capnjosh

Most RPGs utilize the concept of faction reputation in some way or another. It makes sense, and it’s a valid element to include in its own right. Extending this concept into how creatures and spawn spots relate to their surroundings can introduce a good amount of dynamism in the virtual ecology of an MMO.

You need 2 main mechanics:
1. Every time a spawn spot has some sort of an impact on another spawn spot, you need to record the results of that interaction; or, possibly just have that interaction proportionally change the faction relationship between those two spawn spots’ respective factions (whether those “factions” are actual NPC factions or simply species).
2. You need to ensure that all members of a faction behave toward other factions according to their faction ratings. This includes spawn spots as well as instanced creatures. This part can get rather complex because you want to allow for dynamic, ad-hoc ally groups, both by instanced creatures as well as by spawn spots.

Just imagine a game world in which a player witnesses instanced members of a faction with which he has a higher rating actually join his side in a fight against members of an NPC faction which both he and they have low faction ratings. And then, a patrol of another group of creatures comes along and joins the opposing NPC faction because they have a higher faction rating with them than with both you and the first faction. And over time, the player is actually able to change all that. The thing is, that then you have a world in which all those NPC factions constantly, autonomously change their relative ratings amongst each other. Add in an independent “lust for wealth and resources” as well as a system of “survival is what ultimately counts”, and you just may have a fully-functional virtual ecology.

I’m in Data Warehousing here at K2. For the last 6 months I’ve had to get up to speed with TSQL on SQL Server, figure out SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, figure out good Source Control practices, figure out the detailed inner workings of the databases of 6 MMOs, 2 casual flash-based games, and 3 billing and Customer Relationship Management Databases, figure out how to work with something over 1.5 billion rows of connection log data, figure out how to use web services and XML messaging, figure out how best to set up daily data extractions and snapshots, use these great things called “Table-Valued User Defined Functions” (think “parameterized views”), learn how and why one should write well-formated TSQL code (it’s a piece of art to see clean, well-formated TSQL), figure out how to do accounting and reporting for virtual currencies, figure out how to manage employees in an overseas development office, figure out how best to balance doing full extractions of data vs. just pointin Analysis Services directly at the source data (go for the latter whenever possible, by the way), figure out Data Mining structures (great fun when your data is set up right), learn just how much better life is when you get pretty hard-core about mainting strict referential integrity in your databases, get really good at reverse-engineering systems based solely on the data they spit out, learn some Multi Dimensional eXpression language basics, write some VbScript to identify exploitive in-game behavior on an in-production MMO, figure out how one can go about doing Social Network Analysis on large data sets, learn a ton about top-down hierarchies vs. Agile-like production teams, figure out some mid-level DBA work, learn how critical it is to have your business decision-makers have a good understanding and great respect of and for what it takes to develop great applications and databses (even if it’s just a qualitative understanding), and I’ve effectively not written a word on what I’m truly passionate for: MMO design.

Yeah, I’ve learned a ton. I feel like I have the database development and reporting chops to be able to seriously contribute on an MMO development team, but I feel like I’ve divested myself of what really drove me to get into this industry. So, without further ado, I’m going to quite simply start writing more.

Well, maybe I’ll start tomorrow…

You and a bunch of friends have just finished a month-long project of deciding on a city location, collecting all the resources and cash to build your city hall, planing the city layout and zoning, and then recruiting more people to build their homes in your young town. The central park has just been completed by the two aspiring terrain architects and everyone has agreed on the interior designer for the city hall. And then the orcs came. More specifically, an orc military outpost popped up nearly overnight just outside your city’s limits, and now you find orcs spawning ever closer to your city hall building.

You know that if you don’t get this thing nipped in the bud those orcs are going to destroy the fruition of all the work and time poured into your city. So you call on all your city’s residents to come out and kill orcs every time they spawn. You call on them to destoy the orc structures at every opportunity. You know that if you can sustain high enough destruction the orcs will give up and go away. However, if you don’t they will continue to spawn faster and faster and closer and closer to your city hall, every day causing ever higher maintenance costs for everyone in the town- especially those unfortunate enough to have their houses build on that side of the city.

Three days of what seems like concentrated destruction later, you realize the orcs do not seem to be getting discouraged. In fact, they haven’t even moved! So, the mayor calls an emergency city council. The topic is how much can the city afford to sink into hiring out for orc killing. After the number-crunchers do some calculating, it becomes apparent you can pay 13,500 credits per mission of 20 orc kills for 900 missions before the city treasury get too low to pay all the maintenance. Other cities have had success with hiring out 900 missions to get rid of a nasty orc infestation, and you have seen other cities offering 12,000 credits per 20-orc-kill missions, so you are confident word will spread and the missions will be completed. Hopefully, it will be enough additional sustained destruction to drive them off. If not, this could be bad news for your burgeoning city.

The mayor sets up the missions in the city’s new missions terminal and everyone stars spreading the word that money can be made killing orcs in your town. A strange thing happens though. Nobody shows up. Well, a sporadic smattering of would-be bounty hunters drop by, but they don’t do more than one mission. Some don’t even finish it. At the same time, you begin to notice the orcs are becoming harder and harder to kill, each one seeming to hit for more damage than before. With concern creasing your brow you start a large patrol around the orce encampment, which you note has sprouted spiked walls sometime in the last two days. As you race past, you notice with worry a smudge pop into view over the next ridge, a thick trail of smoke rising into the air above it. As the distance closes, your worry turns to alarm as you realize that smokey blob is a veritable orc boom town, complete with seige engine construction tents and an advanced barracks. The orcs at your town’s edge are being supplied and upgraded from this until-now unknown and un-addressed regional threat. The last time one of these was discovered, more than 2 player cities ended up razed to the ground, and it took the concerted effort of three major cities a full month to drive them off. Prior to that, those three player cities had been engaged in bitter war over resources. The campaign to rid their region of the orcs nearly broke them all, and once they succeeded they were the closest of allies; they discovered there were bigger, more dangerous things in the world than the feud with their neighbors.

Your thoughts are cut cruelly short when your air bike is blown out from under you and you see your health bar virtually disappear. And then you’re dead.

In shock, you see an orc stand up from behind a rock, outfitted in gear like you have never seen on orcs before. I his hands he carries an enormous, shimmering rocket launcher. Your worst fears have been realized. The orcs have learned something new. They have somehow discovered or been given some super-weapon. You look to the left to see what else is around, and just before your screen blips to the respawn building back in town you see three more. “And they can mass produce them…”

How do you make intelligent NPC factions that can develop, spread, migrate, and even play politics? It’s possible.

Deal with all creatures at the spawn spot level. The spawn spot is the true, persistent entity in an MMO. It’s not the creature. It’s not the dev-created-and-planted buildings or villages. It’s the spawn spot. It’s the spawn spots that really interact. It’s the spawn spots you are truly influencing when you, as a player, kill creatures.

Each spawn spot has a set of attributes that define it. They define the creatures it will spawn, they define how big it is, they define the threshold under which it can possibly die, they define what terrain types on which it will best perform, and they define the rate at which they spawn creature instances in the live game world. These attributes change based on its environment. When a player kills a creature it spawned, it is recorded and included in the periodic calculations that do the actual attribute adjustments. When a spawn spot comes in contact with another spawn spot, the two spawn spots engage in what amounts to an arena battle, virtually of course and without actually animating the whole thing- you can just use the combat scripts you use whenver two opposing creature instances meet and fight in front of a player in the live game world. The outcome of that combat round results in the attributes of both spawn spots being altered. If multiple spawn spots’ areas all overlap, then you do “combat” matches amongst them all, with each round altering their attributes.

Whenever two spawn spots of the same faction interact, their loot tables interact. The loot tables contribute to the overall spawn spot attributes, so what’s in a spawn spot’s loot table really matters. An epic item can do a lot to make an otherwise squishy NPC become a formidible foe. Two mutually-isolated pockets of spawn spots of the same species can over time develop very different loot tables which result in very different levels of difficulty. If the two meet and interact, there will be a significant sharing of loot table items from the more advanced one to the less advanced one. In effect, the less advanced one “learns” from the more advanced one. By manually injecting a few epic items into just one spawn spot of orcs in the far northern reaches, over time the orc faction very well could expand their reach, both through creating new child spawn spots as they thrive due to the additional strength they have through their stronger loot tables (and thus attributes), as well as through the process of “teaching” their unlearned brethren spawn spots the glories of their epic loot table.

A spawn spot’s attributes will also determine how much it attempts research and development on its own loot table. In addition, not all spawn spots will be as amenable to “learning” as others may be, that is, the “coefficient of loot transfer” makes it less likely that the roll to choose which of two loot table items is better will fall in favor of the truly better one. A spawn spot’s attributes will define how much it will attempt to build upgrade structures. Granted, these structures will have to be dev-defined, but the actual chances of building them will be up to the available resources in its current location, the viability of the terrain type, and the “coefficient of construction”. Buildings can simply be an additional item to the spawn spot’s loot table for as long as they exist, that is, for as long as players don’t kill them at a significantly greater rate than they are defined to spawn. If players specifically target the seige engine building in their raids, wherever it may spawn in the spawn area, and over time destroying its instances at a rate that matches or exceeds that building’s spawn rate, then eventually the building will “die” and its benefit will be removed from the spawn spot’s loot table benefits. Also, there will cease to be seige engine instances that spawn from that spawn spot.

It’s doable. It really is. Just break down the complexities into discreet components that can each be calculated and added into one long addition problem

I’m finding it difficult to comment on issues. I’m more into directly tackling the problem. Well, maybe it’s just at times that’s what I’m into. So, I’m going to do something I have found to be rather productive: writing what amounts to a stream-of-consciousness analysis of some game mechanic or system. Today’s rambling will be on some of the implications of Player vs. Player combat systems.

It seems that often more risk = more reward. Things gain significance as more is put at risk. The flip side is that some thing or activity will not be particularly important if there is or was nothing put at significant risk. I’m thinking of accomplishments, though dedication to a goal is significant. So, it’s not just risking something… in addition there is the significance of dedicating one’s time and energy to a goal. But I’m getting off track. I’m supposed to be digging into a PvP-related mechanic and its implications. I thought I needed build up some justification that to have a truly valuable gaming experience you had to have everything put at a very real risk. Ah, but it doesn’t have to be “either, or”. A valuable game experience can come from either dedication to a goal or from truly putting something on the line in the hopes of accomplishing some goal, or a combination of the two. I’d say most MMO design has been squarely focused on the latter, and I think as a result the potential for truly valuable game experiences is gimped from the get-go; gimped by half, or nearly so.

Anyways, we want as much user-generated content as possible. That implies player cities. These cities must be as open-ended as possible. That means there is little that is directly dev-defined. Start with a fully-developed player city. What does it look like? Well, there are houses. Lots and lots of houses. But loads of houses all packed in close to each other does not define a city. There has to be some official thing al the players do to trigger a cluster of houses to become recognized as a “city” or “village”. They have to have built a city hall. That city hall structure, once built, essentially creates a sort of “spawn area” with a defined territory, that is, the city limits or an area of influence. This city hall requires a mayor, who is elected somehow by the owners of all the houses within the town hall’s area of influence. This mayor, then, can set what objects are protected within the area of influence of the town hall, whether they be specific players, specific clans, structure types, creature types, etc. When an entity is on the “protected list” of the town hall, whenever it is inside the area of influence of the city hall it is flagged as “not attackable”. So, player cities then become safe zones.

If a player is not on the “protected list” of a city hall, he is fully attackable by anyone while he is within the city limits, just as he would be if he were outside any city limits; he cannot attack anyone on the “protected list” while inside the city limits. However, if someone on the “protected list” attacks him, that player is immediately flagged temporarily as attackable, even though he is within city limits. Any entity at any time may be put on or off the “protected list” by the mayor or designated player with those permissions.

What about when a non-attackable player attacks someone outside city limits and immediately runs into the safety of the city limits? Well, when a player engaged in combat with another player or creature enters into a city’s limits, he is given a cool off timer that keeps him attackable until it expires. It has a default time, but a city can set how long that timer lasts by donating resources.

The area of a city’s limits changes based upon population, chosen city upgrades, surrounding cities’ limits and their relative strengths, as well as what buildings have been constructed. Envision the system in Rise of Nations where your nation’s borders adjust based on the relative strength of adjacent nations. If a mayor builds a turrent tower near the edge of the existing border, the city’s limits will bulge out around that tower. If a player builds his house near the edge of the limits, the city limits will bulge out around that house, though not as much as for the turret. A mayor could choose to engage the “expansion” city upgrade that boosts the city’s limits, but for a cost in resources and currency which must be paid for out of the city treasury, which in turn is fed by the mayor’s selected tax rate. To allow for some very meaningful commodoties market influence, city maintenance must consist of not only cash but specific kinds of resources, all of which must either be donated or purchased on the player-generated market with city funds.

Interestingly, a player not on the “protected list” could build a house inside city limits, though both he and his house will be continuously marked attackable. This allows for players to build harvesting equipment inside an enemy city’s limits as part of a challenge to their influence. After all, it’s one thing to lay claim to something, it’s another to be able to defend it. This defense, however, will be stacked in favor of the occupants of the city, since they can choose when and how to rid their land of the intrusive structures. A pre-existing structure will remain attackable unless marked otherwise by the mayor or his designate.

Turrets and other defense structures will automatically attack anything marked attackable so long as they are fully maintained (paid for) and stocked with ammunition. They, however, will not be attackable by those being fired upon, as they are city structures (unless they are marked attackable for some reason). All city structures are technically destroyable, but only when the city’s defenses have been unlocked by an invading faction. A city’s defenses can be unlocked by essentially paying for it, and even then there is limited window of opportunity within which all structures are attackable. To unlock a city’s defenses, an invading faction member must first get into the city hall and pay the necessary fees to unlock the defenses (the fees are “laundered” through a city-unlocking item crafting system). The exact “price” will be calculated based upon existing city defenses, population, donated cash and resources to the defense fund, etc. Then, the defending city’s mayor has 24 hours to choose the window of opportunity within which his city will be attackable; the time windows will be discreet 2-3 hour chunks within the following 2 days. Some likely balance issues can be worked out by adjusting the required “fees” to unlock city defenses or by requiring additional missions or quests to be completed (think of the Task Forces in City of Heroes, something very challenging for the elite members of the attacking faction).

When a city is attackable, all buildings are, well, destroyable. The attackers can win the city by either destroying the city hall or capturing it. Upon capture, the highest-ranking member of the attacking faction can choose to raze all buildings in the city or assign ownership of each one to any member of his faction, even himself. Upon destroying the city hall, the city is stricken from server records and all the buildings simply return to being a cluster of buildings.

Upon destruction, a structure can be salvaged and looted. Salvage and loot amounts will be some random percentage of the total materials and items present before destruction. If the owner of a house in an attackable city doesn’t want to lose his stuff, he has to either pack it all up and move or defend it ferociously. Alliances with other factions, and the ability recruit mercenaries would really really matter when your stuff is at stake. When a city is in an attackable window of time, it’s a free-for-all, just as if the battle were taking place in the middle of the nowhere. Anyone can join in the skirmish. To help make it more obvious who is on what side, members or allies of a player’s faction are flagged friendly. Those not members or allies are flagged as enemy. The faction system must allow for quick allying and un-allying.

An interesting hook in this system is that it can fit right in with a dynamic creature population management system. A city is really just a spawn area. It additionally adds a terrain definition to its territory as being a “city”, so the various creatures that have an affinity for “city” terrain will eventually be found there. The competing city limits system is an extension of spawn area interaction system - it simply treats each city as just another spawn area. NPC factions can then calculate what kinds of activities it needs to engage in in order to optimize its own situation, and creating missions and quests are included as an available activity.

Another interesting hook is that player cities will become the start points for new players. When a new player chooses where to begin his adventure, she can choose one of several qualifying player cities, each of which has built a “newbie building” which puts them on the list. The benefits of attracting newbies would include larger population, meaning stronger defenses, larger economy, larger land area, more security, etc. Significant kingdoms are quite possible.

The placement of cities would also matter to a significant degree. Mostly static resource deposits would result in high strategic value to certain land areas. Cities placed in mountain passes would actually mean something if they could really restrict passage. Cities placed in close proximity could benefit from mutual protection or even engage in high-stakes economic competition. And none of this would require a single developer to define. It would just simply… happen.

The implied faction system fits right in with the way the creature management system handles relationships between any two creature species (or “factions”). You can apply and be accepted as an ally with any NPC faction, given you have sufficiently high faction rating with that faction. You can ally up with another player faction, given they choose to accept you. Your faction rating with other factions will be influenced by those with whom you officially form alliances. Only allies will receive any spoils of war through the game mechanics, though of course players can give stuff to helpers who were not officially allied. I’ll do another rambling on a faction system some other time. It’s cool stuff

The above is a snapshot, however fuzzy, of what MMOs will be. And oh how freakin’ cool they will be!

The next big step forward we are all seeking seems to lie in two areas:
virtual ecologies and fully in-game, player-driven item schematic/recipe development. Interestingly, or maybe as expected, neither of these areas are direct content design; they allow for content design by unnamed others. When we can figure out how to make every entity in the game world effectively optimize its situation based on its environmental experiences, players will not only have a whole host of tools to fashion their own motivation to play the game, but it will allow for even more powerful tools for designers to create immersive content. When we can figure out the necessary game mechanics to allow players to create the specific item schematics used to create items (and keep the whole roiling mess an internally stable system) we will have taken this next big step.

I find it difficult to put words to the thoughts swirling in my head. The complicated nature of MMO design, specifically the above two mechanics, seems to be too compilcated to simply sit down and write out a complete, all-inclusive synopsis on how to do it. So, following my own copious advice to simply do what is over-obvious when stuck in a problem, I had to just write it. I know for sure the above is true, so starting there is, well, a starting point.

We have a choice between adding new content and features or consolidating what we have and adding new features later. I’ve written about this before, but I worry it’s a decision that too often is decided in favor of new features.

I’ve taken a stab at this topic before in “Frustration of Reasonable Desires“, bince since the topic has had some time to stew, I wanted to revisit it.

A lack of features is only frustrating when the features that are missing are pretty essential to the game experience. A feature that does not work cannot be truly considered a feature. If the core features of a game do not work well, and since to some degree every other feature depends upon those core features, one could conclude the game does not in fact consist of features, and to opine that more features need to be added at the expense of bug-fixing is to ignore the fact that it is not “features” that will be added, but rather ever more elaoborate bugs.

I’m trying to make the point that there comes a point where one must cosolidate that which one has created. Create, Consolidate, then create again, and then consolidate once more.

I read recently that it is merely a matter of opinion and preference whether or not one fixes bugs in existing features. If the existing bugs are not utter game-breakers then they can (even should) be left as-is in favor of new features and content. I’m reacting to that. I believe bug-free systems, elegant code, efficient production tools, happy customers, and a happy bottom line all go together.

Some good food for thought on the matter has been posted recently at Zen of Design: “Triage and Extrapolation“.

What exactly is it that results in our tendancy to leave outdated tools as they are? What is the barrier that keeps us from immediately updating or fixing a tool that has become even a litttle bit outdated or broken? I betcha it’s linked right in with the preference to add new features over fixing existing systems/bugs/imperfections.

I think we’d all agree that letting some game operations tool remain “sort of broke” is not a good thing. The argument, however, then becomes “how much will it really gain us to fix it”.

Apple, iTunes, and the iPhone may help resolve this one. Every Apple product amounts to a subset of what, well, non-Apple products are. Apple products arguably don’t do as much and they restrict you to exactly what they designed the product to do and be. However, those things they have chosen to let you do are quite often a joy to use and as a result “it just works” resoundes from countless mouths. Apple has built a rabid fanboie nation on the habit of neglecting new features in favor of making a smaller set of features exceptionall well-done.

Faced with the question of whether to add new features or go back and make what we have exceptional, I choose the latter. I really think it’s the best route.

Gamasutra had an interview with John Smedley posted here. I thought the following quote indicates SOE’s Free Realms will be a very good project to watch:

I rather give people some lines, and say “color inside these any way you want.” Then you can’t just generate whatever you want, but you have users creating content themed towards our goals.”

On a tangential front, I just got a job with K2 Network in Irvine. So, this means I’m moving from London to Irvine- I’m there now, in fact. I’m very excited, and I start work tomorrow!

Since it’s a Korean-developed game imported and translated to Western markets, I will be most interested to get some first-hand knowledge on the issues surrounding the Play for Free business models, cultural translations, and the art of operating an MMO (rather than producing it in the traditional sense).

i want a new expansion with content!!!!!! … just (trying to) chatting with friends ingame who never logon anymore and to decorate my houses is simply no long term solution… (from here)

And then later on in the same comments thread on the SWG release of Chapter 6: Masters of the Wild at MMORPG.com….

The only thing this does for SWG [Chapter 6 expansion] is it helps those who promote fictitious fun by providing a means to generate their own content through the Story Actor Event Perks. PEX’s team is being downsized and these changes are to assist his department through redirecting a workload onto the customers; not a terrible thing honesstly. (from here)

From the comments on Raph Koster’s post “Quit being snobby about user-created content”:

User-generated content, like all human creative endeavor, is subject to Sturgeon’s Law…. The free market tends to act as a sort of crud-filter….. User-generated content also needs crud-filters. We used to have ways of doing this on MUDs….. The threat to the scalability of our approaches was that they were largely top-down… Modern… techniques tend to be more democratic. However, there are inherent problems in these systems….. Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of clips on YouTube have 4 stars? I’ve seen the same phenomenon on NetFlix. To me, it would seem as though mass voting on a star rating isn’t very expressive or useful for many kinds of content…. I think that the case for user-generated content is not helped by the kind of wild, anarchic approach we see in Second Life… (from here)

I see two widely-attempted approaches to take care of the “crud problems” of User Generated Content: the MUD-style top-down Wizard, and the user-rating system. Both obviously will not work (and have not worked) in MMOs. In many respects, I think we would all agree with the statement that the free market tends to act as a crud-filter.

The top-down approach doesn’t scale enough, it relies upon the good nature and time availability of the people in the Wizard roles, and it is an “unnatural” solution, in that it relies upon a contrived demi-god role to be filled by members of the population.

The user-rating systems depend upon the general population caring enough about the content to be willing to rate the crud as “crap”. I think that to rate something as “crap” often feels judgmental, complete with all the connotations of that word. At least that’s something I feel whenever I rate some User Generated Content as “crap”, even if it is indeed crud. I think it takes more dislike to rate something as “crap” than it takes liking something to rate it “good”, and this for the same reasons that it takes a whole lot more provocation to get somebody to fight than it does compliments to get someone to smile (who here liked Fight Club). So, seeing as the fundamental “crud-filter” mechanism in the free market is to keep on walking past whatever it is you don’t like, that is, inaction rather than action, the user-rating system will always and forever be skewed toward higher ratings, and fewer votes, than what people actually feel. I suppose, then, this would imply a simple increase in the “this is crap, toss it” threshold would go a long ways. That or keeping track of the number of player impressions some object gets and compare that with how many people voted for or against it, assuming some percentage of non-votes is in effect a “no” vote. However, the “game” of campaigning for “yes” votes would jump into full swing, and when confronted with having to say “no, I’m not going to vote for your crud” or just voting “good” for something you don’t care that much about, most people will tend to just vote “good”… again, for similar reasons as the fight mention from above. So, I guess my opinion is that the user-rating system can be improved to a degree, but it will always be flawed.

The free market acts as an effective crud-filter because the “voting” is only done by those who like the content enough to give something tangible to its creator. The actions are what matter- as we’d all expect from “actions speak louder than words”. If someone voted “good” that means they gave resources to the user who created the content. In short, money does the talking. This is different, however, than a voter saying, “I like your stuff. Here’s some money;” that would be no different than a user-rating system. The only way for it to be different, I think, is there must be a transaction. The user content must be something the voter wants to take home and put to some sort of use. The user content in general must be capable of being tangibly useful for others.

In economics terms, the User Generated Content must add value, and that value-added product must then be something someone else can use to create value.

Currently, User Generated Content is restricted to the aesthetic and imaginary world. The comment “The only thing this does… is it helps those who promote fictitious fun…” is really very accurate. In my MMO experience, serious role-playing seems to amount to make-believe. There is no value-added, economic product involved. It does not use up scarce resources, so there is no tangible risk or investment required, other than emotional- it requires extra effort in the suspension of disbelief. Not to say it’s bad. I’m just saying what is required of serious role-players is currently being required of all players in regards to User Generated Content.

Make User Generated Content matter financially, and you’ve made it work. It will then be in the same vein as crafting in a player-driven economy. How? You have to build upon the schematic/blueprint aspect of existing crafting systems. Players need to be able to create new blueprints that produce new objects that look different, are shaped different, and behave differently than any dev-created object. In SWG, you could produce items with widely-differing stats that influenced how a player used that item. We need to go further and let crafters change what an item actually does. The game Spore is doing something similar, though with creatures. In the extreme, we will need to allow for a crafting system to allow for players to go from bows and arrows all the way up to starships and jet packs, all without a single hair of dev influence. And if there are multiple server shards, that crafting system needs to allow for one shard to have a completely different set of in-game items than all the others.

That paragraph describes what I believe has to happen in order for the User Generated Content problem to be solved. Holy complex, Batman. But how freakin’ cool would that be?!

I’m linking to a Raph Koster post, as I’m sure any self-respecting games blogger is obligated to do on occasion :)  He wrote a little ditty entitled “A brief SF tale“.  Take a quick read-through before going on…

There is an important principle here that goes to the very root of game design.  If a population wants something, and that something is reasonable and not overtly “wrong” (like stealing cars or killing someone) then there is very little that can prevent that desire from ultimately getting fulfillment.  Someone is going to figure out how to get it, and shortly thereafter word will spread.  I’m using Raph’s post, and the military-bandwidth-internet-security issue he was responding to at some level, as a jumping-off point; I’m not directly commenting on either any longer.

At the moment, I can think of two primary ways a desire can be frustrated

The first is that of cost.  If a random person has the choice between obtaining a thing legally and reasonably-priced (to them) vs. obtaining it illegally and for little to no cost, I think more often than not they will choose the legal way.  The key is whether or not the price is reasonable to them. So, if someone wants to discourage such an illegal activity [that can be replaced by a legal one], then it’s “simply” an issue of pricing or compensation systems.  When the price for a desire is inappropriately high, the individual is thrust into an unnecessary moral dilemma, complete with the commensurate stress.

Another scenario in the frustration of a desire is that of prohibition.  If a person wants some thing, but is prohibited from obtaining that thing by some sort of rule or edict, but that desire is actually quite reasonable, then I believe the frustration experienced by that person will more often than other types of frusration lead to a destructive response.  In the extreme, imagine a very aggressive police state that cracks down on the wearing of, say, shorts when there is really nothing, culturally or otherwise, that prohibits the wearing of shorts- in fact, since it’s hot out shorts make a lot of sense and people really want to wear them.  This is unnecessary frustration.  And you can bet there will be no small amounts of protest (there had better be).

An interesting facet I think is that the first “cost-type” frustration will not have as much protest as the second, the “edict-type” frustration.  In the first, there are workarounds.  In the second, it’s just plain not possible to fulfill the desire[largely].

In game design, it’s a bit of a unique situation, since the “edict-style” frustration of a desire is a distinct possibility.  The most obvious example is if a game mechanic prohibits a player from equipping a high-level sword purely because he’s not obtained a certain level. That’s an “edict-style” frustration of a very reasonable desire.  The other side of restricted player activity is when a mechanism for a desire does not even exist.  I don’t think the lack of the ability to fly starships pre-”Jump to Lightspeed” Star Wars Galaxies was a point of player protest.  Protest seemed to be focused on broken specials, balance issues with certain professions, and a number of bugs- it was centered on certain “edicts”, whether active or passive, that prevented players from doing what they had a natural desire for.  It wasn’t the lack of a feature that made players protest, it was the frustration involved with an existing feature.  Granted, the cost of fixing certain bugs is sometimes seemingly too high, but I guess my opinion is that as much preference as is humanly possible needs to be given to them over adding new features. 

I guess what I’m trying to point at is that the most successful game designs are molded around what people naturally have a desire to do.  It observes human motivators and provides tools that seemlessly allow for those desires to be fulfilled.  It’s the repeated, diverse fulfillment of natural, reasonable desires- that’s what the best game designs do.  Existing games can be “fixed” or refined by noting points of consistent player protest and reevaluating whatever design edict has been imposed.  And I think fixing those kinds of frustrations, the ones in existing systems, are of greater importance than even adding new features.