How Unfair is Unfair?

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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!

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!

"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!

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.