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

[Lachek Butalek]

On Nov 20, 2007 7:52 AM, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> 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.
...
> 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.

And once again, I'm reminded of tabletop RPGs, where the same argument
has been raised repeatedly with little to no consensus within the
hobby.

Should a set of game rules only simulate reality, letting the
individuals who play it (mostly the game moderator) infer whatever
meaning they wish within the game constraints? (GURPS)
Or should a set of game rules hint at the fun factor by strongly
emphasizing a particular piece of the game, thereby leading the
players towards engaging mostly in that activity? (D&D / d20, Spirit
of the Century, etc)

In reality, the lines aren't that distinct. Many tabletop gamers use
d20 rules to simulate reality and hardly ever use the rules the game
was built around, which (arguably) is miniature combat. In my humble
opinion, this often leads to the "Alterac Valley" problem, where the
reward system imposed by the rules of the games clash with the
gameplay attempted by the participants.

Sean Howard wrote:
> That's why I think we should stop thinking of MMOGs as games. What they
> really seem to be are shared environments in which a game (or two or
> three) take place. For instance, in WoW, you could grind up your levels
> and do raids for uber-loot (that's one game), battle in the PvP areas (a
> second game), or just sit around and tell stories around the campfire (not
> a game at all).

This is the GURPS stance, and one which (like tabletop RPGs) many
MMO's claim to do. "Be anything, do anything!" is the prevalent
marketing line. Well, there is but one MMO I'm aware of that lets you
do this, and that is Second Life. The thing with Second Life, if
you're not really into graphical chat clients, there's not a lot there
- like Sean says, it's not a game. It's up to you to infer meaning,
and your own concept of what you're doing there is more than likely to
clash with someone else's before long.

On the other hand, a game which strongly hints at an underlying
premise is likely to have less pitfalls of this kind. By its nature,
it's not as flexible and might not attract as many initial
subscribers. On the other hand, those subscribers that do join are
likely to be the target audience for the game, and won't engage in
activities that clash with other subscribers' ideas of what the game
is about.

As a simple example, take the (tabletop) game "Sorcerer". Sorcerer has
a very explicit premise. You cannot be anyone doing anything; you are
a sorcerer, and you engage in the summoning of demons. In emergent
play, the game is about your relationships with those demons, what
engaging with demons does to you, and how far you are willing to go in
your quest for power. For this reason, the game strongly de-emphasizes
your character's own abilities, choosing instead to focus on the
intricacies of demonic summoning, the strength of demonic bonds, the
lengths demons will go to to get their ways, the powers demons might
infer onto their summoner, and so on.

Nobody who knows the game will approach it thinking "Cool, I'm going
to totally summon all the demons I can, get awesome super-powers and
get everyone to worship me!" - or if they do, they will most
definitely change their mind after playing a session or two. Instead,
one would approach it as "Cool, I'm going to totally summon all the
demons I can, get in a lot of trouble with controlling them all, and
then have to clean up the mess - and how do I do that without
summoning more of them?". One approaches a game of Sorcerer *knowing*
the game is about getting in, or staying out of, trouble - not about
pumping your stats to the max and boasting to your friends.

Similarly, WoW implicitly states "You get to be a hero! Nothing you do
within the scope of this game is crippling - the only way is up! The
point of the game is to get more powerful than everyone else, and show
it off!"
CoX states "The point of the game is to get an avatar that looks
really, really awesome! As you get more powerful, we give you more
costumes and cooler looking flashy powers!"
EVE Online states "The point of the game is to get rich beyond your
wildest dreams, and use your riches to make your organization win!"

The crux: the moment you try to add multiple premises to a game, you
muddle the idea of what the game is about. This causes friction within
the community, which now have differing goals within the game. You can
choose to collect and wear cool-looking armour in WoW, but the game
system punishes you for your choice - a mismatched set with less
inspiring textures may provide better stats. You can explore
tremendous vistas in WoW, but if you venture out beyond your abilities
you're likely to get eaten by the first mob that shows up. You can
assault and kill off all guards and quest givers in hostile towns in
WoW, but the server resets the state, so there is little to no payoff
beyond boasting rights. You can go to Alterac Valley and battle random
hostiles for Honor, but because the reward system is broken you may as
well lose - as long as you do it quickly.

In tabletop RPGs, a game moderator is always present and only have to
deal with 2-8 other players. A skilled moderator can make a GURPS-like
system work for them and get everyone on the same page with regards to
the premise of the game.

MMORPGs are 99% auto-moderated by the system itself. As such, an MMO
that offers a plethora of premises to tens of thousands of
simultaneous players runs into a vast array of community management
problems, where players looking for vastly different forms of gameplay
from the same base set of rules gripe about why the game isn't more
like *this* or *that*. No wonder solo play has been so successful in
modern mass-market MMORPGs, whereas those games that feature clearly
defined premises have far tighter communities, easier grouping, and
relaxed and polite conversation on boards and in-game chat.

So for my 2c, if it wasn't obvious - I'm looking forward to seeing a
plethora of MMOs with smaller subscriber bases and tighter, better
defined game play. Anything less, when you're dealing with a largely
computer moderated community of people, is simply too much to bite off
for anyone but the biggest players, and I pity those community
managers.