[MUD-Dev2] Specialization

[Sean Howard]

"Damion Schubert" <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Specialization isn't overrated.  Realism is overrated, at least as far as
> game design inspiration comes from.

They can both be overrated :)

> Specialization has many positive
> roles in the game, including creating a need for different
> player roles and making the game possible to balance.  And almost
> every MMO that has eschewed any specialization restrictions has been
> a balance nightmare.

That's because MMO designers purposely design games around the classic
mould of tactical games. When you play chess, it makes sense for each
piece to be specialized because you have access to all of them. And there
are a lot of examples of that sort of thing that have lead to coherent
rules for balancing. That's great. I love that. I love tactics games.
BUT...

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.

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.

Anyway, until MMOs can create games (rather than just social environments)
that allow for people who don't fit into preset stereotypes, they will
still fall short of what they can really be. It's only difficult because,
so far, there has been relatively little commercial success in that
direction. But it is possible.

> Specialization allows us to make things COOLER.  If you know that
> only rogues can go invisible, you can actually give them more powerful
> attacks designed to go well with that invisibility, and you can push that
> to 11.  However, if everyone can go invisible, the designer must account
> for the combination of invisibility and every possible power.  As an
> example, in Shadowbane, stealth + summon = instant army in the
> opposition's base.

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.

> Combinations this powerful end up actually SHRINKING player choice,
> as all players in the arena either choose the broken template, or are
> forced to make choices designed to combat it.

As long as you can minmax your way to victory, people will do it and some
will accept nothing less than the perfect solution. But a victory which
can't be minmaxed, which has multiple paths to victory, which itself is
largely optional...

> that way lie dragons.

That's what they put on the map for uncharted territory. Know what happen
when people actually charted it? They found America. History can decide
whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

-- 
Sean Howard