Kill Ten Rats

In MMORPGS we always want things bigger.  We want bigger worlds, bigger cities, and of course we want a bigger server population.  We reason that if there’s several thousand players on a server, there’s sure to be people online in every area of the game at all times.  No one wants to live in a world which feels empty.

But there are certain design decisions which work well for a server population of a few hundread that doesn’t work for a server population in the thousands.  When I used to play MUDs in the 90’s, I would normally expect a grand total of 5 to 30 people online at any given time.  Everyone knew everyone.  Everyone knew everyone’s alts.  You hung out with the same people every day and you complained about the same people every day.  It was like living in a small village.

MMOs on the other hand, are cities.  They wouldn’t be “massively multiplayer” without being massive.  You have to make an effort to group with friends.  Unlike a MUD, an MMO character you meet is entirely forgettable.  This causes certain gameplay mechanics which work really well in MUDs to break in MMOs.

In the MUD I played longest, there was full player vs player combat, with corpse-looting.  Players who stole items after a battle were shunned and players who honorably let their victim reclaim their corpse were known praised.  Someone who picked on newbie characters or new players was held in especially low regard.  It was possible to round up a gang to chase a newbie-killer around the MUD and make the game practically unplayable for them.

I thought I’d have a similar experience when I started playing the Ultima Online beta.  But there were too many people.  Someone could kill you the day the servers went live, and never be seen again.  Someone who helped you defend your honor could also disappear into the crowd.  Perhaps it was a factor of the newness of the server that kept a set of norms from developing.  But ever since the dawn of the MMO, I’ve never known the name of every character on a server, as I once did.

If MMOs want to have servers where players form  meaningful friendships, alliances, hatreds, and enemies, then they may need to design their MMOs to function with smaller servers.

I bought ice cream this weekend. While I was not looking, the boxes shrunk again. They went from 2 quarts to 1.75 quarts a while ago. I adjusted. They are down to 1.5 quarts now, and everyone seems to have gotten the memo at once.

On most products, people are most sensitive to price differences, then quantity, then quality. The immediate price difference is also essential: even if an appliance will obviously cost $50 more per year to use than the one next to it, a $75 difference in price will swing an overwhelming amount of business to the cheaper one. For some things, you really care about quality and are a connoisseur, but on the whole you will notice a $5 difference before you notice a less fine patina on the finish. So price is immutable. You will not charge more or less than $15/month for your MMO, because if you charge more, you are a ripoff, and if you charge less, you are obviously the ghetto MMO.

Quantity is the next thing to vary. You can fake that with a bigger box: people do not look closely. Note when you buy paper towels, that they translate “big rolls!” into smaller ones. They are trying to avoid that problem, where people pay more for 8 small rolls than 6 big rolls. In MMOs, our variant is “36 zones! 128 playable classes!” How many of those zones are repetitive or procedural content? Did you get those classes by taking every possible combination of skills and giving each package a name? “Hush you!” So your detergent has a “new concentrated formula!” that requires more per load in some random-sized box.

Quality? Who notices quality? You can’t tell on half the things you buy. The same products come off the line and go into boxes with a half-dozen brand names. The terrifying thing is that people enjoy it more when it comes in the higher-priced box. And do you notice a 5% difference in quality on most things, really? Cut the pickles a little thinner, use 2 fewer pepperoni slices on the pizza, put a little less meat and a bit more pasta on the plate. Price is the same, the unit (1 hamburger) is the same, so your buying habits are probably the same. Make the game get by down one member on the Q&A staff, minus a tester, released a week early. People notice the number of zones and the ship date, not how optimized the graphics coding is; the few who do care are the whiny customers we could stand to do without. You will probably have a new job when it’s time to pay the piper, and the next guy will blame any problems on you anyway.

You hardly noticed yourself losing one hair at a time, but you woke up bald one fine morning.

: Zubon

I stop at Taco Bell every couple of weeks. I order one Beef & Potato Burrito and two Big Taste Tacos. In the past year, those prices have each increased by a dime, so the order is now $4 after tax. I have spent more time pondering that 8% increase than it will ever cost me to pay it.

I ponder because it is odd that I felt price sensitivity. Not enough to even look around the menu for new items, but I noticed. I get the principal of watching the cents so the dollars take care of themselves, and I can see the cumulative effect in my bank statements, but I really don’t care about a few dimes. And yet, somehow, I do.

People will drive across town to save $5 on a $15 item but not $5 on a $125 item. Because 1/3 off is big! But it’s the same $5. If it is worth your time to save $5 on one, it is worth your time to save $5 on both.

$15 a month? I spend more than that per person on a nice dinner. That is a couple of movie tickets. I get a ridiculous amount of value for my money.

I would probably be happier with an MMO that charged me more and took less time, with concentrated awesome instead of grind, travel, downtime, and things meant to prolong subscription fees. I would probably be happier with a premium game that charged me $30/month and had great servers, fast customer service, and less rabble. (Show of hands developers: half the people at twice the price, you in?)

But I still notice price sensitivity when I could have WoW for $15.

: Zubon

Some times, devs just know things:

The only place where I find a very broad approach useful is in convenience of play. What is a player’s overall tolerance for inconvenience and delay of any sort? In that one regard I do tend to think in terms of casual and hardcore I suppose. A hardcore player will put up with less refined UI, buggier content, long travel times, and other things that basically delay or degrade the play experience. A casual player will quit after fairly little irritation of that sort.

Vastin knows a lot of things.

–Ravious
how deep the rabbit hole goes

Zubon many times has reminded MMO players that in “their” epic story to become a hero, well… you aren’t.  This position is debatable (and has been debated).  Regardless, we can assume for the sake of this post that making the player feel like a unique hero in a game-spanning story is quite difficult.  What if the player was not actually supposed to be the hero in the first place?  Could the writers create a story, where the player was merely a cog in the grand workings of the world AND also make the story meaningful?  My position is that “yes, with skilled writers this is possible.”

Continue reading Persignifficult (A Reminder Revisited)

The Top 10 Reasons to go to Fan Faire 2009…

10) Las Vegas!!
9) Antonia Bayle & Firona Vie in your pictures.
8) Tournaments, Live Quests, and Prizes!  Oh My!
7) After hours fun in the Legends Lounge.
6) Late night LON and SWG TCG!.
5) Meeting your game’s Developers!
4) Meeting your in-game friends, in real life!
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest at the Banquet hosted by Brenlo!

Top Ten reaons to NOT go to Fan Faire:

10) It’s in Vegas!  Which means there’s dozens of places cooler than Fan Faire within walking distance.  You can’t even use the excuse “There’s nothing better to do” when at Fan Faire
9) You’ll be embarrassed when your friends find out you have pictures of yourself standing next to Firona Vie in your camera phone.
8) The “prizes” you get for live quests will suck so bad that you’ll cry.
7) Late at night, you’ll wonder why you thought it was a good idea to spend 200$ on a plane ticket, 150$ on a room and 89$ on an MMO faire, just so you can hear hype about upcoming updates 15 minutes before the people on the forums.
6) You’re still crying about the “Delux Sarlac Trash Can” and  “Improved Junk-loot Flower” prizes you got back in #8 of this list.
5) Playing a virtual card game like LON TCG and SWG TCG in their computer lab will make you feel more lonley than if you had just sat in your hotel room alone.
4) Everyone on the forums who said they will be there, won’t.
3) Brenlo singing Karaoke.  You’ll want your 10 minutes back.

2) SMED singing Karaoke!  When asked for another encore of “Achy Breaky Heart”, Smed will say yes.
1) The Pink T-Shirt contest.

Game 1: unreliable servers, up right now, but freezing and giving me rollbacks.
Game 2: in beta, should stay there.
Game 3: in beta, will probably still need that NDA even after it launches.
Game 4: account servers will not let me log in to give them money, nor will they send me a password reset e-mail.

I’m going to bed.

: Zubon

I recently said in a kin-chat in Lotro how much I love the new Quest Guide that points me to where I need to go for each quest.  No more looking things up with google!

One of the people in kin-chat responded by saying, “That thing is for stupid babies, too lazy to read”.  I could sense an argument brewing in chat, so I quickly said, “Yeah babies like me! :)” in kin chat.  No one had any place to rush to my defense, and no one had any place to argue against the use of the quest guide.

What exactly gets people in Lotro so fussy about the addition of this quest guide?  The little arrows pointing you towards your goal goal are completely optional, and disabled by default.  Really, I think it’s the principle of the thing, more than the thing itself.  Quest guides make tasks like “Find treasure x” or “Hunt down mob y” much easier.  Newbies want things easier so they can rush to the high-end content, but old-timers want the game to be as hard today as the day it was made.

One of my kin mates took six months to reach level 50 in Lotro.  I took a little over six weeks.   Sure, he wasn’t the fastest leveler back then, but the speed at which I’ve gained levels has actually made his accomplishment seem trival.  The quest-guide, in combonation with the xp-curve readjustment, has left many old-timers feeling bitter.  To them, an all-too-easy game is getting even easier all the time.  And you know what?  They’re right.

The starting areas for Dwarves and Elves recieved a revamp in the last update.  New quests were added which enabled you to cherry-pick only the easiest and fastest quests on which to level.  New travel routes were added, which allowed someone to easily reach other starting areas for even more selective-questing.

New areas have opened with tons of quests.  Not only can you cherry-pick your solo quests, you can cherry-pick entire zones.  Want to skip the Barrow Downs?  Fine.  Don’t think you want to try Fornost?  No problem!  Don’t feel like setting foot in Angmar?  Just go somewhere else.

The truth is, the game is much easier than it once was.  But that’s unavoidable.  If there’s a new area, then it’s going to help someone level easier.  If there’s new raids and new loot, it’s going to make someone’s character stronger.  If the level cap is raised, it’s going to make old raids trivially easy. As these games progress, they get easier.  That’s just the way it is.  The alternative is that we go without new content.

The thing to remember, if you’re an old timer, is that the new folk are not stupid.  We know it was hard to reach the cap before they put in Evendim.  We realize that 24 level 50’s used to wipe at Helegrod.  We know someone had to find out everything the hard way before it was posted on Allakhazam.  You’ll just have to be satisfied that we newbies are still interested in your tales about “The old days”.