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Understanding Games: Episode 3March 20th, 2007 |
Looks like Understanding Games: Episode 3 is up at Kongregate now. This one is about how players build mental models: hypothesizing, experimenting, and getting feedback from the game as to whether they are playing correctly.
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One of the most amazing things in MMORPGs to me has always been the fact that they don’t actually use this, well, beyond the “how to beat the Boss” syndrome.
In UO there was the Dungeon Covetous levers, and the notes at the throne and the painting that read “3-4-1-5″. In the first year of UO these caused players to constantly try the levers. Everyone tried them. But it wasn’t long before players were telling those who tried that it was broken. Others said it was simply to reset a set of chests around the corner from the levers. Very poor feedback. I also always wondered, and still do sometimes, if the levers combined with other levers to open the way to the secret rooms below the stairs, which I found through a different method (the age old “why do mages always try to teleport everywhere” method).
Be that as it may, the idea of interacting with the game world to make some (hopefully cool) discovery was never picked up on in MMORPGs. In more recent years, there has been absolutely no interest in those levers. Players have the attitude, and I’ve been told this quite a few times, that “they don’t do that”.
What a disappointing waste.
I really think DDO was making some good strides in this direction. There’s a few puzzler type experiences using ingame world objects to achieve something (like a Pipes-type game in one dungeon to get to a scroll in the center).
Otherwise though, I agree. In the ongoing strive for quality and playability, some earlier innovations have been cut out. The justifications are simple for business folks: EQ1 and then WoW. What else should we bother doing beyond slot-machine drop-based very-light RPGs?! 
I thought this particular version of Understanding Games was interesting, but I wish I got credit for just how quickly I figured out what needed to be done. My score was certainly high enough they shouldn’t be asking me “that wasn’t so easy” 
That’s what makes DDO such a standout for me. Unfortunately, for other reasons, it doesn’t have the numbers to be a compelling reference in discussions about “what players would benefit from”. Which is a shame (and the same sort of shame I saw from CoH/V, innovations that should be emulated but which are lost to a lack of subscribers).
Erp, formatting error. That third paragraph should have been the fourth one.
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