Catcher said:
Of course, but then, where does he say that the only way to reward devotion IS power increase? He specifically says "You don't need levels and XP..." Further, there's his very next point...
Damion Schubert said:
...but you need a reason not to cancel...
That sounds an awful lot like he is pointing away from leveling as that tool.
So why emphasize it the way he does? The way he puts it, this "reason not to cancel" seems to be something extra you add to the game to keep players playing.
How about "because I'm finding it entertaining" as the reason not to cancel?
How about "because this game world is unique and interesting?"
I'm sorry, but he simply is not talking about it in this general a sense.
You might bring up some interesting new things that he might have been thinking - but
he didn't say them.
The idea that he's not assuming power increase seems somewhat far-fetched when you consider:
but you do need to allow players to quickly know where they are int he pecking order in PvE and in PvP.
There needn't be a "pecking order".
Not that he's assuming combat, of course - that would be silly.
Sounds good so far and doesn't contradict a single thing he said either.
So what?
If he begins the talk by saying "There are many smart innovations", then goes on to spend a lot of time on the less smart/stupid ones, he doesn't get points for saying it.
He spends his time talking about levelling and XP as though finding alternatives is difficult.
Then he himself says that
Threshold advancement is even better when they are not levels
Why even start talking about levelling and XP as though it's a good idea to which better alternatives might exist if we search for them?
In cRPGs it is, and always has been, a bad idea (unfortunate p&p relic) to which better alternatives do exist.
He shouldn't be apologising for it and tentitavely suggesting occasional additions; he should be denouncing it as a load of crap and coming up with something better.
Here's where you leave the track again on power gain. Read the above quote from his presentation again and tell me where he considers "the Grind" as a necessarily good thing.
I'm not talking about grind (necessarily). I'm talking about power increase.
The entire talk is based around:
getting... in EQ at 20
getting... in WoW at level 40
content that elevates with the character advancement
people in WoW who are pissed because they got to 60 and they
cannot play their solo game anymore!!!!!
Even his WoW example of "rewarding" quests is about quests that reward through level increase. You might not be talking about power increase, but he was. He might not have shouted it explicitly, and he might have thrown in one or two "but you really can do things differently..."s. All his talk was still entirely focused on the assumption of power increase.
Refer to my arguements above with twinfalls. Seems this little example drew more fire than anythingelse said eventhough it was just an example and he never said SMAC was a bad game. I liked the setting of SMAC too, but I can at least see the logic in the point that he's making.
Yes - logical if you're talking about making money. Not if you're talking about moving the industry forward.
No-one is saying that "give the people what they're used to" doesn't sell. Don't imagine it's anything to get excited about though.
Mark Antony said:
I'm not here to defend everything he said...
but isn't this exactly how the Codex seems to see things?
Sometimes, but the usefullness of such a view depends on the context. If the context is creating a good game design to satisfy all portions of the market, then this kind of black and white view is stupid and harmful.
If it's a codex shit hurling contest, there's less to lose.
As a specific example of the idiocy of the view, "hardcore" seems to refer to:
(1) People who buy £300 graphics cards and want to see reflections in the eyes of their enemies.
(2) People who buy £300 graphics cards and want to play counter-strike at 200fps without blinking.
(3) People who emphasize gameplay over graphics / physics etc.
(4) People who spend a lot of time gaming.
(5) People who game in long sessions rather than short ones.
...
The reflection guy might have no skill at all.
The counter-striker might not give a damn about prettiness - so long as he can see who to frag / be fragged by.
The gameplay over graphic guy might play at 8fps with low settings if it means he can play interesting games.
The above might spend widely different amounts of total time playing, and widely different individual session times.
The notion that any non-casual gamer fits into "hardcore" is absurd in logical terms, and harmful in design/marketing terms (even money-wise this one sucks).
Did fun acquire a particular meaning that includes close-mindedness or did you use DU's ESP on this quote? Just asking.
Call me crazy, but when "fun" is followed by "cute and funny", I'm not going to interpret it as "entertainment in the most general sense".
Suggesting that things need to be "fun", "cute", "funny" etc. is closed minded, since it fails to admit the possibility of entertainment existing without those things [take a minute to think of books, films and even existing games, and you'll see that "fun" is not required all the time]
You still want such a "casual World" to be inviting in it's way.
Sure - but I wouldn't call it a "casual" world. You're assuming that "not spending a long time playing every day" implies a casual attitude to the game world.
I might not play tennis often, and I might not play for long, but that in no way implies a casual attitude on the court.
Afterall, who wants to spend even 30 minutes every few days in Battlefield:Earth: The Movie?
Not seen it, but presuming you're suggesting that a bleak, harsh environment can't be involving, I'd say you're 100% wrong.
Sure - you can't use that kind of environment if you want people to spend half their lives there. That's not necessary though.
I needn't cancel my subscription to the "Bleak, depressing, yet involving book club", simply because I don't want to spend all my time involved in such a setting. I just need to be able to read when I want without being penalised (effectively) for not spending much time with such books.
I did notice that power increase as reward got assumed again out of nowhere. You really ought to have that looked at you know.
I never said that he stated it as a universal truth. He was careful to appear to admit various possibilities - then spent the talk focusing on the status quo, without mention/discussion of any real alternatives.
[The idea that he's not assuming power increase is still a little silly - e.g. why does content need to "elevate with character advancement", with the example of fighting (not that he's focused on combat) orcs then ogres then zombies]
Perhaps he's hinting at innovation by making zombies more powerful than ogres?
Where's his alternative to levelling? Where's his alternative to combat? Where's his alternative to generic fantasy?
When he mentions non-combat puzzles he makes no attempt to present them as viable alternatives - no attempt to tie them in.
When he mentions Eve, he says that it freely ignores his whole talk - wouldn't it have made sense to look back over his talk with that in mind, and perhaps look at the way it manages to do things differently?
Interesting you should say that because here's the rest of that point...
Damion Schubert said:
...players want to be better than normal. Fantasy has this meme built into it....they don’t want to be just another crafter, they want to be the best crafter in britain.
By 'larger than life' it sounds more like he's talking about signifigance to the underlying story, which can be power, or influence, or the wieght of the consequences of actions.
I don't know what you're reading, but when I see:
...larger than life...
...better then normal...
...want to be the best...
I don't interpret it as "want to be part of an involving situation, and to have an important influence on it.
I interpret it as "want to be the best / better / more powerful / larger / better / stronger / better..."
That has nothing to do with importance of action, and everything to do with "look at me - I'm ubar".
Would Fallout have been fun if you could only play the guard of the Armory in Vault 13? You could still have plenty of choices with cosequences, they just wouldn't have much of a sphere of impact. Then the game would end randomly when the AI Vault Dweller either died or betrayed your location or brought back the Water Chip, etc.
What point are you making?
Are you saying that it's possible to design a bad game where the player isn't amazingly powerful?
I'm sure you're capable of coming up with any number of bad ideas involving any suggestion I might make. Coming up with bad ideas is easy. That's irrelevant.
The question is whether a good game can be made which doesn't have players either be super powerful, or on a treadmill towards such power.
The answer is yes, and assuming otherwise is closed-minded.
When you automatically equate "character advancement" with "power gain" then who is wearing the blinkers?
When it's followed by orcs->ogres->zombies, do excuse me for allowing context to affect my interpretation.
Out of interest can you find any example in the article where character progression/advancement/change... doesn't involve power increase? If you can, I missed it.
Should a game not become more challenging over time?
First: how does increasing the player's power achieve that exactly???
Second: in an online game, probably not. If the aim is to have players playing for months (even if not for long each month), their skill at the game will plateau very early compared to their time playing the game.
They need variety in challenge. They don't necessarily need difficulty increase (and AFAIK they don't get it either).
There's certainly room to add game breadth as well as depth, but, assuming such a path were available, should all diplomatic challenges be as easy as the first?
I said nothing in my previous post about variety / escalation of player challenge. I only talked about absolute player power (rather than contextual influence).
There can be great variety in a game world without putting players through that variety in an organized, linear fashion.
As for difficulty, it shouldn't change much, since players spend most of their play time on a learning curve plateau. There should be simpler/easier things to do in order to learn the ropes, but there's no need to have escalation of difficulty in the majority of content.
One of the best ways to balance things (and easiest in many ways), is to provide a variety of difficulties of challenge, each with a variety of outcomes. Designing quests with two outcomes {Die horribly / Achieve mighty victory}, creates a balance nightmare, since either you dumb down to the lowest common denominator, or you put people off when they fail.
If you admit degrees of success / failure in most instances, then there's no need for the player to think "We're three level sixes, and this is a level 8 quest - we should have a reasonable chance..."
Rather anyone can take on anything (so long as truly life/death quests are clearly presented as such), and will have the opportunity to half-succeed / escape with their lives / back out half-way as the odds become clear...
Sticking big level indicators on quests is an ugly, inelegant solution.
He didn't use the word but he did say some things in that area both in looking for variety in "tactical problems"...
Sure. I'd have liked to see more emphasis on that though - whatever words were used.
...but I can understand why he didn't get into details like that in front of competitors.
I'm not with you there. It's pretty much impossible to give away trade secrets in a fairly general one-hour talk. If you're giving the talk, do it to the best of your ability.
Any concept he wanted to illustrate from something he's currently working on could be presented in an entirely different format.
galsiah said:
Absolutely. Though this is rather at odds with the rest of the talk.
Care to actually explain this one or should I translate it to "Talk isn't inline with My Vision"?
Sure. The talk says this:
You could do
this in all these ways, but there are good reasons it's done
this way.
You could do
this in all these ways, but there are good reasons it's done
this way.
You could do
this in all these ways, but there are good reasons it's done
this way.
Eve didn't do any of these things, but I'm not going to bother thinking through how that applies to my points.
Since Eve didn't follow my advice, and sticking to your vision is the main goal, don't adapt your vision (read design) just to follow my advice.
I could have gone through comparing conventional wisdom with the way things were done in Eve, but that would have been difficult. Instead I thought it'd be helpful to present some points, then say "but you might want to ignore them".
The Fantasy section includes examples from standard psuedo-medieval fantasy (WOW), superhero fantasy (City of Heroes), comic fantasy (Bugs Bunny), contemparary fantasy (Highlander, Harry Potter), and Science Fantasy (Star Trek). seems he's going for the broader depth to me, but that may just be me.
These aren't his examples of fantasy - they are frequently either alternatives, or mere illustrations. [the section also contains Civ and Alpha Centauri, but I guess mentioning them would have made your point look foolish
]
Truely, the combat alternatives section of this presentation was the weakest but then, he's the Lead Combat Designer, so the fact that he's thinking about it (out loud) at all is reason for more interest, not scorn.
Ok - I direct my scorn at the fact that there is even such a thing as the "Lead Combat Designer".
In any case, Lead Combat Designer or not, any designer should be aware of the wholistic design in order to understand where their section fits in. I don't see how it helps to give an analysis of the advantages of combat without making a genuine attempt to draw comparisons to tactical content in other activities (pointing out that Myst isn't repeatable doesn't qualify).
The first sentence is rather uninspiring in any case: "This question comes from outside the industry"
As though people inside the industry aren't asking the question, and understand the reasons that combat is necessary.
And yes: I am using ESP; I'm fully aware that he meant to imply nothing of the kind; I know that the subtext was "as well as from within the industry"; I know that Bioware have a "Lead Combat Designer" to throw the competition off the scent of their wealth of non-combat tactical activity research etc. etc.
I'm not gifted with the ESP that seems to run rampant here.
But you're happy to ignore the context which was your first defence of his talk.
You can't reasonably cry:
Ignore those statements - look at the context!!
...
Ignore the context - look at the statements themselves.
Or maybe he chose a topic and chose to stick to said topic, you just don't like the topic. That's fair, though hardly grounds for the kind of flaying he's been receiving around here, in absentia.
If he chose the "Don't innovate" topic, then stuck to it, then it is certainly grounds for what he's getting. [I'm sure Hitler stuck to the topic :D]
It's not fair to expect game level details given the context though. He's going after industry-wide trends and letting others work from those challenges.
What is he "going after" exactly?
A summary:
WoW is like Coke. You need to be Red Bull.
Coke's really sweet - there might be other tastes, but sweet is good.
Coke has these great bubbles - now you could do things differently, but there's a reason people use bubbles.
Coke is great because you can drink it all day. You can't eat steak all day can you?
Coke comes in red bottles - there are other colours out there, but red really is good.
I know I said you had to be Red Bull, but what could help you more than my telling you how and why Coke is great?
Oh - and stick to your vision.
This is one Codex mantra that I just can't understand: just make the game we want who cares if it sells!
There - you're getting the hang of the ESP.
The idea that you can evaluate "an innovation" in isolation in "bang for buck" terms is just silly. It might be true if your "innovation" is some funny little mini-game, or a new type of hat.
If you're designing a really different game which
is innovative (rather than the same shit with a few "innovations" thrown in), then such a view isn't helpful.
I'm not saying don't carefully evaluate financial viability. I'm saying don't limit your innovations to ones that can be evaluated out of context from the main game, and strapped on as an afterthought.
This kind of piecemeal, uninspired design won't get you anywhere more interesting than a WoW clone with extras.
If the most innovative, imaginative game is made and sells only 1000 copies or 10000 do you think anyone else will actually try it again?
Like VD says, who says that real innovation or the games that we would like, don't sell?
We live in a capitalist society that rewards giving customers what they want and not breaking yourself doing it.
Not what they want now - what will entertain them in the future. Simply giving them what they want now will get the industry nowhere, and will fail to make money as soon as a competitor actually goes further and really takes things forward.
Working within the system may be slow, but the alternative is to hit your bunker and pray for the rest of the world to go away. It won't hurt you much to come out and play from time-to-time, galsiah.
Nonsense. It's quite possible to work within the system, but still to innovate. It might not be safe business (neither is the cutting edge of any industry).
In response to what you said earlier about market research and giving players what they want, that's not what I want (and not what Twinfalls etc. want either I think).
There are three options:
(1) Respond to what the mass market wants.
(2) Respond to what the codex wants.
(3) Think for yourselves, take a lead, and come up with something great that neither predicted / asked for.
Option (2) is preferable to (1), but (3) is what we're after.
It's not the safest or easiest option, but the idea that it wouldn't make money is silly.
Most large investors are risk averse. An investor with half a brain knows that while putting money into one risky venture is dangerous, putting money into 100 risky ventures is much less dangerous.
If money were there for many small groups to try something really new, it's very possible that enough would be successful to make collective investment worthwhile.
Thinking such a thing possible is not "not living in the real world" - such situations exist in other industries.
There's plenty of things that Bioware can and will do wrong (at least in the eyes of the Codex), but it's poor form to pick them out of a parsed review without consulting the original source and even poorer form when the reaction ios based more on perception of a company as opposed to the individual and what was actually said. We can all do better.
