quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Let''s not forget the lousy 11-year-olds who play six to twelve hours a day and have invincible characters, then hide in towns whacking honest, hardworking people and taking their loot. That''s crappy, and there should be some way to prevent it. I don''t like the idea of time and loot converting directly to invincibility.

Those people sound like real life equivalents to evil coworkers who take advantage of the fact that they are single and have no children to take care of so they always seem to be working harder than you and get those promotions.
Sorry, I was watching "Baby Blues" the other day.

That''s actually a fairly good point, GBGames, but it annoys me to no end that snot-nosed little punks can beat me at a game just because they have nothing better to do than build up their levels. Nothing''s more aggravating than getting steamrolled in an RPG.

*** OT WARNING! ***

quote: Original post by GBGames
Those people sound like real life equivalents to evil coworkers who take advantage of the fact that they are single and have no children to take care of so they always seem to be working harder than you and get those promotions.

evil coworkers? they didn''t make you have children (which directly affected your ability to work as hard, as you point out)... and remember, they pay property taxes that pay for schools even though they have no children, whereas you get a tax write-off and pay less, even though you use more resources because of your children. and don''t get me started on how much work parents miss compared to people who don''t have kids...
who''s evil now?

quote: who's evil now?

Amen to that.

Personal responsibility is being obliterated at the workplace.

**
'I don't want to be beat by an 11-year old punk'

Wouldn't that very attitude put the entire design in danger? I mean, it puts (yet) another restriction on a game design. If you go by ideas specifically implemented to not have certain groups of people have some advantage over others, you might cause a lot less people to interact with your product. You'll end up designing what has already been designed, with a minor face-lift to make it appear more attractive.

I'm not saying that a game built to remove that '11-year old punk' from their potential playerbase will fail, or that I even disagree with the logic, but that these kind of decisions should only be made when absolutely possible. Why not try to open the game up to an enormous target audience, not restricted by age, gender, race, religion or political boundaries?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that instead of fighting the problem of those 11-year old punks being in an otherwise perfect game, you instead accept it and make use of it. If you can predict what a certain group of people are going to do in a game, why not design with that knowledge specifically in mind? Give other players opportunities to find entertaining activities in your game and/or tools to protect themselves from the potential harassment from 11 year old punks, instead of barring all those punks from a satisfying experience.

I believe that each game requires its own personal solutions for the problems that might occur in their game world. How would I fulfill the 'I don't want people to powerlevel their characters for more than 6 hours per day' design requirement? How about make those characters age faster, and I mean with real age consequences (older = slower, weaker, less agile, etc)? Imagine characters living in the virtual world only for about 100 actual gaming hours (100 virtual days/months/years?). Imagine powerlevelers (leveling faster than average or whatever powerleveling is all about) being able to do exactly that which they are already doing, but with the consequence that their characters can exist for only 25 actual gaming hours. Would you, knowing you'll far outlive this puny pretender character by your superior lifestyle of taking it easy (like Tai Chi for example ) care as much about their existence as you do now? Or would it be a little less? Would the consequence of the action, be it a positive or a negative action in your opinion, affect your opinion about the action itself?



[edited by - Silvermyst on December 8, 2002 7:27:25 PM]

More OT (Off-Topic):

One thing I can''t stand is people who don''t have kids complaining about having to pay taxes that support schools.

[falsetto]
"Oh, I don''t benefit from schools, so why should my hard-earned money go to educating some other person''s children?"
[/falsetto]

Because you benefit from having an educated society, in the form of lower crime rates, higher standard of living, and cashiers who know how to make change, even if you dig out that 37¢ after they rung up your purchase. Stop whining.

Another thing that I can''t stand is people who put other priorities before their career complaining that the antisocial bachelor gets more hours and climbs the ladder faster, so I agree with you there.

So, to finally conclude this off-topic segment and get us back on track, GBGamer''s analogy was valid in that my gripe about little kids playing all the time and beating me was just as childish as family men complaining about bachelors outmatching them in the work place. Point taken. Let''s all drop it.

Back OT (On-Topic? Wait a second...):

Perhaps the only real way to ensure that people with varying levels of dedication can enjoy a game is to offer a system in which nobody can be unstoppably tough. A sort of a paper/rock/scissors system, in which even the most hardcore guys will have weaknesses that can be exploited. Even typing it, it doesn''t look like a very good system, but maybe there''s a way to refine it into a viable game model.

quote: Because you benefit from having an educated society, in the form of lower crime rates, higher standard of living, and cashiers who know how to make change

Can you prove that any of my hard-earned money, that I am forced to pay in the form of state and federal taxes, is achieving any of that?



[edited by - Silvermyst on December 8, 2002 8:13:39 PM]

Oh, for crying out... I''m not going to encourage this tangent. Think whatever you thought before my last post, and discuss your beliefs in a different forum.

Hey, Silvermyst, I just scrolled up a little bit, and it''s no fair editting a post I already replied to, even if it was only 49 seconds later...

In response to your new, modified post, I don''t mind 11 year olds. I don''t even mind them playing video games all the time. It probably isn''t good for them, but I''m not going to get in their little faces about it. God knows I spent a good week of my life tracking down the damn heart pieces in A Link to the Past. What I object to is the fact that somebody can attain absolute mastery of a multiplayer game by employing the same techniques that they use to master a single-player game.

I''m all for raising levels and raising levels and raising levels until the troll king is mud on your big hob-nailed boot, but that sort of tactic shouldn''t be as effective in a multiplayer game. Since a multiplayer game or even a massively multiplayer game will by its very nature target a diverse audience with various lifestyles and time constraints, it shouldn''t be structured such that the guy who is always online beating up on goblins has a clear, unassailable advantage over the guy who comes home from the office and logs on. Nothing like flopping down in your chair after eleven hours of constant frustration and loading up Diablo II only to be immediately annihilated and robbed posthumously by "InGeMaR TeH 1337 D-zTrOyEr!!!11". That sucks.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Rmsgrey, that''s a good point. I should have pointed out that I DO like the idea of people being killed with a single hit. I think that protection from damage should come primarily from armor or magical defenses, but when a character gets hit in the neck with a sword, their head should fall off. If something gets between that neck and that sword, i.e. another sword, a piece of armor, an enchantment, or three inches of space, then they won''t lose their noggin. Nobody should be able to kill so many goblins that their skin becomes impenetrable.

Actually, I think I''ve been playing too many p/p RPGs - when I said "single hit" I was thinking of the rationalisation whereby a "hit" actually represents a (very) near miss, or slight nick rather than always being a solid contact. In this model, hit points mostly represent the character''s ability to "just" dodge, or minimise the effects of actual contact (eg by letting the enemy sword glance off your armour rather than bite through it). Hit point loss then represents accumulated fatigue and minor damage that reduces combat effectiveness. To use your example, a character about to be hit in the neck might jerk backwards, getting nicked by the sword, or shrug their shoulders, taking the blow on their armour, or something similar. So while the character is eventually killed by a single hit, they can resist a number of attacks that would manage that single hit on a less experienced character.

In fact, a friend and I started work on a p/p RPG where characters had both hit points and wound levels. If the character is in a position to resist getting damaged, then attacks go to hit point loss. If the character is unable to resist damage (eg lack of hit points, immobilised) then attacks go directly to wounds, which are generally crippling, and not infrequently lethal.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
What I object to is the fact that somebody can attain absolute mastery of a multiplayer game by employing the same techniques that they use to master a single-player game.
(cut)
Nothing like flopping down in your chair after eleven hours of constant frustration and loading up Diablo II only to be immediately annihilated and robbed posthumously by "InGeMaR TeH 1337 D-zTrOyEr!!!11". That sucks.

*DING!* You get a prize, sir! You have stated clearly and concisely exactly the point I''ve been meaning to get across for literally a year.

Are developers really so set in their ways that they just can''t see that the leveling model for single player "RPGs" (aka Goblin Slaughter Simulators) does not work for a massively multiplayer social game?

First, allowing such a gross disparity of power level between PCs means that any social structure which presupposes some degree of equality in its citizens collapses in the face of the unassailable might of high-level characters and the pathetic weakness of new players.

Second, the strict correspondence between monster slaughter, experience level, and in-game ability creates such a limited game for new players, especially ones who don''t have a lot of time to dedicate to gaming, that I imagine most quit in frustration well before they even see nine tenths of the game. Since so much of the world has to be dedicated to challenging the relative minority of high-level powergamers, newbies and casual players are left crouching around a rat hole with knives.

Third, because all challenges are based on combat, and all characters eventually become arbitrarily good at combat at high enough level, there''s absolutely no incentive to work with others. You might as well be playing a single-player game, except with other people in the way.

Here''s what I''d like to see.
1. NO stat improvement.
2. NO HP increase.
3. NO XP bar.
4. Skills improve logarithmically based on training.
5. Skills can be trained while offline.
6. Multiple challenge types:
- Some problems cannot be solved by combat.
- Some problems require a combination of skills which can be acquired much more easily through assembling a team of specialists than by learning all the skills yourself.
- Some problems require a stat level you don''t have and can never get, so you must ask for aid from others.
7. NO power equipment. A sword is a sword: expensive, requiring skill and time to make, and an effective weapon in the right hands. Full plate is full plate: very expensive, very difficult to make, and very good protection at the expense of any hope of speed, stealth, or subtlety.

What makes a player in this sort of game? Not his stats: they can be duplicated by any newbie. Not his equipment: depending on who he is and what he''s doing, that expensive greatsword may be a great asset or a massive hindrance. Partially, his skills: as long as his character''s been around for a while, he''s got one or two good ones which may or may not apply to the task at hand. But mainly, it''s the people he knows and his ability to form a team to tackle a task. At some times he will be the go-to guy; at other times he''ll have to ask favors. That''s a social game. That''s what MMORPG should be. Or so I think.

-STC

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-SpittingTrashcan

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