Grinding: The Grindinging, Part 2: The Action Audience

Notes: Ahead are hypothetical untested claims about improving MMORPG's for an action audience. You may also need to understand how the "series of tubes" works (the internet).

1. WASD Movement.

For a audience who likes action games, there is nothing more mind-numbingly boring then moving with clicking the mouse. We're used to moving with a button, not telling our character where to go.

That's the realm of those guys who like those weird CRPG's.

If it's such a good idea, why don't more people do it?

Client-Server synchronization is slightly harder for WASD movement to keep track of. Essentially, to have smooth WASD movement, the server has to assume certain things about the position of the player. The players position is less of an exact point, and more of a diffused cloud.

You see, we are so used to being able to move swiftly as human beings, that the slightest non-responsiveness feels clunky. WASD must be a client-side thing, with the server attempting to synchronize as much as possible.

2. Left click to swing your weapon / fire your gun.

None of this auto-attack stuff. If I swing and it hits something on my screen, I want that to be counted as an attempt to attack something. Every click of a button should correspond to an action that my character attempts to perform.

The problem with auto-attack and the like, is the abstraction. It removes me from the game. I realize that MMORPG's are supposed to be slower paced and more thought oriented, but there's no reason to have the pace be several thousand times slower than normal.

Emergent Gameplay: As soon as I have to aim at my opponent in order to target him, player opponents have to attempt to dodge my targets in order to avoid taking damage.

3. Mouse-Aim to target opponents (None of this Tab-Selection / Auto-targetting)

Let player aim matter. If I am casting a fireball, I want to cast it at what I am actually looking at. This brings an element of skill into the game, where aiming and dodging matters. When two players circle each other in battle, movement matters.

This also brings about emergent game-play. If the monsters were flying, or could move and skitter very fast, then the monsters would effectively dodge my shots if I targeted the wrong spot. This also leads to very natural obstructions and positioning requirements on the player. To target correctly, the player must avoid natural obstacles and the obstruction of other monsters with ranged attacks.

4. Some form of Defensive Maneuver or Active Dodging. (We'll accept that we can't dodge every hit, but at least make our dodging attempts *do* something)

A 'block' button would be nice that gives us some sort of defensive move. Most action games have a defensive reaction concept that gives you time to do something once you see that something bad will about happen. I admit it's unreasonable to expect that we can dodge every attack in an MMORPG battle sense, but at least let my dodge attempts have an effect of the gameplay.

A simple bonus to avoiding ranged attacks while moving would be good. A larger bonus to avoiding attacks while 'dashing' would be great. A block button that reduces damage taken by some percent while blocking would be terrific.

5. AI that does something other than hit us repeatedly or use generic damage skill #37. Or perhaps having fewer mobs and have them be more challenging.

For example, AI that dodges intelligently might be nice. Or perhaps AI that refuse to be herded into tight little packs to be AoE'ed. I admit, this is quite a strain on the server and could be quite computationally expensive to execute and synchronize.

On the other hand, a monster that keeps you on your toes by intelligently dodging (that has an effect) and forcing you to pay attention to your fight rather than your skill rotation might also be a welcome change of pace.

7. Knockback / Altering the Position of enemies.

This is born out of the desire to be able to use our surroundings to our advantage. Knocking the enemy into deadly areas or out of the way of our friends is the kind of positional advantage that makes each potential fight different and engaging.

8. Being able to take cover to avoid enemy fire, Crouching.

This is a natural follow up to #3. If we have to aim at opponents to target them, they should also be unable to hit us when we take cover behind natural obstacles. The most natural form of defensive cover is the crouch.

9. Greater rewards for harder difficulties.

A game is most fun when the enemy you face is roughly as challenging or a little more challenging than enemies you can barely kill. That said, each player has a different skill level in this case. By having greater rewards for harder difficulties, you give an incentive for players to improve their skills and reward players who have great skills in your game, allowing them to skip boring content in favor of ones that are more challenging to them.

Grinding: the.. Grindinging.

Or hereby known as 'the black fathomless time sink into which all MMORPG's must dwell in.'

It occurs to me that I should probably start by explaining what the Grind is: MMORPG's are essentially large time-sinks with rewards separated out by individual requirements, such as experience costs, number of monsters defeated, or number of menial tasks performed.

For each arbitrary goal, the player is rewarded with some increased ability or the ability to perform some new action in the game, ensuring the player spends a pre-set amount of time in the game world exploring some aspect of it to ensure he takes the time to appreciate that portion of the world or does not prematurely exhaust his interest in the game.

However, one can imagine that for a game, the amount of content is necessarily limited. Therefore, the only way to stretch gaming hours is to enforce restrictions on pacing to such a degree that advancement takes an exponential increase in magnitude or risk the danger of the player burning through the game too fast. (And thus, not remaining committed to the game.)

The grind can be many things, but generally equates to the repetition of a certain amount of actions for a long duration of time for the sole purpose of advancement.

The fundamental problem with grinding is...

It isn't fun. It's work. No one ever wants to grind. They want the results from grinding. Much in the same way that a lot of people don't want to work, but getting paid possibly overrides their desire to not work.

I've heard of a lot of solutions to grinding, make it less extreme, have 'bonus xp' days, make it quest/story oriented... etc.

Example One: Fix the 'Grind' by reducing the amount of experience needed to level.

Okay, here's the problem. The amount of experience you need to advance in most games follows an exponential curve. That is, the amount of time invested will always grow way beyond control in relatively few levels.

For example:

Let's say that each level, you need to slay a mere 10% more monsters than you did at the previous level to level.

So at level 1, if you need to slay 10 monsters, at level 2, you need to slay 11.

At level 20, you need to slay 67 monsters.
At level 40, you need to slay 452 monsters.
At level 60, you will now need to slay 3,400 monsters.

To go from level 60 to 61, requires three hundred and forty times the investment as to go from level 1 to 2.

Anything involving exponential growth balloons quite rapidly, no matter how gently the growth starts at first, the compound effects soon make the requirements enormous.

But, surely that's expected! The more you progress, the more time you need to invest. You can't expect to go from master to grandmaster in the same time you go from novice to apprentice! That would remove all the thrill of accomplishment from the game.

Ah, yes. Of course. It's somehow 'justified' that such enormous time investments be part of the game. Even if that were the case, you have to consider the actual return on time spent. Let's say I paid you a thousand dollars every time you leveled. This will represent the 'thrill of accomplishment.'

So going from level 1 to 2, you made 100 dollars per monster you slew.
Going from level 20 to 21, you made roughly 15 dollars per monster you slew.
Going from level 40 to 41, you made roughly 2 and a half dollars per monster you slew.
Going from level 60 to 61, you made roughly 33 cents per monster you slew.

The rewards don't match the time invested.

Ah! But that's unfair! The rush of going from level 60 to 61 is far greater than going from level 1 to 2.

That is absolutely accurate.

Now ask yourself this, does it feel exponentially greater to go from level 60 to 61, than level 1 to 2?

Would you feel three hundred times more satisfied going from level 60 to 61 than level 1 to 2?

No, chances are, most people feel about the same level of happiness or even less. Going from level 1 to 2 in a new game is a novel experience. Going from level 60 to 61, we'll have the 'been there, done that' scenario where we've seen it all and all we want is some new skill, piece of equipment or a minor increase on the numbers we see on screen.

Example Two: Supplementing the Grind with alternative forms of experience.

This is an idea that most often takes the form of Quests.

Unfortunately, the most tried and true forms of quests are (Now, we can all say it together..)
Kill X monsters... Which.. is exactly the same as above.

And then comes the second one... which is...
Deliver package X to guy Y... Which involves lots of tedious travel.

The main problem with these kinds of Quests, is that it's overdone, and essentially replaces the main grinding of the game with an entirely new beast: The Quest Grind, where all grinding is forsaken to do even more mind numbingly boring quests. Kill 30 rabid squirrel badger weasel... orcs.

And hot on the heels of these quests are: Repeatable Quest Grinding!

Which makes sure players always have a quest to do by simply giving them the same quest to do over and over again... but make sure they have to do it more and more...

...which just makes it grinding again... doesn't it?

How could you ever argue that quests are bad? Would you really prefer pure grinding?

Nay! You misunderstand my point, fair citizen.

It is simply that most Quests are a different form of grinding. It does nothing to solve the main problem of the grind, it simply presents it in an alternative light. Instead of slaying 3400 monsters to get to your next level, you simply have to slay 30 of them, 10 times over.

It has some benefits: You achieve a mini-rush of satisfaction from completing the quests.

It has some costs: The amount of work required to implement quests could be quite costly to the game.

Cutting the grind up into little mini boxes and wrapping them in bow ties, doesn't actually change the grind in some dramatic way.

That and the effort of implementing a sustainable quest grind is literally massive. Think of how many quests you would have to implement to ensure that the player never runs out of quests to do and hits your behemoth grind... masked by the pretty quests that have kept him on his merry way.

So then what do you propose, if you think these are such 'bad' ideas?

I never said they were bad. They just don't change the innate nature of the problem.

Grinding isn't fun. There is too much time involvement for too little reward.

Then the obvious solution? Make the grind fun. Or at the very least, make the grind interesting.

Okay. Then how?

It really depends on who your target audience is... (to be continued..)

N-Modal Gameplay

Note: RPG talk up ahead.

Scenario One: Single Mode

Let's say that you have a spell called 'Heal.'
Once, every 30 seconds, you can heal someone.

You fight a monster, what do you do?

Obviously: You hit him, and once, every 30 seconds, you heal yourself.

Scenario Two: Single Bi-Modal Spell.

Now take the same spell, but give it the option to harm *or* heal. So now we have a spell called 'Harm or Heal.'
Once, every 30 seconds, you can heal someone, or harm someone, but not both.

Now you fight a monster, what do you do?
Do you heal yourself? Or do you harm him and hope he dies before he kills you?

Obviously: You harm him until you're almost dead and you heal yourself.

Scenario Three: Single Bi-Modal Spell + Single Mode Spell.

Now let us add a new spell to your list of spells. Let's call this one 'Ice.'
You can, once every 10 seconds, slow the movement of someone for 10 seconds and do a little damage.

Now you fight a monster, what do you do?

You could:

Slow down the monster's movement continually, and harm him with your spells, while staying out of the monster's attack range.

-Or-

If we're about to die, we can slow down the monster's movement continually, and heal yourself with your spell before going back to hit the monster some more.

Scenario Four: Two Bi-modal spells.

Now let's add something new to our 'Ice' spell. Let's say that instead of slowing the monster down, it can be used to block the next hit the monster does to us, giving us an 'Ice shield', or it can be used to attack the monster

Now we could:

Stay in combat with the monster forever, using our ice shield to negate damage and our heal spell to heal damage.
Stay in combat with the monster, using our ice shield to damage the monster and our harm skill to damage the monster.
Slow the monster down and use our harm skill to damage the monster, like before.
Slow the monster down and heal ourselves if we are about to die.

Scenario Five: 4 Individual Spells

However, if we had these 4 individual spells: Harm, Heal, Shield, Slow...
we would have a very different game plan.

It is true that we could do all of the options above, but the *optimal* solution would be:

Shield ourselves, and harm/slow the monster we're fighting. If we get low on health, Shield, Slow, run away and Heal.

There are no decisions to be made when we have all 4 spells. We don't have trade-offs. There are no difficult decisions to make. There will be no difference between individual play-styles. There will only be optimal players and non-optimal players.

The result -- Restrictions breed awesomeness.

The restriction of only being able to use one of two modes for your spells every once in a while gives you the freedom to choose a style of combat you like. If you had all the spells available to you, you do have the choice of choosing a style of combat you like, except that choice would be either optimal or obviously suboptimal.

If the optimal solution isn't clear, or is balanced between the modes, then players have the ability to express themselves and it creates depth in skill usage. Knowing what skills to use when and knowing how it will constrain you later adds skill into the game.

One of the most important things in gaming life...

...is death.

No, I'm serious.

Death is the ultimate consequence. The 'Game Over.' The point at which you understand that you have fundamentally failed in what you have set out to accomplish.

It can also be hilarious...
...or bitter...
...possibly frustrating...
...or infuriating...
...or nothing at all.

If Death in the game itself has no meaning, then defeat has no meaning and subsequently, the game loses meaning. Imagine space invaders without the penalty of death. There is no reward for doing well. No penalty for doing poorly. No incentive to improve. Pac-man without ghosts or infinite lives becomes a chore in dot-eating and maze following.

Death gives us those 'I can't believe I just did that' moments.
Death gives us the 'I can't believe they made a boss that ridiculous' moments.
Death gives us the momentary break away from monotony where we step back and evaluate our performance.

The design of death in games then.. should be taken seriously. Let's look at one extreme.

Nothing happened. It was all a dream. Continue play as normal.

Most recent offender: Bioshock

Bioshock is a descendant of System Shock, a game in which you wake up alone, in a hellish nightmare scenario, where roughly 17,000 things are trying to bash your brains in while apologizing for doing so. You might imagine that this makes playing System Shock, in the dark, at night, alone, with full environmental audio, the easiest way to be found dead the following morning from terror-induced panic attacks.

Bioshock is roughly fifteen thousand times less scary than that. Pretend that you were alone. In an abandoned city. Filled with ghoulish minions of what used to be human beings. Dark. Terrifying. The only other human contact is through remote radio. And everywhere you can observe what used to be scraps of humanity and the decay of it all.

With only your wits and your guns to survive.

Terrifying, no? Except for the tiny fact that you're immortal.

IMMORTAL.

Every time you die, you pop-out of the neat little 'Ressurect-o-matic' locating conveniently every 15 feet. Free of charge. Slightly dis-oriented perhaps, but all in all, well jolly good and well rested.

...and not that scary at all. When death becomes a minor inconvenience, things fail to be scary. Things fail to be relevant.

You're Dead. Game Over. Restart?

Biggest Offender: Almost every game on the NES? Raiden / Ikaruga / Tohou 'Perfect Shooter' games.
To a lesser extent: 'Punish me' games, a la, Ninja Gaiden. Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry, MMORPG's that penalize your exp when you die.

Then there's the flip side of the equation. If Death means you essentially restart from ground zero, or the first level, or perhaps at the beginning of the level you were on several hours ago because you kept dying to that ONE boss.

Death, in the first case, cost you nothing, and was essentially made gameplay irrelevant because there was no penalty or incentive for how well you did.

Death, in this case, costs you everything, and thus makes every single move relevant. Almost frustratingly relevant. We play games to have fun. While some of us do enjoy the Zen like qualities of playing the perfect game of space invaders, I would wager that most Timmy players out there are not out play the perfect game, or have every move carefully scrutinized for errors.
The removal of all progress, forcing the player to restart entirely from scratch, also doesn't work because the time commitment required for playing the game is magnified to an enormous amount. No one but Spikes have the time involved to actually restart the game over from that far back. What's the point?

Making death cost you progress is essentially demanding that the player perform to a certain level. Games simply don't have the right to do that unless the player himself requests it. Some hardcore gamers do desire to be challenged into performing at high levels. However, Timmy players just want to play and Johnny players just want to experiment. There's no need to force them to perform 'perfect games.'

But what other kinds of death could there possibly be?

Better known as the 'sliding scale.' It would appear that most games nowadays go from 'Death is a minor inconvenience' to 'Death sets you back for a few hours' to 'Death drives you completely insane and makes you snap your controller in rage.'

How exactly does one make death relevant but not set you back for a few hours or penalize you for game-play time? It seems to be impossible, when you first look at it. It's a sliding scale, no? How could you not penalize the player at all and still have death be relevant?

One only has to look at team based FPS games to realize that this is simply untrue.

When Death does not equal Defeat

Suppose you are in a game where death has no penalty. You come back to life somewhere else. You lose nothing. You didn't get shunted an hour away from where you were. You can get back to where you died in seconds.

What did you lose? Seconds of time. A minor inconvenience.

And ridiculously important when those seconds are precious. In a team-based multi-player game, where the coordinated actions of a team are magnified by the efforts of individual players, not having a key player in place might cost the players the entire match. And having a player who constantly takes stupid risks and gets himself killed 90% of the time is simply not an effective teammate.

And it might even cost your team the win. The key in this case, is that your individual death does not affect you directly, but it does affect your chance of success. Your individual death might not cost you anything at all or it might cost you the entire game.

Death is still a set-back and a penalty in this case. However, it is almost entirely virtual. If your team was doing well, your death might cost you nothing. If your team was doing poorly, your death still costs you nothing.

But what if... what if your team needed you at that crucial moment? Or what if your teams were evenly matched?

Death, in this case, doesn't really feel horrible and yet still has tremendous importance on the game.

Death in the online world...

In the world of massively multi-player online role playing games, the only 'fair' negative impetus that one can deliver players is death. If they mess up, death. If they are in an improper area, death. If they do something incredibly stupid, death. (Or to a lesser degree, damage, which is essentially, the threat of death.)

If you don't want the players to do something, the kindest (and possibly only) way to do it is to kill them, or threaten to kill them by harming them a lot. (One can do other things, such as taking away experience or items and such but in an online rpg, this essentially means setting them back potentially hundreds of hours of progress... and possibly sending the player into abject depression or keyboard-snapping frustration.)

However, in these games, death is a negative impetus strictly because it costs you time (either travel time), experience (which is time spent playing the game), or penalizes you with some sort of penalty that says you can't play the game for a while. These penalties are designed to make deaths relevant. Death is always a bad thing.

How could we possibly make almost certain death something that the player would want to do?

Without it being horribly abused...

The Graphics, Part 3: No Free Lunch.

How many things must go into a game for it to be a fun, enjoyable game?

I would like you to imagine a delicious golden flaky pie. Do you like apple pie? Okay, a slice of it is apple pie. Do you prefer peach pie? Okay, a slice of it is made of delicious peaches.

Do you want more apple pie? Okay, but that means the peach part slice has to be smaller. If you want more peach, then you have to make the apple part smaller. If you want some blueberry filling in there, then you gotta take some slices away from the peach and the apple. Want more crust on the outside? Then you have to have less filling.

You can't make the pie bigger.

For any game that's produced these days, they do have set budget. A time constraint. A fundamental limitations to how many resources they have. This is the size of their pie. They can't make their pie bigger. If you want prettier graphics, they need more artists. If you want shinier visual effects, they need more graphic programmers.

Bioshock had 2 or 3 dedicated programmers working on water effects, which kind of makes sense, seeing as how the entirety of the game took place under water.

So we have these pretty graphics. The high-flung visuals. The dramatic displays of absolutely stunning photo-realistic effects. And it's awesome to look at and feel.

But at what cost?

The more graphically stunning a game has to be, the less time there is to go into game-play. Or balance. Or design. Story. Direction. You can't reasonably expect to get a perfect game if you insist on having the pie consist of 95% graphics and 5% everything else. What could the game have been if you had 10% less graphics and 10% more focused on game-play, balance, bug testing, engine.

What is the cost of your graphics?

I've heard tales of graphical demands, inflated to such a scale, that if one were request say.. a model for a jeep in the game, that after all the artwork, texturing, rendering and animation, the Jeep would cost somewhere around 500,000 to a million dollars to be developed.

Hundreds of thousands in budget for a Jeep model. ONE JEEP.

And here's what happens:

I want to have player drive-able vehicles. Oh, but the artwork will take an enormous amount of time to perfect? And the animations will set us behind schedule and over budget? Oh well. Scratch that idea.

And the game now goes vehicle-less. Players can't drive vehicles. Oh well.

And that amazing, pre-rendered cut-scene? Well, that took so much money to produce, that we can't hire that many level designers.

And the game now goes down a few levels in scale. Instead of 18 levels, we can cut it down to 12.

Was that shiny lightning effect worth it? Will you even notice it six hours into the game?

What is the benefit of your graphics?

Can you be awed by the same laser gun the 60th time you fire it? Can you be awe'ed at the mean looking giant, when it's the 10,000th one you've slain?

Or would you rather be impressed by a stunningly designed level? A clever convoluted boss battle? A nice, balanced, game? How about monster A.I. that offers you a real challenge?

Was the subtle lightning arcs off the side of your gun worth the loss of a level? Maybe a boss fight? Is it worth it to give up some game-play balance? Or how about having your cinematic epic storyline being cut off?

But that's unfair! Why can't I have my gorgeous screenshots AND a great game?

Because the pie is always the same size. They don't have infinite budgets. They don't have infinite time. If you keep your expectations for gaming graphics to such ridiculous levels that they push all other content, you can feel free to do so. But at the same time, I believe you fundamentally lose the right to whine if the difficulty curve is a bit off, or the monster A.I. is a bit... shall we say... retarded.

They simply don't have the time to do all that in a finite amount of time.

But those huge companies have all the money in the world to throw at us. Look at how much they're charging! SIXTY DOLLARS A GAME! Surely I could have my awesome graphics and great AI and balance and...

Even if they had infinite sums of money, they have a finite amount of time. A year and half to develop the game when 90% of the time was spent on making it look pretty will still be a horrible game. Even if you had a quadrillion dollars to spend on a game, if you try to iron out all the game-play issues in the span of a month, that's still not enough time to iterate the gameplay to perfection.

The best case scenario? Delays.
The worst case scenario? A bad game.

That is BS. Those programmers are smart guys. And they could always hire more of them...

Even if they had infinite programmers, the system that you're playing on doesn't have infinite processing power. If you're going to make your XBox blow chunks trying to create photorealistic water, you lose the right to bitch that your controls are irresponsive, or that your camera isn't intelligent enough, or that your A.I. comrades in arms can't seem to hit a brick wall with a nuclear bomb.

It all takes processing power. And if 99% of the processing power is devoted to giving you a fully cinematic view, your AI will frankly suck as the best it can do is "Walk, Walk, Shoot!" It can't think that hard, otherwise your XBox will skip a frame, and you'll lose out on that AMAZING lighting effect that you've seen for the 37th time straight.

At the end of the day, why do we play games?

We play games because they are fun. We play games because they are challenging and engage us. We play game because they have masterfully told stories. And yes, we do play games because they are beautiful pieces of art that are dazzling to the eyes.

But everything has it's cost. For every model, beautiful light effect, dazzling texture or beautiful cinematic, just ask yourself...

If they didn't have to spend so much of their money and time on this artwork... what else could they have done? Would I have been able to play more levels? Have bigger, better boss fights? Could they have spent more time on balance? Could they have shipped the game without delaying it for months? Sound? Music?

Just ask yourself...

What could the game have been?

The Graphics, Part 2: The Purpose

Now, before I start a horrible rant about how I feel graphics are overrated nowadays, there are very very good reasons for having a game with good graphics.

#1: Timmy wants to roll in Style. Timmy wants to feel awesome.

Timmy doesn't play the game because he's killing a bunch of abstract shapes. Timmy plays the game because he wants to be a ninja. You can't properly evoke the feeling of being an awesome ninja without looking like an awesome ninja with all the cool ninja duds. This doesn't mean you go and look up in the history books how ninjas historically looked. This doesn't mean authentic grass hats and patchwork peasant clothing. You want to evoke style, not historical accuracy. This also means that you don't go for photo-realism exactly.

Timmy doesn't want historical realism. Timmy wants to have the ninja experience he's picturing in his mind. Timmy wants to play what he feels is the ninja. It might be a cliche ninja. It might be a realistic ninja. The only qualification in the art is that it must be an awesome ninja. Totally unrealistic black armor, with sword bigger than he is? Who cares?

Awesomeness, the feeling, needs awesome art.

We play games to experience the feeling of being larger than life. Even the Nitty-Gritty war games portray a war, far more intense than the war, with bullets whizzing by and explosions that leave no mark. None of the boredom, none of watching horizons for hours. You can't do this without that feeling of awe that art can do. I mean, which one of us can ride a classic muscle car, or race a Formula One Racer?

None of us. And do we want them to look photo-realistic? Not neccessarily. We want them to look good. We want to feel good about racing these beauties. No faded paint and semi-reflective surfaces here.

#2: Spike needs to understand what is going on.

Art is an incredible communication device. For example, I could have you memorize a list of cards in a some trading card game, let's say.. Magic: The Gathering. For example:

Player A has 6 forests in play, 5 of them which are tapped.

He also has 3 creatures in play, a Shinen's Roar, a Humble Budoka, and a Wispy Moonrider.

His opponent has 5 untapped mountains in play, with 3 plains and a Kami of Fiery Roar, a Kami of life's Web, 2 Kabuto Moths, and a Red Devil.

And by the time you've finished reading this and trying to figure out who is winning... a minute or two would have passed.

...Or quite possibly, you could've looked at the picture and immediately understood the game state from the simple picture before you've even finished reading the first sentence.

Lots of cards on our side, a few cards on their side. A bunch of his cards are sideways, which means he can't use them. ALL of our cards are ready to smash face. All this in a glance. This is the amazing power of effectively formatted art. Colors, frames, icons and graphics all convey more information in a second, in a glance, than we could ever tell from reading lines and lines of text.

This is heavily important for Spikes. Spikes need to understand the game state very quickly. They need to figure out the game state as fast as possible to come up with their next move. No one wants to lose a game because some bit of information was unclear. Art and Graphics are a tremendous vehicle of information for Spikes.

Take it from a different angle...

Think of it this way, this time from a Massive Multi-player Online game perspective. I am level one. I see a huge brutish ogre that has a massive red aura. I probably won't attack him. If I see a bunny on the ground, I would probably think that's weaker than I am. The graphics convey the threat that a monster poses.

If the bunny somehow happens to be the vorpal bunny from Monty Python, and the huge brutish orc is actually some kind of hemophiliac coward, then even the best graphics won't save you from a Spike's wrath.

Graphics determine player expectations and a lot of that is because people treat artwork as a source of information. Notice how I made the bunny much smaller than the Ogre? Even that little resizing gives you the information that the bunny is a smaller, weaker threat compared to the two muscled brutes. If instead, you were treated to lovely O's for Ogres and b's for Bunnies in some sort of text-action game (I'm looking at you Rogue, Nethack.) You would not nearly get the depth of information that artwork would get you.

#3: Graphics allow people to express themselves.

Look at the advent of digital avatars. How many times have you found a ridiculous good hat in a game, put it on, and then promptly burned it because it was ridiculous looking? No? Oh well.

In this age where people are increasingly represented by avatars, having those avatars be customizable allows people to communicate who they are or what they think is cool. Look at Halo 3 customization which customizes individual armor pieces and compare that to what Massively Multiplayer Online games have already been doing with thousands of armor pieces in different colors, shapes and sizes.

Self-expression in games is as important as self-expression in the real world. Graphics help people achieve that goal. People can put more personal investment in a game if their virtual avatar resembles the ideal person that the character is envisioning in their mind.

I, personally, am a fan of any kind of sunglasses in a game. Although... I will occasionally wear a silly hat if the need fits.

The Graphics, Part 1: The History.

Let's talk about art in games.

No, not like, whether games are art. But rather, the graphics of games.

Let's talk about.. whether graphics are good for games.

Hold on, put down the pitchfork. I'm not saying I want the old text adventure days back.

But with the rising costs of today's development, a major blockbuster game takes something like tens of millions of dollars to produce, must sell hundreds of thousands of copies, and a couple of years to produce. With the longer and longer development times, innovation is squelched for favor of stagnant copies...

I mean, it's a little hard to believe all this is worth it for the photo-realistic virtual tennis game I'm seeing. I had about a million times more fun playing Mario Tennis (with loveable, cartoony graphics) or Wii Sports (with.. shall we say.. rudimentary graphics) then I had playing 'Pro Super Awesome Tennis Supreme Champion with realistic commentary, skin tones, and character models.'

There's a cost to the demands of graphics. Let's see how this whole silly affair started...

Back in the day, you had your little raster graphic consoles. We're talking scanlines here. Your Atari-era days. And the era were programmers tried to out-do each other with fancier and fancier techniques for graphics. Back then, when you wanted to draw a line on the screen, it had to be all the same color and you had to plot out the entire horizontal axis. You couldn't draw a line and then go back and 'draw something before it.'

And there wasn't a frame buffer either. *shudder*

But then, programmers started to learn the tricks of the system. Changing color memory on the fly so they had characters with more than one color. More and more complex shapes and designs, as well as speed improvements and controls...

This was the golden-era of arcade gaming, so to speak. The lone developer who made the graphics, code, design and put it all together in a neat package to sell to the world. The first wave of graphic improvement, where programmers struggled to out-do each other in graphics pushing whatever hardware they were on to the fullest. However, this brand of playful competition was quickly squelched when new management came around and realized that this was a new possibility! A new market! A entirely new frontier...

...where you could pass off a tiny pixel as Spiderman and dupe people into buying a few hundred copies.

When you only had to sell a few hundred copies to break even.

Note, I said 'dupe.' Take a look at the ancient games of the 80's. They were all produced by a company. No individual programmer names made it on there. It was in fact, forbidden to put your name anywhere in the game. Initially, the programmers had free reign over what they produced, but as times changed (and profit margins grew...) so did policies. And thus it became that, it was company mandated policy to churn out... well... crap.

People were indeed duped back then to pay for the crummiest of games. When you pay 10 dollars for a Spiderman game, take it home to play, and realize that you're looking at a red dot swinging on some white dots across a square block of dots... You do indeed, feel quite silly at having bought it.

Especially if it played like a cross between washing the dishes.. and say.. slamming yourself in the head with a brick.

Imagine the crisis of faith the consumer population feels when exposed to this. Suddenly, it wasn't enough that you produced a new fancy video game. You had to ensure that it was actually worth buying. And what could the consumer possibly have to gauge the quality of the game from the box?

Screenshots, of course.

(Actually, one of the alternative solutions game companies tried to use was a ridiculous amount of hype. There was an Atari game called.. 'ET' based on.. guess what? ET. Awesome movie, terrible terrible terrible game. This game marked the end of the initial golden age of games, where people finally realized that the game companies at the time were out to simply dupe people into buying crap. The programmers rebelled of course, but the company had its say.

...and people joke about millions of unsold ET game cartridges ending up in a landfill...

...Snopes confirms it too.)

So the graphic console wars started. Because each game could only run on a very specific console, if you could convince the majority of the public to purchase your console, you would have your market audience for life playing your games. And thus games starting becoming graphical promotions for the consoles themselves. How would I know the Z9000 console would be better than the Atari 2600? How would I know the NES would be better than the Atari 7600? In a world where games were new, often disappointing affairs, people turned to graphics to help guide them. Screenshots of the newest technology. Look at all the pretty colors the Atari 2600 can do! Look at those beautiful lush greens and the man with the hat (Pitfall.)

This trend continued to the present day, where the major consoles are still fighting the graphics war. Each generation of consoles fighting for supremacy of.. who can pull off more sprites, the biggest explosions, the most realistic 3d graphics...

And where screenshots once ruled the day before, we turn to in-game videos or demos to see our beautiful games in action. The first thing we judge a game on is by graphics. Perhaps the only way we can judge a game without actually having played it. It's in our gut to judge a game by it's beautiful beautiful cover.

Where will it all lead to...

MMO Diversity, Part 5: Modern Models

Note: This article is primarily about massively multiplayer online rpg's but can be extended to talking about any rpg with a skill/numbers base.

So, I've spoken a bit about some problems that MMO's have, primarily with how their skill tree is developed. I would like to take a walk through some modern MMO's and analyze how they (attempt to) sidestep these issues.

Recap:

The diversity problem in western MMO's is since the classes are role-based how does one customize one's character because all the roles have the same skills (or need to perform the same functions.)

The diversity problem in eastern MMO's is since there's too much customization of character, and too much focused on the choices you make, you have limited skill sets, you become a narrow focused character, and the classes become somewhat hybridized and hard to tell apart.

City of Heroes, NC Soft

Straight from the outset, you are forced to choose your role: Tanker (Melee Defense), Scrapper (Melee DPS), Blaster (Ranged DPS), Support (Heal / Support), Control (Crowd Control).

But then, how does City of Heroes address the customization problem?

1. Appearance is everything: By giving characters full control over how they appear (and thus doing away with all those silly equipment pieces.) they make a very visual impact on players. Players can choose to be anything from super sailor princess to titanic mecha overlord. Everyone thusly can choose to be somewhat unique, as they definitely stand out from the other 9 players wearing full plate mail.

2. Skill SETS: City of Heroes allows you to choose primary and secondary powers, but the crux of the matter is you are only allowed to choose skill SETS, not individual skills. In these skill sets, you can put the utilitarian skills as a bundle with the awesome skill that the player wishes to acquire. In this way, you do manage to give the player the utility spell he needs to fulfill his role and give him the freedom to choose how he wants to play.

3. Utility Sets: If you could only choose 2 very large power sets, then the game would still be hard to balance. City of Heroes addresses this by giving additional Utility Sets to the player, designed to handle problems such as transportation, gathering, evasion, or anything else lacking to the class. Since these are, again sets, they can be bundled with niche skills. In any event, the player does not have to give anything up to acquire these utility skills.

Silk Road Online, Joymax

Silk Road Online is, without a doubt, the single most grindingly boring game on the face of the earth. To give you an idea of what a Silk Road Quest is like, imagine you have to kill literally 5000 chaos demon flowers to get 5% of a level. Then repeat 50 times over.

That's not to say it doesn't have some good ideas. It has a very very good skill system that encourage skill experimentation and innovation.

1. Exponential Skill Improvement Costs: To get a skill from level 1 to level 10, it requires something to the degree of 100 times the skill points it takes to get a skill from level 0 to level 1. In this manner, one *can* get useful utility spells at low levels because the relative value of the utility spell / skill point ratio is far far greater. Imagine that you had a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% speed increase in stealth, like in Ragnarok Online. Now imagine if that choice, was, instead, a choice between improving weapon damage by 5% or getting a 3% increase in stealth, speed, attack speed, stealing ability, with the ability to cure poison and cast a weak magic defense buff.

2. Limited Infinite Skill Selection: Silk Road characters can choose from every skill in the game potentially. Potentially. Realistically, it's fairly improbable. What they have done is made it so that one must level up a generic passive ability to unlock later and later skills in the trees. One *must* level up these generic passives in order to improve their skills in the tree. Thus, to have skills whose power nears one level, one must focus on one or two trees.

However, you cannot level a skill tree greater than your current level, so there is no incentive to put all your points into a single tree in the hopes of achieving a higher power level. And given that the trees (Weapon based or Magic based) are very synergetic, the optimal choice is to choose two trees.

What this means is that to realistically gain powerful skills, one must divert the majority of their points to two or more trees. Out of the possibility to choose between infinite skill trees, the optimal choice in their system is to choose two or more trees to focus on. Coupled with their exponential skill point improvement costs, this means it is very easy to tell what few trees characters have chosen to become.

3. Micro-gains in skill improvement unlinked to level gain: During the gaining of one level, a character in silk road will gain many hundreds of skill points. In this manner, they encourage experimentation as the character can simply gain a couple of extra skill points in this level to try out skills. It does not in any way shape or form hamper his advancement of his current level to try out new skills. He does not give up anything by trying out a skill besides a little bit of time. He does not lose anything "in the long run" and mistakes feel very cheap. Because, hey, even if that skill was horrible, I only spent 3 skill points on it, and I could get that back in like, a minute.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard

I don't really think I need to go much further than to say World of Warcraft is currently one of the best models of the western mmorpg. It has clearly defined role-based class systems with a heavy influence from dungeons and dragons and MUDs alike. It solves diversity in an interesting way, directly related to their talent tree.

Let me say this: the talent tree is the most obvious/simplest way to combine the western and eastern systems of skill thought.

First off: Every character in WoW gets their class based skills. All of them. They don't get to skip any. Then every character in WoW gets hit by a fully loaded skill tree that modifies their skills. All of them. And they have to spend points in this tree to unlock bonuses in skills.

Imagine an Eastern MMO where you started off with nine points in every skill and the last bit of adjustments you were to make were to add the last polishing skill points to those you wanted to be just a bit better (or get a few more points in those passive skills.) Wow does have one very good system in place though to increase this diversity even more.

1. "Gold Medal Skills" - These are special (powerful) customized skills designed for players who play a very specific way. How does Blizzard know that these players are playing this way? Because they have placed points in those skill trees in a following manner and thus earn the privilege of being able to use that skill.

It's the best case scenario. Some players have skills that other players don't, but they are the ones who can best use these niche skills in the first place or have the best rationale to have this skill.

It is fairly balanced because there is a significant cost to getting them. It also helps distinguish people from each other as even two of the same class has wildly different 'special' abilities. It's kind of like two people playing street fighter that have their own signature moves. Very 'Ken' and 'Ryu' like, in a way. They're both shotoken characters, but they're tweaked just enough so that they're diverse.. but they can still handle the majority of the same situations decently.

That's my brief discussion on MMO Diversity. Granted it was mainly about skill trees, but since MMO's are so reliant on the skills players have to use, talking about the core skill setup defines 50 to 60% of the core gameplay of any MMO. Thus, by carefully planning the skill setup, one can promote or squelch playing diversity.

Why I play for High Score? The game outside the game.

A lot of games will, as a seeming after-thought, give you a score based on how you performed.

I guess it's supposed to give you some indication of your performance and how well you've performed. But a lot of these scores are meaningless to the average player. High scores, in a void, mean nothing. A lot of online mini-games will give you scores for your performance, but are those scores meaningful?

It's true that scores don't *need* to be meaningful, simply a measure of the player's arbitrary ability to play. But at the same time, a well designed score system can be very good for the game's meta-game. The meta-game is literally "the game outside the game." The game of competition to see, not who can beat the game, but who can score the highest. Getting to level 25 in Pac-Man is playing the game. Getting to level 25 in Pac-man collecting every single piece of fruit so that one can put your initials on the high scores list is playing the meta-game.

The meta-game can inspire people to do better, think harder, and come up with new and interesting strategies to play the game. The perfect example of this is Tower Defense, where simply beating the game might not be enough for players. One must beat it with the highest score or the best possible strategy. The meta-game thus extends the life-time of the game, by encouraging people to improve their game.

What properties do score tables need to have to ensure this?

1) Scores must be public.

There are far fewer rewards in having a score that no one ever sees. A little private assurance. However, scores are just numbers, and a number without context is essentially meaningless. Having a public high scores table also means there's the possibility that you could be a high-rank in those high score tables. That people will know about your accomplishments.

The desire to beat other people and the desire to achieve a rank on that high score table are very Spike goals. Without this kind of motivation, Spikes have little to gain from a simply score.

2) Scores must be a fairly accurate representation of performance.

This is fairly simple. If I kill 3 guys, and he kills 3 guys, we should have roughly the same score. If I kill 3 guys and he kills 3 guys and we have a wild score discrepency, the score becomes meaningless as it becomes less understandable to the general player.

A high score automatically implies certain things: A mastery of the game, or a long time to achieve the feat, or simply an efficient performance.

If high scores fluctuate wildly, then it becomes meaningless. If I said Player A had 5000 kills, and Player B had 4339 kills, that is a fairly good score representation. If I said Player A had 129387129387123 million points while Player B had 334934 points for the same amount of kills, you would have no idea what those points meant.

This also implies that there shouldn't be a point-farm where the only measure of success if to see how long a player can abuse a specific pattern to acquire a large amount of points with minimal effort to himself. (Like, hanging back and just shooting upward at the spawning enemies... forever.)

3) A high score must be achievable.

There is no point in keeping the top 10 scores of all time, as it only makes players feel that they can never reach that point. Why post the 45 millions and the 67 trillions when most players reach the thousands at most? We can't all play perfect games of Pac-man every single time.

The newest trend that seems to be working quite well, is to post the daily or weekly high scores. This way, you are ensured of competing with people of relevance. (Oh my god, I'm 15th out of all the people playing, right now?)

4) Scoring should not be based on some exponential system, scoring systems should strive to be linear.

If you make it to level 10, you should not get some exponentially bigger score than someone who made it to level 1. The key to this is again, understandability. If the first place has 100 times the score of the other top 10, that's bizarre. If he really 100 times better at the game? Human beings are terrible at understanding what an exponential increase really means. Thus, if at all possible, try to keep scores linear. If he gets to level 10, he should have roughly ten times the score of someone who got to only level 1, not hundreds. That way, you can easily tell from the score what kind of progress that person has made through the game.

Good: Wow! That guy has 10,000 points where I only have 5,000. He must have gone like, twice as far as I have.

Bad: That guy has... 100 times the score I do.... I have no idea what that means.

5) If a public high score isn't achievable, then smaller goals (or ranks) might be sufficient.

There is nothing better than being complimented by the game for doing well. By giving players ranks (like, silver star, gold star, A++.) You provide an additional incentive to do well. I mean, sure some people can be top 100, but if I can get a gold medal on this game, it's good enough for me. This sets the 'good enough' point, where the player might not be the best, but he's hit a goal that he can accomplish with a little effort.

(For example: If you survive 15 seconds longer, you qualify for a gold medal rank!)
(Especially, if said gold medal rank unlocks something)

MMO Diversity, Part 4: Focused Skill Sets

Note: This post is mainly about massively multiplayer online rpgs but is applicable to any role playing game with a skill based system.

Recap: Skill Sets

Western MMO's: Traditionally, Western MMO's have fixed skill sets, where there is little or no variation among character classes as to what skill a class has. If a level 15 rogue has a 'pick lock' skill, then rest assured, some other level 15 rogue you encounter will be almost certain to have the same skill. This assures that classes have the skills to do what the designers intended, however, it means a relative lack of diversity in the character classes.

Eastern MMO's: Traditionally, Eastern MMO's have skill trees. One acquires skills by purchasing them with a skill point acquired by leveling. One can also empower their skills by investing more than a single point in them. In this manner, players can choose what skills they wish to acquire, and generally acquired much more diverse skill selections. However, the problem with this is that with a harsh system of 'no take-backs' and the quick obsoleting of skills that aren't being empowered are generally weaker or even useless. This leads to Focused Skill Sets with a Fear of Experimentation.

Thus, the main problem is how to create an environment where players can have diverse skills without leading to Focused Skill Sets and a Fear of Experimentation. This is a much harder problem than it seems.

Problem 1: There is hidden tension between an Experimental Community and a Diverse Community.

The problem is essentially: If a player can experiment all he wants, then how does he ever stick to a skill set? If all Thieves could magically become Healers without risk, how does one stop the entire community from jumping, en-masse, to the newest and currently best known build?

Real Life Example: Consider a collectible card game. One is free to experiment with his deck build as often as he wants. However, when you get up to a tournament level, the most predominant decks are those that are considered 'the best' in field. The freedom to choose whatever deck they would like often leads to the best players choosing the best decks. It is not unheard to see 50% of a high-level tournament make-up to consist of the same exact deck with minor variants.

Possible Solutions: Some scaled cost to re-experiment, limited experimental phases, a 'one-level' test phase for new skills, quick character re-advancement (The idea that once you've hit level 100 on a character, leveling another character to 100 should take much much less time.), merit-based advancement, Balance in power of the top-tier experimental builds, lots and lots of additional skills added over time (thus changing what is the 'best' build at any given time).

Problem 2: Making lots of skills does not neccessarily make a more diverse environment.

If Warrior One has 'Heavy Strike' and Warrior Two has 'Impact Strike'... how are they any different? We've given them different skills, but since they both need the same types of skills, they end up playing the same. The biggest offender of this is Trickster Online, where each of the 4 character classes essentially start with the same skill. 'Hit things for damage based on your primary statistic.' The game does get better later on, but because each character needed to play similarly early on, there is almost no difference in the skill selection they get early on.

When you have 4 different names for 'Hit something slightly harder' or 'Heal Damage', there's a problem. You might have name diversity, but you've just made the same damn thing.

Just look at all the games where mages will get 'ice bolt', followed by 'slightly stronger bolt.' Truly sigh-worthy. An entire class whose 20 out of 25 skills basically boil down to 'Hit enemy at distance for damage.'

Possible Solutions: Different resource bases for different skills. Basic Skills with alternate effects or additional effects. Diversification of roles. Later skills that have added synergy with basic role skills. The idea of gaining skill sets instead of individual skills. Skills that become more complex as they are improved, rather than simply more powerful (For example, adding a knockback component to a heavy blow skill, or adding a bleed component.) Skill cooldowns such that single overpowered skill is unable to be used repeatedly.

MMO Diversity, Part 3: Hybridization...

Note: This article is mainly about Massively Multiplayer Online RPG's but can be stretched to incorporate any skill-tree based game.

Recap:

Western MMO's suffer from a lack of choices. You can't decide on what skills you want to be better than others. You can't really decide how your class will evolve. A warrior is a warrior is a warrior.

Eastern MMO's suffer from too many potential possibilities. Too many classes waters down the pool of classes. With so many possibilites, one is unsure whether his class can fulfill a specific role, or what his class is even meant to be doing in the first place.

How Modern MMO's can address these current problems...
...with examples of some that already have.

Hybridization: Giving each character class a clear goal and keeping in mind that no matter what the player does, there are clear roles he can fulfill is the main fix to the problem of too much Hybridization:

1) Have a clear set of roles that each character class can play and how effective he is at those. Have less roles that a character can fulfill but make him more effective in those roles.

2) If one character class can fulfill multiple roles then we make sure that he can fulfill those multiple roles without interfering with himself. Address potential problems with those multiple roles and how one can alleviate it.

3) If the character is too much of a hybrid, make his customization choices something that would naturally make sense as a combined whole.

Bad Example:

Assassin, Ragnarok Online

Roles: Primary Damage Dealer, Secondary Physical Defense Character, Secondary "Money" Character, Secondary Stealth Character, Poisons Enemies.

Do these roles interfere with each other?

Somewhat. His main powerful ability (Sonic Blow) requires a lot of magical energy to accomplish. However, it cannot be used in stealth. If he, instead, wishes to steal items from a monster, that takes up the energy he could have used to sonic blow to kill the monster. If the Assassin stealths, then he no longer fulfills his potential to be the party member who can dodge 95% of enemy attacks. Additionally, many of his powerful damage abilities cannot be used in stealth mode...

Except for the fact that many of his damage abilities can only be used in stealth mode. His only Area of Effect attack can only be used in stealth, and takes up a lot of magical energy, so he can't both handle Area of Effects and play defense (Which would be an ideal role, a defensive character who could also damage everyone that's attacking him.) The Assassin can play many roles, however, they are at cross-purposes with each other.

Do the roles make sense when taken together?

Partly. If you choose to whittle away the Assassin's, steal, stealth, envenom, area of effect abilities, then what is left with is a very strong defensive character that deals a high amount of damage. However, add any of the Assassin's other skills to the mix and you water that down to something that never utilizes the Assassin's full abilities and somewhat unclear about what the assassin's true role is.

Which is a shame, because if those abilities were not at cross-purposes with each other, they would make rather good combinations. Stealth and Massive Damage would lead to a very powerful 'Alpha Strike', except for the fact that the Assassin cannot attack in stealth except with a weak area of effect.

He cannot use his area of effect while he is playing the role of defense, because he needs to be stealthed to use his area of effect skill. This would make a great deal of sense if possible as a warrior who could keep the focus of multiple enemies at once.

He cannot both stealth and steal from monsters, which would create a very interesting money character that focuses on bypassing monsters entirely. Poisoning a monster is much less effective than simply doing his most powerful attack move. Furthermore, the Assassin's most powerful Poison Bomb skill is on a timer and has the condition that the enemy not be killed while the poison is in effective to deal the most damage... which totally defeats the purpose of the Assassin being a damage dealer. (In order to poison most effectively, the assassin must not attack the thing he poisoned.)

Good Examples:

Paladin, World of Warcraft
Clear Roles: Defensive Warrior, Secondary Healer, Tertiary Party Enhancer

Do the two roles interfere with each other?
If he is healing, is that hindered by the fact that he is a defensive warrior? Possibly, if his healing is interrupted because he is in the front line getting hit by stuff. Therefore, we give the paladin the option to have faster heal times, ignore spell casting interruption.

If he is playing defense, does that hinder his healing ability? Possibly, if his defense abilities take up all the magical energy he needs to heal other people. Therefore, we can make his defensive abilities relatively light on magical energy or give him the ability to recover magical energy while he is being hurt or doing damage (As a defensive warrior.)

When his abilities are put together, do they make sense as a combined whole?

A defensive warrior and a backup healer. Clearly the Paladin's role is to make it hard for his party to die. He both absorbs damage from rampaging monsters and heals the party in case some of that damage passes by. Additionally, he might have some powerful resurrection abilities or group buffs that make it even harder for the group to perish.

Pure Wizard, Dungeons and Dragons Online
Clear Roles: Massive Area of Effect Damage Dealer, Powerful Crowd Control, Secondary Group Enhancer, Places Enemies under Negative Enchantments.

Do the roles interfere with each other?

Yes, the roles do interfere with each other. Using magical energy on both Crowd Control and Area of Effect Damage Dealing are redundant tasks. If on the other hand, he is around to provide useful enchantments for the party his role as Damage Dealer and Crowd Control will be hampered by the need to constantly maintain and use up his magical energies on keeping the group buffed.

We can address this issue by giving the wizard only a few spell slots to choose from. His highest level spells will be limited in number to one or two that he can swap out at specifically designated rest points. This way, the wizards most powerful spell will only be from one or two of these categories and the player's focus will be on only one of these roles and not all three of them at once.

We can also prevent the wizard character from fulfilling all of these roles by giving him a very limited energy point to work from, thus ensuring that he will be called to fulfill only a few roles at a time before he is exhausted. To balance this, we can make him very powerful while his magical energies are well supplied.

Do the roles make sense when taken together as a whole?

Yes. These roles, when combined together, make the wizard a universal problem solver or a "panic button". No matter what the situation at hand, whether it be overwhelmed by enemies, having to have a powerful enchantment or simply destroying something very quickly, the wizard can be called to get rid of a problem. Balanced with a low energy pool, the well prepared wizard becomes a valuable role as he can be called on to unleash his full power at those critical moments.

MMO Diversity, Part 2: The Choices You Make...

Note: This article is mainly about Massively Multi-player Online Games, with a slight bleed into skill-based RPG's.

A quick recap of terms I've discussed and that I will continue to use:

Western MMO:
An MMO where characters choose clearly defined roles at the outset, characterized by little or no character branching and definite skill sets rather than point based skill tree systems.

Examples: Everquest, Dungeons and Dragons Online.

Eastern MMO:
An MMO where characters start off with initially unclear roles, and determine them by strict character branching with further branch-offs from point-based skill tree systems.

Examples: Ragnarok Online, Trickster Online, Maple Story

In the Western MMO, it's very hard to talk about my character. After all, what makes me different from anyone else? There's very few classes, and in those classes are very similar skills. How do I express myself if all I can say is 'I'm a level 30 warrior.' 'Oh.' Where is the choice or the diversity there? How am I any different from the faceless masses?

Considering the problems of Western MMO's, the Eastern MMO System seems like a comparative upgrade to the old Western MMO system. Why would one want static roles and a complete lack of choice in skill sets? Why shouldn't I have the freedom to decide whether my character has heal or not? Why shouldn't I look forward to when my Thief becomes an Assassin?

Problem 1: Hybridization

Throughout time immemorial, there have been 4 main party roles:
Thief (Single Target DPS).
Cleric (Heal Bi.. err. Healer.).
Mage (Crowd Control).
Warrior (Tank.)

When you have 32 classes divided up into these 4 roles, and possible combinations of those roles.. you have no idea what those classes end up as. Please, tell me, at first glance, what you think the difference between a Crusader and a Knight is? Crusader, Knight, Swordsman, Assassin, Rogue, Battle Smith, Monk? What do you think their roles are? Tanks? Damage/Tanks? Damage/Tank/Cleric? What makes these characters special besides the unique way they take/deal damage? How do you compare the relative benefits between a Crusader and a Knight? An Assassin and a Monk? When the classes come too close to one another, the difference between the two might be in Name (And looks) only.

Still, with a little effort, you could do it... I mean, what do I care if my Assassin and my Monk do similar things. Isn't it awesome that I have an Assassin? And a Kung-Fu Monk? Or better yet.. ASSASSIN MONK?

Problem 2: Focused Skill Sets

If you have one point in a skill, common knowledge says that it should be worse than a skill in which you have 9 points in.

Fair enough, that makes total sense. A skill in which you've invested in should be better than a skill in which you haven't. And it also makes total sense you should be able to 'pass up' bad abilities to further your good abilities. Who hasn't groaned when their thief in some game got the skill 'kick a little bit of sand in someone's eye' and wish that they could just possibly gouge that eye out?

However, this leads to dangerous scenarios where core abilities and utility spells are ignored in favor of the best abilities. It'd be slightly odd if the following scenario happened...

'Okay, Thief, sneak around that corner and kill the guard.'
'I err.. don't have points in sneak.'
'Okay, then steal the key off him.'
'I err.. don't have points in steal... but I can err.. stab him twice, really quickly.'
'...'

This frankly, wreaks havoc on the whole class-role system. You can't count on a person in that role to have to skill you need in a party system. Imagine a Healer who couldn't heal effectively, because he spent all his points on his 'holy attack' skill.

Furthermore, this problem kills game-play diversity. In our focus to make our good spells ... well... really good, we kill off any opportunity for our other spells. Any player who has spent the last 10 levels saving skill points to dump it all into 'Double Attack' of any type will know the feeling. Days and weeks are used leveling the same three skills over and over to their maximum power. Other skills are discarded into the dust. It is *so* important that we level our main skills that we do not deign even to "waste" a point in other spells.

Our game-play will be reduced to three-skills. And the system encourages it, otherwise, we're just being silly and weak, wanting 'too much.'

Problem 3: Fear of Experimentation + 'Cookie Cutter' builds.

The major problem with the skill point based system is that usually, each and every decision made with our skill points is final. We can't try out a skill before we sink a point into it. It's FINAL. Nothing is worse than the excitement of putting a skill point into our recently acquired skill of fiery explosion mark 3 and learning that.. well.. it sucks.

Which leads to a major fear of experimentation. Who has the time to level another character up to 60? 100? 200? How will I reconcile my desire to have a good play experience as well as the desire to have a character that remains useful? I limit myself. I limit my skills. I do research online to find the 'best' skills.

Which leads to the plethora of 'Cookie Cutter' builds. The established common builds that are supposedly better than any other build (Whether or not that's true or not, is up to the player.) Millions of people requesting help on how to build their characters. Millions of skills lying unused in the mud.

Problem 4: Obsoleting Skills feels like a punch to the gut

So, I have my shiny level 10 double attack skill. It rocks. Wait.. what's that? What do you mean in 10 levels, I get a triple attack skill? What? That totally sucks. I just got a new skill. I should be HAPPY. Instead, I feel like the game creators have just pulled a fast one on me and are now pointing and laughing.

Some skills are better than others. This is true.

Having skills that are simply better than others and obsoleting old skills that people have spent dozens of points on, while ignoring other ones, is like someone slapped you across the face.

Now, you could make level 10 double attack a pre-requisite for this awesome triple attack skill.. but then that pretty much means you've set the course for the player for the previous 10 levels. 'Hey! You better get level 10 double attack, or else.. You're going to suck!'

Compare this to the Western MMO, where if you get a triple attack skill, all players will scream 'Awesome', replace their double attack skill with the triple attack, and walk off feeling like they've been rewarded for invested their time into this so far.

Proble...

Well, actually, I've said enough about the skill tree system. The fact is, the sheer amount of customization you give to the players might be a terrible idea if the system also punishes them for customizing their characters in the wrong way. That, combined with the fact that more and more character classes generally leads to more confusing and less diverse gameplay tends to be more of a net negative in the end.

Join me for the next part, when we look at Modern MMOs and how they've addressed the issue of customization and avoiding these problems.

MMO Diversity, Part 1: The East and the West

Note: This article is mostly about Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMO's)

There have been a glut of MMO's from the East (Korea, China, etc.) and the West (US, Europe). Both have somewhat different roots and they lead to very different game-play models. This is my theory on the history of the evolution of these various styles of MMO's. Under no circumstance should you take any of this as well-researched facts. That said...

How did western MMO's evolve? The earliest model would probably be the Pen and Paper games popularized in the west. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons being the most ubiquitous example. In these games, the classes were not so different from one another. Take one mage and compare him to another mage and the only difference would probably be the equipment and the player playing the mage. Both of them could learn everything the other mage could and more. Every warrior was at least proficient in their weapon of choice.

The next stage in this evolution was the gradual adaption of the pen and paper model onto an online model: The MUD, or Multi-User Dungeon. Modern muds have a terrific variety of game-play and settings but the very first few muds have, for the most part, a firm grounding in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rules. If you were a level 25 warrior, you were going to have kick. No question about it. There wasn't a choice. When you leveled up, you got a skill. Barring very rare exceptions such as weapon choice, all level 50 warriors had the same skill set.

One of the first incarnations of what could be called a Massive Multiplayer Online Game was Everquest. In this, all classes followed the same general model. You hit level X, you get skill Y. All Bards that were level 30 had Spirit of the Wolf. All Monks that were level 30 had meditate and kick. They all had the same meditate and kick skill. You weren't going to suddenly find a level 30 Monk who somehow didn't have meditate, but had some god-like triple kick skill.

From Everquest onwards, companies have tried to emulate the massive success that Everquest has had. Most of these typically have the same class-based play as before. Warrior, Thief, Cleric, Mage. From this model, the western MMO's were born. You picked your class, and you stuck with it, and you flamed on the message boards when your class was depowered by those evil Game Masters.

Western MMO's are very role-based. At the outset, you choose a role. A warrior, a mage, a priest, a thief, etc. This stems from its Dungeons and Dragon roots where players would choose what type of role to fulfill in a party. These games give you tools (in the form of skills) to help you fulfill that role. Thus, it is vitally important that each role or class have the same set of tools to work from or they might be woefully under-equipped to handle it.

From my experience, Western MMO's typically ask you this question:
'How do I use the skills that I have effectively?'

What about the history of Eastern MMO's?

To tell the truth, there isn't much of one. Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds was one of the first MMO's out of Korea and it followed a straight-forward path akin to the Western Muds. It, however, introduced the idea of character-branching, that one base character could become aligned and subtly different. (Lineage is one of the direct descendants of Nexus, branching off from one of the Nexus sub-servers several years after it was released.)

To tell you the truth, there was a precedent for character-branching before. It was a Japanese game of all things that brought this to us. The game? Final Fantasy 5 J. (FF5J was never released for the U.S. Market.) You can see the class-change system in Final Fantasy XI has had its roots in one of the earliest incarnation of the game.

And then shortly thereafter, Korea spawned one of the most pervasive and well known game of the Eastern MMO's: Ragnarok Online. RO marks, what I believe to be, one of the earliest examples of the Eastern MMO marked by one thing: Skill-tree based character development as well as character class changes. While the game was officially released in 2002, the earliest alpha/beta of the games were many years before that date.

Shortly thereafter, the Eastern MMO market quickly branched off into derivative works such as Maple Story, Silk Road and other "free-to-play" MMO's which made money by selling in game upgrades. Individually these MMO's have small quiet markets but when taken together as a whole these small free MMOs have user bases that can compare with the large stable western MMO populations.

As a general rule, these games are all about defining your character through the choices you make while leveling. You choose what skills to get. You choose what skills to upgrade. You gain levels and sometimes you even choose what character class you will become. Not only that, sometimes you even choose what the next advancement of that character class you will become. It gives the player an amazing freedom of choice. The decision to make their character how they want it. The ability to branch out into multiple paths.

From my experience, Eastern MMO's typically ask you this question:
"How do I build my character up so that he has the best skill-set for me?"

...In the next part, we'll see how this affects the actual game-play of these various MMO's...