[MUD-Dev2] Player Choice - How Much is Too Much?

[James]

"cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> Since everyone's run out of things to say, I figured I might as well start
> another argument :P
>
> It's been stated several times by various people that a game designer
> shouldn't tell players how to play the game. That players should have the
> choice to play like they want to.
>
> Now, I'm big on player choice - to me it's one of the fundamentals that
> makes a game not a movie. Saying that, I'm not sure I can truly agree that
> a game designer can't tell players how to play the game.
>
> Surely, we're doing that to some extent /just by making the game/. If I'm
> playing Magic:the Gathering, then I expect a strategic card game - sure I
> can use the cards to proxy as 40k models, but I'm not playing M:tG
> anymore, and I can expect anyone who's trying to play M:tG to be rather
> annoyed.
>
> If I use WoW to produce LotR machinima, then similarly I'm not playing
> WoW. That isn't "how I want to play WoW." It just isn't WoW.
>
> While taking away all the player's choice means it's no longer a game,
> limiting them to a certain degree is pretty much the point of making game
> rules. We should and, I'd say, must, tell the players how to play the
> game.
>
> Looking at the world around us it becomes patently obvious that people
> don't make choices that will be best for them. Can I get the hell out of
> bed in the morning, even though I know it means I get home earlier, and
> might actually eat this side of 9pm? Heck no. The most enjoyable moment
> for me in a MMOG was RP'ing in a MUD. Does that mean I RP all the time?
> Hah! Too much effort, even though a part of me knows it would be
> well-rewarded.
>
> Players do not know what will be fun. That's why game-design is hard. A
> good game designer /does/ know better than the players what they will
> enjoy - if he didn't he wouldn't be a good game designer.
>
> The important caveat, of course, is that players hate to feel like their
> choices are being deliberately limited - the old "invisible wall" at the
> edge of a game area, for example, when a chasm would achieve the same
> effect but not feel forced. I suspect this is what most people object to -
> not the removal of choices, but the obviousness with which they are
> removed (such as a "nerf" in MMOG's - having the previous performance to
> compare to, any such limitation will be obvious).

Agreed on a number of levels. The most frustrating and atmosphere
breaking example I know of is the 2D 'maze' like design of Guild Wars
where you literally can't fall down a low slope, or really stray from
the roads. This instantly limited my immersion (along with not being
able to jump at all (I mean, come on, jumping is a universal videogame
paradigm!) and made the world seem that much more arbitrary and
constructed.

An interesting example I was pondering recently (apologies if this is
too specific) is the recently changed Alterac Valley in WoW.

To set the scene, for those that don't know: this is a huge 40 vs 40
instanced battleground (i.e. PvP area with objectives). Players earn
honor for a number of objectives, though the honor earned even for a win
is small in comparison with the honor required to buy items afterwards
(~500 for a full win (80-300 for a loss, depending) compared to 12,000
for an item purchase). It also has an asymmetrical map design.

The problem is two fold- first the need to repeat the games many times
to earn significant points to purchase rewards. This means players are
instantly driven to 'grind' the battleground many times and look to
maximise their honor per hour. This often means games are simply races
to kill the opposing sides NPC general and win, with little PvP combat
taking place. This is boring, but efficient, and no fun for the players
involved. On the opposite end, sometimes games occur with lots of
interaction, solid base defence and cunning strategies. But even whilst
enjoying this, there's the nagging feeling of inefficiency - you'd've
been better off in 3 fast boring games.

The second problem is that you're 40 random people per side. Recently
Blizzard changed the rules to address the 'race to kill the general'
problem, forcing players to capture a series of other objectives before
the enemy general was killable. Only now, still, it's VERY hard to
encourage players to defend their objectives. Now it's just a race to
capture them and kill the general as fast as possible. This is despite
the fact the most EFFICIENT approach has now changed- if 10 people play
objective defence, they can potentially turn a 50/50 win ratio into a
90/10 one. But that requires teamwork between random people, something
exceptionally hard to acheive emergently (even with someone shouting in
general chat (!), and something the battleground design self-evidently
still fails to do. "Most" players seem to follow an internal program of:
"Ressurect at the nearest controlled graveyard -> ride about towards the
enemy base until I see an opponent -> kill them/die -> back to ride
about stage/back to graveyard -> go back to step 1". At this level of
player behaviour, the map asymmetry becomes the deciding factor, since
it channels players following these rules in ways more favourable to one
side (the Alliance).

I guess my question is- how do you design an open and objective based
pvp game, and encourage players into the proper group helping behaviours
they should be doing? These are ALREADY the optimal behaviours in terms
of honor/hour but that doesn't seem to be enough. I've often thought
that it needs a Battlefield 2 style 'commander' role that can actually
mark the map and 'officially' direct groups of players- it certainly
works quite well in that game, but then maybe it's a completely
different mindset.

The interesting thing about Alterac Valley is that it has been changed
many many times over the last year or so and still doesn't work. And
Blizzard aren't stupid. Maybe 40 vs 40 PvP 'points' grinding is just
incompatible with fun/engaging/intelligent gameplay fullstop?

-J