My girlfriend plays WoW and I sometimes look over her shoulder. We both play FFXI. I can’t get myself excited about performing any kind of task for the reward of a text window. To me, games replaced TV and Movies. I’m watching a story where I have influence on the the story arcs presented. FFXI’s full motion cut-scenes are the reason I even play the game, and I go back to the replay characters and re-watch the cut scenes I’ve unlocked. I really have zero interest in getting gear or leveling other than that it unlocks other cut-scenes or provides “your character trained hard” background between story moments.

To me, Ralph’s original post presumes that I am dis-satsified if I’m not surprised. The transaction I think I’m making is that for what I paid I get to be the hero and get to decide where the hero journeys on the way to the ending of my choice. Talk about surprises and I imagine being stuck unable to get the happy ending without starting from scratch, or some other sucky revelation. My choice in gaming is based on the quality of presentation (cinematography, npc character development, background music), not the ability of the provider to hide the plot points until I open them.

On the other hand, WoW is a “gamey” game in which NPCs want you to collect [1-20] [animal] [body parts] because [motivation]…and because that’s what the designer plugged into his MadLib quest template. These low-fidelity quests encourage you to do stuff, but are highly susceptible to documentation and don’t offer much in the way of alternative, creative solutions because the simulation can’t support it.

I like mini-game style quests or crafting systems because they’re seated nicely in the middle ground. Oblivion’s mechanic for influencing NPCs was pretty silly to me, but I admired the fact that they didn’t just implement an “Influencing…” status bar that filled to 100% over 30 seconds. I may not have slipped a veiled threat into a conversation that scared a diplomat into compliance, but I did beat the minigame using some amount of cleverness.

If anything, I feel like that’s where cookie-cutter quests fail the worst: they don’t give players the ability to react creatively. If anything, that’s a fine excuse for most people to go hit up Wowhead and walk away guilt-free.

The player who wants to solve puzzles on his own shouldn’t have the experienced spoiled by other players, which I guess is an argument against static puzzles.

I posted some thoughts back in June about modeling natural obstacles in an MMO, and one of my criteria was “spoiler resistance.” I think the question of static vs variable information depends to some extent on how active the solution is. A hole in the ice is pretty easy to avoid once you know where it is. Freezing temperatures can’t be avoided, but can be mitigated. Here the challenge is a) finding the right equipment to deal with the temperatures, and b) continuing to operate effectively with this handicap. Knowing that it’s going to be cold only gets you so far.

There will always be people who would rather solve a puzzle than look up the answer; niche audiences continue to grow as far as I know.

I think the actual issue is the fact that in WoW and similar quest-driven games.. it’s multiplayer. There is a strategic advantage to be gained by solving puzzles frequently and as fast as possible. The root of that strategic advantage is the fact that you gain things from the quest that do not actually relate to the quest at hand.

“Go give Thromus this message and you can have this hammer and some experience.”

But according to that logic, the only solution would be to.. not reward players for completing the quests. Which seems very counter-general-MMO-ideology, since most gain their appeal by simulating advancement.

Kinda sketchy and just thrown together, but it seems to me that you would have to ACTUALLY reward the person playing with an enlightening experience.

Difficult to say the least, and people still make strategy guides for Myst.

[...] Raph had a post that got me thinking. All of my games feature some kind of information system. That’s a bit misleading, though. All games are entirely about information processing. [...]

Now, its okay to present a dynamic puzzle if its a side quest I suppose. And then it would have ‘meaning’ if the gamers get past it. You could give them ‘badges’ and titles (like Problem Solver).

So, for “required Class Quests” I would let those remain Static perhaps. So that those that get stuck can acquire help. However, if it is a dynamic puzzle I suppose the bonus is they would have to pay/hire someone to help them get through it. But you see the challenges developer’s face here.

I wrote a blog similar to this on my site called “Optimization, Patters, and Routine” a few months ago. The basic thing I was talking bout if players “know” of challenges in advance then they can optimize how to get around. Tactical Transparency = static. Dynamic = realtime problem solving and sort of breaks optimization (unless there are emergent patterns).

I love topics like this keep it going

Good point about players reverse engineering (or trying to) interesting game systems. For me, by far the most enjoyable game mechanic in MMOs, if not games as a whole, was Bioengineering in SWG.

If you aren’t familiar with it, basically you went out and “DNA sampled” five wild critters. Each sample had a whole bunch of stats (over 20) which weren’t described in the manual. The samples were “combined” in an order which was significant but not described in the manual. You could then “experiment” to tweak the stats of the resulting template and use it to create a pet that you could sell to other players.

Bioengineers spent a considerable amount of time running the numbers and trying to figure out what all the stats did, how they combined, what the effect was of the order of slotting them. Reverse engineering the system, basically. And we almost did it. We could make a pretty accurate estimate as to the result of combining any given samples and we were able to use that knowledge to plan out and fulfill custom orders from players who wanted to buy animals with specific stats. But we never cracked the challenge level calculations and we never quite figured out why the game would allow us to make level 10 animals (the highest that could be called by players who hadn’t invested skill points in Creature Handler) with insanely high stats.

The Bioengineer loved the aforementioned mission terminals. They were an easy way to get an exact waypoint to a particular mob type. But not all mobs appeared on the terminals. The career Bioengineer knew in which regions of which planets to find specific mobs in the wild, and was by necessity a master of aggro management.

The actual game mechanic to support this was, when you get down to it, pretty simple. A bunch of stats and a black box with some formulae inside. Yet it kept me busy for months and months. I would literally spend entire play sessions just running around sampling random mobs and recording their stats. It was much more interesting than the “go here, do that” quests that I’d do once and forget about. There’s nothing as boring as a problem already solved.

I’m glad people like Tim at Lunar Quest are using this to teach. Maybe we should make games with some puzzles that require level 3 in Electronics or Chemistry with realistic outcomes being the metric of success. (Say rewiring an alarm or repairing some equipment.)

That then turns the ‘problem’ of players learning the static content into an educational solution.

It also means we’re actually doing something constructive with our time learning things with some real use afterwards. That has to be better than mindlessly killing things. I no longer want to play games that reward me for killing things, especially as they become more realistic. Teach me electronics in a fun way, and I’ll pay to play that ‘static’ content.

[...] has an interresting post about game design, where he talks about different puzzle and questing techniques that game [...]