FW: [MUD-Dev] Advancement considered harmful (long)

[John Buehler]

Travis Nixon wrote on Wednesday, May 31, 2000 2:20 AM

>But this is part of the problem.  If players cannot, by design, affect the
>gamemaster's plans, then the immersion is fleeting, at best.  If you have a
>storyline that plays out, I think that most players want to be
participants,
>not observers.  To feel that their actions are actually MAKING a
difference,
>that things would have had the possibility of turning out differently if
>they had acted differently.  If the players do a good job of defending the
>town, then by damn the town should be saved, not destroyed anyway, because
>it was how a GM decided things would be.  :)

  This is what I was trying to convey by the sandboxing notion.  I knew I'd
get into trouble by not providing examples.  Your example of successfully
defending a town is a good one because it provides players with a sense of
having an impact on the world's events.  I'll hit this from two directions:

1. If the defense of the town is not consequential to the macro activity of
the world, then the gamemasters can set it up so that the players could win
or they could lose.  The town battle becomes a sandbox in which the players
can do whatever they want.  The players will have a sense of affecting the
world - they saved the town, but the gamemasters have already decided how
the MACRO activity of the world will play out regardless of what happens in
that battle.  The macro plan might be that the bad guys eventually succeed
in driving the good guys back to the mountain passes, where the good guys
get to successfully defend and hold the bad guys.  Then there will be
discoveries beyond the passes that will enable the good guys to begin to
fight back.  There's a very primitive macro statement for a world.  The ebb
and flow from day to day or even month to month is not significant.  The
players have enough ability to elicit change in the world, but not to
control
the macro activity of the world.  That must remain in the hands of the game
designers, because they have an entertainment experience that they are
obligated to provide.

2. Any activity by players will be sensitive to time and to whatever the
players feel like doing.  If the bad guys launch an attack when none of the
players are logged on, the bad guys win - probably.  If the bad guys launch
an attack in overwhelming numbers, the bad guys win.  If the bad guys attack
in anemic proportions, the bad guys lose.  If too few players are interested
in defending a town, the bad guys win.  The success or failure of an attack
is entirely in the hands of the gamemaster - if the gamemaster has actual
control over the bad guys NPCs.  The more the game world is like a
simulation,
the more control is taken from the hands of the gamemasters.  Think about
your experiences as a paper and pencil dungeonmaster.  If you want to kill
off your players, you do it.  If you want to give them a cakewalk, you do
it.
If you want to really challenge them, you put in just enough bad guys and
tricks and traps to keep things interesting without killing any of them.  I
believe that it must be like that, even in a massively multiplayer game
world.
The gamemasters must regulate the ebb and flow in the world to match the ebb
and flow of player availability, competency, etc.  The gamemasters
ultimately
decide which group will win any competition.

>My own personal inclinations here are leaning towards some sort of system
>where the players have to "earn" that power, by being given a little, and
>not giving them more if they abuse it.  Or maybe by "proving" themselves
>through some sort of player voting system.

  This sounds somewhat like the patron/vassal system in Asheron's Call.  But
there's no true in-game power associated with being a 9th rank patron.
There
are perks, but not power.

>With some sort of "earned power" system, it would be
>possible to either give the player the option to control that NPC, or
>possibly even have their own character elevated to the position, at which
>point the player gains control of the guards.

  How about this: have a sophisticated faction system so that you can be on
really good terms with the captain of the guard and as a favor to you, the
captain is willing to commit the guards to an action of your choosing.  I've
written a bit on the importance of faction systems over on the Hero's
Journey
boards on Stratics and The Vault, which I invite you to read

  An article on character perceptions:

http://hj.stratics.com/lore/journal/volume1/issue2/whatwasthat_tormanth.html

  An article about faction and what I refer to as favors:

http://hj.stratics.com/lore/journal/volume1/issue3/factionfavors_tormanth.ht
ml

  I post under the pseudonym of 'Tormanth'.

  Anyway, the purpose of the faction approach is to give 'point' interaction
to
a player.  The player can trigger activity in the world, but no obligation
is
placed on the player to have a support role to other players' experience in
the
game world.  And I believe that it is important to avoid the NECESSITY of
having
players depend on the highly-variable quality of service that other players
can
provide.

>Imagine this a few levels higher, and it
>would be possible for a player to declare war on the enemy (whose leader
may
>be yet another player), and put the resources of the kingdom behind that
>declaration.
>
>Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems you're saying you would never
>ever want something like this to happen?  I mean, a war is a pretty major
>event to put in the hands of a player.

  I believe that that level of control of world events is generally not in
the best interests of the player base - especially when the decision to
invade
is going to impact the experience of thousands of players.  The goal is, of
course to have a massive player base, suggesting that tens of thousands of
players are on at any given time - ideally far more.

  I have a fundamental aversion to encouraging players to spend their lives
in these game worlds.  Thus, I am very much in opposition to systems that
encourage addictive personalities to be dragged into the game world - such
as constant reminders of advancement and advancement being the basis of the
world's means of evaluating success.  This is the case in EverQuest, and
advancement is like cocaine to many of the players of that game.  As I said,
I'd like to see the games invite players to enjoy the game, but not to cater
to addictive personality traits - as valuable as that might be to a game
company.  This will be a tough balancing act, but somebody will pull it off
eventually.

  The experience of being a lord and king and launching armies against my
opponents will be best relegated to the day when NPCs are more intelligent
and the computers can casually handle tens of thousands of NPCs.  Then the
world will become one suited for six or seven players who each control a
kingdom and decide the macro behavior of the world - but without impacting
the gameplay of other players in an unbalanced way.  If each player controls
a kingdom, they would essentially be considered peers.  On the other hand,
if one player controls a kingdom and another controls a single NPC, the
latter player is going to have a difficult time ensuring that he enjoys his
game experience if the king player decides something else.

>Yes, if you allow these kinds of things, eventually somebody is going to
>abuse the power given to them, no matter how many checks and balances you
>put into it.  But is this really a bad thing?  A tyrant somehow manages to
>take power.  What happens?  Well, a few possibilities.  One, people living
>there think "THIS SUX" and quit the game.  Two, people living there accept
>it and try to ignore him, probably eventually leaving the area.  Three,
>people living there band together and oust the tyrant.  Maybe a GM steps in
>here and causes a portion of the guards to defect against the evil tyrant.

  The designers of Ultima Online believed that player checks and balances
would ensure that the world would remain a viable social environment.  But
things didn't work out.  There may be other fixes that they would put into
place to address this (and I don't mean the new PvP treatment), but my
personal belief is that placing all player characters into a heavily NPC-
populated environment is the only way to generally enforce some kind of
coherent social structure.  This is akin to enforced roleplaying, but again
using the sandboxing technique.  A certain leeway is given to players to
shape their characters as they like, being as much of a social mainstreamer
or a social outcast - but with predictable and reasonable results.  Being
an outcast will come at a cost, while being a mainstreamer is a delicate
balancing act of managing factions and such in order to climb the social
ladder and obtain maximum benefit from the NPC social structure.

>I honestly believe that the only way the first would happen, that people
>would just flat out quit the game, is if they didn't think they had any
>power to change things.  And either of the other two have interesting
>possibilities, although chances are pretty good that the second would
>eventually turn into the third.

  I believe that it is a fundamental fallacy of massively-multiplayer game
worlds that players can obtain significant power and have significant
influence on the game world's activity.  This is a holdover from the paper
and pencil days of Dungeons and Dragons.  The entire world was geared to
the enjoyment, advancement and achievements of a small group of people.
But in these online games, the players have opposing goals and things can
rapidly become a case of two people who don't even know each other coming
into conflict with their characters and defining 'fun' a different way.
The classic case is PvP, of course.  One character thinks that fighting
another player is fun, while the other character thinks that working with
another player is fun.

>Maybe the GMs shouldn't be telling a story.  Maybe they shouldn't be
>deciding in advance what the outcome of an event is going to be.  Maybe
they
>should be winging it.

  So long as they can maintain the quality of experience for the player
base, winging it is a fine approach.  I would assume a certain adaptability
in the gamemaster plans at the lower levels of activity.  We want players
to be able to elicit change, but not so much that it impacts the experience
of many other players.  This is all wrapped up with my belief that players
must be restricted in power and must be content to be rather more mundane
in their abilities.  The enjoyment of the game world will be the experience
of a new world and new skills - not the ability to accomplish outrageous
tasks.  This is the difference between quality and quantity.  I believe that
quality will slowly replace quantity, subtlety will replace sledgehammer
power trips - similar to how special effects have made their transition
through time in their use in movies.

JB





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