I was worried that skirmishes would pale. They have, for me at least. The problem is that they are so transparently procedural content, and that is not LotRO’s strong point. Let me contrast with the equally procedural Torchlight.
Author: Zubon
.
Промоакции для игроков не только в шутерах — воспользуйся промокодом Vavada от наших партнеров и получи бонусы, которые подарят азарт и атмосферу, сравнимую с игровыми победами.
.“Open” Beta
If you declare your beta “open” but require a beta key and:
Q: Where can I get a beta key?
A: Open beta keys are included in all pre-order boxes, and are given out by selected partners. Check back later for the list of partners that are giving out beta access.
then either you are unfamiliar with the term “open beta” or you are intentionally using terms deceptively. Neither inspires long-term trust for running a complex software project.
: Zubon
I’m saving up my snark about how long “paid beta” will run past release.
No Need to Bribe
Something frequently (willfully) misunderstood in politics is that you do not need to bribe people to say things in your favor. It is much easier to find someone who is already on your side and promote/support them. That think tank is not saying nice things about Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart is funding them; Wal-Mart is funding them because they are the kind of shop that will say nice thinkgs about Wal-Mart. Bribing a senator is more expensive and uncertain than funding the campaign of the guy who already agrees with you.
Syncaine has not been bribed to say nice things about Darkfall. Darkfall is funding its most passionate advocate in the hopes that he just keeps talking. These companies give away accounts and free time as promotions anyway, so why not pass some to someone who will promote your game in the process?
For we the gaming bloggers, the key is removing barriers to play. If the game is there and available, odds are better that I will play, odds are better than I will write about it. I phrase many things in terms of LotRO because I have the lifetime account, so it is always there, ready, never needing that decision point about re-subscribing. $15/month is nothing to me, but the trivial inconvenience of re-subscribing and allocating my attention across multiple games is a barrier. If Blizzard granted me free play, heck, half a dozen friends re-subscribed last month, I would join them occasionally. And then I would find myself noticing and commenting on patch notes, events, etc. Were we not such a bunch of hate-filled vipers who constantly attack the games we play, I would be surprised that so few developers have offered bloggers free play.
Bloggers are not like the advertising-funded sites and magazines. Even if we have ads, they are usually through an ad network rather than a direct relationship with a publisher. It is hard to buy good blog reviews, although you could try buying goodwill with a bit of swag. You can buy attention, which may or may not be an issue for you the reader, and which may be an issue for the publisher given how much venom we have in the blogosphere. And, of course, full disclosure.
: Zubon
I have not bothered to keep track of whether I got into betas randomly or as “press,” not that I visit many betas these days. I don’t have anything to disclose for live games. I receive few bribe offers. I want a pony.
Torchlight Walking Animations
I do not comment on animations often, but I am very fond of two in Torchlight. The Destroyer does not walk; he stomps. He stalks. He is a large, angry beast of prey, and not a subtle one like a great cat. To pull a line from the book I’m currently reading, “I’m leaving. The first three creatures — man, woman, or sub — that get in my way, they die. Right here on the floor. Die.” The second is Medea’s entry with her troops. This lasts for a few seconds per game, so enjoy it. Her troops, little versions of her, are in perfect parade march. She is less formal, sauntering behind them without a care, completely at home. Why not give one of the bosses a little sway?
: Zubon
Character Recycling
In Torchlight, you can retire a character who has completed the game. Retired characters pass on one item, which gets upgraded stats and lower requirements to equip it, and items can be passed down several times to become ridiculous. Later-generation characters also start with more fame, effectively free skill points. You can also toss your items in the shared stash, but your new level 1 will be a long ways from using that level 50 equipment. (There is also an infinite dungeon for characters who will not be retiring.)
In Kingdom of Loathing, you can ascend with a character who has completed the game. Ascended characters pass on one skill, so players accumulate many skills over time. All non-quest items go into ancestral self-storage, and they can be reclaimed at different times depending on your difficulty setting. Some smaller bonuses also accumulate across the generations or just by merit of having been playing for years. (There is also an infinite dungeon for characters who will not be ascending.)
In Dungeons and Dragons Tiny Adventures (not DDO), any character reaching the level cap automatically retires. Retiring characters pass on one item, which can be equipped at level 1. Many classes, modes, and abilities are opened based on the number of characters retired, no matter what you retire.
What would you think about a MMO that offered something like this? All of the above are single-player games with limited interaction. D&D Online had a steady stream of hate about the design decision to give your first character a lower stat total than later ones, which I think was reversed. This would be more extreme: every successive character receives some improvement. That sounds potentially painful in a game with a level cap and PvP, where being the best would involve having mulched a dozen capped characters already. Balance could be difficult, hitting that window between “not worth it” and “absolutely required,” particularly as the game ages and you need to decide whether the new boss is balanced against newly capped characters or 10th-generation characters.
It could be the worst grind ever. It could also be an exciting way of re-visiting content and mixing the Explorer and Achiever perspectives.
: Zubon
Update: I should note, this is well-worn territory for the MUDers. But the populations, if nothing else, are rather different between MUD grognards and WoW players.
DPS Population Imbalance
Step back from what you know about how popular certain classes are and reconsider the acclaimed LFG tool. The slots are for one healer, one tank, and three DPS. From a naive perspective, the non-DPS classes are getting screwed here. It looks especially absurd coming from City of Heroes, where support stacks nicely and groups are often more than half support classes, or The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, where an ideal six includes an off-tank, secondary healer, and/or controller/debuffer. Cap the group at one, while the DPS classes get three slots? It would seem like you’d have a much easier time finding a group as DPS.
But no, the population is so absurdly slanted towards DPS that they are waiting. Tanks and healers queue and instantly get groups. This is still true even now that people know they can skip the queue by switching talent trees, and few groups are going to kick you for having lousy tank or healer gear. Granted, if you are a Mage or Rogue, you are stuck as DPS, but that Paladin could spec and queue as any.
A system that explicitly favors a preponderence of DPS is de facto the largest buff to tanks and healers ever. This mostly comes down to what I said about static groups: anything that makes grouping easier makes group-friendly classes and builds more viable. As the population has time to react, group-friendly classes and builds will become more popular.
The upcoming Star Wars has a different approach: the Jedi/Sith classes are the tanks and healers. If you want a shiny lightsaber, you don’t get to play DPS. Yeah, right, I say that, but you can already hear the forum wars mockery of all the Jedi/Sith that focus on damage. “DPS Sith lol. Can we get a tank that can tank?” Or, as DK tanks currently say, “But Blood Stance heals me!”
: Zubon
Digital Carrots II: Meat Brains
In the most important neurological finding I have read all year, mammals have correlated but entirely separable systems for wanting and liking. Ponder that a moment. To some extent, that seems intuitively obvious: you can get what you want and not be happy. This is not, however, about mis-calculating how happy something will make you. Your basic theory of the world presumably includes some version of, “If Bob keeps doing X, he must like X.” You might make exceptions if X is heroin.
Some have proposed that MMOs should be in that same category of unhealthy addictions, and I suddenly find myself forced to take the idea seriously. You don’t need surgery or drugs to skirt that connection between motivation and enjoyment, any more than you need to hack the server to exploit flaws in the system. Our brains are meat hardware that worked well enough to reproduce itself on the savannah, while modern memetic software can develop quite powerful malware.
Let’s make that more concrete. Your brain gives you the same neurochemicals for watching that little bar fill that it would for actually accomplishing something. Even if you know you are accomplishing little, we can fill that bar faster than reality could and give you lots of numbers popping up telling you that you are advancing. There are lots of flaws
Why play worthless “social games”? We have found formulas that line up with how our brains pass out neurochemicals, even if they provide no value, even if they provide no enjoyment. The relevant neurochemicals go together often enough that you are conditioned to think you are having fun when you are just feeling compelled to continue. Cognitive dissonance should carry you through the rest.
Sometimes you take a week or two off and are eager to get back. Sometimes you take a week or two off and completely lose the motivation to log on. For some in that first case, congratulations, you really are having fun and not just following your highjacked motivational programming. For some, I worry that we just failed to make it through withdrawl symptoms the way that people in the second case successfully did.
: Zubon
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to refresh the waitstaff in my Facebook restaurant. I wish I were kidding.
In the Future, We Will All Be Hybrid DPS Classes
One positive incremental change in the MMO world is the introduction of different character modes. That is, you can hit a button and switch the focus of your character. You can fulfill multiple roles, but not all at once, with a way to switch between them. Examples include Champions Online and DC Universe (no classes, just modes), dual talent specs and Druids in World of Warcraft, and the Minstrel and Rune-keeper in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. If you have the skill points and cash, you can also switch ships in EVE Online easily enough, which would be like hopping classes in another game.
These vary in their ease or extent of switching between modes. The two main LotRO healing classes need about 10 seconds to switch modes fully mid-combat. My WoW Paladin lost all her mana when switching. Other games might require you to go back to town to switch, which is still nice although certainly not the one-click, mid-adventure thing I am talking about. The effectiveness of doing so depends on how flexible other aspects of your character are. In LotRO, you must visit town to change your traits, and I know how I hate it when our healer is traited for damage. In WoW (late game), you would want to be carrying a second set of gear if you switch from Retribution to Holy.
Another way to implement modes is to switch focus within a role. A Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Hunter has solo and group DPS modes, the former with higher threat and mana costs, the latter decreasing them but losing bonus damage. (Solo mode: good for pulling targets off the healer, not worth much else post-Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢.) Switching your Warcraft Mage from ice to fire is probably a less dramatic change.
While I love my alts, I am in favor of anything that will let you stick with one character. Let me stack all my options on one guy and switch which option I use, rather than switching between Zubon, Zuba, Zoobown, and Zupwn. While that will make hotkey management interesting, it saves me from having separate friends lists, guild rankings, vaults, key bindings… (You could also implement saved (and importable) or account-wide friends list, guild affiliation, shared vaults, key bindings…)
: Zubon
[Update: I see that Tobold just hit this theme from the POV of a DPS class in the post-LFG WoW world. Yeah, dual-spec does not seem like a huge boon for them. Having played ranged DPS in quite a few games, while I cannot address how WoW is this week, we are generally doing fine and soloing brilliantly, even if we are over-competing for group slots. I feel more for my healers, like my poor CoH Controller who fought bosses by putting his damaging hold (“stun” for WoW folk) on auto-repeat while I went AFK and waited for the pitiful DPS.]
Digital Carrots I
I recently suggested that you separate the intrinsic reward from the extrinsic reward in your gaming. Do you enjoy doing it, or are you just pursuing the imaginary shiny? My notion was that while our primitive simian brains reward us with neurochemicals for raising that number on the screen, it is probably better to do things we actually enjoy rather than chasing imaginary carrots on digital treadmills.
I am fascinated by the phenomenon of judging an activity by the reward at the end, rather than the quality of the activity itself. Adding achievements to a game increases its ratings. It is not just cognitive dissonance from people spending all that time chasing transparent dangling carrots; people really seem to get more enjoyment from that extra “Hurray! You did good!” from the achievement pop-up. My reaction to the Borderlands ending was that it was incoherent, but many commenters are far far far far far more bitter that they were not given a giant gun for beating the boss.
I understand why people repeat certain dungeons for loot, but some seem to lose the idea of having fun in the game apart from character advancement. An ideal design would make the most fun content the most rewarding (I know, tastes, preferences, play styles, etc.), rather than reinforcing the idea that you must slog through something to get the best rewards. That would seem like better word-of-mouth advertising. I usually hear players raving about how fun the early advancement is, rather than the late game. Is that just the novelty of the new shiny? A design change switching to late-game slogs as a slowdown technique? Or are we just irritable because the units of advancement are futher apart, and everything is fun when you level twice an hour?
Outside MMO-land, most games don’t have much in the way of extrinsic rewards. And looking at MMOs from the outside, all those digital shinies are still inside the game, providing no value unless you keep paying your $15/month, providing no value once the next wave of planned obsolescence hits.
: Zubon
More Gaming Metaphors From My Cat
Left to her own devices, my cat spends most of her time in the basement. I think it is because her favorite blanket is there. We close her downstairs when we go to bed, because otherwise she will make trouble. Come bed time, suddenly and consistently, she does not want to be down there and runs from me. Being a creature of habit, she runs down the stairs. And then looks surprised at how she was trapped.
: Zubon