‘Every MMO inconvenience is someone else’s game’
Jun 16, 2022 8:34:13 GMT -5
Rakul and Regolyth like this
Post by Morreion on Jun 16, 2022 8:34:13 GMT -5
Massively Overthinking: ‘Every MMO inconvenience is someone else’s game’ (Massively)
Raph Koster:
“Every time you make a design choice you are closing as many doors as you open. In particular, you should always say to yourself, ‘I’m adding this feature for player convenience. How many people live for the play that this inconvenience affords?’ The small shopkeepers; the socializers who need the extra five minutes you have to spend waiting for a boat at the Everquest docks; the players who live to help, and can’t once every item is soul bound and every fight is group locked and they can’t even step in to save your life; the role player who cannot be who they wish to be because their dialogue is prewritten; the person proud of his knowledge of the dangerous mountains who is bypassed by a teleporter; the person who wants to be lost in the woods and cannot because there is a mini-map. Every inconvenience is a challenge, and games are made of challenges. This means that every inconvenience in your design is potentially someone’s game.”
“Every time you make a design choice you are closing as many doors as you open. In particular, you should always say to yourself, ‘I’m adding this feature for player convenience. How many people live for the play that this inconvenience affords?’ The small shopkeepers; the socializers who need the extra five minutes you have to spend waiting for a boat at the Everquest docks; the players who live to help, and can’t once every item is soul bound and every fight is group locked and they can’t even step in to save your life; the role player who cannot be who they wish to be because their dialogue is prewritten; the person proud of his knowledge of the dangerous mountains who is bypassed by a teleporter; the person who wants to be lost in the woods and cannot because there is a mini-map. Every inconvenience is a challenge, and games are made of challenges. This means that every inconvenience in your design is potentially someone’s game.”
Andy McAdams: This sentiment really resonates with me, and readers can probably recall my issues with fast-travel as the primary means of travel in games. But I think the main distinction here for me is that inconvenience has to be engaging in some way. I think of it in a slightly McLuhan-esque phrasing of “the inconvenience is the game,” when we define rules that govern the games really as just inconveniences to the player. Sure it would be way more convenient to be able to waltz up that max-level city guard and sneeze him into a murder of butterflies as a level1 character. Sure it would be more convenient if my rogue didn’t have positional requirements. But those things are actually what makes the game fun and engaging.
This is however not to imply that all inconveniences are created equal.
For example, one of my favorite parts of Anarchy Online was the buffing system. I played a Metaphyscist in large part because I loved handing out moochies for tips. Was it inconvenient for players to have to find a high level MP to buff them enough they could cast a high level nano or equip high-level gear? Of course, but getting to be on the other side of that and helping other players was fun for me. It gave me a reason to just hang around Old Athens and shoot the breeze with guildies and buff people so they could play the game they wanted. I miss inconveniences like that; they increased the social fabric of the game.
I think the line for me is “nothing in extremes.” If I can just teleport around the world to wherever the hell I want without any tradeoffs, that’s no fun. On the other side, if I can only get places by walking and it takes me 20 minutes to just get to a quest location, that’s also no fun.
Anarchy had a really novel solution to this too: You have the teleporter networks to move around the world to fixed places, but then you also have the Grid that could move you again, other places. Then you had fixers who had special access to the Grid and teleport you to even more places. So you might hire a Fixer to join your group long enough to run through the grid to the exit you wanted, then tip the Fixer, who would drop the group and go on their merry way. It wasn’t full-on convenience, but it also wasn’t full on “it takes 20 minutes to fly from Stranglethorn to the Undercity and YouTube wasn’t a thing yet” For more contemporary examples, Lock porting in WoW used to be a huge win to get places quickly. Mage ports to all the cities are the same. The inconvenience of getting places was offset by the engagement with other players… at least for me.
When I compare this to Guild Wars 2 where you have some cockamamie rationale that these magic beacons that just happen to be everywhere you go, and you can use them to teleport… nothing about that is really fun to me. It’s convenient, but not engaging.
In short, inconvenience is good, when it’s engaging. It’s bad when its not.
This is however not to imply that all inconveniences are created equal.
For example, one of my favorite parts of Anarchy Online was the buffing system. I played a Metaphyscist in large part because I loved handing out moochies for tips. Was it inconvenient for players to have to find a high level MP to buff them enough they could cast a high level nano or equip high-level gear? Of course, but getting to be on the other side of that and helping other players was fun for me. It gave me a reason to just hang around Old Athens and shoot the breeze with guildies and buff people so they could play the game they wanted. I miss inconveniences like that; they increased the social fabric of the game.
I think the line for me is “nothing in extremes.” If I can just teleport around the world to wherever the hell I want without any tradeoffs, that’s no fun. On the other side, if I can only get places by walking and it takes me 20 minutes to just get to a quest location, that’s also no fun.
Anarchy had a really novel solution to this too: You have the teleporter networks to move around the world to fixed places, but then you also have the Grid that could move you again, other places. Then you had fixers who had special access to the Grid and teleport you to even more places. So you might hire a Fixer to join your group long enough to run through the grid to the exit you wanted, then tip the Fixer, who would drop the group and go on their merry way. It wasn’t full-on convenience, but it also wasn’t full on “it takes 20 minutes to fly from Stranglethorn to the Undercity and YouTube wasn’t a thing yet” For more contemporary examples, Lock porting in WoW used to be a huge win to get places quickly. Mage ports to all the cities are the same. The inconvenience of getting places was offset by the engagement with other players… at least for me.
When I compare this to Guild Wars 2 where you have some cockamamie rationale that these magic beacons that just happen to be everywhere you go, and you can use them to teleport… nothing about that is really fun to me. It’s convenient, but not engaging.
In short, inconvenience is good, when it’s engaging. It’s bad when its not.
