I could wax long and winded about this, but I’ll just cite Raph:
CoH Players Make a Zillion Missions
Looking at Metaplace, Whirled, XNA and the increasing trend for democratization of game development, I’m a happy camper. Middleware like Maya, Max and game engines are still too costly, and Blender and the like aren’t worth fighting the UI (despite being powerful). Still, this is a step in the right direction.
Yes, we’ll be dealing with Sturgeon’s Law, but hey, we’re internet users, we do that already.
For my next trick, I’ll pull a rabbit out of my hat… er… find a way to pay the really creative armchair devs. Blizzard isn’t exactly happy with UI modders, and there’s certainly plenty of *junk* out there in the user-generated universe, but there are also gems, and kicking a little back to the cream of the crop is a good PR move, good for encouraging more work, and good ethics.
This is a very intriguing story. I think there’s some potential with allowing players to generate content and perhaps create their own quests. It just needs to make sense in the context of the MMO.
I’m just worried about the lack of maturity of the typical WoW gamer — that kind of content would need to be approved by the devs ultimately for various reasons.
As we’ve seen Blizzard likes to be in total control. They just shut down another company that was trying to sell downtime insurance with the dubious claim that it was infringing on their “intellectual property”.
“Raph said: Yes, users can be just as good at game design as pros — what they usually need is tools with a low enough barrier to entry, and the context within which to create.”
I agree with him. There are lots of passionate people out there. It seems crazy not to somehow capitalize on on it and involve the players more then they are now.
Indeed. I was in the Whirled beta, and I kept hammering on the notion of a vetting/review process with filters and stringent oversight. There will always be some idiot that tries to mess things up for everyone, and devs need to step up and slap them down mercilessly.
At the same time, they really need to reward those who are talented enough to do their work for them.
“At the same time, they really need to reward those who are talented enough to do their work for them.”
Agree 100%!
There are legions of wonderfully devoted players out there that would love to contribute in a small way to a MMO. I just can’t believe that big MMO companies can’t find some way to reward them and incentive creativity and even good behavior.
One gets the feeling that they just don’t even bother to consider these kinds of things as they are so inwardly focused on themselves.
You mentioned Theodore Sturgeon and thus get the Best Blog Post award for today! You win a virtual toaster! (It’s in the virtual mail.)
Meh, I was going to point to an interview with someone CoX-related regarding the difficulties inherent in making a ratings system that can be abused, but it was something I read in passing (ie while doing something else) and I haven’t bookmarked it. 😐
Another issue of concern (and one I noticed while putzing about the the mission architect myself) is “gaming” the system — http://ofcourseillplayit.com/?p=172 . That kind of behaviour irks me because a) it doesn’t occur to me to do it and b) I don’t see the enjoyment of it when I’m confronted with it. I don’t like “the ends justifies the means” MMO gaming.
Am rambling. Need more coffee.
Funnily enough, this was a solved problem in the MUD days, where distinguished players were routinely given content creation privileges. The jump to 3D made many level editors quite complex and/or limited.
This is an excerpt of Ysharros’ link: http://ofcourseillplayit.com/?p=172
(…) No, it’s used for AE farming. Yap. In a sort of classic example of “players optimizing the fun right out of an experience”, we quickly learn that if you give players the tools to create even more of a grind for themselves, regardlesss of how monotanous it is, if it’s efficient, they’ll do it. So people create missions with specifically large quantities of easily defeatable mobs, form up groups, and mow them down. (…)
Ouch. This seems to be a rule of human behaviour. If people find something that they can exploit, they will do so.
There was once something called the “gear trick” in Guild Wars. Picking up an item that had to be carried, mobs would exclusively go for the character in question. In the content update “Sorrow’s Furnace” there were plenty of gears needed to be carried around to open doors, and there were huge and strong enemy mobs.
Well, player abused the “gear trick” to the max and turned a wonderful adventure and exploration zone into a farming zone for the new “green” items (Green in GW = ultimate items with perfect stats, info for confused WoW players. Purple is crap in GW!). The “gear carrier” was ideally a super strong tank, and everyone else could focus on nuking. This takes away a lot of the fun of the GW system, where everyone usually had to fear to be attacked. Still, people often tried to apply the strict holy trinity approach and hyper specialized builds in terms of tanking, dps and healing.
I quit 10 days after Sorrow’s Furnace was introduced for quite a while to test EVE Online, 3 days after release people were already FARMING the quests, the zone, well…
try to find someone who does not want to abuse the gear trick, good luck… for not even my own friends wanted to play without it. “Let’s farm some more, we can play normally after we got the gear!”
I went apeshit crazy, GW was never so much about gear, but vanity items, but the new green items reduced intelligent people to mindless, greedy, loot-lusting farm zombies.
This is SOOOOOOOOO sad.
The gear trick got fixed many months later, after people already farmed SF for ages. Too late, IMO.
But it had to be done. The Ritualist class introduced in GW:Factions has certain “item” spells that creates an urn that has a certain effect if you drop the ashes.
But well, people did never drop the item – they used it as a personal gear trick. So upon release of Factions or a few days later, the gear trick was suddenly fixed. Mobs now no longer focused on the “gear carrier” alone.
You can bet people woudl have abused it to the max. Some people cried GW is ruined for them. Oh my.
So yeah, player generated content needs supervision. Otherwise you will always have someone playing and abusing the system to the max. And others who don’t will feel disadvantaged and feel they have to do it, too.
Perfect, the game just got flushed down the toilet.
I wonder whether Left 4 Dead’s Director system could be used to aid in balancing the user-created content to keep the challenge/reward ratio where the developers want it to be..
Actually, Longasc, I blame the root game design of a gear/level DIKU grind. If players are “optimizing their playtime” by making farming missions, that means that farming is more fun for them than playing the actual game, or the endgame is more desirable than the leveling content. That, to me, is a sign that something needs to change in the core game design.
Likewise, you can be certain that people would buy level capped characters direct from Blizzard, if they offered them. Heck, people already buy them, just on the black market.
If players are trying to skip your content, don’t try to force them to go back into the rat maze, ask *why* they are trying to get around it when they have the option to do so. To that end, the Mission Architect may well be a brilliant feedback tool.
(Also, if the “endgame” really is the best part of your game, let people jump in and play it without making them grind through the leveling content. Yes, it’s a blow to the sub model, but it’s about time devs wake up and start letting people play their game, not endure it before they can get to the part they want to play.)
To be sure, there will always be those who just want immediate gratification and leave once they get it, but that GW example is a good one to look at. How many people actually *did* keep playing once they had perfect gear? Was the farming just a means to an end, or was it just something people did because they felt compelled to find shortcuts/exploits, and left once they couldn’t anymore?
…
Hirvox, the AI Director could probably help, but it would probably be easier to simply put limits on the Mission Architect itself, say an XP cap or no XP granting at all in player missions. (I’ve seen that idea floated about, and I think it could work.)
Regarding the root game design, I agree, we have talked a lot about that already on various blogs.
Regarding GW and Gear Farming in Sorrow’s Furnace: I have no clue/data how many people kept playing after they had all the greens they wanted.
I think many farmed on to sell the greens, to buy ectoplasm for the highly expensive “Obsidian Armor”, a longtime grind prestige object. Intentionally so. GW has/had no “endgame”, PvP was once supposed to be the endgame for everyone, but the conversion did not happen.
I played GW with all classes, basically made an alt char after acquiring skills, gear and vanity items for my favorite char.
– I still do not understand how people could grind Sorrow’s Furnace over and over and over. And for what reasons. I am not sure if ALL of them were after obsidian armor or for what they were grinding, but they WERE grinding like there is no tomorrow, all doing the gear trick –
(GW never had much content besides the fixed storyline missions. But at least the first chapter left me some room for exploration, as the map was huge.)
-> In fact I even think that some players really love to farm/grind the same mob or zone over and over.
Despite most players hating to grind for something. I think I once mentioned death levelling for Legendary Defender of Ascalon on Muckbeast’s blog – once ArenaNet offered a title for this, many more people did it.
I do not want to sound like a smartass, but I wonder if behavioral science can explain this… how we can be so dumb while playing a game.
This is a short test if you do not mind. You may delete it. 🙂
It’s a good question, Longasc. No complaints here. 🙂
Yes, some people *do* like grinding, but I think the key in your example is that they are setting *their own goals* (like the Obsidian Armor) rather than being jerked along by level/gear-gated content access. Also, we’re talking about Guild Wars, where there’s no monetary pain to the grind.
When someone chooses to grind for *fun*, with only a time cost, I don’t see much of a problem with it. Sure, the game itself could be more interesting, but at the same time, to each their own. I like to wander around and take screenshots, which would be mind-numbingly stupid to some players.
Gear grinding in GW holds no appeal to me, nor does XP farming in CoH. I play the game while it’s interesting, and if it turns into a gear grind or race to the level cap for stupidly repetitive raiding for more gear… I sign off. Some people love that, though, and I don’t really see a problem with letting them do their thing. Their style is no less valid than my own, just different.
That’s why I can’t get worked up over people making farming missions. If they want to do that, blasting through the levels so they can play the “endgame” or just preen over their big numbers, that’s perfectly fine. It holds no interest for me, but that doesn’t make it categorically *wrong*.
…it might make it unwise from a business standpoint in a subscription model, but I have absolutely no sympathy for that in the first place.
I think that MMOs, of any game genre, are most prone to this diversity in gameplay. I think that devs should *foster* this sort of choice, rather than try to shoehorn everyone into one sort of gameplay style.
Also, this is just one more thing that makes me think the focus on the “endgame” is unhealthy on the whole for the MMO genre. We’ve had bragging rights as long as we’ve had scored games (Pong and beyond), but MMOs have taken their design too far in the “ends over the means” direction. I’d much rather devs focus on making games fun rather than giving more and bigger numbers to chase after. People will always find ways to brag or compare themselves to others… why make it easier and *count* on it to maintain addictive interest instead of making good mechanics and content? All I can conclude is that it’s cheap and easy to use those psychological weaknesses to cover lazy design work… and that’s what bothers me.
Short test? What are you testing?
I created a pure user account (without blog) at WordPress and somehow it decided that my username has to be lower case. I dunno why, I definitely typed Longasc and not longasc, but now it seems I cannot even change it to Longasc.
Now it is working. I found the option to display the username as “Longasc” instead of “longasc”. 🙂
Ah, gotcha. Aye, it took me a bit to find out where to change my name, since my login isn’t the same as my posting name. 🙂