Most people on the Interweb are fairly normal. You know, they post pictures of their cats, sometimes they gossip about work, sometimes they bitch about politics. Much like people everywhere.
Some people on the net are… well, quite obviously crazy. You know the ones, it’s usually something about the patriarchy or the dangers of fundamentalist preachers or intelligent insect armies or long, disturbing fantasies about family members getting it on with each other. And that’s just science fiction writers.
Then you get the ones that are like speakers of foreign languages that you kind of sort of know. You cock your head to one side, because it sounds like they should be making sense, using words that you’re pretty sure are used by normal educated people, but put together differently. Until finally, after in-depth analysis, you realize that dear God, you just wasted your time, because this person isn’t just misunderstood, they really don’t make any sense.
As part of that, I give you Prokofy Neva, probably Second Life’s most infamous avatar and certainly one of its most interviewed by the mass media. There’s not usually much to comment about Neva’s blogs (yes, she has three now), mainly because she focuses absolutely on Second Life and treats other endeavours like MMORPGs and Wikipedia as ridiculous or evil or, usually, both. In fact, pretty much anything Neva doesn’t understand, or hasn’t heard of, she treats as dismissively unimportant. Like, say, SXSW, a live music and film festival that shuts Austin’s traffic and parking down on a yearly basis. Oh, wait, no, it’s not important!
While tekkies and geeks everywhere thinks SXSW is the epitome of culture, it isn’t really, because not only have most normal people never heard of it (it’s in Austin, Texas and a few thousand people go bar-hopping and watch movies and hear panels about games at it annually), those that have wonder privately if it has peaked.
Well, that explains it, I suppose.
However, apparently Richard Bartle made the mistake of giving an interview in Second Life, and in so doing, attracting the gaze of the lidless eye.
How *could* Richard Bartle and his MUDs and whatnot have anything to do with Metanomics when Richard Bartle, as a good British socialist and intrinsic Marxist (although he’d deny everything but the British part likely) is opposed to virtual economies. He really really hates RMT, and he wants to set up a giant commission in the sky to scold REALLY hard all those nasty smug little Chinese boys that go around gold-farming and interrupting everybody’s game! For shame! Shame, shame, little Chinese boys (and Western round-eyes who do the same thing, essentially, in Second Life or some place). Shame! Maybe if we all hold hands and chant STOP THE GOLD FARMING, KILL THE RMT really really hard, we can make Tinkerbell wake up and prevent money from leaking into and out of games! Evil money! Evil capitalism!
As I said, Prokofy looks at everything through the Second Life filter. People make money in Second Life. Therefore making money is good. Why would people be against making money anywhere else? Not that anywhere else actually matters, or that you’ve heard of. But Bartle’s said that he’s against RMT in games, and people call Second Life a game, therefore, burn the heretic! Plus, he’s English so he’s probably a Commie. Or gay. No, better go with commie. They’re all lefties there, donchanow.
But, we get some clarity as to what Neva is on about: it seems Bartle didn’t speak up when they came for the Jews, or something.
Or, he could have said, “Yes, we’ve seen such a textbook example of the dynamics of griefing in that utter savaging of you on Terra Nova in the w-hat thread, and the solution should be not banning people but enabling them speak in defense of themselves, to have good speech drive out bad eventually.”
Instead, he began this total nihilist Marxian rant about the impossiblity of ever having any sort of agreed-upon morality such as to define some minimal code of behaviour (he wasn’t even willing to concede a game-god’s TOS, it was wacky).
[Let us pause for a Moment of Reflection, and recall that when it came to RMT…evil little Chinese boys…gold…there WAS an absolute, rock-solid, non-subjective, absolutely objective moral imperative which we could all invoke, which was (*holds up Cross*): evil, evil game gold mined by evil evil kiddies disrupting the game and CHEATING *gasp*!)
But griefing? Naaah, no moral imperative. It’s anything goes. P.S. this is a good example why socialism always and inevitably turns to crime.
Note that Prokofy Neva is one of the few people actually banned from commenting on Terra Nova. Note that Richard Bartle is on Terra Nova’s masthead. AT LAST ALL IS CLEAR.
But just in case you still were confused, Prokofy Neva finally drives a stake in the Bartle Player Types!
Unfortunately, with the usual crashes and lags and idiocies, I couldn’t get more than about half of what he was saying, but he did dwell quite a bit (because unfortunately Robert Bloomfield set him up to dwell on it) on these four avatar classes in games, which were something like, um, let me think now: Asian, African, American, Middle Eastern. No wait. Man Boy Women Girl. Wait. Let me check my notes. Explorer. Doer. Uhhhh Entitlement-Happy Clueless Git Nutsack. And uh…
What was it again?
Remember kids, what we don’t understand? We mock. And I really, really don’t understand Prokofy Neva.
#1 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
Nope. PvP does not have meaning because it can change the world. It has meaning because other players care about its results. There is a huge difference; tho I suspect you don’t understand what the difference is.
If the results don’t measurably change the world then only the participants in said PvP will care about them. Otherwise there is no reason for core PvE players to care. Currently PvE players only care about the existence of PvP at all because of -
Balance changes made to PvE due to PvP
Developer resources being devoted to a part of the game they don’t play
PvP rewards impinging on their PvE glory
So why exactly would they care about the actual results of PvP again?
#2 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
PvErs would have no reason to care if they didn’t want to. The problem is that PvPers don’t have a reason to care either. Even players who participate in world PvP in WoW find it ‘hard to care’ about the results; who cares if you go invade the enemy’s capital city, when the entire time you just sit there fighting guards?
The world has changed. There are dead guards scattered everywhere. But no one cares.
(Players suggest various solutions to this, most of which are flawed, but that’s to be expected ofc)
#3 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
To put it another way: why should enemy players care when you invade a capital city? They have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain; and you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain either.
Actually that isn’t true: what you both stand to lose by participating is valuable time that could have been spent grinding out epixx elsewhere in the game.
This is how progression interferes with world PvP. WoW’s devs understand it in a superficial way, but they do not understand how to solve it. Do you?
#4 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
player skill, and the effect player skill will have on character performance in a well-designed game.
And why wouldn’t the skilled players use the powerful classes? They’ll just be good and powerful then, blow through all of your content and move on after bitching that your game is too easy/short.
Balance via imbalance. That is the one Blizzard idea, and it’s a good one. Make your classes varied enough, and make your encounters varied enough that there is no ‘holy trinity’. It’s not hard to do.
So are things balanced or not? Giving each class a meaningful purpose in a variety of situations doesn’t mean leaving them alone. It means a metric ton of tweaking and balancing to ensure that each class has a purpose that isn’t completely overshadowed by another. And while it’s not too difficult a concept it is very difficult to implement.
#5 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
why should enemy players care when you invade a capital city? They have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain; and you have nothing to lose and nothing to gain either.
And by giving them something to gain or lose you either make it universally world changing and therefore impact the PvE crowd or very limited in scope as you can’t meaningfully touch any part of the world that PvEers go and use.
Now don’t get me wrong, a factional territorial capture system isn’t terrible idea. In fact TR and WAR are implementing them in at least some fashion. But it’s not my cup of tea, not is it a lot of other people’s cup of tea. Just hammering home the point that no matter how great any of your ideas may be to you, they do not appeal to everyone.
#6 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
As Mr Paul Barnett said, all that tweaking should be before the game launches.
Players may choose to use the ‘overpowered’ classes, or they may choose other classes because they are more fun. Your classes should be distinct enough tho that no one class is ‘absolutely’ better than another, with different encounters designed to subtly favor different classes so no one feels like they ‘need’ to be a particular class to have fun.
Some players will always finish content more quickly.
Let them.
That’s the lesson of original WoW, where reaching the level cap took a fraction of the time it did in other games. They can then choose to redo the content at a harder difficulty (but still gaining some benefit, even if just from farming gold) by e.g. soloing a 5-man instance; or they can PvP; or they can do optional progression like the Timbermaw rep grind with no real rewards except maybe a gimmicky trinket; or they can have fun fishing; or they can do content at the SAME difficulty as when they blew thru it and just have fun with their friends; or they can reroll an alt.
If someone rolls an overpowered class, that is on average (note huge disclaimers!) better than other classes, then they’ll just reach this point faster. That is not a problem, because no matter what class you pick you can still have fun.
#7 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
Makaze, so close..! I was about to complement you on observing that the ‘world’ includes other players; thus, what you gain or lose does not have to be something all players, including PvEers, need or can use.
I agree with what you say about territoy capturing.
#8 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
Or to put it another way: something concrete like territory change could, from one perspective, be seen as too ‘rigid’: if someone wins, the other person has to lose. There is no ambiguity there. But what if you used a metric where, while you did lose something, it’s as if you lost nothing at all..? ;)
#9 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
Things (events) happen. Do they result in gain, or loss for you? Sometimes it is easy to say, and it is this type of thing that people, including game designers, like to work with. However it is more ambiguous events that are necessary to solve conflict in a social environment while still keeping everything fun.
So as I said, this is why most game designers cannot make games that are worth playing; because they do not know how to think this way. Any ambiguity that arrises is usually by accident.
I will give one example, because otherwise everyone (instead of just 99% of readers) will ignore this post thinking it does not make sense: imagine if, in WoW, killing a faction leader gave YOUR OWN faction a buff for 24 hours that increased honor and experience gains by 10%. It also caused the city that faction leader was in to burn in flames for two or three hours, with a momentous message announcing that leader’s death so everyone would know why their city was burning. NPCs would not actually be affected and would still be in place; altho they might have different conversation texts to indicate their dismay and alarm with the state of affairs.
Has the faction with the burning city actually lost something? They have, and they have not, all at the same time. If you care about your faction and server’s reputation, then you have ‘lost’ something; but you have also gained an opportunity to retaliate. If you do not care, then you have lost or gained nothing.
Has the faction with the XP/Honor buff gained anything? The players who went on the raid and killed the boss will likely not gain more honor from the 10% than they could have gotten by farming BGs during that time instead of going on a raid. Neither do they benefit from the XP gain; a week from now, it will be hard to say that anything happened at all. But… you did gain something, and that is a memory in the minds of all players on the server: You did something important.
At the same time that you gained nothing, you gained everything too. This is how to design conflict in games; this is what 98.99999% of game designers do not understand; and this is why they do, and will continue to make crappy games, /sigh.
#10 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
*shrug* You’re not improving game design by deciding not to balance classes, you’re absolving yourself of making any difficult decisions and hoping/praying that the rest of your game makes up for the shortcomings. You’re also putting way too much emphasis on players playing your way, not the way they will actually (and have repeatedly been shown to) play.
Come talk to me when WARs first patch hits
As for the other stuff. Clearly you’ve got some awesome idea that you think will revolutionize the MMO landscape but rather than simply summarize it you like to smuggly pretend that you’re smarter than everyone else since as long as no one actually knows what it is they can’t directly point out the flaws. Frankly I don’t care enough to slowly tease it out of you. And why should I? Even if it is awesome it’s not like no one else has/will think of it and I stand by my assertion that no matter how good it will not universally appeal to all players.
#11 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
That’s it? Really?
Been thought of and discussed at length multiple times.
Not implemented because MMO players are whiny bitches and don’t regard it as the other faction having a 10% buff but rather their faction having a -10% relative penalty. It also makes PvP have a direact and meaningful impact on PvE which a large segment of players won’t like.
It’s an idea, and in certain games may actually work really well but it’s far from having anywhere near universal appeal.
#12 by random poster on March 13th, 2008
You could build a game that has great PvP, great PvE, perfectly balanced RMT so that it doesn’t affect gameplay (or not have it) and you would STILL have someone trying to break the rules.
You simply can not make a perfect game for everyone. Someone is always going to be unhappy and try to do things their way in or outside of the rules, because to some people breaking the rules/ruining other people fun IS the game.
#13 by Taemojitsu on March 13th, 2008
“Not implemented because MMO players are whiny bitches”
No, not implemented because there’s no clear reward. When I first brought that particular idea up on the WoW forums. the reaction was resoundingly positive :P
As for the balancing thing, I suppose when two major game companies say they try not to make unnecessary balancing tweaks, then obviously it’s a good idea to make those tweaks.
“Frankly I don’t care enough to slowly tease it out of you. And why should I?”
Yes, why should you bother try to understand the flaws in your perspective. It’s not like you’re making any games.
“You could build a game that has great PvP, great PvE, perfectly balanced RMT so that it doesn’t affect gameplay (or not have it) and you would STILL have someone trying to break the rules.
You simply can not make a perfect game for everyone. Someone is always going to be unhappy and try to do things their way in or outside of the rules, because to some people breaking the rules/ruining other people fun IS the game.”
And your point is..?
We have laws against murderers, and punish people who murder others. Most people feel no desire or need to kill other people, but there are still some murderers. Does that mean we should revoke these laws?
ZOMG Murders is irrelevant to a games discussion Lawl! Silly Taemojitsu and her crazy analogies!!
#14 by Makaze on March 13th, 2008
When I first brought that particular idea up on the WoW forums. the reaction was resoundingly positive :P
Yes that’s a group of rational, non-biased, and longterm thinking people
I suppose when two major game companies say they try not to make unnecessary balancing tweaks, then obviously it’s a good idea to make those tweaks.
Try not to and not actually doing it are two different things. Of course you try to limit changes but you’ve got to make some for the long term health of the game. It’s not always pretty but it’s got to be done.
Yes, why should you bother try to understand the flaws in your perspective. It’s not like you’re making any games.
I’m perfectly willing to discuss various ideas, but the “I’ve got super awesome ideas but I can’t actually tell you because they’d blow your freaking mind muhahahaha!” schtick is/was getting old.
And what random poster was trying to say was that your assertion that making your “perfect” game would cause RMT to cease because it’s just so perfect is faulty.
#15 by Damion on March 13th, 2008
If someone’s class is a bit underpowered, LET IT BE UNDERPOWERED!! Unless class balance substantially changed over the course of the leveling process, i.e. because you have terrible scaling, people accepted that their class would be weak in some areas to make up for being strong in others. You don’t need to change that.
No, because then you create a socially stigmatized class of players who are unable to actually find groups in order to go and do stuff with. Note to any designers reading this thread: not balancing your classes is a horrible, horrible idea. Please do not listen to it.
My point, for the 1000th time, is that good game designers will avoid the RMT problem by designing games where no one feels the need to use RMT; by focusing on the experience (’the leveling game’) instead of where you end up (’progression as competition’).
Inaccurate. If your game has any sense of character growth, social standing, or economic development worthy of anything, people will try to RMT. If your game has none of these things, you have a virtual world with poor character attachment, uninteresting social dynamics, and an uninteresting economy. These virtual worlds are usually the ones that die.
Two things prevent this. 1) player skill, and the effect player skill will have on character performance in a well-designed game.
The problem with player skill is that a lot of people don’t have it, and most people are not willing to pay $15 bucks per month in order to suck.
2) making the game ‘easy’ to account for differences in both player skill and class balance differences.
This way lie dragons. ‘The grind’ is created when content no longer creates a tactical challenge, doesn’t offer much in the way to learn or improve tactically. The surest way to turn something into a grind is to make it required for something else, and make it ‘easy’.
People who play games for games sake play them because they want to achieve something. Making the game so easy that anyone can do it ends up cheapening the achievement, and usually means that they wash out of the game before they can build strong communal ties.
No, not implemented because there’s no clear reward. When I first brought that particular idea up on the WoW forums. the reaction was resoundingly positive :P
This was tried in Star Wars Galaxies. It resulted in players throwing the competition in order to get a buff that they found useful for other things.
#16 by Prokofy Neva on March 13th, 2008
Gwaendar, don’t be silly. We all realize that “Bartle didn’t write them” — well, he explains the story himself and it’s a bit more complicated than that. But they are known as his, and the test up refers to him, and HE has been dining out on it ever since. And read his Second Life chat transcript, he is set up and primped by Bloomfield to talk about these ridiculous useless 4 categories (inapplicable to open-ended virtual worlds and even games these days) and he natters on about them and says he didn’t write them but he doesn’t say, gosh, I should revise tho. Or, gee, maybe I should get some input on how these could be updated. Nothing like that. I don’t mind if people are classic curmudgeons. He’s entitled. He’s earned the pride of place. But I don’t see why I can’t criticize them. That’s insane. You are all such horrid conformists.
>In that sense, Prokofy’s stance is akin to me going to Saudi Arabia and demanding that homosexuals have the right to marry. If a community decides on a particular social norm, and the people of that community are largely in agreement, then no matter how much I feel I am in the right and they are in the wrong, it’s not my call. These issues need to be decided by the groups involved.
Neal, oh, stop it and grow UP. First of all, international gay rights movements do just that. And that’s fine. People get to espouse their beliefs? And support those who are likeminded? Hello? Like you demand to do here? They express solidarity with one another. Gay rights couldn’t have come as far as it has without this solidarity nationally and internationally. You don’t let “the community” dictate your life, my God, what a backward, medieval position! I thought you folks were supposed to be technolibertarians?
As I’ve already said a billion times: if a group wants to decide to be backward, they get to do that. They want to have women as chattel in a role-play, well unfortunately, who can stop them if you can’t demonstrate breaking of any real-life law? The Boy Scouts get to discriminate against gays and not have them in their group, by court ruling, brushing off all challenges. Freedom of association trumps freedom of expression when freedom of expression begins to encroach on freedom of assocation.
But…it isn’t that the rebuffing of that effort to trump it then leads to its utter collapse. Freedom of expression gets to stay, and keep making its case, and keeping saying that Saudis cannot execute gays, let’s say. The idea that you cannot go to another country and invoke universal principles and express solidarity with others goes against international law and justice. It may be the way of war in games, it may be YOUR ethos, but don’t impose THAT on everybody else.
And, truly you’re notion is so utterly false. Why should a bunch of thuggish indemocratic government goons get to be a group that decides stuff?! It’s like games and game god goons deciding stuff. Who the hell are they? Why do THEY get to be “the commuuuuunity”. They don’t! Some other group gets formed! Aren’t you all supposed to be for groups and wikis and whatnot? And that group has gays, and they demand tolerance, and we give solidarity to them. Very simple. That’s how universal principles work. But of course, you scorn them in favour of a million local situational ethics.
#17 by Taemojitsu on March 14th, 2008
Neva, you are trying to solve all the world’s problems.. but your audience isn’t interested in that. They just want to selfishly protect their own territory; your words are wasted on them and all it can lead to is complaining about how they don’t care if people IRL get oppressed, as long as the people who are oppressing do not intrude on games.
The only thing that can force ethics in games is when ‘the community’ decides not to play games that suck. You shouldn’t worry about it; any responsible person will have already decided not to play ethically irresponsible games.
#18 by TPRJones on March 14th, 2008
I was promised random Trotsky quotes.
I want my money back.
#19 by IntLibber Brautigan on March 14th, 2008
Mika,
This dualistic distinction between the user and the avatar is very manichean. The user is the avatar, the avatar is not some distinct being, they are merely our real persons representation within the VW, but they are just a tool. What we earn and acheive through them belongs to us as real natural persons, it does not belong to the avatar, as the avatar is not a separate being. As natural persons we do have rights wherever we are in person or wherever we are engaged in business.
For instance, just because I trade stocks remotely on Scottrade through an online account does not give Scotttrade the right to take my property at a whim. A Virtual world is nothing but a 3d website.
#20 by Makaze on March 14th, 2008
Again… he did revise them already. And even before revisions things still fit pretty neatly within the actual archetypes including your examples as Damion and I pointed out. The tests on the other hand don’t as they’re rooted in a fantasy RPG setting, but feel free to make a 2nd Life version.
You say that you’re OK with other groups and communities living as they wish and yet at the same time seem hellebent on convincing them to rall yand rise up against their evil oppressors that they might be liberated unto a new world. I’ve got news for you, they’re not oppressed, they don’t need to be liberated, and they view you as an annoying and disruptive presence.
And you still give too much credit to the people you call “game gods”. They’re really only trying to provide to the market what it wants, and that overwhelmingly seems to be a lack of RMT in Diku style fantasy. Most I know, including me, would rather be working on anything but. On the other hand I’ll tell you why in the end they do get to dictate anything they want within their VW and that is… the power button.
Universal principles? No such thing.
#21 by Taemojitsu on March 14th, 2008
“Yes that’s a group of rational, non-biased, and longterm thinking people
”
Not once did anyone mention any of the concerns you raised. You really don’t have a leg to stand on here.
“Try not to and not actually doing it are two different things. Of course you try to limit changes but you’ve got to make some for the long term health of the game. It’s not always pretty but it’s got to be done.”
Oh.. wait… lemme get this, so you’re saying that they only make NECESSARY balancing tweaks due to things being broken..? Which is what I already said?
“I’m perfectly willing to discuss various ideas, but the “I’ve got super awesome ideas but I can’t actually tell you because they’d blow your freaking mind muhahahaha!” schtick is/was getting old.”
In other words, you can’t understand what I have already posted, so you look for some large and complex system that you can more easily attack. I did not think my arguments here were so complex, but I consistently underestimate the stupidity of many people I talk to. :(
“And what random poster was trying to say was that your assertion that making your “perfect” game would cause RMT to cease because it’s just so perfect is faulty.”
I was not the one who introduced the word ‘perfect’ into the conversation. A FUN game would reduce the frequency of RMT almost to zero, because the reasons why players felt they needed to do RMT would be removed.
This is one of those ‘not very complex’ concepts that you seem to find so hard to understand, /shrug.
But ofc… I also understand why you don’t understand it, and why you keep making irrelevant extensions to what I say, and so I will try to minimize your confusion by avoiding mentioning anything you do not already know and accept.
Damion:
“No, because then you create a socially stigmatized class of players who are unable to actually find groups in order to go and do stuff with.”
Ever heard of Drakedog? Many players are willing to play the ‘less powerful’ classes in a game, because guess what: they are not actually less powerful *gasp*. They are different.
“If your game has any sense of character growth, social standing, or economic development worthy of anything, people will try to RMT.”
If your game is fun, players will not feel the need to waste real money to bypass content in a game they are PAYING for.
“If your game has none of these things, you have a virtual world with poor character attachment, uninteresting social dynamics, and an uninteresting economy.”
Why do you postulate a game where character development is not fun?
“The problem with player skill is that a lot of people don’t have it, and most people are not willing to pay $15 bucks per month in order to suck.”
If they dislike the particular strengths and weaknesses of the class they picked, then they can reroll =)
Wasn’t that easy!
“This way lie dragons. ‘The grind’ is created when content no longer creates a tactical challenge, doesn’t offer much in the way to learn or improve tactically.”
Easy to learn, hard to master.
Know it.
Love it.
Do it.
Content that is inherently ‘easy’ is not the same as content that is not fun. Your definition of grind is a bit off. Every single MMO is easy: and yet people still find them fun. Name me one thing you can achieve in say, WoW, that anyone could not achieve… besides a Gladiator title, which ofc is tainted with reek of class, spec, and gear imbalance. :P
“People who play games for games sake play them because they want to achieve something. Making the game so easy that anyone can do it ends up cheapening the achievement, and usually means that they wash out of the game before they can build strong communal ties.”
Then why in the world is anyone still playing WoW? Please explain this contradiction with your own thoughts with observable reality.
Now, you’re going to have a hissy fit because you’ll think that since I’m saying the game is easy, then it’s impossible to achieve anything and/or anyone who has fun is deluding themselves. Please do not have a hissy fit, because that is not what I’m saying.
“This was tried in Star Wars Galaxies. It resulted in players throwing the competition in order to get a buff that they found useful for other things.”
Yes, that is generally the danger in giving rewards for any competitive activity… just look at preforms farming PUGs for honor in WoW, or the rampant arena team selling, or the dearth of PvP in many battlegroups’ AV races, etc etc.
However in this case: do you really think every single player on an entire faction would let the opposite team waltz in to their capital city, massacre dozens or hundreds of guards, then assassinate the faction leader with no opposition? Especially if you had a similarly ambiguous and social-driven reward for individual kills of players of the opposite faction. :P
#22 by Taemojitsu on March 14th, 2008
“You say that you’re OK with other groups and communities living as they wish and yet at the same time seem hellebent on convincing them to rall yand rise up against their evil oppressors that they might be liberated unto a new world.”
No. Her argument (irrelevant; again, we cleared this issue up like 20 pages ago) is that you should not try to ‘oppress’ those interested in using RMT.
Your response, or at least the typical response in this thread, is that those are the rules, players should follow them, and the company has the right to make the rules.
My argument (which everyone seemed oddly resistant to) was that trends of people engaging in RMT in your game suggests that your game is flawed, and should be improved so people don’t feel the need to buy virtual gold in a computer game they are already paying to have fun in.
#23 by Brian on March 14th, 2008
Indeed. I also am saddened at the lack of random Trotsky quotes.
#24 by Taemojitsu on March 14th, 2008
Neva dear, the sheer amount of idiocy in this thread gets old. Let’s play “last word-ism” and announce that since no one in this thread seems to have the slighest idea wtf they are doing or how their thoughts relate to the subject at hand, it just isn’t worth it to reply to any further trolling here.
I know I’m certainly tired of it. I hoped for more, but this thread fails to deliver in terms of people who can actually do anything. I suppose they’re all busy working.
#25 by Makaze on March 14th, 2008
Not once did anyone mention any of the concerns you raised
That’s kind of my point. You proposed an idea for more content to the players and got positive results. That’s not exactly proof that something is a good idea. You posted it to some designers and some flaws were pointed out pretty quickly and without rebuttal. Again not saying that it couldn’t work in some game that takes those issues into account just that not everyone is going to like it.
Oh.. wait… lemme get this, so you’re saying that they only make NECESSARY balancing tweaks due to things being broken..? Which is what I already said?
No I’m saying making tweaks to keep things on an even keel is necessary, not just when things are broken. And by broken I mean bug broken. But they must be carefully thought out and not knee jerk reactions.
I was not the one who introduced the word ‘perfect’ into the conversation. A FUN game would reduce the frequency of RMT almost to zero, because the reasons why players felt they needed to do RMT would be removed.
Perfect was brought in because we can think of little other way to describe a game that is always fun to everyone, which is what you’re describing. Fun is a very very very subjective thing and what’s fun to you is torture to the next guy and vice versa. So the whole point of the conversation was that you cannot make a game that is fun enough to everyone to prevent RMT since someone somewhere will find some portion of it not fun enough and want to skip it. Period.
Any feature you add to or remove from a game is going to make some group happy and another group not so happy. A designers job is to maximize the happy group and minimize the unhappy group. But you have to be profoundly naive, both to human nature and game design, to think that you can design something that appeals to everyone.
As far as I can see you’ve posted exactly two coherent ideas and a boat load of vague “I know something you don’t knows, but I’m too cool to tell you”s. Nothing you’ve said is all that complex so much as devoid of actual substance. If you’ve got some good ideas hidden in there then the problem is not a lack of intelligence on the part of your audience but a lack of communication skills on your part.
If they dislike the particular strengths and weaknesses of the class they picked, then they can go play another game
Fixed that for you.
which ofc is tainted with reek of class, spec, and gear imbalance. :P
And yet you don’t want to balance things…
Many players are willing to play the ‘less powerful’ classes in a game, because guess what: they are not actually less powerful *gasp*. They are different.
Underpowered or different but equal? Because they’re not the same thing. The former is what you were advocating earlier. The later requires vast and constant amounts of balancing.
#26 by Makaze on March 14th, 2008
My argument (which everyone seemed oddly resistant to) was that trends of people engaging in RMT in your game suggests that your game is flawed, and should be improved so people don’t feel the need to buy virtual gold in a computer game they are already paying to have fun in.
No one is arguing against the effectiveness of such an idea. Only pointing out that it is completely and utterly impossible to achieve.
#27 by Neil on March 14th, 2008
Hi Prokofy,
I “demand” nothing of this blog. This is not my personal playground. The author allows me (and you, and the rest of us) to make comments as we please. Attempting to paint me and the others participating in this discussion of having a huge sense of entitlement is not only wrong, it serves no purpose other than as an ad-hominem attack.
Of course people can espouse their beliefs, particularly over the internet, but there is a big difference between having a rational discussion and going to someone’s house and proverbially peeing all over the floor. Wasn’t people disrespecting others’ private space one of the catalysts for your objection to griefing in the first place? How does your double standard (“don’t grief me, but I reserve the right to grief you”) make me the immature one?
Of course no one lets “the community” dictate their position. If that was the case, there would be no need for online forums, or blogs, or thought of any kind, but as the blog bears witness to, there is a lot of discussion going on about these various issues. The people in the community make their voices heard. In real world democratic societies, we cause regime changes through things such as voting and participating in politics. This is not how online societies work, in part because “immigrating” from online worlds is orders of magnitude easier than immigrating from one’s country of origin and in part because online worlds are, by necessity, dictatorships.
If you don’t like it, change it. If you can’t change it, deal or leave worlds. If you don’t like what’s going in in someone ELSE’S world, don’t go there. Just like some Iraqis don’t like American intervention abroad, some online world inhabitants don’t like those from other worlds trying to “liberate” them from their “backwards” norms. That was the gist of my analogy. If you want to try to change the scope of every online game, of course that’s your right — just don’t treat us like heathen barbarians.
#28 by n4omi?? on March 14th, 2008
Ok, I have no great truths to add, but…..
While communism/capitalism/nihilism/conformism/socermomism/socio-ecinomic oppreesionism/racism/any-other-ism are terribly important issues, and ever so worthy of commentary,
In the end, I play video games for fun.
I like mmorpgs because I can have fun playing with other people.
I play by the rules established by the company what provides the game i pay to play (WoW right now).
It may make me a communist, but I HATE getting badly written “buy my gold” spam in my WoW mailbox.
As a paying customer, in what appears to be Blizzard’s attempt at capitalist imperialist internetz oppression of the masses, I want them (as I state again, a paying customer……fracking capitalist pigs….), to, as the recipients of my money, (damn capitalism again), to put a stop to this spam…..
I don’t care if, in second life, you make mucho money selling horse wangs/schoolgirl outfits/ e-dildos/functional clients….
Just don’t crap my game up with your “virtual world”, I-wanna-be-Neo-from-the-Matrix nonsense, ok?
#29 by Waldo on March 14th, 2008
What a sad thread. Do not feed the trolls.
#30 by IntLibber Brautigan on March 14th, 2008
yeah Bartles 4 player types are not enough, but the 4 more he added aren’t enough either, and part of that is because of his own selection bias of being against RMT. I took his quiz, it was totally wrong (told me I was not interested in Second Life whatsoever and should be in Matrix) primarily because none of his questions asked a single thing about my commercial interests (i.e. srs bsns), which is the primary focus of my interest in Second Life. His quiz told me I’m an explorer, but I’ve not even seen 1% of SL to date, and am quite bored with any game I cant come into with a bunch of money to establish myself.
IMHO Bartle needs to definitely keep out any reference to any virtual world that has any capacity for people to earn a living from it outside the role of game god or game company techie/support.
The distinction between commercially viable virtual worlds, and fantasy MMPORGs is much as the distinction between science fiction and fantasy when most bookstores intermingle the two for some absurd reason, when there is very little crossover between the readership of the two genres. A real virtual world with commercial underpinnings needs its economy to function semi-independently of the real world but still allow users to cash out, and must operate stably with that influx and outflux of cash flow (i.e. stably meaning no gross changes in economic activities like, for instance, banning bank interest or adfarms). For this reason, such a VW must operate by real economic principles.
An MMPORG is a self contained closed economy that can function on its own unique set of rules no matter how irrational if applied to the real world. As such, they are much like a fantasy novel with no need to be grounded in any physical laws or logical evolutionary progression. A closed economy like WoW can be as ludicrous as you want because it never has to answer for its actions to a larger market.
The second sort will never evolve beyond being closed worlds with their own provincial culture and mindset, and their own funny ideas about how economics works, much like all those puny little “countries” you find nestled in various nooks and crannies in europe and the himalayas. Nobody is going to ask them how the superpowers should be running the world, as they dont seem to have succeeded much in the governance game. I dont think even prok would disagree with that.
Where her problem is with Bartle is his seeming arrogance in demanding that the fantasy world is the only sort of virtual world there should be. I’m sorry, but no, no thanks. Go ask the King of Bhutan to be UN secretary general… Without the commercial opportunities, I have absolutely zero interest in participating in virtual worlds. That said, my business in Second Life is the best job i’ve ever had. I have no interest in hanging out in Bartles vision of Smurf-land.
#31 by Syn on March 14th, 2008
Catherine Fitzpatrick makes me sad to be human.
-Syn
#32 by Jason on March 14th, 2008
So, according to Prokofy Neva and Taemojitsu, since some baseball players use steroids to gain advantage, baseball is flawed, and all baseball players should use, or at least be allowed to use, steroids? I’m just not following your logic that if people desire to go outside the rules, then the rules must be flawed and not the people.
And for more Prokofy fun… a quote take from Raph Koster’s blog about the new MetaChat MetaPlace app on MySpace:
“I’m a little creeped out by the MySpace thing. I don’t have any class aversion to MySpace as so many do. But MySpace has all these emos and goths and cutters and I just find it scary.”
… and yet, Second Life is okay?
#33 by Beene on March 14th, 2008
“Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.”
Leon Trotsky – The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
#34 by Glendronnach on March 14th, 2008
380+ comments?!
All I can say is:
http://xkcd.com/386/
#35 by Makaze on March 14th, 2008
@Glendronnach
Thank you. For pointing out that I had that conversation at around 2:30 last night. As fun as this has been, and it has been fun
I think it might be time to move on.
#36 by robusticus on March 14th, 2008
Gold farmers shouldn’t be allowed to use steroids.
That’s cheating.
RMT is just a shortcut.
It goes a little something like, “Having paid [Game Company] fair value, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work.”
See if you go around screaming CHEATER CHEATER PUMPKIN EATER it sort of cheapens the actual cheating bits. I’d say a fair definition would be gaining an advantae you wouldn’t ever be allowed to have, by modifying the game. Uploading the nonexistant Sword of 1000 Truths, that only you could have. Speed hacks, aimbots, etc. But you can’t defend that if CHEATING is anything and everything that someone doesn’t agree with.
#37 by Leon Trostsy on March 14th, 2008
Don’t eat cabbage soup when it’s three days old.
Random enough for you ?
#38 by Waldo on March 14th, 2008
“As fun as this has been, and it has been fun
I think it might be time to move on.”
It was time to move on a few months ago.
#39 by Taemojitsu on March 14th, 2008
Makaze.
You do not attempt to find truth. You attempt to give the appearance that your words are correct. You do not care about consistency of your arguments, or whether the words you say are true or not; all you care about is presenting a strong aspect.
There is no point in discussing anything with you. Even if you did somehow manage to learn something in the process, you will never go beyond and integrate the inconsistencies in your beliefs to reach a higher understanding. For this reason your opinions are, in a word, worthless.
There are two things you should contemplate.. I know you will not, but for some reason I offer them anyway:
1) Do not think dishonestly.
2) Distinguish between loss and gain in worldly matters.
Maybe with time, and effort, and humility, you will not act so much like a fool. I can only hope.
#40 by rbtroj on March 14th, 2008
So, in a nutshell …
#41 by Spaz on March 14th, 2008
JESUS CHRIST MORE PEOPLE ARE POSTING IN THIS THREAD THAN SAW THE LAST EPISODE OF “SEINFELD,” HOLY SHITNIBBLETS
DEAR EVERYBODY,
SHUT UP AND DIE. AND SHUT UP.
SINCERELY, ME
P.S. Second Life entrepreneurial tycoons, please sell me a pimpin’ hat and some bangin’ jewelry or whatever, cause I have almost 20 dollars saved up. THAT IS OVER TWO WEEKS ALLOWANCE
#42 by Holmgang on March 14th, 2008
Comrade railwaymen, remember that victory begins in the factory and the railway workshop, makes its way along the rails, and culminates in a bayonet-thrust.
August 30 (1920)
Aleksandrovsk
#43 by csven on March 14th, 2008
I go away for a few days, surf back thru only to realize I need a friggin’ bucket of popcorn. *sigh*
Well, having done a brief scan and catching mention of an apparent disconnect between… well… everybody and one person, here’s at least one disconnect I suspect might be an issue:
“A statement I believe to be true *is* a fact until it is *disproven*.” – Catherine Fitzpatrick/Prokofy Neva
Carry on.
#44 by Zubon on March 14th, 2008
“Is that an ice pick?” – Trotsky
#45 by Sheepherder on March 14th, 2008
Taemojitsu, you earlier stated that the easy way to trivialize the purpose of RMT is to focus on the levelling game. I have two issues with this:
1. This is not true of necessity: one need only look at a game such as Unreal Tournament to see that a game without levels can be without RMT. The true root of the problem is progression (and the requisite grinding the results from progression) in all forms.
2. One can easily imagine a world in which people who have not reached the end of the levelling game resort to RMT to give themselves an advantage. Take WoW for instance: in the early battlegrounds level brackets there are a great many players who are willing to spend vast quantities of time and/or money in order to equip their level 19 with weapons, armor, and enchantments which are obscenely overpowered when used in conjunction with each other. One could conceivably argue that this can and will occur wherever their is the potential, and it does not take a leap of imagination to presume that some of these individuals use RMT to obtain their results.
It follows then that the type of game doesn’t really matter so long as the grind is still there. The only guaranteed solution is to remove the gear and the level grind, and make the game about “something else”. The problem with this is, of course, retention. This game would constantly need new and exciting content to keep people interested, which is where most MMO developers fall flat, because they usually cannot develop content at such a pace.
This is where world-scale unrestricted pvp has potential: you can keep the entire pvp crowd “developing” their own content by letting them do what they do best in a massively multiplayer fashion as long as they have the proper incentives. The problem is getting the PvE crowd (me included) to drink the Kool-Aid, this is a lot easier if your PvE crowd doesn’t have to have Phat Lewts in order to compete, if your classes are decently balanced, your pvp play is fun, and the atmosphere is actually that of an epic conflict rather than a bunch of thugs camping lowbies until their friends show up.
This is why the Onslaught mode in UT2004 is a crowd pleaser, the epic proportions, ease of entry, and co-operative mayhem appeal to wider audiences than the tight-corridored fragfests that earlier shooters had, and WoW’s Arena and Battleground pvp doesn’t even hold a candle due to steep play time requirements. If you don’t believe me, then go pick up a copy of UT2004 for $10 and see how many Onslaught servers are still running in comparison to Deathmatch.
#46 by Taemojitsu on March 15th, 2008
Ah, a non-retarded poster in this thread ^_^ Sheepherder, you are exactly correct. I will address some of your points tho:
“Take WoW for instance: in the early battlegrounds level brackets there are a great many players who are willing to spend vast quantities of time and/or money in order to equip their level 19 with weapons, armor, and enchantments which are obscenely overpowered when used in conjunction with each other.”
This is because there is no ambiguous compensation for the power gain in a single twink. This problem applies to endgame too, where the ‘twinks’ are in fact no more than well-progressed endgame characters. When I first encountered this problem, I attacked it mainly from a single direction: increased responsibility in a team environment.
This is the approach WAR is using. Their Battle Points rates the value of each piece of equipment, and each ability gained from leveling up, etc etc. This means if you have a ‘twink’ on one side in a scenario, they are balanced either by another twink on the other side, or by MULTIPLE weaker characters on the other side. WAR will not have teams made of twinks rolling pugs of weaker players, and this is the biggest problem with WoW twink PvP. It isn’t so bad if you can’t go 1v1 up against a twink, because after all they’re a twink!… what sucks is when you have literally no way to win, because your entire team is just so totally outmatched.
So as I said, WAR will not really have this problem. Players may individually decide to twink anyway, but with increased power under the Battle Points system comes increased responsibility; the average player will not feel obligated to twink before they can have fun in PvP, and neither will they feel the need to use RMT.
(later I ended up also attacking it at the individual player level, because while balancing for team size works for instanced PvP it obviously doesn’t work for world PvP… as you mention later in your post)
“The only guaranteed solution is to remove the gear and the level grind, and make the game about “something else”. The problem with this is, of course, retention. This game would constantly need new and exciting content to keep people interested,”
This, I think, is where the importance of ‘not releasing your game before it’s ready’ comes in. In WoW, there was no level grind. The entire leveling experience put you in contact with unique and interesting quests, storylines, and group instances, not to mention the excitement of world PvP that was early WoW.
Later on, a well-designed endgame should accomplish the same thing. Raiding is not a grind if you are having fun with your friends. It’s just that the progression associated with raiding can too easily end up feeling required, leaving players unable to focus on having fun; instead they feel obligated to play and raid efficiently. A good game avoids letting this attitude of ‘gear being required’ from developing in the playerbase.
Yes, -sigh-, that’s why so many people hate WoW’s instanced PvP. But WoW’s devs simply do not know how to reconcile world PvP with the rest of their endgame’s progression, instead they think that by adding a few loltowers people will suddenly start PvPing again. They are incompetent; but that is after all why other PvP games are getting so much attention, even tho it doesn’t look like they’ve analyzed all the factors for making world PvP (as opposed to just instances) fun regardless of gear level.
#47 by Beene on March 15th, 2008
“Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.” – Trotsky
#48 by Jason on March 15th, 2008
World PvP in WoW was never something I would describe with the word “excitement”. It mainly consisted of being ganked by a group if you ever went off solo or in a duo, or ganking solos and duos with your group… oh, and by the way, Southshore is under attack, Tarren Mill is under attack too, 24/7, and no one ever wins because of the cardinal rule: You can’t allow players to deny other players content. The Horde can never occupy Southshore and the Alliance can never take Tarren Mill. The only people who ever win in world PvP in WoW are the NPCs.
#49 by Sam on March 15th, 2008
Wow I read maybe the first 15% of the comments between Crazy and Scott. Is it just me or is she talking about something totally different than the rest of the thread?
So yeah… anyone got pics? I’m curious to see what my parents warned me against when I first started going online.
#50 by Taemojitsu on March 15th, 2008
Jason, your obsession with winning prevents you from seeing that other players don’t always think the same way. Let me guess, you either extensively played MMOs prior to WoW or you work on them; for whatever reason, you have become disillusioned about having fun in a game and concern yourself only with what concrete rewards you have to show for the experience.
For the average, non-’hardcore’ player who hasn’t got burnt out that way, interacting with people when both of you care about the result is much more fun than any game-dictated ‘reward’ or ‘lasting effect’. This is why even if YOU did not particularly enjoy it, countless players in WoW say that early WoW PvP was their best time in the game. The lack of rewards was irrelevant, because you didn’t need them to have fun.