This weekend I decided that what I needed was a change of scenery and since both Champions Online and Fallen Earth had open “betas” I figured I’d give them look. I plan on writing a more detailed post on each of them later but here’s my one line review.

Champions: City of Heroes 2.0 or maybe CoX evolved and that’s not a bad thing.

Fallen Earth: The love child of Fallout 3 and Eve with a crafting system that I find very compelling.

More later – the iPhone is ok for short posts but not so much for longer writing.

First, let me lay some groundwork.  Kendrick is the guild leader of a large raiding guild – a casual raiding guild, but still a raiding guild.  I’m the guild leader of a tiny friends-and-family casual guild.   While I led a few raids in EQ, I’ve yet to be on one in EQ2 in 5 years of playing, and I’m unlikely ever to be on one.  While I would enjoy doing the 12-man city raids, I have no interest in doing what it would take to turn my tiny guild into one large enough to do the 24-man raids, and I’m also not going to jump ship to a larger guild just to raid.  Besides – week nights the only night I stay up past 10:30 is the night I have a team game of Civ 4 with friends, and Saturday nights Sisca and I play D&D with those same friends.  I like my sleep too much to become a raider!  (For the record, I’m over 40 and I’ve been playing MMOs since EQ launched in ‘99)

As noted elsewhere on this blog, Sisca and I only recently reached 80, with his monk and druid, and my guardian.  Next highest in the guild is a 72 necromancer, followed by my 67 conjurer, and then a 62 berserker and a 60 wizard (who has been playing for about a month ).  Even ignoring time zones and varying work/D&D schedules, with those levels and classes we’re barely capable of grouping up for instances in, say, Tenebrous Tangle – we can’t yet do Kunark instances let alone TSO ones as a guild. 

I’m a hardcore-casual player – I play a lot of hours, I read blogs and the forums, I spend time figuring things out.  I play a guardian – I like being a tank, the guardian fits my image of Lore, and I’m a good tank.  If I was a min-maxer though I’d switch to the pally or the SK, as a guardian is best suited to raiding whilst they are more flexible in instances.    But, I also really don’t worry about ‘best’.   While I do choose AA’s that I think make sense for how I play, and my role, I don’t try to figure out what THE BEST setup is.  The alchemist had fallen behind in levels, so I went through a good chunk of the 60’s and 70’s using App1s and a handful of Adept 1s, getting App4s as he leveled – I certainly didn’t have Adept 3s, let alone Masters!    When we went to Kunark from LP at about 67 I was wearing the level 62 MC BP and legs, with a fairly random assortment of drops and quested gear for just about everything else, and frankly it stayed that way till we hit 78? and started doing the solo shard quests in Lavastorm….

I hear a couple consistent arguments against the RAs.  The first is simply that they are free, and you should have to ‘work’ for them.  I frankly admit that I don’t get that.  Firstly there IS a cost associated with them – the cost of 1) time waiting, 2) choices (which one do I get for which avatar) and 3) the cost of first acquiring the Adept 3.   Now, some say time is not a cost.  I would argue that in an online game, time is the only cost.  For anything.  Why don’t I raid?  First and foremost it comes down to time – I don’t have the time to build up a raiding guild, I don’t have the time to commit TO a raiding guild.   Why don’t I, and others, do more instances to ‘fish’ for those rare Master drops?  Time again!  It takes time to put together a good group, it takes time to run that instance, and it takes time, possibly weeks or months of it, to get ‘lucky’ on the drops.   That’s time I prefer spending other ways.  I love a good instance crawl!  I don’t love crawling the same instance night-after-night-after-night.   Any thing you or I do in a game is paid for with the coin of our time.  Our real life time.

The second argument is vaguely altruistic – I’m against it because it hurts the casual players! is the cry.  Strangely enough, I mostly hear this from people who aren’t casual players.   The truth is, it really doesn’t.  Yes, TSO was tuned around the assumption that the player base was Kunark geared, and with Adept 3s.  It’s thus not unlikely that Odus will be tuned around the assumption that the player base is in TSO gear (at least tier 1, possibly tier 2) and Masters.  You know what?  That’s nothing new.  It has always been that way.    Raiders shrug and move on, because they are in raid gear and fully Mastered.   That’s fine and fair enough  – and with the new way of doing raids moving forward, I in fact wonder if perhaps the ‘easy’ mode will be tuned without assuming full Masters and Shard two gear….  after all, part of the problem has always been tuning such that your average player could still do content while not boring your bleeding edge to death.

Here’s a key fact for my point of view though – when Odus releases it will be the first time I’ve ever been max level at the time an expansion was released to raise the level cap.   Amongst casual players happy about the addition of RAs, I suspect I’m not even unusual.  Maybe it will play out differently in that situation, I don’t know – what I do know is that I am used to each expansion being harder than the previous, with the expectation that I fully geared there, even though odds are I didn’t.   And somehow I always manage.  I’m not looking for Masters to give me an edge in Odus – I’m looking forward to them giving me an edge in older content!  I can’t do TSO and Kunark instances today – my hope is that with Masters my husband and I can, if not with both of us two boxing, then with our two other regularly-playing guildies when they finally catch up.

As to Odus?  Well, we’ll be in the beta and we’ll feedback about the concerns of the casual-players – the ones not in full tier 2 shard gear with a complete set of Masters, and hey, the devs might even listen.   Near as I can tell Rothgar is one of only a few who is a dedicated raider, amongst the others many seem to have playing experience that mirrors mine.   Failing that, well, there will be new spells, and new gear – if I level in TSO and Kunark to 85, and then venture into the first quests of Odus I suspect I’ll do just fine, and that would not exactly be a hardship.    There is still a ton of content in Norrath I have yet to complete!  And that is why, despite the arguments, I like the RAs.  Even ignoring the fact that I intend to use them for level-locked alts and my Ranger Down! barbie doll level 45ish ranger, not just (or even mainly) my main!

As I said earlier, all of this is stuff that those of us that have been playing these games awhile have heard thousands of times and Scott pretty much nailed the response that we’ve all hashed out over the years. However, yesterday a friend of mine, Pentane, linked this Scientific American article on the Expert Mind. I highly recommend it for all you armchair game designers – even you real world designers will find it interesting but I’m guessing quite a few of you have already read it or some of the books that have been written from those studies. Also yesterday, Psychochild, posted the first in a series of articles on How to Replace Levels.

These two articles combined got me thinking about the whole levels in MMO’s debate again but in a slightly different way and I came up with a kind of challenge – design a multiplayer that doesn’t have levels of some sort.

The trick here is to think of a “level” as a game mechanic that meets the criteria in Psychochild’s post. In other words anything that is used to mark Achievement, provide others Information or help with Pacing through your game world is considered a level. So far I’ve only come up with one way that it can be done and while I think the game might have some interest it would be a decidedly niche game and I wouldn’t want to propose it in today’s market.

First for all the EvE players that are already pounding out the response that EvE doesn’t have levels, go back and re-read the definition, this goes for all of you “skill-tree” fans. A skill-tree is just customized leveling. It might be a more entertaining system but it’s still a level based system.

Don’t think so? Take a person that’s been playing EvE for a month and their associated skill points (for the sake of argument lets assume they’re really good at understanding the system and spent those points optimally) and pit them against someone that’s been playing EvE for a year and their associated skill points. Odds are it would be no contest. I’m not an EvE player but I have to imagine that while it might be possible for a new player to make a beeline for 0.0 space, in reality there is a minimum skill set needed to have fun in 0.0 space.

Yes, there’s the factor of “player skill” that comes into that equation. Someone that’s been playing a year understands the tools at their disposal much better than the new player so even if you put them in the exact same ships with the exact same equipment the more experienced player should win. And this brings us to the Scientific American article.

Go back and re-read that, they’re talking about chess, the ultimate skill based game right? Even chess has levels, it’s right there on the first page of the article:

The results are ratings that predict the outcomes of games with remarkable reliability. If player A outrates player B by 200 points, then A will on average beat B 75 percent of the time. This prediction holds true whether the players are top-ranked or merely ordinary. Garry Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster who has a rating of 2812, will win 75 percent of his games against the 100th-ranked grandmaster, Jan Timman of the Netherlands, who has a rating of 2616. Similarly, a U.S. tournament player rated 1200 (about the median) will win 75 percent of the time against someone rated 1000 (about the 40th percentile). Ratings allow psychologists to assess expertise by performance rather than reputation and to track changes in a given player’s skill over the course of his or her career.

So Kasparov is a level 2812 chess player and Timman is level 2616. These rankings definitely meet Psychochilds criteria for a level, they’re used to mark Achievement and provide others Information about your abilities. In a way they also serve to provide Pacing for chess tournaments in that you should normally be matched against an appropriately skilled opponent at the outset. Competing in a tournament will mean that you’ll eventually end up matched against someone higher level than you which will provide you an opportunity to increase your level should you win.

There are other similarities between the world of Chess and MMO’s. For example the real way most players improve their skill is not by competing in tournaments but in the endless studying of other, better players, and their tournament games. Sounds a lot like grinding for levels to me. Of course, for someone like me, it’d be really cool if I could level my character just by watching a video of more experienced players defeating, or better yet being defeated by, a raid. I’m not sure how you’d code that but it’d be cool.

So if most skill based systems are out what about a “sandbox” game? Remember we’re talking about multiplayer here so give me a good example of a “sandbox” game. The only one I can come up with is Second Life and, let’s be honest here, there is no game in SL. Still I’m willing to give it to you, so why aren’t people like Tom Chick and Mr. Trembling Hand and all of the commenters saying “Levels Suck” flocking to SL? Oh yeah, no game.

I know, I just know, someone is going to throw the GTA series out there. First of all let me reiterate that we’re talking Massively Multiplayer games here. Taking mechanics from a single player experience and throwing them into this realm is going to create more problems than it solves but if you can explain, in detail, how you can create a fun MMO version of GTA I’m all ears, and so is EA and Rockstar and THQ and every other major publisher/developer out there. Also, I’m not 100% convinced that GTA doesn’t have some element of leveling in it but I really haven’t played it enough to say for sure.

I guess the real question is whether or not there is any way to meet those three design goals of levels and overcome what appears to be the main objection to levels – the inability of players to play with their friends whenever they want regardless of the differences created by the levels. Because to be honest without meeting those design goals do you really have a game? If there is nothing to mark your Achievement what’s the point? If I can buy the game, create a character and slay the dragon in the first evening (Pacing) then am I likely to come back tomorrow? Of the three I really think the only one you can afford to slack on is information. Yes it’s nice to be able to know what the abilities of my group mates are just by looking at the UI, but it’s not that big a deal for me to have to ask them how they play their character.

As I said earlier I think I’ve come up with exactly one system that can do that so far, it would definitely make for a niche game and I’m not 100% sure I can make it fun and “sticky” without adding some sort of leveling component in there.

So the challenge is out there. Come up with a system that doesn’t use some sort of “level” component AND would be fun to play in a multiplayer environment.

I’m going to work on refining my idea and maybe I’ll post it later this week to let everyone else rip apart.

As the 800 pound gorilla of the genre, EQ has, sometimes unfairly, been blamed for many of the ills that plague MMO’s to this day but this one falls on their shoulders fair and square. You combine the harsh death penalties with a dependence on groups to advance and the fact that certain classes are more “group friendly” than others and you get a player base that is trained to create the “optimum group” and that refuses to even consider attempting anything beyond the simpilist of tasks without that group. When you come out with your first expansion and the players quickly learn that the most successful groups consist of a Warrior, a Cleric and an Enchanter, you’re once again reinforcing that “perfect group” concept and marginalizing most of the rest of the classes in the process.

But if EQ created this problem and everyone knows about it why hasn’t one of the other games stepped up and tried to eliminate it? I think that many have tried but the combination of player habit and the mechanics of computer gaming in general have conspired against them.

In every new game that’s come out I see the players start out by forming the Tank, Healer, Crowd Control based group. Over time they learn whether or not that is the optimum and once they determine the optimum group make up thats what they go looking for. The mechanics of computer games are such that there will always be a path of least resistance and if you’ve balanced your classes around people being in groups and tried to give everyone a role in the group then you end up with these “optimum groups”.

Once you’ve started down the “every class has a purpose in the group” path your players will find this optimum and you either have to live with it or you get on the continual class balancing treadmill.

In his post Pentane concludes that the technology isn’t there to prevent this kind of group min/maxing from occuring but I disagree, especially with the increased focus on instanced areas.In Neverwinter Nights you can create an encounter trigger that contains a lookup table that generates the type and number of creatures spawned based on the average level of your group. Why can’t similar technology be used to create an instance that’s not only tailored to be level appropriate but also group makeup appropriate. A group enters the instance that consists of mostly melee types with a few nuking casters but no healer or crowd control, create encounters that have only 1 or 2 enemies that have a lot of hit points and can hit fairly frequently but don’t hit all that hard. The group has a healer with them make the monsters hit a little harder to give the healer something to do. They’ve got some sort of crowd control, then make it a swarm of weaker monsters, kind of a monster zerg rush of the players.

This would mean that the level designers for these instances would have to put a little thought into not only the layout of their level but also into how various groups make ups will handle the encounters. You need to leave the group with crowd control enough room for the crowd control person to work while also providing spots for healers and nuker types to be back out of the way and possibly something to hide behind to slow down anything that comes after them. You’ll also want to give some thought to the monster tables to try and keep the encounters interesting but not impossible.

Of course even if some game does implement a kind of encounter generation system you’ll still face the problem of player habit. If your new MMO is going to attract players from the previous generation of games you’re going to have to somehow overcome this tendancy to do what worked before. Sadly, short of a baseball bat, I don’t see any way of keeping your players from trying to form the “optimum group”, at least initially. The only thing you can do is not cave in to the “my class is weak and class x is to powerful” ranting that will appear from a small minority of your players. If you do that and if you’ve done your job designing the content to allow for challenging gameplay no matter what the group makeup the majority of your player base will eventually learn that it’s not what classes you have in the group but what players you have. There will be a minority that will want to change your gameplay so that it matches what they already know but if you ignore them you’ll have a much larger percentage that will love you for it.