Eve-Online quote-play

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In a recent comment I wrote that I don’t like much Eve’s current direction. I’m done commenting game design so I won’t go in detail, but here some meaningful quotes.

The first comes from a dev blog and demonstrates I wasn’t so wrong:

Invention was supposed to be the revolutionary feature of Revelations and should have changed the entire science and industry genre as we know it, with the potential side effect that could change the biggest part of the player economy; Tech 2.

However, the effect that invention was supposed to bring has not yet been seen.

Only a couple players had managed to build an interface.

Then we can pass to give a look at Eve current development schedule. For reference you can use the previous battleplan and the E3 news.

The biggest disappointment to me is that the main feature of Kali seems completely GONE from their plans. Not delayed, gone. They used to describe the whole expansion as:

The upcoming expansion to EVE Online—codenamed Kali—will introduce an innovative Advanced Reactive Content System (ARCS), in which the political landscape and physical borders of nation-states within the game can be altered dynamically through the collective outcome of player actions, thus directly controlling the game universe destiny and resulting storyline.

This was in the form of “Factional Warfare” that I described throughly, analyzed in design potential and praised as one of the most interesting thing ever.

Gone.

In their dev blogs there aren’t anymore references to Factional Warfare. The Kali patch isn’t anymore named Kali, but “Revelations”. And the three chunks (Spetember 06, December 06 and April 07) once again delayed. Oveur:

The engine itself is a bit different, depending on whether you are talking about our optimizations to our DX7/9 engine or the optional Vista engine – or the actual combination of both which is the big package. Currently, the big bada-boom is in Revelations 3 at the end of the year.

“End of the year” almost surely meaning you won’t see anything till 2008 and later. Another full year delay on top of the year delay on their 2006 plans.

Don’t mock me when I think of Vaporware when they talk about walking on stations with models turning their head dynamically toward noise to simulate human behaviours. From a dev blog:

This brings us to an area of computer graphics called dynamic avatar human-to-human interaction. It tries to apply knowledge derived from years of research of human body language into the actions of computer generated avatars, so that their behavior mimics human behavior without the user or NPC controller micro-managing every little twitch of the body or glance of the eyes.

This is one of the areas that we intend to research and apply to our animation system.

V – A – P – O – R – W – A – R – E

But I was writing about Factional Warfare. You would think that CCP has OODLES of time if they waste it on this kind of TOTALLY USELESS (and very, very pretentious) shit. Oveur says that Revelation 3 at the end of 2007 will be the engine upgrade to Vista. So Factional Warfare is for Revelation 2? From a dev blog:

Following Revelations 1.4, we’ll be refocusing our efforts on Revelations 2. It was covered at fanfest, that we have the hots for warfare in Revelations 2 on all levels. But what does warfare & the increased emphasis on improving current content rather than adding new stuff really mean?

So “Warfare”. No more “Factional”? Why? Just playing with names? Not adding more “new stuff”?

Uhm, no. It looks like the “increased emphasis on improving current content” means that the “Factional” is gone. Or at least that’s what I understand when they describe the new “Warfare” without the “Factional”:

We want to improve the goalsetting in warfare, by improving and adding options to player buildable infrastructure. This means improving Starbases, Outposts, Stations and Sovereignty. However, Warfare also needs something to fight with, so we want more tactical and strategic components there.

As you can imagine, this isn’t only for the people shooting, this creates goals for everyone, a fighter can’t survive without his industrial backbone. The industrialists must build the infrastructure and the merchants are there to supply the essentials you can’t acquire yourself. It’s all interconnected.

Then they go commenting fleet combat changes. Uhm, that’s a blatant U-turn. Factional Warfare was about everything but combat.

The orginal Factional Warfare was NOTHING about big ass fleet combat and uber guild PVP. It was instead a “bridge” between casual players and those big corps. It was a way to make the NPC empires an active part of the game. The kind of work that Eve needs from a very long time. See the quote above about the “Advanced Reactive Content System”. Or the bottom level of the Factional Warfare right from their own description:

The initial idea is that players can elect to take on missions as mercenaries – in which case the reward will be mainly monetary – or as enlisted soldiers, where they will be rewarded with increased standings and discounted ships and equipment. With the contract system in place alongside it, FW can be something individuals or even alliances can sign up to, with contracts for single missions or for the duration of a long-term campaign.

Whether through trade, bounty hunting, resource allocation or even combat, FW is entwined with the very EVEness of Eve itself. It is where the rich background of Eve will come to life.

This is all gone. Now “Warfare” just means a patch that will affect fleet combat. It’s a combat mechanic patch. Nothing about the original plan. Not even close. It’s a completely different direction.

Which couldn’t be put more clearly:

all Warfare improvements in Revelations 2 are aiming for the same thing. Even though it’s improving current features, it’s encouraging gameplay which not only is more fun and easier to jump into, it’s also good for the general performance of EVE.

Time to backfire on CCP? Is this the result of TomB replacing Lekjart as Lead Designer? Quoting myself at that time:

Of course these are all early claims with no substance. Yet. But mmorpgs are long term projects and the shit that happens *today* is crucial for tomorrow. When everyone will have already forgot what happened and what brought the change of pace.

Of course all these delays also mean that CCP staff is so idle and bored that they decided to keep themselves busy by working on a new MMO.

And to conclude, subscriptions news that you can compare with my previous report:

less than 20% of the EVE community have 2 or more subscriptions. The other 80+% are single account users.

We have just over 156k subscriptions and an average of 15k active trial accounts as of the reported metrics at the beginning of the month. There were 34,420 players logged in on Tranquility Sunday afternoon.

Sir Bruce, the owner of mmogchart.com is a great guy.

What it takes to become a game designer

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Up for some snark.

Moorgard makes a good resume about this other discussion. But I’ll tell you that’s not really the point. You learn those parts afterwards. They are valid but all optional.

What is essential is just one thing: contacts.

The rest is superfluous. You need opportunities before you can do something with them. And contacts will give you those opportunities. Without opportunities you could be god on earth, but you’ll never do anything. Then there are multiple ways to make contacts. You can have charisma, you can kiss asses, you can live next to the big building, you can be in Austin, you can have friends that pull you in, you can have luck. Whatever. Every way is a good way. But you still need contacts.

Of course this doesn’t make you a good designer. But it’s also true that before you can become a good game designer, you have to become one.

So don’t believe those guys. They are just scared of the competition.

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Having fun playing WoW pt. 2

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Answering indirectly Raph’s comments and blog.

I suspect we’re reaching a little bit of a language barrier. :)

I don’t know if it’s a language barrier but it’s probably a term that defines two different things. The one I’m talking about is strictly “functional”. Content -> purpose/function. Mudflation doesn’t exist till the function of the content is preserved. And it is always preserved till it’s not deliberately replaced.

This thing I’m describing is also completely independent from the “social” aspect. It can be reproduced even in a single player game.

For example before the expansion the levels 58-60+ were covered by five dungeon instances (Stratholme, Scholomance, Upper and Lower Blackrock Spires and Dire Maul). From there you could get experience and gear upgrades along with the “tier 0” armor set, then move to raid instances. This was the intended progression.

The launch of the exp pack provided everyone an alternative path. Instead of doing those five dungeons multiple times now you can run a few quick quests through the new zones and obtain MUCH BETTER gear. With MUCH LESS effort.

What is the consequence? That suddenly the first path becomes completely irrelevant because devs have provided a much better alternative. “The path of least resistance”: over time content with the same “function” in the game system is progressively selected till there’s ONE path left (and here the players asking more “middle” content are in a wrong position). Content is eroded to the essential.

The content of this expansion doesn’t stack on previous level 60 content. Or we wouldn’t get any mudflation as the old content would retain its function. But the content in the expansion replaces the standard 58-60+ content. It allows you to skip old content entirely. It’s a jump forward.

Faster, soloable, better rewards = FUN

The point is: this not only the goal, but also the “escamotage”.

(2) The point is: by devaluing old content they can valorize the content in the expansion. That sort of “artificial fun” that is the KEY of these kinds of games. Here you manipulate desires. What people want, what people do. In the game you can create a “need” just by devaluing and replacing.

(3) The point is: without the devaluation, there cannot be new value. No baits to throw to the players.

Your Epic Sword of Pwn must become a toothpick so that you can then restore your lost power. You need to lose power (mudflation) so that you can gain it anew (valorization).

Hell, it even happens on movie sequels. The Hero who won both the kingdom and the girl at the end of the first movie must lose everything so that he can demonstrate how badass he is once again.

So the end point is that devaluation and valorization are strictly connected. WoW expansion is practically this: you take away from the players so that you can give them again. In a endless loop.

being able to go back and see something that was once powerful and is now trivial helps that, and both of these feelings are core to the value offered by this style of game

This is often brought up, my opinion is that it’s not really relevant. What matters is what you see ahead. What’s behind, in these kinds of games, is soon forgotten. Games based on this model are successful when they don’t even give you time to look back. They keep pushing you forward endlessly. As an obsession. If you stop, you lose interest.

How many players that are having fun with the new content are going to run old level 60 instances for the “nostalgia”? Some for sure, but this isn’t a core mechanic or motivation. It has a place in the game, but it’s a part that isn’t directly relevant. If players start to go back to past content it’s mainly because they lost interest in the expansion content, or because they already finished it. These cases are not good cases for the game.

restrict players from helping each other (limit trading, twinking, use soulbinding, etc)

Powerleveling happens (in fact the first 70 worldwide was poweleveled to victory), twinking is so limited that it’s not relevant in WoW. But in a game so founded on the solo experience the powerleveling isn’t a main phenomenon. What I mean is that the mudflation doesn’t interest the game as a whole, but just that part of content that is now “sided” by new content in the exp. Not content “stacking” (on top), but content added aside past content. And replacing it as the “new” was designed to be artificially more desirable.

As an hypothetical example let’s say that Guild Wars offers periodic packages, each offering the exact same level 1-20 experience, just in all new environments. If every package is balanced then there would be no reason for the players to buy all of them. So the devs decide that in every new package the 1-20 experience is shortened by a 25% and the gold dropped upped by 25%.

What happens? That new content looks graphically better and it’s even “functionally” better. So the new content completely replaces old content. Their function overlaps, so one is preferred to the other. As if we have two quests with the exact same reward, but one can be completed in half the time. Which one do you think the players will choose?

This becomes also a quality problem. There may be a quest that it is written very well and original. But there’s another quest with the same function that gives a better reward and that you can complete in half the time. “Players see past fiction”. That’s a quote from Raph. Players go for the game’s goal. Not for “quality”. And here we are at “The best route should also be the most fun route.”

The kind of mudflation pertinent to WoW (and that I commented here as a very SPECIFIC case) isn’t of the “social” kind. But is the fact that the lower end content in the expansion OVERLAPS with classic 58+ content. If the very first quest was only possible if you had a character in a complete Tier 3 set (last raid instance in the classic game), then Blizzard could have released a full expansion without an hint of mudflation.

The progession could have been: level 58 -> 5-man dungeons -> Tier 0 set -> Molten Core raid -> Blackwing Lair -> Ahn’Qiraji -> Naxx -> first quest in the exp

Instead the progression is: level 58 -> first quest in the exp

All that we had in the middle is gone. Bypassed. It lost its function in the fabric of the game.

And this mostly because WoW is a GAME. Pure game. Where more social, virtual world-like features like the Auction House are a minor phenomenon. A gimmick with relative relevance. In fact these work within VERY STRONG restrictions exactly to NOT GET IN THE WAY of the GAME.

Which is what Lum explained perfectly in the follow-up to that thread I linked.

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.

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.

So points Raph listed, such as:

– New users now have less “buying power” so to speak.

– Social contacts get harder early in the game, because users accelerate out of the shared low level experience quickly.

These are irrelevant in a game where you can (and, mostly, will) play solo and where what is *required* to buy are skills from NPC trainers that have fixed prices.

One interesting point is in fact that since WoW is so solo-friendly (single player game), it will also age much better than similar MMOs. Just because the social aspects and virtual world-like elements are already so weak and bland that the negative effect due to their degrade is next to none. Heh.

The myth of the MMO market

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Quoting Alan Dunkin (and finding the quote took me almost a fucking hour):

Money can come from a lot of places these days.. there’s an entire new generation of dotcom millionaires, energy barons and VC firms that are just waiting on the right project to fork out tons of money.

The premise is: the MMO market is ripe.

Good. This is the best thing. It means that there are the basis to build something excellent. We have ideas, we have the monies, we have wonderful artists. It may be the best moment ever for this genre.

We’ll see. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong, but maybe it would be wise to use that money on something solid instead of wasting everything along with a great opportunity.

I’m copying over some of my comments from FoH about the real state of this market:

I don’t think you can compare the EQ2 launch to VG, the MMO market has exploded since then thanks to WoW.

The idea that WoW opened up the market for other companies is a myth that devs are using as a way to find foundings from all those people out there with lots of money but no brain. And it works.

So. WoW was a good thing because now it’s easier for MMO companies to find the monies. But it’s a dream with short legs.

—

Moorgard: But anyway, I question the notion that WoW has a unique market that won’t shift to any other MMO.

Not as an assumption.

It’s a mistake to consider that as an open market.

1- It WAS a mistake thinking that this big market didn’t exist before WoW.

2- It is a mistake NOW to believe that this market is independent from WoW.

BOTH are mistakes. What people think change with the wind. You have to figure out what’s real and what’s perception. The fact that the MMO market grew for everyone is a wrong perception.

With games, I believe a game that is fun, polished, well-marketed, and easily available for purchase and play can absolutely attract WoW players as well as a huge segment of the population that never tried MMOs before.

SURE. But that’s the point.

To be wrong is the assumption that you automatically have WoW’s players and that today the MMO market is easier because there’s a larger public to feed.

The “Vision” isn’t about stealing someone else’s pie. The Vision is anticipating something that isn’t here yet. A successful game has to move past WoW, not behind it.

The product makes the market. First you have the product, then you have the resulting market. The STUPID idea is that there’s a market that can be fed every sort of product just because there’s an implicit larger demand.

What I’m saying is: the market may be slightly bigger due to exposition, but it’s not as big as people say to justify all this enthusiasm and all sort of stupid start ups. It’s a growth, but it’s a growth completely compensated and even overwhelmed by the stronger competition and (relatively) higher standards and expectations.

Making a MMO today isn’t simpler than how it was five years ago. Arguably, it’s HARDER, more risky and likely to fail.

(and I’m done for a while)

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Having fun playing WoW

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The title is appropriate.

Now I’m not anymore so upset of having lost the honor points bonus of the last month. And all those players who ground honor points for two months now see the result: some less fun playing the expansion. The same applies to raiders. You get some fun before, and some less fun after. A compromise.

I’m quite happy of my own. The very first two introductory quests in the Outlands are already offering me upgrades to my relatively crappy gear (and I even did some raidin’). I’m taking this veeeeery slowly so that I can play for a bit longer before hitting the raiding wall again.

But this is also the main topic now. The mudflation. Raph wrote a few things about this. But he talks about the economy, where in WoW this aspect is completely IRRELEVANT. He obviously speaks a bit in general, but WoW has other problems, concretely.

It’s not necessary to make a big list, because WoW’s economy is the one that works better. And it works well because it’s very simple (and we can argue whether this is good or not). It’s all ruled by money sinks and, imho, applied even too diligently. My 60 warrior never got more than 40 gold during his lifetime and I also had to go farming (something that I really despise) in a few cases because I was completely broken and couldn’t even afford repairs. Epic mount? No thanks, I despise buying money more than I despise farming.

What are the main money sinks in WoW? Training skills as you level up, repairs and “maintenance”. Maintenance including all the added money required to support high-end activity such as raiding.

That works. The economy works even too well. But, again, it’s pretty irrelevant for the player. What instead matters in WoW is the CONTENT mudflation. And the content mudflation works on different premises.

Mudflated content (in my own definition) is content whose functions overlap. Two pieces of content have the same function in the game, one is clearly better then the other, and it replaces the other. The result is: content is removed from the game.

Also: path of least resistance. When we have two paths, one is preferred over the other. Such are games.

We design games with content reduction in mind. I already underlined the absurdity of this concept more than two years ago, the week that Blizzard announced the expansion. I also pointed out what was going to happen and why:

The rise of the level cap is a quick “fix”, both in the sense of game-drug and as a functional and effective way to give back to the players that experience that they loved along the way and that faded when they hit the top, when they had to adapt their habits to the bigger raids and guilds. It works basically like the nostalgia. It’s like if you are warped back ten levels without even remembering to have gone through them and have to repeat the experience like if it was the first time. In this genre the possibility to refresh the sense of awe and achievement is definitely something precious and satisfying for the players. So: why not?

While we can argue whether the current content will go or not right in the toilet, what is sure is that the current *progress* will.

We could assume that the players will retain their current gear for most of the hike to 70 but if this is true Blizzard would lose one of the strongest “fun” points: the sense of achievement. In the current game levelling is fun because you acquire new skills, spend talent points, get access to the mount and acquire progessively and constantly new gear. If the next 10 levels become just a grind with each level just giving out higher stats and nothing else, the “magic” would vanish easily and the expansion would finally feel rather dull. A game where you retain the same sword for 10 levels is a game that isn’t fun. So what could happen? Where is the line that will part the brand new level 60 character ready to move to 70 and those other players that have been at 60 for more than one year and collected all sort of powerful items? From my point of view the expansion will HAVE TO replace the gear for *all* the players.

And the implicit contradiction: why we burn and remove content when content production is the bigger problem we have today? Scott Hartsman offered the answer to this:

All of that “database deflated” content is called “shared experiences,” and they’re critical to a game’s success in the era in which they’re relevant. In the long run it loses value. That’s a given.

However, it’s absolutely critical to have it there in the short term, in order to get a game to the point where it can actually lose that value. That’s a problem of success. We should be so lucky to have that content beginning to lose its original value.

What happened in WoW with the expansion? The first result is obvious. It completely erased all the content from level 58 and above. Every instance past BRD is now completely USELESS. And I’m not exaggerating.

In particular. The most useless piece of content of the whole game is now that “tier 0.5” they added about a year ago after all the protests against the raiding game. Completely. Useless.

The point is: the mudflation from the perspective of those who build these kinds of games isn’t THE PROBLEM. The mudflation is THE SOLUTION. Read Raph with this in mind.

P.S.
And if you are a good game designer you would also notice that for a new player the quality of the game is inversely proportional to the mudflation. The more you open the gap between the early and late game, the less players around, the more the solo grind is prolonged.

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Blizzard to offer digital download

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It was discussed these days that Blizzard didn’t offer a digital download of their expansion (I commented this on Brandon’s blog).

Well, they are going to. Or at least I read it and I’m sure. It’s just that these days I read things and then forget where. So go find the link yourself.

Now. If only they offered it in time for the release I could have spared the ~$60 for taxes+shipment of my US copy.

Yes. $60 for importing, $40 for the actual game.

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New server caps

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I collected some statistics about the new server caps on WoW as I anticipated in one of the previous posts. I wish I could quote the original plan where they wrote in detail about these new server caps but it is gone (and here you hear me swear, as it always happen when I cannot fucking find what I’m searching). This is taken out the server split FAQ:

Are any other measures being taken to avoid forcing a realm split?

Yes. One measure is to raise the player caps for all realms when The Burning Crusade launches. This will be possible in part because of the hardware upgrades that we’ve worked to put in place since the original launch.

So I went checking how many players they allowed on a single server.

Before this expansion the server caps were set between 3200-3400 players. Counting alliance + horde. From my new surveys it looks like Blizzard didn’t go all that far. The new cap seems to be between 3700-3800 or so. I’ll run more tests to see more precisely if little more or little less, but that number should be already fairly correct.

So we have a +500 players more or less. On the Silvermoon server there was a queue as I logged in to take the numbers and when I was done the queue was still there. I counted 2600 alliance characters and 1200 horde. So around 3800 overall.

About the two new races: usually 2/3 of Draenei are Shamans, and 2/3 of Blood Elves are Paladins.

I would post all the graphs but they aren’t all that interesting. The level 60 wall is starting to cascade on levels 61, 62 and 63. While the graph only hints at some more activity between level 1 and 20, but still very flat. Only around 1/4, 1/5 of players are starting new characters, while the others are storming the Outlands in the race to 70.

EDIT: I ran more polls today and I can count between 3750-3850 players. So the new cap is probably 3800.

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Forrest Gump dings 70

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So the first level 70 was a french player on euro Archimonde. I have already reported this yesterday on the forums but what I find amusing is the subtext of the whole thing.

It reminds me the scene in Forrest Gump, where he goes running back and forth between the two US coasts. And there are all these people following him like a prophet, waiting for the final revelation. Then he stops, turns and says “I’m pretty tired.”

And here it’s the same. The race to 70. First player worldwide (assuming) to reach the top. And we expect words of wisdom. Something engraved in history.

What will our hero say? What’s the meaning of life?

“je ding”

Priceless.

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I don’t need a blog

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Because he is writing all the right things.

That guy speaks Game Design the right way even when simply commenting daily play in WoW. And it’s always interesting.

His way of talking freely about everything without any fear or worry is also refreshing. Or maybe it’s just because he didn’t learn yet that devs “cannot have nice things”.

I hope it’s not a temporary thing.

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