Tag Archives: Game Design

“Out of game” design

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Summing up two articles I wrote about DooM 3 and its correlation with MMOGs:
http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/view/206
http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/view/219

Doom 3 starts to become extremely annoying NOT because the unexpected is expected. This is a side-effect. It becomes annoying because we know what the possibilities of the game are. We define better the shape of the box and we start to be able to look at it from the outside. A scene isn’t scary anymore because it happens in-text, but it’s scary because it *always* happens out-of-text.

Answering another message:

Yes, but what I did was about collecting all those points and summarize them under the same flaw:

– The design breaks the “suspension of disbelief” because it exploits artificial “out of game” design strategies.

What you wrote in those points is true and originated by the same flaw in the design stage: “out of game” design.

Random comments about DooM 3 and the future of level-design

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I spent a little time in DooM 3 and I finished to use the old godmode because I wanted to check the Imp model in tranquility. Without the cheat I’m too scared and I can just shoot randomly everywhere and flee. I also cannot play for more than five minutes because I simply feel too scared. So, after the godmode I was amazed. I passed about fifteen minutes just by dragging the Imp everywhere around the level, staring the light effects of its fireball and observing the wonderful work they did with the pathing. Without esitation the monster is able to run throughout the whole level. If you are visible but unreachable it will start throwing fireballs at full speed, if you are out of sight it will run back to its original position. The only glitch I’ve noticed is about the interaction between different monsters. If you played the original DooM you’ll remember for sure that a major strategy was about making the monsters shoot and fight each other. I tried something similar in DooM 3 but not only the monsters don’t care about each other, but they also ignore any kind of damage. So you can dodge a fireball, see it land on a zombie and the zombie will be unaffected.

http://www.cesspit.net/misc/doom31.jpg
http://www.cesspit.net/misc/doom32.jpg

These screenshots are the reason about why I started to write this comment. Look at the legs, this is what really amazed me. If you notice, the left leg stays on a lower step than the right one. This means that finally the monsters are starting to react concretely with the environment. They don’t simply slide anymore on the ground with an animation attached to the movement. Instead they are starting to have real limbs, with a simulated movement that depends on the environment. I’m quite sure that this is simply based on the “ragdolls” but what I mean is that we are starting to go toward an interesting direction. What DooM 3 misses, even compared to its original version, is the “level”. The original DooM was a game strongly based on level-building more than the monsters. The walls were highly interactive and a level could change completely, transforming itself from narrow corridors to open spaces. And the open spaces are what DooM 3 misses more.

So this is what I expect as the evolution of this genre (I expect this even for MMOGs): interaction with the environment. Not only because the movements of the limbs will be simulated by an algorithm but because the movement of those limbs will be based on the physics. And the physics will be the real, only ruleset of the game. Considering strictly the gameplay this will mean that the Imp won’t simply be well-animated on a stair, but it will be able to jump on a wall, clutch on a handrail and things like this. The monsters shouldn’t be just entities walking on a more or less flat, horizontal level. Instead they should be able to walk on the ceiling, lurking everywhere around a level. What is now strictly scripted and hand-defined should be part of the IA and the physic defining the level. Instead of building using polygons, the level designers will start to use “materials”, as if building something in the reality.

The aim is to create an environment where you don’t have to anticipate and plan ahead the reactions of the players and the monsters. You will simply build a realistic environment and the gameplay in that environment will be completely open and free as in real-life. Because you’ll move from “designing” a game in all its parts, to a simulation. After this process the design itself will change and it will allow designers to really demonstrate their creativity within a game-world.

Another issue is about the negative influence of the consoles. As you all know using a gamepad to play an FPS isn’t really easy and this is affecting the level design. The levels are starting to become more and more flat and horizontal to reduce the problems of the controls on a console. I consider the sense of “verticality” one of the strongest elements for the immersion and gameplay. A huge part of the strength of the “Lord of the Rings” movies of Peter Jackson is due exactly to this vertical sense, with mind-blowing movements of camera. And this isn’t a strong element for an FPS, but for every form of art. Even in a game like DAoC one of the worst aspects is the level design, in particular on the old zones. You have hills, grass and trees. That’s all. The level itself can be lovely rendered but it lacks of any interest or creativity, completely unappealing. Instead the level design, for every kind of game, is strongly important. It becomes content because the environment is all, even more important if you also give a role in the gameplay to that environment. World of Warcraft represents a step forward on this idea, even if it doesn’t accomplish the interaction. We don’t have anymore horizontal levels, instead the verticality is present and largely used. You don’t walk on flat terrain, nor on random hills. Each small corner of the world is designed with a sense, there are uplands, long slopes, peaks and so on. You could find a small town on a lake, bordered by high mountains and, on top, a castle, accessible only from a tortuous road and a bridge on a chasm. The terrain isn’t anymore boring and random, instead it has a strong role in defining the environment. Not anymore as the “background”, but as the “subject”. Finally.

http://www.cesspit.net/misc/evening2.jpg

Unfortunately World of Warcraft stops with the interaction. You won’t be able to jump from a cliff to escape from a monster. Because the monster will teleport randomly at the bottom of that cliff, or simply nuke you through a hill if you try to flee and use the environment as a defence.

Now I’ll go back to observe my DooM 3 screenshot. Look at the hand of the monsters, the colors, the effects of the fireball, the shadows… For the first time raw math and artificial code are starting to challange the beauty of a painting.

MMOGs have no “difficulty”

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I imagined to write a short article about the difficulty in a MMOG since it’s what everyone is talking about after the last patch. Everyone is commenting that the game is now harder, perhaps because of bugs, perhaps because of the design. Some players like this change because they think WoW was way too easy till now. Quoting “El Gallo” from one of the boards I follow:

I will stick to my guns on the “game was too easy” issue (play a warrior as my main btw, and no I was not talking about just 1-on-1 though if you pay any attention you rarely get more than 2 on you except for a few spots and that is still easy to handle). Soloing needed to be a little harder (not more tedius, just harder so you have to think a bit at least once in a while).

Like I said, I wasn’t calling people crybabies in WoW because they don’t want timesinks, I don’t want them either. The problem is that they want a game where it is literally impossible to ever lose no matter how shitty you play, which I don’t want. Godmode isn’t fun.

Other players, instead, are commenting that the game now is too hard and, consequently, not fun as before, in particular when compared with the earlier phases. There’s also another small part of player, more experienced with MMOGs, commenting that this is a good change because the game should aim to incentivate the group play, obviously at the expense of who just wants to solo.

Now I’ll focus in particular on the first two types of comment because the third is too complex and involves more reasoning about the structure of the design. And noone wants to read me babble for a whole page about it.

So, my point is quite simple: the “difficulty” in a MMOGs cannot exist (at least within this model). Why? Because these games are designed after the “Risk vs. Reward” model. This means that there is no “set” environment for the designers to balance the content and its difficulty. The advancement isn’t difficulty-based but repetition-based. That’s why we often talk about treadmills and grind. When WoW was “easy” you simply fought higher levels mobs, often aggroing more than one and still winning. Now that the game is harder nothing will change from the difficulty point of view. You’ll simply have to aim at lower level mobs, one at time.

Eno, what is really important for the game is the “pace” of the levelling. The only difficulty, in fact, is about how fast you are able to advance. How fast you can advance while playing solo and how fast you can advance with a well balanced group. It’s a content-based difficulty where the more the game has to offer, the more the treadmill can be long. The designers of this game should tweak and balance its content by considering two and only two elements:

+ The “pace” of the game
+ The difficulty of the quests

The “pace” of the game is about the compromise between the fun and the sensation of a “grind”. Even if WoW is quest-based often there are insane collect quests that are just masks for the most obvious grind-play. So the difficulty, the experience coming from monsters and the experience coming for quests should be balanced considering the “pace”.

Then they need to consider the difficulty of the quests. They need to check if the game has enough quests to offer for who plays solo and, integrating with the point above, check the difficulty, the reward in experience and the “pace” to determine if the game is well balanced or feels as a grind.

The whole discussion is about the content. What makes EQ (or DAoC) and WoW different is the quest system. In other games you grind, in WoW you follow a story. So, is this “story” well balanced both for groups and for solo players?

My comment (I joined in Beta 2) is that WoW really feels less fun to play.

1- It was more fun to play because the quests had a well-balanced difficulty. They gave way more experience than they do now to the point that now camping and grinding, as in every other mmorpg, is becoming more rewarding than questing, disrupting the MAIN strength of this game. Plus, I find myself involved with more and more quests that I cannot solo and I spend *too much time* searching something I can do, to discover, at the end, that it wasn’t worth the pain because I’m receiving gimped experience and gimped loot.

2- It was more fun considering the combat system. An easier game allowed the players to aim “high” in the Risk vs Reward model. This meant that you were able to aggro and fight more than one monster and still expect to win without dying or fleeing. This resulted in a more fun gameplay where the content was accessible. Killing an high level monster or chaining low level monsters allowed the experience to flow more naturally, excluding again the sensation of grind. Moreover the animation system worked. It was in synch, not perfectly but at least way better than how it is now. WoW’s combat is already too chaotic and having all the animations, the splash damage and the sounds out of synch is making it even more messy and, consequently, less fun to play.

P.S.
Please make the game harder. Read: Not boring
I link this message because this player shares my point of view. He tries to suggest ways to really deal with the difficulty, trying to suggest a different model aimed to utilize the potential of this genre. His design ideas could be weak or silly, surely out the scope of this game, in particular at this point of the beta. But he still tries to explain that in a time-based environment an harder difficulty is simply equal to more grind:

Right now it seems blizzards goal has been to try to make the game harder, by reducing the power of players. This was not needed IMO. Player power was fine before this patch, and continuing to decrease (if they decide to) will bring this game down to the ground with the rest of the boring grind fests.

Doom 3 and SWG, same flaw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dynamism

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Psychochild quoting someone else:

B. Smith wrote, “Make – Things – Change. Make things different each time a player logs in. Make a WORLD that actually has an independent existence, instead of renting a convention hall, hanging up a few dart boards, and calling it an immersive experience.”

Mythic makes me smile

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Mark Jacobs is gone wild by announcing free levels and gold for their game. The demagogy cannot fail and in fact the players are rejoicing. Not different from real politics where the promise is about less taxes… while all the rest goes to hell. I’m not even sure how exactly this works, even after Sanya’s clarification I still don’t understand if the free level will be gained only if you level once or less each week, but it’s not important from what I want to say. One thing is obvious, the idea is to counter Blizzard’s “rest system” with something similar but more effective. And here’s where they making a big mistake.

Mythic has always been extremely receptive about what happens in the market. They observe attentively and try to learn from what happens in other MMOGs. It’s a very good model and I like the attitude. A pair of month ago they copied CoH’s sidekicking and even if not perfect it was an interesting attempt. Now they are trying to imitate WoW’s attitude about being more casual-player friendly. A crucial challenge for this genre as a whole. This time is not important to delve in the design model to see if there are better solutions or if that’s really the problem to solve. What is important is that Mythic is failing completely at understanding the scope of what Blizzard is doing.

The “rest system” is only a very tiny element of their approach. Perhaps the most striking but surely the less important. Blizzard is planning their game to be accessible from the ground up. Accessible “out of the box”. This means that not only they have silly mechanics like the “rest system” to give a cookie and a wink to the casual player that still need to be seduced by this genre (or mass market player, in Lum’s definition). But they have the whole game built with that aim. It’s cohesive, it’s an “holistic” design that defines a basic principle. It’s not an attempt at solving a problem by adding a workaround. It’s a strongly effective approach that starts from the ground and reaches the top. I’m saying that the “rest system” is only a small part because by playing the game you’ll notice how deep is this idea in the design. The very fist step is about the character creation. It’s obvious how different is WoW from other MMOGs, DAoC in particular. You don’t need to know anything about the game mechanics because during the creation of the character you’ll only choose what you are supposed to know without a strong knowledge of the game: a name, a race, a class and the aspect. That’s all, exactly all you need before starting to have fun. Other games force you to choose the statistics, but you cannot do that without knowing already the ruleset of the game. This is just the beginning because everything is planned to be intuitive and fun. You start on a newbie zone and in a few seconds you have already a pair of quests that teach you the very basics of the game. Blizzard’s work isn’t about a cookie here and there. It’s about an extensive design that involves the controls, the interface, how the zones are built. And more. Because the real, important part is that the ruleset itself is built to be compelling but at the same time easy to understand and master.

DAoC is the opposite. Years of band aids have transformed it in a colossal mess. Too often problems have been ignored or just partially “solved” with ineffective workarounds. This new idea included. Thinking that WoW will appeal the mass market just because it has a very silly “rest system” is a huge mistake. WoW is a lot more, it is cohesive. DAoC is loosing pieces instead. Entire parts of the game are becoming useless and obsolete because they are left out of the design evolution. Mythic modifies a part but another one crumbles. They apply a patch and the wound begins to bleed heavily only months later. Being receptive about what happens around them isn’t enough. DAoC’s body isn’t healthy at all, there are a lot of symptoms and if Mythic keeps ignoring them the game will suffer more and more.

The fact is that you cannot transform a messy game for catasses into a one that appeals the casual players just by adding free cookies. It will be obvious when WoW will be out. DAoC has problems everywhere in the design, from the char creation to the whole PvE and the whole ruleset. After two years I need various hours of reasearch before I’m able to create a non-gimpled character. Even the classes I play have still very obscure parts about how they work concretely. You’ll never completely understand the dynamics involved because they’ll change for each class. Nearly impossible to understand how the spec points influence each style and spell. And those are just a few examples. DAoC is absurdly complicated. Mistakes have been built on other mistakes and the whole game is weak because the design is never coherent even with itself. Rules have been built on broken rules and exceptions have been added and re-tweaked constantly. Real world’s laws are more easy to understand. Even two weeks ago they added overlapping res sickness. Plus the sidekicking system that isn’t documented anywhere, even less in the game. It will be soon forgotten just because noone remembers about it. Half of each of their patch is about mysterious slash commands that 95% of the playerbase will never remember.

Installing Linux and recompiling the kernel is easier than playing DAoC. Linux isn’t mass market.

DAoC needs the design to take a complete different direction. Problems that have been ignored for too much time must be addressed at their core, without waiting more. The deisgn needs a more holistic approach, without loosing pieces along the road with entire parts of the game becoming obsolete. Things like the epic armors must have a role, must be redisigned to provide the fun. The whole PvE needs work to be compelling and interesting. Providing alternate advancement paths is good, but not if it corresponds to dodge the attention over an unsolved problem. I don’t want a new expension to fix the errors of the previous one. I want the errors “healed”, not replaced with a new part built on top of the other.

A MMOG is a living body. You cannot fix it by adding more and more superstructures. You cannot heal it by applying too many plasters or ignoring and dodging some of the symptoms.

The new proposed system won’t make the game more casual players friendly, nor it will solve population unbalance. It will just make more obvious that the game is suffering this design strategy about ignoring problems and adding workarounds at will. When a game with a different approach will be out, all that I’m saying here will become more clear. The players’ enthusiasm about a few new cookies will vanish when something else will offer something really different.

It’s fun that, while Mythic was revealing the plan to the public, their server programmer was explaining during a conference why it will fail.

It’s what makes me smile.

Team play

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Raph Koster:
We may not like it, but all empirical evidence at the moment seems to show that requiring cooperative team play for success causes greater retention.

Battle System – A design idea

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

—

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

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

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

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

1. Ranks, squads and generals

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

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

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

2. Battle System: skills and spells

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

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

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

3. Resource system and geomancy

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

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

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

Housing anyone? :)

4. War machines

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

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

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

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

SWG ravings: Classes

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Same thread:

– Classes –

Raph:
I agree that silly interdependences are counterproductive. But I will defend the need for players to make choices. In the real world there are few people who can do everything themselves, despite Heinlein’s “specialization is for insects.” Communities rely, in large part, on synergy between different specialties.

I don’t criticize the need or promotion of the specialization. I criticize the fact that you choose to specialize strictly roleplay possibilities. You aren’t specializing a player toward different styles to combat. You are specializing him about *possibilities*. Possibilities outside the mechanics.

The design doesn’t work, imho, because you created a *gameplay* class from a roleplay possibility that has a completely different nature and now you need to denaturalize that class to give it an excuse to be a “gameplay” class.

Roleplay is something that needs to be accessible to everyone. It shouldn’t define specific classes because it should be a *pervasive* non-gameplay “mood”. Defining a specific role for something that should be everywhere is not a good idea.

I also don’t believe that enforcing a ruleset makes the players play in a different way. I don’t think that you should even care about having a “second-class citzen”. There’s nothing to teach, imho. If the players don’t choose to play in another way it’s simply because the game doesn’t offer enough possibilities to do so. Tradeskills are not important and a “second-class citzen” just because they have an horrible implementation in many games.

You cannot “teach a lesson” if you still have nothing new to offer. SWG has, and I think that having strict non-combat professions hasn’t really helped toward their “success”. On the contrary, offering them as an alternative just brings a lot more players to appreciate an important and original part of the game. Making it more satisfying.

Raph:
In SWG, the original conception of the RP profs was to recognize and reward some of the crucial roles that people play in these games that the games traditionally ignore in the code.

This could still be done without enforcing this approach as “exclusive”. These possibilities should still be open to everyone. I don’t criticize at all the rewards, I criticize just the specialization applied to this element.

Raph:
The interdependence was intended in part to teach a lesson on the importance of the RPers and social glue to the game as a whole.

Yes, but you also shattered the exact same purpose. You have denaturalized a playstyle and you have also made it an exclusive choice that surely doesn’t promote the need for RP.

I strongly believe that these games need a presence of non-combat possibilities. I think that nearly nothing has been done till now on this aspect but I also think that this section shouldn’t be exclusive and specialized.

The very potential of these possibilities is ruined if you denaturalize them. Forcing them to have a strict gameplay role (so not anymore an RP value) is about a denaturalization. I don’t think that forcing this is really adding an RP depth to the game. Actually I think that this is actively ruining the RP potential since it’s only accessible after a selective approach.

Instead of assimilating the “RP flavor” you are segregating it AND forcing it to integrate through a denaturalization.

I understand your choices, I just hope it’s more understandable what I criticize.

To conclude:
1- The roleplay should be pervasive in the whole game and open to everyone. By creating a specific and specialized role for it you aren’t promoting it. On the contrary, you damage it and denaturalize it. With the side effect of needing excuses to justify its presence IN the gameplay (since a “class” has a sense and is justified in the concrete gameplay you can or cannot offer).

2- Classes should be defined as *consequences* of an observation of the possibilities you have in the game. SWG does the exact contrary. You continuously need excuses to justify the presence of the class. Here you are just experiencing an inner flaw produced by the denaturalization.

The problems are just consequences of previous errors.

Raph:
EQ2 is doing this with its tradeskills. But I would suggest to you that if one of the two sides does not have comparable investment in content

This sounds like if you trying to justify the work on these parts of the game toward the “producers” or the players or both. Well, if this is the case it’s not a design problem. It’s a managment problem. If your choice is a compromise for this situation, so this is just another demonstration that this compromise is now producing bad consequences.