Question #3 - Shared Characters

[GaioMacareg]

One of the biggest complaints with people who play MMORPGs I've seen anywhere is that they reward the people who spend the most time online. The trick is that this is true to such an extent that it is better phrased as punishing those who don't spend a certain minimum of time online. So, question #3 is, how can you make the game fun for the player who is only going to be in the game world for one or two hours on the weekends?

Other players in an all interactive world might not even notice the poor guy. He might be playing for months and people would keep thinking of him as a newbie because they never see him and he's always out of touch with what's happening. In a combat-oriented game he'll never rise above low level simply because of the amount of time it takes to kill enough things to rise up.

Now, looking at a combat game (my personal preference) one solution is to give an experience bonus based on the time spent offline. I don't really like this solution.

As you can guess from the title, my first thought was shared characters.

Personally, I think that the biggest drawback to the combat systems is that gaining the levels becomes the goal in itself. One of the biggest complaints about true character death is that the player feels taht they would have wasted so much time building that character up to where they are. This tells me that the players weren't really having a lot of fun or they wouldn't mind spendng that time. It tells me that playing the game as a low level character is specifically not fun.

So the ideal solution would be to make low-level play not only enjoyable, but in fact desireable.

I've seen a number of for-low-level gamers events hosted by various guilds on Everquest. That's an interesting idea. It seems to work out alright too.

But what if the game had roles specifically for people who weren't online all that often? I'm thining something like a shared account. The StoryBuilder scripts several custom NPCs. When a player subscrbes, they can choose to play as their own character, or they can take the job of playing one of the public roles. When they log in, they see a selection of which public NPCs are not currently being used by another player. This would let me and several other people share a character. I assume that people would experiment around a bit, but eventually start to have a few favorites they use most often.

The real problem would be the potential for abuse. Bob gets killed by another player and signs up to play shared NPCs. The guy who killed him is attacked by one. Then by another, and another, and another as Bob keps taking control of and using as many of the shared NPCs as he can to carry out his vendetta. Real problem there.

I suspect that some solution like a tally of how often the controller got the character killed and so forth could be used to restrict access to the most abusive players. It could also be used to reward those who use them best. For example, looking at Everquest with its level 50 cap. Make shared characters of all levels. When someone interacts with a player of a shared character, at the logoff screen they get the option of rating the player's performance. To prevent abuse, each player can only rate each other player once per time period (Month, two months? Who knows, but once ever is not that good an idea). Based on the ratings a player gets access to higher and higher level shared characters. Poor ratings drop their access.

[Atama]

There is one huge disagreement with shared characters, one that is strong enough that I would object highly to them. And that is the simple fact that they will be inconsistent if played by various players, some who would be good, some poor. It would be a disaster, in which you don't know what to expect from a character one day or the next. Also, it would be impossible to interact with them normally, because you would have to reintroduce yourself to the character every time you meet them since the player probably won't remember you. And the player also wouldn't remember anything that you did to that character in the past. I think it would be horrible, no offense.

[SamW]

Originally posted by GaioMacareg:
One of the biggest complaints with people who play MMORPGs I've seen anywhere is that they reward the people who spend the most time online.


This can't be helped, unfortunately, and I don't think we really want to cheapen the rewards for time invested. While shared characters are interesting, they completely destroy any pretense of roleplaying, and reduce individuals to hive-mind creations. As Og would say "Me no like."


On the other hand, no game should have the mind-numbing power curve that is EverCamp. While Everquest is extremely addictive, it is not a roleplaying game - it is not even a combat simulation, it's a stimulus-producer designed to use the most psychologically addictive patterns it could find.


The problem is that there is entirely too much focus on linear progressions in the existing games. Levels, by their very nature, reinforce this idea of moving along a continuum that has a definite begining and end. Level-based games are designed to restrict access to play areas by placing them at specific points along the level-line: you can't do x until you are level y.

Therefore, to quote Og, "Me no like lines."

There is no one, perfect, solution, but one vital step is to stop locking up game content behind level barriers. Yes, players should be aware that they are advancing in skill, but there is really no need to ever show skill scores or 'levels.' By removing the concrete measure of skill, the emphasis is removed from gaining the next level, and placed on enjoying the game for its own sake.

Just some thoughts -

SamW

[JCrook]

Originally posted by SamW:
There is no one, perfect, solution, but one vital step is to stop locking up game content behind level barriers. Yes, players should be aware that they are advancing in skill, but there is really no need to ever show skill scores or 'levels.'

Ya, I have to agree with this. First of all, I am not going to have levels either in numbers or descriptive words (I played with the descriptive idea for a while, but Sam's earlier point is correct, in that people will just decipher the descriptions into levels). Second of all, in the game mechanic there won't be levels. Progression will be made completely fluid by using a continuous number to represent skill and attribute values. In other words, one day you might have 211 skill points in archery. You and a friend practice archery that day, and at the end of the day, you have 221 skill points in archery. You never reach a level at which you gain additional powers or whatnot. Your skill progresses gradually, daily, with practice.

Now, looking at a combat game (my personal preference) one solution is to give an experience bonus based on the time spent offline. I don't really like this solution.

I intend to utilize this to some extent. As part of my much-desired power of using an offline contingency directive, I'd like players to be able to assign certain activites for their characters while they are offline. At the beginning of the game, one of the most important daily activities will be rebuilding the city and producing the tools and commodities needed to accomplish this. Some people will scavenge, some will make things, some will build things, some will serve the people doing everything else. When you log out, you'll be able to assign certain activites during offline time. You might say, spend 4 hours per day building my house, 4 hours practicing my boxing, 1 hour tending my chickens, 8 hours sleeping, 4 hours scavenging in the following sectors (A,C,D), 2 hours teaching at the boxing school, etc., etc. For time you spend doing things which require skill, like building, tending chicken, practicing and teaching boxing, you earn skill points even when you are offline.

Despite the fact that my game is rather combat-oriented, I'd like to get away from the kill=experience model. I haven't solved this problem yet. I probably won't eliminate it completely, but I'd like to make it so that people who spend their entire lives in the temple, the school of sorcery, or the boxing school, can become nearly or even equally as powerful as people who go out hunting dragons every day. I think the solution lies in the time spent. You earn more experience for killing a dragon, but there aren't dragons lurking everywhere waiting for people to kill them and earn experience points. I know for certain that you aren't going to earn experience points for killing sheep, chickens, and peasants.

[KathyN]

Hey I like the idea of assigning off-line hours very much! One of the weird things in EQ and similar games is that you can run, fight, and etc. almost non-stop without the need for sleep. (Unless medding is done in your sleep?) And game time compacts days into hours. But if your charactor was busy doing normal day-to-day things it would sure be more realistic in my eyes (ok big oxymoron - a 'realistic' fantasy game! :P ) Would there be penalties for not sleeping enough? Like maybe your boxing practice wouldn't go so well if you were tired? As far as skill development goes it would sure help those who are limited time-wise.
Kathy

[GaioMacareg]

Despite the fact that my game is rather combat-oriented, I'd like to get away from the kill=experience model. I haven't solved this problem yet. I probably won't eliminate it completely, but I'd like to make it so that people who spend their entire lives in the temple, the school of sorcery, or the boxing school, can become nearly or even equally as powerful as people who go out hunting dragons every day.

The often ignored Basic D&D had just about the most interesting solution I've ever seen: Different xp paths for different classes.

Warriors got full kill points for creatures. All other professions got 25% or nothing at all. Mages got experience for learning new spells, researching, casting spells, and training apprentices (and training as apprentices since that gave them new spells). Money spent increasing their personal libraries also provided xp. Theives got xp for gold (or GP value of items) acquired by any means, and for using their skills with an eye to getting money and goods. Assassin-style ones got xp for payment, kill xp for their targets, and skill xp for using their skills when stalking a target. Clerics got "kill" xp for any character they converted to their faith and 1/10 the xp value of any gold donated to a church they were the high priest of. They got xp for training new priests, recruiting new priests, and for money spent spreading the faith (building a new temple or shrine, donating to needy causes in the name of the church, etc.)

In this model, characters who aren't actively killing things can gain experience very rapidly. A thief who never leaves his hometown and never got into a fight in his life might be the highest level character around. A wizard who spent years in his tower is almost guaranteed to be dangerous.

Considering the flexibility of many MUDs, and especially the ones here, youd probably want to vary this to be something like, choose an experience path... 1. Way fo the Sword. 2. The Way of Money. 3. The Way of knowledge. 4. The Way of Power.

Even a mage might choose to play with kill experience. Fine, let him. The priest path works just fine for one who wants to play a politician, or a guildmaster, or a corporate CEO, or whatever else fits in your setting and involves growing an organization. The theif path works great for merchants as well as for theives. Thus the guy selling goods and making new items gains experience for the use of his skills and for both the creation and sale of his goods. Some provisions would need to be made for a person changing their lifestyle. They'd need to be easy enough not to hurt people's roleplaying, but able to prevent a person changing thier path to warrior everytime they wandered around outside town, or before they got into a fight, and then to their before theypicked up a treasure and so forth.

This can't be helped, unfortunately, and I don't think we really want to cheapen the rewards for time invested.
I didn't say cheapen the rewards for time invested, I said not penalize those who can only play occasionally. There is a big difference. Of course those who play often will have more powerful characters, but the current situation is so slanted towards them that those who can only play occasionally are getting turned off to games. I have a ton of friends who could play a game for about two hours a week, but who refuse to MUD anymore, even though its their favorite style of play, because they don't have the time to make it up levels to the point where they consider the game fun. So they play FPS games instead.


It would be a disaster, in which you don't know what to expect from a character one day or the next. Also, it would be impossible to interact with them normally, because you would have to reintroduce yourself to the character every time you meet them since the player probably won't remember you.
Possibly. I suspect that a great number of people would settle into playing the same NPC everytime. Plus, most of the time they'd be under computer control, and I don't know of any MUDs with Turing capable AIs so the few times they they did recognize you would be a benefit. But those are pretty good points. 'Course they could be worked into some of the characters, a mad scientist, a badly written AI, a demon-possessed villager, so on. But that wouldn't fit for all of them.

So I get to a variant: Static characters. Play a character that ignores all rules of experience. Starts at mid-level (whatever that means for the given MUD) and never improves. This one, has a real problem if it falls into PK hands.

[SamW]

Originally posted by JCrook:
Despite the fact that my game is rather combat-oriented, I'd like to get away from the kill=experience model. I haven't solved this problem yet. I probably won't eliminate it completely, but I'd like to make it so that people who spend their entire lives in the temple, the school of sorcery, or the boxing school, can become nearly or even equally as powerful as people who go out hunting dragons every day.

What I did for Horizon Station is remove experience points entirely. Whenever you use a skill, there's a chance that skill will improve. If you don't use a skill, you never get better at it - the guy who spends all day hacking up mutants with his chainripper might be a master with his weapon of choice, but is SOL if he ever loses that weapon and finds himself having to fight with a spikewand.

Experience points, in general, are bad because they create an unnecessary layer of abstraction and allow people to improve a skill without ever using it. This also allows people to get really good at the things that interest them without having to do anything that doesn't interest them.

Sam

[SamW]

Originally posted by GaioMacareg:
So I get to a variant: Static characters. Play a character that ignores all rules of experience. Starts at mid-level (whatever that means for the given MUD) and never improves. This one, has a real problem if it falls into PK hands.

Or just put plenty of fun stuff on the front-end, so that casual players don't find themselves getting bored. An experience curve that levels out fairly quickly (so that you don't have to spend sixty years building a character) but still allows for specialized advancement or higher levels of learning is also a good idea.

I agree that there shouldn't be a penalty for being a casual player, and I'm combatting this in a couple of ways in Horizon Station, that I'm keeping secret for right now. But the one that I think is most important is just not starting characters as gimps that have to fight rats and chickens in order to get through the early stages of the games.

If characters start out doing entertaining things, then the 'penalty' for casual players is pretty well nullified, I think.

There is also room, I believe for games that have no advancement scheme at all, instead relying on new content and loot acquisition to keep players interested.

Just some more thoughts, I have to say that you have some interesting ideas that bear further examination. Keep 'em coming!

Sam

[JCrook]

Originally posted by SamW:
If you don't use a skill, you never get better at it - the guy who spends all day hacking up mutants with his chainripper might be a master with his weapon of choice, but is SOL if he ever loses that

I'm doing this, too. I was just using XP as a generic term. I'm not using a system whereby you earn a certain number of points which you can assign as you desire. Use of a skill earns points for that skill only.

Originally posted by Kathyn
Would there be penalties for not sleeping enough? Like maybe your boxing practice wouldn't go so well if you were tired?

Ideally, yes. I want to be able to track such things as sleep, food and water intake, and damage from the cold. The environment is wintery, and there are limited resources. I'd like the environment to take its toll on the characters, so that, should the players diddle around focusing only on breaking the system rather than reacting to the situation and trying to improve it and change it, their characters will suffer from frostbitten toes and lack of food and sleep. He gets slower, his skills drop off, his acquisition of skill points also decreases (you can't learn when you are sleepy and hungry), and eventually he might just topple over from lack of food and sleep.

Also, it is damn hard to poison a foe who never eats or drinks.

A thief who never leaves his hometown and never got into a fight in his life might be the highest level character around. A wizard who spent years in his tower is almost guaranteed to be dangerous.


This is what I want to achieve, and I think the use of skill progression for skill use will accomplish this. But I want to avoid any kind of character class system. My concern mainly lies with those who improve their combat/magic skills killing things vs. those who improve their combat/magic skills in practice and study. I want those who spend their lives in a temple to be just as dangerous who spend their lives adventuring. Hopefully, this will help remove the emphasis on killing things by providing other less dangerous, more sure, but perhaps slower paths to skill prowess.

[GaioMacareg]

This is what I want to achieve, and I think the use of skill progression for skill use will accomplish this. But I want to avoid any kind of character class system.[quote]
That's where the abstraction to "way of the sword, way of money, way of knowledge, and way of power" comes in. That's totally character-class independent and can easily fit into any seting. A player can choose their own favorite style of play (or the one that suits their character idea best) and poof, they get rewarded for it.

For a use a skill & it improves system, one of my all-time favorite RPGs was Microprose's Darklands. Thier skill system was a simple percentage system. The great thing was that you odds of improving your skill each time you used it was 1/3 the inverse of what skill you had, making for built-in diminishing returns. So let's say that you have only a 10% skill at smithing and you make some horseshoes, you've got a 30% (1/3 of 90) chance to improve your skill by a few points (2-6). If you've got a 70 skill and make a suit of armor, you've only got a 10% (1/3 of 30) chance to go up by 1-3 points. I never did figure out exactly how the increase worked, but it was roughly based on the value of the 10's digit in the score -1. So at a skill of 50-60 you'd never get more than 4 points. From 60-70 not more than 3. After the 90s you were stuck getting 1 point per success. Overall it worked really well. The only way to pick up a new skill was to have someone train you. Each training session only had double the normal odds of success, but you got a random skill value up to 25 (not often more than 15 though). The built-in diminishing returns was particularly nice, and having it all use one clean formula kept it easy for the players to understand the mechanics.

[quote]Just some more thoughts, I have to say that you have some interesting ideas that bear further examination. Keep 'em coming! Thanks, I plan to. I have many ideas but not enough experience to know about implementation.