The Cesspit. - EverQuest(s)

A quote

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:45:55 -0700

A quote from Scott Hartsman. One of the few devs I still respect and have esteem for.

In online games beyond the boutique scale, you are #1 or you are Everyone Else.

"#1" obeys certain rules that I won't get into, but stability-to-growth becomes easier and you're far more protected from loss, barring extreme triggers.

For "Everyone Else," the converse is true: You are generally in a net state of subtraction over time. It's just a matter of the rate. It takes extreme triggers to cause stability or gain.

For an MMO in the Everyone Else category, overall stability is actually a significant victory.

Therefore, saying that "EQ2's investment isn't paying off," is most definitely incorrect -- It's paying off in that "stability" means we have a large percentage more subscribers right now than we would have had otherwise.

Worth quoting and giving it some visibility as it's true in general and not just for EQ2.

Mushrooms!

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:20:52 -0800

I promised myself I won't comment, even if there would be still so much to say (ahh!).

But I had to post this:

I could ALMOST say that this expansion has some nice art and not so badly designed zones.

Client performance should be a bit better, but the presence of characters and the use of complex shaders is still a killer.

If you couldn't swallow EQ2 I doubt this expansion will change things. But it is improved.

On fizzles

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 06:49:04 -0800

Archiving something I wrote about EQ2's fizzle mechanic that is going to be removed (while I controversially think it should have been changed and left in), mostly because one of the ideas I proposed was used for the interrupts:

This is the new behavior of interrupts, they now automatically restart the cast up to 3 times.

--
There was a long discussion a few months about WoW's release about the Warrior class which led to an in-game protest and a long post from the lead designer. Here's the interesting bit:

Now, regarding your opinions. Obviously it's perfectly valid to hold the opinion that we should have designed a lower failure rate in general (miss/dodge/parry/etc) and compensated for that in other areas. In fact, if we were to do it all over again, it's reasonable to say I might be in favor of doing something to that effect. That being said, it wouldn't be as easy as changing all mob HP's. Not only would it also require changing player HP's, but compensating through HP changes also has ripple effects on the effectiveness of spells, non-physical-damage procs, etc.

I see miss rates not differently from fizzles. They are negative odds. Never directly "fun".

As Kalgan says, the less you have of them, the less frustration. But they are also part of the *fabric* of the game.

Some games that didn't understand that concept failed horribly. Think to Morrowind combat. If you had a low attack skill you would hit ONCE every ten or more "swings". This is absurdly retarded.

So, as Kalgan said, here the right recipe isn't about removing the odds, but finding the sweet spot where they add flavor without becoming frustrating.

Fizzles are essentially the same thing. They are negative odds, exactly like missing with a weapon (I don't know how misses are calculated in-game but I guess they are related to the skill level as well, dodges with skill level compared to defence of target and so on). They are *excused* within the game because they are consistent:

- You learn a new spell and need to practice so that you can improve using it.

That's a consistent, familiar mechanic that I wouldn't remove lightheartedly and that's why I commented it.

Now the problems of the fizzles:

Fizzles provide a need to hammer the same key while getting increasingly pissed off, and feelings of frustration/incompetence as their cost of failures.

- First problem. How frequently fizzles happen. This is obviously related to the skill level and should remain so, imho. To make the mechanic more satisfying you could link more directly the skill-up with a fizzle, so that if players fizzle often, they also skill-up faster. You fail (fizzle) but you are rewarded with a skill-up. Secondly, it's essential that they are odds in combat, but not the norm. I admit to only have experience of the very early game, but fizzles seemed rare enough. If they are still perceived as annoying their chance could be made more steep depending on the skill level (so that you reduce the chance of fizzle at an high skill level, and then readjust the progression).

- Consecutive fizzles. From your comment it looks like this is the most frustrating pattern. The solution is to make the system "aware" of fizzles and increase the chance to cast a spell after one or more fizzles happen. This could transform into a *positive* mechanic: for example by affecting more than just the next spell and even by rising the chance to crit (like an invisible buff). You fail the spell but when this happen you can count on a "compensation" on your next spells.

- Spamming keys. If the problem is about having to re-issue a command (this is even for me), you could automate this. On a fizzle the character would automatically recast the spell as soon as possible without requiring the player to press the hotkey again.

In short:

- Reduce the chance to get a fizzle at the proper skill level and rise the chance to skill up after a fizzle.

- Compensate a fizzle by improving the chance to crit and succesfully cast spells on the next few spells.

- Make recasting automatic if a spell fizzles.

The idea is to transform negative feedback into positive one. So that instead of triggering frustration, you trigger revenge: "Okay, this spell failed. But the next one will tear you apart" translated into higher chance to cast the spell successully and higher chance to obtain a critical hit.

Better than a thousand words

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:42:07 -0800

Taken from Gallenite's most recent post, about EQ2:

Were it all to be done over again, I suspect things would be a bit different.

Heh.

EQ2's "Echoes of Faydwer" not so bad bundle

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 10:22:44 -0700

I ranted a lot about the price and content of the upcoming EQ2's expansion, but at least I have also something positive to report:

The retail box for EoF will contain the base game as well as both DoF and KoS.

Well done.

This is the sort of thing I think is more reasonable and that I suggested for years. Put on the shelves a complete product so that new players won't be turned off by a bunch of purchases one stacked on top of the other to get the complete version of the game.

Seen from this perspective the $10 price raise for this expansion (for a total of $40) is more justified for the full game, even if I think the three "adventure packs" still need to be bought separately. I hope there's a complete and updated paper manual in the box, even if this time I'm going with a digital download, myself.

It would be nice if the veteran players who have already base game + DoF + AoS could get a $10 discount and get the new expansion at the price of the previous ones.

Pretty video for EQ2's exp pack

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:42:00 -0700

Since I've commented the other (leaked) one (it's there after the comments on Vanguard), I'll also spend a few words about the official one (if it's the official one).

At first glance the video is rather well done and looks very pretty, it even fools you believing that you can see all that in the real game. But then if you pay attention you can see smaller details that don't look as good.

The new zones still look a bit too bare and empty, the ground textures still too clean and replicating monotonous patterns and the grass blades still follow this awkward choice of being made as a flat block spread horizontally that makes them look more like quite awful placards instead of "decorations" (if you expand horizontally a flat surface you only obtain to make it look even more flat, if the grass was made more like a single vertical blade or flower, it would instead look much better).

The overall layout of the zones seems to be of a good impact but then it's again the detail that misses and makes these zones feel like just big containers with not much to see from the player's perspective. Look at the 2:12 minute. There's some sort of flower-lamp at the border of the road. That's the kind of stuff that the game definitely misses, the detail at the player's point of view, more organic terrain, less pattern-like. But then there's also to consider that EQ2's engine already doesn't have a great performance, and the more detail you add, the more it is going to struggle.

The same for Kelethin, the tree city. The layout doesn't look too bad, but it seems to lack detail and I wonder if a place so big will also have content to fill that space with. "Huge" is good, "wasteful" not so much. I think the noob island in the game looked much better exactly because, being smaller, it was much more detailed and carefully built. More organic and alive. (and I would have loved to see the bridges connecting the platforms on the tree city animate and sway in the air)

The video also does a good work at hiding the glitches that you can see daily in EQ2. I'm not sure if the animations were tweaked specifically for the video or are going to be tweaked for the expansion, but the running animations definitely look much better than what I see in the game right now. The characters don't look as if they are moving jerkily at super-fast speed as they always do in the game. There are three chars in the video. The tall woman, the dwarf in the blue armor and the gnome in red. Of the three the woman is the one that moves more realistically, with the running animation paced rather well. While the other two have the animation even running too slowly to look as good. The little floating robot elicopters also seem to move rather smoothly, but I suspect it's again another feature of the video as EQ2 has the flaw of having quite jerky updates on the monster movements (it's the first thing I noticed coming from WoW).

Nitpicking you can see the woman shooting at the huge mechanical thing right through a tree, and it would be nice if the animation could match the angle at which the bow should be rised (the animations points the bow straight forward, while the arrow is fired upwards). Then that mechanical thing also shows some unrealistic gliding on the terrain as the animation isn't perfect. At a point a flooded area is shown with boiling water and geysers, all good but the way the smoke blows out is just looks too unrealstic, as large clouds of smoke just don't move that fast even with a strong wind (the smoke quickly loses pression as it gets more space to expand). And the "Faes" are supposed to float, even if their wings barely move...

Even after all these critics (the game still has many, many weaknesses, even if it largely improved) I still believe EQ2 is a better base to build upon than Vanguard. This despite some claims that I found lost in my notes file (so I don't have the original links):

Vanguard uses a lot of newer tech that the EQ 2 engine doesn't have because it's a newer engine. Ryan Elam and I have listed a lot of these differences in the past. Someone like Ryan would have to post to get into the details, but the big obvious differences are more advanced character customization, lighting, pixel shader 2.0 min spec (and therefore more advanced shaders), seamless world, advanced LOD and portal engine allowing for flying and such in any region, NPC wall, cieling, and sky pathing, world lighting, dynamic weather system, and much more.

None of this is to say anything negative about the EQ 2 engine -- the Vanguard engine is simply newer, faster, takes advantage of the latest tech, etc.

--
Mostly yes, but we are still adding some class specific anims and a few other special ones. Some of the races are still getting some tweaks (like the Raki), and there are a few more sets of hair and face options to add to character customization. And there will always be clothing, armor, weapons, etc. added to the game, pre and post launch.

There are also a few tech tweaks to the characters that will make the animations run more smoothly and interpolate better. We also have a lot of action/reaction animations (like the guy shoots an arrow at you from 100 feet and the guy he shot at blocks it, and he raises his shield to block the arrow at the right time -- synchronization) to place and tweak. Lastly, as machines grow faster and we optimize the game, animations will automatically look better because the faster the framerate, the more frames of the animations play (we sampled the animations at quite a few frames, so they're very smooth at high FPS).

Probably some things I've forgotten, but it's mostly there now and it's all about polish, variety, quality, quantity, and synchronization.

Why every time I talk about EQ2 I have to talk about Vangaurd and vice versa?

Because they are going to overlap. They are going to collide and compete against each other more than EQ classic and EQ2 ever did. I just don't think there is going to be a place for both, in the longer term.

And that's what will matter above everything else.

EQ2's exp changes

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:41:31 -0700

From the most recent Test patch notes:

- While we feel that solo quests can be quite rewarding, we were not satisfied with the experience from solo combat alone, especially for those characters who prefer to target slightly lower creatures. Therefore, we have increased the experience earned in the following situations:

* Non-Heroic creature experience has been increased slightly.
* Experience for blue con creatures has been increased slightly.
* Experience for green con creatures has been increased significantly.
- In addition, we also wanted to increase the reward for defeating the nastier foes you meet during raids. Therefore, epic creature experience has been increased significantly.

Hm, I don't know if I like these.

Solo *quests* aren't rewarding at all. The problem is that right now, even before those changes, killing random monsters gives already WAY TOO MUCH experience compared to the experience you gain from completing a quest.

I know because I use to play with combat exp disabled and only getting it directly from completed quests. I can complete ten or more of them and my exp bar only inches forward. But as I enable the combat exp and go kill a monster I see the exp bar moving much more consistently just after a few kills.

What I mean isn't that I want more grind, but that I would like the proportion between "killing creatures" and "completing a quest" better balanced. And better balanced toward the latter.

"Completing a quest" already implies that you have to go kill a number of monsters. What I don't like is that I get 90% of my exp or more for killing them and only 10% when I return to a NPC to complete my task. I don't care about the amount of total reward, but I would like it to be better distributed between those two moments. So that there's an actual incentive to go questing, discovering the world and lore and all the rest that makes the game slightly more complex than progressquest.

WoW for the first time made the quests the core of the game. But they didn't become the core of the game just because they were accessible and fun, but also because they were an efficient way to level and get good equipment instead of just killing the same mob on the same camp spot.

So, if the balance is already so disproportioned toward the direct kills instead of quest completition I guess that after these latest changes the situation will be even worse.

P.S.
Irony.

EQ Progression servers ruined by careless implementation

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 04:36:27 -0700

I've never been an EverQuest player even if I log in EQ2 from time to time, but even if I'm not so familiar with its content I still have followed its development as I do with every other mmorpg.

I'm three days late commenting this, but on FoH's forums those hardcore players that decided to undertake the challenge of the new "progression servers" started to heavily rant about a particular aspect. And I think they are complaining legitimately:

This kind of lack of foresight/complete disconnection with the game/basic imcompetance or WHATEVER it is, is what drove people away from EQ in the first place and aparently it's still going stong, except now the impact it has on the game is even more devastating. The hotzones need to be removed and the server needs to be rolled back, but somehow I don't see this happening.

What are they ranting about? They are ranting about a system already active on the classic EQ servers from quite some time that is, in their opinion, completely inappropriate for the progression servers, and, still, SOE didn't do anything to remove it or at least adapt it so that it wouldn't have damaged the game.

This system is about the addition of "hotspots", a selection of zones where the experience you get from killing mobs is permanently doubled compared to the other zones with a similar level range. It worked for the classic servers where the great majority of the content is mudflated anyway. But on the progression servers this idea goes directly against EVERYTHING that this server type should be.

Now one of the reasons why I have a website and write about mmorpgs is to build a "memory". Gather and develop ideas and discussions so that we (I) don't have to restart from zero when something comes up. To solidificate ideas around certain points. To give things some consistence so that everything doesn't feel volatile and vain as on a message board.

So let me refresh the memories. The "hotspots" where added a couple of years ago when Rod Humble was still the producer of the game. Here's the original design purpose behind them:

As for the hotspots, no, the original intent was not to change populations in underused zones. It was to assist a more casual playstyle (whatever "casual" means in this case it just meant how some folks including myself play.)

Many of us in at SoE are casual players, its been an ongoing joke that I play a character upto level 23 then restart, then I discovered another person who played that way, then another, then another. Obviously we were not doing something right for people like us. If there were 4 people in the studio who played that way there must surely be many others out there.

This combined with the refrain I kept hearing from experienced players that "anybody can get to level 50 in a week" started to grate on my neves after all I know I cant do that..... so we took a look around..

We did some data farming and sure enough there was a big dropoff around certain key levels in player activity as a percentage of their numbers which shot back up again at later levels (when for various reasons there is a ton of more stuff to do).

Well EQ is in a pretty rare position of having more content than most casual players can ever handle so why not hit the level ranges where casual players have the biggest barren patches and give them a boost?

This combined with Marks comments about "why are developers afraid of letting players get to the top?" struck a chord with me. After all "hardcore" players get to the "top" anyway and they can still enjoy playing so why not extend that to a wider audience?

After all we WANT people to succeed and experience all of the fun content, we have years of it just waiting for folks to experience we dont want to put roadblocks in their way we want to take barriers away and give them a boost.

A better summary about the concrete design purpose could be found in a quote I took recently from Dave Rickey and about the mudflation that is becoming again a very actual theme for discussions as the WoW's expansion draws near (everything is connected when you observe mmorpg game design):

Every new expansion effectively invalidates an equivalent amount of old content, every extension of the level range requires ways be found to reduce the time investment to reach the basline for the new cap.

That's it. I couldn't have explained it better. As more levels and tons of content were added to EverQuest, there was an increased need to actually keep the gap between the players manageable, or the new ones coming to the game could never hope to see the higher level content that made EQ successful or even reach their friends to play together.

That's the nature of these kinds of games, the *illusion* of progress. Because the truth is that there isn't any evolution. Nothing is really added because the model used forces a selection and replacement of the content. It's not an "expansion". It's not "growth". What happens is actually a collapse because the old content is made obsolete and loses its purpose and value, so the inner core of the game can just collapse on itself. Negating any real progression or evolution of the game world and slowly making the game progressively "hostile" to new players ("how mmorpgs die"). It's a suicidal kind of development.

You don’t move forward in your gameplay, you just replicate it with shinier technology and bigger numbers.

Let me connect the dots. Look at what I wrote about "this is how MMORPGs die", after reading that go see some emergent episodes that are coming up in WoW. See how all these discussion are: very actual, all tied together and all still lacking of a real answer?

If the bigger burden in creating these games is about producing good content fast enough, then why we are sticking to a model that actively invalidates and progressively erodes and even makes that content accessible only for a minority of the players? But this is a complex discussion that cannot be exhausted here (and that has also valid counter arguments, Scott Hartsman commented this on Raph's blog a while ago). So let's focus on this new problem of the progression servers and the hotzones.

The hotzones have concretely two basic purposes:

1- As the majority of the population in the game stagnates at the level cap and higher level zones, the rest of the players at the lower levels are too spread around between too many zones, now almost deserted. So there was the need to better direct and consolidate those players so that they could meet and play together more easily.

2- Provide "highways" from the lower levels to the current cap, so that the new players could complete their transition to the endgame in a reasonable time frame. With each expansion the gap was increased. Doubling the exp in some selected zones was a way to keep that gap more constant.

Both of these are directly connected with the mudflation and aimed at new players. Trying to keep the game accessible. Firstly by giving double exp to reduce the time needed to level and secondly by directing the players toward a manageable number of zones and content instead of letting them get lost in a deserted game world where the majority of the group-oriented content isn't anymore viable due to the lack of other players. So fighting the dispersiveness of zones that have lost their purpose and function.

Now the problem is that the "progression servers" are nothing but an answer to the mudflation. So changing completely the context and offering their own solution to that problem. Quoting from my comments:

The content isn't anymore mudflated as on a standard server, but is instead "aligned". The idea of "progression" comes from a series of objectives that must be completed before you can advance. It's all focused to be a solution to the mudflation. This new server type is just a way to remove the rust from content that has been ignored for a long time. Find a purpose, an use, a motivation. A way to refresh the memories and restores those qualities that the game has but that have been erased by the "progress" of the mudflation. A way to answer that existential question that plagues the whole game.

A solution that now collides with the purpose of the hotzones. The progression servers are a fresh run through the content. All the players start at the same time, the community is young and the content all relevant, with a function, because the new zones will be progressively unlocked and the level cap raised.

The hotzones were a bandaid for a collapsing game. But the progression servers are instead an attempt to revitalize the content. So the hotzones are completely out of context on these servers. Look at those two basic points that were the objectives of the hotzones. They are both *invalidated* on the progression servers.

The hotzones are a selection of a few zones so that the players don't finish too dispersed on a game world that lost its purpose. But the point of the progression servers is instead about putting back the value in those zones that lost it. SOE made a HUGE mistake here because by not removing the hotzones they basically invalidated the whole idea of the progression servers: make the players enjoy content that was "lost".

But who wants now to go explore zones that only give half the experience? The hotzones were a bandaid to the mudflation, in this case they are applied to a context (the progrtession servers) where the mudflation *doesn't exist* (the whole purpose of these servers). And the result is that, instead of contrasting the negative effects of the mudflation, here they introduce them. So the solution (hotspots) to the problem (mudflation), applied on a context where that problem is not present (progression servers) have the paradoxical result of *introducing* the problem itself. Negating the value of the progression servers and basically fucking up the whole thing.

So yes, those players who rant have all the reasons to do so, because the whole idea of the progression servers just went straight to hell thanks to that oversight.

What should have been done? It's simple and it's again all within what I wrote about the progression servers (same link):

But there are also some basic weaknesses that undermine those ideas. The biggest problem is that the progression servers are only a temporary solution. They are transitory. The motivation is strong if you were there from the very beginning, but the majority of players won't be able to keep up with the pace and will have to deal with the reality quite soon, which is much different from their expectations. People will be excluded from that sense of progression and, with the time, the players will trickle off as they understand that their hopes aren't realistic and that it won't be easy at all for them to be part of that community.

So the progression servers have done the miracle of giving EQ back a soul, identity and meaning. But these answers are only a temporary and the motivation will only work for a minority of the players. And then less and less.

The point is that sooner or later the mudflation will have its effect even on the progression servers since they are only a "temporary solution". And it's then that the hotspots will have an actual purpose without fucking up the whole thing.

When more and more content is unlocked and the level cap raised, THEN it makes sense to help new players who are left behind to catch up instead of just giving up to play. This is why a good implementation of these hotzones was about slowly enabling them for the lower levels and content as the progression server "progressed". Parallel to that progression instead of ahead of it.

But that's not what happened. All the hotzones are already enabled right away. Content that was unlocked two minutes before and that obviously IS NOT mudflated yet, is instead mudflated out of the game because of the hotzones. And the whole idea of playing on the progression servers to enjoy that content completely fucked up by this huge overlook.

This time those "hardcore" players are absolutely right. They were offered an idea that was crushed by a very bad implementation. And a mistake that cannot even be made up without rolling back the whole server.

Hell, this is a rare case where reducing the exp by 25% or so could have been a good idea.

EverQuest Classic strives to find a reason to exist

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:48:11 -0700

So there is a new expansion planned for September that will even break the naming convention of "noun of noun". SHOCK!

As Ubiq wrote the interesting part is that it will provide content for all levels (also implicitly answering to Loral). A sub-world that is suppposed to be self-contained, with the possibility to level there from 1 to.. uhm.. 75? Must be a rather HUGE zone. Or maybe it's the new frontier of the Pure Grind, like DAoC did with those horrible Task Dungeons.

I don't know, but thinking about going back to EQ for this expansion looks like a very bad idea to me. If you want a brand new experience there are many other better games, EQ2 included.

Instead the only real interesting thing going on EQ Classic are the "progression servers". Not only because they are alive, packed with players, but because they provide an answer to EQ's greater problem: the mudflation.

And that's also the tie between the progression servers and the new expansion in development. The new expansion is no less than the triumph of the mudflation. 10 years of expansion pack content? The truth is that EQ has now LESS content than the average mmorpg. As we already examined, content is subjective. It doesn't exist if there isn't an active interest. It lacks consistence. It doesn't matter if the content is potentially there and maybe even in a playable state. What matters is that the content is for the large majority inaccessible because of the shifts of interest of the community. Content that exists, but that is now completely useless and that it would be just impossible to actually experience. Content without an use. Without an audience.

How much of that content is really accessible today? How much is desirable? How much is soloable so that you won't have to remain flagged LFG for a month to do a quest that noone cares about?

With that new expansion they are basically cutting out another 95% of the whole game. A loss of function and "use" that is now so widespread to become an existential problem for the whole game. Why EverQuest still exists? What is its place?

It's in sharp contraposition to those questions that it can be interesting to observe the dynamics of the progression servers. The progression servers are no less than obligatory paths, ways to find an use and purpose to content that lost them long ago. There are two basic points to consider.

- The first is that the content isn't anymore mudflated as on a standard server, but is instead "aligned". The idea of "progression" comes from a series of objectives that must be completed before you can advance. It's all focused to be a solution to the mudflation. This new server type is just a way to remove the rust from content that has been ignored for a long time. Find a purpose, an use, a motivation. A way to refresh the memories and restores those qualities that the game has but that have been erased by the "progress" of the mudflation. A way to answer that existential question that plagues the whole game.

- The second interesting point is the "community effort". The sense of participation. Not only in the fact that the zones are alive again, but that everyone is going to contribute and participate in a communal effort. While the great majority of the mmorpgs focus on a personal power growth, the idea of "progression" on the progression servers becomes a shared concept. The idea of progression is extended to the whole community.

And this is the strongest mechanic that a MMORPG can aspire to.

I have repeated and supported this for years. Doing something just for yourself, in a personal instance, can be fun for a while. But it's when you become truly involved in the community, when you feel a sense of real participation, that this leads to an escalation of fun. Being part of something becomes the strongest motivation you can have. You don't play anymore to kill some spare time, you play because you want to be there. You want to be part of something. You want to belong. You want a memory.

That's where the potential of a community really is: participation, motivation and memory. Being part of something bigger than you and that unites all players. Something to share and remember. Without this, games are meaningless.

This is why I consider the progression servers as the most interesting thing happening to the game. EQ is a game that is losing its identity and motivation. It is losing pieces because of a lack of "answers". The progression servers basically provide an use and meaning to the content in the game and, as a reflection, to the whole game. People come back because EQ regains its identity and purpose, the game "remembers" (and the progression servers also rely a lot on the nostalgia) who it is. The game regains a motivation and this motivation is understood and inherited by the players.

But there are also some basic weaknesses that undermine those ideas. The biggest problem is that the progression servers are only a temporary solution. They are transitory. The motivation is strong if you were there from the very beginning, but the majority of players won't be able to keep up with the pace and will have to deal with the reality quite soon, which is much different from their expectations. People will be excluded from that sense of progression and, with the time, the players will trickle off as they understand that their hopes aren't realistic and that it won't be easy at all for them to be part of that community.

So the progression servers have done the miracle of giving EQ back a soul, identity and meaning. But these answers are only a temporary and the motivation will only work for a minority of the players. And then less and less.

The conclusion is that these servers have revealed interesting dynamics but that are limited by their transient, ephemeral nature.

Why we cannot design games starting from those important goals, instead of having them just as afterthoughts? Why we cannot have a sense of participation and motivation that can really aspire to integrate the majority of the players and that can be persistent in the game instead of just temporary?

I have some ideas. The point is to start designing games as concrete answers to those needs. That's what I try to do, start from the need and then try to find an effective solution.

WoW is crap, buy EQ2

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 09:16:08 -0700

Now I'm joking but the current issues with the download of the WoW patch let me really appreciate how much, MUCH better is SOE's support.

It's from early beta that Blizzard decided to distribute game and patches through Bittorrent to spare on the bandwidth. Problem is that their client is total crap and for very simple reasons. I can use Bittorrent without a problem but the Blizzard's version is completely broken for me. It was broken during beta and it still is. Two years have passed and ZERO improvements have been done. At that time I ranted on their forums explaining the problems and they said they were going to fix it in time for launch. Yeah, sure.

There are two problems with that crap-program.

The first is that it doesn't save partially downloaded "parts". Basically a Bittorrent client chunks a large file in smaller parts and then downloads them from peer connections to then recombine to form the full file. Let's say a "part" is 256kb (as in this case). Other, better Bittorrent clients save even partially downloaded parts, so that even if you have downloaded 128kb of the 256kb, it isn't lost and then it is resumed seamlessly. Blizzard's client doesn't do this. If you go look at the connection details you could see that you have downloaded a total of 15Mb but completed only 8Mb. If you restart the client the 7Mb partially retrieved won't be saved and will be lost.

The second problem is an issue with certain network cards and connections. While other Bittorrent clients allow you to set the max number of open connections, Blizzard's downloader opens them up at will till your connection gets totally swamped and cannot keep up anymore. In my case (ISDN line) I can keep open forty different connections without a problem. It's way, way more than enough to cap both my upload and download bandwith. But if I go above that cap my connection gets completely swamped till it dies. It stops completely to upload and download and I cannot open even a webpage. Basically it kills my connection till I shutdown that program and all those useless open connections. So if your network card doesn't like an insane number of connections open the Blizzard's download is simply unusable since it doesn't allow you to set a cap. It just continues till it kills your connection.

Recently Blizzard got the "smart" idea to keep the downloader up while you play the game to download the patch in the background using "spare" bandwidth and ease the load during patch day. Well, if I don't disable it I last two minutes in the game before that FUCKING SHIT of a program lags me to a disconnection. Again because it happily goes to open connections to other PCs at will till my own drowns in despair. You idiot of a program, I'm on dialup, what the fuck you expect when you open more than *eighty* connections to other PCs?

So two years later I'm still waiting Blizzard to fix those two trivial problems or at least provide a standard .torrent file so that I can bypass that shitty program they have.

And one has to praise SOE at this point. SOE doesn't rely on peer to peer to support their game. In fact their patch program is so smart that verifies and keeps up to date ALL the files. You can go in the game directory and delete a random file and the patch program will deal with it. With a fast, reliable connection. Add to this the mini expansion packs that are distributed completely online. Add to this the possibility to download the FULL game if you need to. Hell, add to this even that they forgot to include the expansion in the expansion DVDs. No problem. I downloaded *all of it* directly from their servers. And if I want I can buy the expansions directly online without bothering to drive to a shop or wait a few days for a shipment to arrive.

Even SOE now supports the possibility to download optional content packs in the background while you play the game as Blizzard tried to do recently. Differently from Blizzard's crap version, it works. I can play the game even with my poor connection and the background downloader does it work smoothly without lagging me at all.

So some praises, at least when it comes to a good support, are well deserved.

EQ2's evolution for next year?

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:59:25 -0700

It's almost like whatever I care about is now off the official channels.

So I read Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman Producer's letter and it tells me nothing particularly interesting. While a post on FoH's forums is much more compelling:

It's one of our longer term projects. No releasable details yet, but since Smed directly addressed character animations here originally, I'll say at least this much about it:

What we need to go through to make both armor/wearables and animations for 40-some different race-gender pairs across both US and Alt models isn't really tenable in the long term. Fixing that is something we'll be talking more about over the next year.

In the interest of efficiency, this project supercedes making a couple thousand new animations for the existing character system.

Doing that much animation work, just to have to throw it all away when the system itself is fixed (and delaying the system fixes by months in the process), wasn't really the best option for us.

That's not to say there won't be incremental animation improvements in the meanwhile like the tweaks that continue to come out with updates. Just not any massive-scale replacement. Hopefully the reasoning above explains why we think this is the smart call.

- Scott

Actually what this post says is not encouraging: "It was delayed, don't expect anything soon". But at least they could decide to address the problem radically when it will be the right time. And this is good, because the problems definitely aren't "superficial".

EQ2 is a game that went totally wrong. But now, step by step, it is adjusting the aim, and it's becoming a good game. Maybe it is watching WoW too closely and backpedaling on a number of design decisions, but overall improving.

Of course it's a matter of "priorities". We usually say "it's about the gameplay, not about the look", but client optimizations, better models and animations, better UI features, less memory requirements... these are all features that can have a strong impact on ALL players ALL the time. I think that a mmorpg should have a continued development at all levels (the systemic approach). Instead of just tweaking balance and add some new content preriodically.

Right now EQ2 is a decent game, with plenty of content and zones to explore. It still has significantly high accessibility issues, a clunky client, an heavy UI and varying artistic style and quality. But it is satisfying enough. Still far from being polished and carefully designed as WoW, but it has some richer aspects here and there. Plenty to do. Perfect for someone bored coming from other games.

Perfect for those fond of this kind of gameplay and who desire a whole new, huge world to discover for the first time.

Looking at the future I don't think it is grim. The biggest competitor for EQ2 is Vanguard, as ironic as it could be. EQ2 isn't a masterpiece and for many players it is like a "parked" experience. Something to do while they wait for something that can arouse the interest again. I believe that if EQ2 plays well its card and continues to improve in the same way it is doing at the moment (at all levels, not just with "more content"), it could have nothing to fear from Vanguard and easily outclass it. Then it will be the time for Vanguard to chase desperately EQ2 as EQ2 is now doing with WoW.

An aggro train.

In the meantime I continue to play casually with my experiment: combat experience turned off permanently and just getting some of it through quests (54 completed, currently). Since there's so much content to see I decided to leave behind the desire to "level up" and just do everything I can. I made to level 12 but it starting to feel a bit too redundant and vain. I wish there were more quests directing me to new zones and places and a rebalance of the xp points so that more of them would come from the quest completition and less from kill-a-foozle.

Why WoW won.

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 22:08:57 -0700

There was a discussion about EQ2's UI on the FoH's forums and it made me think that too often people tend to completely ignore the most obvious things. While they tend to consider what is instead absolutely irrelevant.

So here why WoW racked up millions of subscribers worldwide and why it dwarfed every other mmorpg:

First Postulate on Mmorpgs Subscriptions: If you suddenly double the minimum hardware requirements, then even your potential subscribers base is HALVED (if not worst, considering the scaling).

There, I said it. WoW's success is for the biggest part contained in that line. No need for thousands and thousands of pages and design researches. Just one fucking line.

Hello? Accessibility barriers. The GREAT MAJORITY of people on the internet have computers that SUCK. This is why browser-based games are popular. Not because they are "casual" games, but because they embrace a MUCH BIGGER potential subscribers base.

Crappy internet connection, instable, badly configured system, old drivers, conflicts, incompatibilities. All these are the NORM for PCs. Not everyone is a geek who assembles his computer, runs benchmarks, reads hardware reviews and figures out obscure quirks in the Bios of the motherboard. This is also why the consoles are much more popular. Not everyone has the patience and dedication to swallow that. In particular after having spent considerable amounts of money for that hardware and STILL managing to see games running like crap.

WoW broke the market in three moves:
1- Low hardware requirements, wider compatibility (here)
2- It launched EVERYWHERE, localized and with a good support (here)
3- Game design all focused to simplify a genre and make it accessible/usable (here)

WoW became so popular because it lowered the accessibility barriers. BOTH from the hardware requirements perspective AND the game design. It's accessible. Its engine is the best out there. It runs more smoothly and without incompatibilities compared to any other mmorpg, old or new. And in nearly all the cases IT EVEN LOOKS SO MUCH BETTER.

Seamless world, smooth framerates with tenths of players on screen each with particle effects and perfect animations, no jerky LOD, impressive environments and clip plane, beautifully painted textures, consistent art direction throughout the game.

Not only it is a charming experience because it runs great and doesn't stutters or crashes all the time, but it even looks great.

And here we come to that discussion about EQ2's interface:

--
I don't know if it's a Nvidia vs Ati issue but the UI simply eats a lot of resources. I use the standard EQ2 UI + maps here and I can be in a zone with 30+ FPS or another with 15 or so, the UI still eats up significantly processing power.

Arguably WoW has the most powerful and flexible UI out there, but where it really shinies is in the fact that it takes nearly zero resources. I can have the barely needed on display or I can open hundreds of buttons, windows, features and energy bars and the game maintains roughly the same amount of frames per second.

It's obvious that it's a matter of how the UI in EQ2 and WoW are engineered at a basic level and rendered on screen. It's surely not a matter of "optimizations".

The point is that in other games the UI really does not impact the framerate. In EQ2 it does sensibly. Now it could even get optimized but the fact that it takes resources will hardly change if it's not recoded at a very basic level, I suspect.

And don't bring up the "focus to support hardware for the years ahead". Slowing down the game just because people have more powerful hardware is not an argument. If I'm buying new hardware it's because I want new possibilities supported, not so that I can swallow horrible engines.

If your hardware requirements are high, then the game better demonstrate that the slowdown is worth it (and it usually never is). Instead of just an excuse for a crappy engine.

--
EQ2's engine is already heavy enough without the UI slowing it down even further. One thing is about supporting better graphic possibilities and advanced engines, another is having high hardware requirements because the engine is not so great. Here the competition is stronger because these things CAN be easily compared.

The same applies to Vanguard. If it looks like crap, then better run *very smoothly*. Because noone swallows extremely demanding engines AND overall deluding graphic quality.

Which is also why I have that terrible nightmare.

Solo players "plaguing" the genre?

Thu, 25 May 2006 22:13:06 -0700

Here's a poll I've noticed on EQ2's forums (need to be subscribed to answer):

In other words 76% of those who answered the poll prefer to play up to a full group, while a small 14% likes larger groups.

I bet that in WoW the raid lovers would be even less in comparison.

--
Adding some comments. I'm often (more often than you imagine) a "solo" player but I don't like this general trend. In fact I believe it's pretty negative for the solo players, the community and the overall game.

It's important to understand these trends and not just dismiss them superficially. In this case the situation is not encouraging. And that poll could be considered more as an "alarm". Something that is also generalized to all mmorpgs, so not a specific problem of EQ2.

Stealing a comment from Darniaq that has some implications in what I'm describing:

* Sometimes, yes, people just want to get in for 15-30 minutes to kill some stuff. So forced-grouping is a problem for them.
* Other times they're just shy. They want the opportunity to see other people, and experience the economy, but they won't want to openly interact.
* Other times they don't match the requirements of a group. Like, how many guilds would let a pickup raider join them on an AQ run if that raider still had green equipment?
* Other times someone just rubs them the wrong way, but leaving ostracizes them from the larger group.

I think there are design implications if the players start to deliberately avoid group content. It's a symptom that needs to be considered seriously because it may say that something in the game doesn't work too well.

In my case I said I'm often a solo player. But the real truth is that what I do depends above all on the *game* and not on my personal preferece of a playstyle over another. There are mmorpgs where I NEVER grouped with anyone even if I played for months. There are mmorpgs where I passed the majority of my time in groups and got even quite involved in the community.

Are solo players growing consistently in the genre because they really don't want to bother with other players, or because they bump against accessibility barriers and design models that aren't exactly encouraging and rewarding the cooperation?

Is "solo play" a real necessity or just a reaction to a lack of accessibility?

I have my answers as always and I know about these problems rather well since when I started playing mmorpgs I could barely write some words in english. Being "shy" isn't a small detail, in particular when you face something completely new to you. Game design can do a lot in these cases, to overcome those "barriers".

In fact I think there's noting more important and pertinent to game design than that.

SOE rises the bar

Tue, 02 May 2006 23:46:03 -0700

Yes, but of the prices of their games. Heh.

Yesterday the announcement of an increase of 3$ for the Station Pass, bringing it to 25$. It is starting to feel rather pricey, even more so if you consider that european players have to pay taxes on that. Which brings the price to 30$. Not a small amount to pay monthly. Plus original games and expansions that you have to purchase separately.

Now, I've written in the past that I'm all for rising the monthly fees. No, I'm not crazy. Behind this statement there's a development plan. I believe that expanding a game through expansions finishes to hurt the game because instead of working uniformly on every part, as a choesive project (like Eve-Online is doing), you are forced to develop "optional" parts and never address core issues that would improve the game significantly. Basically you are bound to an horizontal development that brings directly to the mudflation and a game world that ages awfully.

The idea to increase the monthly fee came with that premise: we up the monthly fee, but to keep a serious, radical ongoing development that replaces the expansions. That is part of the monthly fee. As long you are subscribed you can experience all the game has to offer without any barrier or divisions.

Here SOE not only upped the price of the Station Pass, this would be negligible and I glided on the news, but they are also going to rise significantly the prices of the upcoming expansions.

Today the announce of the new EQ2 expansion, slated for November and named, as anticipated, "Echoes of Faydwer". The very first thing I noticed in the press release wasn't the features list, but the retail price going up to 40$ and approaching that of a stand-alone game. It reminds me Guild Wars, but in this case NOT stand-alone and WITH the monthly fee. I guess that's what they meant when they said they were going to slow down the release of the expansion packs to improve the quality. This surely wasn't planned as a gift.

I have a suspect. There have been rumors that the upcoming WoW's expansion will be rather pricey. I think SOE with this press release wanted to send Blizzard a clear sign. *nudge-nudge* Let's rise the prices together.

With the difference that WoW isn't that pricey. This November you will probably have to buy the expansion and the basic game if you want to open a new account. It's not a small price, but still less than what you'd have to pay for a "full" EQ2. Three expansion packs plus three adventure packs. For european players you still have to apply taxes at least for the adventure packs and monthly fee, something that doesn't apply to Blizzard. Game boxes and monthly fees.

There's also another relevant difference that should determine a completely different marketing strategy between the two. Blizzard is betting on returning subscribers with this new expansion, they have a huge pool of players to draw from. Instead I think SOE should aim at luring in new players. This would require a completely different and aggressive approach, instead of moving along with Blizzard as a parallel line. They need to collide, not to cooperate.

The "price of admission" to EQ2 is significantly higher, and if you count the expansion, adventure packs and station player services, Station Pass and RMTs, SOE resembles more like a sponge for money.

This June the third adventure pack will be released, "The Fallen Dynasty" (7.99$), about which we know three relevant traits: high-end content, asian-themed and outsourced.

Developed in conjunction with SOE's Taiwan studio, The Fallen Dynasty Adventure Pack promises to deliver the same downloadable story-rich content seen in the previously released The Bloodline Chronicles and The Splitpaw Saga, but this time with Asian influenced adventure zones, weapons, tradeskill rewards, as well as all new quests.

A few more words from another preview:

Veteran players will get to explore seven new areas, visit a new village, explore a new dungeon – there’s even talk of a forsaken city. We do mean veterans, though – only level 55 to 70 need apply –

The few screenshot on the newly opened page look pretty. But not as pretty as the asian-themed Guild Wars and, in particular, I seriously doubt it will move at the same framerate.

But lets even look at the feature list of that massive expansion coming out for EQ2:

Echoes of Faydwer is the third expansion pack for EverQuest II, and introduces a new playable race, The Fae. An enchanted race of winged creatures, the Fae dwell on the continent of Faydwer, in the arboreal city of Kelethin, the new starting city being added to this latest chapter in the EQII saga. Echoes of Faydwer includes over 350 new quests, a new selection of profession hats, cloaks, armor, and new horse mounts available to players of all levels. EQII players will encounter over 40 new types of creatures to face, more than 20 new zones and adventure areas, and will be able to compete against other players for new PvP (Player vs. Player) rewards, plus all-new items, equipment, spells and tradeskill recipes. The Achievement system introduced in the Kingdom of Sky expansion has been enhanced to include additional sub-class abilities, allowing players to further customize their characters' abilities.

Which all amounts to the usual: Nothing New.

There isn't really any new idea or significant development. Not a single new feature. Zones, monsters, quests, items, skills, spells. But nothing adding a different flavor if not as an overstretched, bloated "More Of The Same".

Looking at the official site there are a few more details but not so encouraging. There is a bland copy of WoW's jewelcrafting system with the addition of "adornments" that can be applied to armors and weapons to gain a few bonuses and a "Belief System" which sounds like a faction with some prizes to get.

Both Guild Wars and Final Fantasy XI have tried to explore new and innovative gameplay modes with the recent expansion. On this perspective EQ Classic is experimenting a lot more and developing new systems and types of interaction even if it's also plagued by its incredibly dispersive and inaccessible scope. EQ2 here risks to borrow the worst. Just the overstretched development without any significant progress for the game. "More content", but nothing that stands out or brings something new to the game.

I've recently written about the entrance of new players in the game. I even discussed various strategies to add new content at the low levels without fragmenting and dispersing the community, while still enriching the game. Here SOE seems to dismiss every valid consideration to just reuse a mindless approach: more zones, more quests.

I think EQ2 deserves more ambition and should develop a more aggressive marketing strategy. Instead of reconfirming a stereotype.

The prices go up, the ambition goes down.

EQ2: the equipment damage rule

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 04:54:54 -0700

I wanted to comment this for a while, in the last update patch there was a change that created some discussions and complaints. Here it is:

- Upon death, the most expensive item equipped in each slot within 2 minutes before death will take damage. If an item was equipped in more than one slot, the next most expensive item will be damaged in addition to the most expensive item. A single item will not be damaged more than once per death.

To begin with, this explanation is rather twisted and the first reaction from the players was a question mark. What the hell does this mean?

Well, Aggro Me wrote a bit about this rule when it was still on the test server and not in its last reiteration. EQ2 has gone through many revisions of the death penalty and, following a funny and consolidated trend, it moved more and more close to WoW. Right now the death penalty doesn't differ too much between the two games and even in EQ2 one of the most relevant elements is the fact that when you die your equipment gets damaged and you have to repair it.

Since the two games follow the same rules both also have to deal with the same consequences. In EQ2 the players have available a /slash command to bind to a key that would quickly unequip all your items. This "smart" workaround/exploit was useful because you could press that key when a death was imminent to easily avoid to get the durability hit on your equipment on death and avoid repair costs.

In WoW the players don't have access to powerful slash commands, but the UI scripting language also allows to create buttons to swap equipment and mirror the exact same exploit. It is interesting now to compare how this problem was addressed in the two games.

In EQ2 the solution went through various reiterations that lead to that rather counterintuitive rule I quoted up there. In fact the first problem is that this workaround to fix the exploit breaks one basic rule: "a player should always be able to understand a change or use a new feature without reading the patch notes". In this case not only the explanation isn't that simple to understand, but the new mechanic is based on a timer that is invisible to the player. The two minute rule, plus its precisations, is nowhere "transparent" in the game. This two minute timer isn't revealed to the player, nor it can be autonomously deduced. The result is quite simple: or you read the patch notes, understand exactly what they mean and remember them, or this mechanic would remain completely obscure and hidden. It is clunky and complicated, not really appropriate for something that should be kept simple and transparent. Intuitive.

How the designers arrived to that conclusion? Here's the "designers vs players" duel in the form of questions and answers:

Q: The players use a macro to quickly unequip items when death is imminent to avoid repair costs.
A: The designers introduce a 2-minute timer so that every item equipped in that lapse of time would get damaged. Even if unequipped at the time of the death.

Q: The players start to complain because they are penalized when swapping equipment for other reasons, every item equipped within those two minutes would get the durability hit. With this penalty stacking on multiple items.
A: The designers tweak the rule so that only the last item equipped for each slot would get damaged.

Q: The players once again outsmart and exploit the rule bringing with them two complete sets. One is their proper set they should use, the other is a disposable trash set to which they can quickly swap before a death to have it absorb the penalty.
A: The designers tweak the rule so that the "best" item for each slot would get damaged.

And that's the final rule. There are even cases where you deliberately unequip items to move through risky spots without risking your equipment. This rule doesn't prevent this, but the players would need to remember to wait an imaginary 2 minute timer to wear off every time. It is simply counterintuitive and artificial. Aren't there better design solutions?

As I said WoW shares the exact same mechanic and risks the exact same exploit, it's is interesting to see how Blizzard addressed the same problem. Now the point is that we don't even need to wait for Blizzard, because Blizzard's design is extremely simple. It's logic.

The players unequip items to avoid them to get damaged on death. How we prevent this behaviour?

That's the starting point, and this is a roleplay game. The more it is consistent, the better. So what's the simplest answer possible to that problem? It's obvious: we forbid the player to swap equipment during combat.

See? It wasn't hard and it even makes sense. It's extremely hard to imagine a warrior in a full plate who swaps his whole armor during a fight. Preventing this lame equip-swapping behaviour would not only fix the exploit, but also make the game mechanic more consistent, believable and intuitive. If you try to swap a chest piece during combat in WoW you get a message telling you that you can't do that action at that time. You need to wait to be out of combat, when it makes sense to allow the character to put on a different armor set. Is this brilliant design? No, it's logic. It's thinking from "within the game" instead through the artificiality of game design: you cannot swap armor sets at will while you are engaged in combat. It's not a rule to close an exploit, I would be *surprised* if the opposite would be allowed.

This is not all. If we think to a combat situation there's still the realistic possibility to swap some of the items. For example it makes sense to swap weapons even if you are engaged in combat. This possibility would be believable. And, in fact, this is once again how WoW behaves: while you cannot swap your armor sets during combat, you can still swap two kinds of items, weapons and trinkets. Which, incidentally, are exactly those two types of items that contemplate the item-swapping as a valid combat strategy that is part of the design of the game. (trinkets don't even have durability in WoW)

I'm far from praising WoW. What I want to demonstrate is that Blizzard's design isn't something complicated and convoluted that comes from the minds of game design gurus. It's just simple thinking, logic, linear conclusions. Observation. You think to a fantasy game, you imagine these warriors and you are supposed to simulate the game mechanics so that they go close to what you would expect. The problem of the consistence.

The only excuse I can guess on SOE's side is that they didn't have available an "in-combat" flag to use directly in the mechanic, forcing them to find another solution. But even in this case I believe it wouldn't be hard to code something similar starting from what's already available, like the hate-lists of the mobs (if the players is in aggro, he would be considered in combat).

It looks like SOE has inherited Raph's "Out Of Character" design. The absurd idea that the game design is completely abstracted (alienated) from the setting and the world you simulate. The level of the mechanics independent from the metaphoric level. The result is a complicated and convoluted ruleset that simply makes no sense and just leads to more and more problems.

Of course I'm writing about a tiny detail here with a negligible impact. But it's a way to reveal a much broader and dangerous trend. A design apporach that I consider harmful (for these kinds of games).

--
Off-topic: What happened to Scott Hartsman? I have three guesses:
1- He just stopped posting on the boards because he's busy planning and scheduling and there's no major release anytime soon
2- He was moved/promoted/downgraded to a different role or project
3- He left SOE

Hey, you know I'm suspicious.
(now I have the suspect he may go to fill the space left by Raph)