Tag Archives: Game Design

Vanguard’s combat mechanics, more dangerous than appropriate

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“I’m not writing anything, but I do it well”

A couple of days ago an article describing Vanguard’s combat mechanics was linked on FoH’s boards. You could go read it like I did but you can also spare your time: it says nothing. (btw, after the restyle Silky Venom is probably the best looking and well designed fansite I’ve seen)

I think this is a perfect example demonstrating how some words put together can fool everyone without actually saying anything. In particular on the catass guild forums, the players are easily fooled by some vapor instead of actual solid ideas. That’s the power of the hype, everything is blurred and you can define what is still isn’t the way you like. Instead of looking at the actual game you are just looking at your dreams about it. And the dreams are usually prettier than what you’ll get through the compromises of the reality. This is why I think that the most important conclusion about that article and the following reactions is that the players really want to “believe”. Like Fox Mulder. They really want to be confident and anticipate a game that will be great. What is sure is that the audience is there and that the expectations are high.

But here I’m too jaded to get fooled by some steam. I like the hype but I need something solid to support it or you won’t convince me. That article in particular is rather silly. It says nothing at all. It actually delves in the mechanics and explains them in detail, but you could take the article and replace “Vanguard” with “WoW” or “DAoC” and it would be still correct. The purpose would be to describe how great is Vanguard’s gameplay compared to other games but the result, if you look through the mist, is that it describes everything BUT what sets Vanguard apart. Well, beside the fancy figures.

General Statement: If EQ’s gameplay is considered a leisurely stroll, and WoW’s is a healthy jog, Vanguard’s gameplay feels like ice skating. It is smooth.

If you give the article a quick glance you’ll notice it starts from the “autoattack”. You would expect him to claim that Vanguard has no autoattack, in particular considering how it starts: “Prior games used autoattack.” Prior games. That means that Vanguard is obviously different. Haha, you fool. Vanguard’s autoattack not only is there, but it is also EXACTLY IDENTIC to the one in every other game. You know, weapons have a swing speed and, if you don’t press any special style, the character will keep swinging the weapon at that speed. Truly revolutionary compared to prior games. Indeed. Probably the most interesting point here is that the swing speed can be as slow as six seconds. A particularly dull wack-a-mole. But let’s glide on this for now.

The second paragraph is about “Special Attacks”, because it’s obvious, the game isn’t just about a slow or fast autoattack, sometimes you can also press some buttons for a special action. Even here you’ll try to figure out what’s different in Vanguard. In this case the claim is about having in the game not only offensive styles that increase the damage or apply effects, but also defensive styles that will require the player to pay attention (oh noes!). Well, I don’t know if this can be considered as a different trait. My warrior on WoW seems to have quite a few defensive styles. I can switch to defensive stance, the Demoralizing shout is a defensive debuff, then I have Disarm, Shield Block, Shield Bash to break spells, the Sunder Armor can also be considered a defensive style, the Thunder Clap slows down attacks, the Intimidating Shout makes multiple mobs flee and I finally also have the Shield Wall for the special occasions. I guess that’s already a fair range of defensive tools available at the right time. Or not?

But the real distinctive trait isn’t that one. It’s the fact that these special attacks… have cooldowns. Oh nice. Now if only I could remember one game where the styles DO NOT HAVE the cooldowns, it could be a nice argument. But I cannot. DAoC’s skills have cooldowns, EverQuest’s skills have cooldowns and the same for WoW. In fact all these games are designed around the good timing of these skills and in fact they all, even if in different proportions, require some strategy and timing to play your class effectively. That’s what really set the difference between a poor game and a good one. The balance with which these skills are planned, the variety of the tools you can use, the synergy with the other classes, the complexity of the multiple encounters. That’s what matters, because at the origin ALL these games reply the exact same mechanics: there are autoattacks, there are specials, some specials are defensive and they all have cooldowns. There’s really *nothing* different at this level to distinguish one from the other.

Late edit: There’s an ideal link here to something Darniaq wrote recently:

If someone stopped looking at the systems once they noted the similarities, they may not truly be able to assess the success and relevance of one over the other, nor understand where future success could be had.

/end of the late edit

On the forums someone was arguing about these points:

Imagine that in Vanguard every creature in the game has the ability to do a deathtouch, but it is easy to counter. There is nothing like that in WoW and so I don’t see how you can possibly think that reacting to something after it has happened is the “exact same thing functionally” as mitigating it with abilities.

So WoW doesn’t have that?

Just the first examples I could think:
In Zul’Gurub there’s one of the mobs who has a powerful life leech that splits and links multiple targets. If you don’t Shield Bash or stun the attack as it starts, you wipe.
In Gnomeragon there are those alarm things. If you aren’t fast to kill them, they call for some elite mobs than can easily wipe the group if you are already fighting (and if you were in beta you’ll remember how hard it was to spot them since they had no sound). This is something slightly different but that still follows the same pattern.

And there are plenty of examples like this one. If you see your target with the sparkles on the hands, you know that it is going to cast a spell. And you can stop it before it happens. All the crowd control skills are again examples of “mitigating skills”. They let you control and solve a situation. They are tools that require a proper and competent use if you want to go through some of the harder instances where you have to deal with multiple mobs. And even WoW is nowhere “new” compared to other games, it just relies more on those tools and developed more patterns to figure out and solve. The original design is basically unaffected. The difference is simply about how much a system uses these tools.

A sharp armchair designer out there may say “oh great, so we will just be spamming defensive specials,” but that is not the case either…because of special ability cool-downs and the timing of autoattack, if you simply spam your defensive specials, you will not have them available for use when “the big one” occurs, because you may have “wasted” it on a lesser attack used to fake out the warrior.

And how’s this different? These games not only have the same cooldowns used by Vanguard on these specials, but they also rely on endurance or “rage”. If you waste what you have without some planning, you won’t be able to use the most useful skills when they are most needed (and I really do know this since I’m lazy and tend to reuse over and over those few skills that I can easily reach with my fingers and as soon they light up, even when I should plan my attacks more carefully).

Finally we arrive at the last paragraph, where there’s a description of something that could possibly define a difference in Vanguard. Or not. Basically Vanguard will have pop-up icons that will let you anticipate what type of attack the mob will use in the “next turn”. This means that you’ll be able to plan your tactics and the use of those specials described above considering the attacks that will come in the next turn and reacting to them in the best way possible. This is how Brad justified the slow pace of the combat since, otherwise, you just wouldn’t have enough time to see these icons and plan your reaction before the turn is over. And this is also why you’ll have to “pay attention”.

Which brings to my conclusion. All this makes sense. I’m not saying that Vanguard’s mechanics, as described, are particularly flawed (but I’ll delve even about this point below). But for sure they don’t add anything new. At all. See, these combat mechanics, in every game, work on abstractions. This is also why in Vanguard you are able to anticipate the target’s next attack, it’s an abstraction. This is why we see levels, hitpoints, statistics, icons and so on. Reacting to an icon becoming active (WoW) or reacting to an icon popping up (Vanguard) is essentially the same thing. From the player’s perspective there’s absolutely no difference. Already in WoW I cannot watch the action to figure out if my target dodges so that I can use the “Overpower”. The action on screen can be too confused and the only thing I really do is watch the icon lighting up and press it before I miss the opportunity. We play the quickbars. Still today what is going on in the graphical window is almost irrelevant. Our eyes are still locked on the quickbar and the health bars. That’s your game. It’s true that we react to what happens, but to what happens on the quickbar. The gameplay is all in the UI, this is why they are so important to make a game fun and successful. The graphical window is almost an optional, you need it to deal with the aggro and keep your character facing the target, but then you play the quickbar.

If we consider Vanguard, the underlying mechanics remain unaffected. Instead of looking at an icon lighting up as a “reaction” to an event like in WoW, you’ll see an icon popping up to which you have to react. How’s this different for the player? In one case he racts to an icon that becomes active, in the other he reacts to an icon popping up. These systems work on abstractions and these abstractions are modeling the exact same thing. Preemptive attacks or reactives are like two different skins for the same model. They don’t define a different approach, they just give a different superficial shape to the same mechanic. They are UI themselves.

What would actually matters is what in that article isn’t written: whether Vanguard relies more on these reactives or not. Because from the functional point of view those systems are IDENTIC.

The only difference is that WoW models and mixes different patterns instead of hardcoding and repeating just one. It models reactives as well as some preemptive skills and spells. Using them when they make more sense. It makes sense to see the sparkles of a spell and stop it before it is casted, and it makes sense to react to a dodge or a block after it was executed. The only thing I can see is that Vanguard’s combat is even more abstract and unrealistic. It’s more heavy on the UI to the point that we are really playing just an expensive MUD. If you can see what a mob will do BEFORE it does it, the graphical representation of the action truly becomes completely irrelevant. Why would you look at the models when the icons already describe and foretell whatever is going to happen? And I wouldn’t be surprised if Vangaurd UI will take much more space on screen compared to other games. Some players described this perfectly, it’s a direct copy of EQ2 crafting system. One of the most abstract and absurd ever created.

I already wrote at length (some ideas also here) how these games should move toward *removing* the UI as much as possible and try to simulate a realistic experience where you react to a more direct feedback instead of just to a quickbar, an health bar or a text string in a chat window. That’s what sets a graphical game apart from a MUD. That’s where its specific and untapped qualities are. That’s what would be an actual evolution. Instead Vanguard moves to rely even more heavily on the UI to the point that what happens on the screen isn’t anymore relevant. The combat mechanics become so abstract and detached that they live on their own isolated level. They are emancipated from the rest and they require a type of knowledge that is nowhere immediate and direct. Which probably fits with the “hardcore” target audience of the game but that goes right against the intuitive, accessible and smooth mechanics that made WoW successful.

I won’t argue about the goals of a mmorpg. But I still believe that the success of these fantasy worlds is more cultural than functional. It’s about their myths and what they evocate. It’s about the immersion into a believable and self-consistent world. It’s in everything BUT the overcomplicated and abstract rulesets that eradicate that immersion to show you that the game is just about math formulas, numbers and preplanned algorithms. We like what we see on the curtain, not what’s behind.

This is my opinion. These tools that Brad is developing are still abstract and a lot will depend on the final implementation. But they are more dangerous than appropriate.

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

INFERNO – DAoC 2 is possible, here’s how

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On the Vault Mythic asks the dreamer to dream:

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

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

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

Again, leave this thread to the dreamers, everyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DAoC: INFERNO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Each henchmen will be named by the player.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And let’s see if WoW can outperform that.

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

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

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

Again, leave this website to the dreamers, everyone.

A proof of sense

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There’s a thread on Q23 discussing the possibility of Valve working on a mmorpg based on the world of Half-Life. Now what interests me isn’t directly that discussion but a comment that stusser wrote:

stusser:
Besides, valve is going in the exact opposite way. Half-life2 isn’t about immersing the player in the world. It’s about immersing the player in the narrative. That’s why they put so much work into facial gestures and movement, to aid the suspension of disbelief. It’s the kind of technology suited to handcrafted lovingly designed content meant to experienced at a discrete moment for maximum penetration, which certainly doesn’t describe a PSW.

My comment:

“In fact HL2 would be PvE.”

If you think about it and revert the perspective you could see what I mean. Instead of thinking whether Half-Life would be appropriate for a mmorpg or not, think from the perspective of the mmorpgs and the flaws or weaknesses of the PvE. Now go back to reread what susser wrote. Isn’t what he describes exactly what the PvE misses at this moment?

I think so.

This ties back with many things I wrote, my ideal separation between PvP and PvE (some references here and here) and all the other discussions about the instancing.

Another spin to the wheel

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It started as a “quick” reply on this thread to finish to include many notes and abservations that I was waiting to organize. This came out even too easily. I rarely can write this clearly and straight to the point. It doesn’t happen always that I can write without struggling with myself and what I want to say.

The main topic is the PvE in DAoC and the newbie experience. But it then joins a bunch of different topics that I’m discussing these days and that are all related.

I’m going to post this on F13 in a few hours, if you want to stop me, do it now :)

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Doing the Champion quests should get you enough CL experience to reach CL3, assuming you do nothing else. As for the rest, I’d argue that unlike TOA, you absolutely do not need CL5 to be RvR-ready. It’s like the titles at RR11+, something nice as a reward once you get there, not something to “grind” to.

1- This ruins the content. At least assuming that for “champion quests” you mean the three chapters. Retaining these to do them at 50 to maximize the gain (since you can start to acquire the exp only at 50) makes the content even more dull than how it is already since the first chapter is tailored for level 30 and the second for level 40. Fighting a bunch of greys to accomplish very simple and linear tasks won’t be all that entertaining.

2- It’s not that the CLs are required for RvR, it’s just that in this case the reward isn’t really appropriate to the time required. In other words: not justified.

Now the points is: why was it changed (nerfed) at the end of the beta? From the comments, true or not, I heard that you received around a .4 for killing an enemy in solo. Which would still be an acceptable balance considering you would have the bar moving and the ten bubbles filling up at a decent pace. There are already the Realm Ranks to define that type of slow and exponential progress, there’s no reason to add another overlapping.

Since the Cs don’t really stack in power (the same assumption that was betrayed with ToA) their purpose is to broaden the class. Offer it some more minor tricks. This has the sole scope of making them more fun to play since one of the limits of the game is about having classes that are too strict and specialized. Hence it’s another of those parts of the game that you WANT to valorize, instead of keeping it away from the players.

The titles in RvR and the Ranks can be “achievement based”. Because that’s their direct and natural purpose and sense. But it’s not so good to retain the achievement based mechanic for the CLs. There’s nothing to achieve because they don’t offer anything that is worth pursuing. Instead they add some FUN to the classes that would be a good idea to hand out to the players for “cheap”. Like it already happens for the weapons.

What I mean is that there isn’t really a good reason to make it slow instead of more quick. You are just pushing back the fun.

And this goes further because it’s a patter Mythic is repeating. In September you nerfed the exp in the TDs. Why? Again there isn’t a good reason to do this and it just damaged the game some more.

Let’s put it in this way: our life is too short to waste time grinding repetitive and dull PvE content that doesn’t offer any challenge. That’s what the TDs are. So why a designer would want the players to spend MORE time there? Where is the gain? Where is the purpose? This problem is really at the basic level. In a game you can offer a grind only for those parts that are already representing a satisfying repetable content.

The RvR in DAoC is a great and perfect example of “satisfying repetable content”. The PvE is NOT.

This is why noone criticizes the Realm Ranks *grind* and why there are players that always praise it above what WoW implemented. The grind here is appropriate. It doesn’t ruin the game. It valorizes it. But it’s completely different when you reapply grindy mechanics to the PvE (both as exp grind and money grind). ALL KINDS OF GRINDS aren’t fun in a dull, repetitive PvE. And there isn’t a single decent reason why you would find acceptable and useful to TRAP the players in a cavern for days. It follows the same unjustified and unfun design trend that we have criticized for all these years. It’s masochistic.

Players complain because this is logically wrong.

So, again, why the exp in the TDs was nerfed? The only reason I can imagine is to rebalance the experience gained there in relation with the rest of the game. In fact there’s that “triad” that I already commented and that is the reason why I was against AlteredOne proposed changes:
1) In TDs you quickly gain money and exp / but not loot
2) In the instanced dungeons you can “quickly” gain Aurulite, hence items / but the exp is crap
3) The quick task quests around the non-instanced zones give you easier *soloable* and short tasks that give you medium money and exp

Schematizing:
1) ++money ++exp –loot
2) –money –exp ++loot
3) +exp +money ++easy to solo

The first patter was by far the most efficient. In fact with the money you can also go buy equipment and even aurulite. This is why the only reason I found to the nerf to the exp in TDs is about rebalancing those patterns. But this doesn’t justify it. We still lack the satisfying repetable content and these patterns were rebalanced in the WRONG direction. It was the other two patterns that needed to be brought in line with the TDs and not the other way around.

But there’s even another point to consider. Why the hell we would need three different patterns? The PvE is the same in all three. It doesn’t offer anything different:

You have so many different possibilities just with Catacombs. You can level by taking these solo mini-quests in the new zones, you can farm aurulite in the new instances or the instances of the classic dungeons, or you can do task dungeons to farm directly the experience at an insane rate. But, no matter what you choose, the experience (of the player) is completely MISSING. You can trade between voids. Between empty experiences that are there just as excuses (and excusing what exactly?).

This is why I believe that DAoC would need a *consolidation* of its PvE and not a further fragmentation as it happened. Of course, it would benefit from a fragmentation of the PvE intended as: different types of challenge and patterns presented. Different qualities and something that could be actually involving. But what DAoC diversificates is not the actual PvE (which is dull and repetitive in every case) but the rewards. The reward is the only difference setting apart the three patterns. And it is obvious how this isn’t positive for a game that definitely doesn’t need a grind applied to this type of content, in particular when the fragmentation of the PvE is furtherly made worse by the population problems and the isolation of the players through the instanced content.

We already know that instancing has both good and bad consequences. This is even worse in a game with population problems (in particular at the lower levels, where the newbies need reasons to have fun and get involved) and with this fragmentation of the PvE that has no good effects or logical justifications.

This is why it’s always not so trivial to analyze all these parts and why it’s not possible to just claim a bonus to the exp or something similar. All these things delve deeper. Why the hell we cannot have a place where we can get good money, good exp and even good equipment? What are the valid reasons that brought to the fragmentation of patterns I illustrated above? I don’t know any. What I know is that the great majority of the players are grinding the TDs DEFINITELY NOT because they are having fun. But just because they are the most efficient pattern offered. They don’t enjoy the content. They ENDURE it. And this isn’t acceptable in an environment where you are supposed to have… fun. An environment that is supposed to valorize its qualities and not its problems.

Now I hope my point is clear: the existence of the TDs in the game is completely unjustified. So it makes sense to remove them since they damage the game. Now think to what could happen if Mythic would announce the removal of the TDs. The players would RAGE. And here’s another important point. The players wouldn’t be angry because you remove something fun from the game, but because you remove a viable, consolidated and optimal pattern that they *absolutely need*. It’s their pattern of choice. The “fun” and the optimized pattern must be kept separate. They aren’t the same entity. The players are merely choosing the “less worst” pattern they have available to endure the PvE treadmill and reach the endgame, that, contrarily to WoW, is that part of the game that still justifies a subscription fee. How could we “valorize” the PvE instead of balancing the “less worst” patterns as it happened till now?

Imho the TDs must be completely eradicated. That’s the very first step. They never made sense both from the player’s perspective and the design. They are unjustified and just damage the game. They only “dissimulate” a value by offering the best pattern available. But that value is solely functional and totally inappropriate.

The second step, also following the line of thoughts above, is about moving the “TDs mechanics” (go to taskmaster and take the two-types missions, the “clear dungeon” should be just removed) WITHIN the Instanced Dungeons where you farm aurulite. Because there isn’t a valid reason to keep the “reward” patterns separate. There are no advantages. This would instead encourage the players to focus on something more varied. The IDs offer a more refreshing experience than the TDs and they are naturally suitable to inherit their role. We remove the TDs and carry over their functional role to the IDs where the players would benefit from a more rewarding and complete experience:

a) Players will hunt everything they need: money, exp and equipment. Also helping them to be “viable” for the RvR BattleGrounds.
b) The experience will be more varied and refreshing: the IDs offer more varied environments and challenges.
c) This would consolidate the “game space”, encouraging the players to gather and group.

While ToA exhibited a blatantly flawed design under everyone’s eyes, Catacombs still brought new mistakes that are also damaging the game, just in a more subtle and less apparent way. Which doesn’t make those mistakes any less significant.

I think that what I wrote here is a demonstration of why we cannot compile a personal wish list and expect to do something positive to the game. Things are complex and need an involved discussion where the arguments can be delved and explained. This isn’t a conclusion even if I provided my own. This is instead a possible start to confront those ideas, contribute to shape new ones and avoid to repeat the past mistakes.

Keeping PvP viable

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This is another answer to a comment that Heartless wrote here. And an occasion for me to underline a few concepts that are dear to me.

He says that my system could be interesting but it cannot really be judged since it’s not fully developed and explained. Well, as I wrote in my reply, that’s not something that I can do. Simply because I miss the data I need and designing a system in all the minimal details just based on pure assumptions is actually silly and goes far beyond the purpose of my “design” ravings.

But even if I cannot snap my fingers and make appear a complete design document in all its parts, I can still take an existing game and apply my ideas to it to imagine (and share) what could be the possible result. Of course it cannot be perfect because my ideas were supposed to make sense together, but I think it’s still possible to make my goals more understandable if I take a current game and explain how it would change with some of my rules applied. Instead of having to force people to follow and tune to my ideas for a long and not trivial journey, using a concrete example everyone knows can be useful to make clear at least some of the concepts.

Of course to do this I’ll take the most fucked up PvP system out there: World of Warcraft.

We know that it works with equal mechanics for both factions (Horde, Alliance) with 14 different ranks that offer access to superior PvP loot. So we have a rather simple and straightforward system, different ranks and a reward: the shiny loot. Of course this structure is already broken on a number of points but again my purpose is to explan a few ideas and what they bring to the plate and not magically heal all of WoW’s flaws. So we take this basic system with all its issues and see which effect some of my rules can have on it.

As you can see by reading the brochure, one of the main goals is to have a system that is equally accessible for everyone. So the first thing to go is how the honor points will be achieved. There won’t be anymore an inner competition in the same realm, nor a functional competition over the greed for points against the other realm. Instead we can still have a variable threshold of points to move between the ranks from server to server, but once the amount is set, it won’t change anymore dynamically. We can also retain a mild decay rate considering that the progress isn’t freeform as in DAoC (the points to spend) and so the progression is bound to a cap (rank 14) that could be even too easy to reach if you don’t lose anymore the points from week to week.

So you kill enemy players and achieve goals in the BGs and you gain regularly honor points. These honor points don’t need anymore to be compared to the points of every other character. So they are added clearly and immediately like it happens to the normal experience. The UI will clearly show in real time your constant progression. What will change from week to week, instead (and since we retain some rules from the current game), is the amount of points you need to reach a precise rank. This doesn’t mean that these numbers are supposed to skyrocket. They just oscillate around a constant value to mimic the different activity on the different servers, but you’ll need more or less the same points to reach rank 10 today as you’d need five years later.

This means that, thanks to the constant progression, everyone will be able to reach the last rank with some dedication. The catasses will do that in three months while the casual players will need more time. But everyone will be able to get there eventually and at their own pace. Without a forced competition over time that is just inaccessible for most of the players.

At this point the system is similar to DAoC’s Realm Points and Ranks. You gain honor points and progressively move up the ranks to acquire the proper reward (loot in this case).

Now lets move to the heart of my system. Lets say that 20 players enter Arathi Basin. To make things simple I’ll say that 15 of them are still rank 1, while five of them are rank 14. If you read how my system is designed you know that your possible rank is set on the amount of players active at that moment and directly organized in squads. This means that if twenty rank 14 players join a BG, they CANNOT go around and use their rank 14 equipment. The rule would be that in a BG like Arathi Basin with 20 players for each factions, only ONE of them would be able to fill the last rank.

Ungrouped the ranks do not exist. In my original system you couldn’t use any of your advanced skills and, in this example about WoW, you just cannot access the PvP loot you achieved from the ranks, if you are alone. So there’s a definite difference between a rank you unblocked because you have the right amount of honor points and a rank you currently hold and use. To do this you must be organized in groups and be designated as leader. When this happens the leader will finally have access to the powers granted by its rank (just loot in this case).

In this example only one every twenty players can be set at rank 14. As decided above we have 15 players at rank 1 that just cannot move from there since they don’t have enough honor points, while there are five of them with rank 14 unblocked. So all five of them could cover that rank but only ONE will be able to. How does the system decide who between them will be choosed? Well.. it’s based on democracy. There will be a specific window showing the organization of the squads and ranks, not dissimilar to the current raid UI. The -position- on the diagram will define the current rank of the player, while next to the name of the player it will display the “possible” rank.

The five rank 14-enabled characters in our example can now propose themeselves to be designated to use their max rank. Lets say that three of them porpose themselves, while two of them just don’t bother and accept to remain rank 1 for the length of this BG. At this point all the players in the BG can make their choice and vote for one of them. Who will have the 51% of the preferences will be choosed, set leader and will be able to finally use his uber rank 14 loot. The same for the opposite faction.

It’s not rare to hear that “Level-based PvP doesn’t work unless everyone on the same level” but we often forget the problem of the loot, which is just another type of treadmill, equally disruptive for the PvP. In fact in WoW the level 60 BGs happen just between same-level players and, still, they are horribly unbalanced (as Heartless writes in the last paragraphs of this comment). If twenty rank 14 players in uber purple loot enter a BG, the other faction would have no chance and the gameplay would just suck. The variance in possibilities is what defines a good fight from one that just doesn’t hold any fun. Till the variance is within manageable margins the fight is fun, but when the difference in level or loot has too much of an impact, the purpose of the PvP goes to hell and the game just becomes a paractice of confrontation to decide who has grown the biggest e-peen. Which I don’t really feel all that interesting.

This is why the system I just described would help to retain the balance. Only one player every twenty can be rank 14. In order to fill a rank you’ll have to be organize in squads so it won’t be possible to just randomly zerg in without even forming a group. This system would encourage the players to organize themselves, set their leaders, build up good or bad reputation among the players and so on. I consider all these “side-effects” as good and positive. They make the community and help to structure the PvP so that it makes sense and is enjoyable for everyone instead of a chaotic mess where everyone competes against everyone else. It’s a system that brings players together instead of making them fight agaist each other. That encourages them to fight together for a shared goal instead of a selfish interest.

The example here is just to explain one part of the system. Specifically how the ranks are unblocked and designated. How the system is kept accessible and how the balance is retained. But there are then other goals that complete it and that would differ from WoW. For example the ranks are not supposed to be linear, nor one as a more powerful version of the other. Each rank should define a *role*, similarly to what happens with the classes. A role isn’t directly more powerful than another. It just gives you different tools to use in the proper way and contribute to the battle through that specific role.

And, finally, the reward and purpose of the ranks isn’t about better loot. But about advanced skills that have an impact on the large scale of the battle and that add dynamism, tactics and coherence to it. All elements that are missing and have been completely dismissed in the current design of these games.

A very quick note on “skill” in games

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I thought about this while writing the “review” of Rag Doll Kung Fu.

We often discuss “skill” in games. The players seem to want it despite we have often pointed out how this also brings problems.

But *why* do the players actually want games with skill? Well, it can be to impose their own unique qualities and personality in the game and remove some importance from the actual mechanics like the levels and the treadmills rewarding just those with the most time available.

But isn’t this hinting something else? Maybe it’s just that we are starting to refuse codified patterns (in particular with the mmorpgs, where you can play for years) and want to set our own. The possibility space.

The sandbox.

Maybe we are slowly getting to that point. Maybe it’s not just about the perceived fair (skill) and unfair (time invested, RMTs) competition. Maybe it’s because games requiring “skill” are simply more fun.

City of Heroes – Mass nerfage makes everyone giddy!

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(coverage also on Ethic’s blog and an old-style rant here)

A thread on Q23 grabbed my attention. I don’t play CoH and I know nothing about it but I remember one awful screwup a few months ago when the players were raging about a balance nerf with the devs justifying it with data completely wrong, just to discover that there was a gross bug on the test server that falsified the whole work they were doing. With the result of making the devs look like idiots since they couldn’t even notice how the characters on the test server were behaving completely differently from those on the live servers. Something that resembled closely to the “hunter bug” that hit Word of Warcraft in June. Again with the players having to scream in order to draw the attention of the devs and finally have the possibility to *explain them* how the game actually works.

In this case the problem seems different. At first I thought it was just a communication problem, my comment was:

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When you go for a big change like this you don’t just post: we are going to do “x”. Instead you explain precisely the reasons that brought to the change, what are the goals, what are the trade offs, why the designers felt the need to go in that direction and so on.

Only *after* those premises you can obtain an useful discussion instead of 250 pages of screaming players.

From what I’ve read people just do not understand why the change was made.

—
Then I digged further in the official thread and I found enough details to understand what was going on, despite I never played the game. In the thread on Q23 EFLannum makes intelligent considerations about the implications of this new screwup and I further commented along those lines:

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EFLannum:
What I was trying to get at was whether or not they actually broke the combat system or simply made levelling slower. The number I used wasn’t really important whether it be 3 times or 1000 times. In the first case they would be looking at a difficult fix whereas in the second case there are a lot of things they could do to provide some “grind relief” if they were of a mind to do so. Sometimes the difference between a good game system and a bad game system is simply a matter of scale and nothing inherently wrong with the system itself.

Speaking about the “system”, I’ve read some more about the changes and it could even finish in a *huge boost* instead of a huge nerf (if they so choose).

From what I understand each character has six slots where you can drop various enhancements. Before this patch you could drop six same enhancements to have a maximized effect. While after the patch they are trying to force the players to use different types of enhancements at the same time (they aren’t nerfing the skills, they are trying to force the players to spec differently).

We still don’t know why they want the players to move in that direction but they could still recalibrate the powers on the previous system. So that 3 same enhancements after the patch could correspond to the six enhancements available before.

This would also add tactics and versatility because then the player could choose to use the diversification for a major advantage or still keep focusing on just one enhancement to even go *past* the limit set before the patch (hence the boost instead of the nerf).

It seems again a poorly executed transition more than bad design.

—
Going a little deeper in this problem I can figure out what exactly went wrong, because, lets make things clear, this is *surely* a big screwup, and not a required nerf to make the game better. So lets start from the simpler points, taken from the dev notes and move onward:

Q: What if I don’t have more than 2 SO’s of any one type in my powers already?

A: Then you have nothing to worry about, your character will function exactly as they did previous to this feature being added.

This means that this changes will affect only the characters who use more than two same-type enhancement. If this happens they’ll have diminished returns on those powers.

From this perspective the upcoming change could have two possible goals:
1- Nerf highly focused characters (which is what the players are ranting about)
2- Encourage them to differentiate their powers instead of focusing the enhancements

Since I don’t know directly the game I cannot know the actual reasons why they would go toward the second path but it could be because they want to add some diversification between the characters and have more equilibrate and strategic builds that could make both the PvE and the upcoming PvP more interesting. So a positive goal to strive for. It’s also sort of silly to push this massive change with the nerf as the only purpose since it would be way easier to tweak the single powers instead of redefine the whole system, so the first path doesn’t hold.

Now, as I wrote above, the nerf is NOWHERE implicit in the change. If the devs only want to diversificate the builds this can be done in different ways and completely detached from the effectiveness of the powers. This is why they could recalibrate the powers so that using three same-type enhancement post-patch could correspond to the same bonus of six same-type enhancements before the patch. This not only would retain the current balance in the game that the players don’t want to be touched, but it would also offer a slight boost (if the devs so choose) so that the the slots that are left could be used to *further* enhance the powers, adding more same-types enhancement and incurring in the diminished return penalty (to not make them too overpowered compared to how they were before the patch), or to diversificate them and avoid the diminished returns to fully benefit from each slot (adding variation and a degree of tactics to the class development).

This is why I say that the system they are applying is nowhere tied to the actual effectiveness of the powers. That’s not how the design works. The effectiveness of the single powers is just arbitrary and can be tweaked anytime (this is why I say that if the goal was to nerf the players there could have been more efficient and direct ways to do it).

So, if we leave the effectiveness of the powers out of the discussion we can see how the proposed system is actually going in a positive direction: add more depth and varation in the class development. The goal works, the players would never rant against this because it would be felt as positive, as it, in fact, is. So what went wrong? Why there was a so massive and unanimous negative reaction?

I think I know the answer, again in the dev notes:

All the Issue 4 and 5 balance adjustments were done with this system in place internally here at Cryptic. All playtests, QA checks, difficulty adjustments and balances have been done with Enhancement Diversification in mind since March 2005.

See, I assume that “Issue 4 and 5” are patches *already released on the live servers*. Which basically means:
“We are sorry. It’s from March that you play with overpowered classes while we were tweaking things on the background in view of this last change. You have enjoyed the game on “easy mode” for seven months, now it’s time to bring the game back in line.”

Well, I think it’s kind of obvious that you cannot feed this to the players and expect them to react politely. Come on…

The design may be not bad, but the execution was surely awful. It even goes beyond of my definition of “what a nerf is”.

PvP and NPCs

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I was rethinking some parts of my dream mmorpg and considering the use on NPCs in the massive PvP. We have practical examples in DAoC and WoW, and they both suck.

But I remember that when Blizzard announced the possibility to fight in the battlegrounds along with the NPCs the idea sounded very cool and exciting. So I was trying to figure out if it was just a stupid idea or if it was the execution in both DAoC and WoW to make it awful.

I’m obviously leaning toward the second possibility. I believe that there’s one bigger problem that ruins the experience: the respawn. It may sound cool to have a role in a bigger battle and fight along squads of NPCs, but this situation suddenly becomes rather lame if you know that those NPCs will respawn two minutes later and will charge back on you as if you just kept fighting an army of unbeatable undeads. In this case the NPCs become just annoyances getting in the way. They ruin the PvP instead of adding to it.

So I make here a point. Having numerous NPCs contributing to a large battle with organized squads and even NPCs named heroes is all good and exciting. Something that has lots of potential to untap. But this work only if there is *persistence* in this scenario and if an NPC dying won’t respawn if not after a fair amount of time (from battle to battle, not from minute to minute). Killing NPCs should set a progress. Like when we moved in the classic games from the random, constant encounters to a finite number of baddies to beat in a level. In this case I believe the fun would return.

The problem is how you counterbalance the fact that the *players* will keep dying and coming back while the NPCs won’t. I’ll have to figure this out.

Dream mmorpg – How to solve RMT through “communism”

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Saving another old discussion about my fancy ideas.

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Darniaq:
How do we “solve” the “problem” of RMT?

Through communism.

Really, solving this problem is extremely easy and can be done in hundreds of ways. What lacks is the will to do so.

To explain some more my idea (that is just one of those hundreds other possible ways):

I divide the “objects” in the game world in two groups:
– Player-centered tools
– Commodities

All the objects in the first group are the traditional loot we have in other games. Weapons, armors and other stat-enhancing items. Since these objects are directly tied to the PvE experience, they are cut out completely from the economy. They are not tradeable.

The concrete form of this idea is that the magical items develop personal paths. Think to WoW talent tree, a similar system will be used for each object and it will be the object itself to provide more skills and powers to the player. So there’s a personal tie and uniqueness between one item and its owner. If the item is traded it will lose all its proprieties and the player will have to restart the path. So no twinking, the PvE experience and its patterns are untouched and cannot be messed from the outside. There’s no external intervention.

This first system is completely closed.

Then there’s a second group. The objects in this second group (the “commodities”) don’t hold a value for the single player (they aren’t used in “solo”) but they are meaningful for the wider community. For the guilds and for the realm. On The PvP conquest system the players will have to manage their territories, gather resources and move them between places, commerce within the borders of the realm and outside (think to elements of an RTS joining the PvP metagame to simulate a world).

This is the level that already by design is “shared” and communal. So it’s this level that will be flagged as “tradeable” and so part of the economy (while the first level above is completely precluded from an economy). In this case the trading system doesn’t affect nor can ruin the PvE experience of the players. It’s not an external violation of something that was supposed to remain closed (the PvE, the fights, the quests, loot drops and so on). It’s instead the REAL commercial level working properly along with its premises.

The players will commerce those goods that have an effect on the meta level, those goods that are already designed to have a communal use, so already designed to be shared and reused. The economic system exists outside the single players, where these players gain a status already dependent on their role within the community.

This is how the PvE experience is preserved without being violated by an external, unexpected intervention, and how the economic system remains stronger and even more deep and meaningful because already part of that “shared endgame” that is usually completely lacking from this games (where everyone just think to himself and his uberness).

This system is completely impermeable to something like IGE because it would require them to play the game.

—

Noel:
If there is a market for something, someone will provide that service or good. In other words, so long as someone is missing something they want (be it a game item or a new car), someone else will be willing to provide that to them. I think the real question isn’t ‘What’s the problem?’, but rather ‘Is there a solution that doesn’t make a game less fun?’

The fact is that the example is a recursive system that doesn’t seem to possibly work in another way. It’s a paradox because it recursively implies itself, so there’s no escape (as you said).

As for every paradox the only way to solve it is to break the model. If you break the model you’ll see where the paradox was blind.

The paradox, in this case, is that in a game where only the single players has a value (is a goal) nothing can be accepted from the outside. Because this disrupts the experience. That experience that the players is supposed to live instead of “buy”.

An economic system (that doesn’t suck), can exist only if the game has already shared/truly-communal processes. Right now the games have nearly zero persistence and depth, so nothing matters outside the personal level and the economic systems we have now are often “exploits” to break the game (twinking, for example).

EDIT- I anticipate discussions. Some relevant points also in the comments here below.