Goblin Squad Member
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A "gameplay frustration" would be the situation in which you discover that, no matter what you learn, no matter what you do, no matter what the future may bring, you cannot overcome "this" obstacle. That's not the same thing as being forced to retreat and develop a better strategy for next time. So I think you'll find that you and I have very similar outlooks in this matter after all.It may well be true that our outlooks are similar, however, my read of your main issue seems to be that "this" is the basic concept of PFO, a game based on winning and losing. If this is not so, I am sorry for mis-reading your comments. However,
Even the purest competition does not necessarily require such "predator-prey" dynamics as the competition is only a measure of achievement.
sounds like that is what you mean.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Suffice to say that the field of game design, as a segment of human knowledge and a discipline of study, has advanced radically in the last few decades.
I disagree. What has changed, arguably for the worse, is that society has taken to coddling and protecting fools from the consequences of their folly, and in hubris, and for the sake of increased profit some game designs flatter that social change by reflecting the 'nobody loses/everybody gets a trophy' attitude. It is not a radical advance in game design it is a degradation.
To paraphrase somebody who first said it: "Protect men from the consequences of foolishness and you end with a world filled with fools."
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Goblin Squad Member
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A game's goal may or may not be one in which a player gains by another's loss, it may or may not be the goal of uncovering a story, the goal of a game is defined by its designers and could be just about anything so long as the designer can define it, either implicitly or explicitly.
In PFO the game designers are thought to be generally restricting themselves to providing the environment and tools for the players to use in developing their content, and I submit the content players will develop will predictably entail conflict. The more creative will likely involve plot, just as in a story.
In conflict there will be winners and there will be losers. It is most likely not a 'zero-sum' environment, but that only says interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses are either less than or more than zero: Citing 'zero-sum' as a descriptor is not very meaningful, even if it makes you sound authoritive in game design.So GW will generally not be defining the goal of the game but creating a context in which the players may do so.
Since this is the case your contention about 'bad' game design is unfounded and misconceived.
In the matter of 'zero-sum' GW has stated, IIRC, there will be a slight economic inflation anyway so 'zero-sum' can be safely eliminated as a factor in evaluating design.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...That's just incorrect. It's a perception caused by a warped worldview that's quite beyond the scope of this thread to deconstruct, though...
Unsubstantiated assertion and possibly ad hominem. You assert your worldview is correct and mine is 'warped', but you defer explanation because it would take too long: I call that pure horsepucky. Your worldview is rendered suspect by your own rhetorical device.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm very much in favor of not requiring a rigid "class" mix (that's in quotation marks as I realize PFO is to be a classless system) for successful dungeon crawls. Sure, it may be easier with the ideal mix of roles and abilities, but being shut out because you don't happen to have anyone with, say, cold abilities isn't challenging - it's frustrating for no good reason.
During pre-expansion WoW, I did numerous five-person instances with wildly varying pickup groups. Sometimes, our only "healer" was the hunter healing her pet, or the tank was the warlock's voidwalker. Those were edge-of-disaster runs because we had people and pets filling roles they weren't optimized for, but they were both challenging and fun to do, as they required a lot of sideways thinking, and finding new uses for abilities. I'd rather see GoblinWorks go this route than place barriers specifically designed to permanently thwart a less-than-optimal group.
I agree with this. There are many possible party formulas that CAN be successful, even though 99% of them will not be optimal. And that is a good thing. Stretching your skills and getting out of your comfort zone is part of the challenge, and I think most of us would agree group encounters are more fun and memorable when they are challenging than when they are too easy.
Back in the old PnP days of First Edition D&D our group went through the "Tomb of Horrors". I am certain after completing it, and later reading it, the DM should have killed us off immediately, but the rewards (a +4 sword in particular) felt well earned due to the difficulty. And we all lost a constitution point from being resurrected. (Not everyone used that mechanic, but it seemed an appropriate punishment for failure and death.)
Tough challenges equals more fun, and there are many groups that can create party success. Variety is good.
Huh? I was going to post that you were misunderstood. Now I am not so sure that I can. When I play games, I play for the challenge. Some I win, some I lose. I do want the challenge though.
It seemed to me that you were stating (in a nutshell) that you thought this game would be best served by designing it's PVE encounters with a "many options to defeat encounter" outlook rather than an "only one way past here design". Was I misunderstanding you?
This.
I'm in favor of giving alternate--though potentially much more difficult--ways through a dungeon. I'm not in favor of making dungeons 'easy' to avoid 'frustrating' people.
I can definitely see the other side, though--making lockpicking unnecessary makes lockpickers unnecessary.
There should always be room for the niche, so you want to have a rogue in your group, but a real tabletop dungeon is best served by giving alternate routes for those who neglected to prepare Knock.
There should be more room for failure and less for anticlimax.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This.
I'm in favor of giving alternate--though potentially much more difficult--ways through a dungeon. I'm not in favor of making dungeons 'easy' to avoid 'frustrating' people.
I can definitely see the other side, though--making lockpicking unnecessary makes lockpickers unnecessary.
There should always be room for the niche, so you want to have a rogue in your group, but a real tabletop dungeon is best served by giving alternate routes for those who neglected to prepare Knock.
There should be more room for failure and less for anticlimax.
SWToR did this a bit. Some of the dungeons had alternate paths if you had people with certain crew skills. Hammer Station is the only one that springs to mind (I haven't played since a month or two after launch). If you had someone with enough biomed, you could use some gas masks to access an area with extra loot, and if you had someone with another skill (I want to say archaeology or something) you could power up a drill that would punch a hole through a wall and give you a shortcut to a boss that bypassess a bunch of trash mobs. I'm a fan of "If you don't have this skill, this bonus stuff is off limits" or "If you can't open this passage, you've got to go the longer, harder way around". I'm not a fan of "Sorry, you're lacking this one skill. The end of the dungeon is closed to you."
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Goblin Squad Member
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But, that would be the point. You wouldn't have the same guy in town randomly giving out quests. It would be a random event, like it is in the fiction. Random doesn't have to mean uncommon. It just means that when you see an NPC in the wilder parts of hexes(or just wilder hexes) you should consider talking to them. It gives another interesting reason for people to actually spend time in taverns and inns.
In a way, this kinda reminds me of the radiant events in Skyrim. Just wondering around you'll run into various and different events based solely on the radiant system that puts things into the game at random, like Spriggans attacking Hags or bandits attacking a merchant or a roaming pack of wolves. They wouldn't really be quests, but just events out in the wild that people can randomly stumble upon at any time (perhaps some more often than others, like maybe Goblins attacking a random NPC more often if there's a growing goblin presence within the hex).
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The TT principle is "fail forward": a failure should always leave a path forward instead of stopping play.
I'm not sure what the MMO equivalent is; it seems to me like there should be ways to fail out, or challenges that must be overcome in order to reach the reward for overcoming those challenges.
An important concept might be that turning back from a dungeon IS a continuation of the story, not an end. The game needs to go on, but the dungeon need not be cleared for that to happen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problem I foresee isn't a fail forward scenario, but a nobody loses scenario. I agree there should be ways forward but they should not be a easy or simple as they would have been had the party properly prepared. The opportunity to go an alternate route should be more difficult (while achievable) than simply doing it right.
WSome I know would even prefer the longer, harder, scenic route.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The TT principle is "fail forward": a failure should always leave a path forward instead of stopping play.
I'm not sure what the MMO equivalent is; it seems to me like there should be ways to fail out, or challenges that must be overcome in order to reach the reward for overcoming those challenges.
An important concept might be that turning back from a dungeon IS a continuation of the story, not an end. The game needs to go on, but the dungeon need not be cleared for that to happen.
Well the concepts of escalation cycles certainly contribute to that. Hero's attempt to stop the great dragon cult, hero's fail, dragon cult grows, new waves of hero's move in, hero's back off, gather allies to attempt to defend their city from the oncoming wave of dragons that have been grown in the dungeon they failed to clear. One thing worth mentioning is the key difference in the MMO and the tabletop game... the first hero's to step into the story, do not always or even have to remain in the center, they may be the stars at the start, and become support characters, or may run off to deal with a different problem etc...
Unsubstantiated assertion and possibly ad hominem. You assert your worldview is correct and mine is 'warped', but you defer explanation because it would take too long: I call that pure horsepucky. Your worldview is rendered suspect by your own rhetorical device.
After a bit of thought, I think I can summarize sufficiently to give a concise response.
I believe human life and its experiences are valuable and should be cherished. Even that of borderline sociopaths bitter after decades of failure who don't know any better than to destroy others in order to result in a higher relative position for themselves. Ignorance is not immoral, but I do wish such people could be shown that progress cannot be made during a race to the bottom.
In PFO the game designers are thought to be generally restricting themselves to providing the environment and tools for the players to use in developing their content, and I submit the content players will develop will predictably entail conflict. The more creative will likely involve plot, just as in a story.
No doubt. It only takes a few hateful people to poison a community, after all.
But in principle, each individual can still choose to not be toxic sociopaths.
In conflict there will be winners and there will be losers. It is most likely not a 'zero-sum' environment, but that only says interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses are either less than or more than zero: Citing 'zero-sum' as a descriptor is not very meaningful, even if it makes you sound authoritive in game design.
Zero-sum (and non-zero-sum) interactions can involve any collection of entities. A thousand. Ten groups of a thousand each.
Or even just two people.
It is still up to each individual whether they will behave cooperatively or with hostility.
You wouldn't be here to read this, for example, if untold and uncountable millions of people didn't understand that mutual cooperation is what leads to progress. Of the whole group. Subversive individuals are rightly excised for the health and safety of the meta-organism.
Yes, an individual might be able to exploit the good will of a larger society for his own gain. Many do so in their folly, not realizing that their host is not powerless against them and it is only through the success of the host that their pathetic, selfish little parasitic lives can continue. Intelligence is a bell curve, after all.
I say that justice is simply the dead hand of Darwin: weeding out those unworthy individuals even now.
So GW will generally not be defining the goal of the game but creating a context in which the players may do so.
There can be multiple goals in a game. Defining the "context" of the game implicitly defines the possible goals.
In the matter of 'zero-sum' GW has stated, IIRC, there will be a slight economic inflation anyway so 'zero-sum' can be safely eliminated as a factor in evaluating design.
All the more reason for players to relax and not be so hostile: it's guaranteed that there will always be enough for everyone.
I disagree. What has changed, arguably for the worse, is that society has taken to coddling and protecting fools from the consequences of their folly, and in hubris, and for the sake of increased profit some game designs flatter that social change by reflecting the 'nobody loses/everybody gets a trophy' attitude. It is not a radical advance in game design it is a degradation.
To paraphrase somebody who first said it: "Protect men from the consequences of foolishness and you end with a world filled with fools."
The world is already filled with fools. And one more than you think.
It should be obvious, but fantasy isn't reality. The phrase "it's just a game" is not meant in jest. PFO really is just a game, a shared fantasy. In such fantasies, we, the constituents, define the rules.
If one's goal for entertainment is to see others suffer, I'm not sure how one can expect others to willingly participate in that entertainment while also creating a pleasant experience -- for anyone. There would always be a bigger fish. The desire to strive to be that biggest fish is self-contradictory since it acknowledges the exponential un-likelihood that oneself will succeed.
Two-hundred and fifty thousand players. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning twice in the same day while rowing a boat to London from Mars.
And how long does the biggest fish even remain so with all the other fish taking bites out of him?
The term is "Toxic community cascade collapse". I hereby coin it.
A "gameplay frustration" would be the situation in which you discover that, no matter what you learn, no matter what you do, no matter what the future may bring, you cannot overcome "this" obstacle. That's not the same thing as being forced to retreat and develop a better strategy for next time. So I think you'll find that you and I have very similar outlooks in this matter after all.It may well be true that our outlooks are similar, however, my read of your main issue seems to be that "this" is the basic concept of PFO, a game based on winning and losing. If this is not so, I am sorry for mis-reading your comments. However,Even the purest competition does not necessarily require such "predator-prey" dynamics as the competition is only a measure of achievement.sounds like that is what you mean.
I don't think I know what you think I'm saying.
In any case, I don't know whether PFO will actually require "predator-prey" social dynamics: it isn't launched yet.
I sincerely doubt a game with such a system in place could grow, let alone be profitable. GW's staff is composed of experienced professionals in a well documented industry. I think the likelihood of PFO itself being hostile to player cooperation has been ruled out already given this alone. The dev blogs strongly suggest that cooperative player communities are being counted on for the game's social structure.
And the blogs have also given a rough outline of hard systems being constructed to punish anti-social ("toxic") player behavior.
But.
The game itself also seems to be getting design work done specifically to allow and take into account that same toxic behavior.
So I simply conclude that it will be up to the playerbase to establish the tone of the game's social context.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The game itself also seems to be getting design work done specifically to allow and take into account that same toxic behavior.
This sounds off to me.
It may not be all that important to your point, and I totally agree that the playerbase itself will be responsible for establishing the tone, but I think it's a disservice to conflate banditry and pvp in general with "toxic behavior". At least, I assume the "design work" you're talking about is the flags and the general desire for banditry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think what Tony was getting at with regards to "taking into account toxic behavior" is the reprecussions for negative behavior (attacker/murderer flag, rep loss, alignment shift, etc.)
I think that's what they were talking about when they said:
And the blogs have also given a rough outline of hard systems being constructed to punish anti-social ("toxic") player behavior.
It's hard to make the argument they were talking about the same thing when they immediately followed that up with:
But.
The game itself also seems to be getting design work done specifically to allow and take into account that same toxic behavior.
PFO is a business venture. It's in their interest, and it's in the players' interest, for PFO to be successful.
To do that, they need to avoid pissing people off.
Well then they failed before the game is even made. Just by having PvP in the game will, and has, pissed lots of people off. Allowing looting of players in PvP will, and has pissed lots of people off.
They have said over and over that PFO isn't designed to appeal to everyone, that its designed to draw a certain type of gamer. Many of your ideas and suggestions here seem better fitted to the forums of Wow or SWTOR then PFO.
Every PvP battle will end in someone losing. There's no way everyone can win and avoid frustration within the game setup in PFO. But despite that, it won't drive those of us who understand what the game is about, to quit the game just because we lost a battle. Those of us to whom theme parks hold no interest look forward to the struggle, the frustration and the challenge that PFO will bring.
We don't want PFO turned into yet another hand holding theme park. So you can push for such changes you wish to see, but we will oppose those that take the game into unwanted areas.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Fear not. There are many other games that will appeal to non-PvPers. And there are many more that are heavily focused on PvP...see "Camelot Unchained". Even the crafting will be leveled through PvP in that game, if Mark Jacobs follows through with his design intent (and there is no reason to beleive he won't).
There are still more games such as Elder Scrolls Online that will allow zero PvP if that is what you desire. So there are many options for the people Ryan and Company have already pissed off. And that's okay. This game will not be for everyone. And there won't be room for everyone regardless.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It should be obvious, but fantasy isn't reality. The phrase "it's just a game" is not meant in jest. PFO really is just a game, a shared fantasy. In such fantasies, we, the constituents, define the rules.
I say that common thought is an error. A fantasy does have reality in the psyche both collective (cultural) and individual. The things we do in games affect us, and how could it be otherwise? We may not be perceptive or subtle enough to recognize it, but it is not completely alien to us, it is not 'other' else it would not draw so many in, would not spark the imagination or incite passions. It is an error to believe that fantasy simply has no bearing on reality.