Thoughts of a roleplayer

The Science of Magic

2011-03-23T20:02:00.002-05:00

Magic is not magic, you know. It's a science! And like all good sciences, it ought to be observed, studied, theorized and explained. Magic should be something that makes sense in the game world, something internally consistent and explainable, not a plot device that is no sooner introduced that it is dismissed. And perhaps more importantly in an open world, it should be something the players can discover themselves.

Magic, as a natural phenomenon, should be discovered before it can be used. This might be the premise of the world : the formally barbaric, nomadic tribes first settled down when they discovered how to use the natural supernatural forces themselves. From there on, they unraveled, little by little, the threads of life, the elements and spiritual things, increasing the human presence in the world.

Then come the players, in their youthful enthusiasm, expecting incredible forces to be bestowed upon them with little more effort than the destruction of native life forms; and while studying indigenous creatures that have some forms of natural magic might indeed help pierce its deepest secrets, it is through the scientific method, applied rigorously, that players get to discover the new things of their virtual lives. When enough efforts have been applied toward the discovery of things supernatural, new powers can be unlocked, powers of creation or destruction; powers minute or gargantuan; powers shared or jealously guarded, which can then only be found by the same, rigorous process, or by multiple observations of its effects, typically of the painful variety.

All of this, of course, is not possible if the magical powers are simply throw-away elements, token acknowledgements of a fantasy world that is best left rigid and unimaginative, for there can be no science if there cannot be growth of knowledge, through observation and experiments. If, however, precious care is given that the world is not only malleable, but internally consistent, such that players can not only discover its marvels, but collaborate in creating such wonders themselves, then magic becomes not only a science, but also a whole realm of technology, where industries rise and flourish through the many needs of the players. Certainly, many will want the capacity to toss fire and its elemental cousins at undesired intruders, but many more will want simpler things, from constructions and convenience enchantments, to alterations and purely aesthetic creations. Slowly, the players will find ways to outdo themselves, marking the history of a rising magical culture or the downfall of an overambitious nation.

Eventually, beasts will be dissected and elements observed; potent powers will be weaved into fabric and metals; and grandiose spectacles both immensely useful and ridiculously eccentric will be presented. Players will gain power; for its own right, for themselves or for others, they will seek it. Conflicts, both ideological and territorial, will spark, until one or none remains, for it is the nature of men to seek what is unobtainable. And only after too much has been done will men realize the folly of their pursuit. Science is not good or bad, but there are always those who will seek it for either. Magic, then, becomes just one more way for humanity to doom itself. Perhaps their impressive ruins will serve as a warning to future nations, then, to not toy with the basic forces of nature? One can only hope.

Slow, Harduous Research

2010-11-28T22:40:00.003-05:00

What I would like to see in an MMORPG is a system of research for acquirable skills; something that allowed players to spend some time, possibly involving another minigame, and learn a new skill or recipe, or receive a new enhancement, as a passive skill.

On the skill side, this would be akin to intense training, either in general, earning an unknown skill; or in particular, trying to design a skill from scratch. This would be a form of self-teaching, allowing one to gain a skill when no one knows or is willing to teach it. With great effort, a player would discover something new - or possibly understand something they have seen done - and be able to teach it to others. This would allow first-generation players to have something to strive for; and when basic skills have all been discovered and spread, new players will have an easier time catching up to the veterans, making the game more fun for everyone.

For recipes, the system would be similar, but require that the player actually input materials. Experiments using said materials would destroy them, but possibly teach the player some new ways of using them, potentially yielding a working prototype. Again, recipes would eventually spread in the community, if not by teaching, then by reverse-engineering, meaning new players can become useful crafters with less invested time.

As for passive skills, it's all about intense training - one could train themselves to withstand great mental fatigue, for example, hardening them against psychological effects or increasing some related attributes. Even without a precise goal in mind, intense training in their skill in general can yield small but welcome incremental bonuses, something that is always useful to have.

The whole idea here is to allow players to be pioneers in their chosen fields, permanently engraving their names in the history of the world - or perhaps just following the footsteps of heroes of yore, who learned every move people take for granted the hard way.

And darnit, they liked it!

A Realistic User Interfaces

2010-04-12T18:39:00.002-05:00

When you look at the average MMORPG, you sometimes struggle to see the character through all the user interface elements taking up portions of the screen. While they are pretty much essential in creating a decent interactive game, they often take much from the immersive feeling of the game, preventing the players from feeling like they are in a real world instead of a computer game. With the proper elements, however, much of that immersion prevention can be eliminated.

The first step in making the user interface more immersive is not to decorate it with skulls, dragons and fairies, but to make it an actual part of the game. Make the interface something the character sees, a spell of sorts from which everyone benefits. The inventory screen? Part of the spell. Minimap? Spell element. Friend list, character stats, action shortcuts? All part of the character's magical GUI. You can even call the third person camera some sort of hallucination spell that allows a character to see themselves from behind.

With such a complex spell, you can even add new, interesting elements. For example, every character - and event the NPCs - could have their own helper avatar, taking the form of an illusionary butler or maid, or even a playful child; or they could be fairies, skeletons, bunnies, dragons, whatever the player wants. As long as you have the model in the game, you can make it the player's helper; and the helper does more than just help the player around with the GUI. They could act as assistants, reminding players of important events - for example, their own assigned sleep time. They could help the players customize their GUI, perhaps recommending customizations that would fit their needs. They could help players find new things to do - informing them of the best place to go to improve their skills, find mercenary work or go hunting, or any other number of tasks in which the player would like to participate.

Even better, as long as the player is within friendly territories, the helper could stay in touch with local events. They could get the player's magical mail, inform them of new bounties or track down potential party opportunities. With a magical GUI, the possibilities are plenty - and players will no doubt find more themselves, adding to the customization choices; perhaps a market could even develop for customization experts to sell their programming skills for some in-game currency.

With a GUI and avatar, the players can feel immersed, even when looking at a stereotypical game interface. There's nothing to stand in the way of their appreciation of the game, and it actually helps make the players happy, so it's a net win, right?

A Game World

2010-03-31T18:04:00.003-05:00

An MMORPG is defined first and foremost by the world in which its players are allowed to play. It can be a theme park or a sandbox, of course, but past those labels, there is so much more it can be.

In making a game world, one has to choose how everything will interact and, more importantly, how players will interact with the world. Any type of player one wants to find in their world must find something to do, and even players who defy categorization can be accounted for.

Do you make a game for achievement fans and player-killers? Drop the crafting and appearance differences, and make sure you display their appropriate numbers for all to see. If you want socializers, make sure it's easy for them to find each other and form groups. You want a mix of explorers, achievers and socializers? Make your world complex yet friendly, then, and you will find some of each.

But if one wants their game world to be taken seriously, they have to think further than the four Bartle categories. Which killers do you want in your world? You can pick the action-driven ones, and make mercenary work easily accessible. You can pick the ganker, who likes to prey on weaker players, and encourage the laws of the jungle, where only the strongest survive. And as you ponder your game world, you will no doubt notice that the categories just fill themselves; as if the world had taken a life of its own, so will the players fill the world before you even craft it.

In our game, for example, we had a magic-heavy, skill-based, complex world that encouraged player interaction. You'll find that anyone with some social needs will thrive as long as you make it easy for them to find each other; the merchant-like achievers will likewise do rather well if there is enough complexity to allow some speculation on the side; and the killers will find plenty to do if you make it easy for them to jump into the action for their side and get paid for their accomplishments on the battlefield. But, of course, each of them would do well to be explorers, of the world's geography and its basic rules.

If you craft a decent world, players will come; but if you make a deep, wonderful place in which they can live, they will be sucked into your alternate reality. Your world may be a roller coaster or a city builder, but in the end, if you stay consistent in the design, you will end up with something someone wants to play; and that is really the basic of making a game.

The Art and Science of Combat

2010-01-05T10:55:00.004-05:00

Although this is not a distinction often used to describe an MMO's gameplay, I feel it is one that deserves some attention. One should know which of the terms best describes their gameplay, which would undoubtedly help them tell if they're headed the right way in term of design decisions.

If gameplay elements tend more towards making the game a science, then people will have to study numbers and come up with the best formulas; characters will be optimized based on the setup of the day and there will be no decisions to take during the action - they will all have been made in advance, during the planning phase.

Should gameplay elements indicate combat as a form of art, then people should not overly worry about optimization - there will be many working setups, and anyone can contribute, no matter how odd their choices, as long as they have an idea of what they're doing. Decisions on the battlefield will matter more, and the initial plan will likely not survive contact with the enemy.

Although both elements can make for good games, they do not interact well; people will expect one and, seeing traces of the other, will likely complain that the game is not exactly how they wanted it. Combat should be thought of as an art or a science; getting both at once only serves to confuse people.

Importation and Teleportation

2009-11-28T12:05:00.004-05:00

One way to add diversity from combat and crafting is to add the possibility of trading and importation, with the value of goods varying from place to place. Unfortunately, local supplies and demands lose some weight when you factor in fast travel modes like teleportation, flying mounts and machines and the various magical means. While modes of linear travel simply decrease the time between two points, teleportation essentially reduces it to a constant. With that in mind, a way to lessen the importance of teleportation for the transportation of goods needs to be implemented.

If one uses the concept of energy as money, then teleportation can use energy - using the currency itself to fuel the transfer. With that in mind, it would be quite possible to add a so-called teleportation tax, where items need to be prepared before they can be teleported; preparing items requires energy, depending on their weight and inherent magical power, such that using teleportation to trade goods between areas of supply and those of demands becomes financially infeasible, except for a few goods that are small, non-magical and highly priced. Items typically carried by adventurers, while often both heavy and magical, are less of a problem in this case, since said tax need only be paid once to prepare items for teleportation.

With such high burdens associated with faster travel, it would not be uncommon for players to travel between towns, perhaps forming caravans for mutual protection; and players of opposing nations will certainly do their best to disrupt caravans and appropriate expensive goods for themselves. There will be conflicts, politics, intrigue and death; a recipe for a great story to unfold before our very eyes. And when you let players in charge of telling a story, it can either end very well, or very badly, either case being quite interesting, to say nothing of lucrative. Maybe teleportation isn't such a bad idea after all...

Three-numbers attributes

2009-06-23T15:42:00.002-05:00

A lot of depth and realism is lost in games due to the ability of just anybody to recover from near-mortal wounds; or for an exhausted person to be perfectly rested again after very little time. Attributes like health, stamina, mana and whatnot are fine for showing the immediate effects of their decrease, but fail somewhat short of realism for natural (or supernatural) recovery. As such, I propose the use of a three-numbers attribute system : immediately available, short-term recovery, and maximum (or long-term recovery).

Instead of showing attributes as current / maximum, they would be displayed as current / short-term / maximum. Short-term, in this case, is the amount to which the current attribute can easily recover; for example, if stamina shows 45 / 90 / 100, current stamina will naturally recover up to 90, then stay there until the short-term stamina increases.

This can be used to work with any attribute. A slash from a sword, for example, would not be quickly naturally healed, and would deal most of its damage on short-term recovery, prevent easy healing; a lash from a whip, on the other hand, can cause quite a lot of pain, but little actual physical damage - it would recover naturally, given enough time, making whip combat quite different from regular combat - and that's not even considering the value of pain. The various forms of health recovery would differentiate themselves, among other things, by their ability to deal with short-term and long-term wounds. Both would have their uses, and being short on one could be as devastating as being short on the other.

Stamina, on the other hand, would be something more of a long-term resource; the more you use it, the least you have later on. If you've been fighting (or crafting) all day long, you're likely to feel the toll. Your swings are weaker, your reflexes slower, and suddenly, climbing that hill doesn't seem like such an easy task after all. You'll be sitting, after another exhausting event, and watch as your available stamina makes its way back to the again-decreased short-term amount, wondering if now would be a good time to check your supplies, or perhaps sneak a little afternoon nap, hoping no nasty makes its way to your location in the mean time. If you are a crafter, you might want to consider calling it a day after the sixth time you dropped your instrument, and perhaps head to the local drinking establishment and kick back with fellow artisans after a day well spent.

And while we're at it, why not have short-term and long-term mana usage? Depending on the spell used, a magician's powers could be depleted for long-term or short-term; casting lots of smaller spells in quick succession, for example, would decrease the short-term mana pool but leave the long-term pool mostly untouched, while attempting word-shattering evocations would leave a magician looking forward to a day filled with very few spells. Abilities could be acquired which would allow to used more short-term or more long-term mana in a spell, allowing for magic usage tailored to the immediate needs of the wizards and sorcerers.

Should any other attributes be used, they might likewise be interpreted on the three-numbers scale. Morale? Sure thing. Concentration? Certainly. Rage? Perhaps, though it would likely start empty, and build up as the fight progresses. Intimidation? Nature affinity? Zen? They could all work, if implemented right. And what's more, there's little to lose but simplicity to the three-numbers system, and a bit of complexity would certainly be a small price to pay for the myriad improvements this could add to the average MMORPG.

Limits of Emulating Real Life

2008-12-22T21:50:00.003-05:00

In the making of any game, the developers have to ask themselves how much some things have to be emulated, or how much they have to be real. Be it physics, lighting, spawning or AI, everything is important, and often a middle ground must be found, because usually no single concept offers the whole answer.

Take monster spawning, for example. The traditional way of handling respawns is to have creatures pop out of thin air, with no explanation as to why or how they do it; and the harder it is to explain something, the harder it is to suspend one's disbelief. At the opposite end of the scale, however, every spawn is explained in details (and education videos), which takes more hardware to run than all the players together; not really a position in which you want to find yourself, unless you consider the players to be a background upon which the NPCs play their carefully-orchestrated masterpiece.

Finding a middle ground, you want to spawn creatures within growing groups, away from a player's eyes. The circumstances surrounding the addition to a member - or more - to that group should be good enough that the birth of that creature should be obvious and predictable, so that total immersion into the game world can be achieved. You also want the nature of the spawned creature to fit with the game world; should it spawn a member of a species which starts young, then it should be young. Should it spawn within a species with castes, it should belong to a caste, such that the group will be better off with it. And, of course, you should apply a generous amount of randomness in the new creature's abilities, so it can be differentiated from other members of its group, within the capacities of the species and group, of course.

However, there's still plenty of room for deciding how to do things. Do creatures age at a continuous rate, such that you can observe it changing slowly over time, or they they hit stages of life and pop to their new form? Are the capacities of a member decided randomly, or are they affected by its environment? And, of course, do its belonging appear upon birth, or does your creature acquire them through hard, virtual work?

You might also want to compare with the current games on market. People are used to enemies popping into existence, and would probably not look twice if creatures appeared to change before them, without visible reason. The idealism of a realistic virtual world is laudable, but it serves little purpose if it takes you a month to create something the players will never see. Balance in all things also applies to game creation, it seems.

The Laws

2008-12-15T21:07:00.003-05:00

Countries have laws. That's how you make people behave because, seriously, half of them are savages. How you uphold these laws depends on your available resources. With magic, it's kind of easy; just make sure anyone who enters your country accepts a law spell, binding them to the laws of the country, with unlawful actions resulting it automatic penalties upon the lawbreaker.

That being said, what can laws cover? Murder and thievery, of course, at least as applied to lawful citizens of the territories. You'll want to make sure people feel safe in your country, otherwise you might have trouble getting citizens to want joining your country. If you want to establish global or specific taxes, that's entirely in your right. You also want laws which establish your system of beliefs, so that like-minded people prefer your country to allies' or rivals'.

Of course, nobody is forcing you to have fair laws; if you want thievery and murder to be legal (at least against people who aren't YOU), then by all means make them legal. If you don't want goody-two-shoes entering your country, then make it illegal for goody-two-shoesians to do so. Or tax the heck out of them; who said you had to be fair? You're the king (or president, dictator, comrade, what have you), and whoever finds it a good idea to argue with you will find themselves quite acquainted with the meaning of "full extend of the law".

Perhaps more importantly, however, you want to consider the laws of neighboring states; should one of them have strict beliefs regarding certain aspects, you should at least acknowledge them, otherwise no alliance would be possible. With conflicting laws, you will have to actually pick your allies, and it's never possible to satisfy everyone. Enemies will grow of former allies, and wars will be forced upon pacifists, stuck between enemies fighting over trivialities; war is never pretty, but it rarely gets worst than good people fighting for no reason than upholding arbitrary laws.

Yes, laws are important, even when there are none. They define the country and, ultimately, they define the people who live within it, from the humble peasant to the mighty rulers. It's what you believe in, it's the laws you decide to obey that show who you are, and determine your overall experience - be it as a noble paladin or cunning rogue, you will obey the laws, or suffer the consequences.

Mood Swings

2008-12-08T15:37:00.002-05:00

You know you're an adventurer when you can go from the wildest berserker rage to a cowardly retreat within the beat of a heart. The way things work, your mood is affected by what you need to do to react correctly to your environment; how you feel at the moment has no effect on your overall disposition.

What if it was different? (Yes, I know, how unexpected of me). States of mind are not something people can normally easily manipulate; doing so requires monk-like training of both the mind and body. Better to just go with the mood.

But what ARE moods? Moods are anger, fear, love (or lust), hatred, sadness, and all other feelings that make the palette of human emotions. Moods also affect how you act; if a warrior manages to make you angry because of his taunts, then it's normal to want to hurt him. When affected by a fear spell, you'll probably want to run away, because your attacks will be slow and clumsy. Likewise, charms can be dispelled by reminding yourself that that thing over there has tentacles and mouths where they don't belong and are these bones and I'm going to die help me please...

Essentially, moods should move only slowly and over time. A fear spell might not be your best choice against a berserking warrior, just as trying to freezing the mage in his track would be a less than temporary impediment to your opponent, who would most likely not hold back on retaliations. Applied correctly, however, it can prevent the squishiest members of you group from losing the internal part of their favorite organs. Know your targets, and know your capacities, and you will succeed where the best would falter. Let the moods always swing in your favor.

Basics of a Game World

2008-12-01T16:54:00.003-05:00

It's all in the crystals. Really, it is. Crystals have the intrinsic ability of being associated with magical powers, and nobody will ever question a crystal's abilities, because hey, you don't know what they can do.

So if I decide that, say, crystals have the ability to store energy, nobody will question it; it's such a basic concept that it would actually be accepted without any complain. With this, you can make energy your currency - it is transferred easily from crystal to crystal, taken as life energy from the bodies of slain foes, even discharged from items with magical potential.

Once you've established that crystals hold energy, you can make them do plenty of things with it. Want to travel to a remote location? Use energy. Want to enchant an item? Use energy. Died and need to be transported someplace safe? Use energy, if you have any. Every action could have an energy cost or benefit, and it would make a lot more sense than magically converting gold pieces to labor or materials.

Now, we're back to the crystals. See, crystals can do more than store energy - they can be your essential traveling accessory and companion. The crystal provides the game interface, opening holographic windows in front of your character in response to your keystrokes. It contains its own dimension, allowing you to store items as if it was a proverbial hero's almost endless backpack; better yet, with the proper training, material and, of course, energy, you can increase its capacity to suit your growing needs!

Your life crystal is what lets you send messages to far away people. It shows you direction and your surrounding. It records every location to which you have been so that you may travel there again. It knows the name of all your friends and records every last bit of information you might need - not to mention having access to an exhaustive library containing every relevant information one could want. It is your crystal that first greets you in the morning, and the last thing you will see and hear before falling asleep is what you programmed your crystal to show and sing to you.

Do you see the beauty? It's a simple system that encompasses concepts of MMORPGs that have stayed with us so long but which always seemed a bit out of place, as if they were added without much forethought about the impossibility of their presence. With a single concept, a single word, you can have a world that makes sense, from the first shiny to the last dragon; it's a self-contained world, all ready to be explored.

Rebirth of the Thoughts

2008-11-28T21:37:00.002-05:00

So it was two years ago that these humble ramblings first appeared, and it is only appropriate that they should come back on the same day.

I could have posted sooner, but that would simply have resulted in a few sporadic posts. I don't think too many people would want to show up to see a post every month, so I instead kept ideas aside for a grand re-opening. Or something like that.

The point is, the Thoughts are back, and not much has changed, so I hope you keep enjoying my writings!

Exploring the Genres

2008-05-27T17:04:00.003-05:00

The thoughts so far have talked about an MMORPGs of the fantasy genre, by far the most common genre in the current market, but it would also be possible to use the concepts exposed with other genres. Let's take a few of the most popular genres for comparison.

Science-fiction is, of course, the obvious first, being both popular and fairly common. The skill tree of a combat-oriented science-fiction game would be somewhat different, with less emphasize on melee combat, and more on ranged and mechanically-assisted fighting. Crafting wouldn't use many hammers or needles, instead relying on automated mechanics, of both the micro and macro kinds, and the portable and industry sizes, taking instructions from the crafter. Vehicles become more important, ranging from portable impulse generators to space stations rivaling the sizes of inhabited moons. Whether you're planet-side, hunting exotic animals in no less exotic terrains, or fighting the good fight against alien invaders in your rental space ship, you're bound to have the time of your life in a science-fiction MMO.

Next in line is an MMORPG striving for realism, and here you have some problems, because MMOs being what they are, people are bound to get hurt; and if you push the realism too far, you'll find customers quite dissatisfied at permanently losing limbs, or worse. Every forward push of the fun takes away from the realism, until your game has more rule and loopholes than a poorly-worded NDA. Not to say that it's impossible, of course, but I'm not holding out for The Sims 3 to rival World of Warcraft's combat experience just yet.

There's also science-fantasy, where psionic capabilities rival microgravitic field generators. This is the realm of jedi knights saving helpless princesses from multidimensional dragons. You might not have mighty wizards wielding arcane powers and fireballs, but you can be sure the ill-defined laws of the supernatural will offer just the same experience. Like the science-fiction world, the science-fantasy universe will offer multiple planets to explore and conquer, but they will have a greater emphasis on personal capabilities; people with supernatural powers are of little help in ship-to-ship combat, but they will offer great support during close-encounter fights, leading to much different tactics.

Finally, there's steampunk, the oft-forgotten child of history and realistic fantasies, where one can build autonomous androids with a coil of wire and the right Swiss army knife; here, there aren't many machines of mass destruction (not that it'll stop some from trying), so close combat is again important, but you will see a significant number of pseudo-technological objects, from pistols and blunderbusses to esoteric devices affecting the world in every way imaginable. There's no lack of things to do here, so it's probably from a lack of awareness or desire that a world of steam-powered mechanical animals hasn't risen up to the glories of MMORPGs yet.

These is just beginning to scratch the surface of different genres, of course. There could be a lot more to say about those genres (and maybe more will actually be said), and other genres are also possible. Fantasy is king, yes, but even lowly pawns can overtake the mighty king.

Is Procedural The Key?

2008-04-27T09:25:00.003-05:00

First, read this fascinating article at Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Done? Good. Then, at this point, you can't but be as excited as I am about a game that actually tries to make a dynamic MMO. I believe that Love, as it is called, can be a revolution in MMORPG; granted, a man working alone has significantly limited possibilities, but even with one hundredth of the current subscribers of WoW (10 millions, if you need to know), Love wouldn't fail to attract attention from deep-pocket corporations, and some of them might actually want to do more than a me-too game.

With a world that is different every time you visit it, and players who do not feel threatened by a game that tries to be more than the rest and deviates from the norm, you will see in Love nothing short than a new age of MMOs, something that will take gaming, in all its forms, leaps forward, in an era of player-driven worlds and compelling stories. Until then, mister Steenberg, we are waiting. Please don't go Duke Nukem Forever on us...

I Remember Ultima Online

2008-04-08T19:31:00.003-05:00

I remember UO. I was a tamer, yessir, best there was. Anyone needed a mustang, they knew they'd come to me, best tamer, best prices. Of courses, animals were next to useless in combat, but that didn't matter much. Taming was great for me, and that's all that mattered. How this matters is, of course, that I'm going to be talking about animal taming; specifically, the training part of the taming.

In UO, a tamed pet is expected to know all commands. It will understand your speech and attack, follow, move or fetch the newspaper at a word's command. A more interesting concept would have the tamer teach commands to the pet.

A pet would have a base intelligence, which indicates how many commands it can learn. If the pet age is to be a factor, then we can assume an old dog will have more command slots available. These slots are to be filled by a tamer with the appropriate skill learned, through interaction with the pet (Hey, another potential minigame there!). Assuming the taming was successful, the new command can then be used by the pet's master.

Before learning new tricks, however, the pet would need to fulfill some requirements. Besides having enough skill slots, and the intelligence to understand the command, it would need to have trained with the master before, understanding and forming a bound with them. That bound allows a pet to want to perform tricks for the master, in a mutually beneficial fashion. Pets that get transferred to new masters retain their skills, but are unable or unwilling to use them until the new master's bound is high enough.

In other words, taming a colossus of a pet is nice, but you will need to invest lots and lots of time into training it into something decent, and don't even get started on the cost of A-grade dragon meat; feeding a humongous creature is always a costly matter. On the other hand, if all you want is to give a friend a cute puppy, then you've got it easy; dogs are smart and loyal, and not only will they learn cute tricks very easily, they will also form bounds with their new master quickly. New tricks can even be taught by a new master, allowing for tamers specializing in taming or training of particular creatures.

All this can, of course, be adjusted for other forms of companionship. Golems can adapt their positronic brains to suit new tasks, or simply assimilate magical elements that explain new behaviors. Skeletons which go to combat often can actually learn the tricks, and zombies that eat enough brains might start to think better. With evolving allies, one could keep the same pets around for very long periods, without having to worry that their followers would start lagging behind their own development. Of course, you don't have to train them, if you don't want to; piles of bones and stacks of rocks will crush opponents pretty well without training, but sometimes it's the little extra length that makes all the difference. That, and seeing the puppy dance. That's a lot of brownie points right there.

The Currency

2008-03-29T21:10:00.001-05:00

Forget gold pieces, platinums, dollars or even buckazoids; give me shinies.

That is all.

Mabinogi Review

2008-03-24T21:33:00.003-05:00

Mabinogi is an MMORPG developed by the Korean game corporation, Nexon (Also responsible for the popular platformer MMO, Maple Story). The medieval-fantasy setting of Mabinogi is certainly nothing to write home about, but where the game shines is with the core game mechanics, which lie a long step ahead of the competition in term of player interaction. One's success in the game is actually largely influenced by the skills and knowledge of the player.

Taking combat as the first example, by picking the correct skill to use against an enemy, a skillful player can overcome an enemy much more powerful than themselves; conversely, one who does not understand or has not mastered the combat system will often fail, even against enemies of a fraction of their level. The combat system itself is quite complex, and requiring a lot of time to fully understand, but it revolves around a rock-paper-scissor system, which is shared by the players and enemies alike - although some enemies do enjoy some natural abilities outside of the normal combat skills. Magic is done in a similar manner, and choosing between fire, lightning and ice, each having their own distinct effects, can determine the positive or negative outcome of a battle.

Player advancement takes the form of levels, skills and attributes. Levels are what could be expected of an MMORPG, with the exception that level alone does not determine much of a player's survival abilities. While gaining a level does grant increased attributes and the highly-coveted ability point (AP), it is not, by itself, a one-way trip to great power and adulation. Levels simply help you achieve your goals, whatever they may be. The second form of advancement, skills, are simply a more advanced form of skill levels from other MMORPGs. One advances skill by spending the aforementioned AP, available upon leveling, completion of some quests and aging (More on that later). Skills, however, must be trained before being increasable, either through usage, studying, or both, where appropriate. Characters have no strict classes, and are given the choice of picking as many or as few skills as they like; increasing skills, in most cases, requires exponentially more AP, meaning that mastering many skills (getting the rank 1, with ranks going from F to 1, in a reverse hexadecimal numbering system) would require lots of dedication and knowledge from the player. Finally, attributes are the stats that determine the exact outcome of most actions; high strength means more melee damage, high intelligence better magic, high luck more item drops, etc. Attributes are increased through leveling, increasing skill levels, aging and dieting... well, food consumption, at any rate. You can eat meat all day, and it WILL increase your strength - by a small amount - but it will also most likely make you fat, with your character's appearance matching the part. Luckily, gaining or losing weight does not otherwise affect a character.

Another interesting aspect of the game is the 'life' skills, skills not directly related to combat. You can gain skills like cooking, smithing, enchanting, campfire and resting (which allows you to sit - you don't otherwise have the knowledge of the arcane magic of "sitting"). Of these, the main production skills include a small minigame, using the player's skill to determine, in part, the outcome of the production; cooking, for example, requires that the player select the proportions of the ingredients, using a fuzzy and somewhat unpredictable minigame, meaning that more skillful and experienced players will create better food, which allows for better temporary attribute boosts and, in the case of exceptionally good food, short cutscenes showing the character's level of appreciation for the food.

Players also have access to musical instruments, allowing them to play music in the game; in conjunction with the music composition and music theory skills, the instrument playing skill allows the player to play whatever song they can create, from great classics to the anime-du-jour's theme song.

Also interesting to note is the character's age, which plays a great part in determining the type of game the player will be confronted with. Characters can start between the ages of 10 and 17, with 10-years-old characters having lower starting attributes, but gaining them faster over time; this means that experienced players who start at a younger age will end up stronger than their older counterparts. However, attributes increases on leveling up are not flat, but dependent on a character's age, so starting at age 10 might be better for, say, increasing one's luck, but their intelligence will not increase upon leveling up until they get older, meaning that mages will be at a disadvantage if they decide to level up at a lower age. Age also determines a character's height, from short 10-years-old to adult characters (those of age 18 or above).

There would be much more to talk about here, but I believe the point is made; this game is, I believe, along the path of evolution for the MMO genre, propelling the genre forward with convention-shattering mechanics which would make gaming philosophers red with shame. Any real MMO enthusiast owe it to themselves to try this game at least once, and with the coming of the 'first generation' (G1) update, there is now much to do in Mabinogi (Although we can only hope that the game will be able to catch up with its Korean counterpart, which has been enjoying more advanced features for years now).

On a final note, the game is free to play, with additional features available through the cash shop. Pets and fluff items are planned, but most importantly, the characters cards are available, which allow one to either create an additional character on an account (Limited to one initially), or rebirth an existing character, re-setting their age and attributes (Except attributes from skills) and optionally changing their appearance, but keeping the character's skills. At high level, rebirthing is the only viable way to increase skills, since APs are slower to come by the more your character gains age and levels. This way, one can pay to increase their character's power, which acts similar to an optional monthly cost that increases the rate of power gain.

Concentration as a Resource

2008-03-02T21:42:00.002-05:00

Last time, I mentioned that getting hit could temporarily reduce your concentration. One is in their right to ask; what, exactly, does concentration do?

In the Real Life MMORPG, concentration is what allows you to keep track of what's in your head. Better concentration will allow you to solve more complicated problems, avoid distractions and ignore annoying people. In an MMORPG trying to emulated this all-time favorite, concentration would be a resource, which gets filled with what you do.

Say, you're a sword fighter; a barbarian. You don't have much to think about... The foe is over there, try to hit him while he doesn't hit you. If you start fighting defensively, you start concentrating on your opponent's moves, trying to find an opening. Your concentration is fully taken by your opponent. But what if some idiot starts throwing rocks at you? You can either ignore them, or try to avoid them; either way, it's going to start eating at your concentration. Fighting more opponents means you have less time to dedicate to beating them to a pulp.

What if your barbarian is also a tamer? You can send your pet panther at the village idiot, but that would mean you have to give orders, and you have to make sure the pet isn't doing anything bad. Overseeing minions does take away from your concentration.

What if you also have a friend with you? Your trusty mage sidekick is behind you, tossing pain and destruction at your mutual opponent, while relying on you to defend him. You have to keep between the friends and the foes, lest the friends start looking for a new meat shield. Concentration is taken away, once again, by having to worry about something. A tank you may be, but you're a tank with lots on his mind. Now you really wish you had paid more attention in those meditation lessons.

The concept would be the same for a magic-user. The spells you cast will take away at your concentration, and gosh forbid you should cast a continuous spell; simply keeping into effect would take parts of your concentration away, not to be recuperated until the spell is gone. Of course, you can always customize the spells you use to fill exactly as much concentration as you need them to, but that doesn't mean the system is any easier on you.

Keeping track of every effect affecting concentration may be more complicated than what the average gamer is used to, and with today's attention spans at an all-time low, one would be better off picking one role, and sticking to it. Sure, you can learn all the skills you want, but don't expect to marsh in the middle of armies, completely invincible. Sooner or later, your concentration will be overwhelmed, and you will fall. Hard.

The Value of Pain

2008-02-18T12:47:00.002-05:00

There you have Samron, the warrior. Samron is a tough guy; he will take hits from his foes all day and never feel the least bit of pain. He doesn't expect his foes to feel any, either. Why would anyone want to stop fighting to feel pain, anyway? That would just be silly.

Of course, Samron does have kind of a point. If players get hit all day, it doesn't make any sense to have them feel pain. A warrior who feels pain would fall to the ground after the hundredth stab (Or perhaps go insane and enjoy the pain, but that's another story). What we need is a game where hitting someone isn't so trivialized. Pirates of the Burning Sea had something like that; attacks aren't directed at the opponent's health, but at their balance. When the opponent's balance is lowered enough, you can start shoving pieces of metal through their bodies, with lots fewer chances of the opponent avoiding the attack somehow.

What happens, then, when people start feeling pain? Well, for one, players will have a much greater respect for willpower. Typically, those who have high willpower in role-playing games are the wizards and mages, who are expected to put lots of efforts towards their craft. Personally, I don't really see a wizard take a few punches and keep dishing them, which would be a pretty good standard for willpower if I ever saw one.

No, those who need willpower the most are the front line soldiers, people who are expected to stand between the squishies and the squishers, shields high, blocking and taking hits so that people who can't take care of themselves still get their share of the loot at the end of the day.

So what would pain do to those who aren't tough heroes of the front lines? Why, it sends them to their knee, of course. Few people could take a sword or a mace to the face and stand proud before their enemies. Since they are adventurers, however, we will assume that they are not totally unaware of pain, and have come somewhat prepared. For those who can take pain, however, it's not as if there is no penalty. Concentration, for one, suffers greatly. Tossing spells and shooting projectiles is not something you want to do when you have your mind preoccupied by the large, bloodied crack in your skull.

With concentration as a resource, players would be much warier of getting hit. The damage may be a few inconsequential, quickly healed hit points, but the loss of concentration from the hit and pain might mean the difference between a well-placed fireball and a misfired fire bolt.

So next time you stand behind your favorite tank, dishing out your favorite mass-murder incantations at unsuspecting mobs, take a moment to thank the warrior for taking the hits for you. He might be wearing thick armor with more spikes than a hedgehog on speeds, but no one likes to take a club across the face. He's doing it to protect you, so be nice to his still diminishing IQ points now, will ya?

Let's Go Cray

2008-01-21T21:40:00.000-05:00

If you've been reading these rantings for a while, you know that I want more from an MMORPG than what is offered today. I want realistic advancement. I want a realistic world to explore and conquer. I want fun trade-skills, and generally fun at every corner. But there's also lots of things that I think would be fun, but I haven't mentioned because they aren't practical, due to hardware or social limitations. So I'm going to go crazy now, and name all the pretty ponies I want for my birthday.

First of all, what about a full character customization? Having lots of options is nice, and the Elder Scrolls series has a nice character customization, but what if we could get more? Say, going clay modeling for the face, or opening 3D studio to design the character; or maybe picking hair style by combining many styles into one. This would certainly be leaps forward compared to current MMO trends.
Chances of this happening : We won't see anything this advanced because people can't be trusted with full openness; I'm still holding out for something that makes me go 'wow' the way Oblivion did.

What about a nice social network? You could rate the people you interact with in-game, and the game would tell you how much it expects you to like other people. People with similar beliefs would be registered by a state-of-the-art AI and could more easily find each other, thus enhancing their game experience.
Chances of this happening : I'm not holding my breath; socializers are usually the first ones to suffer from budget cuts.
(For those who are more programming-savvy, I've been told that friend-of-a-friend software is O (n^2), so it probably won't happen for a while)

If we're going crazy, why not add destructible environment? With real world constraint calculations? And realistic physics, thrown in for good measure? Of course, the ability to interact with the environment and leave a lasting mark would be nice, but what we all know we want is to see what happens you we toss fireballs around like maniacs. Show me a gamer who doesn't like explosives and I'll show you someone in denial.
Chances of this happening : Cold day in heck. Aside from the fact that MMORPGs of today are static games, we also have to remember that the system needs to do all of those things simultaneously for all those people connected. It's nice to dream, but unless they invent infinite computational power tomorrow, I won't be holding my breath too long...

Could be more, of course... What about growing up as a child? The ability of a game to interact with the real world in a meaningful way, such that real work can be accomplished in a more relaxing atmosphere? Or a smart, unpredictable AI? Heck, any AI at all would be nice. Just toss us an AI bone. We'll take anything, really.

Ahem...

What else have I forgotten? Aside from virtual reality, or mixing all the genres into one large mega-game, what else could be done, in a perfect world, to move the MMORPG genre forward, and help the cause of boredom-deprivation?

Reverse-Engineering Crafting

2008-01-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't it be nice to find a nice Sword of Everlasting Pepper, and be able to tell how it's made? Check out the blade and learn about the crafting process; cut out the leather hilt to tell where it came from; or maybe analyze the enchantment to know how you, too, would be able to create spicy, delicious condiments at a moment's notice, astounding friends and foes alike with your culinary prowesses.

You would first go to your trainer, of course, asking if he, or any of his colleagues, knew how to create the desired ingredient-spawning magic. Learning that such an art is only known to a currently hostile population, but knowing that your life would have no meaning without the capacity to summon the indispensable treat at will, you would venture in a long trek along snaky roads and pointy mountains, braving dangers unknown to sentient-kind, only to yet again face death in the hands of the spicy masters. Claiming your prize, you would go along disassembling it, hoping you would be skillful enough to pinpoint and understand what, exactly, makes deadly arsenals create such a delightful supplement.

Playing a minigame of difficulty varying depending on the power of the knowledge or knowledges you seek proportional to your own, you hope that you can understand the mysteries of sharp and blunt seasoning before you completely ruin the weapon; should you fail, you would be forced to find another similarly powered item to once again attempt reverse-engineering the peppering process. Should you win, of course, you would be covered with glory; you would sell the final products to rich warriors hoping to add a little spice to their fights (horrible pun intended), and masters of the arts would travel from distant lands in hope of trading secrets with one such as you.

This is the only thing keeping you going, of course. Through freezing tundras or fiery volcanoes you march, with the only thought being of the power and glory that would be rightfully yours should you manage to bring the knowledge of such power to your undeserving homelands. Be proud, my friend, for your goal is noble. We will await you here, knowing, with each bland meal, that you are working hard to deliver us from our culinary impediments. Forward!

A Magic-Intensive World

2008-01-09T17:19:00.001-05:00

Everywhere you look, it's pretty much always the same things... You've got the throng of medieval-fantasy worlds on one side, then the ones trying something different on the other... There's science-fiction, modern, science-fantasy and a few others, of course, which should be praised for at least not introducing even more orcs and elves to an already Tolkien-saturated market, but beyond those few gems of varying shines, there's little to keep a fantasy enthusiast entertained.

An idea I had is of a fantasy world not unlike those swords-and-fireballs me-too clones out there, but with the distinction that magic is a prevalent and abundant power. Most people, no matter their profession, are expected to know their own share of magic, and science, for the most part, is relegated to hobbyists looking to pass the time between their magic-using jobs and watching the magic TV. That is not to say that people of the magical world are still using flint stones to skin the Tarrasque, of course, since an abundance of magic means a lot of potential for growth that do not require knowledge of fission. Buildings are built by taking the raw materials and shaping them in the desired shape; food is grown and harvested by highly specialized agricultural spells, and whatever tools a magical society does need are created by telling the otherwise obedient laws of nature to shut up and do as they're told.

Barring external forces, our magic society would evolve towards an utopia at an alarming rate. A powerful and common magic means most actions are easier to take than within a non-magical world, so fewer people are necessary to do the basic maintenance, leaving more people to advance the arts of the crafts even further. In an advanced magic society, sustenance is assured, work loads are light and movement is trivial. All that's left is to create greater and greater things. That, or finding an opposing force, of course, which is somewhat typical of an MMORPG.

So yes, strictly speaking, it might be a medieval fantasy game, but you'll have to search long before you find a sword to swing, or a dragon that isn't friendly or dead. People might still need help, though. Now where did I put this 'summon exclamation mark' scroll, already?

Advanced Item Enchanting

2007-12-28T00:06:00.001-05:00

When enchanting an item, you typically only decide on a single enchant - say, additional strength; yet, you will find items in your quests that bear multiple powers. I suggest that item enchanting be more open to the player's choices.

Item enchanting should be limited by two things - one, how many enchants an item can take, and two, how much power the enchants can have. The first is mostly self-explanatory - items cannot take an indefinite amount of enchants, although some items will take more than other, depending on size, material, shape, craftsmanship and whatnot.

The power of enchants an item can take plays a much more important role in determining what someone can do with it, however. Typically, more powerful enchants would take exponentially more power. If running out of power, one could 'use up' an enchant slot to place a negative enchant, which would allow more power for positive enchants. Such negative enchants could include penalties to stats, skills and peripheral attributes (vision, speed or regeneration are a few), which would mostly be the counterparts of positive attributes; other, less common negative enchants could include added weight, penalties under certain conditions (cold, evil, wet...) or even soul binding - the first person to equip this item is bound to it, and cannot trade it. Powerful artifacts could be custom-made for a particular customer, who would want it soul-bound so they could fit a few more precious points into their prized possessions.

Additionally, enchanting would require components, with components of different quality having different ratios of enchant-power to enchant-consumption. The scales of Queralyx, the Great Black Wyrm, who was slain in an epic battle to be told for generations to come, will give more powerful enchants than the eyes of Robert the Newt Who Happened To Wander Too Close To Town - and whose slaying didn't generate as much as a haiku, much less a ballad. More advanced players will get more advanced enchants, though the difference isn't such that using an item a few notches lower in the power scale should prevent a player from achieving anything worthy of Bardic Tale status; they just won't mention the rather bland spear he used to pierce the bad guy's cardiac locations.

Should an adventurer wish to acquire an item worthy of legends, which they could pass to their proud offspring as a powerful family heirloom, however, they would need to get lots of work done; most likely, they will require help, presumably in the form of loyal guildmates, ready to climb the highest mountains for their beloved friends. Great beasts must be slain, rare resources be found and harvested, great care be placed in growing only the best ingredients for such a creation. Or I guess they could buy the items at the market, but where's the fun in that?

Finally, when all the ingredients are carefully selected and you know exactly what enchants you want, you have to pick an enchanter. The enchanter you pick must be able to create the enchants you want, of course, but should ideally be powerful in the type of enchants you want - a priest enchanter would be better at creating a holy weapon than a necromancer, after all. That enchanter would also be someone trusted, for he would be in possession of an item of great power. Finally, you must pick someone with a renown for creating great items, because enchanting isn't easy, and should they perform poorly at the enchanting game, the resulting item would be much weaker than it otherwise could have been, effectively wasting much of the resources used in the process.

When all this is done, however, and you have your shiny new item, you can parade around town, showing off your new-magic-item smell to the ahh-ing and ooh-ing crowds. Because in the end, we know you're not doing it for the killing or the bonuses - you really just want more pretty lights and fancy colors around your character; and don't we all?

What You Do Matters

2007-12-15T14:29:00.000-05:00

So often, in MMORPGs, you see dozens of people killing the same creature over and over. You see them forming a line or entering instances just so they can slay the same boss. What happened to causality? It seems like doing something does not have consequences; if that is the case, then why bother?

Wouldn't it be much better if players could have an influence in the world? If slaying an evil beast would essentially mean that it is gone, no longer to plague the world with its taint? Of course, the players coming second will find only a lair largely devoid of opposition, but at least it would make a certain amount of sense. If you are worried that the world might become unpopulated, simply instill a rule of less killing, more reward; each opponent becomes a challenge, and players are forced to use their tricks much more efficiently, rather than continuously using the same skills over and over.

By giving players the opportunity to change the world, you give them the chance to make a difference. Players will feel special after successfully completing a rescue mission, because they know that, had they not done it, the would-be rescuee could very well have been killed, permanently affecting the world in a negative way. Likewise, players deciding to go on a rampage, killing innocents left and right, would find that not only are they now permanently hunted everywhere, but they have had an effect on their fellow players that could most likely be felt for a long time to come.

If more MMORPG developers were trying new things, pushing back preconceptions that have no room in a modern game, then we would see a real revolution in gaming. For now, we must live with revolutionary games that do things the way they've always been done.

Where am I?

2007-11-23T11:28:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, I haven't been very faithful in posting. Truth is, I'm posting my new ideas on the Metaplace forums. Give it a look someday, you can discuss new ideas with the brains of tomorrow's MMORPGs.

Multiplayer Crafting

2007-11-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

What happens when you want to make a lamellar armor, but only have smithing skills? Without leather working skills, making an armor combining leather and metal pieces would be tricky, at best. While you could theoretically create parts of the armor beforehand, and then leave them in the care of a leather worker to complete the process, such cooperation would most likely imply waste and inefficiency. A better method would be to work together on a single item.

What happens, then, is that one player initializes the crafting, and asks the other player for help. Together, they smith and weave away, using their combined skills and resources to create the masterpiece, their efforts rewarded with an item they both can be proud of.

This could be used for other collaborations, of course. A master smith could get help from an apprentice; the apprentice gets to work on their skill, and get paid for it, while the master gets some assistance, making the crafting minigame that much easier. Enchanters could easily work in parallel with other crafters so that their enchantments can be placed on items of greater power.

It might be wishful thinking, some would think, but I think adding multiplayer crafting would really help the genre progress forward as a true multiplayer game, instead of a multiplayer solo game.

Where Does It Come From?

2007-11-01T21:22:00.000-05:00

The enemy? Where does it come from? Ho, it just appeared there, you say? Because the last time it died was exactly 30 minutes ago? Well, that's inconvenient, our soldier died 18 minutes ago; we'll have to wait another 12 minutes before we're saved. Let's hope there's a level-appropriate adventurer nearby who will accept the quest, otherwise we're all going to take a 30-minutes trip to limbo. T'would be a shame, really.

Yeah, OK, not quite subtle, but I got the point across. Mostly. I think.

Where do these enemies come from? And, while we're at it, those allies? They just spawned there, it seems. That doesn't make sense. Everything should come from somewhere. And I do mean everything. There is no infinitely respawning enemy. There is no infinitely respawning quest reward. And there is no infinitely respawning iron node, herb patch or vendor item. If you want herb, you either get it yourself, or hope someone has harvested some recently. And if you want to kill some goblins, you don't go to goblin camp #121; you go search for them. Get some rumors, while you're at it, it would probably help.

So where do evil goblins come from? The goblin frontier, most likely. What is the goblin frontier, you ask? Ho, you didn't? Should have, it was a good question.

So what is the goblin frontier? It's where goblins come from. More importantly, it's the place that has a very large amount of goblins. Short of a massive invasion force, you cannot as much as hope to push them back a little. If you do amass a massive invasion force, however, then you may stand a chance. Hit them hard enough, and they will be forced to move back and rebuild, leaving their precious land behind, ready to be conquered; lucky for you, you just happen to have (what remains of) a massive army around. So your investment paid off, and now you have some more land to call your own.

Even if the invasion fails, however, it would not have been in vain. Any force standing a chance against the enemy army would most likely deal massive damage to their organization. Such damage is sure to take a long time to repair, meaning that invasion forces, settlers and adventuring parties from that organization will be in shorter supplies for some time, leaving you with an easier defense and the enemy with less spoils from the conquests.

The same would happen in player versus player. If you want the evil player-run city to disappear, you amass an army; the difference being that players aren't always online, so you have to find a mean to organize a raid that gives a fair chance to both parties. Until you do, you can just go scouting for goblins, or maybe ore veins. It beats grinding on foozles, for sure.

MMORPG Food

2007-10-29T15:27:00.000-05:00

Ideally, in an MMORPG aiming for realism, nourishment should be encouraged. Forcing players to eat could be bad, though, since that could mean some players would find themselves in a downwards spiral, with no way back up. That's what we call a Bad Thing.

The way it works right now, more often than not, is that food is an optional bonus. At best, food bonus is a nice thing. Most of the times? It's just a useless side-effect that has no real significance in the game.

How do you make food realistic? By having a morale stat, of course. The higher the morale, the more wondrous feats you can accomplish. And the better the food you eat, the more your morale increases (For a time). So, starting players will not invest too much into foodstuffs; they have other things to care about. Experienced players, however, will prepare feasts for every meal, complete 5-courses sets that send their morale through the roof and makes them that much more dangerous to the local dragon population. They will be sure to always carry the best rations in their bags of foodstuffs preservation + 2, always have a bottle of fine elven wine handy, "just in case", and be sure to bring a picnic golem with them, to really enjoy their mid-raid snack fully.

I think food buffs should last longer, too. Something like 24 in-game hours sounds good, so you can afford to eat a modest dinner or something; just as long as you have a full, 10-pounds breakfast. Wouldn't want you to starve halfway towards the deadly dragon den now, would we?

To Serve And Protect

2007-10-24T21:02:00.000-05:00

What do you do to prevent ganking in an open PvP MMO? On the one hand, if you don't allow player PvP in the open world, your game ends up as a glorified single-player game; on the other hand, too much PvP with too few penalties lead to a world populated by player-killers. What's the right middle point?

Obviously, you'll want to have some level of PvP, but limit the capacity of malicious players to harm their fellow sentients; either of them is missing and you lose credibility as a MMORPG. There are things players can do to prevent being killed, of course, including staying in the main cities. If they never leave it, then they'll be safe; they just won't be adventurers. Many people want to be adventurers, however, and few of them want to deal with evil players.

One solution is to designate areas where PvP may happen. You'll want areas near your main cities to be safe, so that adventurers can get some good, clean fun bashing goblin skulls away. You might also want to protect areas where players may be weaker, such as when adventuring, so gankers don't use the fact that they're weakened to slaughter them. Finally, it's a good idea to be sure that wherever a new player can go is safe; they are the easiest targets, after all.

Another thing you can do is penalize griefing. Player killers can be declared criminals, and be pursued by armed forces whenever they try to enter lawful settlements; by making sure they aren't safe in most cities, you decrease their power, and make other players safer. Merchants can look down on people of low morals, and decide to charge more for their services. You can add some supernatural penalties as well; players with a negative Karma get penalties on many things, to a point that evil players will have to expend resources trying to negate these penalties. Finally, you can forgo any kind of excuses and just add meta-gaming penalties for player killers, such as harsher death penalties, limited skill usage and, in the most extreme cases, character deletion by the developers, if the player's action are against the out-of-game rules.

Griefers can be penalized by the players themselves, of course; many will not hesitate to pursue evil characters simply to rid the land of them; but you could also have the ruling NPCs pay bounties on criminals, such that they would never feel safe, even in cities that accept them. Players who decide to go hunting evil characters could also receive a bonus to their game Karma, improving their standing with certain factions, or possibly deities.

There may be other ways to protect the average player's game experience, for example by making death penalty almost non-existent, but more extreme cases need to be considered more thoroughly; you don't want your penalties or compensations to get exploited, after all. If you can't agree on a good way to prevent player killing, however, it might be better to take it out entirely. Better a fully cooperative game than a ganker paradise, after all.

Sand Boxes

2007-10-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

The term "sandbox" gets thrown around in MMO discussions sometimes; in this case, it refers to games that do not force players into the normal treadmill gameplay of gaining power to get access to the next area, by instead offering an open world which players are free to explore as they wish. This has the advantage of being more immersive, but is often confusing to new players. World of Warcraft has proven that a low barrier of entry is a good policy for games aiming for a mass appeal.

But why would it be called a "sandbox"? True enough, a pit of sand is hardly the most exciting thing to expose players to, but it does offer a good analogy as to how to make a simple world be open.

Take a swing. Kids can swing from it. Inventive kids will try jumping from it, or maybe standing on them, but in the end, that's all there is to it. Swinging. Same thing for a slide. You slide down the slide. Trying to climb the slide just doesn't work. It's just a slide.

In a sand box, however, things are a bit different. You're not limited to only one thing. Most kids will want to play with the sand; building cities and castles. That's the core of the gameplay; most people who play MMOs do it for the adventuring. Some other kids will go sculpting faces and animals, practicing their crafting skills. Some will just sit in the sand and chat with other kids. By their very presence, they make the sandbox a more social environment. Try chatting with a kid going down a slide, or building a castle out of a swing. Yeah, poor results.

Of course, there can be more to it. Kids will bring their trucks and dolls (sorry, action figures) and make-believe great stories. Stories of heroes going out to kill evil dragons. Stories of explorers finding new lands. Stories of imaginary people having great, imaginary adventures. That's what kids want, and it seems there's a bit of a child in all of us. A child who just wants to play in the sandbox again.

Item Identification

2007-10-04T21:47:00.000-05:00

Phil the Barbarian was fighting a ferocious demon, one that has been ravaging his homeland almost without stop for days now, yet showed no sign of fatigue. The demon wielded a powerful sword enveloped in flame, which seems to faze in and out of existence almost continuously, making it hard to fight against. Just the same, Phil was able to summon his natural berserking abilities and added new orifices to its body. The demon fell, like all of the barbarian's previous adversaries.

Searching its remains, Phil found a twisted long sword. That the sword was magical, Phil had no doubt about it; he was so well-attuned to magic that he could easily tell such simple things. What the enchantment did, however remained a mystery, and until the spell was identified, the sword would remain useless.

Trekking his newfound weapon and glorious victory to the nearest town, Phil joined the line to get the quest reward for killing this powerful enemy. That formality out of the way, the barbarian headed to the nearest identifier, who informed him that the sword was in fact a powerful Flaming long sword of Fazing; seeing now that the sword was immaterial and emitting flames, Phil thanked the identifier and went on his way, wielding his now-burning acquisition.

If you can count all the things wrong in this story, congratulations, your IQ is probably higher than the average MMO player. That being said, I have only one question remaining : why is it that items which have an obviously-identified magical property cannot be used until you ascertain that it is indeed what it obviously is?

Ponder that one, young grasshopper. Find the answer, and ye shall receive a king's ransom of gold; that is, 9 silver pieces. It seems kings aren't as valuable as they used to be.

Second Hand Sword

2007-09-30T17:18:00.000-05:00

In MMORPGs, there is only one way to get an item; usually, that way is to kill the one who owns it (sometimes more than once). If it's not a drop, it's a quest reward, or a craftable. Yet one is left to wonder, who made that sword in the first place? Ophelia is so great, that the gods appeared in front of her to give her the sword? Or maybe she was BORN with that plate helm on; we all know what happens with all that chaos magic...

And what about quest givers? You would think that he would run out of wands of incineration eventually, but it seems he's always willing to hand it to adventurers who slay his life-long enemy.

In a more realistic world, items are created by someone for a purpose. When not created by players, the sword has to be thought by an A.I. somewhere, who will decide that with the materials at hand or easily available, the best sword to make is one with fire and speed enchants. Then the NPC will simulate playing the smithing minigame, and create a sword according to those results.

That's how you get a new sword; and if an NPC can make it, you can bet that players will be able to do it too. There's no reason to limit what they can do just because they pay the monthly fee.

Pack Yak

2007-09-23T16:11:00.000-05:00

Your party's inventory space is limited. The barbarian is already knee deep in priceless artifacts and the rogue has run out of room in their bags of holdings. You found plenty of bags, but the only animals around are bulls and yaks, and those can't be used as pack animals. Why? Because the programmers didn't think it would be useful.

In real life, anything from a dog to an elephant, and then some, has been used to carry stuff around, and that works great. Cheap to feed, quadrupedal animals have always made an easy living by carrying humans' stuff on their strong backs. Not so much in video games, which have yet to acknowledge the carrying capacity of anything beyond mules and llamas.

And that is common practice in video games, to give each object a single purpose, ignoring all others. Hammers are for hitting things, not building them (Or the other way around; but never both). A vegetable is to be used in recipes, never to be eaten. And don't you dare suggest that axes can cut trees. Trees are for decorating, and sometimes burning down for your enjoyment. You can get wood at the general store over there.

Objects are for much more than just their primary scripted purpose, but it seems people think it too hard to do more than one thing at once. I certainly hope that trend disappears sometime soon, otherwise those points spent in animal taming and leather working would have been for nothing. No pack yak for me!

Metaplace MMOArrPG

2007-09-19T15:52:00.000-05:00

Metaplace is a service that allows you to build your own virtual world or MMORPG; just like Multiverse, but Metaplace has the name Raph Koster tackled to it, so it's going to be good, right?

The goal is to allow anyone to make a virtual world, big or small, if they feel like it. You can put it on your web site and have people look at your latest projects, or make a whole game out of it and see people swarm to it. And that is interesting. That speaks to me.

It means I could start coding a world, and have natural selection decide whether it's good or not. It means I could be part of a team, and help make a virtual world become true.

So what do you say? Does the prospect of building a world after your own mind speak to you, or will Metaplace go down in history as yet another ambitious project that didn't work?

On Market Analysts

2007-09-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

In MMORPGs these days, the one best way to make money isn't always to kill stuff or get some kind of resources; often, you can make bundles by playing the market. People make their living in the virtual worlds by buying low and selling high; indeed, sometimes, people play for no other reason than to make more money. Even gold traders get some of their supplies from virtual market traders.

But not everyone wants to play the market. Not everyone wants to care about the price of copper in their cities. Sometimes, people just want to make an honest profit. So I suggest a "sell to market" feature.

For a nominal price, players can put their hard-earned goods for sale on the market, tweaking some bits about desired profits and wait time. The goods are then put for sale automatically at a variable price, determined by factors only market analysts would dare delve into; the player's hands and mind are free of caring about whether or not they got a fair price, or whether or not someone is going to make a quick profit from their hard work.

Then players can go back to playing the game like it was meant to, whatever that happens to be in their case; but not playing the market. Market's doing very well on its own, thank-you-very-much.

Traditional MMORPG Progression

2007-09-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

In a traditional MMORPG, the player is expected to put some inputs in the system. First, you usually give some cash; sometimes more, if the game allows real money trade for in-game resources(Or if it has a black market). Then you give time. Time is the primary input resource of an MMORPG; you input time, and the game outputs progression. Better knowledge of the game means you can output more progression for the same amount of time, but in the end, it's still the same time => progression graph.

In any other type of game, where there is an ending, progression means much less. Nobody will care that you have collected all the sparkles of power once you've defeated the final boss. Your progression becomes meaningless once you have uninstalled the game, so the developers have to make sure every moment of the game is enjoyable.

In an MMORPG, however, there is typically no ending, meaning that to keep you hooked, the devs have to give you more progression. They will give you harder and harder bosses all the time. After a while, it won't be possible to progress anymore all by yourself, you'll have to team up with more progressers to defeat bigger, nastier bosses to get more progress points. It's always about progress; never about fun. It seems that you can't have fun anymore, because fun doesn't sell.

If you need me, I'll be playing progress quest. Wake me up when there's a progress-less MMORPG out there.

Good versus Addictive

2007-08-31T12:48:00.000-05:00

MMORPGs sell well usually because one of two things; either they're good, and people enjoy playing them, or they're addictive, and people can't bring themselves to stop playing them.

Most people who have played MMORPGs have some insight in the nature of addiction; it's what happens when you see something you don't overly enjoy, but you can't bring yourself to stop doing it. (Technically, an addiction is a "compulsion or overpowering urge to use a substance, regardless of potential or actual harm", but who's counting?) Addictive MMORPGs will offer you a fun and easy start, where everything is smaller than you and gives you great (relatively speaking) rewards. They'll hook you up to leveling, loot and quests so that you have a feeling of accomplishment when those happen, thus insuring that you will WANT to play the game. Then you're hooked.

Good games, however, will present you content that is thoroughly enjoyable all along, and let you decide how to spend your time - thus ensuring that you enjoy the parts you like most while minimizing the tedious ones. Good games don't need to bribe you with levels and big loot, they only need to present you with activities you might find enjoyable, and let you play them. Then you're hooked.

The big difference, in my opinion, stems from the fact that you are better off after a Good game - you've enjoyed yourself, and are happier. Addictive games, however, will try to present you with more goals to reach, with less regard to the actual enjoyability of reaching these goals.

Some of the upcoming games right now seem to have understood the distinction, and seek to give you an enjoyable experience with innovative design and non-repetitive events. They might not be the skill-boasting free-to-explore MMORPG of tomorrow's dreams, but they try their best to entertain the players, rather than hook them, and that is certainly worthy of mention.

Choices of Advancement

2007-08-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

Now, I've talked about a pure PvP advancement, but that doesn't mean it's the only form of non-regular advancement. Players can be whatever they want in the game, including simple civilians.

Some would find buying resources and making items boring (even with the great minigames), but that's normal; different parts of the game appeal to different people. The important part is that one does not need to kill anything to progress in the game. They can be crafters, of course, or gatherers, but they can be much more.

For one, with an open market, they can be merchants or traders, buying low and selling high. Or they can be bookies, taking bets at the arena. They could provide various services, perhaps scouting new ore deposits for harvesters, or maybe taming exotic pets and selling them to city dwellers. And if all this is not enough, they can be politicians or activists, where they wouldn't need any skills for their characters, simply the support of the population, and be able to make a difference in the (virtual) world.

It doesn't matter what one likes to play, there is something for everyone; that is, after all, the point of a role-playing game.

Pure PvP Advancement

2007-08-24T15:00:00.000-05:00

Sure, there's plenty to do on the PvP side, but would that be enough? Is it possible to play the entire game, as some kind of adventurer, fighting other players almost exclusively?

On the one side, starting players don't offer much to a confrontation. They would have to take odd jobs or join a mercenary group; which, hopefully, should be possible. Battlefields can be won with a heavier purse, should one side have no head for finances. Beyond that, however, when characters gain more power, reputation and allies, what options open for a pure PvP increase system?

The main concern with players fighting only other players, of course, is that the resources stay within the system. You might have gatherers mining, cutting and harvesting their fortune from the land itself and adventurers bringing home the loot from their latest conquests, but those who PvP have only their own skills to count towards income. They can form groups of mercenaries, fighting for the highest bidder and recruiting aforementioned newcomers, or they could join standing armies for a regular income, but can't slay evil and take their stuff, since player looting is just out of the question. A Pvper's income has to come from non-PvPers, even if it just means their harvester friends.

If demand for mercenaries is good, however, it's absolutely plausible that someone who doesn't like to fight NPCs could both make a living and have some fun playing the game simply by posting offers or checking the latest want ads; and since they will be fighting all day (and most of the night), their skills will increase by themselves. So yes, it's possible to gain power by fighting only other people, it just might require some more work than the regular adventuring would.

What about the PvP?

2007-08-20T15:41:00.001-05:00

Some people like safe PvE, some people like arena-style PvP, and some people want unrestricted PvP. You can't please everyone, of course, but I realize I've talked very little about possible PvP rules. What could be done to try to please everyone would be to split the server into multiple parts, allowing different rule sets for each server. I, however, am not a real fan of multiple servers situations, so I will use my impressive intellect to find a better solution.

The first condition is that newcomers must be protected from killers, so as to not lose them to griefers. This can be accomplished by making protected zones for newcomers and a harsh legal system; you don't expect a pardon in real life because you killed two people less than the limit this week, and so people who kill others without justification will be counted as criminals and will be fair game for bounty hunters and guards (both player and Non-). Criminals would have to establish their own cities, hidden and protected from the rest of the world, just to be able to survive in the harsh world.

Another condition for a well-established PvP system is that people in need of non-non-player-character blood can find somewhere to soothe their anger. For that, duel, events (of, say, the jousting kind) and battlegrounds need to be established; and I'm not talking about fighting over and over and over and over again the the same, boring maps against (and with) random people to collect meaningless tokens. What I mean is that war has to be a very real thing, and people can go to war if their neighbors aren't trustworthy. Or they annoy them. Or they looked at them funny. Might want to be careful though, alliances are a hard thing to forge sometimes.

Finally, you can't have a decent PvP system without some reward for the winner, and penalty for the losers. In World of Warcraft, winners are rewarded a few shinnies more than the losers. You get paid for participating, and even that is optional, as you can be standing still the whole time and get the same rewards as your allies. That's not a decent PvP system, that's throwing some bones at people who request fillet mignon.

What they should get is a reason to kill people, a reason to group up against evil and a reason to run away in front of superior forces. Of course, corpse looting is out of the question, as it is too harsh a punishment when the cause of the death can be in no way the fault of the player. Experience penalties could exist, but in this case they would have to be per-skill, which means people with more skills get punished more; it also means that you would either have to lose some moves, or not have any penalty if you have no skill points left, so the whole thing is out of the question. You could have a monetary penalty, but banking, whether official or not (through the use of mules) would make losing money for death pretty pointless. And of course, permanent penalties, like stat loss, would drive players away faster than an exploiter on pre-patch day.

This leaves us with compulsory monetary penalties, a.k.a. item damage, and temporary debuffs. The former is pretty self-explanatory, and although small, does provide an important deterrent to risky actions. The latter, known as resurrection sickness, means that the player would be next to useless for a certain amount of time after death. Resurrection sickness could use a small overhaul, however, as a flat (dependent on level, usually) rate for death hardly seems like a fair deterrent.

First of all, the amount and time of the sickness should depend on the type of death the player suffered. If it is Death From Having Your Toes Bit Off By A Rat, then there's no penalty; you just get back up somewhere safe and go off killing more rodents. If it's Death By Player Killing, then check how Killed you were. Is it just a bad guy killing an unwary traveller? Then the player is found by local authorities and can resume normal activities within a few minutes. Or is it an army pillaging all in its path while mowing down all opposition? Then chances are you won't be of much help in the near future, otherwise you would just as soon go back into battle. The harder the death, the harsher the penalty should be.

But death penalty alone does not create a fair PvP system. To be fair, you also need to reward the winner. Of course, when you fight, you gain skill experience; there's no reason fighting another human being wouldn't teach you just as much as fighting NPCs would. The real problem is that, since corpse looting is a big no-no, and duplicating items to the winner is out of the question, then there's little incentive to fight. Rewards can be posted for killing enemies, but those would have to be either small, or come from the players' own collective pockets, otherwise they are too prone to abuse. The only way to reward players who help their team by showing up regularly in the battlefield is to give them fancy titles, which gives them benefits toward allied NPCs, as well as bragging rights (read : show how much they lack a social life).

Of course, all of this needs some serious balancing; no doubt important exploits would be exploited, loopholes looped and flaws taken advantages of, but with lots of hard work and hours spent telling your boss you're just testing the game, you'll eventually come with a good, stable system. That, or you'll just revert back to the lowest common denominator, and in the process scare away players who wanted something new.

On Altering Body Shape

2007-08-13T16:24:00.001-05:00

Some games let you change some of your character's looks, like hair style and stance; some games have so few characteristics to change, changing anything isn't even worth considering. But what about more basic physical attributes? You can't go to the hair stylist to instantly change your fat into muscle, but why not a trainer?

Of course, you can't change everything instantly; it would require a large investment of money, a long wait period, and even maybe some player interaction, but in the end, you get your new body type. If your appearance isn't set by your stats, why not let the player change it over time?

The More, The Merrier

2007-08-06T16:35:00.000-05:00

It's a well-known fact that adventuring parties generally want more people when they can; the guys playing Dungeon and Dragon will happily take another member in the party if that member can pull his weight. Yet in MMORPGs, half the times you can't take someone else, because the instance or encounter is limited to parties of a certain size which, logically, makes absolutely no sense. Why can't more than five people come in to fight Lars the Mean? And why are you limited to 25 people when raiding Melzebut? The short answer is because game limitations make having too many people at one place inconvenient. The real answer should be because everyone wants a go at the treasure.

When raiding the Lost Ark of Neephta, it's a good idea to have a strong party. Let's say that the dungeon or encounter has an Arbitrary Challenge Rating of 6, meaning players should add up to a Arbitrary Power Value of 6. Your warrior's a 2, mage is a 2. They find a beginner rogue for one more, and a beginner healer for a final 1, so they got a 6. They could try it with one less, which would result in a more challenging encounter, but with 1/6th more reward per party member; or they could try with one more, taking reduced treasure per person, but diminishing the risk greatly. This goes right along the idea that casual players should be able to help.

This also goes right along the risk-reward axis so well known to MMO players; you don't go fighting mobs your level when 'green' mobs only give a little less experience, so players don't bother with higher risk, they just take the safe reward; and in fighting without risk, you fight without glory. But at least the XP's good, right?

MMORPG : Scavenging from Other Games

2007-08-02T20:05:00.000-05:00

Most MMORPGs nowadays are simple games, where you smash monsters around with a big stick, and perhaps get the chance to make a bigger stick for yourself (which invariably ends up being worse than anything you get from monsters). A MMORPG, based on its virtue of being a virtual world, should be able to do more than that. Why not incorporate elements from other game genres that would fit well within an MMORPG?

The Thief games, arguably the fathers of stealth games as we know them today, incorporated lots of scenes where the player was expected to avoid enemies rather than engage them - even when killing said enemies would be easy, doing so could alarm more guards to your presence, compromising your mission. In Thief, the player had to jump from shadow to shadow, avoid loud floors, knock down guards and extinguishes fires to avoid detection, the performance of which represented most of the game's gameplay. In MMORPGs, the concept of stealth is usually limited to a character basically turning invisible until someone of a high enough level gets close enough, and there is no consideration of lighting, nor do you care much about loudness. Stealth does not require any skill from the player.

In the Prince of Persia series, the player is challenged with complex acrobatics maneuvers, both during the platforming times and during combat. The player will successively walk on walls, enemies and columns, demonstrating the prince's incredible agility. Some will be quick to point that acrobatic-enabled sections of the game were hard-coded, meaning that it wasn't possible to walk on any random wall, but still, the idea of using short steps on the side of a wall to increase one's jumping distance is certainly something that is worthy of being considered for an MMORPG.

In the Civilization (rather long) series of games, the player must build cities to collect resources and make their empire grow. Yet, in MMORPGs, whenever the cities aren't fixed at game creation, the best thing players can do is place their house close to where they want to be. There is no resource consideration, and finding a source of drinkable water is never really a consideration. But what if that was actually important? Player might need to go scouting for locations before building up, considering natural resources, trace routes and potential threats. Successful cities would bring hundreds or thousands of players, challenging in popularity the NPC-operated cities.

In Flight Simulator... Yeah, OK, you see where I'm going with this one. Those so-called flying mounts would certainly take a whole new significance if you had to watch for wind direction and potential obstacles.

I'm not going to touch the economic simulations games, but suffice to say that there is a world of difference between a true open economy and a free-for-all auction house.

This is already a nice list of genres to borrow from, and I haven't even touched city simulators, sports, racing, puzzle or card games. MMORPGs can be much more than simple monster mashers, and if more MMORPGs trying to incorporate new ideas become successful, we might see a true revolution of the genre. MMORPGs of the future might have nothing to do with their simpleton ancestors.

How Unfair is Unfair?

2007-07-27T21:30:00.001-05:00

There's lots of discussion possible about the subject of fairness in MMORPGs. Some say that since life isn't fair, then neither should a MMORPG depicting life in some form; others will simply refuse to play a game where success is a result of random or arbitrary events that aren't fair to the player's skills or commitment. Of course, everyone will agree that giving a Sword of Doom to a starting character is unfair, but exactly where does a line need to be drawn between keeping the game simple and fun and making it fair for everyone?

Basically, if a monster has one chance in ten to use an ability to instant kills the character, it's unfair. If Warriors can deal ten times the damage mages can, while retaining the best defenses, it's unfair. If Joey gets a red lollipop while I get a blue one, it's unfair. But here's the problem, if you give Karl a red lollipop too, then Joey will complain that he got a smaller piece of the cake last time, and he deserves a redder lollipop for that. Everyone knows it in the MMORPG industry, and they'll repeat it : you can't please everyone. As a corollary, I would like to submit the more people you try to please, the less will be satisfied with the results; those who get the nerfbat feel threatened, and those who were already balanced will feel forgotten.

So, how much unfairness do you need before things get unfair? It depends on who you ask, but I would say, not very much. Older gamers will remember the old days of the original Warcraft and Command and Conquer games, where fairness was mostly attained by making every side basically the same. Games like Warlords Battlecry tried to break the mold, and had various sides, each with their own powers and abilities, and most of them had exploits allowing you to gain quite unfair advantages; those that didn't were considered too weak to play in most cases.

These days, the easiest way to get good balance is to do your best, and then ask the fans to break the game during beta. And break they will, since number crunching, exploit-finding MMORPG players are a dime a dozen during betas; so much so that by the time the game ships, players will already know the shortest route to any point, whether it be some place or some power.

Of course, this doesn't answer the question of how much unfairness you need until things become actually unfair; I don't think anyone could answer that question correctly. It's all a matter of what type of game the player wants to play. In the end, just make sure that the fairness follows the game's philosophy, and it will likely attract people who want to play it.

Randomness in MMORPGs

2007-07-22T17:00:00.000-05:00

Once again, Tobold initiates some brainstorming, with his much-touted concept of random cards in an MMORPG; the basic concept is that the actions a player can take at any time aren't fixed, but taken randomly from a pool of all possible actions, similar to Magic: The Gathering or other trading card games.

Now, I'm not completely against randomness in gaming, because always hitting for the same damage gets boring fast, and most people will like some randomness, but the concept of random abilities has quite an important limiting factor. Random abilities mean that even a well-built character can get a bad streak of events, and end up dead through no fault of their own; that's not what a fair MMORPG should do.

It's not to say that such a good concept can't happen, though; you just have to put it into perspective. Random powers beyond with inherently random elements; say, Chaos Magic. A caster of Chaos Magic has a much wider and powerful array of spell at their disposal, but they never know what powers will be available next; kind of like the trading card game example. You can add certain elements, like chances of random events upon casting a spell, but that's outside the scope of this post.

The important part is, random powers could be available, but they shouldn't be forced into the player. Some people like to play the slot machines; others want their own skills to matter in the game.

How Realistic is Too Realistic?

2007-07-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

You should know by now that I advocate an MMORPG where realism is given an important part; not to say that magic or science fiction are bad, on the contrary, but it would be nice if they weren't just mysterious elements tossed in to add a few more classes. When you ask for realism, however, it's a good idea to precise when you want to stop.

Take food, for example. It seems it has become the norm in MMORPGs that food is to restore lost hit points, and perhaps give some small buffs. I don't know about you, but I rarely grow back lost limbs with a sandwich, and the only thing that gets better when I eat is my stomach (But hey, if your game has morale, more power to you!). So in a realistic game, regular, every day food shouldn't restore hit points.

How far do you push realism, however? You want there to be food in your game, because real people eat, but how important is food? In Ultima Online, not eating gave you penalties to your actions, but couldn't kill you directly. But you could make starvation kill, or at least make you take damage; just as you could have players require water, which they have to drink manually every hours to avoid dehydration. You could do these things, but they would just be tedious, especially for newbies, who might end up dying every few hours because they don't know how to get food or water. You want realism, but you also want fun.

Just as magically healing food is unrealistic, so is being able to run all the time; yet I don't see, nor do I want, an MMORPG where running gets you actually tired, because realistic walking speed is boring; walking is for stealthers.

What about sleep? You can't stay up a week playing the game, and neither should your characters be able to stay up for days with their plate mail on, bashing goblins. The sensible thing to do is to give penalties to players who stay up too long (Blizzard tried that, and they got angry explosive letters; so they changed the tiredness penalty to a well-rested bonus, and the fanboys shut up); staying up for days will result in your characters gaining next to no experience, and having heavy penalties on actions. The problem arises when the game world has different time sets than the real world; if your days last only a few hours, then you cannot expect a player to stay up more than a few hours at a time, which will discourage many, and not just the hardcore players. Many players enjoy playing for hours on week-ends without having to worry that their character is tiring. Magic and alts can allow you to game longer, but eventually you'll have to get some rest yourself.

So in short, getting a good balance of realism is hard; you have to decide where to draw the line, and make sure it's before the fun ends. In the end, you just have to make sure you alienate as few people with your decisions.

Elemental Damage

2007-07-13T19:29:00.000-05:00

It's one of my pet peeves, something that always irks me when playing fantasy video games; that casting a big rock at the enemy deals earth damage. Or piercing the enemy with an icicle is ice damage. Or that you put some fire on your sword and suddenly it starts healing the fire elemental.

You don't see it that much in MMORPGs, but it's still there. There is no such thing as earth damage. That big rock deals blunt damage. And that icicle? Yeah, it's cold and all, but the cold won't kill the opponent; the piercing will.

Please, developers, stop thinking in numbers once in a while, and see the logic behind reasonable damage types.

That is all.

Create Your Own Dungeon

2007-07-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

Yet again, Tobold steals the scoop on an idea that's been in my head for a while now : that of player-created dungeons. But unlike sir Tobold's idea, my player-created dungeons are less about players setting spawn points and more about what happens when mines get too deep.

Dungeons in The Dream MMORPG aren't little instance doors that sparkle or flash in the world, which you can cross to get somewhere where level-appropriate monsters get killed; dungeons are what happens when people don't or can't use their caves or structures anymore.

Just imagine; Little Town #42 needs iron, starts mining iron. When they don't need iron from the mine anymore, either because they've secured a better supply, or their need has diminished, they abandon the mine; it's only a matter of time until some baddies take it as a lair, no?

Or how about this... Littletownians start mining the iron, and soon discover a precious mithril deposit. If the word gets out that there is mithril in Little Town's mine, they might get in trouble; they will need to hire guards to protect the precious metal, or risk some evil overlord taking over the mine for his own needs; then they would have an overlord with mithril to fight, which is significantly harder.

So yeah, player-created dungeons aren't really create, they just happen. Think carefully next time you start a mine, it might get taken over someday.

The Skills of a Leader

2007-07-03T12:16:00.001-05:00

So the game lets you create characters with pretty much any skill combination you want. That's good; but what about people who's skills aren't character-based? Take a leader, for example; a king or a general. Their skills, of maintaining a kingdom and leading troops, are mostly that of the players, not the characters.

What skills does a general have to take to be considered a general? In truth, not much. You would want the Leadership skill, of course, and a few skills like Tracking and Siege Weapons could be of use, but beyond that, it's all about character development. You could take Mounting and Holy and make a Paladin; you could take theoretical skills and be a scholar; or you could take Necromancy and Curses, and lead your troops simply by their fear of you.

That of course leads to the facts that a leader doesn't have to be a high-roller. Pretty much anyone with a tactical mind and strategy skills can be a leader; they don't even need actual game experience, they're just there for their sparkly mind.

Of course, a leader without fighting skills wouldn't last long in case of defeat; I guess there is a point to taking fighting skills, then...

Endgame? What Endgame?

2007-06-28T12:08:00.000-05:00

Over at Tobold's, there an interesting article about endgame in Lord of the Rings Online which, apparently, sucks. Tobold goes to say that this comes to no surprise, as every endgame necessarily sucks. I propose that this doesn't have to be.

In a linear MMORPG, where persistence is moved aside in favor of grinding and levels, then sure, the endgame has to be bad. You programmed your game to have a big stone wall called 'level cap' at the end, of course players will get hurt. What a game really needs to have a good endgame is an open player battlefield with persistent battles.

When you move away from the safety of NPC-protected zones, there's a whole world just needing to be conquered. There, players can acquire bits of land and, together with their associates (often called guildmates), they will found villages, towns and cities that rival those of whatever NPC royalty they happened to start in. Of course, in these parts, anything can happen (which pretty much insures that anything WILL happen), so these towns will not be safe. People playing evil characters will not hesitate to attack, pillage and raze cities; and so will good characters likewise attack and conquer evil cities.

How is this different than normal PvP endgame? The keyword is persistence. Sure, in the normal game, when you kill that wererat lord, he's gone, but soon enough some other beasties will find the lair attractive and you'll have to see how hostile he is all over again. In the so-called endgame (Because there's nothing forcing you to go to war once you're powerful - and nothing preventing you from going monster-slaying again if you go to war), when you successfully attack an enemy city, they'll have a hard time taking it back - which means you made a significant difference. The world is now a little bit more in your favor because of it. That's persistence.

And that, kids, is how you make an endgame that doesn't suck.

Elite MMORPG

2007-06-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

Can an elite MMORPG be financially successful? An elite MMORPG is one made for people who would consider themselves to be elites - people with more money than time, who don't mind using their brains and don't like having to spend screen time with the leet-speaking youngsters. An MMORPG for the elite would have a greater monthly cost, and most likely implement many of the ideas this weblog has exposed.

With a cost of, say, 20$ per month, you're keeping away many of the people who are looking at World of Warcraft and your MMORPG, but you also make more profit from the game; if the game is good enough that enough people want to pay that extra 5$ per month to kill baddies (or maybe sew tunics), then you might still make a profit; that, of course, wouldn't stop your eager fans from comparing the MMORPG to its lesser brothers.

For an MMORPG to really be considered elite, though, gameplay would have to be elite as well. Gamers should feel threatened when going adventuring, otherwise it's not really elite. They should never feel that the game is easy, even when it is, because they come to the game for a challenge, and challenges and grinding are mortal enemies.

Can it really exist, though? Are the 8 million subscribers of World of Warcraft really role-players, or are they simply in for the feeling of accomplishment of grinding levels in an addictive game? The latter would certainly not want a difficult game, let alone a challenging one. What do you think? Would you play such an elite game?

Undead Play Concept

2007-06-12T14:40:00.000-05:00

So, hopefully, everyone knows about monster play by now. If not, go check the LotRO web site right now. I can wait.

Good. Now, I think everyone would agree that monster play is a great concept; it lets people be antagonists without making evil characters themselves, thus everyone gets to be a good guy in the end. It's a such a great idea, in fact, that I wouldn't be surprised if we were to see similar concepts emerge in the coming years. With a little luck, undead play could be it.

Undead play is different from monster play in many ways. First of all, everyone starts the same, or very similar, as an incorporeal spirit. Those spirits are tasked, obviously, with killing the living creatures that step into their territory. By killing such creatures, the spirits can claim the parts of their bodies that were moderately undamaged, and use them on themselves to become corporeal; for example, a spirit managing to kill an enemy could decide to take only its head, and become one of those flying-head undeads. Or they could take whatever part is still in good condition and bring them back home to store for later use. When enough body parts are assembled, they create their new bodies; perhaps they'll simply stay human-like, or perhaps they'll add an extra torso and set of legs for mobility. They could also decide to go all-in and build a real monster, using extra parts as layers of armor. Taking bodies back isn't easy, however, and would leave the spirit vulnerable. If they killed enough people before, they might be able to summon a lesser spirit to carry the body for them.

For the undeads, the goal is clear : they have to kill everything in their path, no matter what it is. They are dominated only by their hatred of the living and need not worry about such things as material possessions, or even death.

For the living, it's simply a matter of security; they cannot let the undeads invade their lands, or the civilians would quickly become preys, leaving the undeads with better bodies to fight the forces of good with. If we assume that there is no perma-death for the characters, and since the undeads do not loot the dead bodies, there is little risk to going to the front, and they might luck out with undead essences or whatnots for their use.

For the living, equipment could matter. Holy water and sanctified weapons would help greatly in destroying the undead; holy symbols and explosives could insure that the enemy does not get bodies upon their eventual defeats.

Likewise, the undead could choose between a variety of powers to use, some of which coming at the cost of living essences collected from the deceased (The currency of undeads). Fire spirits could appear as flames, and ghostly spirits be almost invisible. Zombies would be expendable militias, summoned from the undead's own body reserves, while monstrous brutes would come into battle with defensive enchants.

As the battle rages on, significant points could be taken or destroyed by either side, pushing back the enemy forces. Undeads being pushed back would benefit from greater supernatural support from the proximity to their home. The living have only the desire to defend themselves as a protection, and hopefully more people would be attracted to the fight if it gets too close, perhaps motivated by a shorter walk, or bounties on undeads defeated.

In the end, it doesn't matter who wins or who loses. What matters is that people get a way to beat up each other silly, without forcing anyone in the role of bad guys.

Scroll Writing!

2007-06-10T10:13:00.000-05:00

Scroll writing is when a character takes some of their own magical power and infuses it into a scroll for later use. It is not enough to infuse the power, however, one must also write the runes on the scroll that will make it stay and become usable later.

Scroll writing

The mage begins by assembling the power to be infused in the scroll; this is done with a minigame similar to enchanting's magic-catching game.

When enough power is caught, it can be placed in the scroll; this is done by 'painting' the scroll with the proper magical colors, all the while staying as close as possible to the desired pattern.

Finally, you have to write the runes that will make the spell stick to the scroll until they are read. Patterns will be presented to the character, and they must reproduce them as closely as possible.

All-in-all, not a bad game, though it might require a bit of patience and dexterity. You'll just be happy when you can cast that spell on your foes.

With this, the week of tradeskills is concluded; while I haven't touched nearly all the skills and games possible, this should give a good example of how one can implement games that are simple and fun without forcing programmers and designers into another all-nighter.

Fishing!

2007-06-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

"Fishing?", you say? How can I make fishing actually interesting? You might recall that World of Warcraft had one of the least engaging fishing minigames (Click on the floater when it bobs), and that lead to a bad impression of the fishing trade to the role players at large; it doesn't have to be so. Fishing has been implemented successfully before, with the Breath of fire series as a prime example. Fishing CAN be fun!

Fishing

The basic fishing game is a two-parter; first you set your equipment, choosing the pole, lure, bait, floater and/or sinker, then throw the line. In shallow water, you might be able to see shadows of fishes, which helps considerably, but most fishing will be done the traditional way : throw the line and wait for a fish to bite. Hopefully, this is shorter in an MMORPG than in real life.

The second part of fishing happens when a fish bites; the player has to wrestle the fish back to shore. Good physical stats will help against bigger fishes, and so will better equipment. The player has to pull when the fish is tired, and relax when the fish is pulling. You get the fish when you manage to pull it all the way to shore.

Of course, there's more to fishing than fishing poles. Net fishing exists, too, but it's harder and more expensive. For net fishing, you need a boat (or a choke point near land). You go at large and try to spot schools of fish; then you throw your net down, and try to catch as many of them as possible before pulling the net. You probably won't get record fish sizes that way, and some areas might be net-proof, but at least you'll feed the family (and perhaps your guild's families as well).

The third and final fishing game is done with a spear or harpoon; the player stands on the side of a fishable area, typically a river, where the fishes have to come close, and then try to hit fishes with the spear; this is similar to a bear trying to catch his lunch (And might be playable if, say, the player is polymorphed as a bear). This game can also be played underwater, if the player can breath there long enough; it's easier to spot fishes within water, but you'll also be easier to spot and avoid.

With three different games to play for potential fishermen, here's hoping people will demand better fishing games pretty soon. A one-click game isn't exactly the most engaging event in a player's life.

Smithing!

2007-06-08T16:54:00.000-05:00

Forging a sword is not an easy one to translate to gaming. It primarily consists in hitting the blade until it takes the desired shape, then adding the hilt and other extra parts; not something that sounds overly fun to play, but it should be possible to make a game more interesting than 'watch the bar fill up'.

Smithing

The first part of smithing consists in heating the material, which is then sent into a mold. Metals too hot or too cold can affect the quality of the item, and may make other parts of the minigame harder to play.

Then comes the shaping of the blade. The player is presented with an overview of the shape the item is to take, and must hit the metal until it is roughly the right shape; making the item the right thickness decreases overall forging time.

You might have to cut away some parts, to obtain the desired shape. Cutting is done simply by following a pattern with the mouse.

Now, that's not exactly everything there is to smithing. Many items will require polish to last longer, or the need for annealing may mean the item will have to be shaped more than once. And of course, if you're making a chain mail or scale mail, or perhaps just a pick axe or key, the process could be completely different. Smithing is a complex art, and might require a more complex game than other trade skills.

Teaching!

2007-06-07T09:54:00.000-05:00

Teaching is an odd thing; it's a tradeskill where more than one person has to work towards the same goal : educating the uneducated. It's a cooperative minigame, where the results are based on both the results of the teacher and the results of the students, so it's hardly 'wait and watch the free skill increases'.

Teaching

Before the teaching starts, the teacher has to prepare his material; this is done in a kind of hide-and-seek game, where relevant materials are hidden among irrelevant ones. Once time runs out, or enough material has been found, the course proper can start.

Class takes different looks, depending on what it is about (blackboard teaching for regular classes, practical work for some trade skills, or maybe training dummies for combat classes). The teacher has to make sure students stay aware by concentrating their attention on them, and make sure the class progresses at a decent pace.

For students, the system is similar; they first need to find what they will need for the class, just as the teacher does.

The second part, however, is different; they will need to play some kind of tetris with the information they get. If they play poorly, the teacher has to give them attention to lower their 'field'; if they play well, the class as a whole progresses better, since they don't take the attention of the teacher. As well, the students get some bonuses too; if they notice that another student close to them isn't doing well, they can try giving them help directly. In a way, this is a cooperative tetris-like game.

Now, some may oppose to a player's result being tied in to another player's capacities, but that is essentially what happens in group adventuring in MMORPGs; if one player plays poorly, the whole group suffers. The most important thing, in the teaching minigame, is the skill of the teacher; poor teachers would get smaller classes if their name isn't well-seen, while a good teacher would be known enough that students will come from far and wide to attend his top-notch classes. Likewise, a top-tier teacher could be entitled to refusing certain students they deem unworthy of their attention. Good sensei don't teach neophytes; that's what introductory classes are for.

Enchanting!

2007-06-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Weird stuff, that, enchanting. You have to put magic into an item and make sure it stays there, despite all else. But how does one go into enchanting an item? Well, glad you asked! (Because otherwise, I'm post-less on this tradeskill week).

Enchanting

First, you make sure you collect all the ingredients for the enchanting. Some enchantings will require only the basic enchanter set, available at every magic mart near you; others will require uncommon items, to be quested for (or paid for) by the enchanter.

Once you've done this, you have to perform rituals to catch the magic proper. This could take many forms, but most likely would be a color-block game. Everyone likes those, right?

Once this is done, you get to the enchanting proper. First, you grab some magical power from the reserve. Then, magical patterns are given to you, and you have to reproduce them with the magics available; if you run out of magic, you take some more from the stock.

With the enchanting done proper, you have to make sure the enchant stays. You will see the magic escaping from the item, and have to patch magic holes with your own mana reserves; if your reserves run out, either take something to replenish them or wait for them to replenish. The better you patch the holes, the quicker the enchant will implant into the item and the faster you can be done with the enchanting.

Now, thinking about it, I come to realize that enchanting would kick major behinds as an all-in-one game. You play all the games at once, catching magic when you run out, and patching the leaks before they become too big. The better you play the games, the closer you get to the pattern and the faster you fix leaks, the stronger would be the enchanting. Is this bad, though, asking for player skills in an MMORPG?

Alchemy!

2007-06-05T12:21:00.000-05:00

Alchemy's a weird thing. At its base, it's just like chemistry, but you have to acknowledge that alchemy is supposed to be magical; making it just like chemistry would make it lose its 'magically unknown' charm.

So I'm going to try to make a game that's a lot like chemistry (Don't go looking, I haven't done chemistry), but which also has magic-like elements.

Alchemy

The first game of alchemy is choosing what you want to make. Borrowing from the Elder Scrolls series' Morrowind and Oblivion, you do this by picking ingredients until you are satisfied with the predicted result.

Some ingredients might require preparation; it's cooking all over again! Or maybe part of it. You have to play Dance Dance Revolution, keyboard-style, with the ingredients.

Then you choose amounts. You are presented with the requirements in weight of a certain recipe. Using a scale and some sets of weights (More expensive weights will be more precise, meaning you have to guess between-weights amounts much less), you have to pick the right amounts of ingredients presented to you.

Then you place everything in a pot. Easy, right? Not so much; you have to place them in the right order, stir, shake and keep the fire just right. It's not easy being a mad alchemist, but once you're done with this, you have some potions you can play with.

Some? Yes, well, it would be kind of silly to make just one potion and drop the rest of the cauldron, right? So you make many at once. This means that making potions is not a small enterprise.

Now, some potions, like food, might not require every step, or be so short to make it would be silly to play the game fully. When that happens, you don't get penalized for playing bad and not reaching the end faster; the game simply ends. You don't want the game to take longer than if the person had decided not to play it at all.

Well, that should be enough for alchemy. Maybe I'll do enchanting tomorrow. That sounds interesting enough.

Cooking!

2007-06-04T11:32:00.000-05:00

Before I start crafting, I have to explain what my criteria are for picking a certain minigame. They are :
- Minigame must be fun. I wouldn't consider it a game if there was no fun to be had by playing it.
- Minigame must be challenging. If it's not challenging, then you might as well not have a game, since everyone would get pretty much the same results.
- Minigame must be hard to automate. I know fun minigames shouldn't need to be automated, but if a bot can outperform a person, then I want to at least make it hard to MAKE a bot for the game.
- Finally, the minigame must reflect the crafting in progress. A lot of the crafting skills have real-world counterparts, and those that don't can either have a parallel to real world, or have rules made up that need to be followed.

With that being said, here comes the first crafting skill.

Cooking

The cooking minigame is a multi-part one; not all cooking recipes will use all parts, but these parts constitute the maximum in term of minigame playability.

First, you prepare the ingredients. That includes cutting, dicing, pureeing or otherwise modifying ingredients as long as necessary. To do this, the player is given instructions coming at them at high speed, and they must try to follow them as best they can; those who played dancing games would recognize the formula, and it should be easy enough to understand by most. You just press the four direction keys, with a few extra keys (Numbers, maybe, or perhaps clicking) once in a while to change the instrument.

Then, you prepare the dough. This is done by reading the recipe booking (potentially with simple captcha, in the form of ink stains and spilled food) and scooping the ingredients with the proper instrument. If the recipe requires one cup of something, then you take the 1-cup cup and try to take as close to the right amount as necessary. A skillful cook will get it right almost every time, and thus save time cooking.

After the dough is prepared, you cook it. When the dough is in the oven, you have to watch the fire and make sure it's not too cold or too hot. You can open the oven to let the heat out (Though you risk damaging your recipe) or add fuel to the fire. You also have to watch the dough to take it out when it's ready.

After it's cooked, you can add ingredients. You are presented with an image of the resulting food, and have to come as close to it as possible. In a cake, for example, this means adding the frosting equally everywhere, and the decoration, for example fruits or chocolate, as indicated. Some recipes, say, a pizza, could require you to put these ingredients in before you take the recipes to the oven.

Once you're done with any number of these games, the food is ready. Enjoy the meal, knowing it was created with your hard work (By opposition to your hard waiting for the bar to fill up).

Now, as I mentioned before, crafting minigames should be optional. One ought to chose a minigame they can more easily relate to and excel at, but it doesn't mean that they are barred from a crafting skill if they don't possess the related player skills. The game will just be a little more boring if they choose not to play it fully.

See, cooking is easy! Don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the next crafting skill.

A Week of Crafting

2007-05-31T20:06:00.000-05:00

Starting Monday of next week, I will be publishing ideas daily of crafting skill minigame implementations. I will give examples of how minigames could work, and how those ideas tie in to the real world counterparts of those crafts, when appropriate. I hope I can get players' imaginations kick-started on a game they might want to play simply for the excitement of crafting skills...

Recognition to MMORPGs

2007-05-30T16:47:00.000-05:00

If MMORPGs are to get the recognition they so badly need, we have to get rid of the stereotype that MMORPGs do not require skills. Ideally, however, the skills required would not be ones that put avid gamers at an advantage; reflexes, dexterity and perfect memorization shouldn't be overly involved, but instead replaced with reasoning, strategies and understanding. An MMORPG player who understands the world around him and reacts wisely to changing situations is one who, while maybe not able to trade rockets with the best of kids, can explain the difficulties of his game, and how his role plays an important part in the grand scheme of things.

Now, I say that dexterity and reflexes shouldn't be overwhelmingly involved, but I understand that they can add important aspects to the game. Stealthing people, for example, could be required to hop from shadow to shadow, or perhaps rooftop to rooftop; their combat would be faster-paced than average, and opponents who cannot react quickly could be at a disadvantage; that is to be expected of people who choose a job requiring such finesse.

Crafting, on the other hand, could, in certain cases, require a lot of dexterity; if tradeskill minigames are to mirror their real world counterparts (when we're not talking about magical crafting), they should ideally require the same skills from the players. Intelligence and planning are other traits that can be required for crafting.

If we, as players, fans, perhaps developpers, but before all gamers, can imagine an MMORPG that allows us to say "Yes, my game is challenging, but I like it that way", we would certainly have come a long way from the over-simplifying days of yore. It's what we need, to feel good about our hobby; a reason to play that doesn't involve the infinite acquisition of power.

Addon: It seems a recent post dealing with that aspect has attracted some attention. You can read the comments at Kill Ten Rats' forums.

Someone Else's Idea

2007-05-23T17:31:00.000-05:00

I don't have the monopoly on ideas, wouldn't you know, and my brother recently came up with a concept that could warrant being further analysed. His idea is derived from LotRO's monster play system, which makes players take the role of bad guys; but instead of gaining intangible points that can be used to boost the player's game experience, monster players (or any other similar concept of opposition) get extra time added to their subscription; a player could play the game for free, if they play as monsters a lot.

This concept of paying the player to play the theoretically more boring aspect of the game would create a game where people who have more time and less money (traditionally called "kids") could still play the game, enjoying it for free (or cheaper), while helping to create a better game experience for those who are ready to pay the full price so they can play whatever they want to play. (Some would also argue that keeping kids out of the grown-up playground means paying customers get an overall more mature game to play).

Of course, one has to be careful just how far the gap between Elite and Free Play players extends. Too much of it, and you end up with a game that's not actually fun to play for the time extension part, and nobody wants to play it.

Or you could have a game that's focusing on tiered play even more; Savage has proven that the RTS and FPS styles can mix, but what about going further? You could make a game that's free to play for FPS players, requires a valid cd-key for RTS players, and has a monthly fee for the all-encompassing Civilization-like game, where battles are fought in the RTS-and-FPS game.

I might have derived a bit from the original MMORPG concept, but tiered play is certainly something to watch, if anything so that we don't become meals for the Elite users ourselves.

User-Generated Content

2007-05-17T21:27:00.000-05:00

It has been said before, the future of gaming is in user-generated content. By allowing users to create and vote on content generated by other users, developers can increase their art database tremendously, with the only cost being the user-generation system itself.

Of course, you can have a good crafting system, which would keep players occupied for a while, but they will eventually demand - and create - more. You can give them the chance to create their own PARTS of their own items, by giving them, say, a sub-item crafting. Or they could create new haircuts by missing parts of different haircuts. Create their own blade by taking the sharpness of one, the shape of another and perhaps the point of a third. Or create their own sleeves with the basic shape of one, the size of another and the fringes of that other one.

But what if they could do more? Second Life may not be as popular as certain journalists would want us to believe, but it has shown that user-generated content can be quite powerful in attracting attention and talent.

Players don't want to create something for nothing, though. How do we reward artists who use their own time to better the game? Free game time is of course a possibility, as are in-game rewards. Monopoly on their creation could be a great insensitive, as it would mean that those who create something great get rewarded accordingly.

Whatever the reward is, it must be allowed to both show great creators to the world, and keep hacks and griefers away. Because for every great artist, there's ten beginners, and a hundred potential griefers.

What Quests Really Mean

2007-05-11T15:47:00.000-05:00

Quests in MMORPGs are gross derivations of the original meaning of the word, which were an enormous investment in time (Think quest for the Holy Grail); today, you go questing for lettuce to get sandwiches, and learn new spells by walking between two people who are too lazy to do it themselves.

Quests, if even they are to be called that, should have a broader range, a longer input, and perhaps a larger participating population. You could put as a quest to eradicate the local zombie population, or to supply the blacksmiths with the materials they require; anything that needs to be done, as long as it has some relevance and importance. Those missions, however, can't be done by a player alone, nor in an evening's play time. Players will have to form group and communicate in order to achieve their objective, and the spoils of the actions would be split according to each player's acts during the events.

If you want to clear the orcs, you have many things to do; first, send scouts out to find out their intentions, numbers, equipment and readiness level. Once that is done, a war proper can be fought, starting by thinning their numbers with attacks on their scouting parties and quick hit-and-run strikes, or perhaps by organizing a militia from the local adventurer population, and leading an all-out assault on their camps.

Material-gathering quests would evolve similarly, with prospectors finding new minerals, and selling the locations to groups of gatherers, who would then organise camps to gather and carry resources.

With this system, any Harold Casual can come in, do what he can for the quest efforts, and get rewarded for his actions, without having a dozen more Isabelle's come behind him and slay the orc chieftain again. With a dynamic world, quests would form themselves out of necessity, and players would find reasons to put bounties on baddies, creatures or resources they need for their long-term accomplishments.

Gradual Item Power Increase

2007-05-09T17:47:00.000-05:00

Don't you find it silly that, with a strength of 59, you simply cannot use that two-handed sword, while a strength of 60 lets you swing it around wildly without getting tired? I think a softer limit to item usage would be better.

We start by renaming the minimal stat requirements for item use to optimal stat requirements. You can still use that two-hander with 59 strength, but you'll swing it slower and less efficiently. Similarly, when you hit 255 strength, you don't need to switch to a Really Big Two-Hander, you just get more out of your old sword, from being able to swing it harder and for longer periods of time.

Equipment and stats should be more separated; as long as he's strong enough to lift it, you should let little mister mage wear a chain mail armor; he just won't be able to cast many spells, as such an encumbering load would quickly get in his way. Anyone can swing a mace around and hit stuff, but it takes actual skills to get the most out of it.

Of course, this wouldn't work in a typical MMORPG, where the Sword of Ultimate Imbalance can only be acquired by killing the arch-giant, deep into mountain Grind; such a weapon could, without limits, be passed down to a new player or character, who would then become stronger than his level, simply for having it. If you do away with levels, however, and tie the capacities to use an item with the actual skills linked to that item, then you can give any of the Ultimate Imbalance set items to that new character, they just won't do him any good.

The Roots of MMORPGs

2007-05-06T12:10:00.000-05:00

For everlong as the roots of a MMORPG aren't clearly defined, the game can only find as inspiration other games of the type - copying from other MMORPGs. In truth, MMORPGs come from many different sources, which may create many different results.

If you found your MMORPG based on single-player role-playing games, you will create what amounts to a single-player RPG with many player-controlled NPCs. The goal of the game will be power acquisition, and as long as acquiring more of said power is possible, challenges will be overcome by being more powerful than them, instead of outsmarting them. Players will come to expect a linear story where they are only tokenly involved. There is a market for such MMORPGs, but they are often regarded by outsiders as being games for simpletons.

You could also base your MMORPG on human history; conflicts wouldn't be lacking, but perhaps not that many people are interested in long, boring walks punctuated by short periods of chaos. Players would, for the most part, have to play the role of simple people, doing simple (and often boring) things. Again, there might be a market for this type of game, but I honestly doubt it would be worth considering.

Of course, you can base your game on tabletop games (call it AD&D). Tabletop games have the advantage of being more open-ended, since game masters can make or break rules as they see fit; that part would be kind of difficult to implement in a computer game. Luckily, you can still do something similar, by having a very open-ended game, with few rules imposed on the players. Such a game would probably require longer development and testing time, but it is a market where competition is quite scarce.

There's other sources of inspiration, of course, but these three should cover the basics; you have to define your game at least relatively to these three, or other similar concepts, before you can move ahead and design the actual game.

Player-Created Lair

2007-05-03T20:28:00.000-05:00

In discussing player-created towns and player-created buildings, one subject is usually missing: player-created lairs, with traps and secret doors. Of course, a complete, world-like MMORPG wouldn't be complete if you couldn't create one of those, too.

Your building doesn't need to be approved by GMs before you can build it, since you will be building it with actual materials. Make some plans, buy the materials, and set to work on your cottage, castle or cathedral; you could even create a future ruin, where explorers of the future will seek riches and fame by fighting the legions of evil/good.

You will have to choose between materials of different qualities and prices, structures of varying degrees of complexity, and perhaps traps hidden everywhere for the unwary to stumble upon (and in). You will have deadly pits, poisoned arrow traps, signal alarms and perhaps explosive runes to protect your inner sanctum, where you will await adventurers, who will go through waves after waves of your legions of doom just to kill little megalomaniac you.

Because a complete MMORPG wouldn't be complete if you couldn't be megalomaniac, right?

On the Uses of Friends Lists

2007-04-29T16:34:00.000-05:00

MMORPGs, by their massiveness, and their role-playingness, are close to social networks. There is still plenty to be done, however, to come close to social networks in terms of interactivity. One step in the right direction would be the addition of friends/enemies lists.

You can tell a lot about someone by who their friends are, and the same should apply to MMORPGs. If you have a griefer, content in disrupting other people's fun, they will get lots of enemies, which might be a good way for game masters to find them. On the other hand, someone who gets lots of friends is probably someone you want to group with, since he's proven many times that he's friendly, reliable, or maybe just knows how to write.

But that can't be the end of things, otherwise groups of griefers would call each other friends and get themselves good reviews. You also have to watch who someone hangs with; if someone only ever gets good reviews from people inside a small clique, who all get bad reviews from outsiders, then you can tell people that they are unlikely to want to befriend these people.

Going further, you will realize not all nice people want to associate with other nice people. Role-players will want to associate with role-players, achievers with achievers; casual players will hang with their kin, as will hardcore ones; and people with a basic grasp of grammar will want to listen to people who can likewise spell correctly, while that kind of behavior would be infuriating to Internet-spellers.

So a high friendliness rating would tell you that a person is likely to be like-minded to you, while a lower one might indicate that they are either griefers, or simply different-minded.

Of course, as always, I leave to the programming team the task of designing such a feature. Us designers can't be bothered with details such as 'feasibility'.

The Role of Non-Player Characters

2007-04-22T17:31:00.000-05:00

Friendly NPCs in MMORPGs nowadays are usually one of two things: either they're super-humans who send the player on quests they can't be bothered to complete themselves, or, more commonly, they're there to perform repetitive tasks that explicitly serve the players.

The problem with that is that NPCs don't have a purpose, a reason for doing what they do. That NPC vendor will buy any crap you send their way, no matter how useless it might be, and with only indication of price the level of the creature which dropped it. That is wrong on many, many levels.

Non-player characters should have their own purpose, which serves their own interest. They will not buy items that the players don't want, because they can only do what players can do. NPC vendors should not be used as trash cans for players to dump their unwanted loot to. They don't need bear gallbladder. They need iron, wood, cloth, sugar and herbs, for which they will compete with the players. Should players run NPCs out of business, they will attempt to start over again, perhaps in another city, or they might offer their services for more menial tasks (Such as vendors for lazy players).

NPCs should follow the same rules that dictate the actions of players; they should have the same skill system, stats, equipment, and be governed by the same rules that govern players; NPCs simply don't pay monthly fees, so they don't mind being used for menial tasks.

When that mentality of NPCs-like-players is achieved, we can see a MMORPG that achieves a reasonable amount of immersiveness.

On the Edge of Gameplay

2007-04-17T16:52:00.000-05:00

I know I said I wouldn't talk too much about myself, but there is one particular bit of game experience which clings forever in my memory, and I think it is particularly meaningful in explaining the type of game I would like a MMORPG to be.

The setting is World of Warcraft, the Deadmines (Low-level party instance). The party is sub-optimal, consisting of a paladin as the only healer, the only one capable of casting resurrection AND the only one being above minimum level for this instance; the rest of the party was made of tanks and damage dealers (Did I ever mention how opposed to gnome warriors I am?). I was playing a rogue; this is important.

Needless to say, this was a hard win, but we progressed onward anyway, despite a large number of near-wipes. Once, the whole party, minus the paladin, was killed; the paladin saved his own life by jumping down in the water, a feat NPCs aren't smart enough to accomplish. This allowed him to climb back up and resurrect the rest of us.

Now, we cleared most of the instance, but the final boss would have been a problem. Simple tactics working best, we decided to target the boss only to get credits, ignoring its friends. The fight went on, and after much damage taken, the boss dropped; our own party did soon after. Now, the rest of the party all did their looting, taking one head of the boss each (Yes, each got one head of the human boss. That's MMORPG rules for you), except myself; so into the fight was I, that I forgot to do it. Everyone being dead, and having finished their quests, it was decided that we wouldn't be fighting through all the respawns again just so that dumb little rogue could get his quest done. Then it dawned to me that as a rogue, I could use stealth to go right through all the respawns to get to the boss.

The party disbanded (I think the paladin stayed in the party, curious to know how I did; he didn't help in the sneaking part, unfortunately), and I returned again to the instance entrance. I sneaked past the encounters, feeling the adrenaline rush through, as if a single one of them saw me, it would undoubtedly be the end of me.

Long sneaking quest made short, I managed to go through the whole instance in stealth mode, all alone, and reached the boss' corpse, only to see that it had de-spawned in the mean time.

Gah.

A few weeks later, Blizzard increased the de-spawn time of bosses.

Gah!

Epilogue

So little Hexedian the gnomish rogue might not have been the best at sneaking part guards, but one thing hits me when I recall this story. I've played a character to level 50, and a couple more to mid-level; I've done Shadowfang Keep, Gnomeregan, The Scarlet Monastery, Uldaman and even ZulFarrak; I have tried a wide range of content in the game; and yet, despite all this, the one bit of gameplay that always comes to mind when I think of World of Warcraft is a failed instance run I did with a secondary character. The game I played wasn't even part of World of Warcraft's intended gameplay; the quest to sneak past all the guards didn't exist, yet it might be the most enjoyable moment of all my WoW history.

I think MMORPGs should have more Hex the rogue moments, where the events that happen are what players make of them, not what was scripted to happen. Gameplay will emerge by itself if you let it do so, and do not constrain the game with artificial limitations.

I hope my story, while not the most interesting one around, at least managed to entertain you, and give some kind of idea as to what I envision of a game.

On Ethics

2007-04-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

While ethics are not typically elements of a classic MMORPG, we can't forget the influence of virtues in Ultima Online. Ethics, however, are typically presented in a simplified manner, offering the player with the choice of being good, or getting a bigger reward. Never have ethics been about who to save when you can't save everyone, or whether or not two wrongs will make a right.

I believe that ethics, that is, the theory of good and evil, have the potential of creating a classic of gaming that would transcend gaming and become part of history. For that to happen, however, a great deal of attention would have to be placed on making ethics part of the game itself; simply making it an afterthought would, like many other features, only serve to weaken the general game experience.

For ethics to play a major role, two things need to happen. First and foremost, ethics have to influence the game world. That means players and NPCs should have a way to know another player or NPC's ethics, be it magic, psychology, reputation or stats display (I wouldn't recommend the last one; breaks the game immersion). Based on someone's ethics, players can decide whether they will befriend them or not; they will decide if they want to hunt them down, or maybe just ask vendors to charge more to them. This does not only apply to being Good, of course; player-run bandit cities wouldn't accept no goody-two-shoes paladin or law enforcers.

Before a system to make ethics worthwhile can be useful, you will need a way to influence ethics. PKs and griefers will go down fast, while charities and evil-slayers will be praised world-wide; even small things, like over-using a bargaining position, could influence ethics in small ways. Reputation could also be influenced by whom the player hangs with; a player performing Good acts to infiltrate an enemy organization, but who is often seen in the company of openly evil people, would have a hard time keeping his notoriety up; and don't even think of infiltrating evil cities when you can't even kick a beggar.

With that being said, it is important not to fall into easy traps of ethics; players should be able to interact with other players of widely different ethics, without there being penalties to anything but reputation (Unless the laws of the lands are specific about such dealings). There cannot be an easy way to influence ethics too much, such as making large donations, otherwise it might be easily exploitable (Unless you want to have exploitable reputation changes; donations to churches have been known throughout western history to erase all of a noble's evil deeds). Similarly, few things short of killing large numbers of innocents without a good reason would make a player look evil enough in a short amount of time.

If you have accessible ways to enable people to see other people's ethics, you could have a way to hide one's ethics. If you have magic detection, you can have magical hiding or forgery. With psychology, you have reverse-psychological poker-face feigning. Reputation can be altered with well-placed bribes or blackmail.

If ethics are to have a central role in a MMORPG, they could easily become multi-layered, letting players choose their own paths of virtues. Players could be asked to choose between the mutually exclusive loyalty, justice, freedom and happiness, with neither being the true Good choice, but still sparking conflicts within defenders of different virtues. Evil players could likewise decide to take the route of the murderer, blackmailer, burglar or public streaker. Thief guilds could instill a limit to the number of murders members can have within time periods, which would both serve to insure relative anonymity and reasonable member skills (Good thieves don't get caught).

When all is said and done, that players have chosen their factions and are waging war, you start reaping the benefits of your choices. Good players have a greater affinity to Holy magic and empathic skills, while evil ones will take their picks of a greater selection of demons and curses to unleash on their opponents. Even the balanced or undecided players could benefit, with access to both, and greater powers with certain non-aligned arts and mercantile skills.

In the end, the incorporation of a well-thought ethics system, by itself, wouldn't be enough to create a classic out of a mediocre game; taken in coordination with a well-polished game, however, it could pave the way to an era of games challenging both the minds and spirits of gamers - pave it with solid gold.

I Play to be Challenged

2007-03-28T20:40:00.000-05:00

I think the biggest problems in MMORPGs today are that they aren't designed, from the start, to challenge players, but rather to give them means to gain more power. For players like me, this is wrong; I don't want to be told I'll gain new power if I kill three dozens more of those orcs. I want the game to show me a scenario, and to tell me "Ok, this is what you know, now find a way to win this." This can be achieved with reasonably truly random enemies, challenging battles or crafting games which use the players' skills.

Players like me (And I know there's a whole underdeveloped market to be exploited for our demographic) want a game where the story happens all the time; a game where 'monotony' means 'only three new enemies to wipe today'; a game where stuff actually happens, which might scare proponents of static dungeons, but would represent a seven-leagues-boots lunar-gravity leap forward for those of us for whom the bragging right of being the first to complete static dungeon #176 for the metric umpteenth time doesn't portray a perfect world.

In my unloved demographic view, a game has to have actual unpredictable elements to be considered a game, otherwise, it's just a player-paced story, revolving around yet another hero in a world of heroes.

Aaaand that's all the ramblings you will get from this weblog. I'll be back to writing insightful and revolutionary ideas next time, I promise.

Rethinking the MMO

2007-03-26T18:14:00.000-05:00

There's an awesome article down at Gamasutra about, you guessed it, MMORPGs. Go read it. You'd think that guy was a long-time reader of Thoughts of a roleplayer =P

Skill Cooldown

2007-03-25T10:08:00.000-05:00

Typical MMORPG behavior includes cool-down periods for skills, particularly spells, which means those skills cannot be used for a period of time after being used, presumably because the character is tired, and to prevent over-usage of a single, powerful skill. This cooldown period also exists for some items, for example potions, and is sometimes shared between skills and potions - fireball 17 has the same cooldown has fireball 1 through 16, but not as firebolt 21 or lightning ball 14. While this principle is based on a good principle, that is, to presume that casting spells tires the caster, I believe that simple cooldown does not accurately depicts exhaustion.

To more properly represent fatigue, it should be stats, not skills, which are on a cooldown. For example, we could decide that the Willpower stat is the base for short-term fatigue, with certain skills being able to increase that. For example, Gerad has an willpower of 14, and took an Arcane Lore sub-skill to increase his short-term magic pool by two. If he decides to cast a spell with an associated short-term cost of 6, he will have 10 more power points immediately available for casting more spells. Those 6 points he expended will start regenerating as soon as he's done casting, so if his regeneration isn't too low (Intelligence? Wisdom?), he will get a few more points available before the end of the fight.

To this you could add long-term fatigue, which few spells use, but regenerates slower, and perhaps some form of meditation, or cheap item buffs for regeneration (Hey, Cooking!). So with this system, you can keep lobbing fireballs as fast as you want, but you'll eventually be too exhausted to cast; it wouldn't hurt if you were ready to give those bad guys a good whack upside down the head, either. As long as you still have mana points, short- and long-term fatigue available, you'll be good enough to win another fight.

Top Ten Reason to Play This Game

2007-03-23T17:13:00.000-05:00

Kill Ten Rats' forums have a thread asking people what the number one feature would be in a MMORPG (And of course, people don't limit themselves to one feature). So I thought I'd go ahead and tell the world what the top reasons for playing the thoughts of a roleplayer game would be.

1- Class-less, with a realistic skill system, allowing for a wide diversity of characters.
2- Customized crafting system, allowing players to decide exactly what they want to create.
3- A large, ever-changing world to explore or shape to your will.
4- Realistic everything, from combat and crafting to stealth and NPC creatures' lives.
5- Plenty of interesting non-combat activities, including trade skill games and other mini-games.
6- Grind-less combat advancement through the increased challenge and decreased number of opponents.
7- Non-static magic system, allowing for players to create their own spells from lists of acquired magical knowledge.
8- Advanced golem crafting, supplementing the already numerous ways of acquiring companions.
9- Complete guild system, allowing for a guild to have the advantage of both a small, friendly guild and a large corporation.
10- And finally, no monthly fee!
...
Ok, that last one might just be over-wishful thinking. Besides, monthly fees help keeping griefers away; you don't want griefers to create a hundred hotmail-backed accounts

Typical Adventuring

2007-03-10T22:11:00.000-05:00

So, what would typical adventuring look like in a non-WoW MMORPG? When things are more logical, when there's not a dozen NPCs with giant golden exclamation marks over their heads, just begging for the thousandth player to come by and give him some murloc eyeballs. You might be lucky and find a local farmer - PC or NPC - who needs some wildlife taken away from his farm; you might have a teacher tell you to go elsewhere for education; or you or your guild might acquire enough of a notoriety that that local constables or interest groups come to you for safety assurance or component retrieval. Chances are, however, that unless you're ready to start from the bottom to acquire the trust of your fellow characterians, you'll have to make do with slaying evil without any shiny from the local monarch at the end.

For regular adventuring, there wouldn't be much to discuss. Players would track and take out targets as they see fit, be they food- and leather-bearing wildlife or evil invaders (Or maybe not-so-evil bystanders). Then someone comes across something noteworthy; perhaps a dragon has migrated in a cave nearby, or some evil creatures or cult has emerged and is getting prepared to wreak havoc on unsuspecting villagers and needs to be stopped. Either way, the adventurer has found something that he cannot do alone, and he will call upon friends and countrymen for help. Together, be they a handful or a hundred, they will discuss tactics and strategies, in hope of protecting that which is dear to them, because, in this game your actions count, and your inaction could cost lives - virtual ones, but lives nonetheless.

So they enter the stronghold, with the plan in mind, and contingencies accounted for; and when the plan inevitably dies, and contingencies are unprepared to deal with what lies ahead, they must improvise to the best of their abilities; because there is no telling what you will face, no help to know what your opponent has prepared but the means you have at your disposition, be they stealth, divination or whatnot.

And when the enemy lies defeated, allies resurrected and evil schemes thwarted, the loot can be distributed, the farewells be said and the portals home opened. Satisfied with having saved the world (Or perhaps their locality), the heroes can take care of business as usual.

Come to think of it, this sounds a lot more like a tabletop game then a typical MMORPG. Is it bad to dream of such thing?

Not WoW

2007-03-09T12:40:00.000-05:00

Having recently tried Lord of the Rings Online, as well as reading reviews of it, I often heard people commenting, both positively and negatively, that the game is too much like World of Warcraft. On the one hand, some people like that fact that the interface and general gameplay are similar to that of World of Warcraft; on the other hand, people complain that the interface and gameplay are just rip-offs of World of Warcraft.

Now, as far as MMORPGs go, WoW has what people want; while it is certainly not the best MMORPG possible, it seems to have hit close to a local maximum (That is, the best you can get considering certain premises, like a class-based system). For a MMORPG to be very different from World of Warcraft, it would have to be very innovative in many ways, because, within the (albeit very large) niche of players who want class-based ~~grindfests~~ monster bashing, World of Warcraft has done very well, and there is little left to add. Games like the Lord of the Rings Online just have to change what they can and hope that the LotR theme will be sufficient to make the game profitable. Because, really, the only things LotRO can offer to fans of the genre is a story based around the sagas of the ring-bearer and a different world for those who have exhausted their WoW capacity.

It's not say that LotRO is bad; it's really well-done and polished, and I expect there will be very little need for patches after launch, which is certainly a very welcome change from what MMORPGs want people to get used to. You won't pay to beta-test LotRO (Unless you pre-order and get to play the pre-release game, but meh, you know to expect if you do that, and that is to actually get to keep your character after launch. Tobold said it best). But you won't need to learn how the game works if you've played WoW, which is a blessing and a curse.

Now, the point here is not to lament the lack of innovation in LotRO; Turbine thought that a class-based system would work best for Lord of the Rings Online, so they stuck to a WoW-like system of questing, monster-bashing and leveling. The real problem is that people will keep comparing LotRO to WoW, completely missing the fact that MMORPGs existed before WoW. MMORPGs have a rich and diverse history, and the fact that WoW was so popular simply means that they hit the demands of the market at the time with great accuracy.

What we need now, though, more than ever, is a game that can be defined not only as being not WoW, but as not being WoW (Take a moment to think about it). With LotRO, I think the market will hit the limits of how much of the same people can take, and the next big thing could very well be a game that shows more innovation than fans of the genre dared hope for. We don't need another UO, another EQ, SWG or DAoC; we need a game that can only be compared to itself. We've endured hack-and-slashes long enough to deserve that, right?

Flexible Voodoo Science

2007-03-05T20:04:00.000-05:00

Three new skills added to the skills list : Voodoo, a new type of magic; Science, a theoretical skill, and Flexible Weapons, which isn't a new form of damage, but includes whips, flails and nunchakus.

Lord of the Rings Online

2007-02-28T14:40:00.000-05:00

I tried the Lord of the Rings Online beta, but I'm not going to give you a review; you can get those at Tobold's, MMO Musing or maybe Kill Ten Rats. What I'll talk about, however, is an instance of the Mini games rule: the possibility to play real music in-game.

From what I could see, each class gets an instrument type they can play (Minstrels can learn all instrument types at level 20). From there, you just equip your harp, lute, flute or whatnot, and press number keys to play (Control for a flat, shift for an octave higher. Control + shift doesn't seem to work, however). You can impress everyone with your musical talents, or annoy everyone in the main square with your lack of; the only problem seems to be that music suffers from lag, and notes may get delayed different amounts, which leads to off-beat songs.

I think that concept is, to put it simply, awesome. Players can have fun with simple musical instruments, and perhaps entertain players in the main places for tips (Now if they could only find a way to make the lag between notes even, it would be perfect). And with a G15 keyboard, making songs would probably be quite simple. So yes, I think Turbine got it right with the /music.
I think if developers spent a little more time finding simple and fun things to entertain players, MMORPGs would have a longer time-to-boredom. We can only hope that they will find other such great ideas, and that their example will be widely followed.

On Character Customization

2007-02-23T15:05:00.000-05:00

I want to customize my character. I want to choose my look down to the smallest possible detail. Give me size and weight customization. Give me a hundred colors for my hair, skin, eyes and toenails. Those are lacking in today's MMORPGs, and indeed seem to have regressed in the past years.

The game can load a haircut per player, why not two or three? I think hairstyles should be add-ons by the player, so that the hair elements can be added separately. Choose a flat hair style, add a ponytail, add braids or buns as desired. Place a ponytail on each side for a different effect. And heck, go to a hair stylist to change it as needed; Ultima Online had that, and it was great.

I want to customize my body appearance. If I want to be tall and slim, let me be tall and slim; and if I want to be short and fat, by the devs, you will let me be short and fat! And none of those pre-made faces. I want my own head, forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, the deal. I want people to recognize me by my face, not by the name that hovers over my head.

And please, please, please, don't go telling me a facial expression and pre-defined hair style is all you need. Simple characters are only good for munchkins, and if they don't want to customize their own character, let them hit the random button and be done with it. I don't want to look bland just because some guy somewhere is too lazy to spend a few minutes selecting his character's looks.

That's all I wanted to say. Character customization has always been a favorite of mine, as it is for many people who would agree with what I write in this humble weblog, I presume. I just wish the developers wouldn't just say it's too hard to do and actually get around to doing it...

New Teaching System

2007-02-18T11:21:00.000-05:00

I've previously touched the concept of teaching in a MMORPG, but after some time, I realized that system was quite troublesome. Suffice it to say that I had to think of a new system to replace the broken system; and what better way, of course, than as a mini game?

Without defining exactly what the game would be, I envision that it is something that should involve both the teacher and the student(s). Students have to listen or practice what is being taught and, should they fail, it would be the teacher's job to bring them back in line. The teacher has to both watch students and teach his class, so that a good teacher would teach the same class faster (and possibly charge more) than a beginner one.

So teaching becomes in line with other trade skills, having its own mini game; it's simply that the game must involve more than one person. I think this is much better than having a system where you don't know if the teacher will be present the whole time you're away...

Out Of Ideas

2007-02-15T18:04:00.000-05:00

After talking at length about the game I would like to play, I've finally reached the point where my short-term inspiration has failed me. I could probably talk some more about crafting skills, melee combat or the benefits of hippopotamus leather for waterproof boots, but I think by this point the idea has been passed. So unless someone can provide me with good ideas to write about, you can expect the posts here to be more sporadic, as inspiration strikes, instead of every other day or so.

Circumventing Item Binding

2007-02-13T16:11:00.000-05:00

World of Warcraft introduced the concept of item binding to MMORPGs, where more powerful items are 'bound' to their owner when picked up or equipped, which has the effect of making them completely non-tradable; this is presumably to keep the holy sinks in the game, preventing people from reselling them after usage, or farming them for other people.

There is another way to keep people from getting cheap and easy twinks, without enforcing large sinks, and with the added bonus of preserving realism: you make clothing and armor items be fit for their owner. This only makes sense: a full plate armor has to be custom-made for the owner. Trying to wear an armor that isn't custom-made for you is like trying to run with shoes not your size; sure, it might work, and if you're lucky, you might even be able to get back home to decide you never want to do it again, but chances are you'll want to put that armor on your mule or in your bag of holding until you get to a competent blacksmith who can resize it for you. Forget about doing cartwheels in an armor belonging to someone else, you'll be lucky if you don't break a bone in the way.

In a MMORPG, though, you don't want to force players to go visit a blacksmith, get measures taken, and then wait a week or two for the armor to be resized. The process should be streamlined via the skill auctioning system, to find a blacksmith, tailor, or maybe a bone crafter, allowing for best efficiency for the new armor owner.

So this way, you can have a small fee for transferring items to a new owner, and even a small fee for acquiring someone else's armor, allowing the diminishing of other sinks; unfortunately, this mostly only works for armors. Weapons aren't typically custom-made (Though it could be possible), so weapons are just as easy to transfer to new owners, though it's a good thing you don't need a dozen different weapons. Bind on Pickup, anyone?

On Spell Customization

2007-02-11T12:30:00.000-05:00

Saga of Ryzom had an interesting spell customization system, in which spells could be created to cost more or less mana depending on range, power, area of effect and others. While the idea is noble, it had serious flaws in it, not the least of which being that you could have a mana-restoring spell which costs less mana than it gives back, making it essentially a free mana heal spell. In large groups, people didn't have much use for spell diversity, instead relying on the much-praised casting of the heal-health-and-mana-on-a-large-area bomb spell, so that after a few seconds, everyone was effectively ready for battle, at absolutely no cost.

While the implementation is arguably flawed (Though I'm sure there is no lack of players who would argue otherwise), the idea is a practical implementation of the concept of spell customization, which had been asked for numerous times before. Fix the flaw in the healing system (If you can hide long enough for fanboys to let you call it a flaw) and you actually have a quite decent magic system.

Regular role-playing games usually offer spells that are simply more powerful version of a previous spell - for example, the Final Fantasy series has Cure spell from 1 to 3 or 4. This could be worked into a spell customization system; spells have a base effect, say, heal, fire, poison, sleep, whatnot, on which is applied a power ("Fire 3", or perhaps "Greater Whatnot"), an area of effect ("Greater Fireball" or "Long Firebolt") and possibly modifiers (Damage over time burning, longer cast time for greater power, shorter cast time for higher mana cost, perhaps a bouncing ability or pierce-through effect). With careful consideration, you could have your Magery and Healing skills become quite customizable; and you can always decide to only apply customization to certain skills, so that perhaps Elementalism, Holy and Nature Magic would have only fixed spell effects.

As I seem to often say, there's nothing bad with giving players more freedom; they will often surprise you with ingenuity, if you simply let them use their full potential.

More On Crafting Mini Games

2007-02-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

My previous attempts at defining trade skills mini games were, in my opinion, rather limited, so I've taken the liberty of inflicting yet another post to unsuspecting readers. This one will talk about the skills involved in playing the trade skills' mini games; of course, it means that the developers are willing to let people use their own skills once in a while, but that shouldn't be too hard to sell to the big boss.

The mini games associated with trade skills should ideally be easy to understand, hard to master and impossible to automate. This is to keep players interested in playing the game from day one to the end of times. There could be more than one game associated with each trade skills; for example, the smithing skill mini game for weapon smithing could be different than the one for armor smithing. There could be overlapping between different skills as well; wood crafting and stone carving should have similar tasks that can use the same game, with different visual sets.

That being said, it's easy to understand how hard it would be to make every trade skill have one or more mini game, even with overlapping. To keep the games interesting, they should be related to the skill they represent; for example, alchemy and chemistry could have you weighting different substances. However, some skills, say, herbalism or jewel crafting, do not have activities that would obviously be fun as a mini game; finding games for those skills would be quite a challenge to developers.

More importantly, however, each mini game, or set of mini games, associated with a trade skill, should be completely unique, so that two trade skills will never play the same. With this in mind, players can decide on the mini game or mini games they like the most, and pick up that trade skill. In this way, the trade skills would become a very real extension of the game itself, and players would be more likely to appreciate the game to its full extent. Because, really, if you're not making a game to entertain the players in some way, then why are you even bothering?

On Death Penalties

2007-02-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

Sure, death is very annoying, what with having to go back to where you died to resume the fight, but the really annoying part of being dead is the accompanying penalties. Equipment damage is common, as well as a debuff, often called resurrection sickness, which makes adventuring next to impossible. Past that point, it all depends on the game.

Everquest had become (in)famous for its harsh death penalties; namely, if you died, you had to walk back to your corpse or risk losing everything you had. Dungeons in Everquest were notorious for being quite empty, since dying in a dungeon pretty much meant that you lost everything you had. Nowadays, kids get a corpse summoner service, which, according to some players, takes all the fun out of it.

Before that, Ultima Online had an even harsher penalty; namely, your items were left on your body (except those which were newbied, the ones you started the game with), but other people were able to loot them as well (though they would become criminals by doing so, if you are a law-abiding citizen). Ultima Online was violent, with player killers pretty much running every tile outside of protected areas; and of course, when Origin decided to create a non-PvP server, the player killers complained that they no longer had victims to slaughter and insult.

Nowadays, it's impossible to not compare any MMORPG to World of Warcraft. WoW has a very nice death system, where, upon death, you get the choice of waiting or reappearing at the nearest graveyard, as a ghost. If you decide to run to your corpse as a ghost, or a friend resurrects you, you take no penalty besides the equipment durability loss from death. Alternatively, you can talk to the spirit at the graveyard, who will resurrect you for a higher equipment penalty and up to ten minutes of resurrection sickness (Just long enough to check the city and go back into action, it seems).

As with most everything that doesn't have to do with the core game play, I think Blizzard got it about right with the death penalty. A few things could be done better, though. For one, death adds emphasis to the two resources in World of Warcraft, namely time and money, in that it makes you lose some of both (time in running back to your corpse, and money for the repairs). This means that you don't lose anything important or permanently upon death, which actually makes it a trivial matter; not that low death penalties are bad, but this simply adds another reason to the already large list to farm lower-level monsters instead of finding challenging enemies.

Had the previously-mentioned greater rest experience system be implemented, it would be logical to think that players could lose some daily rest upon death. Even further, were they out of rest bonus, they could become tired more easily, so the death penalty would mean less time to hunt during the day, whether the player is casual or addicted.

But no matter what the death penalties are, they should follow the game's philosophy. If you want a hard game, high death penalties are fine, while more casual games will want low penalties. Besides difficulty, developers should remember that anything they do can and will change other parts of the game. If you have high death penalties, players will be less likely to try to explore, especially if they have to run naked to their corpse upon death. In a game that is about PvP, that's fine, since it means players can't run back into the game after death; but if the game is about exploring or socializing, harsh death penalties may tend to push your desired player base away from the game. So the important part is not to decide what you want as death penalties, but rather to decide what you want as a game; then the death penalties will mold themselves around the game.

Character Rest

2007-02-05T17:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, we've all heard it: MMORPGs are addictive and dangerous. World of Warcraft has tried to cut down on the addictive factor somewhat, by rewarding casual players with extra experience. That effort is made completely useless by the fact that addicted players don't care about a few extra experience points, and the fact that the high-level game forces players to invest large amounts of time in order to be competitive.

The concept of rest experience could be taken further, however. In World of Warcraft, the first one-and-a-half level worth of experience, when fully rested, is doubled. You get fully rested by being offline or inside an inn for a full week, so it's not really useful for the hardcore player base. Rest experience could be improved by making it based on two different timers; the first part of the rest experience is the one earned every day; you get about an hour or so of extra skill points earned(statistically), as long as you rested at least 8 hours during the night (or day). When that rest bonus is expended, you get to the long-time rest experience, the one that accumulates over weeks and months. If you don't play during the week, but play many hours during the week-end, your non-play week time will be working for you. Same if you go away for some time or, devs forbid, decide to play another game for a few weeks.

To this can be added tiredness; characters that fight evil creatures or smash the anvil all day do get tired, and it can alter their skill learning, if not their whole effectiveness. Tiredness is, of course, dispelled by resting; more accurately, if you've rested long enough to get rest experience, then you're not tired anymore.

Of course, this would do little to dissuade real addicts, but unless you're willing to force players who play too much out of the game, chances are you'll only meet limited success in stopping addicts.

Why You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It

2007-02-03T20:24:00.000-05:00

At the end of the NPC Creatures Populations post, I linked to an interesting read about MMORPGs; most importantly, it talked about holistic design in MMORPGs. Holistic design is one in which the developers realise that anything they change within the world will affect other parts of the world; and they try to design it so it will still work even after changing parts that could be broken.

The reason you're trying to keep your cake and eat it is because you're trying to satisfy two urges: the urge to eat that delicious source of dessertness, and the urge to keep the cake for later. MMORPGs face a similar dilemma, in that they can't satisfy all the players; indeed, sometimes they can't satisfy some of the players, no matter what they do, because the players ask for contradicting things. On the one hand, players will want more money for themselves; they will ask for better drops, more item resale value and less money sinks. On the other hand, they don't want item price inflation, they don't want to have to farm their resources for long periods, and they certainly don't want the other players to have all this same, easy cash.

In a holistic MMORPG design, the developers would typically try to balance item drop and money sinks so that the players will like the drops they get, and still not acquire ridiculous amounts of cash. Holistic design is important to more than just money transfers, though. You want to balance realism in combat and balanced combat classes, otherwise you'll have cookie-cutter characters, who see no reason to differentiate themselves from the other pastries around them. But you will also want to balance realism and fun, because the market for players who want to immerse themselves in a true medieval experience, with the long hours, high taxes and constant hardships, isn't exactly flourishing.

Every feature should be well thought out before even getting a maybe at the meeting, to be completely certain that it will not go against previous decisions or other parts of the big system. Implementation of great concepts, in particular, shouldn't be thrown in because of their own merit, because they can have unexpected results on other parts of the system. For example, if you decide to implement monster migration, you'll want to make sure that your quest team won't assign players to kill creatures that have migrated away for the season; you'll want path finding for both short and long distances (your programmers will love you for that), and you'll want to make sure that the AI doesn't get stuck because there's unexpected elements in the way. There's tons of problems that could pop up if you don't consider the idea carefully.

The more a MMORPG tries to include a complex, living world, the more the players and developers realise that living organisms are actually quite weak things. Small mistakes, sometimes invisible to the naked eye, can cause long diseases and, in extreme cases, even death of an otherwise quite healthy game. Forget the arsenal of competitors, or even the sharp tongues of fanboyish detractors; your MMORPG is more likely to die because of small things attacking their health than because of bigger, visible threats to its longevity. And often, it's almost impossible to detect those threats before they're out of control, and any but the most well-thought attempts to fix the mistakes will remind you of the first rule of holistic design; anything you change can and will affect other parts of your world. So keep your wits about you, and think ahead as far as your collective intelligence scores will allow, because any mistake in wisdom can result in irreparable damage strong enough to even the most dexterous developers might not be able to dodge.

Mini Games

2007-02-02T18:35:00.000-05:00

What really spices up a good game is sometimes the things you don't suspect; for example, mini games, which you can play when you're not out adventuring. I'm not talking about chess and poker, though those can add a nice touch as well, but rather lesser tasks to which you can give some attention, and which offer small rewards for small risks. Single-player RPGs are notorious for having things you can do, which basically only offer some fun-factor, and I think it's high time that this concept is included in MMORPGs as well.

Just imagine a game of tag in a dark room, with stealthy rogues and teleporting, illusion-weaving mages. Or maybe hide-and-seek, or a game of finding hidden treasures. Games which offer a decent challenge, can be played by more than one person and are simply fun aren't that hard to create, and with a good attention given to preventing cheating, it would help greatly in overcoming the stress of the adventuring life (and give something else to do when in town than just checking the auction house again =P ).

With mini games to spice up meaty adventuring and, huh, vegetably crafting, a MMORPG would be able to retain a large portion of otherwise uninterested gamers, all for the working time of some bored programmers and artists. If they really cared about the players, they'd give us our capture-the-flag and hide-and-seek!

One can hope...

NPC Creatures Populations

2007-01-31T16:31:00.000-05:00

Monster NPC creatures in MMORPGs are typically statically located, and respawn out of thin air, for the camper's greater delight. What is rarely considered is that perhaps it would be possible to have a realistic monster population in a MMORPG.

Realistic monsters, be they rabbits, goblins or dragons, would have purposes on their own. Rabbits need to survive, and to do that, they only need to eat, avoid predators and reproduce. If the rabbit population goes up too much, however, food starts getting scarce, and the rabbits get more daring; they go eat near potential predators, namely human settlements. What happens then? You get a good old-fashioned quest. Farmers, or authorities who have been contacted by them, will pay adventurers, typically very meagerly, to take out some of the rabbits that are ravaging their vegetable crops. For rangers, this is good news, since it means they get something extra for hunting rabbits - plus, the rabbits are plentiful.

Another thing that might happen if the rabbit population goes up is that other predators will become more plentiful as well. Big bad wolves, who require fresh meat to live, will become more common, and while they don't typically attack humans, they can be a problem to livestock and hapless travellers. The result? More questing. Wolves tend to defend themselves better than rabbits, but they also have better furs, and more meat, for those who aren't afraid of uncommon food sources. No lucky rabbit foot, though.

So right here and now, we have an equilibrium. Rabbits can't get too common without encouraging wolf population growth, which need rabbits to live, otherwise their population will go back down; and if it doesn't, a hundred adventurers are ready to reason with them and make them see the errors of their way, usually in a rather permanent way.

Now, having balanced populations isn't everything, monsters need to come from somewhere. For rabbits, this is not too difficult; you add a hole in the ground, call it a burrow and make rabbits pop out of it; if you want extra fancies, you can have rabbits hide back in it when they sense danger. In this way, the rabbit population can never go lower than the number of rabbits left in the burrow. Rabbits will always exist.

When it comes to wolves, however, things might be different. While wolves will typically lodge within caves and other natural nice places, those locations are rarely inaccessible to adventurers, who can go in and try to fight the whole wolf pack; if they succeed, they have one less pack of wolves to care about. However, if too many adventurers hunt wolves, they might become scarce, and unless some lawmaker is ready to take some time away from destroying demons to declare them an endangered species, you might see the total destruction of all wolves within a certain area. Wolves can migrate from other parts, but for a while, rabbits might become a problem.

Now, most animals are easy to understand, but when sentient creatures are involved, things get more complicated. Goblins usually have their own agenda, and when they are not solely preoccupied with survival, they will start to get organized. If they are evil little goblins, they will raid settlements in hope of finding sustenance in the form of rations, or perhaps loot, to quell their hunger for shininess. If that happens, then you have goblins with actual loot; goblins that adventurers will want to kill; and goblins which will fight back much more fiercely, since they are both large enough to have raided in the first place, and made stronger from the weapons, armors and trinkets they acquired; we are to presume goblins cannot make such things on their own. Goblins which aren't technically evil might simply decide to defend themselves against invaders, in which case it is the players' role to play the evil part and exterminate helpless populations.

This presents a lot of story opportunities. Adventurers can venture in the goblin outlands and raid some villages. They can do so to protect their homelands, or simply because they like killing goblins. Similarly, if they go after goblins who pillaged a town, they might want to keep all this nice loot for themselves, or give it back to their rightful owners. But adventurers can also venture further in, and try to exterminate bigger goblin populations; and that causes dilemmas. Is it alright to kill young goblins, knowing they would most likely become raiders? The game doesn't offer the answer, it only presents the question. Players make their own stories, and set their own rules.

What about creatures which aren't technically part of populations? Dragons are rarely seen in groups, since they usually don't mingle very well. If a dragon enters an area, it will have to not only claim it for itself, but also exterminate would-be predators, acquire their shinies and find reliable sources of food. They also offer a much stronger challenge to adventurers, and typically a larger loot as well. Since they work alone, or in small groups (For example, a dragon, its mate and its youngs), defeating a dragon leaves the area unoccupied. Migrating creatures may want to seize the land, or perhaps retake it if the dragon took it from them in the first place. Dragons themselves have to come from somewhere. If you don't want your dragon population being exterminated by the players, that location must be either inaccessible to the players, or so suicidal a place that even large raids of seasoned adventurers could not hope to last long in such a location. In either case, you simply control the dragon population by having extra dragons migrate out of the place and seize a suitable lair, possibly away from another dragon (If your players are too lazy to do the dragon-slaying themselves).

With different creatures come different rules, and if you change one's rules, it might affect another's; this is called holism, which basically means that changing one part of a system, particularly one in equilibrium, might change other parts of the system. For more information on holistic MMORPG development, I recommend checking the lengthy but interesting read at http://mu.ranter.net/theory/.

The Melee Fighter

2007-01-29T19:16:00.000-05:00

After having established the role of a tank, realistic combat and real stealth, all that is left is to explain how a fighter manages the different aspects of fighting in melee. What I envision here is a concept, perhaps somewhat complex, of emphasizing certain aspects of combat to best suit the situation.

Available to melee fighters would be some scrollers allowing them to choose how much of any action to allocate to the fight. Those scrollers would let them choose the power of attacks, the amount of defence, the zone of control for defending spell casters and such, as well as the speed of attacks. Choosing a high attack and good speed, with no defence or zone of control, would be equivalent to fighting as a berserker. High defence and zone of control means you expect the spell casters, ranged attackers and the rest of the melee fighters to deal the damage. Other scrollers could become available with skills, for example feints, taunts, controlling allies or casting melee-based spells.

With the use of those scrollers come specializations in melee fighting. Tanks would be those who are good at maintaining zones of control, defending themselves and others, and perhaps using taunts. Rogues use stealth and quick, weak attacks. Versatile fighters can be decent at everything, as long as they know how to set their scrollers for optimal performances.

So now, after seeing custom spells, you have custom melee fighting. Stances are good, but they're better when you get to make your own, aren't they?

The Stats Model

2007-01-27T14:19:00.000-05:00

Even though you don't have stat counters and right-click -> inspect in Real Life, you can get a pretty good idea of a person's statistics simply by looking at them. For example, you know that that 2-meters-tall guy, weighting a hundred kilograms, without any fat in sight, has more strength than you do; and you know that, without really being a body builder, there's a good chance you could have beaten Albert Einstein in arm wrestling. It's simply about making sense of what you see, and games like Fable took that concept in and made your looks based on your capacities.

So I'm thinking, how come you can decide on your appearance at character creation, and that appearance has very little to do with your actual stats? World of Warcraft comes to mind here, with a gnome warrior having only marginally less strength and and hit points than a tauren warrior (Who is easily three times bigger than the gnome). Worse, a gnome warrior is very much stronger than, say, a tauren druid of the same level, yet you wouldn't expect a tauren to lose in arms wrestling or weight lifting against a gnome, no matter how warriorish he is.

Now, if the game only features one race, you would expect all members of that race (Unless significant sub-races are present) to have the same kind of growth potential; starting appearances would have little to do with potential stats. In a game featuring vastly different races, however, what you are should affect what you can be. A player making a character of a strong race and a magic-using character would play differently than one of an intelligent race for the same magic-using character. So what I think is, appearances count, and your stats should affect your appearances; at least, the physical stats would, those typically being strength, constitution and dexterity.

Again, this is simply an effort to make the game look more in line with reality. After all, you're not getting any stronger reading this.

Real Stealth

2007-01-25T19:13:00.000-05:00

Why is it that MMORPG rogues are able to hide in plain daylight as well as during the night? Why is it that games artificially boost a rogue's stealth ability? I think that the ability of a sneaky person to get past others should be based on them not being noticeable, so passing behind guards is a must or, if impossible, at least using shadows to conceal oneself.

That being said, it would introduce into the game something that developers seem to dislike, that of using the player's skills for something. To enjoy a fully functional stealth system, you would need to have the player decide on where to go, unless you decide to use some fuzzy path finding technology that technomagically makes the character decide on the best path to take. Not only that, but you would need players to actually be paying attention to what is happening around them, as well as prevent third-party scripts from automatically detecting invisible stuff.

So, without artificially boosting a rogue's invisibility, the stealthy players will have to find environments in which they can meld, typically shadows (unless they buy points in invisibility spells, of course, but let's not get there); and players would have to pay attention to their surrounding to avoid being ambushed. So, in essence, it just gives player a more realistic experience of fantasy warfare, instead of relying on random number generators to do all the job. I don't think that's all bad; it's just different from what the hardcore gamers are used to, and these people are pretty vocal in their disapprobation, so we might not see realistic stealth in a MMORPG any time soon. At least it's fun to dream, isn't it?

The One-Man Army

2007-01-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

With the possibility to create golems, to tame animals and to summon undeads, demons and elementals, one has to wonder what are the limits as to what one can order. While it is possible to control more than one type of creature, there are some things to take into consideration before attempting to invade presumably evil creatures with an ill-assorted army of followers.

First and foremost, there are limits to the numbers one can raise in every category, and these limits also overlay between categories. For example, one cannot summon demons unless they have the willpower to control them, and no one can summon elementals unless they have the power to keep them active. As for undeads, they may require both; the willpower to keep them enslaved, and the magical power to keep them active. Golems will require both the technical know-how of how to keep them up, and sometimes the magical power to keep them active. As for animal companions, the master needs to have the magnetism to keep them charmed, which translates into skills of animal taming and leadership.

But there are other considerations as well; you cannot simply have the maximum amount of everything and hope they work well together. Animals, for example, could be scared to death of mechanical golems, undeads, demons, and perhaps fire elementals, while being relatively accepting of magical creatures that do not seem immediately destructive, like magical golems and nicer elementals. Golems, if not trained properly, could interpret other companions as threats, and treat them accordingly. And you don't want to know the effect of placing dried-up corpses near mountains of pure thermal energy.

So while, yes, it is possible to mix many types of followers and slaves, it's not possible to use nearly all of one's capacities in every domain at once; and the choices you make at any time will reflect the things you can do with your commanding capacities. Choose the undeads and demons, and you'll have a hard time against Holy magic. Animals aren't too good against metal-kind, while magical golems and elementals are susceptible to dispelling.

So yes, it's possible to know lots of way to have followers, but in the end, as with everything else, you're better to pick a speciality and stick to it.

On Taunts

2007-01-22T15:11:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, when thinking of the problems inherent to the implementation of the warrior's Taunt skill in World of Warcraft (namely, that it doesn't work on player characters), I had an epiphany of sort. I thought, what if the taunt was modified to not force a player to attack the taunter, but instead to be a special case of a debuff?

The envisioned taunt would have the same effect on PCs and NPCs alike: it would give penalties to the taunted, with decreased chances to hit with melee and ranged attack, chances to fizzle spells and the like, unless the target is attacking the person who is taunting (easily identified by their flashing in red). So, against an NPC, the taunt would have sensibly the same effect of forcing the NPC to attack the target, with the added bonus of debuffing if they decide not to. The taunt, however, now becomes useful in PvP, as a way to save a friend from certain death (or just annoying the enemy with another debuff).

The debuff way also adds some sense or realism to the game, since losing concentration is the result you expect to see from being taunted. And of course, for our healing friends, there are ways to protect oneself from taunting; a good, disciplined character (imagine a monk) wouldn't be fazed by such cheap tricks, so it's another game dynamic to consider.

On Set Items

2007-01-20T20:17:00.000-05:00

One concept that has been used times and times again in recent fantasy games is that of the set items; that is, items that are better if worn with other items of the same set, so your helm of Bob would give more defence if worn with your gauntlets of Bob, and maybe give resistance to curses if you also have the sword of Bob. Set items, however, are usually drops, not craftable items, so in essence, it just gives craftable items another layer of uselessness.

How do you reconcile set items and freely craftable items, then? By inventing the concept of item resonance (Seriously, you should have guessed that one. Sheesh). Item resonance happens when items are crafted with similar goal in mind. So, for example, a plate helm is a lot more efficient if worn with a plate armor, plate gauntlets and plate greaves. Similarly, an item enchanted to resist curses will be more efficient if worn with an item to resist necromancy or another which reduces demon attacks. Wielding a dagger will not be very useful if you're wearing heavy, cumbersome armor, but it becomes quite deadly if you have boots of speed and gloves of agility.

So now, players can make their own sets, reinforcing their desired fighting style precisely the way they want it; no longer will they be forced to rely on developer-enforced sets that might be close to what they had in mind.

On Subskills

2007-01-19T11:43:00.000-05:00

It's very mighty fine that you just got one more point in your Fishing skill, but what does it do, exactly?

Of course, increasing any skill increases your efficiency when using that skill, so you'll be able to catch bigger fishes with less efforts, use better lures and all those whatnots. But, more importantly, it gives you access to some subskills. Subskills are special talents you can learn that are related to their respective skill. To buy those skills, you must expend the skill points you earned earlier (Don't worry, your total skill won't go down) and, in some cases, seek training from a master or other sources of information. So with a few points in fishing, you could learn to throw your line further, or maybe how to set up the lure better. You could opt to learn a line trick to make the lure look more alive, or you could take the skill you unlocked after taking that other skill a moment ago.

There are lots of possibilities; but, as you progress, you'll realize that some of the skills become redundant. Perhaps the magery Lightning Bolt spell is similar to the elementalist Lightning Strike, or the nature magic Summon Lightning. Maybe you're not too enthusiastic about learning a hundredth way of healing someone. What's the point of mastering every skill, then?

The truth is, there might not be a point. As you progress in different skills, you will notice that there are many ways to obtain the same result, which is good for character diversification, but bad for specialists who have mastered much of their skill and don't want to start learning new ones. The thing is, however, that learning enough of every skill that anything new would become redundant would take an enormous amount of time; forget about mastering the game in a month, it will take years to be good at everything, and by then you will realize that it was a big waste of time, since you only need to excel at your own profession to succeed. But at least you don't need to share the loot, right?

Webcomic Characters

2007-01-17T15:59:00.000-05:00

People who know me know that I'm a webcomic freak. So I thought, why not mix this with the MMORPG fanaticism? I know you all wonder what your (read: my) favorite webcomic characters would be like in the game, so here's what I think.

From 8-bit theater:

(Characters are post-upgrade)
Fighter
Slashing, Piercing, Blocking
Athletics, Dodge, Mounting, Engineering, 2 unknowns (The guy doesn't do much besides fight, it seems).

Red Mage
Slashing, Magery, Healing
Elementalism, Blocking, Leadership, Tactics, Mounting, Arcane Lore
(As well as whatever strikes his fancy)

Thief (aka ninja)
Sneak, Dodge, Throwing
Pick Locks, Acrobatics, Blocking, Piercing, Unarmed, Mounting

Black Mage
Magery, Sorcery, Arcane Lore
Elementalism, Necromancy, Demonology, Demolition, Piercing, Illusionism

White Mage
Healing, Holy, Blunt
First Aid, Biology, Arcane Lore, Protection, Defence, Teaching

The now twice defunct Black Belt
Unarmed, Blocking, Blunt
Dodge, Acrobatics, Athletics, 2 unknowns

What about Dominic Deegan?

Dominic
Illusionism, Arcane Lore, Magery
Sorcery, Healing, Teaching, Scroll Writing, Enchanting, Alchemy, Fishing

Luna
Sorcery, Magery, Arcane Lore
Healing, Holy, Illusionism, Teaching, Protection, Cooking

Gregory
Holy, Healing, Protection
Defence, Arcane Lore, Biology, Nature Magic, 2 unknowns

Spark
Sneak, Acrobatics, Fishing
Dodge, Piercing, Exploration, Demolition, Dancing, Sleeping

Perhaps Bruno the Bandit?

Bruno
Slashing, Athletics, Sneak
Dodge, Blocking, Piercing, Trapping, Mounting, Dancing

Ho, and why not The Gods of Arr-Kelaan?

Ronson
Chemistry, Cooking, Holy
Tactics, Leadership, Magery, Biology, Sorcery, Illusionism

Everyone's favorite Girl Genius

A Spark (none in particular)
Engineering, Smithing, Golem Crafting
Chemistry, 5 depending on the person

The Order of the Stick!

Roy
Slashing, Blunt, Blocking
Athletics, Unarmed, Smithing, Dodge, Mounting, Animal Taming

Haley
Sneak, Archery, Pick Locks
Dodge, Acrobatics, Dancing, Trapping, Piercing, Tactics

Elan
Music, Piercing, Illusionism
Sorcery, Dancing, Blocking, Dodge, Acrobatics, Sneak

Durkon
Holy, Blunt, Blocking
Healing, Mining, Smithing, Protection, Defence, Dodge

Vaarsuvius
Magery, Arcane Lore, Elementalism
Sorcery, Illusionism, Alchemy, Scroll Writing, Golem Crafting, Enchanting

Belkar
Piercing, Sneak, Dodge
Acrobatics, Throwing, Bone Carving, Tactics, Exploration, Cooking
(And a total absence of any tracking skills)

Goblins

Chief
Holy, Healing, Leadership
Tactics, Teaching, Throwing, Piercing, Protection, Biology

Big Ears
Slashing, Defence, Blocking
Protection, Piercing, Holy, Dodge, Blunt, Athletics

Thaco
Slashing, Dodge, Acrobatics
Blocking, Athletics, Sneak, Tactics, Leadership, Unarmed

Senor Vorpal Kickass'o (aka Fumbles)
All skills, with minimum knowledge in all
(That was the easiest one by far)

Complains of Names
Slashing, Athletics, Blocking
Dodge, Acrobatics, Cooking, Tracking, Herbalism, Biology

And finally, I can't forget Dungeons and Denizens

Min
Blunt, Athletics, Slashing
Smithing, Stone Carving, Wood Crafting, First Aid, Cooking, Tactics

Those I didn't mention, from lack of space:
8-bit theater: Sarda, Princess Sara, the Dark Warriors
Dominic Deegan: Gregory, Miranda, as well as a large cast of Villains
The Order of the Stick: The linear guild, Xykon, Red Cloak, Miko, Lord Shojo, and probably a few others
The Gods of Arr-Kelaan: A large number of gods, and perhaps a few mortals of some importance
Goblins: Minmax, Forgath, The fortune teller, Dies horribly

While I know most of you skipped over all the boring details, I hope at least I showed you a few webcomics you'll remember to bookmark.

How Guilds Work

2007-01-16T12:20:00.000-05:00

There are lots of things wrong with guilds right now, not the least of which is that they're mostly devoid of any kind of subdivision. Other than the the guild leader and his lieutenants, there are no way to differentiate one guild member from another. This often leads to a practical limit to the size of guilds, above which people start not knowing each other and the guild ceases to function as a guild.

I think a better guild system would be one that allows subdivisions, both in hierarchy and classification. You could have sub-guilds within a guild, for whatever purpose you might require. For example, a merchant's guild could have a division for cooks, another for blacksmiths, woodworkers, engineers and maybe golem crafters, with a superdivision for those who have a large number of trades. Or you could have a guild divided by rank, with less privilege given to lower members, including perhaps restricted access to the guild house.

But perhaps more importantly, this would allow guild members to have access to a smaller group of guildmates, so that, while help is available outside of the small group which shares the player's interests, the number of people one has to know is not overwhelming. This way, a guild does not implode from its own gravitational force, and perhaps guild leaders could save some time deferring the management of subdivisions to local leaders.

More Skills

2007-01-15T15:52:00.000-05:00

Only minor changes; I added the Nature magic and Exploration skills.