Why PvP must be regulated in modern MMO’s

With all the controversy in the player community over the new PvP Fugitive system, I’d like to add the input of a 10 year veteran to the MMO/PVP community.

In every MMO I’ve played, I’ve played on a PvP server because I am that type of player. From UO to EQ, DAoC, SB, Eve (I like 0.0 space :))..and yes even WoW. I’ve pvped in nearly every major MMO to date.

From years of experience, I can tell you that PVP Must be moderated by game mechanisms to keep the pvp system alive.

Now, although I’m opposed to PVP regulation of any kind, I do see its use in today’s MMO community.

The majority of players who makeup the community for games such as AoC are NOT PvP’ers by nature. In my research, I’ve found that hardcore PvPers make up a small percentage of player-base.

The majority of players are there to advance their character, get gear/cash and socialize. They like to PvP when they want to, or sometimes like World PVP for the danger.

These people keep the MMO alive. When these non-PvP centered players leave a game en-mass, it fails. Shadowbane and the DAoC PvP servers are a prime example of what happens when un-mitigated PvP is the game’s policy.

The majority of MMO players do not like being griefed, they don’t like being interrupted in the middle of a quest or raid, etc. Me, personally, I get pissed when I die in PVP, but I chalk it up to the fact I live on a PvP server, and I turn my anger into determination to exact revenge on the person. Not everyone is like this.

So you may ask yourself, how can I tell a PvPer from a non PvPer on a PVP server? Simple.. If you kill this person, and they send you hate mail/flames via /tell, you have killed a non-PvPer. People who play on PvP servers because they enjoy it will rarely bitch at you for killing them, even if you grief them. We know it just comes with the territory, and we make adjustments for that.

To validate my point, I’ll give you an example of the first instance of MMO PvP mitigation. Ultima Online was an awesome game for many years, and most of the people who played the game were computer geeks. Face it, UO started in the 90’s and was in its prime then. The people who played it were all D&D, or TextMUD veterans who liked the realistic environment of a world where you could kill anyone, anywhere. Just like real medieval life.

Fast forward a few years, what happened to UO once it became main stream? Normal people, i.e. people who had never been into the TextMUD or D&D seen start taking interest in this game.. and there are ALOT of them. They dislike the fact that they can be killed at anytime while mining, or hunting Wyrms or Lichs. So, Origin enacts the Facet system to please both sides of the community. UO had a PVP consequence system from the start.. kill someone and you get flagged grey for x amount of time, NPCs wont talk to you, and guards can be called on you. Also players can attack you in cities. Eventually, you become a murderer (flagged Red). You are KoS everywhere and people like to hunt you down.

Facets came into play, and now all the Red players are forced into the Felucca Facet, and all non-PvP people stay in Trammel. UO actually gained alot of strength after this system was enacted, because more normal players played the game.

Fast forward to Dark Ages of Camelot. Great game, and I believe the first MMO to utilize instanced dungeons and PvP battleground areas combined with elements of large-scale pvp battle. PvP server population was extremely high until the game got mainstream winds and when new MMO players were confronted with the reality of 24/7 un-mitigated PVP, they moved to blue servers. The PvP server population went so low they merged the servers together.

Move on to Shadowbane. Huge hype, alot of anticipation in the MMO community and it was very popular at first. Although Shadowbane failed due to more issues than just the PvP system, I believe the PvP had a large part to due with people’s intolerance for bugs and server issues. People realized they didn’t want to be ganked or robbed at any given time while camping a mob for a Discipline Rune, or while completing quests.

Come to modern day World of Warcraft. Love it or hate it, WoW is an extremely successful game. It combines alot of elements of modern MMO’s in a very good way. The WoW Battleground system is extremely popular in the game, as it allows players to PvP at their convenience. Also, the PvP servers in WoW are a bit.. lame for my tastes, but they run well with high populations. The system of Horde vs. Alliance helps to mitigate griefing and rampant PvP on these servers because it provides a system of checks and balances. And once again, even if you hate WoW you must admit it works.. 7million+ monthly subscribers world wide, last time I looked.. thats saying something.

This brings me to another point. World of Warcraft has brought the MMO to front of the media. It is because of WoW that the MMO industry is booming again and allows games like AoC to be developed and marketed effectively.

Also, you must remember that alot of people playing AoC are probably WoW veterans, and WoW may have been their first MMO experience.

Now we come to Age of Conan. So far, seems like a great game with a ton of potential for the future if it is tweaked right. Its doing a great job of providing all the fun elements of an MMO, even on the PvP servers. I think a fugitive system is the right direction for the PvP servers because it provides a safety net for those players who may play on a PvP server, but may not be totally committed PvP’ers. Having this system in place, if done correctly, will not ruin the game, but I think provide the PvP servers with more strength.

You PvP’ers may hate Carebears, I know I do, but face the facts.. they’re growing and they’re here to stay, and unless we can bring these players into the PvP realm and have them realize that it is enjoyable to be in World-PvP, us Hardcore-PVPers will eventually be extinct in the MMO realm. The only way to accomplish this is by providing them a gentle pillow to fall on in a game based on PvP combat.. that Pillow is the fugitive system (hopefully).

The following excerpt is from a post on Massively that details the status of a fix for this bug.

A few weeks back our own Adrian Bott took a close look at a very … unique … bug in Age of Conan. It seems that differing animation cycles in the game have resulted in an unforseen side effect: female avatars do less damage then male ones. At the time, the Funcom developers said they’d let us know as soon as they could about a fix. Today they let us know, but the news is mixed. The good news is that ’straight damage’ (what they call white damage) has been fixed. Simple autoattack routines use few animations and they’ve all been fixed and pushed to the live servers.

Too funny. What retarded shit will Age of Conan do next? Stay tuned to find out!

I’m not sure what game he was talking about at the time, but player vs player (PvP) interaction and combat is the best end-game possible for an MMO because it is always different and always smarter than a scripted and repetitive PvE encounter.

Maybe someday the PvPers will outnumber the PvEers and we’ll end up with a PvP game as entertaining as Ultima Online was when it first came out.

PVP IS the game by Hedron

THE GAME WILL DIE!

What you, and many others seeking to “balance” pvp in this game by limiting it fail to connect with (IMO) is that PVP IS the game.

The designers don’t seem to know this yet, and the newbie players don’t seem to know this yet. But I guarantee you it’s true.

When you’re maxxed, and at the top of the game, you WILL be bored by fighting the game. Right now, everyone is complaining about PVP because they just want to be left alone in peace to level up so they can max, and they don’t want to loose hard earned stuff to cheap kills. That’s FINE. But if your solution to allowing people to max without undue hassle makes it so that AFTER you max, PVP is still undesirable, then this game will DIE.

And NO, increasing the level cap is NOT the solution to keeping the game fun. When you’re at 50, you’re not going to want someone to push reset so that you have to climb another 25 levels doing the same boring crap you did to get to 50. You will have earned being king of the world, and you’ll like it that way. Maybe 2 years after you max, you’ll want more levels. Not before. What you’ll want to do as a 50th level player is fight other people, role play, help others, found a guild. And you’ll LOVE your time in game doing these things. Hell, you may even voluntarily start a new character and max it, but you’ll always have your level 50 stud to go back to, and you’ll love that fact.

But the problem with limiting PVP in ANY way is that everything about the game becomes less amusing if you can’t at level 50 just go out and fight some damn battles! Who wants to found a guild and fight a war with it, or help a group of newbies, or go on a killing rampage is the results of any of those things will be a significant, time consuming game set back. DON’T WE WANT TO HAVE FUN HERE?

Limit PVP and this game will die.

It’s a fact. Write it down so that if/when it happens, I can say I told you so way back when.

Everyone seems to think that the solution to solving PKs is to make PKing mean more, be more intense, etc. WRONG. The solution is to make it mean LESS! Take the profit motive out, take the loss of items out, and voila… pvp becomse a FUN aspect of the game rather than a chore.

Remember this is a game! What we all want to be able to do is to have fun and make progress. The reason that PVP impedes that right now is because it results in the loss of significant items, and doesn’t involve enough skill. I don’t want to play pass-the-potato with every good item on the server! I want to square off against people and fight them in a level playing field, and earn and lose BRAGGING RIGHTS! And if I lose, I want to get up and do it again. I want to do it in the context of my guild’s role play, and I want to do it against people I know and who know me within the community formed by the game.

WHY DON’T PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THIS? MAKING DEATH INTENSE MEANS MAKING PEOPLE PISSED OFF AT THE GAME. IT MEANS MAKING PEOPLE PISSED OFF AT OTHER PLAYERS. IT MEANS MAKING PEOPLE AFRAID TO PLAY. And it’s annoying. So stop it.

Hedron
The False Prophet
KAAOS

I’m sure it will be just as Free For All as the actual server is.

The new site and forums can be found at http://www.deathwhisper.net.

Due to the amount of players, the kiddie mentality of most of those players, the chat systems, the fragmentation of community, and some game design components… we have almost totally lost the in game (and to some extent, the out of game) aspect of trash talking.

The current state of trash talking is World of Warcraft or Age of Conan is someone doing a /spit emote on a corpse or /saying ‘Haha pwned.’ Really, it is a sad state of affairs.

What do most of these games have in common?

1. Lack of community in game
2. Lack of centralized forum or meeting place out of game
3. Weak chat interface
4. Game play moves too fast

Since the game play is never going to get slower, the real improvements need to be made around community building — something that has been in a state of decline since the days of the old Neverwinter Nights.

In game
The in game experience can be improved with a robust and easy to use chat system that lets players communicate without jumping through hurdles.

Out of game
The out of game experience can be improved by creating a community forum that fosters trash talking and inter-guild and inter-player communications (and does not have the sheer amount of drivel and dumbness that something like the WoW forums has). This is extremely difficult because of the need for moderation on the game owner’s side and the factionization of current PvP guilds (everyone has their own site and own forums).

Personally, only 50-60% of the fun comes from actually winning or losing in PvP. For me, the rest comes from the trash talk and storytelling that these battles would/could lead to… if there was a proper forum for it.

What’s even better is that you not only get rewarded for playing more than other people, but you get rewarded for such skillful things like having a large guild, having an active account (whether you log in or not - sweet!), having a battlekeep, and by winning PvP mini games.

This seems a little concerning to most of our guild… especially since the game was just released and has a slew of release issues.

One of our affiliates, Sordee, probably summed it up the best with:

They are gonna try and throw everything and the kitchen sink at this game in the next six months in hopes of creating a lasting community/game before WotLK and Warhammer Online come around.

Funcom Post about Powerpoints:

In an effort to reward those investing time and effort into Age of Conan, thus allowing Funcom to put even more resources into adding and improving upon the game, we are now introducing a points system that will give you tons of exclusive benefits!

Funcom is now introducing the concept of Powerpoints. These can be spent on various different exclusive benefits, services and items! Powerpoints are generated over time in various different ways, as detailed later.

Let’s first take a look at what these Powerpoints can get you:

* You can buy Powerfeats – exclusive feats that can buff your character and provide you with new and very powerful spells and abilities!
* You can take gathered pearls and turn them into Powerpearls. These can be put into weapons and armor to make them even more powerful!
* You can obtain special offers that we will put into the game regularly, but only if you have enough Powerpoints! This can be anything from mounts to spells!
* You can convert Powerpoints into so-called rested experience, effectively allowing you to level up faster than you would otherwise!
* You can purchase exclusive weapons, armor, potions, recipes, ingredients, and other times using a mix of ordinary gold and Powerpoints.

The good thing is that Powerpoints are retroactively applied to new characters. So points you have generated will also befall new characters you make, making it easier to level up and play with new characters. This is simply to improve replayability for you.

So how can you acquire Powerpoints? Here are some of the ways:

Having an active subscription

You will earn one Powerpoint each week for all characters on your account as long as you have an active subscription. You do not have to actually log in and play the game; we will simply reward you for your aid in allowing Funcom to improve Age of Conan.

Having many guild members

Once your guild reaches a high number of members, you will start seeing the benefits. If one hundred unique members log into the guild at least once every week, all members in that guild will be granted one Powerpoint that week. So make sure your guild grows!

By owning a battlekeep

If your guild is lucky enough to own a battlekeep, every member in your guild will receive one Powerpoint every week you have that battlekeep. Of course, holding on to such a keep will prove to be a formidable task, so be sure to protect your property!

Post-level 80 reward system

Okay, so you have reached level 80 and there are no more experience levels to reach. But with the Powerpoint system you will now earn one point each time you were supposed to reach a new level, effectively rewarding you for continuing to develop your character!

By winning PvP mini-games

After having reached level 40, you will get one Powerpoint for every 40th mini-game you win. This is basically a way for us to reward you if you put a lot of effort into partaking in mini-games with other players and, of course, making sure you win as well!

Please keep in mind that these details might change over time as the game grows. We might also choose to include new ways of earning Powerpoints later.

Please note that you can start earning Powerpoints once your free month of play is up, but the actual benefits will not be available in the game until later this year. However, we encourage you to start saving up Powerpoints as soon as possible! When we do launch this service later, you will be at a serious advantage if you have points to spend!

You will start accumulating points once your free month is up, but please note that we have not implemented a tracker in the interface yet. This will appear at the end of June.

Instead, let’s talk about tits. If there’s one thing that Funcom got right when designing the game, it was giving perverted male players the ability to strip their female character to a level of bare-breastedness that surpasses other MMORPGs.

Thanks for adding the funbags, Funcom. We owe you one.

Edit: Hahaha. Just found this post from a week or so ago.

Greetings,

Funcom can confirm that some of the female models in the game have
had the size of their breasts changed. This is due to an unintended change in data that was introduced in an earlier patch, data which controls the so-called morph values associated with character models and the size of their respective body parts. We are working on a fix for this and your breasts should be back to normal soon.

The plastic surgeons of Hyboria apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you,
__________________

Funcom Glen ‘Famine’ Swan
US Community Manager

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.

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

(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