Progression

In "Paying to be the hunter", Tobold made the point (with respect to MMOs):

Many other games don't have character power levels or gear, so it is totally possible to create a game in which playing a lot would only make you stronger in as far as you become more skillful in the game

As 8f and Samus pointed out in the comments, there are plenty of games which require player skill, such as Call of Duty; but one of the unique features of virtual worlds is that we players are more like actors than athletes. Our skill lies not in dexterity, but in playing a role.

The premise of virtual worlds is the same as in D&D. It is the character that progresses, not the player. The fun is not in improving your keyboard skills, it is simply in acting the role of the character, and seeing the challenges from her point of view. As a player, I'm still rubbish at casting fireballs, but I act the part of my character, who is expert at it through the effort she has put into improving her magic abilities (not my keyboard abilities).

Of course, given equally powerful characters, player dexterity will matter if both are in competition. But it be the end, we players do not play these games because of our superb keyboard dexterity, or we'd be playing games in which keyboard dexterity matters more, and the second-by-second and minute by minute game-play was more attractive. We play these games for the epic stories told (and our part therein), whether player generated or developer generated; and for the personal development of our characters within that world.

It so happens that in most virtual worlds, character progress only happens when the player is in-game. That's not a law of nature, though, and I can quite imagine games in which characters are set skill-building tasks that progress while the player is offline. Skills in Eve online are trained while the player is offline. In WoW, followers level up by doing missions that progress while we are offline. In fact, the legendary quest is progressing through such naval missions. It would be interesting to see what could be made of a game in which our characters could train while we players are elsewhere.

Blaugust, day 21.

Good and bad angels

Note: I normally try to keep to one voice, in this blog - my own voice, Dàchéng the mage. Sometimes, when discussing matters relevant to Earth, such as the state of the euro, I might use the voice of my avatar in Earth Online. Usually it's clear from context who is 'me'.  In this piece, though, I find myself jumping between several voices like a schizophrenic. I leave it to you, dear reader, to figure out which voice is which.

Incredibly, it took me until this month to explore the turtle's back with my Pandaren, Paoquan. Sadly, I didn't find the Pandaren starting zone all that satisfying. Lack of immersion was the problem - all these wise old men telling Paoquan what a great fighter she is at level 5 or 10. It just reminds me of their insincerity. All these monks are relying on some dumb noob to fix their problems.

But the point I'm at now is one that I can't seem to progress beyond. Here's my dilemma. Paoquan has just learned that the turtle (Shen-zin Su) on whose back the Wandering Isle finds itself is in pain. The pain is coming from its starboard side, and there's a ship has crashed just there. Off to investigate, what's the first thing she meets? Taurens! They remind her of Yaungol. Oh, they are Yaungol! I, Dàchéng, know of course that the Pandaren are fighting Yaungol in Kun-Lai Summit, among other places. I'm not sure what Paoquan knows. Presumably she would have learnt about them in primary school. Anyway, the one thing Paoquan does know is that the turtle's pain is located here, and so are the Tauren. Now I find some idiot level 10 hermit helping them. Has he never heard of Yaungol? Doesn't he know Shen-zin Su's pain emanates from this area? Hasn't he put two and two together? I'm a bit more suspicious of these people than the hermit is. And the leader of these Yaungol Tauren, Korga Strongmane, wants me to help arm his compatriots. Well, why in the world would I want to do that? Strongmane tells me that I'm his new ally. Dream on, Tauren.

Actually, how come he can speak Pandaren? Where would he have learnt? Is this a deliberate attempt at infiltration, or is this just Blizzard's thin storyline creaking? Anyway, I can't target him and kill him.

Instead of helping the tauren or the mad hermit, I do what every adventurer's first instinct tells him to do. I head down to the crash site. There I see humans under attack from lizard men. Again, I can't attack the humans. I can't speak to them, either. They don't know Pandaren. Or perhaps they're too busy fighting for their lives. Old Wei-Palerage, the hermit, doesn't think it worth helping these people. He's too busy helping the Taurens. There are medical supplies on the ground, but for some reason, I can't pick them up. The paper-thin storyline is reminding me at every step along the way that it's just a game, not a world.

So now I can't advance. The on-rails nature of the game prevents me from progressing unless I help arm the Taurens. Every instinct in my body tells me that would be a grave mistake; so here I am trapped in the intersticial void between the world and the keyboard. I know I'll still be here next Samhain.

Edit: Paoquan did indeed stay there for another year.

The Wanderer

Tobold brings up an excellent subject: travel. Let me let you into a secret: I love and I hate travel portals in MMO games. I love them, because they're so convenient. I hate them because they shrink my world, and break it up. What to do about this dichotomy? Well, let's look at the kinds of MMORPG travel we commonly encounter.

1. Slow dangerous travel through the game world. Running, walking, riding. Is there a more boring way of getting from A to B? You travel slowly, and the player must be present to guide you, and avoid threats along the way. Oh, but therein lies the fun. There can be threats and adventure along the way. I love what Guild Wars 2 has done for running: as you move from zone to zone, you are levelled down to that zone, so that you are never free from danger. You must always be alert. The same is true of PvP games (e.g. EVE, Darkfall, even WoW on a PvP realm), where you might at any moment encounter another player who wants to do you harm. Sadly, in many other games, you face no peril in crossing zones you out-level. Then this becomes the most boring method of travel ever, slow safe travel.
   All the same, you don't want to be spending half your game time on this sort of travel.
2. Faster, safe travel. Flying above the threats of the game (I'm thinking of WoW flying here, not EVE flying). This is travel without danger, above the world, but where the player must still be present to guide the character. This can be fun, from time to time, for sight-seeing, like a drive down the coast, or through the mountains on a sunny day. As a means of transportation in a game world, it's not the most interesting. You still must be present to guide your craft. Of course, you may spot something on the ground and choose to land and find adventure. I wish WoW had not introduced flying. I'm really enjoying travelling through Pandaria on my ground mounts, risking death, and I'm not surprised that neither Rift nor GW2 sees any need for flying mounts. Safe travel is dull.
3. Fast, safe automatic travel. Here I'm thinking of WoW's air taxi services. You travel safely and quickly between fixed locations and because it is automatic, players can take a break and stretch their legs. I like this style of travel, precisely because of the change in rhythm introduced. Games need pauses, times when you can let down your guard and let your mind stray to other things. Even including abandoning the game for the rest of the day.
   Of course, you may (on rare occasions) stay at your post, and watch the scenery if you want. Even though this is fast travel, it is not so fast that the world seems smaller because of it. Because it is safe travel, time dilates!
4. Instant travel. Portals. Hearthstones. This is the most convenient form of travel, but of course, it makes the world feel disjointed and definitely smaller. Nothing to see here. I fell sleep in Whiterun, and woke up in Markath.

These modalities of travel can be found in lots of MMORPGs. What can be done to make them fit your world?

Peril
 Peril is the fundamental driver of most fantasy worlds. We adventure to experience peril and to triumph over it. Those heart-pounding, sweaty moments are the ones you remember. I already mentioned GW2's simple expedient of levelling you down to the zone you're travelling through. EVE, with no concept of levelling, takes the approach of making one part of the game universe safe and the other part dangerous, and only provides the first modality: slow dangerous travel (or slow safe travel)*. 

Trade
Eve's predecessor, Elite, actually made the whole game about slow dangerous travel. It's sauce was to add trade to travel. Its gameplay is all about trading. EVE has dipped deeply into the same sauce. Trade is a great reason to travel.

Most MMORPGs have gone in a different direction. Trading goods aren't carried by caravans or spaceships, and  hauling goods from A to B is not present in most games now. For instance in WoW, the postal service invisibly and efficiently transports all your goods from one character to another. The banks have your goods at all their branches. Guild Wars 2 has gone to the extreme of allowing immersion-breaking access to the auction house from wherever you happen to be. Nils had some interesting ideas about haulage in his series on travel.

Exploration and Discovery
Running around the world discovering what's out in the world is one humanity's primal joys. It's part of our nature.

A mechanic that I love in WoW is finding flight points. It doesn't make sense from an immersion point of view, of course: why do the taxi-service's gryphons only fly to the flight points I know about? Surely they must know them all? All the same, I don't care, because I love the mini-game of discovering the flight points. Rift and Guild Wars 2 avoid this problem by having me discover non-sentient portals (all the same, you wouldn't want to think too deeply about how the actual mechanics of travel from portal to portal works, and why I can't travel to portals I've never been to before).

This allows us the fun of discovery along with the convenience of fast/instant travel when there is no fun to be had from discovery.

Dungeon-finder tools often make exploration and discovery irrelevant. No discovery is required. This removes the idea of "world". How many people in Azeroth know where Dragon Soul is located? Many Cata-born people don't even know where Wyrmrest Temple is!

Portals

Using portals and taxis for travel removes the fun of peril and trade/haulage. How could we improve on that? How can we allow the use portals without encouraging them above all other forms of transport? GW2 has the idea of allowing mobs to capture your portals, preventing you from travelling to captured portals. It's an interesting idea, and fits well into the world simulation. Just as fitting, though, would be to allow you to travel to captured portals, and find yourself in the midst of a bunch of enemies! That would certainly make you think twice about using a portal, re-introduce peril, and let us consider whether a particular journey might be better made by other means.

A portal is powerful magic. Not the Guild Wars 2 type, of course, where they are at every turn and corner, more common than bus-stops in a city; and where using them breaks my immersion (instead of interacting with the  portal device, instead you must open your map!) But when portals are rarer, their value is perceived. People already pay mages for their portal service in Azeroth. How about increasing the cost of portals? When you must pay for your portal, you will again consider if it is worth using or finding other means of transport. Even better, what if you could own one of these portals, and charge people for its use? Now we can have either PvE or PvP emergent gameplay, as different factions vie for control of each portal.

What if the payment was in the form of a mechanism for powering the portal, like dilithium crystals in Star Trek? Maybe the only known source of these is in a galaxy, far, far away. Owning that source would be very important to you! Or perhaps, like high-end tailoring in WoW, you can only create a crystal at a particular place  and time, and in small quantities. There are many ways to make portal use rarer without discouraging their convenience.

What are your ideas?




* Of course, I know that travelling in EVE is never 100% safe. Same as on Earth.