Bartle thinks I’m an Explorer. (EASK 100/50/50/0, to be precise.) I spend more time looking around and taking screenshots in MMOs than any other activity. I love sites like this:
The WoW Map Viewer makes me very happy. (Of course, it’s broken for patch 3.2, which makes me a sad carebear, but since it’s a labor of love, I can’t really complain.)
To me, the most interesting part of an MMO, and most other games, is the worldbuilding involved. Some of that is due to my career (I’m an artist in the game industry), some of it is just personal preference. A large part of it is due to my constrained gaming time and very low tolerance for grind and abusive game design.
Shamus of Twenty Sided fame has a great Escapist article up on this, coming at it from the angle of wanting an “I Win” button.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. I’ve matured past the point of wanting to prove my self worth by conquering an abusive video game. (Truth be told, I hated it back in the NES Ninja Gaiden days. I didn’t quite have words to express it then, I just knew that I liked some of the game and hated the “gotcha” moments and “Do It Again, Stupid” gameplay.) I detest grind (known as “do the same thing over and over so you can qualify to do something else”). I can’t stand memorization as a general rule, so long “Quicktime” events bother me.
I come to something like WoW or Guild Wars and want to spend a lot of time looking around. I’m a tourist, that’s what I do. It’s a matter of priorities. I don’t care for the mindless treadmills that pass for “gameplay” or the puerile cesspool that passes for “community” in most games. I want to see what the devs put together, and how their worldbuilding comes together.
Devs, if you believe that you have an interesting setting and great game world, let me look around in it. Let me see it at my leisure and poke around the fringes. Stop pushing me through cattle runs and Achievement galleries. Let Team Ninja do the whole “we’re the Dev Gods, kiss our feet” routine wherein the player has to qualify via self-flagellation to see your magnum opus. Players bought the game, let them play it and see what you made. Some players are masochists, sure, but if you want to make money in the mainstream, realize that those players aren’t the bulge of the bell curve.
Devs, if players who have purchased your game are only seeing half of it because they don’t have da skillz to see the rest, you ripped them off.
So, how about some potential fixes for the problem? Complaining is cheap and easy, right?
I worked on Tiger Woods for the PS2, and we had a “dev cam” that we could take control of and look around the scene. This was a vital tool for us to actually see what was going on with our art, and how we could fix things. I want that as a player. Make it a cheat, fine, but give me control of the camera for when I just want to look around. I can promise you that I’ll have a greater appreciation for the artistry involved with the game if you let me study it, especially if you let me pause the game and then take control of the camera. (Frame by frame control would be brilliant, too.)
It’s scary, since some visual elements are indeed constructed like Potemkin Villages, and letting players look “behind the curtain” to see the wizardry might feel a little… drafty. Thing is, in a world ever more preprocessed and spun into superficiality, I think that some players would appreciate such candor.
For MMOs, let me buy levels, or just do away with the gating grinds in the first place. Ultimately, what would be great is if there were a Map Viewer in every MMO. It doesn’t need to affect the live game (though a “Ghost Mode” would be great). In games where moment to moment tactical information is important to conceal for playability, an offline Viewer would be perfect.
Make all of the cinematics available from the start. If someone wants to spoil the story, that’s their choice. If they don’t understand the context because they didn’t play through some parts, maybe that’s a good reason for them to go back and play the game some more and have a bit of fun playing through.
(Tangent: Why are these heavy story-based games pretty much just “story for a while then game for a while, the two rarely mixing”? One simple reason is that interactive stories would require a lot of permutations to work and that gets expensive. So, if you’re going with the traditional “play game, play movie, repeat” route, let gamers skip the game part if they so want. And vice versa, to be sure, let players skip any cinematic they so choose.)
Adjustable difficulties are another great tool, adjustable at any time. (Or as close to any time as possible.)
Invincibility codes are the baseline on this one (at least for single player games). It’s an absolute minimum, and it should be hardcoded into the game itself, and noted in the instruction manual. No Game Shark, no hex editing.
In an age when we can pause live TV and many people buy DVDs for the extras, I still find it odd that we don’t actually have more control in games. You know, those silly entertainment things that are all about letting the end user control the experience? Devs, if you’re trying to force your players into narrower and narrower chutes, perhaps you should be making movies. Let game designers do their job.
And let the players look around and play.
Addendum: What about a game that is all about giving players control of pausing time and not just looking around, but playing in those interstitial chronological spaces? Think The Matrix meets Okami. (I never thought I’d make that particular pairing.)
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I just started playing Aion and the game world is pretty. They did a good job with it. I played Fallen Earth in beta and the world is huge. I little rough around the edges but awesome. It cool you worked on Tiger Woods. That is cool stuff to me
While I don’t disagree with your desires, I think one challenge publishers are faced with is perceived game length. If they scripted in a god mode, people who turn it on, zip through the game and then complain it was too short (because people are stupid like that). And by complain, I mean tell other potential purchasers “Don’t buy this, it took me like 5 hours to go through the whole thing.”
I know a counter-argument would be that game length shouldn’t be arbitrarily extended by grind or difficulty spikes, but at some point you have to accept that these are games, not Bryce viewers… any game is going to be shorter in god mode than it is when you have to actually overcome obstacles.
I always assumed that’s why cheat codes were ‘hidden’ and then later leaked by devs. Because they didn’t want the initial surge of hype, user reviews and word-of-mouth to be tainted by cheat-code enabled manipulation.
Again, I’m not disagreeing with you: I often go back and wonder through areas (in an MMO) where everything is ‘greyed out’ just so I can look around.
Tho I know in my case, if I had the ability from Day 1 I’d be tempted to use it, and once I did I’d be disappointed, like hunting for Christmas presents on Dev 1 then having Christmas morning being lacking surprise. Of course, I was 8 when I did that…one would *think* I’d have more self control by now. One would be wrong!
Funny thing about length, Pete… I’d spend *more* time in a game in invincible clothes than otherwise. That’s sort of the point. Of course, I’m weird, and almost definitely an outlier. *shrug*
Releasing codes after the early adopters have had their fun would be a good way to handle it. (That’s harder with console games, though.)
Another wall of text and quite delightful! I will have to say that “puerile cesspool that passes for “community” in most games” makes me saw aww. Not every community is like the WoW forum community. I totally get your point though.
I like to explore without expectations too. One of the things I enjoyed most about being a guide was that I could leisurely wander through zones instead of blasting through them killing everything. It was a nice change.
*chuckle*
Aye, I’ve found good people in any MMO. They just seem to be outnumbered by those who think that internet anonymity gives them license to be jerks. (Cue Penny Arcade theory on the same… which is considerably more biting than I’d phrase it.)
I know great people in WoW and W101, and Puzzle Pirates has a lot of them. I know they are out there, and I cherish what friendships I do make with good people. I didn’t mean to say that they don’t exist… just that they all too easily get shouted down or stay quiet in the first place and leave the place to the dogs.
And when the game makes it easier with slutty dancing animations or easy zone-wide chatting, well… I’d still rather be out exploring the wilderness. 😉
I think I once qualified as EASK in the Bartle test, too. In this latest Brainhex thing I got brandished as an achiever type, what an insult. 😛
Pete is right, the god view mode… doubt this is going to happen.
The core issue is that our virtual worlds are getting more and more games. This starts with loot distribution. It is based on game mechanics, formulas – so that nobody gets the short end of the stick. Let players sort it out, duke it out. If someone takes too much, take his head – that was the classic solution! :>
OK, this was a particularly bad example… 😛 Today gamers ask for more and more things and content to do in their GAME, but all this is not adding anything to the VIRTUAL WORLD.
The social component of MMOs is receding, and I wonder if Blizzard’s latest “Guild achievements” stuff for Cataclysm is going to change that. I very much doubt that this will be successful if it is done in the way of “achievements” for doing this or that grindy thing or collective grinding of achievements!
Guild Wars has/had not much “endgame”. Nothing to do for people, the horror. But people cried for more – and they got titles/achievements telling them to do silly things with a huge grind component. And it apparently works – a cheaper and more effective content extender mechanic is hardly imagineable.
These to-do-lists bugger me a lot, personally. But this is my personal pet peeve, one does not have to do it, after all. What is much worse is that >all< (really, almost everyone) people are going for this are basically eliminated from the game, as they are busily working/grinding to Valhalla.
I damn the whole genre if it cannot evolve out of this particular direction that is prevalent nowadays.
Cheating in games is an interesting thing. I remember when Doom came out and if you wanted go mode, you just typed something like /IDDQD. Then there was the ‘all weapons’ cheat which was something like /IDKFA. They’ve become like geek code words now and you can even buy them on t-shirts.
God I loved Doom. And the level editor too. They just don’t make games like they used to eh? 😉
I would separate “god mode” from “explorer mode” in an MMO, then.
I’ll tell again that when Tabula Rasa offered people god mode, I gained 7 levels in the space of an afternoon, rushing through content. In the end, i spent LESS time looking around because I had a surge of “need my max XP fix NOW!”.
I’m an explorer, but I rarely spend time looking at a cool scenario besides the “Awwww” moment. I look around everywhere, but more for the “heh, found you !” moments.
I have used god modes in games like Doom, and in the end, it soured the experience for than anything. At first, I have fun, but then, I don’t feel anything anymore. I’m not even happy to discover something new, because I do’nt feel like I’ve earned.
OTOH, I spent 2 frakin’ hours on the last boss battle of GoW because I wanted to finally see the end. Well I had no pleasure redoing it again and again. It was more like rage. I would have liked a god mode then.
But, people often take the easy way. As was said, you give them a god mode, they’ll use it and then complain that the game is too short.
Just like with a game that came with an antipiracy protection making the game quit to desktop, and pirates badmouthing it for “being buggy and constantly crashing”
What would I do with a ghost mode? I would go and look everywhere. But would it make me spend more time in the game? Seeing the time I spent in Flowers just flying around, I guess I would at least spend SOME time…
I just started playing Jade Dynasty over the weekend, and it’s surprisingly good.
The PVE (so far) is totally, totally, meh… grindfest! But in JD, it doesn’t matter, since they give you legal bots, and have amazing autorouting [click a mob name, autowalk to mob, almost never gets stuck].
The game is extremely atmospheric – I’m a wuxia nut, and I can vouch for the fact that JD feels entirely authentically wuxia-ish. (Chinese swordfighting stuff, if you don’t know what that is, then picture the chinese version of medieval knights errant – with ladyknights too.)
While the localisation into English isn’t perfect, the quest text, if you bother to read it, is classic Wuxia through and through. The storylines and the (melo)drama… it’s great. =)
JD seems like a very good ‘tourist’ place, because of the atmosphere, the legal bot, the autorouting, and the fact that mobs just seem plain stupid and you can run madly past most of the dangerous ones while sightseeing. XD
As a F2P, the actual cash shop (real money stuff) is imo, rather nuttily priced. There’s no way to get mounts in game (other than buying them from other players – no mount selling NPCs, other than the cash shop). And the mounts cost US$15-20 for ground mounts, ?US$25? for flying mount – bind on equips. If you only play one character, it’s not so bad.. but if you’re an altoholic, well.. ow.
Respecs are up to US$30 a-piece. Etc, etc. *However* I must emphasize that so far within the first 4 days of play (level 30+ out of ?150?), there seems to be a very definite design philosophy behind how they’re pricing items, which is intregrated with how the game is set up.
For instance, if you mess up your character horribly and don’t want to respec – the bots actually let you level up fast enough that you don’t HAVE to use money to respec unless you’re attached to the character.
I’ve only just joined a clan (guild), and I’m discovering they’ve built in lots of neat social mechanics, while at the same time staying true to the Wuxia genre.
Heh I should probably post a ‘so-far’ review on my own blog (that I never write in lol) instead of spamming up this place. Sorry Tesh! =)
Just thought that the explorer in you might find JD interesting – because right now I’m happily running around touristlike.
—
On an unrelated note, I didn’t like DDO at all. 😦 I quit within 10 minutes, it was giving me a headache, the voiceovers were annoying, and the whole thing was totally unengaging for me. =/
*chuckle*
Spam away, nugget. We’re not afraid of tangents and walls of text around here. Especially relevant tangents. 🙂
I’ve heard some good about JD, so it’s good to see someone else enjoying it. I probably won’t pick it up, but that’s just because I have too much on my plate already. If I had scads of time, it’s definitely one that I’d dig into. I’m a fan of Chinese art, and what little of their history I’ve read is likewise engaging.
DDO really is one of those games that won’t appeal to everyone. No shame in that. 😉 For what it’s worth, though, I wasn’t impressed with the first ten minutes, either, but the game does get better as it goes. At least, it did for me.
Spitfire, aye, all these newfangled ideas like *pixel shaders* are sucking the soul out of games. Why, back in my day, pixels *were* the shading, and artists put each one of ’em there for a reason. 😉
Modran, yeah, there may be good reason for “invincibility” and “explorer” to be split. I suppose it depends on what the game is and wants to do. I’d still want access to both, but they do serve different functions.
[…] already answered that a bit in my Game Tourism article, but to recap, I’d play the game. In other words, if the “game” is […]
Another splendid article Tesh! You are always daring to think outside the box. We need more people like yourself that appreciate the intrinsic beauty of virtual worlds without having to kill everything in sight.
For me, MMOs have become a pretty landscape with railroad tracks cutting a swath through the terrain. As players we can’t really venture to see what’s beyond the sight of our passenger cars. We are tourists as you say, stuck on a predetermined pathway.
I’d rather be an explorer then a tourist on a tour bus.
I want to see what’s beyond that hill. I want to be able to explore and interact with the environment in different ways. There has to be something more to MMOs that just being a murder simulator (I’ve used this metaphor before).
Exactly! And let us play the way *we* want to. Or at least just give players more ways of interacting with the world and expressing themselves.
I am exploring the Misty Mountains at the moment. I found a secret pass, and the public dungeon Goblin Village is also very cool.
I have no ideas about LOTRO’s endgame, but exploring Angmar and the Misty Mountains makes the Explorer and Lore geek in me really happy at the moment.
P.S.: Tesh, how about an edit button, at least working for 1 minute after people posted stuff? 🙂
I have alredy taken some 600+ Screenshots since I started my char in LOTRO. Not taking in account the some 300 I made during the trial phase… 🙂
Longasc, I would *love* an edit button for posts. I’ve spent a bit of time looking for such a setting, to no avail. It makes me sad. I’ll keep looking. 😉
Thought you’d enjoy these old posts since you said you like screenshots 🙂
http://thallians.blogspot.com/2008/06/big-pics.html
http://thallians.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-pics-i-couldnt-resist.html
p.s. I’m all for letting players jump to whatever level they want. I can’t see this being a bad thing. (for players, maybe its bad for check writing businessmen/VC’s) If all people want is the end game they skip to it. Mentoring always seems to be well received also.
Nice, thanks! Screenshots make me happy. 🙂
Mentoring is a good way to handle some of this, yes. It has the benefit of fostering social ties.
…I’m not sure why I’ve neglected adding you guys to my blogroll. *rectifies*
[…] make no secret of the fact that I love flying in games. I am a Bartle Explorer, through and through. Flying is perhaps my favorite activity in […]