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How to #$*! your players

You there. Yeah, you, the dev with the plan. Put it down for a second. Considering going F2P, like all the other cool kids are doing? Well it won’t be successful until you learn how to properly #$*! your players. What’s that you say? The game? No, you got it wrong. This isn’t about games anymore. If you wanna make games then quit, start your own indie house and do it there for art’s sake. This industry is about making “interactive entertainment experiences with large potential to be monetized”, not “games”. Don’t be archaic.

If you’re still with me, some pointers on how to make sure you’re #$*!ing your players the right way:

– Is your virtual world very, very large and requires extensive travel? Make sure you #$*! your players by charging them to make this travel fast. Limit and sell, honeybear.

– Do your game and loot mechanics award gobs and gobs of items to players, both useless and useful? Do their bags get full easily? Then #$*! your players properly by reducing their bag space, and selling them unlocks. Limit and sell. Are you getting this?

– Use psychology! Remember, the more complicated and layered you make your F2P system, the more players will say “Aw, #$*! it” and just subscribe as usual. Throw mud into those waters! #$*! them all Freud-like!

– Your game virtual world thingie has tons of achievements? And lists, to make sure you’re constantly fingering that itch on OCD players? Great start! Awesome! Extreme! However, if your players complain that some of those feel way too long and grindy, then you have to do the right thing: Don’t adjust that length! #$*! them by leaving things inhumanely long and selling them stuff they can use to accelerate completion for a little while! Think outside the box and into the wallet.

– Every time you manage to squelch a little bit of fun it makes Bobby smile. #$*! ’em.

What Am I Doing Here?

Zubon talks about the double-edged blade that occurs when players can scale everything so that everything is end game content.  The opposite edge occurs because either developers or players feel that because so much happens on the journey to the level cap then basically there is less at the level cap.  My first thought, and the first commenter on Zubon’s post, was about Guild Wars 2.  I had just read an interview from an ArenaNet developer on some website, and the developer’s response to a question of end-game content in Guild Wars 2 was very on point:

We have a lot of cool content when you get to the end of the game. That’s one of the cool aspects of our events. You can play all of our content over and over again, and even when you get to level 80 you can go back to old places and finish out the areas and we’ll level you down to where they are to allow you to go back and play that stuff at the appropriate level. So you can always go back and play through content, it’s not just worthless content to you because you leveled past it. It’s almost like a temporary thing where the game sidekicks you down to the level range for the content.

It does sound great on paper. Yet, the opposite edge that Zubon describes feels real. So many MMO players eventually get to the point where they can return to older content. When I do it, I often wonder what I am doing there.

Continue reading What Am I Doing Here?

Nothing and Everything as Endgame Content

I see more games trying to avoid having their earlier content become completely irrelevant while improving their endgame. You do this by having a version of the old content that scales to the new level cap; games without levels have this mostly baked right in anyway. Feel free to comment with your favorite game; World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ are the ones I know best for having another version of older dungeons available at the level cap. Borderlands had its own version: after you beat the game the second time, everything levels to the cap, from the final zone to the first skags.

City of Heroes took a different approach, and it seems to have worked against them from many players’ perspectives. Everything scales, and you can always drop back profitably, so every instance remains relevant as you level. Everything is endgame content and leveling content. Perhaps because of that, City of Heroes has never built much that is endgame content in name. A favorable interpretation is that very little is held back and hidden behind a grind; a less favorable interpretation is that there is little new to do at the cap, which quickly becomes “there is nothing to do at the cap.” Those who took the latter interpretation generally unsubscribed. The illusion of scarcity is an important marketing principle.

: Zubon

Context-Sensitive Menus

Isn’t it fun when you mention a problem and the solution is already in the works? Last week, that was my mention of manuals and digital distribution, where the manuals are there, just not immediately obvious when you don’t care enough to look very hard. This week, it is my next bit from The Design of Everyday Things, preempted by Guild Wars 2.

One of the difficulties in making intuitive interfaces is that some things require complexity. It is not always possible to make something powerful, flexible, and simple. If you need 200 options, you have problems whether you have 200 buttons or 10 buttons with a combination of toggles or whatever. There is no simple way to present 200 options.

One solution is to hide some options. That is why most “options” menus have an “advanced options” menu, although that is rarely of help to me because the option I want to change is usually somewhere under “advanced” (as are many cool toys that you never knew you wanted). One non-computer example cited did that with a flip panel — less common options were hidden under a plate so you did not see all the buttons at once. Yes, putting a fig leaf over half the buttons can potentially improve how intuitive the interface is.

But what would be even better would be if the options auto-updated according to your needs. My phone at work does this, and I tend to demand more of my games than my phone. This needs to happen in a structured fashion, so that you are not chasing commands or having buttons change on you in the time it takes for you to push them, but we already have some good examples, dating back to adventure games that automatically do the right thing when you click or use something. (This can be done badly, if the multi-use button does things unexpectedly.)

But as I suggested in the opening, Guild Wars 2 is already doing this. Change weapons, and your power bar updates. Go into Death Shroud, and your power bar updates. Summon a pet, and your power bar updates. I was so used to needing several power bars for all my abilities that it never struck me to want my 0 key to update from “summon bear” to “command bear to attack.” Is it potentially easy mode if, when you are set on fire, a big button pops up offering to let you use that water you picked up? Maybe, but you would think that would be an immediately available option for your character, because in real life you do not need to rewire your brain to lunge for water. Do I have any evidence that Guild Wars 2 is going to do this well? No, but I endorse the idea, even if it takes a few iterations to make it work as intended.

: Zubon

Buffing

Ravious’s trinity and beyond discussion reminds me: buffing is a lot more fun than healing. City of Heroes will always have a place in my heart because of how awesome Kinetics is, especially at high levels. Buffing is less visible than putting green numbers over folks’ heads, and you cannot slap a DPS meter-equivalent on it, but it is more fun for both the buffer and the buffed (than the healer and the healed).

You know the litany against healers, in design and in playing one and in needing one, so skip that. Apart from enjoying the resource management game of the little bars you watch, the big fun in being a healer is making your friends limitless gods that go toe-to-toe with Cthonic horrors and win. Sure, you could do that by pretending you are a battery and re-filling the little bars every time the big bad all but one-shots your tank, while your other friends plink away its health, but why not actually make your friends limitless gods? Buff their defenses so that they can take the hits without constant healing, buff their regeneration to cover the gap, and buff their attacks so they swing more often and put really big numbers over their enemies’ heads. Cut the umbilical cord. (Debuffing does about the same, although something within me loves helping my friends more than hurting my foes, even if I am helping my friends hurt my foes.)

But why should I go on at length when we have this view from D&D?

: Zubon

Public Service Asides

A few quick notes before the weekend.

The biggest news on the MMO scene is, of course, that Lord of the Rings Online is now “free-to-play.”  People of all station are arguing over whether it actually is free-to-play because – now make sure your sitting down if you are reading this on a mobile device – eventually Turbine will want players spend money if they want to continue playing through the content by at the minimum buying content packs.  Shocking, I know.  I, myself, thought Turbine was becoming a gamer charity organization.

My two-bit review of the pricing so far is: the cost of content and vanity items seems pretty fair, while the cost of luxury buff items, especially temporary ones, seems a bit high.  I spent roughly $2-3 buying a skill that now lets my Captain warp to Rivendell once an hour.  It would’ve cost me about a $1 to buy a one-time-use warp to Rivendell.  Like any vast cash shop with everything from housing items to hour-long buffs, it has its ups and downs.   If you intend on trying this game out, head to Landroval if you can, where all the cool kids are.

Another small thing is that Guild Wars 2 beta scams are becoming pretty prevalent.  Some scam sites are even advertising in Google, and they look pretty professional with solid URLs and ArenaNet art assets.  I have an eye half-cocked at ArenaNet for not having something more definitive on their site about a beta.  They have an answer to the question of a beta in their FAQ, but with the huge amount of attention they garnered in the past few months, I think a beta placeholder page is now warranted.  Anyway, nothing less than either an ArenaNet blog announcement or guildwars2.com site update is going to pass as official for a beta announcement.  So beware, ye Guild Wars 2 fans.

–Ravious

Recettear Demo

The English-localized version of Recettear launches today. I played through the demo, and I wanted to share a few thoughts. Put me down for “weakly recommends.”

Recettear is “an item shop’s tale.” You know those merchants back at town in your fantasy adventure games? Recettear is your shop, and you are Recette. Your father was one of those adventurers, and he went missing (presumed dead) after taking out a substantial loan with your house as collateral. Tear is your partner, an accountant fairy from the financial company who provides you with advice and collects periodic, increasing loan payments.

The basic game is an economic sim. Continue reading Recettear Demo

Guild Wars 2 – Completionist Hearts

I saw them days, possibly a week or more, before I knew what they were.  From the Guild Wars 2 gamescom videos almost every one showed the player hitting the map.  The world would zoom out and re-orient from the character in a somewhat artistic way, and I saw heart outlines on the map.

I actually allowed the puzzle of their presence a few cycles of the old brain when an NPC was circling the hearts and at the same time telling me there were farmers about each heart that needed help.  Event hubs! I first thought.  Wait, hearts as the icon for event hubs don’t make sense was the second thought.  Then because I didn’t like the look of hearts on the nice map, I conveniently forgot about them while I was inundated with plenty of other Guild Wars 2 information.

Continue reading Guild Wars 2 – Completionist Hearts

Manuals in an Age of Digital Distribution

MMOs broke me of reading manuals. I used to read them, all of them. I am a junkie for rules and design — I have read rulebooks for far more pen-and-paper games than I have ever played. I have read ~200 page manuals for 4X games.

I now rely on tutorials. Almost all games come with them. Even games without explicit tutorials have a way to ease you along the learning curve.

MMOs broke me of reading manuals because the manuals were wrong. I do not blame the manual writers. What they wrote was presumably correct when they wrote it. Then two classes were cut in the last month of beta, one was re-done, one changed its name, twelve abilities changed names the week before the game went gold (including several that swapped names), and half the numbers changed. Then everything changed within the first three months, so only the general class descriptions were correct. Then the vision of some classes changed a year or two later. The developers’ online documentation is rarely completely correct, so let us not even hope for the printed version that needed to be finalized a month before the release date. (And people buy printed guides as they would for single-player console games, ha.) Some MMOs learned this and made the manual uselessly vague, which is another non-solution.

Even a decade ago, you went to the fan sites to learn how the game really worked. Now every game has a wiki and multiple forums with new user guides. It has become a measure of how newbie-friendly a game/community is: you need some small number of helpful, literate people to write the guides, so either the game is popular enough to have several of those people (good sign) or a small game has enough concentrated awesomeness in its community to have several (good sign). If a game is worth playing, people will be encouraging you to get started.

Now I get many games via digital distribution. Do they come with manuals? A few games have something on the start menu that directs you there, but I do not know if they included PDFs of the manual. Maybe it is in a folder somewhere? It would be helpful if the Steam library included a “manual” button, but the prominent one is “play.” So I play, rely on the tutorial, and that usually sees me through.

: Zubon

LOTRO – Out of MMO Storage

I have a weird relationship with Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) that is unlike any other MMO I play.  It’s definitely one of my favorites, and it is always part of my Steam catalog. Yet, after it becomes my main game for a few months.  I have to go completely cold turkey on it for a few months.  It stays there staring at my as Steam illustrates my array of games, but I have almost a revulsion thinking about firing it up.  There is no logical reason for it.  Seriously, I have written and deleted multiple sentences right here trying to put some sense to it.

However, I am back in it now that it has been re-born as a Free-to-Play (F2P) title.  Not because it is now playable without a cover charge as I have a lifetime account, but because it feels fresh.  It feels new, and in parts it feels like a different game.  One that is more caring of my time.  I like that.  There is so much to learn, but I think that many LOTRO posts will be coming in the future.  I saw a few blogger friends also in-game so hopefully they will speak on such things as well. (Oh look, during editing I see one has!)

Last night I was a little overwhelmed.  Dozens of titles splashed across my screen.  I was gaining Turbine Points (“TP,” the cash shop currency) at an irregularly weird rate, and I heard that my points I racked up the past few months might take a bit to show up.  I checked out the slick new dungeon grouping system (please make a collapsible menu), and I did a quick Rift skirmish with a few friends.  Last night’s play felt like walking into a restaurant and getting free samples of the coming meal before I am even seated.  Then when I sit down to look at the menu it’s too hard to make one choice.  I am excited about LOTRO, and I can’t wait to start digging deeper in to all the changes.

–Ravious