Tag Archives: design

Can I Have The Car With That Kitchen Sink?

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Wildstar.  Lovely, lovely Widstar.  First – read this.  I’ll wait.

 

Let’s go over the list so far.

  • Great art – check
  • Levels – check
  • Integrated zones – check
  • Dynamic content – check
  • Active combat (avoid the fire!) – check
  • Talent system – check
  • Customization – check
  • PvP – check
  • Dungeons – check
  • Housing – check
  • Mentoring – check
  • Dungeon housing – check?
  • Focus on tactics, not zerging – check
  • End-state content – check

I know of no game that launched with all this working.  I know of only a few that had half this list working.  You’re lucky if you get 2 of them right these days.

There are 3 possible outcomes that I can see.  First, the most probable.  The game launches, has everything in it, works about 50% of the time.  Two, the game launches, everything is broken and it’s a massive failure.  Three, they somehow manage to pull of the most amazingly smooth launch in history and become a shining beacon of tomorrow.  I’m hoping for #3, but I’m betting on #1.

Well, there is a fourth one.  Carbine is going to pull off the most massive troll prank in the history of gaming.

Neverwinter Action

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In every game that I’ve played, I’ve had a main character than was self-sufficient.  My gaming hours are strange, so grouping up was hard.  EQ grouping was an exercise in teeth pulling and it today it seems every other group has someone who can’t count to 10 without taking off their shoes.  EQ I was a necro (fear kiting!), WoW I was originally a Rogue (stun locks!), then swapped to a Shaman and finally a Monk.  Neverwinter, I play a Cleric.  I always had healing alts for some reason but this time it’s a main.

In nearly every game I can think of, healing is both targeted and direct.  This means you aim for someone, press a button and their health bar goes up.  A Neverwinter Cleric is not like that.  Since the game controls are mouse-look enabled, you have to point to your target to heal them.  Not going to happen in group combat.  Instead the game uses a “smart heal” system that automatically targets users based on lost health (both as a % and as a total).  Often times this will mean the tank but sometimes the heal hits the wrong person.  Fine.  That’s why the game uses a passive/over-time/ae heal structure.

Clerics have a debuff for their enemies called Astral Seal, which caused all attacks on the target to heal the attacker. There is a targeted AE heal – Bastion of Health – which is pretty solid but hard to target when people move.  Forgemaster’s Flame gives a damage effect to an enemy and heals the party that’s nearby.  Sunburst provides knockback + AE healing close to you.  Healing Word is targeted but it’s a heal over time.  The Divinity heal is targeted but also over time.  And… that’s pretty much it for healing.  You have 1 direct heal.  Everything else is more or less what I call “healing obfuscation”. You press buttons but people seem to be healed more or less by accident than on purpose.  Due to the way the game manages skills, you can’t just stand there and spam heals.

This system means that players have a huge responsibility for their own well-being.  Many a time I’ve had group members take a massive hit because they “stood in the fire” and died a few seconds later because of enemy focus fire.  As an action-rpg-mmo, everyone and their mom need to be moving around.  Dodge, dip, dive, duck and dodge.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a single group could complete anything without a healer past level 30.  It’s when to compare to other MMOs, healing is not going to instantly save lives.

This has two main benefits that I rather enjoy.  The first is player responsibility and role management.  Other than a Rogue standing on the boss, everyone else needs to run around and control the map.  It is extremely active.  Stand and spam will get you killed and you will get frustrated.  This will eventually weed out a lot of players in terms of group content.  Second is that bosses don’t have any abilities that need to be soaked as every big hit can be avoided.  BioShock Infinite (and games w/ regeneration shields) have a problem in that if you pump your shields, in order for an enemy to feel threatening, he needs to be able to drop your shields in a hit.  These are damage spikes and they are often unavoidable.  Horribad gameplay.  If you reward players for managing incoming damage, does it ever make the game more enjoyable.  But it is different and a type of different that not everyone will enjoy.

I can run an LFR in WoW while watching a movie – which I consider the summit of casual play.  I can’t do anything combat related in Neverwinter without actively moving and attacking, or I’m going to die in 10 seconds.  I expect Wildstar to be similar, based on the data provided so far.  DCUO sort of had this.  It’s a pile of fun.

Free to Play Foibles

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Since Rift is going F2P in June, quite a few people have voiced some concerns over the business model and the long term ramifications.  I think Wilhelm has the most sober approach to it all.  There are quite a few items I would like to discuss here that I think many people have either overlooked or simply not really thought much about.

A subscription game has a relatively assured income model.  You have X players you get X money.  As long as the playerbase is happy, you’re going to bring in money.  This part I don’t really get about RIFT since the quality has always been there but without Hartman at the helm, we all pretty much figured this was going to happen.  WoW makes about $50 million a month and can amortize/invest into future content development.  The thing about themeparks is that the developers determine the content and the players consume it.  Given WoW’s development cycle, you’re paying about $60-$100 per patch and then another $60 per expansion pack.  Take any other themepark F2P game and you can pay much, much less for content – sometimes nothing.  Sandboxes do not have this problem (hence UO still be subscription) and PvP games are pretty close to this.  This is rather clear if you take a step back from the actual game.

Where people tend to trip up a bit is two-fold.  First, a company needs to make money and people have to spend money.  I know, simple.  The thing about making money is that you have to consistently make it.  If you’re selling unlocks for an account, things that last forever, then after a while, people won’t be buying them if they’ve been there for a long time.  You need new players to buy that sort of stuff.  In order to make cash, you need to sell consumables.  In a level-based, gear-based system, what is consumable?  New content is one, but the price tag to develop it is high and you’re not sure to get the money back.  Character customizations work but again, unless you’re overwriting what was there before, you’re not going to have long term success.  Devs have yet to figure out this problem, instead they all rely on lockboxes, which is more or less gambling.

This is where it gets tricky.  As a general rule, people are stupid.  A person is smart, certainly.  Groups of people, in small enough quantities can show smarts – hence guilds.  Large groups, as is evident in any political circle, are as dumb as bricks – if not simply lemmings.  Neverwinter’s spam of who is successfully unlocking mounts in their gambling boxes invariably makes other people think “I can win too”.  Even the lottery is a tax on the stupid as you have a better chance to be hit by lightning twice before winning the lottery once.  People still buy dozens of tickets a week.

So you end up in the situation where developers have yet to find a consumable item that doesn’t make players feel like they are getting gouged (which is why we pay subscriptions right?) and resort to the lowest common denominator.  Which the public happily provides.

A third point that I need to bring up is the comparison to F2P in the Asian market.  The majority of those games are P2W, clearly.  And the majority only stay on the market for 12-18 months.  This is the polar opposite of the western F2P market.  For some reason I can’t yet figure out, our side of the ocean wants free games for years and years and years.  If you’re too cheap to pay 10$ a month for a F2P game, you shouldn’t complain that they are offering items to people who will.  If you’re unable to find things to buy at that price point, which I personally find issue with, then there’s simply a problem with the financial model of the game (*cough* SWTOR *cough*).

While I might think that RIFT could have continued for another 10 years with a subscription model, apparently they were getting enough feedback that F2P games were eating into their profits.  WoW is no different I’m sure.  Someone will have to make the tough decision of either guaranteed income and to weather the F2P storm while the market evolves or to jump into a pool of cannibalistic fish who will do everything to destroy their competition.

Is Free to Play here to stay?  Yes.  Is the current market deployment sustainable? No.  Did the exact same thing happen to subscriptions over the past 5 years?  Hell yes.

Neverwinter Pit Fight

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Astral Diamonds come into the system through Daily Quests and events.  Since the AD are used to buy everything on the AH and do a wide majority of character customization, you need lots of em.  Heck, the best pet in the game costs 980K AD and at level 38 I’m sitting on 50K.

The skirmish event was on, meaning that completing one gave me a chest with 1,000 AD.  When this event is NOT active, even as a Cleric, I can wait 20 minutes to get into a queue.  When the event is active, it’s under 5 minutes.  My tank, level 18, seems to insta-queue no matter the time.  The daily quest for skirmishes gives you 2,000AD but past level 30 you need to complete 2 of them.  This is hard to do when there isn’t an event. Plus, if you’re on a quests and get into a queue, you lose all non-overworld progress.  Overworld meaning the 15 or so locations you see on the big map, which is only about 10% of the content.  Last night my queue came up when I was on the last boss on a hard quest.  Hard to restart :/

Anyways, here’s a quick video of the current skirmish someone else took since I didn’t get FRAPS installed until after I was done.

The entire event is in a room that my AE spell covers 25% of the space.  As usual, the last boss has what seems to be infinite timed add spawns – in this case 1 caster and 2 wolves.  The run I had last had such poor coordination that there were always 2 casters up aiming directly for me and 2-3 wolves chasing me around.  And no tank on either run, in fact one had 2 wizards and the second had 3.  Fun times!

Since I hit level 35, I’ve gained a new AE heal spell and my gameplay has changed dramatically because of it.  Group content is harder, I have more powerful skills that dramatically affect the gameplay and it’s like a new game is opening up.  What a massive difference from every other MMO out there.

The downside is that nearly every group I’ve run with has had at least one person just quit the group and due to the in-game mechanic change and they are listed as disconnected and the spot stays blank.  I could use that extra body.  Neverwinter seriously needs a vote kick option or some way to manage this.  Grouping tools should be a priority.

I should mention that gear drops in the game are a strange affair.  I think WoW has brainwashed people to think that Green << Blue <<<< Purple.  Here are comparative items, at my level.  I mean there’s a difference, sure but it isn’t massive.

Neverwinter - Blue Item

Neverwinter - Green Item

The fun part here is that since people don’t understand that gear is replaced in a day and that there is a massive price difference (800 vs 50K), you can make a pretty penny if you play the cards right.  The downside is that people roll /need on gear that they can’t use.  Greedy buggers.

The Trinity’s Crutch

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Last night I ran a dungeon in Neverwinter as a Cleric.  Throne of Idris.  We had 1 Wizard, 2 Great Weapon Fighters and 1 Rogue.  That’s right, no tank.  I died a fair bit and the last boss was a 10 minute+ fight (well, on the 3rd attempt) of running around after the Wizard left and the GWF died, leaving us with 3 to kill a 5 man boss.  I danced and jived and sucked back healing potions and screamed when the boss finally dropped dead.  It was a ton of fun.  It was also a level 40 dungeon that took over 90 minutes.

I’ve been gaming for quite a long time and 99% of it deals with combat.  Sometimes this is a war of words but often with someone taking a blunt instrument to the head.  In both cases, combat is a combination of taking an attack, recovering from the attack and giving your own attack.  Hence the Holy Trinity concept of Tank, Healer and DPS.  Other than Guild Wars 2, I can’t think of any class-based game that didn’t explicitly focus on this trinity.  Sandboxes (EvE, UO, DF, etc…) are not included since most players will build a character with all 3 facets.

In older versions of D&D (pre v4), you had the concept of trinity but a lack of good tools.  You needed a great GM and a decent ruleset to make it work.  Or really good players.  A bad GM would send everyone after the Cleric or Wizard, then slowly choke down the rest of the group.  MMOs brought the concept of Threat as a mechanic to the table, where players were ranked, based on actions, and the monsters attacked the player at the top of the list.  At lower skill levels, this works rather well since DPS and Tanks and Healers are somewhat even in terms of output, since the scale is small.  At higher levels, as is evident in WoW, DPS will outpace a tank’s threat by exponential factors.  Inversely, as tanks get better, healers have less threat since they have less to heal.  Until that point, Healers are wearing “kick me” signs.

Developers try to address these issues with 3 tools.  The first is a threat modifier, where you do more/less threat per action based on your skills or class.  Tanks typically want more, healers a whole lot less and DPS can be used as the middle ground.  Using WoW again as an example, Vengeance provides a DPS boost to a tank based on the damage they take.  This gives tanks the ability to hold threat against tons of enemies while DPS is going wild.

The second is with a taunt.  A taunt does one of two things.  Either it gives you a massive boost of threat or it puts you at the top of the threat list.  The former only seems like the latter when you’re close to the top.  I’m still trying to figure out if Neverwinter uses the 2nd type or not.

The third method is called a threat wipe, and it’s usually seen as dirty pool by players.  This is where a boss is going smooth and all of a sudden he forgets everything that’s happened and you need to restart the whole threat dance.

I play a Cleric and a Tank in Nevewinter.  Again, Open Beta disclaimer.  Threat in the game is currently broken and it’s enough to reduce my enjoyment of the multiplayer aspect of the game.  As a Cleric, one bug fix is that I need to remove all my gear then re-equip it to have a chance to survive any group encounter.  The way the Cleric works is through mostly Heal over Time spells.  Given that there are continual spawns on a boss, any boss encounter I’m going to get swamped with enemies, so I tend to gather them up and run to the middle pile, hoping the tank can get them.  Which isn’t often.  As a Tank, I have a 15 second taunt that seems to make the enemies turn to me, then turn away after 1 hit.  My threat building skills work in a small cone in front of me and for them to really work, I need to block all attacks (due to the mechanics of the Mark skill).  Since blocking means not moving, I can’t really pick up the adds and keep the boss on me.  I’ve worked a few things out so far but jeebus is it ever hard to keep threat active.

As much as I enjoyed the dungeon run last night, there were 3 or 4 times where I just wanted to quit the run from sheer frustration.  The thing that kept me going were the other players and the attitude of “damn this game, we’re going to beat it”.  I ended the run with no drops, next to no experience gain, 90 minutes out of pocket but 3 new names added to the friends list.  Something to cheer about after all.

Also, I need to get FRAPS re-installed…

Neverwinter – Story and Lore

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I know I said I’d get to the Foundry but Tipa’s impression post got me thinking more about the odd feeling I get in Neverwinter.

If you’ve played any recent game, then you’re familiar with the typical storyline.  Batman needs to stop the Joker, Jim needs to stop the Zerg, players need to defeat Crucia.  From start to end, there’s a cohesive story that you’re a part of, either as the main protagonist or as a side-kick.  Games where you’re a side-kick are usually stinkers, since you’re lacking the power to change the game.

MMOs are really similar to this in that they need to provide a Hero’s Journey – from small beginnings come great things.  You start off as a plucky hero (willing or not), fight your way through hordes of minions and eventually lay waste to some big bad wolf at the end.  Expansion comes out, new story, new path.  Somehow my badge of honor that shows I killed Deathwing doesn’t impress the monkeys who are 1 level higher for some reason.  I digress.

The thing about this main story is that there are plenty of smaller stories along the path.  Each “zone” has a particular flavor and point.  Save the trees, keep the boars away and whatnot.  Individually they are fine but the stories combined create lore.  This is used not only to drive you forward in a game but to frame the world ahead of you.  If in one zone I need to skins bears and the next I’m hunting zombies, there’s a distinct lack of cohesiveness and the lore becomes hard to follow.  WoW has amazing success because the lore is so consistent.  EvE has success since the lore is player created.  At any point, you can look back and see “this is what’s happened so far”.

Back to Neverwinter.  The game has no lore, it only has a setting.  I’m in Faerun, got it.  Why am I attacking these skeletons again?  Who are they working for?  Each zone has an underlying story but with 20+ zones, none of them seem to link to each other at all.  This is where I think the D&D license wasn’t truly understood.  When I sit down at a tabletop, I am playing my character across multiple sessions and multiple adventures.  Sure I might be in the North killing Giants one day and on a boat in the South chasing pirates the next but the cohesion between the settings is player based.  I explicitly know this because I chose to go on that boat (or lost a bet).  Neverwinter has no such choice.  I am going through multiple campaigns with the same player but zero other linkages between them.  It also doesn’t help that the writing is atrocious.

neverwinter demon

Cool. Who are you?

It’s too late now to ret-con the story from start to finish but I am hoping that the first module released addresses this issue.  Right now, my best bet for a consistent and coherent story is the Foundry.  A few of them are series with promise.  If you’re playing Neverwinter, give Old Jerry’s Saga a shot to see how the absurd can be a valid critique of the common.

Neverwinter – Character Progression

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Just to re-iterate on all previous Neverwinter posts, the game is in Open Beta/soft launch. While the details might change, the systems are pretty much set in stone.

The basic game gives you two character slots.  I have a Devoted Cleric (healer) and a Guardian Fighter (tank).  The former is level 30, the latter level 11.  I am thinking about buying more, to give the Rogue a shot but time will tell how that works out.  Leveling (after the Foundry nerf) is done primarily through single player core quests.  Skirmishes give next to no experience and I only run them during the events to get the extra 1000 Astral Diamonds at the end.  Dungeons give decent experience but take 45 minutes and the loot system is pretty broken right now (as per my last post).  Some Foundry missions give some decent experience and loot, plus are easily repeatable.  It’s entirely possible to level solely in the Foundry but I am playing a themepark and want to enjoy the ride.

To character progression now.  After the tutorial you’re level 4 with a power in each slot.  Each level gained from that point gives you a Power Point to spend in a given skill.  Additional powers are unlocked after you’ve spent enough points (5, 10, 15, 20, etc…)  Every 10 levels you get extra stat points (STR, INT, etc..) for your character, though they have a somewhat negligible impact on the game.  Level 10 gives you access to professions and the start of the Feat system.  Similar to Power Points, you get 1 every level  and can spend them on passive boosts in a tiered structure.  At 30 you get access to a specialization (currently only 1 exists per class) and you get to spend your Feat Points on Paragon abilities.  These unlock more passive skills, in a tiered format but only along a single path (of 3).  At level 16, you get a companion that either heals, tanks or damages.  Tank is a really good bet for everyone, though if you are a tank, get the healer.  Max level for a character is currently 60.

Each class has a particular Paragon path focus to choose.   My cleric can either go for DPS, healing or buffs.  Powers have 3 ranks each, and you can only equip a small subset at any given time.  So my Cleric has 2 passives, 2 dailies, 3 encounters and 2 at-will powers selected for solo play and a different set for group play – so a minimum of 14 points and a maximum of 28 to get everything you might need for both roles.  You can reset these choices for a Zen fee (the F2P currency).  You have enough points to spent in the Powers without really worrying about “mistakes” but the Feat/Paragon portion is lot less forgiving since they are all passive abilities and can have a dramatic impact on gameplay.  The forums are a great place to read up on the choices.

Abilities are broken down into quite a few categories.  Stats, the core numbers D&D uses for Strength, Dexterity and so on, are rather fixed along your path.  It’s unlikely you’ll exceed 26 points in your core stat by level 60.  The other abilities are a different matter and they work with a “ratings” system, where you don’t gain 1% crit, you gain 50 critical rating, which depending on your level, gives you specific % increase.

  • Power – Increases damage and healing
  • Critical – Increases the odds of dealing a critical strike
  • Armor Penetration – A % increase in damage to enemies with armor
  • Recovery – Increases the speed of Encounter power recovery
  • Movement – Increases movement speed
  • Defense – Decreases the damage you take
  • Deflect – Increase odds of blocking damage entirely
  • Regeneration – Increased life regeneration
  • Life Steal – A % of damage you deal is converted to healing
  • Maximum Health – Increases health

Gear can come with 3 of these abilities on it and up to two enchantment slots.  The slots use gems with the same stats but come in three flavors – offense, defense and utility.  For example, my Cleric would aim for gear with Power, Critical and Recovery and slot Power/Recovery for Offense, Defense for Defensive and Movement for Utility.  My Tank is likely to go for Defense, Recovery and Life Steal.

I personally think that the gear point spread is too high right now and that makes gear way more valuable than it should be when it comes to upgrades.  From one item to the next might have a 10% increase in power.  The game also “recommends” gear upgrades but this is based on adding all the stats together to give you a GearScore (yes, that’s the name).

In the end, the question remains “does my character progress?”.  The answer is a yes and even though it uses an old “talent” system, the fact that you get something at level up is a great carrot on the stick for progress.  I’ll get a new skill and try it out.  I’ll get a new piece of gear pretty frequently too.  There’s always a feeling of there being more and that keeps people playing.  I know I’m still having a blast.

Open Beta is Still Beta

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A few more hours into Neverwinter and I’m still having fun.  The soft launch/beta issue is still quite evident, what with daily downtimes, sometimes more than once a day.  And there are bugs/exploits abound.  Bannings have even started for some people exploiting the Foundry.  I think bans are heavy handed, especially in a agreed-upon BETA status, though perhaps they are only banning people that haven’t spent money yet.  That exploits are being found though, that’s a good thing.  Means players are playing!

I have this thing with crafting in MMOs.  In Ultima Online I had 2 characters who only crafted, one of which was a GM tinker.  That might resonate with some.  EQ2, EvE and a couple others have complex systems but by and large, crafting in MMOs today is more or less a joke.  SWTOR embraced that thought and had crafting done by NPCs.  Neverwinter uses the same concept, crafting as a something you can do in combat, and puts in a web-service to manage it.  I am certain that I have more hours in the crafting queue than I have  played as a character in-game.  Right now, I have two 18 hour queues running.  And I still can’t make gear that’s high enough level for my character to wear.  /sigh.  I’m going to stick with it though, just to see what comes of it.  A good thing is the “rare” crafting items you can make, that appear on timers.  That’s cool.

Neverwinter Cleric

Chest piece at level 29

The game also comes with an LFG tool, one for skirmishes and one for dungeons.  The first one is simple enough, lasts about 10 minutes.  You’re likely to be in the queue longer than in the fight.  The dungeon queue is a tad bit longer but the dungeons themselves are quite long.  They are basically corridors of trash followed by a mini-boss.  Usually 3 minis then the big one.  They tend to all follow the same pattern.  At a given health percentage/time delay, they summon allies.  The problem here is that tanks are not able to pick them up quickly enough as threat management isn’t yet balanced.  On some end boss fights, I’ll spend the last 30% or more running around trying to not get hit by the spawns.  And that’s with every -threat skill I can get.  The health pools/damage abilities of the bosses aren’t yet balanced either.  One skirmish boss took about 5 minutes to kill.  Another dungeon boss could 2 shot some players.  Beta is Beta.

Another quirk for group play is the loot system.  Every magical item (green, blue, purple) is un-identified, meaning you have no idea if it’s an upgrade or not.  Every group I’ve been in, there’s been 1 guy(gal) who rolls a /need on every drop.  I can’t tell if it’s an upgrade or not and there’s plenty of restricted gear – i.e. a mage can’t wear rogue gear.  Why a mage can roll need on gear that they cannot use is crazy.  And boss drops, for me at least, have been static.  Meaning I’ve killed the guy 4-5 times and seen the same item drop every time.  Finally, there are chests in these runs.  Some can be only opened once, others multiple times.  It would be nice for some consistency.

Neverwinter Auction House

Gear can be expensive

I talked a bit about the F2P aspect, and the cash stop.  From what I’ve seen so far, there’s next to no need to spend actual money yet.  Sure, you need to spend real cash to get a 100%+ speed mount (default is 50%) or to upgrade your companion past level 15, but they aren’t really requirements as you can easily get by without it.  Even inventory management isn’t too bad.  The Astral Diamonds used for the Auction House are a bit different though.  If you complete 3 dailies (Foundry, Skirmish and Dungeon) you get 1000 diamonds a piece.  Run 3-4 skirmishes during the event, and you get 1000 per as well.  If everything lines up perfectly, you can finish the day with 5000-6000 diamonds.  I don’t see how you can reach the 24,000 daily cap yet but maybe that’s in the higher levels.  The best gear on the AH is about 200K per piece and by my math, you’re going to need to buy diamonds with cash or get lucky with drops.  The “cheap” stuff is 50K per piece and seems well enough.  We’ll see how that ends up in the end.  One thing I think will sell the most is Enchanted Keys, which open Nightmare chests.  You get these chest randomly (I have 20 or so) and the items are usable anytime once you have a key.  And the key only comes from the cash store.  Cryptic has been smart enough to send a system message whenever a player unlocks the “rare” mount from these, which appears to be every other minute.  A whole lot of “he won it, I should be able to as well”.  Still, for the average player, I don’t think there’s a huge motivation to spend money.  Maybe with more classes or races?

The next post on the game will discuss the Foundry system and player development.

In the meantime, here are my suggestions to the devs:

  • If crafting starts at level 10, let me make level 10 gear then.
  • Add a default option for loot rolls that you can only need equipment your class can use
  • Add some randomization to boss drops
  • Make all chests mutli-use or single-use.  If single-use, have a /roll option on the appropriate items

HardCORE

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Exodus (some might know them as vodka), a large 25 man raiding guild in WoW, is calling it quits.  They were an ultra competitive group and the post summing up their exit is very interesting.  I’ll summarize the quote (bold for emphasis):

In the last few years this game (despite many people quitting and guilds dying) isn’t to blame for vodka/Exodus’ demise it’s the raiding community. You see… we’ve basically been killing ourselves off slowly since day 1. … the time commitment and the level of shear dedication and determination it takes and costs to be at the very top. Raiding for many many hours on end is fun, CAN be exciting, and at the end of it all can really prove who really wants that world first/us first/realm first the most.  Unfortunately we (hardcore raiders) pushed too hard. The competition is slim because the competition is literally eating each other (well not that literally). Good luck to everyone left in the race for this expac, but I don’t know how much longer this sort of thing can last.

I think it’s important to read the original quote but the TLDR; version is simply that hardcore raiding has a smaller and smaller pool of eligible players.  Those that do make the cut get burned out on the crazy race for world firsts. Many guilds run 16-18 hour days until that world first run is over.  No human being with children can run those hours or any with a typical full-time job, so you’re looking at getting people just out of school (or in post-secondary) to fill the slots.  There’s just too much competition for their attention at that age that it’s difficult to motivate them.  Especially if they haven’t been part of the MMO scene from the start.

This isn’t to through the genre under the bus.  I was a big raider in EQ and early WoW.  I knew quite a few in the real world before I met their in-game counterparts.  I made a choice for a family life and put the raiding away.  Some didn’t and they are quite happy where they are today.

That being said, it’s rather clear that today’s trend of a more social/casual attitude towards gaming is not a fad but a reality.  Games that want to attract a hardcore base will have to be niche from design as there simply aren’t enough people left in the general public with the time or energy to consume it.

Slightly related, Camelot Unchained hit its kickstarter goal (and passed by 10%).  I am glad it was able to make the mark and look forward to what is put out.  I hope that the game launches and gets some success, if only to break the MMO-themepark mold.

PvP for the sake of PvP

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Darkfall: Unholy Wars launched a few months late but those who waited apparently enjoy what was given.  It does sound like a lot of fun and reading through that post gets me thinking about what I do like about sandboxes and what I don’t like about FFA PvP.  (To Syncaine’s credit, he has a fairly detailed post about a PvE sandbox that I would love to play someday.)

What I like is being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it and never really having a schedule.  There’s no common ride and everyone’s adventure is slightly different than another’s.  I really liked that about UO and early SWG.  Community had a big part in it but the ability to socialize to consume PvE content was where it was at.  Killing dragons or liches, treasure hunting, animal taming, building a craft store – it was all great fun.

What I didn’t like was the open/FFA PvP aspects.  One person could ruin 20 or 50 other player’s nights for no other reason than griefing.  Goal-based PvP makes sense and it’s always around controlling PvE access.  I can’t remember a game where you hunted people for their ears in order to make a coat but there are plenty where you keep people away from a resource spawn point so you can craft better gear.  UO private shards all have this problem and typically move towards extremely aggressive PvP controls.

The thing that lacks most in PvP games is the moderation of the activities.  In the real world, there are laws and law enforcement.  Typically these two combined will keep the general population from attempting a PvP activity (theft, harm, etc…) and those that do are tracked down and punished.  This doesn’t exist in games for a few reasons.

First, players are not online, their characters are and not 24/7.  I could play Jim as a PvP dink and Paul as a savior and most people would never know the difference.  There should be tools to identify a player based on all their characters.

Second, law enforcement is a thankless job, with little bite and no compensation.  When a griefer does it for the lulz, there is no in-game punishment possible to stop them from doing it again.  Short of removing all their skills and gear, or simply access to the game, why would the stop?  Moderation then requires a higher level of authority and then you get into the “god complex” issues.  Mind you, League of Legends has a decent system, even if there are still hundreds of horrible people playing.

The sheer lack of social restraint in these games is incredible.  No one would walk down the street and say “wow, that’s a nice car” and then proceed to break the window, hot wire it and proceed to row down a street full of people.  No, what happens is that you approach the driver, compliment them on the car and have a quick conversation.  I mean, I can’t imagine anyone on this planet thinking it’s acceptable for a group of people to simply walk around town, shooting everyone and then say “it’s to teach them buggers a lesson that crime is always around”.

I get PvP, I do.  It’s the reason we have MMA, boxing or any other combat sport.  There’s a primal need to compete against live people.  There’s a superiority complex that makes us strive to be better, to improve.  What I don’t get is some people’s need to intimidate or harass other players and their ability to find enjoyment in it.