Imagine if your phone company declared that Tuesday was maintenance day. Sometime on Monday night, if they remember, they will post the details of whether tomorrow will be a "rolling restart" day, with a random 15-minute window of downtime between 8 and 9 AM, a regular maintenance day (perhaps 6 hours of maintenance, from 8 AM to 2 PM EST), or an extended maintenance day with 8+ hours of scheduled downtime. Of course, all downtime estimates may be extended at any time without notice or revised estimates, and no compensation of any kind will be provided.
This would end poorly. People would leave that phone company in droves. The United States Congress would probably be involved within the week. And yet this has been the standard maintenance schedule for World of Warcraft for the last four years now.
When a game is not just a game
There are, of course, a number of differences between my hypothetical phone company and an online game. Not having telephone service for the better part of a day would be crippling to businesses, and potentially life-threatening to anyone who needs a phone to call 911 during that time. By contrast, online games are "just games".
Scrabble is also just a game. When you go to the store and buy a Scrabble set, you own your shiny new game. Your game does not go away if the publishers go out of business, you decide not to pay them a recurring monthly fee, or you are banned from international tournament play for whatever reason. There are limitations to your rights; for example, you cannot make a knock-off, post it on Facebook, and expect not to hear from the lawyers somewhere down the line. You can, however, freely resell your one copy of Scrabble via a yard sale, EBay, etc.
Your MMORPG account lacks all of these aspects of physical ownership. Indeed, companies are quick to point out that you are licensing the use of their software, and that they own your characters (some microtransaction game somewhere is going to lose a lawsuit one of these days for nerfing some item they were happily charging real world cash for), i.e. that your MMORPG is NOT a game which you own, but a service.
Are we setting the bar too low?
Tobold writes that MMORPG customers are remarkably tolerant of, well, poor service. We will complain, some unhinged minority of us will apparently post that they wish snipers would kill Scott Jennings over class balance issues, but we tend not to take our money anywhere else.
Part of that is because of there isn't anywhere else to go. There are a limited number of triple-A MMORPG's out there, and a given player can probably rule out half of them based on playstyle preferences. Part of that is physical reality; apparently online games requires more downtime and maintenance than global telecommunication networks. (Technology is strange like that.) Some things that are inconvenient for certain players (e.g. not being able to play on Tuesday morning, having a bit torrent patch download clog your home network) are more convenient for others (at least the downtime is off-peak, and the downloads are faster if you've got the bandwidth).
Still, I can't help but wonder why the default response anytime someone raises this question is "it's just a game, you shouldn't get worked up over it" and not "why isn't the service better?"
P.S. This post was originally inspired by the Warhammer EU open beta debacle, perhaps the best summary of which is at The Greenskin. If you are at all familiar with the incident, I highly recommend the following video linked via the Greenskin coverage. It's like the modern version of the famous Fangtooth, Pally CM video.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Time Management with multiple MMORPG's
Depending on how you choose to keep count, I've arguably got three MMORPG's going right now:
- Retail WoW (which I'm actually paying for),
- The Wrath Beta (which I'm not paying for), and
- The Warhammer Beta (which I'm sort of paying for, to the extent that the promised open beta and head start access factored into my decision to pre-order rather than wait for launch and watch the dust settle).
The irony is that I've spent the evening watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles, doing some housework, and now reading the blogroll and writing up a post instead of playing any of the above.
I'd guesstimate that I'm scraping together maybe 10 hours of combined gaming time per week since I started my new (real world) job. In some ways, that's actually a fair chunk of time; billed at minimum wage, that is more than the box price for a new game. In comparison to the time commitment for high end raiding in WoW, that's not much at all.
So many choices, so little time
I find this all interesting because I'm noticing that my current time constraints are definitely influencing my decisions in terms of how I spend my time in-game. For example:
- I'm probably not going to fire up the Warhammer beta for the little time that remains in the evening after I post this, even though it's the newest toy that I have the most questions about. As I posted yesterday, there's a server wipe coming in a week, and the four hours I spent on it over the weekend represent nearly half of the time I spent on games this week.
- The cooking and fishing daily quests I'm doing on my retail WoW account might seem like the least interesting choice of the three, but that's the only thing I'm working on right now that will still be around in December.
- I will finish up Cheerydeth's level journey, simply because it will be cool to be able to say I had a level 80 beta Death Knight. That said, I'm leaving the heavy testing of the Storm Peaks and Icecrown to people with more spare time, and will put off trying it for myself until the zones aren't so buggy that they're bringing down the whole server. I wouldn't trade my WotlK beta experiences for anything, but I'm not sure if I would have opted to invest the time in leveling a beta character if the opportunity to do so hadn't come at a time when I was waiting for a new job to start anyway.
- Speaking of past decisions, I'm not sure what I'd think about taking on a project like my uncrushable solo Paladin in the future. For one thing, I don't know if I'll even have the time to get good old Greenhammer to level 70. My mage remains my favorite character, and the warrior has content in front of him that I've never seen before, along with Titan's Grip to cut through all the mobs that much faster. Would I want to use a low DPS Pally for a third (fourth counting the beta) trip through Northrend? Even if I did, would I really want to sink 100% of my gaming time into grinding out the level 80 equivalent of badges (it took the Pally approximately an hour a day for nearly two months)?
- What about other alts? I'm not sure I'd want to play a retail Death Knight, but leveling any other alt in WoW represents a fair chunk of time leveling through old, uninteresting content pre-Outland. (Part of the solution here may be to wait; I think it's likely that Blizzard WILL allow level 55ish alts of non-Death Knight classes at some point in the next year.)
- Meanwhile, let's say I wind up sticking with Warhammer. It appears that any single character will miss out on a lot of the game's content, but spreading out your gaming time between multiple characters could seriously slow your main's reknown ranking.
I'm not sure that this is really a "Player vs Developer" question. Perhaps it's more "Player vs Self". Either way, I'll be curious to come back in a few months and see what choices exactly I've wound up making.
- Retail WoW (which I'm actually paying for),
- The Wrath Beta (which I'm not paying for), and
- The Warhammer Beta (which I'm sort of paying for, to the extent that the promised open beta and head start access factored into my decision to pre-order rather than wait for launch and watch the dust settle).
The irony is that I've spent the evening watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles, doing some housework, and now reading the blogroll and writing up a post instead of playing any of the above.
I'd guesstimate that I'm scraping together maybe 10 hours of combined gaming time per week since I started my new (real world) job. In some ways, that's actually a fair chunk of time; billed at minimum wage, that is more than the box price for a new game. In comparison to the time commitment for high end raiding in WoW, that's not much at all.
So many choices, so little time
I find this all interesting because I'm noticing that my current time constraints are definitely influencing my decisions in terms of how I spend my time in-game. For example:
- I'm probably not going to fire up the Warhammer beta for the little time that remains in the evening after I post this, even though it's the newest toy that I have the most questions about. As I posted yesterday, there's a server wipe coming in a week, and the four hours I spent on it over the weekend represent nearly half of the time I spent on games this week.
- The cooking and fishing daily quests I'm doing on my retail WoW account might seem like the least interesting choice of the three, but that's the only thing I'm working on right now that will still be around in December.
- I will finish up Cheerydeth's level journey, simply because it will be cool to be able to say I had a level 80 beta Death Knight. That said, I'm leaving the heavy testing of the Storm Peaks and Icecrown to people with more spare time, and will put off trying it for myself until the zones aren't so buggy that they're bringing down the whole server. I wouldn't trade my WotlK beta experiences for anything, but I'm not sure if I would have opted to invest the time in leveling a beta character if the opportunity to do so hadn't come at a time when I was waiting for a new job to start anyway.
- Speaking of past decisions, I'm not sure what I'd think about taking on a project like my uncrushable solo Paladin in the future. For one thing, I don't know if I'll even have the time to get good old Greenhammer to level 70. My mage remains my favorite character, and the warrior has content in front of him that I've never seen before, along with Titan's Grip to cut through all the mobs that much faster. Would I want to use a low DPS Pally for a third (fourth counting the beta) trip through Northrend? Even if I did, would I really want to sink 100% of my gaming time into grinding out the level 80 equivalent of badges (it took the Pally approximately an hour a day for nearly two months)?
- What about other alts? I'm not sure I'd want to play a retail Death Knight, but leveling any other alt in WoW represents a fair chunk of time leveling through old, uninteresting content pre-Outland. (Part of the solution here may be to wait; I think it's likely that Blizzard WILL allow level 55ish alts of non-Death Knight classes at some point in the next year.)
- Meanwhile, let's say I wind up sticking with Warhammer. It appears that any single character will miss out on a lot of the game's content, but spreading out your gaming time between multiple characters could seriously slow your main's reknown ranking.
I'm not sure that this is really a "Player vs Developer" question. Perhaps it's more "Player vs Self". Either way, I'll be curious to come back in a few months and see what choices exactly I've wound up making.
First Impressions: Warhammer Beta
I don't expect to spend much time in Warhammer's open beta; realistically, I can mess around with low level characters now, or I can do it after the head start begins and actually get to keep the guinea pigs. That said, a few very early impressions:
Annoying:
- Maybe I'm getting old and suffering eye strain, but some of that flavor text in the chat window can be hard to read, especially the lighter grey color reserved for NPC's background chatter. I dunno if it needs better contrast or a larger font (or if the game's default UI can be configured to provide these things), but it's a bit annoying.
- I rolled a High Elf White Lion, a melee DPS class that comes with a cat as a pet. This was actually just about my first choice of classes in the game, but the constant pattering noise from the cat's feet has caused me to reconsider that plan.
- As Rohan noted a while back, it's possible to accidentally click on yourself and/or your pet while attempting to loot corpses (or, indeed, target foes if you're relying on the mouse for that). Not fun.
- Public quests are interesting, but they're not without flaws. I had actually outleveled the game's second PQ (i.e. all the mobs were below my level) by the time I reached it. Also, it is VERY annoying to come in 1st on the contribution chart and not even get a crappy white loot bag due to an unlucky roll. I'm not sure whether I'd rank that above or below doing the same PQ four times to finish out my influence bar and getting white or no loot on the other three times too.
- I picked the lowest population Order side I could find for this day 1 test, but the character select screen does seem to have the threatened separate login queues per side. I've probably said this before, but having to wait in a queue for a server that has the physical capacity to take more players simply because my side is too popular will get old really quickly (like the first time it happens).
Good:
- The UI seems to be good; generally, if I can't figure something out, it's because I've failed to notice the on-screen directions. (E.g. you have to right-click on your unlocked titles to actually wear one.) Both the quest tracker and the minimap are pretty useful.
- Scenarios: As promised, the first words I saw when I zoned into a scenario were "if you can heal, you have to heal!" That said, this was not really my problem since I took my own advice and didn't roll a healing class, so I was free to try to learn to play. (Aside: You get a group health bar UI, but I suspect that the learning curve may be a bit intimidating if you haven't healed before AND are a priority target.)
The T1 Elf vs Elf scenario seemed reasonably evenly matched, well-designed, and fun. As I said with PQ's, perhaps my biggest regret here is that you permanently level past scenarios and can never go back on that character, no matter how nostalgic you are. Still, I'd rather play the one scenario I've tried than any of Blizzard's current battlegrounds, so that's definitely progress.
Also, at least the early stages of the Reknown grind (players have a parallel PVP level to their character's actual level) were very quick. I picked up a title and two ranks in a single scenario.
- Quests: Kill X baddies, loot Y items off the ground, or use Z quest item. The non-public PVE quests aren't exactly ground-breaking (though the game's map screen will give you hints on where to go next), but, as Rock, Paper, Shotgun says, this is not necessarily an insult. One quibble is that quest items are stored in their own secret tab of your backpack, which you can forget to check and then wonder why the drop is taking so long to find. Ah well, I guess it's worth not having to worry about the bag slot your items are occupying.
- Combat: Well, the game does still have some pathing issues, which may have hit me harder than usual because I was playing a pet class. That aside, combat is good. It's definitely a notch slower paced than WoW, with a greater emphasis on your abilities instead of auto-attacks. Also, I don't know how well this scales, but it seems like my health and mana/energy equivalents regenerate very rapidly, which means minimal downtime.
Overall?
So far, so good. I may not bother to log into this thing again until after the open beta character wipe, but that's actually a good review. Obviously, I haven't seen much of the game, or any outdoor RVR yet, but the actual game content that I have seen is pretty good. I may just have to get used to the concept of not being able to finish large to massive amounts of content every level, but I guess there's no real harm there since it seems like the scenarios and public quests are generally more interesting than the solo stuff anyway.
Annoying:
- Maybe I'm getting old and suffering eye strain, but some of that flavor text in the chat window can be hard to read, especially the lighter grey color reserved for NPC's background chatter. I dunno if it needs better contrast or a larger font (or if the game's default UI can be configured to provide these things), but it's a bit annoying.
- I rolled a High Elf White Lion, a melee DPS class that comes with a cat as a pet. This was actually just about my first choice of classes in the game, but the constant pattering noise from the cat's feet has caused me to reconsider that plan.
- As Rohan noted a while back, it's possible to accidentally click on yourself and/or your pet while attempting to loot corpses (or, indeed, target foes if you're relying on the mouse for that). Not fun.
- Public quests are interesting, but they're not without flaws. I had actually outleveled the game's second PQ (i.e. all the mobs were below my level) by the time I reached it. Also, it is VERY annoying to come in 1st on the contribution chart and not even get a crappy white loot bag due to an unlucky roll. I'm not sure whether I'd rank that above or below doing the same PQ four times to finish out my influence bar and getting white or no loot on the other three times too.
- I picked the lowest population Order side I could find for this day 1 test, but the character select screen does seem to have the threatened separate login queues per side. I've probably said this before, but having to wait in a queue for a server that has the physical capacity to take more players simply because my side is too popular will get old really quickly (like the first time it happens).
Good:
- The UI seems to be good; generally, if I can't figure something out, it's because I've failed to notice the on-screen directions. (E.g. you have to right-click on your unlocked titles to actually wear one.) Both the quest tracker and the minimap are pretty useful.
- Scenarios: As promised, the first words I saw when I zoned into a scenario were "if you can heal, you have to heal!" That said, this was not really my problem since I took my own advice and didn't roll a healing class, so I was free to try to learn to play. (Aside: You get a group health bar UI, but I suspect that the learning curve may be a bit intimidating if you haven't healed before AND are a priority target.)
The T1 Elf vs Elf scenario seemed reasonably evenly matched, well-designed, and fun. As I said with PQ's, perhaps my biggest regret here is that you permanently level past scenarios and can never go back on that character, no matter how nostalgic you are. Still, I'd rather play the one scenario I've tried than any of Blizzard's current battlegrounds, so that's definitely progress.
Also, at least the early stages of the Reknown grind (players have a parallel PVP level to their character's actual level) were very quick. I picked up a title and two ranks in a single scenario.
- Quests: Kill X baddies, loot Y items off the ground, or use Z quest item. The non-public PVE quests aren't exactly ground-breaking (though the game's map screen will give you hints on where to go next), but, as Rock, Paper, Shotgun says, this is not necessarily an insult. One quibble is that quest items are stored in their own secret tab of your backpack, which you can forget to check and then wonder why the drop is taking so long to find. Ah well, I guess it's worth not having to worry about the bag slot your items are occupying.
- Combat: Well, the game does still have some pathing issues, which may have hit me harder than usual because I was playing a pet class. That aside, combat is good. It's definitely a notch slower paced than WoW, with a greater emphasis on your abilities instead of auto-attacks. Also, I don't know how well this scales, but it seems like my health and mana/energy equivalents regenerate very rapidly, which means minimal downtime.
Overall?
So far, so good. I may not bother to log into this thing again until after the open beta character wipe, but that's actually a good review. Obviously, I haven't seen much of the game, or any outdoor RVR yet, but the actual game content that I have seen is pretty good. I may just have to get used to the concept of not being able to finish large to massive amounts of content every level, but I guess there's no real harm there since it seems like the scenarios and public quests are generally more interesting than the solo stuff anyway.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Beta Premades!
Level 80 premades are now available on the beta servers. Sadly, we only get three copies to work with, so there are some decisions to make on my part. One of the three was easy; I've wanted to test out Titan's Grip for some time now, but my warrior is only level 61 and has a combined 25 points of weapon skill in the three 2H weapons the talent works with. This way I will actually be able to compare the Wrath Fury spec with the Death Knight on similar footing (though not identical, since the premade warrior comes with epic PVP gear). Obviously, with Cheerydeth halfway through level 77, I don't really need to copy a premade to get a level 80 DK.
Still, that leaves eight classes and two copy slots. One option is to send over the mage and pally premades. My existing 70's are both on the beta server (indeed, I can send a second copy of each to compare level 70 specs side by side if I want, since I'm no longer saving a slot for my warrior), but I have zero interest in spending significant time leveling them. Testing my existing characters would really let me look at what my favorite classes gain from level 70 to level 80.
The other option is to send over characters that I haven't played as much (or at all) in the live game. I've done this exercise on recent TBC PTR phases so I have some idea which classes interest me. There might not be level 80 premades for a while once the expansion goes live, so this might be my best chance to see whether classes I haven't played really shine with their new goodies. Of course, then I don't have much of anything to compare my experiences to, and I won't even know how to spec and play the classes in question.
This isn't a formal poll (I do have a poll going) but I'll be happy to hear any persuasive arguments you all might have on this topic. :)
Still, that leaves eight classes and two copy slots. One option is to send over the mage and pally premades. My existing 70's are both on the beta server (indeed, I can send a second copy of each to compare level 70 specs side by side if I want, since I'm no longer saving a slot for my warrior), but I have zero interest in spending significant time leveling them. Testing my existing characters would really let me look at what my favorite classes gain from level 70 to level 80.
The other option is to send over characters that I haven't played as much (or at all) in the live game. I've done this exercise on recent TBC PTR phases so I have some idea which classes interest me. There might not be level 80 premades for a while once the expansion goes live, so this might be my best chance to see whether classes I haven't played really shine with their new goodies. Of course, then I don't have much of anything to compare my experiences to, and I won't even know how to spec and play the classes in question.
This isn't a formal poll (I do have a poll going) but I'll be happy to hear any persuasive arguments you all might have on this topic. :)
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Mark Jacobs Saves the MMORPG Industry
Warhammer Online mastermind Mark Jacobs jumped into the blogosphere yesterday, opening up a new blog (amusingly titled "online games are a niche market") with a bunch of posts. There was much rejoicing, and people did feast on wildebeasts and breakfast cereals and maybe roasted squigs (I don't know much about Warhammer cuisine) etc etc.
The meatiest of his posts is titled "What does WAR's success or failure mean for the MMORPG market?". Obviously, you should have a salt shaker in hand, since the man does have a product to sell here. That said, I agree with his general take on the MMORPG community as we near Warhammer's launch. This game comes in with a well known license, an experienced studio, a reasonably large budget and dev cycle, and the behemoth of all video game publishers working distribution. For better or worse, this WILL be seen as a referendum on the triple-A subscription MMORPG. I'm less convinced that Warhammer's success will instantly wipe out doubts about the genre's viability (again, the deck is slightly stacked in their favor), but a win would certainly be better than a loss.
Coming soon(er)...
Meanwhile, there's an odd game of leap-frog going on to determine when The Showdown actually begins. Warhammer's "open" beta (for values of open that are currently still restricted to pre-order customers, unless there's been a wider release of keys that I haven't heard about) was scheduled to start on Sunday, but Keen reports that pre-order customers who got into the stress test "Preview Weekend" are being let into the open beta two days early (which would, if my maths are good, be tomorrow). This was probably intended to ease congestion in the starting areas before players who haven't gotten to play the game yet arrive, but it may turn out to be a big deal.
See, meanwhile, Blizzard may have been planning a first strike. Mania speculates that World of Warcraft's "What Warhammer open beta?" patch 3.0 PTR will go live tomorrow. I think she may have it right. Which would be very puzzling given that the marquis feature of the patch, the first few tiers of the Inscription profession, isn't even finished in closed beta yet.
Hopefully they are going to hold off on forking the 3.0 patch off of the closed beta for as long as possible. Patch 2.0 diverged from the TBC beta before it hit the PTR's, and was pretty out of date in terms of balance changes by the time it went live (which was the state the live game had to live with for a month). Still, I can't see a way to spin this as a good thing for the development and testing of the actual patch and expansion. That's a lot of effort to go to just to screw with your competitor's launch.
The meatiest of his posts is titled "What does WAR's success or failure mean for the MMORPG market?". Obviously, you should have a salt shaker in hand, since the man does have a product to sell here. That said, I agree with his general take on the MMORPG community as we near Warhammer's launch. This game comes in with a well known license, an experienced studio, a reasonably large budget and dev cycle, and the behemoth of all video game publishers working distribution. For better or worse, this WILL be seen as a referendum on the triple-A subscription MMORPG. I'm less convinced that Warhammer's success will instantly wipe out doubts about the genre's viability (again, the deck is slightly stacked in their favor), but a win would certainly be better than a loss.
Coming soon(er)...
Meanwhile, there's an odd game of leap-frog going on to determine when The Showdown actually begins. Warhammer's "open" beta (for values of open that are currently still restricted to pre-order customers, unless there's been a wider release of keys that I haven't heard about) was scheduled to start on Sunday, but Keen reports that pre-order customers who got into the stress test "Preview Weekend" are being let into the open beta two days early (which would, if my maths are good, be tomorrow). This was probably intended to ease congestion in the starting areas before players who haven't gotten to play the game yet arrive, but it may turn out to be a big deal.
See, meanwhile, Blizzard may have been planning a first strike. Mania speculates that World of Warcraft's "What Warhammer open beta?" patch 3.0 PTR will go live tomorrow. I think she may have it right. Which would be very puzzling given that the marquis feature of the patch, the first few tiers of the Inscription profession, isn't even finished in closed beta yet.
Hopefully they are going to hold off on forking the 3.0 patch off of the closed beta for as long as possible. Patch 2.0 diverged from the TBC beta before it hit the PTR's, and was pretty out of date in terms of balance changes by the time it went live (which was the state the live game had to live with for a month). Still, I can't see a way to spin this as a good thing for the development and testing of the actual patch and expansion. That's a lot of effort to go to just to screw with your competitor's launch.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Poll: Progress towards rewards
I've been thinking about how I choose the stuff I do in WoW these days (yes, I know, loot incentives are kinda the title of my blog, bear with me), when I remembered that there is a poll feature that I haven't used in a bit. So, without further ado:
All else being equal, which do you prefer:
A) Random chance of immediately obtaining a reward (e.g. 10%)
B) Fixed, rapid progress towards a single reward (e.g. 10% of the rep or honor points needed to get a reward)
C) Slower, more efficient progress towards multiple rewards (e.g. if you can do two quests in the same area and make 6% progress each towards TWO rewards in the time it would have taken to do option B)
Go forth to yon sidebar and vote, I'll wait. :)
Alright, so here are my thoughts.
Random Loot
This is my least favorite option by a wide margin, and I'm not alone. And yet, this seems to be the developers' favorite, as the very best loot in many games is often primarily handed out by random drop tables. The problem with random loot is simple; that 10% chance that the boss drops the loot doesn't actually mean that you're going to get your item if you kill the boss 10 times. You might get it on attempt 1, you might get three in a row, you might not see the loot at all in 15 tries. So what's this annoying mechanic still doing in MMORPG's?
Do developers prefer to waste players' time by handing out worthless rewards so players will need to come back for the stuff they want?
In some cases the answer is yes.
Do devs think that the happy day when the boss drops the two best items from his loot table outweighs the multiple unhappy days when he drops things no one wants?
I talked about WoW's current daily cooking and fishing quests last week, and let's just say that I'm not going to be going out of my way to do any of the current cooking quests ever again if I finally get the cake recipe.
Does random loot in group environment help conceal the fact that most of the players present didn't actually get anything tangible for their time?
Maybe this is only a subset of the first point, but it does deserve some special attention. Now sure, most raiding guilds will come up with some sort of out-of-game loot distribution system (e.g. DKP) to reward players for showing up. Anyone who has ever raided can probably produce paragraphs on what was wrong with their loot distribution, no matter what that system was. In my view, once your players are having to post rules and spreadsheets at some out of game location to handle an in-game task, the devs in question fail.
Rapid Progress vs Efficient Progress
Given the option between one reward quickly and two rewards less quickly, I'm going to take the long view. If I'm not planning to stick with the game long enough to get both rewards, it probably isn't even worth my time to keep playing for the first one. If I do obtain both rewards, going for one first and then the other represents a waste of time.
That said, there are situations where this one gets reversed. Maybe you're just starting out with a new raiding/arena/RVR guild and your short term performance really matters. Maybe the amount of time you save by doing the two tasks in parallel isn't enough to really matter.
Still, I find that the most rewarding activities in game are the ones where I'm making progress on more than one front. Perhaps that's gold AND a shot at a random reward, or honor AND progress towards an achievement (whenever patch 3.0 happens) or reputation for two factions with nearby quests.
Then again, I think about this stuff too much. And that's why the polling booth is open. :)
All else being equal, which do you prefer:
A) Random chance of immediately obtaining a reward (e.g. 10%)
B) Fixed, rapid progress towards a single reward (e.g. 10% of the rep or honor points needed to get a reward)
C) Slower, more efficient progress towards multiple rewards (e.g. if you can do two quests in the same area and make 6% progress each towards TWO rewards in the time it would have taken to do option B)
Go forth to yon sidebar and vote, I'll wait. :)
Alright, so here are my thoughts.
Random Loot
This is my least favorite option by a wide margin, and I'm not alone. And yet, this seems to be the developers' favorite, as the very best loot in many games is often primarily handed out by random drop tables. The problem with random loot is simple; that 10% chance that the boss drops the loot doesn't actually mean that you're going to get your item if you kill the boss 10 times. You might get it on attempt 1, you might get three in a row, you might not see the loot at all in 15 tries. So what's this annoying mechanic still doing in MMORPG's?
Do developers prefer to waste players' time by handing out worthless rewards so players will need to come back for the stuff they want?
In some cases the answer is yes.
Do devs think that the happy day when the boss drops the two best items from his loot table outweighs the multiple unhappy days when he drops things no one wants?
I talked about WoW's current daily cooking and fishing quests last week, and let's just say that I'm not going to be going out of my way to do any of the current cooking quests ever again if I finally get the cake recipe.
Does random loot in group environment help conceal the fact that most of the players present didn't actually get anything tangible for their time?
Maybe this is only a subset of the first point, but it does deserve some special attention. Now sure, most raiding guilds will come up with some sort of out-of-game loot distribution system (e.g. DKP) to reward players for showing up. Anyone who has ever raided can probably produce paragraphs on what was wrong with their loot distribution, no matter what that system was. In my view, once your players are having to post rules and spreadsheets at some out of game location to handle an in-game task, the devs in question fail.
Rapid Progress vs Efficient Progress
Given the option between one reward quickly and two rewards less quickly, I'm going to take the long view. If I'm not planning to stick with the game long enough to get both rewards, it probably isn't even worth my time to keep playing for the first one. If I do obtain both rewards, going for one first and then the other represents a waste of time.
That said, there are situations where this one gets reversed. Maybe you're just starting out with a new raiding/arena/RVR guild and your short term performance really matters. Maybe the amount of time you save by doing the two tasks in parallel isn't enough to really matter.
Still, I find that the most rewarding activities in game are the ones where I'm making progress on more than one front. Perhaps that's gold AND a shot at a random reward, or honor AND progress towards an achievement (whenever patch 3.0 happens) or reputation for two factions with nearby quests.
Then again, I think about this stuff too much. And that's why the polling booth is open. :)
Monday, September 1, 2008
Why push unfinished content live at launch?
Massively reports that Stargate Worlds will increase their level cap every three months as they roll out episodic content. This exact system probably wouldn't fly in a traditional MMORPG, which tend more towards large chunks of new content at once and more stability at a given level cap for longer. Still, this got me thinking; why is it that, even as developers work insane crunch time, cut a variety of features, and generally launch unfinished, modern MMORPG's insist on launching with their final level cap? Here is a not-so brief case study:
World of Warcraft
WoW launched with more solo PVE content than any other MMORPG that had come before it, including enough material to solo to the level cap. At the same time, it's very clear where the polish lies; in the early game, to impress reviewers and new players, and towards the end, where new dungeons were added in the 50+ range, other content was revamped (e.g. Silithus for the level 58+ crowd).
It's not informative to directly compare the content in the 20-58 area to the 58+ content in the expansion; obviously they had a more mature engine with more features, and more experience making interesting quests. However, there's a real drop in quality there, and it is no longer time efficient for Blizzard to go back and address it now that many players are butting their heads against a level 70 cap. Instead of re-doing the content (which, again, would be time that would never be appreciated by players who have all the alts they want), Blizzard has simply helped players bypass it with faster leveling and better loot.
What if the game had launched with a level cap of 40, and an "endgame" of the Scarlet Monastery? One could picture moving the plot from Strath Live to a raid wing, and patching in zones and level cap increases over time. Perhaps you could have an event where the Argent Dawn mounts an offensive at the Bulwark and Chillwind Camp to break through Scourge defenses and open up the Plaguelands. Of course, you'd have to figure out how to deal with players who prefer raiding and PVP (both of which are disrupted by raising the level cap, though PVP was non-existent at WoW's launch and the raid game really wasn't tested much in beta). There's also the issue of crowding into the new zones as they open. On the other hand, there is time to clear each round of instances as they open up, and balance is easier with fewer levels and skills.
Lord of the Rings Online
I've blogged in the past about how LOTRO suffered from not having enough content at launch. Their level 1-15 experience (available in open beta and widely played by pre-order customers, reviewers, and the general public) was as good as any MMORPG out there, including WoW. The content was not quite as good, but functional from there until level 30 or so of their level 50 launch cap. Soloing past level 30 was a nightmare until the first content update, a month and a half after launch, patched in a crucial missing zone. The level 40+ content was so obviously last-minute placeholder junk that they spent the rest of their first year live gutting and replacing the contents of one of the two zones for level 40+ characters, expanding the other by a good 50%, and adding an entire third zone for the 40-50 crowd around the game's 1-year mark. By the time they'd finished the job, many of us had canceled and gone back to WoW.
What if the game had launched with the level 1-30 content? Instead of putting together boring, grindy and uninteresting junk (e.g. killing generic boars in Angmar, home of the Dreaded Witch King), they could have focused on finishing the stuff players were actually going to encounter first. They could easily have sealed off Angmar (with an event to open it later) and the area east of the Ford of Bruien (say that the flood that killed the Nazgul's horses made the area temporarily impassible). The first content patch could have carried the story onto Rivendell, making it highly anticipated. From there they could have expanded north into the Misty Mountains and so on, finally ending up in Angmar (seemingly the logical place for the game's first story arc to end).
Age of Conan
I've never played this game, so I'll limit my comments to the observation that many people claimed that there simply wasn't enough stuff to do past level 30 or so (which was, no coincidence, further than reviewers were likely to play the game before posting their comments).
Hellgate: London
Well, the devs didn't have more time, and they apparently didn't do much planning with the time they had. The business model (free to play base game, subscribe for perks and new content to be specified at a later date) was not a good idea. Still, could this thing really have been WORSE if they'd launched with some of the current content, perhaps a lower box price, and immediate, documented plans for X money on Y date (instead of the nebulous monthly fee that is charged whether or not anything new is added) gets you the next Act?
Warhammer Online
This game isn't out yet, and there are limits to how much anyone can say on the topic of its endgame since the few closed beta testers that have seen it are still gagged with an NDA. We can, however, say that the devs decided to cut 4 of the planned 24 classes along with four of the six capitol cities. Ironically, this brings Warhammer closer to following my advice.
Most games have all their classes in place for launch. When there is a need to balance the classes, they have to go in and mess with players' live characters. Adding in multiple classes after the game has gone live means that they can balance the existing classes against the NEW classes. For example, if it turns out that tanks are just too hard to kill, the new classes can feature armor penetration and/or debuffs that reduce healing. That's definitely more fun than taking existing classes and nerfing them, while the actually unfinished classes cry in a corner somewhere because they aren't getting the attention they need.
Obviously, Warhammer can get away with this more easily than, say, WoW would be able to; Warhammer still has a lot of classes, and players will spend the majority of their time fighting other players (who will learn to react to new classes) instead of raid bosses (who would need to be re-programmed and balanced to react to new classes). Still, it's better to launch with the classes that are finished than to launch with more classes that require major fixing.
What does this all mean?
To sum up my little tour of current MMORPG's, it seems that developers are more concerned with the APPEARANCE of the game being finished (look, it's technically possible to reach the level cap!) than with the REALITY of whether the gameplay is ready to go. If the game isn't a total failure, they can white-wash the early levels and hope that they will get to the later stuff before people get there, realize the game just isn't done, and quit.
The thing is, let's say you did set your level cap at 30 out of 50 for launch. Some of your players aren't even going to get to level 30 before you finish the content through to level 40. Sure, it might be temporarily annoying for the rest of the gang to be stuck at a level cap, but would people really prefer to push forward into mediocre content? Personally, if it's a game that I like and am confident that I will continue playing, I will be happy to try out whatever the devs have provided (e.g. rep grinds, PVP, group content, fishing) while camped at the level cap. If I haven't liked the game, in particular the part of the game I played MOST RECENTLY since that's freshest in my mind, I'm just going to cancel.
Now sure, there are some downsides. When you're raising the level cap repeatedly in a non-instanced world, you're going to get a lot of crowding every time a new area opens up. In a game with WoW-style item inflation, you're also going to have to offer cosmetic rewards that stays with a character (e.g. titles for killing a level 40 raid boss with no characters above level 40 in the raid), because gear rewards are going to be diminished in value with each increase to the level cap.
And, finally, there is the PR issue of not making it look like you launched your game half-finished at full price. Perhaps a decreased price for the initial box might help off-set that part, while simultaneously reducing the entry barrier for purchasing an MMORPG account that you can't resell on the local used game market if you hate it. Also, a LOT of the work that goes into making a good game is infrastructure stuff (the game engine, server code, network protocols etc) that is going to have to be done upfront regardless of content; players WILL notice if companies respond to a lowered bar by lowering their own standards even further. The real money in the subscription MMORPG market is in the subscription fee, so releasing a bad product is shooting yourself in the foot.
Bottom line? Whatever you're releasing, make sure it's good.
World of Warcraft
WoW launched with more solo PVE content than any other MMORPG that had come before it, including enough material to solo to the level cap. At the same time, it's very clear where the polish lies; in the early game, to impress reviewers and new players, and towards the end, where new dungeons were added in the 50+ range, other content was revamped (e.g. Silithus for the level 58+ crowd).
It's not informative to directly compare the content in the 20-58 area to the 58+ content in the expansion; obviously they had a more mature engine with more features, and more experience making interesting quests. However, there's a real drop in quality there, and it is no longer time efficient for Blizzard to go back and address it now that many players are butting their heads against a level 70 cap. Instead of re-doing the content (which, again, would be time that would never be appreciated by players who have all the alts they want), Blizzard has simply helped players bypass it with faster leveling and better loot.
What if the game had launched with a level cap of 40, and an "endgame" of the Scarlet Monastery? One could picture moving the plot from Strath Live to a raid wing, and patching in zones and level cap increases over time. Perhaps you could have an event where the Argent Dawn mounts an offensive at the Bulwark and Chillwind Camp to break through Scourge defenses and open up the Plaguelands. Of course, you'd have to figure out how to deal with players who prefer raiding and PVP (both of which are disrupted by raising the level cap, though PVP was non-existent at WoW's launch and the raid game really wasn't tested much in beta). There's also the issue of crowding into the new zones as they open. On the other hand, there is time to clear each round of instances as they open up, and balance is easier with fewer levels and skills.
Lord of the Rings Online
I've blogged in the past about how LOTRO suffered from not having enough content at launch. Their level 1-15 experience (available in open beta and widely played by pre-order customers, reviewers, and the general public) was as good as any MMORPG out there, including WoW. The content was not quite as good, but functional from there until level 30 or so of their level 50 launch cap. Soloing past level 30 was a nightmare until the first content update, a month and a half after launch, patched in a crucial missing zone. The level 40+ content was so obviously last-minute placeholder junk that they spent the rest of their first year live gutting and replacing the contents of one of the two zones for level 40+ characters, expanding the other by a good 50%, and adding an entire third zone for the 40-50 crowd around the game's 1-year mark. By the time they'd finished the job, many of us had canceled and gone back to WoW.
What if the game had launched with the level 1-30 content? Instead of putting together boring, grindy and uninteresting junk (e.g. killing generic boars in Angmar, home of the Dreaded Witch King), they could have focused on finishing the stuff players were actually going to encounter first. They could easily have sealed off Angmar (with an event to open it later) and the area east of the Ford of Bruien (say that the flood that killed the Nazgul's horses made the area temporarily impassible). The first content patch could have carried the story onto Rivendell, making it highly anticipated. From there they could have expanded north into the Misty Mountains and so on, finally ending up in Angmar (seemingly the logical place for the game's first story arc to end).
Age of Conan
I've never played this game, so I'll limit my comments to the observation that many people claimed that there simply wasn't enough stuff to do past level 30 or so (which was, no coincidence, further than reviewers were likely to play the game before posting their comments).
Hellgate: London
Well, the devs didn't have more time, and they apparently didn't do much planning with the time they had. The business model (free to play base game, subscribe for perks and new content to be specified at a later date) was not a good idea. Still, could this thing really have been WORSE if they'd launched with some of the current content, perhaps a lower box price, and immediate, documented plans for X money on Y date (instead of the nebulous monthly fee that is charged whether or not anything new is added) gets you the next Act?
Warhammer Online
This game isn't out yet, and there are limits to how much anyone can say on the topic of its endgame since the few closed beta testers that have seen it are still gagged with an NDA. We can, however, say that the devs decided to cut 4 of the planned 24 classes along with four of the six capitol cities. Ironically, this brings Warhammer closer to following my advice.
Most games have all their classes in place for launch. When there is a need to balance the classes, they have to go in and mess with players' live characters. Adding in multiple classes after the game has gone live means that they can balance the existing classes against the NEW classes. For example, if it turns out that tanks are just too hard to kill, the new classes can feature armor penetration and/or debuffs that reduce healing. That's definitely more fun than taking existing classes and nerfing them, while the actually unfinished classes cry in a corner somewhere because they aren't getting the attention they need.
Obviously, Warhammer can get away with this more easily than, say, WoW would be able to; Warhammer still has a lot of classes, and players will spend the majority of their time fighting other players (who will learn to react to new classes) instead of raid bosses (who would need to be re-programmed and balanced to react to new classes). Still, it's better to launch with the classes that are finished than to launch with more classes that require major fixing.
What does this all mean?
To sum up my little tour of current MMORPG's, it seems that developers are more concerned with the APPEARANCE of the game being finished (look, it's technically possible to reach the level cap!) than with the REALITY of whether the gameplay is ready to go. If the game isn't a total failure, they can white-wash the early levels and hope that they will get to the later stuff before people get there, realize the game just isn't done, and quit.
The thing is, let's say you did set your level cap at 30 out of 50 for launch. Some of your players aren't even going to get to level 30 before you finish the content through to level 40. Sure, it might be temporarily annoying for the rest of the gang to be stuck at a level cap, but would people really prefer to push forward into mediocre content? Personally, if it's a game that I like and am confident that I will continue playing, I will be happy to try out whatever the devs have provided (e.g. rep grinds, PVP, group content, fishing) while camped at the level cap. If I haven't liked the game, in particular the part of the game I played MOST RECENTLY since that's freshest in my mind, I'm just going to cancel.
Now sure, there are some downsides. When you're raising the level cap repeatedly in a non-instanced world, you're going to get a lot of crowding every time a new area opens up. In a game with WoW-style item inflation, you're also going to have to offer cosmetic rewards that stays with a character (e.g. titles for killing a level 40 raid boss with no characters above level 40 in the raid), because gear rewards are going to be diminished in value with each increase to the level cap.
And, finally, there is the PR issue of not making it look like you launched your game half-finished at full price. Perhaps a decreased price for the initial box might help off-set that part, while simultaneously reducing the entry barrier for purchasing an MMORPG account that you can't resell on the local used game market if you hate it. Also, a LOT of the work that goes into making a good game is infrastructure stuff (the game engine, server code, network protocols etc) that is going to have to be done upfront regardless of content; players WILL notice if companies respond to a lowered bar by lowering their own standards even further. The real money in the subscription MMORPG market is in the subscription fee, so releasing a bad product is shooting yourself in the foot.
Bottom line? Whatever you're releasing, make sure it's good.
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