MMOs: Consequences of Choice.

[Part of my MMO Design Folder]
 Often the most important choices you make in an MMO are your first few, when creating your character. This is because you'll have to live with that decision or start all over if you don't like it. Afterwards at best we only get the illusion of choice where all actions will lead to the same result anyway or worse, there is only one path forward as if we are actors following the script in a play. As a result the choices you do -in- the game are of little consequence. This is an area that needs improvement. However, I actually think the problem is more of a technical limitation than a design one.

Currently when you make any choice worth remembering, something is saved against your character, probably a little string of numbers, so that the game knows what you did / have done and can do something "different" for you (consequence) at specific parts of the game - usually in story instances separated from the open world, as to not wreck or spoil anyone else's experience. I say we move some of those consequences back to the open zones and this will in turn make an otherwise static experience something more lively. 

To start, I'd introduce NPC faction ratings, a sort of invisible "like-ability meter", which is what the Elder Scrolls series runs on. This more than just Horde/Alliance. No, it would need to be extensive. Each group, each town, each society and in some cases each individual NPC should have a hidden rating of how they percieve each player. This extends to groups of what other people would deem as monsters (like, bears of this forest, bears of that forest, etc). Database wise this is probably nightmarish, but it's still just a bunch of numbers. By doing this you could have the following example play out:

Bob the mercenary did a job for Town C who wanted him to raid a goods caravan between Town A and Town B. After returning the goods his rating in Town C improves, but Town A and B dislike him more (especially if he let anyone escape). Maybe Bob kept the goods for himself (didn't hand it in within time limit) which means Town C also dislikes him. Maybe Bob is happy living with the wolves in the white forest who he feeds and hence they like him now, but must remember to be wary of the wolves in the nearby black forest since they still don't like him.

Groups that favor you will trade for better prices and possibly won't attack you, while groups that dislike you probably will trade only select goods and not give you more rewarding quests. Groups that hate you will most likely attack you on sight, forget about trading. They may even send bounty hunters to come get you. What happens if one person in the party is wanted but the rest aren't? Well, if they attack an otherwise non-hostile NPC (non-hostile to them) their rating would drop really fast. That rating should not decay on its own. Players must actively do something to alter it.

Town NPCs should also be killable, and should be the target of quests too. That blacksmith who broke your armor? You can kill him. Or rob him. Or be paid to execute him. Or kidnap his daughter. Same goes for the morally ambiguous wizard in that dark tower. How would this work though? Easy! All shops or NPCs of interest are within solo instanced zones. A house, a room, a tent, whatever. Mabinogi even forgoes this, just having some people see particular NPCs while others cannot.

Freddy may have killed the blacksmith, so when he goes in the shop is empty, or can't go in at all. Bob who is in Freddy's party can still enter, since the blacksmith is alive for him. Sure, Freddy can get Bob to buy and repair stuff for him at the said Blacksmith, but that's extra maintenance and would get annoying. Also, Bob might then run off with Freddy's gear. That's the price of his choice. Not to say that Freddy is a crazed murdering bastard. Maybe Freddy simply took a quest to slaughter that entire town becauase they were cannibals.

That moral shade of grey is important, as is giving perspective from all sides. Never mind if the players don't look for all sides of the story, but make sure it is there if they choose to make an informed decision. That's really what it should be about. Let them earn their heroism, let them own their decisions and not be railroaded down the path which is convenient for "the story". Done properly I believe this system will have everyone living their own story already anyway.

150 Shades of Grey? That's probably overkill.

Mabi improving Guildwars 2

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

For some reason GW2 no longer lets me log on to their forum... I wonder why. Anyway, I feel that they can take a leaf out of Mabinogi on ways to improve the game. Recently they've been adding basic musical instruments into the game which is pretty good, unfortunately they are cash shop items though making them not as accessible to the general public and are a far cry from what you can achieve with the instruments in Mabi. Also I feel they missed out on a good opportunity with those balloon rides being instant teleporters as opposed to actual floating dirigibles that people can fly in, even if they were just "on tracks" to begin with.

Mounts of any sort would be a good addition actually, especially the flying kind. I imagine that would cheapen most jumping puzzles though. "Music and mounts are not needed," I hear you say. True, but they would add another factor to the game. One I think that would be positive, especially when you can do things like this.

They also should put more silly attires in their store, as well as let people fight in "town clothes". If the population of Mabi is anything to go by then at least half the players would prefer to be dressed in cat, cow, or penguin costumes while doing everything from lazily fishing at a stream to fighting giant dragons. Could be an untapped market there! They would also look incredibly cute. :3

Lastly the Living Story in GW2 updates every two weeks with temporary content to generally mixed reviews. Mabinogi also has temporary events  every two weeks that keeps the world "changing" but in addition adds story content in a more permanent fashion in the form of Generation quests. This may simply be possible on how they structured their game though. Sure, it means some NPCs can be seen or not seen based on where people are up to storywise which creates the odd occurence of player A interacting with something player B cannot see (and thrown into instances for story based combat) but on the whole it still works pretty well. If GW2 incorporates this it would certainly lessen the rushed feeling some people are getting at the very least.

Ellen Kieled it! Time to celebrate with the Queen!

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

Kinda glad now that my previous post with "art" incentives was overlooked as Ellen Kiel has emerged the victor in the voting for the Captain's Council seat - thrashing the hopes and desires of all of Evon Gnashblade's supporters (and hopefully their wallets too). Story-wise, unless you were playing either an evil aligned, human hating, or charr loving (beastiality much?) character then you -should- have voted for Kiel. A surprising amount of people decided to vote for Evon without RP consideration. They just wanted the fractal he offered which now will have close to zero chance of coming to fruition thanks to their collective failure. ANet did a good job getting players involved in the election so it will be interesting to see if they can keep it up in the next arc: the Queen's Jubilee.

From what I've seen so far it looks pretty fun inside the Crown Pavillion - lots of things to fight and lots of loot for the taking. Ofcourse the aetherblade pirates are still being a nuisance but aside from the opening ceremony most of their antics are with content outside the city. Haven't explored those yet mainly due to the shineys dropping inside the new zone. Also the solo arena fights, which you can watch/be watched by other players are pretty interesting. I've beaten the first three rounds so far and am hoping to make it all the way to the end!

Definitely going to be a case of this though.

A Tale of your Own

Keen posted an interesting article about MMOs having a story. The short version is they prefer games that don't give them one, like Everquest or UO as opposed to the rise of the "commander" in GW2 for example. To some extent I tend to agree. Sure the first time you run the main plot it's great, but I'm not so enthused about doing it all over and over for my alts (so I haven't, I'm not really an alt heavy user). The good thing, at least in GW2, is you don't have to. There are plenty of other activities to keep you busy, if you so chose. The Living Story is another example of this. The previous release I loved tremendously so I participated a lot, this time around it's not my cup of tea so I just do dailies (if I remember) and log off.

It's a similar case in Neverwinter Online now that I've finished the main quest story and am sitting on level 60. What's left to do other than raise professions? Well, I CAN'T run the skirmishes I missed (all of them) without making an alt, which I think is bad design. I can still go do the dungeons I missed though which is good, and I can still do foundry stuff though I prefer to make quests as the incentive to play them (especially solo) is a bit ... meh. That leaves the "epic" level dungeons. The catch? All the epic level stuff is behind a gear check wall. I'm currently around 4000 points short there to be eligible to run the last dungeon (Castle Never, which has no normal mode. Epic only) which means it's hamster wheel time if I want to reach there.

Guild activities are always fun though!

Now would I rather grind gear score in NWO or do the living story (currently Cut-throat Politics) stuff in GW2? It all comes down to the one that gives me the most sense of progression and fun. In this case neither since I stumbled back into Age of Conan this week with my supposedly "test" character on the wrong (pvp) server. Why? Because things are still new to me and there are some really pretty sights and music, despite people trying to gank me. ^_~

Path of Pirates? I don't think so.

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

I have a little issue with this next living story arc in GW2. The main plot involves chasing a pirate (who killed a pirate during a pirate festival in a pirate city) to their pirate base (dungeon party required) filled with pirates and if you are fast enough can shoot down a pirate airship. Outside that I can go grind pirates in the open world, pirate the pirates hiding in jumping puzzles (all of which I've done before) for their pirate caches or retrace the steps of a sailor (cough pirate cough) who lived in the pirate city which is a hook for the a book ANet are trying to push forward. Most likely about or containing pirates. Oh and the overall reward this time? A mini pirate.

Previously I could see the merit in helping the pirates against the risen threat from Orr, aiding them in rescuing refugees (aka cowards) from the Molten Alliance (and then bashing both them and the refu-cowards at Southsun) and even saving them from an insane supernatural entity that enjoys wearing a flaming pumpkin on his head for some reason. This time it looks like it's just in-fighting amongst a faction I would personally prefer to nuke into non-existence.

Really wondering why ANet decided to make these people "good guys" in the first place, AND give them the main capital (hub) of the world. They don't even pay well for the trouble I go through for them (seriously, 1 gold coin max is insulting) and there's literally no in-game or out of game lore posted by ANet as to how the all got mass redeemed or something other than "band together to face Zhaitan!". Yah well Zhaitan is dead. Officially. That's why the Orr zones were toned down and risen made weaker.

Truce is over criminal scum.

So help the pirates? Not this time. Someone else can go sort it out. It's not like Logan Thackeray (or anyone else) paid ME specifically to identify and catch a murderer. I've got better things to do elsewhere... in other games.

Your reward is Crabs

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

As the "Secret of Southsun" draws to a close I can only speculate on the many questions left unanswered by this living story arc, mainly "WTF was this crap?". With the cowards (ahem, refugees) from the previous storyline relocated into Consortium slave-labour of Southsun Cove all the action was taking place on that not so little island paradise/hell. Quelling riots and running about re-exploring the island for weird flora samples were actually the highlight for me, but really there was not a lot of quest direction given at all so for achievement hunters the best bet was still to go ask Dulfy. A new PvP game called Crab tossing was also introduced where you basically use the young of the highly dangerous local crustaceans as a ball which for me was ok entertainment but got dull really quick since I'm not a PvP sort of guy.

Story-wise there were basically only two main things to do: recapture the sylvari terrorist Canach personally (because the Lionguard and Consortium are completely inept) and escort the contract papers out to a waiting ship, which is a little weird given there was a working asura teleporter right there. Both of those were solo quests which is great, and the second one was actually pretty fun and had a good twist. The first one was quite crap, given that regardless of your class/previous experience in the game - the only thing you needed to be now is a minesweeper. Literally. Canach was on god mode, and the only way to beat him was with his -own- mines. If that doesn't make sense, wait till I tell you about the new Karka Queen Mega-Meta event where the only way to remove her armor is by throwing her own eggs at her. On second thought, I won't bother. It's amazing people are paid to make this stupidity.

His defences are down NOW! Attack quickly before he gets a towel!

I guess the storyline was successful in that it managed to bring people back to the island, but if people are going to voluntarily stay there afterwards despite the terrible wildlife and faecal rewards (an ANet staple as they have a serious aversion to handing out gold, or letting people gain wealth other than from the Trading Post) is another matter as there are easier places to get already. Coming up next, the Dragon Festival in the only city that matters to Anet: Lion's Arch... again. Starting to wonder why they bothered making the other cities to begin with. They could always cycle the location of the festival/events but nope.

Changing the Game

Missing content seems to be a big issue on the GuildWars 2 forums lately with all the "temporary" content that comes and goes so some people are angry that they have to actually make time to play the game or miss out (this is actually common in many MMORPGs). Some have suggested being able to "replay" missed content which is ok I guess, but GW2 doesn't seem designed in lore or in practicallity to handle that so well unlike Mabinogi which caters for it splendidly for main arcs, however even there there are hot-time events and most things only also run for two weeks. Someone likened the experience to watching Game of Thrones, but missing an episode which was then destroyed forever because it is temporary content. My counter was this:

"I can just imagine Rickon Stark (youngest of Eddard’s kids) being annoyed that he can’t take part in the final part of the Baratheon rebellion against the Targaryens because he hadn’t made his character yet when those events took place and now argues with the old gods and the new to make a time loop so that that battle can continue to happen, along side the day to day life at King’s Landing, the numerous weddings, and the battle of the Blackwater at the same time so he can take part in all of them, knowing that no matter what he does it won’t change the outcome but he doesn’t care. At least this way he gets to experience it. Reading about it or being told about it afterwards isn’t good enough you see. He has to live it."

That's the sort of the logic that people who want replayable content to follow, and in some cases it simply just doesn't work. Then ofcourse there's the content which no one would replay anyway - I'm specifically talking about their latest release involving a solo enemy dungeon where instead of being able to use all those skills the rest of the game was encouraging you to get better at, you need to pickup an "everyman" tool to defeat him with gimmicks regardless of who your character is. When you alter the game in such a way, it should always be "more fun" than the standard. The Super Adventure Box did it. Hell even Bloodrayne did it in one level instead of slicing and draining everyone dead she was in a nazi-mecha (though the video poster disagrees with it being "fun"). :P

To be fair, there's not a lot Bloodrayne can't do.

One thing GW2 and Mabinogi have going for them though is that they clearly state what and when content is going to appear/vanish. As a contrast Age of Conan celebrated it's fifth year anniversary by having five days of giant bosses attacking random parts of the world. They didn't say where or when. I logged in to see if I could find them and the short answer was nope. I wouldn't have even known I missed anything if they didn't put the announcement up. Did it matter in the overall scheme of things? Not really.

Meanwhile in Neverwinter, where most of my time is spent creating my campaign in the foundry (only like 5% done >.<), my character just logs in for the shortest amounts of time to pray and send his mercs on missions. Both of those actually generate a bit of XP and some coin which I find interesting, given that I'm not actually "playing" the game. Ofcourse I was slightly surprised then to learn that I had out levelled some instanced quests that I was waiting on my guild to do, and could no longer participate in them. Odd given that all the foundry quests can already adjust to party level that their main content doesn't but it isn't really a big deal though because I like the thought that my dude's too busy to handle every little problem that occurs and that he wisely lets others take care of garbage that's unworthy of his time. If only more people viewed their MMORPGs the same way, maybe there'd be less complaints about missing content.

As a last bit of wisdom/common-sense: Real life > In Game. There's no amount of MMORPG gold, exp, monster slaying glory that can compete with experiences in real life. Just remember that kiddos! ;)

Deal Breaker: Melted Alliance

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

And so with a large and quite badly planned explosion that resulted in multiple casualties of dredge, flame legion, and all of their captives, ArenaNet's "Flame & Frost" chapter of the Living Story drew to a close, leaving us with some ugly gauntlets, a few questions, and a pretty resounding "meh". The finale was a large underground weapons facility which sounds fun, except you can only go in with 5 people since it is a dungeon instance and comes complete with the trapings of numerous overpowered baddies and random traps. Also, all the trouble the molten crew took with getting captives was simply so they could mine stuff and eventually have ridiculous weapons tested on them. The silly bad guys didn't know what happens when you squish or burn someone apparently. Still it was ok, and was not as annoying as getting into and through Arah to shoot a lame (literally) dragon. My favourite bad guy was also in there - the dredge weapons tester miniboss. Why? Because he is funny, doesn't kill outright and when he showed up personally dies in one hit. In fact I think he is the only "standard" mob in the whole place with everything else being veterans or better. Kinda sad that of all the things, HE was the main highlight for me after all those months.

Though the bosses were entertaining too, in a dodge or die kinda way.

As everyone suspected there's a puppeteer pulling their strings (a female one at that), still in the shadows. We'll probably run into her later in the next story arc in Southsun Cove. Would be cool if it was Riel though. With the Super Adventure Box now closed and undergoing "upgrades" it seems I have little reason to hang around here again. Maybe I shouldn't be so negative on ANet's quest building team and try find out just how hard it is to make one on my own. Apparently that's one of the features of this other MMO called Neverwinter...

Flame, Frost and Donkey Kong

Part of my Explorer of Tyria journal - you can find the rest here!

ArenaNet has been pushing out its Living Story the past few months with all the pace of a sun-bathing glacier. Basically the proud Norn and warlike Charr are getting their butts kicked by a Dredge and Flame Legion alliance (aka "the Molten Alliance") so badly that they are mostly withdrawing not just to their capitals, but all the way to the karka infested isle of Southsun Cove. Well, supposedly. Sure, the molten dudes are popping out from magic portals and APCs here and there but there are still lots of towns out there that haven't noticed this supposed on-coming force; Butcher's Block is still in endless party mode and that place up in Wayfarer Foothills where they cook wurm eggs and have dozens of snoozing patrons hasn't changed one bit. Maybe they're just too drunk to notice anything wrong? Seems the only people actually affected come from previously unknown areas and I suspect part of the reason they are so pathetically weak is due to their unnatural clumsiness.

Or maybe they were also just drunk?

With their meager possessions (being refugees) lots of them still manage to "misplace" them along the various routes they took to run away while defacating themselves like the cowards they are. One of the tasks given to the COMMANDER OF THE FIRE-TRUCKING PACT is to go poke the mounds of dirt and feces left behind by these losers to retrieve them. Yep. For some reason this is one of the "highlight" activities of this story arc. Shovelling shit. Thanks ANet. As for the molten alliance themselves there are hints laying about in another scavenger type quest that indicate it's not Primordus driving these two armies together but something else. Popular theory is it is the Consortium, the competitors of the Black Lion Trading group. Their previous actions included happy things like letting the karka invade the mainland and opening the irritating and unstable fractal dungeon which now requires eternal vigilance lest it destroy reality. Far as I'm concerned all these pirate scum should die. May as well wipe out the barbaric Charr and soulless Sylvari while I'm at it too.

What's that? The Asura? No I love those little goblins, especially since part of the April release was the Super Adventure Box! Personally I feel this is ANet's best content since the Mad King (I did miss Wintersday so maybe that one was good too) which is ironic given all of its 8-bit Mario-ness. There's definitely a certain charm in the nostalgia, and for someone who absolutely dislikes the dungeons in this game I find the Super Adventure box to be awesome. No idea why, but it's a strong enough reason for me to get back into GW2 for a bit. Hopefully it sticks around and doesn't vanish at the end of April like ANet has said, because if it did - they really would be April fools.

Belated Happy Easter too! :)