[MUD-Dev] CoH (was: MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?)

[Scott Macmillan]

Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:

> At the risk of putting words into your mouth, it's not that you
> like the system, it's just that you don't hate the system. It is
> streamlined so efficiently that it doesn't get in the way of the
> reason you are there - and that is to kick some ass as a super
> powered being.

Close.  I have never been overly thrilled at any equipment systems
in MMO's or MUD's.  Mostly, it's a timing issue.  In an offline RPG
I'm usually afforded the chance to get equipment before or at about
the time it's needed.  In an MMO, I'm always chasing equipment down
so I can stay competitive.  Reward turns to hassle.  I'm glad that
CoH makes it an easier hassle for me to deal with, instead of a
byzantine mess.

>> It has the same effect as an equipment system would in DAoC or
>> EQ, except that it's been streamlined down to the essentials.  >
>> > I'm not sure that is a positive point. For instance, Dungeon >
>> Siege took so much of the non-essentials out of the game that >
>> it practically played itself. Games are about making >
>> decisions. Not all decisions need to be made, but if you take >
>> away or limit good decisions, the game aspect suffers. Being > a
>> great game designer is knowing which decisions to offer and >
>> which decisions to make for the player.

I agree on the need for choice.  To me, it left the fun intact.  At
every odd level, you chose which powers you will put enhancement
slots into.  For each power you have a number of choices for the
type of enhancement you will use.  When upgrading, you have to
decide if you'll spend money on a new enhancement, or hope for a
lucky drop and save your money for enhancements at a later level.
Lots of choice.

What choices do you feel were taken away with the enhancement system
that rob it of the fun element?

(As a note, I have heard that you end up with huge piles of
influence/money at higher levels, so that particular choice would
indeed become insignificant later on.)

> City of Heroes gives you very little decision making. You've got a
> simple branching tree of contacts, which doesn't give you much
> information to make an informed decision about which to
> choose. You get a new skill every other level, but you will only
> get to choose from about three of them at any one time - most of
> which are pretty similar except in small ways. The enhancements
> make very little noticeable difference, except when you get to the
> origin enhancements much, much later in the game. The areas are
> specific to levels, so that you are herded through them, unable to
> find anything interesting in old areas, and forced to level again
> from basically scratch in the new areas. Outside of the shops,
> which are rather useless by most regards, the level up guy, which
> is unnecessary, and I hear the new tailor, there isn't anything in
> the game which isn't about combat.

On some of the particulars above:

I agree with the contacts issue, there isn't much going on there for
choice.

When getting powers, you often have much more than three choices -
if you are at least level 6, you can choose from Pool powers - misc
stuff that everyone has available, such as movement and stealth.
You can have up to 4 different pools.

While enhancements may not make much as much difference at low
levels as they will later, I will argue that they are at least as
effective as equipment in most other MUDs and MMO's.  A 5% boost to
accuracy?  That's a +1 weapon in D&D.  I've never sneezed at a +1
sword in D&D.  ;)

I'm not sure why the shops would be considered useless.  Can you
elaborate?

> That's the metaphor of being a superhero. That's not the
> gameplay. CoH has a brilliant metaphor. I'm not arguing that.

Perhaps we're talking apples and oranges.  If I'm reading you
correctly, you're talking game design as the specific
challenges/choices afforded to the player.  I'm talking game design
in terms of experience the creator wants to convey to the end user.
If the vision of the game is to give someone a top-notch superhero
experience, then some of those extra choices you want may very well
be extraneous.  You'd be dead on if the goal was to make a realistic
virtual world.

Please note, I'm not saying that CoH shouldn't be made a deeper
game.  I do think that what they did does not qualify as bad design
in any way though - they chose to keep tightly focused in their
feature set, is all.

As I'm not a designer, I'll trust someone will point out to me if
I'm committing a faux pas with the above.  ;)

>> IMO, Cryptic managed to keep focused to deliver a relatively
>> "shallow" but extremely rewarding game.

> That is exactly true. But I could make an extremely rewarding game
> which gave you a dollar for every 5 minutes you played. It
> wouldn't make it a good "game".

I guess that depends on whether the game is made good by its
specific components, or by whether it services its overall vision.

> I believe that CoH does have 9-hour raids for the higher level
> characters.  Task Force missions or something. Besides, MMORPGs
> aren't just about large raids anymore. Everquest 2 is being
> designed around small parties of 6 people total.

Fair enough - I was simply using that as an example of the opposite
of an easily rewarding game experience.  Task forces are in CoH, but
as far as I know are never mandatory in any sense.

>> The alternative would have been to try to jam that depth in at
>> the start, and probably do a mediocre job of it.  > > Shades of
>> SWG, perhaps? It'll be interesting to see whether > SWG fixes all
>> the flaws before CoH adds in all the depth... > which approach is
>> better?  Enquiring minds want to know!

IMO you are better off with something closer to CoH - you avoid
disillusioned fans.  If someone leaves because they're bored, that's
different than someone who leaves because they feel (right or wrong)
that they were lied to.  I think it'd be easier to get the bored guy
back with an expansion pack.

>> Given the realities of finite resources and time, I'm glad they
>> polished a lower number of features, instead of half-assing a
>> bunch.

> I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that if you are going to praise
> CoH, which deserves all sorts of praise, you should be praising it
> for the things which is does right - which are plenty. However,
> the shallow game systems and almost complete lack of player
> interaction aren't deserving of praise. I know they might not have
> had the time or money to make the game deeper. I don't hold that
> against them. I'm against people trying to justify their enjoyment
> of the game by praising flawed and uninteresting systems.

I'd say then that my reply is, why is a game bad because it has a
more limited number of meaningful choices?

To answer something posed in your next email - the meaningful
choices I've found in playing have come from the tactical style of
combats that I'm involved in.  My group is very tactically oriented,
and we tend to do very well.  As a storm defender, my character has
mostly debuffs and crowd control.  I very much enjoy the choices I
have to make with power usage, and teaming up with my mates.

I've also found that I have a great deal of player interaction, in
that same tactical space I am talking about above.

I'm saying that there are more meaningful choices in CoH than you're
giving credit for, with power selection, enhancements, and with
tactical combat.  Given that basis, I'd say that CoH just has fewer
meaningful choices than you want, or the wrong ones.  On the
gameplay side, IMO there is a lot to be said for focusing down to a
few crucial elements.  I don't think Tetris would have been a better
game if it had a talking animal companion in it.

>>From a project management perspective, it's absolutely better to do
a few things to perfection than to do more of them in a mediocre
fashion.  A few polished items are what you need to get noticed and
sell games.  A bunch of mediocre ones will leave you buried.

> I want the right stuff to be praised because I want the right
> lessons to be taken from it. I don't want another GTA3 syndrome.

No, and that's fair.  But I think there is a good takeaway here -
focus your game down to a number of elements that you can do well
with the time and money you have, and then polish them until it
hurts.  Then build more features on top.

> Refactor? Programmer, eh? It's been a while since I stopped being
> one, so it's a bit weird to hear programmer speak again. :)

*laugh* Actually, Producer.  Which might be why I keep coming at
this from a limited resources perspective... it's the one that
trumps all game design goals, unfortunately.  I do tend to hang with
these programming types too much for my own good though, I think.
;)

Scott
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