capnjosh

In Eve Online all in-game items have been dev-created, and everything called, say, a “civilian armor repairer” will have the exact same attributes.  This results in a commodities-based economy as opposed to a unique item economy.  For crafters the competitive advantage comes in 2 ways: doing research on a blueprint to make it cheaper or sourcing materials cheaper.

This is strking me as a pretty important discussion- a crafting system that results in either commodities or unique items.  I see pros and cons to both, so it’s possible they are two distinct ways of approaching the MMO world, and as such neither one is “more right” than the other.  However, I get the sense it would be possible to mix the two systems successfully; but that’s for another post.

If you go the unique items route, like in Star Wars Galaxies, you end up with zillions of player-crafted, say, acid launchers, each of which could have different attributes.  If another player is in the market for acid launchers, he has to not only locate acid launchers but he has to somehow sort through all those acid launchers’ attributes until he finds one with the kind of stats he wants.  I think this has a number of extensive ramifications to the gameplay: it results in a “bazaar” feel where shoppers roam throughout the merchants’ tables examining their (unique) goods, and I think it more strongly creates a “local economy” than a “global economy”.

The “bazaar” feel kind of precludes the possibility of centralized commodities markets that deal in large quantities of identical items.  If the crafting system results in unique items with unique hash numbers, then quite obviously you don’t have large quantities of identical items.  There is no common, universal reference point for an item’s attributes and value, so you end up with a more informal, local economy where prices are relative to the local population rather than, say, a regional population.  Granted, Eve Online has it’s markets programmatically segmented into regions, so it has a similar thing going on, but I think it’s a different effect when it’s done that way. 

Implicit in this discussion is the issue of player-generated content.  If you go with a commodities economy you reduce opportunities of meaningful player-generated content.  If you go with a unique item economy you obviously allow for meaningful player-generated content.  I think static, dev-defined items inherent in a commodities-based world results in a bit of a “static” feel to the entire game.  The goal of the player is to find the “best” build.  In a full-fledged unique item, player-generated content kind of a world players look for the best build, yes, but they equally look for ever-new ways of countering and surprising their foes, and in addition there is the whole vein of research and development.  In the long run, this is the best route.  I’ll write more about it some other time.

In Eve Online I’ve discovered my character is a bit gimped in what I am really interested in.  I love exploiting inequalities in the market.  Another region buys and sells the same item for a notch less than they do in another region.  I want to buy loads from one and sell them in the other.  Quite simple, but you need to have a big ship in order to make your time worth it.  The race/class/career I chose back when I started over a month ago is ill-suited to train the skills needed to get there.

Now there may be some debate about this complaint that I can’t fly the enormous freighters- “You have to put your time in before you can be an elite class” kind of a debate, which I will admit is quite valid.  However, that’s not really point, is it?  I’m not wanting to be l33t immediately.  I’m simply irritated that my totally ignorant decisions on things I had no real way of knowing about are now coming back to haunt me.  I have certain challenges now because I had to, for all intents and purposes, arbitrarily make choices on what I thought I might like in the game without knowing what I would like in the game.  And, these choices forever influenced my game experience.

That’s fine, nothing is served to you on a silver platter.  You have to deal with the cards dealt.  However, let me define who I am as I play, rather than having some element of that definition be decided in one fell swoop from the beginning before I have any solid understanding of what that choice entails.  Just give me a blank slate just like everyone else, and let me take it from there.  Let my informed decisions define who I am, not some decisions forced upon me before I even play the game.  Besides, it would allow the game developers to devote more time and effort into the more interesting systems.

In an interview I had while at the Game Developer’s Conference last week, the primary question they focused on was approaches to MMO game balance.  They wanted a strategy on how to set item attributes, loot tables, gold drops, spawn rates, etc. so that nothing in the game was out of balance.  How do you ensure there are no game-breaking holes that result in too much money being generated, too much boss camping, over/under-use of a particular character build, etc.?

The game the interviewee was making was not meant to be a “Virtual World” style MMO (think Raph Koster’s vision of Star Wars Galaxies).  They were making more of a City of Heroes, Guild Wars, or Diablo II type game, hoping to make something that would allow players to be able to jump in and out of the game without having to invest too much time building up characters and such.  A noble goal as I see it, but I think it’s a bit of an impossibility to truly balance such a game.  That just means that you must be willing to accept a certain level of “borked-ness”, and you must realize there will always be justified playerbase frustration.

Here’s a quick blog post that’s says it pretty well by Brooks Brown.

However, that being the case, it has got me thinking about what various approaches there are for MMO balance.  Well, the balance of any RPG-style game, Massively Multiplayer or otherwise.

One thought is to analyze things from a cash-flow perspective.  Figure the max theoretical income situation at a few character level ranges, then compare those with theoretical expenses at those levels.

I would like to hear some others.

Well, made a last-minute decision to go to the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco.  I’m living in London for the time being, so I had not seriously considered going until a wild thought the Friday before hit me and I checked out plane tickets.  In addition, I figured that if I really intend on joining the game industry it was time to start making some serious moves in that direction.

In short, the GDC was the best possible thing I could have done.  I gained some direct experience with the industry and I now have a “feel” for things.  I don’t have the audacity to say I know everything, but I am confident I will be quite able to make significant contributions to any game development team, especially those working on MMOs.  And, for the first time I have a quiet confidence that is the case.  In all my jobs prior to now, I’ve either not enjoyed them or not been confident that I am playing to my strengths.

More specifically, I will do well in game system design, scripting- both dialogue/quests as well as game mechanic scripting.

Danc at Lost Garden wrote a bit about “throwaway content” and how procedural content may be a good solution for it.  An interesting implication in how he spoke about the design process was that core game mechanics and systems are not necessarily given the highest priority.  However, I guess the tough part is realizing when a component is (or has become) “throwaway”.  In some ways it can be personal.

It has alwasy struck me that the first and most important design task is to identify and design the core mechanics and all related sub systems apart from any particular world context.  The goal is to essentially look at all graphics, story, and specific skills and animations as “skinning” the core game you have designed.

When I think of “game design” it’s this core game mechanic design that’s the goal, not the graphics, environment, the character, the fancy specials, or even the backstory.