I hate the average RPG player on BYOND. I put in a ton of time anf effort trying to make a game where the objective is to NOT LEVEL UP LETS GET STRONGER FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN TO GET EVEN STRONGER. I make quests, dungeons (with actual puzzles to solve, which is probably a BYOND first) and challenges and things to do and have FUN with. I didn't want leveling up and getting stronger to be the objective of the game.
What happens when I get a few people playing the game? They all turn it into a god damn grinding game, and only focus on GET STRONG.
I purposely made the game so that rewards for killing stuff a lower level than you (or doing quests lower leveled than you) are very low. So what to players do? They sit around killing about 5000 rats, getting up to like level 7, so they can then go and 1 hit kill 5000 slimes to get to about level 10, so they can 1 hit kill about 5000 mermen, and so on. Rats were designed to be killed by level 1 players only, Slimes for level 3 players, and mermen for feel 6 players.
If you kill them at those levels, they are much more of a challenge to kill, but the rewards for killing them are much higher, and in general your progress through the game will be much quicker (though harder and with greater risk of death).
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention. I did not want people to sit around all day KILLING STUFF. I added tons and tons of quests with other stuff to do, more than half of the quests do not involve killing monsters.
People still opted to sit around killing monsters.
I designed the game in a way that provided you did these quests, and generally focused less on KILL STUFF, you would never have to kill more than 10-40 monsters per level to level up (10 at level 1, 40 at level 90). That is at very maximum, 4000 monster kills. People which are less than level 30 have already racked up in excess of 6000 kills. Despite the fact that there is quests for them to do upto about level 36, and if they did all of those, that number would be less than 1000 kills...
What the hell drives people to do stuff like this???
It gets better!
In the game there are powerful boss enemies. They are designed so they need 3-5 people to kill them, provided that people are at an equal level to them (or close in level). One level 10 boss is a bandit leader, but I am willing to bet that not a single level 10 player has killed him. Why? Because people would rather level up to level 20-30 and kill him on their own, than work in a small team of 3-5 people and kill him at level 10.
WHYYY?? There is absolutely nothing to gain by killing him at level 20+, any rewards he gives for being killed are aimed at level 10 players, and by level 15 (when the level 15 boss appears), those rewards are generally replaced by BETTER rewards, and so on.
But it gets even better still!!!
I was getting sick of this kind of "I PLAY ON MY OWN, EVEN IN A GAME AIMED AT MULTIPLAYER" mentality. And so I added HARDER bosses, that would be totally impossible for anyone on their own to kill (I didn't technically make them harder, I just made them anti-solo proof), on top of that I added dungeons that required both team work, and for people to think about what they are doing (in the form of puzzles and challenges to solve).
What happens? People TOTALLY ignore these types of dungeons. "TEAMWORK IN MY MULTIPLAYER RPG??? I DON'T THINK SO BUDDY!!" or "WTF PUZZLES IN MY LEVELAN UP GAME??? LOL YEAH RIGHT" seems to be the mentality of the average RPG player.
Because of this way people are playing the game, an how much it is annoying me, I am taking down Generiquest, and I am totally redesigning it.
Once it comes back, it will be almost impossible to level up by grinding. All enemies that are not bosses will give little to no exp, additionally, if a player is 5 levels above an enemy they kill, it will drop no items except for those involved in quests. Rewards may increase if (and only if) teamwork is used to defeat these enemies.
Enemies will also be in general more challenging and harder to defeat.
Boss fights will require team work. If you do not
work as a team, you will not be able to kill the bosses, actually, in most cases, you wont even be able to fight bosses without a suitable team of people.
Dungeons will become much more interactive. Each one will have a storyline and quests. They will all involve puzzles and exploration elements, and the majority (possibly all) of them will require teamwork to progress through.
These changes will make it impossible to grind (as you will get nothing for it), they will not force people to use teamwork, but large parts of the game will not be accessible without teamwork (bosses wont be killable, a lot of dungeons wont be fully explorable and so on), also, the general level of intelligence requires to succesfully play the game will be higher than it currently is.
I didn't want to force these things in the game, which is why I never did it in the first place. But players are not taking the hints that the game was designed to be played in this way, so I have no alternative but to do this.
I don't particularly care what people say or think about these changes either. It is my game, I pretty much made it entirely from scratch (excluding graphics/sound), I'll do what I want with it.
ID:53959
 Feb 8 2009, 8:58 am
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Min-maxing players will always be a problem so long as you have a good RPG. Good luck, though.
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" Dungeons will become much more interactive. Each one will have a storyline and quests. They will all involve puzzles and exploration elements, and the majority (possibly all) of them will require teamwork to progress through."
Sounds like Dungeons and Dragons Online, which happens to be my favorite MMORPG. I hope you can pull it off as nicely as they do. :] However, don't overlook possibly the biggest problem inherent to a party-oriented game. The number of players. You have to do a number of things to world design. 1. You have to design the world so that player to player encounters are maximized. Whether or not these encounters are designed so that they're only between players of certain levels is up to you. This encourages the formation of parties. 2. You have to design quests and content that is adaptable to solo play, in the event that there aren't enough players available for a decently sized party. 3. An alternative to solo-quests is the hiring of NPC henchmen. | |
Your game has become Retardiated.
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Achievement Bot wrote:
Your game has become Retardiated. Took the words right out of my mouth. | |
Add levels to the monsters, when player kills monsters with lower level than he currenly have then he gets less exp, and when he kill monsters with higher level, he gets more exp. For example. killing monsters:
4 levels lower than you - 20% exp 3 levels lower than you - 40% exp 2 levels lower than you - 60% exp 1 level lower than you - 80% exp the same level as you - 100% exp 1 level higher than you - 120% exp 2 levels higher than you - 140% exp 3 levels higher than you - 160% exp 4 levels higher than you - 180% exp PS. Players won't waste a time killing rats on higher levels because they won't get as much experience as before, same with other monsters. | |
Honestly, I'd say it's lack of players (what's the chances of someone close enough to your level being on, especially in the very early levels where it would be more useful?), combined with the unfun-ness of having to sit around and rest after EVERY SINGLE kill, hoping that someone won't spawn before you're healed, if you're fighting stuff 'on-level'.
This is more of an issue early on than at higher levels, but having to spend twice as much time resting as actually DOING something if you're fighting things at the recommended level is probably part of the main reason most people wait until they're stronger to take on areas. At least, in my experience, you could take on one, MABYE two rats at level 1 before resting, and the same with bats at 3. Whereas if you waited until at least 5 you had a least a chance of winning if something unexpected interrupted you. | |
I make quests, dungeons (with actual puzzles to solve, which is probably a BYOND first) You have CLEARLY never played Teh Blobz. I don't particularly care what people say or think about these changes either. It is my game, I pretty much made it entirely from scratch (excluding graphics/sound), I'll do what I want with it. If you're gonna do what you want with it, maybe YOU should stop complaining. | |
TM The Ultimate wrote:
Achievement Bot wrote: Might be becuase it's the same mouth. | |
Kisioj wrote:
Add levels to the monsters, when player kills monsters with lower level than he currenly have then he gets less exp, and when he kill monsters with higher level, he gets more exp. For example. killing monsters: He already does this | |
Oasho wrote:
Honestly, I'd say it's lack of players (what's the chances of someone close enough to your level being on, especially in the very early levels where it would be more useful?), combined with the unfun-ness of having to sit around and rest after EVERY SINGLE kill, hoping that someone won't spawn before you're healed, if you're fighting stuff 'on-level'. There is a word for players like you. Scrubs. When I was testing the game, as a level 1 Cleric I could kill 4-5 rats with no equipment and the weakest offensive skill in the game, without the need to rest once. Oh yeah, since then, Rats have been nerfed greatly. Half as much Hp, they deal half as much damage (actually less than half), and any defence they had has been removed. If I could do that with the weakest class in the game (offensively), I don't see why other people are struggling with it. Fair enough, I made the game and know more about it than the players. But in this situation, I don't think that even matters, there is no element of stratergy or how you make your character involved in it, since it is a level 1 character with 1 skill. If you ask me, it is more of an issue with the average BYOND player. Most of them are use to standing around hitting a punching bag for hours on end to get stronger, and they expect enemies to be the same as that, with a different graphic. If that is how you play Generiquest, you will die, a lot. I remember about a week ago, one player logged in, and the first thing he asked was "how i kill stuff?", which was answered with, do the tutorial, to which he replied "how i do tutorial?". (For those who have never played the game, there is a help file documenting all controls in the game, and the tutorial is neither hard nor hard to find, provided you are told where it is, and placed right next to it when you first log into the game). Though not all players are this bad, a lot of the players just are not very smart. Pretty much every question a new player asks can be answered by reading the help files and/or doing the tutorial. Sorry to those people who think the game is too hard to start. But the game is not hard in particular. You just need to use your brain and think about what you are doing, a little bit. Also, Kisioj. The game is built in a similar way to what you described. Though the amount of exp an enemy gives remains constant, that amount is based on the enemies level. Basically, if you are at an equal level to an enemy the exp they give is decent, at low levels it takes 10-20 kills to level up by killing equal leveled enemies. But as you level up, the amount of exp you need exponentially increases, making that amount of exp less and less useful. An example is rats. At level 1 you have to kill 10 to level up. At level 2 that increases to 25, by level 5 you need to kill nearly 200 to level up, and by level 10 it is over 1000. Alternatively, if you are level 10 and kill level 10 enemies, you only need to kill about 20 of them to level up. As you can see, there is no point in killing enemies at a lower level than you. But people are doing it just becaue the fights are quicker and easier. Sure, it might take you 20+ seconds to kill a level 10 monster, but it is a lot quicker to kill 20 of them than it is to kill 1000 rats, or 300 bats. It just does not make sense! Also, I understand that it is not the best idea for a game to require large groups of players to play when the total number of players is low. But in this case, the game has had 20-30 players online in the past, and for decent players, a group of 3 is all that is needed to do most stuff (a group of very good players can get away with 2 people). I hardly consider 3 people out of a potential 20-30 a large number, especially when the game is listed as multiplayer only, not single player. | |
Vexonater wrote:
If you're gonna do what you want with it, maybe YOU should stop complaining. Bahahaha. This is my blog, which I pay for. Provided it is within the law, I will do as I please while I am here. When you enter my house you follow my rules, and the only rule I have is that I AM THE RULES. And I say you don't tell me what to do. I also tell you to shut up. | |
What you can add to stop grinding(at least from the same monster) is diminuishing gains.
Every time a player kills a rat, the next rat will give thme less experience and so on. This was brilliantly implemented in the Spellforce series. | |
Andre-g1 wrote:
What you can add to stop grinding(at least from the same monster) is diminuishing gains. He already stated that he does this, twice, in fact. | |
He said he did it by level, what I meant was, each kill would give less experience.
Related to kills, not level comparison. | |
Andre-g1 wrote:
He said he did it by level, what I meant was, each kill would give less experience. Oh, I read that wrong, that's a good idea, though! Maybe it can be implemented on top of the current EXP-level limit. | |
I somehow don't think adding diminishing returns on kills would stop people from grinding.
The situation right now is that it takes about 300 rats to level from 1 to 5. Alternatively, if you do quests and kill enemies your own level, it takes less than 30 kills to get to level 5. The majority of people are opting to kill 300 rats, rather than doing a few quests. It is like this through the entire game. People are opting to mainly take the "easy" route and killing weak enemies quickly and in large numbers. If they are doing quests, they only bother doing them after doing all this grinding, so the quest is much easier for them to do. I did want to give people options. But the majority of them are sitting around, ignoring 90% of the game while they just grind the day away. Which is very annoying, which is why I am reverting to putting in actual limits on how much one can grind, as well as making the game in general less catered to grinding and grinders. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
There is a word for players like you. Scrubs. Yep, insult your players when they provide feedback onto why they are not playing the game exactly as you imagined. Brilliant. The problem here, is that you are getting angry that players don't follow your ideal, when it seems that the incentives for grinding outweighs the incentives for fighting stronger mobs. The problems could be a number of things, such as too small of a playerbase to effectivally group, the scaling of experience not working in favor of stronger mobs, or even just laziness and macroing. | |
Techgamer wrote:
The Magic Man wrote: Read the rest of the post first. I test every enemy that is added to the game in various situations. With different classes, different levels and different situations, such as what a poor player with weak equipment would have and so on. In most cases, it's not that the game is too hard, it is that people suck at playing at it, and are expecting it to require no skill to play. Also, there is no GOOD incentive for grinding. It takes 10x longer to make the same progress (actually less, due to the rewards being less), it is much more boring and just not worth the effort. About the only advantage it has is that it is much easier. (I had to put in methods to prevent people from abusing grinding, because they were trying to do things like have the game play it's self while they were sleeping and what not) The point I have been trying to make it, grinding in the game is just not worth the effort. Sure, by doing things at a lower level (the recommended level), it might be harder, and you might die more often... But there is absolutely no penalty for dying anyway. The players are just lazy. To the point where they expect the game to practically play it's self. It is almost like some people don't want to play the game for themselves. They want to know how to make their character strong, they want to know where and how to level up quickly, they want to know how to kill bosses, they want to know how to do quests and what they get for doing quests... Without actually playing the game or doing any of the stuff they want to know. | |
However, the problem you are experiencing here is entirely from mismarketing. You drew the wrong crowd with the game, and thus you got these results.
I love the game design that you've gone through. I completely concur with the philosophy of teamwork (No point of making a multiplayer game without maximizing player to player interactions).
Don't do this to yourself. From the sounds of it, you created a wonderful game, and now you're going to destroy this product because people don't play it precisely the way you want them to. This happens with every game. There will always be people to fuck things up.
That being said, I would like to try out the game for myself. I was entirely unaware that this was hosted publically, or I would have come in (The fact that I was unaware is another reason why I believe that your problem is not game design, but rather mismarketing)