5/24/08

Devs just can't win

I remember playing Vanguard, which has a very large open world with 3 continents and many starting points. There were a vocal group of players who didn't like this style. It took too long to travel and to group, they'd say. The population was thinned out.

I'm playing Age of Conan now, and the world is not as huge nor is it as open. It is a more focused experience. There is a vocal group of players who are decrying this. It's a game on rails and too small, everyone goes through the same places, they say.

I tend to lean towards the Vanguard style, but I can play and appreciate different games for what they are.

I have to sympathize with game devs. No matter what decisions they make regarding a game world, it seems that a sizable portion of gamers will dislike what they do. What is condemned in one game is yearned for in another.

MMO players have to be one of the toughest groups of 'fans' I've ever seen ;)


Nerf the Archers!

4/20/08

Anyone else notice this historical trend? tongue

This post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit of a rant, a bit of a pet peeve.

Archers always get nerfed.

Over on the Conan boards, they are having a PvP weekend with NDA sorta kina lifted. First observation: Rangers are wayyyyy overpowered! Day 2 of the weekend, Rangers are nerfed and 'are hitting people like jello' according to one Ranger. lol!

In AO, Agents (a sniper class) got their opening shot nerfed hugely early on (PvP balance). I was an Agent and I remember the howls.

In Horizons (yeah, a PvE game!), Scouts were the first class to get nerfed if I remember right- I heard some very bitter Scouts in chat. By the way, for those who would think a PvE game would be nerf-free, Horizons is the counterexample. I remember class arguments on the boards and in-game (I know it sounds weird).

In DAoC, the archer classes were feared in the Old Frontier early on. They got nerfed. Well, OK, stealth & ranged is pretty powerful. I think they buffed them up again later.

Vanguard Rangers were an early victim of the nerf bat. This game was another 'beneficiary' of trying to balance PvE with PvP play, which means- nerf the guy with the bow!

It just seems like it goes on and on. You think devs would pay a little closer attention to archers by now grin

Interestingly, archers seem to be more nerf-worthy than casters.

 

"Will it Survive?"

1/23/08

http://vnboards.ign.com/pirates_of_the_burning_sea_general_board/b23032/106065150

I've noticed a trend in the last couple of years- posts asking "will this game survive" soon after release.

Remembering back to the day of the Big 3 (AC, EQ, UO)...can't remember posts like this.

Is this due to more niche type titles?

Is the very fact of having a variety of MMOs to pick from dissolving the past unity of the player base?

Are long-term MMO fans simply getting burned out on the genre?

Are players getting more critical?

Is this a good thing?

 The Triumph of Levels and Classes over Skills and Sandboxes

1/11/08

Anyone else disappointed by this outcome?

Having levels and classes make for straightforward recognizable play. "He's a level 25 Cleric, he's what we need." It also is constraining. Level 25 Clerics are usually very similar to each other. But this setup is very comprehensible for players, and I suspect that is why it is predominant. It also appeals to the show-off factor- "I'm max level, noob!"

A skill-based system allows for open-ended character design. This gives great freedom, but it is not conveniently recognizable- "What's your skills again?...oh." and even with the myriad of choices in what you can be, often there are certain templates (i.e. tank mage) that end up being de facto 'classes'.

Question: are level/class based games a natural outcome of what players want, or are they due to the success of past titles using this mechanic? Are they due to ease of design for devs? Will we see any big skill-based sandbox games soon? I hope so, if for no other reason than variety.

Missions, not Quests 

5/25/07 

I'm thinking of missions as they were done in AO and SWG.

The standard questing system is done like this:

NPCs are scattered throughout the world that players find and speak to, gaining a quest from them.  This leads to the player base having different quest lists due to players being in different locations.  It may take one player longer to get a quest than another, and by the time the second player gets the quest the first player may have done the quest.  The result- different people looking for groups for different quests.  As a whole, lots of people are looking to group- but with many different quests as the objective, that drastically cuts down on the available number of players that need what you need.  

Many looking to group, but few having the same quests.  Travel time might be an issue to get people together who want to do the same thing.  Players are unhappy.  Grouping games, what a terrible idea!

Now, what if a group could form and then go get a quest to do?  AO and SWG had mission terminals that both individuals and groups could go to and get a mission for all to do.  This avoids trying to match up players in different locations trying to group for a particular quest they already have- in effect, the group gets the quest after they form.  They can pick up multiple missions, and stay together as long as they want and have a good time gaining experience.

In a fantasy game, this can be handled in different ways- say there are taskmasters at an outpost or town for a certain level range that both solo players and groups can visit to get a solo or group quest, with or without the use of instances.  This would allow for both solo and group play, as well as satisfying casual players- they could do a single solo or group quest and then log off.  Perhaps one could choose the level of difficulty of the quest- easy, average, challenging, hard, each to be awarded with varying amounts of loot and experience.  Easy quests may involve objectives that are close to the taskmaster that won't take long.  Hard quests would be like mini-raids, with the group needing to go through several steps while traveling to a distant goal to gain lots of experience and the chance for very good loot.  There could even be PvP quests to take on other groups that have the same type of quest, flagging each group to fight each other.

This system would have the beneficial effect of allowing players to play whatever style they wish- solo, group, casual, hardcore, PvP- and would allow instant grouping of players with each other.  This removes the barriers of having to match up quest lists and having to travel to meet up with others who have similar quests.  Players would select their own content in whatever style they wish.

In Defense of Grinding 

5/23/07 

I'm to the point where a plain old grinding game is starting to sound good.

Yep, call it camping, dungeon-crawling, grinding, hunting, whatever you like.  I don't mean grinding as in taking forever to level, I mean it in the sense of just going out and killing things, without a long list of quests to tell you where to go and what to do.  And more importantly, who to do it with.  

We are in the middle of an era of quest-centric games.  Games that offer advancement predominantly through quests are seen as bringing richness to the storyline of a game, they make advancement interesting, they eliminate the drudgery of grinding the same mobs to level.  They are often casual-friendly: do one quest and log out.  Lots of solo quests seem to be a trend- WoW and LOTRO, for instance.

But.  Quest-centered games that have no incentive for players to repeat quests- most of them don't- end up with lots of people looking for groups for various different quests and not wanting to just group and go kill things.  Grouping becomes more of a chore: what group fits my particular need?  Are there enough people around that want to do this?  Players that want quest X, Y or Z- maybe you want quest A, B or C- will leave a group when quest X is accomplished, looking for quest Y to be accomplished in the next short-term group.  Since players all have different lists of quests they need, the community is fragmented.  Groups are temporary, as is the community.  It can be a pain finding a group for the quest you need.  Hey, that tank was really good, too bad he wants to do different quests than you, guess you may not group with him again for a long time, if ever.  

Some may conclude that grouping sucks when it is a bigger hassle than it needs to be.

Maybe pre-ToA DAoC did it right- plenty of camping/hunting/dungeon-crawling, very easy to find groups to do that, with epic quest lines that were useful but the game did not center around the quest, quests were secondary, they were even optional in some player's minds.  The ToA expansion, with its various Master Level steps, artifacts, and scrolls to farm led to the fragmenting of the classic DAoC long-term hunting group, the backbone of a good in-game community.  Everyone wanted to do one of a hundred narrowly-focused activities instead of just grouping up, gaining exp and loot, and having a blast.

Which game is easier to find a group in?  One where you are grouping for one of many particular quests, or a particular step in a quest sequence, or a game where there is a lot of places to go and kill challenging mobs for experience that everyone in the game around your level can do?

If there is plenty of content to hunt, or camp, or to dungeon-crawl through, maybe 'grinding' will be less of a dirty word and bring back easy grouping where people will just band together to go out and smack down nasty mobs.  And just maybe this will bring back groups that stick together for more than 15 minutes to do something, and even have a real community as a side-effect.

 The Demise of RP Servers in MMORPGs

 5/13/07

The most recent MMORPGs- Vanguard and LOTRO- have no official RP servers.

LOTROs RP community designated Landroval as an unofficial RP server and publicized it that way when the inevitable 'are there any RP servers?' questions started popping up on message boards.

Vanguard has an 'RP-preferred' server. This flagged the Florendyl server for RPers to congregate on, but there is no difference between this server and any other PvE server (as many non-RP people who played there and not on one of the many other non-RP-preferred servers delighted to point out).

Gone are the days when RP servers were a standard feature in many games. Of course many players attracted to RP servers tended to be those who didn't necessarily wish to RP, but were looking for a slightly more mature community without the typical witty "IPwndURmama" type of names. Despite the occasional 'RP Nazi' personality, many RPers are quite helpful to others.

I doubt that this is due to a lack of demand. In every game I've played on a RP server, that server typically had a higher population than similar non-RP servers. My guess is that RP servers tend to be too labor-intensive; having to deal with many name petitions, behavior violations, and so on. That requires staff and staff require paychecks.

Personally, I'd like to see some kind of premium server- I'd have no problems paying more to play there- that would either be an RP server or a Mature server. I think a good amount of people would pay more to have a game experience that is more immersive than the typical Chuck Norris joke roundup on global chat or having names running around like "DarthCheney". I would suspect that they could have player-volunteers that could do much of the grunt work for the staffers- sending in chatlogs, screenshots and such. Perhaps even try a pre-screened name for one's character, with a 24-hour approval process. It would be worth a shot. If you repeatedly violate the servers' rules, you would be effectively locked out of logging in to that particular server and could play on any of the many others available in the game.

There are plenty of different types of servers for people to play among the community they prefer- PvP, FFA PvP, PvE and so on- having no RP/Mature servers is a failure to serve a sizeable portion of one's game population, particularly as the average gamer grows older.

Different game mechanics, different types of community 

5/9/07 

As has been discussed here before, game mechanics can have profound effects on the types of community experiences players have. Often there are debates framed in a soloing vs. grouping context, though there are other ways of looking at things, such as a questing/grinding axis, and a focused experience vs. a wealth of things to do.

Questing in general is seen as a good way to make a MMO interesting, whereas grinding is often looked at in a pejorative way. Sure, there are fans of grinding, but killing hundreds of orcs or boars sounds much less interesting to the average player than going on a series of interesting quests that engage one in the lore of the game.

Recently I have been playing LOTRO. LOTRO like many recent games is quest-centered; grinding there generally gives you less experience than questing- the quickest and most efficient way to level is to do lots of quests, hence that is what most people do. Some quests are soloable and people do them solo. Other quests require groups. My first grouping quest was a quick affair, it was over and done in 10 minutes. We found each other on the LFG channel, fought our way to the mob that needed killing, and the group was done. There were a stream of different quests being advertised on the LFG channel. Nobody stuck around to see if anyone needed this or that other quest, they just took off, probably looking for another temporary group for another quest. I haven't grouped with those players since.

The thing about quest-focused play is that yes it is engaging, good quests are memorable, but it often is restrictive from a social standpoint. If you are on say part 5 of a quest series and other players are doing part 9, you may not get much interest among others in aiding you in your goal. You may play with a great player who has other quests to do that you've done or vice versa. This situation is not very conducive to long-term grouping or anything more than a temporary community. It fragments the player base.

I remembered back in my DAoC days, back in the original version. In Hibernia fins groups were one of the better ways to level up for the final 10 levels or so. A full group of 8 players would fight a group of 3-5 purple-con finliaths, who would give lots of experience. it took some coordination and some skill, however. You needed people to do their jobs. Group wipes did happen, but were often seen as the price of doing business. In a competent group you would gain lots of experience. You could make a name for yourself by being a good player. I was a Warden who was often in demand there; I'd often have to go /anonymous if I was doing other things and didn't want to have to turn groups down there. Groups would stay together for hours at a time. On weekends the same group might go literally all weekend with different players dropping out and joining at different times.



There were 3 different fins spawns in the Cursed Forest; there often would be waiting lists to get in a fins group. A community built up around fins groups. After one hit level 50, it wasn't uncommon to aid others there. It was a rite of passage. There were other ways to level up of course, but this was one of the more popular and efficient ways.

Was it boring killing hundreds of fins? Yes, it certainly sometimes was. But it made for a solid community. There would be socializing in the down time between group pulls. This was much more of a community experience. I remember being in great groups where people would say "I should have logged 2 hours ago but the exp is amazing, you guys rock!"

After the Trials of Atlantis expansion was released, this community fragmented. ToA offered a rich selection of quests, master levels and artifact components to farm for. This was a significant content boost and gave players lots to do, but it also divided up the player base. One player might be farming scroll 2 for a certain artifact while another player needed a particular step of a particular master level. No longer was there one community looking to gain exp or loot, there was lots of things to gain or accomplish, but that meant that you might only have a small range of players at any one time wanting to work towards what you wanted to gain. People would comment that things were different now with all of the things to do; the community was scattered.

This isn't to say everyone should grind, or to promote one type of play over another. It isn't a plea for having only a small number of things to do to promote one big community (though that might make for a more community-focused game and I would like to see one). However, it does suggest that in promoting one type of play to the virtual exclusion of another there could be long-term effects upon a game's community. Maybe supporting both questing and grinding would lend different types of social experiences that would be to the ultimate benefit of both the players and the game. Community isn't just players deciding to create one, it is about responding to game mechanics in efficient ways as well.

Grouping in the post-WoW world  

5/9/07

On groupng...

No one was a bigger fan of DAoC than I was.  I liked grouping for years, had a blast.  That was in the context of a solid community.

Grouping these days takes place more in the absence of a general community, it is more of a goal-driven exercise.  Maybe I have rose-colored glasses on in thinking back to the 'old days', but often grouping is short-term and not that relaxed now.  Forget about roleplay most of the time, unless you are in a guild that makes it a point to do that.

Quest-centered games end up with those LFG who are looking to do a particular quest and not others and therefore groups tend to be temporary affairs; back in the grinding days of yore, groups were more about grouping for hours and leveling at a camp or in a dungeon together.  That probably fostered more of a general community.  Of course how a game divides experience for grouping makes a difference too- are there group exp bonuses?  But it does look like quest-centered games promote a mix and match patchwork of temporary grouping that is not conducive to much else than getting that one quest done.

So I am sort of evolving with the environment around me and am becoming more of a solo kind of player.  At this point I would like to see solo quests that can take me all the way to level cap.  I think grouping should give one more access to better loot and more content, but it would be nice to have the option to make it eventually as a soloer too and not have to deal with grouping issues that are much more short-term in focus than community-driven.

 

 Global chat- the sweet spot

5/8/07

Global chat channels are an expected feature of current games.  On the positive side they are a quick way to get questions answered and a convenient way to LFG.  On the negative side they often have too many people talking at once for meaningful conversation and have a sense of anonymity that give any moron a soapbox and a large audience.  The last thing many people want to hear is a political discussion on global chat while trying to escape from such subjects for a couple hours in an MMO.  There is a reaon why there is an "I survived Barrens chat" WoW t-shirt out there.



In years past there weren't global chat channels.  UO had limitied means to chat with anyone not within sight of your character and still had a thriving community.  Certainly one has the option of turning off global chat, but then one misses out on an element of community and a useful means of finding information.

I think the sweet spot for global chats were Alliance chats in DAoC.  DAoC (at least when I played it years ago) had no global chats.  They had /broadcast in the capital cities, but that was it.  Guild and Alliance chats were the ways one talked to others at a distance.  Alliances were voluntary groups of like-minded guilds that banded together for the main purpose of having /alliance chat, sort of a global chat for people on a similar wavelength.  An Alliance might be of PvP guilds, or RP guilds, or simply of guilds that got along well with each other or had other things in common. 

This had two benefits- you could talk to people whom you often had more in common with than the general populace chattering on a standard global anonymous chatgroup, and Alliance chat was usually seen as something that would not be abused- in other words, if someone was being stupid or being an annoyance on /alliance you could contact the member's guild leader and have it dealt with.  This encouraged accountability and community at the same time.

Alliance chats in DAoC were good ways to have global chats with accountability and specificity towards the type of community you wished to belong to, instead of drowning in a single busy annoying global chat.

Perhaps alliance-type focused chats are the sweet spot in global chats.  Say a game starts out with a noob channel for those to use until level 10, then you graduate to a selection of chat channels.  Say you can pick from OOC, RP, PvP, General etc.  Having specific focused global chats will cut down on large amounts of chat spam where it is hard to follow conversations or avoid annoying types of chat and focus one's chat experience in certain types of communities that one enjoys.  However, voluntary chat channels like /alliance chat offer accountability while retaining the usefulness of global chat.  Those were my favorite global chat experiences.

 

The Age of Casual Soloing

 4/28/07

From the VN LOTRO board:

Topic: General Population - Why is eveyrone so Solo centric
http://vnboards.ign.com/lotr_online_general_board/b5042/102605839

Reading that thread has convinced me that grouping games are pretty much gone as a significant influential playstyle. Not to say that there will not be niche-status grouping games, but it looks to me that the driving force is the solo/casual crowd. WoW brought this to light in a big way with its huge success (regardless of the endgame). DDO was a grouping game effort that did not do well- some would argue that content and design were factors there as well. Vanguard was to harken back to the old-school grouping experience of the original EQ but I would argue its playability issues and unfinished release status were greater factors in keeping its numbers down- though as those factors lessen, I think we will see more and more requests for solo and casual content in a niche-level population.

My first MMO was UO which was primarily though not exclusively a solo experience; I spent the most time in DAoC, a group-oriented game. I remember spending several hours at a time doing such things as Master Level raids. There was a good community there, but since leaving in 2004 I've not seen another experience anywhere similar to it. I've played with people who were part of that grouping game tight community in DAoC in other games since, but it's like a whole different setting now- everyone is pretty much off doing their thing. That's a big change in just a few years. 

It's interesting to think back on DAoC's group play, how it was taken for granted then.  Grouping and raiding for hours on end.  Did it get o;d at times?  Certainly.  Trying to kill the ML7 boss mob for 90 minutes or so and having him down to 85% health because we hadn't figured out the trick yet.  Bad groups?  Sure there were.  Grouping taking too long to get together, falling apart, wasting time?  Yes, at the end of my time there that got to me.   Good groups?  Yes, some of the best memories from the game come from that.  Fighting one's way down to the depths of the Barrows in Albion and fighting one's way out- a good feat.   It was a great community.   Nowadays the very thought of grouping for hours repulses many.

Then there was WoW, which in leveling up was a predominantly solo/duo experience.  Grouping actually lessened experience, there was no group bonuses like in DAoC.   The community was poor overall, plenty of jerks to boot.  When you don't need others that much, there's little consequences.  There wasn't many great memories from there.  I wouldn't doubt it was because of the lack of community.

Nowadays it seems that much in the way of grouping in recent games is very temporary and goal-driven, something to be done only when one cannot solo. It is something to get over and done with. To me, this impacts upon the community experience in games, which seems to be lessening. The more community lessens, the more I like to solo and duo. It's sort of a self-reinforcing experience. 

 I think the best of all worlds is to have a game that scales to the user.  You should be able to solo or duo all the way to end game eventually, but grouping should give one greater rewards and experience for those that choose to do so.

An interesting essay on this phenomenon is:

Alone Together in World of Warcraft? 

by Nicolas Ducheneaut

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/02/alone_together_.html

It will be interesting to see how upcoming releases such as Age of Conan and Warhammer handle this issue. Gods & Heroes is bringing an interesting approach to the situation- NPC minion hirelings that form a group with you- in effect, you are your own group as you rise in levels. 

Update, 4/30/07:

http://vnboards.ign.com/mmorpg_concepts_and_design_discussion_forum/b22584/102618658

 The thread that this idea is attached to is getting some interesting responses.  There are people who think grouping should be rewarded as it takes more time and effort, and there are people who think soloing should be just as viable as grouping.  I happen to think that the latter view misses the point that the path of least resistance will mostly be taken, so if soloing and grouping are treated the same, that by default means soloing will be the playstyle chosen.   An interesting twist is the observation that games post-DAoC have mainly been quest-centric:  DAoC involved a lot of hunting,  camping (though mechanics somewhat limited it), and dungeon crawling.  There were epic quest lines, but quests were much less prominent (in the classic game).  Games such as WoW, EQ2, DDO, Vanguard et al are very quest-oriented; the majority of one's experience can quite possibly come from questing.  This takes the focus off of grinding groups that stayed together for a long time due to good experience (and may not accept someone who has had crappy behavior in the past) and places the focus on short-term temporary 'get this one quest done and bye' groups. 

 Add to this the emphasis on taking out down time and limiting travel time, which used to be time to socialize...and  community-friendliness is rapidly disappearing.

Solo and casual prevail, grouping and community slip.