The Threshold RPG forums currently have a serious debate over the in game ethos system. It is a system that has evolved over the years and changed along with many changes to the religion system. You can read the discussion here:

Threshold RPG ethos and religion discussion.

Aristotle, the head admin and developer of the game wrote:

Dalaena and I discuss this topic occasionally, and interestingly enough we were recently discussing affinity. It seems like affinity, while interesting, is overly complex and does not seem to accomplish much. If we are wrong about that, we’d love to hear people tell us why.

This system has been tweaked and overhauled many times over the years. It has never really accomplished its goals. The core problem is we are trying to codify behavior that should be natural through RP. Unfortunately, if we leave it totally through RP, you’ll have the gear and friend “whores” who ignore it all to be buddies with everyone.

It definitely ain’t easy.

You think you are reading the Muckbeast game design blog right now, but you aren’t! The one you really want to be reading is now hosted elsewhere. I am posting these periodic reminders for the few people who might be receiving new post updates via RSS or some other method and need to switch over their bookmarks and/or subscriptions

I like to believe my thoughts on game design are interesting and worthwhile, but I’m not sure if they measure up to the quality of the design below (as always, click to be sent to the new and improved Muckbeast):

If you’d like to read and discuss a review of Campaign Cartographer 3, click on over to Muckbeast now and enjoy!

Campaign Cartographer 3 review

Remember to update your subscriptions and bookmarks to the new Muckbeast:

This is a concept I have always believed strongly in, and Raph Koster just wrote an excellent blog article about it: Ways to make your virtual space more social. He makes a lot of great points, but I am going to focus specifically on the concept that game developers must engage in some degree of social engineering when they make a game, and for a virtual world game they MUST take steps to force people to slow down, hang out, and socialize with others.

You Can’t Chat While Hammering the 1, 2, 3, Buttons

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I have no idea why this feature is being ignored by the current crop of MMORPGs, but I am going to talk about it anyway because I think it is an important and extremely fun feature. Housing presents one of the best opportunities for players to express their own imagination and it gives them a “piece of the world” to call their own. Further, it provides the developer with many opportunities to make content more exciting if it involves a way for players to bring home a trophy they can display, or some other type of house oriented loot - carpets, furniture, cool artifacts, etc. I am going to focus this post on questions, rather than opinions, so the readers can give their own take on player owned housing without any bias or prompting.

What Player Owned Housing Features Do You Like?

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I am really getting sick and tired of every MMO turning healers into pseudo-DPS classes. I don’t know who started this trend, but whoever it was needs to be chained up with the guy who invented bind on pickup crafted items, thrown into a pit, and have lotion lowered down to them while being reminded to put it back in the basket. There are a lot of gamers who actually enjoy playing true support classes and true healers. They don’t need OMFGWTFBBQ dps to keep them happy in between times where they “have to (omg I might hyperventilate)” heal.  This obsession with making healers into DPSers always causes severe balance problems. After all, why just DPS when you could DPS AND heal? This quickly results in nerfs, and for some reason developers always go straight to the heals for their nerfs. Imagine how that makes the people feel who actually play healers to… *gasp the horror*… HEAL?

(NOTE: That’s Dr. Cuddy, from House, M.D., if you are wondering about the girl<->topic connection.)

The Stupidity of this DPS Healer Phenomenon

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The so-called “holy trinity” of class design has been around since the early MUDs. Yes, that means it pre-dates all the shiny, glowy graphical MMORPGs. It was a dominant feature of DIKU MUDs, whose original classes were fighter, healer, wizard, thief. That gave you tank, healer, and two dps (ranged and melee, but range was meaningless in pure room based MUDs). Things really haven’t changed much since then. At most, I would change it to only one of the following:

Tank, Support, DPS

or

Tank, Healer, Crowd Control, Support (buffs), DPS

Are you happy with this arrangement? Does this provide enough game play variety for players? If not, what are the flaws? What would you change (if anything) to improve it, tweak it, or overhaul it completely? And where do hybrids factor into all of this? Do they screw up the whole concept entirely or do they fill in the gaps where necessary? I know you all must have some strong opinions on this, so let ‘er rip!

No wonder developers don’t invest serious time into mini-games. I can barely get people to talk about them! It would be easy to misinterpret this as a lack of interest, but in 17 years of making online games I have rarely been disappointed with the results of a good mini-game. With almost no exceptions (I cannot even remember one off the top of my head), every mini-game I have ever put significant effort into has resulted in massive player enjoyment. Perhaps I need to turn this into more of a question than just praise for mini-games in order to entice a little more commenting! Read on for some specific questions you can answer.

What Makes a Mini-Game Good?

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On June 11, 1996, I brought Threshold RPG fully online for the first time. I generated my first couple characters to make sure everything I had created was working. The game was playable, though it did not have a tremendous amount of content. It had a handful of “zones” and your character class (guild) options consisted of: fighter, mage, thief, cleric, and psion. With so many possible things to code, and so much in need of creation, what was the first thing I created at that point? A mini-game. I coded a deck of cards for playing 5 card draw.

Why Are Mini-Games So Awesome?

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I imagine some of you have read a few of the articles from the last year or so where writers try to draw comparisons between raid leading in a game like WoW, and management in the business world. I seem to recall the Wall Street Journal even wrote about it. I must admit, every time I read an article like that it strikes me as a pile of BS. The ONLY place I have ever heard this tripe is in a few scattered articles that could easily have been bought and paid for by Vivendi. I have never read anything of the sort in a respectable business publication (WSJ is respectable, but as a daily it can freely include random garbage articles).

Why Are They Perpetrating This Fraud?

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As promised, I am leaving the Wikipedia topic and moving on to another issue of Threshold’s game design. The religion system is probably one of the most robust and popular role playing features on Threshold. In this post, I am going to talk specifically about how the deities were created. I am assisted in this task by the recent discovery of an article I wrote for the webzine Imaginary Realities back in December of 1999. In fact, why don’t you click over to that article, then come back for a few more thoughts from me and some discussion: The Making of a Pantheon .

A Little More Insight into Threshold’s Religious Pantheon

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People keep asking me to write about how and why I designed things, so I guess it is about time I actually broke down and gave the readers what they want. As I noted in a comment post, when I look back over my 16+ years of computer game design my failures stand out for me more than my successes. I don’t think that is negativity. I think it is just a bit of perfectionism mixed with a desire to never forget my failures in order that I not repeat them. In this post, I am going to discuss an absolute disaster of a design failure from the early years of Threshold : allowing players to attack (and kill) themselves.

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I don’t do “tech news” type posts very often, but every now and then there are some technology issues I think it would be interesting to discuss. So here’s a grab bag of three issues:

1) A preview of Windows 7 (please be better than vista)

2) The MPAA getting a much deserved b-slap from the FCC.

3) And some insane patent related litigation that would be horrible for the MMO industry if it succeeds.

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That headline is a grabber, isn’t it? I did not purchase Wrath of the Lich King so I have no practical knowledge regarding the current state of WoW raiding. I suspect it is not significantly different and still has the same problems that always annoyed me. I created this topic so those of you playing WotLK can educate me. I will start the discussion off by recapping a few things I hate(d) about WoW raiding, and the readers can tell me if WotLK is more of the same, or a major improvement.

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Achivements are the new hot feature in MMOs. I’m not sure who had them first, or who does them best, but there is no doubt they are popular as heck. In every game that has them, people seem to really get into collecting them. Even when there is no in-game benefit, just piling them on seems to be really popular.

For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, here is basically how Achivements systems work. There is some system in game that tracks the achivements - either a list of badges (like City of Heroes), a journal (like Warhammer Online), or just an achivement interface (WoW). There are generally categories (quest related, kill related, exploration related, etc.). Whenever you kill X number of a certain mob, or find a specific location, or meet a specific NPC, or perform a task a certain number of times, you get an Achivement unlock. Unlocking achivements can even trigger additional achivements (”You’ve unlocked 100 Achivements!”). These build up over time, and generally provide you with things like fluff titles or perhaps access to specific gear vendors or powers. The tangible benefits are nice, but do not appear to be completely necessary. People will hunt them down even if there are no specific rewards.

MMO Achivement Systems: What I Think.

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MMOs are all about community and playing with (or around) other players. This means population management is vitally important. If the game is too crowded, because get sick of not being able to do things. If the game is too empty, the game is no fun because they cannot find people to play with, group with, team with, or compete against. This is an extremely delicate balancing act. This was hard enough in the old days of MUDs when everyone played on the same server. Then, the only thing you had to worry about was spreading people too thin around the world. But now, with the exception of a small handful of games, all MMOs have tons of servers. Companies that run multi-server (or multi-shard) MMOs have that issue to deal with on top of the matter of figuring out ways to keep players geographically close to each other inside the game.

Geographical Population

This is the type of population problem MUDs and one-shared MMOs deal with. They need to make sure the do not design their game universe in a manner that spreads people out too much. On Threshold, I accomplished this by only having ONE major city with shopkeepers, training halls, and a tavern. As a result, everyone naturally concentrated in a single place between adventures. It was not until the game had grown significantly that I added another major city with shops and taverns.

Server Population

This is a new problem that modern, large MMOs have to deal with. This is a particularly serious problem because most graphical MMOs these days waste so much of their content. The overwhelming majority of their world is total throw away. People blaze through entire zones in an hour or two and will never visit it again. With content being consumed so fast, it needs to be readily available to a lot of people. Thus, a server cannot support more than a few hundred players (or a few thousand tops) all playing at the same time.

This is a particularly serious issue for PvP related games. If you do not have other players to fight against, this entire type of content is rendered moot. This is one of the issues Warhammer Online is currently struggling with. They released with too many servers, they are drastically in need of consolidation, but they don’t do it because they are too afraid of the PR hit from server merger. In the meantime, their players (and subscriptions) suffer.

Your Experiences with Popluation Issues

So as I so like to do, I leave you players (and devs) reading this with a question. What type of population issues have you experienced in games? What have the developers done to solve the problems, and were they successful?

It has become standard fare for MMOs to have some kind of special event around holiday time. Most have something at Christmas and all other major holidays, but some will run special events even for minor stuff (including Hallmark Day… oops, I mean Valentine’s Day.) The current trend is to create some kind of faux-In Character name for the event (All Hallows Eve, Feast of Winter Veil, Keg End, etc.) that dimly creates a lore reason for the event. This is often a very weak excuse, since in-game time rarely relates to real life time.

Before you assume I am down on the idea, I think these events are good and interesting things. I think they are an example of developers giving something fun to their community, and they create a bit of an emotional connection from the game world to the real world. When you are celebrating something special in real life you are also celebrating something special in the game. If anything, the only negative thing I have to say about the idea is the fact that all too often this is the ONLY type of special event developers run. That’s a shame. Events directly related to the game world itself are far more interesting and should be a bigger priority.

What Do Players Think About Holiday MMO Events?

As players (or visiting developers), what do you think about these holiday events? I will get you started with a few specific questions:

1) Are these kinds of events fun?

2) Are they worth the time developers put into them?

3) Do you have a problem with developers trotting out the same event each year, or mostly the same with a few things added?

4) Do events like this break immersion, add to it, or neither?

Feel free to also share examples of good or bad holiday MMO events you have experienced.

Merry Christmas!

Follow Your Nerf Assiduously After the Fact

After nerfing something, a developer has a duty and a responsibility to its customers to keep a close eye on the effects of that nerf. Simply releasing the nerf into the wild and just leaving players do deal with the aftershock is irresponsible and downright cruel. Your players are going to be somewhere between mildly annoyed and absolutely miserable as a result of the nerf. You owe it to them to watch it closely and find out if the nerf went father than you expected or intended.

All too often, developers just assume they can count on players to raise a huge stink if the nerf went to far. A sloppy, lazy attitude all too common in developers is that they only need to use their tracking metrics to find things that are too good and too powerful, since players will be far more honest about reporting things that are weak. While it is true that players are more likely to report things that are weak, relying on this depends on your staff having a really good ability to sort through the din of forum posts and other feedback methods. Good luck with that.

If You Need to Nerf Again, Consider Undoing the First Nerf

Everyone has seen this happen countless times. Some class or ability in a game is too powerful, it gets nerfed, it continues to be too powerful, and it gets nerfed again (or perhaps again, and again, and again). Eventually, one of (or some of) these nerfs actually does the trick and results in the ability no longer being overpowered. At this point, all previous nerfs should be reviewed as potentially being unnecessary. Sometimes it is hard to properly diagnose why something is too powerful. Perhaps the ability is getting used in surprising ways, or perhaps when seems like the problem at first is not the real problem. That is fine. There is no shame in admitting that. But do not compound the problem by lazily or stubbornly refusing to re-examine and possibly undoing previous nerfs.

Example: 

A certain power seems too strong. In round 1, the damage gets nerfed. In round 2, the cooldown is increased. In round 3, the “real problem” is discovered, that the damage from this power is being delivered untyped, or unresistable, or resistances simply are not working against it. Round 3 successfully makes the power reasonable. The developer should now go back and consider undoing nerf #1 and nerf #2 now that the real problem has been found.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 1)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 2)

Soften the Blow

It surprises me how few MMO developers make any effort to soften the blow of a nerf. Didn’t any of these people watch Mary Poppins? “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine, go down.”   No matter how reasonable or needed a nerf is, the players negative affected by it are going to be unhappy. Even if they agree with the developers about the nerf, there is simply no way to be pleased when your character, realm, race, or class is weaker one day than it was the day before.

How NOT to Soften the Blow

Fixing a couple negative bugs for someone is not a way to soften the blow. Sure, it is nice, but players EXPECT developers to fix bugs. You are rarely going to get much gratitude from players as a result of bug fixing, and it certainly won’t make up for nerfs.

Give Them Something Useful

The most direct way to soften the blow is to give them something else that is useful. Perhaps this is an ability or feature you had been planning to give this group of people for a while, and now is a great time to release it. This gets back to my previous point about not rushing nerfs - if you hold off the nerf until you have some new content to give at the same time, you might be able to completely eliminate unhappy feelings from the nerf portion.

Give Them Something Fun

Game balance or your development cycle might make it impossible to give them something useful. In that case, figure out a way to give them something fun. Either come up with your own ideas, or comb your player feedback systems (forums, email, whatever) for some fun or pure fluff suggestions. Sometimes purely fun things mean more to players than actually “useful” things.

 No Matter What You Decide, at Least Try Something

Whatever you decide to go with, make sure you at least do something. Show some effort. Show the players you TRIED to soften the blow. Show them you care about their feelings and reactions to a nerf. Do not make them believe you could care less what they think, and that you heartlessly nerfed them out of some kind of sick joy. When players believe the developers are actually looking out for their interests, and trying to maintain a fun environment, they will forgive a lot of necessary nerfs or balance tweaks.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 1)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 3)

What is a nerf? In most of the world, it is a soft, spongy toy like the eponymous Nerf Football. In the world of gaming, a nerf is a reduction in power, utility, or usefulness of a character class, race, realm, zone, item, etc. Nerfs are very controversial because people do not enjoy being nerfed. Unsurprisingly, people often enjoy seeing OTHER PEOPLE get nerfed… especially in PvP or conflict oriented games.

Generally, players think anything of theirs is fine, and many things of their opponent’s is too powerful. Anything of their opponent’s that is weak, is “fine”, and if such people ask to be improved they are told to “learn to play.” This is expressed succinctly and cleverly by the following axiom:

“Hi. This is rock. Nerf paper. Scissors is fine.”

The sad, unfortunate reality is that nerfs occasionally must happen. The problem is, most developers handle this situation very poorly. They do not think things through, they rush the job, and they take no steps to soften the blow. In this article, I will discuss how developers nerf without thinking things through.

Think Before You Nerf… Then Think Some More

Developers need to understand that whenever you nerf something, the ripple effect is going to be huge. Actually, I should call it a tsunami effect. Everyone affected is going to be angry, and some of the people unaffected will also be angry because they might feel you didn’t nerf enough.

Anytime you are considering a nerf, you need to make sure you analyze the ever-lovin’ heck out of the situation. You need to constantly ask yourself “What EXACTLY is the problem with this class/item/etc. What EXACTLY is making it too powerful?” The answer is very often not the most obvious thing. An overpowered DPS class may not be overpowered because it does too much damage. It might be overpowered because the damage is of a type that is not resisted or defended against (solution: give players a way/choice to defend against it). It might be overpowered because that class has too many escape or utility powers, which make the class unstoppable combined with its damage. It might be overpowered because whatever negatives you have given the class are too easily overcome or remedied.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to PROPERLY DIAGNOSE THE PROBLEM. If you rush into the nerf, you are very likely to misdiagnose.

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 2)

Nerfs… How to do them right (Part 3)