Server Restrictions and the Sense of Community
With just over one week since Aion's launch, Rynala and I hit level 23 last night. The server queues have not been a problem. We are usually able to get into the game before the queues hit. Disconnects are very infrequent. The server has went down a couple times this week but it was the first week so I guess that is to be expected. (How sad is it we just take these things as expected for MMOs?)
I have been seeing Aion getting a lot of flak from bloggers about the server queues but as I said before, I would much rather have queues for the first month than empty servers/server closures for the rest of the life cycle. Everyone knows the population will dip-be it a little or a lot-after the first month.
Tobold seems to think that we need to do away with the traditional server model of selecting a server and then putting characters on that one server. I would have to say I disagree to a point. I know games like Wizard101 and FreeRealms do not have your characters hardlocked to a server but I think the hardlocking gives a sense of community.
With your characters being locked to a server, you grow to know the other people on that server. You know who to trust, who to hunt, who to sell to and who to buy from. You know who the good guilds and who the trash guilds are. You can make a name for yourself on the server. Even with thousands of people on a server, you will still commonly run into the same people. If you break that down, now if you want to hunt a guild for PvP you will have no luck because this guild could be hiding on one of many different servers. Perhaps you want to go capture a fortress in a certain area... well if one side is defending too well one server, you could just switch to a different one and beat those people into submission. It would be a fundimental breakdown of any community building aspects of the game.
It reminds me of when cross server battlegrounds were implemented into World of Warcraft. I remember getting in the queue for a battleground and often facing some of the same people. Yes, it could get repetitive, but it also made you care more about it. Now, when you go into a cross server battleground, you are lucking to see one other random person from your server. That sense of "PvP community" is gone.
I like having a strong server community. Breaking down server boundaries diminishes that community. For a casual player not involved in server politics, I could see it not being that big of deal but for everyone else, it is somewhat nice to build up that e-reputation.
Problems with Permadeath
Sorry for the late Friday post. I got tied up at work and did not get a chance to post this when I would have liked.
Syp wrote a post today contemplating permadeath within MMORPGs - not necessarily MMOs with the permadeath feature but instead people holding themselves to a permadeath standard. Syp's focus is Dungeons and Dragons Online and the various "permadeath guilds" within that game.
Permadeath is an interesting concept to me. I love playing NetHack and that game is all about permadeath. People get killed on hundreds of characters before they ever "ascend" and beat the game. I have spent many years of my life playing pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons so I have a laundry list of characters that have died permanently in random and often gruesome ways.
For me, MMOs and permadeath do not mix and unless MMO design changes drastically with a "permadeath-based game" (which I think would be awesome, by the way), the two will stay mutually exclusive. Within your average MMO, there are multiple design elements which I feel get in the way of permadeath.
Roguelikes are mostly random. Within Nethack, aside from a few key levels, a majority of the game is random level design with random monsters and items placed on those levels. MMOs do not have that random element to them. Going through the starting area of almost any MMO is going to be the exact same experience every time.
A further problem with the style of roleplaying permadeath in DDO is that you as a player already know what the game is going to be throwing at you. In tabletop Dungeons and Dragons permadeath works because you are not retelling the same story to each character. Your character may die half way through the campaign and you pick up a new character, but you do not replay the first half of the campaign with the new character. With MMOs, every subsequent character benefits from the knowledge of the previous character. Oh you died to the two zombies hiding around that corner on one character? Well on the next character you know to avoid that corner because there are two zombies there.
Another thing that hampers permadeath in MMOs is that most MMOs nowadays expect you to die... and die often. There are multiple quest in World of Warcraft that require you to die in order to complete them. And between raids, battlegrounds, and world PvP, your character is going to die and die often.
If MMOs did have permadeath options, the rest of the game would have to become trivial. Roguelikes work with permadeath because if you die, you only lost a couple hours of game time. Games rarely last more than five to eight hours max. Today's MMOs last thousands of hours. I would almost expect the game to require a style similar to Darkfall where gear and other items are not that hard to replace.
While permadeath is a fun thing to think about, I really do not believe it has any place in current MMOs. I do think it would be interesting to see an MMO built from the ground up with permadeath as a feature (maybe not mandatory, but a feature nonetheless) but as for now, I think games are not conducive to that style of gameplay.
China Bans Gold Farmers…. REALLY!
Still in the middle of a rigorous class and study schedule so I cannot write up a full post on this so I will link you over to Broken Toys where it is discussed more!
I will admit that I squealed with glee when I read it.
The Hook That Grabs You
"I came for the beer, but stayed for the hot elven maidens."
Lately I have been watching my game playing habits and trying to figure out what exactly it is that grabs me in game. I have a good number of MMOs I have been playing lately (more on this in another post) and between World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, Runes of Magic, and now Aion, I was starting to see a trend in what I want from games.
Games need to deliver a one-two punch to me. The story of the world is the first thing that needs to be solid. I love games with epic questlines. The second punch is the community.
I can play some of the most poorly made and buggy games so long as the game has great lore and great community. The fairness of the game and the class balance really do not mean much to me. Whether the game is PvE or PvP does not matter either. I have come to realize that I play MMOs to experience stories and be part of communities.
I think this may be one of the reasons I have always picked the healer class in games. It gives me the easiest inroad to being part of a community and makes it easier to find groups to experience the story.
The lore is the hook that catches me, but it is the community that makes me stay. Once I makes friends on a server and in guilds, I hate leaving them behind. I have grown to hate playing MMOs solo. That is one of the main reasons I love that Rynala joins me for playing most games. Even if the game is buggy, broken, or imbalanced, playing along side someone makes it so I do not notice those things. I just am able to enjoy being in the company of others.
What is it for you? What hooks you? What makes you stay playing the game?
I came for the lore, but stayed for the community.
Keeping Old Content Relevant
Tobold and Ravious today posted about WoW's old zones are of no importance to high level chartacters and how this will cause WoW to eat itself. Tobold talks about how Luminous has you go back to farm low level zones for materials you need while Ravious talks about how Turbine is constantly revamping the low level zones to better streamline them and give old players a reason to start new.
Both of them are essentially looking at the same problem from two ends of the spectrum. Tobold is coming from the viewpoint of someone who has played WoW for years upon years and has no reason to ever go back to those zones. Even if he had to go back to those zones to farm crafting materials, he would be doing it solo. Ravious is coming from a viewpoint of someone new to the game or returning after being gone since just after release. For him, those low level zones are ghost towns and the few people in them are just soloing by themselves and have no reason to group.
I cannot help but wonder if in some ways, Guild Wars got it right and maybe the style could be modified for a standard MMO. With the Factions and Nightfall campaigns in Guild Wars, it takes a player about 5-10 hours to reach the level cap of 20. From there, they have access to almost every single zone in that campaign (aside from the very final stages of the campaign unless they are grouped with someone who has access).
Instead of railroading players down one or two set leveling paths in a game with the game, why not remove levels all together and just make all zones the same level but with varying levels of difficulty? In Guild Wars, I can go to the later zones from the campaign from the start but they will just require a greater amount of focus and concentration than the earlier zones.
What I would like to see is a game have a two to three hour introduction area similar to the pre-Searing in Guild Wars Prophecies or the level 1-6 racial introduction areas from Lord of the Rings. This introduction areas would be your tutorial to teach you the basics of the game and your class and if you have already done the introduction on a previous character, you can skip it and go right into the game proper.
You could take your friend to an "end game" city siege, raid, or whatever activities are usually exclusive to people at the level cap within hours of them joining the game. Since there would be no levels, all instances and zones would remain valid.
Leveling and constant stat increases just cause mudflation so why not do away with those systems? I used to only see a goal as new purples but playing Guild Wars has shown me thousands upon thousands of people who play just to get new skins for their weapons and armor. There are many people who would go kill things for house and guild hall trophies or materials to craft an insane looking axe.
While the foundations of the RPG is a level based system, I think it is time for the genre to evolve.
Also, you still have time to get your name in to win one of the two extra Aion beta keys I have. Just make sure you get your post in before the end of the day. I am going to close the post tonight and announce the winners tomorrow.
Spoiled By WoW
After being out of WoW for almost a month, I realize now how spoiled I had become by the game. While there were a lot of spoiling in-game conveniences, that is not what I am talking about as many games do in-game just as well if not better. What I am speaking of is the access to information out of the game.
Things like WoWHead, Thottbot, WoWDB, WoWWiki, Elitist Jerks and even the official forums have completely spoiled me. Due to the millions upon millions of people playing the game, there is more information than you could ever need. It never takes too long to find out what you need to know if you have a question.
Still not able to find what you need for that quest? Checking on WoWHead probably shows fifty comments of people on any little aspect of the quest.
Wonder what gear or build is best for your class? The official forums and Elitist Jerks are going to be filled with threads and posts by people who have crunched the numbers and can tell you which avenue is best.
This ease of information is not available for most other games. There have been multiple times in Lord of the Rings Online or Runes of Magic that I have been frustrated due to not being able to find answers to questions. People in game do not know, there is nothing on the forums and the wikis on the games are incomplete.
I think the game with the most complete out-of-game info is Guild Wars. The two wikis for that game are amazing resources filled with maps, mission walkthroughs, and quest information.
While many people may blast the WoW community, at least having that many people makes getting information easier.
Understanding Microtransactions
In the past, I have not been a fan of microtransactions. And while I am still not a fan of content that is exclusive to microtransactions or double dipping with subscriptions and microtransactions, I have come to a peace with the concept overall. This has mainly happened due to Runes of Magic.
Runes of Magic has a giant item shop where you can buy a multitude of items that are a nice convenience. This is the kind of implementation I like. If you do not like microtransactions, you could accomplish anything you wanted in the game without spending a cent. The items within the cash shop are mostly things such as potions to increase your experience gain for an hour, potions to refund your training points (sort of like WoW talent points), mounts, unique vanity outfits, and other items like this.
Furthermore, you do not buy the items directly with cash. You go on their website and buy "diamonds" and then use the diamonds in the store to buy items. It is a similar to XBox live currency.
Two of the aspects of the diamond system I like the most is that you can gift items to other people and you can sell diamonds on the auction house for gold. This benefits diamond buyers and those that play for free. For a diamond buyer like me, I can basically buy gold through a legitimate in-game method and for people that play for free, if they are good at making gold, they can buy diamonds and have access to cash shop goods.
I like this system. It allows me to play when I want to rather than feeling like I have to play the game because I am tied in with a monthly subscription. As it stands, I could see myself spending $15-$30 a month on Runes of Magic between diamonds for myself and Rynala.
Ixobelle recently talked about microtransactions and "buyer anxiety" when it comes to making a ton of micropurchases instead of having an "invisible" monthly payment. I do not think that buyer anxiety has ever been my problem with microtransactions and free to play games. It has always been something more like Syncaine actually talks about in a blog post he just wrote up today. Free to play MMOs have a terrible habit of giving people who play microtransactions a terrible advantage.
The person playing for free will not be able to compete when the paying players can buy gear and weapons that are incredibly better than anything else available in game. Free Realms sells level 1 swords that are better than anything a level 20 blacksmith can craft. In Runes of Magic, it is limited to items of convenience so in the end the free player will be on almost equal ground as the paying player.
I think that the microtransaction model could pick up greatly in the west so long as it kept with a business model of limiting the microtransaction items to only items of convenience, not blocking off certain classes or content as only obtainable via microtranactions, and not trying to double dip with both microtransactions and subscriptions.
Quest Experience and Multi-Stage Quests
When two quests take different amounts of time, why do they offer the same amount of experience? When you know every level 30 quest gives the same amount of experience, why do the ones that take a long time? They are only inefficient if your goal is the end game.
The amount of experience a quest gives should be dependant on the average time that quest takes to complete in internal testing and beta testing. If a level 30 quest that takes 10 minutes on average to complete, a level 30 quest that takes twice as much time should give twice as much experience. A quest that takes 10 minutes on average and a quest of equal difficulty that takes 20 minutes on average should not give the same amount of experience. What is even worse is when there is a quest that takes 30-60 minutes to complete and it gives as much experience as a 10-15 minute quest.
There is enough information out there so that players know what is and is not worth their time. So please reward properly.
Group quests are another type of quest that do not seem to be properly rewarded. For example: last night, I was working with a group on the Book 4 questline in Lord of the Rings Online. The questline is filled with multiple group quests but the rewards seem uneven. The final quest, which is a group instance quest, took our four man group over a half hour to do. It may have been close to an hour, but I was not watching the clock. Either way, the experience given for completion was about the equivalent of 2-3 solo quests.
The instance quest was level 42 and took about 45 minutes. I can complete level 42 solo quests in 10-15 minutes each. So if me doing 3 solo quests is the same reward for me completing the group quest, why do the group quest? It is more work and takes an effort to find other people. That extra effort should be rewarded.
Another thing I have been thinking about is certain quest chains. While for the story of some quest chains, I can understand it, but why I do I have to return to the quest giver for completion of every quest.
An average quest giver will tell me "I want you to kill 10 orc grunts" and when I return he'll say "now go kill 3 orc lieutenants", followed by "go collect the orc orders" and then returning once more for he will request "go kill the orc boss." Why can we not have a quest giver just say "Go kill 10 orc grunts, once you finish that go kill 3 lieutenants. With the lieutenants dead, you should be able to find the orders in the tent. After you find the orders, head to the main tent and assassinate the head boss."
Your quest log could say "Complete Mayor Questgiver's requests." and then list all four major objectives he requested. They would be required to be done in order as the later quests are "locked" until the earlier quests are completed. But when you complete one of the quests, you would automatically be given the experience without having to return to the quest giver and the next quest would unlock. After you completed all his tasks, you would have the overall quest completed and be able to return to the quest giver for an item reward and some additional experience.
This would solve one of the most annoying things with questing in LotRO, and that is when you have a quest chain to go to a specific area but that quest chain is the only set of quests for the area and you have to make the long return to the quest giver in between each quest. It would not work for every quest chain because in many quest chains there are story developments, but for many other chains the quest giver knows every step he wants you to complete before you even start.
Tortage, Rashomon, and Class Quests
Tobold wrote today about his thoughts on Tortage in Age of Conan and how it affected people's expectations for the rest of the game. I have never played Age of Conan so I cannot comment on that, but there was one part of his post that stood out to me.
"The same story was told from four different angles, depending on what archetype you played, with your part in the story being appropriate to your class. Thus the fighter would get the kill quest, and the rogue the sneak quest, while the mage feigned alegiance[sic] to the evil sorceress to get information."
I wonder why this is not utilized more in MMOs.
When questing in MMOs presently, your only means of accomplishing a goal is combat. If you need a book from the top of a sorcerer's tower, you kill everything in your path and take the book. If you need to get information from someone unwilling to give it, you fight them until they submit and give you that information. If you find out orcs have taken up residence on the local hill, you only choice is to usually to go kill 10 orcs. I wonder if there is a better way.
One initial thought would be that if every quest was tailored to your quest, then you would only ever be on the same quests as others that are your class. But instead, I wonder if giving options based on race, class and profession would be the best option.
In the situation that orcs had taken residence the local hill, you could have many options. Rogues could be given the option to sneak into their camp and assassination their leader. Warriors would have a frontal assault to take out as many as possible. Alchemists could have the option to concoct a poison to poison their food supply. Blacksmiths could have the option to craft some weapons for the local militia so the militia could deal with them.
In most MMOs right now, the class that you choose only affects what role you will end up playing in a group. Mayor Dave in Questingville will still give you the exact same quests as the rogue, priest, ranger, or necromancer standing beside you.
I think the best way of implementing this would be an epic questline based on your race/class and then having "contract system" I talked about previously in all the town hubs, but have it offering you contracts based on your race/class/profession with some general options.
The overall storyline that happens in the game and the world would be the same, but the way step along the way was approached would be different for different classes (though there would be occasional crossovers). I see it similar to the book quests for Lord of the Rings online from different viewpoints. If each chapter of the storyline was eight quests long, you could a couple class specific quests, a couple general quests and then end it with a large group quests that everyone had. Perhaps it would be delving into a dungeon.
You would not be the one singular hero of the world, you would just be one piece of the puzzle. In LotRO your character is one piece of the puzzle, but you are going through all of the same steps as every other character so in the end everyone is one piece, but the same piece. Under the system I would prefer, in leveling your character through the story, you would see the full storyline unfold but if you played a different class, you would see different things that were done to help it unfold.
Perhaps a warrior would be told by his NPC questgiver to go attack a traveling group of bandits that would be at a specific meeting place. That would be his piece of the story and he would move on.
If a rogue was at the same part in his quest line, the NPC questgiver would give the rogue a map and instruct him to sneak into the bandit camp and replace it with their current map so that they would go to a different meeting location. In the end this "different meeting location" would be the place that the warrior was instructed to go kill them.
Each character would play a role, but it would only be a piece in a larger puzzle. The ending would be the same for every class, but every class had a different part to play.
I hope something like this is what Bioware is doing with The Old Republic. I will just have to cross my fingers and hope.
More Ranting on Quests
Stop making quest chains that span multiple levels. It breaks up the pacing. I hate doing one quest at level 20 only to find out that the next quest is marked as level 25.
Stop making me return to a ridiculously distant area for an single quest in an unimportant chain. If I have to keep making return trips, I should have more than one quest for the area.
Make quests mesh better. If you have a quest to kill 20 wolves in one quest chain and then another quest to kill 30 wolves in a different quest chain, make them at the same place in the chain. I do not like having to kill 50 wolves when I could have only killed 30.
Stop writing a novel just to tell me you are hungry and want some boar meat. I do not care about your dreams and aspirations. I am a mercenary and I am just doing a job. You have friends and family to talk to. I am neither.
Stop giving me group quests followed by solo quests followed by group quests. And for that matter, stop giving me group quests followed by group quests. If you are going to have a quest chain, have it all soloable up until the final quest and make that quest for a group. This way, if I cannot find the group, I at least completed most of the quest line instead of missing huge numbers of quests.
Make drop rates more intelligent. If you want me to collect 10 orc medallions, do not make a set drop rate of 20%. Perhaps start the drop rate at 20% and then for every orc I kill in a row without getting a medallion, increase the drop rate by 20%. Once I get a medallion, reset it to 20%.
When I get back to writing more about Dawn of Steam, one of the things I will elaborate on is quest placement. It will be a "contract" system. Instead of running to town and seeing 30 people who want you to do quests for them, you will see a notice board that has contracts. These contracts will not have huge descriptions and can vary between repeatable quests and one-time quests.
Running into a town may show you a contract board like follows:
Tinker Town Contract Board:
Farmer Joe needs meat. (Daily)
Contract text: Farmer Joe recently broke is leg and is seeking someone to provide meat for his family. Collect 10 boar flanks.
Farmer Steve lost his cow. (One-time)
Contract text: Farmer Steve's cow Bessie has run off. Please return her to Farmer Steve if you find her. Find Bessie.
Mayor Bopkins issues wolf bounty. (Repeatable)
Contract text: Mayor Bopkins is rewarding citizens for helping curb the wolf problem. Rewards are issued for every 10 wolves killed. Kill 10 wolves.
Engineer Meyers is collecting gears. (Repeatable)
Contract text: Engineer Meyers is offering rewards for anyone who brings him gears. Rewards are given for every 5 gears. Collect 5 gears.
Tinker Smith needs a bodyguard. (Daily)
Contract text: Tinker Smith needs is seeking to hire a bodyguard to escort him to his place of work. Protect Tinker Smith.
So few people read the flavor text of a quest, doing quests like this would be more efficient and less overwhelming. Another benefit to this system is that when people eventually do find a quest that is a novel in length they are more likely to actually read it since it it stands out.