[MUD-Dev] [bus][des] Anarchy Online and the free MMORPG...

[ceo]

Douglas Goodall wrote:
> Adam Martin wrote:

>> Even though some of that is tinged with a little bitterness too,
>> it's worth pointing out that the major fundamental non-battle
>> gameplay element of AO doesn't have any flaws at all that I've
>> seen (PS: it's not crafting! that's the second biggest non-battle
>> gameplay bit :)).

This has turned out to be, I think, my longest post to MUD-DEV
ever. Sorry about that; I hope most people manage to read to the end
without giving up :(.

For those who like their "long, rambling articles" in HTML form (or
at least with better-than-ASCII formatting) I'm also going to put up
an HTML'ized version, on mmogresearch.com, although I haven't done
so yet. I'll probably (eventually) correct the numbers below, and
add fancy graphics for each of the game-items referred to etc :).

> Twinking? AO embraces twinking. It makes twinking fun!

As Douglas guessed, yes - it's twinking!

Damion has been talking recently about the need for games to
identify themselves with a catchphrase ("The PvP MMOG!", "The
crafting MMOG!" etc). Well, IMHO AO is "The Twinking MMOG!"; AO
doesn't merely allow twinking, nor even embrace it - it makes it
into a major sub-game (for all levels of player) all of it's
own. Once you get into it, you'll probably still be twinking
yourself when you get to the higher character levels, because it's
fun, challenging, and comes with big rewards.

In fact, thinking about it now, I would go as far as to say that
AO's twinking is what people like Dan and I have been crying out for
every time Raph says that players don't want a challenge: this
rewards cunning, planning, outrageous daring, salesmanship, etc with
big payoffs - and yet if you don't pour your soul into it, you'll
never get any of it; and if you screw up, you lose everything.

In short, it's a game of skill that rewards the best players in
accordance with their human skills and cunning, independent of the
avatar.

Now that I've built you all up to expect something amazing
;)... it's quite simple, and it's called "implants". I'm sure many
non-AO players have heard of AO implants, and read about them, but
most reports haven't done them justice, not by a long shot.

The first thing to realise is that you can play AO right through to
the level cap without *ever* using any implants, and your game won't
be impaired. These are NOT part of the standard advancement - you
have a rich list of 200 odd skills and sub-skills that deal with
that stuff, which are partially level based and largely either/or
decisions you have to make (with 3 one-time resets per character)
and come with profession-based bonuses etc. That's all as complex as
you could wish for from an MMORPG already; there's trickle-down
(skill A gives bonuses to B gives bonuses to C) so that increasing
your "core" skills increments secondary ones by a small amount also,
etc, and skills are exponentially more expensive to increment over
time - giving you some good strategic options for skill choices when
you level-up.

As a player, you will find quite a few implants (or their
components) whilst playing *over the course of reaching the level
cap*, although in any play session you don't usually find any. So,
as a player ignoring implants you will probably end up with a few,
and eventually a full set, but just random stuff, and you won't be
"playing the implant game" at all.

So...what is an implant?

Remember Syndicate (a great game from Bullfrog) ? You had special
agents who were cyborgs, and you could give them cyborg brains,
mechanical legs to run faster, mechanical eyeballs with built-in
targetting etc. Same idea: your AO avatar can put implants in: head,
eyes, ears, arms, wrists, legs, feet and waist. Each implant
increases your character's skills in some way by augmenting your
physical body.

This would be a bit too simple, though, so each implant is made of
three slots, which have to be filled with nanobots. The type of
nanobots, and the level of nanobots, ordains both the skill which
the implant increases, and the extent to which it does so. The basic
concept is that each slot could contain nanobots for a different
skill, so any one implant could boost 3 different skills, or 2
skills (one more than the other) or just 1 skill (by a lot).

However, there are lots of rules about which nanos conflict with
each other, dependenices upon particular implants types (the biggest
"intelligence" nanobots for instance can only go in the
head-implant, whereas "increas health" ones can only go in a waist
implant). Each nanobot is also pre-made to fit into a certain one of
the three slots, and each slot gives a different multiple to the
skill boost (i.e. slot one boosts a skill by X points, slot 2 by 2*X
points, and slot 3 by 3*X points [not actual figures, but that's the
idea). And...there's lots of rules for how they can be combined, and
minimum qualities, and separate avatar skills needed to assemble
them.

So...just putting together implants, making the right combinations
of nanobots, etc is a standard complex crafting game, just like
"making armour" or "making magic items" in most MMORPG's.

But we're still not on to the implants game, not yet. This is where
the fun starts. Here's the key elements:

  1. Implants can boost ALMOST ANY skill.

  2. The *only* requirement to prevent a level 1 character using an
  implant designed for level 200 characters is that each implant
  requires certain minimum values for certain skills.

  3. Once you have an implant in, it carries on working even if you
  no longer meet the requirements; they are ONLY checked when it
  comes to trying to insert the thing, NOT to use it.

Here's an example, from the game, which affected me. I haven't
bothered to look up all the numbers, and I know I got some of them
wrong when typing this up. But none of the errors affect the recipe:
I really did need to do all these things in this order.

  a. I have a level 30 character

  b. ...who is mediocre in combat, but has good team-healing, so is
  able to do very well in teams, so long as he isn't the primary
  tank

  c. Just doesn't hit hard enough :(

  d. And, due to profession, can't afford to increase Strength and
  Stamine much, which are the primary checks for getting better
  armour

  e. So...both too weak (low dmg) and too fragile (low armour) to
  solo or be a primary tank

Then, in a particularly excellent team of level 28-32 players, we
went on a long killing spree, rampaging through a dungeon. Good
tactics, good selection of professions. We killed a lot of stuff,
including a boss who held just one thing: an implant. Most people
don't care about implants, they want better weapons, or quest items,
or crafting items that can be used/traded for really powerful
crafted armour/weapons or for lots of money for people trying to
make those crafted armour/weapons.

This particular implant required 380 points in Treament skill. At
level 30, the "average" profession can only have 150 points in
Treatment. This skill is only used for using advanced non-combat
healing, so useless for most fighting players, but it is also used
to make high-level implants hard to wear. I had to go up a level
just to get some extra skill points to pump it up to the max for my
level + profession, because I hadn't put points in it before (this
took my treatment skill to 160). The implant also required 150 in
Strength and 120 in Stamina (I only had 100 and 90 respectively, and
couldn't increase either!)

No-one wanted it because it was too high level for us. I took it
anyway since I hadn't picked anything else up, and it came with a
huge boost (30 points) to strength (more than 30% of my
current!). It also increased minimum damage by 15; FYI: in AO, most
weapons at that level have min damage of 1-5 and most high level
mobs cause you to do precisely your min damage. So a 15 min damage
boost would increase my actual typical damage by a factor of
approximately 10. That's a LOT.

But...by the time I had enough Treatment to use it (after another 40
levels!), it would still be good but no longer incredible. But
remember point 3 above: all you need to implant is to *get it in*,
and any temporary buffs or anything else you can get your hands on
is counted.

It took a lot of asking around, a lot of generosity from high level
players (I had no idea how to do this), but eventually I did
something approximately like this:

  1. Get and insert an implant which requires 75 stamina and gives
  +5 strength (STR 105, STA 90, TRE 160)

  2. Find a level 50 Enforcer (particular profession) (I just walked
  around looking for them and asked nicely for a while) who can cast
  a 5-minute buff of +14 str and sta (STR 119, STA 104, TRE 160)

  3. Buy buffs from the shop, for all professions, that increase any
  basic skill by 12 and secondary skill by 20 (you have to buy each
  of the 200 skills separately, so it takes you a long time to get
  more than a few!) (STR 131, STA 116, TRE 180)

  4. Visit an implant centre (free resource in each town) and get a
  5-minute buff of +100 tre (STR 131, STA 116, TRE 280)

  5. Buy a special pair of 0 AC (couldn't wear these in combat!!)
  trousers that give +14 to tre (STR 131, STA 116, TRE 294)

  6. Get and insert an implant which requires 130 str and 281 tre
  and gives +17 sta (STR 131, STA 133, TRE 294)

  5. Get an insert an implant which requires 130 sta and 261 tre and
  gives +21 STR, but replaces the implant from step 1 (because it
  goes in the same part of the body) (STR 148, STA 133, TRE 294)

  6. Find a friendly level 60 Fixer (another profession) to buff my
  innate ability to wear buffs by +80 (I could only hold 20 worth of
  buffs at the time, and any further buffs would fail on cast)

  7. Find a friendly level 50 Doctor (...) to buff my Treatment by
  +80 (requires 40 free buff - more than my character could normally
  hold even with no other buffs!) (STR 148, STA 133, TRE 374)

  8. Use the shop-bought +20 to a skill to increase my melee weapon
  skill by 20...

  9. Buy a "concrete cushion", which is an almost useless weapon
  (does a paltry 1-2 damage) but whilst holding it you get +8 to str
  and sta, and it requires 150 in a particular weapon skill (which I
  only had 131 in before step 8). (STR 156, STA 141, TRE 374)

  10. Discover I've miscounted, and am still 6 points short in
  treatment, and have got all the possible buffs, and they start to
  wear out in about 25 seconds...

  11. ...sprint to the town shop that sells lots of implants, and go
  through the hundreds of types in a blind panic, desperately
  seeking anything with + to treatment that does NOT conflict with
  any of those I've got in but need to keep my STR, STA up high...

  12. ...with 5 seconds to spare, find one and buy it, and implant
  it in my right leg... (STR 156, STA 143, TRE 382) [it also boosted
  stamina a little) 13. ...with 2 seconds to spare, implant my boss
  item.

Ta-da! Done. I now have a level 30 character so tough he can solo
50% of a dungeon aimed at level 50 characters. Oh yeah, this is
nice. And the character isn't even a tank - the profession is the
second best healer in the game!

Within minutes, my other skills were almost all back to normal (when
I put my armour back on, and re-equipped my real weapon). But...this
implant also gives +29 to strength. Incredibly, after all that
effort, I now had a 30% higher strength, so ... if I started again,
doing all the boosting, I could this time implant higher level
stamina increasing implants (which require high strength), which
would allow me to meet the implant requirements for even higher
implants, etc.

The main limits are:

  - can you find someone from each of the other professions who will
  give you the right buff AND get them all within the space of time
  before they start to wear off? NB: each buff has min skill
  requirements so that you will need high-level players (or fellow
  implant-twinkers!) AND they have to have bought / found the buff
  spells, so a lot of players of the right profession won't (yet)
  have the particular buffs you need.

  - can you afford all the self-buffs (+12 or +20) for all the
  skills that are needed directly or indirectly (c.f. the weapon
  skill needed to equip a weapon whose side-effect was to increase
  strength)

  - can you find all the special items whose primary use is for
  implanting (c.f. that concrete cushion is pretty much useless as a
  weapon)? There are many many items that buff all sorts of skills
  (remember there are 200 skills) and many different combinations,
  i.e. some guns buff 3 different skills whilst you wear them. Lots
  of guns can also be dual-wielded - if you have a high level of the
  dual-wield skill; if you can find two guns of the same type, and
  can boost your dual-wield high-enough (hmm. Sounds like a job for
  some implant twikning just to get to the point where you can wear
  both guns!) then you can get TWICE the buff of one of them

  - can you work out an ordering of which implants to do in what
  order to piggyback your way up to the skill levels you need in
  order to achieve your final aim? (if you make one miscount, or one
  mistake in ordering, you will have to start again, or may have
  wasted your money on the wrong or insufficiently high-level
  implants or special items)

So, when you're playing the implant/twink game, you tend to do a lot
of socializing and a lot of trading and a lot of spending (to buy
shop-only items etc, and to buy lots of things that are so
infrequently traded by players that you need to get them from the
shop or else will take weeks to find them). Fits quite well with
MMOG activities, no?

Apart from the obvious challenges above, implant twinking is great
fun because of the piggybacking. e.g. the dual-wield guns example
given above: conceivably, I might have found (or bought, or been
given) a weapon designed for level 75 players. I might need to get
my "heavy weapons" skill very high to put it on; increasing strength
adds a bonus to heavy weapons, but maybe I also found a high-level
implant that requires strength but gives a big heavey-weapons boost.

I might then go through the entire main example above JUST to get
the +29 strength boost of that implant, so that I could then start
my "real" implant-twinking to try and equip the gun.

NB: this doesn't work any more in AO; they patched it so that
weapons and armour "degrade" themselves if they're ridiculously
over-powered for your avatar. If I understand correctly, this does
NOT apply to the implants themselves - the game design intentionally
encourages twinking, it's just that players proved so good at it
that the wepaons and armour aspect had to be limited to stop from
getting out of hand.

For the designers amongst us, I'd like to point out the "cheapness"
of this entertainment in terms of implementation time: to make
crafting "deep" and interesting, to make it take longer for people
to master crafting and be making all the different items, we have to
explicitly add more recipes to the game-code. Each recipe needs
game-logic to explicitly work, and most need to invent new items
(which need new graphics, new descriptions, new DB entries, etc).

But...implant twinking requires none of that. It's an emergent
system that uses a few basic rules. Indeed, I believe it's because
of this that weapons and armour had to be modified post-release: the
developers looked ahead at how far they *thought* twinking would
imbalance the game, but in fact underestimated considerably. The
chain of possibilities of self-twinking is very long indeed, with
very little game-logic and artwork...

Adam M
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