[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Psychology of skill in MMORPG's

[Aurel Mihai]

On 6/27/07, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> I've just found this quote on the City of Heroes boards (from
> Arcanaville, for those that know/care), and thought it raised an
> interesting point:
>
> "I've often said that if you don't have the courage to stick up for
> defense, which means sticking up for missing, you have no business
> making a defense set, or Defense itself, at all: you're simply
> unqualified. But its worth noting that this frustration with not hitting
> seems to be confined to MMOs, and perhaps even just this game alone. In
> FPS games, there is a presumption that you're going to miss most of the
> shots you take, because its presumed that a good player is going to be
> trying very hard to make you miss. I've seen FPS tournaments where it
> appears the average number of shots that land is about one in ten, or
> less. In effect, the targets are eluded. This is not a simple matter of
> people not wanting to miss, this is a more complex psychology of people
> believing that the opponent has no right to make them miss and I believe
> that is a more complex psychological issue related to how players
> perceive how skill affects the game. Someone that is applying
> significant skill to make you miss is somehow acceptable: someone who
> pushed a button to make you miss is intolerable. That's not a simple
> problem to solve. I'm not sure I would even want to solve it in the
> general case: I'm not sure this points to an irreconcilable schism
> between players who can accept the strictures of MMO combat in a
> simplified system like CoH, and ones who cannot, and therefore will
> not."
>
> In an online game where skills are learnt and improved based on numbers
> in the game (and not actual player skill), is there an inherent
> expectation on behalf of players that they should be able to use them?
>
> Using simplified CoH mechanics momentarily to illustrate the point:
>
> Player A has an attack power, "Flares". Player B has a defense power,
> "Deflection Bubble".
>
> Everytime player A adds an accuracy enhancement to his attack, he
> expects to miss less. Everytime player B adds a defence enhancement to
> her power, she expects to be missed more.
>
> If they both upgrade roughly in tandem, neither will notice a change in
> their powers' performance. Whose expectation, if either, should win out?
> Is this a problem created by the escalating power current grind-based
> games are based on? Is it restricted to abilities where player skill is
> not involved, as the quote suggests?

If you sit down expecting to play a game of chess and everyone around
you is running a marathon, you're probably going to be disappointed. I
think the issue you mention can be attributed to MMOs being so wildly
popular. People flock to them expecting the end-all be-all gaming
experience. Why wouldn't you, having read all the hype? If a genre is
popular enough to spawn its own mental disorder, how can you not have
fun playing it.

People play games for entertainment, but they often don't have time or
patience research the game before they play it. They go buy the game,
spend the money on a monthly fee, and expect to get their money's worth.
No wonder they feel a bit gipped when they buy a game like City of
Heroes expecting to feel like a hero, but instead feel like Joe Schmoe
because they're playing an MMO with lots and lots of other heroes.
Reminds me of the bumper sticker, "You're special, just like everyone
else!"

Besides that mundane feeling of being a hero among superheroes, MMOs do
suffer from the problem/feature of dice-based combat rather than
skills-based combat. FPSs generally let you hit what you're aiming at
unless there's a good reason for you to miss (you're using an MP40 at
100+ yards or you're aiming a bazooka at somebody's feet from half a
mile away and expecting it to go in a straight line). In an RPG you
generally aim, fire, and pray. Sure, it's frustrating to miss 10 times
in a row when your crosshairs are right on your enemy. In a paper and
pencil game where dice-based combat originated, your GM could explain
that your enemy is running in circles around you while laughing at your
feeble attempts to hit him, but MMOs don't show this and it ends up in a
ridiculous situation where two players can stand in front of one another
shooting a stream of bullets/bolts/arrows/death rays and continuously
missing.

Summing that up, I think that a big part of the issue is the
expectations being placed on MMOs. They're just another genre. They're
not even that spectacular. They need to keep pumping up the hype to keep
subscriptions high and keep the ball rolling otherwise the whole thing
falls apart. MMOs can't remain massive without lots of subscribers. That
need drives a lot of unhappiness with MMOs: you simply can't keep that
many people happy. The additional problem is outdated mechanics like
dice combat, which completes my previous statement: You can't keep that
many people happy, especially when you're too lazy/greedy to spend the
money to develop modern solutions to modern issues. Developers are too
eager to recycle old concepts without a second thought, slap on a new
GUI, and ship it out. A perfect example of that is the LoTR MMO. How
long before the novelty of playing as a hobbit wears off and the
underlying issues with the MMO platform show up?