[MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Green <brian at psychochild.org>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 11:54 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)


>I've been doing some heavy-duty thinking lately.  Luckily for the list,
>I'm "between game jobs" currently, so I'm not bound by a draconian game
>company NDA; I am free to share my ponderings with others in a forum
>such as this.  I've been reading the boards over at xrgaming.net, so
>this has influenced my thinking quite a bit.  I thought I'd share some
>of my conclusions and see what the list thinks.

    I'm in the fortunate position of not having had a gag slapped on me this
time around.  I've been given some rules for what I shouldn't talk about,
but they largely center around not revealing other parts of Camelot's
design, especially those that represent technical innovations.  The only NDA
restrictions I have to deal with are those left over from my time with
Verant.

[snip]


>I think such demands as adding solo play options in our games is really
>distracting us from accomplishing our main task, which is to create
>compelling games for groups of people to play.  Now, I'm not saying that
>our designs need to focus on how to completely eliminate solo play, but
>I don't think we should make concessions in the game in order to
>accommodate the "lone wolf" player.  I think that if a player likes the
>game and wants to play solo, there is enough creativity in the players
>that they can figure out a way to do so.  They figure ways around most
>of the other things in our designs that we've neglected. :)

    As the operator of the major fansite for EQ, a member of the "closed"
beta period, and later as a GM working for Verant, I was probably the most
influential "pro-solo" activist in the course of EQ's development.  To the
degree that it is possible to solo *any* EQ class at any level above 20th, I
think I can reasonably say it was in large part due to my efforts.

    I was wrong.  Not wrong in my arguments, all of the negative aspects of
"forced grouping" are easy enough to spot, and compelling in and of
themselves.  But wrong in my conclusions, that it should be possible to play
an OLRPG with no dependance on any other player.  I'm now tasked with
designing an economy for Dark Age of Camelot, and one of the first things I
did was eliminate any chance of playing the game completely without support
from other players.  Basicly, I came to the conclusion that creating a
system where players could be economically self-sufficient was in direct
opposition to using the economy as a community-building tool.


[snip]
>But, let's look at this under the light of socialization and
>interaction.  Advancement which depends on large disparities of power
>between high and low levels undoubtedly make it hard to socialize.  If
>I'm 2nd level, and my friend is 52nd level (out of 60 levels), we are
>probably not going to have much in common.  While I'm wandering around
>killing orcs, he's planning a dragon raid, or wandering the appropriate
>dungeon looking for the newest, coolest item.  I'd find his activities
>much too dangerous and instantly fatal (and thus, not fun), he'd find my
>activities to not help his advancement at all (and thus, not fun).  If
>he were to start a new character, he'd leave a hole in the social and
>advancement fabric where his previous character existed.  Even if he
>wanted to help me gain levels faster so that we could play together,
>there are usually rules against such activities (most administrators
>call it "cheating", or more recently, "twinking").  Therefore, in such a
>situation, a high level and a low level player are, in general, not
>going to form a solid in-game social relationship between them without
>outside influence or conditions.

    Segmentation of the player community, the high-level and low-level
players have no common interests, so there can be no (in context) community
between them.


[snip]
>As EQ has shown us, even a heavily achievement-focused game can
>encourage interaction by creating game mechanics that require it.
>Meridian 59 taught us (well, me, anyway) that even the most "single
>player" game mechanics with the crudest player grouping ("guild")
>mechanisms can produce some wonderful socialization and interaction.
>"Guild wars" were a common and interesting part of the game.

    What remains to be seen is whether the lack of a complex social fabric
will hurt EQ in the long run.  Since the community is almost entirely one of
Achievers, assisting each other in the process of advancement, will they be
attracted to other games that offer more social opportunities?  More
specifically, can we crack the "Elder's Game" nut, and find ways for
Achievers to continue to fulfill their desires after straight-up
"advancement" ends?

    My suspicion is that when the end comes for EQ, it will come quickly.
Every player that leaves it for another game will be that much less holding
the people he leaves behind to keep going with business as usual.  It may be
an EQ-like game with prettier graphics, or a game that offers a more
compelling context, or something similar but with a stronger social fabric,
or something completely different, but if a positive feedback loop gets
started it will snowball very fast.
>

[snip]
>So, what do we need to do?  Obviously, if you accept my conclusions, we
>must eliminate disparate power differences between high and low "level"
>characters.  When one character completely outclasses another,
>socialization and interaction are hurt.  It follows that we should get
>rid of "level" as a pure indication of a character's relative power.
>Or, maybe not.

    It strikes me that here, as in PvP issues, advancement hinders social
groupings because of the exponential differences in power between low and
high level players.  In our efforts to keep gangs of low-level players from
big game hunting, we power up NPC's to the point that becomes impossible.
As a result, however, low-level players become part of the background to
high-level players, they can't do anything *for* them, and therefore they
have no need to interact with them.  I'm not yet convinced that something
with a *linear* power relationship would have the same problems, if 2 level
20's are a serious threat to one level 40, both PvP and social dynamics
change very drastically.
>
>To borrow a thought from Jonathan Baron's absolutely excellent talk,
>"Glory and Shame", the problem comes when the individual achievement is
>more important than community development.  We ideally want players to
>contribute to the community and the game instead of being
>single-mindedly focused on personal advancement.

    I disagree to a point....  All motivation is personal, all loyalty is
personal, all relationships are personal, these are the fundamental "quantum
forces" of the player community.  Players will pursue their own
self-interest, efforts to make that coincide with group interest should be
subtle, and not make the player feel that he is nothing but a faceless
member of Group X.


[snip]
>So, how do we encourage a focus on community development in a medium
>filled with people mainly interested in personal advancement?  Easy, we
>trick them.  Asheron's Call has provided a wonderful example with their
>allegiance system.  Think about it, in order for a patron to benefit,
>the vassal has to advance.  In order to benefit more, the patron can
>help several vassals advance.  In essence, the patron benefits by
>helping others advance.

    And the most successful model for gaining from the system is
Multi-Level-Marketing.  This is exactly what I mean by "Unsubtle".
Certainly the system promotes intra-level interaction, but it does so
through making relationship a commodity.  I'm not your friend, I'm part of
your downline.


[snip]
>Use the Asheron's Call allegiance system as a model.  A player can
>gather subordinates, which provide "xp" for the patron through their
>actions.  Now, for a few variations.  The "higher" a player is in the
>hierarchy, the higher his maximum "level".  So, a grunt would max out
>after gaining level 2, his superior would max out at level 3, HIS
>superior could reach level 4, etc.  Also, apply the "party xp" idea
>outlined above for all the subordinates that work together under a
>single patron.  So, a group of grunts working together would gain xp
>from each other's actions.  Helping the group means advancing yourself.
>If the leaders of two groups of grunts work together, they can gain xp
>from each other's actions, IE, leading their groups.

    Ick.  *Way* too heavy handed, and absolutely awful for the guys stuck at
the bottom of the pyramid.  They're faceless nobodies, existing solely to
hold up the rest of the structure.  And no matter how you slice it, the vast
majority can never be anything else.

    I agree completely with your basic premise that advancement systems as
they have been implemented have led to stratification of the social
structure, with little interactivity between layers.  And I'll agree that is
a bad thing for community building.  But I can't agree that codifying a
system where the majority are doomed to sitting at the bottom of the social
structures is a good thing.  Natural social structures are not heirarchal
relationships, they are networks, your importance in the social fabric is
not determined by how many are under you, but by how many are *linked* to
you.  Some portions will naturally reflect an apparently heirarchal
relationship, but if the whole does than the majority are forcibly reminded
(by built in game mechanics, yet) of how they are stuck in the lower
reaches.  And it's inherent to heirarchal structures that most of them
*will* be stuck.


--Dave Rickey




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