[MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.

[Neil Brown]

--- Trump <trump at vividvideo.com> wrote:

> I was spurred to write this by the discussion of perma death on
> MUD-Dev a while back, but forgot to actually post it....

Let me say up front that I think this is a great post, and most of the
differences of opinion I'm expressing here are due to underlying
project goals rather than subjective "right-or-wrongness".  I'm using
it as a backdrop for the neverending design battle between the forces
of fun and those of realism that we're having to fight while designing
our game.  The game is a commercial MMORPG ( if you'll allow it to be
called an RPG when I'm through ;) with the mass-market in mind, and
consequently we have to take into account as many of the different
player types as possible. Writing an insanely popular RP-only MMOG is
probably a dream that a lot of people here would like to realize, but
in reality the mass-market playerbase just doesn't seem to fit well
into the RP mold.

During our design sessions we constantly come up with great ideas that
would add realism to our game, and the vast majority of the time those
ideas fall victim to one of three frustrating conditions:

  1) Something I'll call "learning curve baggage" - The player must
  learn how to manipulate this particular stat/skill/item/rule in
  order to be successful in the game, while at the same time the "fun
  factor" of the game doesn't increase at all - it's just busy work.
  Realistic busy work, but busy work nonetheless. We've attempted at
  each occurrence to find a balance between realism and gameplay, but
  it's often a subjective decision whose results will probably need to
  be tweaked or removed during testing.

  2) "Exploitability" - How easily the creative player can use this
  feature to gain easy exp/wealth/whatever with little or no risk to
  himself/time invested. People will take the easiest path they can
  find to achieve their desired results and players will gain
  advantage through any loopholes or shortcuts they can find in your
  game.  It always seems like if we just added realism in a couple
  more areas that the original problem would go away, but inevitably
  this leads to a realism feature cascades until you're trying to
  simulate the real world entirely just to account for all the
  variables.  This is, of course, unlikely to be accomplished by us,
  so removing the offending exploitable feature becomes the other
  alternative.  However, in that direction lies a flat, uninteresting
  game world where everything is simple and static.  This is unlikely
  to generate any player interest in the game, and hence revenue for
  us, so it's also not what we're looking for.  Ouch.  Welcome to game
  design.

  3) The "Ass Factor" - How will the grief players use this feature to
  annoy or otherwise corrupt the gaming experience for others.  Sadly,
  this one seems to come up most often, and usually in addition to at
  least one of the other two. I'd pay top dollar for a reliable
  grief-player auto-ban system, since I have yet to be able to code up
  any Matrix-like anti-grief "Agent" software myself ;)

> Fake death is a fiction breaker.  The most important reason to want
> to have perma death is to keep the all important fiction alive (We
> are talking about RPGs here right?)  I guess you really need to
> decide early on how important RP is to your game.  Most games which
> profess to be RPGs are really just adventure games(AG) in a fantasy
> setting.

Agreed.  Fake death is a fiction breaker.  However, real death is a
fun-breaker for a lot of players, especially the casual gamers.  We
need to keep those players interested in our game and not feeling like
they've just wasted a month of their time because all their hard work
just got his head chopped off by that hill giant they didn't see while
they were on their way back to town for the night.

As our game is designed to have shards, we've toyed with the idea of
having a perma-death shard just to see how popular it is, and what
sort of feedback we get from people who play on it ( and how much of a
customer service nightmare it is).  I suspect it would be a waste of
hardware, but perhaps someone who has tried it in a commercial venture
can enlighten me with some real examples.

> Lets look at Everquest.  Its almost entirely an AG.  What little RP
> that happens is usually centers around lowbie Ogres and Trolls.  Why
> is that?  I'd say it's because they have a defined role which can be
> played out, and there is very little to break the fiction.
> Mindlessly kill most things around your town and eat them.  That's
> pretty much how most people would roleplay an Ogre.  That's what
> lowbies in EQ do.

You're right, EQ does not support RP well at all.  I'm an avid
(addicted?) EQ player, and the RPers I've seen in my travels have been
almost exactly as you describe.  Trolls/Ogres seem to be more likely
to at least speak in character, if not act it, and I would guess that
the RP percentage for the rest of the races is statistically zero.

I think a lot of the problem is that the majority of players really
aren't interested in RPing.  They're more interested in playing the
game for the game itself, socializing, and having fun.  If we tried to
shoehorn them into an RP-only situation and they were punished for
stepping out of character, I think the vast majority of them would
leave in search of a less restrictive environment.  Someone may have
some real world evidence of this as well.

> My thought is that games like this should not be allowed to call
> themselves RPGs.  In order to actually have an RPG you must keep in
> character at all times.  NEVER break character.  This starts with
> the failings of the devs and bleeds into the minds of the players.
> When you refer to a monsters as a MOB you are breaking character.
> Players start talking about MOBs too.  It's no longer the evil
> zombie who must be thwarted, it's now just a level 2 MOB worth 100xp
> and drops 2-5 gold.  There is no roleplay there.

I don't think the mass-market really follows this hardcore definition
of what an RPG is.  It seems like If the game has a character with
equipment, stats, levels, and things to kill, then it's an RPG,
whether you're forced to speak in high Victorian English or not.

> Seeing that you have 415 of 533 hit points left is BAD.  How can you
> suspend disbelief and just roleplay when you know that a sword does
> 12-14 damage and you have 40 hit points?  Suddenly someone hitting
> you with it isnt scary anymore.  It's just math.  Give some
> feedback, but hide the numbers.  If they are found out, so what, but
> dont put them out there for everyone to see.

I agree that numbers can draw player focus where you don't want it,
but giving the proper feedback can be difficult to handle unless you
don't mind bars of bubbles or graphical depiction of some sort.  We
have not yet addressed which approach we will use in our game, but
it's going to be either bars or numbers. Simply giving a text message
like "You scratched/sliced/hit/crushed/smashed/obliterated the Wee
Green Blobbie" isn't enough feedback IMHO, and since we're trying to
keep this available to the mass-market, an ESRP rating of "E" (
Everyone: Ages 6 and up - ok, maybe we're dreaming here ;) would be
nice - at most "T" ( Teen: ages 13 or over. Violence, mild graphic
language ), so that means graphical representations like open wounds,
missing limbs, or visible viscera (alliterated gibs, for those quake
players out there :) is just not possible.  So, we're left with bars
and numbers.  I think we'll probably go with some combination of the
two.

> In addition to sanctioning of those who refuse to RP, you also want
> to reward those who do.  If your game centers around interaction
> with the gods you are rewarded by faithful service to your chosen
> deity.  Obviously all gods, even those who are attuned to death and
> myschif will still be annoyed by OOC activity.  Those who roleplay,
> do smart things and do generous things can gain direct in game
> benefits from the gods, something that simply would not happen in an
> AG.

How do you police this though?  If you allow the players to police it,
then grief players will have a heyday reporting people they don't
like, or just to be a nuisance.  It's nearly impossible to have it
algorithmically policed, especially with free-form text message
capability, and I'm guessing GM policing would be a large-scale
nightmare for a popular game.

On the flipside, how do you reward RP activities?  They suffer the
same detection problems as non-RP activities, and the two become
difficult to differentiate in code.

> Obviously the first thing you need to do is make it relatively hard
> to die.  But this cuts both ways.  If you make it hard for players
> to die you must make it hard for NPCs to die or risk losing
> immersion.  So you need alternatives to death. Win/Lose scenarios
> that do not inculde someone dying.
 
>   1.  Drop and run.  If you make it so that someone carrying nothing
>   will always outrun someone carrying weapons then you have a less
>   harsh win/lose situation.  You can drop all your loot and run
>   away.
 
>   2.  Surrender/Ransom.  Put in a button that will offer surrender.
>   If accepted the system takes over and the winner gets 1000 gold
>   for ransom and the loser is safely transported back to down.
>   (Much like what happens with fake death in many games).  If the
>   winner is expecting 10gold in loot accepting surrender will be, by
>   far, the better option.

I can see people exploiting this to get experience without ever really
being in danger of dying. They could put all their loot in the bank (
or give it to a friend, whatever ), grab the nearest rusty sword, and
just drop it and run whenever they got into trouble.  If that approach
nets them more exp with less risk than "conventional" combat, that's
all people will do.  Your most popular weapons will become the
cheapest one that can be found while doing the most damage.

Now obviously some tweaks can be made so that this isn't as easy as
I've just made it out to be, but any backpedaling you do from this
design means you're sliding closer to the 'easier to die' side of the
equation, which is also bad. What's the ultimate solution?  I wish I
knew.

> Separating the player from the character by making it a
> possessed-host model you lighten the impact of that permenant death.
> You need only possess a new host.  The new host can come with an
> apporpriate selection of equipment and skills already developed so
> it's no big deal, but you still want there to be some fear of death.
> Once again this can be tied into the fiction.  The gods are not
> pleased by you allowing the natives to die, so you will not be
> allowed to possess one that was the same level as the one you left.
> However if you decide to dispossess your host while he is healthy
> you can switch to another of similar power.  Thus allowing you to
> escape the evil class/level treadmill, and focus on roleplaying and
> having fun.

While I think this idea could be a lot of fun, it really doesn't
foster the sort of character ownership that we're looking for to keep
our players coming back and paying that monthly subscription fee.
Each time the player dies ( and the player IS going to die at some
point unless we've made it next to impossible - which has its own
barrage of problems ), they have to start from scratch with a new
character to start relating to, having lost days/weeks/months of hard
work.  Even if you were able to choose a new character with the same
power as your dead character had, it's still a new persona - nobody
who knew you before will know you now, your online reputation is lost.
It's quite a blow, especially to the more casual gamer.

I know I've pitted realism against fun a lot in this post, and I
realize that for many people RP and realism IS fun.  So I guess the
real question for our design team is how do you design a MMORPG with
all the realism and RPG features we've come to know and love from the
pen-and-paper world, while still keeping the fun alive for the mass
market.  What we're trying to do is put ourselves into the shoes of
the average gamer - people who will log off our game and go play The
Sims or Rollercoaster Tycoon - people who might not see "fun" where we
do.

-o-
Neil
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev