Driftwurld : Highscores

I've implimented a high score system in my browser game, Driftwurld! I think it works!? It updates once per half hour. I'll be posting a rough tutorial with the code for a high score table in awhile.

It also has a system where it only shows the first two letters of names not checked out yet. I really quite hate it when games go to all the effort of having nice graphics and depictions, only to let players have crappy names (ie, not a jot of connection to the fiction, or any fiction for that matter) and display them everywhere. I'm checking them manually in the DB at the moment.

I'm wondering whether to make it that when you log in it takes you to the high scores then you click to homebase, so as to emphasise high scores, or just keep high scores as a button on the homebase screen?

Also implimented the ability to gain these scores (power factor) by only three per hour, so far (ie you play for five minutes, get the points, but then it'll be an hour before you can do so again). You get one point at the end of each paragraph of the story completed.

Latter I'll add a lords system that uses the power factor to determine who is promoted to one of the limited number of lord positions for a month!

Idea for permanent death (in any game)

Killed by a grid bug!

Instead of only choosing your characters first name, you choose their surname, then their first name (or use the random option)

What happens is you have two records of your level - current level, and top level gained. Top level gained only goes up when your current level exceeds the top level.

When you die your back to first level! And the first name is gone - that guy is dead! Your 'character' is known by his surname, because your playing a family heritage, not one guy.

However, by paying money and using certain items (that can only be used X number of times per RL day), you can boost your level back up to your top level gained. The smaller the gap between current level and top level, the less you have to pay. Also paying only lasts for awhile, so although it's alot like most traditional mmorpg, it's not always that way and by default, if you don't have the money and items, your back at level one.

Indeed I think ages ago I heard of some game that used a family system along with perma death, but I can't remember it.

Some target numbers for mmorpgs would be nifty

I was playing runes of magic the other day and I realised that in play, I'd simply be made quite alot happier if there was some sort of rating system for beating monsters - like killing them in X number of seconds. And your character would get to a new zone, and be lower level and lower kit, but you'd see your number improve and get closer to the number then finally beat it!

A bot from global agenda, simply because it looks cool!

Yeah, sure, it's still basically accumulating numbers to beat it. But it'd be more interesting than accumulating numbers and just going 'more is gud!'. Atleast it's hitting a goal here.

Also I hate bloggers labels box - I wish it showed the more commonly used ones, like wordpress does! I can't find the important ones at all easily!

Do you think if you dislike something in a game, it's a mistake?

Once again my 'What the firetruck?' responce to someone elses blog becomes a post here...I'll paraphrase my responce here

If something is an unintended side effect and the developers did not intend it to happen, fair enough to argue against it.

But if they did intend it to be part of the difficulty of the game, even if only tanks have to face it...well, what? Do you think difficulty in any particular game has to revolve around what you personally dislike?

Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it's a bug.

I mean, where does it end? If you think your in a position to argue away intended challenges, where do you stop? Which ones are acceptable to your sensitive palette?

And what of the thousands of others - what if they think they can argue this way, and what challenge you think is okay, they think is a big bad spoils their fun bug? Someone, somewhere might have their fun spoiled by what you think is okay - and as much as you think you get to determine what is a bug rather than an intended challenge, so do they. So it must be removed!

Eventually all challenge gets removed as there's always someone who's fun is spoilt by practically any challenge and you end up with...a themepark.

Oh yeah. Right.

Perverse 'grouping' games/gaming

There's a particular cultural meme on the internet I've seen a few times, that's in love with the idea of forming a group.

Here's a thread on RPG.net that has some examples. A quote from it

In the end it's a trade-off; you've given up the sense of spontaneous server camaraderie and overcoming adversity for accessibility and convenience.

And another quote from it

When you do get into a group, it's mostly people you don't know (PuGs being cross-server now) and will likely never group with again. You don't care about them; they are just tools you use to achieve Phat Lewts.

 Which seemed to be the case previously, so eliminating the idea of 'spontaneous server camaraderie'

Really it seems in terms of gameplay, getting a group together in the f'ing first place was the actual game to most people, and the actual dungeon crawl effectively an afterthought to them.

It's just an amazingly lame 'game' and 'adversity' to 'overcome'.

Perhaps it's a breed of brain damage? They are sitting there for hours, literally, looking for group - they are told over and over this is a great game. So they start to treat those dead, dead hours as fun. They just get their minds bent by repeated hours of exposure. The same way I'd brainwash someone, if I had someone in my basement that I wanted to brainwash...not that I...have a basement....

hehe

Peasant Play!

What I think would be neat is to have what I call peasant play in a mmorpg.

Basically you have an alt that you can set to be a peasant. It's perhaps alot like monster play in lotro, where you have a monster and playing it gives your hero character extra destiny points.

The peasants top level would be about 10 or so! Level 10 is epic! And they would have perma death (before you moan, c'mon, it's only ten levels lost and peasants can do peasanty stuff at level one, just not as good)! Also other players, when on their hero's, would get bonus points for killing mobs around peasants, so as to rescue them (peasants can fight mobs but aren't designed to - they engage special peasant resouce nodes like animal traps and crops).

The idea is that peasant play for a few minutes every so often would be attractive in terms of resources and it would give a sense, when playing, of how big and dangerous the world is.

Also there could be events where hero's might have the chance of saving many peasants lives. Yeah, granted they may fail and your peasant dies, but again peasants would be able to do their stuff at level one to a certain extent, and level ten wouldn't be hard to achieve at all.

Peasant play!

Allod of addicts?

In responce, in relation to the Allods cash shop prices

What is this ‘gouge with the cash shop’ meme I’m seeing around the net?

I mean, they literally wield it like a knife and run at you?

Makes me think of a user getting cut at their dealer for hiking up the prices. You know your hooked, that’s why you get so upset and vehement about something you could just not buy – because your hooked.

Basically there's this aggitation because people know they don't really have a choice because they are caught between their addiction and the cash shop price.

If there was no addiction they'd just shrug and not buy it.

Darkfall - the missing link between themepark and eventual play to win mmorpgs

You know what's dreadful? I don't happen to think of any content at all for this blog...then I'll find someone elses thread and respond with what I thought would be a two sentence thing...and it's blog entry sized in the end. This is responding to an article on mmocrunch about risk, again.

It's only a flesh wound!

I think darkfall is evolving toward a play to win mmorpg, but it's still in an amphibian state - it's moved on from being a fish, but it's not a mammal yet, either.

The risk system, which perhaps seems shocking and exciting at first, isn't fun from moment to moment once you start seeing the overlaying structure.

Take this example: If you went out with 200 gold on you, your risking 200 gold. Now say you come back to base with 200 gold...does that sound exciting? No, it sounds like risk for absolutely no benefit at all. Now with darkfall, imagine leaving home base with 150 gold, then finding 50 gold? Great? No. Because you don't have that gold yet - you could lose it all on the way home. It's actually the same as the 200 gold example - you haven't won anything, your just risking more and more and more stuff for no benefit at all.

Now granted if you get back to base and bank it all, then you've won that money. But it's going to be half an hour to an hour before that happens. That is not moment to moment fun. It might feel like it when you find a chest full of gold, but once you see the bigger structure, you see that chest isn't any fun at all. Only getting back to the bank with it all is, and that's not happening any time soon.

Sure if you like delayed fun, it's okay. But that's why I call it an amphibian or reptile - it's not warmblooded yet. It has to laze around in the son for ages before it really gets going.
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I'd suggest just having an ante - an amount a player has to fill with a certain amount of gold, or equipment equivalent to a certain amount of gold. This ante and only this ante is lost upon being killed. So if you do find 100 more gold, it really is a win right here, right now, because you can't lose any more than the fixed ante from before.

Also I wish I could figure out how to put captions under the pictures so I could write "It's only a flesh wound" in the pic above!

Edit: I think success with the caption! Found out how to do it!

Risk #2, Transparency

Even more comments along from my last post and last time at mmocrunch.
I'll quote Inktom,

Unfortunately Hulkageddon 1 and 2 has made safe mining impossible even in empire space. Since Apocrypha and the introduction of wormhole space, you can get that 0.0 feel and profitablility without venturing past gatecamps getting to null or lowsec. They even have wormholes that lead to 0.0 and that enables the term: Stealth mining. But that requires a few hulks and an orca. HUGE RISK! But tremendous reward if you pull it off.

But EVE is not for everyone, but gets the risk/reward ratio right.

My responce

No, not a huge risk. It’s just the impression of a huge risk – what info do you have to prove it’s a risk?

For example, say someones in front of me, flips a coin and it’s my call, heads. They hand me hundreds of game coins and I go weee! Also I don’t lose my game coins.
Now imagine someone goes off into a black box, then comes back out and hands me a few hundred game coins?

Did I face a big risk? Did they flip a coin while they were in that black box? Or did they just decide to hand out game coins to me?

Should I go weeee! or would I just be fooling myself?

Without transparent risks or atleast some level of transparency, you don’t know.

Risk in mmorpgs

There's a good article about risk in mmorpgs on mmocrunch at the moment.

However, while it lays into the often zero risk nature of mmorpgs, they felt EVE made sense. Here's what I had to say:

As far as I'm aware, in terms of risk Eve suffers or fails in that in more dangerous space you have no idea of the risk (you have some idea in poker, for example) since people who will kill you aren't regulated in any way. Is it thrilling when there was a zero change of being ganked, cause all the local gankers were on bio break?

Well I guess that raises the question that if you don't know you couldn't die, but you felt as if you could and that was exciting, whether it the truth of the situation or the feeling of the situation that matters. Personally I'd go with the truth.

Second is that as far as I understand it, it's risking $100 to gain $1. For example, in more dangerous space, will one instance of mining pay twice the value of your ship and it's mods/your guys mods? I'm thinking no, it'll only pay a fraction.

In poker you don't risk $100 to gain $1. You usually risk a certain amount to win multiple times that amount.

I think even if you like risking $100 to gain $1, it'll make you risk adverse and when you do lose, it'll really, really suck. Atleast in poker you can say "Well, I lost $10 but I could have won $100!" while here it's "Well, I lost $100 but I could have won $1...AH CRAP!"

Do guilds themselves defeat the idea of massively multiplayer?

There's something I heard about mmorpgs - "Oh yeah, there are idiots, but if you get a good guild..."

Don't guilds actually destroy the idea of a mmorpg?

I mean, how many people do you have in your guild active when you are? Even in a really big guild, perhaps 200 or so? Most likely less?

And if the idea is that you stick with your 'good guild', then really your interacting with around 200 people or more likely, alot less.

That's hardly massive, is it?

It's a common desire in mmorpgs to have a guild - but it essentially removes the 'mm'.

The Blizzard Authenticator - A rip off in itself

I saw an article on mmocrunch about world of warcraft authenticators. The little device that generates a second code needed to log in (you don't have the device, you can't log in, even if you've hacked the regular password). I wrote the following:


I am surprised how people are so excited to spend money on these if they are so necessary to play the game.

If it’s a necessary part of the game, why doesn’t it come with the game – or atleast after X amount of subscription time they send you one?

It’s like you guys rented a house, then your real excited to buy a lock and key for the front door – the house should come with one.

I mean, if the game didn't come with a password field at all and you 'only' had to pay $6.50 to get one, would you think that's great? No, you'd insist it should come with a password field. You'd say it's absolutely necessary to have one.

And yet you say the Blizz authenticator is absolutely necessary as well.

mmorpg, free, review: Runes of magic

Just a quick note on this mmorpg, since I've gotten a few characters above level 20. It does have alot of the charm of world of warcraft, while having this off kilter German sort of attitude, and also feels a bit like a bunch of excited gamers around a table putting something together. Personally I like the daily quests in it, which it has for all levels. After all, it's BS that you finish any of the quests...so it feels more 'realistic' and participating in a world to do a daily quest to get X amount of items and be paid for it in XP and gold (and tokens), than helping some granny fight off a stranger...only to see someone else fighting him off even before you turn your back. It just feels more like engaging the world when you know the quest is repeating, since it's more like there's an ongoing need in the imagined world for whatever items or whatever encrouching monsters slayed. Ongoing needs make more sense than granny being 'saved' a million times.

It's charming and a growing mmorpg (they added an elven starting area since I signed up) and it gives you that high of being in a world a bunch of other people are running around and caring about the world to some degree. Also yes, it has micro transactions, but you buy diamonds to do so, and you can actually buy diamonds on its auction house for normal game gold you earn by playing (people post diamonds there so they can get gold easily. I wish I could figure a way of turning diamonds into money again, because I've been able to buy quite a few with gold earned). Also I have a character motivation competition here.

So, here's the link to the game: http://www.runesofmagic.com/