[MUD-Dev] Homogeneity and choice (Was DESIGN: Why do people likeweather in MMORPGs?)

[Mike Rozak]

Damion Schubert wrote:

> The key to the issue to is to quite simply, ensure that you know
> what your players find fun and/or challenging and to be sure that
> you're not 'ant farming'.  Ant Farming is a term I throw around
> any time someone designs a feature that is more interesting for
> designers to observe than players to play.  The democracy of the
> market will always ensure that players will reject the ant farm
> game for the one that's more fun.

How do you know when you're creating an ant farm?

The design decisions I've been talking about have been based on what
I think would be fun to PLAY. (What would be fun to design is
automatic content creation to the Nth degree, but it's not fun to
play.) Of course, I don't know if other players will like my design
decisions (which hopefully won't amount to ant farm).

I do know what players would like to play based on historical
evidence... I could clone the functionality of WoW or EQ2 (though
not the scope and animations). But then, I know that path is
destined to not succede. I'd rather try something new and fail, than
clone an existing hit and be guaranteed neither success nor failure.

> I do believe this can work in an MMO, so long as players have an
> opportunity to make a choice to mitigate or work with the effect.
> If they can even find a way to turn it to their advantage (Tundra
> areas cause snow damage, but a ranger can tame a snow leopard that
> can ignore this penalty), you'll find players will even embrace
> the notion of different rules.  If, however, there's no way to
> mitigate the penalty, you'll just end up driving players away from
> a huge wad of your content.

Good point.

> There's a large swath of people (myself included - when I'm a
> player, not a designer) that tend to see choices as 'denied
> content'.  I have to see all three endings to a video game.  This
> isn't so bad in an offline game when it's only got 10 hours of
> gameplay to get there, or I can do some artful gamesave loading to
> see the alternate content.  In an MMO, this is a lot more
> frustrating.

One of the outcomes of a choice can be denied content. For a choice
to matter, the outcomes have to be different, AND for a choice to
really matter, it means that it's difficult to undo the
choice. Contemporary MMORPGs provide lots of small, easily-undoable
choices. I wonder if the experience would be better if they
occasionally included a large, difficult-to-undo choice? EQII
actually does this when they make players decide what side they want
to be on. I haven't played EQII, but apparently, players can undo
the choice of good vs. evil and defect to the other side, but with
much pain and suffering. Are there any other examples?

> For example, if you make players choose between axe, sword or mace
> proficiency when building their character, and then you make it so
> that 1/3 of the monsters are vulnerable to axes, 1/3 to swords,
> and 1/3 to maces, what you've done, in your players' eyes, is cut
> the amount of content that they want to pursue by a third.  Why
> should I go kill axe- or sword-vulnerable stuff?  I have a mace.
> I'll advance a lot faster if I go kill mace things, and I'll feel
> ineffectual if I go kill that other stuff.

I agree with the weapon specialization choice being undesirable at
that detail. Although stretching your example beyond recognition, a
magic user specializes in magic (as a weapon) and fighter in
standard weaponry. Is the specialization of magic user and fighter
so problematic that they're not used? Or do the benefits outweight
the player frustration?

> If combat is going to be as intricate as you describe, I would
> hope that it is the central activity of the game.  Highly
> replayable gameplay should be the goal of any MMO, and combat is
> the only system that has proved to provide that for a wide swath
> of people.  If you're focusing on combat as intently as you
> describe below, I'd argue you should be embracing that as much as
> possible.

The reason I'm making combat more detailed is because I want it to
be more fun.

However, it's part of a larger system, most of which does not
involve combat. I haven't seen the system implimented elsewhere,
which means it probably won't work, but that never stopped me. I've
been pondering why combat is the core of MMORPGs and figuring out
the characteristics of a "core" activity. I half think I've figured
out the fundamental rules and have come up with a different core
activity, but, of course, I'm not certain it will work.

If I weakened combat into just hit points, that would not only make
combat less fun, but would weaken other aspects of the design... or
so my intuition says.

> Auto-attack actually helps, not hinders, this decision process.
> Decision making in MMOs, especially in larger groups, is far more
> complex than most people give it credit for.  Go into WoW and go
> into an elite zone with a party of five, and you'll find yourself
> constantly asking questions like "What's my target?  What are my
> teammates doing?  Should I fire my special now, or hold off a
> second? Are the other monsters noticing" Auto-attack allows you to
> focus on those tactical decisions because you're not clicking your
> mouse like a crack fiend.

So from a design POV, because basic combat is so boring, it's
replaced by an AI (auto-attack). To add interest to the activity,
WoW (and all other MMORPGs) have added special abilities that
actually require some thought.

Why not make the fundamental elements of combat more interesting
instead of building a layer on top of it? GURPs combat, based on
Melee, is infinitely more interesting than anything in a MMORPG.

> Wanting more intricate and complex combat, i.e. trying to make Die
> By The Sword Online, ultimately loses the notion that combat IS
> complicated in MMOs - it's complicated because of what other
> players bring to the equation.

Good point. I'll have to think about this.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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