Curse

englitdaudelin · Jul 22, 2009, 06:01 PM // 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Hard Mode should have been about better AI, or failing that simply better mixes of classes within mobs.

I want to see mobs with healers, hex/condition removal, strong direct damage, anti-melee, party heals and shut-down. Not only would that provide more of a challenge, it would discourage gimmicky builds that steamroll through some parts of the game, and it would actually be better preparation for PvP.

How about 8-person mobs? HM can lose its difficulty when you, with your 7 heroes and hench, take on FOUR monsters at a time. ('cept for those darn gravebanes...)
It's the full-size mobs that might pose more problems.

Back to Fril's latest question: Did A-Net lose control somehow? Probably, but isn't there a basic law of physics that suggests that all complex systems tend towards deterioration? The more complex something is, the faster it will degenerate towards chaos?

Chthon's very long explicates much of the problem: that fundamental visions on A-Net's part interfered with certain possibilities we discuss.

Now, to this: Posted by Fril:
I would extend this comment to titles: did they drive the game, and the playerbase, in the wrong direction? They seem to be one of the two main reasons why farming pollutes the game so much (the other one being "rare/exclusive/shiny stuff"). Are the skill explosion plus the title madness problems the expression of a global state of GW where Anet lost control of the overall design?

Feedback loop. Look at the posts about efficiency:
A-Net introduced titles and skills tied to those titles. There.s plenty of shiny loot out there. A Max title becomes desireable BY ITSELF as an indicator of "skill'" and ALSO because it provides additional power in game. People wanted to max this TITLE and SKILL as fast as possible (put a carrot out, and people WILL chase it). The tiers of the title, however, require many more points toward the top end. So, we see a push toward efficiency there: You must come to the table with a high enough title to help others and yourself efficiently attain the higher ranks of the title. You need to use skill X to increase the strength of skill X (*lookin' at you, ursan farms).
Couple this with the Shinies: A-net gave us nice weapons as a sign of wealth, skill, luck, and time in game. People want the shinies, and the fastest way to get them is via groups using title skills. So: grind your title to improve your title to improve your chances of getting in a group to improve your title and maybe get shiny drops. Once you have, or bought, nice toys, you now need to join groups to show off your new toy, but the way into groups is through the title you grinded to get your toy...

So yeah, I'd say somewhere along the line, A-Net lost "control." By this, I mean that the playerbase--large, large populations--unconsciously or consciously altered or misconstrued the functions and rewards of the titles. Were they not supposed to be a reward, to demonstrate your love for the game? A reward that would transmit to GW2? However, they soon became a way of separating, somehow, people.

And again, if we look at Strain's speech about complexity creep: Titles and their skills SIMPLIFY the game. Players don't need to synthesize, or consider alternate heroes, or experiment with 2ndary professions on heores or themselves: just add a title skill. Grinding and farming also are ways to simplify the game: exploring dungeons, forming parties, and talking with other people are all way more complex tasks than redundantly zoning and pressing the same buttons in the same order.
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Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 08:06 PM // 20:06

It's not that players make an error by playing in a degenerate fashion. They haven't misconstrued the game. All that's happened is that the player recognizes that it's the best way to accomplish the mission.

People like visible signals of accomplishment. It's why they buy McMansions, Porsches and Rolexes. In the game, these signals send a message about you to other players, and they act as a constant reminder to oneself of having "climbed the mountain."

If you introduce titles and rare shinies, these act just like the Porsche. People want them, because they say something about what you've accomplished. The scarcer the shiny, the more attractive it becomes, because it sends a louder and stronger message.

Now, if you want a REALLY rare shiny, you're competing against thousands of people to get your grubby little paws on it. To acquire the shiny, you have to outbid tons of other people, which makes it a competitive process.

How do you get more money than these other players? (Let's leave aside RMT for the moment.) Well, you're converting your time to in-game cash; so is everyone else. If you're going to win the race, you need to invest substantial time and maximize the amount of in-game cash generated per unit of time invested. The amount of time other players will invest is an unknown, but you can surmise that at least some people will invest an extremely large amount of time.

If you aren't efficient, you're going to lose the race to players that aren't efficient but have more time than you. It's a certainty that some kid or college student out there has twelve or more hours a day to spend in Kamadan, so if you want to outrace that player you're going to have to make money a LOT faster during what time you have. The good news is that he's got all that time, and that time is therefore not as precious to him. So you can probably beat him on a per unit basis because he hasn't got the pressure to innovate that you've got.

The implication is that if you set the goal to get the rare shiny, and you're serious about attaining it, the only way to do it is to be FAST.

Giving the titles functions that confers advantage only exacerbates the problem. Players are going to self-separate into people willing to invest the effort into having the PvE skills available and those that are not, because the PvE skills confer advantage and wasting time is foolish. I hardly play PvE any more, because I'm not willing to toss the hundred hours needed to pump up needed title tracks on various farming characters. That time is a huge barrier to entry that restricts the endgame content from most players.

This can't be good for player retention.

englitdaudelin · Jul 22, 2009, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

It's not that players make an error by playing in a degenerate fashion. They haven't misconstrued the game. All that's happened is that the player recognizes that it's the best way to accomplish the mission.

People like visible signals of accomplishment. It's why they buy McMansions, Porsches and Rolexes. In the game, these signals send a message about you to other players, and they act as a constant reminder to oneself of having "climbed the mountain."

If you introduce titles and rare shinies, these act just like the Porsche. People want them, because they say something about what you've accomplished. The scarcer the shiny, the more attractive it becomes, because it sends a louder and stronger message.

Now, if you want a REALLY rare shiny, you're competing against thousands of people to get your grubby little paws on it. To acquire the shiny, you have to outbid tons of other people, which makes it a competitive process.

*snip*

This can't be good for player retention.

Well spoken, and largely what I was trying (and probably failing) to articulate. Let me rephrase my statement about "misconstruing" titles: In many cases, titles are no longer a reward in and of themselves. They are signifiers of wealth, of time spent doing something, of certain "affiliations" in-game, and are signifiers that a player is now "allowed" to join certain groups to do certain things. (GLF R8 Cryer!) Is this what the developers wanted? Probably not. So we're seeing sort of the law of unintended consequences at work here: that the community has largely accepted these signifiers and altered (in places, in ways, I generalize, I know...) their (likely) intended meaning.

Titles themselves are shiny, too: rewards that, like nice weapons and porsches, people can display. I have no problem with that...and inherently, no problem with people seeking such rewards.

So here's are two questions... CAN'T this be good for player retention? I'm with you; the game and the pve skills and their requisite grind narrow my personal choices in chasing the shinies. I don't have the hours to innovate my solo farms.

and...

Is the evolution of the game unintended? are game developers resisting certain changes that are happening organically, and fostering other changes (organic or not)?

And last...why does this thread seem to invite so many long posts?

4thVariety · Jul 22, 2009, 09:20 PM // 21:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

[...]People like visible signals of accomplishment. [..]

Your analysis might be right, but I think you are forgetting that not every player is like that. Or to quote the cover of my favorite game of 2008:

FUN SHALL OVERCOME

In other words: if you only develop content aimed at giving players the chance to wave their virtual genitalia around, then soon that will be your only players and guess what the only thing they'll do will be.

In the "long term fun" department, GW only has two things really. Competitive PvP and competitive title/item grinding. While that might be two things that are relatively uncomplicated to implement, I say there is potential for a lot more things. If I may play Nostradamus, then I'd say that the weirdest thing about today's MMOs in 20 years will be that they were so heavily focused on portraying only one genre of game. Give it a few sequels and you'll see Rollerbeetle being closer to a real racing game, item trade being similar to trade simulations and Polymock being closer to a real fighting game. A much broader representation of gaming as a whole. You see Freerealms trying that, we had Spore go in that direction, even some WoW April Fools joke poked at Rock Band.

Martin Alvito · Jul 22, 2009, 10:34 PM // 22:34

It doesn't matter that not all players are like that. The fact that some are inevitably creates the disconnect where the players that are like that have no use for those that are not. Since goals to be pursued (limited PvE goodies or PvP glory) are competitive processes, you're inevitably going to have a separation between those that feel the game is srs bsns and those that do not.

Why does the focus end up being on limited objectives? Well, the problem is that those two objectives are the only open-ended objectives available in games today. Eventually you're going to own the AI, so the only reason to continue to own the AI once you've figured out how is to get more shinies than other people. Alternately, you can move to PvP where players constantly come up with new builds and tactics...but GW's game design ensures that players do not innovate unless new content is released or skill functionality is altered. Observer mode and the need for interchangeable parts in teams ensures this.

@ englitdaudelin - I doubt that the end outcome is intentional. The problem is that the designer only has so many hours to pump into the product, and the designer derives no revenue directly by adding small quantities of content. The cheapest means to provide endgame content is to create open-ended objectives, and by its incredibly low cost it crowds out all alternative design strategies.

4thVariety · Jul 23, 2009, 08:08 AM // 08:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Why does the focus end up being on limited objectives? Well, the problem is that those two objectives are the only open-ended objectives available in games today.

I'd like to throw in user created content as another open ended objective. It has popped up time and again over the last 20 years and where it did, the potential to extend the product's life was definitely there.

Neverwinter Nights and Little Big Planet are two of the more recent examples. Even though only a fraction of players ends up creating content, all the players profit from that, giving them a chance to do something other than extreme grinds.

City of Heroes introduced user content, other future MMOs have announced they want to include it, so the revolution against the hardcore grinder might not be that far away.

If we face the truth, then the open-end grinder is a player thriving on the competitive. His style of play is geared towards excluding others eventually, thus hurting the interest of the company to retain players. If games are interested in entertaining players that are different from the Grind-Core, other means of open ended objectives have to be created.

zwei2stein · Jul 23, 2009, 08:40 AM // 08:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

If I may play Nostradamus, then I'd say that the weirdest thing about today's MMOs in 20 years will be that they were so heavily focused on portraying only one genre of game. Give it a few sequels and you'll see Rollerbeetle being closer to a real racing game, item trade being similar to trade simulations and Polymock being closer to a real fighting game. A much broader representation of gaming as a whole. You see Freerealms trying that, we had Spore go in that direction, even some WoW April Fools joke poked at Rock Band.

Spore failed big time with it because it delivered several games in one package and each of them lacked depth, length and fun value.

This is what you get for trying to glue pieces of different games together. Some parts will simply limp. And if MMO achiever gets blocked from achieving by need to play 'good' fighting game, all devs would manage is to piss of loud player AND waste resources. Generally, content like polymock did not get much of applause but rather more like distaste and pissedness.

And if company can develop several good games, last thing they want to do is to package them together and sell as one unit.

Minigames are gonna be just minigames ... small & simple distractions from grinding.

YunSooJin · Jul 23, 2009, 08:55 AM // 08:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Spore failed big time with it because it delivered several games in one package and each of them lacked depth, length and fun value.

This is what you get for trying to glue pieces of different games together. Some parts will simply limp. And if MMO achiever gets blocked from achieving by need to play 'good' fighting game, all devs would manage is to piss of loud player AND waste resources. Generally, content like polymock did not get much of applause but rather more like distaste and pissedness.

And if company can develop several good games, last thing they want to do is to package them together and sell as one unit.

Minigames are gonna be just minigames ... small & simple distractions from grinding.

I liked Polymock. Thought it was a little simplistic and easy, but I liked it. It had all the right elements.. I wished they'd have player versus player polymock, but .. oh well?

4thVariety · Jul 23, 2009, 09:20 AM // 09:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Spore failed big time with it because it delivered several games in one package and each of them lacked depth, length and fun value.

No argument here about how those games lacked depth from the perspective of players who are exploring such genres in depth.

But from the perspective of a normal Joe, who is the holy sales-bringer after all, it did not matter that the games lacked depth. For him that is what made Spore accessible. For persons who play in their after hours for FUN and RECREATION, it is frustrating to have to learn layer after layer after layer of small intricacies. Don't turn games into school!

It is stupid to develop 1000h of content and structure it in such a way that the player will not see most of it because he either can't meet the time requirements to advance, or lacks the gaming strength to unlock the next experience. Spore learned the hard way that you cannot expect people to play Diablo for five more hours when they hate Diablo and are mentally already in the Civ stage. If you deny him the ability to skip each mini-game they hate, they will quit and hate on Spore even more.

The "normal" player enjoys a variety of genres and is pretty bad at each of them. This is what Spore went after successfully in terms of sales and that is why big boxes of game collections are selling well. We are simply not there yet, in terms of 3D-engines being able to handle all genres, development tools suited to create content across all genres and development teams experienced enough to pull that off. But we are getting there. Many games try to include at least one genre on the side. Racing, Platforming, Shooting, those are the big three that are merging for a few years now. Other genres will follow. They might not be as good as a highly specialized genre implementation, but 95% of players won't be good enough to know that difference anyway.

Martin Alvito · Jul 23, 2009, 04:25 PM // 16:25

*laughs* Interesting idea that the open-ended objective player creates an externality that screws over everyone else. It's definitely true that the existence of truly open-ended 24/7 grind content drives unhealthy behaviors, because if you raise your level of effort, I have to raise mine to stay ahead. Your effort imposes a negative externality on me. The implication is that Grind Wars is not socially efficient, and I don't think you'd get any arguments from anyone on that score.

You could internalize the externality with the old school model of a per hour usage charge, but reshape the curve such that players pay a minimal amount at low levels of usage that scales up rapidly as the user passes through an "acceptable" level of usage. So you might say that an average of an hour or two a day is fine, and charge a low tiered price up to that point, and then jack the per hour price up after that.

Of course, if you proposed this in a development meeting, the marketing people would promptly stab you in the eye. The proper level of implementation for something like this is at the level of a tax, and that just isn't going to happen.

As for enabling user-created content, that just isn't going to happen with this business model. You've got to be deriving revenue from continued usage for it to be sane to permit its introduction into an MMO. Otherwise you're just driving bandwidth usage without collecting revenue to cover the cost.

4thVariety · Jul 23, 2009, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

You could internalize the externality with the old school model of a per hour usage charge, but reshape the curve such that players pay a minimal amount at low levels of usage that scales up rapidly as the user passes through an "acceptable" level of usage. So you might say that an average of an hour or two a day is fine, and charge a low tiered price up to that point, and then jack the per hour price up after that.

One could invert the skill power curve and keep the prestige skin curve the way it is. More time results in better pixels, while increased usage of grind based PvE skills depletes the attribute powering them. You start at Ursan strength 10, but after 6h it will be worn out to level 1. Then the attribute regenerates over time, but those who play too much will be forced to play even better using non depleting skills, or change their build more often. People with less time will get more power, people with too much time get more of a challenge and do not exploit their power AND their time to increase the loot gap too quickly. Everybody wins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

Of course, if you proposed this in a development meeting, the marketing people would promptly stab you in the eye.

Which ties back to the idea of which interest is in charge. Do we want the best game that can be made, or do we want the most marketable game that can be made. My money is on the best game, since we already got enough overhyped games that are quickly forgotten. If someone step me in the eye for this, I'll go pirate on him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

As for enabling user-created content, that just isn't going to happen with this business model. You've got to be deriving revenue from continued usage for it to be sane to permit its introduction into an MMO. Otherwise you're just driving bandwidth usage without collecting revenue to cover the cost.

Many MMO Publishers and Platform operators have to publish quarterly reports. So far none of them was driven to extinction due to bandwidth or server costs. Not even Flagship. It's always the staff that drags you under. At NC 50% are paycheck costs, operating costs of servers and bandwidth are merely a footnote. And again, once you got a community creating levels, you can nickel and dime the hell out of them with assets. Which is ok, if you ask me. That's honest business.

Martin Alvito · Jul 23, 2009, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

One could invert the skill power curve and keep the prestige skin curve the way it is. More time results in better pixels, while increased usage of grind based PvE skills depletes the attribute powering them...People with less time will get more power, people with too much time get more of a challenge and do not exploit their power AND their time to increase the loot gap too quickly. Everybody wins.

That was part of the point with anti-farm code, right? Increasing time investment nets continually inferior drops, such that the bots can't grind the rest of the player base into the ground.

The problem is that the guy with lots of time still wins. This just blunts the advantage, which ironically causes the guy with lots of time to invest EVEN MORE time to accomplish the same objective. It also makes botting that much more attractive. You've effectively blunted the ability of the individual to produce, which inadvertently turbocharges the relative power of the player with multiple accounts and computers that do the work for him.

I don't know if ANet ever realized that their original anti-botting code was made of fail or not, but all it ever did was incentivize the botters. This would do the same, unless you make it impossible for the bot farmer to ever acquire anything of value.

You could do that, of course. You could create code which only permits nice stuff to drop for you if you have been playing minimally and are playing an incredibly difficult area that requires teamwork and varied tactics to complete. This seems to be more the present model in GW coding. I've personally observed and heard too many "noob always gets the drops" stories to write them off as pure human psychology. Regardless of the drop rate, the odds that I pull a BDS on run #6 as the group's only noob but my friend that does hundreds of runs never pulls one are pretty bad...and that's not an isolated incident across various farms involving chest drops.

Sure, you can wave the conspiracy theory flag here and argue that I'm cherrypicking incidents out of thousands of observations, but when the odds of those incidents occurring are in the millions, the likelihood that I'll ever observe multiple instances starts to get pretty ugly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Which ties back to the idea of which interest is in charge. Do we want the best game that can be made, or do we want the most marketable game that can be made. My money is on the best game, since we already got enough overhyped games that are quickly forgotten. If someone step me in the eye for this, I'll go pirate on him.

Well, as a game publisher you typically want to sell as many copies as possible without breaking the bank on development costs. There are also a lot of phenomenal games out there that never sold well. For every Baldur's Gate there's more than one Planescape:Torment. If you're trying to make money in the business, it's a bad idea to ignore the marketing people. You never want them running the show any more than you want the bean counters running it, but if they tell you that people will hate something as fundamental as your pricing strategy, you would be wise to listen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Many MMO Publishers and Platform operators have to publish quarterly reports. So far none of them was driven to extinction due to bandwidth or server costs. Not even Flagship. It's always the staff that drags you under. At NC 50% are paycheck costs, operating costs of servers and bandwidth are merely a footnote. And again, once you got a community creating levels, you can nickel and dime the hell out of them with assets. Which is ok, if you ask me. That's honest business.

Keep in mind that it's always the revenue side that drives you under. You fail as an MMO if you produce something that people, for whatever reason, don't buy and continue to use. It's hard to spend yourself to death on continuing operations, but it is much easier to leverage yourself to death during development to the point that continuing operations can't pay the creditors.

I agree that it's a personnel heavy model. You've forgotten the power consumption and cooling bills for those servers that get buried in facilities expenses, though. There's no realistic way to separate out which segment of those bills is directly attributable to the servers. You could make some assumptions if you wanted to in order to get at that, but my sense is that the external auditers wouldn't be thrilled with you.

The iPhone App model looks fairly attractive as a way to deal with increased server loads (and debugging/security challenges; you KNOW you'd want to stick a back door or exploit in that code). License the user-created content, agree to some revenue sharing with the creator and let the market decide what's good.

Last bit: the tiered promotion system with escalating payoffs that exists in today's companies ensures that management will be penny wise and pound foolish. Exceed your numbers for a couple of years, and you're into a new seat with hugely better compensation before the bill for your skimping comes due. Why did the Japanese think long term? The pay gap between foot soldier and Fearless Leader was orders of magnitude tighter, reducing the incentive for aspiring managers to engage in behaviors that rewarded oneself at the expense of the company.

This is the only solution I've come up with that explains why the servers for every successful MMO invariably end up stinking, no matter how good they are when they start out. The guys responsible for managing server expenses bleed them to advance their own careers, and since projections are always based on last year's numbers, the successor would commit career suicide by going on a spending spree to fix the problem. Iterate over a few years and you get lousy, depreciated servers.

Fril Estelin · Jul 27, 2009, 10:40 AM // 10:40

Design-wise I had further thoughts recently and came with this new idea, which complements what has already been said here:

What if Anet, at some point (recently, i.e. 1-2 years ago?), chose to design game elements which would have several feature, each appealing to different kinds of players? A sort of multi-objective design?

For example:
- the Zaishen chest has: a title; rare skins golds (which I personally like a lot); new shinnies (EL); title-related items (sweet, booze).
- Zquests: Guardian title; lots of stuff via zoins (tomes, sweets, etc.); new shinnies (bags -> not needed but convenient); Pvers going to PvP, more PUGing
- Nicholas: fun/sightseeing/lore; title-related items; new shinnies (EL, minis)

IIRC that's also what happened with the Dec'08 reorg of the titles, where vanquish would give you points towards Faction titles.

Thoughts?