[MUD-Dev2] Downtime & SWG (Was: Importance of emoting)

[Sean Howard]

"Raph Koster" <raph at areae.net> wrote:

> Exactly -- it'll be wrong to some degree for every given individual, and
> right for the group. :) That's how just about ANY large-scale public
> project works, however. Most businesses cater to the typical cycle, and
> there's a few that cater to the folks whose clocks are offset.

A business can't be open for 24 hours because the business they get at 3
am may not justify the cost of hiring employees and utilities for keeping
the light on. But we aren't talking about something like that. Planning
ahead, you should be able to take certain needs into account at no
additional cost or complexity, so long as you recognize them in the first
place.

> I think there are entire giant fields about blanket statements about the
> nature of man. Are you discarding the fields of psychology,
> anthropology, economics?

No, I'm suggesting that they break down on individual examination. I can
make claims about _A_ group of people but I cannot make blanket claims
about _A_SPECIFIC_ group of people. As long as you don't care about the
outcome, you can talk in generalities. But you, as a game designer, aren't
working at that level. You can't afford to have incomplete or
inconsiderate population models.

Statistically speaking, I should be wearing pants right now. Would you
like to make an assumption on my current state of apparel?

>> Even if you get 90% of the players, when you are talking about 150,000
>> people, that's just not enough.
>
> What exactly is? Perfection?

Maybe not perfect, but better. Smarter. More inclusive. Missing 15,000
players' needs isn't exactly what I would call a success when the effort
needed in minimal. At least the physical effort. The intellectual effort
may be intense. But you are a smart guy and I have no doubt that you are
up to the challenge. I just question why you don't.

> You ALWAYS have to choose what sort of behaviors to support and reward.
> You choose by not making choices, too. And there is no one product that
> will ever fit everyone. I don't understand what you are getting at here.

My point is that as you design for larger and larger populations, the
differences become more pronounced and important. One guy who likes to
solo may not mean a lot when you've got 30 players, but when you've got
3,000 players you've now got 100 soloers. They get together and bitch,
create support groups, bad mouth your product, get angry and influence
others to be angry. Nobody likes to be a minority, but when you are
talking about thousands of them, they can be quite loud and disruptive.

I am in no way supportive of your gamer elitist argument. You have to
design for somebody, right? Why them? Why that way? Because they've
already got a stranglehold on gaming? I disagree. Places like Second Life
or Club Caribe weren't filled with those types of gamers. Everybody around
me games, and not a single one of them, myself included, benefit from or
engage in the behavior you think is most worthy of support and reward. The
gamers you think you have to reward represent a majority of jack squat,
and jack left town.

As for the no one product that will fit everyone, I argue that it doesn't
have to, but it does have to fit those who want to play it. Why would you
EVER push away somebody wishing to play your game?

> The overall happiness with entertainer fell dramatically; most people
> who were entertainers at any given time were people who didn't want to
> do it, and therefore were unhappy. And their presence made the ones who
> DID want to do it unhappy as well.

You could say the same thing about any MMORPG feature. Ask how many
veteran Guild Wars players like to group with newbies. Ask the PvE players
what they think of PvPers. Ask the soloers what they think of the
groupers. Ask the people minmaxing an auction system what they think of
people who don't buy into price fixing. Ask roleplayers what they think
of... well, anybody else. Ask anybody else what they think of furries...

You had two different groups engaging in the same activity for two
different reasons that didn't want to interact. Big deal. That doesn't
break a game, unless the game is so narrow minded that only one reason is
any fun.

> Given a lack of carrots, people self-examine to see if they have their
> own internal carrot. They then work towards that. If they do not find a
> carrot either from the game or from themselves, they quit, usually
> terming the game "directionless."

I disagree. Directionless usually refers to an experience in which the
next step is not known or hidden. That can happen in games with plenty of
carrots. It's like exploring a park. The nature trail isn't a carrot. The
goal isn't to stay on the trail or even get to the end of it. It simply
points you between two known locations. It just keeps you from getting
lost.

I also disagree about calling it an "internal carrot". Surely not all
goals are rewards that are used to dictate one's behavior. The metaphor of
a carrot on a stick implies that somebody is holding a carrot in front of
a mule to get it to walk in a specific direction. How can one hold a
carrot in front of themselves? Wouldn't they simply walk in the direction
they wanted to?

> But this is not unique to games. We have long known, for example, that
> internal self-generated carrots are more conducive to productivity in
> the workplace, for example. But that doesn't mean that we stop doing
> things like employee of the month or higher salaries or other such
> things.

Internal, self-generated carrots are more conducive to productivity
because they aren't actually carrots in the first place. As for employee
of the month or salary bonuses, well, that's a different discussion. But
the reason why we keep doing it is "common sense", which is usually wrong
because nobody ever stops to question it.

>> I pose this question: How would SWG have been different if every
>> player automatically started, from square one, with EVERY skill
>> box filled. Every skill, every abilities, every possibility available
>> from the start. How would the world and community suffer?
>
> Players who came to the game with no internal carrot would have bounced
> off immediately. Players who had an internal carrot would have been
> fine. The net result would be a smaller audience.

Man, you've really got a thing for carrots, don't you? I propose that the
average player would enter the world, perhaps taste a little bit of
everything, and fall into their own practices based on their own tastes
and ideas. If they found crafting to be interesting, they would follow
crafting. If they found entertaining to be interesting, they'd follow
that. Here's the kicker. If they found BOTH to be interesting, they'd
follow BOTH. Because these things were mutually exclusive (you aren't
entertaining or crafting while you are fighting or exploring), a player
could do everything but never at the same time - thus plenty of players
would fall into these roles without being forced into them.

> What's more, I'll tell you that in the opinion of most people, *this is
> what actually happened*, because SWG had a very very shallow "carrot
> tree" compared to most MMOs. You could fill every skill box in very
> little time -- and you could master just the thing you were interested
> in with just a few days of effort. We're not talking the hundreds of
> hours played that other games demand.

A few days of mindless, painful grinding. Yeah, I could master Droid
Engineer in a few days, but that was by churning out literally 30,000 MSE
droids. The problem was, it wasn't interesting, and it was only bearable
through macro grinding. If you were a droid engineer, you had to grind
30,000 MSE droids regardless and there was nothing more interesting you
could do until you did. People did it in a few days because for a majority
of the classes, they couldn't compete or engage in the content until they
were masters.

Plus, how hard would it have been to allow players to retain the skill
boxes they earned, but only equip 250 points at a time? Why did switching
classes involve so much loss and so much grinding to get back up to speed?

> The term bottomfeeding means "engaging in a low-to-zero risk activity
> for low but steady return on investment."

I'd always heard bottom feeding in terms of exploiting others for easy
profit.

> In a game, it's by nature un-fun (because fun entails risk,
> operating at the margin of challenge, and so on).

Woah, woah, woah. Back up there. You did not just say that. Surely, you
can think of even one example of fun which doesn't involve any risk or
challenge at all. How about watching a movie? Baking a cake? And hey, if
having sex involves risk or challenge, you aren't doing it right.

> Actually, they didn't do a "better" job for themselves -- they didn't
> maximize their revenue or their advancement, for example. A player
> actually at the keyboard working at it would do better for the time
> spent. The bots do their job "just well enough." The big difference is
> that they do a rote job so they can do it 24/7.

Having a computer do a job for me without my having to touch a keyboard
seems pretty much the height of effort versus reward. Maybe it takes
longer, but who cares? Not my time. I'm watching MacGuyver.

> ALL game activities can be automated in this fashion. The question is
> how long you will be successful at it.

All games can be automated, yes, which is why a reward system is stupid in
the first place. If the journey is its own reward, one wouldn't seek to
minimize it, would they?

> The issue here is actually the lack of failure state.

If you ask me, a failure state would almost certainly ensure MORE botting,
not less. Because if a bot could do it better, then you wouldn't be
risking failure. I know I occasionally look up hints for games like
Phoenix Wright when I get stuck - starting a chapter over from scratch is
a painful punishment for experimentation. So when it comes down to the
wire, I stop experimenting and start pushing that "win" button.

> You are making the mistake of equating the healing as the service.
> Healing was the McGuffin to get people to show up.
> Entertaining was about entertaining people, not healing.

Then you didn't need that healing crap, since that is what destroyed the
profession. Heck, you didn't even need Entertainer to be a class equal to
the other classes. Wouldn't you say the ability for ALL classes to play
songs and dance would lead to MORE entertainers since they didn't have to
give up anything to do it?

> I don't see how. By its very nature, a given game may not even offer
> what they want to do. That's an arbitrary barrier right there.

A barrier, but not an arbitrary one. Just because I can't castle with a
knight in Chess does not make it an arbitrary barrier. The reasoning
behind castling is very sound, the tactics considered.

> The player may want to change a rule, and cannot. That's an arbitrary
> barrier.

Again, a barrier, but not an arbitrary one. In a multiplayer game, if one
players breaks the system which holds everything together, the experience
of everyone is broken. Following the rules is a requirement of successful
play. Hardly a "because I said so" situation.

> Heh, as a parent of school age kds, the answer is "neither." School is
> an arbitrary barrier put there by society, between them and their play
> time.

I may seem like that (it certainly did to me), but I'm sure the purpose of
school is not just to piss off kids. :)

> If what you are saying is that you want games (of any sort) that do not
> involve obstacles, competition, and rewards, then I suggest to you that
> what you want is not a game. It may not even be a toy. I am unsure what
> exactly it is.

A virtual world? ;)

>> Let's go back to Star Wars Galaxies. Have you seen some of the amazing
>> homes people have designed? There was one where somebody took a bunch
>> of boxes and built an enormouse scale model of a star destroyer,
>> complete with mid-air combat between x-wings and tie fighters.
>> This creativity was allowed by the game, not enforced and not
>> prevented.
>
> I think you underestimate the amount of design that goes into enabling
> that. It certainly was a non-trivial amount of work.

Not in the least. I am deeply impressed and appreciative of it. That's why
I hold it up as an example of what MMORPGs need to learn from. Why
couldn't the same care be shown to something like entertainers? Why
couldn't they write their own music? Why couldn't crafters design objects?
Why couldn't architects design houses? Why did players require help from
event coordinators to set up even the most basic events? Every object in
the game had a unique database entry, so why was that extra effort wasted
on objects that didn't bother to use it for anything worth while??

I know what you are going to say. Time. Sure, time. I get that. Galaxies
needed more time in the oven. I don't think ANYBODY will disagree with
that statement. But would spending what little time you did have on
activities that allowed more expression, freedom, and creativity have
produced a more interesting, longer surviving virtual world than nearly
all the systems that were actually implemented?

> It's a mistake to say "this creativity was allowed, not enforced and not
> prevented." It was ENABLED, consciously and with great effort.

And you should have ENABLED more rather than making conscious decisions to
limit, contain, and control.

> Entertainers actually work the same way. To the true entertainer, the XP
> was not the reward. The applause was. That's why the bots were so
> damaging to their way of playing and why they resented it so much.

I don't see how bots affected applause. The entertainers could've stood
outside starports and entertained to get applause. They didn't because
they were forced into cantinas because obviously, applause wasn't more
important than healing battle fatigue.

> And limited audiences. The number one gripes against Second Life?
>
> - "Confusing" -- which is a code word for "no carrot."
> - "Too hard," which is a code word for "the carrot is not worth it in my
> mind."
> - and "Can't find anything cool," which is a code word for "where is the
> carrot? I am not getting any rewards for this work."

All these things are extension of the same basic flaw. It's because it has
a lack of direction, not carrot. As someone who actively wants to explore
and create within the world of Second Life, I find the interface obtuse,
the tutorial terrible, available useful information scarce, and a general
lack of handholding. This is not because I lack goals or even carrots, but
because I lack an obvious means to move forward and rudamentary searches
yield little to no success.

> People who either shifted off the combat game for a while or were there
> for a sense of overall immersion would prefer the actual human
> entertainer.

That's why I was there (never been much of a combat guy). I still prefer
the vending machine.

> To make you happy, we'd basically have to say "we are not going to have
> entertainers." Which is the default position. Chat has always been
> present in these games. And the number of entertainers, social spaces,
> etc has always been vanishingly small even when plenty of infrastructure
> (taverns, etc) was in place. Why? Because there's no incentive for
> people to stop and check out the entertainers.

I disagree. If you set up a system that allowed people to entertain in a
proper setting, plenty of people would stop by. Having 200 naked people
dancing in a room that ALREADY has a fake band isn't doing much for what
is essentially the fundamental need of entertaining - attention. The
cantinas needed some fundamental rethinking in terms of functionality -
stages to focus on one act at a time, private tables so people can have
private conversations while still being exposed to the act on the stage,
game tables where players can have small private gaming sessions - perhaps
with an entertainer as dealer/gamemaster.

Why would people be at the cantinas? Simple. Because there'd be people
there. That's all you need. If you are that insecure about it, you can
make the cantina itself heal your fatigue, meaning that players merely had
to be in the cantina for a while, regardless of whether anybody was
entertaining. People would entertain because there was a stage.

> Conversely, it was also too small -- players all wanted houses, and they
> took up all the wilderness. ;)

Easily fixed with something like an apartment building where a single
space can be shared by multiple players.

> Because people optimize, if you could master everything, players
> would choose to do things themselves (even if they did not enjoy the
> process) rather than outsourcing it to another.

Some would. I don't think everybody would. Even if you create dependencies
between classes, even a small guild gains a stupidly huge advantage by
exploiting it where others cannot. If one person is willing to go to the
trouble to do it all himself, why should he be prevented? If I wanted to
write, edit, publish, and distribute a novel, there is absolutely nothing
preventing me from doing it except time and effort. Likewise, I can build
a complete game in my garage if I'm willing to learn how to program, draw,
and design. Why then, in a game, must I only choose one?

> I suggest to you that this is something that has changed quite a lot
> over the years, and is now a default assumption. The overall blurring of
> roles is something that has entered as a result of increased
> soloability.

Yay for my side :)



> The progression, again, was only grinding if you saw the progression as
> the reward. If you saw the social reward as the key, then it wasn't.

A novice entertainer might know a single song. A master enetertainer might
know a dozen. (I don't actually know the specifics). So what you have is a
novice entertainer sitting in a corner clapping with a basic dance and
terrible music while right next to him was a girl twirling sparkling
batons with a light show, playing a song everybody hadn't heard a million
times before. To be an entertainer, you had to be a master entertainer.

> Again, you could do that anytime you wanted. Just go do something else.

But you wouldn't be an entertainer... by the game's definition, at least.

> Everything a player does in a game system can be replaced by a vending
> machine. :) And indeed, in single-player games, they are!

There are still a few things that machines can't replace us on. A machine
isn't going to create an underground fight club of battle droids fighting
it out. A machine isn't going to do something unpredictable, like flood
the market with cheap resources because it is changing professions. A
machine isn't going to tell you a dirty joke. A machine isn't going to
follow you around clucking like a chicken.

> So, you can go put on a funny hat in any game RIGHT NOW and do a stand
> up routine. I will wager that there were more entertainers in pre-CU SWG
> having fun and regularly engaging in this activity than there are in all
> of WoW's enormous playerbase today. The incentive structure does matter.

It depends on what you call entertainers. I've certainly seen people in
WoW that chatted with each other, or danced around in their underwear
shouting terrible puns. I've even annoyed a few people by starting conga
lines using /train (back before they dropped the voice part).

Heck, back when I was on Club Caribe (we're talking C64 days), there was a
group that wandered around and did synchronized dancing in public areas
and ones that would moderate game shows or act out plays. The lack of
structure made that kind of behavior more fundamental because it never
felt like you should've been doing something else.

> Ironically, I think of it as something that was GAINED in SWG. Because
> before SWG you mostly couldn't dance and play drums in a cantina at all.
> Apart from AC2, your choice instead was to play music as a combat buff.
> Musicians were actually wizards with a different coat of paint. In SWG
> we said that these things were valuable in their own right. And now here
> you are saying that you wish they were considered so important that the
> combat game itself just went away or was completely disconnected.

My experience with online games predates all this graphical nonsense. Club
Caribe had musical instruments. Text muds had emotes. Most lpMUDs had a Go
challenge or crossword puzzle challenge in their cantinas. Just because
SWG was a step forward from Everquest doesn't stop it from being a step
back from Habitat.

And I don't wish the combat game went away. I just wish there was more of
everything else, and that as much attention and care was put into
non-combat things as combat. But since combat hasn't fundamentally changed
since AberMUD, attention and care may be too generous.

-- 
Sean Howard