The side-grind of raiding

Posted on June 28, 2011 by SynCaine

Back when Molton Core was the first raid in WoW, Blizzard ‘nerfed’ it by introducing fire resist gear. These days they nerf raids by turning god-mode on for everyone and letting them breeze through the content. Trion also elected to nerf content rather than provide content-specific paths to power.

Of course the first method also introduces new content, even if it is just a separate gear grind that’s only useful for one raid. The upside here is that players can decide how far to go down that path, and in turn how easy to make said raid. If you already had MC on farm, you did not need the new gear. If you struggled on Rag, you could always equip more people with fire resist gear to up your chances. Keep gearing people up until you down him, then move on.

The addition of a side-grind is less entertaining than a whole new raid, obviously, but given limited dev resources, I’d rather get a small patch with a side progression path than one that just outright makes everything easier by nerfing the mobs and buffing the players. From the “keep them subbed” standpoint, a side-grind accomplishes this goal better than the nerfs as well. Not that this fully explains why WoW was able to retain players so well back then, but it certainly helped.

Posted in MMO design, Rift, World of Warcraft | 10 Comments

How much for a sparklepony with a monocle?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by SynCaine

Good summary of the EVE monocle debate over at TAGN, including links to other info and a post from the CCP CEO.

I had to dig into my archive to find exactly what I have written about the WoW sparklepony, because even I can’t keep all my ranting straight sometimes (I know, shocking to those who have been here for longer than, oh, a post or two). Luckily that event happened during a calm state of mind day, because what I wrote back then is exactly how I feel about things today. That post can be found here (it’s mostly about EVE, the WoW stuff is the last paragraph), but here is the choice quote:

As for the e-peen pony, while it would have been better for Blizzard to add actual content (a complex quest to earn the mount perhaps), the fact that thousands of people are lining up to hand Blizzard $25 to be handed a new shiny and to pretend they are a special snowflake is reason enough to not bother with the content piece. The customer dictates the direct you go in, and when you have thousands (or millions) of people screaming that they would rather pay for items than play to get them, it would be foolish to ignore them.

In other words, don’t blame the devs, blame the players.

Now what’s interesting about EVE here is that only 52 monocles were sold in the first 40 hours. That’s… a slightly smaller amount than the 140k+ that were lined up to buy the WoW pony. Granted the total player pool is different between the games, but the buy-in rate is still a little off between the two games. Plus CCP has stated that the monocle is the highest grossing items in the store, so not only is the monocle not setting the world on fire, the other stuff is sitting on the selves as well. From the “player vote” perspective (the real one, not how many “I quit” forum threads are created), it’s clear that EVE players would rather blow stuff up than buy virtual designer clothing.

The real question EVE fans should be asking is this: will those 52 monocle sales increase actual content delivery, or does the dev time spend on fluff items cut into other development even after you factor in the increased revenue? Because if it’s the former, then EVE fans should be thanking the 52 people who are really, really into online space Barbie, because pre-monocle they really had no way to over-pay for the development of EVE. If it’s the latter, EVE fans have a legitimate issue. Somehow I don’t see creating a monocle as a dev time crushing activity.

Of course, CCP could just be spending all that monocle cash on hookers and blow rather than content, but that would be some serious ‘borrowing’.

Posted in EVE Online, Mass Media, MMO design, Rant, RMT, World of Warcraft | 13 Comments

TL/DR post on accessibility

Posted on June 24, 2011 by SynCaine

Accessibility brings content to the players that they previously would have had to make an effort to reach.

If the players would rather quit than make the effort to reach the content, what does that say about the content itself?

Posted in Random | 9 Comments

The metrics made me do it!

Posted on June 24, 2011 by SynCaine

One of the justifications from Trion concerning nerfing difficulty in Rift was to allow Dungeon Finder groups to complete them. That statement contains a lot of value when broken down, and directly relates back to the topic of accessibility and its effect on MMOs.

The obvious take-away from the above is that the average PUG group is worse than the average pre-made, and can’t complete the same content at the same rate. I think most everyone can agree on that, right? But what’s interesting is that Trion, and Blizzard, see this as a problem that needs to be fixed, and not only that, but a problem that MUST be fixed even at the expense of the pre-mades, among other things.

Now one of the great ‘hooks’ for any MMO is the social aspect; you log in to hang out with your guild, and you are willing to do content that might not be at the top of your list just to help out said guild. This, in essence, is why raiders run raids dozens if not hundreds of times. This, also, is why raid content is the gift that keeps on giving from a design perspective, and why it’s far cheaper to produce then solo content. Helping your guild progress by improving your character also gets people do to crazy stuff like grind out rep just to get that 1% upgrade, or collect a silly amount of mats to prepare for a raid. Notice that the last two examples are in fact solo content, but the motivator is social/guild-based. It’s also solo content that takes a lot of time without a ton of dev work (when compared to something like a long quest chain with extensive use of phasing or in-game movies).

The Dungeon Finder removes that social need. You can ‘solo’ group content now with other random people, never needing to really socialize, without building those bonds that will get you to run something even if you already have all the items/rep/whatever from it. The dungeon finder does a great job in turning group content into solo content, and not just from the “I need 4/9/19/24/39 others” aspect, but from the “why am I running this” one as well. It also does a great job of killing that secondary effect of improving your character just slightly for the guild, which in turn kills a ton of long-grind solo content for many. Pretty crazy huh?

But the damage a dungeon finder inflicts goes deeper than that. Without it, the only reliable way for a player to run group content was to join a guild. Sure, you could join PUG groups through chat channels, but that was not always reliable and somewhat of a hassle. Trion/Blizzard identified that hassle and solved it with the DF, which in that regard they succeeded. However, that hassle was an important tool used to drive people into guilds, to get them to actually be social and commit to something rather than remaining in their own little solo-hero bubble. Trion/Blizzard provided a tool to eliminate one of the major hooks that keeps people subbed. Oops.

“But SynCaine, lots of people were leaving the game rather than joining a guild, I saw it on the forums! That’s bad business! Money rules you drool trollolololl”

Oh, were they? Pre-dungeon finder how badly were WoW sub numbers struggling? Was Rift seeing a mass exodus pre-DF (I know, short timeframe, but still) How massive was the population explosion once it was added for WoW/Rift?

Oh. I see…

“Well, um… the world economy also crashed! Yea! People can’t afford high-priced luxury items like $15 a month entertainment that’s worth hundreds/thousands of hours.”

Excellent point. Silly me. Off to that $11 2 hour movie I go.

Going back to Azuriel’s PvAH post, deep in the comments section he asks if, had WotLK not happened and Blizzard had released another BC, would WoW have reached 16m subs. 16m sounds like a silly-high number, but if in 2004 someone had asked me if WoW would reach multi-million sub numbers, it would have sounded silly-high as well.

“But SynCaine, MMO burnout is natural, WoW is really old, it was bound to happen no matter what Blizzard did!”

I know, just like it’s bound to happen to EVE ‘soon’. Oh wait, EVE is older. Hmmm. Well whatever, everyone just mass-quit over that fluff item you can buy in-game or for a million dollars. Nevermind. EVE is dead, moving on.

The truth is we don’t know. But what we do know is WotLK and onward sub numbers struggled for a game that, until that point, continued to grow far beyond any reasonable expectations. If what Vanilla and BC did was so bad, and what WotLK/Cata did was so good, why are the numbers so backwards? Just doesn’t add up, does it? Even if you want to 100% dismiss that raiding and difficulty had anything to do with growth, clearly SOMETHING changed to cause the growth to stop and the decline to set it, and I’m just not buying that magically a lot of players all ‘burned out’ at the same time and, at the same magical time, the market hit it’s cap in total player interest. But if you believe in magic, good for you!

On to another thing Azuriel mentions in his comments section, that Blizzard’s Bashiok looked at metrics and to him they suggested that players wanted more accessible raid content, so they gave the players just that. As Nils was quick to point out, metrics are just numbers, and interpreting them correctly is not always easy.

That all players want to see the ultimate big bad sounds pretty damn obvious to me. Of course everyone wants to experience killing the Lich King, the dude is on the damn cover of the expansion!

The real question however is what happens if they can’t do it? Do they leave? History suggests they don’t. Most players did not kill Illidan in BC, or Onyxia in Vanilla, and again, the stats show players were coming, not leaving. Everyone with a pulse (basically) killed Arthus, yet I missed the “WoW has reached 13m subs” announcement, so what happened?

To me this goes back to my original point about accessibility; players think they want it, but the devs have to be smart in how they give it. The DF is, in many ways, a knee-jerk reaction to players wanting to see content without ‘committing’ to a game and forming those social ties that, ultimately, will keep them subbed long past the point of having enough content to justify the sub if they were only looking at things from a solo perspective.

Trion’s 1.3 update is another example of this: they made it easier to acquire certain gear that, prior to 1.3, was only available from expert/raid rifts. They solved the problem of players not having access to that gear by, in a roundabout way, killing the need to run expert/raid rifts. Anyone care to guess how that change is going to play out long-term for retention and overall total content? Again, knee-jerk and short-sighted. Oh, but I’m sure the metrics suggested that not enough players had ‘access’ to that gear, and that players wanted that gear ‘real bad’.

Those damn meddling metrics! (Yes that’s a Scooby Doo reference to end a blog post. You’re welcome).

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, Rant, Rift, World of Warcraft | 13 Comments

Rift: -Insert dramatic quitting title here-

Posted on June 23, 2011 by SynCaine

Rift patch 1.3 is out, along with the ‘new’ world event. Phase one has, more or less, the same exact daily quests as the previous event. And the one before it. Collect stuff around Sanctum, travel to a zone to collect stuff there, do something related to a group. Repeat daily for an ‘epic’ gear piece and a ton of fluff junk. Want to know how amp-up I am for this? After completing the Sanctum quest, I only got half-way through the one in Shimmersand before I logged off. Good times…

I’m trying to figure out how Rift crashed and burned so fast for me. I mean yes, 1.2 turned group content into a puddle and set a very poor precedent for Trion going forward, the zone events were turned into a zero-impact side-show at the end of beta (not enough is made of that crime IMO), valor turned poor PvP into trash, and the overall pace of updates has significantly slowed (good job with those guild banks btw). That’s a lot of bad in a short amount of time, especially considering it’s all coming from the same people who build the foundation of the game, a foundation that was very solid for a themepark.

I’m having a hard time believing it’s just Trion grossly missing their target. They just never struck me as the clueless dev types who overreact or make short-sighted changes. Panic moves usually come from desperation or when things are really going south, and I think Rift is still doing reasonable well, right? Then again, it’s not like Trion has years and years of history in running a successful MMO here, so maybe they just had really great PR just before release. Guess I’m not really sure here either.

Now it’s no secret that I’m not a giant themepark fan, but I have successfully played and enjoyed them before, and all-along I intended Rift to be a nice little sandbox break that should have lasted, well, longer than it has at least. Again, if you had asked me on launch day do I think Trion is going to go the way they did with 1.2, I’d have laughed at you, but while 1.2 did a lot of damage, could it really have completely destroyed the game for me? I’m just having trouble believing that for some reason.

Playing last night just felt very odd, as did the previous time I was on running a 5 man. It’s that feeling that while nothing is directly ‘wrong’, what you are doing is just so pointless, and I don’t mean strictly from a character progression standpoint. I guess once you are on the outside looking in, you can’t just look at something like the world event as a buildup to something fun, but instead you see it as three new daily quests that are a horribly protracted grind for one semi-worthwhile item. Again, the actual content in this case is pretty much the same, but the viewpoint has radically been altered, and the result is one giant meh feeling.

I’d say it was fun while it lasted, but man did it not last long.

Posted in MMO design, Patch Notes, Rant, Rift | 32 Comments

Knighturn on the iPhone and what I’m playing

Posted on June 22, 2011 by SynCaine

Knighturn for the iPhone is a great TBS game with terrible, terrible graphics. I’m actually convinced it’s a social experiment to see just how many people judge a title based on looks alone, as everything BUT how it looks is very solid. It has surprising depth, a fun story, good tweaks to TBS game systems, and overall each scenario is both quick but full of interesting decisions. Again, if you are at all a fan of TBS, grab the game without initially looking at the screen shots and enjoy.

I’m still going with M&B PoP, having now established my own kingdom. The depths of the PoP mod continue to impress, and it’s pretty amazing just how many things are outright better in PoP over Native M&B. The whole thing is an all-around great example of taking something solid, and just dialing it up a few notches.

I’m somewhat back into a LoL kick as well, playing more than just one game a day again. Aria is as addicted as ever, and has noticeably improved her play. Still noob Garen that gets juked hard, but better.

Finally, Heroes of Might and Magic 6 beta starts the 28th. I’m pretty pumped, and really hoping Ubi gets this version of Heroes ‘right’.

Posted in iPhone, League of Legends, Mount and Blade: Warband, Random, Site update | 4 Comments

League of Legends Season One viewing

Posted on June 20, 2011 by SynCaine

League of Legends is running its season one championship, viewable here. At one point the stream reached 210k viewers, which sounds like a damn good amount of people. Riot was showing off its new spectator mode, and I must say it looked very clean and gave a lot of great info.

In Inquisition’s vent we had a few of us just sitting around matching some matches, and the whole thing was a pretty fun “group activity”. During one match the commentator said to call up some buddies, order some pizza, and enjoy competitive LoL. I think he was trying to be funny, but the suggestion is not exactly crazy. In a way, being in vent and watching is like a future version of having people over to watch a sports game. Or close anyway.

I have no doubt that there is a serious future in such gaming/viewing. So long as you understand the game being played at a basic level, you can follow along and enjoy, and a game like LoL is almost as fun to watch as it is to play, given the right conditions.

The conditions, however, are not there yet. The stream needs to be in high-quality HD, needs to be smooth, and can’t pause, artifact, or run at different delays for different people. The delay made watching with others tough, as someone would mention a great ult, and 10 seconds later I would see it on my screen. Once the quality/timing is a reality, the overall enjoyment will really go up.

Imperfect as it still might be however, it is a fun view into the future, and the matches I’ve seen have all been intense and interesting, showing off just how balanced and viable so many of the champions really are, and just how important the player is behind the champion (teams would ban specific champions against specific teams, even though those champions might not normally be considered ‘ban worthy’).

Posted in Inquisition Clan, League of Legends, Mass Media, PvP | 12 Comments

‘Accessibility’ killed Rift

Posted on June 16, 2011 by SynCaine

Some very perceptive readers have picked up on the fact that Rift has somewhat fallen out of favor with me. It might have been my post about patch 1.2. I did drop a few hints there.

Patch 1.2 brought the MMO destroyer, ‘accessibility’, to Rift. In one quick patch, Trion managed not only to kill 5 man dungeon content for me and the majority of my guild, but also world content, the soul system, rifts, crafting, and well, everything else. How is that possible you ask? Well, before I get to that, lets talk about that lovable monster we call ‘accessibility’.

Content difficulty works like a range. Those above the range find it far too easy, those near the top find it not difficult, those at the dead middle are in the sweet spot, those below have a tougher time, and those well under find it close to impossible. The issue here is that it’s not just those who are below the range that can’t enjoy the content; those above it are also excluded (running a dungeon/raid once is not end-game content, and we all know it).

When you move the range down, make it “more accessible”, you do grab those at the bottom of the range and move them into the sweet spot, plus those who found the content near impossible now have a shot. Win. Problem is, those who were previously at the sweet spot now find the content easy, and those who already though it was easy are now excluded. Fail.

Now, from a pure corporate profit standpoint, so long as your range is at whatever level grabs the most players, you are good, right? More people with access, more happy customers, more money. It’s so simple.

But it’s not.

Because while a player can always get better, it’s asking a lot for a player to get worse. If you find yourself at the near bottom of the range, you can improve and look, sweet spot. And from a players perspective, is there anything more rewarding? Not only are you now knocking out the content, but you actually worked your way up to that point and are now reaping the rewards, and you had that motivation because, well, you want to see the big bad at the end of the raid. That is very, very satisfying, and is one of the major reasons raiding in an MMO ‘works’.

There’s more.

If I’m a player, and I’m working my way up through difficult content, I still HAVE content. I’m not ‘done’. I stay subbed. And not only do I stay subbed, but my guild does as well, and we are all motivated to improve and progress. We have a REASON to improve. A very real one; more content. We improve our player skills, we improve because we get better gear, and we improve our teamwork, and it all means something (in the context of an MMO of course) because the better we get, the further we get.

If the content is at a faceroll level, why do I care to improve? Ooh, more gear to faceroll content harder, yay! Oh yes, let me grind out those crafting mats for that 1% upgrade items, because I really need it to finish a dungeon run in 20 minutes instead of 22. “Guys guys, please all be online and ready, we really need to focus tonight to speed-clear every dungeon in the game in record time tonight”. Uh huh, I’m right on it chief.

Point being, once the range is below you, you are done with the end-game. The whole themepark design falls apart. And, it’s at that point that you notice that hey, yea, crafting IS a stupid grind. And yea, that world content is kinda pointless. And no, I don’t actually enjoy PvP. Down and down we go.

So back to Rift.

1.2 moved the range well, well below me. I mean dungeons are stupid-easy. Most of the bosses are actually embarrassing now. It’s bad, and I honestly wonder just who DOES find this stuff a challenge. Probably the same people who find Farmville ‘gameplay’ exciting and interesting.

But ok, so dungeons are no longer for me, what about those rifts, those world events, and how great the soul system is? Those remain mostly unchanged, but they feel the fallout of the dungeon change. If I can spend 20 minutes getting just-as-good epics, why would I spend a significant amount of time crafting? And if I’m not crafting, what good are crafting rifts to me? Or hunting the auction house for upgrades.

If I’m already geared out, what real motivation do I have to get super-excited about a world event or some rift? Let’s not kid ourselves, themeparks are all about personal progression, the ‘world’ be damned, and no matter how fun the content is (especially the 10th time around), if I’m not progressing I’m not motivated. Even the soul system feels flat; why min/max or try out different specific combos when face-to-keyboard gets you there anyway?

I fully expect Rift to now follow in the footsteps of WoW, in that it will decline. Vanilla and BC days had challenging content, and it’s not a surprise that sub numbers grew. WotLK made things ‘accessible’, and surprise surprise, the response was pretty meh (sub numbers dropped in the US/EU, but were offset globally by WoW launching in new regions, hence the overall stagnation). Cata tried to play both sides of the fence, but a combo of too little too late, a gimmick of progression (hard mode rehashes rather than straight-up new content), and a one-track, insult difficulty 1-85 game did it in. With no new regions to offset things, subs are dropping.

Ultimately the ‘accessible’ path is short-sighted. It’s a temp boost at the expense of longevity, and in a genre where longevity is king, it’s a horrible trade.

It’s just unfortunate that a game with so many solid pieces has sold itself out so early for a one-time boost. For whatever reason, I expect more out of Trion.

My bad I guess.

Posted in Inquisition Clan, MMO design, Patch Notes, Rant, Rift, World of Warcraft | 42 Comments

Oh how topical

Posted on June 15, 2011 by SynCaine

Breaking news: CPP > others.

I know, I’m shocked. Literally the first time this has happened, ever. Silly mega-niche hardcore PvP devs and their crazy ideas. Any bets how Bobby ‘borrows’ and screws this up? My bet is “pay to click” hotbars coming to WoW, with skills put on the paid bars instantly clearing an instance.

Also I swear I did not know about this when I wrote the post below.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, RMT | 29 Comments

I’d like to pay $100 for M&B: Warband

Posted on June 15, 2011 by SynCaine

M&B:Warband continues to dominate my time, and I’m beginning to feel a little bit like a thief. I mean, I picked the game up on a Steam sale for $10, and yet at well over 200+ hours played, I feel like I should be paying a lot more here. If Steam told me today that I had to pay $100 or lose Warband access, I’d drop that $100 faster than a WoW character hits 85.

Furthermore, while I played Native Warband for a solid amount of time, I’ve played both the Floris mod pack and Prophecy of Pandor mod a whole lot more. Both of these mod packs are free. Again, feeling kinda dirty about that.

I’m not sure how to solve the initial problem, as I don’t think I’d even start playing a game with a “pay per hour” model, and TaleWorlds (the devs) would have to do something pretty special to warrant a monthly sub fee (though in all honesty, if the game cost $10 a month, it would still be a steal). Perhaps if they had a monthly update, with new art, sound, character, mod tools etc, that would make sense. If there is one single-player game that I could see charging a monthly sub, it’s Warband.

The second ‘issue’, the mods, has a simpler solution: let mod designers charge for what they produce. Of course, TaleWorlds would get a cut of anything sold, but when mods like PoP are outright better designed than many (most?) full-scale commercial games, it seems silly to give such high quality content out for free. In addition, by earning some money for the work that goes into the mod, the people behind PoP could, for example, justify hiring a temporary artist to really make some great stuff. I doubt anyone would become rich off a mod (at least not directly), but such great work should be rewarded. And TaleWorlds should also get some reward for originally creating a game that caters to modders so well.

We have seen the pricing model evolve in the MMO genre, and we are starting to see things like DLC in single-player games, yet games like Warband show that, in today’s market of digital distribution, there is a lot of money being left on the table. Not only is this bad for business, but ultimately it also hurts gamers, as more money for the devs should result in more and better content for the players.

Posted in Mount and Blade: Warband, RMT, Site update | 17 Comments