What Gaming Should Be

As an avid lifelong gamer, I try to describe what has worked well and poorly in games I've played, and in any given gaming scenario, to define how it could best be handled as a result.

Author: reillan

Reading Jon Wood's post about prospective IPs got me to thinking: what, exactly, do you do in a game if it's not combat?  There are, seemingly, lots of different things that currently go on in MMOs, including:

Roleplaying: some people only care about this and spend all their time doing it, no matter the level of their character.

Crafting: Here, too, some people only care about this and find ways to make it the entirety of their experience.

PvP/PvE: All the combat goes here

Exploration: Some worlds are really well-designed and interesting to simply wander around, and some even reward you for it well (I'm of course thinking LotRO right now, but there was a space game not long back that rewarded people in the same way).

Commerce:  As separate from the crafting experience, though some people will, by necessity, combine the two.  But there are many things that can go into commerce, including harvesting resources, crafting, and simply buying and reselling goods.

Quests: Let's break these down by subcategory

1. Kill K mobs or Collect K items by killing KX mobs - these can be grouped under PvE.
2. Go here and talk to this person or use this item.
3. Collect K items on the ground (may require killing mobs, depending on your level of stealth).

What Combat Is:

Combat is either PvP-based or PvE-based.  I'll get to PvP in a moment.  When you enter into PvE combat, you are interacting with a computer-controlled element which has varying degrees of intelligent design behind it, depending on the MMO in question.  Ultimately, it can only respond to the situation in predetermined ways, which means that you are interacting with a program that you can learn and, therefore, completely dominate.  The skills you have represent the small number of ways you can interact with that program function, and almost all of those skills are designed only to interact with that function.  Thus, in essence you are using specific program functions to control other program functions.

But in the game world, it doesn't feel like simple functions.  Instead, it feels like dramatic conflict between your paladin (Galthor the Mighty) and a terrifying orc (random mob 62647).  62647 really does have the capability of defeating Galthor in this conflict, but in all reality it's unlikely, as Galthor is decked to the teeth in shiny blades and gaudy, brightly-colored armor (we have a strict "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding Galthor), and 62647 hits like a dying guinea pig.  But, 62648, 62649, and 62650 happen to be nearby and Galthor didn't notice, then their whole adventure is really just getting started.

I think I finally cracked it: either that, or I just finally cracked.  

One of the classic problems with D&D in terms of crafting was that it is a skill points-based game where as long as you simply invest the points, you can use the skill.  So, if you have the points to invest, you could, say, invest 4 points in Auto Repair and be able to build (albeit crudely) a car out of spray cheese containers.  But for a MMO, you want people to have to spend time with crafting, as it allows them to have something to spend their time on (which means: a reason to keep paying the MMO company) and it helps to make the generally powerful items available from crafting seem somehow reasonable.  

So, with D&D, you end up with a conundrum: do you preserve the sanctity of the points system (as in DDO) by creating a system of crafting that has nothing/little to do with D&D's skill points, do you throw out the points system in favor of a time-based system (A lot of NWN player-run worlds did this), or do you simply grin and bear it, ignoring the fallout of using just skill points (as in NWN2)?  What I came up with this morning in my insomniomatic dreaming was a combination of skills and time, one that I've never seen anywhere before (this question hadn't really bothered me before about 3 minutes before I sat down to write this blog entry) but that I think could be epically good.  

So, here's the idea:

1. Skillpoints are an after-the-fact purchase.  Like with other games, you could have a skills trainer who is separate from the level-up mechanism.  You go to this skills trainer when you're ready to purchase a new skill.

2. Raising a skill still requires skill points, and you receive them just like you always would in D&D.  You just can't spend them yet (see #3).

3. Skills themselves have training requirements necessary for purchase.  So, let's take the example of our Auto Repair skill: you start off untrained and unable to use the skill.  You find the trainer for Auto Repair, spend a skill point, and she unlocks the ability for you to learn Auto Repair.  Now you have 1 skill point, but right there with the trainer you can practice a few small things, using your skill on the target components or vehicle a few times (leveling anything from 1 to 2 is always the easiest, after all), and that will build up an experience meter for the skill itself.  Once it reaches the XP needed for level 2 in that skill, you return to the trainer, spend 1 skill point, and voila! you are now level 2 in that skill. 

4. If you don't have the skill point to spend, the skill simply remains capped until you do. 

5. If your skill is already max for your level, additional uses of the skill do not build the skill up further.  So, just throwing out some crazy numbers, let's say you're level 99 and the max skill value for level 99 is 370.  You can't build past 370 to have it ready to spend a skill point on 371 when you hit 100 (of course, chances are you haven't managed to build the skill that far yet - it'll probably take a bit of grinding to build the skill once you hit 100, that's just the nature of MMOs).

This kind of returns to the roots of D&D, as the intention for skills was always that you should have to spend time with them in the game to actually get them.  It was up to the Dungeon Master to make sure that you did only purchase things that reflected the skills you used in the game, thus training only what you've experienced.  Additionally, it could be used for other things as well, skills that don't have a crafting component, for instance, to help make sure that people don't simply grab them up willy-nilly and become awesome without putting in the legwork.

disclaimer: This is my own creation without conscious influence from outside sources.  I have posted it here with the intent that it now becomes property of the world at large - I want no part of it.  It is much more important to me to see my vision implemented in an MMO than to ever consider requesting payment for said vision.  So, if you're a developer and want to use this idea - please do!  I'd also love it if you dropped me a line on mmorpg.com to tell me that you liked it.

Often, we see postings regarding MMOs we'd love to see established.  I think these lists often give added weight to franchises merely because they could be easily implemented as MMOs.  But there are a lot of popular titles that could be turned into very interesting and unique MMOs if a design studio were to take the time to do them.  So, to try to spur discourse that could ultimately lead to such MMOs being made, I am here to offer my own MMO requests, with a bit of insight on what we would need in such a game to make it cool.

#5 - Dungeons and Dragons, Faerun

Yes, I know there is a DDO already out, but there is also a fundamental problem with it - it is set in the world of Eberron, a world created only recently as part of a contest that Wizards had.  It's at least an interesting world, fundamentally different in several ways from their main lines, but it is not the world that is the fan favorite among all the planes.

The Forgotten Realms setting is where the stories of Elminster and Drizzt take place.  These two heroes are the most popular in all of Dungeons & Dragons literature, and the world has spawned dozens of well-selling books (The current best selling fiction book of the D&D universe, according to Amazon.com is "The Sword Never Sleeps, a book by Ed Greenwood, author of the Elminster stories, that is set in Forgotten Realms).  The world of the Forgotten Realms is called Toril, but more well-known is the name of the continent on which the vast majority of the adventures take place - Faerun.

Faerun's geography has been very firmly established, with large, highly-detailed maps available, and many cities (especially the more popular ones) intricately laid out.  Some of these cities, especially Silverymoon and Waterdeep, are described as beautiful cities with artwork regularly created depicting them.  Faerun is also where the epic video games Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale were set.  These are some of the most beloved and popular fantasy video games of all time.

So it seems rather odd that Wizards chose Eberron for DDO.  Perhaps this had to do with licensing (perhaps Obsidian/Atari own exclusive rights to work in the world). 

Now, I personally think that the current iteration of DDO is not implemented to my standards.  I dislike the slow leveling system it uses.  Some people would say that it is the only way to do D&D and keep it true to the series, but I think that any time you implement a game into a MMO environment, you immediately lose the ability to keep it "true" and can thus do a few things to it that others might not appreciate.  For instance, you could remodel the current 20-level system into a 60-level system, with smaller relative XP rewards and slower loot drops.  # of attacks could be turned into an issue of weapon speed, with each level giving a progressively larger boost to weapon speed (A weapon with a speed of "10" could have its speed reduced by 80% by level 60, or effectively a 1.33% reduction in speed per level, for a fighter, paladin, etc.  That would give it its full "5 attacks per round" it currently enjoys).  Abilities, Armour, and so on could all be expanded in the same ways, so that level 1 and level 60 have obvious mathematical connections to regular PnP D&D, but levels along the way may not be so obvious.

One of the key things about D&D is the ability to dual class, and I don't think that should be any different in a Faerun-based online game.  Prestige classes could be implemented, which would require you to find a trainer somewhere in the world, have rep with a faction, etc.  Some classes could be left out at launch so that they could be implemented later, as well (especially faerun-specific classes). 

Another big thing is loot, which I haven't directly addressed except to say it should be slower.  That's not the whole puzzle, however.  Loot should have the same relative chance in an online game of being really, really cool that it has in PnP D&D.  Perhaps you just killed a dragon and you're looting his treasure chest; you would have a very tiny possibility of looting an artifact more powerful than the normal line of weapons, but even some random weapon drops would be amazing.  You could, perhaps, discover a +5 Vorpal sword (or as I would prefer it, a +4 Vorpal Keen sword).  Each bonus on the sword would be part of a random table, and you'd be far more likely to loot a plain +3 sword than a +5 sword with bonuses - but the possibility would exist nonetheless.  And, certain creatures (especially big mobs like a dragon) could have a higher chance of rolling better on loot.

Finally, crafting would need to be capable of making all non-artifact items, including the +4 Vorpal Keen sword.  This is D&D, after all.  Finding the materials to make them may be time consuming, but you could do it.   In this way, crafting would not be a waste of time as it is in most games.

If I designed the game, characters would probably start out in a sparsely-populated area of Faerun, possibly some place with high populations of all the standard races (my vote is for the Dalelands, but not many dwarves and gnomes there).  Expansions could take characters further and further away - into Icewind Dale, down to Chult, east into Thay, and so on.  Over an extreme amount of time, they could even head into Shar and other continents.

Wake me when I can raid a Zhent stronghold.

#4 - Magic, the Gathering

I've been playing with this idea for a while, and its implementation would be much harder than the standard fair of games.  Some of you may argue that there's already a Magic MMO - well, there is one where you can play the card game online, and I play it as well, but I'm wanting something more in-depth than the card game.

In Magic, the Gathering, the players themselves are part of the game and are called Planeswalkers.  These are able to summon monsters, collect artifacts, and cast powerful sorcery.  Planeswalkers are ever locked in mortal combat with each other, highlander-style.  However, Planeswalkers can also team up to take others down (such as when more than 2 people play the game). 

This means that there is already a mechanic in place for Planeswalkers to work together, and therefore we can exploit that.  It we say that Planeswalkers must occasionally work together to take down other Planeswalkers, then we can set up a game that has NPC Planeswalkers and PvP for Planeswalker battles.

Each Planeswalker would have a mana pool that is comprised of mana from the region he's currently in.  He could collect artifacts along his travels that provide him with additional mana resources, and these would increase his starting pool.  Mana would regenerate very, very slowly.  Each person would have a display of mana colors currently available, from all 6 colors (counting colorless as a color).  When casting a spell, he would need to have that amount of mana available to begin with.  Spells (creatures, sorcery, interrupts, etc) would need an amount of many available first, and, except for interrupts, would take a certain amount of time to pull off.  Additionally, each person would have only a maximum number of spells they can slot.  These spells are available at any time (taking away the randomness of the card game, to an extent). 

Many of the basic spells people would get as they level - a level one character may start off with the ability to cast fireballs and summon wolves.  This may be the only spell in his library, too.  But as he levels, he gains new abilities (a few more than his library can currently hold, at any given level, making him choose).

Characters would start in one of the 5-colored regions, and have mana available to them mostly of that region's color.  As they progress further, they start blending further as well.  Ultimately, if a person played long enough, he could gain every spell in the game regardless of its color.  However, he would not be able to put all of these into his library - so just like in the card game, he would have to pick and choose what spells he wants available to him.

Interrupts, regular spells, and cards in the current game that "return to hand" would be handled as a mechanic of casting time and skill cooldowns.  Interrupts would have no casting time - you click it, it happens.  Regular spells would have a casting time (these could vary).  Most spells have a very long cooldown, preventing their overuse, but cards in the current game that return to hand could have a cooldown that is reset when the spell is broken or the creature it modifies is defeated, or the cooldown could simply be short to reflect that it can be used again and again.  Monsters with summoning sickness could be paused for a short while when summoned, whereas others could attack immediately.  Channeled skills could have default actions that you can set (ie, set it to default to 3 damage) or could be selected to entirely drain your mana pool (so that you can use up all the mana tryng to heal yourself or injure your opponent, if necessary.

#3 - Transformers

This is just a cool idea, and potentially very lucrative from the standpoint of product placement.  Imagine a system that allows you to choose a base vehicle type (car, truck, fighter jet, helicopter, etc) and you get a default transformer who always transformes into a robot and back into the vehicle based on a set model - however, there would be extents to which you could modify the model, such as adding paint, stretching a fender to be a foot longer (give a car "tailfins"), elongating the nose of the car, and so on.  It still transforms in the same way, but it looks different.

Now imagine that you sell the rights to Ford, Honda, or some other automaker to use their current lines of cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, and so on as several "default" models.  So, a player could start with a car and make it look however he wants if he wants to take the time stretching various components; however, if he wants to, he can also simply click through pre-defined vehicles, and take a Honda Civic as the model for his transforming car.  All players would be given the power of flight while in bot-form, so travel times shouldn't be a terribly big issue that causes everyone to roll a jet.

The game could be set up as either PvP (allowing players to play Decepticons), or PvE.  

The only other thought I had regarding the design of this game would be that certain vehicles (especially common ones like cars) would draw significantly less aggro, owing to the fact that they fit into the environment better.  People would be a bit surprised if they saw a tank rolling down main street.

#2 - Firefly

One company already owns the rights to do a Firefly MMO, but I'm not convinced that it's one we'll ever actually see, at least without some help.  Even if we did see it, it might be horrible.

The thing that made the Firefly story great was not its technology or its character classes, but rather its moral ambiguity and the ability of bad-guy characters to still seem good, often by their juxtaposition against even worse bad guys (read Richard Slotkin's "Gunfighter Nation" for more info). 

Arguably, every character in an MMO is evil.  My Champion in Lord of the Rings Online has not gotten heroic by helping little old ladies across the street (certainly, there was a fair bit of that, more often in Lothlorien), but rather by causing the Brandywine River to flow red with the blood of bandits, Dourhand Dwarves, and Dunedain.  The senseless slaughter of sentient creatures is not virtuous, but we're rarely ever given the ability to try to reason with a people (except by first beating them in combat and killing off their entire army singlehandedly - that happens quite often).  Yet my Champion is "one of the good guys," befriended by Glorfindel, Gandalf, Elrond, and all the other heroes of legend. 

So how, then, can a game appreciably make characters more evil, while still allowing them to be on the side of good, and furthermore offer the players the freedom that being a smuggling ship outside the law provides?  I'm not entirely sure it can.  Certainly, every quest chain would need to be incredibly well-thought-out, and offer a lot more variations for XP than merely "go here, kill this, bring it back to me" quests. 

#1 - Shadowrun

If Firefly was set on Earth rather than in deep space, you'd have something akin to Shadowrun.  For those of you uninitiated, Shadowrun is another PnP RPG, and its premise is that magic has come back into the world, creating Elves, Orks, Trolls, and so on as part of the racial mix.  This is supposed to happen around 2012, to coincide with the Mayan calendar that everyone in real-time Earth is currently panicking about.  Fast-forward 50 years to the present-day of the Shadowrun RPG, and many people have slipped off the radar - they've either been born without SSNs (now called SINs, so these are the SINless.  clever, no?) or had them deleted from government systems.  And of course, since these people officially don't exist, they often end up doing odd jobs for people who need jobs done that are, shall we say, not official either.

So these SINless often become Shadowrunners.  They take on contracts from shady contacts (who often go by the name "Johnson") to do all the typical things MMOs ask us to do - kill someone, steal something and bring it back, and so on.  However, in the Shadowrun universe, if you can get by without killing someone, you're doing much better.  Of course, it's always better to carry off a mission without drawing any attention.  However, only an idiot goes into a secure building without at least some form of protection (often in the form of a 12-foot-tall Troll wielding a No-dachi as a 1-handed weapon).

As a result, Shadowrun is the *perfect* property to be turned into an MMO.  The "Johnson" questing system is exactly what we use in every other MMO currently out, even though we don't call it that. 

The biggest problem with Shadowrun is that it doesn't fall neatly into class and leveling systems.  A magic user has the potential to be, over the course of an absolute ton of playing that we expect MMOs to produce, the most powerful person ever, with no possibility of anyone of a different "class," especially without magic, to be able to catch up. 

So I do think we would need some classes, at least to prevent potential balance issues.  Spellcasters (perhaps broken down by spellcasting tradition), Adepts (with at least Physical Adepts as their own class, and possibly other adepts as well), and non-magical people (who could be broken down into Rigger, Street Samurai, and a few other classes).  The game would preferrably be played without levels, but if we had to use them, they would be mostly an artificial construct to determine when build points (the points you assign to your skills and attributes) would be provided.  Perhaps, if we limit people in points by limiting them in level, we wouldn't need classes (a spellcaster would max out when he runs out of points), so that would be even better.

The game would initially start in Seattle, with certain nearby areas possible for travel, and adding on expansions of other regions over time.  Many of the places could be more or less "instanced," as we don't necessarily need to see the hundreds of miles of land between Seattle and Denver if we're flying between the two, although there should probably be an extent to which the land surrounding a city is available for exploration and questing as well, especially for those magic users whose traditions require being outside of a city.

I hate all current PvP games.  So, here's some ideas I had for a great one:

#1: Full loot ... ish

You have the ability to loot your opponent, but this only takes unbound items from them. 

#2: Item binding.

Bound items are merely items that cannot be taken during combat.  These are the items you're wearing and any crafting items you're carrying.  If you equip a new item, the old one becomes unbound, and thus lootable and tradable.

#3: Additional loot and XP from PvP

Enemies count as PvE mobs for loot tables - meaning, you can not only loot your opponent regularly, but you get additional items for that looting.  Perhaps this could be done in a bound form for certain things (ie, take the scalps of your defeated enemies, turn them in for a quest), or an unbound form for item drops.

#4: Combat is wide-open

Whoever deals the final point of damage to something gets the XP (for their entire group) for that kill.  Items are dropped on the ground and you simply have to run over them to pick them all up (this means someone else could grab them, and you'll just have to kill him).

#5: You can accidentally kill people in your own group

And your group loses XP if you do so.

#6: Respawn points are laid out frequently

So you can get right back into the action.

#7: No death penalty

So you can get right back into the action.

#8: Fast transport around the world

Because it sucks having to waste time walking 40 miles just to talk to someone and then walk back.

#9: When you're talking to an NPC, or fighting a named boss for a quest, you cannot be hurt by outside forces.

Because these are important activities that take time, time that might be inhibited by the respawn rate of PCs.

#10: No instancing

Because it sucks, and because people camp the exits, and this sucks, too.

#11: At least one grenade-launcher-style weapon

To take care of the people who will eventually camp anyway.

(This is the third part of a series on Champion Damage.  Please see Part 1 and Part 2)

Part 3: Managing Champion Power for maximum damage-over-time.

Introduction

If you've been keeping up with my series so far, you know that Dual Wielding and using Slow-MH, Fast OH is far superior in short-term combat to any other weapon set up.  But does that damage last for extremely lengthy combat, such as against a high-morale mob?  In this entry, I will examine just that issue.

What I find in this article: If your combat lasts over 1.5 minutes, go with a 2H weapon.  Good use of skills is still key, however, and Hedge is surprisingly one of the best of these.
 

Power over time

One of the great things about being a Champion is our ability to regenerate Power during combat.  In our primary DPS stance, we get a roughly +1200 in-combat power regeneration (ICPR) rate (plus any items we choose to wear that further boost that).  We don't get a high Power pool to start, but because we regenerate so much, we may not need it.

+1200 ICPR roughly comes out to +20 power each and every second during the combat - that means that if we can burn under 20 Power Per Second (PPS) as we deal DPS, we can maintain our power pool indefinitely, and other low PPS values can keep us in the blue for several minutes at a time.  If we can maintain ourselves below 20 PPS, we can even use our power to replenish the power pools of our party each time a mob drops.

As much as I've knocked around 2H weapons so far, they seem best suited for maintaining our power.  With all of the skills in the following chart, power used remains constant regardless of the speed of weapons we wield.  That means we can use our power more efficiently on skills with higher damage.

This chart assumes the same weapons from last time: a 2H Axe that has 3.1 speed, and a 1H Axe with 2.4 speed paired with a 1.7s dagger.

If we just look at these skills and how well we can hold up in a combat, the 2H weapon has a very clear advantage - much cheaper power consumption.  Just comparing averages, we subtract 20 from both averages to show the rate of return from ICPR, and we can see that we should burn 23.84 PPS while using a 2H weapon, 46.29 PPS while DW.  A champion with 2500 Power (and we don't usually bother to keep that much) could expect to last 54s without running out of power while Dual Wielding, but an amazing 105s with a 2H weapon!  In the 51s of time betwee, the DW person could regenerate enough power for another 22s-long burst, but that still means only 76s in combat, with 29s of downtime.

That's 38.16% more up-time when using a 2H weapon over DW.  

Now you may say, "but we'll use food to regenerate power" or "we'll pop second wind to regenerate power" - well yes, you could do that, depending on how fast you can kill stuff.  But while you're popping second wind, the 2H person is using Red Haze or possibly even Heroics.  And your Second Wind is reliant on you killing your target, but if you're in an extremely-long battle, that may be neither possible or desirable.  And what's more, the 2H person could be popping Second Wind, too, and just last through greatly-extended combat sessions that much longer.

But just out of curiousity - how much does food matter?  According to the lorebook ( I don't have the game sitting in front of me now), Superior Rack of Lamb with Mint Sauce provides +148 power every 30 seconds.  That means that a DW who uses it could get 3.2 more seconds out of it, then have to spend 2.8s downtime before the next blip hits.  When it does, he has another 4.4s of power he can burn through before he runs out again.

So yes, food does help.  Potions help.  But much more effective is using a 2H weapon.  Even at its worst, 38.16% up time is greater than 28.32% damage (the max damage differential of  DW/2H calculated in part 2) during combats lasting more than 1.5 minutes.

Effective power management

As you could possibly see from the charts, there are some skills that simply do not make sense in a long-combat setting.  This is especially true of Bracing Attack, Blade Storm, and Relentless Strikes, which are the 3 worst power-eating damage-dealers in our list.  Simply avoiding these skills during long combats will help a lot, but we can also maximize our returns by carefully selecting our skills ahead of time:

1: Pip Generation

Merciful Strikes wins my pick for the best power-management skill for two reasons: first, it's tied with Wild Attack for power consumption; second, because it deals more damage than Wild Attack.  All things considered, if you can pull off this skill, you should.  Yes, it's difficult to use, but the best thing you can do for yourself is to get into the habit of using it when it is available.

If you haven't learned by yet, Wild Attack should be your default PIP generator (excepting Merciful Strike, as described above). Avoid Swift Strike like the plague - if you absolutely need another PIP, and Merciful Strike isn't ready, consider Blade Wall instead.  It'll be more power consumption than your Wild Attack, but less than the other choices.  Of course, if you're already dropping AoEs like crazy, start with your Blade Wall for the additional damage it provides.

2: Skills You May Not Have Considered

Horn of Gondor, that AoE skill that you love because it stuns people but hate because of its long cooldown, is actually one of the best skills you have in terms of power consumption.  If AoE won't hurt you, be prodigious in its use - it turns the Champion into a master of Crowd Control, and good use of CC is what separates good Champs from just OK ones.

Hamstring and Clobber are good choices as well.  They take only one pip to fire, have very low power costs, and have desirable side effects.  Of course, if you've been charged with interrupting this particular mob, only use your Clobber when you're interrupting him.  These skills will not out-DPS your neighboring champ, so use them sparingly, but don't be afraid of them, either.

Rend is bloody brilliant - Armour debuff and bleed for everything nearby.  It doesn't have a high initial damage output, but if you can fire it off early and keep the bleed up, it'll drain everything for you.  And its power cost is still low.

3: The Ultimate Skill You've Never Met: My Case for HEDGE.

You read that right.  I said to use Hedge. Go ahead, get the laughter out of your system.

Hedge is an oft-mocked gem of power management.  This skill only costs 36 power to fire - that means that almost no matter what you're wielding, you actually generate more power than you use during the time it took to fire it!  And, because its damage is not dependent on having a weapon, it doesn't require any fervour, it provides a wound resistance bonus, and it deals a fair amount of damage (it's around the middle of the field for Champ damage), it can be fired at almost any time.

And when you're conserving power, I argue that it should be one of your main skills.

So don't burn that 1st age legendary with tier-6 Hedge cooldown quite so quickly.    You can do a fair amount of DPS with these low-power skills, and if you simply avoid Bracing Attack, Relentless Strike, and Blade Storm, you'll be able to last much, much longer.

(For Part 1 of this series, see http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/reillan/042009/3613_LotRO-Champion-Damage-Part-1)

Part 2: Dual Wielding vs. 2-Handed Weapons

Introduction

There's a lot to be said on the topic of Dual Wielding (DW) vs 2-Handed (2H) weapons.  For the purposes of this posting only, I'll be examining only the issue of DPS.  Some of the other issues that govern the use of both weapons are cost of ownership (it's cheaper to replace a 2H weapon, so at lower levels it can be very important) and power consumption (because 2H weapons are much slower and power is consumed the same regardless of weapon speed, 2H weapons should consume less power in a combat).  

What I will look at, however, are raw damage values and how those relate to DPS, including how Flurry improves such values.  Flurry is one of the most often used arguments by proponents of 2H weaponry, so I'll see if it is as good as they say.

In a future posting, I'll address the issue of power consumption, which in longer battles can be a significant goal.

For those who wish to skip most of this article: I contend that DW is far superior to 2H for burning down mobs.  I did not know just how far superior until I wrote this - I thought surely I would find that the 2H veterans would be correct that proper skill use could equal DPS advantage, but it appears that is not the case.

Skill Damage

2H weapon proponents often say that if MH damage is the most important damage (as I argue in Part 1), and some skills have just as many attacks whether using DW or 2H weapons, then those skills will deal more damage with a 2H weapon and, therefore, proper skill management equals greater DPS.  So, let's test that theory:

(Comparing: 1st Age Champ Axe, 2H, 3.1s vs. 1st Age Champ Axe, 1H, 2.4s + Peerless Dagger)

* Brutal Strikes and Ferocious Strikes receive inexplicably higher bonuses from DW than 2H

So you can see, on average, DW deals 25.38% more DPS than 2H does.  The closest skill is Brutal Strikes, with only a 0.34% increase for DW.  No skill does better with a 2H weapon than DW.  When I add Flurry to the mix, this remains true, although the difference in damage, on average, decreases to 25.09% and Brutal Strikes narrows to a mere 0.11% loss of damage for 2H.  Additionally, for those wondering about how Fervour affects this: the damage difference actually increases, so that the average bonus for DW over 2H is 28.32% with 22% Fervour (15% + 7% from Legacies). This chart does assume that the Champion will take advantage of the bonuses I found in Part 1.  Two 2.4 Axes used instead would be a loss of DPS on 6 of those skills.

The only other argument that may be valid, then, is the argument that because 2H weapons are slower, they will need to have fewer uses of low-damage skills to build Fervour, and thus can deal more damage over the extended life of the combat.  This is an argument that will require a bit more tracking.  Thus, another chart!

(Assume: Popped 3 Fervour and Flurry before combat.  Fervour stance traited for 1 pip every 4s)

Total damage in 20.64s for 2H weapon = 4803.  DPS = 232.70

Total damage in 16.4s for DW = 4640.  DPS = 282.93

I extended out the attacks for the 2H weapon because I wanted to give the 2H people the opportunity to burn more damage - but the fact of the matter is this: DW does 21.6% more damage in combat. 

All I did when selecting skills above is to choose skills with the highest Fervour-to-damage and DPS values.  That means Feral Strikes and Brutal Strikes (which can't be used terribly closely together due to their cooldowns).  The reason why the % for DW is much higher here than for the raw skills is that Feral Strikes deals 40% more DPS in DW mode than 2H mode.  A 2H fan could say "but then you should have chosen skills that were closer in value" - to that I say: I did!  Wild Attack is clearly the best bang-for-your-buck Fervour builder until your target is below 50% health, and then it switches to Merciful Strike.  Swift Strike is only used when you really need a point of Fervour to pull off the next skill (and I used it once for each side).  But all of the big DPS, non-AoE skills receive a huge bonus from DW according to the chart above.  The only thing I could do would be to use only Brutal Strikes (which, you'll note, I used twice on the left, once on the right, while using Feral Strikes twice on the left, thrice on the right).  

The point of all of this is simple: if I can build Fervour faster, I can burn it faster.  And, since I know how to use DW to its greatest efficiency thanks to the information from Part 1, this means I will be able to completely own everything I encounter.

Introduction

This is part 1 of a 278 part series (ok, I don't really know how many parts yet) on damage for Champions in Lord of the Rings Online.  I performed this research in an attempt to calculate the maximum amount of damage a Champion can do in a combat, and thus help newbies and pros alike improve their game.

The information for this posting is based on numbers from Mines of Moria, Book 7, Patch 1.  Because Turbine regularly modifies numbers to balance classes, this information could change.

In part 1, I will present information regarding weapon speeds and Dual Wielding.  This topic has been argued often in the forums, with little definitive research behind it.  In future parts, I will also provide information on whether a 2-handed weapon or dual-wielding is better, Fervour versus Ardour, and power management.

For those without the patience to read this whole article: I prove that you can see approximately an 8.5% increase in DPS if you use a 2.3 weapon in your Main Hand, and a 1.7 weapon in your Off Hand, assuming all other things are equal.  You can potentially see greater returns from slower weapons in the Main Hand, diminishing returns from faster weapons.

Part 1 - Weapon Speeds and Dual Wielding

The theory among the conversations on the Champion forums has long been that when a Champion wields two weapons of different speeds, the speeds average together.  The theory means that if a weapon with a speed of 2.3 (meaning, for the uninitiated, that the weapon attacks every 2.3 seconds) and a weapon with a speed of 1.7 are used together, the speed they will both attack with is 2.0 - the slower weapon will be sped up, while the faster weapon will be slowed down.

My theory is this: since a slower weapon deals more damage in a single hit, if a slower weapon and faster weapon are paired, and the slower weapon is in the Main Hand, then that greater damage will be applied through the additional attacks to result in additional damage.

If a Champion uses only auto attacks and skills that use both hands equally (there aren't any, but for the sake of argument let's say there are), then any difference in speed for the two weapons would be unnoticeable - that is to say, the raw DPS of each individual weapon is all that would matter, and it would matter equally across all weapons regardless of speed.  However, as I mentioned above, there are no skills that treat two weapons equally. 

There are two factors involved in how unequally weapons are treated: The first is the number of main hand and off hand attacks utilized by each skill; The second is bonus damage provided by each skill, which I'll get to shortly.

There are three possible combinations of weapons based on speed: Both weapons can have identical speed, the Main Hand can have a slower speed than the Off Hand, or the Main Hand can have a faster speed than the Off Hand.  My theory is that one of these - specifically, Main Hand slower than Off Hand - is superior to other combinations when determining damage output.

The following chart shows how many Main Hand (MH) and Off Hand (OH) attacks each of the champion's attack skills use (please note: clobber and hedge are left off of this list - the former due to the fact that clobber's damage is not reported in the current patch, and hedge generates identical damage regardless of weapon):

In this list, I colored the 5 skills that have equal numbers of attacks between MH and OH to make it easier to see those skills.  Every one of the other 10 attacks obviously deals more damage from the MH than the OH, due to having more MH attacks than OH attacks.  This means that MH damage is more important than OH damage for at least these skills.

But does that rule play out across all skills, and is the increase significant?  To understand the answer to that, we must also examine how bonus damage from the individual skills is applied in Dual Wielding situations.  There are several rules that govern this interaction:

1. Every skill grants a bonus amount of damage to attacks made with the Main Hand.
2. No skills (with two exceptions) grant bonus damage to attacks made with the Off Hand.
3. Bonus damage is contingent on the speed of the individual weapon in that hand.  This means that a weapon with 2.3 speed will receive the same bonus for that skill regardless of whether it is paired with a 2.4 speed weapon or a 1.7 speed weapon in the other hand.  Where applicable, the other hand receives the bonus specific to its own speed.
4. Bonus damage is also boosted by Fervour and Ardour (when used with a legacy), and reduced by Glory.  It is not increased by racial bonuses.
5. Bonus damage increases as the champion levels up, but does not increase with increased weapon damage.  A level 60 champion will receive the same bonus for Rend regardless of whether he wields a level 1 sword or a level 60 sword.

(The two exceptions to rule #2 are for Brutal Strikes and Ferocious Strikes, and since their exceptions involve extensive discussion, I will answer those separately.)

Because of rule #3, even our green-colored skills in the table above receive at least a small bonus from differing weapon speeds by virtue of the fact that they get a slightly larger amount of bonus damage from being used with a slower Main Hand weapon. 

But first: here's a table showing damage bonuses for 4 weapon speeds:

To explain how this data can be extrapolated into raw damage numbers to prove or disprove my theory, I'd like to analyze just a single skill - Feral Strikes.  I have chosen this one for a reason, and I'll get to that shortly as well.  Let's assume that we're using a fully-loaded 2nd age weapon, so that our DPS is 41.9.  With a 2.3 weapon, that's 96.37 damage per hit; 83.8 with a 2.0 weapon; 71.23 with a 1.7 weapon.  With the Feral Strikes skill, we see that we do:

Now, hopefully, the disparity between speeds makes a bit more sense.  When using different-speed MH and OH weapons, I get more damage bonus in the MH Damage column, but less in the OH damage.  The smaller value in the OH damage column cannot make up for the greater damage in the MH.  In fact, I've just increased my damage over time by 6.1% over using  two 2.3s weapons.  

Now, the reason I chose Feral Strikes is that it's actually slightly BELOW the average for damage increase created in this fashion.  Here's a complete chart showing damage for three dual-wielding situations.

Average DPS increase: 8.52%

Special Exceptions

Relentless Strike deals 150% damage with MH, plus bonus damage, rather than 100% as most other skills do. 

Brutal Strikes and Ferocious Strikes have 105% and 130% damage (respectively) for attacks, and this bonus damage applies to both MH and OH damage.  Because each attack has only one OH attack and two MH attacks, each still receives a benefit from using slow MH, fast OH.  Additionally, both attacks for these skills receive bonus damage contingent upon weapon speed, and that damage is applied specifically to the hand based on the speed - that is to say, if the MH has a speed of 2.3, it receives +39 damage to both MH attacks for Ferocious Strikes, and if the OH has a speed of 1.7, it receives +28 for the single OH attack on this skill.

Fervour et. al. applies to both the base damage and the bonus damage.  Because of this, the difference between differing-speed weapons and identical-speed weapons remains the same % difference.

Flurry is also applied to both equally.  Changing the numbers in my Feral Strikes table to utilize traited Flurry at 20%:

Still a 6.05% increase in DPS.

I got into Darkfall around the end of January, so I haven't been playing as long as some, but some of you who haven't gotten in yet may still be jonesing for more news, so I'll provide what I can.

Installation

When I first got the e-mail link to the game, I was so excited I fired up my computer and tried to start the download, despite the fact that it was 11pm and I had to go to work the next day.  After a bit of frustration trying to log in properly to download the file, I finally was able to do it.  The initial download file is small and came across quickly.

I clicked on the icon, and watched in horror as my download speed appeared.  It was downloading occasionally at up to 100k/s, but this came in bursts, and would on the next burst drop to 0, or go back up to only 40, and so on.  After trying for a few minutes, I shut my computer off and went to bed.

The next day before I went to work, I fired it up and left it sitting all day. Download speeds appeared to be as bad as before.  Until I got everything downloaded and got into game, they remained that way.  However, to Adventurine's credit, patching speeds have improved significantly since then - my last patch downloaded at around 800k/s.

First Impressions

The game loading screen and such have fairly bad graphics, reminiscent of something from the days of Wolfenstein 3D or Doom.  This concerned me unnecessarily, so I hope they'll work a bit on improving these.  Once I finally got into the game, I thought the graphics looked a bit hokey as well - buildings had sharp black lines to tell you exactly where they were, ledges had the same.  And then there was the difficulty of learning the UI (which is why I wrote my other lengthy post about it) and trying to figure out what I should be doing.  There is absolutely nothing, at least in beta, to helpfully tell me "hey, come speak to me."

There was a NPC character standing fairly close to where I spawned, and since this was the only character around, it seemed like the one I should talk to.  I walked up and tried clicking and such, but because I didn't understand the UI, I failed miserably in my attempts at communication and walked away.

At this point, I started to become a little depressed about the game.

But I persisted, exploring to the west a bit (I started in the western-most Elven city), and after seeing several more NPCs, I realized that only my lack of knowledge had prevented me from successfully speaking, and I went back to the beginning.  Now I was able to communicate and accept two quests.  Yes, just as I thought, the NPC closest to your spawn is the one who is designed to help you get your start in the world.

It was about this point that I decided to run in windowed mode instead of full screen, and it made a huge difference.  The big black lines I had seen earlier, that made everything look hokey, are simply not noticeable in a tighter resolution.  On release, I'll play as high resolution as my computer will let me, as a result.

So my first impressions were that the UI is not user-friendly (it's not) and that the graphics sucked, but the first I found I could learn my way past, and the second really started seeming more natural as I went through the game (additionally, because of the fairly natural passage of daytime and nighttime, the graphics started looking even cooler as time progressed).

What's good about the game

There's a lot to say for the game in terms of what's good, the first and foremost being that it really is your own skill that determines whether you live or die - more or less.  I'll get into the bad parts of this later, but the good news is that if you're willing to apply yourself, it'll be much more up to you, and much less up to how buffed your character is with equipment and skill points, that determines whether you'll rock.

The graphics really do grow on you, and now I look at them and think they're amazing. 

If you're into these sorts of things, city building and crafting are very important to game play and great if you're the kind of player who can't get equipment any other way. 

You can hear enemies long before you see them, usually - this means that you can often sneak up on someone, or at the very least avoid them more easily. 

What's bad about the game

While skill is the largest factor in determining your success, there are little things that you may simply not know, things like the reach of your weapon, that have a very large impact into how well you do.  Those who were in the beta longer and studied them more intently completely owned me everywhere I went.  This caused a problem in that I simply didn't have a desire to go out and get beaten down every time I spawned.

The alignment system really isn't a deterrent.  Because there are chaos cities and vaults in the wilderness where you don't need to be stuck inside a city, no one really cares if you're red, gray, or blue in alignment.  Sure, if you're in one of the starting cities it's a bit important, but outside of that - nope, not in the least.  The best you can hope for out of it is that if you're in a starting city, you have slightly easier access to wood and herb farming nodes and thus you can farm these to your heart's delight without fear (generally) of losing your stuff.  If you stay close to the vault, too, you can drop your stuff in it before your opponent kills you.

There is no way to get away when you're attacked.  Your opponent moves just as quickly as you do (and, oddly, sometimes faster) and the person chasing has the advantage of aim and ranged attacks.  Running away is one of those key abilities that every game should have - because there are times when you simply are outgunned, outmaneuvered, etc. and need to regroup and try to get yourself back in the game.  That doesn't happen with Darkfall.

One of the reasons it can't happen is because only when you're moving forward are you at your fastest.  If you try to run at an angle, or backwards, suddenly your speed drops off completely.  There's a reason why the Quake series of games had you moving in all directions at the same speed - because that gives you the greatest maneuverability and the greatest chance to fight on your terms rather than your enemy's.  Adventurine needs to learn that still for DF.

While crafting is cool, the resource requirements have at times been too high.  Adventurine has worked to fix this, but it's possible we could see them too high again in the future.  Just be aware.

What's wrong with slower movement?

First, as I already stated, there are times when you need to run away.  I'm going to assume that everyone accepts that as true.  In a game like Darkfall, where all movement other than straight forward is penalized in speed, that means that your only hope is running straight away.  However, your opponent can run just as fast and use weapons in the process, meaning that a straight line away is not exactly desirable either.

So you have to make a choice to try to turn right and left, to try to get away at an angle.  So, let's say that every second you can move distance X:

So every second, I cover this much ground.  Now if I turn to the right or left, my opponent can turn to pursue me without having to turn as much:

This means that if you try to turn, your pursuer will be able to catch up even more, regardless of how you turn.  Turning is basically suicide for anyone attempting to flee.

If you could strafe at the same speed as you run, then it would be no big deal - you suddenly break into an angular direction with no loss of speed and you can change that direction quickly and easily.  Perhaps more importantly, you give your attacker no indication of where you're going to go.  This means that he has to constantly react to you, and if you make multiple course changes quickly, this will give you an advantage.  But when your body actually has to turn in order to change direction, you're making a big wide circle, easy for the attacker to see and adjust to.

In Darkfall, at least, there should never be any reason why your prey should escape you.  And I posit this is bad, because sometimes when you're getting attacked, you need to get away.  There should always be a chance to escape.

Lastly: a note about realism.  The poster below said that you can't move at the same speed in real life, so it's more realistic this way.  Perhaps.  However, you also can't murder people at a whim without expecting some serious retribution.  Retribution in Darkfall is not serious, nor is it permanent.  If you chased me, I would head to some place crowded and well-lit, so that everyone could see, and that visibility would make you less likely to hurt me.  Darkfall doesn't care about such things.  Further, there are things I can do to you even while being chased that would slow you down, things that are not in Darkfall - such as trying to trip you, knock you or throw you to the ground, kick behind me, grab things and throw them over my head, and so on.  Finally, in real-life you have momentum, and that momentum is not easy to change.  If I am ready for it, I can use your momentum against you, to get you going the wrong direction, to trip you up, etc.  Since Darkfall has none of these things, it's not a reasonable argument to argue what is "realistic" - the game is just a game.

Introduction
DFUI is one of the most confusing and frustrating aspects of the game, purely because it is a completely different animal from every major MMO before it. In most MMOs, the mouse performs a function similar to that of a Windows or Mac desktop – that is, it is used to click on various things on the UI – but the mouse is barely involved in controlling the character. MMOs typically allow the player to swing the camera view wildly about, without turning the character, so that there is a disconnect between mouse activity and character activity. However, for the sake of laziness, it is usually possible to also control the character by using the mouse and holding down a button – for instance, holding down the right mouse button might allow the mouse to control character facing, and holding down both buttons might cause the character to move forward.

DFUI works differently, however, because of a different mindset in the creation of the game. First, the creators of Darkfall do not apparently believe that free camera movement is conducive to PvP, so the free mouse look feature is taken away. As a result, moving the mouse causes the character to move. But, this creates an additional dilemma – when the mouse and character weren’t directly tied together in other games, it was easy to click on various elements of the UI, such as icons for skills, but because the mouse is now tied to movement, it becomes impossible to move the mouse anywhere other than the center of the screen.

There is still a need to use the mouse, however, for some things such as resizing windows or moving icons. As a result, the DFUI utilizes a toggle system – you can toggle the mouse to be actively controlling the character, or you can toggle the mouse to be controlling the UI – but never both at the same time. And here’s where the frustration can come in – while toggled for controlling the UI, nothing (mouse, keyboard, etc) can be used to control the character. Either you’re controlling the character, or you’re manipulating your interface, but never both at the same time.

This means that you can’t move the mouse to click on an icon to, for instance, cast a spell or change equipment, because you have ceased to be controlling the character, and making those changes would be changing the character (there is a point where this blends slightly – you can drag stuff to or from your character while toggled for controlling the DFUI, meaning it is possible to equip swords, bows, and so on, but it is not the fastest method of switching).

Moving your character
You switch between character movement and UI manipulation by clicking the right mouse button. Simply click it to gain control of the UI if needed, or click it again to take over character movement. You can move straight while in UI manipulation mode by simply pressing numlock (as with most games). You won’t be able to look around you, but you will be able to, for instance, look at your world map or

Character movement is driven by similar mechanics to other MMOs – W moves forward, S moves backward, and A and D strafe left and right. As I said, this will only work while you’re in character movement mode, and will do nothing in UI mode.

Using skills and spells
One difficult aspect of this is “how do I use my skills?” This problem is two-fold, but I’ll explain why shortly. The first obvious answer is – “Press numbers” – the skill bar utilizes number presses, just like with most other MMOs. So, let’s say you put your sword and shield on numbers 2 and 3 respectively. You’ve been using another item – perhaps your bow – and you need to switch to your melee weapons. While in character movement mode (it won’t work in UI mode), simply press 2 and 3, and you’ll equip both sword and shield.

It becomes complicated, however, because of a mindset of “Equipping” vs. “Using.” When you press 2 to equip your sword, you’re not actively using your sword – you’re simply putting it in your hand. You have to draw the sword by pressing R before you can use them at all. Then, once it’s draw, click with the left mouse button (all of this must be done while in character movement mode) to swing the sword, and it swings in the direction that you’re pointing with your mouse at the time you click it. So, if you’re clicking somewhere other than your target, you won’t hit it. A bow works similarly – clicking while the mouse is aimed on a target causes the arrow to fire at that target (although there is an arc that the arrow takes as it flies, so it might hit the ground before it reaches the target). For both of these things, the equipping and using system seems fairly intuitive.

Where that intuition breaks down is on every other skill. When you want to rest, you have to use the “Rest” skill – but to use it, you have to first “equip” the skill by pressing the hotkey for it, and then left-click to initiate it. Just pressing the hotkey for the Rest skill will leave you standing around looking stupid.

This is slightly more complex when it comes to spellcasting. To cast a spell, you have to first equip your mage staff, then draw your staff by pressing R, then equip the spell to cast, then left-click to actually cast it. This is a fairly lengthy process when you’re first learning, but spells like Mana Missile can be cast quickly at this point by simply continuing to click with the left mouse button.

I want my loots
Loot is also a function of UI manipulation mode. This means that to loot bodies, you have to walk up to their tombstone, drop into UI, open your bag (if it’s not already open), click on the tombstone, and drag the items one at a time from the tombstone to your bag. This can be difficult if you’re in the middle of combat, since you’ll be unable to move your character while looting.

On a side note – nothing marks the loot as “yours,” even having the window open. If someone else runs up and starts looting as well, they could grab items you’re trying to grab. Grab what’s most important to you first.

Harvesting
Whereas looting is a function of the UI, harvesting is a function of character. This means that when you harvest, you have to be in character movement mode. Simply equip your harvesting tool (preferably by using a skill bar button), draw it (since it works just like a weapon) and attack with it when you’re facing the harvesting node. Your character will begin harvesting the node. Fortunately, there is no looting when you’re done harvesting – the resource is immediately transferred to your bag if you’re successful.

There is a small amount of confusion that arises from looting and skinning. Skinning is done on the tombstone just like looting is, but like the rest of the harvesting skills, it takes place in character movement via the use of a skinning knife. If you want to loot and skin, loot first, then toggle to character mode, equip the knife, draw the knife, and attack the tombstone. (Note: You can only skin a given tombstone once. Other resource nodes can be used multiple times, and will give you a message when they’re expired).

Selecting a target
Don't. Seriously, you can't - the DFUI doesn't work that way. In traditional MMOs, you click on an enemy, and then you can click on a spell or a skill and that ability will automatically go off toward the target. So if you want to heal someone, you select a member of your party, press "HEAL" - and boom, they're healed.

Adventurine seems to think that kind of gaming takes away from a person's skill, so in the DFUI, you never simply click on a target and begin using your abilities. Clicks don't "lock on" to a target as they do in other games - if I click on an enemy target, nothing seems to happen, and nothing will.

Darkfall is all about AIM. You aim at a target and use your skill - if you're reasonably close, your skill affects the target. This is easy when the target is stationary - resource nodes, tombstones, and talkative NPCs will all stay put, waiting anxiously for you to act. Where this gets very difficult, of course, is combat. Because combat is very tied to character placement, distance and movement are critical. Weapons that give longer reach, regardless of their damage, will mean that you have a greater ability to hit an enemy that's trying to stay outside your range, or one that's dancing around you. Additionally, strafing and moving rapidly around your target could make them face a different direction when they finally swing, keeping you outside of their attack arc.
 

Here's my idea for a space MMO...

First, looking at what has worked well and what has worked poorly in the past - it seems that people really enjoy being an avatar - a person physically wandering through the gameworlds, visiting planets, fighting monsters, and so on - because it allows them to more directly relate to their characters.  In games such as EVE and PotBS (both of which I've played, and think they have some awesome elements), what people chiefly seem to complain about is that for most of your experience, you're not connected to your avatar but rather to a boat or starship.  Since in either case this is something you will be replacing constantly, it's hard to form a connection with it (although I think the boarding combat of PotBS helps negate that feeling slightly).

What we've been long missing is a game where you can retain your personal avatar-like identity while being on board a ship.

Both Star Trek Online and Star Wars tOR plan to combat this through providing more away-team style combat and by giving you control over a group of people - so that you're controlling everyone who is important to the story, rather than just a single character, and therefore you're supposedly more closely tied in to everyone onboard the ship.  While this concept works well in a single-player game, I think it pushes the MMO too closely to the side of a single-player game.  After all, you're in an MMO because it is multiplayer - while sometimes you're competing with other players to be the most awesome or to control certain resources, it is regardless a social contract between gamers.  The KotOR-like controlling of multiple characters is exactly the opposite of this concept, and it causes them to feel less human simply because they are.  To have true social interaction with the other characters of your crew, they should be humans as well.

So for me, what would represent the ideal MMO experience is for every person (or at least - every major person) of a crew to be a human player.

As I considered this, I established a set of rules around which such a game could be created, and I will dispense those rules now:

Give players the ability to create their own spaceship communities.  I do not necessarily mean guilds, although a guild taking control of a ship is certainly a possibility.  But let's say you purchase a ship - you're a very high-level, very wealthy character who has moved up far enough in the world to buy a large ship, perhaps a freighter or some similar vessel.  This would be an incredibly expensive purchase, so that few people would be able to ever buy and maintain one on their own.  You now need to hire a crew, and you can actually open up contracts with live players from all over the world to fill various roles on your ship.  You can also hire NPCs for these roles (and in fact, you'll need to hire NPCs, but I'll get into that in a bit), but the NPCs would not be quite as good at fulfilling a role and thus it would be vastly preferable for a captain to hire a real-life crew. 

Now the captain doesn't directly fly the ship, but instead issues commands - Go here, fire on this, etc.  Any crew member, PC or NPC, who has been assigned the active role associated with that command must now carry it out, and receives experience for how well they carry it out.  For instance - the ship has been taking heavy fire, and one of the engines has gone offline.  The captain issues a command to have the engine repaired, so an engineer PC receives the order and races to go fix the engine.  Once he arrives, he has to determine what is wrong, resolve it (replacing parts, reconnecting parts, etc) and then starts the engine back up.  Now the ship has engine power again.  At the end of the battle, every command the captain assigned is available in a log, and he/she can go through the log and note how well the role was performed - so in our example, the captain thinks the engine was repaired quickly, so he/she gives a full five-star rating to the engineer who fixed it.  The engineer gets the same experience either way, but when other captains are interested in hiring him for a job, they may see that he has an average rating of 4.5 stars, and choose an engineer with a higher rating...

The crew of the ship also gets to rate the captain, so others know how well this person did as a captain.  If he was yelling at everyone the entire time, maybe they don't rate him so highly...

As players are rated by more and more captains (or, on larger ships, people in charge of them, with anyone in the command chain able to issue commands and rate the ones they issued), they can begin to serve in military vessels at higher levels.  The level a person serves at in a private vessel is always determined by the captain or owner of the vessel.

Military organizations are controlled by the game, with players able to move up within the organization based on quests performed and efficiency with which the quests are performed, as well as ratings they receive from PCs in command roles over them.  Thus, a person could eventually reach the rank of Captain and be assigned a ship by the game, and this ship would be given military missions to complete.  Eventually, it would even be possible for a PC to move into an Admiral role, and at this point the PC determines the very course of the war the military factions are fighting...

As originally stated, private citizens could purchase their own ships eventually.  These could be engaged in trade (freighters carrying resources across the universe), science, exploration, mercenary adventures (hired by militarys to carry out certain tasks without the banner of that military's flag), or even pirate activities.  Regardless, the captain is the one who determines what quests crewmembers are effectively filling, and thus a PC becomes the questmaster for another PC.

So how, you may be wondering, does a person feel he or she is making an impact on the world?  Well, part of it is the group impact - how the ship performs its functions directly relates to how the person performs his.  If I don't get this engine repaired in time, and the ship is disabled and boarded, then my whole ship has faield.  But part of it, too, are the stats I receive as I perform my role, and it's in my best interest to always try to receive the best stats, so I can become a more valuable player, a more powerful player, a more highly-paid player...