Tag Archives: Game Design

SWG ravings: Combat

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More design discussion at Grimwell:

– Combat –

From Keldarin’s comment on the forums:

It is important to remember that this is not THE solution, it is only the first and fundamental part of the total solution.


And that’s the point. More than a year to arrive at this proposed solution and considering it the first and fundamental part. Rejoice.

We�ve been moving very, very fast and that�s something that people don�t seem to recognize.
—
I think that with some of the things that we�re discussing there is potentially to really dramatically change the game in ways that are really going to surprise players. I think that they�re going to be pleasantly surprised by some of the stuff that we want to tackle in the coming months.

Now, where is this absolutely awesome and revolutionary design? It’s a “fatigue bar”. Wow, incredible. What they proposed in the design document is simply about adding a fatigue bar that is present in every other game. With the difference that in this case the bar is also affected by your “hitpoints”.

As I already commented this IS an improvement. Despite what Darniaq says (and is true) the new system works better even if they are adding three more bars to consider. *During* the combat the dynamics should be more readable. But where I agree with Darniaq is that this system still relies completely on what goes on *outside* the combat.

There are tons of interdependencies between all your stats, between the buffs that both directly affect your performance AND modify again your stats, plus the armor that, once again, affect the stats, the resistences and both the regeneration rate of the bars and their actual dimension. IT. IS. A. MESS.

A mess that builds a very complex and deep combat system but if you look at it you’ll notice that NOTHING directly involves the combat. It’s way too messy to actual CARE during the action. What is going on is about centering the pivot of the combat system on the *preparation*. While the actual fight becomes dull (and not just for these reasons).

Now, as I said, their plan is a secure improvement. But this imporvement doesn’t fix the real problems. With these changes they aren’t bringing back old players, nor gaining new ones. They’ll probably bring back only those who had canceled in protest.

So really what�s happened is that we�re looking at increasing the scope of the changes and the updates and additions that we were going to make with the combat balance and make it more creative.

Yes, “creative” for them is finding this new design idea called “fatigue bar” and make it rely on your energy. So basically they are copying every other game with the addition of a dependence on another bar. Is this dependence really an improvement? Darniaq says that this messes even more the rules, I think it does but I also draw a line between combat preparation and the actual combat action. The system is more messy and confused during the preparation but it is also more straightforward during the *action*.

Now, what’s the aim? Where are the REAL problems of the combat in SWG? This is what I wrote in my comment. I agree with their solution but I don’t agree with their *premises*. The changes they are planning could work from a design point of view and concretely adjust the system toward a better state. BUT they don’t change anything if we look at the whole thing from a different point of view.

My design observations have told me that the combat *action* is way more fun when as you fight you also gain more possibilities, you expand your horizon. It’s a combat system that should push you deeper and deeper into the fun of FIGHTING. This not only come from the example I made about WoW, but it comes also from games where the *action* is the whole scope of the game. Think for example to the fighting games, where the more you going on the more you could have access to combos.

So, my belief is that a good (or “better”) combat system is about a system that pushes you into the action, where the fun comes DIRECTLY from the gameplay. Where the system is fun on its own, just by playing it and as a demonstration of this you have a system that involves you in the combat. Which wants you to fight and gives you more and more tools to have fun.

SWG goes in the EXACT opposite direction. It’s flawed in two, big, parts:
1- It relies completely on too many “variables” that are basically impossible to manage during the action. And which just make the game complicated (not *complex*, mind you) and dull to play during the real *action*.
2- It’s based on limiting your possibilities. The more the fight goes on the more you are approaching a defeat. The combat system doesn’t want you to fight. It wants you to win as soon as possible. Every other second is a menace.

It’s way too complex for me to explain what I mean but while the proposed system could work from the strict design point of view, it’s still horrible if we consider a broad point of view. The concrete result is that, despite the changes, the mechanics are still messy, confused, unfun and counterproductive.

Now, when I suggest a creative approach is NOT because I intend to erase all we have already to create a system from the ground up. What I STRONGLY believe is that the combat system MUST rely on different gameplay elements. Every DAMN attempt at fixing it shouldn’t simply be targeted toward fixing the *implementation*. But it should reconsider and adjust the *mechanics*. Because even if the current implementation is broken, what really damages SWG and makes it terribly wrong and unfun is about the MECHANICS involved in the combat.

The fact of having hundreds interdependent variables affecting regeneration values, bonuses, maluses, and recursive variations, brings the combat system to a crisis. Not only it is terribly unfun because you cannot USE that during the real combat but it’s also HELL to balance. It’s a mess that will swamp you down.

I’m saying NOTHING NEW:

Geldon:
The less worthwhile player involvement, the less interesting the combat is. You want to make combat interesting, you need to get that player involved.

Darniaq:
(I totally believe RPG PvP would be more popular if it was based less on pre-battle time and more on during-battle decisions)

So, with THESE premises. With THESE aims. Look back at their proposed design and you’ll draw my exact same conclusions: their system works better but it doesn’t really change a damn thing. It’s still the same broken, umbalanced, unfun and messed game.

This is why I’d push the efforts about adding completely NEW elements and mechanics. To the point that I could still mantain the current HAM system because it isn’t that what DEFINES the gameplay about the combat. This is why not only they need to adjust the ruleset but they also need to rework the dynamics, like the controls.

I’d like to see gameplay elements that should fit better the propose. Like the arcs of fire. The fact that you should need AT LEAST TO FACE your enemy. Use the environment actively, giving more controls so that you can lean from behind a wall, using rocks or other structures to cover parts of your body. And , perhaps, if it’s possible, to WIPE completely the auto target and just create a semi-twitch model. Where it’s not important the skill but still requiring you to ACTUALLY PLAY the game. Having FUN because YOU ARE FIGHTING and not *directly* planning and foreseeing the behaviour of thousands different and interdependent variables.

SWG’s combat is EXACTLY like EQ2 graphic:

Haemish getting married:
If your 3d artists are mediocre, as these guys are, if they cannot imbue the art with a sense of style, the models will be bland suckage. Numbers (i.e. math and high-level abstract technical shit) is not pretty.

I repeat: the proposed design is AWFUL, TERRIBLE. It’s just another demonstration of how much out of track they are. Requoting:

We�ve been moving very, very fast and that�s something that people don�t seem to recognize.

I just see a general tendency. SWG feels fatigued and slow. Despite the insane work it’s just feeling more broken and unsatisfying. I don’t think that adding MORE work will solve the situation because the fatigue is of another nature. What they need is about a different approach. If this happens the fatigue will vanish.

But it doesn’t happen.

The other thing is hologrinding, a system that looked great on paper

Now. How can these guys tell this with a straight face?

SWG- Commenting the proposed HAM system

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Thunderheart posted on the official forums a design document about the revamp of the HAM (Health-Action-Mind) bars. One of the most important systems related to the combat. It sounds like this thing shoud move on the test server, and then live, quite soon. In the last days SOE announced the delay of the real combat revamp and that brough to a revolt of the players since not only the combat revamp is absolutely necessary, but it’s also from the release that it gets delayed, month after month. So this design document should be related to the tweaks they expect to finish before the launch of JTL, the space expansion.

To comment the system the best way is to understand their approach. It seems to me that they chosed to focus on precise elements to “solve” the known issues and produce a better system that is also nothing different from what the players have used till now. And this is both good and bad, depending on the aim. It fits perfectly Raph’s methodology: consider gameplay systems like “riddles” to solve. You have a set amount of issues and you need to find solutions to bring back those issues to a “normal” value, mantaining the balance.

In this case the problems they focused about the current HAM system are principally two:
+ Special moves damage you when you use them. The original idea was about adding a strategical depth, the result is that it “feels” wrong and it’s also not easy and intuitive to manage as a positive gameplay element during combat.
+ The impossibility to heal the “mind” pool. Support classes like medics can heal damage only related to the health and the action pool, making the PvP pivot completely around the mind pool.

If these are the issues I think that they did a good work. To explain the new proposal I think it’s better to imagine directly the new interface. We have still three pools, health, action, and mind. Starting from the right and going toward the left we could see, firstly, a black zone. The black still represents the “wounds” and the wounds limit the max value you can have in that pool. This isn’t related to the combat system since you can heal this part only *outside* the combat dynamics and it’s also not directly relevant. Then we have a red, green, or blue bar (health, action or mind) which represent the actual energy, as you get hit and take damage you loose energy. The bar goes toward the left leaving behind a white zone. When the bar is all white you are incapacitated. This is the zone you can actively heal during the combat. At this point the special moves don’t use anymore your energy on the bar, damaging yourself. Instead there’s a new (dark color) bar that goes up and down *inside* the space of the previous one. You basically have another bar inside your energy bar. This is the bar that you’ll use when performing a special move. This special bar cannot be healed directly, it heals by itself with the time, plus it’s directly affected by the energy bar since the more energy you loose the more you’ll loose “space” for the special bar.

With this system the use of specials relies completely on an apposite bar with its own regeneration rate and that is only directly affected by your current energy. The more you get hit, the less specials you’ll be able to perform. At this point what they wrote isn’t really clear about how they expect to solve the second problem. They don’t specifically say anything about it so my guess is that with the new system the mind pool behaves exactly as the other two. If this is the case I can say that the solution they proposed achieves their aims:
+ With the new system the use of special moves is more comprehensible and also concretely usable as a gameplay element during the combat.
+ The mind pool going back to a “default” behaviour brings various good consequences. Not only this fixes the PvP problems but the system becomes way more intuitive since it works without “exceptions”.

It’s a success? If I consider their riddle-like strategy I can say it is. They focused two problems and they worked out a better system that fixes the issues, is more coherent and doesn’t create side effects. But it’s not all. As I said this is an extremely focused approach. The curent combat system works on top of different elements and the HAM is just a gear, strictly connected with the rest. It’s not easy to judge it without knowing how the other parts affects the HAM mechanics concretely. Also, I think SWG could use a completely different approach where you observe the design from a broader point of view, opening more possibilities instead of having a strictly psychotic approach focused on a “blind” point of view (you can only see and solve the “inner” issues, but you loose the view on the outside, toward a growth).

Their design methodologies are also tied to a few posts I wrote on Q23 boards (original thread here), where I was discussing one of the most used system: “Risk Vs. Reward”. Which I hate. Specifically I was just commenting how much World of Warcraft’s design was far superior compared to Dark Age of Camelot and a part of the analysis was about the implementation and use of the “fatigue” bars. My point is that often games are designed to use the “frustration” as a strong gameplay element. The whole “risk vs reward” just relies on the use of the frustration and nearly every death penalties applied in every game is simply a balance achieved about frustration. I think there are better solutions. I think that the use of “frustration” isn’t a good thing and an active obstacle to the fun. Having a bar decreasing means that you are loosing possibilities, in WoW you have the opposite mechanic. The more you fight and the more the game gives you possibilities. Fighting opens the gameplay instead of closing it toward a death (your or the one of your enemy). The combat gameplay nourish itself, the fun brings more fun and your actions open more paths to choose. If you represent the combat like an algorithm, you’ll be able to see that SWG or DAoC work as a “tree” diagram where the “branches” are the beginning and the “trunk” the end. WoW transforms it so that you start from the trunk, and then you develop possibilities and strategies. If you die, you do it in a “possible-otherwise” state. If you die in DAoC, you do it in a “destiny-has-choosed” situation. And this brings *directly* to frustration. While WoW brings fun, possibilities, strategical depth and a whole better general feeling.

This was just to demonstrate that “good design” doesn’t depend on a situation you need to solve. Design isn’t about solving, it’s about creating. You can intend it as a methodology where you start with a few aims and observations and then work out a way to solve them, but this is a passive, psychotic attitude that will never produce something really positive. In this precise case I think that the game really needs a positive attitude, not a passive one. SWG has many resources and they need to be used with more creativity. The game seems way too much “fatigued”. It’s stressed even if the situation should be really good. And something -active- needs to be done to move the game in this direction. The combat system doesn’t need to be fixed, it needs to be transformed to use different design ideas, to be more fun, to be more realistic and tied to the setting, to be more compelling. A lot of work should be done to add different and important gameplay elements. The controls need to change, there’s the need to include the environment, more movement involved, implement arcs of fire. NEW gameplay elements, not just the old ones adjusted.

Everyone should remember that you can add or discard the pieces of the puzzle, not just organize them the best you can. If you limit the point of view you’ll also kill the potential. SWG is about potential still unexpressed within the game.

I plan WoW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

—

The goals of the system I imagined are:

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

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

—

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

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

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

(well, my opinion is the last one)

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

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

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

Lum, on economic systems.

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Related to my “article”. This is Lum discussing economic systems in games. Precious:

Well, if there was ever proof needed as to my idiocy, jumping into this thread is probably it. That being said:

Every MMO economy is false. Duh. Trust me, you don’t want a real economy in an MMO. It will, with stunning rapidity, result in a tyranny of a very small minority. Much like, well, real economies.

Quote:
EQ, UO and DAoC prove this out. You can craft great stuff or you can buy it, and you can be both a crafter and a hunter either by virtue of having crafting linked to a combat template (EQ and DAoC) or with multi-character servers (UO).

The problem with the typical MMO economic model is that crafting items compete with dropped items. Literally: crafters are in competition with the items that world builders are crafting to make hunting attractive. The problem is that one “faction” in this equation is always losing; either craftsmen complain (justifiably) that the results of their labors are marginalized because the Shiny New Sword from Deepest Dungeon is better than anything they make, or everyone else complains (justifiably) that the stuff they’re getting from monsters is worthless, because it isn’t as good as the stuff crafters are making.

The SWG model (I don’t know if anyone else has as radical an economy so let’s use them as an example) is that players make everything. Boom, the end. Well, that certainly solves a lot of problems. It also makes a lot of people who are used to the kill-things-and-get-stuff metaphor (a metaphor, I might add, that is not unique to MMOs) unhappy. The economy may be far more realistic than most (in that it has a working model of supply and demand and requires a bit of resource management) but the guy who logs in for a couple hours to plink at things with a blaster is either going to be (a) twinked or (b) unhappy, because the player economy has progressed past a point where the artificial elements (quests, drops from monsters, etc) can keep up.

The same thing happens in kill-things-get-stuff games, of course; try playing EQ or DAOC for a couple hours, then taking the money you’ve made and buying anything in the player markets. You’ll find that the money you’ve made is an order of magnitude lower than anything you can buy – again, because the player economy has detached itself from the artificial one. However, in the kill-things-get-stuff game you can concievably live completely apart from the player economy – existing off of quest rewards, items that you’ve looted yourself, etc.

In an economy that is solely player driven (which, for reasons I’m about to demonstrate, very few actually exist), you don’t have that option. Your choices become – hmm, what low level menial tasks that other, richer players don’t want to do can I do that will give me a small amount of income, or what higher level players can I swear myself out to. Congratulations! You’ve created a feudal society! From an economic standpoint, it’s an accomplishment. From a standpoint of whether or not it is fun, not so much.

Now, I’m an advocate of, for lack of a better word, socialist tinkering in MMOs. (The spectacle of a radical libertarian in real life working towards the implementation of socialism never fails to amuse me, by the way.) There are things game creators can do to “tinker” with the economy that can create interesting challenges without completely making the game NotFun. Just for one example: track the total amount of money in your game (call it “M1” for giggles) and key the value of your prestige gold sinks off of that. Since, after all, the target of your prestige gold sinks is to soak some of the money out of the bank vaults of your wealthiest few, why not REALLY target them? Make the process transparent. Display the rise and fall of these prices (key it to in-game stock markets for even more fun). Watch your players game down the prices by flushing money out of their vaults… which is what you wanted to happen in the first place.

However, the significant portion of your playerbase that ISN’T level 50 RR10 or a Master Jedi or whatever isn’t a member of your player economy. More to the point, they don’t WANT to be, most of the time. They want to benefit from the economy, sure. Cheap stuff on the market? Yeah, gimme! Actually working to generate a small amount of value relative to their “worth” in the game world? Oh HELL no. At that point it becomes a job. And most of us already have one of those.

So the trick becomes allowing participation in the economy, without forcing full membership. Hm.

MMOGs and economies

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Copying from a thread @ F13:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sanya
Q: Why do artifacts decay?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/agree.

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

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

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

—

And then Raph replied and I agree with him completely:

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

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

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

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

WoW isn’t a MMORPG

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I managed to find and save this old post I wrote in the beta forums
—

The starting point is that WoW is offering a new way to deal with the treadmill. I discussed about this in the past and I won’t repeat here. The fact is that the feeling of “grind” is noticeable a lot less in WoW than any other mmorpg. Why? because WoW is based on a very well thought and planned quest system. Instead of “camping” a spot you are pushed to move throughout the world “to do things”. Doing things feels a lot better than repeating the same action over and over and over. It gives you a better feeling of accomplishment. And the final result is that you are “having fun”. Something new to the genre. And it’s not sarcasm, sadly. My opinion is that WoW offers the best treadmill on the market due to these solutions. We can argue that a good treadmill isn’t a perfect dream but it’s already something different and improved from the general, poor level.

The first error that Blizzard has made on this phase is to introduce the “rest state” rule, which has been discussed extensively *everywhere*. One of the reasons why the system has been planned is, quoting: “To reduce the pressure for every area to be perfectly balanced experiece/balance wise. With rest states and questing, the world should stay more evenly distributed.” Remember it, I’ll return on this point.

I already explained why the “rest state” is wrong and shouldn’t be kept nor tweaked, here.
In this case I’ll focus on something else. I pointed out that the rest system was coming in a game not ready for it. And the concrete proof is here.

The players are starting to complain. The rest system has given even more importance to the quest system, exactly as I expected. There are only a number of places and quests to do at any level and everyone is following more or less the same path, finding various bottlenecks in the game. So the players are starting to complain because the server feels overcrowded. They have to wait to finish a quest because there are already groups waiting in line for it. Something I know quite well since it happens regularly in other mmorpgs.

At this point everyone is asking to cap the population on a server, or even to instance completely all the content. From a side there’s the rest state system that is wrong for various reasons and has been added when the game wasn’t ready for it, from the other side there’s a more complex idea. The first part is just a demonstration that the quest system isn’t strong enough to hold the load. I expected this: the number of quests is limited, the spots where you go to accomplish your duties are also limited. Simply put, there’s not enough content to support the whole treadmill in a game with the ambition of WoW. In particular when it comes to variation (and the well-known concepts of “gameplay”, “grind” and “treadmill” have their soul in the variation).

While many players are reporting the population as an issue, I think that the population is just the consequence of a real problem. The real problem is that Blizzard has put too much load on the quest system when it still wasn’t ready for that. There are many reasons. One is the introduction of the rest state, one is the arrival of many new players in the beta and another is the fact that nearly everyone is playing in the Horde, since the old Alliance characters are “freezed”. All that contributes to break the soul of the treadmill. And the treadmill is also the soul of WoW, till now. When things are broken you notice a lot of problems and the “fun” is affected. Often the players start to rant just about the end of this process, about the last part, so they see that the collection quests are unfun, or that the server population needs to be capped.

But, again, those are just consequences of a bigger problem. The fact that, for a number of reason, the quest system has reached a limit and now claims attention. I already suggested various obvious ways to ease the situation. Multiplying the spots where you can go to accomplish your quests, so that, for example, many goblins camps can help to spread the players, instead of being forced to go in a precise spot where the quest pointed you. Another is to add more variation to each zone, so that they offer content for a wider range of levels, organizing the spots. I noticed that the world feels quite big and repetitive in some zones. You can use the large spaces to offer more POIs (points of interest). When you are designing and implementing a quest you should measure the average time it takes to finish it. In the case of collect quests it means that you need more “space”, so that the players won’t overlap constantly.

What I’m trying to explain is that the sense of “overcrowding” that the players feel isn’t because there are “too many” players, it’s because there’s a problem in the gameplay. And you can solve it only if you address the gameplay itself.

—

This rings a bell for me. I see something strange and the footprint of a bigger, deeper problem. Why the players are complaining about too many players on a server, when it’s supposed to be the *strenght* of a massive multiplayer game? Why peoples are asking to go back in a supposed “evolution” from the soul of the mmorpgs to the old Diablo concept where everything is simply instanced? I’m the only one to see that as something interesting? We started from Diablo simply because the idea of a massive, alternative world wasn’t still possible. It was THE dream of every single pen&paper roleplayer. To live in a world that you could only read about in a book. Instead, now the players are asking for a smaller scale. For something where their action are limited. Why?

I have my own opinion about this. EverQuest and Ultima Online created the genre. At the same time they killed it. There’s nothing interesting in the infinite treadmill of EverQuest. It worked to give a form of dependence to a big number of players, but it killed at the same time the spirit of a mmorpg. It killed the soul of a mmorpg. It’s all faked.

Quoting myself:

The general model, which everyone is adopting, is to focus on the character power.
The only thing that changes is that your character gains power.
This is the single element that is dynamic in mmorpgs and the single element around which every game is built (till now).

The fact is that you can go kill a dragon. And the dragon will respawn. The dragon isn’t dinamic. The dragon doesn’t exist. What exists is the ph4t l3wt. What it drops. The experience. Your power. That is what will last. Your dynamical growth as a character. Measured in levels, skills and items. Exactly where all the interest of every single player is aimed.

The players want instanced content because that content doesn’t exist. It doesn’t have a life. It’s faked. It’s plastic, or, in this case, “bits”, numbers. What exists and it’s not faked is the real, dynamical consequence: the power grind.

The truth is that everyone is still playing a single player game. PvE isn’t a part of a mmorpg. PvE is archeology. It’s ballast. If you think the general idea of a mmorpg like a rocket, that aims toward the stars where it will realize its complete potential, you can imagine the PvE as the platform from where the rocket has been launched (EverQuest). Now that platform is STILL attacked to the rocket. The rocket is starting to move and the platform is risking to make the whole thing crash on the ground.

One player asked to make the whole content that Blizzard is offering in WoW, completely instanced. Everyone, me included, pointed to him that there are already many games out or in development that offer that. The fact that WoW could offer a polygonal city instead of a text chat like in Diablo doesn’t change the spirit of the game. The players are asking for “hubs” where they can gather (and show off their toon, because mmorpgs exploit a lot the narcissism of the players). The rest of the game is about elements that don’t need the presence of others. Other players are a problem, because they steal your mob, leech your experience, grief you. And so on. If your aim is to “achieve power” and every other player is an obstacle between you and your aim, it’s *obvious* and consequent that everyone will ask for *less* players, or a completely instanced content.

The problem is that we are still playing single player games. With the difference that here you can brag about “your story” among the population of a whole server. So what’s the role of the population? Firstly to satisfy your loneliness, or narcissistic needs (they are exactly the same). Secondly as a competing environment. And that’s where the catasses attacked the “rest system”. They want to be the best, before everyone else. The “rest system” is an obstacle because it gives advantages to their “enemies”, the other players with less time to spend in this “race”.

That’s your PvE. The perfect way to exploit the weakness of your players and hook them in a dependent relationship. (dependence problems are being discussed here)

It’s something sad, it’s not the soul of the mmorpgs, it’s the starting point that now needs to be left to aim somewhere else. The starting point is bad when it starts to assume the control of your whole game. Making the real aim sink and die. We need to fly but we are sinking in a swamp. And that’s our rocket.

It’s sad that a city in WoW is seen just as an “hub” and it isn’t basically different from the chat you have in Diablo. We are fiddling with concepts that are already dead. Instead of moving on, we move backwards and the players are starting to ask for that. Why? Because the players are aiming right to the center. You offer them a power grind? And they aim to that. The reaction of the players simply uncovers the truth. The truth is that PvE is the concept of a single player game. Your friends are ok, any other player is an obstacle or a problem. And this is wrong on many different levels.

The result is that what is faked is not only the PvE, but the whole game. It’s double-roleplay. You roleplay your character, then you roleplay a mmorpg. Because what is offered is a faked environment even for a game. It’s a sinlge-player/cooperative game that is “roleplaying” and imitating a mmorpg.

What I see is that the whole genre is collapsing on itself. Now we have two parts, PvE and PvP. They aren’t two types of mmorpgs. The second is a mmorpg, the first is just a derivation of old gameplay. PvE is what everyone has played till now, before the idea of online games has born. Pulling the PvE in a mmorpg is having an obvious result: the players don’t like it because the “massive” part of it is simply seen as a problem. And so they ask for a smaller scale. To bring back the PvE where it belongs. As a single player/cooperative game.

Why are we playing a massive game when its massive aspect takes off the fun? Really, why? Why would I ask for a massive PvE game when the content is obviouly more fun if completely instanced? Instanced is equal to faked. But remember that non-instanced PvE content doesn’t make it real (the example of the dragon). The players feel that, so they ask for the content to be brough back where it belongs. Where Diablo is.

I see a question for Blizzard. I have many ideas about all these aspects, but the starting question is one. Do you want to make a single-player game or a mmorpg?

The answer is important. Each choice brings to games that should be designed in a *completely* different way. What I read in the last days made me think about all that and I realized that WoW, till now, isn’t a mmorpg.

Many of the design choices should be taken considering that. The players are demonstrating that WoW isn’t a mmorpg and many of its parts should be tweaked in this direction, if it’s Blizzard’s aim.

Why, really, all the content shouldn’t be instanced if it brings only advantages to the gameplay?

Tidbits from the “world”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning

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The means and the ends —

Yes, but why that happens? What I wrote is because what you enjoy is the “new” part and the new part is about something different that you learn, a new way of play, a new strategy and so on.

The “new” or “content” in their most wider concepts mean that. They mean the possibility to “learn”. They become old (and boring) when the gameplay pushes you to repeat instead of moving forward to learn new parts.

Learning is the key of the whole process:

+ We have fun when we are able to learn.
+ We are frustrated when the learning process is hard or forbidden.
+ We are bored when the learning process is missing.

—

No, I think newness and change are just an interpolation of the learning process.

Learning includes those two, those two don’t include learning. Obviously here I could consider the meaning of the word in a different connotation from its standard use.

The marxist treadmill

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

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

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

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

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

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

I pointed this value.

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

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

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

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

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

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