[MUD-Dev] Attractive Grouping (Was: Focus vs. Scope)

[John Buehler]

Cruise writes:
> John Buehler wrote:
>> Cruise writes:
>>> P J wrote:

>>>> Back in beta, I heard WoW called - the best single-player game
>>>> I've ever played with other people.  That pretty much sums it
>>>> up in a nutshell. While there are things you need other people
>>>> for - and I totally disagree that you have to FORCE grouping -
>>>> it addresses the fact that there is little beyond game mechanic
>>>> goals to retain users. You CAN 'win' WoW - or at least it feels
>>>> that way.  Great as a game - IMHO longterm death for a MMO.

>>> Interestingly, this is similar to the complaints many have about
>>> CoH - the lack of socialisation.

>>> It seems likely that this is a result of the
>>> streamlining...you're too busy playing to worry about other
>>> people. I guess the question then becomes: "Can we have focused
>>> MMORPGs that are also social?"

>>> A better way of phrasing it might be: "Is it possible to make
>>> socialising and grouping as much fun and /rewarding/ as just
>>> playing the game as if it were a single-player game?"

>>> So what of problems need to be overcome?

>>>   - Time to group
>>>   - Lumped with bad team-mates
>>>   - Communication is awkward or too fiddly

>>> And no doubt there's more...

>>> Again, can we blame the grind? Is anything that doesn't
>>> contribute to that next level going to be ignored? Is it
>>> possible to have socialising aid the levelling process in other
>>> ways from just getting more XP in teams?

> <snip>

>>  For example, my idea for sating the desires of the combat-hungry
>>  is to have a kind of Front Lines Area where the NPC baddies are.
>>  There is literally a front line, as with WWI or WWII combat.
>>  Through the actions of player characters, that line can be
>>  pushed back and forth.  The pushing back exposes new ground (to
>>  vary the combat), new resources (to vary the trade and
>>  exploration experiences) and perhaps new opponents.  On day one
>>  of the game, the Vandals are at the gates of Rome.  On day one
>>  thousand of the game, the Vandals have long been defeated, and
>>  many other enemies (probably all members kingdoms of some vast
>>  evil empire), and the lands claimed have been settled by the
>>  other players.

>>  The point of doing this is to ensure that no grouping is
>>  necessary, that the combat-interested have a place to gather,
>>  that there is always a ready stream of opponents (directed at
>>  the macro level by company employees for maximum challenge), and
>>  that progress is measured for the group, not for individuals.
>>  Capturing the Third Orc Tower is a moment in game history.
>>  Perhaps to be lost again, but the gaining of the tower is a
>>  landmark moment.

> I like the concept - I'd be worried about the havoc griefers could
> cause, but certainly a very interesting idea.

Perhaps I'm blinded by enthusiasm for my own ideas, but the grief
potential isn't clear to me.  What griefing can players engage in?

> As a more general thought, could we do without groups in any
> MMORPG?  Players simply play the game, and work together if they
> happen to be in the same area.

I like to think so.  Happenstance grouping seems like the best of
all possible worlds.  If people join in on the construction of the
cathedral, it goes faster.  Otherwise, the few on the job continue
at a slower pace (but now all jobs are available to them).  When
multiple characters are mandatory for a task, NPCs should be
available to help out.  But doing things with NPCs shouldn't be as
enjoyable as doing things with player characters.  I say the last
because of a silly desire that I have for people to value
interaction with each other.

> The only difficulty is how to dish out rewards...it can't be based
> on damage done, because that screws over support
> classes. Measuring general utility or assistance provided is
> probably intractable, or at least going to be perceived as unfair
> more often than not.

I believe that rewards should be granted by group consent.  How
exactly to do this I don't know, but I do believe that something in
the spirit of voting for players during the course of or immediately
after a combat engagement is the way to go.  The voting may
automatically cause rewards to flow to those individuals, or it may
simply be that those individuals are voted as trusted individuals
who can then decide who gets what.  It may be related to a 'friends'
system with the assumption that I almost always vote for my friends.

This is a slightly more dynamic version of what happens in large
group attacks in other games.  Normally, only trusted people are
permitted to join in on large group attacks, and the rules are
clearly set out.  Specific people will collect rewards, lotteries
will assign them to group members, etc.

There may be other issues to be addressed, such as who is actually
claiming to have been part of the battles.  If someone claims to be
part of the battle, an appropriate icon hovers over their head.  If
players see someone with the icon and who is completely inactive
during the fight, they may vote to have them excluded from the group
rewards.  Players seem to be pretty good at self-policing things
like that.

It may ultimately be that if the rewards are modest, and that
accumulating items and gold only slightly serve to permute the
experience of gameplay, how rewards are dispensed will be
uninteresting.  If, in the middle of a large melee, a player drops
an opponent with a helm and they don't have one, they stop at an
appropriate moment to pick it up.  It's not a The Helm of Slaying
nor even +1 to anything.  It's just a helm.  It protects the
character's head, but may reduce visibility.  It's not necessarily a
vast improvement, just a way to fight in a different way.  Swap
sword for scimitar, mace for quarterstaff, etc.

> Maybe a more flexible version of EQ2's combat locking? The first
> player to a mob locks it, but other players can be invited to the
> fight at any point - it would end up similar to grouping but on
> more of a per-fight basis. Suddenly discover that your current
> fight is harder than you expected? Yell for help, and any nearby
> players can respond and join in for a share of the reward (and
> perhaps penalty if the original player dies? Just trying to
> balance the various abuse possibilities).

I think that you're right back to individual rewards being the
motivation to play, at which point groups are an annoyance.  Focus
the design on group goals with appropriate entertainment for
individuals and you're on the right path.

> Either of these systems would make actual /communication/ and
> socialising an inherent part of playing the game, rather than
> something which is just done in downtime.

I'm all for players finding entertainment.  If they want to
socialize, I hope that they can, at their liesure.  If they don't
want to communicate, I don't want to force them to.  For me,
'talking' to NPCs is an example of the latter.

>>  Such a game cannot have character levels that significantly
>>  affect character effectiveness.  Levels inherently oppose a
>>  group identity.  Recognition of standing in a group is perfectly
>>  reasonable, but distinct power levels immediately results in
>>  partitioning of game content, meaning partitioning of social
>>  groups according to character effectiveness.  It's the classic
>>  case of 'keep up or drop out'.

> If you removed the forced level penalties from combat in most RPG
> systems, I think you'd have a good compromise. That needs
> explaining, so let's take an example.

> In CoH, every other level you can add a new ability. Generally you
> start with the most basic, general powers, and add more powerful
> but specific ones later.  However, there are fixed penalties for
> fighting enemies higher level than you, which go up exponentially
> as the level difference increases.  Take those penalties away,
> however, and the only difference between low and high level is the
> range of abilities they have. A low level hero will have no
> resistances against holds, for example, making them very
> vulnerable to a higher level character with them.

> This still provides the benefit to levelling, but enables new
> players to at least contribute something. This couples nicely with
> the no-grouping concepts above, as you don't have to worry about
> the level of the person who comes in to help...

That would be an interesting hybrid.  It would still present some
difficulties.  Lowbies would have to travel with highbies, else just
getting to the highbie areas would be impossible.  The same with
getting out of the highbie area, depending on the impact of a
character death.  There would be issues with who gets what from the
rewards, given that items would surely be commensurate with the
higher level powers of the highbie characters.

In short, character power levels partition content.  Because content
is usually partitioned geographically to keep more powerful
opponents away from less powerful player characters, it results in
geographic partitioning of players.  Net result: player partitioning
according to character power levels.

Make achievement roughly orthogonal to the basic activity of the
characters and the problem is avoided.  Instead of fighters becoming
better fighters, they are granted esteem by NPCs.  If NPCs are
sufficiently interesting vending machines, then that esteem (usually
referred to as 'faction') can translate into interesting vending
actions.  What I call 'favors'.  A faction and favors system permits
players to be rewarded for their actions, but without power accrual,
and in a variety of ways.

For example, a player has chosen to use his character to fight at
the front lines.  The character is building faction among NPCs who
favor fighting, and damaging faction among NPCs who dislike it (no
impact on those who don't care).  When the player takes his
character to town, he finds that he has changed his faction, and
that there is a NPC master trainer in town who likes him
sufficiently to teach him a new parry style.

That new parry style is like having a new flavor of ice cream.  It
adds to the experience of playing the game, but it doesn't markedly
change the effectiveness of the character.  It DOES impact the
effectiveness, because that parry is better in certain circumstances
than the general parry that the character has, but it's not
particularly significant.  It will have a different look to it, it
will result in different outcomes from a parry, and it may produce a
slightly different sound, but its purpose is to permute the
experiene of gameplay without moving the player away from his
existing peers.

The building esteem may bring other little favors.  Perhaps NPCs in
town are deferential to the character.  Perhaps they give small
discounts on goods.  Perhaps they are just nicer, giving the best
table at the inn to a certain character.  But they may also dislike
fighters, and reverse all of those things, shaking their fists at
the fighter character, or refusing to sell anything to them, etc.
Naturally, all of these things are visible to other players, and
they will witness the NPC-level faction responses.  The lack of NPC
behavior to indicate faction is one of the sad omissions from
current games.  But that will come in time.  Improved AI, more
bandwidth, more computes, etc.

The idea is to move orthogonal to the single track of character
power accrual.  Let the game be more multidimensional, and let the
achievements impact the multidimensionality of the game instead of
the linear track that we're used to seeing.

JB
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