Month: November 2008

I like to think. As the industry moves towards the mass market, meta-game thoughts are becoming less valuable. This is good for the games as games, but I can still miss the returns to planning and the value it held for Exploring game mechanics.

This encompasses all the forms of character-planning, number-crunching, min-maxing, meta-gaming, and other ways you can think about the game mechanics while not playing it. If you see a spreadsheet showing the trade-offs between different stats, that is an example. If you see a suggestion to take a certain combination of powers, that is an example. If you see a naming system for elves, that is not an example.

This is pretty clearly the domain of the hardcore. If you know and understand the equations for whether a shot hits in EVE Online, you are hardcore, whether or not you play all that much. If you have ever made a table showing input and output prices for your in-game produce, you are hardcore. If you just dive in and play, the numbers be damned, you may not be hardcore even if you spend a lot of time in-game. If you do not think about the game when you are not playing, you are probably not hardcore.

Continue reading Nothing to Think About

I appreciate readers and writers who are aware of distinctions. Here on the internet, we have nigh-infinite room to work out fine details, and we can discuss subtle gradations of merit and failure. We can identify the good and the bad in things, and encourage the one while mourning the other.

I mourn when I see so many unable to develop a thought more precise than “wow sux” or “wow rox.” We could say that WoW has taken the standard DikuMUD model to is most successful implementation, with a strong solo game that moved the entire industry from farming-based leveling to quest-based leveling, with a heavy focus on late-game raiding and weak PvP content. We could discuss the changes over time, both in the game and in the industry as a result of the game. We could discuss the effects of a strongly solo-friendly leveling game or the relative merits of multi-hour PvE raids. But it can be hard to hold that discussion while surrounded by screaming children.

I can’t even tell how many are interested in seeing gradations. One uncomprehending post can throw off an entire thread, either in my perception of it or with people trying to corral it. And then someone else will post the same thing, not bothering to have read the replies that reiterated the fine distinctions. I suppose this is why the news is in sound bites.

It is important to understand that things can have both good and bad points, and saying the good outweighs the bad (or vice versa) does not eliminate those finer points. We can even recognize that, due to our different preferences, we might disagree on whether some of those points are good or bad, or agree on every particular but have different weightings so that a good game for me is bad for you. Ultimately, there is no good, just good for or good at.

: Zubon

Just so we have a single post to refer to this single point:

A modern MMO has skills that scale with level. You acquire the skill once, and its numbers increase with you. If your game has something like Fire Bolt I-VII or Lesser/Moderate/Greater Sudden Strike, it better have come out before 2005.

See City of Heroes (note: 2004) or The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ for how to do this properly. See Asheron’s Call or World of Warcraft for how to be old school. See Dungeon Runners for an attempt to cut the difference.

Having single skills that scale with level allows you to do reduce some of the harm caused by having levels. See sidekick, mentor, and exemplar systems across various games. Having many levels of skills hides the fact that players are not getting anything new this level while creating hell levels and erratic power curves.

: Zubon