f13.net

In case you don't know, Richard Garfield is the guy who invented M:tG.

Below is an extract of an article that appeared on www.magicthegathering.com today.

He basically argues that one reason classic games like backgammon kick ass is that over a number of years time has worn away stupid rules that don't involve decision making, and worked to shorten and focus games.

Or, to put it another way, nobody ever needed to complete a corpse run in chess.




It's all pretty vanilla stuff.

But the argument that chess and backgammon demonstrate how corpse runs suck is kind of fun.

The one glaring thing that he seems to be overlooking is that in all of the examples he used outside of MMORPG's have one thing in common.

They are all turn based.

In a turn based game, you can structure the play in order that every time it's your turn,  you must make some sort of meaningful decision.  Turn based computer games like Civilization take advantage of that same pace.  Deciding which direction to send your scouts to explore can be of critical important in the early game, as well as choosing which tech tree to research, etc, etc.  In any turn based game, you cannot do everything you want to in a given turn which lends feelings of importance to any choice you make.  Do I buy Baltic Ave, or save my shekels hoping to score Park Place?

MMORPG are not turn based.  You have to give your avatar commands every second you are playing else they stand and do precisely nothing.  In many ways, this is a shackle.

Also found interesting this quote


First, how cool would it be to get to teach classes on Games for a living?
Secondly, interesting that he doesn't claim to understand himself how to do the games even he designs..

Crap, now im jonesing for a good turn based mmorpg of some form.

Xilren

EVE on dial-up ?

Wasn't Dofus turn-based?

Operative word being 'good.'

A lot of board wargames in the 70s were developed with that in mind.  The game system could not require writing things down, and external recordkeeping had to be kept to a minimum.  External from the map and counters on it.  Normally only what the turn was and may some kind of resource points, like 3rd Reich, and that was done with little counters slid on card stock with numbers printed on them.

Also 'unit density' and 'unit count' was a factor, so the players didn't have a 1000 counters to set up.  So they scaled the hexes and units to the battle, platoons vs corps etc.   And they introduced things like 'zone of control' which you could put, say a division sized unit in one hex, and then it blocked access to the surrounding hexes, instead of having 3 regiment or brigade size units.  So one had 1/3 of the pieces to set up and move.

Modern computer wargames expanded in good ways and bad ways.  The simulation, fractional losses etc, could be made more complex, because the player did not have to keep track of them.  However, so many modern games felt that using battalions in a corps-scale game was also OK, and dropped hard-zone of control.  The player doesn't have to set them all up, but they still have to move them all, and rules normally want you to keep divisions together, so you end up with more busywork.

On the DnD side of rules, the pen and paper version was designed with that in mind, that's why I never care to see that ported to computer systems, since its abtractions seemed more for ease of play than depth of play.  The depth came from the roleplay aspects, or the 'tricky' feats and spells (rope climbing, etc), which of course were normally NOT ported to the computer.   So it kept the simple parts instead of expanding them, and scrapped the interesting parts because it was too hard to code.

Avalon Hill games were for n00bs :D (Actually Panzer Leader was my favorite game of that era) With SPI games like War in Europe, Terrible Swift Sword and Wacht Am Rhein you could literally spend a day just setting up the pieces, not to mention needing surface area the size of a ping pong table just to lay down the map(s).

We tried those, too.  I had a subscription to SPI. 

We even tried Drang Nacht Osten [sic] - War in the East, which was the start of the German invasion of Russia in 1941, at like a regimental scale (IIRC).   We had like 6 guys playing, it took us one night to just set the damn thing up on a ping-pong table.

Then we started playing, like two nights later I think we did the first combat rounds.  We looked at each other at the same time: fuck this shit.

In those games you don't move counters by picking up each piece and setting it down, instead you have to move them in mass with brushes of your forearm.

Heh. I never played that one (our group didn't play many of the GDW wargames) but we did try Narvik which was from that same series.

Um ok.....article about why a 9bn dollar industry makes no sense, yep thats right all those people buying and subscribing to games dont know wtf they are doing or what they want for gameplay

He also failed to mention that Someone who creates a game of chess, or Go and packages it up gets to sell it 1 time, kind of like you sell a package of cards once...and fail to get revenue off the secondary card trading market...whoops.


Reads like sour grapes to me...

Perhaps one of the purist realizations of MMOG fallacy I had was the realization that the difference between a good game and a lousy one was how well it tests the player.  When success or failure in a MMORPG is based more on longevity than a capacity towards decision making, then is when I know this game does not deserve a $15/mo subscription.  Heck, they should be paying me $15/mo for wasting my life in a game that is not a game. 

Then we get into aspects such a socialization and achievement that seem to be the real crack that make MMORPGs function.  Just because I'm somewhat immune to giving a damn about whether I'm level 1 or 50 doesn't mean that the average newbie will be.

Nah, he's done just fine for himself with the whole CCG thing.

But, i think he has a much different perspective on what the actual game part of an mmorpg is.  He's focused on the what do I do as a player any time I can, and from that standpoint, yes the moment to moment decisions in a mmorpg are really stupid and trivial.  But even in the turn based games he loves, there are still moments of "do nothing", i.e. when the other player is making their move.  All you can do is wait and think about your next move, chat, whatever, but nothing game related.  So they really aren't THAT different, he's just ignoring the whole "it's not your turn" part.

Ironically, there are a LOT of similarities in high level MMORPG raiding and sanctioned MTG tournament play, and even similarities between the RTM aspects of mmorpgs and the secondary card market that the developers/Wotc don't take advantage of....

Xilren

So are MMOG's (especially DIKU's). They just trick you into thinking they aren't. But really they are.

But your point is valid. I think because of the faux-real time nature of MMOG's, they should be looking to the evolution of sports for ideas on unfucking the game systems, especially "chaotic" fast-moving sports like football (soccer) or hockey.

I say removing the red line of level-centric pvp would be a nice start. I think it would be nice to see what you could come up with if "levels" made you character grow more horizontally than vertically - it would perhaps give you a lot more options of actions to take, but god damn, if I sneak attack you in the ass with a claymore, the fact that you've played more shouldn't negate the fact that I just skewered you.

I've been thinking about lateral advancement for a while now, since I think the strict level up and class system of WoW and others is ultimately flawed. In an MMO you want your players to grow attached to their characters right? But what if at some point that player decides they don't want to be their class anymore? Their only option is to essentially discard their current character and start again. Once you've discarded one main character, it's much easier to do consider it a second time. I say consider because there comes a time when you just can't bring yourself to do the same content again to level a main. So all along players have to either be happy with their class, you're pushing them out of the game, or you're weakening their ties to the game so it is easier to quit. Why do it?

Despite my dislike of the speed of the Eve advancement and how you can't affect it directly, I think they have it right with every character able to learn anything. If you suddenly decide that what you're doing is not what you want, rolling an alt would be no better than just changing your character's focus. As a bonus you get to keep all your other skills (which will likely have some relevance regardless), you get to keep your name, your stuff, your corp, and your contacts. Everything that ties you into the game is kept intact. The ships act like changing classes in a way too. While you may have missile/shield/caldari skills, you don't get to use them if you're in a gun/armor/amarr ship.

Personally I think I'd love a system where you quest for your abilities and possibly even stats. I love doing quests that give you more than just more experience, actually I just love doing quests in general, but quests that give you unique rewards are double plus good. Oh, and players should really start closer to maximum power. Ideally you'd be powerful enough to compete right off the bat, then gain extra depth/utility as well as a slight boost in power as you "max out". FPS games/mods with advancement mechanics generally work like that. I really don't see the benefit of essentially timestamping your content by making them useless for players once they've leveled past them. Not to mention making it harder for friends to play together due to level differences, putting a damper on people coming in late or changing class/skills, etc. It's fairly silly on reflection, really.

Wouldn't a MMORPG without character progressing / levels (or their equvalents, cash, traning time, skill trees) be like an FPS where you can just stoll up to the final boss and kill it?

There is no character progressing in FPS (well maybe specific weapons), but there are 'levels' - the acutal game levels.  The only way to see more of the game, is to get though the current 'level'.

Many RTS's the only way to get to other 'maps' is to win on the current map.

So in MMORPG the way to see the content is to change your character, instead of physically blocking the content, its logically blocked.

That's actually why I like MMOGs and dislike the other games!  I feel I could try and go anywhere, but I may be killed or be ineffected, instead of I *have* to finsihed Level 1 to get to 2 and then find the key to 3, etc.

FF did it well with the 'job' system, you can just put on your black mage hat when you feel like it... of course, you have to level it up again, which is great for retention, and you can assign it as half your character's level as the subjob so it makes a difference.

I'd like games to take both that and the combat out of FF and leave the travel behind.

No. Coming full circle, it might be like mtg. Where you quest for new spells and abilities, with the aim of equipping them in synergistic combinations, rather than simply replacing old spells with strictly better new spells.

Nobody has spoken against characters progressing - but levels aren't the only model there has ever been for skill progression.

So you're in favor of the current cockblocking grind we see in games?

So are MMOG's (especially DIKU's). They just trick you into thinking they aren't. But really they are.
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Actually, i've consider the "phased" nature of these and you know what, they really aren't turn based. They lack the concept of locking ordered actions and turn equivalence.  What I mean by that is this, in a turn based game, when it's not your turn, you can't do anything at all other than watch.  Then when you do get your turn again, you decide what to do based on how the game has changed since your last turn, during which of course your opponent can't act.  It's a total back and forth flow.

MMORPG's arent like that at all.  Yeah, I know, behind the scenes there are "round" or "turn" timers but that's just so the computer can keep up with how often you act; i.e. you do 1 attack every 6 seconds. But that doesn't make it turn based.  When you are in a battle, both you and the mob are executing your 6 second turns at the same time, and should you ever elect not to act, the game certainly won't wait on you.  They're basically hybrid real time action games, not turn based.

Who says there has to be a final boss? A PVP centric game doesn't need to have a final boss at all, nor does a sandbox game, only the diku philosophy forces the final boss idea.

Even with a final boss, think about WoW for a moment. Once you hit 60, you never could get another level and yet we went from MC to BWL to AQ to Naxx. It was through gear that people progressed, and the progression was very shallow in comparison to levels. The difference betweem MC gear and Naxx gear is much, much smaller than lvl 50 to lvl 60 and yet it takes much longer to gear up in Naxx than to level from 50 to 60. A shallow leveling curve and an emphasis on lateral advancement would be much the same (especially if you had to quest for progression skills like tranq shot), but from the beginning. I never felt that the boss kills were any more sweet because I had to level up to 60 before I could gear up to be ready to raid the zone. Then there's the point that often it's not progression at all that stops people from killing a boss, but simply dedication and practice. You can't just buy a 40-set of fully geared characters and roll all of Naxx, your lack of experience in the zone would effectively cockblock you.

EDIT: When I mention FPS games I am talking about their MP aspect, it's been ages since I last played an FPS on singleplayer (it wouldn't be if I could get Dues Ex to work on my computers again, grr).

Sunbury's statement would stand if all games' mob zones and content were set up like they are in UO, Eve, or SWG.

I can't just "wander" around EQ or WoW in the way that he seems to be speaking of.

Since all dikus are goal orientated a "last boss", even if it's just for the current patch, is a concept that fits nicely. You need to feed the player base with things to look forward & work torwards.

Garfield specifically rails at busywork,  not "do nothing".

Work that must be done, that has no effect on the game state.  Shuffling,  mana burn (this was interesting), elaborate random effects (this is why, before Hypnotic Spectre returned,  Magic had no random discard for many years).

In the case of MMOs....  Timered buffing is a good example.  I have to do what every 3 minutes?  Of course,  the move to DAoC's concentration based buffing produced it's own problems....


Interesting.  Mind expanding on these ideas?  I'm not sure I agree,  but I'd like to see your thinking.

I don't agree with Garfield on mana burn or other randomness. At all.

Shit happens, deal with it.



I hate shuffling though. I am terrible at it.

In terms of raiding vs tournaments, what the one thing you have to have to be able to even attempt both of these things.  Huge blocks of time.  Whether it's raiding or playing through a tournament, you must have hours and hours of available time, which pretty much freezes out a large amount of people who would like to participate, but just don't have the luxury of 9 hours on a Saturday with nothing else to do.   It's part of the time = power equation in mmorpgs, but for MtG it more time = potential cash rewards (prizes for winning, invites to larger more valuable tournaments).  So no matter how good a player you are, your skill will never be more important that the time you spend.

Also related is the RTM part.  In mmorpgs, rare loot has value to other players to the point they will pay you cash to get it for them.  In MtG, rare cards work the same way.  In both, you could play the normal way/booster pack game in the hopes of getting a lucky drop/pull, but if you really want to get the best gear/best cards, the game is structured so it's very attractive to buy them outright from other players.

MMORPG dev houses have typically not offered direct item sales, and WotC has always maintained they would not sell card singles directly to the public, b/c it is actually in both of their interests that these secondary markets exist.  After all, why should Sony care if half their accounts in EQ2 are loot farmers who sell stuff to the other players, or why should WotC care if card shops and ebay traders do the same with selling rares.  In both cases, they get their money for a monthly sub or booster pack sale, and that's all they care about.  There's no real disincentive to selling accoutns to bot users or loot farmers, or boxes of cards to card shops who resell just the rarers and throw away tons of commons.  The developer has a very low fixed cost for creating any of those items, but their high value to the public at large only exists so long as they continue to be rare/hard to get.

WotC could reprint and sell every rare card they've every made at a buck a piece and make money b/c it only costs them a few cents to make ANY card.  Just like dev shops could sell ANY uber items to accounts and create them with a few mouse clicks.  But if they do that, the perceived value of those things goes right down the toilet b/c now anyone can have them cheaply.

Artificial scarcity works.  However, it has a built in shelf life that is entirely dependant on the popularity of the product.  And guess what both types of developers try to do to maintain that interest and popularity..... expansion packs.

The games might be very different but the business and the marketing does share quite a lot of similarities.

Xilren

I think this is a false comparison.

Time doesn't equal power.  Assuming you have access to the cardpool to deck build,  performance is a factor of:  skill,  metagame/strategy choice (i.e. what deck to play), and some luck (in what your matchups are).

Just because you show up to every local tournament,  this nets you very little.  As an example,  I show up to on average an event a month.  My last 3 appearances have garnered me two 1sts and a second,  netting me a couple hundred dollars in cards.  During the same period,  I know people who haven't placed at all despite attending every event,  netting them nothing. 

Raiding is generally designed and run so that mere participation nets you awards, conforming directly to the time=power mechanic.

You're also not accounting for the rating system.  Wizards,  through the DCI which administers sanctioned events,  tracks your wins and losses and performance.  This assigns you a rating (base 1600),  and your rating changes based on who you win or lose against and what their rating is.  If you have a mediocre rating,  and beat a highly ranked player, you can gain huge points (max gain is either 16 or 24).  Beat a low ranked player,  you could gain as few as 1 or 2 points.

Ratings directly translate to seeding at "major" events (Pro Tour Qualifiers, or PTQs, Regionals, etc.) and can guarantee you byes.  A high enough rating,  I believe,  can even get you invited to Pro Tour events without winning/placing in the requisite PTQ.

To try and summarize my rambling:  In MMOs,  time and commitment to schedules nets you increased power and is the only way to play the game.  In Magic,  time without skill nets you nothing.  Even if time starved,  you can enjoy playing the end game at any time as long as you can find at least one other person to play with.

Really,  if you keep up with trends by occasional reading,  you can keep your hand in on the competive scene with as few appearances as once or twice a month.

(For those that play with me Online:  I'm a much, much better Constructed player then I am a Limited player.  Heh.)


Three major things to point out:

1.  Magic has two major customer stakeholder groups:  active players and collectors.  Collectors will acquire sets of cards,  rare foils, etc. from various sets just to have.  Active players will tend to specialize in one or two branches of competitive play (Standard and Extended, for instance)  and will trade away rotating cards to acquire cards from newer sets.

The easiest way to see the effect of collectors on the secondary market is through the relative price differences between Online and Cardboard.  Online prices tend to run well below prices for cardboard prices.  (For instance,  dual lands will be 5-10 tickets [read: dollars] cheaper online then their cardboard equivalent).

2.  Wizards endorses and supports it's secondary market.  The secondary market creates relatively impartial values for cards,  which then give players values so that they can trade thier unwanted rares/chase cards for cards they need.  (Which is the most common way players acquire cards outside of buying boosters).

For instance,  I play Constructed online.  Margalis just sticks to Limited mostly,  though he will hold onto black cards.  He'd trade me rares he had drafted (painlands, for instance) in return for unopened booster packs at the going Online rates.  Or trade me White rares for some Black rares.

Wizards even maintains a "reserved list":  cards that it has guaranteed it won't reprint so that they maintain their relative value.

What this boils down to,  when combined with a generally low level of power inflation,  is that old cards tend to hold their value very well.  When Angry.Bob or CommanderSlack talk about selling their old collections,  these collections even tend to appreciate.  Why?  Because Wizards has stayed away from the "easy" cash in of selling individual singles and massively reprinting in demand cards.

3.  You mistake expansions for power inflation.

In MMOs,  MUDflation renders old items worthless/obsolete.  In Magic,  the movement is lateral:  cards leave play in one format,  but will still be legal in others,  as new cards are introduced.  Since old cards retain value,  they can easily be traded for the new cards coming out. (Especially since the secondary market provides players with impartial values on their cards).

At the same time,  many cards are considered "staples" and are left in base sets to be reprinted again and again.  (Wrath of God, Persecute, Phyrexian Arena, etc.) 



Just some thoughts...

In any skill based endeavor, time and skill are going to correlate to some degree. The best baseball players in the world play a lot of baseball, and the best chess players play a lot of chess. That in itself doesn't mean much. The question is the relative importance of time vs. skill.

If you play a lot of magic and suck at it your rating will go down and your return on investment will be negative. Spending time isn't enough. An average player will have a negative return on investment as well, and break even at rating.

The blocks of time are an annoyance, I was thinking of doing a sealed deck tounament but playing to the end can take 12+ hours. But I wouldn't equate that with rating, it is a tournament format condensed into one day. I don't think a required time committment for a certain flavor of event makes something comparable to a MMORPG.

In Magic the Gathering, Chess and Baseball you can't grind away to level up and become better. To make a lot of money or be the best they take a heavy time committment but that is true of nearly anything.

Agreed, but, at the same time, those with the skill but without the time can't take part in the local tournament because the time commitment precludes it.  That's what i see as a comparison to raiding; sure in mmorpgs you have well run raids and poorly run ones, but without the ability to dedicates hours at one sitting, you can't raid at all.

Most people consider magic players (not collectors, which to the best of my knowledge have no mmorpg equivalent) divided into two groups: casual and serious.  The serious players are the ones who dedicate a lot of time to playing in organized events to seek some reward be it increasing their rating, winning cards, cash or a pro tour invite.  Casual players may well be just as skilled as the serious players, but without being able to pass the time barrier to entry, they will never be able to obtain those same rewards at all  (in an mmorpg, thats uber loot or locked content of course).  And you're right, it's not hard to stay skilled playing casual magic (especially now that mtgo exists).

My argument should be stated more as in both genres end games, time = barrier to entry.  It's an opportunity cost to enter the "elder" or "high level game", be it MMORPGS or Mtg.

While this is certainly true, how is this any different than mmorpg dev's both refusing to do direct item sales themselves, and phasing out old uber loot in favor or new (EQ's mana stone and rubicite armor come to mind)?  Wotc long ago recognized that a healthy secondary market is in their best interests and so consciously factors that into their decision making about how to manage their game.  Dev house are no different.


To be honest, i see mudflation the same way i see rotating sets in magic's type 2 environment.  Much fewer people play the formats in which older cardsets are available, even though they can.   In the same way, most mmorpg players gravitate toward new content either because it is perceived as better (which could mean more powerful, or simply new), even though the old content still exists and it useable. 

But that really wasn't my thrust; I'm not talking about perceived value or power inflation.  In both mtg and mmorpgs, expansions are primarily designed to keep players retained by adding new stuff.  It's about driving and maintaining interest in the game.  And in both genres new content help drive the continuance of the RTM market as there are always some new rare card or uber drop to seek.  And this ties back to the raiding/tournament level play.  To compete at that level, you need to have lots of rare cards or good raiding gear to give yourself a decent chance of success which means as long as dev houses keep pumping out new rare items/cards, there are supporting a secondary market whether they mean to or not.

At any rate, my linkage between the two genres was mainly b/c when i looked at both of them, i found myself having the same thoughts about certain parts.  To wit, I gave up playing "serious" or tournament magic years ago b/c i simply can't devote the time to it; same for raiding in mmorpgs.  And when I consider if I ever wanted to play seriously (events or raids) again, i see a healthy secondary market ready to sell me the tools needs to compete at that level.

It's not a perfect comparison by any stretch; mtg is a much more skill based game and has things liked sealed deck play and drafts which have no mmorpg equivalent.  Pus the whole monthly fee vs pack purchase revenue models.  But even though the games themselves are very different, the marketing and management of them has some overlap, IMHO.

Xilren

I'm confused as to what MTG has to do with taking levels/progression out of MMORPGs?

You can't see some zone until you defeat another player x times playing cards?

My point is that without some game mechanism to restrict content (no matter if its grinding levels, trading to make cash, beating player X times, whatever) is it even an MMORPG?   

I don't consider arena or 1:1 matching games as MMORPGs.  Its just semi-in-game ways to set up games, like the MSN web site matched you up to play Backgammon, and then you could rank your results on a ladder.   That's not a MMORPG.

For me WoW ended when my char hit L60 and I visited most instances (once).  I rerolled most race/class combos to 20, some to 30 some to 40, when I noticed I had done those zones/quests with another char.

To me the 'game' in WoW is to 'experience the content successfully', meaning finish the quests, see the zones, kill all the mob types, maybe even become that top-level of PvP.   I could see some of those tripped off 'non-time invested' or 'skill based' or 'non-grind', but what does that really mean?   Getting 1200 on some in-game SAT test before I can leave the newbie zone?

Speaking only in terms of the mythical MtG ORPG that lives in my head, levels are replaced by card pool, and the progression of your character development is simply the growth of said pool and say your starting life point total.  So content would be locked only in that in order to do anything useful outside of the newbie area, you would have to have a sufficent card pool to defeat mobs that had a mid level or better card pool and corresponding LP.

So sure, you could take your all commons goblin deck and 10 LP into a battle against a mid level counter deck, you might even win sometimes, but overall, the decks made from deeper card pools (read more uncommon and rares) would smoke you regularly.  If you every played the old microprose MtG PC game, you'd know what I was talking about.

It's still character growth, but it's not levels and loot.  Plus the combat is much cooler :)

Immerision is a valid and useful part of all MMO's. It's sorta what defines the genre, right? Putting yourself in an environment with other people? But I do agree that the "level" system bites ass. I agree with the previous poster that stated that it shouldn't matter how long someone has been playing (their Level) if I shove a claymore up their ass. Critical hits, aimed strikes, and weapon of choice shoudl all play a part. Instead of making poeple more powerful as they level up... aka D&D... give them greater oppotunity to gain new skills, new weapons, better gear, etc. But whena bullet enter's their brain, they are just as dead as someone 10 minutes intot he game.

Eve's system of time-based solo-skill progressino is nice. Add to it a BF2-like lateral skill base where people pick from a very large list of abilities, weapon certs, and gear, and you might have a winner.

Best differentiation between a 'game' and a 'world' yet.

A game has an identifiable linear progression which gates content such that the user starts, experiences a mid-state, and an ending. Once you reach the 'ending' you start over.

If that's what an 'MMORPG' is then no wonder I don't like them.

A persistent world would have no 'ending', and avoid massive power differentiation between the illusory 'beginning' and 'end' state. Stuff happens in the world. You may experience that 'content', or not. If you miss it, it doesn't really matter because some other 'content' will occur.

Or to put this another way: Standard DIKU based 'MMORPG's' are shallow, predictable, boring and fail to live up to their potential in any way other than providing lots of busywork instead of interaction.

Which was Garfields point.

I'd argue that in M:tG, Chess, Baseball, the grind is exactly the same as in WoW.

In WoW you become stronger by using time to attempt to complete quests, and kill mobs, at the same time you hope to improve your player skill by learning stuff. You also use time to read message boards, in order to learn strategies (both in terms of play and in terms of character design). If you are successful at completing quests, killing stuff, or learning stuff, your character power or player skill increases. If you don't play your chances of winning do not improve.

In non-Diku games the model is similar. You use time to practice, and to read about your game. Just like with the Diku, this time will result in a variable amount of skill increase. If you don't commit time, your chances of winning will remain low.

The real difference between most MMOGs and everything else, is that in a MMOG you have the game's entire population lumped together, so the gaps between different players' chances of winning are made more obvious, and severely reduce opportunities for fun.

If every chess player in the world was matched by WoW's battleground system, or could randomly run into each other in EVE 0.0 space, people would would be just as annoyed at the amount of grinding they had to do to get good at chess.

Sorry but i disagree.
Character power and player skill are entirely different concepts.
Chess is purely about player skill b/c the pieces are the same; there is not power differential.
MtG has SOME power differential based on rarity of cards, but again is mostly player skill based.
WoW is all about power differential of your avatar, not player skills.  The ONLY time player skills enters the picture is when two similarily powered avatars square off.  If player skill had the majority of sway, a level 10 character played by a skilled player (say an alt reroll) could beat a level 60 in a straight up fight.  Not happening.

Yes, time is a neccessary investment to get good at all of the above, but the difference in chess YOU are getting more skilled, in WoW, your avatar is.  Strategy in WoW is rather...limited.

That may be what it turns out to be, but THE GAME is not 'power differential of your avatar' THE GAME is 'seeing all the zones, dungeons, doing all the quests'.   The power is the means to the end.   Of course someone else could define THE GAME to be "be the highest level on the server with the best equipement and beat everyone else in 1:1 PvP", but that's their goal, not the game.

In Chess THE GAME is to win 1:1 matches, thats it.   In MT:G I guess there are 2 games, one to win 1:1 matches, the other to collect rare cards?   

I am not sure why it matters what the source of a large power differential is.  If there is one its not much fun to play, wheither it is caused be catassing, or talent.  I like Texas hold'em as a pvp model. Skill is important. Experience is important. But enough luck that anyone has a shot.

QFT

If combat is entirely skill-based a lot of players will lack that skill, get frustrated, and stop playing. If combat involves skill, players will need a low-pressure, fun, friendly environment to train those skills before they're exposed to the high-stakes game itself.

Player skills are in effect soft capped by the player himself.  There are some people who just suck at Poker, or chess, basketball, or RTS games no matter how much they practice; most will never be more than average at best.  There are a few who maybe naturally gifted at them.  B/c of that, average (i.e. non uber) people tend to gravitate towards either an implementation of those games with a level playing field, or they just don't play the ones they're bad at.  Not only that, but your skills in those examples can actually deteriorate over time due to not practicing as much, or age, just as much as they can go up as you first learn them and practice.

OTOH, mmorpg avatar power is only capped by time committment (anyone can basically max out based on that alone) and it never decreases.  So long as you put in the time, you will max out, period.

Why it's important is recognizing this when you are designing a game system. Where you fall on this player skill vs avatar power concept should helps determine some design decisions you need make to try and appeal to the widest audience possible.
Compare the appeal of PvP with level restricted battlegrounds to open, FFA PvP.
Just like you can use handicap in gold, or sealed deck in MtG, you can elect to design  your game system to support as level a playing field as possible even with lots of player skills weight.

Else your game self selects into a very small audience.

Let's not forget that there are many different skills found in gaming (twitch or reaction skills, strategy, etc).  To date MMOG's employ some amount of this and temper it with a time component and a RNG component.  I think this maintains a sense that even the inexperienced can win often enough to be encouraged to stick with it. 

The goal as I see it, is to find a combat mechanic that utilizes a variety of both skill sets as well as random elements while also providing a carrot (advancement scheme) that rewards the player without unbalancing game mechanics.  Having a more global focus on the conflict also sweetens the deal... though many of you appear to disagree.   

> There are some people who just suck at Poker, or chess, basketball, or RTS games no matter how much they practice; most will never be more than average at best.
I suck at Poker and I suck at FPS.  But I have more fun in Poker because mechanics of Poker let me play and win a little.  In the typical FPS, I am a grease spot and can't hardly do anything.  If I was making a MMOG, I'd be looking at Poker because there are a whole more sucky people to market my game to then not.  Replace FPS with grindy RPG, it doesn't matter. The people who don't grind 12hrs a deserves to have fun to.  Still having power differential fine, it gives people something to work for.  But it shouldn't be so great that it prevents people from having fun. 

In open pvp, I might find Kasparov when I run out the gate if the pvp is like chess.  But I'd find Howard Lederor instead if the pvp is like Poker.  The end result may be same, but I could probable get a few good hits on Howard, have more fun in process, and would have an outside chance of winning because nature of the game allows it.

EDIT: Also, I'd rather be Howard Lederor in pvp.  Because it's more exciting.  Even a complete scrub could beat me if everything lines up in their favor and I have make damn sure that happens as infrquent as possible.

Ability to win in MMOGs also deteriorates over time due to mudflation, emergent strategies, metagame changes, and social decay (you fall out of favour in your guild if you don't play etc).

Also, people in this thread are underestimating player skill in a MMOG. Player skill in a MMOG is organisational and communication skill. I don't care what any says : Organised Teams > Phat Lewt in almost every MMOG.

As I understand your other point (that poker/chess etc has a large population of average opponents to play against who will never all turn around and progress to uber), I think the same is true of MMOG playing - I suspect large numbers of people never reach the level cap, and they certainly don't learn all the uberist of PvP strategies or train with a top level PvP team. The difference outside of MMOGs is that a 'level 30' poker player can have fun at that level. MMOGs don't give people enough mechanisms to have actual fun before the end game, so they just quit. MMOGs also often fail to give casual players a fun way to contribute to realm or guild objectives even if they do reach the end game.

If low stakes poker was only as fun as level 20 in Everquest, nobody would play low stakes poker.

I personally felt this was one place WoW excelled.  Low level characters in WoW were pretty fun to play...  However, as you leveled, many classes didn't change much, and enemies (on the overland anyway) really didn't have too many tactics to learn to deal with, so you ran into enemies that their only advantage over you was statistical, but were required for quests.  That moment, where you realize it's not your tactics that are the problem, but that you just haven't killed enough bunnies yet, that it the issue.  In poker, you can have good luck and beat someone better at poker than you.  Even in chess or go it can happen...  But in MMOs, it's like a chess match where your opponent has 8 queens instead of the normal alotment of pawns.  Or a checkers game where your opponent starts out with every piece 'king'ed.

Someone needs to try to make a UO again.  Skill-based, with no levels to artificially increase HP.  Can someone get CCP to work on a fantasy game?  I just have a hard time being a ship in the blackness of space.  Rather be a ranger in the woods.

...but UO lost its popular appeal as soon as there were other options available. Its non-linear format had insufficient dings and shiny for the competitive mass market. The DIKU grind works because it's a cheap, compelling narrative: One day you'll get to visit that dangerous new area, one day you'll get to see the inside of that dangerous dungeon, "Those Sons of Arugal may have killed me now, but one day I shall return and slaughter them like mewling pups." It's just a matter of time.

This isn't quality narrative, mind you. As Mr. Garfield points out, it's not even quality gameplay. A thousand Korean MMOs have boiled the DIKU narrative to its essence, shaved off every uncritical feature, and captured the time and interest of millions. They're the MMO equivalent of spider solitaire... and folks will play them for hours if they're nominally free. It doesn't have to be great storytelling, it just has to be more evocative than minesweeper... all minesweeper has going for it is that the game's more challenging, faster paced, and more fun.

Not only is the DIKU narrative addictive, it's accessible. Any player knows that all that stands between them and the next chapter is a few hours of foozle whacking. The thrill of solving a puzzle or acquiring genuine player skill (vs. character skill) may be sweet, but it may also be frustrating. Foozle-whacking is dull, but consistant. The narrative will proceed at a reliable pace. It is, to embrace cliche, spoon fed.

A truly superb, open-ended game might inspire players to make their own narratives. If every option was equally rewarding and exciting, they would happily choose those which most fit their image of heroic adventure. Unfortunately, the most frequent question people asked in my old UO days was "So what do I do now?" The real answer was, "Well you could do X, Y, or Z... whatever you want!" Folks didn't want to hear that answer. None of those options was exciting or rewarding enough in its own right to make it an obvious choice. Answering "Let's go fight at the orc fort," was always accepted more positively. The DIKU narrative provides that answer automatically.
 
WoW's gameplay may be less fun and less challenging than Microsoft Hearts Network, but it has more bells, story and whistles... and for this it expects you to pay a monthly fee. Millions do.


I agree about the ship, but I'd be as happy playing a wildwest gunfighter in an urban post-apocalypse as an dwarf in the Tunnels of Olde. I like terrain. I like to wander between walls and shrubbery. Space combat feels artificial and exposed... a mathmatical game of angles and momentum. Realistic as anyone might make it, it still doesn't make me feel viscerally and immersed.

The poker analogies are very interesting I think. Poker is very much a game where anyone can win at any time, simply because of luck. Skill influences the game, and over time a more skilled player will meet with more success, but it is never guaranteed in any individual hand/game. Magic is very similar also. As a newbie you can play a few games to learn the basics, then go join a limited tournament and win some games, even if you don't face other newbies. You could open up a pool of really insane cards, you could face mana screwed opponents, you could topdeck your bombs at the exact times you need them. There's just so many ways you can win without needing skill to make it happen. And yet, magic is deep, and being a skilled player will mean you win more often than a lesser skilled player despite the luck factor. I wouldn't call magic an especially newbie friendly game as it can get fairly complicated and a little overwhelming at the start, but once you get past that initial hurdle you gain the ability to win games. I think that is a large part why so many play Magic.

I think that adding some real randomness (ie. not just critical hit) into a combat system, while still requiring skill (and perhaps time) to be a factor, would be the ideal system. Nobody likes knowing that they are going to lose simply because the other guy played longer or is really really good. Them having a disadvantage is fine, people can appreciate the carrot dangling in front of them, but if you don't let them win they are going to get frustrated.

Thinking back to my CS days, I was pretty decent, and improved all the time, and loved seeing that improvement. It was a real sense of satisfaction to see myself pull off fights I wouldn't have before. And yet, if I got into a match where I'm getting dominated I'd just leave. It's no fun getting owned by someone who just flatout shoots way better than you do, and frankly, you don't learn much. Losing can teach you a lot, but only if you have a real chance of winning. It's by analysing what you did wrong that losing can teach you. If all you really did wrong was come up against a far better player, that doesn't teach you much beyond when to stop playing.

Slightly off topic, but...

Online Magic, like any online game, isn't particularly newbie friendly.  That's why DIKUs are so popular, because they railroad you for the formative levels so that you don't need to figure things out.  You don't get swamped by information and have a helping hand until you figure out what's going on.

With Magic,  the newbie friendly entry is cardboard casual.  Buy a precon, fill out with a couple boosters,  and you and your friends can have fun playing for hours with a minimal cash investment.  You can setup your own play rules for the environment (no land d, or no net decks) so everyone has a good time.

Magic Online,  like any competive online game, eats the casual and new for lunch and then assrapes their corpse.  There will always be that guy playing a tier 1 net deck in the casual room,  or the maxed out character one shoting noobs,  or the guy with the aimbot/speed hack ruining an otherwise decent play experience just because they can.

  I'm not sure why the lot of you have decided that it’s fair to compare MtG, poker, and chess to mmos?  They are essentially different realms of play.  To make the point, count how many different players you have played in each game in the last year (not counting MtGO, that’s later), now compare that to how many different players you've met in the same period of time in an mmo.  The truth is you are much more likely to walk into an unknown match up online then you are in a real world game.  And unless you run in some fast crowds (Xilren) you’re not likely to be meeting any uber players in real life.  However online you are by definition playing all of them every time you log in.

  Now look at MtGO, same game, just online, and yet essentially different in character to even tournament play in the real world.  Exploitation is rampant, everyone knows the broken decks.  When a new deck comes out its only a matter of minutes before someone figures out the new exploit(s), and in the next couple of hours everyone knows how to play it and how to beat it.  Compare that to offline play where it may take weeks or months for a new exploit to percolate throughout the community of players (at least before MtGO).  The same was true of chess, different openings were championed at different points throughout history but as information became easier to store and disseminate the exploitative game disappeared (with the exception being speed chess) and the game became how many variations of moves could a player store and sort through in their mind.  Imagine how many openings aren’t played in competition because they are the wrong ones.  Just think of how many possible moves are simply out of the question and will never be played.  How much smaller is the game because those possibilities are lost? Simply put the size and skill of the community in which you play has a huge impact on how a game is played.

  My point is that although I agree with the perspective that the card game is a better metric than the dice game, there is a point you are just skipping over which is that online games pit you against the best players of the game by definition.  So any design which sets one player absolutely inferior to another is broken, whether that is because skill plays too great a roll, or because preparation plays too great a roll, or because power differential plays too great a roll.  Power should be able to overcome preparation, preparation should be able to overcome skill, skill should be able to overcome power, and vice versa, and the great equalizer should be the fickle hand of fate, or to put it another way luck of the draw.

I seriously have to question how much you actually know about the CCG "scene" netdecking, playtesting and metagaming are guaranteed in anything beyond friday night magic.

Also the idea that you run into the uber players online every time is pretty silly.  Take WoW's BG's for examples from my time watching a organized team run WSG during a WSG weekend it looked like about 8/10 teams are just pug scrubs who get RUN by org groups.  When it comes to world pvp you are even less likely to run into someone wearing top tier shit.  Because they are too busy raiding.  Honestly the hardcore raid players are almost never online except when raiding, playing alts or grinding some gold from my experience.

Or take RTS or FPS games, you aren't going to run into the "uber" players every time.  Typically they will all congregate to special servers that kick noobs.  Or in RTS you'll often see rooms titled "pros only".

I'll leave you with this comment, the only MMO's that I've ever seen a metagame that came anywhere near to CCG's in terms of importance were GW and SB.