Author: Zubon

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A Different Reality: Graveyards

In MMO land, death is a temporary inconvenience. But does the in-game fiction reflect this?

I object to many games because it is not even theoretically possible to complete them without dying many times. There are trial-and-error puzzles where “error” means “death”; in-world, your character somehow just knew to jump after opening that door and to put a bucket on his head before walking into the cave. The NPCs see an invulnerable god, but you just had many save files. It is entirely player knowledge, where the character never knows why he avoids certain doors

Some MMOs recognize that death happens. Asheron bound you to a lifestone, and there is an explanation, although not perhaps for how your equipment rebounded with your spirit. You have a telepathic bond with a stored clone, which is how you bring back knowledge of what killed you. Other games have stories in which people die, which seems ridiculous when graveyards are known to be waystations rather than permanent parking spots. Who is in those graves? Why don’t they just release? How can there be widows and orphans, and why are there epic stories about fallen heroes when they could just rez?

That you can kill the boss once a week seems less silly once you remember that you died three times in the process. What makes it more silly is that everyone else should know, so why does anyone think that VanCleef is really gone just because you decapitated him? You’ve survived worse. I want a game that takes this principle seriously and has quest-givers comment on why they would want to temporarily inconvenience the enemy, or the quest is to finally banish the Lich King rather than to kill him. Again. Of course, if you do, he would really need to be gone for that to make any sense.

: Zubon

A Different Reality: Vision

In MMO land, if your visual attention wanders, you can fail to notice that you are on fire. Almost all information arrives through vision, and the little bit arriving through hearing is usually duplicated visually.

MMO environments break with the old tradition of “off-screen,” in which objects clearly visible to the character are invisible to the player. For years, we came upon castles and dragons that hid by being straight in front of us but just beyond our myopic vision. Meanwhile, our characters had the impressive ability to see anything on-screen, even if it was down three levels, behind a wall, and under a giant turtle.

In an MMO, when looking at yourself, you mostly see a cloak and the back of a helmet. Checking whether you spilled something on your shirt requires rotating an incorporeal camera. In real life, people would find other uses for incorporeal cameras.

Video game characters’ optic nerves are linked to that camera, rather than their eyes, although some games habitually park the camera in-skull except for dramatic moments. This can cause great problems around walls and corners, as the camera might poke into a wall or torso, or else flee the solid objects in search of some strange angle. It is from this that we learn (1) everything is hollow, including your torso, and (2) the camera is trying to kill you. Why you linked your optic nerve to such a hostile entity, I will never know, although maybe it was not hostile until you enslaved it.

: Zubon

Reviewer Request

This mostly goes out to my MMO blogger buddies, although I am hoping readers have similar thoughts.

If you have been following a game since before beta, your positive opinions on the final product are suspect. Call it fanboyism, irrational exuberance, or cognitive dissonance: we expect your opinion to be positive no matter what the final product is, and if you pre-ordered before playing any sort of beta, we completely discount positive views. You are an advocate. Negative views gain strength so long as they are not too strong; the negatives seen even through rosy lenses are probably real, but we also discount venom spewed by people who sound like jilted lovers.

You can write for people who have already decided to buy the game or not. Both love news that supports confirmation bias. If you want to write for people who have not yet decided and are either on the fence or just have not thought about your one game in the thicket of competitors, there are two things that I think will be most helpful.

On your enthusiasm, “show, don’t tell.” We already know that you like it, so we need to see why. This post is inspired by Ravious doing an excellent job of that on Guild Wars 2. See also SynCaine on Darkfall, demonstrating why and how he enjoys the game in a way that is compelling even to those of us who will never play it. These are model posts for bloggers.

For that final decision when the game is releasing, give us references to more disinterested observers. Have a few links to other people, noting an endorsement from a newcomer (not a long-time follower of the game), a mixed but “buy” review, and someone who decided against buying. Demonstrating awareness of “this is not for everyone” strengthens your view by making you look less like a raving fanboy, and the positive comments from someone who is not buying get that same weight as your negative comments. Please also remember to link to your pre-release posts with an update of “and this panned out perfectly” or “and this will need some work post-release.” The perfect conclusion will be “These are my 3-5 favorite aspects, but don’t buy it if you cannot stand X.”

Thank you.

: Zubon

On the Need for Empire Space, Even in PvE

One of the secrets of EVE’s success as a PvP-centric MMO is that most of the sheep are safely in the pen. Sure, some folks engage in daring raids in high-security space, but it is mostly safe, and the vast majority of the playerbase is there. Those massive 0.0 empires are funded (probably in-game, certainly out-of-game) by the safe sectors.

SynCaine discusses more or less what the undead horde in Horizons was supposed to look like, in contrast to the more moderate Guild Wars 2 plan of hyper-evolved public quests. One can imagine the potential hell of server divergence if you actually let the game run wild like that; some developers would be happy to see such big differences across servers, expansions could not be planned linearly, some players would love it, some players would claim to love it while flocking to the safest server… I kind of like the idea that what server you play on really means something, but SynCaine circles back around to the problem with having meaningful consequences: it is not safe:

I agree that most WoW-type players don’t actually WANT dynamic content as defined above, which is more than likely the reason its not more common. In a way, what GW2 is trying to do is make those type of players believe the content is dynamic, while still ‘safe’ enough so their individual nightly plans don’t get too disrupted.

Well, yes. I really do want to be able to log on for an hour twice a week and have fun. Well, perhaps not me personally, since I am insanely obsessive like the rest of you, but as a developer you do not want a game that alienates people who will give you a full monthly fee for minimal access (in favor of the guy who plays 40 hours a week and complains on the forums another 20). I do not want to come back from a month away and find myself unable to escape from the undead-infested city that was safe when I logged off. I do want some safe, formulaic options that are available at all times, and if I re-join in an unsafe area, I want a button to get me somewhere stable without forcing me to spend a whole night doing it. Because you or I may be excited about checking the progress of the war every night before logging in, but with my work schedule, I want to be able to play when I want to play. You can tell me to go play something else for a night if I need that safe option, but if you tell me that very often, I am taking my subscription dollars with me.

So we cannot turn the whole world over to the risk of undead hordes without narrowing our little MMO niche. Instead, we keep some completely safe, static areas. We should have this even to the level cap, to keep those long-term casual players who are happy to run their daily heroics. But I agree, we could go a lot further with letting events play out in the wilds.

: Zubon

PS: Is that the core plan for GW2 PvE: “public quests plus a deed log, go!”? That sounds better than most, actually.

Proud Moments

This week, I had one of my proudest moments in Team Fortress 2: I was accused of hacking. As a Pyro. Normally we reserve that for the Snipers, who can one-shot people at extreme range, rather than someone using area-effect attacks up close.

Granted, this was from a Spy, and a relative newcomer to a server where I usually play. He was outraged and found something suspicious in the way that I would run up to a niche or corner, where he was standing invisibly, and set him on fire. We regulars know that Spies are constantly hiding in those spots, and he could not watch me Spy-checking continuously for several minutes once the other team got up to 4 Spies. And we know there is a Spy nearby once he backstabs a Sniper. And not all of them were perfect on the issues of being fully cloaked before moving or changing disguises in plain sight.

Let’s see what this weekend brings. Fear my w+m1 skills!

: Zubon

Comment Threads

none of us is as dumb as all of us Those of you who don’t read the comments miss the really exciting drama. Once a post goes past 50 comments, it is most likely a train wreck, and I’m sure it can see you through a dull Friday moment.

For the win, however, I recommend this Wikipedia discussion page. It relates to a recent xkcd comic about a made-up word and its equally made-up Wikipedia page. Antics ensued. And kept ensuing. And did not cease to ensue.

: Zubon

Incremental Improvement

We should look at this as a step forward.

David Allen’s previous game, Horizons, did not go well for a variety of reasons. It was eventually taken over by a new group whose financial backing is small enough for me to consider it a fan-run game. They seem enthusiastic, and they are so proud of their work that they re-named the game “Istaria” to dissociate themselves from the original release.

David Allen’s more recent game, Alganon, did not go well for a variety of reasons, but it has kept going under its original company (instead of transferring several times). Under new management, it has advanced from borrowing from Battlefield Earth to borrowing from Star Wars. These are all positive movements.

I see no reason why his next game cannot be even better.

: Zubon