I was reading some posts on Ralph Koster's website (http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming),he's a designer from Ultima Online, and was amazed at the in depth resource and economic models they had planned that were eventually ripped out of the game. Creatures that desired and sought out needed food, merchants that valued based on rarity and economic demand, hard core stuff.
But I read on. Players *hated* UO's early economy. It left them with tons of boxes and daggers, but uninterested merchants who charged an arm and a leg for tools. The monsters ended up with such poor AI, text muds do it better. So they "fixed it". And ended up the generic pablum merchants all buy for x and sell for x*2, monsters all attack or just wander around a bit, blah....
Ralph came to the conclusion that players aren't terribly keen on innovation, a sentiment mirrored by some other prominent MUD and MMOG developers. And, really, from the player's perspective, who cares if wolves eat rabits when they get hungry or a dragon snacks on a deer? And who cares if shopkeepers are keeping accurate ledgers if my smith can't move his junk. Sadly, players seem to want 1) all efforts to translate into reward (Investigate a market first? But I already crafted 200 chairs!) 2) No real risk to their character (Permadeath? No way, I'll take no penalty ressing thank you!).
But how does that make even a remotely fun game??? What is heroism without loss or risk of loss? What is bravery without danger? And why even bother playing a game if you don't want any of that stuff? Racking up imaginary numbers just like everyone else doesn't seem terribly appealing, and yet that exact thing drives the MMORPG market.
Take Everquest for example. One of the largest MMORPGs and a huge step *backwards* from UO. I say backwards not in tech, but in design- it's basically just a glorified DIKU with a 3d engine slapped on top. FFXI is a little prettier, but is more of the same. WoW seems to have a much more clean system, but seems to have focused on making the treadmill less painful, but is still a treadmill.
Maybe it is a problem in focus. It seems that most of these games are built around combatas the central focus. Rewards are built around combat, abilities around combat, systems around combat. And what does combat mean to a computer programmer? Number crunching. So the games become number hamsterwheels and the graphics help to ease the tedium.
But it wasn't always like this... Earlier games focused increasingly on community and expanding interaction. This is still the rallying cry of many designers. So why is the state of MMOGs what it is?
It confuses me....
ID:153087
 Jan 22 2005, 9:51 pm
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I can't see how terribly fun it is to risk losing your character, expecially one you've put many hours into using. There can be some player-related factors as well as things in the game that can get people screwed over.
First thing I think of for permadeath is a group of people going to some hard area (because at some levels, those are really the only options left) and then a key member or two leaves, or is disconnected without warning. It really screws everyone else over if it costs them their characters. I'd like to be able to enjoy a game. It's one thing if player death merits some sort of downside but losing it completely will just get you a bunch of people who'd rather just be safe and not bother to get far into the game at all. Sure, there can be a number of innovative things that can be put into a game, but do they all actually equate to more fun for the player? There isn't much in the way of heroism or bravery in a game because it's just a game. People want to have fun. While I'm not suggesting that everything be handed to them on a silver platter, robbing people of time and effort they put into one thing because of some mishap elsewhere doesn't sound fun in the slightest. (Although that animals eating other animals thing did sound pretty great. :D) | |
A lot of people, inluding myself, like the idea of permadeath in roleplaying games. I started out in pen & paper RPGs with a GM that had at least one of our group rolling up a new character by the end of every game session. It made the characters stop and think about what they were doing instead of charging headlong into battle every time. It also made high level characters something to be even more cherished and they were all the more awe-inspiring. "A 7th level thief? DAMN that guy's good!"
There is a huge difference between "many" and "most" though. The major MMORPGs have to appeal to the most people, because they have shareholders screaming at them to earn the highest profits possible. There is also the inherent risk of online play, like Sarm pointed out. A lag spike at the wrong time means that not only your character that you worked 7 months to develop is gone, but the characters of all your friends who were depending on your contribution to the team are also dead. Big ouch. The idea about animals seeking food is interesting. (I wanted to make a system that kicked it up a notch and even made animals seek out others of their kind to reproduce.) The primary trouble is that it would eat memory and processing power for something that is, for the most part, invisible to the players. Dumber AI leaves more resources for flashy things that wow the multitudinous shallow gamers who don't care why a wolf does what it does, as long as it drops gold and experience when you kill it. A game where you have to intelligently stalk a creature, learning its habits and planning the best time and place to strike, has little to offer the casual gamer. In the end, it all depends on what you want to get from the game. If you want a rich and immersive game that offers a unique playing experience, go for it. There will be a few people out there who enjoy the same things you do. If you want to make money, appeal to the least common denominator and cave to public preasure whenever your vision conflicts with the general consensus. | |
So why is the state of MMOGs what it is? Unfortunantly in the game industry the power has shifted from the developer to the publisher. Games are becomming more and more expensive to develop to be commercially successful so developers are more dependant on funding provided by publishers and publishers in general are only interested in things that have proven to be successful. As far as why its popular most players aren't patients enough to spend much time specifically learning to play or learning too much too fast. Many games with a lot of depth and probably UO in its early stages just threw the players into a very complex world with nothing more than a basic tutorial. The possible reason Everquestis popular is that is was complex enough for its player base to find it interesting yet simple enough not to overwhelm them. This doesn't mean you can't have a complex game but the complexities have to be served one small chunk at a time to let the impatient players digest it properly before moving onto the next complexity. However in a MMORPG or even largely open ended games you unfortunantly don't have the same control over a player and without a boring obviously set up tutorial you can't structure the game in such a way as to allow them to slowly take in the game before moving on to further challanges. However you only really need to worry about that if you're going for the largest possible audience. If you're going for a smaller crowd that is more willing to read through a manual and spend the annoying time it takes to get into the groove of the game you have a much smaller challange at hand. Though as far as the handling the early learning portion of game you can also fail miserably by making it too easy and too slow. Making it too easy is only tolerable if the player can also get through it rapidly provided they already know how to play. Tutorial levels like in Black and White that are painfully slow are very obnoxious and don't really make me want to go through it again to play the game again. | |
Jmurph wrote:
Ralph came to the conclusion that players aren't terribly keen on innovation, a sentiment mirrored by some other prominent MUD and MMOG developers. Players don't necessarily have anything against designers throwing innovative new features in; the problem is that they hate anything which requires innovation on their part. They like game features which can be boiled down into strict step-by-step guide form with simple steps and repeatable results. Once someone figures out a reliable method for clearing a certain zone, completing a certain quest, etc., that method will gradually become common knowledge throughout the player population and eventually grows into Holy Writ, not to be tampered with by mere mortals. Players will fiercely resist any attempts to come up with an alternate tactic, and should the developer foolishly alter that part of the game so that the tried-and-true method no longer works, all chat channels and forums associated with the game will turn into a cascading river of whining. Thus, when presented with a game that defies attempts to create standardized solutions, they understandably aren't very happy. | |
Leftley wrote:
Thus, when presented with a game that defies attempts to create standardized solutions, they understandably aren't very happy. Heh, they should try playing DROD. :) http://developer.byond.com/forum/ index.cgi?action=message_read&id=323870&forum=5&view=0 | |
I agree that dying to a lag spike is... frustrating. However, I think that much concern over permadeath also relates to the fact that death and combat are far to easilly doled out in most modern RPGs/MMOGs and responsible for far too much reward. If combat was less forced on players, revolved around meaningful choices and combat generally broke off whenever serious pain was inflicted (not always to the death), I don't know that this would be a valid complaint anymore. For example, if you set how aggressive your character was in combat (IE set his "combat AI"), his pain threshold (IE when he runs), and choose his equipment, I don't see how you could really complain if you jump into combat and somehow lose connection with dire results . (Of course this assumes that that these systems work fairly well. If combat is largely "twitch" based, it's a different story). And if monsters didn't always carry around treasure/resource hordes, how many players would go after them anyway?
I think this area has been a perfect example of bad design- designers reward combat and base systems entirely around it then wonder why players want to fight stuff all the time.... | |
I think that much concern over permadeath also relates to the fact that death and combat are far to easilly doled out in most modern RPGs/MMOGs and responsible for far too much reward. If combat was less forced on players, revolved around meaningful choices and combat generally broke off whenever serious pain was inflicted (not always to the death), I don't know that this would be a valid complaint anymore. And if monsters didn't always carry around treasure/resource hordes, how many players would go after them anyway? If you don't want players to fight why bother implementing it in the first place? Seems kinda pointless to implement combat along with a bunch of things to prevent players from wanting to use the feature. | |
Theodis wrote:
If you don't want players to fight why bother implementing it in the first place? Seems kinda pointless to implement combat along with a bunch of things to prevent players from wanting to use the feature. Ah. So apparently adding risk to something makes it pointless. In that case I expect my upcoming game "You Automatically Win Every Time You Play No Matter What" to easily trump all these pointless games that are floating around. | |
Theodis wrote:
If you don't want players to fight why bother implementing it in the first place? He never said he didn't want players to fight. He said he didn't want the focus of the game to automatically be on combat. | |
He never said he didn't want players to fight. He said he didn't want the focus of the game to automatically be on combat. Then why not put the effort into making that more interesting rather than going out of your way to make other features less interesting :P? | |
Ah. So apparently adding risk to something makes it pointless. I didn't say that but he was wanting to add a whole lot of risk and make the gain next to nothing to keep people from doing it. My point being if you don't want people doing it why even give them the opportunity? | |
Theodis wrote:
Then why not put the effort into making that more interesting rather than going out of your way to make other features less interesting :P? Well that's the point of perminant death in this case. To make combat more interesting. Combat doesn't have to be simple number crunching to be interesting and fun. | |
Theodis wrote:
I didn't say that but he was wanting to add a whole lot of risk and make the gain next to nothing to keep people from doing it. My point being if you don't want people doing it why even give them the opportunity? Let's just stop here for a moment. Please explain why it's such a very bad thing to design a game such that there are different approaches available of varying appeal, as that's what's being discussed here and what you're attacking. We can boil RPGs down into two basic approaches: running around killing things (we'll call this approach A), as compared to engaging in trade skills and never engaging in combat ever (approach B). If A is more interesting and rewarding than B, then a greater proportion of players will follow approach A; if B is more rewarding, then more players take path B. But in either case, unless there is an unimaginably vast discrepency some players will still take the minority route; either because they don't care so much about racking up numbers, or because they have found a way to make that approach work. Often this is a matter of supply and demand; the unpopular approach becomes economically feasible because it is unpopular. Other times it's a matter of difficulty; players may be able to succeed through one approach acting out simple tasks by rote, but succeeding by the other approach is much more demanding and requires highly specialized skills. In any event, however, perfect game balance does not require that your player population takes all approaches in equal proportions, which is good because that's never going to happen; players always have favorites no matter how well-balanced the game is. So I really fail to see the problem in attempting to skew the player population, even if it's accomplished by deliberately screwing up the game's balance "on paper"--which isn't even necessarily the case here. | |
Well that's the point of perminant death in this case. To make combat more interesting. Combat doesn't have to be simple number crunching to be interesting and fun. The point I was getting out of the original post is that making death permanent and reducing the rewards of combat was to discourage combat. Making death permanent doesn't neccessarily make the combat more interesting just makes me avoid it unless the rewards are worth the risk involved. However if there is no reward why go into combat in the first place? Why implement a feature you don't want people to use? | |
On this note, have you played Garthor's latest game?
The combat in that is utterly splendid. If this was worked into an RPG, I think it would solve all the problems we have here. | |
That's exactly my point. It's not that I don't want players to ever fight; rather, I think it's odd that in most games almost all players do is fight. As I pointed out, I think that this is because all of the rewards (and systems) are based on combat. If combat were not as required, a bit more risky, and not the primary source of reward, my theory is that the people who would get involved in combats are those people who *want* to play soldiers, mercenaries, bandits,etc. instead of people who just see it as optimal behavior. In other words, if there are many roads to the same place and they are more or less equivalent, then people will choose the path they want.
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Theodis wrote:
The point I was getting out of the original post is that making death permanent and reducing the rewards of combat was to discourage combat. Which is what makes it interesting. Combat is generally done to death in the average MMORPG. You fight to get your cooking skill up, you fight to get from town A to better town B, you fight to show off how good you are. You're always fighting, which makes combat boring (although it's hardly the sole factor when it comes to MMORPG combat). If you're fighting when death is perminant and the rewards are slim you're fighting for a reason, not because fighting is the thing to do. I'm not usually a fan of perminant death, but in this case I do like it. | |
A tamer might not use much skill, since their pet did all the work...
but if you ever played a bard, it required being able to manage all the monsters well. getting 100 in a skill was not all that hard so a lot of the game was focus'd on what you did, not leveling.
the only reason their systems failed was because they failed to implement them well :)