[MUD-Dev2] Specialization

[Damion Schubert]

On Jan 24, 2008 7:41 PM, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:

> "Damion Schubert" <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> MMOs are social games. It seems like an interesting idea to let players
> play just as a bishop, but ultimately, it is an inferior solution. What if
> all the players want to be bishops? No, can't do that. Breaks the game
> balance. What if a player wants to look like a bishop, but act like a
> queen? Nope. What if players just want to get together and create their
> own version of chess? Certainly can't do that when black is always played
> by AI.


Bah, and humbug, I say, to all that.  Tactical gameplay in MMOs serves
a crucial yet often unobserved part of the human experience - they give
people something to talk about.  Something to compare.  Something to
bond over.  Throwing away good gameplay design because it might get
in the way of the social aspect of the game ignores the fact that the
tactics
that arise from such gameplay constraints often do more good than harm.

Removing specialization so that all people can become and do all things
if they so desire ends up creating a quagmire of overwhelming choice to
most players, where if they are being competitive, they don't understand
why they are failing.  In these situations, tactics tend to gravitate
towards
'superbuilds' - character templates that have a high percentage of success
in the most situations.  The net result is that choice actually begins to
shrink.

One of the lead designers of Magic: the Gathering first described this
paradox to me.  When one possible card combination in that game
becomes overwhelming, all other players who desire to have a meaningful
seat at the table are forced to build decks that use that combo, or build
decks specifically designed to beat that combo.  When this happens,
the number of different deck builds actually shrinks, and interest in the
game wanes as players cannot express their creativity.  The broken cards
are often artifacts - colorless cards that defy specialization, which makes
them harder to balance.

What you are describing is not at all like saying that players must all
play as bishops.  What you are describing is like saying that all players
may choose to populate their own chess boards with whatever pieces
they like.  The end result - 15 queens surrounding one king - would make
for a crappy game, and would be so utterly uninteresting as to not allow
a society to gel.  Compare, by contrast, the massive amount of interest
and discussion in creating the perfect Warrior build, beating Kael'thas
with just 6 healers, or figuring out how to beat a 'lock/druid combo in
the arena (i could point to examples from other games, but the fact that
WoW creates all of this discussion with a paltry 9 classes is something
that surprised even myself).

Good gameplay creates good discussion.  Abandon good tactical gameplay,
and you are merely praying that serendipity causes a community to gel.

I propose that designers need to stop turning people into chess pieces.
> The world is a very diverse and interesting place in real life. People are
> fascinating, amazing creatures. I mean, whenever you hear people talk
> about their experiences online, they are talking about their experiences
> with other people. Read the Lessons of LucasFilm's Habitat. They don't
> talk about how players successfully roleplayed their class type. They talk
> about the ingenuity of the playerbase to circumvent just about every
> barrier that was place there in a misguided attempt to help them.


And people's real personas are very interesting, but your average player in
this marketplace starts off as a lurker, a window shopper.  He's more likely
to observe before either roleplaying, or sharing details about his own self.
"Game" behavior gives him something to do until he forms social bonds that
loosens himself up enough to share.

>
> You are thinking inside the box. Why do you need invisibility to be a
> skill anyway? Not just from a realism standpoint, but also a social and
> moral one (ask Plato or Frodo about rings of invisibility some time). What
> purpose does turning invisible truly serve? How can it be replaced with
> something better, if it needs to be replaced at all?


> In general, powers that break games are largely optional. So opt not to
> use them.
>

So your answer would be to only allow Magic players to play with common
cards and chess players to play with pawns.  Big, interesting and scary
game pieces might not combo well with something else, so we better keep
all possible functionality as bland and safe as humanly possible.  If only
more of my competitors took this point of view.

Beating on 'invisibility' is a strawman argument.  Whether that particular
power fits the ruleset, ethos or backstory of your world is irrelevant - the
fact of the matter is that all game rules and paradigms potentially have
powers and functionality that become overly powerful when combined with
other powers.  If not, you probably have a pretty uninteresting game.  If
so, you probably need some sort of gating mechanism that the designer
can use to keep things under control.



--d