The fabled Weighted Companion Cube from the game Portal.

It’s as accurate as I could get, with the time I had to work with. If it doesn’t explode in the kiln, it will be legendary.

This is a repost of a short article that I wrote back in the late 1990’s.

We all felt that after we lost the NWN game that there would never be another perfect PvP & RP game. If there were to be another “perfect” game, it would need to meet a specific set of requirements, at least in my mind.

Sure, some of the items are a bit out of date, but most still apply. And unfortunately, there hasn’t been a perfect (of even really good) PvP game since back in the day.

It’s too early to tell for Age of Conan, but even now it is lacking in the Level Playing Field / Balance category. And the chat system needs to improve. And the community needs to grow a bit, since the only interactions that take place now are either 1) you getting ganked by someone while you’re questing to try treadmill up to maximum level or 2) someone asking you to join their group so they don’t have to wait for a spawn.

But, at least there is a bit of promise, I guess. But I digress. On to the archived article.

The Perfect Game

In the existence of video games, the great majority of them, have been of some competetive nature, of sorts. Whether it be a fighting game, strategy game, sport game, action game, adventure game, or RPG style game… the one thing that all of these have in common is that it pits players against players in a competetive environment. With that being said, I cannot understand why the main focus of a massive multiplayer game should NOT be combat oriented. The idea of gaining virtual money and virtual real estate, of gaining cool items, and the like, while being a necessary part of the gaming environment, these types of things should NOT be a central focus. Now, that is not to say that roleplay has no part in gaming. In fact, the complete opposite is true, roleplay is essential to gaming. But the nature of this roleplay should not be geared only towards happy trading between people, buying houses, and being fishermen. Instead, one must realize that the whole reason fantasy worlds exist is to teleport the player into a peril fraught world, one where dragons roam free, one where you can slit your neighbor’s throat and no one will care too much, and one where you are constantly in a struggle for survival.

After having said all that, these 10 components are what strike me as the most essential components which would be necessary in creating the perfect game.

I. The Turn-Based Environment

Since combat, struggle, and survival are the key underlying themes to the world, a turn based environment is needed. This environment provides those involved with a small, finite period of time in which they have the ability to think, plan, communicate, and then act. The turn based environment provides for a fair way of giving each person time to think, act, and react. This type of environment eliminates the problems of lag, ping times, bad connections, and quick twitch reflexes (ie, the click-fest which many games have become).

II. Strategical Combat (PvP)

From the turn based environment, strategic PvP will develop (assuming III. IV. and V. have been met). Strategic PvP grows from the ability of each person not having to rely on quick clicking ability, but rather on their wits and tactical skill. Since the world and combat space are a finite space, it becomes like a game of chess, one players moves, the other player reacts, until there is a victor. The victor is the person who showed mastery of the terrain, his weapons, and of being able to out battle his opponent. Strategical combat also requires:

III. Defensive/Counter Attacks

By this I mean that for most (preferrably all) possible attacks, that the opponent has some sort of option (whether he chooses to take it or not is up to him) whereby he could divert or minimize the attack against him. This is a system of balancing powerful attacks with powerful defenses, something which the games of recent have ignored. One cannot hope to have Strategical Combat when an opponent can throw a 2000 points of damage spell that has no chance of being minimized, other than by sheer luck. This system of checks and balances provides for a more strategical environment. Again, in chess, each pieces has its strengths, each piece has its weaknesses. Other pieces exploit these weaknesses, or divert their strengths.

IV. Attainable Peaks (Levels)

First, there must be a set limit to how high of a level one can attain. Second, the highest levels must be attainable in a reasonable amount of time. Only when the players have peaked out in the tedium of their character’s level can the above mentioned combat take place.

V. The Level Playing Field

Since everyone will be able to reach their maximum level without years of playing, and assuming that III. is taken into account, everyone will be on a more or less level field. Balance will exist because of III. and IV. thus making the combat meaningful. This leads to the next key factor:

VI. The Drive for Power and Respect

Whereas in recent games (as people have mentioned recently on this board) the drive behind the players was to acquire money, equipment or other “material” possessions, this, in fact, is detrimental to the gaming environment. This promotes random acts of killing and only random acts of killing. The drive for loot destroys the hopes of the strategic combat. Instead of this drive for loot, it is important that the notion of power, skill, and respect be part of the environment. Organized events (combat oriented, guild oriented, problem solving events, etc) are a means to producing a heirarchy amongst the various guilds and players. The drive should be to become the best and most respected, not to become the richest.

VII. Roleplay

Sprouting from the turn based gaming environment, roleplay can flourish. Since players don’t need to worry about being jumped as they sit at a zone gate and don’t need to worry about getting the “click, click, click” death of UO and EQ. Instead, should a combat situation occur, since the combat is turn based, the encounter can be roleplayed instead of having to react and flee or whatever. Also, aside from the combat based roleplay, general roleplay is also necessary. This roleply can be largely based on VI. and the power of the different guilds and respect that has been awarded to the prominent players. Roleplay also helps the community grow.

VIII. A Central Messaging System

Important to the development of VI. and VII. and the community, there needs to be a centralized message board system. This is key for outside the game roleplaying, It is important that everyone knows where to find out about the other guilds, their goings on, their players, and it is a good place for in game events to be developed and discussed.

IX. A Quality Chat Engine

The chat engine must be exemplary. There need not be any shout commands or ooc commands that broadcast to the whole world, but there needs to be private messages and an easy to read and contribute to chat window/engine. The chat is important to both roleplay and pvp. PvP, like roleplay, requires communication. Without communication, the game loses a part of it’s strategy and it also loses part of it’s community. With a chat engine like ultima online’s, the community can never develop.

X. Community Events (Quests)

The community of the game needs to be developed. Many of these factors contribute to the development of the aforementioned community. As the community develops, it is possible to have meaningful events in the game, quests, and other adventures. Guild on guild combat, team combat, pvp ladders, and the like are all a part of this and are all necessary for the game to be the ideal game. NPCs and AI only offer so much challenge and get quite boring very quickly. With players becoming a major factor in the game, and with the communal heirarchy developing and constantly being challenged and rewritten, this allows for the game to be complete. It now has the ideal combat and the ideal community and thus, it is the ideal game.

PvP, Roleplay, and Community need to develop in the proper way, or the game will not be ideal, and will flop. All three are important and all three are interrelated. None can be sacrificed, all must be present.

Kal Mirage
AGM of KAAOS

This is a repost of an article written by Hedron from the late 1990s — probably 1997-1998. It used to be available on his website False Prophecies, but he’s a slacker and let that domain and site die.

(Note: Blockquote is a bit fucked up right now, so it will look like in line text.  Eventually, I’ll fix this.)

Six Circles of the Adept Game Player by Hedron

What’s My Point

• 1. Encourage players in the early parts of the cycle to advance through to the later parts
  2. Help the advanced players to clearly understand that there IS a cycle of game playing, and that beginning players need time to develop to the point where they can participate at the high level that the advanced players want to play at. Ultima is a YOUNG game, with young players (in a game-hours played sense), and because of this it’s unavoidable that until the community for this game matures, the high-level interaction of the 6th Circle game players is going to be rare.
  3. I’m hoping there’s an outside chance that OSI, and other MMORGP designers will read this, and pick up a little insight into the few aspects of gaming that they might not have already thought of. It’s CRUCIAL that game designers understand that they should be designing the game and all its updates around making the 5th and 6th circles of play better. ALL aspects of those circles. Including PVP improvements, chat improvements, better boards, and role play environments. Maybe they already know this stuff, and just have too much work to do on the basics to worry about it, but if they don’t, then I’m hoping they read this.

I’ve been thinking about writing this document for some time, but never seemed to get around to it. I have been watching the recent exodus of experienced players from the game, however, and it has really spurred the urge for me to put this together to possibly stop the good players from leaving.

There’s definitely a large number of problems with Ultima Online. That’s clear. But for as many disappointments as the bugs cause, I see more people walking away disgusted because of their interaction with other players. What strikes me about this is that the people involved just don’t see the whole cycle. They don’t understand how and why the players play the way they do, and because of that they don’t see how the current behavior of most of the UO players can ever lead to the kind of gaming experience they’re looking for.

Even beyond that, I think there are a large number of players who don’t understand what the best aspects are of a role playing multi-player game. I see lots of people playing UO exactly like it’s a single player game. They’re exploring the challenges of NPCs and stat building, finishing that part of the cycle, getting bored, and moving on.

So what I’ve written is a description of the “Circles” of game playing. The better you are, the higher your circle.

By doing this I’m hoping to:

The good news is, if you wait for it, it will come (especially given OSI’s willingness to constantly update the game to make sure the environment encourages this).

The information below is based on real observations of the cycle of game play for hundreds of players. It’s not something I invented, it’s something I have experienced myself, and watched others experience it. The observations I’m making come from a long history of playing online games, and/or participating in online communities. In some way shape or form, I’ve been hanging with people online since around 1986, beginning with pre-internet (or at least pre publicly used, web based internet) local 6 person chat rooms and BBSes, up through services like AOL, through online games, out onto the internet, etc. Not that I’m particularly interested in boring you with my “credentials”, but I think it’s important to know that I’ve seen a lot of this shit, and that I’m not just guessing about how it works. For over 10 years, one way or another, I’ve been watching people interact online. In terms of player interactive games, I’ve played Diablo, MageStorm, Doom (I&II), Duke Nuk’em, Quake, War Craft, War Craft 2, Starcraft, Solaria, Everquest, dabbled in some MUDs and probably most importantly, a graphical MRPG game called Neverwinter Nights based on AD&D rules that allowed 500 or so players on at once for over 3 years. Offline, I’ve played D&D, AD&D, Magic: The Gathering, and off-line computer games.

For whatever it’s worth, here’s what I’ve seen. (I’ve tried to keep this main document streamlined to provide a relatively quick read on my main point - the cycle of game maturity. There’s a ton of good detail on each section that I’m not providing here, but my intention is over time to write more sections, and hyperlink to them from this document. If you wanna get deep into it, you can follow those, if not, just breeze this top layer).

Game Maturity

Most players move through a hierarchy of playing, advancing through states of maturity as characters and players in the game. I don’t mean maturity in the sense of real world adult sensibilities, I just mean in terms of fully developed game skills, knowledge, and characters. The point of writing this up is this: think about where you’re at in this cycle, think about where the people that you’re playing with are at in this cycle, and think about what the over-all effect on the gaming experience will be in Ultima once enough people have been around long enough to make it through these stages.

That’s the whole key. The highest forms of play are in the upper stages. The player base has not had time to reach them on a general level, which means that finding people that are high enough up the circles to play with is tough.. (Pursuit of the lower circles often leads to what some players consider “power” playing and that some call “abusive”.)

(Also, worth mentioning is the fact that some of us out there may not have even tried to go through each of these Circles in Ultima. Players like me come from other environments where we already did this, so we know what type of character and play style we like. As a result, we make a b-line for that niche, without stopping in the other circles. You may recognize yourself in this category.)

The First Circle - Survival

When players first start the game, they’re newbies. Their main concern is acquiring enough stats, skills, money, weapons, armor, etc. just to survive. They want to do things in the game without risking death at every turn.

The Second Circle - Competence

Once you’re starting to get your stuff together, you’re less worried about just staying alive, and more into developing a higher level of competence. You’re rolling through lower-level creatures, and common challenges, beating them, and gaining momentum. Game play finally starts to feel a little “fun”.

The Third Circle - Beat the Game / Excel

Once you’re pretty good, you start getting determined to be “really” good. You get the best armor, the best magic, the best skills, etc. etc. If you’ve got that, usually you start trying to beat the game. You find the toughest monsters, and baddest dungeons, and take ‘em on in a full charge. Unfortunately, this is also around the time that certain players start finding and exploiting bugs. As part of the urge to beat the game, they beat the hell out of it… by cheating.

The Fourth Circle - Prove your Mastery

Ok, so you’ve got it, the best of everything… so now what? Well, this is a social game. Multi-player games are all about interacting with other real people. So if you want to prove how good you are, you’ve got two choices. People pick whatever is their style, but almost everybody moves into either

1) Helping others (taking bands adventuring, handing out stuff, teaching newbies, etc. Note: this is NOT the same thing as Role Play, that’s covered the 5th Circle) or,

2) Killing others (kill everyone, including those who have no chance at beating you and then taunt them with the fact that you did it. Note: this is Player Killing, it is NOT the same thing as Player versus Player which is covered in the next Circle.)

The Fifth Circle - Seek New Challenges

Now here’s where it gets interesting. And also dangerous for OSI. There’s a limited number of things to do in a game that can be programmed into it. It’s at this point that people have exhausted them. They need something new, and there are only a few options left. The point is that no matter WHAT OSI does, they just can’t program an ever-changing environment that will hold the interest of real people for an indefinite period of time. It can’t be done. It’s not possible.

What can be done is to set up an environment in which people amuse themselves. Once people have used up all the pre-programmed challenges, there’s nothing left but to interact with other people, and that’s what most/all of the Fifth Circle is about. If OSI has designed a game that doesn’t support numbers 1 through 7 (below) very well, then people will head straight for number 8, and UO will die out.

There are a number of options to turn to in the Fifth Circle, and which way you turn is a matter of who you are. Depending on your inclination, you might pick any one of them. When you’ve fully explored the one you pick first, if you’re like most true gamers, you’ll just move on to one of the others. The longer you’ve played, the more accepting you are of ALL of these aspects, because you’ve tried more and more of them, and realize and understand the merits of them.

I’ve tried to list them in the order that most seem to move through them, but it’s fairly likely that the average player will just skip around to whatever holds their interest. The DEGREE to which you explore these is also variable. If you’re not very strategic, you might just barely touch PVP, but then get neck-deep into RP, or visa versa. The bottom line, though is that since all of these items are about interacting with other people (except MAYBE #1), if you don’t have other people to interact with that are exploring the category you’ve chosen, then you don’t have anything. That’s the problem that UO is suffering from right now. Anyway, here they are:

1) Different classes - roll a new guy, start over, and develop him differently. Really get to know the nuances of the advantages and disadvantages of the various character types.

2) PVP (player vs. player)- aaahhh! Now here’s the real beauty. Fighting NPCs is a chore, fighting real people (in the right game environment) is an ART! UO has yet to see ANY of this to my knowledge. All it has is PK (player killing). Simplistic brainless slug fests with no technique or talent. This art will develop. The highest form of this is 1 on 1 (in my opinion anyway, although could change my mind yet). And for those who think that the UO interface precludes this, let me just say that there are a TON of ideas that have not been explored yet. And unlike many other games, if there’s things that make it suck, just get ‘em to change it. Now I agree, bug exploitation for instant kills is a joke. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the ART of PVP. Nothing in this brief paragraph can describe the full scope of PVP, so don’t underestimate it. And the synergy of player versus player with ALL of the other circles is the life-blood of a game IMO.

3) RP (Role Play) - Playing an actual personality/character, whatever your activities are (pk, pvp, guide, helper, whatever) adds a spice and newness to the game like nothing else. In my opinion, if you combine this with #2 above, you’ve reached the pinnacle of game playing.

4) Chat Room - as stupid as it sounds (to me anyway), lots of people get in a game, conquer the basic challenges, make some friends, and then forget it was ever a game. They just hang out and chat with the people they’ve met. I don’t condone this, but nonetheless it’s the last stage for a lot of people. However, my own observation is that the chat interface in UO is pretty bad, so people won’t really chat in this game.

5) Flame Wars / Board RPs - this is something almost undeveloped by OSI, but you can’t overlook it. Where ever there are boards to be had in multi-player games, there’s a class of people who specialize in just verbally taking people apart, and/or posting RP and such. When this is based around actual game events, it becomes very involving. Well worth participating. Again, when tied to a STRATEGIC PVP system in which epic battles occur whose outcomes are based on the real human skill of the participants, then a drama and poignancy to these interactions is added that is not otherwise present.

6) Intrigue / Events / Guilds - Where ever people go they form organizations with purposes. Those orgs compete or conflict, and this is the heart of the political posturing in MPGs. Very cool stuff.

7) Occupations - this is a new one in graphical MPGs. It’s what OSI has created by taking a stab at creating a real economy. I’m not sure how this will work out in the end once things are balanced, but it’s definitely a challenge. Be a merchant, a sailor, a miner for hire, whatever… interesting.

THE BIG SCARY ONE FOR OSI - GO GET A NEW GAME. People get bored. Some have the inclination to get involved in the other seven final challenges, and some don’t. A lot of what determines if people stay with a game is how well the game supports the above 7 items. Programmed challenges NEVER keep people fascinated. You just can’t program an NPC to be smart enough, funny enough, aggressive enough, cool enough, unpredictable enough, etc. to hold a real person’s attention for any length of time. Your average player probably breezes through the first 4 circles inside of 3 to 6 months of play time (depending on how many actual hours they play). Once that’s over, if the game can’t support and support WELL real staying-power playing that the 7 above give, then you might as well stick a fork in it, it’s done.

The Sixth Circle - Zen Game Play, Everything is One

This is the final circle of game play. This is the stage at which a player appreciates all aspects of the Fifth Circle. When you have a world full of the ultimate players, they combines everything above and create a challenging, human interacting, role played world with a wide variety of classes, game play styles, and occupations based around a system of competition that demands skill, thought, reflex, and strategy to compete (whether that be in PVP, role play, intrigue, competitive business, whatever).

You can only reach this circle if the conditions are right. First, you have to be the right type of person. You need to have an attention span, a desire to interact with others, imagination, a love of challenge, and a strategic mind. Second, you have to have the right type of game. The place where you play has to be capable of supporting all of the above elements in an interface that really allows you to explore them all. The extent to which it does NOT support them is directly tied to how soon you basically throw up your arms, conclude that you can never reach the higher circles in this environment, and boogie looking for that next online game.

When you reach this level, it could be with a varying amount of skill in any of the 5th circle challenges. Some people specialize in one or two, and are very light on the others, some are Renaissance people and are well rounded in them all. The key thing is that you recognize all of them and their merits, and are able to integrate yourself into the elite class of characters who play them all without limiting the interaction of any of them.

That means more than the common attitude of “I play my way, you play your way, just leave me alone.” RPers need to realize that RPing in Disney is not what this particular game is about. It’s about RPing in a vicious medieval realm, where death is very real. PKers need to realize that beyond just slaying the helpless, fighting even battles is where it’s at, and that even beyond that, making someone feel like they’re just been destroyed by an evil lord rampaging across the realms is hugely better than feeling like they’ve been destroyed by a 15 year old brat, rampaging across an environment only slightly more sophisticated than a Nintendo game.

And don’t forget, you goodie RPers, PKing isn’t just for evils. There’s nothing wrong with killing other players in the name of good. ;>

Hopefully this was at least semi-interesting, and more to the point, I hope it makes a few people think about why things aren’t just the way they like them right now, and points out that given time, there’s a good chance that will change.

Hedron
The False Prophet
KAAOS - www.kaaos.com

Looks like Age of Conan is all the rage right now. It boosts huge scale guild based combat, as well as Free For All (FFA) PvP.

Sounds like the perfect game for KAAOS since it is supposed to be PvP centric. We’re on the Deathwhisper server with all of the other old school PvP guilds. Should be fun when we get to the end-game.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the game is still basically “in beta.” PvP is pretty silly right now — meaningless and basically just a gankfest of higher level players in lowbie zones or same level players jumping people while fighting mobs. Good stuff.

Only time and the upcoming patches/fixes will be able to tell whether this is a long term home, but for now it is at least something a bit different from World of Warcraft.

More information to come as it becomes available (since I’m only a L30 Ranger newb).

Finally getting around to getting this site set up.

Quick Background
Our guild (KAAOS) has been a PvP presence in a variety of online games for over 15 years. Personally, I have been in the guild since 1995 and have taken part in some ass kicking presences in Neverwinter Nights (old school version on AOL), Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and most recently, Age of Conan.

My plan is for this site to start off as a dumping group for the collective thoughts of our guild in regard to online gaming and PvP.

While it is in its infancy, I will likely be reposting various articles from guild members (Hedron, Azmodion, Tyo, myself, etc.) from years past. Some of them may be outdated, but it’s good shit nonetheless.

With that being said… Welcome and fuck off.