Tag Archives: Game Design

A Cataclysmic Problem

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It has become a sad little game. Logging onto WoW and peeking through my fingers at the Guild roster or my friends list. Who isn’t going to log in? How many weeks has it been since I talked to that person? I wonder if they are playing Rift. I wonder if they are okay. As far as I know, only one absence is logically explained and has assured the guild he will be back when things get straightened out. But then, he lives in Japan, so I am pretty much willing to give him a pass.

People like to point fingers at Rift. But it’s not Rift. Rift was lucky to come out at the right time, in the right place to fill a void for WoW players.  But it could have been anything, any fun fantasy MMO with pretty graphics that does any of the numerous things players have been begging for in WoW, and they would have gotten a whole slew of dissatisfied customers. People aren’t leaving WoW for Rift because Rift is a better game. People are leaving WoW for *anything* because they are simply tired of WoW and what Blizzard is doing with it.

The problems:

1. Cataclysm is too hard.

For those saying “l2play noob”, shut it, and leave. Cataclysm is too hard. It’s that simple. Fewer people have killed Nef than had killed Kel’thuzad or Prince at this point in the expansion. Call people Wrath babies all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that people like raiding, like getting epics, and like DOWNING bosses. What they don’t like is endlessly wiping for hours because ONE person screws up (and it is never the same person). In a 10 man raid, a team should be able to lose 2 people and still manage to pull off the kill. In a 25 man raid, a team should be able to lose 5 people and still pull off the kill. Take a moment to consider the fights and how ONE person can screw even a 25 man raid.

BWD: Magmaw – one person with a parasite runs into the group, probable wipe. One person jumps on the head and doesn’t know how to work the chain, probable wipe. Omni – A person gets fixated and doesn’t move quickly enough, tanks and or heals get a slime blown up on them, definite wipe. A person doesn’t control their pet, Magmatron’s shield blows, definite wipe. Maloriak – Miss an interrupt? Wipe it up, the tank just died. Chimaeron – Tank’s taunt missed, through RNG I feel the urge to add, wipe it up. Or god forbid, the raid makes it to the final push and there aren’t enough mages, warlocks, and shaman, to spawn things to distract him. Artemedes – One person targeted and doesn’t move fast enough, entire raid wipe.

ToW: Conclave – ONE person knocked off Rohash platform, raid wide debuff, wipe. One tank misaligned his jump, falls to his death, raid wipe. One missed taunt to pull Anshel off his healing thing, raid wipe because he isn’t going to die fast enough. Al’Akir – the master of RNG wipes with tornadoes spawning on healers or tanks and spawning right when wind blasts start up.

BoT: Trash – wipes if one of the cc-ers goes down. Halfus – miss an interrupt, taunt, or big heal on the tank that is holding 2 dragons? Hope the trash doesn’t respawn before running back. V&T – One ranged not moving fast enough, one tank getting sucked into the basement, one purge happy healer, one person not running the right way for fire breath… wipeity wipe wipe. Elemental Monstrosity… what in this fight doesn’t cause a wipe if it happens to a tank or healer? Cho’gall – Slimes resist the earthbind totem? Kiss the healers goodbye.

RNG is not fun, especially when it controls the success or failure of a boss fight. My issue with all of these abilities is not that they exist, because many of them show nice challenging boss fights. My problem is that the price of even minor failure is DEATH. Didn’t move fast enough? Dead. Didn’t run the right way? Dead.

So what is Blizzard’s response to this? It will get easier as the expansion ages. This is possibly even more short sighted than the “resilience will fix it” comment. Yes, out-gearing the content will make it easier, but that doesn’t help guilds who are losing raiders left and right NOW.

2. 5 levels simply wasn’t enough.

There aren’t enough new zones for 80-85. There wasn’t enough time to feel like we were going from easy to hard. Replacing ICC epics was going to be hard enough, but replacing them with greens at 81 is just painful. At least with Wrath we held on to them for 6-7 more levels. (Some even making it all the way to Naxx.) When I hit 80, I hadn’t even touched Stormpeaks or Icecrown. Only a few quests had been completed in Zul’drak, and about half of Shalozar. Sure, I was one of those weirdos who did both Borean and Howling Fjord, but still, I had a ton of content. And I didn’t do dungeons as I was leveling, so those were totally new at 80, plus heroics!

It also took me 3 weeks to go from 70 to 80. It took me 3 days to do that for 80-85. Even when leveling my alts, it takes a short amount of time. And I always ding in Twilight Highlands regardless of how many instances I do while leveling. At that point, I only have that zone left to do.

3. Old content being revamped is great, but you have to please the bleeding edge too.

There simply needs to be more to do. I am thrilled at the updating of the old world. But where is the stuff in the old world for level 80-85? Where are the quests in Stranglethorn for the bored level 85 to escort newbies down to Booty Bay? Where are the level 85 Argent Dawn quests in Eastern Plaguelands? Where are the quests at the Ironforge Airport?

4. Dye, Appearance, and Housing.

How many years have players been asking for Armor Dyes, Appearance tabs, Soulbound armor bags, and player/guild housing? As long as I have been playing the game.

Did anyone else notice that it is one of the BULLET points on Rift that a player can dye their armor? Champions touts their character customization and creator for good reason. Players like to stand out from the crowd. They like to ROLEPLAY of all things. It’s why I always hate when affliction gets nerfed. I don’t WANT to be destruction. I want to be affliction and I want to be good for my team as affliction. I also don’t want to look like a unicorn vomited on me. Many players site LotR Online as a great example of player customization because of the appearance tab. Tons of WoW players, including myself, love to collect old armor and holiday clothing. Now we have overloaded banks and every new acquisition is an exercise in torment of what to delete.

Blizzard argues that they want players to recognize instantly when someone is wearing a set of armor. They want players to see the pretty art their artists created. This is a fallacy. I play three classes at level cap right now. I played 5 classes at level cap in Wrath. I could maybe tell you distinguishing characteristics of TWO of the armor sets I wore. I could maybe spot 3 or 4, if I was looking at them in game and correctly identify them as tier 10 armor. I know for a fact I can only do it for two sets of tier 11. I am not looking at players to tell how awesome they are, I am right clicking and inspecting to tell how awesome they are.

The solutions: Never present problems without a possible solution.

1. Nerf bat or buff bat. I vote buff.

So how do they fix the difficulty? Well really there are only two easy options. Nerf the bosses or buff the players. Nerfing the bosses is bad business. Then all the “hard cores” start whining about dumbing down WoW. They can’t just toss a buff on the whole raid like ICC, because then imagined elitism springs up.

But buffing players… Now that’s fun. Big numbers is big fun. An amplified, worgen tomed, fully buffed, spell power potted Curse of Doom on Netherspite for 52,000 damage? Yes please. (My point is made by the fact I remember that SO CLEARLY.) But they can’t just go in and buff everyone 15% across the board. They have to be sneaky about it. Buff this ability on this class, buff that ability on that class, buff armor gains on tanks, buff slow heals on healers, etc etc. Stealth buffs? Even better.

2. Patch soon, patch often.

If all the content is going to be reworked old content, it’s got to be fast. Patch every other month if possible. Especially if they are going to continue updating old content. In addition, every patch needs to carry with it minor buffs, minor additions (like to archeology, stats, and achievements), and possibly a pet or mount. Any updates to Holidays and Holiday bosses are stellar too.

Also, note for the next expansion, having the amount of exp to get to 81 be less than the amount of exp to get from 79-80, is not a good thing. The time invested needs to be equivalent to the previous levels. Consistency is key.

3. &4. Fidelity vs Agency. Omg, Kent was right. And suck it up princess. As designed just doesn’t fly anymore.

First off, players are willing to accept things that are expanded over time. Look at archeology. Players are willing to accept shorter dungeons if it means more of them. Players are willing to accept getting poor loot drops if there are more ways to get the odd piece they are missing. Players are willing to accept something not being perfect if it means they get something neat. Fidelity and agency are a trade off, but far too often Blizzard seems to make the wrong choice on which one to go for.

One example of this is the linearity of a quest zone and the inclusion of cutscenes. This is exceptionally noticeable when playing with another player. Ever tried to do Uldum with 2 people? It *sucks*. When one player completes a quest and it auto ports them somewhere while playing a cutscene, the other player is left in an old phase, alone, and has to fend for themselves. I like linear stories as much as the next RPGer, but in WoW, there needs to be a feeling of open world. I can remember doing quests and deciding to not do a “thread” of quests. Just skip it, that one is too annoying, or just isn’t fun, so I will just skip over it to this other quest. Blizzard killed that in Cata though. Each quest is a part of a big long chain. If the player tried to skip over this step, they can’t progress the zone.

This goes for dye on armor and appearance tabs too. Saying this was “as designed” just doesn’t work anymore. Sure when WoW was the *only* good MMO out there, we accepted this. But other MMOs are ripping off WoW and allowing for more freedom. The Blizzard artists need to let go and accept that players want to play THEIR way, not the way an artist wants them to. Yes, someone is going to take Paladin tier 2 and turn it into Hello Kitty pink, red, and white. But just as often someone is going to leave it red, gold, and black and look just as awesome. Also dye can prop up a flailing profession or become a major gold sink.

Even quests that are fairly simple go into this dungeon and kill this dude, or go and gather these rare items for me, in out of the way, hard to reach places, will fill a need in the old world for level capped players. Anyone else remember farming to get a flying mount to get access to the Highland Pools and the Shat’ari Skyguard dailies? I do.

One final point is about Guild leveling and reputation. As I said before, Guild Rewards are a powerful thing. Being in a level 20+ guild on my main and having all my alts in a level 2 guild, I can honestly say the difference is noticeable and painful. It will be slightly eased by the inclusion of a tabard in 4.1 that will help players earn rep with a new guild, but this doesn’t help new guilds. Players aren’t willing to move on to a guild that is a better fit at the risk of losing their perks. I have heard, from multiple people, about recruiting coming to a standstill because players simply aren’t willing to start over on rep or join a guild that is lower level than the one they are in. Guilds advertising in trade that are under 15 or so are practically laughed out of the channel. I have always maintained the best thing about WoW is playing with friends. When the player feels punished for playing the way they want to play or for changing their mind, something is wrong.

It may not be dying per se, but WoW is definitely feeling some pain. I worry about what might happen if this trend continues. People can argue all they want, but the dwindling raiders in my guild and the dwindling people on my friends list speaks for itself. The really worrying thing is that for each player that leaves WoW because of any one of these problems (or RNG), another player is likely to follow, especially if they find a new multiplayer game to play. And so the negative feedback loop starts until there is no one left but the gold farmers to play with.

Dragon Quest IX – or If I see one more slime, I am gonna LOSE IT

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JRPGs, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… Suikoden, Legend of Dragoon, Xenosaga, Persona 4… I could go on, but what’s the point?

I love JRPGs. I love the crazy outfits, the crazy item names, the progression curves, the exploration, the bad translations, the overly complex attack animations, the wildly stereotyped characters… I even love “not as much JRPGs” like Pokemon and other standard RPG grind type games.

Dragon Quest IX does some wicked awesome things and some absolutely terrible things.

Awesome:

Trades System

I am an altoholic. I love playing different classes, different characters, with different abilities. One of the sad things with JRPGs is that there is generally a wide range of characters to pick from. (108 in Suikoden!!!) And the player is often limited to certain characters at certain points for story reason. This has always bothered me. I build a team and level them, gear them, and balance them around each other. So when the game suddenly shoves a 4th string unleveled, ungeared, noob into my group, I get annoyed.

DQ9 fixed this in a rather spectacular way. Your main character, and the 3 party characters you can recruit, can change your trade simply by going to a specific city and asking it to be changed. It retains the old trade’s skills, stats, and level, so you can switch back without losing any progress. How much do I love this? I cannot even begin to express it. Imagine, in WoW, going to a guy and paying 10k to switch classes. You have to start at level 1, but you retain all your gear, mounts, pets, achievements, reps, tabards, attunements, etc. You can re-do quests and zones. To be fair, there would need to be major changes, like a soul bound item bag for armor you can no longer equip, your mounts would grey out until you reached the level you could use them again, high level professions would grey out, etc etc. But what if you could have a character that was a single unit, but had every class leveled to 85 in it’s “class tree.” One character, every class. *mind.blown.*

Gathering

When wandering around the world chasing down enemies I noticed these little sparkle spots. I ran up and activated one only to be rewarded with a crafting material. I didn’t think much about it, until I ran across another one, that was a different trade material. A very EXPENSIVE trade material. And there were SIX of them just laying on the ground. A quick trip to Gamefaqs confirmed my suspision. These things were everywhere and they respawn over time, making it easy to gather materials to craft items.

In WoW one of my favorite things to do after a stressful day of work is come home, pop open a beer, turn on something mindless on tv and gather herbs. Sometimes ore, but usually herbs as I have more herbing characters. And here I can do it on a ds? Solid gold win. Now if only I could herb for WoW on my ds…

Crafting

It’s still recipe based, but DQIX crafting is a shining example of what crafting could be. New materials are added to old items to improve them. If a sleeping potion is combined with a weapon, the weapon now has a chance to put enemies to sleep. The recipes are found in bookshelves around the world. They are often items that are a few “steps” ahead of what the character can purchase at that point in the game.

The absolute best part is that crafting leads to gold. To make an ear cozy the materials cost 970g. The ear cozy sells for 1200g. Given sufficient time, the player has access to as much gold as they are willing to stand making ear cozys for. This, a million times this, is what games have always needed. It doesn’t need to be a huge amount of money. It doesn’t need to be easy. It does need to be obfuscated in the system. But buying materials, making an item, and having that item vendor for less than the vendor prices of the materials is just so backwards it’s absurd.

Online Store

It took me a while to “get” what was going on with this. If the player connects their DS to Wi-Fi in the game, it connects them to a store. A store that has rare items from the game for purchase that changes every day. Genius idea. It brings people back every day (esp if there are holiday only items), keeps them connected, and gives them something awesome to spend their hard earned gold on.

Multiplayer

Wi-Fi multiplayer. Crawling a dungeon with 3 of your friends and their main characters, and getting loot, experience, and enjoyment out of it. It was what convinced me to get the game in the first place. And what convinced me to get my husband to start playing it again.

Terrible:

Learning Curve

Head bashingly hard with no clue as to where you are supposed to go next? Yep. An annoying sidekick that keeps track of everything EXCEPT what step of the main quest you are on? Yeah, that too.  Any explanation as to any of the trades, skills, and weapons? Not in this game. Much of what I learned, I learned by accident.

Leveling Curve

In most JRPGs it is possible to game the system early to prevent “grinding”. When the game first starts up, I will run around and explore the first area as much as possible. Learn all the moves, test everything, and try anything. First this gives a good feel for the game and the characters you have. Second, this generally leads to a few excess levels. Early levels go faster, so by stacking a few extra levels up early, the next few sections are a bit easier, and I generally stay a level or two ahead of where I am supposed to be for the whole game.

DQIX appears to have anticipated this and nipped it in the bud. Not only is it possible to “dodge” random fights, but also the leveling curve spikes so early that when I tried to just power through the main story, I quickly hit a wall around level 26, where I was supposed to be around 34 to progress.

Which brings me to my first really big gripe with the game. Cheap Bosses. When I attempted to battle the boss that I should have been level 33+ to fight at level 25, every 4th turn he would attack one of my party members for a critical strike. I was doing pretty well, rezzing people, until he got my priest. Then it was within 12 turns of death. I failed. So I noted the amount of damage he did for each critical hit. About 150+ on my plate/mail wearers and 225+ on my clothies. I realized I was going to need to do some serious leveling.  So I went out and leveled to 33, like the handy guide on Gamefaqs suggested and went in to fight the boss. I assumed I would fail because none of my characters had enough health to survive his criticals, despite being the level suggested.  Only, as it turns out, he didn’t attack me with a single critical strike the entire fight.

Later I managed to be in the perfect position to test my new theory, which was that the game had a “minimum level” needed to fight the boss, and if the player had not reached that level, the boss would have a significantly higher critical chance. As far as I could tell, this was true.

Add to this, that when running with several high level characters and one or two low level characters, the high level characters get the brunt of the share, instead of everyone getting a percentage. I understand their logic, but if I am almost at the end and just wanted to switch because I just unlocked a new trade, I wouldn’t be punished for it.

My final big gripe with the leveling system is the fact that it is far more rewarding on the exp gain to just farm metal slimes, instead of going to the difficult content and killing standard mobs there. At the very least, make it semi worth it to fight something challenging as opposed to goofing off 20 levels below where I should be playing.

Story

Spoilers abound.

Don’t even get me started on the idiocy of a chain of command that doesn’t allow a subordinate to refuse a superior. But they give the player choices… and NONE of them are actually choices. Why even put it in the game? Why even take the time to code it? Just force the player to do it.

Very early in the game the main character that the player is assuming the role of loses their wings and halo. They are “mortal” and no longer Celestian. Only as it turns out, they are still Celestian, just stripped of all their powers. I assumed that the point was I was slowly earning my wings and halo back. I was working towards being a Celestian again. When the game offers me the chance to save the world if I become mortal, my response was, “well, sure, why not?” It’s not actually changing anything if I am mortal over being Celestian. Not to mention, it really isn’t a choice, it’s a “you have to do this, until you pick yes, and we aren’t letting you out of this screen” thing.

A a few select points the developers apparently decided they needed something a bit more powerful than a cutscene and so put in these long anime sequences. I get that it is a JRPG, but these just stick out like a sore thumb. They forced me to equip my character with a full set of gear (thus making them “match” the visual of the anime) and even then, the anime had a male not a female. What was the point? It didn’t feel heroic, it didn’t advance the story, it didn’t give a pay off.

On top of this were some very clear decisions made to force the game fit with the story that are just wildly frustrating. I spent half the game collecting those Fyggs. NO I am not going to hand them to you so you can claim all the credit for my hard work. No I don’t want to unchain the crazy guy mumbling about trying to kill the Celestians.

Forced Failure

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is terrible. But designers keep doing it. DQIX likes to put the player in a combat battle, then when they make their choice the bad guy makes some snide remark, the game says something like “Ember freezes in fright!” and the bad guy one shots the player. Yes that was fun, wasting all that time to just have an outcome I couldn’t change. Could we have that in a cutscene next time? At least in Suikoden it WAS possible to change the outcome, if difficult.

The Battlefield

DQIX allows the characters to roam around the battlefield, lining themselves up for shots, moving next to the person they are going to heal, etc. It looks neat, the first few times. After level 40, it’s just an annoying waste of time. Not to mention that the game has a formation system, that is completely nullified by this other roaming system.

Tank/DPS/Heal Roles

Each trade has a skill set. These skill sets mesh fairly well with the tank/dps/heals idea from other RPGs. The problem is, DQIX doesn’t give the trades the skills needed to do their job well. All of the skills that would do things like, allow the tank to hold aggro, are underpowered and fail so often, it’s pointless to even use them. As are the buffs, debuffs, and status clears. It was easier to simply heal through the poison than waste the time to clear off the poison. The one fight I used buffs, the boss cleared them off instantly.

I don’t mind breaking from the standard roles, but this means that all of the trades need to have comparable health and armor. I despise the fact that more often than not my mage is tanking and the only character who needs heals.

I like Dragon Quest IX and I am still playing it. However it really just makes me long for RPGs that actually make sense. Oh and ones where I don’t just farm poor little metal slimes.

The Best Job you will ever Hate.

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“Don’t come here if you think making games might be fun or cool. Don’t waste your time and money. Only apply if you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else.”

I learned Level Design at the Guildhall at SMU, a Master’s level program that focused on training and practical experience. The same professor who said the above, at the risk of having admissions kill him, also said that working on games was the “best job you’ll ever hate.” It is such an odd thing to say, but it was true. It’s the best job, and sometimes I hate it.

Spending 80 hour work weeks for 2 months only to have it universally panned by critics in addition to getting laid off?

Having to work on games like Imagine <Insert Random Profession Here>?

Knowing something is a terrible idea and having to do it anyway because the Publisher said so?

There is a reason the average burn out for developers is around 8 years. Spending more than 2 years at a single studio is uncommon. The average lifespan of a video game studio is 11 years.

It is common for developers to work 60-80 hours a week near the end of the project, to get it wrapped up and shipped.  The sad thing is, for most independent game studios the sales of the previous game go directly to fund the next one. If the game bombs, the studio could, and likely will, have problems getting deals with publishers to make their next game. For an owned studio, if the game bombs, they will likely be working on a less important title next, which won’t do as well, which starts the vicious cycle towards closure.

The business is about making money, so when a game doesn’t make money, it doesn’t get sequels. Why do some games get endlessly remade with only the smallest of changes? They make money. And as a game developer, you rarely get to just work on games you would love, but rather, because you need a job, so you work on Barbie’s Dream House Interior Decorating to pay the bills.

This video is true. People watch it, laugh and say, it can’t be that hard. It can’t be that bad. Oh but it is.

Breaking into the industry is extremely difficult. Staying in the industry is a feat worthy of Sisyphus. Becoming one of the big names is virtually impossible. You don’t get paid as well as you would in another field. You work twice as hard for half the credit. And the greater internet dickwads blast your game and call it crap without ever having played it. So either everyone in the video game is insane or extremely passionate about what they do, despite the many hardships they have to deal with to make games.

I said ‘As Designed!'”

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Anyone who has ever worked in Software development knows the unique pain and torment that is bug testing. After months of making a program a group of people are hired, given basic instructions, and then tasked with BREAKING the software. Not checking to see if it works, but rather checking to see if they can break it.

There are a million reasons to hate bug reports. Badly written, found using cheats, mis-labeled, and mis-attributed to the wrong thing. I could write dozens of posts on the worst practices of QA testers, but really, the one that gets me annoyed most often is that bug that is repeatedly entered and finds it’s way to me, despite having been closed several times. Occasionally they re-open the original bug, but more often it is a duplicate, showing that they do not search the database for the bug before creating a duplicate. The most common cause of this is bugs that are closed “As Designed.” Meaning that what the tester marked as a bug, really isn’t. It was intentionally created that way. An active choice was made and scripted to do exactly that.

Best case scenario this is something like “Player 1 gets a bit more gold than Player 2.” Respond with “As Designed, we needed a solution for rounding odd numbers and Player 1 just gets the lions share rather than deleting the extra coin.” Relatively simple. And usually, the bug is closed, no one ever notices it again, and the matter fades into obscurity.

But what happens when it isn’t that easy? I recently designed a timing puzzle. I intended for it to be a simple move – wait – move puzzle. A senior designer saw it, loved it, and worked with me to make it more complex and puzzling. Now, fast forward 3 months and I have received no less than 5 bugs on the puzzle. After having marked 4 of the bugs “As Designed” with increasing annoyance, I got the last one and began drafting a rather annoyed email to QA to tell them to 1. quit bugging this issue and 2. do a search of closed bugs to make sure it hadn’t already been bugged in the past and closed “As Designed.” I was halfway through the email when suddenly I had the thought – well, clearly as designed in this case is wrong, or else I wouldn’t keep getting the bug. Five people saw this and immediately thought, this is not what is supposed to happen.

One of the hardest things to get used to as a Game Designer is the universal truth that while you know something is a good idea, it may not be a good thing for your game.

To build on the earlier example: Two players split any money earned in the level. There is a drop of 11 coins. What do you do with the extra coin? My immediate response was, Round it up to 12, and both players get 6. Stick a fork in it. (It’s done.) Another designer replied with “Lose the extra, no one will know you were supposed to get 11, so they will just think they were supposed to get 10.” It is a common saying among developers that players never miss something that is cut, but they will complain about the things that they see that are broken. The thing is, each of the money amounts are tied to art. The art always gives the same amount, thus quick counting players will be able to see that there were 2 4 coins and 1 3 coin. So either solution could lead to a “bug” in the player’s view. My idea, to err on the side of plenty meant that at least if they saw it, then they wouldn’t care. They got more than they thought they would so that’s just gravy.

In the end the decision was made to just give the excess to the first player. The players have the ability to trade coins, so it isn’t a huge issue. But what about when it is? The puzzle example – it is very confusing. As soon as it is explained to the player they say “Oh.” And complete it in one try. But the solution isn’t obvious. This lead to the complex design discussion of how do we fix this?

Solutions included everything from highlighting the correct path with coins to cutting the puzzle all together. I suggested that we simply return the puzzle to it’s earlier, simplistic, state. It was clear what you needed to do and honestly, it would be a much cheaper solution than adding a ghost to lead you through the puzzle or coins appearing along the path. One designer immediately argued, but that puzzle is so fun and it really is one of the better puzzles. We shouldn’t cut it or dumb it down. I understand what he is saying, but at this point in the project, it isn’t logical to ask people to work on adding something new when we can just as easily simplify it and polish something else. The player will see a broken addition to help them through the puzzle. They won’t see the puzzle that was overly complex if we replace it with the simpler version.

This lead to the standard Holy War of “Smart Player vs. Stupid Player” and how we shouldn’t punish our good players by dumbing everything down for the stupid player. I won’t recount the tale here, but eventually I won, not because the decision was good, or logical, or whatever, but because there was simply not enough time to do otherwise. Do I think it was the best solution? No. The best solution would have been to go in, rework the puzzle and art to make it very clear what was supposed to be done and set the complex puzzle up better with a series of smaller puzzles leading up to it. Was it the right decision? I think so. It solved the problem in an elegant way, without introducing new bugs, content, or functionality.

This experience has made me realize that “As Designed” is a terrible thing. Too often we just say, that’s the way it should be, and don’t stop to consider that maybe it isn’t. We control the worlds we create when perhaps we should sometimes realize that the correct solution is the one that allows the world control.

Respond, if you please

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Video games tend to draw controversy. It’s okay, we ask for it. We know we are asking for it and deal with it when it happens. This is how the ESRB was born after all.

The thing that bothers me though, is when a video game gets a ton of bad press, then makes attempts to correct the “problem” and receives no response from the media or sites that complained so loudly to begin with. I get why national media doesn’t do this (though really with everything on the internet they could at least make a small post). But what stops small blogs from responding?

The example that spawned the thought for me is the “Torture Quest” brouhaha in WoW. When Wrath of the Lich King launched, players tore into the content, much as they always do. A few weeks after launch, someone wrote a blog post about a quest: The Art of Persuasion and about how horrible it was and how they were going to stop playing WoW over it. The quest requires you to “torture” a captured enemy for information. For whatever reason, many players (ironically most had done the quest, but never really paid attention to *what* they were doing) latched on to this and got *bent*. How dare the developers force them to TORTURE INNOCENT PEOPLE. Rawr! Pitchforks! Torches! Bad Blizzard Devs!

To which I replied with “Really? THIS is where you draw the line?” Seriously. We are discussing a game where my main character, Joyia has 181,866 TOTAL KILLS. She has KILLED almost 200,000 THINGS in the game. (I also want to point out her kills that yield experience or honor, ie meaningful kills, are at 67,405, meaning that she has killed 114,461 creatures/humaniods/players that were only for loot and sometimes not even that.) In that same zone there is a quest to collect HUMAN EARS. In Hillsbrad they have you poisoning some farmer’s dog. In Hillsbrad again they have you COLLECTING SKULLS. These are just the thoughts off the top of my head. My first reaction was “What’s a little torture on top of the wholesale slaughter of thousands of creatures, many of whom were unarmed or non-aggressive.”

My second thought was “Well, okay, but this guy, NOT INNOCENT.” And he isn’t. He is an evil wizard attempting to destroy the WORLD. Imagine a crazy, powerful being, attempting to launch every nuclear weapon in the world at once. It’s your job to stop him. Would you step down the dark side to prevent it? Even if it meant my own death at the hands of Justice, I am pretty sure I would. This isn’t puppy killing we are discussing. This guy is a mass murder (as much as any player character) and is actively killing puppies himself.

Regardless, after a few months, the furor died down and no one really talked about it again. Fast forward to Cataclysm. Early in Hyjal, one of the introductory leveling zones for level 80 players, there is a quest to capture a harpy (a known and common enemy mob throughout the game)  and interrogate her about her master’s plans to reincarnate an ancient for the bad guys. Ancients are super powerful beings. Having even one on your side is the equivalent of bringing a tank to a knife fight. The player, once damaging her to about 25% is given two “speech” options. One to “Soften her up” the second to “Ask her about their plans.” The first results in a bit of “smacking around” and some comments from the npc holding the harpy in place for you.

This is very obviously Blizzard’s response to the fuss over the Persuasion quest. First, the player doesn’t need to “rough” the npc up to get her to talk. Just asking her she volunteers the information the player is looking for. Second, if the player does “rough” her up, the npc has 8 canned responses, 5 of which could be construed as negative towards the player for using violence. Finally, at the end of the conversation with the harpy the player is given the choice, to kill her or spare her. Both options return a “positive” response from the npc. “It’s your call, <name>. Marion brought this on herself when she attacked our matron’s sacred shrine.” and “You’re a better person than I, <name>. But I suppose the harpies are just pawns here.” if you choose to kill or spare respectively.

It allows the player to play as they chose, as opposed to following the designed path. I love it. This is a prime example of  “Player Driven Stories” as discussed at GDC this year. The player drives the story. Both of my healers let her off, sparing her life. My DK and Warlock both killed her. My DK chose to soften her up until the npc said something to the effect of  “Okay, we still need her to answer questions.”

Regardless, it was a superb response to player’s comments on the “interrogation” from Wrath so why couldn’t the detractors at the very least acknowledge that Blizzard took their concerns under consideration and made an effort to appease them. Although I still feel it is a bit hypocritical to run around ripping out skulls then get squeamish at a bit of shock therapy.

Gender in Video Games

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When asked to discuss this topic, I generally gravitate towards Women in the Game Industry, as opposed to Women Gamers. Today I did an interview for an article on gender and how it relates to women gamers, touching on the assault behavior towards women. It’s a complex topic. So too is women gamers and women developers, but in my mind, they are all interconnected and form a cycle.

The Mythical Unicorn

Any female gamer can tell a story of at some point where being a girl who plays games has attracted the wrong sort of attention. The belief in the rarity of women who play and enjoy mainstream video games perpetuates this myth and the responses. Start with a lonely guy that seems to be unable to find a girl who understands him. He likes books, movies, and video games. He meets a girl he thinks is cute, asks her out, and discovers that she couldn’t care less about these things that make up a majority of his passions and hobbies. She cares about clothes, shoes, celebrities, and makeup. Poor guy. Now he meets the one girl in his sphere of acquaintances that does like the things he does. She plays video games, she argues who is better Picard or Kirk, and she, miracles of miracles, revels in HIS knowledge of such topics. Queue the love at first geek scene. And suddenly this girl possibly has a problem. For some reason, lack of attraction, already taken, etc, she doesn’t want to date Lonely Guy. He tries to ply her with gifts, but despite the prevalent belief that women can be bought, it doesn’t work.

What is she to do? Break his heart? Be mean? Try to be nice, but knowing it is going to be awkward and likely will just “string” him along? It sucks for the girl. All she wanted was a friend to argue lore with! And unfortunately the skew of males to females makes this an incredibly common occurrence. Because of this women are more likely to attempt to hide their identity. By hiding their identity the problem is exacerbated and female gamers appear to be more rare than they really are.

We are not a mythical unicorn. Attend PAX Prime or PAX East and this will completely dismiss the belief that gamer women are rare. There are plenty of us running around. We just don’t like to tell people because they get stupid over it. Once I decided I would no longer hide my female status from WoW friends, I discovered something very surprising. Not only did “outing” myself lead to other girls being willing to do the same thing (it was quite a shocking day) but also we were able to develop friendships through our common trials and tribulations. According to various websites, though their numbers are speculative and not backed by Blizzard, it is believed that 1 in 5 WoW players is female. That’s alot of girls running around Azeroth.

The Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

Once people get on the internet, realize they are anonymous, they suddenly become a different person. Much like the Invisible Man changed radically when he realized he would no longer be punishable for his actions, so too do people on the internet believe they can say whatever without repercussion. This leads to XBox Live speak, Trolls, and all other number of wildly offensive things being said over public channels that would *never* be said to someone’s face.

Because of this truth, women often find themselves at the receiving end of extremely offensive behavior. I once had a guy in WoW tell me “Shut up b*tch. I will find you and I will rape you.” I recoiled in horror from my computer. It didn’t matter that this person had no idea who I was. It didn’t matter that I knew he had no way of actually hurting me. The fact that he would even physically be able to type that to a possible woman was appalling to me. I reported him, ignored him, and immediately left the guild (who’s leader responded with “well that’s just the way he is”).

For the most part however, I see these things as a new form of saber rattling, boasting, or puffery. It is a way for them to swing about their manliness. And just like in real life, I can be bothered by it, or I can ignore it. In WoW I generally ignore it and the player depending on what they say. On other sites I protect myself by having over protective security settings.

A Woman in a Man’s Field

Of course, my view of these social interactions is viewed from the eyes of a game designer. I work in a predominantly male industry. The last figure I read was 13% of the video game industry is female. This has been mathematically accurate, or lower, at every company I have worked at. Other than Guildhall women, of whom there are many, I have only met TWO other women designers in the industry. I spend most of my time with males.

The thing that always gets people is how much different I think than other designers, and they have problems realizing that most of my variant viewpoint comes from being a girl. It is different on this side of the fence. It gives me a different lens through which to look at games.

In my current game, we have a small number of female characters. I began attributing female characteristics and names to a few of the androgynous characters in an attempt to “pad” the number. Very soon after I noticed the guys followed my lead. Without a word they were willing to accept these characters as female, despite never having thought so before. When I pointed it out to a senior designer, he laughed and asked what did it matter? I pointed out the large difference in the number of female characters to male and he looked quite surprised. It never even occurred to him to think about equality in terms of sex among the characters. Needless to say, he even agreed it should be more balanced and made a point to start “female-izing” the androgynous characters.

Add to this the fact that at many of these companies I get to have “the talk” when I start working there. As if I haven’t been dealing with unwanted attention from guys for half my life. As if I don’t understand that if things get even remotely awkward I need to run, not walk, to my supervisor and nip it in the bud. As if I haven’t already had to have the conversation once where I was pressed on why I missed work and turned bright red as I explained menstrual cramps to a male. In fact it has become a rather large warning sign when I start at a new company only to find that they have a 3 hour presentation to go through about this sort of thing. Great, I can expect this to be a problem. (As a side note, there was no such talk at my current company and it was all I could do not to caper with glee.)

One step further, having to work on a game that has a woman in a metal bikini. People think it’s odd when I sigh at games that only include the mother, maiden, crone archetypes. Or the groan inducing things like in Uncharted 2 where every woman in the entire game is after Drake like he is coated in sex pheromones. They say, “But you play video games, you should be used to it. If you don’t like it, don’t make games with it in there.” I like having a job. I also like making games. You don’t always get to chose the projects you work on. It also confuses the guys I work with when I say, “Why can’t she be more like Lara Croft and less like Daphne (the princess/hooker from Dragon’s Lair)?” They immediately respond with “Lara Croft is exactly the stereotype you complain about!” A strong, brave, adventurous female that doesn’t spend her time chasing men but rather chasing history? Make her boobs as big as you want, she’s still awesome. And she is capable of having a relationship with a male that doesn’t assume sex.

The Cycle

The problem with all of these things is that they form a negative feedback loop. Women don’t play games because the traditional response of how to make a game for girls is “Pink it.” Women then don’t become game designers because they don’t play games, so it isn’t a career field they want to get into. Women aren’t the ones designing games, and so games don’t get made with women in mind as a valid market.

Add in that women and men view fun differently, seek different forms of enjoyment, and create different goals in games and the fact that it is hard for a guy to understand why his game idea didn’t appeal to women becomes very clear. There are not enough female protagonists in games. EA proved that games with female protagonists didn’t sell as well as games with male protagonists. I was stunned by their lack of ability to see that if you only have 20 games with female protagonists and 200 games with male protagonists, then it should be obvious that the male protagonists have had more chances to be in good games that sell well. Not to mention a female protagonist isn’t going to help if the game isn’t fun to women. They are still targeting a male audience and it is easier to connect with a protagonist of the same gender.

Why do MMOs have a better balance of men to women than other games like Call of Duty? Does it have anything to do with the ease of entry into MMOs? Or the ability to customize your character? That the design supports more cooperative play as opposed to competitive play? That MMOs are more social in a positive way than CoD? Or is it simply that the initial induction into an MMO, like WoW, is usually a hand holding one by a significant other, and this play style is supported, as opposed to CoD where it is a huge liability to play is such a manner?

I am a girl. I play games to the point I more than consider myself a gamer. I design games as a career, with the hope of making an enjoyable experience for everyone who plays my game, not just the target audience. I prefer to play a game I can take at my own pace. I prefer to play a game where I can play a female. Does this make me any different from any other gamer? Not really. Do I get treated differently because of the accident of my birth and my love for things outside of my social norm? Definitely. Should I, and do I want to be? Not at all.

The gender gap is closing. The social mores are shifting and games are slowly becoming mainstream. Every day some kid is turning 18 after a childhood of playing games and they aren’t chucking their Xbox just because they are an adult now. Every day another gamer family has kids or gets pregnant and plans how to raise their kid in the tradition of games. These issues will pass after time. And it will get better. After all, every year I have been in the industry, that percentage of female developers has gone up.

Children in Video Games

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To begin, the Article.

Go read it. I’ll wait.

All done? First and foremost – I abhor violence against children. I think people who hurt children should be subjected to all the pain, violence, and abuses they subject on children. I pray for swift retaliatory karma against these people and hope the rest of their lives are miserable, equal to, if not greater than, the pain the child felt during the abuse.

Now, violence against children in video games is a wildly controversial thing. So why does it show up at all?

1. More and more game designers are parents.

Just look at Heavy Rain, Nintendogs, and Mario Galaxy. More game designers that started in this industry as young adults in their 20s are now reaching the age where they have children. Anyone with children will readily admit that it is a radically life changing experience. So logically it makes sense that as these designers have this experience it will reflect in their work. 10 years ago an RPG wouldn’t have considered including having children as something the player can do. Children aren’t adventurous and heroic. But now, as in games like Fable 3, children are becoming a part of the game. Because the game designer parents are able to say “This is an adventure. This is a compelling reason to radically change the way a player plays the game.”

2. The social mores against things in video games are falling, just as they did for other mediums.

Do you remember the brouhaha over Fred and Wilma being shown on TV in bed? It was a huge deal that a cartoon would depict people in a bed together, thus implying sex. Now, it is common to see women in their underwear, sex, and violence on TV. Sex is coming to video game mainstream. So will all the other things like drug use and children. These are the things that define our humanity. Our successes and our failings. That is why they create drama and evoke emotion. Video Games will continue to attempt to elicit emotion from players and drama is a part of that.

3. Why even have kids in the game?

Ask any parent what their worst nightmare is. I am willing to bet most of the answers involve something with their children. The Sims allowed me the joy of having a house full of children, something I will never do in real life (I mean like 6 kids, seriously). The terror that I feel at the idea of having a game where I can gain a child, then possibly lose them… *shudder* The article brings up Bioshock as a violence against children example. However it is notable that in Bioshock they are always Little Sisters, in-human. The NPCs in the game even back this up, saying “Those aren’t little girls anymore.” But when given the option it is always Save vs Harvest. That is an intentional distinction. Despite the fact that the player knows that Harvest will kill the Little Sister, it doesn’t say Kill, it says Harvest. The interesting point is that this is a moral choice presented to the player. And at the end of the game it is revealed that the player is rewarded for choosing the “correct” path of saving the Little Sisters.

In Dead Space 2 (I haven’t played it, I am going off the article) it sounds like the designers needed a small fearsome enemy that was hard to hit, could move fast, and needed to scare the player. As a secondary effect of their story choice they even created the feeling that the player *shouldn’t* be shooting this enemy. Despite the fact that you should. That moment of hesitation can lead to the players death.

It is also worth noting all of the games mentioned are arguably Horror games. The designer’s job is to elicit horror from the player. What could possibly be more horrific and want you to bring down the whole thing than something that harms children? It never occurred to me that Andrew Ryan in Bioshock wasn’t a bad guy. Despite what the designers tried to twist into the story, here is a man willing to exploit children to further his own ends. Once that is made clear, the player no longer feels bad for tearing through this ruined city and destroying it’s people. They allowed their ideals and beliefs to lead them away from the inherent compassion and sense of right. At this point, I no longer wanted to just escape Rapture, I wanted to punch a hole in the wall and allow it to flood. To destroy it completely for the failure to retain it’s humanity.

4. But why have violence against kids in the game?

To evoke the parental emotion and all the messy feelings that come with it. In Heavy Rain I WILLINGLY took a vial of poison, knowing that the probability of it killing my character was high, knowing it was likely a trick by the designer to set me back. But I could chose no other option. I had to save my kid and if this was the hoop the serial killer wanted me to jump through, then by God, I was going to jump through it. My life for my child’s? In a heartbeat. The designers were exceptionally clever with their choices of trials. How far could they push the player to save a child? And push the player they did. It even sparks the thought that while yes, this is a game, would you really do such a thing? If this were real, what would you give up? The designer held up a mirror to the player’s soul and that is definitely going to make people uncomfortable.

5. Games are all about fantasy and being the hero.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band did so well because they MADE THE PLAYER A ROCK STAR. World of Warcraft makes me feel like this powerful and amazing hero that literally saves the world over and over again. Games are about fantasy and being the hero, and what is more heroic than saving a child? The catharsis of saving the child in Heavy Rain is sufficient to have made it a critically acclaimed game despite iffy controls, ambiguous choices, and uncanny valley.

I will admit as a designer, I am uncomfortable with the idea of putting children in harms way in my own games. But that doesn’t mean the question shouldn’t be asked or the situation explored. I am wildly uncomfortable with rape and yet I accept it’s inclusion in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as a required event to bring me closer to the protagonist, despite her alien responses and behavior. Did Dead Island create the trailer with the express purpose of sparking the discussion to get press? Of course they did. Should they be vilified for doing so? No more than any other game like Call of Duty that does such things to spark discourse and free publicity. After all, movies have been doing this for years already.

Now, take a moment to imagine the Dead Island trailer, which I will admit is marketing at it’s finest. Everyone has a strong emotion about it, despite the fact it doesn’t show one second of gameplay. But imagine if the story the player is stepping into is this family’s story. The player assumes the role of the parents or even the child at various points in the game. The goal of the game is to get them out alive, as all survival horror zombie games are. Through a single short trailer they have given the player all the motive and drive to not only play the game, but play it at their best. To seek, to strive to save this little girl. The trailer shows the worst possible outcome, one the player should stop at nothing to change. That is a powerful emotional response. That is a powerful story over a standard and common game type. Much like movies set themselves up for Oscars, this game appears to be setting itself up for the art and story telling in video games debate. Will it succeed? I can’t wait to find out.

 

Update:

As it turns out, the trailer was in fact, pure marketing hype. It’s a shame, to use something so artistic that could have been the stepping off point for a truly spectacular story. Ah well, back to hacking zombies to bits.

 

Hell is other players…

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Over the past month many a friend has left WoW. The new expansion was easily leveled and to be honest, really didn’t add much to the game itself. The new zones are fascinating. The new races enjoyable for a while. Archeology interesting for a short while then becoming locked in combat with Fishing for the most boring profession. Now we are back to the grind for gear which has slowed to a glacial crawl due to the difficulty of Heroics and Raids.

First off let me be the first to say, I enjoy a challenge in WoW… for about a week. After a week or two, I am tired of bashing my head against the same old wall and just want to move on to something else. Now, two months after Cata’s release ending up in a Heroic with players who do not grasp the basic concept of “Stay out of the stupid” just makes me get angry and annoyed at the rampant stupidity of other players. Sadly, it seems like a Boolean event too. Either the group is fast, efficient and effective, or they are completely incompetent and you wonder how they even managed to turn the computer on, much less level to 85. The amount of frustration I feel at people who can’t be bothered to learn one really shouldn’t stand in the blinking yellow stuff can’t possibly be healthy.

I try to defend WoW to people who have left, but honestly, I am not sure why I even try. I have been raiding for weeks and have managed to lose every single roll on gear. People who were unwilling to even work to get rep epics are winning rolls on the few pieces I can’t buy or get with rep. When I run dungeons I invariably get stuck with players who don’t understand concepts like stay out of the bad. All in all it is a highly frustrating experience.

So as always, I turn my eye towards the question – How would I fix this?

1. Variant dungeon difficulty, that can be clearly marked by an item level. So we already know the dungeons are “ordered” as you level from 80 to 85. You always do Blackrock Caverns and Throne of Tides first. Then move on to Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle, then on to Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and Lost City. Why then are they *wildly* different as heroics? Arguements could be made that Stonecore and Grim Batol are by far the hardest heroics, and yet each one has a fight that is wildly difficult and “group breaking”. This happened in Wrath too (anyone remember AN before the ToC patch? *shudder*). Would it not be more logical to have the heroics progress in the same difficulty curve as the regular versions? This way the instant someone hit 85 they could pick up enough gear to queue for heroics (329) and then would be put in a BRC or ToT, which would be tuned to be *slightly* more difficult than the level 85 regulars, but almost always beatable by a non-idiot group in full 329. Having a second number to hit (335?) for Stonecore and Vortex, then a third number (341?) for the final “tier” of heroics. Not only would it make more logical sense, but it would also help people ease into heroics, as opposed to hitting 329, queuing and getting thrown into a Grim Batol, virtually assuring your group’s failure.

2. Get rid of the random drops (to an extent). I am sure anyone who reads this knows how much I hate random, and to be fair, I usually try to contain it to vanity items. However when you run a Tol Barad and have hunter gear drop (that is items with the class limitation hunter) and there isn’t a single hunter in the 25 man raid… Well that’s just a waste. I was a part of a Halls of Origination run where literally every single item dropped was plate or mail. Much to the joy of our Warlock, Priest, Mage, and two Druids. Really? An hour and a half and not a single usable upgrade? It’s not even like it dropped something useful that everyone already had, that’s at least acceptable. We are talking about every single person in the group choosing to run this instance to get specific items and having every single item sharded because no one could even equip them. I am not saying make the perfect gear drop, I am saying “cheat” the system out a bit so if there are no plate wearers, plate doesn’t drop.

-Heading off the comment – Some might point out that there aren’t that many drops on bosses, so if they weed out all the plate/mail drops then something might increase to a 50% drop. This is easily fixed by simply having more variations of gear. Every Resto Shaman will tell you there needs to be more healy boots. Every cloth wearer will tell you there needs to be more 346 bracers. (There are currently two 346 cloth bracers for DPS in the game and NEITHER has haste.) There are gear gaps that need to be filled. And while we’re at it, what is with all the belt drops by the dozens for clothies? There are two easily crafted belts available at large for clothies and yet there are 6 346 belts, two of which can be purchased from the Justice Points Vendor, not to mention all the early purple belt drops in raids.

3. Tanks and Heals are at a premium and it is only getting worse. We have 4 classes that can heal and 4 classes that can tank. Tanking assures an instant queue. Healing assures a short queue. And yet, every week since launch my queue time as dps during peak hours has slowly risen. It went from 25 minutes at launch to 40 minutes now. During peak hours. I thought, well clearly this means I should be tanking or healing. Unfortunately, warlocks can’t do either. So I worked pretty hard to get my priest up to heroics level and finally got in to heal. And man did it *suck* on so many levels. DPS stood in stupid, tanks couldn’t keep aggro, I ran out of mana faster than a dog eats a treat, and to top it all off, when the +spirit trinket dropped that I so desperately needed, the shaman needed on it saying “Whut? Spirit converts to hit for me…” And of course won it. Is it any wonder Tanks and Healers aren’t wanting to queue?

I understand the desire for a challenge. I really do. But challenge != frustrating. And currently, that’s how it feels for heals and tanks. At the risk of saying, screw the hard core, make it easier… Well, make it easier. The more people who feel they can tank without being subjected to the ridicule of other players when they lose aggro on a mob, the more tanks we will have. In a raid, this is clearly a different situation, but in heroics, we need more tanks. The only way I can see adjusting this for both raids and heroics is to require raids to have 5 tanks, 5 heals, and 15 dps, as if they were broken down into 5 micro groups. I don’t really think that is an answer, as it is already complex enough to get 2-3 tanks geared for raids. I really feel that heroics and raids should be tuned differently when it comes to healing and tanking. A heroic should be able to get by with a mediocre tank while a raid never should. Also, to be fair, a majority of your players are DPS. So they have fun melting faces. Fewer tanks and heals means fewer melted faces.

Also, throw your heals and tanks a bone, add in the ability to offspec roll on items in heroics. When something is very clearly a tank or healing item, the tank or heals should get preferential treatment, since they are putting up with the added stress of healing and tanking. If a +spirit item drops and the healer needs, the dps should only be allowed to roll offspec. This makes it far more rewarding to run as a tank or healer if you are attempting to get that gear, as you are sure if it drops you will get it. As an added bonus this assures that tanks and healers across the board will gear consistently as well, thus overpowering the encounters and making things *easier*.

4. Give us something new. Not to sound negative or anything, because it is clearly still a challenge for some people, but so far Cata’s raiding seems to be “Don’t stand in the fire.” As much as I hated it, at least the vehicle fights threw a bit of a twist on things. But honestly we need more Dreamwalker fights. More Festerguts. Way more Lootships. This that are the norm to break up the don’t stand in the stupid. So far on this raiding tier I have seen little innovation. Omnitron is trying, but really is just 4 bosses thrown together. Conclave of Winds so far is one of the only mildly original ideas… but they drop random stated loot. Yes that’s fun, never knowing what you are going to get. Not to mention that even one death means a complete and total wipe. (Really you should be able to 8 or 20 man all raids once a majority of the people are geared to the level of the raid.)

Even if the new is something old. Deadmines and Vanessa Vancleef – amazing. Very very interesting. So where is the raid encounter? *imagines fighting Patchwerk right after running the raid through Frogger*

5. Overhaul crafting. Okay this isn’t as easy as adjusting some loot code to make loot drops worth it. But seriously. Crafting could be so much more. And it could be the answer to people who really just like to farm, play the ah, and make things. It can also fill in gear gaps, ease entry into heroics and raids, and stabilize economies. Crafting always seems to be the spot that has the most potential, and yet Blizzard seems content to let it sit. Especially if the new crafting takes time and effort, it could be a great boon to players looking for something new and Cataclysm is all about the overhaul.

6. Stack the groups for success. Towards the end of Wrath, I noticed a trend. I wondered if it was just coincidence or if it was intentional. It seems to be gone in Cata, or maybe it just doesn’t work with everyone at such low gear levels. In Wrath, more often than not it seemed like if the tank was *wildly* overgeared, the healer was not as much. If the healer was overgeared, then the tank was not as much. And invariably, two of the dps would be complete and total face melters while the third was always fresh and barely geared. It *felt* like the system was specifically putting groups together that could carry the lesser geared member. Every time my tank queued, I was always paired with a Kingslayer healer. It seems odd, but really, if the system isn’t doing this, it could be. My warlock more and more gets into groups with everyone completely geared, and so they go exceptionally smoothly, while my lesser geared priest gets stuck with people in full crafted pvp sets.

These are just a few ideas I have had on how to make WoW more fun and more engaging without inherently changing the game (except for the crafting). But even so, I almost feel like they are moot points. At the end of the day, the bad parts of WoW are directly related to bad players, with bad attitudes. The social aspects of the game aren’t quite enough to overcome the trolls, griefers, and haters. Everyone starts the expansion with their own goals, play times, and focuses. People aren’t as willing to help or play together because it is all still so new. One hopes as patches are released and players migrate back that we will have lost our singular focuses and return to the group whole. I miss my friends though, because hell is other players.

Feats of Nerdity

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My XBox 360 Gamerscore is less than impressive.

My WoW achievement score is quite impressive. Especially if one takes into consideration achievements across multiple characters. Not kidding. I have spent a stupid amount of time and an even more stupid amount of gold getting various WoW achievements.

100 Mounts? I got it. Ring of Dalaran? Yup. Loremaster? Check, check, check, and check. Minipets? At least one on every.single.toon.

Today’s Breakfast Topic on Wowinsider discussed what achievements *should* be in WoW. A great topic to discuss. Many of the suggestions for Burning Crusade raids were exceptional. (Nobody Move – awarded for no one moving during Flame Wreath on Aran. Brilliant.) But many were suggestions that while could mildly be interesting would be terrible WoW achievements. Of course, not to fault the people writing them in, but Blizzard themselves seems to not have a standard for achievement and achievement changes.

Bad WoW Achievements:

1. Any achievement that cannot be completed by every class/race/faction combo. Allowances can be made to have the 2 version achievements for Horde and Alliance. This means no achievement for x amount of spells cast.

2. Any achievement that can only be earned during a single short time. Though having Feats of Strength instead of achievements seems to work well for this.

3. Any achievement that requires leaving the game or something outside of the game.

4. Any achievement that effectively locks out level capped players.

Now having said that, I feel that Blizzard is very arbitrary on achievement creation, criteria, and removal. There are achievements that are wildly specific. And then some entire areas of the game that are ignored. They give achievements for gold loots, but not item loots. There are achievements for professions as a whole, but not for mining x ore, or disenchanting x items.

Of course, due to the fact that they added achievements in Wrath, they didn’t add many of the smaller more interesting dungeon achievements to old world and outland dungeons and raids.

When they remove achievements, for the most part, they make them Feats of Strength (but not all of them, see The Keymaster achievement). Also if they remove an achievement that was a part of a criteria for a meta achievement, they generally remove it from the meta (again not always, look at the Naxx achievements.) They also have been inconsistent with removing rewards from achievements, then not removing rewards from the exact same style of achievement. (See Naxx drakes vs. Ulduar/ICC drakes.)

They need to make achievements consistent. They need to make the removal (which is fine) consistent. They need to make the addition of achievements a part of each major content patch, even if it is just filling in old holes and gaps in the system. Imagine if they simply added a section now that gave a player an achievement for soloing all the classic dungeons?

Like it or not, achievements became a huge part of people’s enjoyment of WoW. Now they need to make it work across the board instead of just being shotgunned across expansions and spurts of creativity by designers.

I was young and needed the achievement points…

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Achievements in games are, depending on who you ask, the best thing ever or the direct proof that designers hate gamers.

I love love love achievements. An achievement for pressing start? I love it. An achievement for collecting 10,000 x? I love it. However, I do understand why some gamers hate (or ignore) achievements. I also think that the industry as a whole needs to do better at understanding what achievements should be.

Why gamers hate achievements:

It is possible most gamers hate achievements because many achievements are badly designed. Or the gamer’s expectation of the achievement does not match the designers expectation of an achievement. Many gamers attribute an “achievement” as something that is difficult. Pressing start? Not difficult. As a designer I view an achievement as a carrot that I apply to side or optional things to drive gameplay. Meaning that I use it as a tool, just like a pickup or any other reward, to drive the player into behaving in a certain manner.

Why designers put bad achievements in their games:

Each console has a set number of achievements. Xbox 360 requires a total of 50 achievements that total 1000 points. Designers attempt a balance of easy, medium, and hard achievements. After about 40 though, generally they start running out of ideas. It becomes a matter of the first person who suggests something that doesn’t sound stupid, goes in. Designers also tend to steal ideas from each other. So all it takes is one game having a terrible achievement, one designer thinking that achievement was a great idea, and thus the terrible cycle is perpetuated.

So what makes a bad achievement?

Any achievement that cannot be completed after a certain length of time. It seems like a great idea. Anyone who plays a game in the first two weeks, bam, an achievement. The thing is, not all gamers are equal. What if someone buys the game and then lets it sit on their coffee table for 3 weeks? What if a gamer is on a fixed income and has to wait to get the game? As a general rule, people hate being excluded. If a gamer buys the game, they deserve to have a fair shot at getting all the achievements.

Multiplayer achievements can be bad. A designer really needs to stop and consider if multiplayer achievements belong in their game. Just like everything else in game design, adding something like multiplayer achievements all depends on the game. Obviously Team Fortress 2 requires multiplayer achievements. Bioshock 2, not so much. While multiplayer was a part of Bioshock 2, they were bad achievements in that game. Unfortunately the multiplayer was only played for so long. So after some time has passed, these achievements are effectively unobtainable. (See above.)

Achievements that take an excessive amount of time doing something that could be considered “grindy”. Again, depending on the gameplay, this definition can be fluid. Excessive is a subjective word, but logically it should make sense. If the game has a play time of 10 hours, an achievement should not take 5 hours to complete unless it is one that requires playing the entire game. For example, in Lego Indiana Jones there is an achievement to kill x number of snakes. Seems simple right? Well the x number of bugs achievement dings about 3/4ths of the way through my first play through, as expected, and as a well designed achievement should. BUT the snakes one didn’t. In fact, after completing the game, then re-completing all the levels to get all the extra hidden stuff I still had not received the snakes achievement. I then spent 2 hours farming snakes to attempt to get the achievement, to no avail. Either the achievement was bugged or simply required too many kills.

Any achievements based on a random number. (See previous blog posts on random.) Achievements should always be a response to something the player has done.

What makes an achievement good?

Anything that is “clever” gameplay. If the game has a system to solve puzzles, then design takes the time to make sure this system works with a wide variety of solutions, the most clever of these solutions should be an achievement. Anything that makes a player feel like they did something nifty.

Anything that could be considered wildly amusing. In Lego Indiana Jones there is an achievement to kill Indiana using Dr. Jones Sr. It’s called That’s Blasphemy. Excellent achievement. It refers to the source material. It is completely possible to get accidentally in normal play. If a player is attempting to get it after completing the game it is very easy to do.

Anything that is considered challenging (not frustrating) within the normal gameplay. Beating the game on the hardest difficulty is a great example of this. Beating a boss without using a health potion? Beating a boss using only the standard attack? Beating a boss without taking damage? All great ideas for achievements.

True dedication to the game. Did they play every class? Did they search tons of hidden places? Break everything (within reason)? Shoot every weapon? These can be ways of rewarding the player for exhaustively trying everything in the game, but remember to keep it within the bounds of not being excessive on time to complete.

Why do I like achievements?

They give the player something to point to and say “Look what I did.” Look, I completed this game to 100%. Look, I did this really crazy thing. Look, I took out that optional boss hidden away in the corner basement. Not to mention they give me a definitive point where I can say, I experienced this game as far as the designer wanted me to.

Achievement points are here to stay. As designers we need to focus on creating fulfilling and meaningful achievements that meet player expectation. Just like everything else, achievements need to fit with the tone and style of the game.