Category: Guild Wars 2

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Loss Versus Failure to Gain

Game developers manipulate player desires by presenting the same options differently. Player reactions are empiricably testable with cash shop setups.

I frequently cite the example of having a “hunger” debuff versus a “well-fed” buff. These can be designed to be numerically identical, where the character has higher base stats that are debuffed by hunger or lower base stats that are buffed by food. You balance content around the higher number in either case. Players will complain about a hunger debuff but feel like they have been given something extra with a food buff. Even if the numbers are identical, humans are unhappy if you tell them you are taking something away from them, whereas they barely notice if they fail to gain something.

Many cash shops have some sort of lottery option. You can give the developers $X for a chance at items or whatever. What you see at least as often these days, because we would predict that it works better, is giving you a lottery ticket or prize you can pay $X to unlock. In the former case, you can play the lottery by giving me $X; in the latter, this lottery ticket is now yours, but you cannot redeem it unless you give me $X. Same lottery, same prize, same $X. If you doubt which implementation yields more sales, look at where the developers are betting. Team Fortress 2? Locked crates with keys in the cash shop. Guild Wars 2? Black Lion chests with keys in the cash shop.

Developers can make this more concrete by adding time pressure: the box/ticket expires in a week or after the event. Some players might still see a locked chest or lottery ticket as a failure to gain, but if it is going to disappear in a few days, they have definitely lost something, even if only an opportunity. The perception of scarcity also plays in here; you always have access to thousands of TF2 crates and GW2 chests for a few cents, so it is harder to instill the idea that you are losing any opportunities, while other games might make those drops less common (but still give the player frequent opportunities to buy things). Hence TF2’s time-limited crates, and doesn’t GW2 have occasional seasonal Black Lion chest items?

: Zubon

[GW2] Gates of Maguuma Story and Writing

Hitherby Spoilers

There are 3+ new story instances in Gates of Maguuma, the most recent update and the start of Season 2 for Guild Wars 2. They are repeatable in that players can always go back to that instance through the new story journal. They also tell the story of how you, the hero, and all the NPC notables travel west to Dry Top.

I need to start with Bhagpuss’s thoughts on the Gates of Maguuma’s story instances:

The plotting now seems to sit somewhere around journeyman comic-book level (that’s a good thing) with the dramatics hitting a solid soap-opera groove (so’s that). No pretensions to be anything more than hokum but at least now it’s competent, professional hokum.

I disagree, and then I agree. His statement infuriates me, but at the same time I think it’s good. One can never tell with a crazy cat. Continue reading [GW2] Gates of Maguuma Story and Writing

[GW2] Season 2 Beginnings

After what feels like a too-long break, Guild Wars 2 is back in the swing of things with Season 2 of their Living Story. Mrs. Ravious and I were excited, but in a calm, metered manner. It’s amazing how when the pressure of that 2-week window abated to become permanent content, we’ve decided to take consumption of the content at a more metered pace.

This is a good and healthy thing, in my opinion. It makes Guild Wars 2 feel more friendly in my library of never-ending content. I feel Jeromai is taking his time as well. I feel this is healthy for the continuing life of the game. Get people to drop by, the hardcore will always be around, and make something even more sustaintable.

Anyway. Continue reading [GW2] Season 2 Beginnings

Shifting Priorities

I have written previously about storyline paths differing between development and live teams in MMOs. I find myself looking at recent Guild Wars 2 updates and wondering whether there was a change in development teams or the same team deciding to shift directions. One could easily look at the first year of GW2 and say, “Wow, we made that way too zergy. Let’s dial that back.” But recent content has been not just dialed back but punishing of zergs, which means either they wanted a hard break with the past or someone different took over the reins of design.

On the one hand, some content encourages zergs, other content discourages it. Yes, not everything calls for the same strategy; that’s good design. On the other hand, almost everything did, for the better part of a year, call for the same strategy, so current players feel punished for doing what they’ve been taught to do, and it is not as if a huge wave of players loving non-zerg content will sweep into GW2 because a few updates were not pure zerg. You need to upset the apple cart atop your current playerbase for a long time and hope they stick around while you right it and turn it in a new direction. On the gripping hand, as I said of “punishing,” quite a bit of content did not encourage zergs so much as require on the order of 100 people to have a reasonable chance of success. The content being rebelled against still requires dozens of people but now requires you to herd those cats in multiple groups before the tools to manage that have come into existence. To say nothing of the switch from the original “show up and do what you want” approach of GW2, where content requiring synchronized dancing was hidden in a few instances.

Also, the boss blitz is just bad.

You have certainly seen that changeover in design philosophy, usually coupled with a changeover in design teams. The original GW1 was very different from the final game after the expansions. City of Heroes under Statesman was very different from City of Heroes under Positron, and I am not sure who was helming the switch to Incarnate content around the time I stopped playing. “Trammel” and “NGE” are famous design shifts that veteran MMO players will still debate in some forums given half a chance. A Tale in the Desert saw quite a few design shifts under the same management, but Teppy was always an experimenter; I have no idea where the game is headed under its new management.

Ingress has had a shift in emphasis over time from a geocaching-like game that focused on walking to rewarding car-based play. If you can’t see why that transition could be rocky, remember that my job was analyzing traffic deaths when I started blogging.

: Zubon

Wow, we don’t even have a post category/tag for Ultima Online. Then again, we don’t bring it up enough for me to want to create it.

[GW2] The Four Winds Carnival

Guild Wars 2 has updated with a content patch – Festival of the Four Winds – after the last, big feature patch. The content is mostly a rehash combining the Queen’s Pavilion with the Labyrinthine Cliffs. The combination creates an eerie yin and yang effect. It’s uncanny how stark the two places are with Guild Wars 2 players. Continue reading [GW2] The Four Winds Carnival

Easy Spring

On the MMO side, I’ve been taking it pretty easy this spring. However, I’ve not been lazy on the game front. Most of my creative juices have been towards revising UNE and also creating two other system- and setting-agnostic TTRPG supplements. One supplement is aimed at quickly creating character histories or downtime stories, and the other one is a GM-emulator. They are nearing draft completion, and I’m going to have art and layout done professionally. The goal is have them up on DriveThruRPG under the pay-what-you-want model.

Guild Wars 2

The only MMO I’ve touched this year has been Guild Wars 2. I’ve slacked off big time since the feature pack. If I sign on it’s either for Tequatl (or the Wurms) or WvW hijinks. I am pretty excited about the upcoming Festival because it seems like a better way to ease back in to the game rather than start Living World Season 2 right away. I do hope that Season 2 starts pretty soon thereafter though. ArenaNet has been silent on that front, except for the mention of potato cooking times and gravy. Continue reading Easy Spring

Time Investment

Phillip II: I can’t lose, Henry — I have time. Just look at you — great, heavy arms, but every year they get a little heavier. The sand goes pit-pat in the glass. I’m in no hurry, Henry. I’ve got time.
Henry II: Suppose I hurry things along. Suppose I say that England is at war with France.
Philip II: Then France surrenders. I don’t have to fight to win. Take all you want — this county, that one — you won’t keep it long.
— The Lion in Winter

How do we feel about games whose competitive balance privilege the investment of time?

I do not mean games where you become better with experience. “Easy to learn, hard to master” is a classic design goal, and games without that learning curve often become dull quickly. Instead, I mean games where players can spend different amounts of time on the field, with points accruing to players/teams that invest more time. This includes bringing more players, playing for more time, or often both.

In contrast, think of a round of an RTS, FPS, MOBA, board game, or sporting event. The temporal bounds of the game are fixed, and the rounds are generally distinct. I can play as many games of StarCraft as I like, but I start each game fresh. If the other players are not there, I cannot keep rolling the dice in Monopoly to keep going around the board, nor can my football team show up at midnight to score unopposed while the other team is asleep.

Many computer-mediated games allow and even encourage this sort of play, especially where territorial control is involved, and the economics of the game may create this on a smaller basis if you can farm during off-hours to create an advantageous starting position. For example, your server’s score in GW2 WvW is largely driven by how many players you field over how much time, whereas GW2 sPvP at least tries to have equal players for equal time. EVE Online, Darkfall, Shadowbane, and Ingress are other games where bringing more players or continuing to play before/after the other team does allows you to win through superior time investment. You may be really good at the game, but you only have two hours per day to play, while the opposing guild might be college students who just finished finals (although you dominated during finals week).

On the one hand, it seems like something is wrong with such a game if superior time investment does not yield results. If you are trying to simulate a war, great ways to win a war include bringing more allies, bringing more economic resources, and sacking your enemies’ cities while their troops are elsewhere. On the other hand, now that I am long past the age where I have time to kill, why would I want to engage in competition where my competitors can score while I am not even playing?

: Zubon

To say nothing of the general MMO incentive to keep grinding.

Time to Effectiveness

This is true. In any PvP game (or game with a significant PvP element), a major factor must be time to PvP effectiveness. From the time I start, how long until I can be worthwhile to have along and how long until I am at parity with long time players? This is mechanical, numerical parity; you may still be lousy because of having no strategy or practice, but how long until I can shoot a bullet that does as much damage as the next guy’s?

In most non-MMOs, that was the instant you log on. A rocket launcher is a rocket launcher, a zergling is a zergling. Now more games have character advancement, so even a FPS might make you level. The better ones use a model like Team Fortress 2: you need time/money to gain options, not power (at least in theory; the “options” might be better than what you start with, but there should be trade-offs).

MMOs are notoriously bad because you need to level. Guild Wars 2 sPvP avoids this by letting you play at full effectiveness on day one, but WvW does not because a level 1 scaled to 80 is significantly less powerful than a level 80. His bullets do not do the same damage, and they will not until after a level and equipment grind, but the scaling means you can at least contribute while taking care of that grind through WvW. In EVE, you can join your friends and meaningfully contribute on your first day. I have been playing Ingress lately, where you can start contributing around level 5 and reach full effectiveness at 8, which was spread over a month for me and is doable in 20 hours or less of (highly efficient, possibly assisted) play.

For MMOs, this is indicative of the larger problem that you need to grind to play with your friends. MMOs are bad for playing with your friends. Their character advancement systems make it difficult to find a span within which you can bring veterans, newbies, alts, etc. together, and it only gets worse over time as the power differential between day one and the level cap grows. I played a bit of World of Warcraft but it never really caught me because I spent almost my entire time in that vast, lonely wasteland between level 1 and the cap.

If I play these games to play with my friends, I want to play with my friends. If I play these games to compete with other people, I want to compete on a level playing field.

: Zubon

Individual and Group Rewards

Guild Wars 2 and Ingress both have PvP systems of territorial control with individual and team points, where what earns individual advancement is aligned with but not identical to what helps the team win, leading to a disconnect in incentives similar to agency costs under the principal-agent problem.

GW2 players have WvW levels, and they earn WvW xp by capturing or defending objectives and defeating opponents. There are also rewards of normal xp, loot, cash, and karma to be won, as well as achievements. Teams are rewarded for points per tick (PPT), which come mostly from holding objectives with a few supplemental points other than “per tick.” Player rewards are higher for offense than defense, and we have often discussed the incentive this creates to “karma train” capturing objectives while worrying less about keeping them, fighting the enemy, or winning the matchup. I have had another server let us capture Stonemist Castle while they waited upstairs, because they wanted another capture credit.

Ingress players level up through action points (APs), the best source of which comes from linking portals and creating fields. Creating fields grants the mind units (MUs) by which the teams are scored. The same APs are awarded for a field or link, no matter how big the field is, so players have an incentive to farm AP and level in portal-rich areas like downtowns and historical districts. This weekend, I captured and carefully linked several square blocks of dense portals and got around 120,000 AP, in a game where the (current) level cap is at 1,200,000 AP. This was worth about 200 MU, because it covered several square blocks. It would be worth far more MU to the team, and take far less time , were I to drive to portals a few kilometers from each other and link them up. For this reason, some players are rather unhappy that a geocaching-like game where you are theoretically walking around instead produces larger (team) rewards for people willing to drive around. And if you can get 10% of the level cap in one long walk, that team reward starts to matter a lot more than your AP for linking up. (One of the backbones of the local Resistance is a player who is willing to drive for hours per day, destroying and claiming and linking.)

There are, however, emergent effects that create positive team incentives. Since players hit that level cap relatively quickly, veterans often invite lower-level players to gain all the AP when they destroy enemy portals. The higher-level player blows enemy resonators up while the lower-level player follows behind and places their team’s resonators. This weakens the enemy while increasing the number of level-capped characters on your team. Also, those densely packed portals may not be worth much in terms of MU, but they are great places to farm equipment, because you get some equipment when you hack a portal, and you get more stuff at less cost when those portals are owned by your team. There are cities in my area known as well-leveled and protected farms for each team. (The main backbone of the local Resistance is a couple who is willing to head out and protect/reclaim their team’s farms on short notice.)

: Zubon