Monthly Archives: May 2006

Do One Thing

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Both Darniaq and Ubiq wrote some thoughts after an interview with the Garriott’s bothers and I think they bit a poisoned leaf (Darniaq thinks aloud but doesn’t seem to arrive at a conclusion).

I find those marketing strategies fundamentally flawed and I expect there will be a backlash sooner or later. It’s true that there’s a group of casual mmorpg players with ADD that jump from game to game, but I see this as a periphery of larger consolidations of players. I wouldn’t base any business on a completely unreliable target. It’s foolish.

Darniaq summarizes that strategy in two points:
– Portfolios are good. Why offer one title when you can offer many?
– Retention in a game is good. Retention in your portfolio, better.

The scenario doesn’t look so well, from my point of view. A miriad of mediocre games that could have a potential, but that are destined to have a forgettable and brief life.

I can imagine some players trying a new game as it launches, but I really cannot imagine that, in a year, players bored with Dungeon Runners will go buy Auto Assault. Come on. This strategy could work while we are still in a mmorpg frenzy phase where everything is undecided. In the longer term I think the dust will settle and the purchases will be more driven by the confidence the players have in a product and a company.

My point of view here is somewhat rigged because I don’t see the “churn” as a feature. But as a standard of quality. A solid playerbase means that the game has a value, so it’s a general definition of “worth”. Trying to embrace it would mean embracing a mediocrity. Favoring volatile, forgettable experiences. Swarming the market with a bunch of products to disorient a noob customer.

It could work till the market is chaotic and immature, but I don’t see this as a good strategy in the longer term. I’m from a completely different school: do one thing, invest everything you can on it so that it can be the best possible. This is the only way I see to hope in a growth. Betting on the quality of what you can do, your dedication and commitment to offer the best service you can.

NCSoft strategy looks instead more like a market speculation, at some point they’ll need a magistral exit strategy.

I also don’t understand how their ideas apply to the single company. It may make sense for NCSoft to have “casual subscribers”, but how can the single games survive without imploding? Chasing the mediocrity grounds the quality, it doesn’t improve it. Things go progressively worse, not progressively better.

I don’t know. I really cannot understand how it can be better to disperse the resources on multiple projects that will be short-lived and with no future, compared to instead *consolidate* the resources to do something right. And when you got something right you can work to build on top of what you achieved. This is the only way I know to hope in a growth. Working toward a goal, reinvesting. Adding bricks to a solid house instead of building a bunch of shacks that will be blown off by a weak wind.

I always wonder what could have happened if SOE used and reinvested all its resources in one game instead of spawning multiple ones. Every time I hear about a new mmorpg in development I roll my eyes: do we really need another?

I’m a wannabe designer, but I’d never try to start from zero in a brand new company even if I had the possibility. That’s a recipe for failure and this industry needs a consolidation of resources and talents. Not more fragmentation and more unfinished, amateurish projects with no future. We had enough already of those. “Bring together”, join the efforts. Every single game world has a huge potential, it just need ideas, resources and a good execution. Not a wipe and a restart every two steps.

Building things so that they can last. So that they can be solid. If we are two groups with similar goals it makes sense to work together so that the house can be more solid. It’s part of the cooperation.

I hope that in the future won’t get swarmed by a bunch of mediocre titles competing over a tiny group of players. Instead I hope there will be more aggregation. This is how I think the market should be tackled.

Even from the perspective of the development good results only come from well-oiled teams that learnt to work together and perfectioned what they can do. Blizzard came out of that. An high churn is never good. It isn’t good for the communities as it isn’t good for the developers.

It’s true that “communities are portable”, but seconding this concept never brought to good results. When SOE built EQ2 the former EQ players didn’t move to it. They moved to WoW. I think communities try to choose an home with a roof that appears solid and doesn’t drip. There are of course swarms of players that float around these consolidations, but I wouldn’t found a market on them. You are trying to survive of the breadcrumbs of passing players.

It would be interesting to map the migratory fluxes between games if we had precise, disclosed data. But I suspect that the major ones would be unidirectional. Because the core point is this one: how many come back? I still think that these players are more on a research driven by a dissatisfaction. As the market matures I think we’ll see the opposite of what Ubiq says. The players will know better what they are looking for and will become less incline to move. Harder to seduce with inconsistent hype.

I also don’t think that the companies that NCSoft “hosts” will like to be used as disposable fuel.

This is how I would rewrite those two rules:
– Better do one good thing to which you commit and dedicate than a bunch of mediocre ones.
– Retention is an health measure, even (and in particular) in a competitive market.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nor it was made of paper. (!?)

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SOE rises the bar

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Yes, but of the prices of their games. Heh.

Yesterday the announcement of an increase of 3$ for the Station Pass, bringing it to 25$. It is starting to feel rather pricey, even more so if you consider that european players have to pay taxes on that. Which brings the price to 30$. Not a small amount to pay monthly. Plus original games and expansions that you have to purchase separately.

Now, I’ve written in the past that I’m all for rising the monthly fees. No, I’m not crazy. Behind this statement there’s a development plan. I believe that expanding a game through expansions finishes to hurt the game because instead of working uniformly on every part, as a choesive project (like Eve-Online is doing), you are forced to develop “optional” parts and never address core issues that would improve the game significantly. Basically you are bound to an horizontal development that brings directly to the mudflation and a game world that ages awfully.

The idea to increase the monthly fee came with that premise: we up the monthly fee, but to keep a serious, radical ongoing development that replaces the expansions. That is part of the monthly fee. As long you are subscribed you can experience all the game has to offer without any barrier or divisions.

Here SOE not only upped the price of the Station Pass, this would be negligible and I glided on the news, but they are also going to rise significantly the prices of the upcoming expansions.

Today the announce of the new EQ2 expansion, slated for November and named, as anticipated, “Echoes of Faydwer”. The very first thing I noticed in the press release wasn’t the features list, but the retail price going up to 40$ and approaching that of a stand-alone game. It reminds me Guild Wars, but in this case NOT stand-alone and WITH the monthly fee. I guess that’s what they meant when they said they were going to slow down the release of the expansion packs to improve the quality. This surely wasn’t planned as a gift.

I have a suspect. There have been rumors that the upcoming WoW’s expansion will be rather pricey. I think SOE with this press release wanted to send Blizzard a clear sign. *nudge-nudge* Let’s rise the prices together.

With the difference that WoW isn’t that pricey. This November you will probably have to buy the expansion and the basic game if you want to open a new account. It’s not a small price, but still less than what you’d have to pay for a “full” EQ2. Three expansion packs plus three adventure packs. For european players you still have to apply taxes at least for the adventure packs and monthly fee, something that doesn’t apply to Blizzard. Game boxes and monthly fees.

There’s also another relevant difference that should determine a completely different marketing strategy between the two. Blizzard is betting on returning subscribers with this new expansion, they have a huge pool of players to draw from. Instead I think SOE should aim at luring in new players. This would require a completely different and aggressive approach, instead of moving along with Blizzard as a parallel line. They need to collide, not to cooperate.

The “price of admission” to EQ2 is significantly higher, and if you count the expansion, adventure packs and station player services, Station Pass and RMTs, SOE resembles more like a sponge for money.

This June the third adventure pack will be released, “The Fallen Dynasty” (7.99$), about which we know three relevant traits: high-end content, asian-themed and outsourced.

Developed in conjunction with SOE’s Taiwan studio, The Fallen Dynasty Adventure Pack promises to deliver the same downloadable story-rich content seen in the previously released The Bloodline Chronicles and The Splitpaw Saga, but this time with Asian influenced adventure zones, weapons, tradeskill rewards, as well as all new quests.

A few more words from another preview:

Veteran players will get to explore seven new areas, visit a new village, explore a new dungeon – there’s even talk of a forsaken city. We do mean veterans, though – only level 55 to 70 need apply –

The few screenshot on the newly opened page look pretty. But not as pretty as the asian-themed Guild Wars and, in particular, I seriously doubt it will move at the same framerate.

But lets even look at the feature list of that massive expansion coming out for EQ2:

Echoes of Faydwer is the third expansion pack for EverQuest II, and introduces a new playable race, The Fae. An enchanted race of winged creatures, the Fae dwell on the continent of Faydwer, in the arboreal city of Kelethin, the new starting city being added to this latest chapter in the EQII saga. Echoes of Faydwer includes over 350 new quests, a new selection of profession hats, cloaks, armor, and new horse mounts available to players of all levels. EQII players will encounter over 40 new types of creatures to face, more than 20 new zones and adventure areas, and will be able to compete against other players for new PvP (Player vs. Player) rewards, plus all-new items, equipment, spells and tradeskill recipes. The Achievement system introduced in the Kingdom of Sky expansion has been enhanced to include additional sub-class abilities, allowing players to further customize their characters’ abilities.

Which all amounts to the usual: Nothing New.

There isn’t really any new idea or significant development. Not a single new feature. Zones, monsters, quests, items, skills, spells. But nothing adding a different flavor if not as an overstretched, bloated “More Of The Same”.

Looking at the official site there are a few more details but not so encouraging. There is a bland copy of WoW’s jewelcrafting system with the addition of “adornments” that can be applied to armors and weapons to gain a few bonuses and a “Belief System” which sounds like a faction with some prizes to get.

Both Guild Wars and Final Fantasy XI have tried to explore new and innovative gameplay modes with the recent expansion. On this perspective EQ Classic is experimenting a lot more and developing new systems and types of interaction even if it’s also plagued by its incredibly dispersive and inaccessible scope. EQ2 here risks to borrow the worst. Just the overstretched development without any significant progress for the game. “More content”, but nothing that stands out or brings something new to the game.

I’ve recently written about the entrance of new players in the game. I even discussed various strategies to add new content at the low levels without fragmenting and dispersing the community, while still enriching the game. Here SOE seems to dismiss every valid consideration to just reuse a mindless approach: more zones, more quests.

I think EQ2 deserves more ambition and should develop a more aggressive marketing strategy. Instead of reconfirming a stereotype.

The prices go up, the ambition goes down.

Let me backfire now

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Now that I’m pissed off, let me backfire.

I had archived (when I still didn’t have reasons to flame the game) a link to a Gamespot review of FFXI on the XBOX360 to comment later on. It fits prefectly the momentum:

Preposterously long installation period, plus layers of unnecessary inconvenience; virtually nothing done to enhance the experience for the xbox 360; slowly paced action and exploration caters almost exclusively to the hardcore; tough-to-swallow monthly fees required.

That’s a quite good beginning, isn’t it?

Let me quote more:

There’s something to be said for a game that can stand the test of time. Final Fantasy XI Online dates back to 2002, when it was originally released in Japan. Clearly inspired by the influential massively multiplayer PC game EverQuest, FFXI infused the online role-playing formula with the distinctive look and feel of Square Enix’s hugely popular franchise. The game naturally attracted thousands of players, many of whom stuck with FFXI over the long haul, since it featured a deep character class system and a huge, evolving world to explore. However, it’s simply impossible to look at FFXI for the Xbox 360 in the same way as the previously released PC and PlayStation 2 versions. Paradoxically, that’s because this latest translation of the game is essentially no different than the others. It makes no concessions whatsoever to take advantage of the Xbox 360, and it practically goes out of its way to inconvenience and alienate new players. If you’re addicted to FFXI already, now you can play it in HD on the Xbox 360 if you feel like buying another copy. But if you’ve avoided the game up until now, you’d best keep that up.

The game’s sprawling environments and initially slow-paced combat makes the underlying action feel like a chore even early on.

Just beginning play for the very first time literally takes close to three hours, from the hour it takes just to install the game to your Xbox 360 hard drive (the game gobbles up more than a third of the total amount of free space on that thing), to the hour it takes to update the game files once you connect, to the hour it takes to enter about half a dozen registration codes and, finally, spending a few minutes to create your character. Like other versions of FFXI, this game is unfortunately saddled within Square Enix’s PlayOnline viewer, a shell that provides you with a free e-mail address and some other completely unnecessary services. It must be an inextricable part of the game, but all it does here is make it more difficult for you to jump into a session of FFXI.

Once you’re in the game, you’d better get comfortable, because the slow pacing means you’ll have little to show for your time spent unless you play for at least several hours at a time. You’ll also find it’s almost impossible to make progress after a while unless you join a well-coordinated group of players. And after you manage to find an adequate group and start slowly grinding your way toward your next level, killing monster after monster, you’ll naturally pressure each other to keep playing. In the past few years, online role-playing games have evolved to cater to more types of players, by doing a better job of accommodating people with less time on their hands or those who prefer the option to play solo. Such games as World of Warcraft and City of Heroes have attempted to become less restrictive, easier to get into, better looking, and simply more fun than their predecessors. By comparison, a game like FFXI feels like work, not play. No wonder the game’s character classes are called jobs.

Another issue worth mentioning is that, for better or worse, FFXI throws all kinds of different players into the mix. That means you’ll run into Japanese players running the PS2 version of the game, American players running the PC version of the game, and so on. Most of them have probably been at it for months already, so don’t expect much sympathy as you try to learn the ropes. Don’t expect the game to do a good job of teaching you the ropes, either. The manual spends about as much time explaining the registration process as it does telling you how to play, and the game itself pretty much drops you into the world without any instruction. At least the PlayOnline service itself offers some advice, though in FFXI, you’ll have to learn most everything the hard way…or hope that an experienced player is kind enough to walk you through some of the finer points of etiquette, grouping, combat, macros, travel, and so on. Prepare for a frustrating uphill battle just trying to get your bearings in Vana’diel.

You can still look forward to some decent character graphics and environments, but this game looks seriously below par, and rough edges like an inexplicably uneven frame rate and distant objects suddenly popping up on the horizon hurt it further.

While each of these expansion packs add substantial amounts of content, none of them are likely to even come into play until you’ve already invested dozens of hours in the game. So while FFXI has grown over time, it hasn’t really evolved. One of these expansion packs might have done something about the interface or the graphics, for example.

Whatever mystique there was surrounding FFXI is gone now, and what’s left is a great, big game that’s almost intolerably cumbersome. If you’re very brave, masochistic, or stubborn, you might find some rewarding experiences in FFXI. But chances are good that you won’t. Considering this is the first time the Final Fantasy series has appeared on the Xbox, it’s hard not to feel sorely disappointed by the slapdash job done in clumsily pushing this game onto the 360.

That’s what I define a good review. Even if here I collected the gripes, these are good gripes, whether you like the game or not. The point is that you can like it. But IN SPITE of these problems, and not because they do not exist. These are problems that existed since the very beginning and that affected just everyone. Square did very little to address them and the game remained essentially the same without even trying to improve.

I believe FFXI is a wonderful game. One of the best mmorpgs, sitting close to WoW. Even better on certain aspects. But the fundamental point is that the game is CRIPPLED
by absurd problems that could be extemely trivial to address. This is why the lowest common denominator is Square’s masochism in those choices that cut the legs of this game and, as the review says, alienate possible players.

Some of the common gripes have good reasons behind and I can even defend them. Compromises that have a foundation. For example the “worldpass” mechanic (you cannot create a character on a server of your choice) was a “lesser evil” that pissed of every single player. But that was still able to effectively achieve the miracle of balanced servers. See what is happening to Blizzard and you’ll understand why this choice wasn’t so terrible.

The same for the decision to unify the interface and technology between the different hardware platforms, or the decision to have global servers to cut the maintenance/administration costs while striving for a good ideal. There were good ideas behind, good principles. Even innovation and the desire to try something different. Something to strive for.

But beside those valid points, there were also other, fundamental flaws without good reasons to support them. From the decision to not allow the game to run in a window or deleting not only the characters, but even whole accounts after a period of inactivity, to the very little work on the game client to take advantage a bit more of the different platforms.

It wouldn’t have been too hard to code a better mouse support to improve the controls on the PC.

That review lists and explains clearly most the perceived major problems at the high level. It is interesting to notice that the great majority of them aren’t even directly related to the game.

The issues of course don’t end there. Even the game has serious accessibility and design problems and it’s again interesting to observe that it was fairly successful in spite of them. It’s a game with a huge potential, high production value and execution, but that suffers from very simple problems that are evident to everyone but Square (and here there’s obviously the cultural gap that hinders a good communication between the comunity and the japanese devs). It could have been much, much, much more successful than how it is now but it is again grounded by those basic flaws. As I wrote on Q23: “I hate the retard, masochist parts of the game, not all of it”.

FFXI is a game I always wanted to love but that has remained really hard to approach for me. I’m sure I’m part of a large majority in this.

It’s fundamental for every mmorpg to remain flexible, evolve and adapt. FFXI, while remaining one of the best game worlds to date, performs very poorly with these three.

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FUCK YOU, SquareEnix

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It seems I have no luck buying european expansions for mmorpgs. And SquareEnix continues to have a passion for masochism.

This morning I received the latest expansion box for FFXI. This time it comes as just a dvd box. I always like to find manuals and give them a read while offline, I’ve already commented as it would be a good idea to start giving the retail boxes more value as we move to the online distribution. Not through lame items in the game, but with some content in the form of good manuals, atlas and so on. Something you wouldn’t find in the digital download and something that would appropriate for a physical box, like something you can read offline.

Well, this dvd box has two DVDs inside and a sticker with the registration code. Nothing else. Not a single piece of paper, not even install instruction. I wish I could have got a digital download version, but it seems it is too smart for them. So I can only buy a retail box that is essentially empty.

I’ve seen a discussion complaining about the lack of transparence on the monthly fee if you buy the game for the XBOX360. Well, the expansion box for the PC version I bought doesn’t tell you anything. There’s “online” written in the title, obviously, but no mention that it is an online game, nor that it is an expansion pack. It doesn’t say anywhere that the basic FFXI is required to play. On the back of the box there are five screenshots and the system requirements. Nothing else. It doesn’t say anywhere that it requires FFXI, nor that it is an expansion pack, nor that it requires a monthly fee. What you can see is the title logo and the “PlayOnline” logo.

I said there are two DVDs in the box. Well, one is for the manual and nothing else. I’ve looked at this manual, it’s a pathetic five pages pdf. Let me repeat: a WHOLE DVD used to contain a five page pdf. If this isn’t retareded I don’t know what could.

So I insert the other “game” DVD to install the expansion… and I cannot. It tells me that Final Fantasy XI is not installed. The problem is that I am using the american version, and it seems that I cannot install the english european version I bought over the english american version of the game.

No, I’m not that stupid. The past expansions WERE compatible. I guess this isn’t anymore the case. Right now the billing system is down for maintenance so I cannot say if the key-code works, at least. I’m quite sure it won’t. Anyway, I won’t be able to install the files, even though they are identic to the version I have.

As the billing system comes back up I won’t go there to register the expansion, but to cancel my subscription for good. I wish I could send them a FUCK YOU in big, fluorescent letters. I won’t touch another SquareEnix online game with a long pole. It could even be the Jesus of mmorpgs.

EDIT:
To begin with, I was owned (they rebill the first of the month, one day late to cancel).

While I was waiting for the billing system to come back up, I was able to install the expansion by creating dummy registry keys and let the game believe it is the european version. This worked smoothly and I was able to verify, patch and run the game without a hitch. The client works with all the expansion enabled.

Now the problem is that it doesn’t fucking accept the european key code. Let me rephrase. I have a working client with all the expansion enabled, but now I cannot activate it because it doesn’t accept a fucking key code. What is the purpose of this, I really don’t know. Square self-publishes and distributes, so they don’t even have a good reason to protect the local market. Why do they care where I buy the expansion? They have global servers no matter where you live and a multi platform game, but you still cannot use a fucking key code from a different country. The billing system physically resides in the smae machine, it is in Japan, and it still discriminates over a key code for no apparent reason. I bought the game legitimately, but this is still not enough to let me play the game.

My account was created when the game launched in the US. I don’t want to spend 60$ just for the shipment plus taxes and there is no fucking way to buy a gooddamn keycode online because it seems we are still in the prehistory of the internet. Or maybe it would be a too good business practice while Square must always do something stupid to fuck up their games. What is fun is that with my username and password I can play on any client version. On PC, PSX2, XBOX360. From Italy, Japan, Australia or USA. But not the fucking key code. It won’t work. The key code is the only goodamn thing to be picky.

Fucky you, SquareEnix. I’m done giving you money.

Btw, when shit happened with SOE (see the first link) the problem was promptly acknowledged. I don’t think Square will come in my help this time. “Customer care”, of course.

P.S.
To complete the fun: a gaming magazine in Italy received a review copy of the expansion from Square. Obviously european. Since this expansion has only high-level content it’s necessary that you enable it on an account with an high level character. But their only account with which they originally played is american since the european version was published only one year after.

They weren’t able to play the game and Square will do without its review. Win-win.

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Another use of levels

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If I let pass a few days before returning on the argument I’ll finish to forget about it as it always happens. So I continue here what I wrote about Oblivion and use the levels to let the player adjust the difficulty of the game.

As I explained (even on Q23) in Oblivion the levels don’t really exist in the game. There is no direct game mechanic or dice rolls factoring your level. The game is skill based and the level is only a way to measure and segment the overall power of your skill pool. Basically the level of the character doesn’t exist to be used by the player, but to be used by the system.

The system checks the character’s level as a way to measure its effectiveness and then balance the difficulty of the creatures and the value of the items around that variable. The player is passive in this mechanic.

It is not a case that the best mod for Morrowind effectively hid the levels to uniform the character growth while preserving the integrity of the rest of the game (even balancing it much better). The game is already skill based, and if the levels are only a way for the system to monitor the character growth, they can even be obscured.

There are many uses of levels, more or less apparent, from all that Raph wrote to cozy worlds. But they can be also used by the *player* (and not by the system) to control the difficulty of the game as many japanese RPGs are doing from a very long time: with the casual encounters.

This is an excerpt from a post written by Kitsune about Dragon Quest VIII and the flexibility of the casual encounters:

That’s one of the biggest misunderstandings about DQ. Since the original, you have never needed to grind to level up. Yuji Horii has always, always, always designed each game so that if you explore around you and try out things, you will be at the appropriate level to be able to win. Unless you have a certain hardcore purpose in mind (in which you use metal enemies to get the job done quickly), leveling up has happened as a matter of course, for doing what the game was designed to do. If you explore reasonably (you don’t even have to do it much) you can play the entire game through without ever stopping for the express purpose of leveling up.

More than any RPG series I’ve played, its easier to control the difficulty level in DQ. Exploiting very satisfying tactical plans pays off and you can do hella hard stuff at low levels. In fact, that’s one of the reasons the game sells so well in Japan. Its made for both people who just don’t want to have too hard of a time of fighting, but want it to be fun enough to do more than attack and for people who like to make their own challenges. Both exist in great quantities. I love doing stuff like going to the treasure cave near the thieves’ town before you do anything at the abbey or for the king and then an entirely different cutscene plays when you meet the thief lady (so many name changes, I’ve been purposely vague) to reflect that. You can enter the western continent anyway you please and the cutscenes reflect that (there are different flows to plot depending on which place you start exploring at). You can visit Lapan House and get the tiger before you ever hear about a spoiled prince. Or vice versa.

Just walking around that luscious overworld invites finding what’s hidden every nook and cranny for many a gamer now, but that’s the way it has always been for the Dragon Quest faithful. That’s why every town has lots of little goodies hidden in pots, or down wells (I love the hidden health club you can find in one, and the friendly monster in another, and the stuck slime king in another), or around obscure corners, or up ladders.

As has been pointed in this thread and others, the monsters have many unique abilities and animated meticulously with many creative and charming touches. Believe it or not, the monsters are the joy of the game.

So no they aren’t just there to grind XP. They’re the entire foundation of the game and one of its biggest selling points. If you can’t get into it, fine, but you can’t criticize a game for what you want it be, instead of looking at it for what it wants to be.

And then he returned on the same concept recently while discussing/arguing about Final Fantasy XII:

No need to grind. Don’t make me give you my “Leveling up is not a valid strategy in this day and age” speech.

I have done some mob quests, but not all of them, in particular, not the ones before the more difficult bosses, but guess what? You don’t get any experience for it, maybe some LP, but no experience. The rewards are indeed helpful, but not enough so that you will be able to win against a boss. When I lose against a boss in FFXII, I try a different strategy! And guess what? If its better, I win the next time!

Besides, there’s only a handful of hard bosses in the entire game. Most of them are only mildly challenging or wimpy.

There’s no such thing as any good console RPG that requires to level up since Final Fantasy IV. None. No matter what good game you spit at me (and you know I’ve played them all), I can spit back a way to get past the challenge without leveling up. (Note: “Good” game, shit like Saga Frontier doesn’t apply, obviously bad games have bad habits.)

Its pure logic, Ex-S. If one person claims you are forced to level up for the bosses, it cannot hold true if another didn’t and can get past them. Because then you wouldn’t be forced, there’d be another way.

Giving your opinion on the slow pace is one thing, but there’s no call for saying something incorrect about a high-profile game most people won’t be able to play for months. I’m really tired of this attitude where if you’re having problems, it must be something wrong with the design of the game, not with the way you play it.

Beside the discussion about the specific games I wanted to underline how the use of the same mechanic (characters levels) are used to achieve two opposite results. In Oblivion the levels are used to measure the power of the character to then adapt the difficulty, in other games they merely articulate the character progression, and in the great majority of the japanese RPGs they are instead used by the players to adapt the difficulty of the game to their needs/desires. Customization and self-imposed challenges.

The difficulty of an encounter is always static. There are fixed variables involved and the player is required to “learn the lesson” and go through that type of encounter (often the end bosses, this is evident in DQ8, for example). The bar is set at a precise height and the player has to surpass it. The casual encounters, always hated by the western players, are here a way to offer the player a customization. While the boss monster will have a fixed difficulty, the players can manipulate the variable they control: the characters.

The level of these caracters adds a customization to the formula. You can decide to refine your tactics till you win, trying every time a different strategy, or you can slow down and gain more levels. There’s always a gap between you and an encounter. When this gap is too wide, the encounter may feel frustrating because you don’t know how to overcome it. The levels add customization to the difficulty because they help to compensate the gap. You can decide to fill it by grinding the casual encounters, or you can try to fill that space through “skill”.

I find this interesting because, as Kitsune explain, this is a huge, if not the major, selling factor for japanese players. It adds a great deal of replaying value as there are always small details to discover. The western players are less used to toy with the small details, we glide on the content and get frustrated if an encounter is too hard without trying to find a different strategy. We go through these kinds of game with the fast-forward.

Too little patience and tolerance.

It would be an interesting mechanic even in mmorpgs, but too often the encounters are so strictly codified that there isn’t much skill involved (and again, “skill” doesn’t mean “twitch”) and the “playable” level range of the monsters is narrow (fighting monster fours levels above you becomes nigh impossible, no matter how well you play). So there isn’t much to “customize”, you are just locked in a precise situation. The group mechanics are more interesting, but even here there’s this awful trend to trivialize an encounter through levels and items. See for example the instances in WoW, where the players standardized the access to each 4-5 levels above the standards set by Blizzard.

Fixing Oblivion

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There have been many discussions about the problem of “rubberbanding” in Oblivion. The term isn’t mine but it’s what I saw being used to describe the problem.

To explain, in Oblivion the whole game shapeshifts around your character. It’s the most often perceived flaw because it permeates the whole game, not only the game design, but also the graphic. The whole world is rolled at your feet like a red carpet, you walk around and things enter the rendered range and pop-up into existence, outside this radius and they cease to exist. The NPCs continue to exist and have their own schedules, which help to give the game some consistence, but everything else in is “volatile”. “Spawned on demand” and dynamically adapted to your level.

This means that all the content is potentially accessible at level 1. Every monster is in fact calibrated on your level. A wolf is spawned if you are level 1, or a minotaur if you are level 20. These are the “levelled lists” that were already present in Morrowind. You enter a dungeon and the game will populate it to be appropriate for your level, both in mosters and loot. No matter where you go and how well you play, at level 1 you will always find poor loot, while at level 20 or above you’ll always see the best of the best everywhere, and the whole world populated by epic creatures.

It existed as a way to address different playstyles in a sandbox game. It was needed to retain a general balance and keep the game always fun, trying to solve the problems that came up with Morrowind where you could quickly become god-like and then feel bored for the rest of the game because you were too powerful. It’s a general problem with an open-ended type of game, the story is not “directed”, so it becomes increasingly hard to calibrate the difficutly. You never know if the dungeon is being entered by a level 1 character or by a level 20. The solution was to populate the game world dynamically, adapting the spawns directly on the level of your character.

The result was that the players, not surprisingly, didn’t digested this workaround so well. It’s a solution that completely removes the persistence from the game in a similar way to what happens with randomly generated content. In a world and a game that relies heavily on the immersion, the world itself becomes “virtual”, potential. Every spawn represents a “possibility”, and not a fixed state. This type of virtuality has the direct consequence of removing the history. The mobs are “replaceable”, things do not exist. The world outside becomes pretentious, faked. You know that no matter where you go, every dungeon is tailored around you. The distance and space within the world cease to exist, because the world simply “walks with you”.

Here what is broken is the discovery. In a immersive game you explore the territory, discover treasures, get to know characters and stories. Think to the original Ultima series. YOU are the one who is ported to another world, you are then asked to move, explore and learn. That word exists with or without you. The fun is in the “roleplay” as immersion. You are a stranger in a strage land. So the player experiencing the discovery through the character. Make experience of the world.

The world is an essential part of these games and its value is in its history, its objectivity. Its independent state, autonomous from your character. PvE implies the fact that your character is detached from the world he discovers. This discovery implies the fact that the two sets don’t overlap and remain separate. PvE implies an identity, and, as an identity, autonomous from the one of your character. “Identity” is the opposite of “virtuality”. Virtual defines a possibility: something else, somewhere else and in a different time. Identity defines something that cannot be modified, a state. And history is part of an identity.

These are the same concepts I analyzed when discussing the use of the instancing because all these different design strategies always revolve about possibilities and the adaptation of the content. About “virtualizing” parts of the game so that they can be reused.

At the core it is needed a balance between two extremes, because the concept of the virtuality is opposed to the identity and you cannot have one and the other. One goes against the other, it precludes the other.

In Oblivion the game feels completely unbalanced toward the virtuality, so, as I said, the world loses consistence, it’s all adapted around you and the underlying rules are too evident to not get easily recognized. The “artificial wires” that connect this world are exposed and you can kiss goodbye to the suspension of disbelief. The immersivity fades away and you are soon learning and interacting exclusively with these aritficial rules. Simply put: you know what to expect, the game becomes predictable.

You know that at the end of the dungeon there will be that creature and that type of loot because you are at that level. Before going in for the first time, you already know what’s within.

This is a rather interesting mechanic because in other games the levels are used in the exact opposite way: the creatures are at a fixed level, while your own level is the game design tool used to customize the difficulty (I’ll write about this in another moment).

“Fixing Oblivion” is a way to bring the game back within a threshold so that not all problem are fixed, but at least the suspension of disbelief is once again possible, and you can concentrate more on the immersion. This could be possible through two mods, working together and addressing the basic problems of the levelled lists.

The first can be found here (Francesco’s mod, with only the core components present in the versions before 2.3) and is already quite popular. There are various mods changing the levelled lists but they are too aggressive or don’t really fix the real problem, even if they may have nice ideas. The one I linked is the best compromise I found at the moment. The second is a simple mod that slows down the skill up rate four times.

The first mod intruduces min and max levels to the quests, so that they still adapt to you but only within a certain level range, recovering some of the missing persistence. This makes the difficulty more static at certain points, it scales the content indipendently to your character and you won’t be able to finish the arena or quest lines without reaching the appropriate level or at least moving near it. The second mod works in combo with the first, making the levelling process four time slower, so requiring you to spend more time hunting and exploring for each level (slowing down the skills four times essentially quadruples the “content”), encouraging you to take the side quests without worrying about outlevelling the main quest (which, thanks to the first mod, will adapt downward and upward to your level, but stopping outside a certain range. So Kvatch will never become impossible, floating within a smaller level range).

This gives the game and the player more breadth and even more control on the difficulty. The original game is completely shaped around your character, but the levelling process was also extremely fast. So it was easy to rack up levels quickly and then arrive at a situation where you have to fight the same epic creatures every two steps. Those two mods distribute the flow of the game more uniformly. You have more time to see low level content and explore without feeling like outpacing the rest of the game. The result is that everything should feel more natural. You may find quests that are too hard, so you have the time to go somewhere else to gain more power before you try again. Your level becomes a way from a side to still adapt the game difficulty appropriately, from the other a way to adapt yourself to the challenge. Possibly achieving that balance that was missing in the original game.

I still haven’t tested everything thoroughly but for now it seems to work and on the paper the ideas are solid. At the moment I’m waiting for the official patch to come out before I go through the game for good. Hoping that it won’t take too long.

This was mostly a digression on the design implications.

Guild Wars – Fantasy Melting Pot

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Another interview with Jeff Strain confirms the same approach that I identified:

When we started working on Guild Wars and especially when we started pursuing what has kind of become the modern incarnation of the art style for the game, we really said, you know, obviously there are lots of different fantasy traditions in the world. And the fantasy tradition for the original Prophecies campaign was kind of your, very unique, but basically European kind of look, especially the early areas of it. As you point out Factions draws on an Asian fantasy theme, it’s not really Chinese or Japanese or Korean but kind of a shared cultural history between all three of them that we tapped into. And what we want to do is pursue that with future campaigns. Pursue specifically branching out into other cultures, other mythologies, other settings that are drawn from and inspired by cultures from all around the world. Guild Wars really truly is a global game, I mean one of the things that makes it different is that everybody plays together on one big virtual seamless server network, instead of being divided into shards and zones. And so we wanted to reflect that international flavor of the game itself in the art style. And so what you will see with future campaigns is we’ll pick another culture or mythology from around the world and then kind of explore that as the foundation, not only for the architecture but the character designs, costuming, the dialogue, even the quests in the story is going to be driven by that.

That’s exactly the trait I underlined with my early “review” in beta.

To be honest it’s not completely true that Guild Wars isn’t divided into zones. Europe and America are still seaparated and I think you can join foreign players only if you move to the “international districts”, which are always empty. You can port the whole account to a different zone, but even this transition isn’t smooth within the game and you can only switch an handful of times before your account gets locked permanently. A smoother travel system would be welcome in the game, considering that the technology can easily support it. In particular beween euro/american zones.

The choice to not bind the game to a precise setting is both a strength and a weakness. From a side there’s the possibility to explore freely every myth and culture, from the other it reinforces a generic feel. The player becomes a “traveler of worlds” but the strong use of the instancing and the setting-independence make the game feel rather inconsistent. I’ll return on this point but the basic problem is that there’s very little persistence, so very little immersivity. The whole game is focused on your own character and this is not the best way to feel involved with something. It is already a weak-bond.

I also continue to see the release of the stand-alone expansion packs as something not simple to sustain. It surely puts much stress on the developers and requires an high creative commitment. It is a bold choice. We usually think just about the new content added but we forget that a game isn’t just about that. With the original Guild Wars we even bought brand new technology and game systems. Those aren’t rebuilt with the new expansions but just brought over. I’m skeptical about the actual possibility to keep the game always fresh with this type of restless development. See this discussion.

It’s important that the development focuses also to expand and polish the game systems instead of exclusively on the content. The commitment to release (and depend) on these semestral expansions could be problematic to work on both fronts. It’s an incentive to reuse the same tools and patterns to optimize the production instead of allowing to shift the resources to attempt new solutions.

Considering that they need to release full-priced standalone products it may be a good idea to reverse the model and lower the price of the previous exapansion as the new one comes out. I think this could convince more players that arrive now in the game to pay another 20$ to eventually get the first chapter, instead of expecting them to spend 100$ for both.