[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Koster]

http://www.edge-online.co.uk/news_main.asp?news_id=3416

Hey Richard, you should repost these yourself. ;)

start quote--->

Column: Richard Bartle 

Death by design - the MUD creator examines death in multi-player world
gaming, from player killing to permadeath...

When the first wave of massively multiplayer online games hit the open
market, 'player killing' was allowed - players could freely attack and
kill each other. However, as it turned out, players could advance far
quicker if they killed other players than if they didn't, and this
skewed the games so that the player killers (or PKs) dominated
them. Unsurprisingly, players complained.

There were two reactions from development teams. The Ultima Online
<http://www.uo.com>approach was to rebalance the game so that PKs
didn't have so much of an edge. The EverQuest
<http://www.everquest.com>approach was to remove player (character)
death altogether. EQ quickly garnered more players than UO, and set
the precedent. Subsequent online games designed by people who cut
their teeth on EQ (which is most of them) largely use the EQ model.

Well, yes, it's true: too many PKs do empty your game. However,
removing player death is only a short-term solution. The same people
who initially complained bitterly about being killed in EQ are the
same ones who are leaving now for other games because they're bored.

Without PD (it can also mean 'permadeath'), there's no sense of
achievement in a game. Anyone can reach the top, no matter how dim
they are, simply by playing relentlessly. There's no way to prevent
them. It's like running a race with a bungee jump rope attached to
your waist: sure, it's a lot harder the further you go, and you might
slide back a few paces where the surface is slippery, but if the rope
doesn't have enough elasticity to yank you off your feet before you
get to the finishing line then all it does is delay the inevitable.

People who start to play PD-free games because they see them as a
challenge eventually realise that they're no such thing. Anyone with
time on their hands is guaranteed to 'win'. From a gameplayer's point
of view, the whole exercise is therefore pointless. Social ties will
bind players to a game for long periods, but with nothing really
happening they'll eventually leave for pastures new. To keep them, you
need to have either a constant influx of newbies or the regular
addition of new areas so there's some different wallpaper for them to
talk about.

Introducing player death helps, but it has to be 'real' death - loss
of character. If people can be resurrected, death is little more than
a slap on the wrist. Note that 'player death' is not the same as
'player killing': in the former, you lost your persona because the
game took it away; in the latter, you lost it because another human
being took it away. Players tend to accept player death more readily
than they do player killing (although they don't like either) because
the root cause is the behaviour of the game's random-number
generator. RNGs don't hate you, or mock you, or carry a grudge. They
don't add conflict.

PKs do add conflict, and the point is games need conflict. Conflict
brings out heroes. Conflict drives narrative. Conflict is resolved -
things change as a result of it. Artificial conflict doesn't cut it:
it has to have meaning, and to have meaning it has to involve loss. A
game without loss is not a game.

But players won't play if they think they can be killed. It's hard
enough to persuade designers that a degree of PKing makes for a better
game, let alone persuade the players. Players will go for the games
where they can't be killed, then leave when they get bored, without
ever linking the fact that they've become bored with the fact that
they can't be killed.

A new wave of persistent worlds is on the horizon, whose designers are
trying to find ways to introduce PKing without putting off
players. The basic idea is a reworking of the UO approach, in that if
you don't want to be Pked then you don't have to be. Most areas in the
game are safe, with only a few 'badland' areas where you risk being
killed if you enter. The rewards in the badlands are greater, of
course; if you survive, you'll have a lead on people who stay at
home. It's PK by geography rather than by server.

Unfortunately, 'having a lead' doesn't mean anything if the people who
don't put themselves at risk can catch up simply by playing more hours
than you.  All you're buying yourself is time. Nevertheless, this is
how most of the new games are handling it. It's a partial solution,
but it still doesn't bite the bullet.

To make it worthwhile to enter the badlands, it has to be the case
that you can gain tangible gameplay rewards that simply cannot be
obtained elsewhere.  If you could reach higher levels in the badlands
than out of them, for example, then that would do it; if you could
increase your character's stats beyond those of stay-at-homes; if you
could buy bigger houses, or get higher skills, or bake tastier pizzas
- whatever. Putting your character at risk to gain meaningful rewards
that you can't get anywhere else adds the necessary sense of
achievement to keep players playing.

In this sense, PD is consensual - you don't have to venture into the
badlands unless you want to.

Unfortunately, in current upcoming designs, you really can get
everything from outside the badlands that you can get in them, it just
takes longer.  After all, if you can't, you 'have to' enter the
badlands if you want to advance, which means that you're going to be
PKed 'against your will'.

This implication that the game is 'forcing' you is incorrect. You have
a choice: risk all for significant gain, or risk nothing to get almost
to the top but not quite there. Do you want to be a hero? You get to
decide. The only difference is, unlike in EQ you can't talk being a
hero unless you act being one.

There is another choice, of course. If you don't like your risk-free
advancement being capped, you stop playing. You just tell the
designers straight up: if you don't change this, my entire guild will
leave and play some other game - one with no cruel, cynical designers
like YOU robbing us of months of playing time in an instant.

Except you won't. To get into this kind of situation, you have to have
played for months. You're hooked! The game still has interest, because
there's always more you can do. You can complain about unfairness, but
you have no ammunition to use against the simple counter-argument: no
pain, no gain.

Major counter-intuitive fact: most players who complain don't actually
leave. If they try, they're back within two weeks. The players who
really leave are the ones drift away without a murmur, not the ones
who orchestrate public demonstrations. Player power may elicit
knee-jerk reactions from administrators, but players aren't game
designers. They may think they know what's best, but it's for the
designers to decide what is best. Some degree of PKing is good:
although players may rail against the very concept of it, unless they
do actually get PKed on a regular basis they're not going to leave in
droves.

So is it safe to implement PD in badland areas that give higher
rewards than available elsewhere in the game? Sadly, it's not. The
flaw in this argument is that that although current players may not
leave a game that has PD or PKing, new players might not even start
it. They could simply head for games where they know their character
will be immortal, not realising until it's too late what that means
for the game's long-term prospects.

Verant <http://www.verant.com> recently stopped eBay
<http://www.ebay.com> from selling characters from EQ on their
service, but gave no public explanation as to why. Was it because they
felt the practice impinged on their intellectual property? Because
they were worried their players were being defrauded? Because they
wanted to sell characters themselves? No. It was because players
complained bitterly that it gave an unfair advantage to a select
few. Your level-40 character doesn't seem quite so impressive if
anyone with dollars to spare can buy a level-50 one off the shelf. In
a game with PD it wouldn't do the buyer any good, because without the
skill to run the character they'd lose it the first time they put it
at risk. If all that happens is you drop a bit of kit and maybe lose a
few points, who cares?

Unfortunately, the players don't see it that way until it's too
late. Their attitude to PD is akin to the general public's attitude to
public transport: if only everyone else did it, my life would be so
much better. There's not a lot you can do in the face of that!

So the designers of massively multiplayer games have a dilemma. Should
they have no PD (and pay for it in long-term churn), have caps on
functionally immortal characters (and attract fewer newbies), or have
optional PD (and cross their fingers)?

Over the next few years, we'll find out what they decide.

Richard Bartle created the first Multi-User-Dungeon (MUD) in 1978 with
Roy Trubshaw, heralding the beginning of online gaming. The game has
undergone numerous incarnations, and is still running more than 20
years later. Dr Bartle is the programming director of MUSE.
<---end quote

-Raph
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