[MUD-Dev] Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly.

[Shakkar]

This is my first post to the list, but I've been following it for some time
and other forums.  I've also spent many, many hours in some of the worlds
members of the list have designed.   I think some of you have missed the
point and seem more intent on absolution than on the real crux of the issue.
Lets say its given that only a small percentage of players will reach that
dreadful stage of the person in the article.  And that it isn't truly your
fault that he got there.  There:  you're absolved.  Now lets move on to what
Raph has said better than most and what I think the real crux of the issue
is.   There is a difference between trying to decide for the player how many
hours at a stretch he will play and designing your game to require those who
wish to achieve spend endless time to do it.  UO had this problem to some
degree with people feeling they needed to macro to keep up, but its got
nothing on Everquest.  It is ROUTINE in Everquest for people to want to get
an item and to play in one spot til they drop from exhaustion still trying
to get it.  If Everquest offered many items of nearly equal usefulness it
would help somewhat (there is only one journeyman boots I mean here for
example) but even more would be not to have a game mechanic where it really
takes 24 hours of straight gaming to acquire them.  Here we seemingly have
much of the game tied up in exactly these type of game mechanics; requiring
many hours of uninterrupted play to achieve their goals.  This is bad from
both the bandwidth issue, design issues, and from any social conscience that
you designers may have.

----- Original Message -----
From: Raph Koster <rkoster at austin.rr.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 8:56 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly.


>
> First, we're speaking of average play sessions, and average hours per
week,
> two distinct figures, with very different sorts of causes and different
> sorts of issues to them were we to try to minimize them.
>
> Hopefully everyone agrees with the premise that shorter average play
> sessions opens us up to a larger audience? Most adults have trouble
setting
> aside blocks of 3 to 6 uninterrupted hours to do anything at all,
especially
> play a game. Reducing this seems eminently desirable, and may actually
> *increase* the addiction, because the current length of play sessions
> usually includes a lot of "set up time" at the start of a play session
> (locating and assembling a group, traveling to the points of interest,
etc).
> I would bet you could reduce the average play session of EQ by a third by
> putting in a really nice "matcher" system for forming parties, for
example.
> An MMORPG that has satisfying play sessions of only one hour will hit a
far
> broader audience than the ones today.
>
> Another tactic for tackling average play session is to have exactly the
same
> mechanics in smaller bite-size chunks. If it normally takes six hours to
get
> the Sword of Lambada, make it take three. And so on. The addictiveness
will
> likely not change much from scaling this.
>
> Neither of the above tactics alter retention much, IMHO. The third might,
> but in which direction is anyone's guess.

Here is the key and where some others didn't get the point.  Designing a
game so that you have to spend large amounts of time all at once increases
your bandwidth requirements, lowers your total possible players, and is
socially irresponsible.  No, it's not YOUR fault if Timmy plays all day and
night and fails out of school, but you really could have done better in not
designing the game to encourage him to do so.  "You" being generic of
course.

>
> Consider leaving in your time-consuming mechanics, as above, but put in
> other mechanics and forms of play that do not require time. For example,
> allow offline mass production for crafting skills, or ways of doing guild
> management via a website, etc. These will tend to drive down your average
> while leaving all the other mechanics intact and able to addict. Some
> players will play for these other mechanics exclusively, and even the
> addicted players will likely use them to some extent, reducing the time
> spent online. Some play sessions will consist entirely of doing these
brief
> activities.
>
This has been discussed before in the advancement thread, and is a great
idea.  This lowers bandwidth requirements, makes business sense, and
provides for people to play in a more casual style without feeling they are
falling behind.

> >     I once calculated that EQ's bandwidth costs could have been cut by
> > 2/3...by halving the population per server and running twice as many.
>
> It could be cut by 2/3 by just sending less needless data, I suspect. :)

I know that *I* haven't seen any greater availability of bandwidth in the
games I play in.  Of course that could be transparent or simply that the
bandwidth is only keeping up with the growing playerbase.   And I'm sure
that greater innovation in using the bandwidth we have will continue.  I
don't think having more bandwidth allows for the excuse of making  games
that require people spend more than a few hours a day for the achiever types
to feel like they accomplished anything.  There reaches a point where you
have to say, IMHO, how many hours a week do you want players to play?  Would
anyone here think 80 hours a week was good?  Some people are playing that
number of hours now, and the game mechanics rewards that over the person who
plays 40.  To me this is the crux of the issue.

Shakkar





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