[MUD-Dev] [ssows] thinking about EQ2 - kill locking (fwd)

[Michael Hartman]

Ken Snider wrote:
> Bart Simon <simonb at alcor.concordia.ca> wrote (in a forward):

>> Just wanted to pick up on Lisa's comments about kill locking. I
>> am dumbfounded by this feature - if there is any case for game
>> designers contracting ethnographers for useability studies it is
>> this.  In story after story player remarks about those lone
>> ranger types who ride in save the day when they are just about to
>> bite it. Players seek to build their reps and their game
>> identities this way and these unplanned events are what make for
>> the truely heroic episodes of the kind memories are made
>> (absolutely right on Lisa).

> This is precisely why the "yell for help" option "unlocks" the
> MOB, allowing you to to "ride in and save the day", so to speak.

Which is precisely what does not work very well in game. FFXI had
the same system, and it worked very poorly. A lot of people end up
not knowing about the "call for help option", and even those who do
might forget about it in the heat of the moment or have trouble
typing or triggering the command for it when they are desperately
fighting for their lives.

The "call for help" functionality is just a poor kludge on top of a
bad feature designed to try and mitigate it partially.

Kill locking still prevents people from having to learn to "play
nicely" around each other. In fact, what it often encourages is a
group of people attacking a bunch of mobs to get them "locked" and
then fight them, before someone else can.

It also results in things like in FFXI where a warrior would stand
near a named spawn point spamming the taunt command in hopes of
getting the mob kill locked before anyone else.

Kill locking is definitely a "feature" that should die, and I hope
it is not one of Dr. Bartle's "newbie demanded features" that
becomes widespread simply through inexperienced players thinking it
is a good idea.

> Nothing has changed in that sense (if you consider the EQ
> non-locking paradigm, you'd pull MOBs, and control the "Adds" that
> came along. The fact that you know in advance who the "adds" will
> be does not negate the need to do something about them!)

You don't see a difference there?

Unpredictibility is a major part of excitement in gameplay.

Knowing who the adds will be in advance takes away a lot of the
unpredictibility and makes the game into even more of a mindless,
repetitive grind.

--
Michael Hartman
President and CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
http://www.thresholdrpg.com
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