Signe:
HRose, your avatar series is creeping me out like that movie The Ring did. Can you please just tell me what happens at the end? Can you reassure me it can’t get out?
Fun with a webcam, part 2. No, I promise I won’t become a camwhore :)
What is odd is that the previous time I filtered the colors, while this time the images are taken “as is” from the webcam. It looks even crazier.
And next, the revolution.
I made also a black&white version.
Latest revision of my idea. As posted on Q23.
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Yes, armchair design once again. But this time it’s SHORT. No TL, DR this time. Kay?
GOAL:
A PvP model that would blend at best with a PvE game. Where one part isn’t detrimental to the other and with a goal to create a system that is fun, deep and still easily approachable for non-hardcore players.Something that could be enjoyable for the majority of the players instead of a small niche.
This is a new PvP system imagined to be plugged directly in either EQ2 or WoW. So this time you don’t need to imagine complicated game schemes that I designed in my head. You just need to pick the game you are more familiar with and imagine this simple idea plugged in.
In the case of WoW I need to override some rules in order to plug my system:
– The Honor System is discarded
– No more points will be awarded for a PvP kill, exactly as it happened before the Honor System was patched in
– The Honor System will be replaced with a new one where you can “spend” PvP points to buy: armor, weapons, crafting recipes, crafting resources, consumables, epic mounts, whatever. And even repairs, reagents and griffin flights. Get more PvP points = get more “currency” to buy this stuff. Pretty straightforward.
In EQ2, also some rules need to be overridden (from their announced plan):
– No xp debt. No Looting of items or gold.
– No restrictions to who you can attack.
– Rewards following the same scheme explained above.
This is the idea. In the shortest way possible I could manage to put it:
– The contested zones have one conquerable “hotspot” each. The players can organize and go cap one, putting their guild flag on it. The hotspots don’t have any NPCs defending them, just players. Once capped all the kills taking place in the proximity of the hotspot will be worth PvP points. Encouraging the PvP action to move away from the PvE hubs (villages, towns, camp spots), so without disrupting the gameplay of those who don’t want to bother.
The longer version is here, explaining the details and the reasonings behind, but here you have already all the essential.
Other related parts:
– Explanations, about ganking, rewards, objectives, specialized playstyles and “choice” in PvP.
– Possible solutions, about factional balance.
(if you cannot suffer my long posts just look the end, there’s a summary)
A discussion on EverQuest 2 PvP triggered some thoughts about impelementing a PvP model that would blend at best with a PvE game. Where one part isn’t detrimental to the other and with a goal to create a system that is fun, deep and still easily approachable for non-hardcore players.
Something that could be enjoyable for the majority of the players instead of a small niche.
The first part is about some general considerations I made, the second part is more about pulling ideas. This is just a five minutes brainstorming session, so don’t look for the details, polish or possible exploits. It’s just the scheme I would start to work on.
—
Open field PvP, to work and remain fun when is paralleled with PvE just CANNOT have rewards attached to it. This is why WoW’s PvP was so much enriching before they ruined it with the honor system.
This doesn’t mean that I believe that PvP should have no rewards. But it should have PvP rewards (skills, powers or loot, it’s not so important) tied with PURPOSES, OBJECTIVES. And not the free ganking. I don’t want to reward gankers in any way.
The scheme should be like this:
– Open PvP without restriction outside the newbie areas (WoW’s distinction between “friendly” and “contested” is good, so I would retain it).
– No penalty for the victim. No xp debt, nor any other kind of penalty for who is killed. The small timesink is enough.
– No reward for the attacker. The PvP should retain a roleplay value. Meaning that the “free ganking” shouldn’t be punished nor rewarded. Attacking another character should be remain asn open choice and the game shouldn’t artificially push a decision on you.
– Special PvP goals (towns, towers, hot spots that the players can battle over) in BOTH dedicated areas and normal PvE areas.
– Points awarded EXCLUSIVELY by conquering and holding these “hotspots” and not for the direct kills.
This is the perfect model for a game where PvE and PvP have to coexist.
The PvP goals/hotspots would attract most of the PvP action, still blending uniformly with the non-instanced game world. This would bring to life the environment and the various zones, while still remaining accessible and fun for the new players.
—
The next step is to figure out some ideas (and override some of those above) to give more consistency to the system. Adding a meaningful PvP scheme to an open PvE world isn’t easy for a number of reasons.
These ideas are based on games build with the same structure of WoW or EQ2. So there are two factions and they share a single PvE world where the players engage mostly in PvE activities. As I write in the first point above, I like the separation between “friendly” and “contested” zones, so this idea will be carried over.
The first point to figure out is about two aspects of the same problem. The first is that in a PvE world with an high number of zones you have to find ways to consolidate the PvP action only in a small number of “hotspots”, or the action would be too spreaded out and it would be too hard to find some quick PvP action without sitting in one place and hoping someone to pass through. This is the first goal.
The second problem is about the reward. If we don’t award points for a direct kill, but only for conquering a PvP objective, the risk is that the two factions will avoid each other to farm points passively. My original idea was in fact to add hotspots that could be conquered and then “held”. Pretty much as it happens in Arathi Basin (WoW) you gain points over time till you have that hotspot capped. As you can imagine this idea is already broken because the players in a huge world like the one in EQ2 or WoW, would just go to cap undefended hotspots to farm points while sitting idle. This is obviously not fun, nor an incentive for PvP (which assumes the players whacking each other, and not sitting). So this idea needs to be discarded.
At the same time, though, I still want to reward the players for PvP goals and objectives and not for the pure ganking. So I need a way to:
1- Have the whole game world enabled for PvP but still focusing the PvP action only in a few spots at any given time.
2- Reward the players for accomplishing objectives instead of ganking.
3- Reward the players for active battles and fights instead of encouraging the players to avoid each other to farm point passively.
To begin with, each “contested” zone can be actively conquered by one of the two player factions. The ownerships could influence an overall layer (like granting bonuses like DAoC’s relic system) but wouldn’t affect the PvP rules in that zones. So if a contested zone remains neural or is “capped” by the good or the evil faction, the rules don’t change and everyone can still initiate attacks at will.
The first design goal is that, at any given time, the majority of the contested zones should remain neutral (first point listed) and only 3-5 zones should instead be “flaming”, meaning that a battle is taking place in that zone (also flagged so in the map, so that the players can quickly see if where a battle is taking place). The consequence of this is that in all the contested zones that remain neutral (again the majority) the PvP is open but yelds no reward. This means that ganking in those zones is possible but it remains an open choice that the game doesn’t promote in any way. So the players are supposed to go questing with relative ease as it happened in WoW before the introduction of the Honor System.
The next step is to push the game in this direction. So how to prevent the players to go conquer all the map at the same time? Initially I was thinking about having NPCs defending these hotspots, making the players work hard to conquer one, but then I got a much simpler idea that can totally eliminate the need of NPCs.
PvP Hotspots
Each contested zone should have one and only one “hotspot”. These hotspots can vary depending on the zone. They can be a tower, a small camp, a village, a huge town, a fort and so on. They basically consist in an empty structure that should grant the defenders a tactical advantage and a flag to cap as in WoW’s battlegrounds. In WoW the zones usually have one village/camp for the Alliance and another for the Horde. In my idea these wouldn’t be affected by the PvP system. The “hotspots” are a completely different point on the map so that the battles won’t focus on those villages, disrupting the gameplay for those who only want to PvE and need access to the NPCs.
Each “hotspot” could have different “requirements”. For example you would need at least 10 players if you are going to “cap” a small outpost, while you would need more if you are going to “cap” a bigger hotspot. This would differentiate the PvP zones, so that some zones would be appropriate for smaller battles, while other adjusted for bigger ones. The requirement is simply based on the number of players in the proximity of the hotspots. So if you don’t have enough players with you, you just wouldn’t able to cap the hotspot. It’s a very simple mechanic.
If the requirements are met, the hotspot will begin to shine even at a long distance and a warning broadcasted to the whole zone. This means that the opposite faction will know that an hotspot is being capped. There’s also a timer before the players will be successfully conquer the hotspot and put *their guild flag* on it. Once the hotspot is conquered, it will start to reward PvP points over time to ALL the players within a radius from the hotspot. The more the time passes, the more points will be awarded and the “bounty” on that hotspot will rise.
In order to prevent the players to passively farm points, these rewards over time are still supposed to be minimal and not an optimized way to achieve a good amount of PvP points. So what’s the optimal pattern?
Hotspot radiuses
The idea is that, once an hotspot is capped, the PvP rules on that zone will be affected. It means that all the kills in the proximity of a capped hotspot will start to be worth PvP points. This radius is supposed to cover at least 2/3 of the whole zone. The more you are closer to the hotspot, the more points your kills are worth. This means that the players will be encouraged to focus their PvP activity as close as possible to the hotspot, creating again a “meeting point” and without disrupting the gameplay of those who don’t want to get involved (who also have the possibility to move to another zone where there isn’t an active PvP battle going on, see [1] above).
As there are requirements to cap an hotspot, there are requirements to hold it. For example, if the hotspot needs at least 15 players to be capped, it would require at least five players to remain there defending. If less than five players remain there the hotspot would return neutral on its own and ready to be capped again by another group.
—
That’s pretty much the whole idea. I’m not sure I explained it clearly but it is rather simple and intuitive. I believe it would be fun and not even too hard to implement in a game structured like WoW or EQ2.
In short:
This coordinated with what I wrote above. So no xp penalties, no looting, no incentives for the free kills whatsoever and completely open PvP in all the contested zones.
Tell me how this wouldn’t be so much more fun, involving and still accessible compared to all the other PvP implementation we’ve seen till today. Tell me why it wouldn’t work plugged in directly into WoW or EQ2, And tell me why it wouldn’t be better than their official rulesets built by experienced dev teams.
Tell me why.
on his blog!
Yeah, his blog is gone. I thought it was a technical issue but it seems that he just couldn’t suffer anymore all the players using what he posted to squeal and rage against his work on SWG.
His last post should have been something along these lines:
Interesting factoid, I couldn’t even post THIS without someone linking to it and taking about SWG.
Honestly, this blog’s days are numbered…
Where “THIS” corresponds to a link (now broken) to one of his recent posts where he wrote some general design thoughts.
All the drama originated from here even if it was probably just the last strain on something that was bothering him already from a while.
Honestly I totally understand his reaction even if I don’t approve it. In the last weeks I read some of his posts on the official boards and despite he was trying to post constructively, giving feedback on some bugs and even asking some collaboration to nail down the problems, all his attempts were rewarded just with constant flames, personal attacks and open trolling. Those boards are now a total clusterfuck bordering the civil war. He is surely having a lot of pressure on himself and, being only human, he could suffer these reactions only for so long. Nothing that truly surprises me. We have seen these sort of things already many, many times even if not pushed at these levels.
Beyond these extremes I still have the same point of view in regard of developers having blogs or writing on the forums:
You cannot force a developer to speak as you cannot force him to shut up. This must be a personal choice.
His choice was that having a blog wasn’t anymore useful for anyone if not to feed the trolls in a situation already beyond what’s tolerable and civil.
I also think that game designers must show some more personality and be resistant to criticism, of every kind. I believe being in the eye of the storm and still enjoying every second of it is a fundamental part of that role.
I still prefer those who suffer criticism than those who are indifferent to it, though.
Yes, (being a) game design(er) is hard ;)
Way to go with the fixing of what didn’t need fixing. From F13, another proof of brilliant game design…
(it reminds me of something)
—
From the patch log:
Raid & Dungeons
– Molten Core: It should now be very difficult to remain out of combat while fighting the bosses in Molten Core.
Well according to players on the official boards this has also led to a number of serious bugs and nerfs for several class specific talents and skills.
An excerpt:
“Using Hunters to pull and Feign Death if it goes wrong: BROKEN. Now the whole raid will die.
Player suiciding on an accidental or bad pull: BROKEN. Now the whole raid will die.
Rogues and Hunters escaping combat as their class skills specifically ALLOW, for example, when the raid begins to wipe: BROKEN. Now they get put back into combat immediately.
Warrior off-tanks using Charge to initiate their portion of the battle: BROKEN. Now they cannot use Charge after anyone else engages.”
Hunters can not feign death a bad pull and if a hunter FDs during a wipe the boss will be evade bugged until the hunter stands up again. If the hunter does stand up the boss will kill him. Same with rogues.
Also a boss will aggro across the whole instance so when you wipe on Golemagg and there are already players at the entrance he will run through the entire instance training all mobs on your unsuspecting players waiting for the port.
—
Yeah I wondered what was up with the whole “you are in combat” thing when I tried to charge a mob last night. Looks like their “brilliant” idea to fix the combat-rezzing “problem” was a half-baked as any of SOE’s back in EQ.
“Hey guys, they’re not playing the way we want. They’re holding folks back so they can rez in the middle instead of waiting on the 30 minute rezzes on the 3-4 druids they have.”
“Well we can’t have that.. let’s just flag THE WHOLE RAID in-combat. Surely there won’t be any side effects to that.”
Aggro me‘s comment’s on EQ2 PvP ruleset:
Wow, on Monday I was cautiously optimistic about the PvP rules and now that has changed to unabashed excitement.
It seems like the EQII team is trying to remain true to the goals of the original ruleset, making things fun while restricting griefing, while adding back in as much freedom as they possibly can.
This is insteresting because he doesn’t have just a different opinion from mine. But he is writing instead the EXACT OPPOSITE.
And this isn’t just about expressing a personal preference, but about interpreting the outcome of those rules. It will be interesting to see how things will go.
I’m trying to like it but I really cannot digest it all that much.
EverQuest 2 progressively released more and more details about its upcoming (with the expansion) PvP ruleset and it seems to have met the consensus of the majority of the players. Not mine, though.
The full explanations can be found here (nothing new. This is at least one week old).
There are some design choices that I don’t see as interesting nor fun and I believe will turn into experiments gone wrong, in the same way pretty much everything they tried that wasn’t directly derived from WoW (see my “Patterns of EverQuest2” that were at the origin of the lenghty articles below).
Between the sympathizers there’s also Cosmik. So I’ll back up some of his comments at times.
The first note that I have to make, though, is that for the most part this PvP system is a carbon-copy of the (terrible) one used in WoW. Now we’ll have to see if the history repeats and if those few things that EQ2 is trying to do differently will reveal to be so bad that everything will be ultimately patched back to a proper WoW clone in all the tiniest details. The King of Game Design that SOE secretly seems to worship.
The guidelines are the same as WoW, as I already “ranted” about. There are two factions, one is evil, the other good, both share the same classes, there’s a distinction between honorable and dishonorable kills and if you farm enough points you can build up faction and have access to fat loot. Now let’s delve more into the details.
Communication and Interaction
All the first part explains how the comminication between the two factions is regulated. And it goes really in the detail explaining everything you CAN’T do. Even if it would have been so much simpler to explain what you CAN do. Which is: you are free to whack those in the other faction and use emotes. That’s all.
On this level the whole system is clearly copied from WoW till the minimum detail. There isn’t even a minimal difference whatsoever. Let’s hope that at least they didn’t copy even the exploits (like leet speak) that were only patched later in WoW. Maybe they went in lazy mode and just blocked directly the messages instead of adding filters, who knows. I also wonder if they’ll go with DAoC model and use only generic overhead names or they’ll go with WoW’s model and still display the full name on the enemy characters. Oh yes. Rhetorical question, I guess :)
There’s one trait I find extremely interesting, though. But I’ll come on this later. (see the P.S. at the end)
Combat Mechanics
The next part explains how the combat will behave differently from PvE to PvP. They have basically set them as two separate systems where one spell can be adjusted in PvP without affecting PvE, so making the balancing process less problematic and less prone to screw ups.
From the development side this is a solid practice and one that other games have already used in a way or another. It is good that EQ2 was planned from the ground up with this mindset, so I have nothing to criticize.
Instead from the player’s side this could be problematic. I’m wondering how they’ll keep the UI clean and still show how the skills and spells behave in the two different situations. I also believe that the variance will make the game feel less consistent and understandable. Which would require probably too much research to understand all the quirks and use your character at best. So it’s good from a game-y point of view, but less in an attempt to create a world with its own rules and consistency. I can understand the choice, though.
And now we arrive at the problems: Taunts and Hate Reduction.
Cosmik is glad, along with many other players positively surprised, to finally see aggro managment skills finally working in PvP. Yes, they’ll add more tactics into the fight but I really believe this is a bad decision that will make the combat terribly unfun.
The experience in DAoC already taught (to noone, since no game actually addressed this problem) how gameplay-disrupting skills make the combat frustrating. The frustration comes directly from the loss of control. A combat system (no matter if it’s twitch or turn-based) is fun the more you have an active control on it. If you can take decisions and affect how things are going. By definition an attack must imply a defence. Losing control of your character without any possibility to do anything else than stare at the screen feels like being kick-slapped around a room without the possibility to react. It zones you out. It feels passive.
I already examinated at depth (from my point of view) these mechanics and I believe that this sort of frustration is valuable in the game only if it can also find an “exit point”. A “vent valve”. But instead in these combat mechanics the “loss of control” is not a pattern of counterattack. It is instead a pattern of death. When you are losing control you are also going to die.
All these comments come from my direct experience and I know what frustrates me in a PvP combat and I perceive as “unfun”. What I hate the most in WoW’s combat mechanics, for example, is that I pass the majority of the time trying to fight against the controls and gameplay-disrupting situations. I’m constantly feared, Mind Controlled, slowed down or chain-stunned. These interruptions disrupt the gameplay. While I hate being feared, the most frustrating thing is that you also lose your target. Here you are fighting with the interface, which is the most annoying thing in a game: having to re-issue the same commands repeatedly.
This continue loss of control is not fun. It gets in the way of playing the game. So why creating two separate systems for PvP and PvE if this possibility isn’t used to support the fun in the game? Again it’s not a case that the most fun mechanics are those reactive (see again Mount and Blade) instead of those gameplay-disruptive. So I don’t see the innovative implementation of taunts and aggro management in PvP as something that will contribute in a positive way.
The same I could say for the “Control Spells”. This isn’t a new problem for the genre and I already explained what I think about it and how I’d try to solve it (same link as above). EQ2’s model isn’t anything new, regulated through immunity timers (as DAoC). In this case probably a better choice than the one used in WoW (through diminished returns). While the latter is more consistent, it is also less fun for the reasons listed above.
So I do not like how EQ2 is going to address this problem, but it’s also in line with what all the other games are doing.
About the behaviour of stealth I won’t comment much because it depends a lot on the implemention than general design. I just hope that they copy WoW, in this case, and not DAoC. Hiding the overhead names while stealthed. That’s pretty much all I ask. It would be also interesting to have a variable visibilty based on range or skill/level check instead of just a visible/invisible boolean status. Another detail that I find important is that WoW uses sounds to help you detect hidden targets (both friendly or not). That’s another very good idea.
Death System
This is crucial in every PvP implementation and the one that made WoW’s PvP so popular and successful. Here I agree with Cosmik. This choice to add an exp debt on a PvP death is plain bad. I just don’t see any good coming out of this. There is no advantage whatsoever and on top of this there’s even the incentive to grief by attacking a player when he is engaged in combat to make him suffer the full exp debt (and loss of money).
I also agree with Cosmik on the doubts on the honorable/dishonorable system. It is something that never worked in WoW. I don’t even think it’s possible to make it work without adding a further layer of complexity that wouldn’t add anything worthwhile to the game. Here the solution is rather simple and the one WoW implemented before kicking everything to hell whith the launch of the honor system. More feedback on this here.
Here SOE is trying to outsmart Blizzard by implementing a system that faied in WoW and was discared among the complaints of the players pointing at the page of the manual where it was described. I think this new solution will be also short-legged since it doesn’t really address the *origin* of the problem. No useful solution can be found if this part is examined superficially as it currently is.
Forcing the players to check the exact percents of health on a target before attacking to avoid to incur in a penalty is bad. Very, very bad. Broken design on multiple levels (even if the actual threshold to matter is the one at 20% with the latest revised mechanics). I also do not understand the “Kill List” used to address the problem of repeated kills. This is another system that failed in WoW and an occasion for EQ2 to do better, but its solution convinces me even less. This is another core mechanic of every PvP implementation. My suggested solutions and further thoughts are here (adding “bounty points” and incentives to survive instead of penalties).
There’s also a possibility that you drop some junk in a PvP death. I don’t think this idea will add anything worthwhile. Fluff. Instead dropping gold will be annoying and adds to the death penalty. Again a bad move.
I note that at the higher levels there isn’t any penalty or discouragement for ganking. This while the victim will still receive the exp debt and drop gold that will be looted by the happy ganker. The ganker is allowed to farm lower level players and loot their gold without any penalty.
At the lower levels, instead, ganking will be forbidden, since you won’t be able to initiate the combat with a character 8 levels below you. Cosmik commented about this and I agree with him. This pretty much erases all the qualities of an open PvP system. WoW outsmarted pretty much everyone on this aspect with the idea of “friendly” and “contested” zones. It wins hands down and the evidence of this will show.
All these points stacks up to form a death system that doesn’t look nowhere fun nor solid or even accessible. While encouraging the griefing and cheap ganking mechanics. Pretty much the opposite of the results it should try to achieve.
—
No mentions about the PvP rewards and factional gains, so it’s hard to figure out the impact of this system. I only know that doing worse than WoW is pretty much impossible in this case (yeah, Honor System).
So, I expected to write a few terse notes and instead I got this. I have many gripes about the death system and the combat mechanics and I expect that this PvP ruleset won’t be popular. I wouldn’t be surprised if SOE pushes this back in the list of priorities after it is launched.
Pretty much the same destiny of EverQuest 1.
P.S.
At one point I wrote that there was an interesting trait but then I forgot to write about it. I don’t know if I’m correct but there’s a part where they hint there aren’t just two alignments possible, but three (good, evil, betraying). They don’t explain this part but it may have lots of potential. One of my ideas on the “dream mmorpg” (also tied to the “permeable barriers” concept) was about letting the players betray the original two hardcoded factions to create new ones, with the possibility also to switch from good to evil and vice versa. I’m curious to see what will happen in EQ2 from this perspective.
We like his “attitude”. This is just a random digression that I decided was worth saving.
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Utnayan:
What about the noticable lack of players in their perspective guilds? If you check the threads, most of the complaints are dead guilds, no friends, people they played with have all but vanished. The cities are unpopulated.
Only going to address the part I can touch with facts in my realm – For starters, thanks for being civil. This kind of thing I’m more than happy to address. Two things.
1) These games churn users, usually a small percentage every month. EQ2, EQ, WoW, DAoC, CoH – They all do. There is some level of this in all games.
2) As for how it affects EQ2 specifically – The kinds of people who post on generally-hardcore-gamer boards (foh, f13, SA, etc) tend to be the most affected by problems we’ve known that we’ve had and have continued to address.
I apologize for forgetting who pointed out a number of months ago: “EQ2’s biggest problem? No carrot.” (Amadeus I think?) I very openly agreed with that and explained some of the things we were doing to improve that critical piece of the game.
The rate of improvement there directly impacts the rate of churn. Churn goes down, overall subs go up.
Compounding that, is that particular problem is most easily and quickly noticed by people who go through the most content — the same people who frequent these types of boards the most. I’m one of them. I assume you’d be one of them. Our hosts on this board are the extreme case of them.
Have we improved everything we need to in order to make that stop affecting people entirely? No. Have we improved enough over the past year to where a whole lot more are staying? Yes. Are we continuing? Absolutely. Will it get even better as we continue? I’d bet my life on it.
Malathor:
You’re doing a good job Gallenite. You should be running SOE, not Smed.
Thank you, but it’s actually the EQ2 team of “people who do real work” doing the amazing job. I’m just the one who’s in the fortunate position of being able to come here and brag about how proud I am of them every friggin day :)
And while I sincerely appreciate the sentiment, you do not want me running any company. That’s a whole separate set of problems that I’m fairly certain would end in tears if I was the one who had to deal with them.
There’s been a fair bit of vilification going on lately, and while I’m not going to say much about that (or any other topics I’m not personally involved with), I will say this much. Four years ago and change, Smed’s the one who made sure I got hired. He’s also the one who later on said, “You want a shot? Okay. Here. Take it.”
So if you like what our team is doing, please do keep in mind that no small part of that credit has to go to him as well.
I’m just the messenger. Shoot at will :)
– Scott
What if everything we believed till today was false?
Any good solo class attracts tons of players in any game.
There are a few interesting discussions on the forums and even on TerraNova questioning the role of other players in a mmorpg.
The theme is rather complex and wide and I don’t want to try to analyze it now. But I believe there are some “emergent” traits in the discussion that I tried to bring up as well along these last weeks in EVERYTHING I wrote. From the navel-gazing theories during the Christmas (after Raph’s posts) to the concrete proposals that I added as the natural consequence of those reasonings. I believe it’s also something that every player can feel directly when playing a game.
I always considered one article Lum wrote (or the more recent version) as one basic principle and core value of this genre (and reused it many times) and here I’m not negating it, but I still consider these “doubts” as something that has some value. If understood correctly. In fact my worry about the discussion on TerraNova and on the other forums (where the discussion is continuously chunked and derailed, making it hard to delve) is that those “symtoms” aren’t interpreted correctly. Because that’s the whole point.
Personally I went through a transition and many of my ideas changed in the last year, in a concrete way. But at the same time the basic principles I had are still there, they are only seen in perspective.
This is why I don’t feel surprised if TerraNova reveals that the majority of the players spend the majority of their time playing alone or that “The average guild member collaborates (in quests, etc.) with only 11% of his/her guildmates for more than 10 minutes over the same month”, nor I believe that WoW is showing “exceptional” (meaning “unusual” here) trends. This is instead something I recognize and I believe is widespread, probably even beyond the conclusions on that site. In fact I believe that those conclusions are completely wrong.
Different games show different trends? Are you sure? Take a game like Eve-Online. It’s the exact opposite of WoW and its social fabric and corporations/guilds structure is what makes it truly unique. We could safely postulate that this game would show completely different trends overall, especially about the behavious in the guilds. But are we absolutely sure, again? I’m not. I believe that, from the perspective of this discussion and the conclusions and traits I consider relevant, they would be identic. In fact I believe that both would mirror a graph I already used. Yes, the association between hardcore/casuals and collaborative/solo is deliberate.
The “emergent” level of these games mirrors exactly the model of the “iceberg”. The part visible above the water is only a minimal part of the whole. There’s a HUGE, yet hidden, mass that we systematically forget and remove of any relevancy. We make assumptions on a superficial level that surely makes sense and is valid (like Lum’s article) but it isn’t so absolute and univocal as we assume.
In “game design” this blindness would be a Total Disaster (actually this is false (*), but I don’t want to make things too complicated). If we must strive to design “better” games, also in the commercial sense, we cannot just aim at the visible part of the iceberg. This is foul, inadmissible. It’s “Brad McQuaid”.
All these consideration, if we have some “intellectual honesty”, seem to contradict the theory that the value of these games is in the “community”. The community seems instead a backdrop at best. Just the fluff at the end of the journey to try to retain the subscriptions even when the game is clearly “over”. That “endgame” that, incidentally, most players (me included) seem to criticize.
So how we put all these pieces together? Is there a connection? Yes, I believe there is, I also believe that all these “revelations” aren’t contradictory with the basic principles they seem to negate (Lum again). That’s the interpretation that I find lacking on TerraNova or on the forums where this discussion is partially tackled. I believe that all these pieces go together and I don’t think the overall scheme is extremely complicated.
The answer is simple: we are at the beginning. They keywords are those that I keep reusing. Accessibility and permeable barriers. The new mass-market or new mmorpg players are starting a journey. Till today the accessibility barriers were immense and this type of audience was simply precluded. A mmorpg was “catass by definition”. We didn’t have “casual players” or, in this context, “audacious explorers”, because the design didn’t have any place for them. All these things are changing now and this genre is slowly learning from its mistakes. It is opening up in new directions, in particular thanks to WoW and all the work it did toward the accessibility.
So I don’t find surprising that the large majority of the players are still “learning the ropes”. Nor I’m surprised if even WoW still exhibits PLENTY of accessibility barriers despite all the work it did in that direction. Again, we are only at the beginning. We have only seen some timid attempts (and, still, they paid back hugely already).
I believe, coherently with all I wrote in the past, that the hidden part of the iceberg is what matters. But not in the sense that we have to consider it, yet trying to dissimulate this interest. I believe instead that we should work to make that side EMERGE. So not trying to simply “second” it. But understanding its needs and behaviours. Giving it legitimacy and revolutioning the design if the conclusions are asking that.
This is why in my practical ideas I recently focused on the “permeable barriers” (between the servers, the classes, the alignment and the play-styles) and why I used my tripartite design scheme as a “gateway”, where the players are encouraged to discover all the parts that the game has to offer in a natural, progressive way (I also wrote about this more specifically here). Without impositions or mandatory requirements. Without the design strongarming a specialization. And even without the players PRETENDING from the game what they learnt to expect from every other mmorpg they played.
Again all these ideas are only a few possible solutions that I imagined and that I consider valuable. There are surely more and better ones. What is important is about acknowledging all these core points and arrive at the correct conclusions. Those conclusions that I criticize, since I seem to have a point of view that doesn’t seem welcomed.
(*) False why: because, at a basic level, a designer doesn’t need to be omniscient to create a good game.
