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Safe Design

When I worked in traffic safety, a critical point was that systems need to be forgiving. A momentary lapse in attention or judgment should not lead to disaster. Granted, we live in the kind of universe where that’s just the way it is, but your design should seek to minimize that rather than to wrap people around trees.

In terms of game design, I am thinking about UI rather than combat here. Most games have figured out that one-click character deletion is a Bad Thing. Most games let you lock items or bags so that you cannot accidentally sell or deconstruct an important set of gear. Another aspect is that these need to be sufficiently customizable: if there are too many “click OK to confirm” screens, you start automatically clicking OK without thinking, which is just a more tedious version of not having the warning. As a player, I want to be able to pick what is hidden, what gets a warning pop-up, etc.

In terms of hardware design, I need a computer case whose power/reset buttons have a panel over them. I want it to be like the self-destruct button you’d see in a movie, with the clear plastic cover you need to flip before hitting the big red button. I’m not worried about myself in this case. I have a cat.

: Zubon

[GW] Artifical Intelligence and Natural Stupidity

Computer-controlled characters do some things better than humans can. They have complete battlefield awareness, so they can see someone start a spell with a 0.5s casting time, switch targets, and interrupt with a 0.25s casting time spell. (Of course, a human can occasionally interrupt a 0.25s spell with a 0.25s spell by just firing at random, “I’ve got a hunch he’s about to cast…”) NPC healers never whine about needing to be the healer, and they never get tired of staring at hit point bars.

The hard part can be making it so you want anything other than NPC companions. There is a narrow space between “completely useless” and “good AI,” and then between “good AI” and “better than the player.” In a FPS, the only limits on how aware and accurate an NPC is are computer-defined. One balancing factor is that NPCs exhibit perfect tactics but absolutely no strategy. Another is that you can just stop trying to improve the AI at some point; if it is already competitive with the humans, you don’t need to improve it, and you may have gone too far. GW also PVE-only skills, which are overpowered and not available to heroes and henchmen.

Another is letting the computer do completely stupid things that humans do. This also adds a sense of verisimilitude when playing with them. I used to joke that my heroes needed advanced “don’t stand in the fire” lessons. Then I watched a hero run past me into a sandstorm to start casting his spells, and it stopped being funny.

: Zubon

[GW] Diminishing Marginal Utility

Man, that’s a great spawn you’ve put together. I bet our players will want to fight it 15-20 times in one sitting.
— GW1 design meeting minutes

I am open to the argument that Prophecies PvE content was good when it came out. Maybe if you start in Prophecies and play through, this seems fine. If I grant you that, I need you to grant me that whoever put together Prophecies hard mode did what could very charitably be described as “the best s/he could, given the circumstances.”

I would love to help you VQ Eastern Frontier, but I promised my mom I’d quit cutting myself for Lent.
— guildmate

It is not just that the content is poor and not much fun. It comes in huge doses that the game encourages you to choke down. Guild Wars encourages its players to go kill all 300 enemies on that map. There are only 4 or 5 different spawns on that map, and you get a small team size, so go have fun killing those 4 or 5 groups for an hour or two. It is a bad sign when the wiki recommends starting 6+ zones away as a time-saver because it you can run a large team from a distant zone faster than you can vanquish a zone with a 4-person group.

Vanquisher runs of this area without active quests requires defeating around 350 foes. Including quest influences, it has been reported to range from 271 to 393.
Guild Wars wiki

I’ll discuss sometime soon why balancing Prophecies hard mode is nigh impossible.
: Zubon

[GW2] Diversity Solipsism

A post for GuildMag’s Third Blog Carnival.

There is so much character diversity in Guild Wars 2. Just a while ago one of the ArenaNet devs, Leif Chappelle, was discussing that there are a staggering 30 choices for the first story arc (levels 1-10). I know these aren’t all-roads-lead-to-Rome choices either. A person dies in one player’s story and exists forever in another player’s home instance. Tack on five trait lines per profession, a billion dye combinations for town clothes, anti-clothes, and a million armor combinations and character diversity goes to infinity and beyond.

And it’s all there for you. Just you. Continue reading [GW2] Diversity Solipsism

I’m Back!

Greetings Rat Slayers, I have returned…  Not that I’ve been anywhere exciting or exotic, quite the contrary, I have been wandering about in a bewildered MMO malaise for the past few years and suffering from a general apathy regarding the titles that have been produced.

That’s not to say that I haven’t kept abreast of the goings on in the industry, and I have continued to test and trial games, and I’ve even gotten excited a few times about features and innovation, that later turned sour and left a bitter taste when the ‘innovation’ failed to deliver or amounted to old mechanics re-skinned to appear revolutionary.

Thankfully, 2011 brought about the F2P revolution and gave me something to pass the time until I could get excited about something again.   From a retail release perspective, Guild Wars 2 has done that for me, finally.   More importantly, I see trends in the trenches, that suggest we are starting to see developers breaking out of the misguided meta that ‘a better WoW’ is the future of the industry.

I see more indie developers taking risks and pushing new paradigms and that is exciting.   I can’t wait to share my experiences in several exciting projects currently in early stages of development, as well as whatever else comes along.   Kill Ten Rats has always been an epic quest, and I am glad to be back with all of you brave adventurers as we carve out our destinies and push this MMO universe in new and exciting directions.

~Cyndre

 

[GW2] Microtransactions – Philosophy and Market

There is a lot that was said in what will likely be a seminal blog article by ArenaNet’s co-founder Mike O’Brien. Fans are going to point to this piece for years, I would imagine. There are two major encircling themes in the post “philosophy” and “market.” O’Brien does a good job showing how ArenaNet envisions that the two will entwine in Guild Wars 2.

Philosophy

Philosophy is a hard sell. ArenaNet has been in the favor of “showing, not telling” for a long time. they continue to do so by letting press film video and discuss the experiences of Guild Wars 2 during the beta events. It’s tough when they are not ready to show, but feel pressed to tell, as is the case here. Continue reading [GW2] Microtransactions – Philosophy and Market

[SWTOR] The Duo Strikes Back

This past weekend was called “Weekend Pass” for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which granted new players a chance to try it out for 4 days without needing to spend any money. I took the opportunity to see how my favorite method of gaming (the duo) works in SWTOR. I enlisted my son to be my “other half”.

First we picked a server, easily done. Next we had to find classes that start on the same planet/area. New players might not realize that they would need to do this but as an old veteran of the MMO wars, I know how things work. Research showed us as follows:

Continue reading [SWTOR] The Duo Strikes Back

[GW2] Back to Beta and Poll

Congrats to all the lucky Guild Wars 2 beta testers. I will be joining you in the next beta, and ArenaNet was kind enough to extend my press credentials for the next beta. There is one thing I plan on focusing on for sure, crafting. I always diligently craft in MMOs I play, and I was so rushed getting to content or PvP last beta that I had to ignore crafting. Well, this time crafting and trading are priorities.

That leaves profession and race more open, and I am going to open that up to fellow readers. I will likely focus on one character again. What race and profession would you like me to be? Please comment in this post with your picks of two races and one profession. As a bonus if you choose human, charr, or norn as a race, you can pick my first story arc since we know those.

Human: Commoner, nobility, or street rat. Norn: Strength, cunning, or instinct. Charr: Ash Legion, Blood Legion, or Iron Legion.

Poll closes when beta starts.

–Ravious

p.s. Feel free to add any other things you want discussed as well.

[GW2] Demand More

What feels like another world ago, I was finding ways to become a blogournalist, especially with ArenaNet. I dutifully followed Regina Buenaobra’s personal Twitter account because at that time I saw digging for any and every crumb of Guild Wars 2 I could find… when few else were. She used to link a lot of personal stuff, mostly feminist blogs, and since I wasn’t finding any Guild Wars 2 info, I usually read what she linked.

A real life friend once maladroitly called me an Inverse Darth Vader. She meant I acted with a heart of gold, but my thoughts were always on the Dark Side. In keeping with this aspect, I read the feminist blogs, and I didn’t understand any of it. I have a wife, mom, and a sister who I respect and treat in kind, and each seemed to want different things from my respect. This all just confused me about woman more. One thing Regina linked did stick, severely.

I wish I could find it now, but one blog entry was a retort to all the negativity against feminist action. Every answer was basically “I demand more.” For example, if the question was “What do you expect with the way television portrays woman?” The answer would be “I demand more.” It really wasn’t an answer so much as a philosophy. The writer didn’t have all the answers, but she had a will and a belief that things could become better. Continue reading [GW2] Demand More

[GW] Contagiousness

This Van Hemlock post inspired my ranger’s use of conditions. Fleshy foes are fun targets for Apply Poison-Hunter’s Shot-Epidemic. Oh look, that entire clump of enemies is poisoned and bleeding. (As I have mentioned, I really hated non-fleshy foes when I was using that build.) Broadhead Arrow-Epidemic-Volley is a fun way to oppress groups of casters. I have grown fond of spreading conditions, so I love having heroes that spread them further. “You move like a dwarf!”

I’ve read Saramago. Blindness is totally contagious. I don’t see why cut hamstrings should be any less so.

: Zubon