Well, I’ve done more than my fair share of ragging on Blizzard (I love you guys. You know that right? Me. You. Hot monkey love.) Though I’ve done my fair share of ragging on everybody, including myself, so it’s all fairplay. If’ I’m a dumbass, I get to at least call everybody else dumbasses.
Blizzard. Dumbass? Or fiendishly brilliant?
That’s the question of the moment, and one I’m trying to answer. Uh. Perhaps you guys can help me out. This just released today recent changes soon to be tested in World of Warcraft (yes tested, if they don’t work, they’ll be changed, still if I waited for the final version of everything I’d never have anything to talk about).
Rest State
• The Rest state modifier only affects experience earned from killing monsters. It does not affect experience earned from quest rewards or other experience rewards in the game (such as future PvP experience rewards).
• As players kill monsters and gain experience points, they become increasingly tired. Their rest level reflects this tiredness in five tiers: well rested, rested, normal, fatigued and exhausted.
• Well-rested players receive bonus experience points for killing monsters. Rested players receive a smaller bonus. At the normal rest level, players receive no bonus experience points for killing monsters. Fatigued players receive half of the normal experience points from their kills, and when exhausted they will receive a quarter of normal experience from a kill.
• To become well rested and start earning bonus experience from killing monsters again, players must either log out or rest online at an Inn (see below) for several hours.
• Thanks to the comforts of a warm bed and a hearty meal, players who rest or log out at an Inn can regain energy up to the maximum level: well rested (it takes 8 hours to go from exhausted back to well rested). Players who log out anywhere else in the world will only regain energy up to the normal level.
• Note that while your character is resting at an Inn, you can play other characters on your account. The rest state is per character only.
I see.
So. Let me try to wrap my weasel little head around this. Let me throw up a scenario to see if I’m grasping what’s going on here. If I'm computing the information correctly.
I’m playing my character Azzrapzor Uberlord, being the lame ass min/maxing power gamer I can be in games sometimes, I’ve decided the easiest way for me to level up is through the mass killing of enemies. These enemies, as we know from previous World of Warcraft discussion on the beta boards provide plenty of experience so I can zoom through levels, even to the point of hitting level thirty in a weekend if I’m clever enough.
Meandering, I make my way out to the killing fields for a good eight hours of grind. Yeah, it’s boring. Yeah, I’m a lame catassing doorknob. Still, if that’s how I want to play the game, hell, I am paying fifteen dollars a month to play right?
Oh, wait, no, I’m paying fifteen dollars a month to bend over and scream out: “Blizzard!” as me and my credit card get promptly violated. From what I can see, if I want to spend my time grinding through enemies, I will be inadvertently penalized by slowing my rate of progression down effectively by around eight times (assuming the bonuses are equivalent to the penalties) my possible maximum efficiency.
Uh. Hey, guys… guys? If you’re cutting my effective play time short due to a forced mechanic (by making me super inefficient), why will I possibly keep paying you? In fact, the more fun your game is, the more utterly mind blowingly kick ass it is, the more I’ll want to play right? But, like, errr, the more I want to play and the more I can’t play how I want to, won’t that just serve to frustrate me?
Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. I understand you can still hang out doing quests and stuff, you can still explore, you can still participate in tradeskills, but as a grinder of the past, sometimes you just want to set a goal and grind towards it. Super fucking pissed is the only reaction that comes to my mind if I found myself in the situation of being essentially screwed because I choose to play a certain way.
Obviously, I’ve jumped right into the bad though. This is worst case scenario, even I can understand why they did it and from a theory standpoint, I know why it looks damn good on paper.
The problem as I see it is two fold. The first problem is content burn, and the rate at which players are likely to zip through it. The second problem which exists because of the first is player retention. As I’ve pointed out before, the subscription based model depends very heavily on long term player retention, and therefore different content for players who have put a thousand hours in, compared to those who have put in, oh, say four hours.
All I’d heard in regards to the World of Warcraft leveling curve though was that it was very quickly exhausted for those who possessed half a brain cell. Everybody said it was very, very fun but… you know, quick. And stuff. Most of the Battle Net beta testers seemed to be quite pleased about this, as did the more casual players I’ve heard from.
That said, the reality is this, if you’re a hardcore gamer and you burn through a leveling scheme in two weeks, you’re going to have to seriously raise an eyebrow at whether you want to keep playing and subscribing. I think this was a problem and I think Blizzard recognized it as a problem.
Their options?
Make the leveling curve far, far, less forgiving. Errr. Yeah. Considering the community Blizzard has built up for themselves, this might be a bad idea. The battle net crowd isn’t exactly known for their devastatingly long attention spans, or their interest in going through heavy level grinds (and honestly, who is?).
The other option? Add in some sort of system to keep players from flying to the end game at a frightening rate.
Obviously, they’ve opted to give the latter a try, and I don’t blame them. Theoretically, it also looks excellent on paper. I mean. Look at it. Who is really going to feel this? The ‘catassers’, those who want to put in eight hours a day for the pure drive of gaining levels, and therefore power. Suddenly, all of the content, such as quests, which is there to eat up a hell of a lot of player time is made irrelevant. Many players will forego tradeskills if they can grind (I don’t know why players do this, but as Raph sadly learned with SWG, it’s just what people do).
So, mr casual doesn’t mind. He still plays two or three hours a night max, where his weariness level drops down to normal, and he logs off and is back to the bonus the next day. Mr tradeskiller/quester/explorer doesn’t mind too much, he’s going to be too busy screwing around to grind anyways, so what the hell does he care? If he sees his weariness level drop, he’ll just go do something else. To him, the journey is what is important, not the destination.
No, the person this affects is Mr Hardcore. Now, I’m not going to say grinding is fun. Nor do I want it to come off as if I think a game is somehow better if players are forced to grind through five hundred hours of complete mind numbing inanity. At the same time, I know after playing these games there are people who will want to grind, and what I am doing is defending their right to grind without being penalized.
Am I crazy you ask? Crazy like a fox!
Yeah, I just like to keep you on your toes. So, don’t get me wrong, I know how idiotic this all sounds. Defending the right to grind? What the hell is up with that?
Well, I’m not sad at seeing grinding go, but I simply get queasy when I see players forced into playstyles. What if I think WoW quests suck my ass, and suck it hard? What if I all I want to do is hang out, chat with friends and solo for six or seven hours?
This would negatively affect me in that case, and while it certainly protects the content integrity, and the leveling curve, to me it’s walking a tricky balance with human nature. People ARE min/maxers by nature. We don’t play games for fun. We play games to be efficient. Fun is hopefully something we feel during that process. Whatever we’re doing though, we’re going to want to approach it as efficiently as humanly possible. Quests? Efficiency. Tradeskills? Efficiency. Leveling? Efficiency?
When a player kills an enemy and gets a literal crapload of experience, he’s going to want to continue along that path. If he sees himself being halted inorganically (as in, not by his choice) he’s going to scream, cry and bitch with the best of them. Especially if he’s in the position of having three more hours to play, doesn’t want to quest, explore or tradeskill but can’t effectively play his character.
What? Go play an alt? Hey, screw you, how about that? Personally, I rarely have serious alts in games, I don’t want somebody telling me good design is me not being able to progress my main character properly, and so being forced to play an alt. That doesn’t feel like good design to me, it feels like somebody saying: “hey, you’re going to play our game the way we tell you to, and you’re going to damn well like it!”
I need freedom in an MMOG. I need to feel like there are metagames I can figure out, and ways I can make my intelligence pay off. That was possibly one of the greatest features of EQ, and has certainly been seen in the more successful games since then (DAoC comes to mind). I want to have the freedom to figure out how to make the most of the skills you’ve given me. I want to think outside of the box.
Taking away the amount of experience I get because I kill monsters too much is not me thinking outside of the box. It’s me getting anally violated because you don’t want me to reach the top level too quickly bypassing all the rest of the games content, and then complaining there is nothing to do. At least, that’s how it seems to me.
Never accuse me of not being a free thinker though, HRose from the boards had a different opinion:
On this particular element I like how it doesn't force to do something you don't want. I mean, it just prevents you to get exp from mobs, nothing else. There's no way to go around this. You aren't forced to spend time doing something to gain back something else as in SWG.
The game just prevents you to exploit the monster exp. You can keep go questing, keep exploring and you can also go make exp through PvP (and this one is a great idea: more paths to advance).
Instead of pissing you off it will just help the player to experience the game in other ways and not just as a mosters grind.
And even if you aren't able to do this and you just want to kill mobs over and over, you can still play on two alts and let one sleep while you grind the other.
Very, very good, intelligent design. All around.
I’ll be the first to say, HRose obviously smokes too much Italian crack. Good game design that caters to his playstyle? Yes. Most definitely. This design does force players though. It forces players who want to grind their life away into not grinding their life away.
Sad as they may be, I think the grinding playstyle is an important one. What’s my suggestion to the problem? Cut down mob experience across the board by about 50%. Jack up quest experience a little more, make the levels slightly longer in total, and make sure you have about a hundred or so quests for every level.
What? That’s impossible? Too bad. The problem here is content burn. Either you make players grind and stretch out the leveling curve (which is what is trying to be avoided here) or you give players enough content where the most efficient way to level is say by purely doing quests, but that still may take them ten hours of pure questing to get through.
This way nobody will consider grinding at all. Exploiting mob experience will not even be a question as people will always be working on quests. This should make everybody happy (assuming that all of the quest objectives per level are tuned appropriately so casual players aren’t frustrated they can’t complete them). Hardcore players are still going to go further faster due to the time they put in but it’s not like the casuals feel hard done by as everybody is doing the same sort of thing. And you won’t have content burn because obviously there will be enough content there to keep players from reaching the end game right away. Plus, players can still grind experience through mobs, or spend their time doing tradeskills or whatever, but at least you’re being fair to every player, casual and hardcore alike.
Perfect solution? No. Far from it. In fact, if my idea was implemented (assuming it was even possible) it might gobble up countless resources and players may still hate it. That said, I don’t feel obliged to say: “well, quests are hard, it’s only realistic to have two hours of questing per level maximum because that’s a damn lot of objectives and original ideas to come up with”. That’s a problem for the company at hand to work out. All I know is that all players and their playstyles should be treated fairly. As soon as you starting implementing design that actually impedes or penalizes one playstyle but not others, you’re fighting a losing battle.