: Zubon

I’ll pick up the PC version at some point.

Lost in the Sandbox is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Item wear is a minor death penalty and gold sink, but it can lead to your losing progress in a night of play. However many hundred times you are supposed to fail a raid, you are losing each time you do unless the raid comes with enough trash to pay for your repair bills (and that is just wrapping in the farming you could do outside the raid). You have heard of people hitting their heads against a wall so hard that all their armor broke and they could not afford to fix it. Then there are the expected consumables of potions, food, scrolls, etc. that get burned for each attempt. Those are dispiriting evenings, when you leave with less than you started with, and that experience cannot be wholly beneficial for player retention (which is funny when the game that avoids it does not have subscribers).

EVE Online is a game where you can lose everything you own but keep making progress because skill training is time-based. You are supposed to lose ships over time. Don’t get attached. Even if you are down some ISK, your skill points keep increasing.

There is something to be said for a lack of consequences. It’s a game.

: Zubon

Forward Progress is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

: Zubon

2012 Predictions is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

“we look at what our players do and less of what they say” works only if your players aren’t the hardest-of-the-hard-core who do exactly what they say they’ll do

The post also includes a lovely, expandable economic model for game servers and customization, although MOBAs and modded games are covering a fair amount of that territory in the non-persistent world.

: Zubon

Bonus Quote for the Weekend is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

There are rumors and filings that CCP is going through some serious growing pains regarding cash flow and management. The cash flow issue is to be expected at the very least since they are working on three MMOs, only one of which is making money. (I did find it funny that Ms Freak in the list says that CCP can do whatever they like with regard to microtransactions for Dust 514 and World of Darkness.)

Again as an outsider, I am not opposed to a $70 appearance item, and I do think it is a little sensational that it’s being used as the poster child for all that is wrong in EVE. Hopefully for all those not really understanding what has been going on as of late, these links might help clear the air.

–Ravious

[EVE] Idiot’s and Outsider’s Guide to Controversies is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Inertia is the inclination of moving objects to keep moving, and for stationary objects to stay put. Once you get going in EVE, it’s easy to keep going. The skill queue charts your course, you have your market ops and your research and the ongoing political situation with your allies and enemies, and it’s just easy to keep moving in that space.

But should you stop — your skill queue empties out and you forget what you were training to do, nobody in game remembers you anymore, your research seems pointless and you are no longer connected to the game.
— Tipa

It applies generally.

: Zubon

Quote of the Week is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

Projects that will work only if they grow large generally won’t grow large; people who are fixated on creating large-scale future success can actually reduce the possibility of creating the small-scale here-and-now successes needed to get there. A veritable natural law in social media is that to get to a system that is large and good, it is far better to start with a system that is small and good and work on making it bigger than to start with a system that is large and mediocre and working on making it better.
— Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus

EVE Online is a good example of the former. I have about a dozen MMO examples of the latter.

: Zubon

Start Small is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The usual concept of a western MMO seems clearly descended from DikuMUD, through EQ and terminating in WoW. I would tend to insert DAoC in there, sometimes described as “EQ without the parts that suck,” but I may be atypical. Perhaps I am uncreative, but I do not see much more room for the Diku model to evolve. It has reached its full flower in WoW. You can have refinements and variations (-raids, +PvP, +story, -classes, +Tolkien, -fantasy, +F2P), to say nothing of lousy clones, but it will take something massive to change the view of the most typical member. There is a lot of room (and money) in WoW’s orbit, but if you do not want to be (seen as) conceptually subordinate, you need to head a good distance away.

We have some less typical members, most notably EVE Online. You all know how I love to pull out “here is how City of Heroes solved that problem,” or how I mix a dozen niche games into my bloviations. These can be annoying in the MMO blogosphere when commenters contribute them independently, not in the sense of “here is an alternate way of implementing that” but rather “your entire argument is invalid because it does not apply to my game (or playstyle).” It is as if you were complaining about birds pooing on your car, only to have a passerby disdainfully remark that there are not any penguins in the area and they could not have flown over your car anyway. Well, no, that is not what I meant by “birds,” but thank you for contributing.

The archetypal example may not be displaced by a better example. I describe Torchlight as out-Diabloing Diablo (for the single-player experience), rather than referring to Diablo as an early example of a Torchlight-style game. (I think of Diablo II as the most typical member there; is that what most of us mean by “Diablo”?) Amusingly, the “most typical member” need not have ever existed. You probably picture some central tendency of a robin rather than a particular bird you once saw. You may think of Dracula as your most typical vampire, but while he never sparkled, he could walk in sunlight; see also Igor and brain-eating zombies. Because Halloween is coming.

: Zubon

Most Typical Member is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

My criticism here is that [developers] usually don’t try to make the getting or the making [of items] itself very fun. For example, EVE has a great economy but the *doing* of it is about as fun as pissing on a flat rock.

This is the other reason I do not play EVE. I could have a merry time being a middleman and playing the spreadsheet. You see a 20% price differential between stations five jumps away, and you can capitalize on that. The actual gameplay involved in that is filling a cargo hold, waiting for a half-dozen jumps, and emptying a cargo hold. I decided not to pay to pretend to be an intergalactic trucker (in an environment where pirate attacks on your truck are surprisingly common).

Before that, I was drawn to the notion of mining. It sounded like a rarefied version of the MMO crafting I often enjoy, being the backbone of the economy, and potentially going from the very rocks to final production. The actual gameplay involved in that is activating a mining laser and waiting for the hold to fill. I decided not to pay to be mostly AFK (in an environment where pirates make a hobby of harassing miners).

And I have paid to pretend to make charcoal, flax, and linen in A Tale in the Desert. The actual gameplay of Facebook games often rivals the crafting in most MMOs.

: Zubon

Comment Spotlight: Fun Economic Activity is a post from: Kill Ten Rats

The trail of bread crumbs leads you from ride to ride. Follow the big symbols over NPC heads and then arrows to whatever they want. One ride sends you to the next. “The right thing to do” is so obvious that we strongly notice sub-optimal ordering in quests and trip combinations.

We can complain about dumbed-down design, but it is good design in the sense that it provides good guidance, works with users’ intuitions and expectations, and is a big improvement over games that have one “right thing to do” but hide it behind an illusion of freedom. We expect games to have a goal and a victory condition and something to do, rather than toys or worlds where we expect to make our own fun.

EVE Online is a wonderful sandbox with entirely user-defined victory conditions. Those design decisions go well together: there is no way to “win,” so there is limited guidance about the “right” path to take. (It is an improvement that certificates help you figure out the steps on common paths.) World of Warcraft is a wonderful theme park with very clear paths and velvet ropes to make sure you stay on them. The middle ground is harder to establish.

: Zubon

Design of Theme Park MMOs is a post from: Kill Ten Rats