Monthly Archives: October 2013

Rate Of Return

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There’s a simple concept that exists in that a person only does something if they have an acceptable rate of return. That is, whatever you’re putting in is proportional to what you get out.

In the real world, this is obvious. You won’t put money into an account without a return of some sort. Sometimes the reward is deferred – where it comes later on. School is like that in where the paper is most often worth more than the class.

Gaming is different since it’s abstracted from the real world. Our values take on different meanings because a) we are anonymous and b) that anonymity allows us to do things differently with minimal consequences.

Games also have a reward structure built over a time element. You need a consistent feeling of reward (progress) to keep moving forward. At some point though, that timer gets either too long or the rewards too poor to keep investing time. At that point people quit.
Some stay, granted, but typically chase another goal – say pet collection or social bonds and proxy rewards. The idea of “making people happy, makes me happy” fits well in this model. But, as most players have found, this player is a rare commodity.

I won’t say this wraps up the analysis of fun/time/challenge/reward but over the last few posts I think I’ve covered a lot of the fundamentals. People will invest time (or money) to do something to get a reward. That something must have value and the reward has to be proportional to the effort or it has no value.

I’m writing this like it was obvious and for most, it is. How to code obvious things is where the challenge lies

Determination vs Deterrence

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Back in the UO and EQ days, you needed to be determined to succeed. Death was extremely painful. You could lose hours of progress or even your entire house! Death was seen as a deterrent for many types of gameplay other than the one prescribed by the developers.

Flash forward to early Wow and the worst part of death was a 20 minute corpse run through STV. Nowdays, any game that puts you more than 20secs away from your corpse is considered hardcore.

GW2 is my current flavor and it treats death lightly. It really isn’t a deterrent in terms of penalty or time. What it does do is kill you all the time for little valid reason.

See, I like to get better. In the majority of games, I tend to float above average. I get meta gaming and theorycrafting. Heck, I write guides for games. GW2 is different.

You can die all the time due to level scaling. You can die to poor spawns, you can die to guys behind rocks, you can die because of aggro radii being inconsistent, you can die because of sparkles that don’t correspond to an attack but do to damage.

My elementalist cannot get better. He has the best gear, all his skills, all the passive traits that I think are of value and enough knowledge of the class to understand skill synergy. But I die a lot. I’d say 1 in 10 fights puts me in rally mode and half of those I die. Most of the time it’s me being victim of poor spawning in an empty zone. And it gets worse the higher in level I get.

It gives the impression than I’m getting weaker as I grow, which is not a fun feeling to have.

Travel Wish List

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My friend Luc has a post up about his top 5 travel spots.  Well friend might be too strong a word, depending on the hockey teams playing.  I’ve been kicking around a similar idea for a while now and his post is triggering this one.

Pre-amble.  I am not big on travelling.  In fact, I have a rather large distaste for it.  I like the destination part but the trip itself, garbage.  I think it’s just a bad taste with US travel, really.  Any other country, customs practically gives you a high-five for showing up.  That’s another topic though…

Believe it or not, I am a rather large history fanatic.  History as in anything that occurred before the West was colonized.  I really love stories and the best ones are legends from other cultures. The legend of Gilgamesh is fascinating and is nearly 4000 years old.  Japanese feudalism, China’s dynasties, Egypt’s emperors, Greece and Rome’s democracy, South America’s empires, the European dark ages up until the monarchy sets in the 1700s.  Each one has a very large impact on today’s society, even though most don’t realize it.

Funny anecdote, my wife was reading a Disney book to my eldest and they pointed to a character they didn’t recognize.  I said “that’s Merlin”.  Both said, “who’s that?”.  The recognized Pinnochio, Belle, Cinderella and all the other ones but not Merlin.  I still have trouble understanding how a grown-up today would not know that name.

Ok, to the main point now.  Top 5 places I would like to visit!

  1. Ireland + Great Britain.  A large part of my heritage comes from here.  This place to me seems like the last place on earth with real magic.
  2. France.  Specifically the Louvre.  I think I could spend a month in there.
  3. China. Half the inventions the world uses daily come from here.  It’s the oldest continual civilization to boot.
  4. Japan. The other half of inventions.  Feudal japan is fascinating.  Religion is particularly interesting here.
  5. Home (Canada).  I’ve seen some amazing parts but there’s so much more to see.  Maritimes are on the short list.

In my anal ways, I’ve already made “brain plans” as to how and what I’d do to make this list real.  Many years ago. If I was a DINK, this would be simple.  So I’m stuck on the idea of bringing kids for a historic tour without them having the context, waiting for them to gain the context (in 15 years) or going without them.  I much prefer the second option but time is always a challenge.

How bout other people?

More or Less Time

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There’s a concept in gaming called time to kill, or TTK.  This number starts off at a baseline and usually gets smaller the stronger you get.  Makes sense, you swing harder, shoot faster and all that.  Designers increase the challenge by either increasing the number of enemies, changing tactics or simply buffing the enemy hit point pool to no longer be linear.

D&D is the perfect model for this.  Baldur’s Gate kinda pushed this to the limit where you could die to 3 wolves if you were too low a level but get 1-2 levels above them and they didn’t even matter anymore.  4th edition moved away from simply throwing the kitchen sink at you in terms of numbers and instead added challenge with stronger enemies.  Still, a level 20 character is practically a god and that makes it a real challenge for a DM to put an enemy that makes it hard for characters to progress since you need to make your own god.

MMOs have a disconnect here between the leveling game, the grouping game and the end game (or raiding).  As you level, it can be argued that your power increases and TTK drops drastically.  TTK in WoW is 2 or 3 attacks after level 50.  Expansion packs have to reset that TTK though, since there has to be some challenge for players or why bother.  While at the tail end of Cataclysm you could kill 10 enemies in 10 seconds, Mists turned that into 20 seconds.  Group content is similar where when it’s fresh, you are likely to die.  When you are powerful, I’ve seen tanks simply walk up to the bosses and ignore everything else in the zone.

Now we get to what is considered acceptable TTK.  I think WoW is a bit low for my tastes, at least in the single player game.  There’s no strategy, just 2-3 buttons.  The Secret World is way too high (cue meme) at 30 seconds or so.  Fights become annoyances where there’s just a meat wall with no impact on strategy.  I like the SWTOR model, GW2 to some degree, where you get to use 5 or so skills and get a rhythm going, or at least an understanding of class mechanics.

There’s some comfort in knowing that I have control over TTK and that if that number fluctuates, I can improve my play to address it.  If random buttons have the same impact as smart button presses, then I just zone out.

Linear Progression

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I’m rather fond of GW2’s linear level progression. Each level is more or less as long to complete as the other. Makes for a smooth ride and set expectations. Compared to Rift’s absolute massive timesink from 51-60, it feels great!

The downside is the concept of power progression. You unlock pretty much everything by level 5, then wait until 80 for a few tweaks. It’s better than Wow where you go 10 levels and then have to learn a new playstyle but the forward goal building is intangible.

I’m curious as to how TESO and Wildstar address this core component. Either the stretch the content to fit the timeframe (how many orcs can you kill before your eyes bleed) or they make all content relevant at all levels (ala GW2)

It’s interesting how much that design decisions impacts my playstyle.