You enter a bright new digital world, exited to explore and hyped just to enjoy the vibe. Ten months later you're yelling at someone for standing in fire. Wh...
Ignore the clickbait title this is a really fascinating video.
This was a really interesting video about how the structure of MMOs ends up incentivizing certain behavior patterns and edging out certain gameplay styles in favor of a dominant mode of play - I especially like the notion that the developers aren't gods of their creation, but subjects of it the same way the players are.
I wonder how you could create an MMO that creates different patterns of behavior in players. As always my mind goes to Star Wars Galaxies, which had some dominant strategies but even among top players functioned more like an interactive chat room than a game (until the New Game Engine which tried to turn it into WoW and everybody hated it).
I think there might be some merit in a game that hides the numbers from the playerbase - ie make all math happen server side and just give the players a kind of vague idea about what does what. While that would probably piss off the core MMO playerbase who are used to being able to theorycraft down to 0.01% precision, a lot of people bemoan the lack of mystique in games of the internet era and an MMO that hides a ton of information server side might be the only way to restore some of that lost feeling of discovery. You could even beat the data miners by having some spoilery things only get downloaded when they're about to be relevant - this might kill latency, but you could spin that as part of the authentic 00s MMO experience.
Monster Hunter used to be really cool about that. There's no health bars, just physical evidence of the monster's injuries/exhaustion/etc, and extra blood spatter or other gamefeel "juice" if you're hitting a weak point. You judged your performance by feeling out kill times and getting more consistent/not dying.
Then they added floating damage text and I will still call that a mistake.
I think there might be some merit in a game that hides the numbers from the playerbase - ie make all math happen server side and just give the players a kind of vague idea about what does what. While that would probably piss off the core MMO playerbase who are used to being able to theorycraft down to 0.01% precision, a lot of people bemoan the lack of mystique in games of the internet era and an MMO that hides a ton of information server side might be the only way to restore some of that lost feeling of discovery. You could even beat the data miners by having some spoilery things only get downloaded when they’re about to be relevant - this might kill latency, but you could spin that as part of the authentic 00s MMO experience.
People will 100% number crunch in order to figure out the hidden formula even if you can somehow stop data miners and leaks. Speedrunners pretty much try to reverse engineer the game's code.
This happened to path of exile, the damage you do is mostly obfuscated, but there's an entirely separate 3rd party app that you can download your whole character into to figure out your actual damage. It's bad enough like this, I can't imagine how toxic it would be if there were actual dps meters.
I'd be fine with that if the game's devs didn't cater directly to them and cause power creep and other problems for everyone else, and especially if the game's culture didn't revolve around assholish meter contests and invalidating people (or outright bullying them) for not having a sufficient (PUBLICLY LISTED) gearscore.
Fuck Activision-Blizzard for all of the above and for stoking the flames of it on purpose.
This is basically how FF14 does it, which leads to a :meow-popcorn: situation where you get what can only be called "elitist casuals" who report you for giving other players hints.
There's a persecution complex among Epic G!mers in FFXIV, the kind that do Savage/Ultimates and don't feel praised enough for it, where they often whine about how it's unfair that talking about meters is a punishable offense.
It felt punishing even being around toxic raider fucks that would call people "shitters" or "terribads" and tell them to kill themselves because number didn't go high enough. :freeze-gamer:
lmao yeah they suck too. MMOs are at their best when everybody is playing how they want and they take their party members' playstyles in stride, but no matter what you do you're going to get some amount of entitled people trying to force everybody else to play the way they want.
You could sidestep a lot of this with a different approach to loot. It seems like Warcraft's feedback loop started at Loot With Good Numbers being the reward for Difficult Raids (from the very rough and distant perspective of an outsider with no interest in WOW). Don't do that. Don't reward the players looking for a challenge with stuff that makes the game easier. If you can, reward gameplay with more gameplay. If you can't, go with something cosmetic. You'll still end up with players grinding for the clout of a neat hat, but at least that social pressure won't be reinforced with mechanical pressure.
Even then just having the cosmetic items from completing difficult challenges would be seen as a bar. Oh you haven't downed the Giga Cum Dragon yet? Then I can assume you're hot trash.
I especially like the notion that the developers aren’t gods of their creation, but subjects of it the same way the players are.
This is why I find systems theory and cybernetics so interesting. When you put enough people in a room and give them the tools to interact/connect, even if you try your best to control or design the system to behave in a way you want, the system almost has a mind of its own, or at least a steady-state it will reach after a while. Understanding the system and even trying to nudge it becomes an exceedingly complex problem.
I think there might be some merit in a game that hides the numbers from the playerbase - ie make all math happen server side and just give the players a kind of vague idea about what does what.
That's how I played my second run of Horizon: Zero Dawn. I realized that the game does a great job of visually showing you how damaged an enemy is (aside from humans really). Fixating on the health bar really took away from the awesome immersion of it all, so I just turned off enemy health bars. Fights were a lot more stressful, visceral, and fun. I felt much more like an actual hunter trying to take down this huge, robotic beast with only visual cues to know how well I was doing
This was a really interesting video about how the structure of MMOs ends up incentivizing certain behavior patterns and edging out certain gameplay styles in favor of a dominant mode of play - I especially like the notion that the developers aren't gods of their creation, but subjects of it the same way the players are.
I wonder how you could create an MMO that creates different patterns of behavior in players. As always my mind goes to Star Wars Galaxies, which had some dominant strategies but even among top players functioned more like an interactive chat room than a game (until the New Game Engine which tried to turn it into WoW and everybody hated it).
I think there might be some merit in a game that hides the numbers from the playerbase - ie make all math happen server side and just give the players a kind of vague idea about what does what. While that would probably piss off the core MMO playerbase who are used to being able to theorycraft down to 0.01% precision, a lot of people bemoan the lack of mystique in games of the internet era and an MMO that hides a ton of information server side might be the only way to restore some of that lost feeling of discovery. You could even beat the data miners by having some spoilery things only get downloaded when they're about to be relevant - this might kill latency, but you could spin that as part of the authentic 00s MMO experience.
Monster Hunter used to be really cool about that. There's no health bars, just physical evidence of the monster's injuries/exhaustion/etc, and extra blood spatter or other gamefeel "juice" if you're hitting a weak point. You judged your performance by feeling out kill times and getting more consistent/not dying.
Then they added floating damage text and I will still call that a mistake.
People will 100% number crunch in order to figure out the hidden formula even if you can somehow stop data miners and leaks. Speedrunners pretty much try to reverse engineer the game's code.
This happened to path of exile, the damage you do is mostly obfuscated, but there's an entirely separate 3rd party app that you can download your whole character into to figure out your actual damage. It's bad enough like this, I can't imagine how toxic it would be if there were actual dps meters.
I'd be fine with that if the game's devs didn't cater directly to them and cause power creep and other problems for everyone else, and especially if the game's culture didn't revolve around assholish meter contests and invalidating people (or outright bullying them) for not having a sufficient (PUBLICLY LISTED) gearscore.
Fuck Activision-Blizzard for all of the above and for stoking the flames of it on purpose.
This is basically how FF14 does it, which leads to a :meow-popcorn: situation where you get what can only be called "elitist casuals" who report you for giving other players hints.
There's a persecution complex among Epic G!mers in FFXIV, the kind that do Savage/Ultimates and don't feel praised enough for it, where they often whine about how it's unfair that talking about meters is a punishable offense.
It felt punishing even being around toxic raider fucks that would call people "shitters" or "terribads" and tell them to kill themselves because number didn't go high enough. :freeze-gamer:
lmao yeah they suck too. MMOs are at their best when everybody is playing how they want and they take their party members' playstyles in stride, but no matter what you do you're going to get some amount of entitled people trying to force everybody else to play the way they want.
Yeah, but it's much less of an omnipresent player culture thing when there's a barrier in the way.
You could sidestep a lot of this with a different approach to loot. It seems like Warcraft's feedback loop started at Loot With Good Numbers being the reward for Difficult Raids (from the very rough and distant perspective of an outsider with no interest in WOW). Don't do that. Don't reward the players looking for a challenge with stuff that makes the game easier. If you can, reward gameplay with more gameplay. If you can't, go with something cosmetic. You'll still end up with players grinding for the clout of a neat hat, but at least that social pressure won't be reinforced with mechanical pressure.
Even then just having the cosmetic items from completing difficult challenges would be seen as a bar. Oh you haven't downed the Giga Cum Dragon yet? Then I can assume you're hot trash.
This is why I find systems theory and cybernetics so interesting. When you put enough people in a room and give them the tools to interact/connect, even if you try your best to control or design the system to behave in a way you want, the system almost has a mind of its own, or at least a steady-state it will reach after a while. Understanding the system and even trying to nudge it becomes an exceedingly complex problem.
yeah, I've been thinking this stuff myself. It kinda makes it work and not play when everything you do has to be "efficient"
Hey now, we cap error in our simulations at 0.05% precision. No I am not making this up.
That's how I played my second run of Horizon: Zero Dawn. I realized that the game does a great job of visually showing you how damaged an enemy is (aside from humans really). Fixating on the health bar really took away from the awesome immersion of it all, so I just turned off enemy health bars. Fights were a lot more stressful, visceral, and fun. I felt much more like an actual hunter trying to take down this huge, robotic beast with only visual cues to know how well I was doing
I just started Horizon: Zero Dawn and I might try this out!