So Diablo III was announced by Blizzard this week and the hypemachine is already rolling full steam ahead based on the scant tidbits revealed so far. Whatever comes of Diablo III I'm sure it will be another entertaining click-fest and I'll have a great time playing it.
Update (Predictions): With two of five classes announced being the Barbarian and Witch Doctor what will the other three classes be? Since both male and female models will be available for each class the Amazon needs to change, my prediction is a Rogue (or Ranger?) class that will take on aspects of the Amazon and Assassin. Some kind of Knight or Paladin class would make a compelling contrast to the Barbarian. This leaves the old Druid and Sorceress which I'll suggest could be replaced with a classical Mage class.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Ekard Unseated in EQ2
Previously I wrote about how my character Ekard in EQ2 continued to hold the Highest Melee Hit Worldwide record I set in 2005. I captured a screenshot of the highest hit board to commemorate that achievement. Well it appears to have been well timed as Ekard has finally been unseated in the EQ2 Highest Melee Hit Worldwide record. At the time of this writing Ekard is down to 5th place Worldwide although still ranked first on the Guk server (but I wouldn't count on that lasting).
I want to congratulate the EQ2 Assassin community on finally reclaiming the Highest Melee Hit board from Ekard. It has been a long time coming, enjoy.
I want to congratulate the EQ2 Assassin community on finally reclaiming the Highest Melee Hit board from Ekard. It has been a long time coming, enjoy.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Turtles All The Way Down
I'm certainly not the first to observe how effective the game-within-a-game design concept is for MMOG design. Seemingly mundane character interactions can be made more engaging by including a skill and learning element, effectively a mini-game.
The Age of Conan, currently in beta, takes this to the next level by starting each character within a private instanced area that leads into a low-level single character gaming experience. At the conclusion of the single character content a player will have achieved a basic level of competency with their new character in a game which aims to make player skill an important component of the combat system. For archetype or even class-specific skills this may be an important training period for the player as well as providing character advancement opportunities in a safe non-PvP environment.
The FAQ for Age of Conan indicates that the instanced introduction period is meant to last only about an hour of play time. Beyond that the single character game continues but interactions with other players via chat is allowed. There is discussion of allowing this "forced" single player mode to be skipped over in some fashion but no details or even developer commitment is given at this time.
I hadn't considered taking the game-within-a-game concept this far but I like the idea. For games that lend themselves well to a secluded introductory experience this may be a great alternative to free-for-all introductory newbie zones. A rich single player experience can provide a good feel for the game mechanics during a trial account period without exposing a new player to early PvP conflicts that may be a turn-off. Specifically for games where skipping the introduction does not create a significant penalty, a player that desires to jump right into the real game can choose to do so immediately even while playing on a trial account.
Gameplay Demo Mini-Games
Something that I've suggested in the past to a friend who works in the game industry is releasing free mini-games to introduce gameplay concepts to new players. This can be a pre-release and demo-like capability providing a sandboxed training area completely disassociated from the game servers if that is convenient or a fully network aware experience that provides some server load beta testing in addition to content testing while keeping game mechanics consistent between the mini-game and ongoing beta activities.
The specific suggestion I've made in the past is to offer a simple web-based game to introduce the crafting mechanics during early beta and get broad exposure to an audience happy to provide feedback. This could be a web-based front end to the existing game servers, think of it as a simplified game client for specific aspects of the game, which can provide for more seamless integration of changes made in the beta servers.
One problem with this method is that the feedback from an open beta is typically quite varied and the signal-to-noise ratio can be very low as compared to a more targeted closed beta. Regardless, I think getting community feedback early in the beta testing process is important and may lead to a net reduction in playability issues during later beta phases. These late beta playability issues compound the stress that occurs as the game nears release and I've seen horrible sweeping changes made at this stage cause damage that can take years to undo. Getting this feedback earlier in the development process may allow for more time to think about the issue - perhaps allowing time for introspection to determine if it is really an issue at all - and hopefully better choices will follow.
The Age of Conan, currently in beta, takes this to the next level by starting each character within a private instanced area that leads into a low-level single character gaming experience. At the conclusion of the single character content a player will have achieved a basic level of competency with their new character in a game which aims to make player skill an important component of the combat system. For archetype or even class-specific skills this may be an important training period for the player as well as providing character advancement opportunities in a safe non-PvP environment.
The FAQ for Age of Conan indicates that the instanced introduction period is meant to last only about an hour of play time. Beyond that the single character game continues but interactions with other players via chat is allowed. There is discussion of allowing this "forced" single player mode to be skipped over in some fashion but no details or even developer commitment is given at this time.
I hadn't considered taking the game-within-a-game concept this far but I like the idea. For games that lend themselves well to a secluded introductory experience this may be a great alternative to free-for-all introductory newbie zones. A rich single player experience can provide a good feel for the game mechanics during a trial account period without exposing a new player to early PvP conflicts that may be a turn-off. Specifically for games where skipping the introduction does not create a significant penalty, a player that desires to jump right into the real game can choose to do so immediately even while playing on a trial account.
Gameplay Demo Mini-Games
Something that I've suggested in the past to a friend who works in the game industry is releasing free mini-games to introduce gameplay concepts to new players. This can be a pre-release and demo-like capability providing a sandboxed training area completely disassociated from the game servers if that is convenient or a fully network aware experience that provides some server load beta testing in addition to content testing while keeping game mechanics consistent between the mini-game and ongoing beta activities.
The specific suggestion I've made in the past is to offer a simple web-based game to introduce the crafting mechanics during early beta and get broad exposure to an audience happy to provide feedback. This could be a web-based front end to the existing game servers, think of it as a simplified game client for specific aspects of the game, which can provide for more seamless integration of changes made in the beta servers.
One problem with this method is that the feedback from an open beta is typically quite varied and the signal-to-noise ratio can be very low as compared to a more targeted closed beta. Regardless, I think getting community feedback early in the beta testing process is important and may lead to a net reduction in playability issues during later beta phases. These late beta playability issues compound the stress that occurs as the game nears release and I've seen horrible sweeping changes made at this stage cause damage that can take years to undo. Getting this feedback earlier in the development process may allow for more time to think about the issue - perhaps allowing time for introspection to determine if it is really an issue at all - and hopefully better choices will follow.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
MMOG Design: Player Interaction
I've been thinking about MMOG design lately and in particular how to create an effective player interaction model that is fulfilling for a large portion of the player base. The player interaction model, as I'll term it, defines the methods, rules, and limitations on player interaction with not only the gaming world backdrop of non-player entities but also player-managed entities.
In my view the primary goal of the player interaction model is to support a fulfilling player experience that will encourage players to continue playing in pursuit of new and exciting content (keep an open mind with the definition of content).
One secondary goal should be immersion. There will be times during game design that immersion may have to be sacrificed to support other aspects of the player experience but with each such sacrifice the player experience can feel less authentic and cohesive. Whenever possible the player should truly feel a desire to be in character. Game design can facilitate character development as well as support the development of a character back-story (perhaps even playing through some aspects of the character back story as part of an optional interactive character creation process) along with in-game effects based on this back story.
Another secondary goal related to immersion is consistency. When possible it should be possible to interact with each player-managed world entity in the same way as a similar non-player-managed entity -- the point of this consistency is to aid player immersion within the game world. This can be particularly troublesome when dealing with the illusion of balance within the realm of player-versus-player (PvP) competition. Internal consistency within the realm of non-player entities is equally important (perhaps even more so), if I can kick one rock on the plains why can't I kick another off of a cliff -- indeed why can't I try to kick that huge rock and deal with the pain in my foot afterward. If the game can support it, interactions at least loosely based on real-life physics can aid in immersion and the authenticity of the gaming experience.
When it comes to player interaction the player imagination is truly amazing. Given the most trivial of in-game actions players will make YouTube movies of everything from corpse humping to music/dance videos. I wouldn't be surprised to find classic drama played out on the liquid-crystal screen.
Player-Player Interaction
This is a broad category which includes solo and small-group players as well as guilded or raid-oriented player. It covers everything from a player-driven economy to game support for player-crafted goods and services and original player creations that can rival the best content the game developers can create.
For some players engaging in PvP competition is important while for others it is considered harmful. How can a game designer be expected to satisfy each of these disparate view points? Additionally, the term "competition" provides sufficient leeway to include contests ranging from various non-combat accomplishments, organized combat, impromptu combat, and others.
Many games find it necessary to add PvP elements to an otherwise player-versus-environment (PvE) game. This has led to some games where PvP "balancing" negatively impacts the existing PvE elements despite many developer promises to the contrary. Now some of these PvP-derived changes will be described as fixing inherent PvE balance issues highlighted by the addition of PvP -- while this may be true in some cases the pessimist in me believes it is far more likely to be marketing hype.
One criticism of many past MMOG releases is a lack of support for large-scale player-player interaction. In some cases the beta promises of guild support never became a reality while in other cases there is a simple lack of low-level raid content. While many players will argue that a lack of low-level raid content is reasonable due to the expectation that power gamers will race through low-level content I believe that it is important to represent as many aspects of the game experience at each level of play to reward players for rich interaction with content at all levels of the game instead of only at the ever-moving end game. Indeed this low-level content tends to amount to a shared experience for all players (although the majority of the time played will not necessarily be occupied with this content) and this level of play is typical of where most casual players will find themselves for their entire career in the game.
In my view the primary goal of the player interaction model is to support a fulfilling player experience that will encourage players to continue playing in pursuit of new and exciting content (keep an open mind with the definition of content).
One secondary goal should be immersion. There will be times during game design that immersion may have to be sacrificed to support other aspects of the player experience but with each such sacrifice the player experience can feel less authentic and cohesive. Whenever possible the player should truly feel a desire to be in character. Game design can facilitate character development as well as support the development of a character back-story (perhaps even playing through some aspects of the character back story as part of an optional interactive character creation process) along with in-game effects based on this back story.
Another secondary goal related to immersion is consistency. When possible it should be possible to interact with each player-managed world entity in the same way as a similar non-player-managed entity -- the point of this consistency is to aid player immersion within the game world. This can be particularly troublesome when dealing with the illusion of balance within the realm of player-versus-player (PvP) competition. Internal consistency within the realm of non-player entities is equally important (perhaps even more so), if I can kick one rock on the plains why can't I kick another off of a cliff -- indeed why can't I try to kick that huge rock and deal with the pain in my foot afterward. If the game can support it, interactions at least loosely based on real-life physics can aid in immersion and the authenticity of the gaming experience.
When it comes to player interaction the player imagination is truly amazing. Given the most trivial of in-game actions players will make YouTube movies of everything from corpse humping to music/dance videos. I wouldn't be surprised to find classic drama played out on the liquid-crystal screen.
Player-Player Interaction
This is a broad category which includes solo and small-group players as well as guilded or raid-oriented player. It covers everything from a player-driven economy to game support for player-crafted goods and services and original player creations that can rival the best content the game developers can create.
For some players engaging in PvP competition is important while for others it is considered harmful. How can a game designer be expected to satisfy each of these disparate view points? Additionally, the term "competition" provides sufficient leeway to include contests ranging from various non-combat accomplishments, organized combat, impromptu combat, and others.
Many games find it necessary to add PvP elements to an otherwise player-versus-environment (PvE) game. This has led to some games where PvP "balancing" negatively impacts the existing PvE elements despite many developer promises to the contrary. Now some of these PvP-derived changes will be described as fixing inherent PvE balance issues highlighted by the addition of PvP -- while this may be true in some cases the pessimist in me believes it is far more likely to be marketing hype.
One criticism of many past MMOG releases is a lack of support for large-scale player-player interaction. In some cases the beta promises of guild support never became a reality while in other cases there is a simple lack of low-level raid content. While many players will argue that a lack of low-level raid content is reasonable due to the expectation that power gamers will race through low-level content I believe that it is important to represent as many aspects of the game experience at each level of play to reward players for rich interaction with content at all levels of the game instead of only at the ever-moving end game. Indeed this low-level content tends to amount to a shared experience for all players (although the majority of the time played will not necessarily be occupied with this content) and this level of play is typical of where most casual players will find themselves for their entire career in the game.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
My wife made me a Star Captain!
My brother-in-law Lucas introduced me to the game MechQuest during the holidays, ostensibly because it was a free online game my son might enjoy playing. As it turns out I wanted to give it a try and see what it was like so I made an account and started a character.
Well I played through most of the game that was available and some content was simply too difficult to beat without farming encounters for credits for about a week so I slowed down and took my time at that point. Other content was locked out because I was using a free account, you see this is part of the business model of these free games - pay for additional content and/or easier progression through the existing content. In MechQuest upgrading to a paid account promotes your characters to Star Captain and makes available various equipment options that are otherwise unmatched in the game (e.g. better equipment for the same cost, or similar equipment available at a lower level).
A few nights ago I found myself reading the MechQuest forums looking for a workaround for a bug. It turns out that there are a bunch of kids on the forums whining that their parents won't upgrade them to Sar Captains. I make a joke to my wife that I was sad because she wouldn't make me a Star Captain. My wife surprised me tonight, when I logged in to MechQuest my account was upgraded to Star Captain - lol.
Well I played through most of the game that was available and some content was simply too difficult to beat without farming encounters for credits for about a week so I slowed down and took my time at that point. Other content was locked out because I was using a free account, you see this is part of the business model of these free games - pay for additional content and/or easier progression through the existing content. In MechQuest upgrading to a paid account promotes your characters to Star Captain and makes available various equipment options that are otherwise unmatched in the game (e.g. better equipment for the same cost, or similar equipment available at a lower level).
A few nights ago I found myself reading the MechQuest forums looking for a workaround for a bug. It turns out that there are a bunch of kids on the forums whining that their parents won't upgrade them to Sar Captains. I make a joke to my wife that I was sad because she wouldn't make me a Star Captain. My wife surprised me tonight, when I logged in to MechQuest my account was upgraded to Star Captain - lol.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Ekard Angst
I'm still finishing my write-up about Ekard and I wanted to see if Google had indexed/archived any of my old SOE forum posts. I was also curious if this blog had made its way on to the Google index.
At any rate, a search for Ekard "highest melee hit" turned up an entertaining post on the EQ2flames.com Assassin forum:
Heh, I just had to register for that forum and say hello. I noticed that Vaanir and a Skratt as well as a couple of other Assassins are still kicking around, that's awesome, I have fond memories of our discussions on the assassin channel.
I noticed a post on that forum from November 2007 about the guk.assassin channel and it makes me smile to think that this channel might still be in use by the assassin community. When cross-channel linking became available I thought that things could easily go either way, either the channel would continue to be popular or players would move to a channel preferred by one of the more dominant raiding assassins. I certainly wasn't in the running for top assassin at that point, dare I say I had become more infamous for my exploited Highest Melee Hit record than respected for my role in the assassin community.
I don't recall how many of the current scores on the EQ2 Highest Melee Hit board existed when I left (I do recall a few like Sparkimus, Silvaro, and Kalyr) and how many are new and valid scores. Because some of the level 80 Assassins seem to be approaching the 70k mark my score may soon be only a memory. As such, I've preserved this memory of my time in EQ2.
At any rate, a search for Ekard "highest melee hit" turned up an entertaining post on the EQ2flames.com Assassin forum:
| Wish they would reset the melee hit boards...fuckin ekard, bastard dosen't even play anymore. |
Heh, I just had to register for that forum and say hello. I noticed that Vaanir and a Skratt as well as a couple of other Assassins are still kicking around, that's awesome, I have fond memories of our discussions on the assassin channel.
I noticed a post on that forum from November 2007 about the guk.assassin channel and it makes me smile to think that this channel might still be in use by the assassin community. When cross-channel linking became available I thought that things could easily go either way, either the channel would continue to be popular or players would move to a channel preferred by one of the more dominant raiding assassins. I certainly wasn't in the running for top assassin at that point, dare I say I had become more infamous for my exploited Highest Melee Hit record than respected for my role in the assassin community.
I don't recall how many of the current scores on the EQ2 Highest Melee Hit board existed when I left (I do recall a few like Sparkimus, Silvaro, and Kalyr) and how many are new and valid scores. Because some of the level 80 Assassins seem to be approaching the 70k mark my score may soon be only a memory. As such, I've preserved this memory of my time in EQ2.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
MMOG Profile: Everquest II
When I play a massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) I tend to focus on a single character, my main, and only rarely indulge in alt-itis. This is the first in a series of MMOG character profiles highlighting my main character from each of the major MMOGs I've played in the last 10 years. Probably my most memorable character is the Dark Elf Assassin Ekard from Everquest II (EQ2) so I'll start with him.
The now retired Assassin of Guk was once well known among the EQ2 Assassin community through the worldwide Assassin channel. Although few probably remember (and fewer still who continue to play EQ2 today) Ekard started the worldwide Assassin channel - hosted on Guk - to connect with other up-and-coming Assassins and discuss matters of interest to the Assassin community; primarily DPS results, new equipment discoveries, and raid techniques.
Character Profile
World-Wide Assassin Channel
Ekard was well known for my prolific record keeping through chat logs and for happily re-linking newly discovered equipment for the worldwide community - at that time linking could only be performed from the server which hosted a channel but all channel members could view the link regardless of their server. In my final days playing Ekard the advent of cross-server linking let other Assassins take up that responsibility and Ekard concentrated on Beta testing for the then-upcoming Kingdom of Sky expansion.
Progression
I took a meandering route through the game starting out with a college buddy at the launch of EQ2 (much later he went on to work as an EQ2 developer at SOE). We settled on Guk after being unable to hook up with the Goonsquad on another server during the first week of release. It turns out some friends of his from EQ took up residence on Guk and they formed the basis of our first XP groups.
My first guild in EQ2 was Wolfsbane, the membership of which went on to form the core guild members of the uber-guilds throughout Guk server in the early years of EQ2. Most of these players burnt out but I eventually reuinted with some of them in Aei Desis.
Ekard joined a "family guild" named Soulbonded and geared up to raiding strength while learning how to raid through strategy instead of raw force. This experience proved very useful when I joined Aei Desis well after its heyday and during a time of rebuilding AD. Aei Desis eventually would come to compete with some of the larger guilds on Guk and elsewhere but remained overshadowed by Ne Plus Ultra. Ascendance, and the other EQ2 uber-guilds. Ultimately Aei Desis was doomed to fall apart, mainly due to lack of commitment by various players (including myself in the end days), as people got busy with their real lives. In AD there was always more than enough drama from the "old guard" guildmembers who yearned for their golden days of dominance, most of whom became mean and petty before leaving the guild on bad terms.
Highest Melee Hit
During my time EQ2 Assassins had always competed for the Highest Melee Hit record on eq2players.com and Ekard eventually made a name for himself with a hit for 3107 damage using Condemning Blade (Master I) during the time when very few characters had access to that Master and before Assassinate (Master I) was available.
At some point a troublesome mitigation bug was not being publicly acknowledged by the developers and I decided to start a competition on the worldwide Assassin channel to see who could get the highest hit by exploiting this bug - all in the hope that this would garner sufficient developer attention to get the bug fixed. This resulted in Ekard taking the Melee Highest Hit record, which he holds to this day, with a hit for 89,320 damage. As an interesting note while the hit dealth 89K damage (as shown in logs) the graphics engine used 16-bit values for displaying damage numbers and the value wrapped once showing only 23,784 points of damage. EQ2players.com was updated shortly thereafter to show the full damage dealt and a few patches later the bug was indeed fixed. For whatever reason EQ2players.com was not cleared of these erroneous scores although many among the Assassin community, myself included, asked for that to be done - as a result an informal highest hit record was maintained through chat logs on the worldwide Assassin channel.
Forums
During the Kingdom of Sky Beta I was very active on the Beta forums under my forum name "deaks" and posted an in-depth analysis of the Assassin options under the new "Achievements System" (EQ2 version of EQ alternate advancement of AA) - requesting some fixes and usability enhancements which eventually made it in game. This thread carried over to the open forums once the Beta NDA lifted and provided the first glimpse at the Assassin achievement choices for many people playing Assassins. It was my last act in EQ2.
Previous to the KoS Beta Ekard was a strong voice for change on the forums pushing for Assassin DPS dominance based on the "Tier 1 DPS" label give to the Assassin class by the developers. Ekard covered Assassin happenings on the forums from the Combat Update through the Kingdom of Sky release.
The now retired Assassin of Guk was once well known among the EQ2 Assassin community through the worldwide Assassin channel. Although few probably remember (and fewer still who continue to play EQ2 today) Ekard started the worldwide Assassin channel - hosted on Guk - to connect with other up-and-coming Assassins and discuss matters of interest to the Assassin community; primarily DPS results, new equipment discoveries, and raid techniques.
Character Profile
| Name: | Ekard Slackass | |
| Class: | Assassin (previously Predator and Scout) | |
| Titles: | Assassin of the Shard, Hero of Kugup, Knight of Freeport | |
| Bio: | ||
| Ekard is the creator of the first worldwide Assassin channel hosted on Guk server, once the most active place for EQ2 Assassin discussion in the world. As of January 2008 Ekard continues to hold the title for Highest Melee Hit for a strike made on October 3rd, 2005. | ||
World-Wide Assassin Channel
Ekard was well known for my prolific record keeping through chat logs and for happily re-linking newly discovered equipment for the worldwide community - at that time linking could only be performed from the server which hosted a channel but all channel members could view the link regardless of their server. In my final days playing Ekard the advent of cross-server linking let other Assassins take up that responsibility and Ekard concentrated on Beta testing for the then-upcoming Kingdom of Sky expansion.
Progression
I took a meandering route through the game starting out with a college buddy at the launch of EQ2 (much later he went on to work as an EQ2 developer at SOE). We settled on Guk after being unable to hook up with the Goonsquad on another server during the first week of release. It turns out some friends of his from EQ took up residence on Guk and they formed the basis of our first XP groups.
My first guild in EQ2 was Wolfsbane, the membership of which went on to form the core guild members of the uber-guilds throughout Guk server in the early years of EQ2. Most of these players burnt out but I eventually reuinted with some of them in Aei Desis.
Ekard joined a "family guild" named Soulbonded and geared up to raiding strength while learning how to raid through strategy instead of raw force. This experience proved very useful when I joined Aei Desis well after its heyday and during a time of rebuilding AD. Aei Desis eventually would come to compete with some of the larger guilds on Guk and elsewhere but remained overshadowed by Ne Plus Ultra. Ascendance, and the other EQ2 uber-guilds. Ultimately Aei Desis was doomed to fall apart, mainly due to lack of commitment by various players (including myself in the end days), as people got busy with their real lives. In AD there was always more than enough drama from the "old guard" guildmembers who yearned for their golden days of dominance, most of whom became mean and petty before leaving the guild on bad terms.
Highest Melee Hit
During my time EQ2 Assassins had always competed for the Highest Melee Hit record on eq2players.com and Ekard eventually made a name for himself with a hit for 3107 damage using Condemning Blade (Master I) during the time when very few characters had access to that Master and before Assassinate (Master I) was available.
At some point a troublesome mitigation bug was not being publicly acknowledged by the developers and I decided to start a competition on the worldwide Assassin channel to see who could get the highest hit by exploiting this bug - all in the hope that this would garner sufficient developer attention to get the bug fixed. This resulted in Ekard taking the Melee Highest Hit record, which he holds to this day, with a hit for 89,320 damage. As an interesting note while the hit dealth 89K damage (as shown in logs) the graphics engine used 16-bit values for displaying damage numbers and the value wrapped once showing only 23,784 points of damage. EQ2players.com was updated shortly thereafter to show the full damage dealt and a few patches later the bug was indeed fixed. For whatever reason EQ2players.com was not cleared of these erroneous scores although many among the Assassin community, myself included, asked for that to be done - as a result an informal highest hit record was maintained through chat logs on the worldwide Assassin channel.
Forums
During the Kingdom of Sky Beta I was very active on the Beta forums under my forum name "deaks" and posted an in-depth analysis of the Assassin options under the new "Achievements System" (EQ2 version of EQ alternate advancement of AA) - requesting some fixes and usability enhancements which eventually made it in game. This thread carried over to the open forums once the Beta NDA lifted and provided the first glimpse at the Assassin achievement choices for many people playing Assassins. It was my last act in EQ2.
Previous to the KoS Beta Ekard was a strong voice for change on the forums pushing for Assassin DPS dominance based on the "Tier 1 DPS" label give to the Assassin class by the developers. Ekard covered Assassin happenings on the forums from the Combat Update through the Kingdom of Sky release.
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