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Hero's Journey: Dev Journal & Screens
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Today, Lead Systems Designer Mike Paddock drops in to write about service abilities in Hero's Journey. This resumes our bi-weekly image and journal series.
;) One hundred and sixty-three years ago, on May 22nd, the great wagon train of 1843 set out on the Oregon Trail, intent on forming a thriving new community. Nineteen years later on May 20th, President Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act of 1862, encouraging people to take up residence around communities throughout the western frontiers of the United States. And now, near the anniversary of those historic events, I have the honor of writing to you about community in Heros Journey.
Community is a big buzzword in the online world, which only makes sense. Email, chat rooms, instant messaging, newsgroups, forums, blogs, networking web sites, et cetera, are all tools of social interaction that promote community. The American Heritage Dictionary has several definitions for community. |
You can read the full journal and see the images here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
I have had nothing but unqualifiedly good things to say about HJ, but this will be my first departure from that.
The philosophy of this game is "more fun, less tedium." I see nothing fun about running all over the place fixing broken this and broken that and depleted some other thing. That sounds like tedium to me. I understand why they are doing it, because there are other games that do it, but I had hoped HJ would stick to its primary vision for the game.
The part about benefits players can bestow on one another, such as rangers increasing speed, is fine. That is an example of a benefit that might be nice, but isn't essential. But I can't be running around with broken or ineffective equipment, so now I am forced to go find someone to remedy that. Which leads to the next issue ...
In EQ 1 I was a ranger and I probably SoW'd about 1,765,987.465 people. The amount of money I was paid for that? Zero. By contrast, druids and wizards who ported people around were paid lots of money for that service. In the examples given in the article, obviously some classes will be cash cows because their services are essential whereas others will get bupkis for their efforts. I realize that the intent of the system isn't to make people rich (I'm getting to that), but it will not be lost on the players that they can make gobs of money with one kind of character and not another. So we start off with a class balance issue before the first sword stroke is even made.
I don't believe you promote community by forcing people to do things that aren't fun. If that were possible, people standing in line at a bus station would be a community. People stuck in traffic on a highway would be a community. People tend to socialize and form bonds when they are having fun together. I thought that was what HJ was about. What the heck is fun about me having to run all the way across some zone to find some guy that I can pay to fix my sword. I buy gas from a gas station near my house. I have been going to that same gas station for 10 years. I don't know the name of the person behind the counter, and I never will. I'm not there to make friends. I'm there because I need gas. She's not there to make friends. She's there to sell gas. But I guess according to HJ theory we are a community.
Please rethink this.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Well, they're not going to force you to use the services. Empaths in DR would get plenty of gems for their services, but not many of them demanded it (and I never saw those that did get treated all that well by the others). You won't have to bug a Warrior to repair your stuff, as there will probably be blacksmiths and the like to do it for you and if it's something they don't waste materials on doing, they shouldn't be charging anyway. Now if it costs materials to do it, then you should expect that they'll want a little something to cover expenses.
I think it's all good stuff. If you don't want to pay, join a guild that has the community that you desire, where they're all friendly and won't go charging you for something like that.
Also, you obviously haven't played any Simu games, as that's what it's all about -- sitting around chatting while an empath drops unconscious at your feet from trying to heal your critical wounds or hanging around the Ranger Guild and chatting while people spam foraging and train other skills. If that's how the services will work, then I'm all for it. Like one of the GMs said. The most fun they had was sitting in the Town Green and popping boxes for people while chatting.
They are not forcing me to use all of the services. I could play this game from stop to start and never need my speed enhanced. Sure that would be nice, but I don't need it. They are going to have an in game teleportation system so that I only have to travel a long distance to that place once anyway. Running faster is just a benny.
But if a substantial amount of my offense and defense comes from the wyr on my weapons and armor, and those crap out on me, you bet I have to fix that. That's a must do if I am going to be effective. And for that I have to trapse off, find some guy and do one of two things - pester him for a freebie (which is annoying to him and annoying to me) or pay him (which is annoying to me). Either way, we sure as hell aren't bonding.
Compounding this is the fact that some classes will clearly be able to print money off this system whereas those of us with fluff or unnecessary abilities will not.
Worse is the fact that in a game that promotes customization I can't choose my service skill - I am stuck with whatever the character class I am gets.
If you want to bring people together in towns, how about making towns fun? Put in some mini games. Make some bars where you can drink and toast. Let people dance or play musical instruments. Give people entertaining skills like juggling or sword swallowing or tightrope walking or you name it - something fun and imaginative. Have events there. There are lots of ways.
Or you could just put in some underinvented, unbalanced, mutual dependancy for unfun things system like this.
If you want to make crafters happy (the obvious driving force behind this move to check the obligatory box in the features list), then give them abilities where people will want to go to them, not have to. Of course that takes a lot more effort and is a lot harder to implement. But I would rather have no system than a half baked system that imposes nothing more than a tedious hardship on me and nothing to show for it other than back to the status quo of my stuff working again, a few gold pieces lighter and my time wasted.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
As for your concern about money. Money has never been an issue in Gemstone. People are tipped for their services but it is an unwritten rule that you never demand money for your service. Healers, for example are tipped very little for their services. A few hundred silvers, maybe 1000, depending on the wounds. Or you could chose to tip gems instead of silver. Locksmiths are tipped a percentage of what's inside of the chest that they have opened. Regardless of the service you offer, it's not much of a way to earn a living, at least not in Gemstone. Hunting is the best way to build up your bank account. Treasure chests contain plenty of silver, gems and artifacts that you can sell for good silver. A lot more silver than you could make by repairing weapons, healing or lockpicking. The serivices that Simu are granting each class are to help add a bit of roleplaying to HJ, not to create an economic imbalance. And if that does manage to happen then Simu has always been good about adjusting the economy and taking money out of the game. So I wouldn't worry about that at all.
Personally, I think what Simu is doing is a great idea. Breakage is a much needed aspect in roleplaying games if you ask me. Some people may not like their weapons and equipment degrading but I think it adds another element to the game. I don't like that weapons in certain games are indestructable. I also like the idea of needing true healing. I don't like RPG's where you get in a fight, take damage, lose hit points but still end up without a scratch. If you get hit hard then you should suffer an injury. A punctured abdomen, a broken leg, whatever. And you should require healing from an empath in order to fix your wounds. I like having that system in Gemstone because it always made me more careful when I hunted. I couldn't be wreckless when I was in battle, even if was just one on one, because I knew that if I got hit too hard then I could suffer a major wound and start bleeding and possibly bleed to death if I didn't find a healer. Those are elements in Gemstone that I wish were in other games. You may find them tedious, but I find them an important part of a good mmorpg.
I guess my concern would be if I had to give my weapon or staff to the warrior or wizard to fix / recharge then they could just scamper with my stuff leaving me high and dry. But I am assuming it opens some trade like window where you can tip if you want, and dont actually pass your gear over.
Well I think its good for promoting balanced parties on quests. Warriors can now fix gear as well as do the grunt work, wizards can recharge their own staffs, rogues can open chests you find, healers and clerics - well that goes without saying, and if you decide to flee an encounter a ranger will be handy.
But maybe Simu could go a bit further with the services. How about everyone thinks up some new ones.
- Rangers could make arrows
, make weapons.
- Rogues could act as fences - value gems, items, make poisons.
- Healers could make potions
- Wizards could scribe scrolls, make staves and wands
- Necromancers could make poisons that could be applied to weapons, poison enemy water and food, make staves and wands
- gearknights could fix your clock
- Clerics could banish spirits. So remove that nasty ghost in the ruin you want to search.
- warriors could beat up things.
So I assuming things like scrolls and potions are in the game.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
And apologies for any extra growliness. Simu fanboy here, so... yeah. Sorry.
Can you explain how warriors would be Magical Item repairers? Most of the other classes have very logical services.Typically Warriors will use magic items to improve there skills. They usually dont have the ability to understand the complexities of those magical energies though. Let alone repair the magical energies of a item. That would require the skills of a mage. This tho brings up the stigma that mages generally arent smiths. Which leaves the question who could repair a magical item. The logical choice is someone who understands and can identify the items energies, but has a very good understanding of physical sciences. The natural choice to me is a bard. This begs the question what does a Warrior do. They deeply understand the physical world much like a gearknight. But gearknights tend to be more mechanical. So warriors make swords, armors, spikes, traps, seige weapons of simple origin. So perhaps they could have a Embelsih item skill to add physical improvements to armor, clothes and weapons. Perhaps even add badges to uniforms via the skills. ALot of the improvements would be simple temporary improvements like leather straps that add a little protection but dont last forever. Sorta like what Leathercrafters leather patches do in WoW, but temporary?
It sounds about what you're after.
You don't need to rely on another person if you don't want to. You don't have to worry about weapon degrading or people with signature abilities that are mainly there to promote roleplay.
You just don't get what Hero's Journey is about. It sounds like you're expecting Simu to make their version of WoW or something.
The special class abilities are more about creating community and promoting roleplay, and less about "WTS my abilaty 2 rez u in cas ui die!" BS that every other MMO suffers from.
These abilities will help to create roleplay in the sense that we all have something to provide each other, so there's just as much point for us to gather and sit at the fountain in town, showing off our new forged/found gear, whilst advertising our ability to help others. Roleplay. You know?
Besides, you make it sound as though you're going to go out into battle with one sword, a sword that degrades after 2 hits. That it'll degrade a short part into the mission, that you'll need to take ten minutes to get back into town then have to run around screaming "Heelp meeeeeee!!1!" until someone happens to show up.
If you don't have the brains to take backup gear in a game with a system that has degrades, well... And besides, chances are that you'll have people IN YOUR GROUP that can fix up whatever your problem is on the spot.
Personally, I think this is top stuff from Simutronics. Anything at all that goes beyond CharacterClassClone#325B9 is great, and they're one of the only Devs doing it.
What I would love to see though is for each class to have the choice of say 2 out of 4 special abilities at creation. Thus a Rogue would need to choice two from the choice of 'lock picking, fencing, cloaking other or disarming traps'. Or some choice, you get the idea.
That way reaaally creating choices with services and thus giving us even more customisation.
By the way, to any of the Devs, are the skills something that improve in skill and you get better at? Like, will you need to find a very qualified locksmith to open some dangerous box? Or will just anyone be able to have a good go at opening any box?
Will we as individuals get known for our service abilities?
For example, me being a Healer. Is it possible to get to the point where you'd see someone say "Wow, with a wound like that you'll need to go see Arremus"?
Looking great Simutronics, very fun indeed! (Would love to hear more about wounds and the impact of them please?
"(The) Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude." - George W Bush.
Oh. My. God.
Arremus, I have played almost every major mmorpg to high level, plus I roleplay (which does not, by the way, consist of throwing pennies in fountains while waiting on some Dev mandated timesink to run its course). One thing I have learned from my travels is that while I love some games and dislike others, they all have their charms and their warts (in greater and lesser proportions) so I am a fanboi of none. I call balls and strikes as I see them for the purpose of providing development teams with feedback, which by the way HJ speciifically asked for in the article (feedback, not sycophancy). I didn't hear you complaining about my supposed lack of mmorpg experience or understanding or skill in any of my many threads praising HJ. But now I am critical of a specific HJ system and this makes me a kid or a l33t dude or a whiner? Classic fanboisim. People like you are the reason we keep getting handed slop.
That said, there is nothing wrong, and a lot right, with having class interdependency. Every mmorpg worth its salt seeks to achieve that. It promotes grouping which in turn promotes community and adds depth to group combat. I do think characters should have some soloing ability for many reasons I won't list here, but I certainly support each class having a unique role to play and being needed.
That is NOT the same thing as putting in some arbitrary, concocted reason to have to limp back to town all the time just because some short sited developer thinks repairing my sword will stimulate roleplay or build community. You say that I won't need to do that because my party members can provide that service. Then what's the freaking point? I am already interacting with that person. How does my having to keep asking him for repairs while we are supposed to be having an adventure together do squat for community building? Either you are wrong about how this works or this system is just a waste of time.
Roleplay? "Excuse me Brother Tom, but it appears that my Rubber Sword has lost its elasticity for yet the third time this adventure. Can you repair it once more by striking it with a mallet?" Real swords don't break all the time. They last for years. Real blacksmiths can't fix broken swords sitting in a cave with no equipment. So don't tell me this adds verisimilitude for roleplayers. Even if they could do this, as a professed "rolreplayer", has it occured to you how imprudent that would be? Do you suppose that flailing away with an iron mallet on a piece of metal in an enclosed space might make a lot of noise and be disturbing to any of the residents of that dungeon (picture the incident in the Mines of Moria)? Of course, as we know from a game mechanic perspective mobs are actually stone deaf and routinely ignore these things, but these factors would certainly occur to a roleplayer (at least one that leaves the fountains).
Possibly the purpose of this system is to make sure that soloers can't be in the field for long before their wounds or need for repairs requires them to come home again. So back and forth, back and forth. Tedium. A player like that won't want to sit and pluck geraniums. Could it be that - yes! It's the reason they are soloing. They will want to get back to what they were doing, annoyed at the interrupition. Again, you can't force people to have mandatory "fun."
When a development team sells me on a game based on a specific vision, I expect them to stick to it. I don't compare apples to oranges. This system would work great in Vanguard. They love pointless extra steps and timesinks over there. It's their version of fun. If this was a Vanguard system, it would fit right in with their thousands of other time wasters. But HJ has said "more fun, less tedium", and that's what I expect them to deliver. This is a departure from that.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Okay - how about people stop giving Amathe a hard time. He has a concern - he has raised it. Thats what these forums are for.
It seems to me Amathe that part of your concern is you think your weapons and equipment are going to degrade really fast/frequently thus requiring you to make lots of trips to town that you would not otherwise have to make.
Can we get some feedback from the Devs on how fast things will degrade?
My expectation is that they will balance it during testing so that you go to town to get stuff fixed about the tiume you would have gone there anyway to unload your junk, shop for goodies etc, so it would be something to encourage you to spend a few more minutes in town and talk to other people.
So I wouldnt expect my sword to break 10 minutes into a mission.
I have played both, though primarily DragonRealms and can say that these services were tedious.
1. Dead, waiting 1.5 to 3 hours for a cleric to happen to wander by (no global chat when dead) - how is this fun? Can't do anything but give a ghostly moan. Departing meant massive experience loss.
2. So injured that the character can't barely walk let alone go fight for money or experience. No empath to be found. Have to travel an hour or three to the nearest NPC empath who might heal some of the injuries but still leave the character damaged with scarring that to go fight would still mean death.
3. Overburdened with chests, trying to find someone to open them. Have to travel 1 to 3 hours to a town popular enough to have it's own locksmith. Can't fight while overburdened.
What I'd like to see are customized community lists. For example, the ability to list categories, name them, organize them, and assign people them. For example, I could create a list called, "Friends & Family" which has a list of all characters who I want to add to that list. I could create a list called, "Enemies", or "A-Holes" or "Don't Group With" or "Guild Friends" or whatever I want.
Is it the fighter?
Yeah, it's the fighter.
So fighters are the most common and fighter can be a 2nd class that can also get this weapon repair skill. This means that there will be more than enough players that will have this skill. This isn't the crafter class that is highly specialized and only dedicated people will take it. This is a class that even casual players will have. Add in a map with icons showing players who have this skill near you and you're set. You may even be teamed up with a wizard/fighter, rogue/fighter, bard/fighter and heck, how about a necro/fighter who can do this for you for free.
What I would like to know is if you can be more than a gearknight and get gearsmith skills. Wouldn't crafting clockwork minions be a nice job skill? Or some kind of gear ability.
Give a man fire and he''s warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he''s warm the rest of his life.
I have played both, though primarily DragonRealms and can say that these services were tedious.
1. Dead, waiting 1.5 to 3 hours for a cleric to happen to wander by (no global chat when dead) - how is this fun? Can't do anything but give a ghostly moan. Departing meant massive experience loss.
2. So injured that the character can't barely walk let alone go fight for money or experience. No empath to be found. Have to travel an hour or three to the nearest NPC empath who might heal some of the injuries but still leave the character damaged with scarring that to go fight would still mean death.
3. Overburdened with chests, trying to find someone to open them. Have to travel 1 to 3 hours to a town popular enough to have it's own locksmith. Can't fight while overburdened.
Sure it can be tough to find a cleric or healer or locksmith at the "dead" hours in GS or DR but I don't think that HJ will have that problem. I don't know what the peak is for players in either of those games now, but when I was playing GS I think it was maybe 1500-2000, maybe not, I can't remember. And the low point was probably 200-300. I expect those numbers to be higher in HJ. I think that Final Fantasy averages 3000 people per server at any given time. Average, not peak. So if HJ can average half that then there should always be plenty of healers, clerics and locksmiths around.
Aspire to Inspire before you Expire...
Here are my comments on this article:
Player-provided services are a really tough balancing act. Anything that requires you to
find another, active, at-the-keys player, is going to suck. Remember
buffs from SWG? You could only get them from a live doctor (it couldn't
really be 'botted'). You couldn't buy them from a vendor. So the only
way to get one was to find an active, live doctor, and ask him to buff
you. If there were too few (and there were), this led to half-hour-long
"buff lines" where people had to stand and wait to get their buffs.
This wasn't exactly fun.. especially if you only had an hour or so to
play, and had to waste 15 minutes of it finding a buff-doctor, and 30
in line... that leaves you 15 to go do something fun.
If they can find a way to make the game fun as you do this, perhaps
HJ devs.. you do not want anything in your game that is going to force players to have to spend long hours hunting around for services provided by another player. I remember in SWG I had some droids, and needed "droid batteries." This was before there was a global vendor search. I had to spend an entire saturday afternoon going from city to city, planet to planet, checking every droid vendor on the server, until I finally (after 3+ hours) found one that had what I needed. You know how much fun I had that day? Zero. Know what my reaction was? I deleted every droid in my inventory and never used one again. This was not a way to make the content fun by having one player provide services to another. It was a way to deprive me of content (having a pet droid) by forcing me into tedious and non-fun activities (player serivces searches) that were required to maintain it.it will work. Otherwise, I think they're stepping into a nasty
bear-trap here. Player-services need to be accessible 24/7 (e.g.
through vendors that are always "up" when the servers are up), or they
will either be ignored, or become choke points.
Making me have to scour the server for hours to find the one player who can make what I am looking for, is a non-starter. HJ will need to implement services so that I don't have to wander around for hours looking for another specific type of player, or I will not be a happy camper.
First mistake I've seen them make so far with this game. Everything else I have seen has looked great.
C
The problem is that the devs cannot control in any real way, the population distributions across the various service classes, nor the offerings of these services to the community. You will end up with hot spots and dead spots. At least in SWG, when the only place in the entire server you could find a doc was Coronet Starport, it was a matter of 10 minutes in a shuttle from almost anywhere to that starport, max. If HJ doesn't have instant travel to anywhere like that, and you have to hoof it to the hotspot, that's going to end up being darn tedious.
I agree with Amathe. I have been very enthusiastic about HJ but this service thing smells like trouble... it smells like SWG all over again, and we know what happened to that -- service classes have been all but removed from the game because they didn't work.
C
I'm another one who thinks that Amathe is justified in questioning the details of this design decision.
I see good things and bad about this proposed system of player services.
Overall I like the idea. Player services in SWG did a good job of promoting community; the reason they didn't do a better job was that all services were for combat players only -- there were no services offered just between non-combat professions.
This design for Hero's Journey addresses that in a couple of ways. First, and most painfully, there simply aren't any non-combat classes in HJ! Second, the services suggested can be used by more than one of the other classes, so there could be interaction with more than just one other class.
So it could work; the concept overall isn't fatally flawed. But then there are the details....
Amathe is right that some of the proposed services are weaker than others, which doesn't make sense -- why favor some classes over others when balance would be more interesting/useful? In fact, Mike Paddock said it himself: "Not all services are created equal, so while some may be needed somewhat commonly, like opening trapped treasure boxes, many are purely optional, such as getting a Soul Jar or having Sure Footing cast on you."
Wow, does that ever seem like a bad idea.
There's a good discussion about this going on in a thread on Simu's official Hero's Journey forum. One of the participants made a great suggestion: instead of just having one service, some of which are good in the field and some in town, let each class have two services -- one for the field and one for town.
That would make it a lot easier to balance the power of services across all classes. Even if one of your services is lame, if the other one is powerful enough you still come out even with the other classes.
It would also tend to level out the problem of some services being nice-to-have and some being must-have. As long as every class has one of each, you're good.
In summary, I think the basic idea of players services is good, and not broken. Giving a bit more thought to the details could make this work.
--Flatfingers
Flatfingers ,
The Systems already exist they are tried and tested and very very good, both DR and Gemstone have advanced gaming systems due to the fact that all SIMUs' efforts didnt go to waste on fancy graphics.
This game unlike most others has had most of the gaming systems that will be used tested for years and they are good (only my oppinion but i have 20 years gaming experience and am not easily impressed) promote community, are complex and very enjoyable. DOn't reward fools or death...
I remember playing DR for the first time having played AC1 for 5 years , I was slightly bored and looked for something no betas on the horizon so i went looking at the muds and spotted DR/Gemstone strange i thought text based online games with subscription i'll try.
I can remember being beat to a pulp bruised intop submmission as someone dragged me out of a room back to town and gave me a lecture on being careful, then someone started to heal me and i could see they were in pain via the text. Interesting I thought as I was doing this a rogue of some sort failed to disarm a trapo on a box which exploded killing me outright.
The rogue was given a dressing down and moved to an adjacent room a cleric then dragged me to the temple got me back to life and returned me to the town squarre where the empath appologised for the idiot who blew us all up and gave me a few gherbs and explained i could use them to heal minor ailments.
Can't remember enjoying myself so much in a long time, but no fancy graphics a complexity to injury and death this started to interest me a lot, if SIMU manage to transfer the majority of their current game systems they will have a massive hit on their hands. I got my charachter to level 55 ish over about 6 months playing on and off I still have an account I play every now and again to remind myself of what well developed game systems are like.
Just to reiterate if you havent played SIMU games online they really are different, take some skill mastering but the rewards you get from mastering them are well try one of them and see before HJ comes out...
SIMU may listen to your comments but as far as games systems go they don't need your opinion...
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel