PVE Difficulty

Tippa made an interesting post over on her blog about The Miseducation of MMO Players.

Where have mmorpgs gone, in terms of difficulty? Indeed, where can they go? Back when you bounced mario around, you could lose all your lives and being sent right back to the start of the game worked out. What do you do when you have a hundreds of hours long game 'session'? Add a death jog every time someone stands in the flame?

I made a reply to someone in the comments about guild wars two supposedly not having any death penalty, which I've talked about here before. Here's the reply...

As far as I can tell guild wars 2 hasn’t removed a death penalty – if no one revives you, you have the classic death jog from some waypoint, back to where you were. Which is pretty lame – why bother coding in a time waster for players?

I think these games have trouble determining any fail point, which goes all the way back to gygax’s designs. With your traditional game, like a FPS, you have a level start, middle and end. What does a mmorpg have? middle, middle, middle, middle….

Your classic FPS can send you back to the start of a level and that works out. While mmorpgs are floundering on what the heck to do – can’t send them all the way to level one! But can’t just do nothing every time they are hit ( see my example of this: http://www.yoyogames.com/games/138974-proof-of-bad-concept ).

I think they need to do the reverse of the traditional design and grant people bonuses for doing well – like go for one hour of gameplay without being knocked to 0 hp and you will GAIN 500 gold (can be won once per RL day/X number of times per RL day)

Lord of the Rings: Killed by a rune keeper!

There's one now! Run!

Maybe it was just the biggest area of effect I've ever seen. Who knew there was open PVP in lotro?

One of the first times I come across a rune keeper in action - near that quest where you rescue Robb Thornley? He's tied to a post with a bunch of orcs around?

I see a lightening special effect then KA WANG...my client starts to crash, offering me a big black square. And oh yes, can you log in fast enough...well, for a second you think you can as you see your character standing there...then a second loading screen and you realise it's dumping you at the closest retreat point! DAMMIT!

Luckily the character I was playing was kind of a TP gathering experiment - but still, I was aiming for the satisfaction of a level 20 no defeats.

On the other hand, latter I got defeated again but just by monsters this time, and I found they had added some self revive mechanism?? Wow, that's different? When was that added? When your character uses it, he actually says "Wrong bet!" before getting up again. No, really!

Okay, not really.

But I will say it lends alot more credence to the idea your character isn't getting killed, just getting the stuffing knocked out of him. There's a time limit on how long it is before you can use the revive option again. Nice addition. I wonder if guild wars 2 will keep the death jog while insisting they have no penalty for defeat (jeez, the more they try to avoid a penalty, the lamer the penalty gets - ie, plodding along in a death job), or give one free revive an hour?

Defeat penalties - a peace offering middle ground which will no doubt not be enough

Tesh has made a post about a line I looked at awhile ago with Guild Wars 2 : Death and other inconveniences

Okay, I had an idea, but honestly I suspect until a full on explorationist agenda is supported by games with no real trace of play to win, it wont satisfy. Ironically the explorationists wont be happy until the play to wins are driven before them and they hear the lamentations of their womens. I'll describe it anyway.

Something like if you go for ten minutes and kill X number of monsters in that time all without being defeated or dying, you get $$$ bonus gold. Fail = don't. Actually that's a little like the optional extra challenges you can take on in doofus, if you've ever read about them.

But I suspect it'll still be taken as a penalty, as the person who is defeated isn't having taken gold away, but they are missing out on extra gold. And aren't we all being a bit limited in our view by having (any) play to win challenge?

Guild Wars 2 : Will the levels/game run out 3/4ths in?

Guild wars 2 has a bit of a different leveling format, apparently.

The thing was, I was kind of put off in guild wars 1 by getting to top level before the story ended. Indeed, I stopped playing - not out of rage, just lack of draw.

Before that point you could go out and pretty much do anything, including followng the story, and you got XP, which meant more power, or atleast some edge. It was a reward mechanism.

Then that got taken away entirely UNLESS I went out and hunted specific elite skills and things - ie, I couldn't do what I pretty much wanted and be rewarded.

So I had PVE fights which IIRC, didn't feel like I did much toward the outcome, and no reward for doing them except to see more of the story which...isn't game. I'll read a book if I don't want any game with my story.

So will they run out of levels, or more specifically, the ability to do pretty much what you want and keep getting rewarded? Will I top level about a three quarters and then only specific activities will garner me anything and doing whatever will result in nothing much in game terms?

Levels aren't exactly a great mechanic to begin with - what's the point if you go from +1 to +2 to attack if the monsters go from +1 armour to +2 armour at the same time? Not alot. But even with a shaky reward mechanic, if it runs out, jeez...

Guild Wars 2 : Death and other inconveniences

Things had gone terribly wrong on the set of 'I love Lucy'

Quoting from the healing and death page of guild wars 2,

Players who have recently been downed several times will take longer to revive each time. If no one revives you, you can spend a small amount of gold to come back at a waypoint. It's as simple as that, and why not? Why should we debuff you, take away experience, or make you run around for five minutes as a ghost instead of letting you actually play the game? We couldn't think of a reason. Well, we did actually think of a reason--it just wasn't a good one. Death penalties make death in-game a more tense experience. It just isn't fun. We want to get you back into the action (fun) as quickly as possible. Defeat is the penalty; we don't have to penalize you a second time.

Now the interesting thing about this compared to a board game like chess, or a quake live match, is if you lose/are killed, well, you just lose. That's the end of the game. While the idea (perhaps not very good idea) of a mmorpg has you...well, still there - the games still going.

Really death in a mmorpg is perhaps more like being hit by a single bullet in quake live. Or perhaps a rocket!

And yet it still involves hurt that matters in the bigger picture.

I'm not sure a lack of a death penalty works out, as dying doesn't matter in terms of the bigger picture. It'd be like whether you dodged all the rockets or got hit by every single one in a first person shooter doesn't matter in terms of the bigger pictures. So instead of 'ROCKETS!!!!1!' it becomes 'Oh, rockets...whatever'. And it's correct - it is indeed just a matter of whatever because it wont affect a thing.

Now I'm inclined to agree on the whole ghost thing, as you can't lose at it except to get literally lost and waste alot of time. That is boring.

And a debuff? It's a death spiral - it's like if your hit in a FPS, you become slower and so get hit even more. So I somewhat agree there.

But after going past those options, they seem to have gone to the extreme and have no penalty at all! Unless you count that small gold fee they mention.

Not to mention the whole 'tense <> fun' thing - plenty of people lose matches of FPS each day - the tension of whether you lose is part of that.

Now what I imagine they'll have is that you die, come back and you waddle up to where you were before in a mission or 'quest' and keep going. Why bother having death at all in that case, since your just going to waste time running back from a waypoint (same as the whole ghost thing) or someone raises you on the spot and...big deal, it wouldn't have mattered if you die. The whole 'downed and last ditch dramatic attempt to live' isn't dramatic at all, because it doesn't mean much except for potentially a ghost run.

I don't think this works out at all. But I'll grant it's what alot of other games roughly do already (that's not to say that it works in those games either).

It just seems to generate the illusion of danger/danger of losing. Really when you look at it, defeat isn't a penalty at all - it just has the illusion of being so.

But in reality all they are coding is an inconvenience, as much as the ghost walk.

When game cyclic events get larger and closer to real life cyclic events

How do you find a picture for cyclic events?
Who knows!? So here's a cool witchhunter from warhammer online!

From an interview on guild wars 2

It’s important to clarify that the event system is cyclical in nature. Events will occur again in the game world; they go in cycles where chains of events cascade out based on decisions and actions taken by the players. These events change the world when they occur, but it isn’t a change that lasts forever in the persistent world, it’s a change that lasts as long as the event chains in the area continue along that path until they cycle around into other events, all driven by player actions.

 Now, part of my intellectual mind says to me this is effectively simply another scale of orcs standing around, picking dasies. Something the guild wars guys aren't fond of

You then get a quest which says, "Kill 0/10 ogres" and you proceed to kill a bunch of ogres standing around in a field picking daisies. Since every player in the game needs to be able to do this quest, the ogres will never actually threaten the character's home - they will just eternally pick daisies in the field. The ogres aren't actually doing what the quest says they are - the game is lying to you!

I mean, aren't the orcs dynamic? Can't you interact with them, kill them, and hey they are cyclical dynamic events too - coming back in one minute. Aren't they just as much dynamic events, simply at a smaller scale (side note: Actually reading this again it looks like the GW2 guys primary concern is that the orcs aren't attacking the farm, but nm)

But the funny thing is, real life is a set of cyclic events which are at a larger scale. Go hunt and kill a rabit - another rabit will 'respawn' over time, after the others have had babies. Whether from day to day, or the seasons, are cyclic events. Forests regrowing after being cut down is a cyclic event. All of these happen at a much larger, more complicated scale and longer time span. But they too are cyclic.

So I think that's why GW2's dynamic events have appeal (atleast to me), as opposed to the "over the standing there doing nothing and comes back in a minute orc" from above.

Although perhaps no one else see's the orc and GW2 dynamic events as merely the same thing but at different scales, so I'm arguing about something I just see. Oh well.

I'm thinking of writing up some stuff on more naturalistic cyclic events - where monsters respawn by the old fashioned way - breeding and rearing young, and such (remember how you imagined monsters before they just appeared outta thin air)

Guild Wars 2: One step forward...now how about the other foot as well?

Care Bear Stare!

Some press release on guild wars 2 over here at mmocrunch

Taking a quote from it

Johanson spots another flaw in the basic quest design used in traditional MMO’s, “what the quest text tells you is happening in a quest is not actually what is happening in the world.” Johanson mentions that often times the events you are supposed to alter, say slaying a group of goblins that are attacking someone’s farmstead, actually don’t effect the game environment. By slaying your 20 goblins you are supposed to kill, you won’t actually save the farmer’s home, those same goblins will simply respawn, ready for the next adventurer to take the quest, thus, in the game world, perpetually putting the farmstead in danger. Johanson says that this is an unacceptable form of questing. With the new Dynamic Events System, if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.

However, look into this further information and you find things are actually cyclical

I wrote the following comment at mmocrunch and thought it'd make a good post here, starting with quotes from the press releases:

“if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.”

“These events change the world when they occur, but it isn’t a change that lasts forever in the persistent world”

So the farm is saved for twenty minutes, or half an hour, or something?

And their example of Skritt? It makes it sound like you have to go through Skritt, somehow, to get to the ending. Like it’s B in A, B, C and D, where D is the game end. In other words, the bigger picture is linear, no matter how many ways you can approach Skritt.

That said, even with that critique, they still seem to be taking a giant stride ahead of other mmorpgs!

And the non subscription plan seals it for me – I’ll buy it. But I really think this is just a giant stride ahead. In the end, that farm is still put back into danger.

If they could procedurally generate new farms, or have player built ones somehow, and after being saved X number of times that particular version of a farm is permanently saved, that’d be taking the next big step.

The step to actual world persistancy.

But beyond dismantling their missuse of the word 'persistancy', it sounds fun in itself and buying it will help fund actual development of mmo's into something new. Unlike a certain company who, from the millions they make each month after expenses, developed a...sparkle pony. And needed $25 from millions of customers to recoup the massive R&D involved, of course. The guild wars team seem slightly more ambitious than that...bless 'em!