MMO Gaming

Over the past couple of days I’ve noticed several posts in my feed reader covering betas, leaks of information (beta or otherwise privileged information) and even a bit about NDAs and breaking them. I’ll probably reiterate here some of what I said in an earlier post, but that’s okay, the things I said then are just as true now.

First I’d like to address an issue with several posts/comments I’ve read about the topic. I’ll group all these people together and let’s just say that these people believe in the “magic patch theory” of game betas. The “magic patch theory” is something I just made up, feel free to use it as you will. Basically the Magic Patch Theory boils down to the fact that certain people believe that at some point during the beta testing period there will be a patch which completely changes and fixes all the problems of the game.

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Back to this talk of tutorials, or lack thereof. I promised this time to talk a little bit about how WoW relates to other games with tutorials, like Tabula Rasa or City of Heroes/Villains. Before I do that though I want to talk about two other games, briefly, and how they handle tutorials.

First up a little talk about Lord of the Rings Online. I won’t lie and pretend I like the game. I just don’t, and I apologize to all fans of the game, but it just bores me to tears. That said, it does have an interesting introduction to the game. You start off by yourself in a given zone (depending on race chosen at the beginning.) This is the introduction to the game and they have you do the normal set of tutorial “stuff” before moving on.

The next thing you do, though, is not move on into the big open world. You instead move on to a larger, but still contained, area. This area has other players but is not quite the wide open world. This is an interesting approach. It would perhaps be more interesting (and more beneficial) for a game that was heavily focused around PvP, allowing players to get a bit of experience before thrusting them into the open. Either way, it is worth mentioning if only to show another way of handling new user experience in game design.

I also want to talk briefly about EVE and it’s tutorial. The first time I loaded up EVE on the 14 day free trial I didn’t even manage to make it past the tutorial. I had been playing the game for over 3 hours. That, to me, was a huge problem. If in 3 hours I could not finish the tutorial (and, judging by the bar that showed me how far along I was, not even halfway done with it) then I did not care enough to stick through more.

Later, when I purchased EVE for myself (an odd story given my dislike of the 14 day trial, but that is a tale for another time) I found that the tutorial was significantly shortened and simplified. I finished the whole thing in about an hour. They then let me loose to do things on my own. Except, instead of teaching me everything I needed to know to play the game well, they taught me only the basics. New tutorials would pop up as I came across new things or wanted to use new features.

This idea works particularly well in EVE given the amount of depth and difficulty the game has getting into it. Being bombarded with a multi-hour tutorial is annoying, but gradually increasing my knowledge when I am requiring that information is useful. It is a thoughtful balance that was struck.

Now then, on to WoW. If WoW is any indication of how to properly design a game for the masses (and it may or may not be) then having any sort of tutorial area is a waste of good designer time. Why? WoW has no tutorial. What you do at level 1 you continue to do until you hit level 70. You talk to people with the ! marker over there head. You turn in when they have the ? marker above their head. You kill the bad guys to collect whatever it is they want. There is no tutorial (there are the new player pop-ups but I’ll treat that as a separate case.)

The game that needs no tutorial has the most players. WoW haters, and probably several lovers also would point this out as a bad thing. It shows the game is too simple, too easy, and essentially made for the lowest common denominator. I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that stance, but I would have to question whether this is a bad thing or not. Certainly Blizzard, swimming in more money than they could have imagined, doesn’t feel bad about designing a game open for anyone and everyone.

On the other side of the WoW coin though is an issue common to my time in WoW that I have noticed lessened in every other game I played. Group dynamics. In WoW grouping is not so much about finding a group that is good as it is about finding a group that doesn’t suck. In many other games, the fact that there is a learning curve, no matter how slight, means that people better understand how to work together, or at least slow down enough so as not to get themselves and others killed. Many WoW players seem unable to understand this. There is no learning curve to the game and its pick up and play ability makes it extremely fun and also extremely frustrating when dealing with players who are new, or have not taken the time to learn.

As a matter of quality, I guess it is hard to say which is better. From a purely business perspective Blizzard would seem to be the clear choice, but from a design perspective each option has its ups and downs. The question is, will other games be able to see significant success with different methods if WoW-like quality existed?

World of warcraft, wow, game design, tutorials, eve online, lord of the rings online, mmo, mmog, mmorpg, mmo gaming

I’m not a frequent commenter on the many blogs I read. This is not because I don’t have something to say most of the time, this is more because I have what people may call a “commenting problem.” You see, I am not a happy and healthy individual like most of you. I have a disease. It is, as of now, still unnamed and until I get my medical degree (which, as I understand it, would require me to actually go to medical school) shall remain so.

My problem is quite simple. I can’t just comment and forget. In fact, I can’t just comment now and check back later where I commented to see if there are any responses. I comment and then I get stuck thinking. I think about all the questions I raised, what questions they raise, what questions others may raise, the arguments or disagreements others may have and then formulate responses and answers to all of these things. And then I repeat that process over and over again in my mind for days before curling myself into the fetal position in the corner of my room.

The corner of my room is cold, and I don’t much enjoy it so you can imagine my dismay when I made a comment over at Cameron’s site. Now I am stuck with a partially designed game in my head and I can’t stop thinking about all the other questions and all the other ways to design this game.

I’m just going to throw it down here. Things will probably be disjointed. Then again, if you read here regularly this will probably not come as a shock to you. First a quick rundown of what I said over there, then on to my ideas.

There are plenty of ways in which an MMORTS can be done without balance issues. At some point you have to sacrifice a bit of realism to attain them, perhaps, but then again, if a person is going to complain that much about realism in a game then perhaps they have other more pressing issues they need to attend to.

In relation to limited resources this does not have to be the case. All resources can be unlimited as they are in every MMO I’ve ever played. More specifically these resources would just have to have rarities attached to them so “spawn� rates on rarer nodes are longer/there are less of them.

This would not be unlike the way that Silver veins in WoW are a rare “spawn� of tin veins.

The problem with unlimited resources based on rarity then instantly becomes one of balance. One guild/person can take over a map and simply hog all the resources, no matter how rare they may be he still ends up getting them every time they appear.

This also brings about the “new player problem� in which new players are able to be beaten on by the simply better prepared, longer time players who have built up bases.

Balance is the key here, specifically balance of the resource and “technology� economy. In most RTS games there are levels of “technology� which can be upgraded. That is you can upgrade a level 1 “tower� to a level 2 “outpost� which costs resources but has higher “HP� and does more damage.

In an MMORTS you simply make this technology more freely available to new players over time.

To give an example, let’s assume there is a high end group/guild/person who has built up a strong base and continuously researches the newest technologies. As time passes this technology would simply become part of day to day life not just for the people under control of that kingdom, but for the entire world. This would mean that the resource cost for these “level 2″ buildings would decrease and would immediately be available to all new players as well without having to build their level 1 counterparts because the technology is no longer new to them.

In this way new players can build bases, if not equal to, at least enough so that they can reasonably hold on long enough to build themselves up further to truly compete with the higher end players.

The problem of resource herding still exists by one group that has a pre-dominant control of the map, but it is not so large anymore and can also be dealt with in any number of ways. One such way is raw materials need to be sold to “NPC� manufacturers that can turn it into the workable resource for a price. And, only raw materials can be traded/sold amongst players.

In this way you create a circle that traps even the strongest kingdoms into needing other players to control parts of the map so they can sell between themselves to have money to build better bases.

Another way of alleviating new player issues would be to have a new game tutorial which plays itself like a single mission of a single player RTS. In this tutorial mission new players are not only introduced to the game, but depending on how well they complete it are given bonus raw materials at the start of the game. These bonuses can be gradually increased as time goes on so that a newer player who does the tutorial at the same level as an older player will start the game off with more resources than the older player did.

This handling of matters does not interfere with the older player, who has had extra time to play and has far surpassed what the new player has gained by the “bonus bump� from the tutorial and the new player is now given a fair chance at building up a base.

Anyway, that’s just what popped into my head on how to fix some of the issues brought up. There are plenty of other issues to deal with, but all of them can be overcome if a little bit of time is put into designing the game properly. I don’t think an MMORTS is doomed to failure if done right. Whether anyone does do it right, however, remains to be seen.

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