[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Player-generated content

[John Buehler]

> On 10/9/07, John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

> > Cruise writes:

> > > Thus spake John Buehler...

> > > > I think that the need to rate the difficulty of a task is
> > > > declaring a problem. It suggests levels. If not levels, then at
> > > > least it suggests that the game world is not intuitive to the
> > > > players. The level scenario is the worst, of course, where players
> > > > are intent on tuning the exact experience that they go through in
> > > > order to efficiently advance. I've ranted on that before and I
> > > > won't again. In general, though, rating the difficulty of task
> > > > should be intuitive.

> > > This is a useful insight - I likewise much prefer level-less
> > > systems, yet I hadn't managed to make this final connection.
> > > Interesting how ingrained thinking in levels is...

> It's really not about levels. Players want to know how tough things are.

Yes, and levels mean that they can be wildly varied in their toughness.
Thus the problem.

> Period. Sometimes, it's simply hard to give visual cues necessary. Is a
> wolf tougher than a tiger? What about a baby raptor?

Consider the visual cues of the fact that the wolf is part of a pack of 120
pound animals.  The tiger is 300 pounds of muscle and sharp, pointy bits.  A
raptor is just a different skin on a tiger.  I have plenty of cues - if the
designers aren't hampered by the crutch of levels.

> When you have a
> non-linear game experience, you do not have the ability to control which
> direction the player is going to wander, and usually you are forced by
> the worldbuilders to occasionally drop a high-level zone next to a lower
> level zone.

Zone?  That's more level stuff.  Lacking levels, I can know what kind of
trouble I'm going to get into because I just walked into a town.  A forest.
A cave.  A battlefield.  The visual cues are all there, waiting for the
designers to make them mean something.

> Lacking the context of some sort of difficulty meter, the
> one way for players to learn is to throw themselves at the monster and
> see if they die.

Yep.  My difficulty meter is the size, number, equipment and behavior of my
opponents.  Because of levels, there's no way to look at opponents to
determine how dangerous they are.  As a result, levels themselves have been
made visible.

> This sort of experimental punishment is not fun. And
> when players do die, they don't know if there's something they should
> have done differently - whether it was truly within their grasp. Setting
> players expectations of success is incredibly important in a free-form
> environment (where you can't linearly control the experience to ensure
> players get to content at the appropriate level), and games do it all
> the time.

Note that the problem of players encountering problematic situation arises
from the fact that they are not at the appropriate level...

> Go to any online chess game, and you can see your opponent's
> chess rating. Play the hacking game in BioForge, and there's a
> difficulty indicator. Heck, even crossword puzzles are typically marked
> as beginner, medium, hard or expert. Do you need levels to do this? No.
> But you need -something-. Just saying 'it should be intuitive from the
> art' isn't feasible with realistic art budgets.

Art budgets have nothing to do with this.  AI budgets do.

> > This is the sort of thing that causes me to believe that
> > achievement-based games are inherently limiting to game designers.
> > They have to concoct schemes that prevent players from violating the
> > sacrosanct tenet that achievement must be earned. It's not only a
> > treadmill that must be run, but it must be run in a specific way. I'm
> > wondering if achievement entertainment shouldn't always be predicated
> > on player skill. Achievements based on character 'skills' certainly
> > make a product marketable, but I wonder how far the genre can go with
> > that approach.

> The problem with requiring player skill is that not a lot of players
> actually have it, and not a lot of players are going to hang around to
> earn it once they figure out they suck at it. This is problematic, not
> just for companies trying to earn 10 bucks a month from their customers,
> but from any game trying to build a stable community.

Game companies typically stumble in this area because the designers don't
understand what sorts of player skills people want to bring to the game
world.  In fact, the volume of players who bring player skill to gaming is
mind-numbing.  The players are out there.  They just don't play in virtual
worlds.  These people are playing piles and piles of card games, board games
and such.  Tetris and Sudoku are obvious favorites.  Pinball games.  Chess
and Go.  How about Minesweeper?  Whether competitive, cooperative or single
player, there are myriad successful online games requiring player skill.

These games should be investigated as models for entertainment in MMOs.  As
should the casual atmosphere that players enjoy when they play these types
of games.  Nothing is on the line.  People are just looking for some mild
entertainment.  That, instead of having to face Lord Ick in his Lair of
Undeath over a period of two hours.

JB