Another MMO dev blog

  10 Responses to “Another MMO dev blog”

1. Michael Chui says:

   August 23, 2006 at 8:36 am

   Second, if you get this urge to teleport a player into the sun, don’t do it.

   Unless the Sun is a special area in your world where good things happen. But don’t teleport the assholes there.
2. David says:

   August 23, 2006 at 8:50 am

   On the mud I started my gaming “career” at there was literally a “jail cell” – a room with no exits. Occasionally the higher-level imms would teleport a problem player’s character there and leave them there for like a week. It was basically their way of telling a player to go away without explicitly nuking the character.

   I was only ever a low level imm (zone builder rather than administrator), so I wasn’t allowed to put people in jail or nuke anyone, although I could disconnect people or cut off their public chat channel access if needed.
3. David says:

   August 23, 2006 at 8:53 am

   I thought this was an interesting passage from his latest.

   One thing to remember is that the relative importances of Fun and Reward depend heavily on the individual player. Personally, games tend to bore me to death if they lack any compelling and immediate fun. On the other hand, many of my friends refuse to play games that aren’t competitive. In terms of genres, MMORPGs lean heavily towards reward. Everything you do is tracked, ranked, and rewarded. Single player RPGs share these features (ever grind to max level in a Final Fantasy game?), but MMORPGs up the ante by adding social elements. By living in a massive world with thousands of players you can constantly compare yourself to other players. The only thing better than gaining abstract rewards is gain more than someone else! This is why PvP in MMORPGs always devolves into ganking: the abstract reward of being better than someone else is perceived to be greater than the fun of a close and fair fight. This finally brings us to a definition of grinding: it’s when players repeatedly perform a somewhat painful action in order to acquire an abstract reward
4. Brew says:

   August 23, 2006 at 11:02 am

   I tend to agree… Unfortunately, very little developement goes on to prevent the gank fest that is pvp in mmo’s. Swg’s battlefields had the promise of a somewhat level playing field… but sadly never got implemented, or were removed shortly after implementation due to ‘issues’. I can’t quite remember what the specifics were, tho.
5. Faith says:

   August 23, 2006 at 3:00 pm

   […] Comments […]
6. Another MMO dev blog on Raph Koster - MMOz says:

   August 23, 2006 at 3:12 pm

   […] Another MMO dev blog on Raph Koster Another MMO dev blog on Raph Koster JZigishness is from Ben Zeigler, a dev at Cryptic, and it’s been added to the sidebar. …there are two basic rules. First, if you screw up something, always give players back more than what they lost. Second, if you get this urge to teleport a player into the sun, don’t do it. Even if they’re being […] via Raph Koster […]
7. karth says:

   August 24, 2006 at 7:55 am

   won’t giving back more than what is taken eventually lead to players playing in godmode? i.e. doing away with the nerfbat.

   a thought on the “pvp->ganking to be “better”” concept – if mmo’s that had more of a sandbox model (i.e. pre-nge swg) and also had some valid (enjoyable and rewarding) difficult pve content, players would measure their own “greatness” in different ways, and be recognized in their communities for it as well. being able to solo difficult content, or able to lead groups of folks through difficult instances , or craft exceptional or rare items, is just as valid as just pvp fighting, and generally more useful to the whole community, leading to more valid game-fame.
8. David says:

   August 24, 2006 at 8:16 am

   I think the way to have PvP in a game and insure that it doesn’t turn into ganking is to give people something important and meaningful to fight over. In most games this means some kind of territorial control mechanism, with clear and evident benefits for taking and holding territory.
9. Michael Chui says:

   August 24, 2006 at 8:55 am

   On the mud I started my gaming “career” at there was literally a “jail cell” – a room with no exits.

   On “Dark & Shattered Lands”, they had three “reasons” for such rooms. One was an IC justification… apparently I committed a crime in New Thalos and the guards snagged me. The second was OOC, where I ran an alt when I wasn’t supposed to. The third was… interesting, what is called a “black hole” room. You’re walking along, enter this room and….. no exits. IIRC, it was off a cliff.

   the abstract reward of being better than someone else is perceived to be greater than the fun of a close and fair fight

   An interesting point. But the words “abstract”, “perceived”, and “fun” are a little too… stand-offish. People like winning. It’s more rewarding if it’s a win in a “fair” fight, but the goal for most of these people is to win, not to struggle. This typically includes the losers, who only want a fair fight because they wouldn’t get ganked that way. If you went through the game and flipped their level and appropriate stats so that those who are weak became strong, people who say they want fairness would start ganking.

   I guess I ought to post that in HIS blog…
10. Rik says:

    August 24, 2006 at 1:53 pm

    Players don’t wait failure; they want the perceived chance-of-failure followed by victory.

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