The Fourth Pillar Debate

So what’s bigger news, that Derek Smart plagiarized from some of his competitors MMO’s – or that six years later, a new MMO can still make that claim with a straight face because nobody has been able to fufill the promise of the mythical fourth pillar?

LotRO has probably come closest to giving players that, admittedly.  But its hard to say really because people mean so many things when they say “story.”  Some people want lots of quests.  Some think that means plenty of solo instances.  Some feel it means the opportunity to be heroic and have an impact on the game world.  Some hope that it means the creation of a dynamic world, with scripted and hosted GM events.  Others say its time for story to be something the players do, with a storytelling system along the lines of SW: Galaxies, or CoX.  Some say it just means having enough space and sandbox to play in and the stories will write themselves – the drama of EVE Online’s null sec wars makes a story of its own in some sense.

All of these things have one common thread though, one element linking them all despite the different forms they take.  For their to be a story, their must be a change of some sort – within the character, the player, or the world – and preferably all three.

MMO’s have their roots in RPG’s of the table top variety.  Maybe its time to draw some strength from those roots.  RPG’s revolve around players and a GM, or in some cases, a troupe of players sharing GM duties and maybe even characters too.  Should MMO’s begin to offer a “GM Package” subscription that gives a basic tool kit to allow for quest creation and npc manipulation? 

Do we need to lower server populations or travel options so that players deepen their interactions with each other? 

Do we need to spend time and money for the better development of AI in MMO’s (face it, the AI in MMO’s is rudimentary compared to other games)?  NPC’s in The Elder Scrolls series open and close their stores, travel to and from their homes and places of business, have dynamic inventories, even steal from each other!  And yet *none* of those things is present in MMO’s, even the latest and greatest ones.

Anyway, bottom line – its not plagiarism if its a long time concept in the genre.  And if Alganon is the one to finally pin the tail on the donkey, more power to them.  Maybe when they are done with that they can start, you know, fulfilling the promises they already made.   Like finishing up the races and classes they promised two years ago…

A Real Life MMO

We were on vacation this weekend (kids on a two week fall break) and we took them to the revamped Stone Mountain Park  in Atlanta, GA.    This is probably going to be a long post so the tl;dr version is  this:  I spent time in a kid’s play area that was designed like an MMO, and it blew my mind.

A few years ago, Stone Mountain was taken over by the same company that runs Knott’s Berry Farm over in CA.  As a result, it took on less of a camping/refuge atmosphere and became more of a theme/amusement park area.  One of the things installed was the Great Barn.  Its a giant indoor funhouse, four stories up in the middle, with numerous different activities inside.  And as I sat and watched my kids and my neighbors kids (who had joined us on the mini-vacation) play, I began to see things with my trained gamer’s eye.   The whole blasted thing was one giant MMO.

Okay, we have four people but do we have all four gamer archetypes present?

When kids came in, they were stopped in an initial area where they could create their “farmer,” and get a special wristband that would track their progress in the different activities.  Can we say Achiever anyone?  In the center great room on the bottom floor, visible from just about everywhere, was an electronic sign proclaiming the top ten scoring farmers from each age group.  In that same great room, the “starter area” for the game, there are hundreds of balls (“fruit”) lying around in several different colors.  Farmers can spend time here gathering fruit for the activities, and the wise ones will grab a bag to extend their capacity (I didn’t get a chance to count the number of slots).  Farmers might also explore side rooms for additional fruit and bags, take them from other players, or perhaps speak with those leaving the game area to gather additional capacity.  Thus we complete the first echoes of Bartle underpinnings.

This fruit Economy as it were, is more complex than it might seem.  There are a finite number of fruits in the game, they are required for all the activities, save some of the explorer ones (ahem, slides, climbing nets, and side rooms).  Expended fruit, through a complex system of tubes, vacuums, and nets, are channeled back down to the bottom floor room out in the open and also in less visible caches around the side rooms.  Some of those side rooms are netted and hallwayed off from the main room, providing quiet areas for Socializing via benches and even through exchange of said caches to interested players.  Some Mini Games exist here in the form of small slides and riders for younger players or those who prefer to play alone for a while.  Killers can peg one another endlessly, as well as trying to defend themselves from the veteran players on the second Tier above.

But Dad, its hard to be an Achiever with all these Killers around!

Once one has completed the games and activities on the first floor, and gathered enough fruit for their liking, they may proceed to the second Tier of challenges and activities, either through Challenges such as climbing cargo nets, or via the Rapid Transport System..er stairs, at the back of the room, conecting to the Quest Hub (lobby) of each Tier (floor).  On the second floor, one engage Killer instincts by Bombing players on the first floor, completing Challenges involving expending various color combinations of fruit to gain Achievement points, or engage in the running gun battle with air guns that use the fruit as ammunition on two opposing sides above the open air great room below.  This second floor also allows for Socilization and Trading as farmers find that they need different fruit colors or different skills or even additional players (one challenge involves a crank system that requires cooperation) to play.  Some of the less assertive farmers simply go between the floors carrying loads of fruit for other players, especially those locked in battle (Crafting and Player Driven Economy at its best).  After completing a challenge, if you desire, just scan your bracelet, receiving the points and perhaps a prestigious place on the big board instantly.  Some of these challenges are again hidden in side rooms, requiring Explorers to hunt them down and use them or share their location with others.

On the third level, players are treated to a more hard core version of the PVP battles below, as it is harder to obtain ammunition, and there are less available guns for the players to utilize.  Moreover, slides dropping one down to the starter areas below are clogged not only with PvPers looking for more ammo, but also less hardcore players just looking to enjoy the ride!   Many community service managers are in attendence, regulating the flow on the slides to prevent jams and aiding players who are lost or have a problem.   There are also a few challenge type games here that can be played solo for the biggest point scores, but require more fruit and more complex expenditures of that fruit or more demanding hand-eye coordination to complete them.

A final, smaller area seemed to be available for those who wanted to complete their tour of the entire facility, but carrying my weighty bag of fruit and my one year old, I found that even since their was no Rapid Transport System to that level, I was not able to go there.   Thus it was completed – those with family obligations or too tied to their material goods would find themselves unable to participate in the true end game and…whatever it was that it had to offer.

My kids played for probably two hours in the area, finally giving up only when it closed down and we headed for the famous laser show.  Caretakers/Devs emerged to arrange the balls and bags in strategic positions, helping to reset the economy to accomodate the new batch of players that would arrive in the morning. 

Are we trapped?

As we left, and I continued to marvel at what I saw with a gamer’s eye, I had one  final terrifying thought…what if I had it all backwards.  What if, instead of building a play area for kids, designed like an MMO, instead the MMO’s that you and I played were designed like kids play areas.  Perhaps in the final say, we are not only being treated like children, but we love it so much, we keep coming back to the same Barns, day after day, not really expecting or hoping for improvement, content in the channeled reality with which we are presented.

I Had A Strange Night.

I went to bed late – later than I should have.  My wife was acting a little strange, and was still up when I came to bed late…a rarity.  We talked for awhile, and her mood seemed to..shift somehow.

Finally I crashed, knowing I would have to be up in four hours.  Two hours in I awoke to a bloodcurdling scream.  And then a second.  My son and my infant daughter.  I rushed down the hall.  My son claimed he had heard a loud noise that had woken him up and scared him.  I told him there was no noise and to go back to sleep.  My daughter took a little longer to calm down than that, but eventually, I was able to fall back asleep.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I too had heard a noise.  And my last hour of sleep was lost to continual nightmares that lurked just beyond my ability to see them, even in that fuzzy vision we all have in the midst of our dreams.

I woke, got my daughter ready for school, walked her to the bus stop.  On the way back, a construction worker waved at me, with an overly large smile and wide eyes.  Inside, I fell back on to the couch.  The rest of the morning is a fevered blur.  I was asleep, awake, fixing breakfast, holding my infant daughter, I heard laughing, I heard computer sounds.  There was a strange buzzing outside my window.  My alarm went off and I went to wake my wife, but she was already awake.  Seeing me, she gently guided me back into bed.  Twenty minutes later, a different alarm woke me.  Feeling groggy yet, I got ready for work.

Finally, I came down the stairs, more awake than before, and I saw it.  The reason I had had this beastly night and illusory morning.  The source of my unseen fears and frets.

Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

 

Yes, I had spent the evening playing Arkham Horror, which my brother got for his birthday, with him, my dad, and my mom.  It was oh so close.  We were one doom counter from Awakening Yig.  And one failed monster fight from allowing the Terrible Experiments of Mikatonic U. to spill onto the streets of Arkham.

The game is exceptionally well done, keeping the tension and atmosphere of the Lovecraftian Mythos without being entirely impossible or bogging the game down.  I will not be choosing the Researcher as my character anymore though.  Her rerolls were helpful to others, but I got tossed into the Sanitarium and Hospital way too many times, and we didn’t have a solid beat down character like the Gangster present.  We think next time we’ll run the Professor, the Gangster, the Private Eye, and the Drifter.  Seems like a good combo to handle whatever gets thrown at us.

If you get a chance, check the game out.  And if hopeless battles against the Elder Ones aren’t your bag, let me highly recommend  you check out the rest of Fantasy Flight Games catalogue.  They are a top notch company.  I know some people have been disappointed with their handling of the Warhammer licences, but I think few can complain about the quality of the products they put out, or the genius of their designers.  Tonight we are trying our first game of Twilight Imperium and I’m very excited about it.

Our local gaming store has weathered this economy well mostly because, the owner tells me, people are rediscovering the value of board games for their family.  It costs the same to buy a game like Arkham Horror that it does to take a family out for movies and popcorn/drinks on a Friday night, but the difference is you can play the game again with no further investment.  If you are looking for a family game night and need something that defies the usual boredom of Monopoly, Scrabble, or Sorry, maybe its time to upgrade your game.

Then again, given the night and morning I’ve had…maybe you’re not ready yet.

Redesigning the Tank

MMO players are simply amazing. No matter what “it” is, if it’s possible in an MMO, players will not only find a way to do it, they will find the best way to do it. The best example of this is the trinity of MMO combat. The idea of healer/tank/DPS wasn’t created by a game designer. It was created by players!

So speaks Hue Henry, Lead Data Designer working on Alganon, one of the new MMO titles currently in development.  And I keep coming back to it.  Is that really true?

Did players in Everquest and Ultima Online invent the taunt mechanic?  Or develop the idea of aggro by sending in the warrior first?  Hue suggests this was a change from PnP RPG’s where the idea of character is king.  This leads me to believe though that he’s never played PnP, given the existence of terms like “powergamer” and “munchkin” – terms which define almost exclusively the player base of MMO’s.

That one stung didn’t it?  Tell me its not true…

Anyway, Hue goes on to say that Alganon will not mess with the holy trinity of classes – tank/dps/healer. And in fact, he bows to their inevitability:

Many MMO designers think they can outsmart their players and make a game where this trinity doesn’t exist. I’m not that arrogant.

I am.  I think there is a different holy trinity of classses waiting to be discovered for the game gutsy enough to do, one that will tweak the way parties are created/grouped/run and give some originality to a new game.  And games need that!  Look at Vanguard – original classes that created new mechanics, like the Bard that allowed players to create their own abilities, or the disciple with his martial arts healing.  All except the tanks.  The same trinity there too – good guy sword/board tank, nuetral dual-wielding tank, bad guy two handed tank.  Bleh.

And for my inspiration, I do return to the PnP RPG scene.  Hue is right about that.  Until DnD 4th came along and tried to put MMO’s on paper, it didn’t quite work that way.  You did have roles for the characters, but they were slightly different:  offense, control, support.

Warriors and Wizards were there to hammer things into submission.  Thieves and Bards were their to make sure that there were no surprises, and that the battlefield would favor the heroes.  And Clerics and Druids were there to make sure that your people did work better in a group than alone, and that they had less chance of dying in that group as well.

And enemies weren’t programmed to go after the person hitting them the hardest and the fastest.  They were controlled intelligently.  To go after the party where it was weakest.  To use its own control and support in groups.

So what if we get rid of aggro, get rid of taunts?  What if characters abilities are arrayed in those three categories, rated primary/secondary/tertiary.  And what if we get rid of the white hat/black hat paradigm in tanking?  What if there was no tank?

What if the guy at the front of your party was wearing robes and a pointy hat, surrounded by a forcefield, paired side by side with a gal in chain, wielding a spear or a short sword?  What would your new “tank” look like?

And Then, The Silence…

And now we have lost the other Creator, Dave Arneson.

A good omen for MMO Designers everywhere.

Who will carry the torch for us now?  At one time, I had high hopes for Monte Cook, but over time those have dwindled.

Certainly the Open Gaming movement, gave us many rising stars, but none who are real icons like Gygax and Arneson were.  And don’t even get me started on the wholesale rape of the gaming community that was Hasbro and WotC’s apparent plan from the beginning.  Someday soon someone will take them to court and knock down the house of cards they built.  And the easiest way of doing that would be to revert to the original version of the OGL, publish 4th edition material, and watch them squirm and wiggle…

But I digress.  Maybe the next great wave of game designers will come from the world of MMO’s.  Someone to really open the imaginations of a new generation, to become a Creator in the way those two were.  Until then, may your creativity, hopes, and dreams guide you, in the path you should go on.

Bonus Points:  Anyone know what’s happening with Game Chef this year?  Its about that time, but nothings up on the site.  Or anyone know of any current 24hourRPG game challenges going on right now?