Author: Zubon

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AI Is Hard, Unnecessary, and Sorely Missed

Xiao-Li Meng writes about the trade-off between efficiency and robustness (bottom of page 208, left side). A solution that works all the time is likely to be inefficient. You can greatly optimize it by making a few assumptions, but then it only works when those assumptions hold. His example is finding a parked car. If you have ever forgotten where you parked at a mall, you know the problem. The robust solution is always to park in the same spot (or very near it), and the way you guarantee that spot is available is to pick the worst one. No one is competing for the back of the lot or the furthest point in the parking structure. You could park at the spot closest to your destination, but that will vary with not only your destination but also lot crowding, who just left, etc.

In our games, we refer to mobs’ having an AI, but we mean that in a very broad sense of AI. They have a few basic behavioral commands and the equivalent of a few buttons to push. Really fancy fights involve unvarying, scripted dances. A few even inspire to pre-planned reactions to certain events, but let’s not tax the system too much.

This is far from an artificial general intelligence that could hold a conversation, but it usually works just fine. The goblin is not expected to do much: close and stab. There are some details about its aggro range and its use of the standard aggro system, but there is no depth, and it really does not matter for the 10 seconds the goblin will be alive. More complex encounters maintain their fidelity by limiting the variables: they fight in limited arenas with closed doors, reset conditions, and things like rage timers to sweep up problems.

Take a step or two outside the assumed parameters, however, and the simple AI has no idea how to vary its behavior. It sphexishly follows its programming even if that programming works against its ostensible goals. You can kite enemies right past your perfectly safe allies. They get caught on rocks or try to run laps on buildings instead of making an ankle-high hop. You can turn their powers against them, and they will not stop following a script that has become suicidal.

I occasionally wonder how Deep Blue or one of the other chess supercomputers would react to blatant cheating. Replace one of your pawns with a rook mid-game or take two moves in a row. A human player will smack you and tell you to stop being an idiot. Does the computer even have the parameters to deal with that? I would expect an error and refusal to continue.

: Zubon
H/T to Andrew Gelman for the Xiao-Li Meng link.

Buy Orders

Almost any MMO with an economy has an auction house these days (A Tale in the Desert excepted, for special reasons). Are we to the point yet when buy orders become standard? That seems like something the next set of games needs. A few of the current-generation games have learned the basic lesson that the economy functions more smoothly when you have parity between buying and selling. EVE Online is the best example; steal their economic tools. If that seems like too much for you, look at the City of Heroes consignment house, which is a simplified version of the same thing. Yes, City of Heroes, the game with no equipment as such and where crafting was added years into it, has a better economic system than your game.

: Zubon

Survey Feedback

Dear Turbine,
You just sent me a survey on The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. Things went downhill starting with this question:

“In the list below, please select your favorite features.
Remember that we’re asking you how much you like each feature, not how much time you spend or your thoughts about the current state of the feature.”

So you want to know what features I like, but I should not take into account the current state of the feature? I need a text box here that lets me tell you how lousy a question that is. If I like the idea of legendary items but think the current system is horrible, I should tell you it is my favorite feature? WTF? “New classes” and “new races” are on the list. Am I fond of all possible new classes and races? There have been two new classes and no new races. Is there any basis on which I can answer this question? And it is a required question, so I cannot skip it.

On the rest of the required questions that were nonsensical or inapplicable to my current playstyle, I filled in the least irrelevant answer. I am pretty sure that you just received active disinformation from me, at your own request.

Please hire someone who knows how to write surveys. I work in evaluation, so I might be able to recommend someone to you.

: Zubon

Champions Online: One Night

Go, play through the tutorial. It is worth seeing the character builder and basic implementation, although it may not be worth the download time.

You will first notice that the game is classless. Class roles come in later, but pick whatever you want at the start. That is positive, although it makes it look as though the entire game is just slightly different flavors of a few attacks. The front could use more “and you have this to look forward to.”

I have said enough about how the graphics are horrible. Just terrible. It is as though they maintained art quality by restraining their better artists rather than working on the worse ones. Just wait until you see the running animation that does not match movement speed.

The character builder has some improvements. Continue reading Champions Online: One Night

Champions Online: The Tragedy of First Impressions (A Lack of Review)

I have already said that my first impressions of Champions Online were negative. But that kept stacking, early problem on early problem, such that I made it through the tutorial once after four starts. For all I know, it is problematic turtles all the way down, or perfection lies just beyond the knee-high fence that stops yet another video game character.

When I first tried the closed beta, it was a mess. I started on a night when a mid-level zone was being tested, so I skipped past what would have been a couple dozen levels of learning what all these buttons do and how to build a character. Some of the powers did not work, there were graphics glitches, the handling was odd, the quick start guide was wrong about what some keys did, and I was unclear on the stuff to test for the evening. It is confusing when you do not know what is broken and what is yet to be implemented. I surely could have puzzled it all out with an hour or three on the forums… or I could log and do something else.

Meanwhile, the graphics were horrible. Continue reading Champions Online: The Tragedy of First Impressions (A Lack of Review)

Moria as Waystation

We have a problem of expectations. Mines of Moriaâ„¢ has been a poor endgame. It is an excellent mid-/late-game area. The problem is just this year of waiting for Moria to no longer be the endgame.

Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ had a great endgame at level 50, with three small Annuminas instances, one small Angmar instance, two very large Angmar instances, one twelve-person raid (the most popular endgame target), and one full raid. There were large targets to fight in open areas, and the battlefield instances were strong late additions. It took some time to accumulate all that, but you had most of the options for most of the lifecycle.

Mines of Moriaâ„¢ has had a weak endgame. Six instances with (often annoying) hard mode available, mostly with “unintended behavior” such that folks got their radiance gear far more easily than one can now. A raid that was just one big fight for twelve people. Then a second raid was added: a smaller fight for twelve people. Now there is more activity beyond that, although I cannot comment on it because (1) I have mostly been on break and (2) it is radiance-gated, so it is unavailable for much of the playerbase.

As an endgame, not stellar. As a mid-game? Wow, that is a lot of options as you pass through. In retrospect, all that level 50 stuff was just something for us to do while the next tier of mid-game came along, as is this extra set of MoM dungeons. In retrospect, kind of a waste to have spent so much time developing content that was covering gaps in the development timeline, but you must do something to keep the subscription dollars rolling in.

: Zubon

The Return of Crafting

Late in the life of Mines of Moriaâ„¢, Turbine has decided to make crafting a viable part of the economy again for non-consumables. Crafters can now make equipment only a bit below the best looted gear. The best of the best (radiance gear, 1st Age Legendary Items) is still in the chests at the end of big fights, but crafting now offers respectable armor and 2nd Age LIs (roll the dice!). The best crafted jewelry is competitive with the best dropped jewelry, a big win for the jewelers who already had a steady consumable trade in hope tokens.

Most of the recipes for these are on one-week cooldown timers, so do not expect to see the economy flooded. Many are also reputation-gated, so crafter alts will not have access unless they are level 60 and running around Lothlorien.

Mithril flakes: more valuable. Legendary shards: actually useful! Patch 2.8.1 was small but did much to reinvigorate; the new IXP bounty quests are very popular, despite the travel time. By the time Rohan comes along, Moria might be up to par.

: Zubon

As Real As Real

From our friends at Terra Nova:

Our first paper on the economics of EQII is now out in the current issue of the journal New Media & Society. … We think the paper is notable because it is the first instance (as far as we know) of published, peer-reviewed, basic economic tests using actual large-scale data from a virtual world. No estimates, no samples, no bootstrapping–just all of the data, period. …

First, the virtual world we studied appears to behave in the way a real economy does. The people there are as rational (or irrational) as we are offline. As a result, there are price indexes, an inflation rate, etc. … A natural experiment occurred in which a new server came online, and its economic indicators quickly approached and matched those of the existing ones. This suggests the powerful role of code in shaping and directing human behaviors in the aggregate. …

In political economy, we would phrase this last point as “institutions matter.” If you had not heard, a research group was given pretty much what it says there: all of the data. I look forward to seeing what else they draw from it.

: Zubon