More heresies for the win!

I was reading Chris doing experiments on a hypothetic skill based game and wondering what is the point. I really cannot understand what’s the goal, what he is trying to do.

Why the players should be fed with something like: change = ( rating² ) / MAX(rating)² * -1 + 1

What the hell is that? What does it represent? What it is trying to tell me?

Math has never been all that eloquent to me but I suppose I’m not alone. Before coming to the mmorpgs I’ve played and read many pen&paper rulesets, from the simplest ones, to the most complicated and rich. I always liked more those more detailed but in ANY case they were complicated on the mathematical level. They were only complicated in the mechanics and choices available. The purpose was always clear and they were still able to simulate and describe nearly ALL the situations you could imagine.

I believe that the difference between a computer game and a pen&paper one is about the target. The pen&paper games were always supposed to be managed by a human brain and be DIRECTLY FUN. Why we needed “rules” in the first place? To simulate situations, to define a structure within the game could be played. You could do completely without any rule (the most rabid roleplay experience) but we moved progressively to simulate situations and create “games”. Defined situations. Where the control of the character is not totally yours.

Considering that those rules were the fabric of the game and that they were directly managed by a game master and the players, those rules were always planned to be easily usable. Directly defined WITHIN the game space. They were symbolic and mathematically “light”. There could have been tables of reference to use for the critical rolls but no game ever required you to use a calculator and write down formulas to come up with the result five minutes later.

But why computer games need to be different? Why the need to complicate the mechanics to the point of making them “unreadable”?

The brain is a symbolic structure, it is not a mathematical structure. When we close our eyes and dream we dream of symbols, not of numbers. The numbers say nothing to us and for the great majority of the players MATH IS NOT FUN.

Even if the computer games need to be translated into math to work, this doesn’t mean that this level has to be fed to the players. Again, there was nothing that the classic pen&paper rulesets weren’t able to simulate. So why not keeping a simple approach? Why not design games that are intended TO BE USED BY A HUMAN BRAIN?

These are games. The rules are the game we play and those rules must be transparent and readable. The math doesn’t add anything valuable to a roleplaying game because these games are about symbolic structures, myths, culture. They aren’t mathematical puzzle games. That’s not the level that I believe the players appreciate. We want to be heroes and adventurers, not mad scientists. We want to roleplay, evocate myths. “Wish impossible things”.

If I’ll ever design a game my goal will be to create a ruleset that is symbolic heavy and mathematically light. Something that could be easily translated to a pen&paper game and played right away. Complex mathematical functions and formulas should be banished from the ruleset and everything should be transparent.

The whole ruleset should be planned to be used by a human brain quickly and reliably in all its parts.

Design something should be as closing the eyes and “portray” a situation. “Design” as dreaming. Design as the very first practice of “roleplay”. Like imagining a movie. Simulating a reality. Evocating symbols. Summoning experiences.

Yes, game design has its own language. But this language should be always shared with the players. There must be an underlying competence in the use of the same language.

When I close my eyes I don’t see mathematical formulas. The math is “cold”, it is not able to communicate. It is not able to create emotions. Game designer and players need to share the same language.

I got swamped in a silly problem that seems unsolvable. I swear that I’ll figure it out, but right now I’m helpless like a total noob.

EDIT: There’s a discussion on F13.

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This is something I was thinking lately, it’s a very simple problem but it may be more serious than how it appears.

Till now the repetition of endgame raid instances (but also the repetition in general) has been a strategy to keep a balance between the time needed to produce content and the time the players need to go through it. Since the players go a hell of a lot faster we have the grind as a workaround that allows the devs to “buy time”. So the very low drop rates and faction farming.

But let’s imagine a scenario where this problem doesn’t exist and where the dev teams have become so competent and efficient to be able to push out content at an incredible pace, faster than how the players go through it. The production of content wouldn’t be anymore a problem and there wouldn’t be anymore the need to artificially “stretch” the gameplay by adding timesinks. You would be able to get your fat loot in a couple of runs, obtaining all there is to obtain without no need for boring repetition.

But wouldn’t this just break the game?

The problem is that the biggest is the repetition, the more the players will be unite, since they need to do stuff together: the same stuff. If there’s an “infinite” amount of content everyone would be spread on multiple levels, without being able to find “other players” who share the same situation.

How would you be able to build even a small raid group if it would be really hard to find players who share the same goals? If instead of 4-5 instances there are 30 and if you are “done” with them after the first run, how you create a “pool” of players sharing the same goals, and so being able (willingly) to group together and have fun?

If I reduce by 50% the drop rates in a set dungeon like UBRS, I also obtain the players to create 50% more occasions to find themselves together. Again sharing the same situation.

If instead I increase the drop rates by 50%, those players will go 50% less times in that dungeon since they don’t need it anymore, making 50% harder to find players available to go there in a casual, improvised raid.

Is there an exit point from this? Putting completely aside the problem of the production of content, how you can create a social PvE game without also the implied grind that unifies the players? Aren’t these “walls” required so that the players can find themselves in the same shit?

A really good post from Damien Neil on Q23 with which I tend to agree (he even links to one of Darniaq’s maps. It’s time for me to dig that part too, wohoo!).

—
Damien Neil:
In an attempt to figure out why I can’t get into Guild Wars, I fired it up again last night. After about half an hour of play, it hit me: The zone design is terrible.

Zones are filled with linear paths. Every once in a while you may hit a junction, but most of the time there’s exactly one direction you can move in. The infamous invisible walls block any divergence from the path.

Mobs stand on the paths without rhyme or reason. They’re just…there. They have no context, other than “the world is full of monsters”. Worse, half of them are buried: As you walk along, monsters literally crawl up out of the ground to fight you every few paces. You can’t avoid them, so you walk a little, fight, walk a little more, fight, repeat, repeat, repeat.

HRose is dead on about WoW’s zone design. Yes, there are bags of xp standing around, but they always have a reason to be standing where they are. This goes beyond “put ghosts in the graveyard and give the gnolls a pot to stand around” as well–there’s always context to the mobs.

The fact that virtually all of WoW’s mobs wander a little makes a difference. Yes, they’re generally leashed to their spawn point, but they walk to and fro and put up a facade of having something to do.

It’s been quite a while since I last played EQ2, but it didn’t do as good a job of this. Take the Forest Ruins zone (a small newbie yard in Qeynos). The zone contains a keep in the middle surrounded by a lawn, with a bit of seashore on the north end. You can see a map of it here.

Take a look at that map’s index of mobs. Sun Beetles on the east side of the ruins, Rock Adders on the south, Antonican Hawks on the southwest, Timber Deer on the northwest…each one of these areas has a big mass of mobs milling about. Separate, distinct, and utterly artificial. Why don’t you ever see a hawk on the northeast side of the ruins? Don’t the deer like the taste of the grass to the south?

But there’s a good side to EQ2’s design as well. The Forest Ruins is a tiny zone, but blends many different types of content. Most of the mobs around the keep are suitable for a low-level solo player, but there’s the occasional linked set intended for a group. The keep contains much tougher mobs than the rest of the zone: you need either a group or a higher level to enter it. However, you can fight your way along the river under the keep and get a look at the tough mobs standing overhead. If you enter the keep and find yourself in trouble, you might escape by jumping in the river. The passage beach to the north is only accessible through a passage guarded by tough mobs–you can get a tantalizing glimpse of it when you first reach the zone, but it will be a while before you can actually see all of it.

WoW’s zones make thematic sense, but are tactically bland. EQ2’s zones are thematically bland, but tactically interesting. Guild Wars’s zones (the early ones I’ve seen, at least) are both thematically and tactically bland.

These are the comments about the problems of factional balance in an open PvP environment. Old problem for someone who plays DAoC from a long while.

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Mark Asher:
One of the nice things about the WoW battlegrounds is that they sides are even. Out in the game world the sides are not even. This was sometimes a problem in frontier fighting in DAoC.

Also, controlling hot spots is a lot like controlling keeps in DAoC, and one of the problems in that game was people just organizing at weird hours to retake a keep.

PvP is fun when the sides are even. When one side is outnumbered, it’s not a lot of fun for that side and it tends to drive players away because they give up. How will you keep the fights even?

Oh, it’s simple.

Each zone will have a special recruiter that will count dynamically the horde/alliance ratio in that zone and, if the conditions are met, will allow a player to “betray” its faction and fight for the other. In this case the recruiter will cast a “spell” on the player, turning his name green toward the other faction and letting him communicate and fight for it. This status is reset when the faction balance in the zone changes or when the players leaves the zone.

Well, this was just a joke.

The point is that what you say is not even correct. Blizzard didn’t solve at all the faction unbalance. You still have it in the form of long queues.

So it’s not Blizzard’s idea solving this problem against HRose’s idea creating this problem. It’s just a choice between having to sit in a queue for 20+ minutes between each BG session or erase this waiting time but suffer for a situation where fighting is harder since you are easily outnumbered.

BOTH of these suck, I’m really not sure that Blizzard’s solution is that much better.

The point is that my idea INHERITS this problems, it doesn’t create it. The faction balance was a design issue to solve the minute after Blizzard decided that the game was going to have two rival factions. What I mean is that this problem doesn’t belong on the level discussed here. It must be solved somewhere else.

That said. There are ways to mitigate the impact of that problem. Solving it is impossible. Even if you are the best design ever. But some sort of mitigation is always posible and some ideas can be developed in that direction.

DAoC also uses some of these ideas that never really convinced me. For example, we could give the outnumbered faction a bonus multiplier on the PvP points they gain, so that, even if they are outnumbered and more frequently killed, the reward system still “compensates” this greater effort.

This would work on the systemic level and keep things even, but it wouldn’t work on the “fun” level, I believe.

Other mechanics could be about adding some quest patterns. For example: the alliance outnumbers the Horde by a fair margin and is holding an hotspot from three days. Every attempt to attack it failed miserably. We could add some PvP quests, similar to Alterac Valley, where the horde players could roam around the zone to accomplish some goals and “summon” an hero or a NPC army that could assist them in the assault. This could help to obtain an alternation on who is holding a spot.

It could work because the faction holding an hotspot is required to camp it and remain at a radius, or the hotspot resets by itself. So the horde is more free to roam around the zone, sneakingly working on their next assault with the added tools.

This solution would be way more development-intensive, so I’m not so convinced by it. But it’s another example to mitigate again the unbalance.

A third solution could be about letting the Horde (outnumbered) assault the Alliance on multiple points/hotspots. Lowering for them by a fair margin the requirements to “cap” one. It’s a more tactical strategy that would allow the Horde to launch some “stealth” attacks instead of trying to charge the Alliance all at once.

This third solution could even work similarly to DAoC, where an hotspot is also upgraded and defended by NPCs. So that the Horde would be able to push all its resources in one to make it inexpugnable even when defended by a few players. While the dominating Alliance would try to maintain many more hotspots, hence spreading the resources and showing many more weak points that could be targeted by the Horde as tactical, quick incursions.

The design strategy I follow *is not* about solving the unbalance, here. But about opening gameplay patterns so that the game remains fun even when you play in a outnumbered faction.

Again, solving completely this problem is not possible because it belongs to another level of the design. But it’s possible to mitigate it in a number of ways and I don’t think the situation with the queues is much better even compared to a scenario where my system would be plugged without any of those “safenets” I explained.

Here I wrote down in five minutes some ideas to address this problem that I believe could be valid. While Blizzard is still doing jack shit after more than a year the game was released and after five years of development.

Excuse me.

I’m finishing to archive the ideas and comments about the open PvP system I suggested for WoW and EQ2 after I criticized the last plans for the latter.

This is about ganking, rewards, objectives, specialized playstyles and “choice” in PvP. I’ll keep the comments about the factional balance separated.

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Jason Cross:
Well it’s an interesting idea, but Blizzard kind of already does this with Battlegrounds. Only instead of the “PvP hotspot” being a point in the real world, it’s in an instanced zone so the performance of a heated battle doesn’t affect the PvEers with undue lag.

The BattleGrounds remove the persistence from the game, which is the whole fun about fighting FOR A REASON. Instead of fighting just for the sake of it. It removes all the purposes and impact you can have.

Simply put: I think I’m not the only one who loves a lot more the open world PvP than quick instanced games. If I want that type of gameplay I don’t launch WoW. It’s not there the potential of the game. Blizzard copied it just because it was easier to do for them.

In your system, unless I am mistaken, you are still technically capable of engaging other players of the opposing faction anywhere in the world. That’s enough to ruin it – game over. If you’re a “grey” in WoW, people will gank you. They get no reward for this, and no punishment. You’re not worth honor points. They did it because you were there, and they think it’s funny that you have to come back and get your corpse now. Sometimes they’ll hide out and wait for you to res, and then gank you again. “HAHA noob u suck!” I’ve had it happen to me plenty of times.

Yes, ganking is allowed but not rewarded, nor punished. As I said: it is a *choice*.

Imho, this adds to the game. Because it’s not anymore the game telling you: “kill that enemy, it’s a walking bag of points”. Instead it says: look, that’s another player, you can choose to disrupt his gameplay, annoy it, challenge him, dance with him or even help in with a quest. It’s your choice. It’s a way to let the players free to build their own stories, characters and gameplay. Without the game system whispering in your ear what you should do.

Before the Honor System went in to transform me into a walking bag of points I teamed up many times with horde players to complete quests. We couldn’t speak, but we could still DECIDE how our characters behaved. I decided to NEVER attack the horde and the system was open and allowed this enriching depth.

On the other side you can still be ganked but you have PLENTY of ways to escape that and move away. This has never been a real problem. And if it is it should be tackled from this perspective (giving the players more tools to escape) instead of ENFORCING behaviours, making the game so stupidly arid.

You can still ask for help in these situations. This is the social fabric of the game and it is PRECIOUS. It isn’t something to shot down. There’s a threat, you are called to react to it. And you have plenty of ways to do so or avoid it if you so choose.

Is it better EQ2’s system where the players are encouraged to gank other players to loot their gold, junk items and inflict them xp debths? Is this more accessible?

Tell me.

It doesn’t seem like your system will address this at all. It centralizes the action at specific places in the overall world for those seeking rewards, but those that want to gank people for entirely social reasons are still free to terrorize the countryside.

And you are wrong. My system also completely addresses this.

You don’t want the PvP to “get in the way”? At all? Ok -> PvE servers.

The proposed system was thought by me with both PvP and PvE servers in mind.

The PvP servers follow the rules described. The PvE servers also follow the same rules, with the difference that you have to flag yourself deliberately if you decide you want to move toward an hotspot and fight there.

How’s this bad? Tell me.

That’s the point of having two separate rulesets. It’s your choice if you want to erase the possibilities of a PvP server and have something more “controlled”.

It also encourages loads of people to fight it out in particular zones – if you spread out and try to capture lots of hot spots, you don’t get PvP points. You get them by everyone engaging on ONE hot spot, trying to take it over and have lots of nearby enemy targets to get PvP points from. This would create terrible lag because it’s in the open world and the numbers can’t be controlled like in an instance.

That’s one goal and should be balanced accordingly.

As the Honor System went in, all the PvP in WoW was focused on Southshore. It was hardly fun, I agree.

The goal is to spread the action between 4-5 hotspots instead of just one. This isn’t really a problem, it just needs the rules to be tweaked, tested and reiterated. (mostly about balancing the amount of points awarded when you conquer an hotspot and those generated over time as log you keep it capped)

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dannimal:
The idea that the honor system converted players into “walking bags of points” and thus destroyed any hopes of freewill on behalf of the players, or that the game system is “whispering in your ear” is where I have issues.

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Darniaq:
The value of the reward is linked to the combat system to get it. As such is a paradox:

The greater the value of a PvP reward, the more people will try to get it, the more that process will be dominated by those who achieve higher stats first, the more other people are cut out, the more likely those people cut out would end up going with PvE anyway.

I’m against the specialization in PvP or PvE. Like it is happening in WoW.

I believe that a player should be able to get the most from each part and access both instead of specialize just in one. So the idea is just to offer two different paths, both viable and not exclusive.

The *current* system in WoW cuts out people because it is based on a selection. In my idea you gain the points and spend them directly. So you can grow at your own pace, without having to “race” and catass against everyone else.

Not partaking of PvE in EQ2 is not leveling up. Not leveling up is not gaining abilities. Not gaining abilities is a disadvantage in PvP. If the rewards for PvP are that great, this disadvantage is even more pronounced.

That’s a gross generalization, but any PvP built into EQ2 at this point would need to take the very different level spread into account. In WoW it’s safer for this sort of thinking because so many people are 60. Not so in EQ2. (it’s also safer because Blizzard sees PvP very differently than SOE).

This is easy to solve.

The zones are already grouped by level. So there should be an incentive to go fight in a zone of your appropriate level. The PvP points would be much more desirable if you kill players around your level instead of players much below you.

So this should encourage the players to group by zone. And as I said the PvE shouldn’t be a problem at all. It wasn’t a problem on WoW’s PvP servers and will be even less in my idea since it would discourage even more the ganking.

Why would you go ganking in a lower level zone if you could go in one more appropriate and challenging (and fun) that would reward you directly with PvP points?

—

The biggest problem with PvP points is what we’re already seeing in WoW: people will grind them to get foozles. It changes the motivation to PvP. It should be something people feel rewarded by after having some PvP fun. But just like XP and item rewards, eventually PvP points become the main thing to get, and therefore something to make a more efficient process out of. It’s a shame but it happens time and again.

The better the reward that can be purchased by points, the more focus players place on those points. Not ALL players, but it only takes a critical mass of them to focus on achievement exclusively to the point of excluding others.

I know that the players will game the system, but why is this bad?

It will even help to keep PvP and PvE separated since the players are encouraged to move closer to the hotspots around their level.

PvP points and rewards should be a reason to promote the fun, not to remove or derail from it. My idea just puts the point where the fun is supposed to be: near an objective to fight for, with some sort of defensive structure.

The point is to let the players fight for something instead of roaming around a zone to just gank every players on sight. It’s about giving a goal and objective to the PvP. And about offering a reward in doing so. The reward is just a way to direct the players there. It’s a guidance to create gameplay.

This already happens on DAoC and I don’t see where it’s a problem. These hotspots are also public, so everyone can join and get some fun out of them. There aren’t mandatory requirements.

Everything is connected.

Yesterday Raph posted on his site an obvious provocation about single player games but I sort of anticipated that theme already a few days before. And not because I was proposing it in the first place, but because I was “giving voice” to some discussions I was reading on various forums and continuing on the same lines of the discussions that started a couple of months ago.

I’m not going to tackle Raph’s arguments because I don’t feel like adding to them or criticizing them. I still believe that what he wrote was a provocation, something strategically planned to trigger the “he’s nut” comment. So he went to search exactly that type of conflict of opinions. Throwing in a completely wrong footing comment but that he knew how to defend at best. I like the way :) It helps to surprise and create the interest. If you are intrigued, you can then follow his arguments.

My opinion here worked like a jo-jo. Raph says that single-player games will vanish because they are a “mutant monster” that has no real place and purpose. Instead of falling in the trap of his deep arguments I just quickly commented on a superficial level, but that is also the level where the generalizations are made:

Books and movies are single-player, though.

This comment is stupid to the point that it is not even worth a consideration. But, you know, I follow the flow.

On Q23 Charles commented (I still have to archive the discussion we had about RPGs):

And yet if you view games as media, media is something often experience alone. Books, movies, TV. If I am playing the hero in my own form of media, I don’t necessarily want to share that experience with anyone.

If you look at every single player game as a unique movie, then it’s perfectly valid to want to play it alone, not ‘aberrant’.

To state that single player games are unnatural is to miss a large part of what makes games interesting and enjoyable.

That’s another step.

If now I jump back to Raph’s comment thread, I find him commenting:

JoeBillBob:
So in other words: Very soon, Single Player Masterpieces like Ultima IV and Ultima VII will no longer be possible. Instead, they will be superceded with “triumphs” of multiplayerism like Ultima Online.

Raph:
No, more likely a masterpiece like Ultima VII will be an instanced adventure within something larger.

And this is another step. The circle is complete.

What Raph said there, from my own point of view, is exactly what I wrote in the last three months about questing mechanics, accessibility, single-player stories, immersion and so on. It’s all tied together, all following the same flow. The same purpose.

We discussed the “sandboxes” and their accessibility problems. I suggested linear paths to help this accessibility and give them a proper structure (direction) and I arrived again at the conclusion to solve some of these core problems by using the concept of “permeable barriers” that, from a side, would help and direct the player, creating a structure that can be simplified and “chunked”. While from the other they would open up the possibilities, removing the barriers that separate and segregate the players. Because I believe that’s where the potential is.

My fancy tripartite game scheme follows those ideas, with the purpose of “gating” content. Each of the three layers isn’t an independent game, but a gate on the other two. One continues in the other and draws legitimation and sense from the other. The idea I was following was to create (permeable) paths to walk the players along. Help them to move the first steps, remove the accessibility barriers of servers, factions, classes, group requirements and so on to immerse directly in the game world. Then progressively open “portals” to other parts of the game, again working on the accessibility.

The goal here is diametrically opposite to what every game out there has done till now. I’m not creating three layers on the same game to target them at specific “player types” that I expect and enforce to specialize in the part they like more. The opposite. I create three layers that flow one into the other so that every player will naturally experience and draw the most out of ALL THREE. It’s about opening up the doors instead of shutting them. Removing the barriers, working to make the game more accessible for everyone. So that everyone has the right to participate.

While other games work on a selection of the players, where some are accepted and some rejected. Mirroring our real society. What I do, instead, is to EDUCATE the players. I don’t select them, I don’t put barriers between them, I don’t impose, I don’t require, I don’t segregate, I don’t create differences, I don’t offer reasons to “hate”. Instead I try to bring together. Integrate. Bring in those players that in other games are rejected. This is the purpose. This is my ideal.

So, for me, using single-player patterns and strategies is something extremely valuable. It’s the very first step to bring the players in, getting them involved in the game. Recuperate the level of the “immersion” that right now is completely lost and forgotten in this genre. This isn’t about wasting resources on a type of “narration” that isn’t appropriate nor the “raison d’être” of this genre. But it’s instead a way to “gate” the players to a genre they don’t know yet. An entrance. A starting point.

A clear sign that says: “I have a story to tell you, follow me”. Your story begins here.

This is why my comment above about movies and books being “single-player” turns into a jo-jo. It’s not anymore a comment against what Raph says. But confirming it. Adding to it.

It’s absolutely false that movies and books are single-player. In fact we watch movie and read books so that we can still share them with other people, on other levels. Somewhere what we do returns there. Maybe not explicitly, but it will. Not differently to what Raph says about Geometry Wars:

It’s multiplayer because we talk about it on a message board, PLUS have persistent identities when we play it, track high scores across the network and compete with each other, get notified when our friends are playing it, and (presumably and potentially) are datamined whilst we play it.

The same reason why a non-explicit multi-player layer in a mmorpg could still be extremely valuable. It’s not something alienated from the genre, but an interesting idea to “gate” the players between different layers of possibilities.

Prologue of “A Theory of Fun”:

“Yes, this is something worthwhile. I connect people, and I teach people.”

Latest revision of my idea. As posted on Q23.

—
Yes, armchair design once again. But this time it’s SHORT. No TL, DR this time. Kay?

GOAL:
A PvP model that would blend at best with a PvE game. Where one part isn’t detrimental to the other and with a goal to create a system that is fun, deep and still easily approachable for non-hardcore players.

Something that could be enjoyable for the majority of the players instead of a small niche.

This is a new PvP system imagined to be plugged directly in either EQ2 or WoW. So this time you don’t need to imagine complicated game schemes that I designed in my head. You just need to pick the game you are more familiar with and imagine this simple idea plugged in.

In the case of WoW I need to override some rules in order to plug my system:
– The Honor System is discarded
– No more points will be awarded for a PvP kill, exactly as it happened before the Honor System was patched in
– The Honor System will be replaced with a new one where you can “spend” PvP points to buy: armor, weapons, crafting recipes, crafting resources, consumables, epic mounts, whatever. And even repairs, reagents and griffin flights. Get more PvP points = get more “currency” to buy this stuff. Pretty straightforward.

In EQ2, also some rules need to be overridden (from their announced plan):
– No xp debt. No Looting of items or gold.
– No restrictions to who you can attack.
– Rewards following the same scheme explained above.

This is the idea. In the shortest way possible I could manage to put it:

– The contested zones have one conquerable “hotspot” each. The players can organize and go cap one, putting their guild flag on it. The hotspots don’t have any NPCs defending them, just players. Once capped all the kills taking place in the proximity of the hotspot will be worth PvP points. Encouraging the PvP action to move away from the PvE hubs (villages, towns, camp spots), so without disrupting the gameplay of those who don’t want to bother.

The longer version is here, explaining the details and the reasonings behind, but here you have already all the essential.

Other related parts:
– Explanations, about ganking, rewards, objectives, specialized playstyles and “choice” in PvP.
– Possible solutions, about factional balance.