Sanya Weathers's MMO Underbelly: Immersion
What breaks immersion for people in MMOs? Sanya runs through some of her pet peeves and lets off a little steam in this week's column
The great irony of MMOs is that nothing destroys my sense of immersion like events and activities designed to make me feel… immersed… in a living world.
That’s what immersion is to me, by the way. I want to believe, insofar as it is possible, that I am going about my life in a world different from my own. I want to pursue hobbies, talk to friends, go on adventures, and make some small mark on the world. I don’t necessarily want to think about the fact that it’s all being controlled by a computer and hosted in some charmless server farm.
That’s not to say that I want the world to be too realistic. For instance, I do not want to pay taxes, or suffer unduly because I didn’t have enough money to do something. Gold sinks are one thing, and I recognize that “paying rent” is just a gold sink. But if I fail to pay my rent, I want all my stuff to be waiting for me somewhere. Ultima Online’s old school solution – if you didn’t pay upkeep, the house crumbled and people could have your stuff – was way too real world for me.
But I’d rather have Ultima Online’s unforgiving reality than to have my nose rubbed in the fact that I’m playing a computer game, and it seems like the things that do the rubbing are things designed to please the immersion nerds like me.
Crafting, for example.
I was never really a crafter in EverQuest, because honestly, it was a fast track to carpal tunnel surgery. Plus, if you made metal bits in sufficient quantities to show major improvement in one sitting, you would be too encumbered to move. Nothing is quite as funny as a crafter plaintively crying out “Can someone come to the crafting area in Freeport and buff me? I can’t move.” But there’s nothing quite as annoying as BEING that crafter. And the first three hours of killing gray bears in order to get a pelt to sew up a ten slot backpack is one thing, but the next thirty hours is another, even if the tedium is broken up by killing that flying thing that terrorized newbies.
And crafting in Camelot was a challenge for me, because I knew too much. I also knew the guy who did the original design document, and he was a little too excited about making it “realistic.” He was going on at length during lunch one day about his plans, and my better half interrupted him to say, “So you’re taking the parts of life that suck and making them… the game?”
But every MMO with crafting/hobbies since then, including games currently in beta, I’ve had the bug. Too bad they’ve all had the same bug, er, feature, and that is that a maxed out superstar with all the trimmings and buffs in the world can still fall over a bucket of fail.
Oh, sure, it’s not as bad as EQ Original Recipe, where “failing” meant losing all of the materials. It’s not as bad as several of the old MMOs, where failing could actually kill you.
But in an MMO I can be a master fisherman who fails to catch fish with astonishing regularity. Listen, I actually know how to fish. I’m no master trout angler, or anything, I’m more of a “let’s sit on a shady dock or on a sunny boat and drink beer” kind of fisherman, but I do grasp the basics. And I stopped catching weeds more than once an hour as soon as I figured out how to cast. But I catch weeds all the time in my video games because A) I am dumb enough to enjoy virtual fishing, and B) the tables are set by someone who likes numbers, not someone who likes fishing.
Having “catch a weed” on a 10% frequency setting even for a master fisherman is annoying, but real rage is reserved for attempting to make an enchanted item and failing – losing the rare drop, magical enchanting thingy in the process. Losing materials in general is just stupid. It’s purely because somewhere a developer is getting his ass all clenchy at the thought of some crafter churning out high level gear with no risk. Or worse, I knew a dev once who seriously thought crafters wouldn’t REALLY enjoy crafting without an element of risk.
That’s true, to a point. But a master tailor should never, ever fail at making journeyman pants. Again, I’m looking at my real life experiences to measure my immersion. I’m as much of a seamstress as I am a fisherman, here – I’m never going to get a job at a jeans factory in China, but I can work a sewing machine and embroider without sticking myself in the eye. Past a certain point, you cannot fail – you just have varying degrees of good. But crafting is implemented by someone who can tolerate spreadsheets with minimal fatfingering, not someone who sews.
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Before anyone else says it... yes, I'm having some cheese with this wine.
Great article this week Sanya a good whine but also a good insight.
A couple of excellent points that are oh so true especially the play testing is the first to go.
Sadly that shouldnt be the case as dev should always have a grasp on their own game and community but it just never works out that way and as soon as those overtime figures are in it gets pulled.
Might I suggest some Sangiovese. I know Malbec is pretty trendy nowadays, but some Santa Cristina is a very tasty treat. :)
Seriously though, I love your articles. Honesty, but maintaining professionalism, especially when there is so much you probably want to say about things you've seen, experience, or heard about on the inside but cannot. I do not envy you, but I appreciate the glimpses you give us.
Realistic elements do not necessarily = greater immersion in a virtual world?
That at some point, what a player has "worked for" should have some noticeable effect, even if it is in the form of reducing mouse clicks...
Nice read.
In a rush, so thanks for that article is the best I can give. :)
I have to admit that there is a lot to this article that I agree with. I especially agree with the play testing idea. I've come to the conclusion that there are devs who just don't play their games.
Sometimes I wonder "how in the world did they think this would be fun?"
I'm not so sure I agree with the night time quest mob example because I believe there are better ways to handle quests like these.
Either make waiting in a particular area novel and interesting or one can even go as far as to allow the player a talisman that will warm to them (in a role play way of course) when the time for the apparition to appear happens.
heck, they can even allow the player to summon the aparition but it can only be done at night. This way the control is more in the player's hands.
Watch the video on the front page of this game company's site. It addresses the "flow" of a game that creates immersion.
www.siliconknights.com/
realistic elements at some points can be tiresome, frustrating, which leaves you with a feeling that is anything but immersive.
Immersion is a wonderful thing. However from my own crafting experience was the realization that I have been in fact spacing out on occasions. Yes, my body and mind pulls a perfectly executed space-out operation while I pleasantly mistaken it for immersion.
I am not sure if others might have experienced this, but as I was drowning in my workaholic streak, I completely lost track of both time and surrounding. To this date, I do not know if it was also a form of immersion or if I was simply one ticket away from obsessive-compulsive land.
It was a fun read.
Another well-venting article -- thanks!
And I thought I was the only one resorting to PBAoE's to attempt killing those cats. I *do* draw the line at virtual fishing tho!
Paul Barnett said that immersion is: "playing Halflife while your house burns down and your wife leaves you."
I think he said its more important for him to make the issue about imagination.
The biggest immersion killer for me is honestly guilds that require vent and use Vent.
In games where I *try* and get immersed, LOTRO now for example, and DAOC ages ago, I would refuse to use Vent or any form of voice software.
Nothing like getting prepared for that big boss fight and someone screams over Vent: "OMG! Did you see that home run that Manny hit?!?!". Or the guys getting yelled at by his wife to take out the trash and he forgot he is holding down the push to talk button.
Rule #1 for me is: if I want immersion, stay away from voice chat.
I will not listen to another word Paul Barnett says again due to that craptacular game called Warhammer. He also said he would not let people who hadn't bought in 100% to company/design vision and would take less talent designers because of this. (paraphrasing) I wonder if that had anything to do with al the bugs/issues/ design flaws of Warhamer?
Don't get me wrong, he's highly entertaining and he's probably one of the best pitchmen I"ve seen. Hell, he may even be a nice guy, but his mantra's ruined a great IP and helped tarnish a company's name even further. I do not ever see me purchasing a game that he's lead anything on.
This is precisely what I dislike about developers " they think their superwonderful, innnovative, and imaginative idea = fun.
I will not listen to another word Paul Barnett says again due to that craptacular game called Warhammer. He also said he would not let people who hadn't bought in 100% to company/design vision and would take less talent designers because of this. (paraphrasing) I wonder if that had anything to do with al the bugs/issues/ design flaws of Warhamer?
Don't get me wrong, he's highly entertaining and he's probably one of the best pitchmen I"ve seen. Hell, he may even be a nice guy, but his mantra's ruined a great IP and helped tarnish a company's name even further. I do not ever see me purchasing a game that he's lead anything on.
This is precisely what I dislike about developers " they think their superwonderful, innnovative, and imaginative idea = fun.
The problem is leads can NEVER be wrong, they are like a parent to the worlds ugliest baby looking upon their child as if it's the worlds bonniest baby even though 100s of thousands of people are telling them it's a butt ugly child they just can't themselves see it.
Unless you then have money men who have the balls to say look mate your child's ugly take it for plastic surgery then nothing generally happen's.
I have an objective method of measuring immersion. Pure timelessness in play is a perfect ten, "omg please let me get back to camp so I can turn this thing off" is a zero. Quantifying between the two is quite easy.
I'm a nutcase when it comes to a game providing immersion. Route my work calls to voicemail, 3 xl pizzas in the fridge, and its game time! Scr*w reality, I'll deal with it later.
Ken
You brought up a couple of great points...such as the "critical failure" for master <pick your favorite crafting profession or hobby> that really irritates the hell out of me some days. Your rant about it, however, was far more hilarious than any of my rants on th same subject: I laughed so hard while reading this that my brother was like, "WTF are you reading?!" :D
I enjoy the wine to your article, actually. It took me right back to catching gazillions and gazillions of rusty buckets/armor pieces in FFXI when pulling up the 10k moat carps required for "Lu Shang's Fishing Rod".... which, of course, was an item that could break (ARGH!)... and it could possibly wind up "destroyed"/lost during interrupted repairs. Glad I never experienced something as awful as that, though people would break them on purpose to help LS-mates lvl carpentry. I never had the stomach to do so after catching so many freaking moat carps though. (;-_-)
Fishing always blows me away though, and I think you've captured one of the shortcomings of MMOs perfectly. I guess we are choosing to do these activities in game, and I'm an avid crafter too (though the grind wears on me like anybody else). Still, there's a point where you have to wonder if the dev was simply time-crunched and lazy (like you describe), or are utterly sadistic people with no regard for moral decency... =D
There should be fish in the water (even if you aren't fishing) that are hungry (or not) and when you put your line in they should take a bite or swim away. Obviously its all just a bunch of numbers and scripts but it is far too obvious in MMO's I agree, maybe in a few years we will have the technological ability to have these details in a virtual world.
Neatly put and made me smile at memories of "metal bits" immobility.
As Neosai mentioned there's also an OCD trance state in certain game activities which is different from immersion - although it can be equally relaxing sometimes - but I'm definitely an immersion junkie given the chance. For me it's like when you're squashed like a sardine on the train to work after being soaked in a downpour and you couldn't be more fed up but then you open a good book and almost immediately you forget everything and start enjoying yourself. Immersion is just a great way to relax when it works. A lot of players don't care about immersion obviously and often the things immersionists like are the exact same things other people hate the most so it's a tricky business.
But you put your finger on the other aspect of the problem where attempts at creating immersion aren't thought out properly and I'd imagine your suggested solution is probably correct - also completely agree about crafting and certain thresholds where you stop failing low skill activities. If you do a skilled manual trade and your failure rate was 5% you'd never keep a job.
Edit: Also I don't think immersion is about trying to create realism - I think it's about creating an impression of realism. I think the best analogy is the kind of painting where with a few brushstrokes the artist suggests a shape and your imagination fills in the gaps.
Oh, I don't know, I can see experienced crafters having critical failures.
Take Stargate Worlds for example. Look at how many years of combined experience all that talent had, and yet, they went to craft a journeyman game and came up with a critical failure. All the time that was spend accumulating all those items with portraits of various dead Presidents on them gone to waste.
Vanguard is another example, as is Tabula Rasa. .
I mean, like who'd have ever thunk it that Brad McQuade and Richard Garriott could have had a critical failure in crafting?
But they did.........
Isn't that why designers build it into their game, just to remind themselves.......?.
“So you’re taking the parts of life that suck and making them… the game?”
What a classic quote. I was truely rolling on the floor laughing with that one. I wonder if that unnamed guy ever realized what a piece of crap he constructed in DAoC. One of the worst crafting designs I have seen.
Just curious Sanya, what are the QA people doing in these shops? How do they let such obvious flaws stay in the code? Is QA just superfulous?
In a business environment, if QA says no, it means no, you go fix it or else. Is Blizzard the only shop that actually tries to run their game development like a business, is that why they are so successful?
Devs playing the game is good but focus testing is better. For instance take the devs of swg. They are by far the most clueless devs I have seen. Why would you create an mmo with space combat content and then have nothing to do at max lvl accept mine or grind on npcs for loot. You need a pvp objective that gives a reward of some kind! But they give us new houses? What the hell are they thinking? Crafting is great in swg although vanguard crafting is better I think, but crafting is not the most important part of the game. If you don't have fun combat you don't have a good game.
SWG could be easily fixed with focus testing and lots of it. Actually they need a new engine for the ground game and then focus test the piss out of it like ND is doing for Jumpgate evolution.
Fixed :D
I've played since EQ1 as well, and we share these pet peeves. So thank you for pointing out how incredibly obvious and counterproductive these failures are to someone who is actually playing the game. Trying to increase immersion with contrived events is just guaranteeing that the immersion feels contrived. No mystery, no masters degree necessary to figure that out, yet this junk gets approved, coded and rolled out, even though virtually every player over the age of 10 just shakes their head at the stupidity of it all and tries to move beyond it.
I've often thought that game design must be taken away from large companies because of one simple fact - the "fun stuff" that is guaranteed to be approved by big company management to go into the game is the exact same kind of "fun stuff" that is approved to go into corporate parties planned by your Activities department.
And we all know just how fun and immersive those events are lol. Can you see them designing an MMO? It'd be like Zombie Sims with party hats lol.
I hate to break it to you, but if QA ran the show, Vista would have been a success. What you need to remember is that MMOs and any other specialty business is by nature totally dependent upon specialists to create ROI. QA (and I btw, albeit on a different level) is in the business of telling programmers, upon whom the entire investment rides, where they are wrong and have to change their ways.
This does not go over well. Ever. So, business makes a choice. Do we keep the people who are our only hope for ROI happy, or do we make them unhappy to please the doomcloud who's concerns have no basis in fact save for his or her claim to represent our as-yet imaginary customers? Even if Mr. or Ms. Doomcloud is absolutely right, the effects of that will be felt after launch, while the effects of the recommended change will be felt right now in the production schedule. Guess where the fuzzy warm security-blanket feeling is for the business side?
Per my previous post, I really believe game design needs to be freed from cubicle world. It's no secret that the most player-pleasing designs come from small shops who are directly connected with their customers, and the biggest abortions come from huge shops who are workingaup in ivory-tower cubicle land.
The absurdity of some in-game abstractions has become the butt of an ongoing household contest. In general, when a game fails to entertain, we (wife and I) entertain ourselves at the game's expense. We're locked in a cycle of one-upsmanship in the ridiculous descriptions we concoct for our in-game actions, and no aspect of game design has provided as rich support for this as crafting.
Blacksmithing failed? Understandable, lots of things can go wrong. Alchemy? Likewise. Sewing? We're starting to inch towards comedic territory, but nothing approaches the surreality of coming up with an explanation for how you failed to pick a flower and put it in your bag.
"After I grab the flower, I'm supposed to jam it in my eye, right? Am I supposed to do that before, or after, I set it on fire?"
<Attempt failed>
Lol I read the title as "weather immersion" and I thought, yea games should have more realistic weather to help players feel immersed in the game.
I came to post about the same to this this article, at least I can agree with you totally :)
I understand the need, and sometimes even the wish, to use voiceware and there are times I did use them for and/or while in game. But everytime I do the world I dive into to have my gaming fun shrinks down to what it actually is: moving an avatar around on my computer's screen. Not only breaking the immersion, taking away a large part of fun, too...
Anyhow, maybe you could make a series out of this article: Major Immersion Breakers today. I feel that judging from its headline it only touches some very few aspects.
Ya wow, i can't believe i actually read through all of that. A few good points, but you really failed to discuss "immersion" which WAS the topic, yes? Instead you ranted on crafting and foraging and how drawling it is. No sh!t, eh?
Well in her defense she did admit it was somewhat of a rant, did she not?
But the rant still follows with immersion. When developers make things like crafting, gathering and similar events painful and irritating it takes away from the immersion of the game because the player will generally say or think to themselves... "What F'n idiot put that into a game?" instead of just rolling with the flow of the game.
Funny piece but not sure i really agree with much of it.
Which MMOs of the last 5 years really allow you to fail to craft stuff? Let alone fail to gather? Vanguard does, but only because it has a crafting system that is a full game in in itself. Other than that. all the others I've played are pretty much No Fail, at least once you have levelled past the recipe.
Domino, the crafting Dev in EQ2, is probably the most hands-on I've seen. I'd bet she crafts in real life as well as in game. Crafting there improved about 1000% after she took over.
I liked the sheer physicality of original EQ crafting. Having to open the forge and put the items into it, and having them actually "there" in the world, so that if you walked off and left something behind it would still be there for someone else to come across when they went to use the forge... that's immersion. But all the same I didn't craft to high levels there, whereas i did in later MMOs where it was just "stand vaguely near crafting station and press one button". Immersion doesn't always equal playability.
I do like complex interactions of wildlife/NPCs, though. Ryzom has some of the best. You can watch the wildlife for a long time there and its as immersive as going on a nature walk. WAR has a very surprising degree of subtlety and variety in this regard, too, especially considering how "thin" the PvE is generally.
I do think a lot more could be done in this area in most MMOS, and it really does make a huge difference to player loyalty, Ithink.
mmos, by there very nature, completely obliterate immersion. Every chat channel breaks it. Seeing some 'tard bunny hopping down the road wearing a flowery dress and carrying a giant battle axe breaks it. Voice applications break it.
ETC.
The only way I can ever get immersed in an mmo is to turn off (or hide) all chat channels and ignore every other player on the server.
As far as I remember there were no skripts at night spawn mobs in Midgard - but i hated to wait for Lynnleigh on the island near Vasudheim. :)
Nice writing with some good points - i have still the hope for an entertaining, challenging and usefull crafting system in the future ... 2020 seems to be a good date for it *g*
I remember a night spawn in Hibernia . If I'm correct it was a quest to do with a thief in Bri Leith near a lake. Oh I miss the old days...
Nice article, I thought it was kinda funny, especially the repeating script part.
While I agree with you that a game shouldn't have every mundane little action included for the sake of immersion, I do think there should be a significant effort put into the game to make it feel fairly believable.
Right now, I'm only really looking to Indy developers to do something real innovating in this department, even though I'm real hyped for SW:ToR, but for different reasons than immersion.
Good read, keep 'em coming.
Actually, there were several. One was for a spraggon type mob right outside of Huginfell, the tree by the lake. There was also one near Dvalin for a named ghost that would pop at night near the fort on the road.
I played all three realms and I know that DAoC had more time of day spawn events than any other game I played. EQ had a lot of long spawn timers period, didn't matter if it was night or day. It was their primary method of prolonging content, if you can even call it content.
That's big on my list too. The more a world is simulated, the more immersive it is. Even little things like the sounds of footsteps on different surfaces adds to immersion.
Whenever I'm in a dungeon, I always wish that looking for secret panels to push for a discovery was in the game. I always wish that books told stories that gave me clues as to what to do to reveal a secret room. It's ok if some things have been discovered before, UO had those "hidden locations" that everyone wanted, but some were darn few who had. It's also ok if it takes a year for someone to finally make a discovery, all the more interesting.
There are loads of ways to make a game world more immersive. A lot of it is fluff, but fluff is good.
After the last several articles from MMORPG.com, I fully expected this to be a rant about how immersion is a bullshit buzzword referring to an exclusively personal phenomenon espoused by only the loseriest of losers and oh don't we all pity them--but instead I found Sanya echoing some of my own thoughts. All I can say is, 'Yay'.
Whine is an understatement. More like rampant nagging and nitpicking. I guess it really depends on the goal of the feature. Is it supposed to add immersion or just a time sink? Many mmorpgs acts as a quasi-slot machine. Pull the crank and see what you get. This design feature is in nearly every part of generalized mmorpgs. Its usually a safe way to go as well, since the harder you try to make something immersive, the bigger the risk you just make it more alienating. Some of those slot machine like mechanics are fun, they are getting old sure, but not necessarily a bad thing.They are time sinks where the run is in the chances, even failing is a chance.
Now i agree the immersion factor needs to be re-addressed, but you are getting way to whiny for it to be truly constructive. Less cheese more meatBALLS!
"when the project manager, promoted for his charm and not his talent, fails to hit his deadlines."
We have one cat here who did not get her cream. Who was this charming lack wit I wonder? :)
Devs playing the game is good but focus testing is better. For instance take the devs of swg. They are by far the most clueless devs I have seen. Why would you create an mmo with space combat content and then have nothing to do at max lvl accept mine or grind on npcs for loot. You need a pvp objective that gives a reward of some kind! But they give us new houses? What the hell are they thinking? Crafting is great in swg although vanguard crafting is better I think, but crafting is not the most important part of the game. If you don't have fun combat you don't have a good game.
SWG could be easily fixed with focus testing and lots of it. Actually they need a new engine for the ground game and then focus test the piss out of it like ND is doing for Jumpgate evolution.
Depends on the focus testers TBH.
Lets face it a Focus Test group brought us the NGE.
MMO's will run many types of Focus Testing and then try and find the middle ground.
Your current playerbase.
Gamers but not playing your product.
Non-Gamers
They are just a few example's and often will include varying age ranges of the above groups, you then have to try and design a system that will appease your current playerbase whilst appealing to the new players and often that is a very hard judgement to make, The MMO that gets that right will be a critical success.
Good article! I know I wanted to kill the frackin 'speech' NPCs in Freeport in EQ2 that would hail me with the same stupid one liner until I clogged up my quest logs with their inane run around town quests just to avoid the speech :p
That whole crafting business has a simple solution and I can't for the life of me understand why not more mmo's follow suit of games like Neocron.
You make crafter a specific selection that doesn't exist alongside classes or combat skill-sets, but is a class or a skill-set of it's own. So that if you choose to be a crafter, you can't be a warrior too. You're either a crafter, a warrior or a wizard. Or you either choose a next tier of a craft or an improved warrior skill, but not both.
Why would people bring a poorer fighter to a fight? Simple, cuz they need the crafter for other things and they wouldn't dream of shutting that player out.
f you do this, crafting can be so much phatter and starts to really shine.
I played a crafter in such a game and I loved it. I was maybe.. 30% less combat effective than my warrior or wizard counterparts, but it never bothered me at all cuz I knew that after the fighting, those same people would literally line up at my door and politely comission me for something they wanted.
MMO's has GOT to stop trying to be everything for everyone all the time everywhere. If you wanna talk about immersion breaker, it's right there. ALL players look for uniqueness and if MMO designers think that their customers are vaccinated against coming to terms with real sacrfices in order to play a specific role, they're dead wrong. Players starve for this opportunity. The more uniqueness they can cram inside one server population without stagnating overall progression, the better.
The principle can easily be transferred to other roles as well, and would fit right into the "solo mmo" debate. For years now, MMO's have sacrificed social fundamentals like symbiosis on the altar of independence and accessability and have chemically removed identity in the process.
This is one of the better articles i have read lately. Your topic isn't so obvios that were all going "duh!" or so contrived that we're all wondering why your wasting the finger excercise writing this out.
Well chosen topic and I have to say I'm with you on the contrived content.
Well done.
Your article fails because it's really a rant about crafting, not about immersion. These issues have little to do with immersion and everything to do with economic and skill balance from a design perspective.
You fail, because every single mechanic and every bit of content and every nuance of art and sound has absolutely everything to do with immersion.
You also fail, because she specifically talks about questing and timed spawns as well.
No. You simply believe your way is the only way to achieve immersion.
No one can possibly say what defines immersion, especially not for someone else. Immersion is an idea, there are no universal laws that determine whether something is considered immersion.
At the risk of riding the fence, Trench is right, but I believe the article was written judging MMORPG's for what they are, not necessarily what they should be. So from my point of view the article didn't fail. From Trench's point of view, it sounds to me like, it just wasn’t thorough enough.
All you have to do is read the presentation in my sig to find out what I think of MMORPG economics as they exist and I even define my own solution to the problem.
The #1 thing that ruins immersion for me is the chat system. All modern MMOs have whispers and global / area-wide chat channels where everyone can communicate telepathically and every school kid can use it as their playground. UO didn't have this originally - restricted communication is something I really appreciate now that it's gone.
It also used to make cities more meaningful as people would naturally gather there in order to socialize, meet-up, and do business. It's all "new and improved" but imo it's most certainly not better.
Nowadays you can be alone, deep within a forest in the middle of the night. You kneel down to examine the deer's mutilated corpse. It's fresh and the beast that killed it must be close. Suddenly you hear a twig snap loudly behind you and you spin around to confront the....
Bumnugget whispers: "U HEEL?"
You reply: "Sorry busy atm"
Bumnugget whispers: "K"
.. werewolf. The first thing you notice are it's piercing yellow eyes which almost seem to glow in the darkness. Suddenly it crouches down to pounce and snarls loudly. You fumble...
[General Chat] Imtwelve: "anal [Ravage]"
[General Chat] ChickNurras: "anal [Backstab]"
[General Chat] Lolwut: "STFU"
... for your silver dagger. The werewolf leaps towards you. It's roar thundering through you, causing near-heart stopping panic, with it's sharp claws outstretched, glimmering in the moonlight.
Joe whispers: "Hey man. Work sucked today :("
You: ":("
Your hand closes over your dagger's hilt and you draw it and thrust outward in blind fear as the monster crashes in to you, it's huge body pinning you to the ground. You're aware your left shoulder is injured but it's still numb and you stab frantically with your right arm, burying the dagger in to it's ribs over and over.
Joe whispers: "Yeah. My boss is really getting on my nerves. He gave me a written warning for being late again."
Xdsfkljsdflkjsdf whispers: "Visit www.gold4mmostuff.com"
Xdsfkljsdflkjsdf whispers: "Visit www.gold4mmostuff.com"
Xdsfkljsdflkjsdf whispers: "Visit www.gold4mmostuff.com"
Xdsfkljsdflkjsdf whispers: "Visit www.gold4mmostuff.com"
[General Chat] ChickNurras: "anal [Rip]"
Bumnugget whispers: "U HEEL?"
/logout
Almost every game has filters, just use um...
I've thought about this a lot and I don't believe that's a workable solution. Besides any ignore list limit (10 in WoW I think?), if you filter the chat yourself then that's just you doing it. It still doesn't encourage other people to go to cities and taverns to meet up and do business, and largely just gives you a reputation for being ignorant. You'll also never get a group unless you participate in these global telepathic communities.
I know I'll be in a minority about this but it's my personal bug-bear.
Ironically, attempting to make a game realistic will only make the unrealistic parts stand out - like the health bar. These will kill immersion anyway unless you sit motionlessly on a pier (so you don't notice the clipping) and fish.
realism and immersion are two different things.
In a movie like Star Wars, 300 , Alice in Wonderland people became immersed in an unrealistic environment.
Also movies like The Patriot/ Braveheart/ or King Arthur which had a realistic enivornment it was possible to be immersed.
The trick to immersion whether the gameplay is realistic or not is to make it fun. Fishing in wow is boring as hell to me but playing the fishing games with the controller rod on PS 2 was absolutely fun.
The problem is people don't talk in old english and if you make them your immersion is going to be ruined in another respect, lack of population as people will leave and play WoW where they can say whatever they want....
Depending on my mood I vary in this from being exactly the same as your post all the the way to liking barrens chat. I don't think it would be that hard to have simple checkbox options for some of this:
1. No whispers unless grouped - maybe with a list of exceptions. A lot of people would tick this because of the gold sellers.
2. No region chat except in cities or dungeons. I'd tick something like this depending on mood.
I'd normally want to be able to make a couple of exceptions for a help channel and a LFG channel so you could uncheck region chat but keep those - assuming those channels were well policed.
Thinking about it, it does seem to come down mostly to the chat channel filtering being specific enough for what people want. I like the idea of a "no whispers unless grouped" option with an exception list. I don't think I've seen that in any game so far.
I've thought about this a lot and I don't believe that's a workable solution. Besides any ignore list limit (10 in WoW I think?), if you filter the chat yourself then that's just you doing it. It still doesn't encourage other people to go to cities and taverns to meet up and do business, and largely just gives you a reputation for being ignorant. You'll also never get a group unless you participate in these global telepathic communities.
I know I'll be in a minority about this but it's my personal bug-bear.
Not ignore, but filter. Two different things. Example: Filter off general chat when playing unless you need to ask something.
Thank you Sanya
I had a great time reading and laughing all the way through it. I can not tell you how many times I have felt the same way about crafting and questing. You see I don't play MMOs all the time, some times I like to make things in my shop out of wood. And although it is posable to cut yourself or hit your finger with an hammer, for the most part I stopped doing that along time ago. I've been making things out of wood for alittle over 25 years, so when I set down and start to make a chair, it ends up being just what I wanted it to be. I do not loss the wood (PUFF its gone),I do not come up with TWO chairs, And you can take it to the bank that I will make more money selling my chair than the cost of the wood it took to make.
Again thanks
Not ignore, but filter. Two different things. Example: Filter off general chat when playing unless you need to ask something.
Yes, I realize that but the effect is the same. It would just be me personally choosing to not the see the messages and wouldn't encourage people to hang around in social locations nor make me seem any less ignorant!
To enjoy "immersion" in a game it really helps to have absolutely zero formal education in history, geology, botany, chemistry, or meteorology or have any experience with "oldy-time" trades such as blacksmithing or be involved in any SCA chapter.
To have any of the above only ensures that you will be yanking your hair out at the apparent ignorance or outright idiocy of world and game system designers.
Drev
Drevar, that's so true.
Immersion can mean different things but in MMO shorthand we tend to think of realism or simulation that transports us from the comfort of our homes to this alternate universe. The fact is there are very few MMOs that have even tried. To me crafting and fishing mechanics seem like symptoms of the problem more than the root issue.
I think, for me, immersive game design means the designers really understand how things do work in the real world and have as a goal creating a space where players truly feel a part of that world. However, they have to do this in a way that makes the experience enjoyable and rewarding. How's that for a vague and unhelpful couple of words? Different people find different experiences enjoyable and different kinds of kudos or bits of bling rewarding.
So let's focus on gamers who presumably want both realistic immersion (or at least plausible immersion) in a setting. How would a designer interested in immersion go about crafting or fishing?
Well, no need to reinvent the wheel. But it might be smart to look at other games beyond the genre to see how they handle things and maybe learn from why they're successful. There are fishing games out there. They may have more depth and complexity than a minigame in an MMO needs but you can pare the concept, which repeats across all titles, down to basic elements of chosing lures, casting and allowing the player "twitch" based control of the rod. That's right. Make it an action game. Keep most functional rewards limited to that minigame. The successes you have may allow access to trophies that can be decoratively displayed, meat that can be sold or used as a crafting ingredient, and perhaps have other rewards like better gear, more lures, and so forth, but it should primarily feed back into itself. No magic items. Just fish. But make those fish interesting. Make catching them challenging.
In other words, make it a game that would be worth playing on its own merits and based on somewhat realistic, if simplified, principles.
Crafting's a bit harder. You almost need that repetitious and boring element in there to weed out those who aren't as interested in being a master crafter as those who are else everyone and his brother will be a master crafter or have one as an alt - and this can create an overabundance of high end goods on the market. Goods created have to have a real function in the game and, in a perfect crafting game, must be superior to anything that can be scrounged as dropped loot. Complexity is what made crafting so interesting to those who loved it in old school SWG and to this day most player-crafters constantly cite it as the best crafting game ever. In SWG you could really dig into resource stats, develop your own high end tools (or buy them) to make the best product, create networks of suppliers for resources and subcomponents. Much of the grindwork, once you got past a certain point, could be managed by using item blueprints in factories or setting mining rigs up to draw in resources from an ever changing pool of geographically positioned raw materials. And those materials themselves had a host of traits which made keeping track of them and stockpiling reserves against shortages a very key thing.
If someone got good at this they'd become famous. In all cases the crafter's name was stuck on the items he made and usually established "brands" of very high end goods would be custom named in order to further set them apart on the market.
How many other games would let a crafter become that famous or sought after? Very few if any. In all other games crafting is a cookiecutter activity that produces generic rewards.
That doesn't help alleviate the grinding issue and certainly factors like encumbrance can be a pain. But instead of eliminating it I'd include wagons in the universe. Load it up and haul your stuff around as needed. One of SWG's big failings was a lack of rhyme or reason in the space portion of the game. People could just teleport from world to world and carry as much stuff as they wanted, almost, while doing it. So when space ships finally showed up nobody needed them to haul goods or passengers. Imagine Han Solo trying to make a living in that universe. Conversely we see in Eve Online that a huge amount of the gameplay comes from, not just PvP, but from the adventures that arise naturally from logistics and transport across long (and time consuming) distances. It's not always exciting in High Sec, though many long haulers have fun chatting/roleplaying with friends as they fly, but in Low Sec or 0.0 things get far more interesting and risky.
Here's an old article on Immersion, literally called "On Immersion", from my blog. It's a roleplayer's perspective on the topic but many of my blog entries touch on the subject because it's just that important.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/OddjobXL/022009/3374_On-Immersion
"Immersion is a loaded word with different meanings for different folks but it's one I'll sit down and discuss with you.
What? I can't sit? That's not a good sign. A sitting avatar often means, in roleplayese, "Sit down and talk to me." Nonroleplayers tend to be rushing around everywhere, places to go and things to kill, but roleplayers love a cozy setting where they can plop their bums down and just do their thing. Not being able to sit immediately reminds a player his avatar is just a character in a game and, when that happens, poof goes immersion. It's the canary in the coal mine - either a developer gets this off the bat or he probably is missing alot of other stuff roleplayers look for.
Immersive elements include setting, control, dynamism and simulation...."
And it goes on from there.
Heh, a rant. I should know, I'm a ranter myself.
Developers playtest EVE, we all know how that ended (cough, cheating, cough, exploiting, cough). Besides if management tells them to do things they will do it and make that little script that fills the gap. But have no fear, games like that die and you get to try a new one, free market is working in world of mmos. If you don't like WOW you just don't play it, simple as that. If a game starts annoying you instead of making you glad you played it it's time to move on.
Besides we all know that 99% of developers never ever tests their code out. Ever! Any industry in the world. This is why QA teams are huge for all who want to make a quality product.
From what was discussed in that article, immersion sound pretty expensive.
I think my post was more intended to explore the subject than offer practical solutions. A new pair of eyes for how to view MMO design when thinking about immersion. If it worked on that level I might have succeeded. If not, no harm in trying.
Excellent article, Sanya, as always.
I find your point about faliure and level of expertise in crafting is very true, but so is the risk element your friend states crafters need. To a point, you're both right.
If you haven't played UO in a while, do so, if for no other reason than crafting. It's the perfect blend, in my opinion, of what crafting in a game SHOULD be.
1) Lots of harvesting for gains. This may sound dull, but it's done in such a way that you get a decent quantity very quickly. How realistic is it that you can advance your skill, as a crafter, with 2 pieces of metal?
2) You do fail and lose materials. A lot. This makes sense because, hey, you're LEARNING the trade. You're going to make mistakes. Ever have to make a set of toaster tongs in shop class in high-school? If you mess up, that piece of wood you messed up with isn't going to be used for anything else, save tooth picks.
3) When you master a carft, the lower level stuff is almost gaurnteed to not fail. As you said, it makes sense, that higher level stuff even a master can struggle with, but entry-level items and equipment are easily done.
4) There's a LOT more control and diversity in crafting coming with the new UO expansion, Stygian Abyss. Imbuing is just one aspect.
5) Variety. Carpentry, Tinkering, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Alchemy, Fletching, Cooking, soon Imbuing. So many different crafts, for so many different purposes, from the standard equipment and potions, to stuff that's just pure marzipan for housing.
It's for these reasons that I think UO has the best elements of both realism and practicality in a game's crafting system that you simply can't find anywhere else. Crafting is the chief reason I still play UO to this day. I love it. I love the slowness, the steady pace of it. It's cathartic. It's something you do because you love to do it, not because you need to. And the fact that I feel the community is so much better than other games I've played (At least he community I'm in, in terms of guild, server, etc.), and RP is more prevelant in that community (Again, the one I play in) doesn't hurt either.
I think that's why games shouldn't aim at realism but only at an impression of realism e.g woodwork crafting needing a plane or a saw tool as a re-usable component but never explicitly being used. It should be very impressionistic and aimed at creating the *feeling* of realism not the actuality.
Yes, make managing the weight issue part of the process - pack animal, cart, wagon. hired porters etc.
Immersion...
I want the computer's operating system to mearly be the means for my avatar to travel through cyberspace from one game world to another.
Life is a game, xcept there are no 1ups.
Vanguard's harvesting and crafting system is excellent. Tabula Rasa never got to have a crafting system because they pushed the game out before it was ready.
Both of them are not failures of game design, but both were victims of being pushed out half finished. In the case of vanguard, microsoft had a change of priorities to the Xbox and cut off funding. In tabulsa Rasa, although the game had been in development for so long, the game had actually be redesigned a couple times and the version we got had the core of an awesome game it just needed another year in development to actually realize it's potential.
The number one immersion killer these days is *drum roll*
Instancing
How can you possibly explain having the exact same looking area duplicated in the same world? You can't and it is the devs lazy way of handling more load. Just create X number of identical clone zones! yaaay
Some games are ok when it comes to instancing but when it comes to games like AoC, which holds only about 50 people before popping another instanced, I doubt I can still call them MMORPGs.
beta testing, play testing. i don't think half the mmo producers know what beta testing is.
You know, where you just reset the server every so often and wipe everything, or set up users in a random level for a while, let them run about as that level, then wipe the characters stats at the end of the week as if they never existed. Because it's not as if these accounts are real things and the people using them think they are playing the real game.
Or put in beta-only devices into the world that allow players to change their level or class or stats with a click. To fiddle and see if there's less nerfing after a particular level, or if something is fair in one class or another. And then wipe the results clean as if they never existed at the end of the week. It's not like you'll be pissing off players since it's a BETA test and they won't be paying for it. An idea for the developer to gain feedback would be to have a "rate this quest" star system in the beta on each quest, or a "exciting/annoying" button you could press on a script/npc to tally stats on what you think of it during that phase of the testing.
You the developer get feedback and see how people play and statistics and everything you need.
Because nobody who participates in a beta of a game would actually be silly enough to believe they were "playing" the "real thing" would they?
Well, if each dungeon is only used once or if the dungeons are randomly generated then there are even worse problems than instancing to worry about. It is not out of laziness, but out of practicality and production cost.
Randomly generated dungeons might sound like a good idea, but in reality it can only be used to a certain extent. All randomly generated dungeons are based on a set of parameters, and these parameters cannot be too complex other wise the dungeon will just be one big zone full of bugs and errors. However if it is simple, then then players might not be entertained after a few times through.
If the developer keep designing a new dungeon every week, then the cost of maintaining a game becomes sky high. Maybe if they charge each player $100 dollar a month this could be easily remedied, but I doubt anyone will pay that price to simply have new dungeons to go through every few days.
If a developer can find a cost effective solution to instancing I am sure they would jump at it, but for now they will stick with instancing more often than not.
I don't think randomized systems need to be buggy or boring. We see randomized gameplay in singleplayer games that keeps them alive for decades - one can point to Daggerfall as an example of bad randomization or to X-Com or Civilization or even The Sims as Exhibit A for how to do it right. Isn't the goal of an MMO to maintain longevity and to retain customers over a long haul? Isn't the biggest complaint often the lack of "end game" content? The popularity of PvP with MMO designers is in no small part due to the fact that it's got relatively low overhead from their point of view and keeps players, who like that sort of thing, entertained. However we know this to be a fairly modest subset of the market and even PvPers want PvE content that isn't boring and mindless. In fact, most PvPers will defend PvP gameplay by pointing out just how repetitious and unrewarding, in terms of fun or challenge, PvE gameplay often is in MMOs.
Yes, good randomized or dynamic systems will require a heavy front-end investment because getting them wrong would be worse than not having them at all. Get them right, on the other hand, could for once give us gameplay in an MMO that resembles actual game-like gameplay! Even more important that variability does breed immersion. If you can't just sleepwalk through a generic situation because you've done it 500 times before and have memorized the gamefaq then suddenly what's actually happening before your eyes matters enough to get you to disable the macros and put guildchat on hold while you pay attention to what's going on. That's immersion, baby.
Good to see Sanya is back to that terrible whiny writing style she started with, the type that is irritating to even read.
So to sum this up, Sanya wants a game that is easy mode and always rewards her but never punishes her. If she makes a mistake she wants the game to say hey don't worry about it, no such things as mistakes so here your stuff back try again.
The game she is asking for would be the worst game ever, no penalty to crafting so then every item is worthless because there's no risk in making them, everyone can and no one loses any materials on failing. Terrible that a person who works for a site called MMORPG wants such a non MMORPG.
And to complain about some ambient noises? Really? Who cares, and for that matter if you are waiting for the creature that only spawns at night to come back, uh well come back at night don't just stand there when it just turned day for it to turn night again.
This literally is one of the worst columns I have ever read.
I have to laugh when I think how many of these "problems" can be answered with one word: EVE. While certainly not without its problems, it does address all of these quite well:
Instancing - deadspace complexes are handled separately but still exist in "real space". They require special probes for other players to find (and ninja salvage if they want to), but they can be found. And their whole existance is explained nicely as some sort of subspace phenomena. Aside from this, EVE doesn't make use of much "instancing" and is the only MMO (afaik) where every single player is in the same realm.
Manufacturing - is always successful as long as you a) have the prerequisite skills (which sometimes take YEARS to acquire -literally) and b) materials (which can also be a challenge sometimes, as some things REQUIRE items you can only get as drops - kind of chiken-eggish, no?). Too bad its as boring as heck and the outcome is always the same (plop, ship, plop, another ship...). Why can't my corp make a spiffy looking Rifter than the next corp, or spend more time to make a better one, or shave off some time to make a cheaper one.
Missions - there's no standing around waiting for a mission - you can either do it now, or not do it at all. The only queues I've noticed in EVE is when a jump gate gets backlogged. Missions are fun (at first) and drop you into the combat (or situation) almost instantly. That being said, they get a little repetitve after a while (especially if you're career focussed) and have zero impact on the realm as-is (sad).
EVE has its share of problems (griefing, steep learning curve, blob-warefare, rapant piracy, mining/manufacturing-grinding, shallow character creation, lack of player customization, scamming, etc), but in these areas I have to give it credit for not falling into the MMO rut everyother game seems to be in right now.
Sanya Weathers for President!
Another great piece of work!
Quoted For Truth
But to put that type of crafting into a MMO has exploit written all over it!
I've thought about this a lot and I don't believe that's a workable solution. Besides any ignore list limit (10 in WoW I think?), if you filter the chat yourself then that's just you doing it. It still doesn't encourage other people to go to cities and taverns to meet up and do business, and largely just gives you a reputation for being ignorant. You'll also never get a group unless you participate in these global telepathic communities.
I know I'll be in a minority about this but it's my personal bug-bear.
In most of the MMOs I play I have several chat boxes. One has most of its exclusive filters set and another is rather open to all the global stuff. The latter box is labeled "Blather'.
Some days I like to log on and explore, trying to be immersed. Other times I will sit and listen to the "blather" until I feel sick... Sometimes I feel like I am playing "Space Invaders" with a chat box.
Quoted for Truth.
As a soldier, carpenter and amateur historian, I sometimes wonder why I even bother with anything the popular media presents me. It's always so frustatingly innaccurate. I also love the response anytime someone brings up how a game mechanic is unrealistic and fundamentally flawed: "This is a game and not meant to be real." To me, that arguement is sad like that two-handed sword made out of tin. Couldn't MMOs be an opportunity to learn about stuff? As opposed to the same, old slot-machine mechanics hidden under prettier graphics.