Those who know me know that I’m fairly actively involved in the community of the soon-to-release game Global Agenda. For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s designed around a third-person shooter core gameplay that is manifested in large numbers of instanced battles on a single central server “shard” – including a larger Conquest system that uses such battles to allow agencies (GA’s “guilds”) to conquer territory on a strategic map and battle with other agencies for dominance.
Oftentimes when describing the game, it’ll be referred to as an MMOFPS. Gaming sites like IGN, Massively, MMORPG.com, et cetera all tend to use the term here and there. This has lead to various people getting into giant drawn-0ut arguments over whether or not Global Agenda “is an MMO” (not to mention the fact that it’s third-person, not the First-Person Shooter that the latter part of the acronym would imply) and based on that, whether it can “justify a subscription fee”.
It’s honestly surprising sometimes how worked up people will get in arguing against the usage of the term, even when it’s mostly just given as a general description – and yet when it comes down to it, very few people will agree on what actually qualifies something to “be an MMO”.
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(Continued from Making PvP Scale.)
Mobility is a key aspect.
When I wrapped up the first part of this discussion, I had just mentioned the core issue with designing scalable PvP: finding some way to maintain a rough balance between technique and strategy regardless of the numbers of players involved in the conflict. Before I go any further, I’m going to admit that I don’t think there’s any perfect way to go about this – whenever you have a truly large number of players in a battle, the drive to “follow the crowd” can sometimes displace all reason and the resultant zerg is inevitable. Instead, the goal we should shoot for is to minimize these occurrences as much as we can. There are some design considerations that, if carefully considered in the process of creating a game, can heavily influence whether or not the resultant PvP system favors zergs or more interesting combat.
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I realize I haven’t posted anything in a bit, so I figured I’d throw up something quick just to let people know that I haven’t forgotten this, life has just been a bit busy recently. A combination of coursework from professors attempting to get something significant done before Thanksgiving, a job interview that I had to fly to, scheduling for my final semester of classes, and other work… yeah, it’s been hectic. But it’s okay, it’ll get taken care of.
I was reading through Syncaine’s argument of why one MMO dying benefits players of another MMO, and realized that there was something that nagged me about the entire thing – and it wasn’t really what the majority of those commenting on the article were looking at. After all, I have to agree that Syncaine has built up a rather rock-solid position to debate from when you can boil it down to an empirical “if even a single person leaves Aion for Darkfall, then Darkfall benefits” observation. From a certain perspective, that’s entirely correct – after all, more subscribers = more money, period, end of story.
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Typically in any game you come across, unless it’s utterly terrible (and sometimes, even if it is), there are a couple of ideas that just stand out as good. They may not be part of the core game play; sometimes they may not even be part of the play at all – but they still make the game experience better in a way that hadn’t been thought of much before. They’re the kind of things that you look at and think “wow, I hope more games in the future do this too.”
Yet quite often, those ideas don’t get reused, but instead just wash away as games come and go. In an age where everyone always seems to be looking for innovation in game play and typically settling for less, it’s surprising how many existing good ideas aren’t harnessed to improve games. Thus, the rest of this entry is going to focus on highlighting a couple of the ideas from existing games that I’d really like to see reappear in future releases. I may mention others from time to time in future posts.
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When you’ve seen and worked with game UIs as much as I have, you tend to be able to spot some issues in a UI without even really using it much. Other issues, however, can be a lot more subtle and won’t rear their heads until you’ve actually taken the time to use them for a while. Thus, I tend to hold off on critiquing a particular UI until I’ve gotten the chance to work with it for a while. I’ve now had that chance with Aion, so what follow are some thoughts on this particular game’s UI.
Links can be stored in the Memo Pad.
Let’s start out with something good. Aion’s ability to link map locations is an amazing idea that works exceptionally well. Open the World Map, Ctrl+Right Click on a spot, and instantly you have a link to that location that you can share with others in chat. You can also copy links to the built-in memo pad window (Ctrl+Right Clicking on a link in the pad will copy it back to chat for quick and easy linking of popular spots). It’s very handy and has caught on rapidly with players. On the other hand, certain other portions of chat linking could use some improvement. You can link spell books and stigma stones, but you can’t link already-learned abilities from the Skills window – which means that if someone is curious what an ability is, you have to type out a description by hand instead of just giving them a link. Also, while items can be previewed on your character by Ctrl+Left Clicking them, the same cannot be done for links of items.
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Getting a bit out of hand...
Traditional computer games don’t tend to change much when they’re released in countries beyond their original target. They typically get the dialogue and interface translated, perhaps a few name tweaks, and occassionally certain specific elements get modified to meet certain countries’ laws (such as restrictions on pandas or skeletons in China). But even those changes tend to be only cosmetic in nature.
Every so often (and much more likely in the case of MMOs), a game has significant changes made to its actual mechanics. These mechanics need not be limited to the game play, either – sometimes the most significant changes take place outside of the game world yet the impact is felt within it. A good example of this would be the recent release of Aion in the West. One of the biggest changes, though neither those playing in the West nor the East might realize it, centers around the billing model for the game.
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Let me say from the start; this particular post doesn’t have any insightful discussion in it. If you happen to read my blog for the sole reason that you think my posts are insightful, then perhaps you want to skip this one (but I’m glad you like the rest!). No, this post is just a small request to those who read something I write and think “wait, that doesn’t seem quite right” – tell me! That’s right: while one of the reasons I write here is certainly to discuss topics I’m interested in, another such reason is to work on improving my writing skills (and to keep whatever skill I do have in practice).
I suppose just the act of writing itself has its benefits, but anyone who writes with any kind of serious intent could tell you that getting feedback from readers is a huge help when it comes to figuring out how different aspects of one’s writing could improve. It’s hard to break out of a solitary viewpoint when considering self-produced works, so we have to rely on others to do that for us.
If you see something in one of my posts that doesn’t seem clear, or come across an argument that appears to lack proper support, or even just want to quibble over comma placement… go for it. Any feedback is always welcome, dialogue even more so.
Image via Sirlin.net
When PvP in computer games was first introduced, I’d have to assume that participant scaling wasn’t even on the radar. After all, it’s a bit hard to envision a “zerg” in Pong. As games have grown in both complexity and scale, however, the problem of how to make PvP fun regardless of how many people are involved in it is a real and complicated one.
As it currently stands, most player combat systems in multiplayer games consist of two elements, which I’ll refer to as technique and strategy:
- “Technique” refers to technical skill: generally a quality of individual players or small groups, this category would include things like twitch aiming, bunny jumping, interrupting enemy actions, coordinating spikes on a target, and so on. FPS games tend to be heavy on technique.
- “Strategy” (in the context which I’m using for this article) refers to a wider view of the battle: where resources are relative to one another on the battlefield, elements of surprise, class compositions, and reinforcements are examples. Many MMORPGs currently focus on this aspect in battlefield-style PvP.
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If I were forced to guess, I’d probably be safe with the assumption that cheating has been an issue for nearly as long as online multiplayer games have existed. As more and more games move into the realm of internet play, the question of how to deal with those who choose not to play by the “rules” of game mechanics has become a very important one in the realm of game design.
If you don't know the origin of this image then you are definitely missing out.
Initially, it was enough to just have the powers that be dealing with miscreants – back in the days of MUDs, typically a few admins/arches or whatever the game masters of the particular server in question happened to call themselves.
As online games became more popular and evolved, so did methods to cheat in them. It became far harder to tell what was actually cheating, and what was just someone with really good aim. Thus, other solutions to the cheating problem were invented: “cheater detection” programs like Punk Buster came into vogue as a way of deterring attempted cheaters. Unfortunately, as anyone with experience will tell you, such programs are playing a cat-and-mouse game with the developers of cheats, and the game is one that they tend to be losing – after all, the cheat developers have the advantage of initiative: they force the anti-cheat programs to react to their new inventions.
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