MMO Gaming

Earlier I mentioned talking about what makes a mob memorable. Of my top 5 list (fine, top 4, really) what makes those encounters so memorable? Is it the social/community aspect involved in taking down those mobs? Is it the challenge? How do you go about classifying what makes a good mob and what doesn’t?

Considering, of course, that the aspect of socialization as it relates to various encounters (raiding with a guild/friends) isn’t something that one can specifically design for (aside from needing a certain number of people to actually beat it) we’ll focus on some other things that make it worthwhile.

PvP is easier than PvE…to design. I think everyone can admit this. Let’s face it, a lot more work is involved with designing an encounter with specific AI, abilities, etc. than it is to say “here are some guidelines to follow, now fight.” PvE is perhaps more accurately PvD, player vs. Designer. It’s a lot more work, on the designers side, for encounters against artificial creatures than it is for other players. It would seem fairly likely that this is the reason we see trash mobs at all. Ask a typical PvE player (specifically raiders, but anyone who’s grouped really) about whether or not they like trash mobs and they’ll probably say no, but if it’s a slowdown to progression that is is good for the designers who can spend more time crafting the next set of enemies. All this though, is an aside to the real question, what makes a memorable fight?

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I mentioned yesterday about playing HL2 a bit and how it is a refreshing change of pace compared to the current and by the looks of things future, MMOs. It got me thinking about what was different and one of the things, among many possible choices, was suspense. Half-Life excels at creating a suspenseful atmosphere, visually speaking places can look creepy and dark, the music perfectly sets the tone and constantly keeps your heart racing for the fear of some monster popping out of nowhere. And, oh yeah, monsters can actually pop out of seemingly nowhere.

Why isn’t this ever done in MMOG’s? Is it an impossibility? I can’t imagine why, from a design standpoint, it would be. It seems like, from the designers perspective rather than have enemies who will pop out of places they would rather just populate the world and let it be. Strictly speaking this is probably much easier than setting up some encounters to scare the crap out of your customers by having mobs pop out in front of you as you are sneaking your way around, but for the sake of fun it would add a lot.

I’m not saying every mob should be like this, that just takes the suspense away, but having some mobs do this would be a great addition. Allow for more dynamic interactions between mob and player. Yes, AI is probably one of the most difficult things to program, but giving your game a good AI can greatly increase the chance a person will continue to play your game. Set up mobs that do more than auto-attack you as you auto-attack them, change it up. And please, give me a scare every now and then.

Unfortunately people’s opinions are so varied that it is hard to try and decide what is “perfect” for people. However, I think you can make a reasonable attempt at developing something good that will reach a large audience.

I mentioned a while back about how to make a good MMO. You know, the one with the letters and nothing else. Well, there was a topic over on Guild Cafe about what you would have in your perfect MMO, so I went ahead and replied with a few little things I wanted to say, but then thought I’d like to more fully flesh these ideas out over here. I’m thinking I may touch on these early next week in more depth, but I wanted to quote my post now. Feel free to ask any questions before I get ready to write the post completely otherwise I’m sure I’ll be missing things.

Setting
Multiple. Essentially taking place along various moments in the game universe’s time-line. The Isaac Asimov book The End of Eternity gives the best depiction I can think of in relation to what I’m referring to.

Advancement
Again, multiple. Various ways to advance including a PvP-centric way along with a PvE-centric way. Crafting/building is also a form of advancement in itself, such that if a player wants to be a merchant he does not necessarily have to still go about leveling up/increasing stats/etc. Something like what EQ2 has with their being separate levels for crafting vs. adventuring, except there wouldn’t be the whole level/xp thing at all, and you wouldn’t have to increase both of them if you only wanted to play one.

PvP
PvP isn’t forced, but encouraged, and it isn’t FFA but it does allow the chance for people of one faction to attack their own other players. This is accomplished through various PvP venues, such as world objectives/control points, political struggle in the game world (rioting/revolutions, that sort of thing.) Also keep in ideas like an Arena style PvP outlet and perhaps even instanced PvP areas as well for certain places.

Property
Players can build up and own many things. Guild Halls, houses, shops, etc. Not true for every city, but many areas that start out as maybe small towns or villages can be built up over time and become thriving metropolises.

I’m not sure I’m liking this. Thanks to a poster on the MMORPG.com forums (again today, crazy) I found this little gem. Particularly important is the following quote:

Austin, Texas-based NCsoft North America, for instance, is planning — for the first time — to sell and insert ads into its popular online multi-player games such as “Lineage,” “Guild Wars” and “City of Heroes,” as well as into its forthcoming fantasy game “Tabula Rasa.”

“We’re really intrigued by it,” said Dorothy Ferguson, NCsoft North America’s vice president of sales and marketing. “It has the potential to increase (revenues), but it’s really also about enhancing the game-playing experience.”

I’m not sure I’m liking where this is heading. Not so much the idea of ads in games, I’m not completely against that, but I don’t know if I can justify $15/month cost plus deal with having ads inside the game world. I think you can have ads that work seamlessly within the game world, but I also think that because a company is doing that they are obligated to pass on the cost savings to the consumer. Arbitrarily charging more money and sticking ads in a game isn’t the idea at all.

I’ll have to wait and see what happens.

ads, advertisment, in-game ads, ncsoft, tabula rasa, lineage, city of heroes, city of villains, coh, cov, cox

What follows is a double rant. Technically speaking, a rant on two generally different subjects that just happen to be mildly related. This being the case, I’ve combined them into one rant because I am lazy that way.

Now then, on to it. Darren decided to put up a post about Age of Conan and it’s sometimes lackluster reception by people. The argument here is that there is finally a mature game coming out and adults, who claim they don’t want to deal with the hassles of a WoW-esque community, aren’t biting that much.

The comments pretty much sum up all the problems with that. The world of Conan is filled with 2 things: Sex, and Violence. I’m not saying that’s all there is too the lore, or that it is a shallow experience or that it doesn’t touch on other issues, but that is what Funcom is selling this game as. Come check out our game filled with sex and violence. And people are curious as to why the adult community isn’t impressed? Here’s a hint, if I am going to have a mature conversation with someone, it probably isn’t about either of those two things. That appeals to young boys, and that is, sadly, the market they will get (because hey, the majority of parents don’t give a crap what there kids are playing and don’t bother to check.)

This brings me to my general rant on the fact that game rating is based on a stupid version of movie ratings. The rating system needs to be completely re-written so people understand it. Better yet, use movie ratings and judge games and movies on the same scale. This game is going to get an “M” rating. “M” being, of course, “Mature.” Sorry, but that’s a misnomer. I have yet to see a mature “M” rated game. What I see is games whose content is based on things you don’t want a certain age group to see. Which is fine, but let’s not label something foolishly.

As a side point to all this, MMO gamers complain about whatever community they happen to be a part of (WoW’s, Warhammer’s, AoC’s, etc.) so let’s just face it, most people are asses who don’t deserve to waste space on this planet with their nonsense. Because these people undoubtedly play games, every community sucks (if you think your community is good you are simply not playing with all the possible people.)

Anyway, back on topic, whatever that topic was. Right, so, I think the rating of “R” is far more accurate a description of what we want to say. Restricted. You can’t see this because you haven’t spent enough time on this planet yet. Unless your parents say so, of course.

So, what it boils down to is this. Don’t show me a rating and say “Look, it’s for mature adults” when it isn’t. It’s for the 18-25 year old crowd, most people will tell you, these aren’t the mature adults of the world.

age of conan, mature, m rating, mature rating, common sense gamer

Or it will be soon. It seems Auto Assault is going to be closing up shop come the end of August. For all the information check out the story listed on their site or the MMORPG.com story which has a bit more information.

From a business standpoint, this honestly doesn’t bother me. In fact, I am kind of surprised it lasted over a year as it didn’t ever seem to have many people playing it. Still, it was kind of odd seeing this announcement on the PlayNC page just two weeks ago. I’m not saying it was a hasty decision by any means but it just seems odd to go about normally and announce new content that will never be seen.

Just my take anyway.

plaync, auto assault, net devil, game closing, shut down, auto assault closing, auto assault shut down

Economics. That seems to be everyone’s favorite thing to talk about in MMOs. Whether it be how gold buyers/sellers destroy an economy to how crafting should effect it, everyone has an opinion. For the record, I do as well, but that’s not what I want to talk about now. I want to talk politics. Why do we not take this seriously in games? There is almost always some sort of government in these games, why does it take a backseat role to all these other things. Regardless of any views a person has the actual study of politics and government can be quite fascinating, and the way it forces interaction is very interesting. It seems silly, then, to not give it a stronger role in the game worlds.

We pretty much accept that Thrall is the leader of the Orcs…why is he the leader exactly? Or perhaps a better example would be the king of Stormwind…you know, the little kid who’s in charge of everything (because where the actual king is no one seems to know.) Are we to honestly believe that no one is trying to start trouble with a 5 year old as king? Is there no dissent at all? It seems highly unlikely, so why aren’t we allowed to do something about that?

I realize, of course, that the way WoW is built wouldn’t allow for such a thing, but I’m just referring to games in general. We accept that the leaders have to be NPCs, but we say we want more freedom. I think it would be much more interesting if I could become the leader of a faction, but, just like in the real world, it would come with all those hassles and responsibilities.

I don’t know…just thinking out loud.

I don’t understand the whole “sandbox” theory of game design. No, more importantly, I don’t understand why we accept stupid terms like sandbox for what we are looking for in a game. I don’t want a sandbox. Have the people who use this term ever played in an actual sandbox? It sucks. Nothing sticks together, there is absolutely no cohesiveness. Anything you build will fall apart. Why are we willing to accept a game being built with shoddy materials that can’t stand up to real use? I understand where people are going with it, in a sandbox you create the fun, you use your imagination. You are not forced to interact with the object the way it wants you to, you can interact with it on your own terms. That’s great…but sand? Really? The best you could come up with was sand?

Honestly, I don’t want to play in a sandbox where no matter what I do the sand just sits there. I want what I do to matter. I want to be able to change how the world is set up. You all go play in your sandboxes I’ll be working on a virtual world.

sandbox, mmo gaming, mmog, virtual world, game design

So, I don’t really get all that many e-mails related to the blog here. When I do, I feel it is my duty to share them with others. And by share I normally mean mock. I’m not cruel though, so I won’t mention names. At any rate basically this person e-mailed me asking what I thought of WoWHead being bought out by a “gold-selling” company. First, there are a few leaps in logic made. The company that bought them doesn’t sell gold or anything of the like. They at one time owned IGE but that’s entirely different. Essentially what he (or perhaps she, I don’t really know) said was do I think it was okay for them to sell out.

Let me put it to you this way. The deal was for over one million dollars. If a gold selling company came to me on this site and asked if I would advertise for them if they gave me 1000 dollars I’d do it, forget one million. It’s all kind of a moot point as the company doesn’t have anything to do with gold selling, but be serious, if you were offered one million dollars to sell out to actual gold farmers, wouldn’t you do it? And if not, send them my way, I’ll make my million.

As kind of a side point to all this, I don’t often report news. Or I should say, I report news that is vaguely interesting. This buy out is non-news. It’s something that, quite frankly, no one has any right to say anything at all about. If you don’t like it, don’t use the site anymore. I’m sure the site’s creators will smile down on you from their money thrones.

A couple of things that are really just one thing but I’ll mention them separately. Strangelands has a sort of “Design an MMO” thing going on. This week is a topic about mixing genres, which, in case you didn’t realize, is a great idea.

Cuppy had something else to say though. I’ll quote the piece that interests me for the purpose of this post:

When I start a character, I devise stories for them. I come up with where they’ve been and where they want to go. While I play the game, I’m constantly immersing myself in the world and really create a connection between my game character and the environment I’m playing in. I feel that on a roleplaying level, it would be extremely difficult for me to take my high fantasy characters and plop them in the middle of World War II. My little fairy druid would really be out of place in a steam punk environment. So that’s my take.

Now, first off, I understand where she’s coming from. And, I also mean no offense by what I am about to say, but here it is. If you enjoy role-playing, or even if you don’t and you just enjoy the story of the game and come up with a character’s story that you never use, that comment still has a major flaw that you may be able to spot. It assumes that setting makes character. This is a flaw in the way you’ve created your character. A character should transcend the setting he or she is placed in. Don’t get me wrong, moving a character from one setting to another will no doubt cause that character to get some details changed here and there, but the core of the character needs to supersede where that character is. If you cannot simply place your character in another context than your character is not “real” enough to be role-playing with. Character creates story (plot), creates setting. That’s the flow. Anything less than that and the character is not strong enough to stand on it’s own.

I’m sure others will disagree with me or tell me that I’ve been doing it wrong that way, but that’s just my take on it. As for the original Strangelands article…I’m getting to that next.

People need to stop. More specifically, we, MMO gamers, need to stop. The next time I see someone mention how developer X in interview Y really seems to “get it” and how to design an MMO I’m going to go crazy (more so than I am.)

They don’t “get it”. None of them. There is nothing to get. There is no hard and fast rule on how to create a good MMO or a successful one. Developers need to stop talking about how their game will be similar to World of Warcraft and how easy it is to get into. No, it won’t. I don’t want it to be. I want it to be as easy to get into as whatever the hell the name of your game is. I’m not talking about not comparing games to WoW, that’s impossible. I’m talking about making your game stand on it’s own without having to mention WoW. I’m just really frustrated by it. As if each thing you are doing needs to be specifically stated where else it has appeared.

I don’t care to read you pimping these other games. Just tell me whatever the hell it is you are going to do. If you are going to make a game that is easy to get into and start playing, then just say that. Don’t tell me it will be just like X in Y instance. I don’t care. Pull your head out of your ass for a minute and stop making the comparisons to every other game for us. You wonder where people get the general stupidity of saying things like “it’s a WoW clone/EQ clone/X/Y/Z clone”? It’s from these developers constantly telling us how much like another game it’s going to be.

Here’s a quick tip for doing an interview, if, for instance, you want to say that the game will be easy to get into, you shouldn’t say “It’ll be real simple to just hop in and play like WoW but…” try this one on instead.

“We’re designing a game that has as few barriers to entry as possible, in every sense of the phrase. That means more than just system requirements, it’s also about how easy and intuitive the interface and design is to start with. As you spend more time in the game you’ll see that there is a steady growth in how things work. The entire game is designed such that it builds on itself and gradually becomes more complex, without ever getting complicated.”

Congratulations, you’ve just not mentioned WoW in one %^@$%^# response.

Now shut up and tell me about your game, not how it compares to everyone else’s.

A two parter, so you know it has to be long…not really actually, as it turns out my toe is just throbbing horribly and I don’t want to try and sit at my computer one leg propped up on my bed so that it doesn’t hurt so bad. (By the way, had an ingrown toenail removed today, thus the throbbing.) Anyway, back to the real topic, official forums.

If we are to look at what Sigil said about Vanguard not having official forums, a lot of people said this was a bad idea…and it is, sort of. Community is something I enjoy talking about. I enjoy discussing how to run a community and how to effectively use one, etc. It’s a hobby. By no means am I an expert, or for that matter overly qualified to discuss how an MMOG community forum is different from any other type of community forum. Some people, of course, applauded Sigil for this move to not include an official community. In fact, from a purely marketing standpoint it would seem to work out pretty well. If the community manager/developers/designers are out posting on fan sites and forums then it greats an entirely different message than an official forum. On an official forum they post because it’s “their job” but when you see them posting on fan sites, that’s just because they really love their game, and it makes you want to love it as well.

Obviously this isn’t necessarily true for Sigil/Brad McQuaid as a big part of the reason this couldn’t work for them was there was a large group of people who just flat out didn’t like him or his company/vision. These people were only ever going to give him crap about anything he/they did (and that’s all I’ll say about that.) But, take a different company or person and see them posting on community sites and it inspires people to check out a game that they might otherwise have had no interest in. That’s effective community building with very little effort. Take CuppaJo, who has a few posts on the MMORPG.com forums. No doubt people who didn’t really care about TR are going to be more likely to try it when they see that the CM is just another gamer who enjoys the genre like they do.

For that matter, look at blogs and when developers comment on them. I know it certainly makes me feel pretty cool to hear something from a person who actually has first hand experience with it.

What though, of the downside to doing things this way? Well, we’ll cover that after blood stops shooting out of my bandage

Tabula Rasa, community, cm, community manager, forums, official forums, cuppajo, brad mcquaid, sigil, vanguard, ncsoft

When checking out Random Battle today I saw a post by Cameron that I found interesting. Not so much interesting in an “I hadn’t thought about that” way, but more of a “well now, this seems oddly familiar” way.

Over at the Kill Ten Rats forum there is a post about Tabula Rasa in which an interesting discussion started. It began with an innocent comment by Nicodemus calling it a third person shooter. I had no real problem with this as it is technically perfectly accurate, but it just gives the wrong impression in my mind (you Halo kiddies certainly know what I’m talking about) so I had to turn it around, trying to say it wasn’t really a shooter exactly.

After my post, Nicodemus left this at the start of his next post:

role-playing games are, by definition, games that emphasize or focus on role-playing.

And that just begged to be responded to:

Absolutely, but by using that definition we find that the entire RPG genre is a misnomer don’t we? I mean…there’s not a whole lot of role-playing to be done in any RPG (single player or otherwise). Sure, sometimes we get choices of dialogue/actions that may affect something, but generally we don’t role-play in the typical sense.

I’m not arguing against the point on the whole, just saying if we are going to demand that definition of our role-playing games we need to re-evaluate the entire genre.

I would argue that a shooter is based around “twitch” combat, reflexes being the most important thing. Not to say that modern shooters don’t effectively use tactics and environment, but more that, TR doesn’t worry about twitch.

I’m also not arguing the fact that it is a game with RP elements less so than an RPG, I’d say that is much more accurate of every game though. I think, TR, aside from the action oriented and shooter-like combat really tries to be an RPG in every other area in the broader sense of the term (or the sense that the typical game RPG is measured under, focused on story and character growth, depth, etc.) That’s not counting the ethical missions system that is implemented which sounds interesting (though it doesn’t affect much from what I understand, which is kind of unfortunate.)

I’m not so much arguing that it’s not a shooter, as that you can’t call it a shooter or people get the wrong idea. When people think shooter (regardless of point of view) they probably think Halo, and if you’ve ever played a match of Halo online then you probably understand why you don’t want to mix the two into the same category.

Honestly, not so much arguing any particular point you made so much as saying just calling it a “shooter” seems dismissive, and by following that road we can simply call WoW, EQ2, CoX, etc. a “stand and hit a button game”.

Both are fairly accurate descriptions of the combat, but dismissive of what makes each game really great and unique.

I think any one of us would agree that the “RPG” label is inaccurate, but we really can’t take it back this far along I’d say. Now this brings up another question; Can a true RPG be designed? Where role-playing is a necessity rather than a choice? I think the answer comes in two parts. First, using the strictest definition, until we have computers which are capable of actual thought (at which point I would have to say that a huge robot invasion is about to take place) the only way I see this working is with GM’s being integral to the running of the story, so much so that they are actually there role-playing with the users on a personal basis or by using player created content in which you force role-play. Obviously the latter is hard to police and the former is not feasible in the least, so we are stuck without that option. The second option involves using a slightly less strict definition of role-play. If there were interactive conversations in an MMO it would go a long way to being a role-playing game. Or, at the very least it would almost require immersion into the world (OK, at the very least it would require a person to pay attention a bit if I’m being pessimistic.)

I’ll continue with this at another time, just some food for thought.

As I mentioned yesterday, a newly started blog, Of Ice and Fire, linked to me. Now the first real post (I don’t count the introduction post) is up, and it’s a good one. Particularly the closing statement:

If a player knows what they’re doing, they should use whatever abilities they need to to do their job;

Exactly. This is one of my pet peeves in games, particularly WoW. If you are going to tell a person not to use an ability instrumental to their class than you are a crappy raid leader. You need to effectively lead people without telling each one exactly what to do. The obvious problem is you need people who know what they are doing, but assuming that is the case, you need to take general control, but you don’t need to point out every little thing each person should do or shouldn’t do. Let them do their jobs.

Also, probably not a good idea to expound on the problems of using X or Y if you’ve never actually played that class. Most of the time you have no idea what you are talking about and no clue as to how the ability actually works…just saying.

Anyway, nice post.

of ice and fire, world of warcraft, wow, raiding, class, how to play

I’ve been spending most of my time trying to gauge the reactions of people over Brad’s interview. The general consensus seems to be that he should just shut up and stop screwing himself over by talking. I half agree.

It is sad though, I can see where he is coming from with the things he says. About not wanting to be there to watch as his company crashed and burned, and eventually had to let go of tons of good people. That’s gotta hurt. That isn’t to say I agree with him not being there when it went down but I appreciate what he is trying to say. It’s not malicious, it’s not because he is stupid, it’s just a crappy situation that he wasn’t equipped to handle. Should he have been there? Yes, in fact, I don’t think things should have gone this way at all, but I’m not going to hound him and tell point out all the problems with what he is saying. At this point he’s limping along somewhere trying to find a place to die (um…metaphorically speaking of course) so I won’t beat him any further.

I will say though, there seems to be some confusion between the interview with Brad and the one with the ex-employee, and I would tend to take the fired employees words with more than a grain of salt. The things he may be saying in anger/frustration may be clouding reality more than we know.

Anyway…I have some things to do (oh yes, things!)