It's all about managing expectations

I'm not suggesting that non-raiders are dirty hobos, but maybe they should want to be.




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The problems of linear progression

Yesterday I advocated returning to something closer to linear progression for raiding and heroics: raid X, then raid Y, then raid Z. The goal, and hopefully the effect of it, is to separate players out by skill and experience, so that if we are in a certain tier of content, we are with similarly skilled and geared players. Contrast this with heroics which throw everyone into the same group and raids which divide only into normal and heroic.

There are some major problems with a linear progression design.

Bottlenecks

One problem is the bottleneck guild-killer boss. Blackwing Lair was notorious for these. One boss that players just could not get down. After months of no progress players would quit, sometimes the guild, sometimes WoW altogether. Beside this, getting stuck with one boss as the only new one to try isn't fun at all. Variety is important and you can only wipe on Razorgore for so long before you get sick of the sight of eggs.

Don't have a single raid at each tier. Have two at least. Early Lich King had three different raids at the first tier, which while two were single-boss raids, they still served to give someplace different to wipe in, a needed change of scenery. These may also allow players to gear up a little more, reducing the relative difficulty of the boss they're stuck on and allowing for more progress. The extend to which one raid can make the other easier is important to consider, since the purpose of the other raids are not to let players skip difficulty content, but to give variety and some ability to self-determine the difficulty, without trivializing encounters.

Another way to bypass the bottleneck boss is to have a "one free kill" mechanic. Each week you get one free boss dead. It gives no loot, no achievement or meta-achievement progress, no quest progress, cannot be skinned, mined, or engineered. It's just not in your way anymore. Go on and die to something else. I'm not as enamored this fix, but I think it's worth thinking about, if only for the value in finding why it's bad.

Ideally every boss would be harder than the one before it, so that bottleneck bosses would be a measure of the skill of the guild/raid, with progress and skill being exactly linked. But skill isn't a number to be easily expressed as greater or less than a threshold. This means that there will always be earlier bosses which for particular raids are harder than later bosses, meaning that there will always be bottlenecks.

Left Behind

New players may find that the majority of the players have moved on past their tier. If they cannot find anyone to play with, they cannot advance, and so are stuck in limbo: lacking the gear and experience to progress, but unable to get the gear and experience if they're alone. We saw with in Lich King heroics when players had briefly gotten plenty of badge gear and had long outgrown heroic level gear, leaving alts and new players with very few people to play with. Blizzard's solution was badge loot inflation, driving raiders back into heroics, with what I believe were negative social consequences, mixing players with radically different expectations of performance and behavior. Now WoW has cross-server group formation, which I believe may increase the pool enough to address this concern.

There remains the rerolling problem. Switching classes can put an otherwise experienced player right back at the bottom for gear. While cross-server can help with the population problem, there are other problems. First off, being left behind means repeating all their previous gearing up, repeating content which may already be old. This process can be very slow, particularly if the gearing process means finding raids, meaning guilds, which the rerolling player intends to leave the moment they can. Possibly worse is that thus process means being unable to play with friends and guild members, which presumably was the reason for the reroll in the first place. For this problem I suggest a retirement system which would allow a character to be converted to another class, with some form of hastened leveling and gear conversion. Retirement would be a serious matter due to the cost of a character, but would allow much faster catch-up without making class something to change on a whim.

There is a third group: the players whose guilds exploded. They're not new players, so slogging through again may not be fun. They're not alts with a guild to catch up to, so the retirement system doesn't make sense, beside that they're not necessarily undergeared, just out of the system. These should be highly-desirable players: experienced, geared, and the last to give up (as opposed to those who quit after the first week of wiping), but they're not easy to find. A tool to help these players better find guilds, and guilds to find them, could help. Maybe it even already exists and is underutilized, but an armory tie-in would obviously be part of it.

Players Missing Content

There's an ongoing debate between "I pay $15 a month I should get to see content" vs. "why should noobs get everything?"

Vanilla used the solution which I will refer to as "lolwut?" Essentially no one did anything to fix it and maybe didn't see any problem. Burning Crusade used PvP and badge gear to help boost players up, which might have worked if not for the guild-wrecking 10 to 25 player raid transition. On the other hand, we ended up with "welfare epics". Despite being a retarded name, it somehow stuck. Lich King expanded the badge system further to give pieces of tier sets as well as badge rewards being upgraded with each new raid. This resulted in a whole lot of players in strangely high gear relative to their experience and skill, a recipe for disaster. This model also resulted in the opposite problem of new players missing the old raids as they became obsolete.

For this I have no good solution. Making the content easier ruins the fun of those already in it. Adding gear can ruin the focus of the game, turning it from experience-driven (meaning player experience, not experience points) to loot-driven, which can ruin it as badly as not seeing content. Flattening all raids to the same gear level would cause rapid burning of content, followed by a whole lot of bored raiders, and then the next raids may be too easy. Exclusive content sounds great, but often the excluded don't like it much.

I probably missed some problems, but those are the biggest three.

Segregation is Good

I can see the marketing now: "A world rich with interaction between new players and veterans sharing their knowledge!" This sounds great, of course. Up to a point.

Have you ever noticed how high school physics classes rarely take place at Fermilab? Or how rarely you see brilliant physicists sitting in high schools listening to the teacher stumble his way through the concept of an equal and opposite force? This is segregation. Self-segregation. There are distinct areas and groups and people separate themselves among them. Veterans go here, students go here.

At this time I think that's the greatest weakness of WoW. It mixes the players too much. We cannot easily self-segregate into appropriate groups. This leads to problems. What problems?

The noob in your heroic. Or, the eltist jackass in your heroic.

People in groups should be of about the same experience level, of about the same skill, with about the same gear, and about the same goals. In this situation no one is being carried and everyone is inclined to work together because they have shared goals, or at least compatible goals. Anyone still learning is not wasting time because they're all still learning, and can learn from the mistakes of the others.

Leveling instances do a decent job of this. While they do mix veteran alts and new players, they are at least of similar gear and level. At lower levels veteran players may be more inclined to be patient, being able to believe that they are playing with new players who are 'allowed' to be still learning, rather than noobs who have been 85 for who knows how long and are still awful so let's call them noobs and call it day. You won't see many level 85 characters in your Stockades run berating you for being carried.

How would we get this player segregation? Well, let's look at what leveling is: linear. Linear content naturally separates players. A level 10 has played less than a level 20, unless the level 20 is a speed-leveled alt, in which case he's probably still played more, just not on that character, so it still works.

Get rid of all this "we want players to see content" crap. It's not working out so well. It's fundamentally incompatible with challenging content and good community. If player misses raid Z, but they are able to actually enjoy raids X and Y, I think that's better than stumbling through raids X, Y, and Z half-seeing the content and getting blamed for everything.

Bring back linear raiding.

While we're at it, bring back linear heroics. Linear heroics? Well sure. Let's not pretend that Mechanar and Arcatraz were of the same difficulty. Were they perfectly linear? Not at all. But there was some known gradient of difficulty. There is in Cataclysm, and there was in LK heroics as well, but those have the random dungeon problem. If people are not picking their instance, they're also not picking their difficulty level. Someone who queues for Mechanar is there for easy quick badges while someone who queues for Arcatraz is there for harder badges and maybe a raid attunement.

Linear content naturally separates players. This isn't a bad thing. It puts players with their peers. When people know they are more or less equal, they're not such dicks about everything. Contrast that with the current system which vaguely pretend we're all equal, when we're clearly not, so conflict arises.

This also means that heroics cannot be the elevator that they are now. That use of them pushes players who have long outgeared them back in, and int conflict with the newer players, or players who aren't good enough to play past heroics.

I expect that merely by putting players with others of the same experience and power level, many of the LFD problems could be reduced. I see the ideal tool as a mix of the BC system, pick a few and people can see you, and the LK system, randomly random with randoms. We'd pick the heroics that we think are suitable for us and then be put in a random one of those. But no random dungeon bonus reward. I think a system where people are doing appropriate level content, in terms of challenge and reward, could lead to a better community, even with cross-server. In fact, since this is likely to reduce the pool slightly, by removing the more advanced players and slightly separating the rest, the cross-server function may be necessary.

To clarify, I don't think we should return to the almost perfectly linear raid structure of vanilla. That was a problem. For starters, I'd have two raids per tier, at least, so that there are no gatekeeper, guild-killer bosses. Major challenges are great, but when a guild is stuck one one single boss for months, with no real alternative content, that's a great way to make people not want to play. Even if the alternative content won't help get past the gatekeeper, it can at least offer an alternative activity to break up the potential monotony.

I'm sure this won't be a popular idea. And I'm sure "come back and do it in a higher level group next expansion" isn't much consolation, since it won't be the same. But consider this: if you're playing trivialized content endlessly with players who are sick of being there, it also won't be the same. Or, perhaps it will be the same. Even worse, while the progressive badge/point structure gets people into the last raids, it also means newcomers miss the first raids, since everyone has moved past them. Wouldn't it make more sense to have veterans in the latest raids with other veterans, new players in the older raids with other new players, and not have the constant conflict between skill and dedication levels?

There will, of course, still be the alts and rerolls going through, veterans in with new players, but that will be the exception rather than the rule.

So if you're sick of playing with noobs, give this idea try. And if you're sick of playing with elitists, give it a try as well.

P.S. Do not relate this to real-life segregation, beyond the example I used.

Time for another installment of Back In My Day!

Hell, everyone! Today I want to talk to you about rogues and some historical context. Also, the funny thing that I like to call "the pain and suffering of other people".

Let's pretend I have special effects like sparkles and a vortex that takes us to another screen with me sitting in a different pose.

Hi! This is a rogue spell called Sap. Today we know it as a useful and most importantly, safe, form of crowd control. While it can be difficult to apply, since the rogue has to get very very close to enemies and it doesn't work during combat, it also has the advantage that enemies don't really notice it. In fact, it was often useful for breaking apart patrolling groups. Sap one and his friends will just leave him behind. It's just like the Marines, but the complete opposite!

But Sap wasn't always so safe. In fact, it used to break stealth. That's right, if a rogue wanted to sap one mob, all the others would see him and get very angry. He is a rogue after all! Who doesn't want to kill a helpless rogue? That's where the expression "having the tables turned" came from, but now we mostly use it for talking about gambling. How interesting!

Rogues weren't entirely helpless though. Oh no, they had this great talent called Improved Sap. They could put as many as three points in it and every point made them 30% less likely to lose stealth when using sap. With all three points they would only lose stealth 10% of the time. This was fun an exciting for everyone! Just think of the anticipation. A rogue sneaks in very carefully and he's approaching the target. You know he's about to use sap. What will happen? Oh you hope, hope hope hope, even if the odds are against you, but maybe, maybe that 10%! Oh boy boy boy 10% chance to see him get totally flattened. Just imagine a handful of elite enemies suddenly notice him and just POW! Oh let me tell you, it was great. Of course the rogues liked it to, because there was nothing they loved more than risk-taking and chances. That's why they picked the class.

In fact, some rogues who'd had a bit too much to drink would play a game call Sap Roulette. Pick a pack and go in a circle sapping them! Of course it wasn't quite as thrilling as Russian Roulette, unless you somehow have a revolver with 10 shots. Now that would be a hefty gun. But on the other hand, if you shoot yourself in the head there's no durability loss on equipment, so those rogues were risking their pocketbooks too.

So everyone, next time you're thinking "gee, I'd love to sheep that mob, but it might attack me!", just think of the daring rogue.

Playing WoW is not Gaming

My tags are consistent on two points: first, they are inconsistent; second, WoW posts are not tagged as either WoW or gaming. Isn't WoW gaming?

For a while I actually thought not. It's WoW. It's this thing unto itself. An anomaly. Everyone plays it and if they don't play it they must at least know of it, know someone who plays it. To call WoW gaming would be like calling oxygen an inhalant.

This led to some bouts of self-doubt. I sort of thought of myself as a gamer, but I didn't play much beside WoW. It was a monopolizer. I wasn't a gamer, I was a WoW-player. But that has a sad sound to me. Gamer sounds sorta cool in a not-quite-cool way (but on the other hand, cool people are assholes).

Sometimes I'd play other games. Sometimes. I'd not play WoW at all for days or weeks at a time (not many weeks, one or two), but then they'd go on the shelf and right back to WoW. Figuratively speaking, since I have no shelf, so "back on the shelf" is closer to "delete local content on Steam."

But I was wrong. Playing WoW is gaming. Not the same as a FPS or RTS, but there are other forms of gaming. It was silly of me to think otherwise.

P.S. This post has nothing to do with the recent chatter about optimization and moronic comparisons to chess. Except the title. That's meant to confuse you. Because that's how I roll. With a t in front.

Happy Mother's Day

At risk of being possibly intentionally offensive, I submit to you this theory: lesbians should not be allowed to adopt. It is simply not mentally healthy for their children. Can you imagine the difficulty of trying to figure out two different Mother's Day gifts, in the same year? Year to year variation is bad enough, but on the same day, just not plausible. You have to figure out how to make the gifts separate but equal, which if we can draw on the lessons of history, doesn't work. My point is this: historical discrimination against black people proves that we must discriminate against lesbians.

In contrast, gay parents are just fine, since if you can sneak into the store at age 8 to buy one dad a 6-pack for Father's Day, you can do the same for a second dad.

P.S. Gay people are not at all like golf clubs, though I'm sure Freud would love your analogies, Mr. I'm Only Rich Because My Dad Gave Me a Ton of Money and a Name.

Civilization could use bigger rooms

Any time I try to do anything diplomatic, such as negotiating the surrender of my enemies, I can only talk to one at a time, clearly due to the small size of the room. This leads to inconvenient problems. Such as Babylon refusing to capitulate because they are afraid of my Russian enemies. Meanwhile Russia refuses to capitulate because they are afraid of my Babylonian enemies. If only I could sit them down and calmly explain that I will crush both of them, so they don't need to be afraid of each other.

This is of course secondary to the reasoning of "we won't surrender to the guy who is currently wrecking our empire because someone else whose empire you are also wrecking might attack us." While I accept that "devil you know" is sometimes a useful concept, when one devil is actively demonstrating his ability to completely flatten you and the other is also being flattened, well let's try math:

Me > Russia
Me > Babylon

Therefore Russia cannot be any more powerful relative to Babylon than I am relative to Babylon, and the reverse. Or to put it another way, if I will kill you and I will kill him, wouldn't you rather take your chances that maybe he won't kill you?

To make it even worse, by the time they accept defeat, they are so badly crushed that there's barely any point in having them as an ally, so I might as well finish them off. Such a waste of time. Don't they understand that my Ottomans are clearly the master race and it is improper to waste the time of the superiors? Which reminds me, why doesn't Civilization have more racism? That could add a whole new level of strategy. Similar to how religion was a great way to pretend to be pious in order to better manipulate people. You know, realism.

If we slowed down music by 1/10, would we still want to listen?

Thought experiment: If you slowed down the execution part of a game down by a factor of 10, would it still be fun?

-Tobold

That's a rather stupid concept, trying to do 1/10 time fun measurement. Games have a certain speed for a reason: that's the speed that fits them. FPS cannot be slowed down much because the quick aiming reactions are part of the game. In contrast, I think real-time civilization would be terrible unless it was slowed down to be nearly indistinguishable from turn-based.

This will, of course, vary with the player. I'd like Starcraft more if it was slower, since I'm just not quick enough for very serious play. That wouldn't fix the fact that I am just generally awful at it. But other players like the speed, for them the clicks per minute is an important element.

Does WoW raiding have a lot of interesting decisions? Not really. So what? I don't make many interesting decisions in a FPS. Pick a target and duck under cover. Wow, that was crazy brilliant right there! I'm being sarcastic about the brilliance, something which may need pointing out if you're reading this post at the wrong speed. WoW raiding is about speed and the dances.

I don't like that WoW raiding is about the speed and the dances. Unfortunately, many people do. Majority? Maybe not. But perhaps enough people to keep WoW going. I did my wallet voting thing and clearly I've lost that election.

Tobold, I really don't like to make this connection, but you're sounding a bit like Gevlon, essentially saying, "I don't like X so X must be bad." Now I will say that for the majority of things, if I don't like it it's probably because it's bad (I have excellent taste, did you know?). But there can be things that I do not like but are not bad.

So I'll try this: WoW raiding is not fun for me, but that does not make it objectively bad. It sounds like we both want raiding with more interesting decisions and choices: talents, stats, and tactics. The lack of those choices does not make raiding objectively bad, just not much fun for us. Maybe someone will make the game that has those raids (and meet all the other criteria, a list which is endless) and then we can play that and not question whether 1/10 speed raiding would be any fun, because it would be, and then we could sing happy songs about having multiple useful talent choices.

I still maintain that cilantro is something that I do not like and anyone who does like it is a sub-human freak who must be culled to ensure that their despicable genes are not carried on. Alas, that includes both of my brothers. Forgive me, it is for a better tomorrow. Though admittedly I doubt we'll see the benefit of a cilantro-free world that soon. It may take many years.

P.S. Sorry about the late post. I was busy killing people. Thankfully Tobold was kind enough to give me something to disagree with.