Mezz Me and I Kick Your Ass

November 25, 2005 by Abalieno | 2 Comments

I gave a look to my enlarging notes file where I write random stuff and I found an old note that I just couldn’t figure out what it meant: “mez in Star Wars”.

Just that. I really don’t know what I was thinking while writing those four words but at least I’m not the only one taking notes and forgetting what they mean. Then the other day I suddenly remembered from where the observation came from and what I was supposed to say about it.

In general my design ravings start from a simplification of an observation. I isolate a problem, something I don’t like or something I do like and try to figure out what are the essential reasons that make something good or bad. Then I try to “reposition” these elements to see if it’s possible to maximize the benefits, reduce the problems and move the design toward a more positive direction (potential, from that point onward). This pretty much summarizes most of what I do. In fact the great majority of my ideas come directly as a revision of what’s already available more than rabid creativity. I try to put things so that they are more appropriate. Starting from what I see to move on what I’d like to see.

In this case the problem was about the “mezz”. Of course with the focus on PvP since it’s where most of the complaints and problems are concentrated. For a long time I sticked with the standard opinion “mezz is bad” because the most annoying thing possible in a PvP fight is about losing the control of your character. In fact in my bundled ideas about DAoC I was proposing to reduce considerably the timers so that they could have been more manageable. But with the time I’m radically changing my opinion and I’ve tried once again to detach myself from the commonplaces in a similar way to what I did when I reevaluated the “unbalance”. In fact “mezz is good”, it adds a whole lot of depth to an encounter and could be an exciting element building up the fun, if used properly.

Here starts the observation. What are the cases where being mezzed is annoying and frustrating? Are there other cases where it’s instead something positive and exciting? In WoW it’s hard to say, or better, too easy. WoW’s PvP is too “disconnected” and lacking strategy and class interdependence and organization. I’ve seen a few recurring tactics like 4-5 mages rushing into a zerg spamming AOE while shielded/healed by priests and the organized stun-ganking groups of 3-4 rogues, but besides these trivial patterns there isn’t much going on and it’s mostly an open field combat where everyone goes on in his own way (and where raids and groups are simply used to share Honor points and a chat channel). This is different in DAoC, instead. There’s way more interdependence between the classes and teamwork. The classes have more defined roles and the encounters can be won or lost based on the performance of the single. This applies in both 8vs8 and the larger battles and it’s in this second case where the use of Crowd Control becomes more of a factor. There’s more organization and depth. The raw combat in WoW is more interactive, smooth and satisfying. You have access to many more “tools” and the actual combat has a better flow (since you have plenty of time to react and enjoy, while in DAoC the combat could just last a matter of seconds and get engulfed in a lag spike between a frame and another). These superficial, coarse observations are already enough to reconfirm a rule. We like the combat to develop and open up possibilities instead of rushing to get resolved as quickly as possible (which comes directly and reconfirms another old reasoning). Like an inverted direction (the “inverted tree” I also commented here).

What I noticed in DAoC is that it is true that the Crowd Control adds depth to a PvP encounter. In particular I’ve seen experienced groups fighting successfully against 2-3 times their numbers and not just with /assist trains. I’ve seen awsome fights that lasted a good amount of time (also because they happened on the classic server, without buffbots and I-WIN artifacts) and it was also thanks to a clever use of CC. What I think is that WoW’s combat isn’t superior to DAoC because of the reduced use of CC, in fact I believe that this is one of the unique strengths of DAoC that it can still hold agains the numb PvP mechanics in WoW. So I think the CC is not the problem itself and doesn’t need to be “solved” (it will surely be a predictable mistake for the upcoming games). But maybe it can be improved once I figure out what isn’t fun about it and how it’s possible to maximize the positive points.

In my experience I’ve been in both 8vs8 and larger fights. In 8vs8 the CC is mostly used to isolate the players out of the fight so that the other group can pick targets one by one. This is the most frustrating example of CC because it *removes* the combat. Once the CC lands and is not purged, the combat is over, you already lost. This is not fun because all the gameplay is trivialized into a first-sighting. It becomes just a matter of fast ping and reflex and there isn’t much more involved. The “combat” here is missing, it’s just a routine to end the fight because it stops to be interactive as the mezz lands and puts the other group out of business. In the larger fights, instead, the situation may change (in particular if you have a keep or a tower to support a defence). The mezz, most of the times, isn’t anymore equal to a timed death. You don’t stare anymore an unavoidable end. In these cases the mezz becomes effectively a “timeout”.The fight goes on, you are forced to see it without being able to contribute but you are anticipating the moment when the mezz will break and you’ll rush in the fight. The fight is there, is awaiting you. The wait builds up the tension and your desire. And these are wonderful premises for the fun.

What I see is that in the first case the CC erases the interaction. You have the “timeout” but once it triggers you have also already lost. In the second case, instead, the “timeout” is still there, but as a premise to the combat and not as a premise to an unavoidable death. So what I think is frustrating is *not* the timeout itself. In fact this timeout not only is required to give some depth to the encounters, as explained above and largely acknowledged, but it also builds strong premises for the fun. It’s a valuable addition to the gameplay and not something that should be minimized or removed. On the contrary what doesn’t work is the definitive removal from the combat. The CC used as an I-Win button too unbalanced and powerful compared to the other skills and spells (which also brought to highly specialized classes that do just CC, another wrong point). So my conclusion is that the negative points of CC are not about the wait it directly implies (the wait), but more about what comes after (the combat). The timeout should lead to some sort of “comeback” where the mezzed player can recover his gameplay. This can make CC work without being annoying or frustrating.

The meaning of that cryptic “mez in Star Wars” had its origin here. I wanted to underline how the final fight between Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi is a perfect example of the mezz and its positive “narrative” qualities. In this fight Obi-Wan is cut out by the force fields and can only watch the duel between Dath Maul and Qui-Gon. In that moment the point of view of the observer is the one of Obi-Wan. We see the action through his eyes and this narrative stratagem is used (and is successful) to build up the tension of the combat. In particular to build up a tension that WILL get discharged (liberation) in the following fight between Obi-Wan and Darth Maul.

This pretty much explains clearly two basic and crucial points. The first is the one I explained above, in order for this mechanic to be effective and successful, the combat cannot be negated. The tension accumulated MUST be discharged or the game (or movie scene) will be just feel frustrating, unfinished. The second point is that, from a functional point of view, Obi-Wan isn’t just waiting there doing nothing. He is building up some rage and when he exits the mezz he is different from when it entered it. He is angry, more determined. The following duel will be a discharge of the tension of both the spectator and the protagonist (empathy+catharsis).

How to translate all this into a game and once again maximize the good points while removing or minimizing what doesn’t work? My ideas are just the direct result of all those observations. And more goals set to reach. As I often repeat what is important is to set goals, then the actual implementation to reach them may vary. The first goal I defined is again that the combat must follow a mezz and cannot be negated. The tension has to flow somewhere in order of the “timeout” to be satisfying and tolerable. If the mezz just leads to a sudden death without giving back the control to the player, the result will be terribly frustrating and nowhere fun. The second goal is tied to the first. It’s about giving the mezz abilities some side-effects so that the players have to stop to abuse this mechanic and add some more depth to it. The purpose is to add side-effects that benefit the victim of the mezz and that counterbalance the power of the mezz.

This is also a perfect example of what I mean with In-Character design compared to Out Of Character design. Here I just observed a movie (or imaginary) scene and imagined, from the perspective of the spectator or the player, how to translate those mechanics into a game. And not planned an abstract formal system out of thin air to then retrofit into a specific setting.

The practical implementation is just an example. I shaped it around DAoC because it’s the game I know better and the one where the mezz has a strong purpose and gameplay role. /and it’s also the game where it was more harshly criticized. A topic still well alive today and rather important for the games of tomorrow.

To begin with, the system I imagined doesn’t include the stuns because they are too rooted in the gameplay and too short to fit in the observations above. So the changes are isolated to two cases: the root and mezz.

In the case of the root:
– If a character is rooted and not in combat (receiving, dealing damage or casting spells, specifically) it will build up an “haste” buff that will trigger as the root breaks and that will last for 1/2 the time the character remained rooted. The buff grants a 20% bonus to melee attack speed, casting times and running speed, plus a “freeze” of the mana and endurance pools (shown graphically by making these pools shine brightly) for the duration of the buff. So that the character can use styles and cast spells without losing mana or endurance.

The buff will trigger only if the character remained rooted for at least five seconds and it will have a minimum duration of three seconds and a max of fifteen. The “purge” RA or similar effects will interrupt the buff build-up as they land.

In the case of the mezz:
– If a character is mezzed it will quickly regain health, endurance and mana at fast speed (in 10 seconds the pools should be completely replenished) Plus, it will build up a “liberation” buff that will trigger as the mez is broken (or fades out) and that will last for 1/2 the time the character remained mezzed. The buffs grants immunity to stuns, immunity to interruption for casters, a freeze of the endurance and mana pools, and a 20% bonus to the damage of melee attacks and spells.

The buff will trigger only if the character remained mezzed for at least five seconds and it will have a minimum duration of three seconds and a max of fifteen. The “purge” RA or similar effects will interrupt the buff build-up as they land.

The purpose is to not affect the duration of the mezz and roots in the game. After a long observation I decided that it’s not that the problem and reducing those timers will just remove the complexity of the encounters. Instead these changes are aimed to counterbalance the power of these spells and offer the victims a “way out”, so that the focus doesn’t stop on who lands the mezz first but on the actual combat that follows the “timeout”.

Of course this is focused to improve the specific mechanics. It’s obvious that those classes that right now are too strictly specialized only on mezzing skills should gain more active “toys” to contribute to the fights.

The proposed implementation is, once again, just a rough idea of what could be possible. It should be tested thoroughly internally so that the system is balanced and fits the goals set. The details I wrote are just the result of approximate simulations that I made in my own mind and with the little experience I have from the game. If they come out realistic and balanced it means I’m cool, but that wasn’t my purpose.

What concerns me is to demonstrate that the goals are valid and should be taken into consideration. The practice, then, may vary based on the experience and what comes up through the testing.

INFERNO – DAoC 2 is possible, here’s how

October 27, 2005 by Abalieno | 4 Comments

On the Vault Mythic asks the dreamer to dream:

Okay, here’s the deal. The producers of Camelot (Walt and Jeff) wanted me to start this thread the other day, and I got bogged down in distractions. So do me a favor and make the most of it, and give the guys plenty to read today :)

What kind of expansion pack would make you excited? Wouldn’t be until next fall, and all the patches between now and then are probably going to be small improvements/fixes/revamp/tweaky things.

Land? Dungeons? Cities? Races? Classes? What about atmosphere, quests, items? What would be cool for you?

Again, leave this thread to the dreamers, everyone.

Despite the fact that the line saying “all the patches between now and then are probably going to be small improvements/fixes/revamp/tweaky things” doesn’t put DAoC’s future into a positive light, here are my ideas:

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Everyone playing the game would tell you that what would be interesting for the game would be about RvR and not PvE. Fortunately or not, DAoC was thought so that its RvR is designed more as a “virtual world” and that “satisfying repetable content” I quoted often in the last days. So the mudflation just doesn’t stick on it and thinking about an optional expansion for DAoC has always been rather hard since the premises of the game drag it in a completely different direction. In a similar way to what happens with Eve-Online (in fact CCP decided to not release pay-expansions but just work through the subscription fees and keeping to radically develop the game).

This is why the production of the game has always tried to find “tricks” to work on the RvR and still keep it free, like the “free expansion” concept that brought the whole “New Frontier” overhaul. Basically we have a problem. We need good ideas about features and content that can be added to the game but that would still be optional to a degree and not absolutely indispensable but at least desirable. The problem is that the idea of “content expansion” is appropriate for mudflated games but not to one where the real focus is the RvR and the competition between the players. You cannot offer the players buying the expansion a direct advantage over those that won’t. It would just break the game (the design between the past expansions always tried to maintain a delicate equilibre on the edge between desiderable -to encourage the players to buy the expansion- and optional content, sometimes going overboard like it happened with ToA).

One of the basic design principles that was behind ToA but that was also betrayed, is about the possibility to give some of the players access to tools that can then benefit everyone. Considering this premise and considering some humor about other problems, I’d say that whatever could be added in an expansion should NEVER be usable and useful for 8vs8. This to mark a line. If it was, we would just add to the game another brand new requirement that the players would just hate. So what would be left is the possibility for the RvR to develop something related to the keeps warfare or something related to larger RvR missions that could be triggered by someone with the access to the exp and then experienced together.

Another of my ideas could be also adapted to provide a viable and expansion-friendly further character development. While the possibility to raise the level cap (and creating enough content to justify an expansion) is just inconceivable for this game. It would just destroy it and force it for years to tweak and adapt everything to the new cap.

As you can figure out there isn’t much left. As I said, the game just isn’t suited to be expanded in this way. It needs a completely different plan. But this goes also beyond the scope of this article and I don’t want to go too radical and irrealistic. I will just have to find something viable, that doesn’t damage the game and that is still possible to package as an “optional” expansion.

The premises of my thoughs are described here above. These are the ideas I squeezed out:

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DAoC: INFERNO

+ Add in the exp pack a key-code usable only once. This key-code would allow a player to flag a character and instantly /level it to 45.

+ “The Evolution Server Project”. Transform the “evolution servers” idea into the exp pack (sort of a DAoC 2 built directly on DAoC). This would be a way to go heavy on the development and keep these servers as a separate project that can be accessed only to those buying the expansion. An occasion for Mythic to go back and solve radically the basic mistakes and offer to every player an occasion to start again (and, in the case they choose so, use the key-code to have a levelled up character and enjoy the endgame without really having to repeat the grind). I won’t go in the details about how the Evolution servers should be shaped up because it would go beyond the scope of these notes. But this is supposed to be the major content of the exp and not a superficial tweak to the rules.

+ (all servers) The possibility to use “formations” in RvR groups. These will be selectable by the group leader and will be triggered on/off just by /sticking to the group. Pressing a movement key would break the formation as it currently breaks the /stick.

+ (all servers) Follow and build on the Final Fantasy XI idea of adding NPCs henchmen. At level 20 the players will have the possibility to do a few duties for the realms (similar to the Chapters of DR, with missions based on the classic world) and receive a personal henchman (realistic or not) summonable only on PvE zones.

– These henchman will have their own classes based on the basic archetypes. All their skills and spells will be designed from zero and some can be “commanded” directly by the player (see below).

– An henchman gains experience and levels like the player. He acquires experience twice as fast compared to a normal player and his level cannot surpass the one of the player.

– An henchman can “respec” to different archetypes. Each respec can be executed freely but “burns” 20% of the current exp of the henchman for that level.

– The henchmen will have separate exp bars and levels for each archetype. So each archetype will need to be levelled separately or not at all if the player decides to specialize.

– This is also a chance to rework the AI of pets and the interface to make the controls more deep and interactive (like the possibility to “command” the execution of specific skills from the NPCs).

– The appearance of these henchmen can be customized, both in look and equipment. The henchmen can be equipped with the standard items used by the characters, special items and specific new items only usable by henchmen that will be linked to specific new quests.

– Each henchmen will be named by the player.

– Only two henchmen at max can join the same group.

(A note on the purpose of these henchmen: For a solo player, the possibility to have a bit more involving and interactive PvE and the possibility to level more efficiently, cutting down the downtimes some more. For the groups, the possibility to “fill” roles and classes missing from the group, for example to partially solve the problem of healers, or tanks, or whatever the group misses. The henchmen should never be more effective than a player playing the proper class and they should only count as a “half” player when calculating the group experience, so that the bonus should be inferior.)

+ Style redesign. This is an occasion for all the server types, included the Evolution servers to redesign the styles (both visually and the mechanics). The new style system would included simple “combo” skills that can be performed by coordinating some skills or spells with other players. These combos can also be used with henchmens (see the possibility to “command” the use of a skill). This change would affect players with or without the expansion.

+ Finally my favourite: Add INFERNO (all capitalized because it’s more badass). “Inferno” is a brand new zone, graphically similar to the “Veil Rift”, with chasms and floating platforms moving in circles around Lucifero’s dark castle. This would also allow to introduce a new technical feature: a physic engine (borrowing from Warhammer development). The physic will only be applied to the chasms and platforms. Basically these platforms can “bend” in a direction, randomly, because triggered or because of how the players are distributed (so that the platform will bend if all the players are in one spot instead of spreading around and distributing the weight). The players will have to fight both on these unstable platforms while facing the difficulties added by the physical engine, as well on more stable constructions.

– The physical model won’t factor the collision between the players and affects exclusively the inclination of the platforms. When a platform bends in a direction the players will have to move in the opposite direction in order to maintain the position and not fall off it. The different types of environmental happenings that the physical model includes will be: earthquakes (the player is shaken, making it lose the direction), dynamically opening chasms, and the inclination of the platform.

– If a player falls off a platform he will disintegrate. In this case he will reappear at the entrance of the zone at no loss after a short timeout (think to WoW’s graveyards).

– This zone has hard PvE content tailored for at least three full groups and divided into consequent segments. The players will start on a floating platform and will progressively move around controlling it (like a manual elevator or a flying carpet). With this moving platform they’ll access various points on the map where to fight a sequence of encounters and different mini-bosses to remove progressively the “locks” to the castle. Once the castle’s seals (graphically shown as huge chains attached to the castle) are broken (graphically shattering and falling down in the void), the players can storm in and eventually kill Lucifero in a final, epic battle.

– If a player dies or falls off a platform, he’ll be ported to the entrance as I already wrote. When there, he can have access to some sort of flying “taxi” that will bring him back to the main floating platform where the other players are. These taxis will be named “Charons” and should be shown graphically as gondolas driven by a masked dark figure. The Charons should speak through voice overs.

– Lucifero should be designed to be hard and as a very long fight.

– Once Lucifero is killed the zone will seal, porting out the players at the relic keep. The doors to the zone will remain closed at least for a week.

– The entrance to this zone will be placed in the center of Agramon.

– This zone is flagged for RvR, once open every realm can enter it, fight the enemy realms on these floating platforms (with the added fun of the physic model) and attempt to be the first to kill Lucifero.

These ideas would make DAoC stand out again among the competition and revindicate strongly its predominant role as an unparalleled RvR game for the years to come. The “Evolution server project” would be a way to appeal brand new players with the possibility to start in a brand new world refactored to eliminate all the radical flaws that plagued the game along these years. While the INFERNO would offer an innovating experience mixing brand new mechanics like the physic system of the platforms and chasms with the classic RvR wars for the ultimate RvR experience.

And let’s see if WoW can outperform that.

—
And to conclude I’ll also explain why the ideas I wrote here will never be implemented. Mythic is working on Warhammer, in a year it be in full production mode, while the playerbase of DAoC, in absence of significant changes and signs from Mythic, will be even more shrunk. Planning something daring won’t be considered as worth the effort by the guys at the decision-making positions.

What Mythic can still accept to “waste” on DAoC is the content team. A few artists, the quest team, a couple of new races or zones and so on. This is, sadly, what awaits DAoC, just a dumbed down, inexpressive support that is going to hand out to the players the yearly “sop”. A brand new weapon or piece of armor, a couple of minor skills. The actual “development intensive” roles, the production, designers and programmers will be busy working on the new game while DAoC will be left just to “train” a few new guys at a low risk, just to keep the game running and teach these trainees how the company works and offer them a chance to show their worth and get trapped like a “cog in the vast machine” that kills all the good ideas.

So I don’t expect much because along these years I get to know how Mythic thinks and reacts. Of course I would love to be surprised but I’d lie if I’d say that I think it could happen.

Again, leave this website to the dreamers, everyone.

Voice chat – Another modern myth

October 3, 2005 by Abalieno | 4 Comments

It started as a discussion on F13, also anticipated by Darniaq. One of those topics that will become more and more important (and recurring) as time passes. And again I had to fight against this tendency as I did already with the DKPs.

The pattern is similar and was prefectly described by Darniaq. Also fitting as a conclusion (and here as the starting point):

What actually matters is the rules players set. You can mock and sneer all you want, but if 39 people use Voicechat for Raiding or PvP or just dicking around at the Auction House, the 40th person is going to use Voicechat too.

Players make the rules. Everyone else decides to follow them or gets excluded.

The point is that the players constantly work to make the game worst. Always. If you read Raph’s book you already know this behavior in the form of transforming the fun into absolutely boring and repetitive actions (see this). If you read AFKgamer you can see clearly how *that* type of “design” is merciless and selfish. Definitely not helping the game and its community in the long term. But selections are always done and the progress is always built on top of the “victims” that are constantly being excluded. Foton says that these online worlds are not appropriate for real life principles but, instead, he makes obvious exactly the opposite. He underlines how they are similar. How everything is built on top of a merciless selection, maybe more or less blatant and justified, but still there.

To understand better what I mean I could bring the example of how the content is used. Lets imagine that the game offers two different paths. One offers complex and interesting quests, bringing the players to group together and explore the world. The other is a small instanced dungeon with a row of mobs standing still, possible to solo and with a calibrated difficulty for your party. With a big experience and money boost as you finish the dungeon in 10-20 minutes. Ready to zone out and back in to rinse and repeat.

Well, the first obviously sounds more interesting and we could expect the players to ignore the second path. Instead what actually happens is the opposite. All the content of the first path will be completely deserted. The few players willingly to experience it won’t be able to do so since there won’t be anyone else around that is willingly to group and, as anticipated, most of that content isn’t accessible for the solo player. So it doesn’t exist. This may sound as a teoric example but it isn’t. This is exactly what happened to DAoC with the release of the “Catacombs” expansion. So definitely not something made up by me.

Now what is important is to understand WHY the players work constantly to ruin and dumb down their own experience. Again Raph’s notes help to figure out this point. In this case he was commenting the violence in games but what he says is valid even for different contexts. Players “see past fiction”, they know and see what the game is about often before the designers realize what it is (in particular when they are bad designers).

In this case the players know that the game is nothing more than a treadmill. They know that the only impact they have on the game world is about their loot, money, and experience points. There isn’t anything else. The persistence of the world is summarized into those three elements. The rest is faked. The rest is fiction. And the players “see past fiction”. They see a ladder and they see two paths to climb that ladder. The second path I described above is faster. More efficient. Functionally optimized. It doesn’t even have the added burden of “dealing with people” since it’s soloable. So most of the players choose this pattern and all the remaining players will just HAVE TO follow. As Darniaq explained above.

Now. We know that the DKPs problem comes directly from design problems. We have examples where the distribution of the loot lacks proper tools (DAoC) or is perceived as unfair or bugged (WoW), so the players look into ways to override the standard rules and bend them to their own advantage. In fact the system wasn’t actually unfair. It was actually too fair and not appropriate for the selfish desires of the players. Because the concept of “fair” for a player is about whatever comes to the personal advantage (which also explains some constant and contradictory rants about the perceived “unbalance” in these games). In fact the DKPs system was created to bend the rules to the personal advantage of a smaller group.

This is why we design (and will have to continue to). Because people are bad. We are selfish and violent, ready to take advantage of the other. Without laws, governments, myths, morals, religion and principles we would be just animals eating each other. Lum says: Men are two days from savagery. And it’s true. Nothing changes when it comes to the internet and online worlds. It can be actually worst because we have the added problem of the anonymity. We have often examples of people stating that they don’t want to play with others because “other people kind of suck” (both Anyuzer and Foton often comment along these lines even if I wasn’t able to track proper links). Often there’s this funny quote that says that the first problem of a mmorpg is the fact you have to deal with other people.

Again, this is why we design. Why there are selected people with the competence to do this very specific work. In this case so that everyone else can have fun, avoid the griefers and possibly building social ties that will help to retain subscribers in the longer term and make the game world more meaningful and interesting.

This brings me back to the problem of the voice chat. In this case the reaction of the players isn’t the result of bad design as it was for the DKPs. It’s just about the players using their own tools, external to the game, to ease the experience. In this case to overcome the limits of a chat box and the slow use of a keyboard. This is nowhere different from the RMT problem, the players are finding more and more ways to disrupt their own experience and ruin the game and erase other possibilities. Cheats are yet another form of the same pattern.

As it happened for the DKPs system, the players now justify the need of external tools like Teamspeak or Ventrilo, stating that the new games require more “skill”. And more skill requires ways to quickly communicate to be able to deal with these new and complex encounters. So it’s not possible to play anymore without, because the encounters are now too hard, they require organization and good players. What a beautifully crafted myth :)

The reality is that nothing at all changed. If anything the new encounters are even more stupid and simple. They are surely more polished and good looking but still remixing the same old ingredients that now are actually rather stale and dull. What the new games do well is to create and exploit the “confusion”. As I commented in the thread on F13, the difficulty in the raid encounters is about making people behave. Listen and follow orders. WITHOUT taking the initiative, without stepping outside their defined role. Without reacting to what happen and disrupting the “tactics”. The new games know that the whole difficulty in a raid is about making people behave and this is why outside the standard pattern (aggro management) they add timed spell effects that disrupt the situation, create confusion, send everyone fleeing around (or fling people in the air) or spam massive AOE attacks or multiple stages (like Onyxia) requiring mass repositioning. It’s choreography. Choreography is hard because it requires everyone to “behave”. To learn a role and repeat it over and over till it matches what everyone is doing. It is perceived as hard because most of the players have soloed till 60, so they cannot relate to a concept like “coordination”. They aren’t used to deal with other players and play together. They aren’t used to fail because someone didn’t pay attention and ruined the encounter for everyone else.

Within this frame the raid encounters ARE harder. They ARE complex (“complicated” would actually be a better word). But they NOWHERE require the use of the Voice Chat because the gameplay is just about mastering the “choreography”, repeating it over and over and over till it’s perfect. Till you can do it while half asleep and watching TV. There is NOTHING that requires a sudden decision making. The best raid and PvP groups will be those formed by players that DO NOT NEED TO SPEAK to maximize their performance. Because they know exactly their personal role into the bigger playfield, they know exactly where their mates will be and when. All these more or less complex tactics aren’t defined and performed “on the fly”. Noone has ever killed Onyxia or another raid encounter “on the fly”. These strategies are thought, like the were created, offline. Then tried and refined. And finally performed “on stage”.

The role of the voice chat is zero. ZERO. If not to make people behave, to yell at them and try to keep them awake.

My point is that the Voice Chat is an ease and nothing else. People are lazy and they love eases. Players justify the use of these external tools stating that these encounters are too hard if not impossible without. But this is obviously false as it was false that the DKPs system was created to make the loot distribution “fair”. These are silly excuses. They are far from the reality. There is nothing in these games that couldn’t be accessed with just the tools the game makes available. But then everyone wants Teamspeak and all the UI tools like RaidAssist. They want them simply because they love the eases. Playing on the thin line between what is legal and what is an exploit.

My conclusion isn’t different from the quote from Darniaq I posted above, with the difference that I don’t like to adapt myself to a false principle. I know that the Voice Chat is an ease and is useful and better than text and chat boxes. In fact I believe that this is another part, along the whole UI, that is destined to be completely removed. It’s the inheritance of an archaic model that is now felt obsolete and will progressively fade. There is no choice. Game companies will second the desires of the players and will have to adapt (along with the related difficulties), whether it is good or not. Whether they actually understand the desires of the players or not.

The Voice Chat isn’t different from the gap between text-based MUDS and graphical mmorpgs. The players will always choose the ease and will always move toward more natural patterns that can grasp more directly what these games are about (the myths, not the mechanics). As always, we’ll lose and gain a lot. At the same time.

But this doesn’t mean that I justify the damage that these awful communities are doing to these games. It’s completely false that the use of third party programs is required by the game. That’s completely made up and I explained the reasons above. Among those who can access and use these “eases” there are players who cannot (bandwidth and connection problems, hardware etc..) or do not want to (cannot be loud at night, wake up kids, breaking the immersion etc..). The advantage of the voice over text is fluff and nowhere mandatory to enjoy and successfully deal with PvE raid encounters and competitive PvP. This is why I do not criticize nor fight against who decided to use the “eases”. But I surely don’t accept the fact that the community is actively segregating those who cannot or do not want to use them. And I accept even less the stupid justifications used as excuses. The voice chat is again a simple choice. A choice that is nowhere required or mandatory to obtain outstanding results in these games, both on PvP and PvE.

Without the voice chat the raid encounters would be still be won, without a noticeable difference on the performance and just requiring some more organization and attention from the participants (which could even have a positive effect over the voice chat).

Other players (and a fair number of them) are being excluded just because of lazyness. Just because, once again, these games are nothing else than phat leet and everyone has learnt to stab the other in the eye, if it is convenient. Or you are in, or you are out. People are selfish and they care about you only in the case you are useful as a tool.

My guild in WoW readily booted me when they discovered that I wasn’t going to use the voice chat. The seven months we played together meant jack shit, speaking of social ties. I wasn’t useful anymore and easily replaced. So don’t fool yourself when others say that mmorpgs are about the people. Because they are about the phat loot and the selfish greed. Because this is what these game have taught. “Games are drugs”. And the players are particularly receptive about being selfish than they are about accepting others.

So, again. If these games are about learing, what exactly are we teaching?

Breaking the immersion: The Faked Dragon

August 12, 2005 by Abalieno | 5 Comments

This is another of those arguments that I have cooked from a long time. When this happens the result is always an endless, verbose article hard to follow that doesn’t really accomplish anything. So have fun :)

I’ve already discussed the importance of In-Character design in order to “pull out” the qualities a myth (or a setting) already implicitly holds. This is true in particular when it comes to the *game*, and not just the shape and mood of the environment. For example, if I’m (role)playing a warrior with an axe, the game will go nearer my expectations if the concrete gameplay *imitates* (or simulates) the behaviour I expect. This goes beyond the raw, detached quality of the design. We can translate a melee fight with a blade in hundreds of different ways. For example we can have a full “twitch” game where you move directly the character and move the blade to attack or parry (“Mount and Blade” is one of the finest examples), or we can have a turn-based game where the character and the blade become numbers and statistics that you need to control from an external level, or we can even have completely detached representations, like it happens with puzzle games where the actual gameplay is a roleplay within the roleplay (think to “Arkanoid” or the various pinballs, where what you *play* is often sublimated to a completely different level, like space battles, car races, theme parks and so on).

I hope this first step is clear, there’s a multitude of completely different ways to represent something in a game. Sometimes we speak of play styles and player types to focus on the “target audience” of what we are going to design, so that it can better match the expectations. And already here there’s the hint. The fact that the design can be an attempt to simulate something at best so that it can go as near as possible to the (preexistent) expectations of the players. We don’t build raw situations from the void, we NEVER create a game to have the estrangement as the result. We need to build on something, on something shared and diffused among the audience. Often we make games to trigger common feelings like “fear” that are usually popular (like it happens for the movies). Why? Because we can all share that particular background at the root. So, every cultural product, to be largely successful, needs to “share a myth”. It needs to *draw* from what is *already* out there to reach a form that joins the original aspect of the art with that background that we can share.

All these steps may bring to the consideration that designing something can be nearer to “describe it” in an appropriate form instead of inventing fancy systems out of the blue. With the “formal systems” you can do what you like, but if the formal system is used as a simulation, its rules need to be bent to that precise result you are trying to achieve. We have a precise goal about which type of feedback the game must provide. This is why, in my article about the importance of IC design I linked above, I always bring SWG as an example and why I aimed at Raph Koster as my main target. That was a game that didn’t need to be invented (and on this site I have written many times about this precise aspect), it was required, instead, to match the expectations. To give a definite form to something that was already rather precise in the minds of the future players. This is why we have popular critics about the game not feeling enough as Star Wars, or not allowing all players to be Jedis or heroes. There were expectations that needed more to be described than reinvented or derailed. This happens about the general archetypes (Star Wars feel, Jedis, heroes) as much it happens in the smaller details so that, for example, the players don’t tolerate seeing a stormtrooper sitting by a rebel. Till the more independent features of the representation and the gameplay, like a huge beast like a “rancor” summoned on a 2×2 corridor with half its body stuck through the roof, medic professions working as magic healers with sparkling effects included, shoothing at targets through hills, sitting halfway in the hair, shuttles taking off through solid roofs and flying through buildings and trees, the impossibility to move over a 5-inch step and so on. I could continue till the rest of the page is completely filled.

My point of view about all these considerations joins an observation I made on Grimwell after Raph listed his newly created list of “do and do not’s” (and the more recent version):

Thinking about it, I’m starting to believe that all the love for “twitch” games is mostly because they are directly less based on a UI.

What I did is to tie the “no to HUD” rule listed by Raph with one trait of “twitch” games. Not just because they have a “fast and furious” type of gameplay, but because the gameplay becomes more direct and simplified in the representation. In the simulation. Simulation as: what is going on the screen matches more closely what I’m doing with my brain and my hands. There are less transitions, less roleplay, twists and hyperboles.

Malderi:
What’s your problem with HUDs?

Abalieno:
The immersion. A more direct experience coming right from a realistic feedback instead of parsing numbers and scribbles with your eyes.

Let’s say we have the typical fantasy game combat. Think if, instead of looking at health bars and hotkeys, you could recognize the health of an orc by looking at his wounds, the blood dripping on the ground, from his movement and his reaction to something that is happening, his expression. What if you could sever the arm with which he wields the mace, or try to move into a tighter space where his movements could be impaired? Then you could really experience the fear. Not the fear about your possible death and the downtime required to go back at the corpse, but the fear of the situation, in that instant, with your brain parsing the possibilities you have to survive and quickly decide and react. It’s tense because you are there, there are no more filters between you and what is going on the screen. The possibilities you have become the possibilities you would have in that situation if it was REAL. There’s not anymore an effort to roleplay and build filters, not anymore the need to “make believe”, not anymore the need for tutorials, manuals and player guides. There’s just you, the orc and the forest. The interface is gone, the HUD is gone. What You See Is What You Get. You have finally the competence to relate to that situation without the need to learn the limits of the system and its rules. You *make* the rules. The system is completely disclosed instead of restricted.

Isn’t that the “dream game” that would shatter the sales records of every other game in the history? Isn’t that the ultimate direction that every game should aim at? Isn’t that the same reason why movies are so popular? Movies and games are “powered by the Nostalgia(TM)”. We always miss “something” and we struggle to reach it. It’s always a process to chase this utopia of the simulation or reproduction or the possibility to “live again”. Make an experience for the second time or make an experience we cannot possibly have in the context of the reality.

If you can see all this you can also see how the games we have now are so “faulty” and limited and why there’s still so much space to anticipate the trends and produce something successful. This is about “The Faked Dragon”. Or how the PvE is often offered in the games we know. World of Warcraft can work as a perfect example of these limits. The players consider it already advanced compared with the other competing mmorpgs. Some of the biggest encounters in the game are scripted. It’s true that in some cases we just have scaled-up models and higher stats, but in other cases we have scripted encounters that need to be “learnt” and tackled in a specific way. They need a proper reaction. All this can be good if we consider again just one face of the medal, the one about the “formal system”. From this point of view we can see how the game offers some unique, scripted and “challenging” encounters. From the “game” point of view this result is definitely positive. But what about the other face of the medal? What about the “myth”?

If we look at these encounters from another perspective (the roleplay) we can see how the first phase of Onyxia is completely offtrack. We are supposed to simulate the epic adventure of forty heroes facing a fearsome dragon in its lair. What we get? A buffed, min/maxed “Main Tank” that pulls this dragon against a wall, with half its head buried into it, while everyone else just stares, heals or fires a weak spell to not break the aggro. Waiting for “phase 2”. This blatant example isn’t an unique case but just the totality of the experience in this and other games. The gameplay is completely faked and functional to the ruleset. The mechanics of the encounters are set not to be the “world of Warcraft” but to relate to the skills, spells, statistics and quirks of the ruleset itself. So we have the aggro managment as the basic element of 99% of the gameplay with just variations on the theme.

What I mean is that THIS ISN’T A FIGHT AGAINST A DRAGON. This is a fight against a ruleset, against the numbers, the health bars, the raid interface, the players not listening, the lag, the scripted language. It’s all faked, all functional and sticking to a formal system that exists beside the world that should be “simulated”. I could say that the rules make the rules. And what we have, the gameplay, is just about numbers, statistics, math formulas and phat loot that we hope to win. At this point all the immersion that the game could have achieved is completely gone. Erased. Nullified. In a raid of 40 players there isn’t a single one feeling like going to fight a *dragon*. They think to the HUD, the phat loot, the teamspeak and nothing else. The “world” is gone. We have a dragon badly pathed and stuck in a wall as the “intended behaviour”. And *everyone* accepts that without even blinking.

Now I know that WoW cannot be taken as an example of a bad game when it is so much successful. It’s a contradiction. But what I say is that WoW is successful because it added unique encounters to games that never even achieved that step. But we are so absolutely far from the ideal goal and there are so many glaring mistakes that WoW is doing that could bring to better game and *anticipate* the success of the “next big thing”.

So why we cannot have a fucking scripted unique encounter that ALSO LOOKS AND FEELS LIKE FIGHTING A DRAGON? And not as a fight against the interface. That’s the real point. That’s why the design should be In-Character and not always wrapped “Out Of Character”, just about a “function” and nothing else. The function of a formal system should NEVER be the goal. The function of the formal system should be about delivering *an experience*. Triggering emotions. The nostalgia for something we miss and would love to live. The utopia of the FANTASY WORLD. The utopia of its touch and feel. The experience in this case is: “the epic battle of forty heroes against a dragon”. Why, at some point, the formal system completely replaced the experience to become the ONLY driving purpose? Why we are pulling this dragon against a wall? Why its head goes through that wall? Why it doesn’t see that it could easily wipe all of us just by turning a bit and using that fucking flame breath? Why it wasn’t scripted to behave in an even barely realistic way instead of just reacting to the stance and selected talent points of the main tank? Why it doesn’t crush all of us under its foot?

On Ethic’s blog there’s a recent entry commenting the cutscenes in FFXI. This is my point of view:

Cutscenes are a tool to deliver a particular effect (affecting the world, see something happening derailing from the usual). That effect can then be delivered in different ways, even more effective in some cases.

So the point is not to compare what FFXI does and what WoW does not. The point is to see what the player can do in the game world and if there’s something more to do than just “visiting” a 3D space.

The “magic” of FFXI is hidden on a huge number of smaller elements. The cutscenes (but in particular it’s what *happens* in the cutscenes to make the difference) being just one.

Them, if the story is interactive, it’s better.

In the light of what I wrote the cutscenes are ways to erase the interface and relate the player to the world. The cutscenes can be positive because it’s that moment, unique moment, where the interface VANISHES. Everything from the screen disappears. You are brought in the scene, there aren’t anymore layers to pass. You become part of a story and you can follow it. The numbers, the statistics, the ruleset, the health bars… the whole HUD just fades from the existence to make the game real and direct. You are projected inside.

Now the next step is about considering the limit. When the player sees a cutscene he definitely doesn’t want to go back at the numbers and the health bars. There’s an undeniable charm but the charm corresponds to a frustration. In a cutscene you would like to be able to touch the figure in front of you. You would like to touch the hair of a girl in a rendered scene and see how they move. You miss the fact that you cannot be really there and affect what happens. It’s a rendered scene that you can just stare and appreciate for what it is. You feel there but you cannot really be.

That’s what is essential to consider when we speak about stories in games. What we need is to move toward a blend between the direct experience, without interfaces and numbers, of the rendered scenes with the interactivity and “presence” of the gameplay. HUDs and interfaces are a limit as much the Out Of Character, functional design is. Game systems and rules should be created to provide faithful descriptions of the experience we are trying to render and nothing else. We shouldn’t betray the expectations and we should define the rules of a game so that they can offer a direct experience as much as possible. The “roleplay” of these games must go away till the point you just cannot avoid to do it. Because the immersion traps you and doesn’t allow you to think outside the box.

The games should focus more and more on this “simulation of realities” in a faithful way and less on the functional aspects of the rules. Less rules to parse and more direct and dynamic feedback.

The more COP Missions I do, the more I appreciate FFXI. Diabolos is a sweet fight, floor drops from under you midfight so if you are standing on a tile (the tile flashs for a few seconds so you have warning) that drops you fall into a pit of monsters that will devour you. Not to mention Diabolos can knock you off the platform if you are not positioned correctly.

This is a small example of a description of a PvE encounter that doesn’t sound completely alienated from the context. The fact that the floor is falling and there’s a pit below with nasty creatures, is a concept that everyone can immediately understand and share. Instead it would be completely different trying to explain to an external spectator the “aggro managment” in WoW and how it is affected by talent points, stances, styles and groups activities. Useless specialistic rules that don’t really add anything valuable to the game if not making it overly complicated, obscure and estranged. As I explained in another comment this is where the unique “magic” of FFXI is. The game goes beyond some functional aspects to let them deliver a richer experience at least in some of its parts.

I believe that the more the gameplay imitates what it tries to symbolize, the more the players will be able to quickly learn from it and love it. The more we get rid of layers and levels, the more the experience will be rewarding and rich. So I agree with Raph, no to HUDs and interfaces. As much as possible. But also no to puzzle games representing something else, numbers, health bars. Definitely no to fuctional scripted encounter that just look terribly lame and bugged and do not resemble in any way to what is supposed to happen in a similar situation like the one presumed.

“Out Of Character” design

July 8, 2005 by Abalieno | 3 Comments

Exhuming comments written months ago brought back many thoughts. In particular the very last line where I linked a well-known story written by Raph. As always as a provocation, because I’m naturally a provoker and that’s the aim of most of what I write.

The problem is that after months have passed I had some difficulties to remember what exactly I meant with that conclusion. At that time Raph replied with:

I’d love the answer to who is out of the box there, Abalieno. :)

But I didn’t give the answer simply because I thought it was obvious and that my point didn’t need further explanations. Now I’m not sure if what I was trying to say was that clear, in particular because now I see how it was deeply interconnected with many other topics that were evident only to myself.

The “OOC design” was a conclusion that I figured out at the end of the last summer, after weeks spent to discuss Star Wars Galaxies on Grimwell. Trying to understand how the game should be developed, what were its natural strengths, what went wrong and needed to be addressed but still preserving the true nature of the game and improve on that path instead of derailing it somewhere else. Now the actual development of the game turned out to be worst than our expectations but this isn’t the point. The point is that, after many reiterations and simplifications, I managed to figure out the origin (from my point of view) of the pattern that brought to many design problems in the game. Escher’s drawing hands.

This is what I consider Raph’s basic mistake and that I believe he still hasn’t fully realized. From those discussions I started to write a lot, on this site and on different boards, so what I was trying to explain couldn’t be more obvious to me. I was writing endlessly about it to the point that I started to put everything for granted even if the topic became more and more complex. I moved from criticizing the specifics of SWG to the importance of the “symbolic shared systems” (the myth) over the “formal system”. At this point the hyperlinks (in my head and on the internet) become countless. On this same site Raph commented:

I think you’re wrong about abstract games, btw. There’s a LOT to learn from them, and they are not necessarily less fun because they are abstract.

Which brought to my my considerations about Raph’s speech at the last GDC. Where again I underlined the importance of the culture and its archetypes over the formal system.

Now I have the occasion to go back and explain that somewhat cryptic comment I wrote months ago on Lum’s blog. With the possibility to even add one more hyperlink, maybe.

The mistake of the “Out Of Character design” is about giving the precedence to the formal system (the shape) instead of the myth (the content). It’s the attitude of the designers that begins to build the general structure of the gameplay only to adapt it afterwards to a specific setting. The setting itself comes after, the rules are built “out of character” because the game-world still doesn’t exist, it hasn’t an identity, it doesn’t share a myth. I underlined all this in SWG exactly because the mistake is more evident. Star Wars is a myth before it is a formal system. This is why you cannot plan the shape without considering beforehand the myth itself. It’s “Star Wars” that should define the gameplay, that should inspire the mechanics, that should trigger the creativity. Not the formal system emptied of any ties with a particular setting.

Now give a look to the recent discussion about crafting and mini-games on Ubiq’s blog. In the comment I wrote there I explain that, from my point of view, mini-games used to make crafting more fun are just a design shortcoming. As Ubiq wrote and Ray summed up concisely: “it’s either an annoying hoop or it excludes those people who would naturally fill the crafter role”. But it’s not the crafting that I want to discuss here. What interests me and that ties to what I’m writing here is the repeated pattern of “OOC design”. Crafting shaped up as a mini-game is clearly a solution created by a designer and not the projection of the desires of a player. Now go back to read Raph’s story. What he writes and evocates there is PURELY about the projections of a player immersed in an environment with a cultural value (so a “myth”). If the player starts to “dream” about the possibilities and scope of what he could do, this means that he starts to design his own projection of the game from within. He becomes a possible designer of an “In-Game design” that is the opposite of “Out Of Character design”. The scope of what he is thinking is naturally coherent with the setting and the fabric of the game because it is MADE with the fabric of the game. The formal system that can consequently build these possibilities comes after the myth, not ahead of it.

I believe this examples helps to explain my point. The prevalence of the myth over the formal system. Where it’s the myth and its requirements to set the behaviour of the formal system and not the other way around. It’s a matter of priority. It’s a matter of who defines who. Who is the consequence of who.

We know that Raph still keeps enjoying tinkering with abstract formal system. This surely helps to understand and learn important elements of the gameplay, but I fear that ultimately it keeps shifting the focus on a level that should come only after the actual content. The focus on the “shape”, forgetting how the content is way more important and from where all the rest should come as a consequence.

So. That last line at the end of the comment was a provocation. I quoted Raph against himself to show once again where the contrast is between coherent design and abstract design. I don’t think that this point is trivial and that should be dismissed, so I keep bringing it up till I figure out where I’m wrong. At the same time it’s another occasion to underline another core concept of “beyond”.

That I commented just before on Grimwell:

The fact is that the genre could be a lot more than a pointless and endless character advancement. It’s like if we took the form of an RPG and emptied it completely of any content. What is left is the advancement and nothing else.

Can’t you see that these games and genres can offer MUCH more than advancement paths and combat?

Can’t you see that these games are much more than formal systems?

Ideas need complexity, commitment and some attention

June 21, 2005 by Abalieno | 3 Comments

Here below my ideas were questioned again, and I expected that. As I commented, the purpose of that article was to present my ideas, summarize some of the basic points and underline what there is different in them that is not directly present in the mmorpgs on the market. From my perspective each single point written comes from months and years of thoughts, discussions and further developments. Each one is an important point with a long “back story” behind and solid reasons why I believe it is important.

The fact is that the pattern is always the same, and I know it well. If I summarize one of my ideas in one line everyone tells me that it’s trivial. Everyone is able to write that a game must be “fun”, or have this and that, but the point is to figure out how. Find a way that actually works. So I agree and after the critics I write down various pages full of text where I finally explain how I plan to achieve that precise goal. To show that I didn’t simply put together a list of goals without delving but that, instead, each point was already planned carefully, in all the minimal aspects, anticipating all the problems and figuring out in detail how to fix them.

But the point is that everyone visiting a blog just offers it a very little span of his attention. If the blog is able then to tickle an interest the reader could even decide to dedicate to it some more time. Now… NOONE is interested in raving ideas that will never reach an actual implementation. If I put together a small list of goals, *maybe*, there will be something reading them and “nodding”. Sharing them. Maybe a discussion over those points will be encouraged, because as I said many times, ALL my ideas come from crucial points of the design that are common to ALL the mmorpg out there. So they are all actual. Fresh. So they can be considered interesting and this is why, in this case, I decided to put that post on the site instead of leaving it to the PM to Jon.

Now the fact is that I *hate* when someone agrees on my ideas and then doubts about them. Doubts that they are solid, they I thought about them for some time, working and delving in them. I hate this because I decide to spend some time to explain in detail those points that were vague or weak and then noone reads them. Or they are dodged in a similar way. The argument is dismissed. So it’s not that I’m not interested in a less superficial discussion, to write and analyze these core points in detail (because they are important not just for a “dream” mmorpg, but for each, *real* one out there). It’s simply that it’s not a possibility, that it’s often a dialogue between me and myself and because everyone else may be interested more in a short article listing a few, shareable goals, that can tickle the imagination and suggest what the genre may miss, than an endless design document hard to follow and understand.

I know that behind every single point I listed there are pages and pages of reasons, consequences and more goals. I know because all that already passed through my mind, all passed through a careful study. I know that a “realistic inventory system” has strong purposes in the gameplay. It is the result of a design at a low level where the mechanics are all tied one to another. Planning caravans, planning the transport of the limited resources, planning the different types of terrains, planning the micro-management, considering how the players find always fun to manage things beside their character, managing complex and realistic inventory, managing their tools on the environment (think to the managment of harvesters in SWG), take care of pets, organize and prepare expeditions for a real “journey” and so on. Behind a little goal there is a whole world of intentions, of solid purposes that will require pages and pages to go in detail. Pages and pages that are somewhat requested (because people obviously doubt of my ideas) but then ignored (because noone is really interested if not to argue on a superficial level).

Quoting myself:

Because it’s about breaking a model. This is gameplay that has been completely cut away but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be fun.

In Guild Wars you have to select only eight skills even if your character has 20 available. This to develop a strategy. This idea is here applied to something different. It’s obvious that you cannot take WoW and remove all its bags and expect to have something more fun. Because there’s no gameplay aside “being able to carry stuff or not”.

The limited inventory is there to develop the “world”. On the wargame level you’ll have to move around resources. This is why caravans will have to travel between places and will need protection. If you raid a town you cannot simply pick up all you find in your way. You’ll have to organize an appropriate convoy (and have it exposed to further attacks/counterattacks) or leave the stuff where it is.

In general I want the equipment to have an use. No use = no equipment. In the current games this model doesn’t exist. You need space to accumulate junk to sell to vendors. This isn’t *equipment*. The junk has no value for the gameplay level if not being goods to transform into money (that you need).

The economy is probably the part of the game where my ideas are less defined in detail. It’s the part that I never wrapped up completely so these points about the “inventory” are strictly about the inventory and use of items themselves. No need of equipment slots to carry junk because I do not even plan to have junk in the game. At the same time I don’t want the players to loot stuff they do not need. It’s not like you’ll find a sword by killing a turtle. A realistic equipement system also means realistic loot tables.

So my idea should be seen from this point of view. You cannot carry around six swords because that limit is supposed to give a depth to the system. A choice that is required like in Guild Wars. No cookie cutter equipment. Instead choices and specializations (plus the “affinity” system will prevent you to be effective if you keep switching stuff at will). Carry an heavy armor and you’ll be slower in the combat. Use a light armor and you’ll be able to hold more bags. Drop the bags on the ground (and risk that other players steal them) and you’ll move even faster.

It’s obvious that “less inventory” alone isn’t fun. But if there’s gameplay depending on it, the situation changes.

I love to fiddle around with the equipment, move stuff between bags, organize them. It’s fun. It’s not something I wouldn’t try to cut from the game.

The same about the classes. There are years of “work” and discussions to at least acknowledge most of the problems in the current systems and try to move on a positive direction. There is so much that I wouldn’t be even able to put together all the reasons and goals that brought to my idea without leaving out a good part. Exactly because everything was being though on an arc of time, built progressively through my “experience” and different discussions. I know for example that a CORE problem that I have to face EVERY single time I log in EVERY mmorpg is the “healer problem” (“lack of” and “requirement of”). A problem that if it is so frequent must also deserve some consideration. Or not? So I gave it. To explain the whole process that brought to my idea I’d have again to write pages and pages, from the analysis of how the multi-purpose classes in WoW are way more fun than the strictly specialized versions in DAoC, how in the first game is way easier to build efficent groups (and ease the LFG problem) and so on (more != better). The solution I propose is to create dynamic roles. The class system is rather complex but the essence is to allow the players to fill temporary roles in the case they are missed (and required). Maybe you aren’t an healer, but you can temporarily fill that role in the case you cannot find a player already specialized doing that. And this without considering the ideas I have to not make the actual gameplay boring and dull for the healers, which is another *core* problem and not just a detail.

About the “conquest system”. It is complex. It has many different layers all interconnected. It is the main structure of the game, the main purpose, the “endgame”. Every other system is supposed to converge there because I always wanted a game with many different layers of complexity (and interactions) but without making all independent and unrelated. This is why it’s a “world”. All the elements have a purpose and are not there to be just “fluff”. Whatever you do in the game will finally arrive at that point.

I already vaguely explained some concepts about how I plan to keep the conquest possible without one side “winning” the game. The conquest is open to the whole world but the system isn’t based just on combat but on an “emergent” resource system built to add an RTS layer. So gathering and managing resources, moving them, defending them or steal them, building nodes, improve the power of the guards and structure defence and so on. The game is again not just combat, the combat is an aspect, the most direct, always available. But there are choices to deal with the rest, at least to manage the situation.

Conquering (adiacent) zones depends not only on the military power but also strongly on the resources. These zones (or better, the villages, outposts, castles and so on) need an upkeep. A maintenance cost. Some of the resources that a faction needs (three factions in the game hardcoded – Order, Chaos, Balance, plus player-made factions) can only be produced by the other faction and then transfered through commerce (mostly through the “balance” faction that works as a tie between the other two). The more one side expands its domain, the more the upkeep costs go up. If the other faction isn’t able to product anything the warehouse of resources in the prevailing faction will decrease, till the faction won’t be able to hold that type of expansion anymore. This is a first aspect that makes hard to maintain a control of the whole world.

The second aspect is that one type of the resources needed (mostly about the power of the defences, the possibilities of upgrades, guard costs and so on) is fixed. A fixed pool that cannot be changed in any way. Hardcoded. These resources can be spread around in order to support a high number of zones, or consolidated in a few in order to keep the defence at a very high level. So the more you expand your domain and the more you offer weaknesses, like the possibility for the other faction to attack you from the flank, in an undefended zone, where even a small strike-team can quickly conquer an outpost and force all the resources on that point. This would create a powerful node that the losing faction can use to disturb and progressively weaken the expansion process of the prevailing faction. So gameplay dynamics and tactics.

Finally, there’s a third system in place. There are three main hubs-cities (one for each faction) that cannot be conquered (and so managed and transformed as a property like it happens in the other cases). In this case you can think to the dynamics in WoW. The Alliance never held Orgrimmar for hours, not the Horde was able to do the something similar with Ironforge. These three hubs are strongly defended and while the mechanics won’t be based too much on continue respawns, it will be still extremely hard to maintain a presence in these places. The best you can do here is a permanent siege.

Now there’s a system applied even here. Think to the RvR dungeon in DAoC interconnecting the three realms. I carried over a similar concept. In the case the main hub of a faction is under constant siege, the players can still organize to use a system of tunnels to sneak behind the enemy lines and coordinate attacks to the supply lines of the opposite faction. As I wrote above they’ll need to move resources constantly in order to maintain the upkeep, so the players can organize attacks to these caravans in order to disrupt the supply lines and weaken progressively the defences of the other faction.

This guarantees that noone “wins”, that there’s still a huge role for the persistence and that there’s a space to develop tactics and interesting dynamics, involving even politics and diplomacy. That depth that I claim back and that is missing currently in other mmorpgs. The essential (philosophical) design is that the three factions are dependent on each other. One can decide to wipe the other but ultimately it will fail in the measure it needs the other in order to exist. So a balance (also impersonated by the appropriate faction) always exists as an inner need of the system. There will be strong shifts in the overall situation, but never definitive, never permanent. The ultimate risk here isn’t the possibility to “win” everything. It’s the opposite, the fact that through diplomacy and politics a realm could settle down and reach a perfect balance (which is definitely a new concept for a mmorpg and something I want to test to see if it can be interesting).

I don’t fight this possibility directly. The game is supposed to be fun and compelling *beside* the combat. This is my goal. A paceful realm is a possibility that I contemplate. Why not? There’s always space for politics. You can try to get what you need with your strength, so you can conquer a zone in order to reach a resource node that you absolutely need. Or settle down an agreement through the diplomacy and the commerce in order to “buy” or “exchange” those resources without fighting for them. For sure there will be “baits” in the game. Both at the personal and communal level. So there will be needs to satisfy that will require to get precious resources (RARE, but not as grindy-rare, just as gameplay-rare) that are deep in the land owned by the rival realm. And you’ll definitely need a way to get there.

There are all of these elements. Reasons for the conflict, alternate paths thorugh diplomacy and politics and interconnected systems to give the whole structure a depth. The real goal is again to “give back the world to the players”. The goal to finally develop a complex world where the players, together, have an impact, where they “care” about what happens and get entangled into an enriching system not “sterilized” in a pointless grind to transform the player in a robot hitting endlessly the same key. Where the actions have consequences and where the lore and the backstory exist at a radical level and not as useless, detached words on a website.

I want to give back importance to all those elements that are now being systematically removed from this genre. To not forget that it’s there the strength. And that we are losing all this to chase arid models.

“Dream Mmorpg”

June 20, 2005 by Abalieno | 4 Comments

This is a PM I wrote to Jon Carver where I tried to summarize the key points of my “dream mmorpg” project. It definitely needs a lot more iterations in order to become more complete (it misses most of the features like the factional system, the mechanics of PvP, the role of the artifacts, the geomancy nodes, the progression trees of magic items etc..) and more concise and precise.

I need to do a lot of work on the presentation and effectivity of what I write. At least this time it isn’t too long.

—
I need to do a lot of organization in order to build up some sort of clear and schematic plan as you did. For now there’s nearly an infinite list of features coming from direct needs, problems and discussions but all so bundled together that I often forget why I decided about something. Basically I’m really trying to address ALL the problems I see around in other projects since it’s a “dream mmorpg”.

A few points I gathered are (far away from covering everything):

– Problem of catering hardcore and casual players
– Problem of load balancing the server, cross-server travel, factional balance
– Problem of PvP and PvE clashing together (repositioning)
– Smaller, manageable communities – “There were a lot less of us back then, so it was easier to get to know most of the folks around you. Since there were so few players reletive to current community sizes, you become friends of friends of folks and a lot sooner you really end up knowing virtually everyone whos playing, or at least are familiar with guilds.”

The rest is about going back to a skill system that has also lot of depths for “achievers”. Realistic inventory system calculating precisely slots and weights (and the need to use horses, carts etc..). No strict classes nor min/maxed templates. All classes are respecced “on the fly” so that a player can cover a specific role dynamically (and adapt irtself to the need of a group) instead of being caged in a fixed model/spec/class.

Plus the separation of elements of PvE (In instanced “planes”, arenas and odd combinations of events) from PvP.

The main world is completely based on PvP and in the hands of the players. Everything works like in wargames so you can conquer the land, expanding to adiacent zones (and manage your resources). All the world is in the hands of the players, there is nothing with the pretense of being “static”, fixed, given.

The players cannot really build towns but can conquer everything that is already in the world (and update/upgrade it to an extent). From single houses to the biggest cities and castles.

The NPCs will then also be controled by the players. The players spawn them and “program” them with simple schedules. So they are used both for the crafting system and to pruduce resources that will then be used (and moved between towns through a commerce system) at the RTS level.

Ultimately the focus (of these PvP lands) will move from the combat to embrace new types of activites. All the interactions of a medieval world are supposed to be simulated to an extent. So we’ll have farms, mines, sawmills and so on. Similarly to a “Settler” game and with the goal of simulating a deeper environment that is supposed to involve more the players in its fabric and mechanics. Less obsessive about combat and infinite treadmills only affecting the single character. Providing communal goals and shared mechanics that should finally put back the focus in the community as the real “endgame” (and where the fun of a multiplayer environment is supposed to be).

That’s the shape. The implementation idea is to go back at the old 2D style of the early Ultimas (but with an advanced UI) in order to cut out directly the production values (graphic, content etc..) and focus exclusively on the accessibility and mechanics. No infinite text to read, just direct gameplay and feedback. To experiment dynamically with the pure design level and discover what is fun and what is not.

Basically the opposite of a MUD.

The communicative pact – How SWG went to hell (and will continue to)

May 9, 2005 by Abalieno | Leave a comment

These two comments have the same purpose of explaining my point of view on Star Wars Galaxies and the latest changes. The first part was written after the second in order to pin down better my reasons.

The rest is in the filth.

—
It’s not about the bad timing of the publish, the bugs, the rollbacks. While these are the most evident manifestation of the problems (and the first focus and concern of SOE right now, I have no doubts), I cannot care less about them. They are completely irrelevant from my point of view because I’m looking at something else. I’m criticizing a part that was never put under discussion by SOE, nor it is now. And, still, it’s the real, but less evident, source of all this mess.

I’m not criticizing the execution here, I’m criticizing the approach. If the approach is wrong the execution can even be perfect but the result will be awful no matter what. No matter how much time they’ll dedicate to fix all the problems. Because the mistake happened on a different, previous level. What I’m pointing out isn’t about those problems that SOE already acknowledged, I’m pointing out problems that they completely negate. That aren’t questioned. There’s a direct difference of opinions here that I’m trying to underline. I’m not jumping in the bandwagon of the players criticizing the CU. I’m on a different position, a position that is nowhere popular or widely shared. A position that didn’t change in the last year and largely anticipated the problems of the game because, no matter of the dedication and restless work of the dev team, the direction was wrong.

The origin of all the rants I wrote and I write now is still the same. It’s the same crusade I carried on against Raph, against the independence of the “formal systems” from their context. This last CU isn’t probably credited to Raph, but it carries over and exaggerates his original mistake: the negation of the existence of the cultural patterns existing before you start to shape a “symbolic shared system” (like the Star Wars universe) into a specific form (like a game, in this case). The problem of the “Star Wars proper feeling” doesn’t depend on whether something was in the movies or not. It’s not a limit of references but a limit of patterns and expectations. If Lucas plans a new episode and throws in stormtroopers healing each other and casting fireballs I’m going “WTF?!” even if that’s actually “official”. There are cultural, implicit rules everywhere, they exist even if they aren’t manifest. These still represent patterns that must be respected because they are the true nature of the myth. They are its essence. Everyone knows if something fits or not depending on the coherence (self-consistence) with its own symbolic level.

There’s a technical term that, for sure, I didn’t invent: “the communicative pact”. It describes exactly these same points:

Through their cinematographic possibilities, the audiovisual language they use, both fiction films as well as documentaries can create different kinds of reality effects (realism, authenticity, actuality, believe). Since we are talking about an â

Posted in: Uncategorized | Tagged: F00lies, Game Design, SWG/SWTOR

Currently reading

March 29, 2005 by Abalieno | Leave a comment

Not Really Organized.

Books:

Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck
Game Programming with Python, Lua, and Ruby by Tom Gutschmidt
Learning Python by Mark Lutz, David Ascher
Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Michael Dawson
Python Developer’s Handbook by Andre Lessa

Links:

You Got Game
Refining ideas, creating design documentation, and roles in creating games.

Creating a Great Design Document
Characteristics of good design documents.

Advice from UseNet on producing useful design documents
Tom Sloper’s Format for Game Design Specifications
High level outline for game design documentaiton.

Skinner’s boxes
“Sarcastically (and as Lum and others have noted), almost all MMOs are Skinner Boxes and the goal is design one which attracts subscriptions more effectively than the others. We play these games to have “fun,” which Raph defined as novel learning. The multiplayer aspect just makes the subscriptions last longer by encouraging social networks.”

Operant Conditioning
Game AI: The State of the Industry
“Finite State Machine” (FSM)
New MUD Book
Game Design Articles – Game Design Documents
Game Design Library
Iterative Development
Iterative Development (bis)
Phil Steinmeyer’s blog
an interview with Jef Raskin
Game Toolkits
A framework for networked applications (Python – Ninjaneering)
Py/UI user interface library (Python – Ninjaneering)

Yes, I know nothing.

(thanks Chris…)

Posted in: Uncategorized | Tagged: F00lies, Game Design

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