The Curse of Winning

How awesome would that be!?

And it invariably reminds me of something that was on my mind often during the later stages of LotRO already. It seems apparent, that most MMOs are bound to suffer from the Curse of Winning. Allow me to elaborate.

When an MMO sets up the playing field, it will usually use the most simple and effective storytelling tools to get you involved: you'll be made an underdog, and there will be some overwhelming threat to create a sense of urgency. This set-up may be sort-of original (WoW, Warhammer Online) or licensed from different media (AoC, LotRO). In the beginning, it works out quite well - you're a low level character and everything around is new, big and threatening.

Then you level up, get into gear, get a clue, learn your skills, get your talents. And keep beating the crap out of everything in your path (hey, that's the whole idea). And then you reach the famous "endgame" and go raid (depending on your preferred play style, you might, of course, not). There you are met with considerable challenge. Yet, challenge, in compliance with unwritten rules of the genre, has to be surmountable. And so you win. And then you win again. And with every dragon you kill, with every demon you vanquish (and with every time it becomes easier and more of a second nature), it becomes harder and harder to feel that sense of danger the background story is still suggesting for you to have.

What to do? Well, as the linked article is suggesting, it's probably time for the creative heads behind our favourite games to start thinking about how to make us lose from time to time. To make those wins count more again.

Taking it even further than the linked article, I'd like to point out, that a deterministic scripted loss isn't that much different from a regular win anyway. In the suggested scenario, the "loss" is triggered when the boss reaches 1% health. Well, that doesn't change much. Actually, it makes things even easier - you'd usually have to bring it down to 0%, after all! I understand it's mostly meant to just shake up the story, but let's take it to the gameplay as well.

My rough suggestion: let's base it off the Balrog's "last 12k" phase. In other words, a climatic finish to a fight, with significantly increased difficulty factor, that requires everyone, tanks, healers and DPS alike, to make a full-out push to drive it home. As an aside, and stating the obvious, that's why the Balrog fight never got boring, ever - no matter how far in you got, you always knew the biggest challenge will be during the last 10 seconds. However. Let's say, that once you get to and into that phase, the encounter will "finish", no matter what. If you kill the 'Rog and the Elf chick stays alive - great, you get your loot, you get your locks. If the Elf chick dies (or you wipe, which will invariably get the Elf chick killed as well), then she's dead, the Balrog roars in triumph and flies (runs?) away, freed and ready to torture the world - however, you still get your locks and your loot (maybe from a slightly weaker loot table - but not even necessarily). That way you can actually complete an encounter with a loss - still getting your winnings out of it, yet a lack of satisfaction attached. And best of all, the outcome depends on your performance, not a script. When you come back next week, you'll want revenge, and you'll always know, that this guy can actually kick your behind, as opposed to the usual "we play the game until I win" pattern.

Nerdrage - will contain profanity

So, now the media is discussing, whether Michael Jackson's children should or should not have attended his funeral (considering their young age and his always having been highly protective of them), should or should not his daughter have spoken, why they did it, who, what, where and so on. And by "media" I mean mostly people who earn their living as "high society experts", i.e. detractors and gossipers who have never accomplished anything on their own. These people, who never were good at anything but turning other people's dirty underwear, are now in the underwear of Michael Jackson's children. Yes, I am making this sound doubly reprobate on purpose.

Children. Kids. As in, sons and daughter. Sons and daughter of a father. A father who died two weeks ago. Do you even know what that means? Do you retarded media-morons even know how much that hurts? At least when you're still human, rather than a social atrocity making a living and cheap fame off sniffing other people's farts? Children, for crying out loud! A little boy who saw his father die while they were playing and thought he's just acting at first. This is, what, the single most terrifying, terrible, painful, shocking, awful thing that can possibly happen to a human being (again, referring to human beings here) in their entire life? Okay, probably second to having it the other way round and losing a child that way (hey everyone, let's make fun of John Travolta! His son died! Isn't that hilarious? Idiots). But a close second. By a wide margin ahead of the third, which would probably be the loss of a spouse, but that's already debatable.

And now you even dare talking about them? Gossiping about them? Sullying their names with your dirty, worthless mouths? I would appeal to your respect and conscience, but you obviously do not possess either. I would call to dignity and humanity, but you probably don't even know what that means. You - all the countless society reports and reporters, star magazines and gossip channels, as well as what became of most newscasts - have been pushing the borders of the tolerable for years now. I can't tell you exactly when you overstepped it, but right now, you're clearly beyond it, by far and wide. Just shut up. Shut the fuck up and go to hell. And leave the children alone!

Yes, it's back

The "ohmigawd, I want to get home / done with work and log into the game" feeling. Again displacing the "ow, is it 8 already...?" feeling. And that was, basically, the whole point. See you in-game!

The character (ability) development

In an RPG/MMORPG/MMOG your character usually starts at level 1 with only very few abilities, and some time later reaches the level cap, at which point it possesses a whole multitude of those. In some systems abilities are not only tied to character level (or any measure of progression), but are found, earned or acquired from drops, quests or talents/traits; however, the general notion is: you start with few, you end up with lots. Still, there are different ways to get from A to B, and today I'd like to compare two, as I have become aware recently, radically different approaches.

World of Warcraft. Of course. My Warrior is a level 28 now. Let's have a look at the gameplay. At this point, my choice of offensive skills is very limited (and before anyone wonders, yes, the Warrior is a very offensive-minded class). Without being improved by specific talents, most of them are rather weak, highly conditional or simply inefficient. As an example, I know I'll get the Slam ability at level 30 - but without either a talent deep down the Arms tree or another talent even deeper down the Fury tree, to use it not only isn't beneficial, it's actually detrimental to your damage output. Strictly speaking, in a regular single-target fight, I have 2-3 skills for doing damage, and 2-3 skills for tanking. They overlap for a total of 4; mostly just a shift in priorities.
At the same time, though, I already have lots of "tricky" abilities, that are there not just for the sake of purely dealing damage. I can strengthen the attacks of all nearby fellows, weaken the attacks of all nearby foes or fear them into running away, attract several enemies at once with damage or shouts, hamstring, disarm, shield wall, shield block and so on. Not everything is a "regular single-target fight", after all - the most exciting things are not. So, it's far from being dull, although the "daily grind" part isn't at its most exciting either.
So, what's the perspectives? The perspectives are rather friendly, but only mid- to long-term. In either spec, the actual and typical style of play doesn't really enter until you get down the talent tree a good bit. Which is, I think, definitely a good thing, because that really makes the different specs radically different, rather than slightly coloured flavours of one and the same thing. On the flip side, however, it means I'll have to stick to my 3-skill-rotations until about level 50. From what I understand, and have researched so far, it's pretty much the same for most if not all classes and specs. Is this bad? Actually, no. It means there will be significant development and evolution of the things I can do and how I can do them all the way to the golden 80. And then, I'll rightly sit down and say "okay, and now, let's optimize this!" - which is a good thing, because I like it.

LotRO. Here, the opposite approach. Taking the example of the Champion (surprise!), when you reach level 20 and get your Relentless Strike, it's your seventh or eighth attack skill. That's certainly some variety early on. It is, however, also pretty much the last significant attack skill you ever get. For the next 40 levels you will be gifted mostly with "utility" - the stuff you were not bothered with in the beginning. You learn to clobber and hamstring, to self-heal and recover power; you get short-duration self-buffs and a short-duration AoE-stun; a few upgrades on your original skills. Things like that.
Basically, the class is done and deployed at level 20. After that, it's just "rounding out the edges". The way you fight will not significantly change thereafter. Or, well, it might, but it will be due to your having learned or discovered something new, rather than your character having done that. It's maybe a little radical in the case of the Champion, but the trend is strong and omnipresent: lots of class-defining abilities up front, rounding out edges and potentially adding versatility later.
Is this bad? Not really, either. There is something to be said about giving people things to play with early on, letting them feel the class and where it's going, how it's going to be, right away. But it also turns the levelling process a little bit anti-climatic, when you keep expecting some new awesome skill or ability, but all you get are things you won't use more than once a week. I guess it was also a reason, why I'd invariably lose interest in an alt somewhere around the mid-twenties latest - when all is set and learned and all that changes from there on is the colour of the icons.

To sum it up: WoW will withhold crucial rotation skills or the ability to efficiently use them from you until late in the game, while feeding you complementary abilities along the entire path. LotRO will let you have your rotation right away to enjoy and have fun with, at the price of reducing later gains to being mostly supplemental. Both approaches have their pros and cons.

The MMO Love Affair

Came across this entry today and was left to giggle nervously.

However. My name is Rem, and I'm a Night-Elf Warrior! What's your game!?

Area of Effect

Reading the Mage Q&A last week I couldn't help but stop at this point and wag a finger in the air in a silent expression of agreement:

Ghostcrawler: We used to call the mage the master of AoE damage, but we’ve since decided that’s not a great niche for anyone. The “AoE class” feels mandatory in situations where you do have large crowds of enemies to contend with, but then the AoE class gets bored when everyone else is maximizing their single-target damage on a boss.

How long have I been preaching this, or at least something very similar, on the subject of the champion class in LotRO? How long have I been pointing out, that the ability to totally destroy X trash-goblins at once can't be regarded even remotely crucial? How long have I been shaking my head at the "kings of AoE" notion, because it's a trait that tends to become less relevant, the more challenging an encounter gets (hint: when "pull together and nuke" is a valid strategy, the encounter can be safely classed as "trivial")? How much effort did I put into streamlining my skill rotation and gear to reach for unexpected levels of single-target DPS-output (all your right-side slugs are belong to me!)? How disappointing was it, when starting with MoM champs were more and more pigeonholed into a niche only justified by the lacklustre content? I'll tell you: so disappointing, that I eventually quit the game (although that was caused by many, many reasons, not only this one).

See, I know Blizzard has their own track of questionable design decisions. But quotes like the above make me hope, that these guys at least understand what this thing is they're working on. That, and when you move to a new garden, you always want the grass to appear greener than in the old one *grins*

Growing up

... is when you don't turn your alarm clock on in case you need to get up early, but turn it off in case you don't.