My Interview on Revolution G
Listen to my interview about MMOs over at Revolution G. It's in two parts, so go here, then click on "Download Episode 4" and "Download Episode 5."
I'm actually pretty complimentary of Blizzard. Even if I don't like the philosophy behind their terms of service, they are still one of the very best game companies in the world. That said, I probably manage to say some things that you fiercely disagree with or that will make you say, "Yes!!! Finally someone said what I wanted to say!"
I cover group vs. solo, time vs. skill, and squishy rules from a terms of service versus hardcoded rules. I talk about what applicability "playing to win" has in an MMO. I cover the kinds of changes I'd like to see to the terms of service in future MMOs, and I even try to quote some academic papers.
Check it out and make sure to visit revolutiong.com, too. Those guys really want the genre to take a step past where it is now and they seem to like me, so that makes them ok in my book. ;)
--Sirlin
July 24th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
“Yes!!! Finally someone said what I wanted to say!” I really really really wish there is something I could bring to the table. But really, I don’t know what to say, it’s all there wrapped up in a little happy meal, sauce included.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Regarding the time vs. skill issue, the fact is that using time, rather than skill, makes the game more accessible to the public in general. It takes effort and insight to get good at a game, spending time, on the other hand, is something anyone can do.
One of the views on MMO stuff that dates from the era of MUD is that people can be divided into Spades who explore, Diamonds who excell, Clubs who kill, and Hearts who socialize. With the economic pressure to have as many people on the server as possible, the game managers are going to be making the game friendly for hearts.
Similarly, the economic pressure pushes subscription-model based MMOs to include time sinks. I don’t have the time or resources to survey this properly, but I would expect that most subscription model based games will have time sinks.
From a development perspective, time sinks are easy (since they’re repetitve) so they can produce perceived entertainment value at low cost. Really, they could be described as the ‘fast food’ of the gaming industry.
On some level, if the presence of farmers and bots is problematic, that’s probably a reflection of shortcomings in the game.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:17 am
I wonder if you’ve ever played City Of Heroes/City Of Villians, Sirlin. This game is a very “casual” game and has some interesting design choices (pretty old too). Through side kicking, low level players can be artificially to one level below a a character 3 level or higher than them. Super Groups (Guilds) can form Coalitions. Inside these coalitions large communities can talk to each other. There a very small emphasis on gear as well. The game is not with out it’s problems (such as, high requirements compared to say….WoW), but still worth checking out - even if only for the costume customization.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I wish I could’ve taken part in that discussion.
Tournaments are “fair fights” now. Players are given an account with each class level 70. Each are given a regulated balanced set of gear with assorted gems/trinkets. You’re given enough gold to respec every round. WSVG is running a pretty decent tournament. I wish you would’ve touched on that subject. I belive Blizzard has said they plan on using premade characters in future tournaments as well.
It’s funny when you talk about respecs. I can tell you straight from the horses mouth why Blizzard want respecs to cost money. They want people to identify players with a spec. They want you to say, “Remember that troll shadow priest, XxMindeath?”. I can’t understand what they’re trying to accompalish with this, but that’s their goal. About respecs, if you want to PvP and PvE 100% effectively, you’ll have to respec MINIMUMALLY twice a weak. I always thought characters could have a primary/secondary spec and give it a 10 second cast to swap between them with a 1 hour cooldown.
I loved the social theory on MMOs as compared to medeival social structure idea. I think that concept holds a lot of water. If you get a chance to link that article, I’d love to read it.
I agree with you on the concept of bans. I always thought it was funny when they made posts on banning gold farmers as an accomplishment.
Also, fury builds blow, I don’t know what that guy was talking about.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Nitrana, wow that is great info, thanks. Are these tournaments open to everyone? Are they free? Are they frequent? Is there a non-tournament way to use those premades?
After much effort, I have still not even gotten Fury to run, so I have no idea about it. It sounds good in theory though.
I have a to-do list that involves writing a fair amount about the medieval social structure of MMOs, so you’ll have to wait a bit, but I will get to it. I’ll post those articles again at some point too. I think my old links to them one of my forum posts no longer work.
Wind Dragon: I know a little bit about CoH but I haven’t really played it. I’m aware that their character creator is the best thing ever.
–Sirlin
July 25th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Having played CoH, some things about the game - like the character creator - are nice, but the developers are clearly moving away from the no loot model. Similarly, CoH seems to have plenty of time sinks.
As far as I can tell, the developers have no idea how to balance the game. PCs are (or were) so overpowered in the PvE setting that the developers have basically resorted to making higher-powered enemies less rewarding, and the parts of the game that are supposed to be challenging effectively cheat to do so.
The mechanics of CoH are a big mess. Defensive abilities stack easily, and have asymptotically increasing marginal payoff. More generally, buffing and debuffing stack much to easily and effectively. High powered groups can be thousands (yes thousands) of times more survivable, and do hundreds of times the damage of low-powered groups.
This combination of high character power - especially high survivability - and the cap on useful enemy challenge effectively turns the PvE game into marking time for high-powered groups.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Hi all,
Mayson from Revolution G here. The podcast with Sirlin was a blast! We really see eye to eye on so many things even though we came to gaming from different paths.
NateTG:
I have played CoV/CoH for a good amount of time and I agree that it is MUCH more casual friendly then most games. It also is fun just to fly around a city and experience it from a different perspective.
There are some serious fundamental issues that CoV/CoH doesn’t deal with. They don’t incorporate anything to do with dynamic worlds in their game. Their game is static. In addition their mission are redundant and have no true distinction from one another. All in all it is a fun game, but it makes me sit back and realize how much more could be done to make it a great game.
Nitrana:
With the comment on Fury Builds. I could not agree less. Fury builds are very gear dependent. Fury Warriors put out insane amounts of damage IF IF IF, the gear is there.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Speaking of World of Warcraft tournaments and premade characters, I believe the most accessible way for any player to enter that kind of realm where everyone has access to the same quality gear is the public test realm. In the last testing session, players could get “boxes” containing almost every epic-quality item in the game prior to the dungeons blizzard intended players to test. Right now, they reactivated the option to copy premade level 70 characters directly to the testing realm.
The gear is PVE-oriented though.
The interview left me thinking about me, and the way I play this game. I’m a casual player, and I’m often frustrated because I think fast outside of the game, but I don’t have the patience and invest too little time actually playing the game to actually try and put my knowledge in application in competitive environments.
Let’s pick a specific example, my character of choice is a holy priest, and right now I’m thinking about good moves to perform against rogues. I’m thinking about tactics that are not exactly simple, such as baiting specific moves, or “trapping” my opponent into making a less than optimal use of his interrupts and cooldowns. Home-made tactics such as a “shadow-kickbait-to-holy-gougebait” combo as early as possible during the combo of the enemy to force a zero-energy finisher, I know for sure that this is a good tactic, but unfortunately, for the largest part of my time, the opposition is definitely not seeing the bait and falls into it out of pure randomness, and I can never see if a “kidney shot-to-auto-attack” combo is due to me executing my own combo correctly, or them messing up theirs.
Besides, as half of the time the gear difference is too big (either way) to make this move of any relevance with regards to the outcome of the fight, I don’t really see the point in working on it any further - and end up spending my couple daily hours in game playing another lower-level character.
Nitrana knows better than me if these are actually used or not in competitive environments, if it’s a good move or not, if it wins tournaments or not. My point is that in order to “level up” my effective PVP skills, I need to “level up” my effective PVP gear. This worries me - I’m playing several characters with the positive objective to improve my skills with the priest class when I fight them (and have some fun too :P), but in the end for every day I don’t play seriously on my priest, I’m one day closer to the patch that will introduce a new PVP tier and make my main character more obsolete than ever.
It naturally leads me to the harsh conclusion that even though I try hard to follow the Play to Win philosophy, I’m but a scrub who never loses.
July 26th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Hey this is Uthgar from team Insurrection. I am also interested in hearing what you have to say about these WSVG tournaments Sirlin. To echo what Nitrana said, they are open to anyone who has 3 peopel ready to show up, register, and play. Everyone starts on an even playng field, with the same gear and race choices. Although 3 v 3 isnt the most balanced bracket, its pretty close to it and the meta game variety offered by it creates interesting tournaments. Knowing what class compostion to run in a particular matchup is half the battle. Although WOW isnt the deepest of competitive video games, its pretty balanced as far as MMO goes and witha bit of tweaks balanced with respect to all games considering the sheer amount of classes and combinations there are.
On top of all this the WSVG tournaments are getting CBS coverage and will be airing on July 29th on TV. You can also find VOD’s of the tournament games on www.ampedesports.com. If these tournaments continue to gain popularity it can only mean good things for the publicity of competitive gaming in the US. Now all they need to do is replace that trash Fight Night with a real fighting game, and we will be good to go!
July 26th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Hey Punisher,
You said “Although WOW isnt the deepest of competitive video games, its pretty balanced as far as MMO goes ”
Really?
How many MMOs have you played? I do no mean any disrespect and please don’t think that I am coming down on you. I would say that from my years of experience WoW is the least balanced for PvP. Reason behind it is gear > skill. To me that is not balance whatsoever.
July 26th, 2007 at 5:59 am
Sorry Punisher,
I don’t mean to double team you but you state, “Knowing what class compostion to run in a particular matchup is half the battle.”
That already seems really boring. If I’m reading this correctly, this means that only certain combinations of classes are viable? Any and all class combinations should be viable in my mind. There will be unavoidably difficult matchups, but the player’s skill and expression through those choices should be viable in the actual competition.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Mayson: I think part of Punisher’s thing is that the gear is even, thus gear > skill is irrelevant because there’s no difference between gear. (In theory, i guess.)
Kicks: I don’t think ANY class combination should be valid. I think class selection strategy is a legitimate skill–and inevitable, really.
(That said, i really really can’t stand WoW or other MMO-style games.)
July 26th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Thanks for listening to the cast guys. If you liked any of our ideas about the future of MMORPG’s make sure to tell everyone you know about this kind of thing. This idea that we have to settle for industry mediocrity is ludicrous. It is nice to see however, that blizzard is changing it’s tune a bit.
Soon we will have the podcasts streamed for you guys so you don’t have to fiddle with downloads. Thanks again and a big thank you to David. I am so thankful there are people that think outside of the box that can come in and put forward some really interesting information.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:26 am
No, not at all Mayson. It is a valid criticism. I honestly haven’t extensively played any other MMO’s, and since you can’t say you have played an MMO if you played it for a week… you could probably say none. However, I do consistently speak with people who have played plenty of MMO’s. Most say that the reason PVP was better in them was that there seemed to be a stronger incentive or more satisfaction to actually PVP. It wasn’t organized like an arena, more like ingrained into the foundation of the game ( like DAOC). When I ask them about balance, they say that it wasn’t really something too thought out. I think that these MMO’s cant really be competive since the format doesn’t lend itself to that. I mean sure you can be in one of the top guilds, but how does that translate to tournament play? I think the only one that resembles WOW in the structure of “organized” PVP is guild wars, and I have no idea how the balance is in that one although I have heard the controls and intuitive feel are lacking. Again, correct me if I am wrong on these things since I am speaking from the perspective of a hardcore crow a closely associate with on a daily basis. I would love to hear what other people know.
As for the gear issue, I believe Winter is on the right track. At tournaments where it counts, gear is a non issue as well as race of the class you are playing. On top of that, roughly everyone has the same gear online which can be gotten through a couple of weeks of arena and battlegrounds, so gear disparity is less and less of an issue nowadays. I run a black temple raiding guild, and although some of the loot inarguably will give you an edge in PVP, I don’t think the edge is large enough to upset all but the most delicate matches waged between two equally skilled teams. As for the class composition issue, its a metagame thing like magic the gathering and like selecting your character or race in a fighting game or RTS. All games have some sort of metagame, its just some have it more critically ingrained into their being than others. If you think about it, it’s impossible to have every class combination in 3 v 3 be balanced to be able to beat every other class comp. Certain classes excel in select few matchups and fail miserably in others.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Punisher said: “If you think about it, it’s impossible to have every class combination in 3 v 3 be balanced to be able to beat every other class comp. Certain classes excel in select few matchups and fail miserably in others.”
I have no idea whether this is true in WoW, but it’s false in the general sense. If certain classes fail miserably fail in certain mach-ups in competent play, even if that may be balanced, it represents a shortcoming in the game design as a competitive game. This is because mismatches minimize the effects of skill.
If you want to argue that class selection is balanced as a metagame strategic issue, then you need to justify the assumption that everyone has access to all of the classes. From what I understand of it, WoW players who can afford to spend several weeks building up multiple characters would be at a clear (time based) advantage in such a metagame.
As I’ve said, there are economic pressures in MMO (and CCG) game designers that cause them to make decisions that negatively affect the competitive qualities of the game.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
As for the “skill vs. time” problem, my girlfriend plays what is called “Nukezone”. It’s an online strategy game and is very skill-based. Except there’s one catch: you have to log on every hour in order to get the max amount of points. So basically people who don’t sleep have an advantage. This might sound like people would dismiss the game for that reason. But it seems that this actually attracts players. The idea that hard work (= time invested) gives players an edge makes them appreciate the game.
It seems many games will have to balance how much work is still fun because both investing time AND having fair competitive play is desirable.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:15 am
Since there was a little discussion about it in these comments, I’m going to note that a fury build with improved slam, a 3.6-3.8 speed weapon, an auto-attack swing timer mod, good timing/reflexes, and a decent/consistent ping is the highest damage warrior setup in the game. It relies on targets being mostly stationary, though, so it obviously isn’t great for PvP.
July 28th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Punisher wrote: “On top of that, roughly everyone has the same gear online which can be gotten through a couple of weeks of arena and battlegrounds, so gear disparity is less and less of an issue nowadays.”
Hah, no.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Chances are if you play WoW to pvp then you’ll be on the bleeding edge of competitive pvp gear, Forty.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
At their very core Most MMO’s are not skill based nor can they be truely competitive games.
Example: ryu throws a hadoken-unless the player blocks/jumps/ducks etc. it WILL hit him.
Player A casts a fireball @ player B due to the games “targeting system” the frostbolt goes directly to the target no matter what, but it may hit or miss pending on a dice roll (due to resists etc.). in that manner the very basic mechanics of the game prevent skill or competitve play due to pre-set game elements and “luck”.
(WoW used as example here)
Factor in Gear and levels and it gets in worse. Giving everyone the same gear and imposing rule in arena such as no cooldowns over 10 mins does not solve the problem. after all blizzard took into account these cooldowns part of character balance taking them away is like taking away akuma’s air fireball. as for the gear, what does it matter if they all have the same gear? now you just put more power in “lucks” hand. it will come down to who misses/dodges/parries the most or resists magic.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
At their very core Most MMO’s are not skill based nor can they be truely competitive games.
Example: ryu throws a hadoken-unless the player blocks/jumps/ducks etc. it WILL hit him.
Player A casts a frostbolt @ player B due to the games “targeting system” the frostbolt goes directly to the target no matter what, but it may hit or miss pending on a dice roll (due to resists etc.). in that manner the very basic mechanics of the game prevent skill or competitve play due to pre-set game elements and “luck”.
(WoW used as example here)
Factor in Gear and levels and it gets in worse. Giving everyone the same gear and imposing rules in arena such as no cooldowns over 10 mins does not solve the problem. after all blizzard took into account these cooldowns part of character balance taking them away is like taking away akuma’s air fireball. as for the gear, what does it matter if they all have the same gear? now you just put more power in “lucks” hand. it will come down to who misses/dodges/parries the most or resists magic. Today’s MMOs will need major changes to become more competitive.
July 28th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
oops
July 30th, 2007 at 2:17 am
“At their very core Most MMO’s are not skill based nor can they be truely competitive games.”
A lot of people think this is the case and it just isn’t so. It may not appear to be competitive in that there doesn’t necessarily have to be ladders or points or some tracking system, but a socio political dynamic with player empires, sieges, naval combat, alliance building, etc is a system that can offer unlimited levels of player competition and nurture the “play to win” philosophy.
July 30th, 2007 at 4:32 am
MMOs can evoke much skill, the problem is the example of and MMO to many people is World of Warcraft and that shows nothing.
New Flash to other gamers WoW is not the only MMO out there :)
July 30th, 2007 at 11:44 am
MMOs can evoke much skill, the problem is the only example of an MMO to many people is World of Warcraft, and that shows nothing.
New Flash to other gamers WoW is not the only MMO out there
**edited cause I wrote this tired**
July 30th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I think the major draw for a more time intensive game (as opposed to skill) is that working for a goal and then attaining it is very rewarding. It isn’t as rewarding as self improvement , but its also easier. It also is less ethereal, progress is a lot easier to measure (exp bars, levels, etc.) and usually in the games its a more visual sign of status as opposed to being skilled. Plus the fact that addictive time consuming play types are quite profitable in a subscription based pay models.
I like how Guild Wars handles its end game, where most of the grinding in the game is only for cosmetic bonus, this allows both time and skill based rewards without becoming obstacles to each other. (unfortunately there is some grinding in the game that does directly benefit the character). Yet, the shortfall of the cosmetic bonus only idea is that really it doesn’t have the same importance or feel of a stat-bonus type reward, its just not as substantial feeling. Maybe both types can never be in true harmony without being separate games?
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:06 am
Have you played Guild Wars?
It’s an MMO that emphasises skill over time, to the point that you don’t even have to play through the story in order to excel in PvP (if you can’t or don’t want to invest hundreds of hours unlocking everything through PvE play you can buy a PvP pack which unlocks it all for PvP play instantly, or you can just play PvP over and over and use the PvP faction points to unlock it that way).
There are solo arenas and tournaments (where you equip yourself and 3 AI heroes), as well as the requisite group play.
The lure for me is the same as the lure of playing M:tG tournaments back in the day - winning is 1/3 deck construction skill (in Guild Wars, picking your build from thousands of possible skill and equipment bits and pieces), 1/3 playing skill and 1/3 knowing the metagame (pack a blind removal skill if blindness is dominant and blindness shuts you down). The quick turnaround is very helpful, if my build sucks I can swap out a skill and jump straight back in.
I’ve also never heard of anyone being banned for exploiting during PvP, instead Arenanet simply patches the exploits.
They do tweak game balance regularly, nerfing skills that dominate to the point that PvP revolves around them etc, but adapting to changes in the game then becomes a mark of a good player.
Not all MMOs emphasise time played over skill :)
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:11 am
Btw, a full minute to get past the terrible sound bites and music and get to the podcast proper?
Hilarious :D
August 4th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Chris Proctor — notably, Guild Wars also doesn’t have subscriptions, so there’s no economic pressure to create time sinks.
August 6th, 2007 at 7:08 am
Nate, I agree, it’s great! :)
Not only no time sinks, but they actively encourage you to stop playing. Ha!
Love the “You have been playing for two hours, please take a break”, in particular.
August 13th, 2007 at 8:38 am
“Btw, a full minute to get past the terrible sound bites and music and get to the podcast proper?
Hilarious :D”
Sorry you didn’t like them Chris. However our producer and sound designer has worked for one of the worlds top radio jingle consulting and development firms and has a reputable record in the gaming industry as well. I personally think you will be hard pressed to back up a claim that his work is “terrible”.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:00 am
I play a rogue in wow, and I’m pretty good with him (go ahead and laugh), but I have this one problem… I have shit for gear. Thanks to my job, i have zero time to raids or do arenas, and when I manage to do it, nothing drops for me. I have to compensate for being as crazy as I can be with my rogue. I do well in arenas that i should loose, (me and a warrior vs a warlock and a paladin) and i top the dsp charts even though i only have two kara epics (the necklace off the first boss in kara, and the boots off of the second boss.) I kinda wish the game was more skill dependent instead of gear dependent, but what do I know about balancing a game that 9 million people play daily.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Lindorn, it didn’t appeal to me at all. Does sound ‘edgy’ or whatever, but all it aroused in me was the desire to skip past it.
I appreciate the need for branding etc, but I just wanted to listen to the feature . . . i.e. it’s the existence of the intro that annoyed me, not the styling of it.
Anyway, the “hilarious” comment is because elsewhere on sirlin.net there’s a rant about delays in getting to the meat in games:
http://www.sirlin.net/archive/ridiculous-loading-times-smackdown-vs-raw-psp/feed/
August 20th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Kurt, check out Guild Wars if you want a game that rewards skill over time, seriously!
August 29th, 2007 at 7:26 am
I understand. I hope you did like the content we did offer….sound bites aside :)
September 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
Lindorn, absolutely, the content was top notch.