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Planning the “Honor System” (old version)

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I’m roleplayng as a designer again. This is my “Honor System” for WoW. Perhaps they’ll steal this too:

This is a rough plan of how I would try to design the whole “honor system”. It tries to address all the problematic issues that the players are bringing up but still mantaining a focus: to be fun.

So far, these are the issues:
1- Prevent to assign penalties if the attack is a mistake
2- Allow an high level character to defend itself if attacked by a low level opponent without incurring in a penalty
3- Not reward a zerg of players killing a poor guy wandering alone, even if on the same level
4- Avoid to penalize support classes and incentivate the players to group
5- Make a dishonorable action have a greater impact if done by a player high on the honorable ranks

I’m not a mathematician so I’ll try to explain how the general system should be built.

The first part is about how we assign the points and when. In this system I won’t address external goals like accomplishing a mission. I’ll just include player-killing. So, the honor points should be assigned when an enemy DIES. This is the first step. Attacking someone doesn’t imply a gain or loss of honor. The honor changes only if the enemy actually dies. So we solve the (1) point.

The second step is to determine if the honor we are going to change after a kill will be a penalty or a reward. My idea is to simply determine this part by “tagging” the enemy. It means that who starts the attack is responsible for it. If an high level player starts an attack to a low level player it will incur in a penalty when he kills it. Instead if it’s the lower level player to start the attack, the high level player will be able to defend himself without incurring in a penalty (neither a reward since the low level player isn’t worth much). Following this idea we solve the (2) point.

The second point also leads directly to the third. The level confrontation between two opposite groups is GLOBAL. It means that the server will calculate the global level of the whole group. So more players in the same group will make the global level to rise. Two level 55 will make a group with a value of 110. If now these two guys attack a SINGLE player level 55 the system will calculate the encounter as: 110 versus 55. And it means that the two guys will receive a penalty if they’ll kill the enemy playing alone. More and more players grouped together ganking a guy alone will recieve a greater penalty. This will solve the (3) point.

For the fourth point we delve more into the math. Support classes won’t kill directly the opponents. This means that if the honor is assigned “per kill” these classes will be penalized. It’s not all. Because we should also push the players to play together. Casters will more likely die first considering their weakness. If we reward only who is alive we’ll finish again to penalize these classes. How to prevent all this and reward the group? The idea is to reward group survival. If a group survives an encounter (51% alive) it will gain a bonus multiplier (with a diminished return softcapped at 2.5). The more a group survives the more the bonus builds up (and the same group will be worth more if killed). If the group flees from a PvP battlefield OR is defeated (only if 50% or more of it dies) the bonus is lost and resets to zero. This means that the reward (or penalty) will be equally distributed for all the group. Both to those alive and those who died. On the same time the reward will depend on the “group performance” as a whole and NOT tailored and measured for each participant. This solves the (4) point.

The last point is about how we calculate the penalty. Not only the “honor points” should behave in a similar way to a normal exp table. But the final result should be adjusted a last time before being assigned. This last modification depends on the level of honor of the player. This means that as a player climbs up in the honor ladder, the honor points should slow down, progressively. Accumulating more honor should become harder as you go up. At the same time a dishonorable action should have the opposite impact. It should increase as the honor increases. So, while the reward should be achieved as an inverse proportion, the penalty should work as a direct proportion. This solves the (5) point.

Ahh. I’m tired. I wrote and read too much on this and other forums for a lot, a lot of hours. I hope it will be somewhat useful. Really hope.

EDIT: I’m not completely convinced about the third point. The math involved should be tweaked so that group play is still incentivated without being a problem. So that part should be reworked.

[Dream mmorpg] Server structure

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So. I made a strange diagram showing how the whole world is built. More than the real server structure it shows the interaction between the instances from the design/player point of view.

As you can see there are three rows:
1- Worlds or shards
2- Planes
3- Adventures

The first row is about various “cloned” shards. A common concept for mmorpgs. This is where the main action will take place. Both PvP and basic PvE happen here. Each shard will be exactly identical but you still have to remember that the world is built to be dynamical and under the control of PvP. So cities will be conquered by factions and there will be a concrete conquest system with land management and ownerships.

Under specific situations and requirements, the players will be able to open portals. These portals allow the players of a shard to move to a “plane”. In this case each plane is unique (not cloned or instanced). Each will have a specific “mood” and a name. Planes are conceived as large zones but still way smaller than a world/shard. They are major hubs where particular activities can be done. The permanence on one of the planes affects the character permanently, developing abilities and weaknesses. When a portal is open it works in both directions. This means that from a world you can transit to a plane and from a plane you can go back. This isn’t all. In fact the main innovation is that from a plane you can go back to a shard/world different from yours. This means that your character is able to travel between the shards thanks to portals and planes. There are many rules about portals, travel, permanence and so on, I’ll explain the specifics elsewhere.

From a plane, then, you can also choose to start an “adventure” (instanced PvE). Each plane gives access to its specific adventures. Each adventure is an instanced session right at the beginning and can involve from one player (single-player type game) to 50+ large raids. Even here the adventures can be accessed by opening portals under specific rules. If you die or fail during an adventure there could be a “cool off” timer that could go from a few hours to a few weeks. So you can only try once and you could need to wait the timer to go before you are able to try again.

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This is basically how all the game is built. All the content works inside that structure. Obviously the creativity is in how the content itself is built. For example the adventures will be different from how they are being used till now. Offering varied and fun gameplay.

Just two ideas I had are about time-related intances:
– The first type is tailored for a small group (even single player or duo). You have a dungeon and a time limit to respect. You need to reach the end before the time is over and it’s basically a race. The dungeon will be structured with “rooms” that will allow you to move to another section only after you have killed the monsters.
– The second type is an arena. You are in and your goal is to survive as much as possible. Just that.

These two examples are about a form of “trials” which must be passed to achieve various goals in the game. The idea is also to build a “ladder” of players with the most awsome performances.
(I loved the training session in the first X-Wing and the trials are a similar idea. With an extremely fun and tense gameplay. Even in this case some time will pass before you can try again a “failed” trial).

Doom 3 and SWG, same flaw

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The structures involved are always the same if you know how to find them. In this case Doom 3 has been criticized for the same reasons of SWG. It’s not my opinion, just read the reviews or the various message boards and you see that the complaints have a constant. Peoples don’t like the game because it exploits too much the same tricks: lights going off and monster-in-a-closet (or unending stream of cheap spawns, in Scharmers words). The redundant critique is that too many cliches become boring and annoying. This is true but we still need to know why. The answer, i think, can be achieved at an even higher level of generalization, where we can gather all Doom 3 faults in one, discover the real flaw generating all the rest and even finding analogies that become interesting even outside the genre. Because we discovered an “highway” that rules various form of arts, joining games and movies, Doom 3 and Star Wars Galaxies.

The fact is that in a game like Doom 3 you are really scared. A lot. The game is completely effective on this aspect. The first twenty minutes are mind-blowing, despite they are a rework of what made Half-Life and System Shock interesting. After some time this feeling changes. Yes, you are still scared, but the more you go on the more you feel scared AND annoyed. Because the fear becomes unjustified. Too many tricks, too many ruses. The same happens in a movie when a scary scene is matched with a very loud sound. Since the scene is weak you use a trick to amplify the potential, repeat the trick too much and everything will become annoying. Faked. The real strength of Doom 3 during the first twenty minutes is about the immersion. You feel the game. You feel the concrete fear because it’s HARD to part yourself from what happens in the screen. It feels real, the graphic and the light system don’t seem anymore “good coding” or “good graphic”, they are content. They are true. You don’t know what to expect to the game because you don’t know anymore the “engine”. You aren’t looking at the “box”, you are IN the box. So you are trapped in the game and you fear it because you become a real marine, in an underground base where everything could happen at any moment. This is mind-blowing for everyone but there’s a point where the magic is broken and where the fear effect happens along a lot of frustration and/or irritation. It doesn’t work anymore.

Where is this point? The point is when the player, or a spectator in a movie, begins to feel the presence of the hand moving the scene. The rule of the “third wall” exists from the theatre of marionettes. If you see the hands moving the marionettes you cannot enjoy anymore what happens, till the point that you cannot even follow the story. This is the same when the “fear effect” of a movie or a game happens just because of tricks. It’s not the repetition that makes the trick obsolete, but the fact that its reuse makes the player perceive the hand behind the scene. A stratagem is an intrusion. The director, or a designer, walks into the scene to make it stronger. It works, but if you start to repeat this and transform it into a perceivable structure, the magic is broken, the third wall is tore, the viewers don’t believe anymore to the magic and they begin to feel outside, looking at the shape of the box, anymore *inside* the box. You break the “suspension of disbelief”, the spectator finds itself outside the scene, it sees the trick, it sees what was on the mind of the director. He stops to enjoy and he starts to nitpick and criticize the experience.

Doom 3 starts to become extremely annoying NOT because the unexpected is expected. This is a side-effect. It becomes annoying because we know what the possibilities of the game are. We define better the shape of the box and we start to be able to look at it from the outside. A scene isn’t scary anymore because it happens in-text, but it’s scary because it *always* happens out-of-text. The “lights going off” could be a believable effect, in particular if it’s excused by an explosion or something, or because you really shoot at a light. But the continue reuse of “clever” spawns on your back is just an intrusion of a “third hand” that uses excuses to produce the fear. It’s not anymore the same situation to be scary, but it’s the trick. In a scary movie this happens when the loud sound becomes the only element producing the surprise. It’s not anymore excused in-text. It becomes artificial and, being this, it becomes a tool in the hand of a director, where, as a spectator, you begin to see even the hand holding it.

To summarize even more: the magic is broken when the fear depends directly on the artificiality. Not anymore in-text, but out-of-text. Not anymore telling a story, but forcing a behaviour directly.

This is where Doom 3 becomes SWG. I’ve wrote so much elsewhere of the original statement: “socialization requires downtimes”. The truth is that to achieve this socialization you need to sacrifice the gameplay. For Raph Koster this is way important because he doesn’t want a simple game, he wants to push the limit further and expand the potential. For him considering a MMOG as a simple game is like building a cage around it. You suffocate it. This is why the socialization MUST take over the gameplay, because it’s a crucial element for the game. Because it’s the true soul of what a MMOG is. And I agree with all this. The flaw happens in the execution, not in the goal. The error is in the approach. As you let the socialization take over the gameplay you break the frame. Again the third wall. In SWG one of the most obvious downtimes is about the combat. You fight and you accumulate wounds that cannot be healed. At some point you have to go back to a city, in a cantina to look at someone dancing or playing an instrument. This is where Raph applied a restriction to create a “space” for the socialization. The principle (error) is that the socialization is something else from the gameplay, so the socialization must happen at the expense of the fun (assuming that fun=gameplay). Long travels time, downtimes between battles, downtimes during crafting etc… those are all the product of a design aimed to create a “void”, a space where the socialization can take over. The design of the gameplay must accept a compromise to incentivate a completely different “side” of the game, the socialization.

My critique is that this breaks the third wall. In Doom 3 the moster-in-a-closet becomes unjustified, it’s about the hand of the designer using the game to produce a direct effect that becomes simply annoying, unjustified and irritating. In SWG the downtimes are all unexcused holes in the gameplay. They happen at the expense of the fun to produce a direct effect that, again, becomes annoying, unjustified and irritating. Because it happens, again, out-of-text. It’s the designer that modeled the shape of the game to produce an effect. This effect doesn’t happen anymore *in* the game. It happens follwing the will of an external rule: “socialization requires downtimes”. This can be translated into: “The socialization takes over gameplay rules”. But the gameplay/game is our frame. The game is NOT a face of something else. The game is the whole object.

Raph considers a MMOG like a medal with two faces. There’s the gameplay/game and there’s the socialization. To acheive both the design needs to accept compromises. If you incentivate the fun you hinder the socialization, if you incentivate the socialization you hinder the fun (or “socialization requires downtimes”). It’s a collage. Two different parts that need a whole lot of artificial tricks to be justified together and to coexist. This mess is, again, the result of an error in the approach. Because the “game” is the whole structure we are creating. The socialization isn’t an external part. The socialization MUST be a solid element *inside* the game iteself. Or as I wrote elsewhere: “You know, I’m so stupid to think that you can encourage the social interaction WITH the gameplay. And not without it.” In SWG the design is conceived ALWAYS out-of-text. It’s the product of really complex and interesting academic reasoning that never considers the context. The aim is to discover absolute rules that must have a value no-matter-what. Absolute. But by doing this they produce a *game* where this game layer is continuously tore to give a prevalence to the socialization. Breaking restlessly the third wall by applying an infinite list of excuses, stratagems and general artificial tricks to justify the game WITH the socialization.

But this doesn’t work, because right at the start, in the model, the socialization and the gameplay are considered two opposite faces. One hinders the other like the PvE hinders the PvP in other games.

This is the conclusion. Doom 3 and SWG have in common this behaviour of the devs to force specific behaviours by using artificial stratagems and without producing the design from inside the game, but outside it. It doesn’t matter how you “dress” the design by producing believable excuses. The players feel this artificiality. It’s way too obvious. The designers don’t let the game grow on its own, with its own needs and evolution. They don’t observe or experience. The game isn’t anymore game. The game is a “mean” to achieve an external goal, like producing a specific behaviour. A player is forced in and out of text continuously. This breaks every attempt at mantaining the third wall.

Raph’s goal is important and strong, it is focused on the specific qualities of online games and it’s where the real potential is. A game like CoH isn’t a good game because it utilizes this potential, it’s a good game because it renounced to the ambition. To follow the more secure and tested path of cooperative play. Where the goal is “simply a game”. At the same time if SWG is still quite strong it’s because of the quality of its ambition. It’s about the aim to be different, to offer more possibilities and expand the aim. To really use the potential that is new in the genre. To follow unexplored directions. But the design is still blind on too many aspects, there are basic mistakes in the approach and it’s fun to notice that these flaws happen on a general level that is common even outside this genre.

Battle System – A design idea

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Version 2.0 of my Battle System.
Less messy and more organized.

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I’ll try to not be too boring like I usually am (and despite the horrible english). The idea comes from a long experience in DAoC, from its mistakes and what could be taken and developed from there to build something different but more *fun and compelling*. I’ll take an idea that went terribly wrong in DAoC: the Master Levels. Everything, from their achievement till their role in the game are seen by the community more or less as a disaster. What I think is that the idea is still awesome but with an awful implementation. Now I thought about “salvaging” what’s good and use it to “fire” my imagination and suggest a complete new system for WoW. With these goals:

+ Provide a good reward system/treadmill for PvP
+ Give the players a reason and a concrete purpose to fight for, avoiding to provide excuses to “host” completely faked and maningless battles
+ Develop a number of skills that will be used exclusively on -large scale- battles, leaving the PvE aspect alone
+ Add depth to the system so that it will involve a complex strategical gameplay and not a sudden zerg instant pointless battle
+ Develop this system so that it will be deeper than just access a set of determined skills. The idea is to build a battle system where everyone has a concrete different *role* based on the achieved rank
+ Epic feel, endless possibilities to expand the system (patches and/or specific expansions) and the sense of wonder that the current game misses

In DAoC the reward system is based on Realm Points. By killing enemies you earn these points and by collecting more of them you earn ranks and cumulative points that you can spend to gain directly new skills. This system works nicely because it gives you a concrete reason to go fight in a PvP environment. The “treadmill” feeds the fun as the levelling does in the standard PvE: killing monsters must be fun but you also need to provide reasons to excuse the gameplay and hook the players. Levelling and gaining skills are hooks. In PvP you need both the hooks and a reason to give depth to the PvP, like a conquest system where the battles have a purpose aside the single encounters.

Considering WoW, it’s obvious that copying DAoC’s system isn’t the best way to go. WoW will have “Hero” classes and they sound already a pain to design without destroying the game. Another new system that gives more skills to the players and that need to be extensively balanced isn’t a good idea. My opinion is that there should be a completely new “battle system” that will offer its own gameplay and rewards (and also define differences between battleground and a possible, different endgame). How to achieve all this?

1. Ranks, squads and generals

The PvP should be defined by “ranks”. These ranks will not only give to each player the access to new sets of specific skills (creating a specific treadmill, undependent from PvE), but they will also define the role of each player during a battle. Opening possibilities and setting specific goals depending on your role. These ranks depend on points you can gain during the PvP. And these points can be gained in two ways. The first is by killing opponents, the second is by accomplishing set purposes (like specific missions). This shapes already the structure of both the reward and the gameplay system. The ranks not only define the new treadmill with its own rewards (the “hooks”) but they define also the gameplay since both your goals and possibilities in a battle depend on your rank. Plus there should be a visualization system for them. There should be graphical elements that will allow other players to “read” the rank of a player just by looking at them. This should be done by just setting a zone on the armor (like a shoulder or the chest) where the ranks are graphically displayed.

At this point the players could organize in “squads” and each squad will be able to choose a player (between the highest ranks) to become a “general”. When a general is set, a big flag with the symbol of the guild will appear on his back and will vanish only when he’ll disband the squad. This flag is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Advantage because a general has access to skills that will produce bonuses for everyone fighting around him (bonuses to magic, resistence, defence, attack..). A disadvantage because a leader with a flag on his back is easily recognizable, enemies could just focus on him to kill him and wipe the bonuses he’s infusing in the allies.

To conclude this section a few words about how PvP points should be gained. As I said, aside specific missions and goals related to a whole squad (like killing a leader, forcing a retreat and so on), points can be gained just by killing opponents. How the amount of these points should be defined? This is a complex part that I define more precisely here. The idea is to reward group survival. If a group survives an encounter (51% alive) it will gain a bonus multiplier (with a diminished return softcapped at 2.5). The more a group survives the more the bonus builds up (and the same group will be worth more if killed). If the group flees from a PvP battlefield OR is defeated (only if 50% or more of it dies) the bonus is lost and resets to zero.

2. Battle System: skills and spells

Each rank you achieve gives you access to new skills and spells. This is a brand new system that will coexist with zero impact on the PvE. How? These skills and spells don’t affect a single character nor a single group. They are ALL area-based. They can affect: – The environment – Allies – Enemies. The three targets are general. This still doesn’t prevent the use of these skills in the normal PvE or PvP. The point is that the effectivity of each of these spells is extremely limited. Each of these skills and spells is designed so that it will have a radius and a *stackable* effect. If only one player cast one of these spells the effect will be nearly zero. But then more players could “add” to the spell and strengthen it, building up its effect and affecting more and more players. So these spells and skills are planned to have an “impact” and a purpose only during large battles or sieges. With a nearly zero role in small and fast encounters. This to leave unaffected all the PvE and group-based PvP. The system I’m defining is about creating a battle system with its own tactics and dynamics. Working toward building a depth where the game usually becomes just a pointless zerg clash.

To prevent balance problems the effectivity of each spell works again with a diminished return value and a softcap. So that the cap will prevent these spells to become too overpowering and out of control while the stack will give a sense to each player contributing to strengthen the spell effect.

That’s the general structure. To this I added a “spellcrafting” system working like alchemy. Each spell cannot be casted at players’ will. There’s a complex system below. The first “stage” is about creating a “recipe”. Recipes are general spells based on different “magic schools”. They define just the general “type” of the spell. Recipes can be casted only with a communal effort of the players (rituals) and they need to not be interrupted for a certain amount of time. When a recipe is ready the players will then be able to add “ingredients”. And these ingredients will just modify the final effect, for example by expaning the range, invigorate an effect, add an effect and so on. Recipes will only be able to affect the three targets, only one for each recipe (environment, allies, enemies), but they can still be casted for different purposes (you could define recipes that follow the leader of an army, recipes that will be casted on the ground to affect the zone and prepare ambushes or defend hotspots, recipes that can be used in sieges, recipes as divination to “see” what the opposite force is doing… and so on). While the ingredients define the concrete effect and behaviour (add effects, increase the power, increase the radius, increase the duration, add movement, boost effectivity in rushes etc…).

3. Resource system and geomancy

If you look at my goals you can still see that the system misses something. It misses a real purpose and something concrete to fight for. To achieve this I imagined a resource system linked to geomancy effects. I haven’t defined every single detail here because a lot depends on how many resources you can use to add and expand this part. My whole design is built so that it’s easily expandable and this section is particularly near to this concept. The general idea is about giving the players the possibility to fight and conquer “nodes”. These nodes not only are structures with defenses, creating the base of a siege system, but they also work as a resource system. Each node affects a geomancy power. If you control a node it means that various characteristics of that zone will change (and they can be monitored and regulated). These nodes affect directly the “recipes” of the previous section. So, each geographical zone will have a different effect (and gameplay) by boosting or hindering the various “recipe” spells. This both based on the location of the battle (so, naturally) AND on who controls the various nodes.

The system is really more simple than how it sounds. Each zone will have by default a “natural” specific effect on the “recipe spells”. But the players will be able to conquer and control nodes so that they will be able to “tweak” these general bonuses and maluses at their advantage (boosting a magic school for example). The effect is not out of balance because pushing a magic school will make another one weak, the balance is already *inside* the system. Who doesn’t control the nodes can still use the strategy, the difference is that they won’t be able to control those bonuses and maluses directly.

The idea is simply about adding a concrete purpose and reason to fight for. The system can be expanded at will, by creating a real siege system and adding more purposes to the nodes (you could extract resources to build defenses and different structures. Building villages and so on.).

Housing anyone? :)

4. War machines

Here I’m leaning even more toward the endless possibilities to expand the system. This idea is about creating more differences between “casters” and “tanks” during a battle: The reward system, then, isn’t limited to new spells. It should be planned with various possibilities, where casters will have a *prevalent*, but not exclusive, access to the “ritual/recipe/ingredient system” and tanks to a different one. What is this new system for tanks (but not exclusively)? War machines.

The idea is to plan a real battle system where tank classes will be able to fly or drive more or less large steampunk machines, from zeppelins and dirigibles to large motorized rams. Bringing back Warcraft’s soul to this game. Casters will use the “ritual system” described to produce collective spells, while the melee classes will have access to major engines to drive the sieges. Obviously to move one of these machines the players will need to organize, they will move as a communal effort (same as the ritual system), making sure that each players still has something to do (since sitting there just for “presence” isn’t good gameplay).

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This is all. The result is that we can forget about a dumbed down zerg-combat and really create an epic scale war with strategical and fun elements. And, once started, the possibilities are endless.

I hope it’s not too late for suggesting some ambition :)

I plan WoW

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I posted this raving bit about a PvP system that would fit in WoW:

I’ll try to not be too boring like I usually am (and despite the horrible english). The idea comes from a long experience in DAoC, from its mistakes and what could be taken and developed from there to build something different but more fun and compelling. I’ll take an idea that went terribly wrong in DAoC: the Master Levels. Everything, from their achievement till their role in the game are seen by the community more or less as a disaster. What I think is that the idea is awesome but it had an awful implementation. Now I thought about “salvaging” what’s good and use it to “fire” my imagination and suggest a new system for WoW so that I could also be able to “fix” a few problems that are already in the game. Because WoW needs:
– A reward system
– A better dynamic system that adds some depth to epic encounters between armies

In DAoC the reward system is based on Realm Points. By killing enemies you earn these points and by collecting more of them you earn ranks and cumulative points that you can spend to gain directly new skills. This system works nicely because it gives you a concrete reason to go fight in a PvP environment. The “treadmill” feeds the fun as the levelling does in the standard PvE: killing monsters must be fun but you also need to provide reasons to excuse the gameplay and hook the players. Levelling and gaining skills are hooks. In PvP you need both the hooks and a reason to give depth to the PvP, like a conquering system where the battles have a purpose aside the single encounters.

Considering WoW, it’s obvious that copying DAoC’s system isn’t the best way to go. WoW will have Hero classes and they sound already a pain to design without destroying the game. Another new system that gives more skills to the players and that need to be extensively balanced isn’t a good idea. My opinion is that there should be a completely new “battle system” that will offer its own gameplay and rewards (and also define differences between battleground and a possible, different endgame). The idea comes from DAoC’s Master Levels because the purpose is to earn a set of skills based on ranks in a similar way to the Realm Albilities. But these skills won’t be designed to offer new sets of possibilities but, instead, to have a role ONLY in battles between armies. The good idea about the Master Levels is that they don’t affect only a player or a single party, but they spread out, like healing fields effective at a range. In WoW it will be a pain to invent and develop another new set of skills but this could be done if these skills will be really designed only around big battles. So that they will affect only this type of gameplay, while they’ll be completely useless in a single-party dynamics.

I’ll make a concrete example so that you can understand better the idea. One of the common ML Ability in DAoC is the healing field. You drop it and it will heal tot number of hit points every so seconds based on a range. Everyone inside the range is affected (aside the enemies). The implementation is horrible in DAoC because you cannot drop more than one field, because they don’t stack. So the situation is that: it is useful if you are in a single party, while it’s less useful in a zerg because someone else will probably have it anyway. My idea is to revert this horrible design so that it fits the real model. The healing field should be developped so that if a single player casts it, it will have a really worthless effect. To the point that noone should bother to cast it if playing alone in a normal group. But it WILL stack. Each player with that skill should be able to strengthen the effect by casting its own on top of the other. This means that these skills/spells will have a role only in the dynamics of a large PvP battles between armies, while they’ll be forgettable in 1 Vs 1 encounters. To fix the obvious balance issues the statistics of these spells must be variable. They should stack but in a progressive, diminished return. Each spell casted will strengthen the previous but not excactly doubling the effect. The purpose is to make every single spell be effective (opposed to DAoC where once one is casted all the others are ignored) but beneath a set cap that will mantain the whole dynamic under control, avoiding exploits.

This can be chained to different ideas to produce a really deep and interesting system. My suggestion would be to develop these new spells like an “alchemy system”. Listen. Instead of creating a spell with a set, precise effect, like it always happens in these games, you develop each one like an “ingredient” or “recipe”. You’ll be able to set various recipes (which should be linked to magic schools and player classes). When the “main recipe” spell is casted (perhaps as a commonal effort of different players), other players will be able to set and add their own spells to the main one, providing different effects or combining those to create new ones. The result is a mess but also loads of fun. It’s a battle dynamic absolutely original with a nearly infinite potential. While right now zerg battles feel absolutely dumb and boring, a system like this could provide not only the “reward” that the PvP needs (since these spells are aquired by practicing PvP) but it will also add depth to a battle system. It will actually create a battle system, as opposed to what the market offers. Easy to balance because it’s big-scale only and, above all, set with precise caps (as explained in the previous paragraph).

It’s not all :)
If you open up the system there’s a lot more to make WoW be original and innovative. If you implement at this point a conquest system where players will be able to conquer and control structures, you can develop, on top of that, a resource system similar to “geomancy”. Controlling nodes on the landmass will have an effect on the magic schools, boosting or hindering them. This means that the location of a battle will affect directly these “Realm Abilities”. Controlling a node will give resources and, at the same time, produce a weakness (or the system becomes too overpowering). And I could go on more and more to suggest the many possibilities a similar system has. After all the game will be developed even after its release, the idea is to set the framework where the PvP isn’t an afterthought but a compelling system that could push the genre, then you have endless possibilities till you have resources to expend on this part. The early goal shouldn’t be hard to achieve since it doesn’t seem to be “too much” demanding from a development point of view: something small and solid but with the design already projected toward the future.

To conclude this reasoning, a last (awesome, I think) note about different classes. The system I described revolves around spells but I don’t think that every class should follow this idea. Aside the recipe/ingredients system I think you can develop another one that I bet would be LOVED by the community everywhere. Spellcasting classes should use “mainly” the system described, they have their role in a battle due to that system. What do the poor tanks? They do something cool: the rank system won’t give them access to spells, it will give them access to vehicles. The idea is to plan a real battle system where tank classes will be able to fly or drive more or less large steampunk machines, from zeppelins and dirigibles to large motorized rams. Bring Warcraft’s soul to this game. Casters will use the “ritual system” described to produce collective spells, while the melee classes will have access to major engines to drive the sieges. The reward system needed in the game is exactly the access to these new gameplay systems, working only on these battles and leaving the normal PvE uneffected to the point that you can simply not care about the PvP. Even if I’m sure *you will* if such a system will be developed :)

The result is that we can forget about a dumbed down zerg-combat and really create an epic scale war with strategical and fun elements. And, once started, the possibilities are endless.

I hope it’s not too late for suggesting some ambition :)

—

General summary for who cannot be bothered to read all the above:

+ Reward system based on ranks
+ You can gain ranks by killing opponents and, in particular, by accomplishing set purposes (like specific missions)
+ Gaining ranks give each player access to a set of battle-related “skills”, coordinated to give each player a different role in a battle, based on the current rank (defining squads with different purposes)
+ The most common version of these skills is about spells that have *no* impact on a single party encounter but strong impact on large scale battles (by actually creating a complex “Battle System” with its own dynamics, as opposed to a pointless zerg rush)
+ Each spell is designed so that it will stack with a diminished return of effectivity below a set cap
+ The cap will prevent these spells to become too overpowering while the stack will give a sense to each player contributing to strengthen the spell effect
+ From a design point of view these new spells will work as an alchemy system. There are “recipes” (based on magic schools) that will be casted as a communal effort of more players, then others players will be able to add “ingredients” to the main spell, creating a bigger ritual with the time which will affect the whole area of the battle (you could define recipes that follow the leader of an army, recipes that will be casted on the ground to affect the zone and prepare ambushes or defend hotspots, recipes that can be used in sieges, recipes as divination to “see” what the opposite force is doing… and so on – where the ingredients add effects, increase the power, increase the radius, increase the duration, add movement, boost effectivity in rushes etc…)
+ This new spell system then should be linked to a resource system based on the possibility to conquer and control “nodes”, similar to geomancy zones
+ So, each geographical zone will have a different effect (and gameplay) by boosting or hindering the various “recipe” spells. This both based on the location of the battle (so, naturally) AND on who controls the various nodes
+ Nodes will provide different resources. The system could be complex since it could be used to expand a settlement, build bigger protections etc…
+ The reward system, then, isn’t limited to new spells. It should be planned with various possibilities, where casters will have a *prevalent*, but not exclusive, access to the ritual system and tanks to a different one (still not exclusively)
+ The prevalent reward system for tanks should be about the ability to use various war machines
+ The war machines go from zeppelins and dirigibles to large mechanical rams. The idea is that each of these war machines will need more than one player to be moved around
+ At this point everyone should still have something fun to do, like driving or commanding turrets or whatever. For sure not just standing there

—

The goals of the system I imagined are:

+ Provide a good reward system/treadmill for PvP
+ Develop a number of skills that will be used exclusively on large scale battles, leaving the PvE aspect alone
+ Add depth to the system so that it will involve a complex strategical gameplay and not a sudden zerg instant pointless battle
+ Give the players a reason and a concrete purpose to fight for (nodes and resources based on a conquer system involving land control on specific zones), avoiding to provide excuses to “host” completely faked and maningless battles
+ Develop this system so that it will be deeper than just access a set of determined skills. The idea is to build a battle system where everyone has a concrete different *role* based on the achieved rank
+ Epic feel, endless possibilities to expand the system and the sense of wonder that the current game misses

Then I could go on forever. For example you need to give a very important role to the guilds inside this system and the rank system should regulate not only the access to new spells but really different roles in the actual war. The idea is to shift the game toward an RTS where each player will still have fun by playing a single soldier/role.

—

I don’t really pretend someone to read all this and even comment but I think it’s not a bad work and perhaps it deserves another attempt at visibility (ahh, stupid hopes..). It provides what a PvP system needs, from the general gameplay system, to the fun, the endgame, the rewards, huge selling points like vehicles, etc…

Even if it needs a lot of work it’s still a skeleton that could become rock solid easily, with a huge potential for being expanded as you like, with whole expansions or patches. Plus it’s not a problem because it coexists with the PvE flawlessly and without consequences.

I really would like to receive some kind of feedback:
– You think it’s too ambitious?
– You think it’s out of the aim?
– You think it’s written so bad that isn’t even readable?
– You think that it sounds horrid and stupid to say the best?
– You think it’s the most foolish thing you have ever heard?
– You think it’s a “convoluted ESL brain twisters”? (this is J.)
– Your eyes simply glaze over pages of dense posting on game theory? (This is Lum the Mad)
– You think it’s simply not possible?
– You think it’s simply broken and confused?
– You think that you don’t care simply because it’s a complete waste of time since Blizzard has its own plan and won’t change it even if a fool posts something (horribly written and confused) on a forum aimed to invent a completely new game just a few months before the launch?

(well, my opinion is the last one)

I like a lot “playing designer” but it’s also something that frustrates me a whole lot because I know that I’m only playing with impossible, distant dreams. If someone at Blizzard is reading: I envy you.

P.S.
Yes, I’ll resist the temptation of using my 20 characters to simulate infinite praises to what I wrote here. I don’t really like talking with myself. I’m another kind of fool, but this is another story that will be told in another occasion.

-HRose / Abalieno
http://www.cesspit.net/
In testing: http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/

MMOGs and economies

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Copying from a thread @ F13:

kaid
The only truly broken economy is one where either every single item in the game is so easy to come by there is no need or reason to trade

Oh, well. This could be a broken economy but it’s a very good game for sure.

See, everyone is missing the point because you really shift the focus on how to build a decent economy while I think Haemish point of view is way more worth of attention: You should shy away from creating and balancing a real economy.

I won’t go back with the discussion between “real simulation” Vs. “fun arcade” because it’s not the point. The point is that whatever you are going to build is still something that will involve “gameplay”. This gameplay could be a simple monster whack or a complex interaction but at the end the gameplay must be compelling and interesting. This is why I still find more fun and compelling to find the tools I need, like the equipment, along my normal play. With vendors and drops. It’s way more fun than trading. Remember that, often, trading is a way to bypass the game. Considering EQ or WoW you can see that what you need (loot) comes directly from your experience and normal play. If at some point the economy collapse with the inflation it will mean that you are able to max your equipment with very little money. And this means that noone will care about PLAYING to achieve what they need. You can sit and pay but you are also killing your own fun because what was hard and challenging has been now dumbed down by the money. The active gameplay has been erased.

This is why the economy brings more problems than benefits to the game. In the real world the economy born to exchange different resources. In the real word peoples specialize themselves in an activity (and then gain and use money) because someone else is doing something completely different. And there’s interdependence. In a mmorpg more or less everyone plays the same game, in the same way. The fact is that there’s no need to shift the resources because you aren’t FORCED to work (play), but you should love to do that. And you DON’T WANT someone else to do the work at your place. Because the point and the aim IS THE GAMEPLAY, and not just the loot at the end. If that loot is the result of a play session you have a good game. If the loot can then be achieved just by trading you are killing once again the fun. In DAoC the players are able to craft insanely powerful equipment and that asks just a ton of money. Well, this destroyed the epic quests. What required gameplay now requires just money. And the game is just more fucked up!

Economies, real or faked, aren’t needed in a game simply because there’s no sense in adding this layer of complexity. In a game like EQ or WoW the economy (a real one) simply doesn’t fit, because it has no purpose aside creating a tons of disasters.

Recently Mythic demonstraded how much the ideas about economic systems in games are completely messed. They introduced powerful objects (artifacts) very hard to gain, impossible to trade or sell, impossible to obtain again and STILL decaying and disappearing from the world. Where’s the sense? Why you need to erase an object from the world if it doesn’t circulate nor can be re-gained?

Sanya
Q: Why do artifacts decay?

A: We don’t ever want to put items into the game that don’t decay at all. Getting an item into a game is essentially a function of time. Without removing items somehow, an economy becomes completely clogged, and special things are no longer special.

Many people who have made something of a hobby out of game world economies have written essays on “mudflation” (MMORPGs have their roots in Multiple User Dungeons � text based games)

Now someone could explain me what relates artifacts to the economy? Or, even worst, MUDflation?

This is the whole point. Economies are unnecessary if the game itself doesn’t offer a very strict specialization in the possible activities. In a game like WoW, DAoC or EQ the economy is simply a burden and every attempt at adjusting it will destroy a bit more the fun in the game. The more the economy works the more the game will bleed. In other games (like Eve), the economy simply works because you have 80% of the game painfully boring. So that trading acquires a meaning. And this demonstrate how much a real economy defines an horrible game with faked depth.

My opinion is that the less the economy is real the better is for my fun. Let’s say that as I enter the game in WoW I have a friend that dump me a ton of money. Who the fuck cares? I’ll still be restricted to use equipment for my level and the difference between my twinked character and someone else with no external support will still be minimal. Rejoice! The fucking economy cannot screw me beyond every limit! THAT’s a working economy. An economy that doesn’t continuously enter the game to hinder my fun at playing it. Harvesting money ad infinitum is stupid and boring. Questing to achieve something valuable is WAY MORE FUN. If at the end you are able to put in the market what you achieved with the gameplay perhaps you are building an economy but you are also DEMOLISHING the game.

This is why I consider WoW’s economy one of the best in the market. Trading and crafting is damn FUN. At the same time the equipment is level restricted and usually bound to you. Yes, items don’t degrade simply because there’s no need to build a fucking economy. And I’m having fun because of it.

The slogan is: WE DON’T NEED THIS CRAP.

To conclude, let’s say that we don’t really want to develop another monster-whacking game and we’d like something deeper. Well, the resources (man-work I mean) are still not infinite. I think there are a tons of ideas that would require a lot of work a experimentation. So better use those resources at best, not at worst.

Dundee
I don’t really have an issue with anything else you wrote, if the goal is to create a realistic real-world style economy. I just disagree that it is necessary, or even a worthwhile goal, really.

/agree.

Destro
MMOG economies are broken because they aren’t fun.

No. When you aren’t having fun you can be sure that there is an economy perfectly working.

And since you like to babble about exploits and dupes: they are still the side-effect of a game where money has become more important than playing. Reduce the importance of the money and you’ll have an equilibrate game where duping and cheating aren’t even an issue. Because the aim of the game isn’t being rich.

—

And then Raph replied and I agree with him completely:

Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There’s strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn’t offer.

We may quibble all we want about whether harvesting is currently as fun as it should be (it isn’t), the act of crafting is as fun as it should be (it isn’t), or the juggling of inventory is as fun as it should be (it isn’t). But it’d be dumb to say that running a business in a game can’t be a fun endeavor or add gameplay–there’s entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world–Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

The reason to have game economies that have complexity to them is the same reason why you have PvE combat with complexity to it–to have it meet the minimum threshold bar of fun. Worrying about wwhether dupes unbalance your economy is the same as worrying about whether buffs are overpowered, frankly. It’s just another axis of gameplay.

Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.

Communication and learning

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It doesn’t exist another term with the same wide meaning of “communication”. Today it’s the most used and abused word, mostly used incorrectly, at least if it’s even possible to define a correct use (it’s not). Still “learning” does the magic. You can substitute “communication” with “learning” in every situation and you won’t even loose any added value of meaning. Many tried to define such a word (“communication”, not “learning”), most of the times peoples tend to focus on a single aspect, like: “something moving from a subject to another”. And here you can start to delve and define all the theory of Shannon and Weaver. The technical theory of communication. Source, encoder, message, channel, decoder and receiver. Math. Difference between at least two different levels. 0,1. Binary digits. Or perhaps we can go romantic (or systemic, like Niklas Luhmann) and define the communication as something “unknown” happening inside the system, like a human being. After all the source could have a precise aim when it sends its message, perhaps the source is a politician willingly to seduce his audience so that everyone agrees with him and votes for him. Does it always work? Obviously not. The massage encounters various problems along its way. There’s “noise”, technical problems. But technical problems aren’t exquisitely technical, a technical difference can also be a cultural gap, a different language… even a “mood” or a “trend” (at the end is all about the aleatory concept of “culture”). And it’s not complete because the noise isn’t the only problem. You can still send a perfect message and still not achieve your ( “your” as “source”) aim. And this happens because of the true, systemic nature of communication: it happens only in a single, closed system. Like a human being.

The “communication” doesn’t really involve two subjects. It just needs one. The communication in its true meaning is just a “perturbation”, a stimulus. It could come from whatever and “whatever” can still communicate with you. Even the absence of communication is strong communication. The point is that the communication “happens” (like shit), you cannot help it. And it happens inside a subject, no matter of what happens outside. This is the concept of the original distinction between a system and its ambient. The ambient perturbs the system, the system reacts. The reaction could be completely “other”, detached, contingent. The message is a perturbation but the communication and its own level happen inside the system. The message outside has zero value if it doesn’t produce a difference inside a system (the basic theory explain that an ambient is always outside a system and the elements that form such ambient are completely different from the elements of the system. They don’t even touch and there’s zero exchange. Each part just perturbs the other. And is “structurally coupled” or “coordinated” with the other.). And the system reacts by following its own processes, it’s impossible to anticipate something from the outside (hm, not really, but I won’t explain).

All this just “adds” to the difficulty of defining a silly word like “communication”. Silly because of the nature of the culture. “Culture” means that you can “draw lines”. The culture is just an hallucination that allows you point your finger and differentiate something from something else. The “theory of form” of Spencer Brown. Even racism is simply a “property” of the culture. It can only happen because we have a culture, one of its finest products. Anyway. We can define things, and these definitions have different “dimensions” just because where we trace lines is something completely arbitrary. You can draw lines everywhere. We can say “fruit” or “apple” and we are just drawing lines to define more or less big spaces. These spaces don’t exist, they are part of our hallucination (culture) and doom (the fact that we have lost the right of being able to see things as a whole. Our integrity.). So, basically, “communication” is hard to define simply because it has not a precise meaning. You see into the term whatever you like. No different from “love”. Everyone has its own definition and there isn’t a precise way to point a “truth”, because, once again, we don’t have truths. We have a culture. And since a culture has the opposite meaning (and space) of “nature”, you have the explaination about why the culture is an hallucination: the truth is about the nature, men don’t live in the nature, they live in a cocoon called culture, a dimension that doesn’t really exist.

So we have a few guidelines and a word with a wide and subjective meaning. Peoples define the communication focusing on different aspects because they point what they see on a precise moment and it’s very hard to draw a synthesis form all that to deduce a single and complete definition able to embrace all the possible aspects. At this point you have two different path (paths always come in pair, it’s a rule), one is about building a very complex definition, long and elaborated enough to fit in it every meaning possible, the other is about using tricks. The first has been choosed by the famous gurus, each with its own insane and incomprehensible definition. The other path is, instead, what I find more interesting and “rewarding”, using the obvious tricks to reach the heart of the communication. The trick itself isn’t complex. Since it’s hard to define the term simply because it has blurry borders and you can fit in that pretty much everything, you can use the strategy to junt find an alternate possibility that offers you the same “range” of meaning. And when you find such a word you can start to observe both wor”L”ds and, so, understand both better. As a Joycean epiphany.

And we already have a wonderful word, already an epiphany on its own: “learning”. Its a term so special that as you start to observe it you’ll see into it more and more depth, till you discover more about the communication than you can do by using no filters and study it directly. Like staring at the sun and feeling dazzled. They are so similar because they share an intimate meaning. Everyone owns a personal definition of “learning” even more than “communication”. Both are wide and blurry, still retaining something nearly magical, something seducing. Learning has the “poetry” that “communication” misses. And this has a precise meaning: this word can save the world. It’s a crossover between the hallucination of the culture and the lost nature. Poetry as “art”. Art as “reavealing an aspect of the world, hidden till that precise moment”. Only the art is able to show us the “nature” we miss. The “art” is an instant, again an epiphany, a sudden mircacle that allows everyone to have a glimpse of the real world. To see a beauty.

“Communication” as a term is no different than “walking”. It’s something that leaves you perplexed. They both involve a source (a starting point) and a receiver (a finishing line). You “go” but we don’t already know from where and toward what. And, you know, why… We do things in general but the words don’t help us to find a sense or a purpose. “Communication” implies something to say? A motivation? Not really, it implies just itself and it really doesn’t give us anything valuable. It’s an egoistical word. Unfriendly. Well: ugly. Surely not artistic. So, why damn we walk? Why damn we communicate? Each time we use these words we feel a loss. The loss of a sense, the excuse. A soul. A meaning!

Really, we have these words meaning so many things and still not giving us anything valuable. Or perhaps we use them exactly because they are empty. Today we are seduced by the emptiness. Luckily we can still choose, or at least I hope. You can use ugly words and obtain nothing than pain, or choose something else with a soul. More “compromising”. “Learning” has everything and more. More than “communication” it belongs to the intimacy of a blind (a child) and closed system. Learning is a process happening in a single system. It defines everything precisely because you can learn from everything, even from yourself. You don’t even need a source nor an aim tied to an external source. You can go out and see a beautiful day. You have learnt. Learning is about life and as “life” its meaning has no real limit. Since it has no limits it gives us the hint of the nature. The absence of the culture, the glimpse of nature. Learning is our purest process and is “beautiful” on every aspect. You don’t need a guru to explain you the term, you don’t need money, nor knowledge. You just need life and you know that it belongs to you, if you want. It’s our true nature without the impurities. Noone can draw a line between himself and this term, noone can apply to this a form of racism and noone can be an (Ab)alien(o).

And instead of “communication” it doesn’t leave you stupid and without a sense. “Learning” is already positive to the point that you don’t need a reason or a purpose. Life in its purest form.

P.S.
Incomplete. I’d like to add more links with references and a better conclusion.

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Tidbits from the “world”

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Not from the real world, just from my idea of a mmorpg. The site is still on vacation but I’ll add a few notes about random ideas.

Basically the world based on the Stormbringer’s setting is flat. Not flat because the men believe that but because it’s really flat. The world has borders, if you reach those borders you’ll see the “chaos” exactly as it has been described in the books. It will be also a very dangerous zone so it won’t be something common to see.

More or less the landmass is a big square. In the center there’s the most important place, Melnibone’. This isle will have a major role in the game and it will be another element aside Law and Chaos. Melnibone is a faction on its own, still near the Chaos. This race won’t be playable at the beginning because of this role and because of its power. They will be able to fly on dragons and dragons are cool and powerful. I have special plans about all this but I won’t explain them now. Just remember that in the center of the map there’s a very important isle, home of the most powerful race available in the world (think to Jedis, but they won’t be lame as in SWG).

Around the isle there’s the sea and it’s where piracy will happen. You’ll have here the dynamics about the commerce. Everything is real and not faked. You’ll need ships to transport goods from a place to another and I expect to build a full naval combat on a very big scale. Realistic as it’s technically possible. And tweaked around the “fun”, so no endless journeys to move a cargo from a part the world to the other.

Then you have the land at the margins of the sea. Each zone will have its style and it will go from a tropical setting to enormous and strange mountains, to deserts, to medieval cities built around big castles, to small outpost and farms. Each style will be affected by the population/race of the zone. Each of these places will be completely in the hands of the players. Every small building can be conquered or bought and managed for concrete purposes purposes. Nothing can be destroyed or built from the void. Each structure can be damaged till it will be useless but nothing will leave or join the world. Cities and each structure part of these cities is already there. The crafting will have a minor effect to tweak and transform all this, but not radically.

The margins aren’t static. As in the books the world will change completely. New lands could come out from the mist of Chaos, along with populations and demons. The idea is that whatever will appear on this main world will still be suitable for conquest. Everything on this “side” of the game is completely in the hands of the players. You’ll have here the basic form of PvE regulated by meaningful and factional purposes and you’ll have the main part of the game, the factional PvP.

The fact that new lands will be added just means that the game has space for additions. New races, new types of commerce, new resources to manage and so on.

This is a side. Then there are the planes. In the planes of Chaos everything can be built (from devs perspective). From a technological point of view the main land is static while the various planes are instanced (these instances happen outside the single server boundaries). Instances could be built as “worlds” or “adventures” (for the lack of better terms).

Worlds are zones communal to all the servers. The access will be restricted but you can meet here players coming from different servers. Worlds are instanced but also persistent. You don’t have different “copies” of the same world. Each “world” will be absolutely unique and communal to all the servers/main-lands.

“Adventures”, instead, are instanced as in the common implementation but they are still server-independent. You can build a party (coming from a “world”) of players coming from different servers than yours, then enter an instanced-adventure. Each instance is an “adventure” and each will be cloned if different parties want to experience the same adventure.

Each of these adventures will have a purpose, a mission to figure out. The access to each of these adventures will also be limited, it could happen that if you fail you’ll have to renounce for an amount of time (a few days or even weeks). Everything on these planes behaves following precise rules. The access to these worlds (both worlds and adventures) happens through portals built on the main land and these portals can be activated only if certain conditions are met (think to Darkness Falls in DAoC).

Once a portal is activated you can step in with your friends (the portal could hold or not, based on different elements, like the number of players passing through it). And you’ll enter a “world” along with players coming from other servers if the portal is also active on their servers.

Each of these worlds will be a quite big, closed zone. Each will have a main city where you’ll be able to get basic equipment and informations, if the aligment won’t determine that NPCs in the city want to kill you. From these commonal “hubs” you can find your way to have access to different adventures starting from this world or going back to your own server. There will be conditions to meet so that you will also be able to enter a different server from your home. In this case the character will suffer a penalty. Each character will be weakened during its permanence in a foreign server but some missions could send you to a different server to accomplish your duties and only a few magic tools could allow you to limit the effect of this weakness.

A long permanence will have persistent effects on your character. Both good and bad effects.

The other possibility is to remain inside the “world”. Movement between different planar “worlds” isn’t possible and portals to “adventures” and back to the main servers/landmass are limited and they vanish depending on what happens on those main standard-worlds. So you could finish “trapped” in a plane for some time, without being able to go back to your server. This could be a choice obviously.

Also in this case the permanence on a plane will affect your character in a persistent way. As you enter a new level your affinity with that level is very low. You won’t be able to use magic for example. As you pass time on these planes the affinity will raise and you’ll reach a point where, potentially, your power can grow out the boundaries you have on your home server. A long permanence on a plane allows you to develop new skills and powers. The positive effect is that the affinity could reach a point where you’ll hold these new powers and you’ll be able to reach new levels even when you are on a different plane or back to your home.

Each plane is like a “school”. You’ll develop an affinity with that school based on your actions and your permanence on that level. And you’ll be able to bring back this new power with you even outside the proper level. The cost is that you’ll also be corrupted by a plane. The affinity you develop in one will contrast with another plane.

This happens if you decide to remain on a plane, without going back to your home (or another server, if you can) and without building a party and start an “adventure”.

If you decide to start an “adventure” you’ll enter the proper instanced dimension. Here you will never meet someone else. You’ll be able to invite a player from the outside but you are basically safe from interruptions. During these adventures everything could happen. The purpose could be to explore a dungeon to recover an artifact, or get it in a limited time, or a trial you have to pass, or knowledge to discover etc…

Purposes can be tied to your homeland in a similar way the homeland is tied to what happens on these planes but basically these zones (both worlds and adventures) are conceived to develop each character beyond its limits. Magic items can be found ONLY here.

So this is how the whole world is shaped. Each server represents a cloned landmass with the characteristics I’ve explained at the beginning. There’s an isle in the center, home of the most powerful race, not enabled to be played right at the start. The rest of the landmass is the scenery for the “main game”, the factional PvP and the basic PvE. You can build or destroy empires, conquer lands or just buy a small house for yourself and start a commercial activity, or train your mount or whatever else. This is also where the basic development of your character (or other “items” like magic tools, mounts, pets and so on) happens.

Then you can jump through portals and have access to communal worlds, unique for all the servers. Here you can meet other peoples coming from different servers. You can stay here to develop “special” powers tied to the affinity with a level, or go on a mission on a different server from your starting one, or build a party to start an “adventure” to discover some kind of magic loot or accomplish a major objective useful for your homeland, or whatever.

That’s the general idea of what players do in this game.

Note that the main land where the PvP and basic PvE happen is located on different shards/servers as it happens in the various mmorpgs today. Youer character, instead, is unique and you’ll see this when you access the other side of the game: the planar levels. Here you have “worlds” that are built as communal instances for all the servers. Each character here is unique and these zones are at the same time huge hubs and the tie between each main server and the instanced “adventures” where most of the “loot” will come from.

All these worlds/shards/servers/dimensions are accessible to EVERY character.

The marxist treadmill

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This topic is the center of the discussions of the old Waterthread and it was one of my points when I commented World of Warcraft.

From my point of view the situation isn’t complex, there’s a key to “read” it. It depends on where you place the “aim” of your game. In DAoC the PvE is a grind and a treadmill because you want to reach level 50 and be able to join the RvR. So it’s a duty.

It’s about this simple concept: the treadmill is the aim or the consequence of another aim?

Let’s take another common example, Diablo 2 (I know only the first levels of it). As you move through the world you explore the map, kill monsters and gain experience. In this gameplay, if the game is well balanced, the levelling and progression of your character will be tied to the treadmill. As you *do stuff* the character grows.

The fun is in this concept. Till your aim is *doing stuff* you have fun. When you *do stuff* to reach another aim the fun is being killed. And you have the grind part.

I think this is a more simple and precise definition of the fun/unfun aspect of a treadmill. As Ian Reid says, everything in a game is a treadmill in the end, so you need to figure out where it achieves a negative value.

I pointed this value.

When you have in your mind a precise idea of this dynamic you have also a clear vision of how the gameplay of a mmorpg should be developed.

There’s a discussion about this here:
http://www.anyuzer.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=147

Cause and consequence. If the treadmill is a consequence (side-effect) you have fun, if the treadmill is a cause the fun stops and you have the grind. You can monitor what happens on a play session and you’ll see where the treadmill lags behind the aim and becomes a cause (grind). It’s a change of focus. From doing concrete things in the world, to repeat algorythms toward your personal power-grind.

At this point you finish on another new level. On this level you need a “term of measure” to monitor when an experience is a grind or not. This term of measure is about learning. You’ll discover that when you learn something the process is fun. When your actions loose the learning process the game fails and becomes boring and unappealing.

Dynamic learning is the only heart of this issue. The learning is the only element involved in the treadmill and it’s why this treadmill can be fun. If a process doesn’t include learning you obtain frustration and alienation.

This brings to marxist theories and I think i’ll stop here :)