Monthly Archives: January 2006

News bits?

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Nothing really new. Just two posts from Raph explaining things I was already aware of. But I thought it was a good thing to archive them. And, oh! Even that post on Terra Nova.

If I’m being silent it’s because I’m writing too much on the forums. I’m going to archive some stuff and the site risks to get swamped with too much reasonings all at once.

—

Raph:
I officially moved out of the Creative Director role in July of that year (which was literally a couple of days after launch; some think that I got the job post-SWG, but in fact, I was offered it months before and chose not to take it until SWG had launched). I was still involved, to a gradually lessening degree, until Sept or so. So I was involved in planning mounts, vehicles, and cities, and I was involved in the Warren. By the time Holocron drops for Jedi came out, I was not actively on the team. What’s more, I have been at arm’s length to the title ever since, because to do otherwise would be very disruptive to the guys who have charge of it now.

As far as your question, I of course have to be politic about answering it, but I’d answer with “we did add content” — cf the aforementioned Warren — and “content depends on systems being solid underneath” — such as better content tools, which we now have, and such as fixing the bugs you cited.

It’s not really a complicated answer…

Raph:
NC has publishing deals with Cryptic, ArenaNet, and NetDevil. I think in some cases of new studios they have funded they have equity too (there’s that ex-Blizz one?). Internally, they develop Tabula Rasa. Lastly, they run US ops for the Korean games they have brought over.

So Cryptic et al are seperate companies.

SOE is a division of a division of a division of Sony, of course. It has very few straight publishing deals (mostly for PSP games — GripShift and Frantix). It has distribution deals (which are not full publishing, just “get the box onto shelves” deals) like the AC deal and the Toontown deal. It has externally developed titles like Champions of Norrath — this is sort of like a commissioned title. Lastly, it has internal development, at three separate studios: Austin, SD, Seattle.

There are centralized things: network ops, customer service, QA (although there is some QA at each location, because you do need some on the ground, so to speak), marketing, and so on. Billing is of course centralized. There’s also a suite of common technologies that we use so that games can interoperate: chat, networking, hooks so that ops can monitor server status, etc. By and large though, each team runs their own live business under a degree of central supervision.

Raph:
The metric I’ve found most useful for population size is weekly uniques. You can also then compare this to your paying (or “can log in”, which we call “entitled”) userbase to arrive at a uniques percentage. Different games will have a different uniques percentage, but higher is better.

Concurrent users is useless. The old metric of “multiply peak concurrent by 4-5” has proven not to hold true for many different game styles. Among the casual Korean games, I am told they regularly multiply by 10. SWG, pre CU and NGE, you had to multiply by 8; Planetside was similar. Different game playstyles lead to different play session lengths, which then affects concurrency.

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An handy solution for every problem (three, condensed months of discussions)

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I come from a five hours, incessant discussion with a friend about game design and mmorpgs. It was so absolutely useful to talk with someone in my own language. I could elaborate so quickly so many concept and I was able to summarize most of the work in the last three months. All at once.

This discussion was so absolutely useful for me because I was able to make a better synthesis of all I read, thought and wrote along these months. Too often I analyze a problem taken out of the general context, delving in the detail but losing the correct reference. Sometimes I forget how things are interconnected and how each solution to a problem must be coordinated and not contradictory with another one. As I often repeated, I always design starting from problems. I isolate some fundamental problems in the mmorpgs (socialization, pvp balance, narrative, emergent play, healer classes and so on), identify all the traits and then try to derive my own solutions. So all these ideas start from crucial points and I always try to suggest alternatives that I believe are valid and worthwhile. This is design for me. I have a problem and try to figure out effective solutions. Minimizing the side-effects (or “deficiencies” as Raph calls them, see the end of the article).

Recently we touched so many fundamental points. About the limits and accessibility problems of a sandbox, about the linearity and staticity of a narrative, about the unexcused, negative transition from the levels being a way to progress in the story (classic pen&paper RPG) to the story being a way to progress through the levels (classic DikuMUD progression). We have lost the story. Some also said that we lost the possibility to affect and change the world, like branching quests that open up different possibilities.

I wrote my own opinion about all these points and suggested many solutions. But it’s always hard to make a synthesis of all that. It’s hard to have a “one size fits all” answer that is truly satisfactory without those “deficiencies”. I wrote that some of the problems, goals and solutions are antithetic. You cannot find a solution for everything because one will be opposed to the other. I gave up here. I’m not good enough to think something that works so smoothly. A story, to be a very good story, needs identity and authorship. Control. It has a start and an end. It’s more or less linear, even if you can segment it and let the player follow a personal order. But all the pieces would still be there.

At the basic level: a good story has an awful replayability.

After you have spoiled it, part of the fun of the exploration and discovery will go away. Yes, we could chase the myth of of the branching possibilities. So that you can repeat a story and find out different possibilities. But this makes the development time increase exponentially and these games have budgets, and these budgets depend on time. This would also not remove the artificiality of a falsely persistent world where you can go back and repeat something to see it going in a different way. It’s a paradox, a false solution.

Mixing together the needs of a strong narrative, an accessible, deep sandbox and a satisfying character progression (along with an healthy socialization and community cohesion) IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE. They have antithetic requirements. The narrative needs a start an an end, it needs deep characters, stories and myths. And it needs to be accessible without mandatory grouping, without other players asking you to skip reading the text because you are wasting time. Without these other players IMPOSING STANDARDS on how you experience the content. I fucking hate this. I want to play the fucking game at my own pace, in my own way, screwing up the way I like, in the order I like and without hearing a fucking annoying noob getting in my way, getting me killed, criticizing what I’m doing or spoiling me the whole thing.

I FUCKING HATE OTHER PLAYERS IN MMORPGs.

What’s this? Me going nut? No. These are the requirements of a GOOD narrative. When I read a book I immerse myself into it. The world outside STOPS TO EXIST. Noone can dictate me how to read, what to read. It’s all about me and the book. I isolate myself hermetically from the outside and the same happens when I’m enjoying an old RPG. It’s about me and the world. My exploration, my experience. The Full Immersion. This type of narrative CANNOT require mandatory grouping. It CANNOT require you to play five hours straight, all at once. It CANNOT require you to plan your life around a game. It CANNOT require you to catass to victory. I want a game that is accessible: 1- When I fucking have the time to play 2- Right away without making me dependent on other players. Without forcing me to adapt to other players. I want my own game. At my pace. For my enjoyment. I am the measure of my game and I fucking DON’T CARE if someone out there is advancing way faster than me. I don’t want the competition here. I want the story and me in the story. I want to zone out of that crap. Fuck the socialization, other players suck. I have enough of depending on them, their time, their pace and their classes.

This is not me going nut (again), this is what other players out there are demanding. The first things everyone wants to know about a new mmorpg, every kind of mmorpg, is if it’s possible to solo or not. Peoples are SICK of depending on other people, of impassable barriers that make content inaccessible. Of mandatory 40-man raids lasting 5+ hours as the only way to progress. Peoples are SICK of that sort of design. Peoples have enough of adapting their life to a game. Peoples are sick (literally) when their houses smell of cat ass. People want games with a value, not excuses to chase carrots-on-a-stick. People want interesting stories, deep characters. An immersive world that simulates different elements and isn’t just combat, combat and more combat. People want broader worlds, good stories, a deeper interactivity. Something that is truly valuable as an experience and not some “fill in” grind because the developers are at loss.

How can you put together all these pieces together? I have no solution. It’s impossible to build a game about other players when these other players are its first problem. You want “x” and “y”, together. But where “x” is the contrary of “y”. Where one breaks the other. I want a mmorpg where I’m not dependent on other players, but then aren’t mmorpgs just about other players? What the hell, go playing a fucking single player then.

Yes, you can try to mingle all these aspects together, trying to discover the games of the future that will do everything right, all at once. You can call this “rich world simulations”. Imho, you are just entering a tunnel that you’ll never exit and risk to break more than you can fix. Maybe it’s possible, but it’s not viable right now. Not even worthwhile. The best solutions are always the simpler ones. Those that make you wonder why you didn’t get the idea before, after someone else had it. Intuitions.

I don’t have intuitions here as I don’t have one solution for every problem. But I can try to do my best with what I have available. My principle from the start has been about reposition each element we have in these games where it is more appropriate. Where it is most valuable and can be used as a resource, instead of a source of problems. So I don’t have one perfect solution, but I have it as collection of parts to place every problem where it belongs, making the game work better and, hopefully, making the players enjoy the game at the best of its possibilities.

My “dream game” is built of three different layers. I’ve tried to simplify and abstract as much as possible here to close all the points I’ve risen above. Offering my own solution:

– The Sandbox
The PvP world. Here is “the world in the hand of the players”. A large war map with regions, cities and smaller outposts, with two hardcoded factions (Chaos and Law) at war, with a third (Balance) set as a “pad” between the two (superficially: dedicated crafters, traders and mercenaries). Making temporary alliances with one or the other, keeping the commerce alive and maintaining a delicate equilibre (Chaos needs some resources that only Law can produce and vice versa. The “Balance” is the only way to trade those resources between the two). This is the “satisfying repetable content”, a character progression with a flat levelling curve, where you can unblock different ranks and roles but where one isn’t directly more powerful than the other. Where you aren’t acquiring directly better versions of the same skill, but where you open up different possibilities of interactions in the war. Making the gameplay more varied, with squadrons, different units and different goals for each. Bringing variety and dynamism in the war. All the world is in the hands of the players, all the world can be conquered and managed by the players. There’s an emergence of RTS game, collecting resources, keeping supply lines between the regions, patrols and so on. It’s a system, a world simulated in all its part. It’s the immersion in a “world at war” and where each element has a specific purpose. Nothing is linear here and it’s all about the stories and situations that the players create. Emergent gameplay. Dynamic situations. It’s like the RvR in Dark Age of Camelot. The power differential between each player is minimal to keep the balance. Veteran players play along with young ones, in the same battles. All the goals are shared, you fight for the realm, not to grow your e-peen. PvP is socialization, here you are together with other players. Coordinated with them. Everything has the goal of bringing the players together. And not apart. All the economy and trade happen solely on this level. RMT is technically not possible, I’m sorry (no, I’m not).

– The Narrative
The narrative is a linear path. It must have a start and an end. This is where the quests exist, where you’ll experience interesting stories and discover interesting characters. This is the level of the immersion. You travel in the multiverse, between different planes of (ir)reality. The scenario can shapeshift. You live the story. All the quest and stories are completely detached from a functional power progression. The gameplay focuses on the story itself. Your character isn’t the purpose. You chase the story. You explore. Every advancement you make is about the story, opening up possibilities that cannot be opened in another way. You move through this progression while you live along the NPCs. Your goals are goals that are set by the story, your power is secondary and never directly connected. To move between these regions and the various planes (hubs) you’ll need to progress through this story. Exactly like a single player RPG. There is no “grind” because good stories aren’t excuses to give you experience points. This progress is still *mandatory*. You cannot skip it if you want to access new zones and progress in the story.

In order to fulfill all those points the content must follow two rules:

1- I must be able to experience this part of the game at my own pace. When I find some time to log in. Whether I have 10 minutes, 1 hour or 5 hours available. The game must be always ready and accessible to make me have fun for the time I have available. Free of time constraints imposed by the game.

2- This content MUST BE SOLOABLE FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE END. I should NEVER depend on other players, or their classes, or their impositions. I must be freed from the competition with other players so that I can play the game at my own pace, the way I choose. Free to immerse myself. Grouping should be *never* mandatory but it will remain optional. I can still go adventuring with another friend, till a maximum of four players in the group. A duo should be the norm. The instances will be balanced on the fly to adapt themselves to the number of players.

This type of approach also opens the possibilities to PvE expansions. Again, the progress through the story has nothing to do with you achieving more power and loot. There’s no “carrot” to chase. No artificial excuse. You can enjoy your progress through the story or avoid it. So what? I would still LOVE to play a game if the story is interesting and I’m enjoying exploring it. No, I don’t need “carrots-on-a-stick” to motivate me. If I’m having fun that’s enough to keep me involved and immersed in the game world. At the same time this new content remains optional for every players and will never be mandatory to compete.

– The Communal PvE
Each plane/hub will have a set of stories and adventures that require larger groups of players to complete. These can go from a 5-man dungeon to epic raids. To unlock all the content on this layer, you still have to progress through the story (“the narrative”) so that you have access to all the different planes. All the content on this layer is optional. You can have competitive dungeons, survival arenas and every kind of different mode. Here you depend on other players, have to build balanced groups and have to organize to succeed. The loot dropping in these instances is not directly more powerful than what you’ll get from the “narrative”, but you’ll get special, rarer items (they look different, have fancier effects, open up secret plots and stories, but will never offer more power). These communal PvE instances are also the only way to summon powerful “artifacts” into the PvP world.

These artifacts make a player near to a demi-god. One player wielding one or more artifacts can fight alone and win against multiple opponents and will be really, really hard to take down without an organized effort from the opposite side. These demi-gods are supposed to become the focus of the PvP in a similar way to how the “heroes” were used in Warcraft 3. They are special and unique. They artifacts aren’t usable in PvE, they lose all their properties if they are brought in a PvE instance. In order to keep them on your character, you need to “feed” them by killing the players on the opposite factions and have a role in the conquest, participating actively in the PvP. Exposing yourself. If you are hiding you won’t be able to fulfill the “feed” requirements and you’ll lose the artifact. When you have an artifact with you your character will change its appearance and you’ll be recognizable in the battlefield. Even graphically you’ll transform into a demi-god. The other faction will also know that one of the artifacts was summoned and will be able to “divinate” your position in the map. They can track you down. you will be hunted. If you die in a PvP battle, your artifact will be dropped on the ground and one of the players in the opposite faction can loot it and use it, acquiring the powers that were yours. The artifacts are also limited in number. Each type of artifact can have only a fixed (and really small) nuber of “copies” active in a PvP world. The most powerful artifacts are unique and one and only one copy can exist in the PvP world at once. If an artifact is unique, the instance where it can be summoned will be sealed till the artifact remains in the PvP world. There isn’t a time limit to the persistence of an artifact in the PvP world, just its “feeding” and “active” requirements. If the feeding requirement aren’t met, or if the player with the artifact has been logged out for too long, not meeting the active requirements, the artifact is reset to the original PvE instance that will remain sealed for a set amount of time depending on the type of the artifact.

This is also how I expect to create interesting patterns in PvP. These demi-gods players will remain truly *rare* and not mandatory to play the game because the number of artifacts that can exist in the world is strictly limited. Only very few players will be active, using them. This makes them exceptions. The demi-gods are supposed to create gameplay for everyone. They become targets. They are recognizeable in the battlefield and will make the war feel more “epic”. They will become “hotspots” themselves, leaders of armies to siege other regions. A demi-god can be a strong advantage in a battle in the exact same way it happens in Warcraft 3. At the same time, these powers are transitory. Once you are fighting (and you are required to) you are also vulnerable and if you cannot survive a battle you’ll lose your powers and someone in the opposite faction will inherit them, overthrowing the previous situation. During a battle there isn’t a limit to how many times the artifact can switch from a faction to the other, till the “feed” requirements are met. Again, these tools are PvP tools and are meaningful only when actively used. The artifact loses all its properties outside the PvP world, becoming just a dead envelop till it is brought back to the PvP. Finally, a demi-god cannot use any fast travel option (teleports and such) while in the PvP world.

—
This idea of a game has no levels and is based on percent skills. The power curve remains flat but the character advancements is deep and is inherited by other statistics, like plane affinity, magic items progression and so on. The skills increase with the use, whether you are progressing in the narrative, or participating in the PvP. Both patterns are viable and balanced to be equally desirable. As I explained, the progress in the story is detached from functional XP rewards. Most of the game content (both PvP and PvE) is already accessible right out of the box. The aim is to bring the players together instead of building artificial barriers between them.

(character advancement as a result rather than motivation)

From Raph:

The challenge at the end of the article stands, which is to come up with a systems that does satisfy all the things you want. What would it play like? How would it feel? If it has deficiencies (it will), are they easily remedied?

Herbalism, Alchemy and serviceable earth golems

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I feel like a kid again. Having idea suggested by the games I play, with the desire to elaborate them, making them more involving, deep, significant and even more absorbing than how they are already.

This is what I define “realism” and “immersion”. This is what the current mmorpgs have lost and how I plan to renew those qualities.

HERBALISM

The first idea about herbalism and alchemy comes straight from Morrowind and one of the custom plugins. So interesting that it makes you wish more. The game does already a wonderful game making you hunting ingredients. I simply LOVE the exploration and the fact that you know already where to go search the ingredients you need. They usually grow near the big trees and I’d love to see a game where all these ingredients grow in places that make sense, coordinated with the weather and climate. This is already a step forward.

– Planning ahead a more complex and deep system that regulates the respawn and growth of the plants. It should factor the location (on trees, near the water, on the mud and so on, with the spawn points placed by hand), zone of the world, weather, moon cycles and season. The plants won’t just respawn, but they will start to grow slowly and pass between various stages. Each plant will have its own specific growth cycle. Some could grow faster than others (also depending on the variables listed) or have less “stages” to pass. Each stage would affect both the type and quantity of the ingredients (like sub-types of plants with their own specific stats and values).

This is the first step, creating a small, consistent ecosystem around these plants that can be picked up (as opposed to static object in the world that cannot be used by the players). I simply love how this works in MW, so we are far, far away from the “radar” of WoW, where the “professions” become just another level-up mechanic without any depth. Fuck those radars, fuck traveling at random around the map while you stare the minimap. Here you go exploring. The true exploration and research that doesn’t depend on artificial rules, but YOUR KNOWLEDGE. You’ll learn yourself where particular plants grow, you’ll learn where to search them, you’ll learn how to identify them. The gameplay is VISUAL. You search for the plants with your eyes, exploring the world. Not with a fucking radar.

– The plants will have to be identified with the eye. No artificial mechanics will be used, like radars. There will be books and trainers in the world. But these books and trainers will only teach you in the exact same way they would teach you in the real world. Just explaining where you may find some herbs, explaining their properties, explaining where they grow and how, the different growing stages, rarity and so on. With a low “alchemy” skill the player won’t be able to know the properties of an herb (appearing as a “?”) and in a few cases (explained below) not even the name of the herb.

In MW you can raise your Alchemy skill by eating the ingredients. The system is rather unrealistic because the plants have an effect on you only if you have an high skill, while the effects just won’t work if you have a low skill. What I would do is again to delve in this mechanic, adjust its realism and make it more complex.

– A player with a low “herbalism” skill won’t know the name of the herb, nor its properties. Most of the herbs will have to be treated in alchemic processes to have an effect, so they would become fully active only with an high “Alchemy” skill and after the proper treatment. Still, the player can eat the plants he takes right away. In this case, if the player has a low “herbalism” skill, there’s an high risk that the plant will poison him or have different kinds of negative effects (vision blur, slow down, penalty to stats, disease and so on). Most of the plants that have “positive” effects will have them active only after a treatment. Without this treatment they’ll have an high percent possibility of just triggering the side effects if eaten. So there will be a mechanic with an input of the natural properties of the plant, mixed with various possible side effects that would trigger in this case. Some healing plants will maintain their basic positive effect. So the system is regulated by the type of plant more than general rules. Accordingly to the realism.

Finally the mechanics about the gathering process. How the “herbalism” skill actually works and other possible solutions to make the gameplay more interesting. Even here I tried to delve some more in what is already there.

– When you find a plant, you can try to gather ingredients from it. The herbalism skill will affect the time you need to gather all the ingredients in the plant, the success rate, the amount of ingredients you receive from this process, and the quality of the ingredients. With a low skill you will probably just damage the plant and get no ingredients. Every plant has its own difficulty and, depending on your skill, the ingredients will also have different quality (from 1 to 5, nothing too complex). Aften being harvested, the plant will disappear and will regrow following the rules above.

– The “herbalism” skill will raise with the use. Each plant will have a “target share” on the herbalism skill. For example the basic mushroom could have a “target share” of 1-5. This means that the herbalism skill will potentially only raise if it is between 1-5%. If the player has already an higher skill, gathering that plant won’t make the herbalism skill raise. Each plant will also define precisely how much the “herbalism” skill can raise. The more the plant is hard to gather, the less it will make the herbalism skill raise. This means that the skill will progressively become harder to raise as you reach higher %. The “skill up” will happen both if the gathering process was successful and if it failed, with a tinier growth in the latter case.

More in detail, I created a system to define better the successful rate of the gathering. This leaves out the calculations about the quality (for the ingredients) and the time the gathering requires to complete (depending on the plant and skill). It’s strictly about the success:

The success of the gathering process depends on two variables: herbalism skill (percent based) and difficulty of the plant. In order for the player to have the possibility to gather something without just destroying the plant, the difficulty value of the plant must be within 10 units from the value of the herbalism skill. So, for example, having a 85% in herbalism would allow you to gather from plants with a difficulty of 95 or below. The raw formula is:

[10 – (difficulty of the plant – herbalism skill)] * 10

The resulting value will be the percent of sucess on a 100 dice roll. On top of this there’s another check that simulates if the players is able to preserve the ingredients in his inventory after he collected them. From 1 to 10 in herbalism skill, the player has a 50% rate of destroying the ingredients even after a successful gathering. Then this penalty goes down by 1 for every new unit point in the herbalism skill, till the penalty will decrease to zero when the players reaches 60% in herbalism.

Practical example:
The player has 3.50% in herbalism (yes, low) and is trying to gather from a plant with a difficulty of 10. Now we take the difficulty (10) subtract the skill (3.50) and we get 6.50. Now we take the fixed offset value (10) and subtract 6.50. The result is 3.50. We multiply this for 10 and we get 35.0 which is the rate of success (35%). The game rolls a 100 dice and if the result is below 35 the gathering is successful. Finally, we apply a last check to see if the player can successfully store the ingredients in the inventory that in this case is 50% (skill below 10%). If this check is also passed, the player will see the ingredients in his inventory or some messages detailing what happened.

– The “inventory check” I just explained will have to be repeated if the player trades the ingredients with another player. In this case the check will be done by the player that is receiving the ingredient and will be independent from the player who is giving them. This means that you can safely trade herbs to a player with an high skill, while it’s risky for a player with an high skill to trade herbs to a player with a low skill. There will be craftable special herablism “bags” that override this check, making the trade secure.

These mechanics appear as too complicated because I explained in detail the calculations, but in the practical day-to-day use it becomes rather simple. You just compare the difficulty value of the plant (visible only if you learn it from reading books or receiving training from NPCs) to your herbalism skill and, if they are within 10 units one from the other, you can try to gather the plant. If the difficulty of the plant is “9” points above your skill, it basically means you have only a 10% of possibility to successfully get ingredients from it. In the case you gather from a plant much higher than your skill, the plant is destroyed and you get nothing. The number of ingredients you gather from a single plant depends on the type of the plant, with the possibility to multiply the result by two or three if your herbalism skill is much higher than the difficulty of the plant (I won’t detail these mechanics here, but they are sraightforward). The rate increase of the herbalism skill (both on success and, much less, on failure, but in this latter case only if the skill is already within 10 units from the plant’s difficulty) depends on the type of the plant, but it’s an independent value from its difficulty. And finally there will be diminished returns on the growth, so that obtaining higher values near 100% will become progressively harder (and slower). Accordingly one basic principle of the ruleset:

– Suceeding at a poorly-known skill is hard, but you learn a lot when you succeed. An expert in a skill usually suceeds at it. Since he or she already knows most of what there is to know about it, the expert improves at a slower rate than a novice.

Since the whole system is percent based there won’t be an exponential, mandatory power growth as in other games. The game is supposed to work as a “system” where each part has a specific, irreplaceable function. No mudflation and no exponential power increases. No big power differential between a player with an high skill and one with medium values.

– About the informations on the UI. Only a timer showing how much time passed from when the ingredient was harvested will be displayed right away and without conditions. The name and difficulty of a plant will be shown only if the character knows the plant. This is possible only reading books or receiving training from NPCs about the specific plant. Other informations like the quality of the ingredients, their basic effects, expiry date (explained below) and detailed informations about the plant (how it grows, where it grows and so on) will only be displayed if the player has an high enough herbalism skill. In the case the skill is too low the unknown fields will be shown as “?”.

– Some ingredients, guess what?, will grow on trees. So the plant you gather is like just a part of a bigger plant. In this case all the rules above still apply, but, obviously, only the fruit or flower will disappear, instead of the whole plant/tree. The trees will usually have seasonal cycles, so the fruits will grow only in a precise moment during the year. Not always.

– The game also uses a realistic inventory system that I’ll explain elsewhere (factoring weight, types of bags, locations and so on). Specifically for the herbalism purposes, the ingredients gathered will have “expiry dates”. So an ingredient gathered will remain in the inventory of the player for a set amount of time before losing its effects (with the possibility to gain negative effects over time due to decay). The duration of the conservation depends on three elements: type of the plant, quality of the ingredient (as explained above, going from 1 to a maximum of 5) and type of inventory. In this last case there will be specific craftable containers that are built with the purpose of storing ingredients, so prolonging their conservation over time.

– Finally, the herbalists will be able to plant seeds in pots so that they can grow and even create and mix new types of plants and practice herbalism and alchemy in their own houses. The seeds can be used in specific, craftable pots, or specialized “gardens”. This is a whole new system stacking up that I won’t detail here but that adds a whole new layer of complexity and depth (and FUN) to this system to make it even more satisfactory and involving.

– All the possible applications of herbalism and alchemy are designed as consumables.

—
That was rather long, phew. I didn’t expect to write so much and I even left out some aspects of the idea. The other one is about “searviceable, walking earth golems” that I was planning to describe just from the player perspective. While the herbalism was designed from the developers perspective. Even here I believe that there are so many “fun” points. Even if the idea sounds so silly.

SERVICEABLE WALKING EARTH GOLEMS (mounts)

The character is wearking a dark cloak, standing in a open area without anything special, some trees, some grass. He drops his staff on the ground and stands up again, he extends his arm forward, parallel to the ground, the palms turned toward the ground. He stays in that position for a few seconds, then he starts to quiver. He bends the head down, the body starts to radiate a brownish aura that grows in intensity. From the eyes and mouth of the character some dense vapor starts to flow, evaporating upwards. Then, quickly, two sharp rays of light burst out of the ground, piercing through the character hands. He closes the hands in fists and begins to struggle with the rays, resembling to laces, as trying to eradicate them from the ground, out of sheer strength. This process make the ground slit open, one big hand made of stone coming out of it, with the palm open. The hand ‘grabs’ the terrain, another hand comes out. The ground starts to vibrate and finally the head and body of the creature come out, then one foot, till the creature can stand up, in a cloud of dust, in front of the player, at least two times bigger than him.

After this summoning process is complete the laces of light between the hands of the player and the earth golem will vanish and the golem remains under the control of its evocator. The earth golem, as instructed, will pick up the character and put him on his shoulder, sitting. At this point the player starts to control directly the golem while his character is “comfily” sitting on that shoulder.

This is how the evocators will use earth golems to travel at a faster speed around the world :)

What time is it?

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I just figured out that I cannot do too many things at the same time. And that when I work on something I just lose completely the perception of the time. But I love when it happens and I’m so absorbed by something. I wish it could never stop because it makes me feel good. Learning new things, toying with them, experiment, swear against everyone because I broke something. Then rinse and repeat. Oh, I so love it.

Anyway, after two days of full immersion in Morrowind and nothing else than Morrowind, I logged in WoW to update my trackers (btw, Mannoroth 64.23%, Medivh 71.65%), and I was like “Whoa!”. I felt as if I logged in Toon Town. All at the sudden the graphic I loved so much became total shit. Like if it was a completely different game I never saw before. I really couldn’t swallow it. Everything was so flat, blocky, completely devoid of any appeal.

I always liked the graphic and style in WoW but during these two days I rediscovered how absolutely stunning the graphic in Morrowind is. It’s still *unmatched* right now and you really feel like the time didn’t pass AT ALL for the game.. There isn’t any fantasy-themed game out there, mmorpg or single player, that can be considered on par or even near the same quality. MW has still, by far, the best skybox I’ve ever seen. The nights are marvelous and all the lighting in the game is superb. It changes so much based on the time of the day, weather and zone. It’s really the ultimate “world” simulation and it demonstrates how the graphic can be effective to immerse the player in the game and feel within a believable, self-consistent world. Travelling is incredible, the style of each zone and the architecture of the buildings is just pure art and talent. From this perspective the guys at Bethesda are the best out there. Without a doubt.

Digging in the structure of the game through the toolset I also got a better idea about how incredibly HUGE is the game. There is an insane number of NPCs and objects and I also slowly started to appreciate how the overall design and structure of the game. I can finally see the wheels of the game, the logic that makes it work, the distinction between generic tools and the specific detail. How you could mix or balance your choices. Or toy with them for different results. It is really powerful and open to many possibilities. It’s sad that the game was ruined by some awful choices in the gameplay (insane missing rates, annoying combat, database indexers instead of “characters”, “cliffracers” and generally awful MOBs AI and behaviour, no schedules for NPC, rather sterile and pointless dungeons.. And I could continue for long).

I’m highly skeptical about Oblivion, though. From a side this new full immersion in MW taught me again how talented are the guys at Bethesda and what kind of amazing things they can build, from the other I could also see some very basic flaws that could have been easily avoided to make a SO much better game (mostly the character managment/progression and the mechanics of the combat). MW is so incredibly huge that you wouldn’t believe it’s replicable. It’s like a one-time event. You just cannot imagine the devs restarting from zero and redo all that work. It’s insane. Oblivion will probably focus on the smaller things, trying to do less but do it better. Experimenting with some new ideas (the AI patterns and physics) while refining all the elements that were already part of MW. Some concepts are interesting and some concepts are less. There’s a thread on Q23 that already lets you anticipate what will be the weak points of Oblivion, if you have some insight. I can safely say that the new experiments with the physics, and the AI will probably be the weaker points, while what didn’t work in MW will do a step forward, making a better game overall. Many will complain about Oblivion not being on par with MW in the mood and sheer scope. Oblivion will try to automatize many aspects. While the new tools are powerful and have lots of potential, something will still feel missing. I’m more then sure it will be a great game, but I’m also sure that it will open so many “what if” about things that could have been possible but finished to be rather deluding. It is promising so much but not everything will work smoothly or will be polished and solid enough. It’s another of those projects with a huge ambition and scope, and not everything will go as expected, some part will be weaker and neglected. Waiting the next project to be analyzed again and better explored.

But isn’t this the fun of making games and the fun to play and discover new possibilities? You always build on top of what you learnt before. Always doing a step forward and experiment with what didn’t really work in the previous attempt.

For now I’ll continue to collect/test/edit the mods for MW. I feel already at a good point and I’m starting to edit some of the stuff more heavily to tweak the balance. At least for what is possible. Most of my ideas to improve the game are beyond the scope of my skills and beyond what’s possible to do with the toolset, most likely.

Btw, it seems like I forgot that mmorpgs exist. The single-player RPGs can be so much more immersive and addicting on their own. I miss so much to be in one of these worlds, exploring them at my pace, enjoying the discovery and knowing that everything is accessible for me. Instead of wasting an incalculable number of hours in a mmorpg, chasing goals that I don’t really feel interesting, not seem to offer me something worthwhile. But that I have to do to remain at my place and not be left out from the massive brainwashing. And, despite all the effort, always feeling “at loss”. Always seeing clearly that you have achieved nothing at all and are still behind whatever the goal is supposed to be. What the hell.

That’s something unique that the mmorpgs will never be able to capture: a distant word where you are alone. Alone with the world. Alone and ready to immerse yourself, forget about the time, forget about other people, forget about someone saying what you have to do, or time constraints because you have to compete with someone else. You are completely alone with a world in your hands, waiting for you to discover it. Waiting for your exploration, discovery and enjoyment.

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Fucking mod tools

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I’m swearing against the toolkit, can you hear me?

I passed a few hours toying with Morrowind. The goal is to build a “definitive” version, taking the very best from the mods out there and merge them uniformly for the best experience that the game allows. And I passed those hours ranting against the tools. Like it always happen.

Every time you start working with the mod tools in a game the comment is always the same: “Why the hell it doesn’t let me do this?” There are some really basic and practical functionalities that would make the work WAY less painful and faster. So you pass a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to do something, because you think it’s indispensable and makes absolutely sense… Only to discover that it’s just not there.

For example: The Morrowind editor is rather simple to use, you can start toying with it without reading tutorials. The world editor is a WYSIWYG and reacts as you expect, then you have a bunch of tabs with the entities of the world: monsters, NPCs, armor and so on. Straightforward. Now, all the graphic programs I know support the use “layers”. This is a very fundamental tool. An image can be made of different layers and you can toggle the visibility of each, so you can work only on one, or toggle two to coordinate them, and so on. In MW the whole game is build by master files (the game out of the box) and some plugins. The plugins contain only “offset” informations to override the master file. So, for example, you could load a master file, select an NPC, edit one line of dialogue and then save that line in the plugin. The plugin will only have that character/line within it, with the override informations.

With this type of structure it’s INDISPENSABLE to have a layered scheme. I want to load a plugins and toggle their visibility dynamically in the editor. For example I’d like to only toggle the visibility of the layer of the plugin where there’s the difference in that dialogue. It would allow me to quickly compare between the master file and the plugin to see clearly what’s the difference. And toggle different plugins to see clearly if there are conflicts and what are exactly the conflicting values so that I can merge/adjust them.

Well, it seems that MW toolset doesn’t allow this. Every time you load a plugin, you also have to load all its dependencies. This means that to load that plugin that changes one line of text for one NPC, I have to load the WHOLE base game, plus the plugin. At that point it becomes extremely hard to figure out the changes between the two because you can only see all the informations merged together. And it’s HARD to go find what exactly the plugin did if there’s no way to point out its values from the values of the master file. They are merged with no way to make them apart.

This very basic operation (figure out the detail of one change in a plugin compared to the master file) is only possible through a complex, time intensive procedure: delve the informations of the plugin to have a list of the entries it changes (but without being able to view the changes, it would be too easy, heh) – load the master file and track that entry – write down ALL the fields in the entry – load the plugin – track down the same entry – check all the fields and compare them with the one you wrote down to finally see if you can notice something different. It’s so fucking clunkly and user unfriendly.

That’s really craptastic design. Then I’m not surprised when these game take so long to come out. It’s obvious: the tools suck.

The terrain editor is really powerful but it’s another perfect example of horrible interface that makes the work exponentially harder and slower. A LOT slower. You can raise and lower the terrain and then drag and drop an object to position it in the world (but you cannot manipulate their “z” axis with the mouse, it would have made too much sense), use different textures, “shade” them and so on. Really simple and powerful. The problem is about the controls. You can set the strength and radius of these effects so that you can raise a large zone all at once instead of spend weeks to raise all the vertex. But all these options need to be typed in the UI as numeric values in two different panels that cannot even be up at the same time instead of working smoothly through sliders or practical buttons and switches. The real problem is that to raise the terrain (for example) you need to left click and move up the mouse, like drag&drop. It sounds like something that makes sense, but it’s not. You keep hitting the top of the screen while trying to raise the terrain, so this means that you have to keep drag&dropping indefinitely to only make very little changes to the landscape. It’s ENDLESS MOUSE MOVEMENT. You have to move the mouse for miles and miles to even be able to rise a small isle. Click and drag up, hit the top of the screen, move down the mouse, reclick and drag up, hit the top of the screen. And so on. It’s RETARDED. The camera controls are even worst than that.

Now you can easily imagine how long it takes even to build a very small zone. You have to keep dragging the mouse around for HOURS. Dish washing is more fun than that. I’m really not surprised that the game took so long to be released. Was it too hard to replace the endless drag&drop with just a mouse click? Target the zone and left click in the point you want to rise. Keep the button down and the terrain will continue to raise till you release the button. The same with the right one, with the differece that it would lower the terrain instead of rising it. WAS THIS TOO HARD TO DESIGN/IMPLEMENT?

And the same for many other minor details that make everything so absurdly PAINFUL. For example you wish that if you select an object in the 3D wiew the toolset would also select the proper object in the object window, so that you could locate it easily. But no. You have the list and the 3D view but it’s damn hard to see which entry in the list corresponds to the object you just selected in the 3D view.

Now I go back at working on this… And swear against the toolkit. The thread discussing the mods is here.

The goal, as I wrote at the top, is to take the best of the mods out there, pack them together in one file and host it here. So that you could go with it without spending an indefinite amount of time to review the millions of mods out there one by one.

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Another definition of content

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I’m following my own line-of-thoughts here. Still about narratives, questing, sandboxes and so on.

This a comment I snagged from a forum, again:

Hetzer:
I dont need a shiny grafikengine (also it dont hurts either) i also dont need a game that can be played via Internet with thousands of players (i play pen and paper also, so what). I need a game where i know that i need cookies, chips, coffee and the number of the pizza service for the next weeks.

The Total Immersion. Where you are overwhelmed and when you turn off the PC the world outside doesn’t even seem real.

But an immersion that hasn’t ANYTHING to do with carrot-on-a-stick, dependence, artificial mechanics.

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Sandbox, narrative and emergent gameplay

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I’m still saving parts of a discussion that just doesn’t seem to end (it started with Raph’s articles about the levels). As I already suggested, it’s possible to have linear paths and narratives within a sandbox but the scope and “aim” of the sandbox is completely different. So we should be cautious when bringing them together. From the theory point of view they are opposed and should be brought apart. Integrating only those elements that are coordinate with the goal, without putting it at a risk.

As Raph wrote, one can fit in the other. But not the other way around.

—

Damien Neil:
Narrative is opposed to sandbox play. Or to look at it another way, in a sandbox the narrative comes from the player.

Planescape: Torment has great narrative; some of the best ever done. It isn’t a sandbox, however. You have a great deal of freedom in shaping who the Nameless One is–good, evil, kind, cruel, cunning, foolish–but you’re always going to be the Nameless One.

Desslock:
The best RPGs facilitate sandbox play AND have a good narrative – they aren’t mutually exclusive. Again, I’ll point to Ultima VII.

These two comments aren’t contradictory and both true from my point of view.

It’s the definition of “sandbox” that creates the incomprehension.

Ultima 7 had many elements of a sandbox but only those elements that are, in fact, not contradictory or problematic for the narrative. The true essence of a sandbox, instead, presumes the presence of ‘toys’ that are then used and manipulated by the players the way they like.

Simply put: a true sandbox assumes and opens up emergent gameplay. Something that isn’t predictable, as: not already planned and scripted.

For example the AI patterns would be naturally part of a sandbox because they open up behavious that weren’t preplanned and are supposedly able to adapt to a truly dynamic environment.

Now the point is: there is ZERO emergent gameplay in Ultima 7. This is why its “sandbox” flavor still allows for “narrative”. An NPC in Ultima 7 will ALWAYS behave the way it was intended. This is what Charles calls a “character” and feels missing in Morrowind. An *identity*. Authorship. Something that belongs to a story someone is telling you (univocal, one-way). And this REQUIRES the author to have a COMPLETE CONTROL over what happens.

The dichotomy about “sandbox” and “narrative” is not superficial as it was described (by saying that they can coexist and should).

What we consider and see as “freedom” in Ultima 7, or any other game that offers different patterns and give the player the possibility to make a choice, is not a “sandbox”. It’s just narrative++. It’s double, triple work and nothing else.

When you allow different types of solutions to a problem in a Ultima game or Baldur’s Gate or whatever, you NEVER generate emergent gameplay. you just need the devs to exponentially multiply their work. Creating different stories and patterns for each “branch”.

The model here is still the one of the “narrative”. It’s just requires more work. But the *same type of work*. So it’s not technically a sandbox. The characters are still defined. They can be defined for different patterns, for example you can have a situation where you can save a NPC from a band of orcs or let it die and loot him. But it’s still within the space of possibility of what the AUTHOR planned. You are still within a STRICTLY DIRECTED story. Just one that has more than one pattern (multiplying the work you have to do to produce the exact same amount of content, so the first thing that is cut in games, since it’s a waste of precious time. Games have budgets and budgets are about time.).

Simply put: it’s still the author to have the whole control. Not the player.

A true “sandbox”, on the other side, IS, as Damien Neil wrote, opposed to narrative. A true sandbox assumes that the toys you make available to the players can then be used *creatively* (this is why the sandboxes are incredibly fun and incredibly hard to create). This assumes emergent gameplay. As: stuff that wasn’t planned ahead and scripted. As: the player assumes the true control of a game where some parts are truly dynamic.

You know what’s the practical conclusion of this theory? This one:
– YOU DO NOT WANT to have emergent, “sandbox” gameplay in a game (or a part of a game) that is focused on a narrative.

Do you want a practical example? Morrowind again. All those tricks that the players find to get some cool loot basically break the game from that point onward. Because they go beyond what the devs expected. So beyond what the game was designed for. So beyond the intended scope of the game. If MW was a mmorpg these would be considered exploit. Not “cool points”. They are cool to experiment. But they break the gameplay once their are used (because they don’t belong to this type of game. So they should be used in different contextes where they are more effective and don’t break everything else).

If you want a narrative (and characters, and involving, immersive stories) you DO NOT WANT to give the control to the player. NEVER. The very best narrative is the one of “make believe”. Where the author has the full control while the player think to have it. Even in the cases where the player can choose different patterns (as explained above) the control is still completely in the hands of the author. Who just pre-planned and pre-scripted those different patterns.

Simply put: a story, to be a good story, needs identity. It needs a narrator. A storyteller. It CANNOT allow “freedom”. The story must belong to someone. It’s history. It CANNOT change.

Ultima 7 didn’t allow for freedom and that’s why the story is good and why it’s one of the best RPGs out there still today. What it does is segment the game in smaller pieces that then the player can “order” the way he likes. But those pieces still maintain a *strong identity* and don’t really allow for freedom or emergent gameplay.

Ultima 7 is all about a discovery (exploration, even for the dialogues, where you discover the characters). It’s built of many smaller pieces as many NPCs it has. But all these pieces are basically static. Strictly defined. They are constants. Before you enter the game, they are already all there. Britannia is supposed to have a life on its own, whether you are there or not. Before you arrived.

So. It’s absolutely true from my point of view that narrative is opposed to sandbox gameplay. And it’s true that Ultima 7, for example, only took the few elements of a sandbox that didn’t ruin the narrative.

It’s not about giving the player the freedom. It’s about giving him the illusion of it (if you want the narrative).

Save the web!

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Lum, this is for you.

I just read an interesting entry on Alice’s blog. It’s about a service in beta that will allow the users to save entire websites in a cache, so that you not only have an online bookmarking service, but also the pages saved locally. So that they remain there even if they got deleted.

The idea is a good one and Yahoo seems to have already a free service in beta without limits to what you save. I toyed with it for a while and it seems good enough but it has four crucial problems that don’t make is as useful as it could be:
– You cannot save a whole site all at once but only single pages.
– You can share the links with others, but not the links to the saved copies, so that feature is only available locally on your account.
– Still no media content available (images and such).
– The cached URLs, even in the case they were shareable, are insanely long.

It’s a shame, because I was really looking to start linking directly the cached pages instead of always have broken links everywhere on this site or on the forums.

The Hanzo:web service seems to solve all of these problems. It saves entire sites locally, it saves the media and it also seem to make all the content available publicly. But a free accounts will only allow to use a maximum of 100Mb of space. Then you’ll have to pay (and if I create different free accounts?).

I also don’t understand what they mean with 100Mb “per month”. The account says: “Your quota will be reset on the 1st of each month”. Does this mean that it’s cumulative? Will the archived pages be deleted after a set amount of time?

EDIT- Btw, it’s too late but I saved Lum (and still half broken since it doesn’t seem to go deeper than two pages *BAH*).

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