New Attitude - No mercy, no prisoners

This week we take a look at The Three Faces of Gaming.

Read on…

The Three Faces of Gaming

by Julie Whitefeather

When MMOs are the topic of conversation or journalism, it is common to divide that discussion of the game into three parts - beginning, middle and endgame.  The beginning of any game is usually where developers concentrate their first efforts when a game comes up.  It is where the game puts on what a friend used to call it’s “date face” - the idea being that we all want to create our best appearance when we are on a date.  The beginning is the part of the game that is meant to grab our attention and keep us playing - but developers don’t always succeed.  As with all things there are exceptions.

While Project Entropia,  is not a typical MMO, being more akin to Second Life than anything else, I found the beginning to be an unforgettable experience - somewhat the way I will never forget the way I once had surgery without anything to kill the pain.  The choices of beginning activities were equally as memorable - I was given the choice of collecting animal sweat or animal dung.  Other games seem to swing toward the opposite end of the spectrum.  The first time I set foot in the Shire while playing Lord of the Rings Online (Lotro) I was awestruck.  The experience is what I call the “Oh my gosh I am in Bag End fan girl” experience.  Yet by level 32, despite having a lifetime subscription all paid up, I logged off, never to log on again.  The promise made by the beginning levels of the game were not met by the experiences in the middle of the game.  As beautiful as the game was, the game play was somewhat lacking.

On the whole, I must say that my experience with EQ2 to date has been unique.   I realize that the opinion of many individuals is colored by the troubles that EQ2 had at the beginning of the game.  Based on what I read about then, and what I experienced now, it is not the same game - it is better, far better. Still, there are those to whom not only is the glass half empty, the other half is full of toxic waste.  Slamming Sony is a favorite pass time for some, and where EQ2 is concerned it is one that isn’t justified by the current state of the product. 

There will always be those players who say EQ2, or any other game for that matter, are too easy in the first 20 levels.  These seem to be the players that miss the old painfully slow leveling of EQ1.  Trying to level in EQ1 was such a horrendous experience that I could easily equate it with having to push a brick across a mile of gravel road with my nose.

I will, however, admit to having a bad case of  “alt-itis” where gaming is concerned, and EQ2 is a dream come true.   There are so many race and class combinations that I found myself continually going back to delete old characters and try out new combinations.  This is not an unusual experience in EQ2 from what I understand.   I found  the starting game in Neriak, Greater Faydark and most recently Gorowyn to be so enjoyable that I had a hard time getting characters past the level of 40 at first.

Dead skunk in the middle of the game - when mid game fails…

Those readers who were around for the 70’s may remember a line from a popular song - “There’s a dead skunk in the middle of the road and it’s stinking to high heaven.”  If a game has managed to draw us in with the siren song it presents in the first 20 levels, this is where the game will first start to stink if it does fail. Whether it is a curse or a just a failing of game design, this is where games often start to drag.  Blizzard addressed this problem by giving its players a way to get through these levels at an accelerated pace - basically applying a bandage rather than address a problem.  Typical of the situation is World of Warcraft (WoW) who are faced with leveling though an area known as Stranglethorn Veil (an area designed for characters in the 30s).  Long time players often begin to feel like an animal who has to chew through  it’s own leg to get out of a trap rather than level through the area again.

Why?

Simple - the mystery is gone.  Every jungle path, every quest, every mob has become commonplace.  But games fail the first time around when we reach the middle levels as well.  Some developers are too busy telling the players what they want the game to be as the people who made the game.  The failure at this point is not understanding a basic lesson in marketing a product - good marketing is the process of making the product fit the needs of the customer, not the other way around.

Early on when I played Lotro I reached a point when I could play in a group or I could quit playing - I quit playing.  This is not so much that I felt grouping was being rammed down my throat (which it was) so much as my inability to spend endless uninterrupted hours raiding without a break for a little thing called real life.  The reality of the situation is that there is no longer what could once be called a “typical” gamer.  MMOs have hit main stream media, being mentioned in prime time television, and some commercial campaigns (like that begun by Blizzard) having developed a cultural status of their own.  MMOs have even attracted the attention of big media conglomerates who are now looking for a “piece of the action”.  If a game is going to be successful enough to pay the bills its developers should understand that their audience has long since stopped consisting solely of a teenager holed up in their parents basement, rarely seeing the light of day.   Now, like as not, the gamer is likely to be the parents themselves.

Endgame… 

Most of the time if a game has managed to string a player along this far the developer has it made. After all, hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned. Even if a player has long ago become bored with a game, by the time end game rolls around, players have invested so much time and energy into a game that they hold on to it with a death grip.  A player trying to quit a game they have been playing for some time becomes like a smoker trying to give up nicotine. But even a long time player can get so upset  with a game that they hit the remove program keys so fast that it sets a new land speed record.

To date, end game is usually divided up between three aspects of gaming - raiding, crafting and player vs. Player.  Even when players have the time to devote to what can rapidly become marathon gaming sessions required for raiding they can quickly degenerate into what Richard Garriott has called “Inventory Management”.   This is how he recently described WoW and he is right.  Raiding quickly becomes a vicious circle with players raiding to get better gear and needing better gear to keep raiding.  This seems to feed on the age old human characteristic of greed.  But we are entering an era of Micro-transactions in gaming (if you don’t understand the term micro-transaction you can read my column entitled “John Smedley down on the Farmers available here. There may come a time when developers will have to find a new way to string along long time players.

There are two other age old time sinks in MMOs - crafting and money sinks.  A good crafting system can keep a player busy for along time. But not every player likes to craft, and not every player is interested in player housing.  There is always the age old money sink of ever more expensive means of transportation that developers can dangle in front of a player like a carrot - whether that carrot is a spaceship in Eve-Online that takes the equivalent of the Gross National Product of a small country to purchase, or a a new rhino mount in EQ2.

There is yet a third means of keeping players involved in end game, and sadly even when it is present, it is often tacked on to the game as an after thought. This is the area of player vs. player.  Player vs. Player in Lotro was so bad that it wasn’t even  worth discussing.  It was more like a desperate attempt to grab at a bit larger audience. 

Player vs. player itself can also be divided into good old fashioned gang warfare on the open plains (what EQ2 has on its pvp servers), arena combat (or dueling) and battlegrounds.  Sadly battlegrounds are absent altogether in EQ2. Even when arena combat and battlegrounds are present in a game they can become problematic at best.  Once again what Richard Garriott calls “inventory management” in gaming rears its ugly head.  The person who wins in most systems of pvp becomes whoever has the best gear. Rare is the combat system where the person who wins is the one who is the most skilled and the best at battleground tactics.  Right now this is almost unheard of.  You wouldn’t think it would be difficult for developers to design into a game and yet the solution is centuries old.

Good PvP should be like a game of chess.  Each player should start out with the same base when it comes to gear for a particular class of character.  Like in chess, two players may start off with the same pieces but it is their ability to use what they have that determines the winner. This is the way it should be - and it isn’t.

Until next time,

See you online…

Julie Whitefeather