[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[Michael Hartman]

Douglas Goodall wrote:

> I never had any conversations on board. I rode the Vision of
> Atlantis (or whatever) 6 times. 3 times I was alone. 2 times no
> one said anything. 1 time I asked where to buy water breathing
> potions and was ignored. I even asked politely. In character. On a
> roleplay server. During prime time.

> Ditto for the teleport pad. I usually read a book while waiting
> for the teleport sound.

Were you solo?

I have never had a boat ride or a teleport pad ride in DAoC where
there was no conversation going on within my group. If I was part of
a chat group, there would also be a conversation going on over that.

Furthermore, the guild channel would frequently light up when people
were on boats or on the pad because their hands were free enough to
actually chat.

The same is true for the 30 seconds or so between some battles when
people would regenerate. During that time they would fire off a
comment or two, then fight some more and listen while they fought.

The downtime provided them the opportunity to actually type up
responses because their hands were free.

> I am increasingly unconvinced by the argument that forced idleness
> and forced grouping are good for communities.

I must say that both as developer and player, my experience is that
forced idleness is absolutely crucial. There was a time that we had
a problem on Threshold with mages and fighters (at the time the two
most popular classes) fighting non-stop and rarely chatting with
anyone.

We added two features:

  1) Weapon Maintenance for fighters: for every few hours of use, a
  weapon would need to be polished, oiled, handles wrapped, etc. To
  maintain it enough for another few hours of use takes somewhere in
  the neighborhood of 10-15 minutes. You do not have to do it that
  long if you do not want to though. You could just maintain your
  weapon for 5 minutes and head out, then every now and then
  maintain it a bit more. The key element though is that in certain
  rooms (adventurers guild, taverns, etc.) you can maintain your
  weapon twice as fast since conditions are safe and relaxing.

  2) Conjuring spell components for mages. There are about 60 spell
  components in Threshold. The maximum number you can hold of each
  type depends upon your skill in conjuration. Thus, if you fight
  for a few hours you will need to replenish your spell
  components. The amount of downtime requires to conjure up
  components is a tad longer than for fighters, but this is balanced
  by the fact that you can find components in the field and
  supplement your supply with them. Again, in certain social
  locations you can conjure faster.

The result of this was enormously positive. There are places in the
game that are very social where you will frequently find not just
mages and fighters hanging out. Since folks know taverns and places
of that nature will usually have people willing to chat, it is worth
their time to visit such places.

The amount of socialization as a result of these two features is
enormous. Many mages and fighters actually look forward to this time
because it is so much fun to hang out with other people and tell
tales.

> opposite from how it's supposed to work. CoH has almost no forced
> teaming or timesinks, but the players are friendly, I can always
> find people to chat/team/roleplay with whenever I want,

You must be the only person with this experience, because a short
visit to their official forums will make it evident that the
majority of people can NEVER find groups.

The areas are dead silent. People look for groups, but there are
almost never groups looking for people.

If you get a group, it feels like you are playing with bots. Barely
a single word is spoken because the game is designed to be go-go-go
all the time.

> travelling takes less time than content,

Of course experiencing content should be a greater percentage of
your time than travelling. I never said anything to the
contrary. But 5-10 minutes of downtime for every 1-2 hours of pure
gameplay is VERY healthy for the game as it gives you an excuse to
life your nose from the grindstone and socialize.

I am always surprised how folks will argue against something by
taking it to an extreme.

I never said travel time should be greater than the time spent
experiencing content, and I highly doubt anyone would argue that
such a situation would be good.

> Is it good to force players to idle in a single player game? If
> not, why does every bizarre timesink receive praise in on-line
> games?

Um..... So they will talk to people?

> I know many developers believe that forced idleness and forced
> grouping are good for the community, but what's the evidence for
> this?

I hope my above example from our game will be considered valuable
evidence. I imagine some other developers here could share similar
evidence.

> I used to be more tolerant of this belief since the game with the
> fewest timesinks (AO) was among the least popular. But the success
> of CoH (and "community building" measures damaging AO's community)
> has made me question the subscription evidence.

You are making a huge assumption that the current, short-term
success of CoH is a result of its game design. I think it is far
more likely that the reason it is doing well right now is the
enormous amount of advertising and free media it received, coupled
with an absolutely brilliant premise .

If future developers start looking to CoH's game design decisions as
a lesson for success, we'll see even more bankruptcy announcements
and cancellations than we see currently.
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