Riveters put rivets into ships (and other things). The Titanic had more than 3 million of them. And while the final product is cool, I don't expect to see "Riveter Online" launch anytime soon. Making 10,000 rivets is beyond tedium. It's work.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Sylveria's example was not really a questing example so much as a town support example. An overexagerated one. A certain amount of repetitiveness is necessary in everything, even real life. It's unavoidable. What can be avoided though is if it's tedius repetition. It's a difficult thing to judge though. Especially since when something becomes tedius is different for every person. Chopping up 10 logs may be fine for Bob, but Jason gets annoyed after only 5. It's impossible to please everyone, but we're going to try real hard to please the majority.
One of the big steps towards keeping things from becoming tedius is that we'll be almost constantly adding to the game in small ways, and big ways with expansions. That town resource gathering task you were on last week for the Arcanum that involved digging up shrubberies, may be changed to chopping them down with a herring to save on broken shovels the next week.
I think the key to avoiding the "repetitive tedium" thing in MMOs or games like them is to interleave the repetitive elements.
Let's take my current favorite whipping-boy for example, City of Heroes. Now before anyone thinks I'm overly bashing the game, I play it, and I mostly like it.
BUT...
It's highly tedious and repetitive in a lot of ways. For example, you enter a City of Heroes mission with your level 20 hero. It's a mission against the "Freakshows." What do you find? You're in a 6-level office building. In every hallway, and in most rooms, is a single "spawn" of Freakshows. And every spawn has 3 white conning enemies (3 white cons = 1 character in COH, so that's a "fair fight" in a solo mission). And every 3 white con group is basically the same 3 guys -- two "stunner freaks" and 1 "juicer freak"... or mabye 1 and 2, or 0 and 3... but basically the same.
Thus you fight, in a single mission, over say a 30 minute period... basically the same battle about 40 times. Over and over again. With no variation.
Now you exit that mission, get on your cell phone, call your contact, and go do the next mission in the story arc. It's a mission against... you guessed it... Freakshows. And its on a map that is... you guessed it... another office. And the spawns are... you guessed it... same as the last mission.
Fast forward. Two hours have gone by. You have done 5 missions and completed the story arc, and gained a level... and all you've done for 2 hours is fight the same 3-white-con freak spawn over, and over, and over, on similar maps, time and time again.
That's repetition that is tedious.
Now imagine if, instead of that, you entered a mission that was not just against Freakshow. The Freaks only own the top floor of the building, and maybe you need to get there to complete the mission. But on the bottom floor are (say) Tsoo warriors... and on the next floor are (say) Banished Pantheon (these are other "factions" of villains), and on the next floor are no villains at all but some riddle you have to solve. Now you've got some variety.
Now... in the end I might fight 1,000 freaks between level 20 and 21 either way. But if it's 4 freaks, then 3 tsoo, then 4 BP, then 3 freaks... it's way more interesting than if it's 1,000 freaks, followed by 1,000 Tsoo, followed by 1,000 BP...
See the difference?
You have to mix things up, or players get bored. When I did NWN modules, my rule of thumb for any area was "No more than 2 of the same encounter." And for the whole MODULE was "no more than 4 of the same encounter" (2 per area times 2 areas, max). The reason was... after doing the same thing a few times people get bored. Now, you may get people who can tolerate more repetition -- as you say, 5 may bore Fred, but you may have to get to 10 before you can bore Jim. But... I find it hard to imagine that anyone would say an adventure has too much variety. In fact, I can't recall ever having seen that complaint before, for any NWN module, MMORPG, or CRPG.
Also, you don't have to have things completely different to mix them up. Let's take COH again. They didn't need different mobs per mission, necessarily. They could vary the levels and numbers... 6 green cons in one fight... 4 blues in the next... 3 whites in the next... 2 yellows in the next... one orange after that. I'm not suggesting it be this linear (maybe do 1 orange, 3 greens, 2 yellows, 3 whites, whatever). But now you're talking about 4 fights that are different from each other in how they will go, and thus each one is unique. If you have 20 fights in a mission but there are 5 or so fundamentally different kinds of fights, then you've got a lot more variety (without changing the mob type necessarily) than you had if it's just the same spawn replicated 20 times.
Back to NWN -- Sure I had "orc lairs" that were just orcs. But again... fight #1 was maybe orc swordsmen. Fight #2 was Orc Bowmen. Fight #3 was orc Spearsmen. Each fight is different. Each enemy has slightly different armor, weapons, magic items, whatever... just enough that you can't mindlessly fight the bowmen the exact same way you fought the swordsmen.
The key is to make it so that the players can't get a "rote" system going and then just do the same things over and over without thinking. That is tedious. THAT is boring. THAT is what drives people to fall asleep at their keyboard. If I can walk into every battle for half an hour and go... "F1, w, w, F2, F3, F1, w, w, F1, F2, F3" in that exact sequence and know it will always win the fight, that's boring. It's not fun. It's not a challenge. And it doesn't keep people interested.
1. No, I wouldn't want to personally stamp out 10,000 rivets. But it might be interesting to be able to supervise the production of 10,000 rivets by NPC laborers as part of a uniquely deep (crafting) game.
2. On the class/level thing, this has already been bashed about a lot, but since the question was asked, I think there might be a way to make the no-class, no-level approach work.
An approach I'm taking in a MMORPG design I've been working on (just as a learning exercise) is based on skills grouped into professions. You can pick some 6-to-10 skills when you create your character and then choose any profession, or pick a profession and accept (or change) the skills suggested as most helpful for that profession.
And then you start playing. There's no need to spend days or weeks levelling up because there are no character levels; once you're in the game you've got everything you need to start having fun.
However, in most of my 16 professions, I do offer ranks. What makes my approach different from the usual ranks-as-levels model are two things:
increasing rank doesn't just confer more power; it imposes more responsibilities
increasing rank is always optional
To the first point, increasing one's level shouldn't just be about gaining more and more power. That's what gets people on the never-ending treadmill that they leave the game to be rid of.
And to the second point, why do we treat high-level play as just like starting play, only against mobs with more hit points? Being good at making rivets doesn't call for the same skills and interests as effectively leading a rivet-making team. Why, then, should someone who enjoys direct interaction with people or things be forced to play like someone who's good at making big-picture decisions (and vice versa)? Why impose the Peter Principle on MMORPG players?
So in my design, most ranks are broken into three groups: tactical, operational, and strategic. Tactical ranks focus on hands-on, adrenaline-pumping gameplay; operational ranks focus on organizing people and processes to achieve regional or medium-term goals; and strategic ranks are responsible for how everyone in that profession contributes to the entire game world as well as how the professions interact, both competitively and cooperatively.
The point of this division -- which applies to all rank-based professions, combat, crafting/commercial, social, and exploratory alike -- is to let players play the kind of game they enjoy playing. If you're enjoying it, it's not tedious!
Players who are into hands-on action with few high-level responsibilities shouldn't forced to climb the ladder --- they can choose to stay at a Sergeant or Deck Hand or Researcher rank and enjoy the content that's scaled for those ranks. But if they think they'd enjoy taking on responsibility for helping other players in their profession have fun, then they can choose to "level up" to the balance of power and duty they're comfortable with.
You shouldn't have to be an Admiral behind a desk to be the "best" -- the Navy needs legendary gunners, too!
Class/level systems don't support that kind of playstyle-directed gameplay, but skill/rank-based systems could. I understand that the decision is made that HJ will go the class/level route, and I won't say that's wrong for HJ (especially with dual-classing), but it would have been interesting to see whether something deeper might have worked as well.
Comments
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Sylveria's example was not really a questing example so much as a town support example. An overexagerated one. A certain amount of repetitiveness is necessary in everything, even real life. It's unavoidable. What can be avoided though is if it's tedius repetition. It's a difficult thing to judge though. Especially since when something becomes tedius is different for every person. Chopping up 10 logs may be fine for Bob, but Jason gets annoyed after only 5. It's impossible to please everyone, but we're going to try real hard to please the majority.
One of the big steps towards keeping things from becoming tedius is that we'll be almost constantly adding to the game in small ways, and big ways with expansions. That town resource gathering task you were on last week for the Arcanum that involved digging up shrubberies, may be changed to chopping them down with a herring to save on broken shovels the next week.
GM Illuminatis
World Builder
Hero's Journey
I think the key to avoiding the "repetitive tedium" thing in MMOs or games like them is to interleave the repetitive elements.
Let's take my current favorite whipping-boy for example, City of Heroes. Now before anyone thinks I'm overly bashing the game, I play it, and I mostly like it.
BUT...
It's highly tedious and repetitive in a lot of ways. For example, you enter a City of Heroes mission with your level 20 hero. It's a mission against the "Freakshows." What do you find? You're in a 6-level office building. In every hallway, and in most rooms, is a single "spawn" of Freakshows. And every spawn has 3 white conning enemies (3 white cons = 1 character in COH, so that's a "fair fight" in a solo mission). And every 3 white con group is basically the same 3 guys -- two "stunner freaks" and 1 "juicer freak"... or mabye 1 and 2, or 0 and 3... but basically the same.
Thus you fight, in a single mission, over say a 30 minute period... basically the same battle about 40 times. Over and over again. With no variation.
Now you exit that mission, get on your cell phone, call your contact, and go do the next mission in the story arc. It's a mission against... you guessed it... Freakshows. And its on a map that is... you guessed it... another office. And the spawns are... you guessed it... same as the last mission.
Fast forward. Two hours have gone by. You have done 5 missions and completed the story arc, and gained a level... and all you've done for 2 hours is fight the same 3-white-con freak spawn over, and over, and over, on similar maps, time and time again.
That's repetition that is tedious.
Now imagine if, instead of that, you entered a mission that was not just against Freakshow. The Freaks only own the top floor of the building, and maybe you need to get there to complete the mission. But on the bottom floor are (say) Tsoo warriors... and on the next floor are (say) Banished Pantheon (these are other "factions" of villains), and on the next floor are no villains at all but some riddle you have to solve. Now you've got some variety.
Now... in the end I might fight 1,000 freaks between level 20 and 21 either way. But if it's 4 freaks, then 3 tsoo, then 4 BP, then 3 freaks... it's way more interesting than if it's 1,000 freaks, followed by 1,000 Tsoo, followed by 1,000 BP...
See the difference?
You have to mix things up, or players get bored. When I did NWN modules, my rule of thumb for any area was "No more than 2 of the same encounter." And for the whole MODULE was "no more than 4 of the same encounter" (2 per area times 2 areas, max). The reason was... after doing the same thing a few times people get bored. Now, you may get people who can tolerate more repetition -- as you say, 5 may bore Fred, but you may have to get to 10 before you can bore Jim. But... I find it hard to imagine that anyone would say an adventure has too much variety. In fact, I can't recall ever having seen that complaint before, for any NWN module, MMORPG, or CRPG.
Also, you don't have to have things completely different to mix them up. Let's take COH again. They didn't need different mobs per mission, necessarily. They could vary the levels and numbers... 6 green cons in one fight... 4 blues in the next... 3 whites in the next... 2 yellows in the next... one orange after that. I'm not suggesting it be this linear (maybe do 1 orange, 3 greens, 2 yellows, 3 whites, whatever). But now you're talking about 4 fights that are different from each other in how they will go, and thus each one is unique. If you have 20 fights in a mission but there are 5 or so fundamentally different kinds of fights, then you've got a lot more variety (without changing the mob type necessarily) than you had if it's just the same spawn replicated 20 times.
Back to NWN -- Sure I had "orc lairs" that were just orcs. But again... fight #1 was maybe orc swordsmen. Fight #2 was Orc Bowmen. Fight #3 was orc Spearsmen. Each fight is different. Each enemy has slightly different armor, weapons, magic items, whatever... just enough that you can't mindlessly fight the bowmen the exact same way you fought the swordsmen.
The key is to make it so that the players can't get a "rote" system going and then just do the same things over and over without thinking. That is tedious. THAT is boring. THAT is what drives people to fall asleep at their keyboard. If I can walk into every battle for half an hour and go... "F1, w, w, F2, F3, F1, w, w, F1, F2, F3" in that exact sequence and know it will always win the fight, that's boring. It's not fun. It's not a challenge. And it doesn't keep people interested.
All IMO of course.
C
A couple of points:
1. No, I wouldn't want to personally stamp out 10,000 rivets. But it might be interesting to be able to supervise the production of 10,000 rivets by NPC laborers as part of a uniquely deep (crafting) game.
2. On the class/level thing, this has already been bashed about a lot, but since the question was asked, I think there might be a way to make the no-class, no-level approach work.
An approach I'm taking in a MMORPG design I've been working on (just as a learning exercise) is based on skills grouped into professions. You can pick some 6-to-10 skills when you create your character and then choose any profession, or pick a profession and accept (or change) the skills suggested as most helpful for that profession.
And then you start playing. There's no need to spend days or weeks levelling up because there are no character levels; once you're in the game you've got everything you need to start having fun.
However, in most of my 16 professions, I do offer ranks. What makes my approach different from the usual ranks-as-levels model are two things:
To the first point, increasing one's level shouldn't just be about gaining more and more power. That's what gets people on the never-ending treadmill that they leave the game to be rid of.
And to the second point, why do we treat high-level play as just like starting play, only against mobs with more hit points? Being good at making rivets doesn't call for the same skills and interests as effectively leading a rivet-making team. Why, then, should someone who enjoys direct interaction with people or things be forced to play like someone who's good at making big-picture decisions (and vice versa)? Why impose the Peter Principle on MMORPG players?
So in my design, most ranks are broken into three groups: tactical, operational, and strategic. Tactical ranks focus on hands-on, adrenaline-pumping gameplay; operational ranks focus on organizing people and processes to achieve regional or medium-term goals; and strategic ranks are responsible for how everyone in that profession contributes to the entire game world as well as how the professions interact, both competitively and cooperatively.
The point of this division -- which applies to all rank-based professions, combat, crafting/commercial, social, and exploratory alike -- is to let players play the kind of game they enjoy playing. If you're enjoying it, it's not tedious!
Players who are into hands-on action with few high-level responsibilities shouldn't forced to climb the ladder --- they can choose to stay at a Sergeant or Deck Hand or Researcher rank and enjoy the content that's scaled for those ranks. But if they think they'd enjoy taking on responsibility for helping other players in their profession have fun, then they can choose to "level up" to the balance of power and duty they're comfortable with.
You shouldn't have to be an Admiral behind a desk to be the "best" -- the Navy needs legendary gunners, too!
Class/level systems don't support that kind of playstyle-directed gameplay, but skill/rank-based systems could. I understand that the decision is made that HJ will go the class/level route, and I won't say that's wrong for HJ (especially with dual-classing), but it would have been interesting to see whether something deeper might have worked as well.
--Flatfingers