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Original post by tanikaze

the problem with twinking is inequity, but every and all measures that are designed to prevent twinking will decimate the economy. there is not a way that i can think of which lets you get the best of both worlds.

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Is the economy that important? Could you not create another system, such as a stock market. I am leaning more and more towards a one player per server rule. Of course now we all get to see how it works out in SWG.


MadKeith: Interesting idea regarding time points, can you expand on it, or was it just a brainstorm.

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Original post by Machaira
I don't have a problem with packratting. If a player wants to keep stuff in the bank until his character can use it, that's fine. At least you won't have a level 1 character running around with gear meant for a level 20 or higher.

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i mention pack ratting because teodric mentioned it. my example a few post back has already mention this problem: it's not a character wielding high level weapons that makes the twink, but that they have the raw economic power to get the best of everything relative to the things newbies get. the best weapon for the twinks doesn't have to be the best one in the whole game, as long as it's significantly better than what the real newbies can ever afford to get. the fact is you can either set it such that the problem presists, or the market deceases.

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Original post by MadKeithV
One possible way you might get around it is by having a resource that is unique to the player, but not the character. Call them "time points", or "skill points", or whatever, but make it so that a long-time player can keep those points when playing different characters, using the points to buy higher stats or better gear than a player who hasn't spent as much time in the game. Basically, it amounts to building twinking right into the game, for every player equally. Twinking between players is probably still possible, but even if you keep getting wasted as a "newbie" player, your skill points will accumulate to the point where in the end you will be able to put up a fight.

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Original post by Machaira
While this is a good idea, it defeats the whole purpose of an RPG. The growth and increase in power/abilities/treasure of the character is the backbone of an RPG, along with the adventuring of course.

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while i agree fps and rpg is quite different. i think the main issue is identity. simple question but with a lot of philosophical implications: who are you? does the player own the property? or does the character own the property? or properly understood, does the character has its own identity where the player only dictates its action or a character merely an expression of the player where such character has no actual identity? rpg might need characters, but there is no game being played without players.

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Original post by debaser
Is the economy that important? Could you not create another system, such as a stock market. I am leaning more and more towards a one player per server rule. Of course now we all get to see how it works out in SWG.

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good question: is economy that important? i'm not going to answer that myself, but look at all mmorpg out there, economy is always mentioned. look at uo, and now sw:g - both have hugh emphasis on economy. of course, there is a simple way to alleviate the problem if you don't care for having a market/economy - make trade impossible. and for the stock market remark, i presume you're not very familiar with the stock market. let me simply say this, there is no stock market if there isn't already an economy. it is one of the many economic activities, but it isn't a subsitute of economy.

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Original post by rmsgrey
This is probably rather late in the thread to bring this up, but is twinking really something that should be stopped?

Is twinking automatically evil, or is the twinking problem actually symptomatic of a systematic flaw in todays MMORPGs?

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equity vs. efficiency has always been a real life problem. in fact you can see this in the real government - tories is pro efficiency, labour is pro equity, etc. this is not a problem that we have exclusively in the game world.

[edited by - tanikaze on December 10, 2002 6:34:02 PM]

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Original post by Machaira
... The growth and increase in power/abilities/treasure of the character is the backbone of an RPG, along with the adventuring of course.

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Pardon me, but I am going to have to disagree severely with the above. Apparently there do exist people for whom powerleveling is one of the chief joys of playing a "role-playing game", as the above quote seems to attest. I am not one of them.

I would say it is a matter of two approaches to the requirement/reward relationship. For me, gaining power/abilities/treasure is not an end in itself, so much as a means to unlock more of the gameplay. A high power, well-equipped character is not an end in itself but a means to experience more of the game. I gain levels to adventure. The requirement is levels; the reward is gameplay.

Machiara, if I interpret your statement above correctly, then you look at things the other way around. Gameplay is a means to increase character power level, which is the end to be gained. Your focus in gameplay is not to open up more and more interesting gameplay, but to acquire a set of trophies - in this case, the best abilities and equipment for your character - which you can contemplate with satisfaction or boast about to others. The requirement is gameplay; the reward is levels.

Because the current forms of MMORPG are quite restrictive, these two different approaches lead to the same actions for the most part. I say, "I need to kill this bug to get money. I need the money to buy the sword Tsurugi, so I can explore the lair of the demon Baphomet, instead of this damned sewer." You might say, "I need to kill this bug to get money. I need the money to buy the sword Tsurugi, so I can kill the demon Baphomet and take his loot and exp."

However, I think we would end up creating rather different sorts of games if we had our way. I say, "I wish I didn''t have to slaughter all these bugs in order to be tough enough to face down Baphomet. I don''t want to fight Baphomet for his stuff, I''d just like to explore his lair." You might say, "I wish Tsurugi were more expensive/rarer. Then having it would be more of an accomplishment."

Now I don''t disagree with the statement that character advancement is a large part of RPGs. It is nice to watch your character develop into a more formidable person. My issue is that I play games for the gameplay, and the current means for advancement are not all that enjoyable. Once I realize that the rest of the game is going to be just like it is now, only with different monsters and attacks, I have to evaluate the current gameplay; and if what I''m doing right at that moment isn''t fun, I don''t want to play the game.

A practical example: I liked playing Diablo II the first run through, because all the quests, monsters, dialogue etc were new, and I was promised more new things to see and different monsters to fight as I went along. But after beating Diablo on Normal mode, I had no desire to continue to Nightmare. It was just going to be more of the same from then on and I had already experienced everything the game had to offer. I understand that some players have their characters all the way up to level 99; I cannot imagine putting up with the drudgery inherent in doing this.

On the other hand, I''ve long since beaten Jet Grind Radio but I still play it every chance I get. The joy of beating that game is that for each challenge you meet you are rewarded with more gameplay options: new characters, new game modes, more levels unlocked for the free play mode. Now that the game is "done", I''m left with my reward: the ability to play any level I like with any character I like under whatever rules I want. That''s what I want out of a game.

I won''t try to claim that either of us is right or wrong on this issue; but I will say that a large number of MMORPGs seem to cater to your mindset, and very few to mine, and I would like to see this change.

- STC

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-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

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Original post by Machaira
... The growth and increase in power/abilities/treasure of the character is the backbone of an RPG, along with the adventuring of course.

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But character growth isn''t always synonymous with increase in power. There''s a difference between character development and character advancement. In current MMORPGs, from what I''ve heard, character advancement dominates because there''s relatively little potential for character development. Twinkies start with more advanced characters, not more developed characters, so if the environment where to offer scope for development to dominate advancement, twinking would be much less of a problem.

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Original post by debaser
MadKeith: Interesting idea regarding time points, can you expand on it, or was it just a brainstorm.

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Usually, I''m just brainstorming, because I rarely get down to the actual dirt of designing a game. However, I think I can detail the idea a little more (and perhaps explain to Machaira somewhat more explicitly where I''m coming from).

What I propose is that a new kind of resource is introduced into persistent on-line worlds. I''ll call this resource "time points", because they are partially relative to the amount of time the player (not the character!) has spent in the game world. The reasoning: most persistant on-line worlds are implemented in such a way as to completely minimise the direct short-term influence of player skill in the game. Nomatter how good a player you are, your character WILL suck the first few hours/days/weeks of its lifetime - which is where twinking comes in to push the power of your "new" character a little using the "experience" you''ve already gained (usually in fact money and goods though, not experience).
So then I am proposing to shift "experience" beyond the realm of the single character, and attach it to the player instead. At any time, the player can have only one single character active in the game, but it becomes possible to create new characters of similar power to existing ones using the time points to buy both character advancement and skills. There should be certain limitations, depending on the implementation of the game world, such as a maximum number of characters per player that are present in the world - to avoid players creating "armies" of their own characters( even though only one can be active at a time, you can still form a formidable political group if you activate each one in turn, so it should be limited ). Another limitation is that "time points" can only be expended upon new characters, or more precisely, the only time they come into play is at character creation. I see time points as not disappearing when spent, but only "disappearing" for the character when being created, but I think there could be variations where those time points are accumulated during the lifetime of a single character, and can only be used when that character dies or retires and a new character has to be created, when they are used up completely.



I do agree with Machaira that _currently_ FPS and MMORPG type games are very different, but my somewhat deviant logic puts a great big arrow there saying "the problem is RIGHT there". MMORPG designers are constantly confusing the "character" with the "player", and severely punishing the player for mishaps with the character. Time points can shift that balance, with the side effect of shifting the focus away somewhat from single characters, towards the game play instead. Note that it does not prevent a player from investing heavily into a character, playing it for a long time, and fleshing out the history. It just enables those players who are unlucky, or who do not see character development as such an important part of the game, to maintain any progress that they as players have made through their in-game incarnations, even through mishaps and death.

The best example I can give is Bob the Newb being singled-out by Tim the Terror (a notorious PK-er). In yer-average-MMORPG, Bob gets killed, Bob starts again, and unless Bob twinks, Bob will suck just as badly against the well-equipped Tim the Terror, and will die again, and again, and again, until he stops playing the game. With time points, Bob''s character will slowly be gaining power because of the game-time that Bob as a player has spent in the game (note: Tim''s time points will increase as well, but as long as Tim stays alive, those will not benefit him!). Eventually, Bob will become a pretty serious challenge for Tim, and might even end up killing him, at which point Tim gets to respawn with a character of similar power (I''d probably balance it to "slightly less"). So, in the small picture, characters are dying left right and center in the game. The big picture however, shows a pool of characters that is, as a whole, advancing, because their respective players have spent more and more time in the game.

As I''m typing this, I''m having a few more thoughts. Earning time points should most likely not be a pure function of in-game time spent. It has to be partially similar to the way experience points work now - the more challenging or interesting the things that you do are, the more you earn, though there should always be a baseline of time spent.
That baseline could be a curve too, it needn''t be linear. The effect of this would be that a very "new" player would earn pure time points quicker than a veteran - a veteran would have to "work" (eg. do more than standing around chopping away at a wood block to raise his strength) for his time points.

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Original post by SpittingTrashcan
Pardon me, but I am going to have to disagree severely with the above. Apparently there do exist people for whom powerleveling is one of the chief joys of playing a "role-playing game", as the above quote seems to attest. I am not one of them.

I would say it is a matter of two approaches to the requirement/reward relationship. For me, gaining power/abilities/treasure is not an end in itself, so much as a means to unlock more of the gameplay . A high power, well-equipped character is not an end in itself but a means to experience more of the game. I gain levels to adventure. The requirement is levels; the reward is gameplay.

Machiara, if I interpret your statement above correctly, then you look at things the other way around. Gameplay is a means to increase character power level, which is the end to be gained. Your focus in gameplay is not to open up more and more interesting gameplay, but to acquire a set of trophies - in this case, the best abilities and equipment for your character - which you can contemplate with satisfaction or boast about to others. The requirement is gameplay; the reward is levels.

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Perhaps my statement was a little sloppy. How about this (which I think is more in line with yours):

The growth and increase in power/abilities/treasure of the character is the backbone of an RPG system which allows the player to explore newer and more dangerous areas of the game.

I don't play RPGs/MMORPGs just to increase in level, though this is almost always a requirement. Character advancement has to be done to get to the end of the game or different parts of the game where a lower level character wouldn't survive. It is somewhat fun though watching your character go up in levels and realizing he's a little more powerful than he used to be.


[edited by - Machaira on December 11, 2002 9:21:36 AM]

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Original post by MadKeithV
The best example I can give is Bob the Newb being singled-out by Tim the Terror (a notorious PK-er). In yer-average-MMORPG, Bob gets killed, Bob starts again, and unless Bob twinks, Bob will suck just as badly against the well-equipped Tim the Terror, and will die again, and again, and again, until he stops playing the game. With time points, Bob''s character will slowly be gaining power because of the game-time that Bob as a player has spent in the game (note: Tim''s time points will increase as well, but as long as Tim stays alive, those will not benefit him!). Eventually, Bob will become a pretty serious challenge for Tim, and might even end up killing him, at which point Tim gets to respawn with a character of similar power (I''d probably balance it to "slightly less"). So, in the small picture, characters are dying left right and center in the game. The big picture however, shows a pool of characters that is, as a whole, advancing, because their respective players have spent more and more time in the game.

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I don''t believe twinking or your system should be a solution to PK problems (though I''m sure that''s not the only reason for your system). Fix PvP instead. Part of the hazard of PvP is the fact that you can be killed anytime by anyone. Perhaps you could grant a new character safety from being PKed by a higher level character or a player only goes PvP when their character is high enough to survive. Either way is a potential solution. Or you just don''t worry about it. If a player wants to play PvP he has to deal with the potential problem of being killed by anyone that wants to kill him. That''s what PvP is all about. I would make it worthless for a higher level character to kill a newbie, but other than that, let them play. I would also have a switch that has to be set in order to play PvP or just have a separate server that is PvP. If players want to actually roleplay the game, they shouldn''t be bothered by l337 players who just want to PK all the time.

As for the twinking issue, either allow it fully or disable it totally using one of the methods stated above. Twinking shouldn''t be a way around the game rules.

Just my $.02

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Original post by Machaira
I don''t believe twinking or your system should be a solution to PK problems (though I''m sure that''s not the only reason for your system).

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The frustration with PK is just a symptom of the underlying problem, IMHO - the underlying problem being a general frustration of seeing hours (days, weeks?) of time investment flushed down the toilet when your character expires. I used it as a colourful example

I actually have very little issues with PK-ing (being an avid FPS-er, where that''s the whole point hehehe).

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Original post by tanikaze

good question: is economy that important? i''m not going to answer that myself, but look at all mmorpg out there, economy is always mentioned. look at uo, and now sw:g - both have hugh emphasis on economy. of course, there is a simple way to alleviate the problem if you don''t care for having a market/economy - make trade impossible. and for the stock market remark, i presume you''re not very familiar with the stock market. let me simply say this, there is no stock market if there isn''t already an economy. it is one of the many economic activities, but it isn''t a subsitute of economy.

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Why couldn''t it be? Why not just run a separate stock simulator in the background to give the player a chance to make some money on the side just as they do with trading now. I an somewhat familiar with the stock market, and do not see how it is reliant on players finding and trading items...

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Original post by debaser
Why couldn't it be? Why not just run a separate stock simulator in the background to give the player a chance to make some money on the side just as they do with trading now. I an somewhat familiar with the stock market, and do not see how it is reliant on players finding and trading items...

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if you ever have a chance to try that, you'll observe very soon that all your players would abandon coins in favour of bartering, or at least use something else as a means of trade. to be precise, it'd destory the value of coins in your game. ie. not only will it be a waste of time to create the stock market simulation, you'll also render coins useless.

the reason is:
coins are constantly being "minted" from the faucet at a relatively constant rate, and usually accompanied with drains that constantly removing excess from the economy. this created a relatively constant value for coins, and that makes it a good agent as a means of trade. it's good because you know 1 gold coin will buy you roughly the same stuff today as in tomorrow. ie. worths roughly the same. but if you make an artifical way to inflate and deflate the value of coins - instead of growing along with the item production rate, then its usefulness will evaporate. imagine what will happen if 1 gold coin bought you a loaf yesterday, buys you an acre today, and will only buy you emperior's new clothes tomorrow. do you think people will still trust the coins? if people believe your coins will worth more tomorrow, then no one will want to trade them today. on the other hand, if people do not have faith in the value of the coins they're holding, they'll try to spend them all as soon as possible - just the same though, however, no one will accept coins as a form of payment either. your simulated stock market, along with coins, will as a result be rendered completely unused.

[edited by - tanikaze on December 14, 2002 8:46:27 AM]