The Cesspit. - Warhammer

The nail in the head of Warhammer

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:12:24 -0700

Despite all the praises about the gameplay and design choices, there are still those glaring flaws that I and others pointed out... years ago.

In this case I quote someone else, as a good summary:

There are 7 public quests (that I know of) in the first Chaos zone alone. That means you’d need 42 to 70 people in that zone working on public quests to do them all at once. I even ran into one completely empty PQ over the weekend even though almost every Chaos player was in that zone.

Will there ever be that many people working on PQs in the same low level zone after the first week or two after launch? Probably not.

I suspected that they would dynamically scale public quests based on the number of players currently participating. When I found a PQ that nobody else was doing, I worked my butt off and completed the first stage alone. Then Champion mobs spawned in stage 2, and I was screwed. So, it looks like they aren’t doing any sort of scaling.

Unfortunately, even though public quests are extremely fun, I fear they won’t even be doable throughout the majority of the game for those of us who will get behind the curve. As soon as I fall behind the pack, which inevitably I will, I’ll be unable to do any PQs until the end game.

I was able to have a similar experience in the second chaos zone, even with 2500 players logged in. Not exactly during an off-peak. And not even weeks or months or years after a server launch.

There's a way to sum it up in an even more significant way:
- Too many parts of Warhammer's core design are strictly dependent on keeping a fine balance on the number of players participating, and so vulnerable. It's not about PQs only. It's about PQs, faction balance in open RvR, issues of overcrowding and depopulation in all the parts of the game. The *fun* strictly depends on that fine balance, to keep all the options viable at all times, and to keep the single option fun without suffering overcrowding or depopulation.

Right now Mythic does absolutely nothing to preserve that fine balance, and down the road I only expect XP, renown bonuses/disadvantages for a faction or the other that won't really move anything in any significant way.

There are certain workarounds that may help, some of which I also suggested (de-levelling, multiple scenarios queues, adaptable objectives for PQs). But to me it's very clear that this game required to be built different at its core.

- Dynamic server structure with a mix of persistence and instancing. Server(zone) created dynamically depending on the number of players. Something like a creative use of Guild Wars system.

Certain design schemes need their specific systems to work. Or they just remain pretty ideas that do not work in practice.

The scheme Mythic's adopting here will have its flaws hidden or sweetened for a while, but it will hurt them hard in the long term.

Warhammer comments writeup

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:44:18 -0700

EDIT: Will revise later.

The NDA came down and I can join others commenting the game. I didn't have time to make a decent writeup, nor the time to see the game past the first few levels, so I'll write down some comments about my experience and view on the game, even if prematurely.

On the basic level this really feels as if Mythic tried to make their own WoW. As a game on its own, it is serviceable. Polished enough and solid. I already anticipated that predicting how popular the game will be, in particular in the longer term, is very hard compared to other MMOs launched recently. Warhammer has a strength over its competition, but that strength is undermined and uncertain. And it may as well end as a weakness that backfires on them. In this case a lot depends on how well Mythic acknowledges problems and answers them. Post-release support.

With Mythic you can never know. Sometimes they react fast, address problems and provide some of the best support and continued development in the industry. On the other hand they often only work around problems and make them worse, or totally miss the point and finish to ruin the game (ToA and other long term disastrous choices DAoC was littered with).

That's also the disclaimer I suggest you to consider: do not believe reviews at this stage. The way PvP/RvR develops isn't predictable at the moment. It can either be a huge success or a big fail. It depends on the flow and players' activity and these elements are impossible to judge when a new server just opened and everyone is crammed in the same spaces. The PvP and other core elements of this game only work if there's a good players' activity. From what I've seen Mythic didn't think of ANY system that helps balancing it, and this mean that the number of alternatives for PvP offered may become a HUGE flaw if the players are spread thin and large swathes of content go depopulated and unused. Just hoping that "ideal conditions" are maintained out of faith just doesn't cut it.

Your fun in this game crucially depends on the affirmation of those "ideal conditions". It's a risky balance, and it's madness for Mythic to simply hope it will happen and will be maintained on its own.

The presentation of the game isn't anything too impressive. Character creation is even more simple and limited in choice than DAoC itself. You have limited graphic combination, no height slider (that existed in DAoC) nor other custom settings. You get to pick a few combination of faces, skin tones and usual presets. On the other hand all the characters have a distinctive look and a decent style. Nitpicking: there's a total lack of polish on the details. There are holes in the models, for example in the beards and hair, and plenty of flickering, z-fighting textures. It's all about small detail you have to have an eye for. But it's obvious that there's some lack of polish overall. Form the first moment you enter in actual the game you'll get a strong WoW feel. The impressions weren't wrong: this game was made with WoW running side by side and trying to copy it down to the smaller details. Not inspired, this is directly "ported". That said, the game has style.

The artists surely went for the WoW look even before glancing at Warhammer source material, but still have poured some personality in the game and not just a soulless copy. This is valid for both the graphic and the UI. There's charm and a lot of intelligent improvements all over the place. On the other side, WoW makes a much, much, much better work at leading you around and stagger systems so that you can learn easily and progressively. Warhammer instead presents a lot more "noise" right away and feels more confusing. The fact that it works on the same systems means that veteran MMORPG players will have no trouble starting to navigate it, but for new players this game isn't as easily accessible. The dwarf starting zone, in particular, is indoors, which is already an odd choice, a bit looking all the same and with no landmarks, so easy to get lost in it despite it reveals to be rather small.

The world and overall zone design mimics WoW without matching the sweeping vistas. The clip range is much shorter, the spaces overall more cramped and the zones without smooth transitions and contiguous feel. The "worldy" feel is lacking but it also kind of feels more "focused". Despite it's not on par with the world design in WoW and its impressive scale, Warhammer doesn't delude on the first impact. It has charm on its own and you don't feel like you are really missing anything.

For quests and other things the NPCs have overhead round icons, but the mouse pointer does not react to them and so the interaction isn't perfectly intuitive. If you know where to click it's because you played MMOs already. Here I had already my first gripe. Playing Relic's Dawn of War and Company of Heroes I'm used to see overhead icons as a way to quickly select a squad. You know, when it is tricky to select the unit properly. The icon is there to ease the selection. That's also a perfectly fine idea for a MMO: since often you get these NPCs cluttered and hidden behind a number of players' models, it is a great idea to place a nice, visible icon floating above their heads that is easy to see and click on. Great. But why can't I *use* it? That would be a great feature, clicking on the overhead icon directly instead of having to target the NPC model. Sadly, and not intuitively, as the first thing I tried to do when I logged in for the first time was trying to click on one of those overhead icons and discovered they weren't usable, the game doesn't work this way.

Despite these initial quirks and confusion, I was presented with the usual MMORPG fare. Get quest, go to location, do task. The quests themselves are WoW, first generation. Nothing particularly original and inspired, and it actually misses the nice touches and gameplay that makes these basic activities still fun and interesting in WoW, despite their simplicity. The system itself instead has some nice improvements. Three are most relevant:
1- In your on-screen quest tracker if you mouse over the quest title you get a short tooltip that explains exactly what to do, so you have an accessible and quick summary of the practical objective if you want to skip the reading of the whole quest, or if you're trying to remember what was that quest about. It's also dynamically updated to reflect what you are supposed to do next.
2- You have a red area marking the zone with the name of the quest, so working like a waypoint of sort.
3- All quest-related items sit in their own bag/UI panel, so don't get mixed with normal loot and equipment.

If you are here to have a similar PvE experience to WoW, then I suggest you to simply play that game. I'm dead bored of the usual quests and Warhammer doesn't seem to offer anything new on that field. The game instead stands out for the alternatives it provides, so here I'm saying that PvE is not very good or brightly designed, but that this isn't even too important. It is there if you want it, but you aren't supposed to care much.

On screen you basically have three experience bars that also explain a bit how the game is organized.

1- The proper experience bar that makes you gain levels (here ranks) by killing monsters and completing quests.
2- The "renown" bar that measure PvP personal progress. Like Realm Ranks in DAoC.
3- A contribution progress bar is local to the zone/location and that measures your progressive activity in the area.

Plenty of reasons to ignore the dull PvE, or at least to break those sessions and experiment with something more original and involving. The basic idea of the game design here is again to provide a number of alternatives so that the game feels more varied and not too repetitive. From what I've seen, it works. Win.

The Public Quests are probably one of the most interesting new concept of the game (but shame on Mythic for having put a trademark on the term). The implementation could have been improved but they seem to work well anyway. They are basically normal quests broken in stages and every player in the area can cooperate or at least work toward getting the task done and pass to the following stage. When it's over there's a timeout and the quest resets and restarts. Not "worldy" feel and rather faked, but it's there for the quick fun. For the two of them I've seen the completion is rather quick. I don't know if PQ in the later game becomes much more complex and elaborated, but those two could be resolved in a couple of minutes (if enough players are present), so it's really something immediate and then kind of redundant.

The redundancy feeds two concurrent systems that defines the reason why you're there and caring. One is through grinding the PQ. So not only completing one, but "grinding" it over and over again. Doing that slowly builds up the contribution bar and you get progressive rewards in three stages that you claim from an NPC. The other system is instead a bit too competitive and not really collaborative as it resembles more to a race to rush. If you manage to "do more" than other players in the area then, when the PQ is complete, you'll be able to roll for loot and, if at the very first positions, get something nice. So you can either grind, or try to rush. Or, well, both.

My impression on these is that they would work better if there was an adaptable system in place, like reducing or increasing quest requirements depending on the number of players involved so that the "flow" could be maintained. I think they would also work better if longer, broader and rewarding more players. Again, I don't know if the design opens up as you progress through levels, but the very first PQ, with a good number of players around, practically lasted only a couple of minutes before it was completed and reset. Feeling too fast and rushed and without even giving you enough time to figure out what to do in a stage before the stage was already completed. On the other hard the PQ are brilliant ideas because of a simple concept: shared quests spaces. You just go to one of them and can join right away, playing along a number of other players and having some fun. It's socialization and collaborative gameplay for dummies. And it's fantastic.

That's what's so special about this game. Got bored with PvE quests? Then go to a Public Quest area and dick around for a while. Got bored doing the public quest? Then queue for a scenario (from the UI, without the retarded idea to have to travel/walk to a battlemaster NPC) and join some mindless PvP. Bored with the mindless PvP? Then join an RvR area and fight for control. At the end this is fun because it's varied. It doesn't even need to be particularly meaningful or deep. You dick around and pack some progress tracked in multiple ways. It's fun and it's very accessible.

And the accessibility was the premise that made WoW successful.

The very first playable scenario is simple and fun. Basically a bridge with some control points and factions spawning at opposite directions. Every player below a certain level gets buffed up. The gameplay feel was also good. The fighting wasn't too fast or twitchy and there was plenty of time to react. Tuned quite well.

There's some controversy about the gameplay. I've read complaints that the game feels sluggish. That's one of the three reasons why the NDA was still up. I arrived in beta AFTER that problem was patched, I didn't read about the problem at that time, and yet I still perceived it.

It's not as simple as it appears. A lot depends on a number of elements, like the design of spell effects. There's a certain degree of slugginesh in the sense that there's some disconnection between you triggering skills and seeing their outcome (health bars updating, graphic effects being shown). The Graphic effect seems to "lag", more because of how they are designed than a system problem. You trigger the spell, get the flating number of the damage, see the health bar go down, then, after a while, you notice the full spell graphic effect. It's a bit silly, as if they used a long spell animation effect on a spell that does the damage instantly.

On its own it gives a bad feel, but it isn't game breaking. What makes it WORSE is about a problem in the controls. There's no spell/skill queue and the game SUFFERS BADLY because of this. You are forced to look at your hotbar, lock your eyes there to see if the spell is being triggered or not, while you are savagely spamming the key hoping to beat the cooldown/refresh timer. This is utterly annoying (even MORE if you play an healer, really) and you don't even have a sound clip like those in WoW that gives you a better idea if the action was accepted or rejected. If you pile the sluggishness problem with this spamming of keys and difficulty to trigger skills, you can imagine that the gameplay isn't as smooth as it should and it makes you feel like fighting too much against the controls. Implementing a spell/skill queue would greatly reduce this problem and I can't fathom why Mythic didn't solve this a long time ago. This is easily the first priority issue.

Controls about moving around and stuff are very good. Much better than DAoC. They put a lot of work to make sure the running/jumping animations feel as smooth as in WoW and they kinda succeeded. There's no fast-forward, jerky speed feeling here, animations are well paced and feel very good. It's refreshing to have at least another MMO that gets it. Just think to SWG, Warhammer sits at the opposite end. In particular I like the way they handled strafing and the back speed. Moving forward is much faster than going back, and this actually gives more depth to the controls even if limits the mobility. Twitchy-loving gameplay types may hate this, but I loved it. The strafing is also a nice touch as the character automatically turns to face the original direction when it stops. Just very good controls and well polished. And a good feel like moving is another key feature behind WoW's success that Warhammer was able to reproduce well.

The few quirks I didn't like are about the collision (with objects, not with players) and the slopes. There's some jerky z-axis movement when you move through a passable obstacle. Instead of a smooth transition, your character jerks up and down when it moves over things. With the slopes the game shares DAoC's problem. Instead of having an intuitive system like the one used in WoW where your movement through a slope depends directly on the degree of its slant (so learnable and then guessable by the player's eye), in Warhammer you still have hand-made paths. Sometimes you can walk up walls, sometimes you feel blocked by invisible walls. There were also a number of occasions when I was able to walk to locations I wan't meant to, and even move off the world, but these are problems that will be likely solved at release or shortly after.

The UI is pretty, well designed and serviceable. In particular the Tome of Knowledge and the maps are GORGEOUS. Best looking maps in any mmorpg. All hand drawn. Only downside is that the name of the location isn't present and it can get annoying if you're trying to remember where some place is. The layout and design is ported over from WoW, but as i said above in the case of the quest tracker, there are smart improvements here and there. I'll point even here two important cases:
1- Open groups button, right under your portrait. Click on it and see listed all open groups you can join in the area. As simple as it is, and added to the other nice features, makes grouping rather accessible.
2- HEALTH BARS. God, this is one of the best features I've seen in a MMORPG recently. You can set overhead health bars, everywhere, so that they show ONLY if the player is hurt. No fucking reason to have the screen cluttered by those raid windows. In RvR you can just look around and see at a glance who's hurt and needs healing. No matter if he's in your group or not. No matter if you have a corner of your screen dedicated to him. Makes healing much more natural and connected to what you see. Heal your target to full and the health bar vanishes. Work done. Only downside is again about a selection problem. Either they add a targeting key that target the most damaged player, or they make, once again, the bars and names directly clickable/selectable as they should with the overhead NPC icons.

Hell, I would actually FORCE healers to go target the models and forbid to heal by clicking on the UI portrait. It would make healing so much more meaningful and interactive. But as it is, it's already better than the rest.

Performance. I tested the game on a Core 2 Duo E8400, 4 GB ram on Vista and a Radeon 4850. That's a very powerful machine right now and so every comment I made isn't meaningful. Especially because I played at 1024x768 and with no AA.

The game was smooth at all times, but then it's supposed to FLY with that configuration. On the other hand I had some issues when I flied to the capital city. Framerate was starting to stutter despite the zone was basically empty. The problem here is DAoC's legacy. The engine of Warhammer is the same Netimmerse/Gamebryo. The basic render just doesn't have a good performance and they kept adding effects and stuff, but the raw performance was never good and still isn't. Compared to WoW the performance is much, much worse despite the stylish, low-poly graphic and my perception is that it doesn't even support anything more. The ground textures get blurry just a few feet away from the character, the clip range is much shorter and the world overall less detailed and well crafted, with the terrain more jagged. The zones not contiguous and the loading makes the game stutter badly when new characters show up for the first time.

I don't think that performance is going to be an issue for most players, but don't take anything for granted just because Mythic went for conservative graphic. The performance of the client isn't very good and a decent hardware is probably required to have a smooth gameplay in RvR.

My final impression is similar to the summary I made. Since I have no idea of the endgame RvR, the strength of the game is about the varied play, but that's also a potential problem as it remains a good feature only till those options are easily accessible at all times and under all conditions. There's a solid game under the skin, especially if they address those few problems I've pointed out. There's nothing that risks to seriously cripple the game outside potential realm balance problems, players' activity and RvR convergence. And these are all issues that were in the air and I commented years ago.

There's no way to foresee how these things this go right now. Wait and see. With Mythic it could go either way.

What is sure is that this one MMORPG has its strength and validity over the competition. It's not a mediocre clone without anything different to offer like most MMPRPGs released recently. Sure, WoW represents a large chunk of its design, but there are distinctive ideas stacked on top of that, and the potential to be successful in the longer term (especially till WoW persists in its horrid PvP design, thanks Tom Chilton).

In particular I'm worried at the reintroduction of the two capital cities, so the multiplication of RvR space and the consequent spread out of the objectives. All that risks to create unfulfillable gaps and destroy a natural flow in the RvR. If the action gets too dispersed, the game would quickly decline and fall again in the hands of organized groups that ruin the game and make it inaccessible and unplayable for anyone else. DAoC went already down that path and Mythic never done anything to change the course. Warhammer right now seems more collaborative and accessible for all players, but so was DAoC at the beginning. So place your bets. I hope that it remains a game for everyone and doesn't go rewarding just the hardcore elite.

To conclude, I'll list the priority issues that I found in the game, that could be easily fixed/adjusted and that would make a much better game in my opinion:

- Dinamically adaptable objectives for Public Quests, depending on the players' activity in the area.
- Possibility to queue for all accessible scenarios. No zone-dependent.
- Usable/clickable overhead NPC icons.
- Location tooltips on the map.
- A way to track on the whole map specific NPCs, like renown trainers, general trainers, flight masters and so on.
- Selectable names/overhead health bars. Keybind to target (or cycle) most damaged nearby friend.
- Implementing a goddamned skill/spell queuing that would allow me to look away from the damned hotbar and avoid spam keys endlessly. NOT FUN! (also playing a sound tone for an accepted action)
- Improving the collision system around objects. It's too jerky and too easy to get stuck. Annoying during combat.

And my old design challenges are still sound. Probably more now than at that time.

Warhammer quick "review"

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:29:08 -0700

The thought gathering and writing isn't going exactly well. In the meantime you get this:

A smaller-scale WoW with a PvP vocation. Neither of its part are particularly brilliant or original but the number of accessible alternatives of gameplay makes it a win.

Got bored with PvE quests? Then go join a Public Quest. Got bored with the Public Quest? Then go join a scenario for some mindless PvP. Got bored with the redundant scenario? Then move to an RvR area and fight for control.

All this right from level 1. It's fun and extremely accessible.

The fact that the PvP is always just a couple of minutes away means that you always have a diversion ready when you're bored.

While you're dicking around your character continues to make progress and grow toward the ultimate RvR endgame. It provides a motivation and makes you go on, without being just progress finalized to itself.

What makes or breaks it: since the varied gameplay is what makes the game fun and strong over the competition, it can also break it. The game is fun if a "fine equilibrium" is preserved. The fine equilibrium depends on players' activity (having enough players, but not too many, to provide a target-rich environment in PvP).

The problem here is Mythic has no system in place to preserve the fine equilibrium.

If the strength of the game is about varied gameplay, then just think what happens if two/three months after release most players are at the endgame and the low level zones only have an handful of players around. Suddenly the Public Quests stop working, you can't queue for scenarios, and the RvR zones have no players in them.

What's left is grind stupid PvE quests that in this game are no better, if not worse, than the competition.

The game could have worked so much better with an adaptable server system like Guild Wars so that players could be chunked by activity and keep all zones always active and balanced around an ideal number of players. As it stands now the game is seriously undermined by that lack of stability in the players' activity.

Especially in the longer term.

Warhammer diary

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:40:03 -0700

I haven't played all that much these days as I kinda expected, but enough to have something to write. Today I started taking notes so that I don't forget bits and pieces.

I'm currently testing Public Quests and Scenarios specifically to have a better grasp of them. I'm going to write what I think of the game and both short and long term expectations, but I'm still completely unable to see the bigger picture.

It's not a matter of having enough playtime (I can already comment on client performance, look & feel, controls, polish and so on) but of saying how it really pans out the later game and the actual RvR. Judging that at this stage would be alike judging DAoC's RvR by playing in the level 10 battleground.

That also something I suggest paying attention to: do not believe reviews at this stage. Especially for *this* game the RvR can make or break it, and whether it is one case or the other it will be only clear a few months *after* release. It depends on players' activity, RvR flow, motivations and so on. It's just too hazy to have a precise opinion at the moment.

Anyway, tomorrow the NDA drops.

NDA breakage all over the place

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:27:20 -0700

So the servers are up. I discovered also why I fell into this odd beta phase, but can't explain. NDA still up. But for specific reasons.

Since I played for 20 minutes, twenty, and have no idea about the one issue Mark Jacobs is talking about, I'll break the NDA:

WoW is to Warhammer like U2 are to Radiohead.

Which is quite flattering.

Lots of things to say already. Will have to wait proper times.

While I mourn Lum's lack of opportunity.

We're in the wrong world.

No Warhammer beta as of yet

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:25:22 -0700

I finished downloading the client on Sunday, but then discovered I couldn't play.

Mythic isn't handling this phase exactly well. On the e-mail I received there were instructions about how to make a forum account. After I discovered I couldn't connect to the server I tried to access the beta forums but discovered the instructions on the mail were wrong. Later on I spotted a post from Mark Jacobs stating that they invited a lot of players lately and had no intention to upgrade their forums in order to fit so many of them.

Without being able to read beta forums and figure out what was going on (or even troubleshooting why I couldn't connect), it was kind of hard to find infos. At the end I had to ask to other beta players on another forum and discovered that the beta was open, but only for some.

Apparently all the recent invites cannot access the server where current beta players are playing in, and we have to wait the opening of a brand new server "later this week".

I'm a bit disappointed about this. Not much because I can't accept problems in beta, but because communication about these issues was poor and because it's a bit irritating to know that there's first-rate beta testers (who can play on any server and have access to forums) and second-rate beta testers (who have to wait their own server and can't access forums).

Moreover I don't have a lot of time to play these days and I still wanted to have something ready for when the NDA drops. That's why I was hoping to get in as soon as possible in order to pack as much playtime as possible before writing my commentary. At this point I don't know what I'll do.

While looking around I spotted this:

After such a packed and satisfying questing experience, it's a disappointment to arrive at the RVR battlefield - player-versus-player realm warfare being the hook Warhammer Online is hung on - and find it barren. Deserted. No scraps anywhere. That's fine, you think, I'll just queue up for a Scenario instead: Scenarios are WAR's equivalent of Battlegrounds - instanced multiplayer maps, usually with a base-capture theme - and unlike WOW's tiny handful, there are dozens of these, one for each zone. But you can queue all you like in the Greenskin starting zone: you won't get a match.

That voices one of my main concerns from the very beginning when they announced so many options for PvP. And it didn't start even there as I was already criticizing their design in DAoC, when while redoing the frontiers they decided to retain too many zones and not consolidate the space at all.

As I said in the past in my PvP game design posts, PvP requires convergence. You may have many zones and variations, if you want, but you need also to build a "flow", so that at any time there's one hotspot where the action concentrates, or other density balance systems. Then you can move the players. Variate gameplay, moving from one section to the other, but you just can't support RvR or PvP contemporary on multiple zones and game modes.

It just doesn't work and it's the first requirement for PvP: reduce as much as possible the downtime and never have a lack of targets and battles to join. Low player activity kills PvP, no matter how the gameplay is great.

From my point of view, these problems are the very first thing you have to work on when you start putting together a project about a PvP MMO. From the previews it doesn't seem Mythic is giving this as much consideration as it should have. So the worries are on the air, and when a game like this launches it is then hard to go down and change basic mechanics to solve the problems. And in the past Mythic kind of made an habit to never solve problems in core design and only endlessly work around them, complicating things and creating bigger problems in the longer term.

We'll see. (and I continue to be convinced of my proposals to at least reduce the problem)

Sure is that even if I can actually play in this beta, I'll hardly have enough elements to guess these long term issues. It just surprises and worries me that Mythic doesn't seem to have any safe net ready.

As I wrote on some forums, it is crucial for the long term life of Warhammer Online that even the low level zones remain active and well populated for PvP. Or that may become, six months after launch, one of the biggest wall that makes new players bounce back and progressively erode the subscription base.

WoW's success was made through growth. Warhammer here risks to launch big and then slowly lose pieces if Mythic doesn't give those problems some serious consideration instead of being too worried about cutting cities or classes. The true problems are elsewhere.

Not in the lack of content, but in the lack of RvR convergence and activity flow.

Will write commentary about Warhammer Online

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 08:43:20 -0700

I got lucky today. Won a book and was invited to the beta of Warhammer Online. The latter isn't so much about being lucky as I expect they invited most of everyone now that they launch in one month.

I actually had no plans to participate into the beta or even play the game at release (or write comments about it), but some things changed and it's wise if I give a look in advance.

I didn't see anything first-hand for now, just noticed I have a key for the beta and launching the torrent on the other PC to download the client. Since the NDA will be released next week I'll do a write up as I expect to have something to say.

For once I'll try to not write 100 pages of text and summarize what's most relevant, both from the point of view of game design and the average player.

Post Scriptum to previous post

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:07:27 -0700

I want to give a closure to the previous post so that I don't need to come back to it.

The instance performance of a realm can also be calculated in a absolute or relative way, this may be an objection to what I wrote.

For example WoW's arenas performance is relative, in the sense that your performance is calculated on a ratio, a so playing more isn't necessarily improving your performance. In fact it can worsen it.

This one model brings to the internal realm competition I described. In the sense that elite players are lead to fight their own faction as less experienced and geared players will worsen the performance of the whole realm. This would destroy the idea of "realm", and so be detrimental to the kind of gameplay Warhammer is offering, as it brings a faction to fight itself and divide players instead of uniting them against the enemy faction.

Not a case that WoW's arenas are detached from the faction Vs faction concept. It just doesn't fit there. And they know.

But there's also another possibility where the performance is calculated in a absolute way. Similar to how honor and badges work in WoW, but applied to the whole realm. In this case even when you lose, you win. You just win less than you would if you really won. Still win, but less.

The difference is that while in WoW the instances are completely volatile and reset, in Warhammer these instances will contribute to overall progress.

Assuming that 1 instance has always one faction against the other, this means that both have equal chances. If 200 instances are played and Destruction wins 101 times, then Destruction wins. In all cases. And this once again means that if you lost an instance, you also lost for your whole realm. And so better let the elite play alone instead of trying yourself and damage your own realm.

Your attempt to contribute will likely be detrimental. In particular in a scenario where these detrimental players are the great majority: casual players who would like to enjoy the game and finish to play against their own realm.

Lum's devs already whimper in WoW:

Yeah, basically the point I'm getting at here is just that the gear disparity is really frustrating for newbies. I'm basically dead weight on any BG team I join because everyone has full gladiator sets. I do my best to help out, but I can't really hurt anyone. I'm bringing whatever team I'm on down, but I have to do that in order to get to their level.

Which isn't a so uncommon feeling. In fact I think EVERYONE at least passed through it once, if not sat there permanently.

Now just think what happens when not only you feel miserable because you feel useless. But your mere presence is also making lose your whole realm with your crappy performance. Also because the organized guilds will have all kinds of phat loot and power ups (if they don't then what's the carrot to dangle in front of players and keep them addicted?). And you can't compete. You aren't catass enough. And you are making shame of your whole realm.

And I also wonder if Mythic is aware of the dead end where they are going. Blizzard has nightmares just to balance three BGs. Even if that balance doesn't matter so much. They make a smallish change and Horde wins all Alterac instances for six months. Make another imperceptible change and is the Alliance to win for another six months.

And this with classes being the same.

Mythic is pushing more class differences, and, in particular, Battlegrounds that will matter sensibly to the overall game progress.

That is a balance NIGHTMARE. They are going to pile the class issues DAoC had, on top of new balance issues due to the Battlegrounds progress. I wouldn't be surprised if the game comes out and we discover that a faction totally dominates the other. It's a no-win scenario. Either the RvR has no real consequences, and so is pretty bland and repetitive without real hooks, or it is meaningful, turning possible balance issues into severe wounds.

I really would like to know how the Beta is going, because all I wrote in this and previous post aren't foretelling of a distant future, but problems that should be explicit already in this phase of beta. So all I write should be already verifiable RIGHT NOW. And I'd like to know if I'm right, or where I'm wrong.

Multi-kings kills in Warhammer

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:56:30 -0700

The only two things I'm curious about Warhammer and that haven't been fully revealed are those at the core of the game:

- RvR character advancement
- How real RvR and instances battlegrounds are interconnected

I was kind of baffled when I read this reply of MJ (no, it's not Mary Jane) on the forums:

Random guy: It is already going to be that way. The king fight isn't only accessible for one group/raid. The instance is simply capped, that is it. But everyone can fight the king when they want to, once per city siege. I am really not sure why people think it is only for one raid/group when Mythic never even said this, nor hinted it.

Mark Jacobs: You are correct. That would be stupidity on a whole new scale. We'll make mistakes over the next 6 or 7 years but none on that scale I hope.

To explain and complete the few informations I already had, Warhammer endgame RvR should be structured in a number of linked maps, probably similar to how the multiplayer worked in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

We should have the capital cities maps at the two extremes of this imaginary segment, and in between a number of transitory maps. So the opposed factions fight to "push" the front line further toward the enemy city. In theory the map where the fighting happens is just one (as only one front line is supposed to exist), and so you move back and forth through these maps only when objectives in that map are won by one of the two factions. Then the front line either moves forward (next map) or backwards (previous map), depending on the point of view.

At a point it will happen that a faction is stronger enough to be able to push this front line/map progression all the way to the enemy capital city. And there, after a number of objectives, the last goal is supposed to be the attack to the king and the conquest of the city.

This is what I knew, assuming it is correct at least as a general scheme. The real question, as said above, is how you make all that work when you have BOTH real RvR (meaning persistence of maps and battles outcomes), AND instanced battlegrounds (meaning lack of persistence and relativity of victories).

If there's real RvR, then a conquered keep is a conquered keep. A truth. But if the RvR is instanced then your efforts aren't absolute and objective, but relative to that instance, then shattered through a number of other instances where other players are playing and obtaining different results.

So the legitimate question: how persistent RvR and instances are supposed to work and relate to each other?

And we came to that answer above from Mark Jacobs that baffled me. He says "you are correct". So: the instance is capped, and everyone can spawn his own instance and go kill "his" king.

This means that the "king encounter" is a group instance, that can happen an unlimited numbers of times, but only once for each player.

You know, kinda like in WoW's PvE, where everyone had his occasion to kill Van Cleef in the Deadmines (minus the farming).

Makes sense? Sure, but while PvE is an experience relative to yourself (personal adventure), the RvR is supposed to be a communal experience. Your realm. Where these fights are fun because they are supposed to be persistent. Fight for something as "concrete" as possible.

If Mark Jacobs confirmed that crucial events like the assault to the capital city are instanced, it means that this kind of RvR is going to work like Guild Wars. Where there's no real war. But the results of a number of instances are charted together, then compared to the global results of the opposite faction, and then the victory mathematically deduced from that comparison. Order won 155 times, Destruction 160, so Destruction wins and the front line moves one map further toward the Order capital.

I called that "projected" PvP. As you aren't fighting for what's in front of you (territory warfare, as in conquest games), but you are fighting to collect "stats" on a chart, and then hope your performance is overall better than a vague idea of "enemy" that also appears on a chart.

I'm sorry but this isn't RvR, as the war between the two factions is detached and filtered. It is just charts compared one to the other. Leader board game. Ladders.

But no RvR in the sense of persistent war and fight for territory.

So virtually identical to the PvP in WoW, and completely different from the RvR of DAoC. Assuming that the whole difference between DAoC and WoW is about the persistence itself.

Which is still a legitimate game. But it isn't what is being advertised. It's no RvR in the sense people expect.

And also leads to a number of problems. For example this kind of "sport PvP" (a definition that matches more closely the game) is by its nature more divisive than inclusive as it encourages the "elite" to despise their own faction as other players who aren't on par with skills and gear become DEAD WEIGHT for the whole faction, as their losses worsen the performance of the whole realm.

The RvR existed to offer a different model. A model where every player contributed. Even if low level and with crap gear, but still better being there than not participating. That's what built the sense of realm in DAoC , that brought everyone together to defend relics, that built the community, cohesion, motivation and longevity of the game. And that put less focus on the personal performance and phat loot.

Which is what Mythic systematically destroyed by promoting 8vs8 gank groups and that made the RvR (keeps and relic warfare) almost irrelevant and just a mild "flavor" on the background. And that consequently destroyed the unique qualities and value the game had, and dig the hole where the game now lies.

Warhammer seems to be a game with a new coat of paint over gameplay that people decided to abandon. Saving what in DAoC didn't work, and burying what worked. We'll see if, after the game's launch, the players will still appreciate the game after having scratched below this new paint coat and discovered the exact same gameplay they decided to quit.

I'm sure this bodes well

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:33:12 -0700

A GOA (Mythic european operator) representative trying to explain how their service will be greatly improved for Warhammer:

We have moved our offices to a foreign country to be able to provide the service that we couldn't offer for DAoC due to the labour restrictions in place in France.

Nope, this isn't about cartoonish style

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:36:16 -0700

For MONTHS after the first screenshots of Warhammer Online were released there was the argument about whether WoW copied Warhammer or the other way around.

People who saw only WoW and thought Warhammer was a copy and people who claimed to know better said that it was Blizzard to have copied and pillaged Warhammer for years.

Both kinda true.

True that Blizzard didn't invent anything. Not just in gameplay, but also the setting and its style. Copied from Game Workshop, copied from Giger. Mostly because, as it happens with many franchises, the original games were bland and with no depth. Derivative. Ultima started derivative as well. Then all games, when successful and spawning series and consolidated settings, start to acquire a personality.

But rarely they are truly original or don't have roots somewhere.

Now the point is: WoW came before even the concept of Warhammer Online. Graphically, WoW has ITS OWN distinctive style. That people easily recognize. It's not just a general setting style. It's a visual style all-around. You can see at a glance if a screenshot comes from WoW. It goes FAR BEYOND being "cartoonish". It's WoW. Everyone recognizes it.

*Then* Mythic takes the concept of bringing Warhammer to an online version. They do have WoW under their eyes. They aren't oblivious. They know its style. When the screenshots of Warhammer appeared on the internet they said they weren't copying. Defended their choices saying that Warhammer came first. That Blizzard copied that style.

Now I ask you to look at this.

If the artist(s) who produced that say that they went for an original style that wasn't trying to replicate *precisely* WoW's style... Well, they would be some of the bigger and shameless liars in the world.

And this isn't just about artists "taking inspiration". This is a blatant CORPORATE MANDATE. To make Warhammer look AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE to WoW in the hope to overlap the market and try to reach exactly that target.

I'm not saying this is a bad or unacceptable move. I'm saying they are COWARDS who won't admit what they are doing. And it is under everyone's eyes.

Mark Jacobs says: mentoring systems punish new players

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 09:00:07 -0800

He replied to a point I also suggested for Warhammer. I can't stay silent when he says such absurdities.

The proposal is about something like a mentoring system where players can access lower tiers (levels) of the game. So "delevelling" their characters to play along with friends who aren't in the exact same tier. My proposal was more complex but that's the main point.

His reply:

That's one I've always had mixed feelings about as a designer. The pros for doing that are obvious but the cons are what concern me. If players can easily move down in levels to help other players, I worry that new players will have a harder time getting in groups. After all, if you could choose an experienced player playing at a lower level or a new player playing at the same level, you'll go with the experienced player. His/her knowledge of the game will always be an advantage to you and to h/h. So when the new player is LFGing or wants to get into the fun in a situation where the number of participants is limited, h/h might have a more difficult time of it in this system. Like I said, I have mixed feelings on it.

One wonders. Because the main reason for that system to exist is to reduce the gap between veteran players and noobs, while Jacobs thinks it has the exact opposite effect. This can't be "opinion", either one or the other state must be wrong.

His thesis is that noobs should to play with noobs, because if there was a veteran player then all noobs will want him in the group. So the noobs will be sitting out of groups? Wait, it doesn't work.

His thesis is that in a world where there's a majority of veteran players and a few noobs, the few noobs wouldn't get in groups because they are, well, noobs. And in competitive, limited PvP (which is a flaw in itself and much discussed in forums) no one will group a noob.

Okay. So to solve this we remove veterans from this scenarios and what we get? A few noobs exactly as before, with the exact same grouping possibilities as before. So he fears that veterans group with veterans and noobs with noobs. Hello? In every game already happens. And the mentoring system (whatever the implementation) has absolutely nothing to do with that.

Really, Mark Jacobs sucks at game design. That's not complex reasoning, it's logic. The two worse alternatives are:
- Veteran players who can't go back in tiers, so they group together at higher tiers.
- Veteran players who can go back in tiers, so they only group together among themselves because they don't want noobs.

How this scenario affects a noob who's looking for group? In no foreseeable way, because in the first case there are no veteran players to group with, and in the second there are, but they won't group with him. So how this is detrimental to his group possibilities? Since Jacobs fears that a veteran player won't group with a noob he FORBIDS him to do it. So he is absolutely sure that there isn't the RISK that a veteran player may group with noob who can't find a group. Like if this could help.

Letting players go down in tiers has the only effect of keeping lower tiers more populated than they would if you could only more forward in tiers (everyone with a minimal MMO experience knows that lower zones become deserted over time). This means that the pool of players available for grouping INCREASES, if you let players move down instead of only up. The more people may be picky and not willingly to group with noobs, but this doesn't decrease the numbers of noobs in the system. And you can be sure that, even if in small numbers, some veteran players *will* be willingly to play with noobs, especially if the system is well designed and rewards this behavior.

So the best and worst case oscillate between "only few more players available", and "a lot more players available". In ANY case a mentoring system has a negative effect on the grouping possibilities of brand new players. In fact it is a partial solution.

The problem that Jacobs sees there has NOTHING to do with the mentoring system, and a lot to do with an intrinsic flaw of the close PvP system they decided to use. Moreover this flaw is foreign again to the mentoring system itself and WILL be present in ALL tiers.

Eldaec on F13 discussed this for months. How a "sport" PvP where results are charted and projected on the overall campaign will have a strong negative impact toward new players, because their participation may be detrimental to the result of the faction.

That's what you get when your "war" is faked. That's what happens when you OPEN that gap between veteran players and noobs because you designed a system that PUNISHES THE PARTICIPATION OF NOOBS TO PVP. With or without a mentoring system.

And that's also the MAIN reason why that "game design" will feed the hatred of veteran players toward noobs that want to play and finish to ruin the "performance" of the experienced team.

Mark Jacobs, get a clue. A mentoring system, in all games and in all implementations, is MADE TO HELP NEW PLAYERS. It is made to let people play together without levels being unsurmountable barriers. It is made to reward interaction between veterans and noobs. It is made to build with the time a welcoming community opposed to an hostile one.

It is made to keep the game accessible and playable after the first burst of players at launch is over.

YOUR OWN PvP system, instead, the one you defend. THAT's the source of hostility between players and the opening the gap between noobs and veterans. That's the one that promotes SELECTION instead of INTEGRATION. And that's the reason why the "war" in Warhammer won't even be close in quality to the war in DAoC. Where realm participation was ENCOURAGED instead of being detrimental to the battle.

Make everyone a favor, let real designers do the game design, and you just think to management.

Level gaps and tiers in Warhammer's PvP

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 18:25:30 -0800

Remember my design challenges?

The second in particular was thought to balance the four "tiers" of the level up process, so that the fights between the players could be always fair and balanced and so that all content in the game was always accessible, removing some "barriers".

This was done by "auto-levelling" an higher character entering a lower level zone. By delevelling that character to the max cap (along the recruit system) it was possible to keep the fights in a zone always balanced, while keeping all the game world accessible and playable all the time. Giving the players an open choice about where they prefer to fight.

So, for example, a tier 4 character could go fight not only in the tier 4 zones corresponding to his level, but also de-rank to 1, 2 or 3 and go fight in those lower-level zones. Permeable barriers, permeable tiers.

The point of the design challenges was to offer some design solutions founded on my ideas and watch if Mythic ones, in the case they differs from mine, were going to be better or worse than what I proposed.

We have already something. From the grab bag:

Q: Will a character of Tier 1 be able to compete at all, even if poorly, against a character of Tier 4? Will multiple Tier 1 characters be able to take on and defeat a Tier 4 character?

A: This is a question with many potential implications, so don’t read any more into this than my exact words. Also, please remember that we are still a long way from launch, and that this may change.

Higher tier players who enter lower tier zones will not be able to attack or be attacked by lower tier players. However, if a lower tier player wants to enter a higher tier zone, all bets are off, and attacking/being attacked can happen.

The specific answer to your question is that Tier 1 players cannot win a one on one fight with a Tier 4 player. A pack of Tier 1 players will be able to cause harm to a Tier 4. We have not yet set an exact level of intended damage (and it will vary hugely depending on the player and the circumstances), so I cannot give you a specific answer.

See the part I underlined. Yeah, lame.

I'm already winning ;)

There's more. In my first design challenge I analyzed a way to coherently lay down the structure of Warhammer's PvP based on the parts that they already disclosed: skirmishes, battlefields, scenarios and campaign.

In my proposed structure the skirmishes and battlefield were exactly how Mythic defined them. A persistent zone, with a PvP territory. You enter this territory and you can fight. My proposal was to use the "instanced" scenarios as a cohesive, automated part of the overall structure.

Basically players go normally fight in a battlefield. These are persistent. As there are enough "x" players on a battlefield, an instanced scenario is triggered and spawned automatically and all players in the battlefield ported over. So it's an automated system that instances itself as there are enough players. The more players, the more instances are spawned. Not enough players and only one persistent zone is active.

This had multiple purposes, but it was also an idea to balance the load and the number of players engaged in PvP.

Here's instead Mythic's way:

Jump into a Scenario and you'll be automatically grouped via our lobby system for a balanced fight. Scenarios are instanced battles against two groups of equal strength.

Yeah, WoW.

You queue for a Scenario (WoW's Battlegrounds) and an instance is then spawned on demand.

It's much poorer version than the one I proposed. It feels faked and not consistent with the rest of the PvP structure. While what I proposed was "transparent" and seamless for the players, better integrated, realistic and tied more tightly with the rest of the structure of the PvP (as the instances were triggered to balance the load, not to remove the persistence).

Sad that all that Mythic is doing is copying WoW on every aspect. As I wrote before, they are repeating the exact mistake they made with DAoC ToA (copying EQ, in that case).

Scenarios offer different game play, ranging from Deathmatch to Capture the Flag to Assault.

Heh. It's so saddening to see PvP treated like that. Why things cannot change? Why we have to deal with this shit?

I just cannot accept it.

Realm vs. Realm (RvR) has come a long way since it was first introduced in Dark Age of Camelot. We've had over five years of experience with the system, and we've learned both its strengths and its weaknesses. The RvR gameplay being implemented in WAR is truly a next generation implementation of the original system.

So you learnt deatmatches and CTF from playing DAoC?

Be ashamed.

On "reset buttons" and "progressive" territorial control

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:12:24 -0800

-Part 1-
This spawns from a blog post where Ubiq talks a bit about Mythic's Warhammer (at least what he reads about the game).

Now I already followed and discussed things in the past, so I could better portray how Warhammer PvP and territorial control should work. *IF* what I understood is correct and there haven't been significant changes in the meantime (I give them the benefit of the doubt).

You can see one of my previous analysis here (or check its category).

In short you may think to Dark Messiah multiplayer and have a good idea about how this system (here I'm focusing on the territorial control) should work.

At the "endgame" Warhammer should have five zones for each of the three "war fronts". One war front for orcs/goblins vs dwarves, one for Chaos vs Empire and one for Dark Elves vs High Elves.

Of these five zones two should be the rival "capital cities" raid zones that Ubiq talks about. The ultimate siege that may trigger the definitive victory and the supposed "reset button".

Now, as in Dark Messiah, each of those zones should be closed and instanced "scenarios". If your faction achieves particular objectives and "wins" that scenario, there's a "map switch" that moves ideally closer to the losing faction capital city.

So these capital cities aren't player-populated "hubs", but only combat scenarios that are "unlocked" through a campaign mode that implies the victory on previous maps/scenarios.

You start from the neutral map -> win it -> move to the one closer to the enemy capital city -> win that too -> and finally the "capital city" scenario is unlocked -> win it -> (supposed) system reset

If Mythic is smart, only one of the five endgame maps is going to be active at the same time (outlining the campaign progression), so a player should have a choice between three maps where he can go PvP (one for each warfront). Helping a lot to focus the PvP action instead of dispersing it among too many zones as it currently happens in DAoC.

On the other side, if there are too many players packed into one zone, the instance system triggers and creates more balanced "mirrors" of the same scenario.

So this should address effectively the two main issues, the convergence required for the PvP and the overcrowding.

-Part 2-

Ubiq: That being said, the question I’m most interested in is how a side that has been utterly decimated to the point that the capital is in ruins can hope to come back to turn the tide. While I genuinely love city conquest scenarios (I feel they capture the ‘massive’ part of what MMOs are supposed to be), most territorial control games are progressive - a game design term meaning that the winners tend to keep winning, as they gain more and more spoils of war, and more and more players on the losing side feel the desire to join up and/or play. This problem was a very tough issue for both Shadowbane and Dark Age of Camelot to deal with.

Long ago I had proposed an idea for DAoC that I think would work well (if not, I’m still wondering why).

Basically each keep can be upgraded to level 10 and levels make guards stronger, among other things.

Currently all keeps can be upgraded to level 10 with no limits (if not limits of time).

My simple idea was add a fixed cap for each realm.

For example you have five keeps for each realm, 15 in total for all three realms and you give each realm a cap of 50 points.

Since you begin with five keeps, you can upgrade all five of them to level 10, using up all your 50 points.

But then, as you conquer keeps from other realms the situation changes and you need to spread those points. You’ll likely try to upgrade your new keep so that it is well defended, but doing so would mean removing levels from your other keeps to upgrade the new one.

The other side of the medal is that the realm losing one keep gets back those 10 points that it used there. And the idea was that you could “overload” the level of your keep above ten, but where every point above ten would cost (x-10)+1 (so to go from a level 10 keep to a level 11 you would need to use two points, to go to 12, use 3, then four and so on).

The result would be that the more a realm expands, the more it becomes also harder to defend, because it exposes more weak spots as the points need to be spread between more keeps, while the realm who is losing can concentrate the strength on a stronghold and make it really hard to capture.

This means that the realm who is losing isn’t left staring passively, but it is given the possibility to counterattack effectively through smaller strike teams aiming at the weak points.

The overall idea is the one of the rubber banding. The more you force a situation, the harder it is to maintain it.

(that was the problem back then. Today players don’t even care about keeps and it’s all reduced to 8vs8 ganking groups)

Jason Booth: Territory is tricky, but I think it can be done in a satisfying way. I think the trick is really in convincing people that the inevitable loss of territory is part of the fun. It’s hard to convince people of this, so it must be some fundamental part of your reward system instead. Push the boulder up the hill, get distracted by shinny cookie, let the bounder roll back down again - but you get to keep your cookie.

Instead I think it can be done through gameplay. My idea is that being on the losing side with the possibility to turn the tide can be even more satisfying and fun than being on the winning one.

The problem is to provide gameplay alternatives, ways to effectively counterattack so that the losing side has something to do.

If what is left to do is get steamrolled by a zerg for the next two hours, the player logs out frustrated. The point is to offer gameplay alternatives.

The point is to foresee these situations, and design solutions so that the game offers things to do in those cases.

About the "reset button" or the boulder pushed up hill, Mythic model in DAoC is already stronger.

The donut is represented by the relics. Not only you get to keep the donut/relic, but the donut also becomes a “ransom” that the other realm will eventually want to get back.

So a victory doesn’t also lead to a reset (after a relic is captured things slowly fall back in normality) but also as the starting point for what's next.

About official forums

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 05:27:46 -0700

It looks like official boards were the prevalent discussion these days. Because of what happened on the SWG boards and Lum's and Raph's replies.

I'll contribute by pointing out a post from Mark Jacobs (about having or not official forums):

Folks,

No, no, no, a million times, no.

And, our excuse was not that we didn't have the resouces (that was true pre-DAoC) but rather, our reason is that official forums quickly become ugly, hate-filled places (the most successful US-based MMO of all time, WoW has worse problems than some really bad games' forums) with a huge signal->noise raitio after the games release. I've seen what happens with every MMO released and I am going to spare Mythic the headache that is associated with those type of forums.

I'll just say that not having official boards nowadays is rather stupid.

Oblivion has official forums, Company of Heroes has official forums, Dwarf Fortress has official forums. It seems quite odd that official forums are a standard and become very useful for single-player, offline games, but they are considered as useless headaches if they are about online games that are all about community building.

And you would be very blind to not see the important role that WoW's forums had for the community.

It's incredible how the signal to noise ratio of a community of 2 millions of players just in NA can be low.

(btw: higher signal to noise is better, the signal is 'cleaner')