An interesting bit from Stephan Frost, in relation to MMO development. If you recall, he was one of the leads on Wildstar, a spectacular example of MMO failure.

In the conceptual layer, the items described apply to any long-dev cycle of an evolving product, not just games. You’re competing against a finish line that is always moving, mainly because you’re competing against established market forces. Big bang successful launches are ultra rare in existing markets, they instead start small and grow over time. MMO’s are rarely given that luxury, as they are competing against expectations from long-established products. New World has 50 other MMOs to compare against… it’s got to be focused and refined to have a chance. You need a super clean vision and new flawless execution to have a remote change.

Wildstar, to kick that dead horse, had an incoherent vision and launched about 6 months too early. I had a blast in the leveling portion and really liked the crafting system. Hell, it had social housing and tons of cosmetics. It was a solid setting, with a decently solid 1-to-max experience. And then it shifted to the same place WoW has turned, the ultra competitive + fine tuned playerbase. It had no social tools for nearly a year, and all group content was either against a clock or required twitch reflexes to get through. Raids being only 20/40 was an insane choice that only works worse the farther we move away from it.

Could Wildstar have ever succeeded, even with more time in the cooker? I like to think so, as the bones were solid. Had social tools been there from the start, had the “timer” dungeons been an extra tier instead of the wall of quit (WoW ran with this as Mythic+), and had raids been much smaller, perhaps we’d be having a different conversation. People can understand balance issues at launch, but systematic issues are tougher pill to swallow.

Is this due to dev cycles, or poor vision? Maybe they just copied the wrong mechanics and should have pulled from FF14’s bag of tricks. I don’t think we’ll ever truly find out, at least not until there’s a deep dive on the topic with such a purpose.

Which is a right shame, as we’re seeing a larger push for games as a service, MMOs in nearly all respects, and those lessons just don’t seem to be learned. Or perhaps they are simply not being listened to while the bean counters run the show.

An opinion article, fine, but also one that really does a good job highlighting the compounding Blizzard woes of poor pipeline management.

There are multiple factors here, and all of them are compounding on each other. Nearly all of them deal with Blizzard’s management approach.

Content drought

The pace of content for any GaaS is predicated on keeping people engaged. OW has been borderline maintenance mode, in line with the WoW content pipeline approach. Is game development hard? HELL YEAH. Did it get harder with COVID, triple hell yeah. At we 18 months into the COVID model? Yup, and any management team that wasn’t able to adapt (not reach 100% of prior, simply adapt) really shouldn’t be a management team. So while yes, there are delays, no it shouldn’t be an all-stop.

Competition

Valorant is one, no doubt. But Apex, Fortnite and a pile of others still manage to release content on some cadence and take some eyeballs. Gamers are locusts and lemmings. Cool that you had something 3 months ago, but there’s a bright and shiny over here.

Fair to point that Blizzard made a point of keeping track with WoW to launch updates to compete with FF14, Wildstar and other MMOs. The shoe is clearly on the other foot now.

Sequel

Any “live” game keeps eyeballs as long as they know there’s a roadmap. Announcing a sequel, means that you’re pulling people from the current one to the next one. Halo 2 players moved to Halo 3. But those game launch cycles are 1 to 2 years. Overwatch 2 was announced at BlizzCon 2019. It will not launch until 2022, at the earliest.

The serious downside to sequels is that you need an A and B team. Each alternates between dev and support. It was made really clear that this did not exist for OW2, and that they needed resources shared between both. Why not add more people? First, the skills are hard to find, and second, that costs money.

Leadership

There’s no denying that Jeff Kaplan is the reason that Overwatch even exists. The game director leaving mid-stream is never a good sign. And we can’t shy away that this whole lawsuit is going to cause some leadership ripples (for now, this seems to be hitting Diablo 4).

Sponsors

It seems you only need to wait a day to learn about another sponsor dropping OWL. This is a financial consideration after all… HotS was shut down due to funding. OWL cannot survive without sponsors, and if OWL doesn’t exist, then there’s not much coming in terms of funding for future content.

End Result

This is a year and a half of content drought, nothing in the pipeline, leadership woes, serious competition, and diminishing funds. This doesn’t mean that OW2 is dead in the water, but it does provide some serious indications that OW1 is on it’s last legs as an e-sports item. It’ll move into the HotS bucket of maintenance mode.

I really didn’t think that OW would have reached this space this quickly. A fascinating set of circumstances.

More “departures” at Blizzard, and this particular photo is acting as a sort of hit list of easy targets for Activision to take action upon.

I have done some dumb things in my life, of that there’s no question. We all have. I’ve paid my fair share of consequences, enough to understand that while in a leadership position, there are some fundamental values and ethics that we need to share. And for a very long time, money allowed people to get away with almost anything. If you survived the middle trenches, it really didn’t matter what you did from that point forward.

There’s a fundamental concept in physics, that for every action there is a commensurate reaction. This applies to sociology as well, just that the timeframes are different. Sometimes that triggering event seems minor compared to other things, but it’s just a lack of awareness of the pressure on that given topic. Dam failures are not often caused by massive floods, it’s gradually eating away and lack of maintenance.

SUPER TANGENT TIME! I do want to point that the last US President is viewed as the final trigger for sexual harassment deluge. MeToo started in the mid-2000’s but truly picked up in 2017. The trickle turned into a torrent of allegations everywhere, and you can’t shake a stick without hearing/reading about it. The normalcy that he presented in sexual assault/harassment really pushed this thing over the edge. And where this current leads, I have no clue.

So more Blizzard leadership exits, and I’m somewhat sure that this will continue for the months to come. It’s a good message to leaders that there are consequences for actions, but it’s also years late. And for those who actually want to buy Blizzard products, the leadership exists here mean that dev cycles will slow to a crawl, which certainly isn’t helping things. It’s all bad news, with a sliver of justice for those who were abused in the past.

Let’s see how far this toilet will flush.

In my younger days as a programmer, I spent a total of 0 hrs thinking about how people used my products. I coded, and people were simply using it wrong. I then coded a program for tanning salons, something to help them book, scan cards, charge people, run the beds, and then tabulate the finances. Like an all-in-one app for a cash-only business (I learned a LOT about ethics here!) Where I spent 2 months coding (the interface to the beds was painful), I spent 6 months doing the user interface work – back in the day we called it UI. Let me tell you that the ladies working there were trying their best, but 4in press-on-nails do not work with keyboards, or small icons. From that point forward, I had a much different appreciate for ease of use.

A few years ago, the concepts of UI got rebranded to the totality of the User eXperience (UX), which covered more than just the buttons, but how the user feels when they are using it. Amazon is a great example, where the UX has been refined over the years to reduce the number of clicks required to complete a transaction. In quite a few cases, 1 click can place and confirm an order (you shouldn’t use this btw). Apple, under Mr. Jobs, had the UX as a core principle of design. I’ll readily admit that the mid 2010 Apple devices were super intuitive and much better than Android. The stuff just worked.

Games are very similar. Mobile games break with bad UI – the successful ones are predicated on simple interfaces that allow complex execution. Incremental games are successful based on the impression of progress where there is little – AdVenture Capitalist succeeds where many do not.

Controller based games simply need to be responsive. Input lag, slowness, poor button placement, TTK ratios all need to be refined through iteration. The user needs to feel like they have some sense of control of the outcomes. Hades and Dead Cells feel amazing because they are ultra responsive – and also rather simple. Keyboard/mouse games aren’t a whole lot different – LoL works because the interface allows it, and that each click matters.

There are quite a few reports on how Mario Bros on NES was designed with UX in mind. The pace of the obstacles, the music, the gradual increases in difficulty are all reflective of a thoughtful design. The NES is a fascinating exploration of good and bad UX (Battletoads is near impossible because of a crappy UX).

Bad UX on the other hand, dramatically impedes the perception of quality. WoW’s default UI is horrendous, and you’re practically mandated to use mods in order to make any sense of the game – at least with regards to the rails Blizzard wants you to run upon. FF14 is marginally better, due to simplified systems, but you’re still looking at 3-4 hotbars of buttons. Civilization as a series has refined this a lot over time, and looking at any other thematically similar game really makes you question why developers think they can do better (I do think Civ 5 is better than Civ 6 due to this).

Complex simulation games live and die on the ability to relay complex concepts in digestible and layered interfaces. Frostpunk is a set of disasters that need to be addressed before they cascade to total failure. When things are about to fail, you are warned. When they do fail, you get a big notice. SimCity doesn’t readily tell you that something needs tweaking, and you’re often stuck digging through a bunch of variables to see why things are not progressing. Factory games aren’t much different! The supply chains can fail at multiple points and it’s not often clear at a glance as to why. The ability to bring up a production report (Factorio and DSP have this) can give an indication because your consumption is equal to production (or above).

In summary, the general thought on UX is that its reflective of polish. Most QA testing focuses on bug catching, but there’s the risk of the people used to the interface becoming accustomed to it. It’s also quite hard to accurate measure, as it’s often a subjective view. The sort of good news is that most gamers have an appreciation for it, and that more and more ‘reviewers’ are taking it into account, A great UX simply enhances the total experience, and it really sticks out when it’s not present.

Who restarts a 100hr playthrough, honestly? I do!

I won’t sugar coat it, Satisfactory was seriously making me question my sanity. ImKibbitz has a ton of videos on that game (and does a great job at it too), and his more recent one on the transition of late-game nuclear waste (the penultimate stage) is fascinating to me. You know how you watch a Minecraft video and it shows these massive cities? Satisfactory is like that. It’s a 24 minute video that honestly covers like 20 hours of effort. It’s glorious when it’s all running at the end. (There’s another video of a “full game world” with some artistic touches that has over 1000hrs of playtime. Craziness.

So I was thinking, is Dyson Sphere Project really that different? What is it about that game that makes it more enjoyable? A new playthrough with a different set of lenses, one that understands the mechanics and has a general plan, would certainly focus on the details and quality of life bits. At least, that was the thinking.

Starter World

The randomizer at the start of the game has some bits of interesting, like how spread out the star systems are. If they are too close, then the rare materials spawn less often. So a wide space is best. The number of planets per type doesn’t mean much – you’ll only ever have 1 black hole. With that set up, I landed and began immediately to survey the land.

Every starting planet has the same sort of temperate layout. You’ll have water, trees, rocks, iron, copper, coal, stone and oil. The “difficulty” here is in the land allocation. You’re often put in a space that’s somewhat tight in terms of land/water ratio, and the first few nodes accessible are low volume. Starter area after all. That makes it important to scout ahead and find where the larger ore piles are located and the larger land masses. You’re going to need it.

The Bus

The concept here is that you want to build a highway of basic material, and then run it through a production area. The first “bus” area will focus on stone, iron, and copper. You’ll break it into 4 phases, basic material, assembled material, buildings, and storage.

Basic material is the initial smelting process. Stone to Bricks, Iron to Ingots and Magnets, Copper to Ingots. The assembled material will move into the simple items, Gears, Magnetic Coils and Circuit Boards. This phase then leads out with 5 lines to the buildings section (bricks, iron ingots, gears, coils, and circuit boards). You can make nearly every important building with these 5 items (Tesla, Wind Turbine, Belts, Sorters, Splitters, Storage, Smelters, Assemblers, Miners, Thermal Stations). Building all these things is important, but you’ll want to store them too. Setting the maximums is important, you’re unlikely to need more than 50 miners and a box can hold 1500. Best to restrict production so that the resources can be used for things “down the line”.

Since this bus takes space, you’re going to need some rather open room to build it all. I’ve personally split it into 2 groups – one for the first 2 phases, then another for the last 2. Breaking up a phase is not a good idea, you’ll end up with spaghetti lines. The best part of a bus is that if you empty an ore node, it’s really easy to run a new supply line to the start and not have to rebuild the entire thing. And since you’ll have 5 main outputs (and access to copper ingots), you can then work to have a more complex 5th tier of the bus to make things go.

The concepts of buses are important, as you’re going to need to do it again for oil, and then again for silicon. You’ll have basic inputs, a transform phase, and then a storage phase. And then use that storage to kick off another transform & storage phase. The storage part is super important, as it allows you to make changes within the bus and not have impacts on the rate of production downstream. As supply chains get more complex, breaking an early part can have devastating effects down stream. It also allows you to create one-off items when automation isn’t practical (e.g. early logistic stations).

Research Planning

The research tree in DSP is big, and it’s entirely possible to research a tech and not be able to build the items because it’s missing a dependency. It’s also not at all clear to a new player what’s actually important!

Having done a full playthrough, I have a much greater appreciation for what’s important for progress. You’ll reach pain points that prevent automation, so my general thinking is:

• Basic power (tesla + wind turbines)
• Mining (to get ore)
• Smelting (to make ingots)
• Logistics (belts and sorters)
• Assemblers (to complete the bus)
• Blue Matrix (research cubes)
• Graphite (refined coal)
• Thermal Plants

That’s pretty much all you need to get the main starter bus up and running. The upgrade tree (generic upgrades) are also good, where you really want to unlock Drive Engine 2 in order to visit another planet. The other planet will have silicon & titanium, essential for future growth.

Build Phases

The early game is all about Blue Matrix production. You need oil to get to the Red Matrix phase, which is a new bus that is more dependent on glass production (stone) and a completely different bus (water, sulphur, coal, oil). The Yellow Matrix phase is a right mess, because it needs Titanium and Silicon, which are only found on another planet. You need a fair chunk of it too, like 6 trips with full inventory worth, to get access to the real goal – Interplanetary Logistic Stations.

When you get access to those (~ the 8hr mark), the game completely changes in scope. For another post.

The internet is a funny place. There’s next to nothing that is fully isolated, most things are dependent on other things. That thing you treasure, odds are it’s dependent on a pile of other products to function. You hate Steam? Well how else are you going to buy that cool PC game? Want to boycott a car company? There are 300 different companies providing parts to it. Imagine for a second if YouTube shut down tomorrow, or Facebook? How many “influencers” would be out of a “job”?

ActiBlizz is no different. There are thousands of people that have tertiary relationships to the company and make a “living” from it. MMO-Champion and WoWhead would stop to exist without WoW. BlizzardWatch if the company went away.

Preach, Bellular, Evi+Tali, Asmongold all made a decent buck on the WoW wagon. Two of them have decided to move on, and certainly are going to bring a crowd with them. Where does Dark Legacy Comics go?

Overwatch League brings in a fair chunk of cash to the coffers. T-Mobile has pulled their ads and others are looking to do the same. Kellogg’s is out. That increases the risk that OWL as an e-sport is at risk of not being able to move forward – just like HotS went through. When HotS did close, there were a lot of people that needed to find new income streams – most outside of the ActiBlizz umbrella. It’s a hell of a choice to change your livelyhood, compared to a player changing what icon they are going to click.

This blends into the discussion of boycotting, where the impacts are oddly messed up into the idea of “winning”. Like if all the “good” people quit WoW, then the “bad” people have won. In what world does your monthly sub and in-game chat have an impact on the paycheck of a CEO? Does anyone think that the WoW direction is a positive one based on player feedback? The MAU certainly say otherwise. Do people think there’s any positive to come out of the LoL community? Nah, we just end up with tertiary actors mad at other tertiary actors.

If you’re paying any attention, ActiBlizz only makes decisions based on money. Their shares went up on the Q2 reports. As long as they are making money, and not risking losing money, they have no reason to make meaningful change. You paying them and expecting them to change is insanity. Why would they? They’ve got what they need from you.

You ever try to negotiate a bill or service with your internet provider? Ever have any success without threatening to cancel your subscription? They don’t care about you as a person, at all. They just want to ensure that you pay your bills on time. Big companies are the same.

If you want something to change, stop rewarding the negative behaviour and instead, reward the good behaviour.

I dislike saying something isn’t working when there’s no comparative. If you haven’t played Factorio, then it’s important to state that this is the gold standard for the factory genre (admittedly niche).

Dyson Sphere Project (DSP) is a lot like Factorio in almost all respects. The change to 3D brings a verticality to building and then some geometry since you’re building on large spheres. And the whole large scale logistical bit (trains) are replaced with shuttles since you’re moving between planets (side effect of not having the need for train tracks). This last bit is a major simplification from Factorio.

The starter experiences are extremely similar. You:

• Manually mine 1 resource
• Create a mining factory & power it
• Create a smelting factory & power it
• Connect the mining to the factory through a belt
• Mine a second resource and repeat
• Use the dual smelters to assemble something more complex

Once you’ve assembled one thing, the rest of the game is the same concept. Mine/harvest/extract some resource, refine it, and merge it with something else. The complexity comes from multiple layers of crafting items, at different rates of production, and getting them all to the right locations. The earlier you are organized into ‘hubs’ the easier life becomes.

ABC

Corny, fine, but Always Be Crafting. These games are about falling forward, so when you have solved one logistical challenge, a new one shows up. You think that you’ll never need more Iron Plates but then you realize that you need to produce 50x the same amount.

The actual Dyson Sphere requires somewhere close to 120,000 solar sails. Each sail takes 25 raw materials, across 6 different types. There are 12 crating stages involved, which has its own logistical challenges. So 3 million in pure raw materials, plus close to 2 million more in the logistical buildings to automate it all.

And you start the game mining 1 item per second.

Satisfactory

I feel the need to compare here as the concepts are the same (more like Factorio as it’s not a sphere and also has trains). The execution is more finicky because it’s next to impossible to select multiple things, draw things out, or do simple group alignment. Videos really do justice to explaining this, so for comparison’s sake here is the same streamer explaining the starter experience in both Satisfactory and DSP (he also has some Factorio stuff). Both videos are similar in length, but the ease of interface is the key bit. (I am avoiding the random MAM research results that would require rebuilding a factory line… that’s its own rant.)