27 Jul, 2007, Valcados wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
BTW KaVir, kudos on some of your own codebases. The only MUD I'd actually play on a day when noone else is logged in, is Vampire Wars, which of course is derived from Godwars. There's something about the Godwars I concept which is just pure hack-n-slash CRACK.

Too bad you don't seem to have gotten that with GWII yet. Maybe when it's more hashed out…
27 Jul, 2007, Stoli wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
What I find troubling about this particular great sage on the topic of virtual worlds (Rich Bartle) is how he never takes a stand on any particular philosophy or game mechanic. Sure, he says "this is unfun" or "this bores me", but why should we care? How does this enlighten us, as fellow game designers? Players say that kind of stuff all the time, and like Bartle, they never get around to explaining what in particular they find "unfun". Even in that article, he dodges the issue by pretending that knowing the mechanics of how a game is played somehow makes it impossible for him to derive enjoyment from it. Um, in Chess, do both players not know all of the different moves each piece can make? If today's multiplayer RPGs have become boring - by design - what is to be done about it? Bartle offers no suggestions - only a series of trite observations that anyone could make, and indeed ones that hundreds of people before him have made.

He offers up two paradigms: The level treadmill (WoW) and the interactive chatroom (Second Life). There you have it: This is what the developers have given us. We can kill computer-generated boars or have mudsex. What our great sage seems to have overlooked is THE GAME a.k.a "a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other ". Where does this fit into our two acceptable paradigms? I guess we'll never know unless we kick in a few grand in "consulting" fees.
27 Jul, 2007, KaVir wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Valcados said:
There's something about the Godwars I concept which is just pure hack-n-slash CRACK.

Too bad you don't seem to have gotten that with GWII yet. Maybe when it's more hashed out…


The original GodWars involved mindlessly grinding your way through thousands of mobs - walk into a room, type 'berserk' or 'cast gas breath', and watch the bodies hit the floor. Rince and repeat, grind, grind, grind. It might have been fun for a while, but the enjoyment soon wears off.

It's no accident or oversight that I haven't done the same with GWII (although it still has more grind than I'd like, but that's something I'm working on addressing). Instead I've focused on making combat more tactical, and in my opinion the resulting combat is far more enjoyable.

Stoli said:
Even in that article, he dodges the issue by pretending that knowing the mechanics of how a game is played somehow makes it impossible for him to derive enjoyment from it. Um, in Chess, do both players not know all of the different moves each piece can make?


They do, but there is enough tactical variation that the game is replayable.

But take a game like tic-tac-toe, and the gameplay soon becomes predictable, with every game ending in a draw. Someone could replace the Xs with orcs and and Os with elves, create a pretty board with lots of background imagery, etc, but they're not going to fool anyone who's already familiar with tic-tac-toe.

Or to give another example, how about snakes and ladders? A classic board game popular among children, yet it has absolutely no skill component at all - it's based completely on luck. Once again you could dress this up and make it look pretty, but you're not going to fool anyone who's familiar with the game.

In the majority of muds (particularly the graphical ones, which tend to be even more primitive in terms of gameplay), if you look at the actual mechanics behind the pretty graphics or fancy text, they're really very simple and not particularly fun. Click on a monster (or type "kill"), then wait until it's dead and take its treasure. Rince and repeat until you gain a level, then look for something stronger. Kill, loot, level, kill, loot, level, kill, loot, level.

As a child I enjoyed tic-tac-toe and snakes and ladders. But once I truly understand their mechanics, and realised their limitations, I no longer derived enjoyment from them. The same is true for the kill-loot-level grind approach used by most muds - the gameplay doesn't involve skill, just repeating the same mindless activities over and over and over.

Knowing the mechanics of a game doesn't stop you enjoying it, but it will make you perceive that game in a different light. You'll look past the pretty exterior and judge the game on its own merits. And if that game is completely predictable, or totally random, or mindless grind, then recognising those limitations can certainly ruin your enjoyment.

Quote
If today's multiplayer RPGs have become boring - by design - what is to be done about it?


There is no "magic bullet", nor are there any simple answers. Some concepts work well, others work poorly, but you can't break it down to something as basic as "Add feature X, don't add feature Y". It depends entirely on your audience and on your game. As you can see from Valcados's quote at the top of this post, some people even prefer mindless grind over tactical gameplay - just as many people enjoy playing tic-tac-toe or snakes and ladders, rather than chess.
27 Jul, 2007, Scandum wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
There's a tendency to confuse complexity with depth of game play. Poker is just a more complicated version of chutes and ladders because when played by equally skilled players it's mainly a matter of luck.

Street fighter like games are a nice step toward chess like gameplay where luck has been entirely eliminated.

Unlike chess however the intellectual and tactical depth of street fighter's gameplay are low which has been countered by shorter game turns making it a tactical reflex game.

A purely tactical chess like mechanism might be possible for a game economy. Exploration and adventure geared game play has been done before though it's rare in most muds. I'd recommend checking out Ian Livingstone's work as an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warlock...

Street fighter like combat should be possible for MUDs using a Gladiator Pit like input system, though turns would have to last for around 10 seconds to make it more tactical. Mob AI would be difficult however and probably beyond most programmers, not to mention that most designers would fall for the D&D trap and add random dice rolls, powerful equipment, bloat, and non essential featurism to completely remove any kind of tactical gameplay that might be possible.

Keep in mind though that a tactical mud would be beyond most players, who generally prefer a less intellectually challenging environment. Fortunately a TV and cable are affordable for the dull masses nowadays.
27 Jul, 2007, KaVir wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
There's a tendency to confuse complexity with depth of game play. Poker is just a more complicated version of chutes and ladders because when played by equally skilled players it's mainly a matter of luck.


While luck can certainly play a large role in individual games of poker, over many games it'll average out and skill will start to become more important. That's why people don't usually sit down for a single round of poker.

Snakes and ladders is pure luck, though - there is no decisions to be made, no bluffing, and no card counting. You roll the die and make your move.

I used poker as the basis for one of my minigames, and while there are a few people who complain about it being mostly luck-oriented, those usually tend to be the people who keep losing.

Personally I'm not in favour of pure skill-based games, because they tend to make the outcome too predictable when playing the same opponent - if I play you at chess and win, the chances are I'll beat you every time we play. If you win, the chances are I'll lose every game I play against you. While I found that entertaining as a child (having played hundreds of games against my father and only ever winning once), I no longer find it entertaining as an adult.
27 Jul, 2007, Brinson wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Poker is not luck…

Poker Strategy merely lies in its betting rather than in the game. Those who know how to bet, against someone whose not so good…will win 9 times out of 10…
27 Jul, 2007, Scandum wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Personally I'm not in favour of pure skill-based games, because they tend to make the outcome too predictable when playing the same opponent - if I play you at chess and win, the chances are I'll beat you every time we play. If you win, the chances are I'll lose every game I play against you. While I found that entertaining as a child (having played hundreds of games against my father and only ever winning once), I no longer find it entertaining as an adult.

I find the same flaw annoying in stat based games where the odds of killing a player with better equipment is small, while games that leave too much to chance bore me.

You present a good argument however and the trick is probably to combine these elements in the right proportions to create a truly engaging game. 50% strategy, 25% luck, and 25% stats might work out alright.

Luck needs to be determined beforehand because too many dice rolls will eventually level out the element of luck. Luck can also be based on strategy however, a werewolf coming out under a full moon could have more luck than a vampire walking about on a sunny day.

Stats are difficult but can be used to benefit less experienced players. PK Ranking can be used for this. Traditionally more experienced players have the better stats which further imbalances the gaming experience.

Strategy is as always the hardest to implement. As simple as chess might be I've never seen the mechanism fully translated to a MUD's combat system.
27 Jul, 2007, Justice wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Personally I'm not in favour of pure skill-based games, because they tend to make the outcome too predictable when playing the same opponent - if I play you at chess and win, the chances are I'll beat you every time we play. If you win, the chances are I'll lose every game I play against you. While I found that entertaining as a child (having played hundreds of games against my father and only ever winning once), I no longer find it entertaining as an adult.


This is only true if there is a huge difference in skill levels, which is more apparent in amateur play. Once a player has a basic understand of tactics and position it becomes very difficult to achieve that level of domination. I had a friend who like you always lost to his dad. It took one drunken night of coaching before the tables had turned and he almost always beat his dad. If I had given his dad similar training, it would be difficult to predict who would win a given game.

When I had a USCF rating, I'd estimate that for most players, you had good games within 300 rating points. That is… a good amateur being about 1100, and a master being 2000. Of course, the higher the skill level, the narrower this band becomes.
27 Jul, 2007, Valcados wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Valcados said:
There's something about the Godwars I concept which is just pure hack-n-slash CRACK.

Too bad you don't seem to have gotten that with GWII yet. Maybe when it's more hashed out…


The original GodWars involved mindlessly grinding your way through thousands of mobs - walk into a room, type 'berserk' or 'cast gas breath', and watch the bodies hit the floor. Rince and repeat, grind, grind, grind. It might have been fun for a while, but the enjoyment soon wears off.

It's no accident or oversight that I haven't done the same with GWII (although it still has more grind than I'd like, but that's something I'm working on addressing). Instead I've focused on making combat more tactical, and in my opinion the resulting combat is far more enjoyable.
Unless Joker very very significantly changed GW to make VWars, you're really dissing your own codebase.
In VWars, you CAN just "walk in a room and cast gas" all day… but youll soon fall way behind in power vs. other players.
The thing which revolutionizes grinding in VWars is that elemental shields play a very significant role, and that means, the more mobs you get in battle at once, the more efficient a grinding machine you are. For this reason, grinding efficiently on a VWars is a very delicate tightrope walking between maximizing how crazy the fight is, without getting yourself knocked out. To this, add your brilliant logarithmic stat gaining system, and you have mud crack. Finally, add in the fact that while you're doing all this, your peers are actively trying their hardest to cut off your freakin head. And you have the ultimate PK experience.

Let's compare with GWII. Grinding mostly involves running back and forth on the overworld map (or repeatedly entering and leaving a randomized dungeon) and fighting mobs 1-on-1 or in small packs. The combat system is novel (and confusing) for a short while, but soon degenerates into using macros to do the same things every time. Meanwhile, because you have no rank system like GW1/VW have, there is NO incentive to pkill (much LESS an incentive to actively hunt players who are close to you in power so that the fight's outcome is uncertain). Consequently, it's a very lame PK experience. Even if people did want to pk, there is NO hunt/chase element, because anyone can just hide in their home plane (in GW1/VWars, it's impossible to hide anywhere, thanks to things like the summon spell). Finally, we have an entirely linear stat gain system, so that even if running back and forth and fighting the same fights over and over IS your cup of tea, the game STILL gets old fast.
27 Jul, 2007, KaVir wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
Justice said:
This is only true if there is a huge difference in skill levels, which is more apparent in amateur play. Once a player has a basic understand of tactics and position it becomes very difficult to achieve that level of domination.


The only player I've ever had close games with (he won 2 games, I won 3, and I tricked him into 1 stalemate) had previously won several chess trophies. Everyone else I've played against I almost always either won every game or (less often) lost every game.

Perhaps it's different at the level of professional chess players, but I don't think that's a very useful comparison within the context of this thread - if we're talking about creating a mud system modelled around the concept of chess, it's unlikely that the players are going to reach the level of professional chess players.

Valcados said:
Unless Joker very very significantly changed GW to make VWars, you're really dissing your own codebase.


I'm just being honest about it. The HnS gameplay was extremely simple and mindless, and consisted of walking through mobs like a lawnmower through a bed of flowers. No tactics, no strategy, no challenge, just charging from room to room leaving a pile of bodies behind you.

It wasn't really that big a deal, because GW1 wasn't supposed to be about killing monsters - they were just a means to an end. However it was still a required part of the gameplay, and a very mindless and repetitive one at that.

Valcados said:
Let's compare with GWII. Grinding mostly involves running back and forth on the overworld map (or repeatedly entering and leaving a randomized dungeon) and fighting mobs 1-on-1 or in small packs.


As I said in my previous post, "it still has more grind than I'd like, but that's something I'm working on addressing". However the main point is that each fight is its own challenge, requiring different tactics. While in GW1 you'd simply slice and dice your way through anything that got in your way, in GW2 you have to pick your fights and understand the enemy; a strategy that works well against one opponent may be useless against another.

Valcados said:
The combat system is novel (and confusing) for a short while, but soon degenerates into using macros to do the same things every time.


Not if you want to play effectively. If you do the same thing every time, you will die horribly. Often.

Valcados said:
Meanwhile, because you have no rank system like GW1/VW have, there is NO incentive to pkill (much LESS an incentive to actively hunt players who are close to you in power so that the fight's outcome is uncertain).


There is already a fair amount of PK, although it'll likely increase once the clan system comes in. However we weren't talking about PK - we were talking about hack-and-slash.
12 Aug, 2007, Kjwah wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Scandum said:
There's a tendency to confuse complexity with depth of game play. Poker is just a more complicated version of chutes and ladders because when played by equally skilled players it's mainly a matter of luck.


Personally I'm not in favour of pure skill-based games, because they tend to make the outcome too predictable when playing the same opponent - if I play you at chess and win, the chances are I'll beat you every time we play. If you win, the chances are I'll lose every game I play against you. While I found that entertaining as a child (having played hundreds of games against my father and only ever winning once), I no longer find it entertaining as an adult.


Isn't that how you improve your skill? When I first started playing games over the internet I was terrible. Using the mindset that you are though, I'd have given up on games long ago because when I started I lost a lot. Same could be applied to anything.

It sounds like you are saying that no one will ever improve and get better at something and that because you used to kick their ass, you will always kick their ass. That simply isn't true. That's just how I feel about it though.. heh
12 Aug, 2007, Conner wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Kjwah said:
Isn't that how you improve your skill? When I first started playing games over the internet I was terrible. Using the mindset that you are though, I'd have given up on games long ago because when I started I lost a lot. Same could be applied to anything.

It sounds like you are saying that no one will ever improve and get better at something and that because you used to kick their ass, you will always kick their ass. That simply isn't true. That's just how I feel about it though.. heh


Actually, my guess here would be that his intented implication isn't that neither person will likely ever improve, but that if you only ever play the same two people the outcome is very predictable because the liklihood is that they will both improve close enough to equally. Now, my own belief would be that the one losing is likely to actually improve more because they're having to face the challenge of defeat each time and try to learn from their mistakes, but in practice we all learn different ways and at different rates and one would hope that yuo're not always only playing the same adversary to begin with.
21 Aug, 2007, Xyris wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
All i can say is WOW. lol. Seriously though. I like MMO's and muds alike. I think honestly though, when ever that DBZ MMO comes out it will be the end of DBZ muds, which, will hurt me. :sad:
21 Aug, 2007, KaVir wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Kjwah said:
Isn't that how you improve your skill? When I first started playing games over the internet I was terrible. Using the mindset that you are though, I'd have given up on games long ago because when I started I lost a lot. Same could be applied to anything.


No, I'm talking about pure skill-based games like chess. When you introduce the element of luck, you make the outcome less predictable. While I do enjoy playing chess, I find it boring to play against an opponent when I already know what the outcome will be.

Kjwah said:
It sounds like you are saying that no one will ever improve and get better at something and that because you used to kick their ass, you will always kick their ass.


Both players will improve, but the better player will almost always win. If I play you at chess, and I beat you, then the chances are that I'll win almost every game I play against you. I have played chess against dozens of different people, and only one opponent I've ever played against didn't result in a predictable outcome after the first game.

The same isn't true of games involving the element of luck. Too much emphasis on luck can ruin the game as well, so the balance has to be just right; I enjoy challenging games. I do not enjoy predictable ones.
23 Aug, 2007, Orignaux wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd have to agree with KaVir there. In games such as chess that are simple to understand and hard to master whoever the better player is will usually win because there is no real luck with chess. Adding luck to games makes the game more interesting though because then the weaker player has a chance to beat the better player.
23 Aug, 2007, Conner wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
Does this make it more interesting to everyone or just the weaker player? :tongue:
20.0/36