoW differs from EQ2 and that I think it is far superior from a design point of view.

In EQ2 it’s the interface that tells you which mobs are linked and it’s the designer to place these encounters by hand and decide those that are linked and those that are “solo”. So the mechanic is completely “external” to the game (see my OOC-design critics). You just “read” it through the interface and react accordingly. This was a major gripe for the players, in particular coming from the EverQuest Classic, since pulling and learning the encounters in that game was a puzze-game in itself, that was purged in EQ2.

WoW differs from that approach even if it keeps things extremely simple. There isn’t any “social” flag system that defines which mobs are linked and which mobs aren’t. I don’t know if there are special cases, but from what I observed the mobs simply react to a fixed radius throughout the game. If the mob you are pulling is at a close distance from another, then those mobs will run to you together. Out of that radius it will be a single pull.

The interesting design approach here is that the model is consistent throughout the whole game. Without cases that disrupt or contradict the experience. The players slowly grasp the rule because this rule is a constant, so it can be “grokked” by the players (using a term Raph used on his book to define the mastery of a pattern) even if they haven’t fully realized it consciously. It is a consistent in-game behaviour because these mobs don’t react to scripts defined by a designer, but on a somewhat “physical”/immersive element that is familiar to every player: distance. Already in the first ten levels of your character, while trying to make through a cave without aggroing the whole place, you start learning the “safe” distance between the mobs so that you can pull safely without getting more than one. And then you continue to re-apply and re-experience this rule till you have fully mastered it. Till it becomes “instinctive”. So that it’s actually about removing the filter of the interface to move closer to a “visceral” pattern.

The result of this is that “mastery”. The possibility to learn to track down mobs and pull them at the right time. Which is a so much better design choice then the one used in DAoC, where these mobs behave accordingly to rules that are hidden to the players (leading to frustration and a not-consistent game), and the one used in EQ2, where the wires are blatantly exposed.

Terrain inclination and physical barriers. Here DAoC is another example of how-not-to-do-it and WoW a good example about how to make it work, also directly linked to the previous point. In the “New Frontier” overhaul to the PvP zones, DAoC’s designers decided to add tactical elements and a better role of the terrain in the mechanics by creating zones that could not be passed and one-way barriers (cliffs, valleys etc..). The idea is not a bad one, but the implementation, as it not rarely happens in DAoC, was awful. The reason of the failure of this mechanic was that these barriers were arbitrary.

Those barriers were placed by hand by the zone designers following their own tactical reasonings that could have been good or wrong, but the problem was that they became “invisible walls” that the players could not figure out consistently. You just couldn’t guess where you could expect a “wall” and where you could instead manage to move through. As you can imagine this can be truly frustrating and the players ranted constantly about it for that reason. The “feature” was also even more crippled by another bad implementation. These invisible walls not only prevented you to pass, but they also made your character stop moving completely, so that you had to turn in the other direction and then move again, removing the possibility to “slide” against the wall to find an “opening”.

This was an engine limitation in DAoC (I could be wrong, though). The game didn’t allow to create one-way physical barriers. Or you had a zone border (so a two-way block) or you could run even up a cliff at full speed (actually much faster since speed was only horizontal and didn’t factor the verticality).

Often WoW is mistaken on this aspect. Some players think that it’s the texture that gives cues about where you can go and where you cannot, but the texture is not an active part of the mechanic, nor the one that is really utilized by the players. It’s the engine of the game that automatically determines the places where you can go from the places where you cannot, depending on the inclination of the terrain. It is then the world editor that the designers use to also pick the appropriate textures.

Even here the mechanic, as for the one ruling the behaviour of the aggroing mobs, is consistent. The behaviour is a constant that the players can slowly grasp and then reuse naturally. At a glance I can tell you where my character is probably able to walk and where I expect to “slide back”. I can guess where there are the passages and where I could try to “push”. This because while playing the game I’ve learnt to parse the concept of terrain inclination and it is now a spontaneous guess that can happen without me actively trying to have coscience of it. Like for the “distance” concept used to figure out which mobs I’m going to aggro with a pull, the “inclination” is another physical, consistent and familiar element that all players can grasp and reuse.

It is consistent because both the “inclination” and “distance” are elements coming from *within* the game and not out of it (like a script or a flag). And “game-y” at the same time because instead of striving for a simluation, they decided to simplify and reduce the pattern to just one, easy to grasp, element that is a constant used then for all the encounters. So they picked ONE element out of hundreds possible (game-y), while choosing it *within* the game world (intuitive for the players and coordinated with the “immersion” in the virtual world).

There isn’t even the need for visual cues that tell you where you cannot go because the textures change from zone to zone, while it’s the terrain inclination to be the constant. So the element that is always reused and that can be grokked more naturally and then applied effectively.

Even here game design is carried over to the game engine to support features and behave consistently. And it’s again another great demonstration of Blizzard’s flawless execution.

– No mindless fetch quests. What? No fetch quests? WoW is filled with fetch quests, why I say it has none?

Because it is true. In the sense that there are no quests whose only purpose is to make you waste time by walking from point A to point B. This mindset is simply missing from the game. There aren’t unexcused quests as a pretence of making you waste time with unfun bits of the gameplay (to an extent). It would be stupid to add a quest whose only purpose is to make you walk just to waste time and, in fact, WoW usually avoids this.

There are instead PLENTY of mmorpgs out there who use the fetch quest exclusively as a time waster. A good example is again DAoC, where the latest two expansions had a vast amount of mini-quests (tasks) whose only purpose was to be a time waster (see also my comments here).

In WoW, instead, there are no deliberate and exposed “time wasters”. At least if you don’t consider the whole game as one. To explain better, WoW uses “fetch quests” but with a precise function within the game. Never unexcused (see the constant?). These fetch quests are instead tools used actively by the game designers to direct the players. So their purpose is not only alien to the “time waster” idea, but also quite important in the dynamics of the game.

These fetch quests are often used to conclude cycles and make your character travel to new zones where its adventure will continue. They highlight a path and lead the player by hand. So it’s not just about completing a boring task that the quest asked you, but about building “narrative bridges” (or “rails”), used to connect the various locations and stories in the game and avoid the player to feel lost and clueless or move out of where he is supposed to be.

The quests aren’t just a method to deliver content in this game, but also as a learning process to let the players slowly discover the possibilities the game has to offer. And that “learning mechanics” becomes then on its own the very best form of gameplay that the game has to offer (and with an awful replayability since you can only learn stuff once).

And it’s another great example of how even the most stupid form of quest in WoW retains a strong role and function that works so well that is often not even noticed.

A well-oiled game. A masterful engine.

Funny Zonk post

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From his own MMO bloggage (because Slashdot wasn’t enough).

Firstly he quotes Blizzard’s rep on the increasing gap and accessibility barriers between casuals and hardcore:

Those with orange texted items are still unique and beautiful snowflakes. As the game evolves, the current “to-die-for” items will be yesterday’s news. Everyone will be chasing the “next-big-thing”, and so on and so forth.

Then he comments:

Which, to a degree, I get. Just the same, my hopeful words from the last post (My hope is that the folks at Blizzard are aware of this and are taking steps to address this issue.) seem even more naive now. Blizzard is well aware of the issue; they just have no intention of doing anything about it.

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Gabe Newell talks about Mmorpgs

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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.

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More accurate graphical combat representation, maybe

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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.

Gated content + Permeable barriers

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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.

World traveler: “gated content”

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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.

Prey incoming

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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.

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Why WoW won.

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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:

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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.

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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.

The defenitive solution to the endgame: “gated content”

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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.