Improving RvR in Warhammer Online Part II: Keeps

My first post about improving RvR in Warhammer Online dealt with Battlefield Objectives and suggestions to make them worth taking and defending beyond the simple desire for free bonus renown and influence. In this post, I'll delve into the keeps and my suggestions for improving keep battles, both for offense and defense. Though some of this applies to fortresses as well, I think that Fortress attacks should be truly spectacular rather than simply a larger, laggier keep, so I'll have a more detailed Fortress post later on.

I originally started writing this several months back, and since then, there have been some changes to keep defense that I would like to touch on before we get to my ideas about improving keep combat.

First off, and the change with the most impact, was the fix/addition of the ability for melee DPS to enter keeps via the postern doors. This has added a welcome facet to keep sieges. No longer are you always safe while pouring the oil or manning the walls. You have to always keep an eye out for that Witch Hunter or Choppa sneaking in through the side door and charging into the defenders. Single-player defenses are much less effective than they were before.

Another new feature is the addition of Ordnance. Ordnance can be found as drops from players, and in random locations around Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Players can use these items to purchase upgraded, ranged siege equipment that does more damage. Sounds great on paper, but the exorbitant cost makes this addition completely useless. It costs 900 Ordinance to purchase one of these siege engines. After several weeks of play, picking up Ordnance everytime I see it and grabbing a dozen or so from our Guild Vault, I have a grand total of 50. So, at that rate, I can look forward to trying out one of these new siege engines in October of 2010!

And finally, we have the new keep upgrade system. This allows guilds who have claimed keeps to spend more gold to upgrade the keep. Again, this system looks great on paper, but the charges are ridiculous, resulting in players upgrading keeps when they come under attack, and then downgrading them once the attack is repelled. Basic cost is 3.6 gold per hour. Each upgrade after that adds anywhere from 1.2 gold per hour to 6 gold per hour. So with just two upgrades, you're already looking at paying at least 10 gold per hour, which adds up very quickly. (note: and apparently, the upgrade costs are being taken from the guild vault every 3 1/2 minutes instead of every 5, which further compounds the issue). I understand that there needs to be a noticeable cost for owning a keep, but this is a little much. I think that increasing the base cost of keep ownership and lowering the cost on most upgrades would be a step in the right direction.

So there we have the recent changes. And though I like them, and they have altered keep battles a little bit, it's still not enough. Follow the link below to continue reading and see my suggestions for further improving keep combat in WAR.

Currently in WAR, keeps are very simple affairs. Bash down the door, bash down the second door, kill the keep lord. This has been slightly improved recently with the change to allow melee DPS to enter enemy keeps via the postern door, but it's still basically the same assault and defense, modified only by the number of defenders and attackers.

Keep sieges should be epic events. Siege engines firing on both sides. Tanks cursing as they swing the ram against the door and do their best to avoid being boiled alive. Attackers trying to scramble up siege ladders and gain a foothold on the wall while the defenders throw them back. Battles swirling across the entire keep area and surrounding environs. Something to be remembered and where different tactics can come into play on a siege by siege basis.

One of the main problems with keep defense is the sheer speed that a warband can tear apart an undefended keep. A full warband can destroy both doors and the keep lord in under 5 minutes. Simply receiving a message that a keep is under attack, running or recalling to the nearest flight master, flying /loading to the correct zone, and then running to the keep can often take several minutes. And that's just for a single individual. Trying to actually organize a group to defend the keep takes much longer. Generally, significant keep defenses only occur after there has already been some activity from both sides in a zone. This has changed a bit with the ability to upgrade the amount of hitpoints on keep doors, but they are still very flimsy when focus-fired by a significant number of players.

On the other side, taking a heavily defended keep is extremely difficult. So often, the general strategy when hitting a zone is to take both keeps first, as you'll hopefully be able to secure them before any sizable defensive force arrives.

Improving on these issues requires a careful balance. We want to make keeps hard enough to get into that it gives potential defenders a time to respond once they hear that the keep is under attack, but we also don't want to make it overly difficult to assault a keep.

So there are several things I hope to accomplish with this proposal:

* Provide more time and easier methods of responding to keep attacks

* Make it easier for attackers to stop stragglers from entering the keep

* Provide more assault options to reduce the issue of single, monotonous bottlenecks

* Spread the combat out in and around the keeps

* Provide more decision points for both attackers and defenders during a siege


I'll break this down into specific sections, though of course, since this is all about keep battles, there will be overlap between the concepts.

Defense Improvements

Front doors. Currently, keep doors are ridiculously fragile when hit by a full warband. I've seen them destroyed in as little as 60 seconds. Front doors should mitigate 90% of all non-ram damage. This puts the door focus back on the ram crew, which is where it should be. Everyone else should be guarding posterns, manning siege engines or trying to lay down suppressing fire on the walls to help keep the ram crew safe.

Oil. Oil should do more damage, making it nearly impossible for anyone to go beat on the door while the oil is being poured. It does decent support damage currently, but any group with decent healers can easily outheal the oil damage. Oil currently relies on other AoE attacks at the ram in order to kill anyone who isn't overly squishy and/or missing a healer.

Patrolling guard groups should have a champion to lead them. The leashing range on patrols should be heavily increased. It would be nice if they would chase all over the keep, only stopping if they lose line of sight for a few seconds. To avoid someone kiting an entire patrol on their own, ranged guards should have a snare attack.

Ranged guards on walls. Regular guard-types, except they are rooted. Also, the biggest problem with rooted, ranged AI in MMOs is their inability to switch targets. If their current target runs out of LOS, they should look for and acquire a new target. They should also be killable and respawn at the same rate as other guards.

Portcullis. Every keep should have a portcullis (gate) on the inside part of the main entryway through the outer wall. This cannot be destroyed, and must be opened via a lever in the tower above the gate. Bashing down the front gate is just one step of the attack. There should be a lever in the tower above the gate that controls the portcullis, allowing the defenders to drop it down in the middle of a charge, cutting the attacking force into two parts. This creates a strong incentive for the attackers to grab and maintain control of the gate tower.

Keep recall scrolls. At some point, this was listed as a reward for high-level guilds, but either its been removed, or its much too far up the guild progression meter. These should be relatively expensive (lets say 50 silver), and when used, should send you directly to the keep that your guild has claimed. If your guild doesn't have a keep claimed, then the scroll is unusable.

Offense Improvements

Rams. Rams should be more interactive. Hitting it near the sweet spot should have a major effect. Currently, its hardly noticeable. Whats more important is having warm bodies on the ram. As long as the controller is swinging, it really doesn't matter much what the other players on the ram do. I often take the opportunity to grab a drink or go to the bathroom when I have a secondary spot on the ram. If everyone hits the ram meter at 50%, the ram should do 50% of normal damage. Make hitting that 90-100% section more important than it currently is. Rams are already difficult to set up due to AoE, oil and the extremely low health of the ram pad. But getting one into place should be the primary focus of a frontal attack. Rams should also mitigate 75% of the incoming damage to those using the ram. Manning a ram is already a boring and thankless task. At least make it easier to survive while staring at the door and the ram-o-meter.

Postern attacks. Postern doors should be attackable and destroyable. The doors should be tough, and the area just inside the door should be a narrow, cramped, killing zone. Attacking through the postern should not be the best nor the easiest choice, but it should be an option.

Opening the gate from the inside - A lever in the room above the outer door that allows an enemy player to open the door. Casting time should be long (15 seconds maybe?), and should be completely interrupted when receiving any damage. Add a couple of champion guards.

Siege ladders. 5-second casting time, completely interrupted on damage. Once in place, it takes a defender 5 seconds casting time to throw them down, at which point the ladder is destroyed. Climbing up the ladder also takes a 5 second, interruptable cast. On completion, you're transported to the top of the wall where the ladder is anchored. These are only usable on the outer wall (and if it helps, you can even add in 'pads' for them). They should also have a cooldown, maybe 30 seconds or so (and only triggered after successful usage) to prevent insta-invasion via siege ladder.

General Improvements

Doors - Postern doors AND front doors cant be used while you are in combat. ALTERNATIVELY, make them actual doors that open and close so that if you want to open the doors to allow your friends inside you can, but, if there are enemy players nearby, they might be able to dash inside as well. At the moment, it is much to easy to run through the sieging force and jump in the front door, which is completely ridiculous. You should have to fight your way inside. Or, if that's impossible, harass the sieging force from the outside, picking away at their numbers while causing a distraction and forcing them to turn some of their forces to deal with you. Even if you can't get in the door, it's still possible to be ressed to inside the keep as long as you have a friendly healer on the walls. But the dash through the middle of an enemy warband to be insta-ported to safety inside needs to be thrown out entirely. Excursions from inside against attacking forces should almost always come from the posterns. Hopping in and out the front door to harass the ram crew is another annoyance that needs to be removed from the game. If you're coming out the front door in the middle of a siege, it should be because you have an army behind you that is charging out as well.

The main issue with this suggestion, is that once you're in combat, it's hard to get reflagged as being out of combat during a siege. I'm not exactly sure how to resolve that. One option would be to allow exit door usage during combat, while disabling the ability to enter a door during combat. That way, if you want to go out and make a suicide run, you're welcome to do so. But getting back inside safely is not as simple as frantically clicking on the door.

Ranged Siege. Ranged Siege is almost useless in most keep battles. Their damage output is too low, and the speed with which the front door usually falls makes their setup time. Increase siege engine damage. Add a short knockback to ballista attacks and a short-duration snare to catapult attacks. It also doesn't help that a number of siege pads, both inside and outside of keep, have poorly planned placement and/or LOS issues. Someone should take the time and carefully go through each and every siege pad, trying out various siege engines to make sure that every option is viable.

Multiple Points of Interest Inside Keeps

Another big problem I have with the current WAR keep design, is the fact that 90% the space inside of the outer walls goes unused. And some of the keeps have a number of buildings and other such things that would make battles in and around them interesting, but there is no reason to hang out away from the main keep unless you're trying to hide.

So, I propose that there be a number of important capture points within the walls that if owned by the defenders provide from defensive advantage. Unfortunately, a lot of the Tier 4 keeps aren't designed with this feature in mind, so you have places like Bloodfist Rock, which is nothing but barren ground inside the walls, and XX, which has almost no space to place any points of interest, so there would need to be a pretty significant overhaul of the keep layouts in order to make this idea work.

Here are a couple of suggestions for possible Points of Interest that would be worth fighting over within the keep walls.

Barracks - This will be the spawn point for all patrols in and around the keep. There will be a flag here, guarded by the guard captain (hero level NPC). Once the captain is killed, the attackers can take control of the flag (which would be presence-controlled, like many of the flags in scenarios). If the attackers control this point, guard respawns stop completely.

Respawn point - For the defenders. That's right, a respawn point within the keep! This would make it much easier to defend the outer walls (which will be needed with the alternate methods of getting past the walls mentioned earlier in this post), and also give those who can get in via the postern something to focus on besides the oil cauldron.

Teleport-in pad - To go along with my suggestion above about allowing guilds to recall to their owned keeps, there should be a certain, controllable spot within the keep walls that the attackers can take to prevent the Keep Recall scrolls from working for that keep.

Final Thoughts

So there are some ideas. Even though a lot of details are glossed over, I'm going to cut it off at this point to avoid writing a novel on the subject.

In short, I would love for keep sieges to be larger, more varied and more interesting affairs all around. A lot of these concepts won't stand alone, and some may be hindered by current game mechanics, but no armchair design doc should ever be implemented as-is. But I do think that some tweaking and brainstorming around these ideas could lead to some exciting and innovative changes to siege combat in WAR.

Improving RvR in Warhammer Online Part I: Battlefield Objectives

This is the first in a series of posts with details about how to improve and embiggen Open RvR in Warhammer Online. This post deals with everyone's favorite renown farm, Battlefield Objectives! For this post, I'm not going to deal with whether or not BO's should given renown/influence/experience. Instead, I want to focus on making Battlefield Objectives a meaningful and important part of Open RvR that are actually worth fighting over and defending.

Click the link below to read on for details.

The basic concept here is that Objectives give bonuses / advantages to those who control them. However, I've also thrown a wrinkle in to give them more flavor and to also make it so that pushing zone control back towards a fortress becomes harder as you lock zones. So, the bonuses for Objectives work for both sides in the center T4 zone, but then as that middle zone is locked and the war is pushed back towards a fotress, the Objective bonuses only benefit the 'defending' side. The attackers will still want to control the Objectives to deny the bonuses to their enemies, but they won't receive the bonuses themselves. This concept is designed to instill a desire for control of the Objectives prior, and during, keep assaults.

To give specific examples, I decided to create a list of potential Battlefield Objective bonuses for all BOs in the Dwarf / Greenksin pairing. I tried to match the bonuses to the official Tome of Knowledge Lore for each objective, but some objectives just don't really make sense. Thunder Mountain is particularly bad about this (come on now! An out-of-the-way, tapped-out Gromril mine that goes nowhere?! Who cares?). Below are my partially thought-out suggestions, along with the official, in-game descriptions for the Objectives.

Black Crag

Lobba Mill - Though goblin constructions are semi-chaotic messes of thrown together bits of whatever is handy (which often includes weaker goblins), their machines are suprisingly effective. The Lobba Mill is one of the most productive spots for production of siege engines in all of the Greenskin lands.

Control of this objective grants a 20% damage bonus to siege engines for all Destruction players in the zone.

Despite its unassuming name, the Lobba Mill is Black Crag's most prolific rock lobber construction camp. The mightiest Lobbas in the Waaagh! are built in the camp, and the abandoned Dwarf stone quarries that dot the mountainsides provide more than enough ammunition for even the longest sieges.

Squiggly Beast Pens - These pens are the source of some of the biggest, nastiest Squigs around.

While the Pens are controlled by Destruction, there will be several champion-level squig and herder patrols added to all keeps controlled by Destruction in this zone.

While the Night Goblins of the Old World Mountains have always been the most cunning, nasty and independent of greenskin tribes, its often easy to capture a few here and there. When kept in small groups they are more craven than rats, and easily forced to work. Most often they are put in the squig pens, where their considerable expertise helps Grumlok and Gazbag's Waaagh! grow the some of the most vicious squigs in existence.

Madcap Pickins - The mysterious shrooms found in this area of the Crag have been known to drive some shaman crazy, but their potential for bolstering magic power is too great to ignore.

While this Objective is controlled by Destruction, all Destruction players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their chance for critical heal and spells increased by 3%.

If there is one thing that Goblin Shaman know how to do when they aren't eating mushrooms, it is growing them. Among the dank mountain caverns many different varieties grow, and every shaman knows that the best mushrooms grow in the darkest, muddiest, and smelliest places. Of particular valley are Madcap mushrooms, a type so potent as to enhance the sorcerous power of the Waaagh! to unpredictable intensity. Consuming a single mushroom will turn a normal Goblin into a frenzied, frothing lunatic. Few Goblins, shaman or not, survive and encounter with a Madcap mushroom, but that hasn't stopped them eating them by any stretch.

Rottenpike Ravine - Controlling this objective allows the Goblin Shamans to harness the restless spirits that linger in the area and utilize their energies for protection.

While Destruction controls this objective, all Destruction players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their magic resistances increased by 100.

This brambled and terraced ravine has been a hideout for all sorts of riff-raff, vagrants, and vagabonds. It is a place of death, and is haunted with the spirits of the innocent men and women who were killed here. In the middle of the ravine is a bend called Hell's Half-Angle where everything from bad luck to full-scale military ambushes seem to occur. The debris of dozens of carts and wagons and towed items such as cannons are strewn about, and even found in piles, and made into defensive redoubts by some forgotten army. In terms of the war, it is an ideal choke point on an obvious line of advance, and both sides desire to control it.

Thunder Mountain

Doomstriker Vein - Controlling this important source of Gromril is vital to creating higher quality weapons and armor.

While controlled, Doomstriker Vein increases melee damage and armor by 5% for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

While many Dwarfs march to secure Thunder Valley against the coming greenskin Waaagh!, an elite few must follow the direct orders of the High King and obtain the gromril needed to complete the Doomstrikers. Only through the strength granted by these mighty weapons do the Dwarfs have a hope of turning aside the massive horde commanded by Grumlok and Gazbag.

Gromril Kruk - Though the Gromril in this mine has long since been tapped, controlling this mine is a source of pride for both sides.

Whichever side controls this Objective will receive a +3 bonus to Morale generation.

Also, controlling Gromril Kruk and Doomstriker Vein at the same time provides a teleport option between the two locations. If either becomes contested, the teleport is disabled.

For the Dwarfs, Gromril Kruk has transformed into the cruel joke of Thunder Mountain. Recently discovered, the area was heralded as a ripe new source of gromril from which the Dwarfs could finish the Doomstrikers and rebuild their kingdoms. However, the vein gave out quickly and suddenly, proving as false as an Elven promise. No sooner had the Dwarfs come to grips with this truth than a contingent of Orcs took up residence in the barren mine. Now the Dwarfs must contend with a constant stream of enemies from the depths of their false hope, while they scour the mountains for what gromril they can find.

Karik Palik - 10% damage bonus for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

I couldnt find a description for this objective.

Thargrim's Headwall - 10% armor and resistance bonus for all players and RvR NPCs on the controlling side.

The campaign to capture the summit of Thunder Mountain is a long, painstaking affair. The route to the top of the mountain is narrow and treacherous and easily defended if one holds one of the many choke points alongside the mountain.

Thargrim's Headwall is a large defensible stone redoubt overlooking two smaller redoubts below it on the path up the mountain. As the first major choke point in the route up the mountain, he or she who controls the Headwall can easily frustrate the movement of an enemy army up the volcano.

Note: The above two Objectives were hard to create flavored bonuses for. Apparently, they are both meant to be choke-points, but they really don't serve as that function in-game. Riding past either is no problem, though Karik Palik could potentially be a choke-point if there were player defenders there.

Kadrin's Valley

Gromril Junction - Keeping the trains running on time is important for quick manuevering and defense of this zone agains the rampaging Greenskins.

While Gromril Junction is under Order control, there will be an active teleport to/from Order warcamp and this Objective.

The Dwarf railroad stops at this station at least once every day, as the train engineers proudly boast. The Dwarfs are as hard-nosed and inflexible about keeping this train running as they are about anything else, and will not tolerate any mischief that would cause the trainmaster to have to delay the timetable. The greenskins are fascinated with the idea of interfering with the train, stealing its valuables, slaying the stunties who run it, and at last, breaking the thing into small pieces if they can.

Dolgrund's Cairn - Possession of the Cairn instills a sense of pride in the Dwarven folk and their allies.

While this objective is controlled by Order, all Order players in the zone will receive a +3 Morale generation bonus.

Dolgrund Dralminsson, former commander of the Gharvin's Brace Regiment, gave his life fighting a rear-guard action centuries ago, single-handedly saving the lives of a hundred seven Dwarfs. The burial site of Dolgrund Dralminsson is sacred to the Dwarfs, for no action is as undeniably Dwarfy as an embittered last stand. The greenskins have sensed that they can easily goad the Dwarfs into a fight at the Cairn with a few well place piles of drek, yet such a decision may prove foolish at such a revered location.

Icehearth Crossing - This tunnel provides a quick, easy and secure route for forces moving north and south through the valley. Securing and maintaining control of this tunnel is of vital importance.

As long as this objective is controlled by Order, there will be level 55 Dwarven hero guards blocking the north end of the tunnel.

Icehearth Crossing marks the main passage through the Icehearth Crag. During the winter the cold is so intense that only a being blessed with the legendary stoutness of a Dwarf could bear to cross from one side to other. In the battle for Kadrin Valley, the underpass has proved a valuable route, and both Dwarf and Orc bleed in its chill caverns.

Hardwater Falls - The icy falls provide a source of fresh, clean water for the dwarven camps in the zone.

While this objective is under Order control, all Order players and RvR NPCs in the zone have their health increased health by 10%.

A large waterfall continually pours gouts of fresh water into the Kadrin Valley, where the water collects in many small pools and streams that trickle through the lush terrain and rock formations.
The Dwarfs now call the area the Hardwater Falls after the freezing torrent of water that blasts down from the rock above. The Dwarfs are trying to preserve this source of water to keep their armies supplied, but the Orcs seek to defile the waters in anyway they can.

Are these suggestions balanced and fair? Probably not. Are they all equally useful? Again, probably not. But I'm not a Mythic developer. This is merely meant to be a rough sketch of what could be done to make Battlefield Objectives important, valuable, and interesting.

Addendum

Personally, I would actually consider taking it a step farther and making the bonuses race-specific for the zone. For example, Madcap would only effect goblins. While I'm sure a lot of folks would complain about it being unfair, so what, life is unfair. These additional restrictions would add a different dynamic to the game. I can imagine that Greenskin and Dwarf players would be more interested in fighting in the Dwarf / Greenskin zones because thats where they would get the bonuses.

But if it were race-specific, then you could do interesting things such as making the bonuses bigger and/or adding in potential negative side effects. For example, we could say that Madcap Pickins increase the spell crit chance by 10% for all goblin shaman, but also gave them a 2% chance of being overwhelmed by Waaagh! energy when casting a spell and being disabled for 3 seconds.

But, I know how much most players hate that sort of restriction, so I'm merely adding this suggestion as a note rather than incoporating it into my main proposal.

Improving RvR in Warhammer Online

Mark Jacobs made a big announcement yesterday about Mythic's plans to focus on changing and fixing the RvR portion of Warhammer Online. It sounds like their brains are moving in the right direction, but I think there needs to be some significant changes to RvR in WAR aside from simply adding in an influence system.

Below are some various thoughts and ideas I've had about Open RvR and Keep Sieges in particular. And no, this article doesn't discuss the maligned contribution system and the gold bag rewards. I really don't care so much about the items. Having fun is my focus when I play. This post will also not touch on any issues regarding scenarios.

Note: My babbling below comes from playing up to level 31 on an active server, participating in a handful of Tier 4 battles and sieges as well as too numerous to count fights in Tiers 1-3.

Second Note: Most of this was written long before the announcement from Mythic linked above. But this information did prompt me to finish up this post.


OPEN RvR

Lets start this off with some talk about Open RvR. Open RvR is combat in the RvR areas, usually centered around Battlefield Objectives or pushing the opposing side back into their warcamp.

One of the big issues with Open RvR is simply the large, empty spaces. Coupled with scattered objectives, awkward terrain (such as thousand foot high cliffs), and lack of anything else to do, makes it very easy to march in, capture the area and then march back out without ever seeing an enemy player.

Another issue is the lack of purpose regarding Battlefield Objectives. Aside from the experience and renown gain when capturing them, these spots really serve no strategic or tactical use. Give each side a reason for controlling these spots.

BOs should provide some advantage to RvR in the local area. The buffs from the guard captains at BOs can be nice (aside from the fact that the easiest BOs to get to always seem to have the merchant buff!), but give us something interesting and useful. Maybe a long-range siege battery that if controlled by your side, can be commanded to drop AoE catapult-type attacks on either the keep or the besieging force.

Or how about Bugman's Brewery in Blakfire Pass or the Tavern in Tabelecland? If Order controls this spot, then the NPCs in the BOs and keep in this zone have plenty of beer to drink and thus are emboldened to fight harder. Something small, but meaningful like making them do more damage. BOs could provide also provide a discount to owning a nearby keep. For each BO owned by your side near the keep, upkeep costs for claiming that keep are reduced by 5%.

Here are some other thoughts and ideas about Open RvR in general.

• Markers on the world map are not up to date. There have been a number of times where I've traveled to a land where I saw the enemy held a keep, only to find when I arrived that the keep had already been taken by my side.


• Keeps under attack should have better grading of how much of an attack is occuring. One player wandering by and getting one hit in on a guard is treated the same way as an assault by four warbands with siege equipment as far as the indicators are concerned.


• On a related note, the cryers in warcamps should speak up whenever ANY keep is under attack. Along with slightly varying messages, such as "The outer door has been breached by our foes at Gnol Baraz!"


• Battlefield objectives should have a little marker on the zone map indicating whether or not they are available to be captured. It sucks to spend time running to an objective only to find that you can't even try to capture it yet.


• There needs to be more points of interest in the RvR areas. Something else to fight over besides the one to four focus points that are currently there. (Just one example.)


• Ability to bind in a Warcamp. Making it difficult to get to the RvR areas was not a good decision. Why do I have to bind in a PvE area? (note: This was just added recently but since it was already in my list of things to improve, I figured I would leave it in for future reference)
  
• More Contested PQs. There seem to be only a handful of these, and they are awkwardly placed so that one side has a clear advantage to accessing them. Contested PQs should be everywhere. Give us a reason to engage in PvP outside of the RvR zones


• Add in more NPC patrols to the RvR area when one side controls all the objectives. And not just around the fort, but between the BOs as well.


• NPC 'scouts' that shout out warnings about enemy warbands. If they see more than XX number of enemy players, they make a zone-wide shout announcing their presence and where the enemies are located. So, in order to move through the area without drawing attention, you would want small, scout-killing parties out in front of your main force that can dispatch the scouts without causing them to raise a zone-wide alarm.

KEEP SIEGES

There are numerous problems and bugs related to keep sieges. The biggest defensive issue is getting to the keep before its taken. A full, prepared warband can tear down the outer doors in the time it takes me to recall to the nearest warcamp and run to the fort. The problem for attackers is the lack of options and strategy. Basically, there is only one. Bash down the doors, charge up the one ramp and kill the lord. There really is no strategy involved. And if there are player defenders, the ONLY way to succeed is to have them heavily outnumbered.


Step 1: The Initial Siege

First off, someone really needs to very carefully go through every single siege pad in and around every single keep and check their LOS, as well as actual visibility (ie what the player can see). Their are numerous places where siege engines have no LOS to other siege engines, or, they are out of range. A catapult placed on a siege pad should never be useless. I should be able to see and target all the enemy siege pads.

Secondly, move the guards back from the doors. Having them run in and out constantly getting in single hits is extremely annoying and just plain dumb. Or better yet, keep them from runing through the doors altogether. And on a similar note, increase the leash range for the guards and patrols. Too often I see them rubberband back and forth because they decide to attack a healer who is out of their leash range.

Next up, you need to stop the ability for defending players to run inside through a gauntlet of foes. If a player is in combat, they shouldn't be able to go in through the doors at all. This will give the attacking players incentive to defend the postern doors, and it will also provide incentive for those inside to make a sally outside in order to secure that door for their reinforcements. Getting in and out of the keep should be about control, not about who has the most lag-free connection.

Add in some interesting siege options such as the Orcapult (Greenskin special catapult that Black Orcs can use to try and launch themselves onto the walls. Sometimes they miss with disastrous results.) Allow the option to seize the gatehouse from the inside and open the gates (put a lever in the gatehouse with a long interaction time that can be used to open the gates).

Along with these changes to give more options to the attackers, you need to help out the defenders as well. The main issue I've found when defending keeps is simply that by the time I recalled to a warcamp and ran out to the keep that was under attack, the outer doors would already be down. So give the gates some more health and make it more resistant to spells and bleeds (in fact, I think that doors should be immune to all sorts of things, but that's another issue).

Also, put some NPC archers up on the walls! What kind of shoddy keep defense has noone on the walls!?


Step 2: Inside the Outer Walls

For Tier three keeps and up, we really need to some more points of interest inside the first keep walls. You have all of this area inside the walls that is virtually useless and generally ignored. The only points of interest are the gates, the walls and the postern doors. Much too narrowly focused.

Having such a single, narrow focal point throughout the entire keep assault really makes things boring. Here are a few random ideas that popped in my head.

1) A Barracks with a hero-level guard captain. If the attacking players don't go and kill this captain, he periodically spawns a full group of guards that head for the front door. Not enough to seriously hamper a sizable warband, but enough to be annoying and provide another point of conflict in the fight for the inner keep. Attackers have a reason to kill him, while defenders have a reason to defend him.

2) Magical teleporter - This provides another way for defending players to get inside aside from the postern door and also a way for the defenders to sally from an unexpected spot. Attackers will obviously want to destroy this.

3) Add-in the ability to break down a postern door. These are doors after all. However, they are generally small and placed in awkward attack locations so that a ram cant be used. However, if the attacking players want to try and beat it down with their swords, that should be an option. Inside the postern door should be a narrow, easily defended hallway. Not the best solution for storming a keep, but something to add another layer of potential strategy and tactics.


Step 3: The Final Assault

Once inside the keep, things really get ugly when you have defenders (and are simply boring when you don't). Trying to crowd up a single-narrow staircase that opens directly onto a tiny room with more narrow stairs up to the third floor is just annoying. In particular, a heavy mass of players combined with the decreased room for camera angles makes this fight not much fun. Make the room bigger and make the Lord and his guards move faster if you're worried about players kiting them.

Make the inside of the keeps interesting. Currently they are extremely plain.

Turrets and whatever else attacking through walls, floors an ceilings is a pretty awful bug. This really needs to be fixed ASAP. These bugs seem to result in lots of extra lag as well.

One of the worst things about the Lord room is the fact that the Lord and his bodyguards reset when they reach the top of the stairs. And where is the first place they make a beeline for when they get low on health? That's right, the top of the stairs. The easy (and sensible) solution is to just make it so that they don't try to run at all. They should stay and fight to the death once engaged.

The inside of keeps definitely need some love. Multiple stairs, larger interiors, hallways and passages to fight over. One room down, one room up is so boring and uninteresting. The rooms themselves should be larger to start with. Give us some room to maneuver and engage our foes rather than having everyone pile up into one big mass.

Step 4: The Aftermath

Killing a Keep Lord is a bit of a letdown after the crazy combat of an all-out assault. Insta-spawn guards and keep lords are boring. Have the new troops spawn slightly outside the keep and march inside, taking their assigned spots.

I understand that supposedly, keeps NPCs do upgrade after a while when a guild claims a keep and holds onto it for extended periods. However, I have never seen evidence of this in-game, nor have I seen any official info about this feature from Mythic. It sounds good in practice, but given the fact that a keep can go from completely safe to dead Keep Lord in 20 minutes, makes it pretty much impossible to ever maintain a claimed keep on servers with active, balanced populations (and even on those servers a late hours raid could easily make short work of any NPC defense).

MMO Core Concept #4: Favor

At its most basic form, favor is simply a more detailed reputation system. Actions committed by players can have a positive and/or negative effect on their standing with individual NPCs, villages, towns, nations, or even whole races of beings.

Some single-player games such as Morrowind have put forth effort into making their NPCs react to what the player does in a meaningful way, but this really hasn't carried over into MMOs. For the most part, reputation is simply a counter that allows you to buy new items from certain vendors and/or have certain NPCs greet you by name. But there is such much more that could be done on this front.

Keep reading for some of my ideas on the subject.

• Favor can be gained and lost via player actions. This would include questing, fighting (both players and NPCs), economic transactions (merchants always like repeat customers). Many actions would include a positive favor boost from one person or faction as well as a negative favor hit from others.



• Favor can go below 0, representing that that faction or person has a particular dislike for you.



• Favor can be temporarily influenced, via spells, magic items or even just the clothes you're wearing.



• Favor also includes relations between NPC factions. This is dynamic and can also be influenced by player actions. If a player hero from one town went and slaughtered a neighboring town, the victims might not be so happy with the town the player is from. But, unless the first town had a major quarrel with the second town, they might in turn be unhappy with the player for ruining their trade relations



• Favor with individual NPCs can be passed down to their descendants

Another example of how this interaction might work:

Perhaps you as a player spend some time in a small village performing heroic deeds, rescuing maidens, defeating monsters, etc, until you're known as the Hero of Whosville! Well that would bring about some nice perks in Whosville, such as discounted wares or extra quest availability. But, it just so happens that the nearby village of Grinchton really hates the inhabitants of Whosville and has had a rivalry with them for several generations. Your hero status has not gone unnoticed there, but the reaction you get in Grinchton will be quite a bit different from the one you get tin Whosville. Merchants might charge you more, the inn will only offer you their crappiest rooms to stay in, the mayor isn't interested in asking for your help with the local bandit problem and other such sundry minor effects. Since they're just a simple farming village, they're not going to do to such extremes as banning you from town or attacking you on sight (after all, you're much more powerful than the local constables), but they will do what they can to make it known that you're unwelcome.

Once you have a base Favor system in place, you can expand it to include such interesting things as each player's standing with gods, elemental forces, guilds, etc.

Favor would decay over time, in both directions, tending towards 0 over an infinite timelines. Rate of decay would be dependent on the actions that resulted in the favor change (saving the farmers daughter might result in long-term favor with the farmer, but only short-term favor with the butcher) as well as the lifespan of the individual. Immortal gods and elemental powers would likely have much longer memories than those of the shorter-lived folks. And perhaps even something your ancestors did might come back to bless or haunt you! This could open up the possibility of such things as making bargains with higher powers to give you long-term favor with them (and thus the ability to call on their aid in times of need). But of course, they would want something in return.

In short, favor is just a fancy name for reputation, but since reputation has become rather static and mostly uninteresting in current games, I wanted to give it a new name to represent the potential for extrapolation and development of this underused game concept.

Monster AI and Points of Interest

One thing that was always a standard in fantasy settings has been the fact that abandoned points of interest such as the old wizard's tower or the ancient dwarven city is that they always attract new inhabitants, usually the unsavory kind. Given that my concept of mob placement and spawning involves dynamic, mobile spawn points as well as mobs that can be permanently defeated, this feature ties in well.


So with that we have the concept of Points of Interest. Rather than just being static places with some flavor, Points of Interest are their own living entities. They desire to be occupied by powerful forces, and in order to make that happen, they exert a magnetic Attraction that draws mobs to them. The Master Spawn Objects that control the mobs actions would be the ones checking for Points of Interest that fit their needs, are nearby and are exerting enough Attraction to draw the attention of the Mater Spawn Objects.

The Points of Interest would be flagged as to how strong their Attraction is and what types of creatures would be most attracted to that spot. So an abandoned wizard tower might exert attraction on all mob types, but it would have a especially strong Attraction for magic-using creatures.

Some Points of Interest might always exert Attraction and some might only attract when empty. So maybe a band of orcs has taken over an ancient city, but the city still exerts Attraction, resulting in a large dragon coming along and displacing the orcs who then look for a new home or maybe just rampage through the countryside in anger!

It would probably also be a good idea to have the Attraction factor of a PoI be malleable based upon strength and personality of any inhabitants as well as resources and treasure nearby. So, using our above example, the presence of the dragon might end up causing a negative attraction to its occupied PoI, keeping other mob groups away.

Simulating AI in Online Virtual Worlds: Preliminary Notes - Master Objects

Dynamic AI and spawn systems are something that has always intrigued me. UO tried it back when they were in beta testing, but the calculations required brought the servers to their knees and the concept was abandoned.

And no, increasing the spawn rate based on number of players in the vicinity does not count as dynamic in my book.

I've tried on numerous occasions to collate my notes into some sort of actual design-type document, but organization of it has always eluded me. So I decided to instead break things down into smaller components and try and put together some rough outlines.

For this first attempt we have Master Spawn Objects.

Master Spawn Objects are invisible objects that control a group of mobs. These not only tell the server when and where to spawn mobs, but they also help define a sort of group consciousness for the mobs in their group, giving the mobs reason and purpose beyond the basic concept of providing punching bags and loot pinatas for the players. This object is not designed to dictate every movement of the mobs within its area of control, but rather to provide a guiding force and also to maintain historical data that will be used to create a dynamic and flexible spawning system.

Master Objects

• Provide an over-arching framework with which to control a group of mobs.


• Serve as a way for mobs within this group to 'talk' to each other


• Can spawn new mobs


• Can add additional AI routines to individual mobs within its group


• Can move the entire group (either as an attack on another settlement or as a means of self-preservation by moving away from areas where they're being 'farmed')


• Keeps historical data on events that have happened with its group


• Can alter its behavior based on the historical data


• Can create and destroy temporary structures that are associated with its group


• Can keep track of group-owned objects and storage, using that information to alter group actions and desires as well as providing appropriate spawns

There's a starting point off the top of my head. I hope in the future to clean it up and provide further details on what each part means. And, of course, this is only one part in a multi-faceted Dynamic Spawning AI system!

I would love to hear any comments or suggestions!

Minor MMO Idea #4: Meaningful Quest Text

One of the common occurrences in online, quest-based games, and WoW especially, is the fact that veteran players tend to skip reading the quest text, instead simply focusing on the pertinent parts, ie, who do I kill and what rewards do I get! I find myself even doing this with new quests that I haven't seen before. Just a quick skim to see who needs to be eviscerated and where they live and what my phat loot will be when I return with a bloody head as a trophy.

But why does this happen? Why is some quest designer's hard work ignored? Well, because its mostly just fluff! The details of the quest text have little to no impact on your character and oftentimes, don't even correspond to gameworld events!


A prime example is one of the early Blood Elf quests in WoW which is designed to teach you how to use the special racial abilities. It's called Thirst Unending.

Part of the quest text reads:

"If there is only one lesson you deign to remember from your time on Sunstrider Isle, let it be this - control your thirst for magic. It is a thirst unending, - you must absorb energy to survive via Mana Tap, and you must control how you release it via Arcane Torrent. Failure is to become one of the Wretched... hopelessly addicted and insane."

But is any of this true? Not at all! I can spend my entire WoW lifetime without ever using Mana Tap a single time. And if I do use it, I can release it whenever I want. There is no side-effect. I don't have to ever worry about becoming "one of the Wretched". All of the quest text above, while suitably ominous, is completely irrelevant to any actual in-game occurrence.

So why would should I want to read fluffy quest text that isn't even consistent with the virtual world. If it gave me some new insight into the land, that would be something. But, as it is, I, like most other players, simply scan for location, required objectives and the available rewards. Anything further is just a waste of time.

And this reminds me of Shadowbane. During development Shadowbane hired a writer to create incredibly engaging and detailed lore for the background of the game. But, when it came to actual gameplay, the lore was nowhere to be seen. This was a disappointment to a lot of players and left the game feeling extremely shallow (which it was).

It's kind of like the whole anti-drug propaganda that talks about the evils of marijuana. I bought into it when I was young. But then I met people who smoked casually, and I tried it myself, only to discover that all of those crazy tales my PE teachers related to me (why we were taught about drugs by the PE teachers I have no idea) were completely false! If you want to tell me about the dangers of inhaling super-heated smoke into your lungs, or the propensity for glassy-eyed TV viewing while under the influence, then I can accept that. But marijuana stories about friends trying to crack open car-sized rocks with their heads is just ludicrous. Are we still buying into Reefer Madness? But I digress.

My point is, if you're going to go to the trouble of creating interesting lore or NPC speech, tie it to your gameworld!

Re-Visiting an Old Friend: Day of Defeat

Back in the days of Counterstrike, when a good friend and I used to cart our computers up to his office at the university so we could play together over their T3 lines, there came along a little mod that didn't receive as much attention as Counterstrike did, but still had a lot of charm, enough so that it was eventually released as its own box set. That mod was called Day of Defeat. I was hooked immediately and it wasn't long before many of my friends followed suit.


DoD took Counterstrike's realism, warped it to fit WWII weapons, created more open and varied maps and really solidified the teamwork aspect of the game. Unfortunately, it has a steep learning curve. It's easy to die. Very easy. And if you aren't familiar with the current map, you can expect to die at pretty much every turn until you learn it. But, the plus side of this barrier to entry is that the players tend to be a lot more mature and team oriented than you find in most FPS games.

But what shines about DoD is the reliance on teamwork. There will never be a single player that can single-handedly win a match for his team. Every map has specific goals, and players will keep respawning until one team or the other accomplishes those goals. The maps are generally complex and have lots of flavor such as mounds of rubble, broken walls and abandoned cars, that not only provide an engaging setting, but that also have an impact on gameplay as well! Bushes, while just simple 2d sprites, do provide a lot of visual cover. DoD is all infantry based, which may annoy those who like the Battlefield type games. But what they do have is done well!

I hadn't played DoD in several years, but my recent foray into Battleground Europe, an online game with a similar WWII theme, made me remember the good old days. So I reinstalled Steam, updated
the client and logged in. The years have not been kind to my twitch reflexes, but it's still as much fun as it used to be. The only real downside is a lack of players. Many of the servers that are around these days seem to like to fill empty player slots with bots. And while they do decrease the empty fort feeling, it's still a very hollow experience. Luckily, there are other servers that don't use bots at all and also have an active population.

DoD has what Battleground Europe lacks... and mainly, thats the fun factor. I think that BE goes a bit over the edge in realism which cuts into the fun of playing a game. If someone could come up with a decent mashup of the systems in DoD, Battlefield and Battleground Europe (and maybe some Planetside), we could have a really awesome WWII MMO! Take the fun and the infantry/town combat from DoD, add in vehicles from Battlefield and Battleground Europe, then layer it all with an interesting, intuitive, dynamic meta-game that is designed well enough to handle widely varying population numbers and maybe throw in a little bit of character development. Stir gently and enjoy!

Primary Layers of an Online Virtual World

Raph, as usual, has been talking a lot about virtual worlds and what defines a virtual world. So that got me to thinking. I decided to attempt to break down and define what I consider to be the Primary Layers of Online Virtual Worlds. Every Online Virtual World will have at least one foot in each of the Primary Layers listed below.


The Three Primary Layers of an Online Virtual World are: Social, Environment, and Economy.

It can be argued that the Social layer is the most important. After all, that's why its online. But in addition to player-player interactions, this layer also includes such functionality as the chat system, available emotes, guild/player organization management and NPC-NPC interactions! What sort of tools do players have for in-game interactions? How does the game facilitate or hinder this? How does this affect out-of-game interactions? Is your website a social gathering spot for participants?

Environment covers the basic things you would think of. What is the world made of? What does it look like? Does the environment have a direct impact on the player? Can the player impact the environment? What are the visual elements of the environment? Also fitting into this category is the interface. How does the interface affect the players interactions with the Virtual World? Without a defining environment, you don't have much of a world. Environment is not just graphics. It includes ambiance, sound, NPC personalities, text descriptions, interactivity and more!

The Economic layer includes both in-world economics and out-of-world economics. Everything from RMT, to subscription model to in-game loot and trading options. How and what can players exchange in-world? Do these exchanges extend to real world money transactions? How are objects with economic value generated? Are they permanent? Are there ways for the world to keep inflation in check? How are players paying for access to the world? How does this business model effect the types of users you get? How do the types of users affect any in-game economy?

All three of the layers cover both in-game and out-of-game areas, and overlap with each other as well. I'll expand more on this in a future post as well as try to better flesh out the concept.



Note: Looking back on this post, I notice that I use the term 'game' quite a bit. This layer division is meant to cover non-game Virtual Worlds as well, but since a majority of my experience has been with the gaming aspect, it just ends up being an unconscious extension of my though patterns.

WoW Concept: A Different Way to make 'Heroes'

This post is in response to Blizzard's press release about their next expansion which includes the first (and only) hero class, the infamous Death Knight. While many are excited to see Blizzard finally getting around to implementing something that has been hinted at since launch, I find their design idea for heroes pretty, damn, lame.

Note: This is not a full-fledged design idea, nor is it balanced or even fully thought out. It is simply meant to provide a sample of an alternate method for implementing Hero Classes that I think would be a lot more fun and interesting than what Blizzard proposes.



Anytime after level 60, players are given the option to take on the hero class quest. The initial phase will be relatively simple, though before they complete it, players would be given a warning stating that completing the quest will permanently change their character class, after which they can never change their mind or go back.

After accepting their new class, the player would lose certain abilities and talents of their base class, but would get access to the Death Knight specific abilities as well as some from the other allowed base for the Hero class. For example, Paladin-base Death Knights might be able to learn how to cast Shadowbolt while Warlock-base Death Knights might get to use maces, two-handed swords and shields.

The hero classes would have restrictions based on race and class. For the Death Knight example, it would be limited to Horde-only, Paladin or Warlock.

This system would be a bit similar to how Shadowbane handled classes. By having two different options for a base class, you give extra variety and personalization to the Hero classes rather than just making them all similar. Also, in order to cover all the race and class combos while still providing a choice, some lore-bending would be required (but hey, if you're allowing Tauren Death Knights, then a little lore-bending shouldn't be too hard).

Perhaps Paladins would lose all of their shield and blessing spells while having their Holy talent tree removed, and Warlocks would lose their pets and the Demonology tree (just an example off the top of my head. I'm not overly familiar with Paladins or Warlocks).

Though I'm not completely sold on the functionality of this concept, I really like the idea that all the Death Knight specific spells and abilities would be acquired by completing various steps of a super-epic quest line rather than simply going to a trainer. The quest line would have a number of parallel branches that can be completed in any order, allowing players to choose which abilities they are most interested in learning and focusing on those first.

In addition to making the hero class interesting and diverse, this method would also allow those who have neither the time, energy and/or inclination to deal with the hero quests, to still have their own niche. Death Knights will have a lot in common with their base classes, but they won't be replacing their base classes. A level 60+ Paladin will still have lots of abilities and options that a Death Knight wouldn't.

Each race/class combo should have two options for Hero class progression, though obviously, there would be a lot of overlap (ie, options aren't unique to a particular combo). Those who choose not to follow the Hero path can still explore their possibilities of their class while having access to abilities and talents that no other class has.

Hero classes shouldn't just be flat-out more powerful via more hit points or more powerful spells, but rather should provide increased and varied options for those who want to experience something different without starting from scratch. And of course, those who do devote their time to playing the hero classes will likely find certain combinations of powers whose synergy gives them an advantage, but with proper design and tweaking, those scenarios should never be completely overpowering.

So there you have it. That's my basic idea for how to handle hero classes in WoW. Making the heroes just an extra unlockable class that you only have to partly grind seems very blase and unimaginative. Though the downside of my concept is that it would require lots of design and additional tweaking and balancing after release. But hey, they're going to be doing all of that anyway...

Single Class Games: A Creative Springboard for New Class-oriented Gameplay

I ran across a blog post the other day (which I cant seem to find now despite hours of searching), that discussed the concept of making a game with only one class! What an excellent idea! This has already been done to some degree, mostly centered around the rogue-type with games such as Thief.

Not only would it be interesting to delve into such a focused area to try and make it engaging, interesting, varied and fun, but I could see doing a small focused game along these lines as a prelude to producing a bigger game that combines the concepts gameplay from the smaller games and incorporates them into a whole.

Click the link below for some random thoughts about what could be done with this idea.

Rangers - Game would be mostly outdoors. Rugged wilderness with lots of nooks and crannies. Mostly small villages who would be somewhat distrustful of the wornout stranger walking into their town. Villages would just be for some light trading before the players would set back out into the wilderness. Gameplay would be centered round tracking, outdoor survival, learning the lay of the land, etc. Opportunities for combat, puzzle solving and exploration abound!

Soldier - This game would start you off as a guard in a town. You do patrols, break up bar fights, gamble and drink on your time off and eventually work your way up to joining the army where you are sent off to fight battles in which you find yourself just one of dozens or hundreds of combatants, and your main focus is to defeat the guy in front of you and keep an eye on whats happening in your general vicinity while trying to maintain your formation and respond to any new orders from the leaders. Maybe even moving from this closeup individual combat to commanding your own squads and armies!

Mage - Entire game based inside an impossibly huge tower that likely crosses and exists in several dimensions at once. The basic concept is that the player is a new apprentice who must learn to use magic, pass tests of their magical abilities, and explore the mysterious tower without getting caught trespassing into forbidden areas while also avoiding being eaten or imprisoned by various entities who live in the recesses of the mammoth structure. There would also be various factions within the school that the player can choose to join which would further alter their playing experience as they advance through the ranks. This would also be an excellent place to try out a complex spellcrafting system!

Priest - Player starts as a novice priest dedicated to a certain god. The goal is to increase their gods in-game presence through converting heathens, making appropriate sacrifices and establishing new temples.. As they gain favor, the player can gain new powers. They'll even have opportunities to change the deity they are aligned with... for a cost. Avatars for other deities would be also trying to promote their gods and as such would cross paths with other players, sometimes in battle, sometimes in uneasy alliance.

Just a few examples off the top of my head. In some ways, having such a narrow focus provides even greater opportunities for creativity than a more open game would.

Breaking the Holy Trinity of Character Grouping

Tank, Healer, DPS. The three required classes of any class-based MMO. Which pretty much makes dungeon adventures very standard and boring after the first couple of times through. Wouldn't it be nice if you could take any class-combo you wanted into a dungeon. If there were ways to engage encounters that didn't rely on the tried and true, "You take damage, You heal, and You kill stuff" routine?

I think a lot of this is simply due to the lack of decent AI. The mobs can't think on their feet, so the standard is to simply make them do lots of damage, and give them lots of hit points so that the players have no options except to follow the rails on your amusement park ride.

But how could this be handled without providing numerous opportunities for players to find ways to cheat the system? With instanced dungeons, you could have some variables that changed the composition, layout and abilities of mobs and bosses based on the group makeup, but then you would have to lock the instance to that group, and not allow them to switch or add other players, which in turn presents a whole slew of problems on its own (not to mention the extra coding required).

In reality, I dont think anything can be done along these lines in a class-driven MMO without some major changes to how things are done. Hit points and damage would need to stop scaling exponentially with level. Players would need to be given lots of various utility abilities that would provide them opportunities to do more with less so to speak. Computer AI would need some serious buffs and the Monty Haul equipment hunt would need to be seriously scaled down so that it doesn't have such an effect on a character's power. In short, too many changes for a class-based system to incorporate. After all, one of the primary reasons for creating class-based systems is to compartmentalize players into easily quantifiable boxes that can then be stacked together and compared to the mobs for ease of power balancing.

When you design a game based around character classes, you're putting the train on the tracks, and your combat system will be pretty rote from there on. If you can come up with ways to make things less generic and more interesting while still maintaining the concept of character classes, then more power to you. But, in the meantime, I'm looking at the skill-based systems as the future of online worlds.

Economy and Inflation in MMOs: Part II

I had originally tried to post this as a reponse to Tobold's article, 'The Link Between Level and Gold' but my response never appeared so I decided to just make it into my own blog entry.

I have written previously about economies in MMOs, and it's a subject that comes up frequently among players... mainly because any semblance of an economy is usually quickly destroyed by incredible amounts of inflation that the devs try to crudely bandage via various gold sinks.

I think the real root of the problem starts at the beginning of the game. The main issues are:

1) Gold and items dropping like candy from a pinata every time a player kills any mob. Even if the items are 'trash', they can almost always be sold to some perverted NPC who apparently enjoys collecting Glistening Ooze and Frayed Rat Tails. Or, even worse, every NPC will be more than happy to buy this junk and will have an unlimited number of funds with which to do so!

2) Permanent items.

The way to move towards this is twofold:

1) Stop putting spendable coins on 90% of the mobs. Why on earth are demons carrying around gold!? Do they stop in the pub after a hard days work of hanging out at the local demon portal? Very few mobs should drop coins. Instead there should be various armor and trade goods that can be turned into useful things by craters. Gold and money should not just appear out of thin air.

1a) NPCs shouldnt buy anything and everything players shove in their faces. NPC vendors should have things that they are interested in, and flatout refuse to buy anything else. Move the economy towards a barter system rather than relying so much on a never-ending supply of gold that falls from the sky and fills everyone's pockets.

2) Equipment should wear out or be lost in other ways, requiring replacement. As long as 90% of the items in the world never deteriorate, you will always have mudflation issues. Until we move beyond this weird item-permanence concept, any attempt at a real economy is futile.


Players should be poor for the most part. Maybe a few gold saved up to be spent at a bar one evening, but not these ridiculous hoards of 1000s of gold. The only ones with that much gold should be powerful merchants and kings.

RESULTS:

Trade routes develop. Perhaps there is an excess number of swords being produced in one town, so the local smiths and merchants have no interest in buying any. But another town down the road doesn't have a smithy, so they're more than willing to buy the swords. Some enterprising player could come along, set up a trade route and make some money while stimulating an actual economy.

Crafting becomes not only an important job, but it also promotes community and interaction as well.

You've taken the first steps towards creating a sustainable, closed economy that can be fun in of itself.

"But how is being poor fun", you say, "I eat Ramen every day and pawned my guitar to pay rent! I don't want to experience that in an MMO!"

Well, to put it simply, you don't have those same requirements in an MMO. You dont have to eat, you can sleep just as easily on top of a mountain as you can in the most luxurious bed, and noone is sending you bills for supplying you with water. There really are very few activities that require money, and that's where the mudflation begins.

As usual, these concepts can't exist in a vacuum. You would need a dev team that takes a long, hard look at the in-game economy at all stages of development. But given the fact that most of the popular MMOs suffer from some form of mudflation to varying degrees, I don't see that as a bad thing.

MMO Core Concept #3: Leaders and Champions

Kind of similar to the upcoming Gods and Heroes squad concept, but taken a step farther. Basically, this is meant to bring an epic feel to MMOs, particularly PvP, while still allowing players to be individually powerful, though there are now differing types of power beyond just the abilities of your character.

Basically, there would be two different lifepaths for players to take: They can follow the path of a Leader, gaining the ability to command several NPCs and access to skills that would facilitate that. Or they can follow the path of the Champion, which would be more akin to the standard character archetypes we see in MMOs today. Players would be allowed to switch back and forth between the paths with some limitations, but there would be significant differences between the skill sets, forcing the players who seek to have it all to spend time, effort and money acquiring the other skills and losing access to some of their previous skills, though the skills wouldn't vanish, they would just be dormant.

And it would be balanced in such a way that a Leader-type character who devotes their skills and studies towards the art of combat and hires combat-oriented NPCs could be just as effective (though in a different manner) as a Champion who has also devoted themselves to combat.

I would even extend this concept beyond just combat. It would encompass city-building as well. Champions may be great for keeping monsters and bandits at bay, but when it comes to actually building a running a functioning town, you would need leaders to command and control all the NPCs in the town.

Some of the basic skills would overlap. Everyone would be able to fight, cast magic, learn tracking, etc. But only Champions would have access to the Fireball of Mass Destruction or the Blade Dance of Doom, while only Leaders would be able to control squads of NPCs or run a store.

This method of dividing character progression into two distinct camps not only opens up interesting avenues of interaction, but also provides a variety of outlets for different types of players. Those who enjoy the sense of power that comes from personal gain would likely lead the lives of Champions, while those who enjoy crafting, socialization and other non-combat activities would lean towards the life of a leader, forming communities with like-minded individuals. Of course, there's no reason the different player-types couldn't have some crossover. Perhaps a Champion decides to ally themselves with a town, providing protection for outlying areas and functioning as a part-time sheriff. Or maybe a Leader could make a name for themselves by commanding a squad of elite soldiers that seeks out the most dangerous foes in unexplored areas.

Envision a city siege. Small organized squads of soldiers manning the siege engines, battering rams and walls, with others waiting in the wings for a breakthrough. Meanwhile larger than life heroes run about, attempting to turn the tide in either direction and engaging each other in awesome displays of power and abilities. Sounds great to me!

MMO Core Concept #2.5: The Rumor Mill

This is part of my Dynamic World series of ideas. The basic concept is that NPC 'fluff' dialogue will change and respond to events that happen in the world. This is done via the Rumor Mill. Rumors are created by the system when significant events occur, be they player actions, NPC actions or Gm triggered events. These rumors are seeded amongst appropriate, nearby NPCs and then have a chance to propagate throughout the land.

Some NPCs, of course, will be more likely to keep up with all the rumors (Innkeepers for example, or that beggar who does nothing but wander the streets all day) while others will ignore them completely.

Each NPC would have a limit to the number of rumors they would know at any time, and they would also have a prevalance towards cetain types of rumors (IE, merchants would be more interested in bandit activity and finds of new resources whereas farmers would be concerned with wolves attacking their animals or bugs ravaging their crops). Rumors would generally be spread along trade routes, be it via boat, pack mule or foot. And there would also be a chance that rumors don't spread to the next town for whatever reason.

It would also be neat to add a "Telephone Game" feature to the Rumor Mill, allowing for some rumors to change as they pass from mouth to mouth. The mechanics of this would be difficult and problematic to implement though.

Rumors themselves would be flagged for importance on a local, regional and world level. If Bob the Knight clears out a den of wolves near the town, that would be of interest locally, but probably not much beyond that. However, if Bob slew the great Fire Dragon who had been terrorizing the mountain villages for generations, that would be an event worthy of worldwide renown. Rumors would also have a persistence rating. Driving off the wolves would only be noteworthy for a short amount of time. But the victory over the dragon would be spoken of for many years to come!

Rumors would also have the added effect of making famous/infamous players known to NPCs, even if they've never set eyes on each other. If everyone knows that you were the one who slew the dragon, then you'll receive praise and adulation as you travel. On the flip side, if you're infamous for the butchering of small farming villages, then you might find yourself persona non grata in the entire region, forcing you to travel halfway around the world to find a city where they don't know your name and reputation.

This would also allow players some insight into local events while they are travelling. Talk to the innkeeper or other gabby NPCs to get info about whats going on.

NPCs would also have rumors about each other. Everyone in the village would know that the local blacksmith was horribly wounded recently and is unable to perform any blacksmithing duties. Smart players might see this as an opportunity to ply their own blacksmith skill to earn some extra cash, and possibly the appreciation of the local citizens, which in turn might foment a new rumor concerning the new blacksmith that recently arrived in town! Or there might be rumors about a local mage recently acquiring a Book of Demonic Summoning which in turn triggers dynamic quests from locals who want the book destroyed, or wish to acquire it for their own shady purposes!

This also ties in with another of my required, MMO Core Concepts, Every Action has Consequences. But rather than having some mystical, overarching reputation that is automatically and instantly known worldwide, NPCs would spread the words of your deeds in a semi-fluid manner, furthering the goal of a dynamic, changing world that responds to player actions in a meaningful manner.

Minor MMO Idea #3: Player Created Artifacts

When reading fantasy books, one aspect I always find fascinating is when they speak of great and powerful items that were created from the Tears of a Goddess by Amazing-Guy, the famous Mage-Smith, who laboured for four days and nights, harnessing the power of the enslaved Fire God BurnEmAll and quenched the blades in snow carried by ten virgin brides!

I've thought that it would be a really cool idea to have these sorts of things doable in an MMO by the players. But the HOW of it always stymied me. No matter how difficult you make the learning of the recipe, or how obscure and rare the ingredients are, the player-base will always grind it out to create as many copies of the same artifact as they can. Sulfuron's Hammer, in WoW is an excellent example. Sure, the first one was a big deal. But it didn't take long before you saw one, or even more, in every single battleground match! And thus does epic fantasy vanish into the nether.

Then, an idea hit me. Rather than hard-coding in the artifacts themselves, let's just code in a framework for how artifacts are created, and let the players fill in the gaps... in a limited manner of course...

This concept revolves around the idea of Inspirations. These would be given out very sparingly, and only to crafters who have reached the pinnacle of their profession, or near to it. I don't quite have the details of that part worked out, but perhaps a fixed number is given when the character becomes a Grand Master, or perhaps they accumulate slowly over time, or maybe they have a small chance of being acquired when a craftsman makes an especially wondrous creation.

Then, these Inspirations can be used on the corpse of a named or otherwise very special creature. Or maybe even on an ultra-rare resource. When used, the crafter is given a pseudo-random special item type (Blood of, Tears of, Essence of, etc) that is tied to the creature/object it was acquired from. This special item will be flagged with attributes based on the skills, special abilities and such of its parent object.

The crafting interface would then allow this special, artifact-resource to be added to any regular creation. So if they player wanted to make an Artifact-quality chair, they could. More likely they would use to it imbue armor and weapons, though I could also see extending its uses to larger constructions such as buildings and ships!

For example, suppose a player used an Inspiration on Gorgofen, the infamous Black Dragon whose spittle could eat through even the toughest armor. They receive a special ingredient, called Essence of Gorgofen. This essence would take some of the attributes from Gorgofen (dragon, acid-breath, etc). Then, when the player adds this special essence to something they are crafting, that item will be appropriately imbued with these traits (this is the framework), flagged as an artifact and the player would have a chance to name it.

This system allows players to create unique artifacts in a meaningful way. They get to choose how, when and why to use their Inspirations, and then they get to choose how, when and why to incorporate those inspirations into a fabulous, one-of-a-kind creation that will be written about in the history books!

Minor MMO Idea #2: Using Mounts in Combat

So I was thinking about mounted combat and a came up with a simple idea. Just add a few special mount abilities that the player would have access to while mounted.

Basically, the mount would function like a pseudo-pet. They wouldnt act autonomously, but instead, while the player was mounted, they would get access to special abilities/attacks. These could even be flavored based on the type of mount. For example, a wolf might get a powerful bite ability to attack melee opponents with and a leap ability that allows for an extra-long jump. A horse might get a rear-oriented kick and a charge ability.

Of course, it would have to be balanced in some way so that it wasn't always advantageous to fight while mounted, but it would be an interesting and simple way to allow mounted combat.

Minor MMO Idea #1: More Intricate Dyeing Options

And by dyeing I'm referring to the skill of adding color to an object. Some games have this option, but many games don't. The most common reason I've seen is that they don't want players to mess with their carefully crafted artwork. But this is obviosuly something that the players desire. Just look at the number of complaints on the WoW forums about the color choices for some of the raid armor!

Here's how to do it right, and better.

First off, as you're designing the textures, they need to be layered in a consistent manner. That way, when you implement the 'dye armor' feature, you can specify which layer gets dyed, and thus have more control over how the players affect your artwork. Secondly, allow multiple layers to be dyed independently. This would allow the players to do things such as give the armor a 'wash' (altering the color of the grooves), 'overbrush' (color the peaks) or 'stain' (alter the basic color of the armor). You could even go so far as to allow color layering (IE, the current color affects the results of your dye job) to give the players even more subtle nuances about how their armor looks.

Not only would this provide simple customization options with little overhead to the company, but I could also see an in-game economy springing up around the Dying profession as some players would have much more interest and skill in creating nice looking outfits.

One disclaimer. Don't give players access to a pure black dye option. It just looks like crap.

MMO Core Concept #2: Dynamic NPCs

This is one of those ideas that has been floating around in my head for some time. But this comment on the Broken Toys blog caught my attention because it put an interesting twist on the concept.

Dynamic NPCs are ones who interpret and react to player actions as well as those of other NPCs. There's really two parts to this. On one side, you have the various town-type NPCs; shopkeepers, quest-givers, blacksmith, etc etc. On the other, you have the mob-type NPCs; orcs, dragons, rats and all that sort of goodness. For brevity, this post will focus on the town-type NPCs and leave the mobs for another day.

I've always thought that it would be interesting if NPCs actually reacted to what was going on around them. If they could know what was happening in their local area (or on a larger area if they are the type of NPC that would care about such things) and alter their routines based on that knowledge.

There are several layers to this possibility. The first would simply be location. NPCs would migrate and set up home/shop based on their fears/desires and how the local enviroment plays into those feelings. A jeweler, for example, probably wouldnt make a very good living in a small, farming village. They would likely look for a larger city with a stable economy and plenty of wealthy potential customers. And this also ties in with the comment I linked to earlier.

TPRJones mentioned the possibility of NPCs responding to wars based from, around or in their towns. People tend to flee warzones, and the NPCs shouldnt be any different. Is the town under siege? Those NPCs who formerly farmed the now-ravaged countryside would now want to move someone safer. Or perhaps they even change, turning into beggars and thieves since they can't make an honest living anymore and

This could even be developed into a meta-game feature, where player-towns compete to make their city more advantageous for NPCs, thus drawing them away from other nearby towns.

Eventually, player-towns would come to represent the guilds controlling the town. Is the guild focused on a safe, posperous enviroment? Then the town will attract merchants, entertainers, nobles and the like. Or is the guild warlike, building defensive structures and constantly warring with their neighbors? Well then you might find more mercenaries and drifters looking to take advanatge of the wartime market. Or do the players even go so far as to kill every immigrant that shows up in their town? They'll soon find their village shunned by all NPCs. Or maybe they only kill the elves, resulting in a town populated by everyone except the elf-types.

I would even take this a step farther, and have the town's appearance change as well. Do the players in the town randomly kill NPCs and offer sacrafices to demon gods? Well then, the town will probably start looking more sinister and become more rundown, populated by crazed fanatics, the destitute and desperate, and perhaps even a few unholy minions lurking about in the shadows. Is your town full of do-gooders who uphold the virtues of justice, compassion and truth? Then the town becomes more shiny and airy, sparkling across the vista so that it can be seen by riders from miles away. The streets are immaculate, the poor and lame are well taken care of and every NPC greets you with a heartfelt salutation.

Another layer to this concept would be related to quests/jobs and shopkeeper supplies. Has a rancher been losing a lot of their livestock to wolves on the edge of town? Maybe they'll try to hire players to take care of the wolf population. And the local innkeeper will start charging more for food as the supply of meat dwindles. Then, once the wolves have been cleared out, the rancher no longer needs to hire players for that job, but maybe they have need of someone to deliver their overabundance of meat to the next town.

An important part to making this all work would be to give NPCs some longevity, so that they aren't killed on a daily basis by the more psychopathic players. But thats a different discussion.

Dynamic town-NPCs would not only make the world seem more alive and fluid, but it would force players to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Shopkeepers for player towns wouldnt just be the drag and drop variety. Certainly there should be options for players to hire NPCs to populate their towns, but ultimately, player actions in-game will determine how successful your town will be.

MMO Core Concept #1: Labor Points - Harvesting of a Different Color

What are labor points? Labor points are numbers that represent an individual character's ability to directly affect the game world. Players can use their labour points to contribute to the building of infrastructure, to assist in production and for destructive purposes as well. Each character starts with a certain number. Additional points are gained slowly over real-time, whether a character is logged in or not. The total number of points that can be accumulated is capped at some arbitrary number.

My overall concept for this system includes several other layers such as skills, hired NPCs, varied building sizes, trade routes and other good stuff that would interact with the Labor Points System in a meaningful way. But, in order to keep things simple and focused, I'll be foregoing discussion of those at this time to keep this essay as basic as I can.

Lets start with the first use for these points, building infrastructure. A player or guild decides to construct a harvesting building, a lumber camp for example. Using whatever method the game offers, they lay the unfinished camp down. Whether the building requires resources or not is irrelevant for this feature, so we'll assume that it doesn't, just to make things a little simpler. However, it does require labor to build. Players click on the unfinished building and choose how many of their available labour points they wish to contribute (I would also require a 'building' skill and have the skill level factor into how effective their labour points are for this task, but that idea is also unneccesary and adds another layer of complexity that I'll gloss over for now). Once the required number of labor points have been contributed, by any number of players, a timer starts. Once the timer is complete, the building is done and production can begin.

Now that the lumber mill is up and running players can choose to contribute their labor points to harvest raw materials, logs in this example. For each labor point, X number of logs are produced. Also, players can choose to contribute labor points to convert the logs into boards, which can then be taken to a carpentry shop and used in other buildings or projects. There would be a cap on the amount of logs that can be produced on a daily basis based on the number of trees in the general area (a lumber mill in the middle of an open plain would not be very productive).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, labor points are also used to destroy buildings. This may be players wanting to tear down their own buildings, or it may be a hostile act against an enemy. To prevent players from arriving at someone's town late at night and tearing everything down before the next morning, there would have to be some artificial limitations on how players use their labor points for destruction. Perhaps a heavy stamina penalty or a hard-coded limit on the amount of destruction a building can receive over time.

The reasoning behind using the labor points for two diametrically opposed actions should be relatively obvious. It's meant to force players to make a choice. They can either use their available labor to assist in building and growing their community, or they can use it for aggresion and destruction; or even some sort of combination of the two. But there will be decisions to make. And those choices have an effect on the world. If your guild is spending all of their labor on tearing down enemy fortifications, then production suffers and perhaps they won't have enough supplies or be able to replace broken items. If your town puts all of their labor into production and town growth, then perhaps a neighbour will start to encroach on your lands by building towers and other fortifications. If you don't take some effort away from production to tear down these intrusions, you might suddenly find that your borders have shrunk.

How will you deal with the issue of mule characters?
Thinking about this question, I would actually say that it's a non-issue. If players have characters whose sole purpose in life is to accumulate labor points, thats fine. The total amount that could be accumulated would be kept relatively small (perhaps a week's worth) and various mechanics could be put in to place to encourage players to skill-up these 'mule' characters so that they are more effective, at which point the line between played character and mule begins to blur. My initial thought would be to have character skills tie in to how effective their labor points are used. A character who is a Master Lumberjack would get more bang per labor point at a Lumber Mill than would a character who has little or no Lumberjacking skill.


In summary, this system is designed to allow players to harvest raw materials, but to also limit the amount of raw materials that can be produced in any given time. It shifts the focus of harvesting towards guilds and communities (since they will be more likely to have the available resources to build camps) while still allowing individual players to have an effect and be able to contribute directly in a meaningful way.