Posted by
Zubon on
March 19, 2010 in
A Tale in the Desert, Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, City of Heroes/Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, Darkfall Online, EVE Online, General, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Warhammer Online, Wizard101 and World of Warcraft.
For a game that depends on a stream of income from subscribers or RMT shoppers, the first hour of play must be the top development priority. This is where you hook players. After that, the endgame is important because that is where your players will be spending time indefinitely and where your game’s chatter will come from in the long run. Next is the early game, when you build momentum. The mid-game has already fallen this far down the list, as you have certainly seen in a lot of MMOs, and frankly few care much how good the late-game is because they are already fully committed and racing for the end-game.
I stand by my repeated claim that optimizing the new player experience is of paramount importance. You must grab my attention within five minutes, and you must deliver a satisfying hour or two for my first play session. Without that, any free trial is worthless, and you may even lose some people who have thrown down $50 for a box. This is the part of the game that every single player will see on every single character, and if you cannot do a good job here, I have no hope for the rest of the game. Yes, it is hard to make things interesting while giving the player only a few buttons to play with. Suck it up, we all have hard parts in our jobs. That’s why they pay us. Continue reading ‘Early, Middle, Late’
A Casualties member mentioned Crimecraft last night. Ah, a gang-based online thing. “I’ve never dreamed of being in a gang, so not really interested.” Then I thought back through some previous games. I never dreamed of being a dwarf that set people on fire by writing on a rock, of making charcoal and growing flax, of summoning headless ice monsters that rained frosty death upon my foes, of being a buffing psychic cyborg, of…
: Zubon
Melmoth discusses:
Look, if I fight wolves in the dwarf starter area, and I kill the requisite hundred and fifty thousand million of them for the Wolf-Slaughterer title, it’s fair to say that I’m pretty good at killing wolves, some might say that I am accomplished if not a little genocidal. Therefore, if I then go to another area, further afield than where one might find a new character normally, I should not find super wolves, ten times the power of a normal wolf, who have but to look at me in a slightly disapproving manner for all my armour to jettison from my body and my skeleton to explode out of my skin and bury itself five feet under the ground. I am a wolf slayer! Look! You gave me a bloody title to acknowledge the fact that I spent a lot of time killing wolves, why can I not kill these wolves? ‘Oh’, say the developers, ‘but these are different wolves’. Different how exactly? Were they privately educated? Have members of their number graduated from Sandhurst? Did they train at Hereford in the use of special tactics and weapons?
I comment with this image. That’s basically the state of things. The only thing keeping you from leveling on boars from 1 to the cap is that you must complete some quests to get access to zones, like exiting the newbie instance or the faction grind to get into Lothlorien, where the level 61 pigs are. You did not think of “access to higher-level pigs” as one of the benefits of that elf faction, eh? You haven’t even seen the edges of the box you’re trying to think outside of.
I pull this example from The Lord of the Rings Online™, but it is almost universal. My Dark Age of Camelot (Albion) character could do just the same, from piglets to rooters with some zombie pigs in between. I have killed the same goblin 100,000 times, with him in a variety of hats and colors.
: Zubon
Some games require grouping. We hate that, especially when certain classes are required, because you can easily spend half your in-game time looking for group members. Some games encourage soloing. We often like that, but single-player games deliver a much better solo experience. Some games discourage grouping, often as an accident of game mechanics, which is just poor. Some games encourage and reward grouping without requiring it, which is the best of all possible worlds.
I have a very long version with many examples after the break, but that is the core of my message today: encourage grouping, do not require it, and make sure the game mechanics really do encourage it.
You encourage grouping by increasing rewards for groups and adding abilities that require groups to take full advantage of them. You require grouping by giving enemies ridiculous numbers of hit points, failing to scale encounters for different numbers, or making encounters that demand (or all but demand) several specific abilities that are spread across the classes. You discourage grouping by making quests difficult to do together and failing to scale encounters for different numbers. Yes, a lack of scaling can both require and discourage grouping.
Continue reading ‘Grouping as the Better Option’
Dark Age of Camelot had concentration-based buffs. If you want to limit the number of characters someone can buff, just code that. Recast timers are annoying; Bob wants to keep these five buffs live all the time, done.
Yes, it encourages dual-boxing. Yes, there are times when you do want things to be timer-based. But if Bob can keep this buff on five characters continuously, just let him do it, rather than having him re-buff every four minutes.
: Zubon
According to Destructoid, members of the UO dev team as well as some developers at Mythic have been laid off and the rest of team has been moved from the Redwood Shores, CA studio to Mythic’s Fairfax, VA. UO, Dark Age Of Camelot and Warhammer Online will continue but more layoffs are expected throughout these and other Electronic Arts studios.
[DAoC] After we graduated from college, many of my friends decided to stay in touch in Albion. Despite no two of us being in the same time zone, we set up a play time when we all logged into Dark Age of Camelot. I had intended to be our Cabalist, but the lure of the run speed buff led me to be a Theurgist. Fear my bladeturn! It was also where I started learning all the EQ jargon we did not use in AC. Mez?
Let us turn to the three-part land of swords and sorcery. Okay, there are hundreds of fantasy RPGs, but what made this one fun to play (and presumably still keeps thousands playing it, if you will forgive the use of past tense)?
Continue reading ‘Some Things Dark Age of Camelot Did/Does Right’
One of the devs over at Dark Age of Camelot has posted a letter on The Camelot Herald. Of interest to me was this part:
“…since the original launch of the game, we have looked at creating a new server type that is geared to players who have less time than others to commit to a MMORPG. This exciting new server will cater to both the casual player as well as address some of the concerns of players about bots and the time commitment necessary to complete ToA. We will be announcing full details about this server type in the coming weeks but I believe that this server will go a long way in making DAoC the leader of the pack in regards to the casual player. As part of this, we will also be looking at the impact of the death penalty and other aspects of the game on the casual player.”
The popularity of World of Warcraft is already making waves throughout the MMOG market. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? We can only watch and see.
From the Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs expansion website, I read the following tidbit:
“Catacombs marks the first time that Camelot has used dungeon “instancing” where players and groups can adventure in their own private adventuring areas – an entire adventure spawned specifically for you or your group alone. Includes private tasks, private dungeons, and more!
For those play sessions where you don’t have much time, you’ll have your own content. Private Adventuring is available to all levels and dynamically scales in difficulty depending on the makeup of your group!”
Bravo!!! I am going to have to give some serious thought to checking it out, just because they are so smart.
