Instead of writing an epic-length comment there, I figured I'd write blog post here.

Master of the two worlds

It's interesting that the comments in the first post worry so much about "split personalities" in today's kids. One of the last few steps in the Monomyth (also known as the Hero's Journey) is the "Master of Two Worlds". This is the part at the end where the hero comes back to the "real world" he or she started in after his adventures in the "other world" (those would be the two worlds). The hero has conquered the challenges of other realm and the lessons learned there give the hero the confidence and competence necessary to survive back in the original world he or she came from.

Now, obviously, not every lesson translates from online to offline, but the idea of a person living in two worlds shouldn't seem so alien. Many of our heroic stories have this as an element.

I'm a two-faced monster

I'm trying not to be too defensive here, because I certainly fit the bill of having a dual existence. Most people reading this only know one side of me, the side I present as "Psychochild". He's the confident (and sometimes even cocky) game designer who has a quick wit and verbose writing style. He's not afraid to leap into a good discussion and present his point of view as somewhat authoritative. He's not afraid to be abrasive, even being an asshole to those who are rude to others.

This contrasts with "Brian", the side few people here really know. He's the introverted, quiet guy that prefers to sit on the side and listen at a get-together instead of being the center of attention. In fact, his most notable characteristic is that he's a great listener. He's not socially suave and often freezes up in unexpected social situations, creating a distinct level of discomfort often associated with dealing with tech geeks and the autistic. Although he's very incredibly smart, he doesn't necessarily show it off. He's quick with a raucous laugh when something funny happens. In contrast to Psychochild, though, he's often wracked with self-doubt and overanalysis of situations and sometimes has an explosive temper when he gets pushed too far.

He also feels weird talking about himself in the third person.

I find the distinction useful as it lets me separate out the two sides of my life and let them live in their respective worlds. A quiet observer doesn't get much appreciation in the online world. A loudmouth, arguing jerk isn't pleasant to hang around with offline. The names people use when talking to me also give me cues about what the person knows about me and what they want. Someone calling me "Psychochild" offline probably only knows me by reputation. Someone calling me "Brian" online, especially if I'm meting out punishment in Meridian 59, might be trying to create a feeling of a connection that isn't there.

Of course, the two worlds aren't entirely separate. I once had dinner with Mark Jacobs at a conference one time and he commented that it was nice to see I wasn't a raging asshole as my online persona might seem to indicate. ;) People who meet me offline are likely to judge me based on my online writing, and I suspect more than a few don't really believe I'm as introverted as I claim. I think that the teenagers who separate face-to-face from texting or Facebook chatting might accept my duality a bit easier than the older people in the audience can.

Life and love on the internet

I got into MUDs in college, which was a huge turning point in my life. This is where I grew a lot as a person, where I learned how to socialize and extrovert in a setting that I had a lot of control over. If I started to get frustrated or tired, it was easy enough to log out of a MUD and give an excuse people could believe.

I also had good, meaningful relationships with people online. I spent a lot of time with one person in particular, a woman from the southern United States. Not lived a relatively quiet life in the Midwest at that point, it was a learning experience to get to know people from all over the U.S. and all over the world. I'll spare everyone the details of our relationship, but let's just say we spent a lot of time talking about our lives during the quieter moments in the game.

She told me was in a rather unfulfilling relationship in the offline world. She was engaged to someone, but didn't think he really appreciated her. I figure part of the appeal of our online relationship was that she could get the appreciation and attention she felt missing from her engagement. Our relationship ended abruptly when I mentioned this observation to her; I haven't heard from her since.

The thing is, while this may not have been the most healthy relationship she could have had, it was a valuable experience for me. Instead of fumbling through a few sour relationships with women in the "real world", I was able to experience a relationship in that environment I had more control over. I think that my experiences definitely prepared me for my long term relationship with my GF I have today. Yes, sure, maybe "she" was really an older guy who got off on preying on college guys, but it still helped me. In the end, she still had her real relationship to go back to; I hope she was able to resolve her problems and find a life of happiness.

People lie offline, too

One point Gordon (and others) bring up is that in the online world, people may misrepresent themselves and suffer fewer consequences for dishonesty. To that, I just have to laugh.

Go start a business, and you'll find out quickly how false people can be if they think you can get something from you. Quite a few times I've had people express interest in helping out with a project (or even Meridian 59) but then gi silent when things don't go their way.

Let me share another, more recent story. At last year's GDC I met a business guy who was referred to me by another game developer friend. We chatted, and he wanted to work with me on a project that he wanted to fund. I agreed and shared a lot of my knowledge and contacts without any hesitation; after all, he seemed nice enough and really seemed to appreciate my advice. I invited him in to a discussion I was having with a lot of other developers about potentially working together on some projects. He wanted to develop a game, and I was talking to people who wanted to do just that.

To make a long story short, it didn't end well. He eventually decided I was "too greedy" and "just using him for his money", so he invited some of my contacts to work with him instead of me. He took advantage of some information that I shared with him about a developer's personal situation to get him to work for him.

This is where Gordon's "there are laws to protect people in the offline world" theory falls apart. Technically, the guy did nothing illegal. Morally, he's a sleaze bag who didn't care about me as a person and was ready to push me aside when he found a better deal. Even though we had met in person, he still presented a false face to me. Yeah, maybe the people in the industry to whom I have told his name and shared this story with may make things difficult for him, but last I heard through a third-hand source he's still working on a project with a poached colleague.

But, honestly, people do this to some extent in the offline world. When you're on a date, you generally put your best foot forward. You might listen to the other person drone on even if they bore you, pretend to like things you don't really like to forge a bond, or avoid picking your nose while out with a potential romantic partner. Is this dishonesty? Perhaps in the strictest sense of the word, but most people do it and accept it anyway. I don't think it's surprising that people try to put the best foot forward online as well; it's just easier to fib since there are less cues to pick up on the fibbing.

The rule is simple: be smart

Online isn't some magical realm where rules don't apply. You have to be smart about how you interact with and treat others. The rules may be different, but you still have to be aware of them. Even if consequences for bad behavior are lower, that means that risks are lower, too. Even if the person you're talking to on the other side of that in-game character is a knife-wielding psycho with a swastika carved in her forehead, you are at a lot less risk than if you were in the same room with that person in the offline world. And, it's easier to extract yourself from the discussion when that person starts typing "healter skelter" and "kill all pigs" or wants to share her Beatles song collection with you.

Really, it's not that much different than the offline world, except you have to worry about being stabbed face-to-face. ;)

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

The virtual and the “real” sides of life

Personally, I think those are the best part of the blog. :)

Tip of the hat to Gordon at We Fly Spitfires for pointing out the plugin.

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Testing out a new plugin

Let's take a look at what we usually mean when we use the word, and what it means for game players and game developers.

Addiction as game design

I decided to focus on this issue after reading Jeff Vogel's articles on Addiction-Based Design in games. (Part two continues his thoughts and expands upon the topic.) Jeff talks about how giving players small, frequent rewards to get people to happily play the same content over and over. This is especially common in MMO game design, but also in the Lego-themed console games and achievements that games offer players (even before WoW mixed MMO and achievements into the ultimate in obsessive gameplay).

Using the word "addiction" to talk about game design makes me squirm because of the negative connotations I talked about above. This is fuel for the "think of the children!" crowd who are all to happy to accuse game developers of trying to corrupt children. So, while I think discussion of what Jeff is talking about is interesting, I'm hesitant to use "addicting" as a term to describe it. Even though gamers often use the term as very high praise.

What is addiction?

This is a good question. It's not something that's easily defined. Again, the connotation is that addiction is a very horrible thing. Some see it as a weakness in a person unable to resist something bad for them. Others see it as a corrupting influence harming an otherwise good person. There are more nuanced definitions, but they don't dominate the discussion like these two tend to.

In any case, "addiction" and "children" are two terms that people don't like to see together. Given that many people (often inaccurately) associate games with children, this makes things difficult.

I wrote a post several years ago talking about game addiction as defined by two people from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Their definition focused on how the behavior affects individual lives. If you have a game (or chocolate, or whatever) "addiction" but you still hold down a job, pay your bills, etc., it's hard to see the harm in that. I think that's a useful way to think about addiction as it relates to games.

Bad habits vs. addiction

While doing some research on addiction, I came across an interesting article on "soft addictions" on ABC News. The author interviewed in the article defines "soft addictions" as habits that started out as normal behaviors but that got out of control. This definition works well with the descriptions of addiction I mentioned in my previous blog post linked previously.

One person in the article couldn't stop shopping. While shopping isn't a bad thing, taken to extremes it can be harmful. And, since it was causing issues between the person and her husband due to her dishonesty, it was affecting her life in a very negative way. She was using shopping as a way to escape from the problems of loneliness she experienced.

Looking at games, we can see some parallels. Some people do get into games more than they should. Sometimes they have issues in their life that they would rather not deal with, and prefer to escape into a game instead of dealing with them. But, if it weren't games, what's to say it wouldn't be shopping, or being habitually late? I don't think it's accurate to blame games for all the problems in a person's life. This is one reason why the term "addiction" doesn't quite fit.

A compelling experience

I prefer the term "compelling" when we talk about this type of gameplay. It's not addiction, where a player will suffer withdrawl if they stop using, but the players are compelled to keep playing. "One more turn" or the equivalent is what keeps people playing these games. The reward they can see just over the horizon keeps them going ever onward. This is the allure of the design Jeff talked about: there's one more goal we can accomplish in the game, and we keep chasing those mini-goals until we find ourselves staring at the sunrise outside our window.

I don't think this is very sinister. Most people play games because they're fun and entertaining. People prefer to have fun and be entertained, so it shouldn't be surprising that a game where players can find these attributes are going to be popular. Yes, again, some people are going to immerse themselves in a game and ignore other obligations in their life, but a procrastinator is going to find any excuse to put things off, even something less interesting.

Burnout and responsibilities

One problem that seems to be more common to MMOs is when a player stays with a game too long. A lot of older games, including Meridian 59, have lifespans of many years. Market reports say that traditional games have lifespans measured in months. Of course, there are games that have longevity well beyond that time frame: games with multiplayer elements that keep people playing with each other, classic games that people revisit on a regular basis, etc. But, few of them have lifespans as long as M59 has had. All these years later we still have people interested in the game. I believe part of the issue is that the social elements of games can be really compelling, especially for those of us who aren't always comfortable going out and making new friends face-to-face.

But, this longevity has a dark side. People eventually do get tired of the same type of gameplay. Some might become upset that they "wasted" so much time merely "playing a game" that encouraged so much "grinding". They become outspoken critics of the game. Some might even feel a moral imperative to warn others so that they don't throw away their lives on the game. Sometimes the thing the player was trying to avoid by playing the game gets resolved, and they feel angry that the game provided the outlet.

There is also the issue of how our games affect children who are very impressionable. A game designer who is designing a game targeting children needs to be more careful about the design. Although we may want to provide a fun and compelling experience to children, our society believes that children cannot make the same decisions adults can. Dealing with impressionable minds brings a lot more responsibility for a designer to deal with.

Having fun is normal

Ultimately, I think game designers should avoid the word "addicting" in favor of the term "compelling". I think we do want to make compelling products, just like every other product developer does. "Addiction" tends to have a very negative meaning for a lot of people, which doesn't help us gain acceptance for games as a legitimate hobby. Anyway, it's not like gamers will do anything for $15 (NSFW); let's not talk about what game developers do for their $15/month. *weep*

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Why “addiction” is the wrong word

Yeah, it involves LotRO. I maybe next time I'll do a non-LotRO post. Don't hold your breath.

Hasn't this been done before?

Richard Bartle gave a designer's perspective on WoW's Stranglethorn Vale. I'm not going to pretend this is as deep as what he wrote about, but our two bits of writing are similar. Instead of showing you how an educated designer thinks about the layout of a zone, I'm going to talk about some design lessons gleaned from participating in a game as a player.

I'm excited to hear about your character!

I'll bet you are. My main character is now a level 47 Champion (for you WoW players out there, it's comparable to a Fury Warrior). I actually gained the 47th level doing the quest I'm about to mention. The character is moderately well geared in a mix of quest rewards and finely crafted items from my Master level Armourer. My specialization is single-target damage, although I do enjoy doing AoE damage on multiple enemies when I can.

The character has advanced in levels duoing with my better half playing a Captain. For the most part, we've not done many group quests, preferring to see if we can duo through most of the content. The exceptions are the later epic quests; there's no way we could duo our way through those and have found two other cool guys to group with to do the later books.

Now tell me about your amazing adventure!

Is so much sarcasm necessary? We were in Evendim (known to LotRO players as "that zone with the inconvenient fucking lake in the middle of everything") to see if we could do the last few quests in the area. Someone wanted to do the quest The Tomb of Elendil. This was an instance quest that I figured there was no way we could duo. I told the Hunter looking to do it that our Champion and Captain duo would join if they could find the rest of the group. We went along and finished up a few other deeds while we waited for the group to form.

Now, a bit of detail for this story. This quest was very low level for the two of us; it was level 40 and "green" to us in the color coding, almost ready to turn trivial. The instance quests in LotRO tend to be pretty brutal, and as I complained about in my first LotRO post the quests aren't labeled very accurately. The quest started really easy with the group slaughtering small groups of normal and "signature" enemies, but the difficulty ramped up when we were tackling multiple Elite monsters at once, and finally had to tackle a Nemesis class enemy.

Forced grouping makes a comeback!

The quest is also near the end of a long series of quests dealing with the forging of Andúril, so it's one of the more major stories in the setting. The quests start off soloable, but culminate in this quest that requires a group. So, if you want to see the end of the story you have to find people to group with. Now, a lot of the quests are really interesting and carry a lot of the flavor of Middle Earth and show a lot of the work that Turbine poured into this game to enhance the lore needed for the game.

Thankfully, the PUG wasn't that bad. It was everyone's first time doing the quest on any character as far as anyone admitted. The Warden tank we recruited was lower level than most of the rest of us (9, then 10, levels below me), and had a little trouble keeping aggro. Thankfully my GF's Captain was able to step in many times and she did wonderfully despite really being tank spec and not really doing much tanking with groups. The rest of the group was 2 Hunters and a Minstrel.

The good news is that the group stuck with the quest until the end despite some deaths.

Designer's Perspective: This quest line commits the sin of giving the player one set of expectations then switching to another. The quest line is soloable until you get to this point, then you have to change the way you're playing the game to continue. This is very frustrating, especially since this is a pretty major storyline in the setting that most people are gong to enjoy seeing. This is a miniature version of the complaints about how WoW's solo-focused gameplay turns into large group raiding.

The long quest chain requirement also means that a player has to stick with all the quests to get to the point where they might be interested in this particular part. The quest is spread out over multiple locations, so the people who are going to be in a proper position to do this quest are going to be limited to some degree. Honestly, it was pretty lucky I was able to finish this quest at all.

What's the solution here? Either keep all the quests soloable, or shorten the quest line and make them all group-focused. This keeps it consistent and doesn't build up certain expectations.

Wait, you got beat up by a Giant Turtle?

The final boss of the instance is a giant turtle named Nornagol. He's a pretty rough customer who likes to knock you back, summons lots of little turtle spawns, and does a nasty AoE. He also has a buff that makes him highly resistant to most types of weapon damage.

Yeah, the turtle kicked our ass the first time. Even though a few people gave excuses for wanting to leave, they all came back for a second and eventually a third go once we found the instance hadn't reset.

Designer's Perspective: One of the things I didn't like about the encounter was that there was this massive defensive buff on the monster with no obvious way to remove it. After our second wipe, I went to my laptop to find a strategy that didn't turn out to be all that great. Seems the secret is getting off a Fellowship Maneuver to do massive DoT damage (and reportedly removes that massive defensive buff). Unfortunately, we were without a Burglar, the class that specializes in triggering Fellowship Maneuvers.

So, this quest not only requires a group, but requires specific group composition for to make the quest go smoothly. It was frustrating that I had to drop out of the flow of the game to look up a strategy. I'm not against difficult encounters, but it would have been nice to have some hint about how to deal with the encounter from in-game information. As it was presented, it was just a brutal encounter at the end of one of the longer instances I've been in.

My role in the encounter was a bit limited. With two Hunters, I wasn't needed to AoE down the adds, and with the massive defensive buff on the main guy my common damage weapons weren't doing much. For most of the encounter I was throwing in a few attacks to whittle off a few points while using my Clobber ability to interrupt the boss's painful AoE after it massacred us the first time.

The Thrill of Victory after the Agony of Defeat?

As I said, the group fell twice to the mad turtle before we finally conquered it. The first defeat was a bit disheartening because a few of us were sure the instance would be reset with our wipe, so a few started offering up excuses about why they wanted to leave. Thankfully everyone pulled together when we found the instance had not reset and that we could run to the end to encounter the boss again. Twice I used a token to counteract the dread we got from dying.

Our first attempt was pretty pathetic because we had no idea what was going to happen. We just leaped in and tried to murder the turtle without much of a plan. The second time we were more focused and made some progress, but it was still just too much for us and we only got the turtle down to about half life before our healer died and the rest of us followed.

When we finally brought down the monster turtle the final time, everyone felt elated. Everyone sent a chat message to the effect of, "YES!" or "OMG we did it!" when it fell.

Designer's Perspective: The boss was tough and it was nice to defeat it, but the defeats we suffered beforehand made the victory that much sweeter. We felt that fist-pumping moment of victory that Nicole Lazzaro calls "fiero", an emotion I hadn't really felt in LotRO before that point. Would it have been as sweet if we had succeeded the first time like we have for a lot of the other content? Probably not.

The trick here is that in order to feel that rewarding feeling of accomplishment, failure must be real. After dying the second time without getting the boss close to death, it felt like perhaps the encounter was going to be just too hard for our assembled group. It was a real possibility that we just weren't going to be able to do it. So, the victory at the end was a testament to our ability to pull through the adversity. But, it's equally possible that we could have continued to meet failure until people got tired and started leaving, dooming the group to complete failure and disappointment. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have wanted to try the quest again since it was nearly trivial to me.

So, which is the better option here? Should the player be given a real possibility of failure (and perhaps even taste it a few times) to make victory that much sweeter? Or should players be protected from real failure in to prevent overwhelming frustration but taking away that strong sense of victory over adversity?

That was a glimpse into a demented mind!

So, there's some of my thoughts about one encounter in LotRO. I won't claim to have all the answers, or even that my thoughts are particularly deep. But, I know some of you like to see a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain. Let me know what you think.

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Playing with the mind of a designer

No, instead, I want to cover the topic of how to make money in games beyond murdering monsters and running packages for NPCs. What does it take to run a business within an MMO world?

Doin' your business

Most games are set up so that you can make subsistence "wages" by going through content. Getting money and drops from monsters and rewards from quests nets you enough for the basics. A good game always makes you strive, however, so in order to get all the goodies you want you'll have to push a bit harder. And, some activity in the game (raiding, PvP, etc.) often requires an influx of capital to keep a character in ready shape, so you need to find some income.

The simplest way to earn cash is to just grind it out. Go murder some more monsters and take their stuff, then use your surplus cash to get your epic mount or whatever other nifty thing you want. This is the game equivalent of picking up a few more shifts at McDonalds to afford that sweet moped that mommy and daddy wouldn't buy you.

For people who want to do more than just subsist, there are more options that require a bit more thinking. In most games, this means finding items or services people are willing to pay for and selling it to them. In other words, you get other people to do the grinding while you sell them something they're willing to grind for.

Do you seriously expect me to take advice from a goblin?

One of the more... interesting... writers about making money in MMOs is Gevlon the Greedy Goblin. He focuses on World of Warcraft, but in theory you could use his techniques in any game. Gevlon focuses on making money on the auction hall (AH) without having to grind. (I found Gevlon thanks to Tobold's commentary on his writing.)

The basics of his technique are similar to running a business in the offline world. As I said above, you find something people are willing to pay for and sell it to them for the price that the market will bear above the amount you spent to acquire the item. This could be drops (which are heavily based on luck), items produced through tradeskills, or services provided in the game (like runs through lower-level instances for alts). Gevlon focuses primarily on tradeskills to make his cash.

Game life is not real life

Gevlon's commentary is interesting, but comes with a few caveats that I think are important to cover. The first is that he tries to draw too many parallels between games and offline life. For example, he believes anyone can be rich in the offline world and he has proven that by the fact that he can reach the gold cap on WoW. He's also not a social person, he often refers to "social players" in a highly derogatory way and calls offline socialization an "ape subroutine". Offline business requires a heavy dose of socialization, unfortunately, so take his non-game ramblings with a bit of salt.

He tends to go on diatribes about what he calls "M&S", or morons and slackers who are the constant target of his ire. Conveniently, he often ignores the fact that games are designed with the intent of entertainment in mind, and that concepts like truly limited resources do not exist in a game. And, as with a lot of people who have experienced success, luck is downplayed if it is even considered as a factor. The only reason you are not rich is simply because you're stupid, lazy, or both. Being at the right place at the right time has a small effect, if any, to Gevlon's way of thinking.

Differences between two worlds

The core problem is that in business, larger risk often means larger returns. When all you're risking is a number on a fantasy character's database record, it's easier to throw caution to the wind on a high-risk, high-reward scenario. When that number in a database is your life's savings or children's college accounts, it becomes a lot harder to put your money on the table and hope things go as well as they could. Games also provide a safety net that allow players who do get wiped out to get back into the game easier (daily quests in WoW), otherwise players would leave the game. In the offline world, that safety net often takes the form of vile "socialism", something else Gevlon hates with a passion.

Games also operate under a very simplified economic system. Instead of having to worry about mundane issues like warehouse space for inventory, you can just roll a few alts and your problems are solved. An inventory full of glyphs don't decay, break, or otherwise become unsalable as goods in the offline world are wont to do. Finding employees is as simple as spamming the trade channel and getting whatever value you can out of the person who can perform the work for you; as opposed to having to deal with issues like employment taxes, minimum wages, and benefits as you do in the offline world. Some people use these reasons to argue for laissez faire capitalism, but again, what works well in the online realm doesn't always translate into a good thing in the offline world.

From personal experience, I believe you can learn important lessons in games, but it's dangerous to think that you can take the lessons learned and apply them immediately offline. I've mentioned before that I learned how to extrovert well in games before I became better at talking to people in person, but in games I can log out when I started to feel overwhelmed. Face-to-face socialization requires a bit more finesse than claiming your internet connection dropped. Not that Gevlon thinks face-to-face socialization is important.

Skills required to succeed

So, what skills are required to succeed at business in a game?

The first, and most important, is knowledge, just as you need in the offline world. You need to know what goods and services are in demand. You need to know what items will sell, and which items are eclipsed by better quest rewards. You need to know what stats a specific class or type of character will want in order to know if the stats on an item are worthwhile or not. If you find a caster weapon with physical stats, that might be better to sell to a vendor rather wasting auction fees hoping someone will buy it.

Another bit of knowledge you'll want is to know what price the market is willing to pay for an item. Some of the first AH businesses in WoW dealt with buying up underpriced items and selling them closer to the going price. Enchanting materials were especially popular, since they cost nothing to list on the AH in WoW. The person willing to take a longer term perspective on selling the item (instead of the adventurer who just wanted to get an item out of his or her inventory) can make a fair amount of money. Learning what the going price is, and how that price can change over time, is important to knowing what will make money.

With this knowledge, it's time to choose your business. Following Gevlon's lead, you might choose inscription as your tradeskill in WoW. Find something that is in demand and that you don't mind doing. Find out what other people are selling, and try to avoid getting into too much direct competition. Be ready to adjust your strategies if someone else tries to move in on your territory.

It's also important to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. During the festivals in LotRO, I spent a fair amount of time collecting gift boxes in the game which had random items. Some of the items were rare recipes for cosmetic items that people will buy for quite a bit of money. I was able to make most of my money for my character's horses by selling extras of these recipes on the AH. (This is part of where luck comes in. I wouldn't have nearly as much money if I had not been able to get a few of these prized recipes.) Of course, keeping these recipes meant that I had to have inventory space to store the items if I got them while the market was glutted with the rare item.

All is not rosy

Of course, it's easy to focus on the positive aspects, just as it was easy to think housing prices could rise forever when people bid up house prices. Where there is risk there is the chance for failure. Buying up the supply of an item only to have it nerfed in the next announced test realm patch notes can hurt your bottom line. Following bad advice and speculating on items that are rumored to become better can be harmful.

Once your business becomes too large to do by yourself, you introduce the risks of social elements. While alts and automated tools can make sure misanthropic goblins don't have to deal with other people, some businesses just can't work with a single person. EVE Online has a lot of corporations set up to make money, and has had a few high-profile issues with trusted individuals running off with shared assets. A recent NYTimes article (registration required) talks about one "bank" in EVE having some troubles when the executive in charge decided to walk away with a chunk of funds. The article draws parallels between the in-game bank and the bank problems we've come to know and love over the past year.

The other bit of warning here is that if you can do it, so can others. Direct competition from someone willing to settle for a lower profit margin can spell trouble if you've invested a lot of money in setting up a specific system for producing goods. And, think about this: a smart gold seller could read Gevlon's site and easily make tons of money without having to resort to hacked accounts or automated bots. It would suck for a gold seller to copy your technique then get the company to nerf that way of making money in order to hinder gold sellers.

You can do it!

Really, making money isn't too hard in games, despite all the problems, as long as you have access to the knowledge required. As I said above, most games are designed to make it easy for you to make enough money to get by. The "broken" economies in games make it more fun than trying to eek out a middle class living on a middle manager's salary. After all, if the game starts to feel like real work, then most people agree that it won't be fun. Knowledge and a bit of luck can help you on your way to some virtual wealth; that, plus four bucks, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

What do you think? Do you make gold by selling things in games? Or is that a level of gameplay that just isn't interesting to you? Are the lessons learned in games easily transferable offline as some goblins might suggest?

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Business in games

Here's a direct link to the interview.

Feel free to leave comments or questions here.

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Interview on the Digipen Podcast

Don't worry, this isn't going to become a LotRO blog. I just tend to get hooked on themes a lot.

For those that haven't played LotRO, let me describe the mechanic. Dread/Hope are values a long a continuum, with Hope being good and Dread being bad. Hope will mitigate or cancel out hope, and vice versa; for example, 2 points of Dread and 3 points of Hope give you a final value of 1 Hope. For some reason, you don't get Dread or Hope directly, instead you'll see Radiance or Gloom and 10 points of these gives 1 point of Hope or Dread, respectively. For this post, I'll just use Dread or Hope.

As you gain Dread or Hope, five stats are affected: your maximum morale (hit points), healing effects, damage taken, damage dealt, and effective skill level. Having a lot of Dread means that you'll be effectively fighting as a lower level character. On the other hand, having a lot of Hope means you're fighting at a higher level of ability.

How do you get Dread? The most common way is by dying. Instead of a "resurrection sickness" effect, you get 1-4 points of Dread for 10 minutes depending on the location where you died. Higher level zones will have greater penalties, making it more dangerous to just leap back into combat after a defeat. Certain locations and bosses will also give you Dread. In many areas, a tall, smoking totem usually fills you with Dread, right before a boss tries to gnaw on you.

What about Hope? Some areas give you hope, notably the newbie areas. This means that at lower levels you'll get a bit of a boost. Some good NPCs will give you Hope, but they tend to be stationary and not all that useful on an adventure. The main ways to get Hope are through equipment, a buff by a specific Captain's Herald that affects all in range, and through Jeweler-created consumable items called Edhelharn Tokens that boost the whole fellowship. New players that sign up for a subscription can also get a special horn that can be used to give 1 point of Hope to the player, but it shares the same cooldown as the tokens.

What makes this mechanic interesting is that it's another value to manage. Dying gives you an effect you've already seen, so you may know how to handle it. Some group quest bosses can be made a bit harder by placing a gloomy totem nearby. But, players can work against the Dread by increasing their Hope. A jewelry crafter can bring a little extra bonus to a group by bringing some tokens.

I've considered a similar mechanic for games I called "comfort" that would have similar design goals. If you wanted to go explore the icy tundra, you should remember to have your character bring warmer clothes, otherwise comfort will decrease and reduce the character's effectiveness. This would reward people who plan ahead, and give some sense of adventure to places with extreme conditions. You could do lots of fun things with this, too. Perhaps characters could take an ability to let them ignore some levels of discomfort; the ability to soldier on despite hardship would be valuable for someone who wanted to visit the far reaches of the world.

But, all is not perfect with LotRO's system. One major complaint is the Hope requirement for many high-end raid bosses. In order to go on the highest level raids, you have to have enough Hope generated by your gear ("Radiance Gear") in addition to tokens and other benefits to counteract the Dread caused by the bosses. Going without is not an option, at the highest levels of Gloom, you have a small fraction of your hit points (20% or so, from what I've seen) and you'll take much more damage. This pretty much guarantees death to anyone who hasn't gotten enough Hope.

This heavy requirement for Hope on your gear causes two problems: First, a player must run various earlier instances and finish them in "hard mode" before an item will drop. Of course, only one token will drop that everyone needs to get their gear, so you'll have to run each instance multiple times for your chance to get the token. Second, it restricts what equipment you can wear to the raid. Want to gear for a slightly different spec? Too bad, because your Radiance Gear only comes in one flavor. This de-emphasizes the role of crafters at the highest levels It also makes the game feel very cookie-cutter at the high end without much variation between different players of the same class. These seem to be some of the biggest complaints on the official forums from what I've seen.

While it's not a perfect mechanic, it is something not found in other games. I think it's rather interesting, and I've enjoyed planning around situations where I had to deal with Dread. I'm not sure I'll appreciate having to build a specific set of equipment for the highest levels, but I'm not currently planning on doing a lot of raiding. We'll see how that goes when I get to it.

What do you think? Is this just another bit of stat-crunching that distracts from the other elements of what online games can be? Or is it an interesting mechanic that adds a new twist to traditional gameplay? Can the high end raids be changed to still use this mechanic but not require a specific set of gear in order to complete it?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Interesting Mechanics: Dread and Hope

I figured it might be of some interest for me to write about how I approach the game and my general experiences with the game after I've gotten into it a bit.

Yeah, prepare for a long post.

I blame my friends

I started playing LotRO because the friends I played WoW with wanted to try it out. I went to the store and got a box for the latest expansion. In the box there were "buddy keys" that allowed a friend to play the game for 14 days. As I posted in my previous story, she got hooked. I signed up to play on the Firefoot server with my friends; the first of our friends on picked that one because it had "fire" in the name.

The original plan was to play as a group, so I tried a few character classes. I was pretty sure I wanted to play a Minstrel, so I focused on that. My GF thought the Loremaster sounded fun; in retrospect, that was a terrible class for someone almost completely new to MMOs to play.

Unfortunately, one of my friends got busy with his work, and we didn't end up playing together too much. It also appears the guild we joined up with is having a bit of drama. Not sure what's going on, but I don't play the character in that guild too much.

How many character slots?

Without my other friends to play with, I got bit by altitis. At first I wanted to see how the different game mechanics worked. Then I had each character pick out different crafting professions to see how those worked.

How deep does that rabbit hole go again? Deep.

My better half started playing around with different characters as well. We started pairing up the characters, leaving one character each for soloing so that we can have some alone time if the other doesn't want to play right then. Besides crafting, we try to play together as much as possible to keep our quests in sync.

Our character pairings are as follows: (my character, then hers)

• Elf Champion [Armsman] and Man Captain [Armourer] (Our "mains", currently level 42)
• Man Minstrel [Tinker] and Elf Loremaster [Scholar] (our grouping characters)
• Hobbit Burglar [Yeoman] and Hobbit Minstrel [Explorer]
• Dwarf Runekeeper [Historian] and Elf Warden [Tinker]
• Dwarf Guardian [Armourer] and Dwarf Hunter [Woodsman]
• Man Warden [Woodsman] and Man Burglar [Explorer]
• Elf Loremaster [Explorer] and Elf Champion [Armsman] (our soloing characters, rarely together)

Most of our other characters are around level 25, with a few at level 20. Getting up to that point is pretty easy in LotRO, especially after they adjusted the experience curve.

Fun together

Duoing is interesting because the game doesn't seem to be precisely created for it. We tend to fly through normal quests intended for solo players, but we run into trouble on full group quests. Our mains are pretty powerful characters for their level, so we can often take "full fellowship" quests that are almost trivial to us. But, there are quite a few quests that we just couldn't take.

Grouping with other people is... interesting. We grouped up for one really cool instance quest and the person taking charge tried to put us in different groups. I typed that we were in the same room, so it would be easier for us to stick together. While I enjoyed the quest as something different, it took a bit of just sitting around trying to find 4 other people, and then the group immediately split up after the quest was done. We haven't done a lot of the group instances, especially at the higher end.

As I've mentioned before, playing with my GF has given me a different perspective on what these games are like to the relative newcomer. A lot of annoyances I write off are real thorns in her side. A lot of things I am tired of she finds new and interesting. Once again, there is no "one size fits all" in these types of games.

One neat thing is that since we have some higher level characters, we can help out our other characters as they have to do various crafting quests to advance in their professions. Doing a level 40 quest with a level 25 character is much easier with a level 40 along, although some of the quests can be pretty brutal (I'm looking at you, Artisan Cooking quest! Although it seems the Tailoring quest is going to be tough, too.)

One minor quirk is that I created a kinship (guild) and put both our alts in it, in anticipation of our friends playing more and maybe not sticking around in the original kinship we joined. My friends aren't playing, but I now have a level 8 kinship that I don't want to just give up. So, my GF and I tend to be a bit isolated from other people. Our "grouping" characters are still in the original guild we joined, even through the guild drama.

A citizen (and mercenary) of Middle Earth

I'm a fan of the Lord of the Rings books, so it's fun to play the game. The developers obviously put a lot of care into developing the world. I'm not the biggest Tolkien fanboy (I have never been able to read all the way through The Silmarillion), but I see little bits and pieces of the world expressed in the game. It's a lot of fun to go through and see how someone else imagined the game.

Perhaps the most interesting part are the epic quests. These are neat quest that let you track an alternate path, parallel to the Fellowship of the Ring. Unfortunately, a lot of these quests are group-focused, especially near the end of the chain, so I haven't gotten to see much of the story.

However, some of the conventions of MMOs just don't fit well. For example, with few exceptions, Middle Earth wasn't inhabited by individual heroes. Even great heroes like Aragorn had others with him, working as a group. Now, I'm not saying that the return of force grouping would make the game feel more true to the setting, the concept of going it alone in Middle Earth seems a bit odd. Magic is another sticky point, since Wizards with real magic were rare. Explaining that a class uses language tricks to do damage seems a bit strange. And, I'll talk about it being "morale" instead of "hit points" a bit later.

The main complaint about questing I have is that the quest levels and ratings are wildly inconsistent and sometimes not useful at all. It's entirely possible that a two different quests will require you to kill the same monsters, but the quests themselves will be a few levels apart. Many "full fellowship" quests are easily done with the two of us (and should probably be "small fellowship" quests), while others surprise you by really requiring a full fellowship. The epic quests tend to be the worst, since they suddenly spring "bring a group!" on you in the middle of the chain.

Another smaller problem is that the quest content often runs out in one area, encouraging you to jump to another area. Given the large size of Middle Earth, this can require really long travel times. If you don't travel around, you may miss some of the interesting lore....

My final complaint in this area are the slayer deeds. As I have written before, I like the idea of deeds for an area instead of a bunch of FedEx and "kill ten rats" type quests. But, having to find and kill nearly 1000 goblins just isn't all that fun on its own.

I look pretty! So, so pretty!

One thing I like is the system for cosmetic items. Upon reaching level 20 with any character, you can equip items cosmetically. It's nice that I can choose a nice color scheme for my character without worrying about it going away when I find an upgraded bit of gear. I sometimes cringed in WoW when I got a new piece of gear about how it would look with my existing gear (rams horns on my helmet, really???), and was often thankful in EQ2 that my Necromancer wore a robe to cover up some of the hideous pants and boots I wore for stat bonuses (before they added a cosmetic system to that game, that is).

You can also do some fun stuff with the outfit options. On my champion, I have two almost identical sets of outfits, but one has a hoodless cloak, and the other has a hooded cloak. I "put up the hood" on my cloak once it starts raining (even though Elves probably don't need to keep their hair dry to keep it pretty....) For my Runekeeper, I have one outfit for when he's bumming around the auction house, and another for when he's on the road. I really think he looks like a true Tolkien Dwarf in the outfits. (I found the gear from drops for the most part.)

Ready for a hard day of undercutting other people's AH postings.

Now he's ready to go nuke some goblins! (Er, I mean, talk them to death.)

Home is where the extra storage is

LotRO has player housing, one of those things you'd expect WoW to have but it never delivers on. There are two sizes of houses for players, and a giant, deluxe sized house for kinships.

What I find interesting is that your house is actually owned and accessible by all the characters on your account. Each character gets a teleport to the house spell, fueled by mildly expensive travel rations. But, you can share items between characters by placing them in the storage chests in the house instead of mailing them. Getting two more large storage areas was a nice bonus.

But, as far as decorations? There are quite a few options, but even in a larger deluxe house, the rooms feel sparse. you can only place decorations on "hooks" in specific locations called "hooks". Specific hooks can only hold certain types of items. Even a fully decorated deluxe house feels sparse. My GF, who likes to watch home improvement shows, says that the decorations violate all sorts of decorating guidelines.

I'm probably spoiled by EQ2's housing system. Items could be placed in your house just about anywhere. There was a lot of flexibility and it was fun to decorate, even if your "house" was merely an apartment in one of the larger cities. Placing a lot of little items, like books you've collected from vanquishing foes, could be really fiddly. But, in the end, you could see a lot of personality in the place. It also allowed for creativity; one house I visited in EQ2 used these large stone tables placed on some rafters to create another "floor" in the apartment. Simple shelves on the wall provided a staircase up. The space was claustrophobic, but it was neat to see someone create that.

The houses are also quite a bit outside the major cities in the game. This means that if you want to go from your house to town without blowing your map cooldown, you have a bit of a run ahead of you.

Crafting: more than Dwarves singing "Hi Ho! Hi Ho!"

Along with the altoholism, I've gotten deep into crafting. LotRO has a few interesting systems for crafting not found in other games. Each crafting profession is a collection of three individual crafting paths. For example, the Tinker can prospect, work jewelry, and cook. A Tinker can mine the materials required to create jewelry, but will have to rely on farmers to get some of the raw materials for cooking.

All recipes are arranged in tiers, and each tier is related. Wood in tier 1 that is treated by foresters is used by Woodworkers to make tier 1 items. Making items in recipes gives you experience toward that tier. The first achievement is proficiency in a tier, which is required to get access to the next tier. You can continue to earn experience to gain mastery of a tier to have a (random) chance of creating "critical success" items. Mastery requires twice the experience points it took to originally gain proficiency in a tier.

You also have crafting guilds which your characters can join, which focus on a specific crafting path. My Tinker, for example, as joined the Jeweler's Guild; her only other option was the Cook's Guild, there is no Prospector's Guild. Access to the Guild is basically a faction grind, where you can create special emblems to turn into the guild. However, you can also use the emblems in special guild-only recipes; common recipes allow you to create 5 component items for the cost of 1 component (plus the emblem). Or, you can create "critical success" versions of one-use recipes without relying on the fickle random number generator. Note that you can only create these emblems (and the special guild recipes they fuel) once per a specific time period: either one day, three days, or one week. Also, creating the emblems give you the best experience gain for resources spent.

I intended for my Loremaster character to be my primary gathering character, since I was told that they solo the best. Even though he's only level 25, through frequent pet sacrifices I can run to the Trollshaws to collect Lebethron Wood for my woodworker. I thought I was living on the edge until I saw a level 15 Hunter doing the same one night. I've spent a lot of money mailing resources from one character to another, though; unlike WoW, the cost to mail an item increases with the price of the item.

Most of my characters have Artisan or Master level in crafting. I've mostly made the crafting emblems and turned them in for faction. I've also used some to craft exceptional items for different characters.

One problem is that most of the goods have very limited usefulness for a character. The lower levels pass by so fast it seems a bit silly to try to make rare/crit goods for them. My Weaponcrafter is fairly accomplished, but I've used less than 1% of the items she's made as actual weapons on my character. I see the profession getting useless at the higher levels, because the legendary weapons will be the preferred equipment, not whatever stuff my character can make.

The auction house: a fountain of money

My most accomplished crafting character is my Yeoman, who has Supreme Farming and Cooking. He's has maximum faction with the Cook's Guild. Farming and Cooking are interesting because they require quite a bit of funds to be poured into them to get going; the two professions require lots of recipe and goods purchases from vendors with few drops available. Many farmed or cooked items don't sell for a lot. Until you get to the highest level, of course. Due to an experience grind to level up special weapons, teas which temporarily increase the experienced gained by the weapon that only a supreme cook in the Cook's Guild can make sell well. I can make about 2 gold pieces (2000 silver pieces) per week selling just the teas.

Even before this fountain of cash, I was pretty good at playing the Auction Hall in LotRO. At level 35 I was able to buy a horse for myself and half the horse for my GF. (She'll probably say I bought the back half... :P) As I mentioned before, I just recently purchased a deluxe home for my characters, and easily have enough money for another horse for any other characters we might work up. Without an enhancement like Auctioneer, I think fewer people are willing to play the market, making it easier for those of us who pay attention to make some quick cash. Having all the alts and all the crafters gives me insight into what people will want when selling goods. I could probably do more speculating by making items and putting them up on the auction, but I'm not eager to do that much extra work. I already spend enough time listing drops up on the AH, particularly recipes and special items from the holiday events.

What I haven't seen yet

With all this playing, I haven't seen many of the larger group quests or instances yet. I've finished Book 1 and Book 3 through fortunate grouping with other characters. I haven't done any raiding yet, but after WoW raiding I'm not eager to get into that. I also haven't been high enough level to go set foot in Moria yet, so besides the classes and Supreme level crafting, I haven't enjoyed that part of the game yet.

I also haven't been playing that long, so I haven't seen many changes to the game over the long haul. I've heard that Turbine has added a lot of content to the game and has really worked to make the game more enjoyable; not surprising given their reputation from Asheron's Call. But, I haven't seen how the game has evolved first-hand.

And since I haven't been playing too long, I haven't felt the nerf bat come down on any of my characters yet. I guess that melee characters had their damage "adjusted to acceptable levels" leaving the tactical classes (Minstrel, Loremaster, and Runekeeper) at the top of the heap; I don't feel like a weakling with my Champion, but I knot my Minstrel can pour out some serious damage in the right situation. I've heard the tactical classes will get their own special brand of love in the next major patch, and Champions are going to get clamped down a bit since properly specced people prefer them to tank rather than Guardians, the official tank class. This could suck, because it could also affect my duoing with my GF; she often throws some minor heals from her Captain on me if I pull aggro. (Hey! Sometimes it's intentional to get them to stop kicking her so hard!) I worry that Turbine is focusing too much on balancing one type of gameplay (raiding) that it ignores others (small fellowships).

The good, the bad, the ugly

If you're just skimming, read this section for a summary of my thoughts.

The Good: I love the setting and the immersive nature of the world. It's fun to see what how the game's vision of Middle Earth fits into the vision I've had since I read The Lord of the Rings all those years ago. It's also awesome to be playing with my significant other for a change, even if my friends abandoned me to go back to WoW. The crafting system is inexplicably appealing, even though the items produced have questionable usefulness, especially for weaponcrafting.

The Bad: It's a bit disappointing that the game sticks so close to the standard formula for DIKU type games. Instead of just calling hit points "morale" in the game, why not introduce some new, interesting mechanics that support that idiom? For example, have special attacks that depend on morale. At high morale they do extra damage, at low morale they do less damage but can restore morale. Or, perhaps give players a risky attack that does good damage, but it takes morale if it fails. There is a lot that could be done, and that's just with based on them coming up with a different name for hit points.

The Ugly: Yeah, let me say it: The Grind. I haven't run into too much of it so far (other than having to commit genocide on orcs, goblins, trolls, etc. for some of the deeds), but I definitely see some of the grind coming up for the factions of the world. How many quests do I have to do for the Rangers before they'll sell me some cosmetic item? Grinding means doing content that's probably going to be trivial to you, stealing monsters from people trying to do quests. Better hope that one soloable goblin area isn't already camped by someone when you decide to do the deed!

What I would do differently

Of course, I'm a developer, so sometimes strange thoughts go through my head while playing. Sure, I'm enjoying the game well enough as a player, and unlike Richard Bartle I can play mostly for fun, but the developer in me still leaps to the forefront on occasion and points out where something could be different.

The obvious caveats apply here. I'm not on the dev team. I didn't even weasel my way to get a comped account like I have for other games, so I don't have any inside access to the developers, either. I'm not sure what restrictions they were under by the license holder (and I've heard they can be pretty strict). I don't have my financial security and professional reputation (such as it is) at stake. So, while I say I would like to do things differently, that doesn't mean the developers did it wrong or even could do it different in any way.

As I mentioned above, I think there's a bit of missed opportunity for interesting gameplay beyond the DIKU model. Getting rid of xp for murdering monsters and focusing on deeds to advanced as I mentioned in my previous post would have been neat. Doing more with the concept of "morale" instead of hit points would have been great, too. Although I imagine the experiences with AC2 might have made some people wary of trying anything experimental with the gameplay.

I would have put more focus on the interesting crafting system. Get rid of most item rewards from quests and just focus on money. Have the shops in towns sell some semi-useful items instead of just having them stock non-magical items nobody would ever buy in the game as it currently stands. If you encourage people to go to the auction hall to find good items, then they'll get used to doing that.

In addition, I would not rely so heavily on randoms for the critical success items in crafting. It's very frustrating to spend time and/or money to get your critical chance up to 63% then fail 3 times in a row in creating an item you really want for your character, consuming resources (and the special crit item) every time. It's also frustrating that you have to level up characters to get better crit chances (use better tools, read higher scholar scrolls, etc.) The rest of crafting isn't heavily level dependent (other than having to have friends help you get through some rough quests at the higher levels), but then getting critical successes favors higher levels so much.

I would have found something else besides a faction grind for higher level gameplay. It seems silly that I've done pretty much everything the Ranges of Esteldin have asked me to do in the zone, but they only consider me a friend (instead of an ally or kindred). I don't want to go slaughter orcs for medallions just to show I'm really hard-core enough to be able to wear the high-end pretty gear.

Related to that, I think having the characters on one account be more interrelated would be nice. All characters on my account can access a house I bought, so why not share other gameplay elements like faction? Why do I have to go grind to the highest levels with the Rangers in one area, then repeat the same process with another character? That's not encouragement to get all my characters to higher levels to keep playing in the long term....

Finally, I think it would be interesting to do more scaling based on group size. As I said before, a lot of the quests are really easy with two people (especially if we're just cleaning out green quests for lore and profits), but there are few quests marked as "small fellowship" or that present a challenge to two people without seriously wiping them out. Our Champion/Captain duo can handle some of the full group quests ourselves, but some of our other duos won't have a chance. Not everyone likes to solo (even if games are going that direction), and not everyone has five other friends they can often rely on. More mid-range content (or scaling up the difficulty for more people, like the normal vs. heroic setting on dungeons in WoW) would be a nice way to include more people.

Whew! That was a lot!

So, there are my thoughts. I wanted to get all of them into one monster post instead of appearing to become a LotRO blogger. I'm still really enjoying the game, and would recommend it to others. I've signed up for another year's worth of subscription; we'll see if that was a mistake or not. :)

If there are any questions, post them in the comments and I'll answer them as I can.

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

My experiences in Middle Earth

• I borrow items without asking permission.
• You take things that don't belong to you.
• He (or she) steals things from others.

The joke here is that I don't do anything bad, you (the person I have to worry about the old "punch in the face" from) are a bit worse than I am, and the person we're gossiping about is a horrible human being.

But, I think that this is an interesting way to think about game design.

• Many players say they want one thing.
• Most players do something different.
• Reality dictates what actually can be done.

Let's see how this relates to quests and "innovation", shall we?

The insightful Sanya Weathers wrote an article in a series about the "MMO Underbelly" about quest realities. She points out that while you might read a lot of people asking for deep stories and meaningful quests, the reality is much different:

"It used to be assumed that people playing an MMORPG wanted story – as they did in their single player RPGs - but then the industry introduced metrics. The fact is, people skip walls of text."

As she points out, this is based on measured responses from players. Most of them will skip the text, so why put it in there?

Well, there are a lot of people that still ask for the story. Read the comments to Sanya's article and you'll see a lot of people wanting text. One poster even went so far as to say:

"My hopes for a future MMO worth actually playing died a little more with every paragraph. I know it is the reality of the situation, but I usually get through my day without facing it.

Facing the reality that MMOs are being steered towards the ADD-rattled and lemming like masses makes me want to start building the bunker out back and writing a manifesto..."

Sanya isn't alone here. One of the designers of the infallible WoW said a lot of the same things; quests are too wordy to the point of being books, any sort of mystery is bad, etc. It's likely that Mr. Kaplan is pulling from a lot of metrics the WoW team has collected about player behavior. Even though designers want more characters in quest text to tell what they feel are better stories, players are blowing past the text and ignoring it anyway.

And, all this runs up against our old friend, the "content creation problem." Writing quest text isn't free, and it takes a lot of time to write text and put it into the game. The time a developer takes (or the money used to pay him) could be put to use in another area that might be more vital for the game. Sacrificing class balance for better quest text doesn't necessarily seem like a good tradeoff if the players aren't going to read the quest text. (You can be sure they'll bitch about class imbalances, though!)

So, here we have our first example laid out for us:

• Many players say they want an engaging story.
• Most players skip the boring text anyway.
• Reality dictates that quest text will be limited.

But, any choice you pick here will be sub-optimal. Put in crappy quest text and players who want interesting stories will complain. Remove quests and players will complain about having to grind monsters for xp. Put in quality quest text and you'll be sacrificing some other aspect of the game. No matter what you do, someone will complain. So, what do you do? Depends on where your priorities are, of course, and which group's complaints will do the less harm.

But, there are (at least) two sins being committed here. The first is many developers not understanding that what players say and what they do are two different things, as I point out. The forum warriors aren't necessarily going to be representative of the people actually playing the game. Metrics are really interesting because they show the specific behavior of players. The danger here, however, is misinterpreting the metrics. Why are people skipping the quest text? It may be because they don't care, but one common complaint about quest text in the comments to Sanya's article above was that people felt that they had to skip quest text to keep up with their friends.

The second is treating players like a monolithic group that has all the same desires. The people saying they want story aren't the same people skipping the quest text; or, if they are the same people, then they have some specific issues that need to be addressed. I find myself skipping quest text in LotRO even with a patient GF who does want to read quest text; I've been trained to skip all that blah-blah-blah and get to the rewards in WoW. On the bright side, LotRO keeps tracks of the quests you have done and lets you re-read the quest text at a later time, so it mitigates some of that.

Turning our eye away from the developers for a moment, we can see one more sin here: the sin of complacent players. Players may say they want something, but they need to show they want it as well, and not just through in-game actions. Tesh embedded a rant in a recent post:

"[Game companies] react to money, and only money. If you want something better than what is offered, stop paying for mediocre work. Stop riding the early adopter hype bandwagon, and wait[ing] for companies to offer something you feel is worth your money."

His core argument here is sound: if you pay for something, this encourages other companies to create more of the same. Developers don't clone WoW because they can't think of any other types of games, but because this is what people know will sell. It's easier to make a business case for cloning WoW because you can show that it works. It's harder to make a business case for something unproven because you have to find data, and deviations from the known art make the data less meaningful. This is why indie game development is so important, because it's vital to get the ability to test out different concepts with lower risk.

So, I'll put the caveat on Tesh's rant above and say: don't fear to support someone who is developing something you really want to play, even if it seems "mediocre" in some way. The ideal game may not have AAA level graphics, or a slick marketing budget, or any of the other things you may expect from large companies. But, a successful smaller game means that it will be easier to pitch a similar game later.

So, what do you think? Are players really saying one thing and doing or meaning another? Or, is there some reasonable explanation? Or, are we just doomed to play mostly EQ/WoW clones for eternity?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Complaints, actions, and reality

Better late than never, so I'm going to take a look at questing and "grinding" from my own point of view.

The topic was originally a post on Michael's blog. Wolfshead also linked to a discussion he had last year, which he later updated.

The point of all these articles is pretty simple: quests have replaced monster bashing as the grind for working up your character.

What is grinding?

What is this horrible beast called "grinding" that seems to be the core of the complaining?

For the most part, it's the repetition of content. As Muckbeast's article points out, the old form of grinding was finding some mobs and killing them over and over. Now the grinding comes from running to do one quest, then doing hundreds upon hundreds more. Even though quest content can change, there are only a few archetypes for quests and they can seem to blur together after a while: go collect N of this, go visit that waypoint, go kill X of those, etc. The same way that all those monsters in games eventually seemed come down to "killing rats".

Repetition, eh?

But, we come to a problem: games are all about repetition. Playing a simple game of Klondike Solitaire is pretty much all about repetition: looking for place to play a card, flipping over more cards, finding more places to play cards, eventually trying to win. Boring, right? Except people are eager to point out that solitaire is likely the most played games in Windows.

The truth is that most games are about repetition, even offline and non-computer games. Games usually have a set of rules that intentionally limit the options in the game. Klondike wouldn't really be much of a game if you could just go through the piles and pick out the cards you need. So, you apply the rules repeatedly in the game to reach the eventual goal. From this perspective, "repetitive" describes 95% of games out there.

Repetition, eh?

Let me tell a little story about how I played The Legend of Zelda when I was younger. I loved finding secrets in games, so when I figured out that I could burn down the trees I wanted to find all the secret doors in the game. Unfortunately, I made that decision when I had the "one use per screen" blue candle instead of the "use it repeatedly, even twice in a row" red candle. That meant that finding secrets in the game required me to:

1. Kill any enemies in my way.
2. Find a tree I hadn't burned yet.
3. Use my candle once on that tree.
4. Probably be disappointed in not finding a secret door.
5. Go to the next screen over.
6. Go back and repeat the process.

It probably took me a few minutes to test all the trees in a single screen. I got quicker once I realized there was only ever one secret on a screen, but it was still a time-consuming process.

But, and here's the kicker: I loved it! I enjoyed the process because I would find the secrets (and I could brag to my friends about finding it). I was a bit disappointed when I learned about the red candle, because now other people could find secrets more efficiently than I could.

But, I've had this same experience in many games since then. I like going into the far corners of a game and seeing finding the secrets, even though this sometimes requires me to engage in non-optimal behavior. Now, I don't think I'm as eager to repeat the process of finding secrets in Zelda with the blue candle, but I find that aspect of a game fun. I'm sure other people would find it a tedious grind.

Repetition, eh?

Part of the secret to avoiding "the grind" is making the repetition interesting somehow. Novelty is one way the grind can become interesting. Before WoW launched, there was a lot of discussion about "grinding" in online RPGs like EverQuest. People were tired of having to kill something dozens if not hundreds of times to get the item they needed for their item. Going and "grinding out" monsters was boring and people were tired of it.

WoW came along and gave us quests. Quests were new! They weren't the same old "find a camp and grind them out" type gameplay people had experienced in previous MMOs. Even though people were basically doing the same basic activity over and over again while questing, it was a new type of activity in a new game. As pointed out in Muckbeast's article (and Wolfshead's post), the inclusion of daily quests drove home the point that you're doing the same thing over and over again by literally having you do the same thing over and over again once a day.

Repetition, eh?

Yeah, I know, that heading wasn't funny the second time, let alone this time.

The content problem

One major problem is that MMOs already have a lot of repetition in them because players are expected to play them for much longer than other types of games. Content is one of the more expensive parts of the game, so players are going to have to repeat some content. One of the problems with newer MMOs is that if they compete on content, they have to compete with all the content existing games have added over the years. it seemed impossible to dethrone EQ as king of the hill until WoW came around.

One of the reasons why Blizzard was able to introduce quests as an alternative to monster-bashing was because they could produce so much high-quality content. The quests were written and designed very well, making them a lot of fun to experience. Of course, Blizzard was in a unique position to produce the masses of content for quests given their reputation and the company's situation that gave them a very flexible schedule and guaranteed funding. Most of the rest of us aren't so lucky. So, while throwing more content at the problem seems to be one possible solution, there are very few companies able to do just that.

Grinding as a state of mind

The problem is that you can't make universal proclamations about what is or isn't fun. My young Zelda-obsessed self didn't mind what most people would find tedious. If The Legend of Zelda were an MMO, people would be clamoring for the game to give players the red candle sooner, and I would have been disappointed all that much sooner.

It's also interesting that players tend to inflict the grind on themselves. Players tend to take the path of least resistance, even if that path is boring as watching paint dry. There was nothing in the rules that explicitly made people camp a spot and kill those monsters over and over again, but it was the most effective way to kill things while reducing the chance that your group would get killed. So, people camped and then complained because it was boring.

Can people actually like "grinding"? My better half, who plays LotRO, actually got upset when they adjusted the experience curve and effectively bumped up her characters up 3 levels. It turned a lot of the quests she was working on gray (trivial), thereby disrupting her experience. For her, the fun was in doing the quests and exploring more of the world with some reward thrown in as a bonus. Even as we play and our advancement has slowed down, she still enjoys finding new quests and new areas to explore. To her, the end goal isn't to get to the top level as fast as possible. Therefore, gaining levels, either through killing monsters or doing quest, isn't seen as a grind.

But, when it comes to things like the kill deeds, it gets different. She gets frustrated when she's killed several dozen Trolls and then has to kill several dozen more to get the virtue reward. What's the difference between the deed and getting xp for advancement?

The first thought that comes to mind might be the reward: she doesn't see higher level content (raiding or Pv(M)P) as a goal, so she doesn't mind getting up levels. But, when the thing standing between you and a bonus is killing 100 more trolls, things feel more like a grind. I'm not sure that's exactly the case here, though.

Bored from not learning

Drawing from Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun, I think we might be able to explain this in terms of pattern mastery. Gaining levels on her character is still interesting because she's doing different things to gain the experience. New zones and new cities give her more opportunities to do quests and search out points of interest, which keeps her from feeling like she's mastered the pattern of the game.

Deeds, on the other hand, boil down to one simple thing: killing a monster you've already killed a dozens of times before many more times. I've I've killed 60 trolls, I'm pretty sure I can kill 90 more. The pattern here is not new, especially if the monsters are located in a relatively small area in the zone, so a player may feel as if they have mastered that pattern already by the time they have a few dozen notches in their weapon.

I think this also explains why monster-bashing got old fairly quickly, whereas questing has stayed relatively fresh for a while longer. By their nature, quests have people moving around and doing different things to satisfy the requirements, whereas the path of least resistance for killing monsters is to camp one location and kill the same group over and over again. It's easy to feel as if you've mastered the pattern and that you're getting bored.

Can the grind be good for you?

In a lot of the discussion, people have been nostalgic for the "bad old days" of camping monsters. And, to be honest, there are some good things about it. As people point out, there was a lot more social interaction in the older games by necessity. I think that even though EQ forced people to group together to be most efficient, people who had mastered the pattern had less distraction when it came to socializing. It's easier to shoot the breeze (especially in typed conversations like in EQ before voice chat became common) if you didn't have to learn to play your part in the encounter.

Another thing people bring up is exploration in older games. Part of grinding out monsters required you to search around for a good place to camp. If your favorite spot was already camped out, then you had to find another one. Finding a spot that was convenient but far enough away not to be fighting with another group was important, so someone had to know the area pretty well to know the prime spots. Without quests to lead you around by the nose

Designing away grind

So, can game designers do to combat fears of the grind? A few things come to mind.

Encourage players to do varied things. As I pointed out, quests don't seem as grindy because you're doing different things in different areas for different characters and getting different rewards for your trouble. As long as things appear to be changing, the pattern mastery aspect won't kick in quite so fast, so the frustration of simply having to grind isn't there. On the other hand, having "daily quests" where the player is encouraged to repeat the same behavior on a daily basis will probably lead to "grind" frustration faster.

Discourage boring behavior. Dark Age of Camelot did pretty well by copying EQ's core gameplay with many changes change. One of the ways it delivered "EQ without the suck" was by offering an "anti-camping" bonus for killing monsters that hadn't been killed recently. This encouraged players to move around when the bonus ran out instead of just pulling and killing the same monsters repeatedly. A good designer needs to identify potentially boring-but-profitable areas of gameplay and try to make that less enticing to players, ideally by making fun behavior more profitable.

Provide alternative gameplay. DAoC also had RvR gameplay. So, if you got tired of camping monsters you could go get your ass kicked by other players. Monsters in disputed areas were also a little more profitable to kill, so there was encouragement to do something a bit more risky but still completely optional. Even though it could lead to some frustration, it was a break from the usual grind.

Encourage socialization. A lot of people complain about how questing ruined a lot of the social experience in games in the posts I linked at the start of this post. Sometimes questing seems hostile to the player that prefers to get into a group, because it can seem to slow down the collection of rwards. Even though some people prefer to "play alone together" with other people inhabiting the world, the best experiences for most people come from interesting interactions. One goal has to be to make it as easy as possible for people to play together, especially if they're not in the same game-defined party/group.

So, what do you think? Is the grind as horrible as people say? Is it a fact of life in games that have lots of repetition in them, or is it something that can be designed around? Or, are modern MMO players too ADD-influenced to want to do anything besides solo their character?

Post copyright Brian 'Psychochild' Green. Visit the post to participate in the comments:

Examining the Grind