WAR to be released...

[Triforcer]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed that there are, like, intelligent people who consider WoW's armory a moral issue.  I mean... really?  Really?  Is it bad to be able to inspect people too?  What the hell?

I probably shouldn't have responded to Lum's initial aside.  We risk unleashing a torrent of crazy (not from Lum specifically, just generally). 

[tmp]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed that there are, like, intelligent people who consider WoW's armory a moral issue.  I mean... really?  Really?  Is it bad to be able to inspect people too?  What the hell?

A different game and anectdotal evidence so take it with inch of salt, but LotRO has the anonymous switch which also disables ability to inspect the player (their version of inspect shows equipment but also the traits they picked and such) ... i'd estimate ~1/3rd of the players do use that switch. The catch here is, there's no way to tell how many of these people utilize it simply so they don't show up in character listings and to free themselves from random PUG requests.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It's quite simply the MMO generation gap showing.

"In my day you had to stare at your spellbook to regen mana, that tub of true black was my goddamned right to own and get the hell offa mah lawn, corp por you little bitches!"

The righteous indignation and the outdated design philosophies of many in the industry show why we won't be getting our wow alternative for some time.

[Abelian75]

A different game and anectdotal evidence so take it with inch of salt, but LotRO has the anonymous switch which also disables ability to inspect the player (their version of inspect shows equipment but also the traits they picked and such) ... i'd estimate ~1/3rd of the players do use that switch. The catch here is, there's no way to tell how many of these people utilize it simply so they don't show up in character listings and to free themselves from random PUG requests.

Oh, I can certainly see not wanting to add an armory-like feature for game design reasons, or a feature that allows you to turn it off (and turn inspection off, too), I just think it's a little over the top to suggest that the armory is a morally wrong invasion of privacy...

[Triforcer]

A different game and anectdotal evidence so take it with inch of salt, but LotRO has the anonymous switch which also disables ability to inspect the player (their version of inspect shows equipment but also the traits they picked and such) ... i'd estimate ~1/3rd of the players do use that switch. The catch here is, there's no way to tell how many of these people utilize it simply so they don't show up in character listings and to free themselves from random PUG requests.

Oh, I can certainly see not wanting to add an armory-like feature for game design reasons, or a feature that allows you to turn it off (and turn inspection off, too), I just think it's a little over the top to suggest that the armory is a morally wrong invasion of privacy...

Plus, the Armory reveals the lies people tell about their avatar and its capabilities.  If pwning a 14 year old with PROOF that they are lying out of their ass or are stupid ("BUFF MY CLASS, I AM WEAK"- "Umm, you are wearing level 30 greens, newb") is morally wrong, I don't want to be right. 

[cevik]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed that there are, like, intelligent people who consider WoW's armory a moral issue.  I mean... really?  Really?  Is it bad to be able to inspect people too?  What the hell?

I have some issues with it, but mostly because players are idiots.  If you read the forums post Armory, almost every thread devolves into a "Your ideas have no merit because your gear sux" followed by "lol, I can't believe the newb in T[X] gear just said someone elses gear sux!1!".  Of course that just means staying away from the forums, because the idiots there will find some way to be idiots no matter how much you limit their toolset.

The other privacy concern I have is that you can somewhat keep tabs on if people playing the game by checking their armory update times.  If you don't log in the "last updated" doesn't refresh.  I'm not quite sure WHY that bugs me, but in some strange way it does.  Of course with an account you can keep tabs on people's playtimes just by logging in and doing a /who, so I can't quite place my finger on why I don't like it from outside the game but I have no problems with it inside the game.  Probably just hung over.

[Mrbloodworth]

Armory or not, this info would still be out there in some form or another. So why not just publish it yourself and call it a service?

Its just like way points for quest goals. The info, if not a mod/tool/plugin will be out regardless, and people will use it. So, why not do it yourself and make a feature? Then design quests around it, where the complication or challenge to the quest doesn't involve not providing enough info as a way to make it take longer and add "challenge".

Because if not, the only challenge is deciding what website to look up where it is.

[Rondaror]

Plus, the Armory reveals the lies people tell about their avatar and its capabilities.  If pwning a 14 year old with PROOF that they are lying out of their ass or are stupid ("BUFF MY CLASS, I AM WEAK"- "Umm, you are wearing level 30 greens, newb") is morally wrong, I don't want to be right. 

This applies only to the small minority of forum trolls.

But for a bragging rights game where success is measured in Equipment and recognition is gained through showing off the equipment (because laying a boss in PvE raid instance isn't recognized by 99,9% of server population), armoury for WoW makes some sort of sense.

However in my case, armoury is to blame for the breakdown of our Kara Raid. However I do not state that the breakdown wouldn't have taken place anyways. But it certainly wasn't beneficial.

[Tarami]

Its just like way points for quest goals. The info, if not a mod/tool/plugin will be out regardless, and people will use it. So, why not do it yourself and make a feature? Then design quests around it, where the complication or challenge to the quest doesn't involve not providing enough info as a way to make it take longer and add "challenge".

Let's just say I don't agree. Snooping around and finding stuff is certainly part of the fun. Some quests have too crappy instructions, fair enough, but as long as there's some logic to why things are where they are, I would say a slight lack of directions is a good thing. I don't think Conan's way of giving out perfect information was in any way an improvement over previous models. It just made the entire game feel excruciatingly grindy as you never had to consider what a single quest ever said.

Because, to be honest, if one finds it more fun to just streamroll through the game, being served in detail what to do at any given time, there will be those sites to use in time, as you're saying. When presenting this information straight up inside the game, there's no way people such as myself can avoid using it. It ruins part of what we find to be interesting with being in another world.

[Mrbloodworth]

Its just like way points for quest goals. The info, if not a mod/tool/plugin will be out regardless, and people will use it. So, why not do it yourself and make a feature? Then design quests around it, where the complication or challenge to the quest doesn't involve not providing enough info as a way to make it take longer and add "challenge".

Let's just say I don't agree. Snooping around and finding stuff is certainly part of the fun. Some quests have too crappy instructions, fair enough, but as long as there's some logic to why things are where they are, I would say a slight lack of directions is a good thing. I don't think Conan's way of giving out perfect information was in any way an improvement over previous models. It just made the entire game feel excruciatingly grindy as you never had to consider what a single quest ever said.

You also don't have to in Wow, at all. (See tomtom, and wowhead UI mods) Was part of my point. But in contrast, yes in AOC you did need to read quests, it may have told you where to go, but once you got there, you had to figure out the rest.

Perfect. No.

Enviable. yes. Skip the middle man, and do it yourself, this way you have more control about the info you do provide players. Example: One brilliant thing about AOC (besides the really well written quests), were the area markers, the circles with the lines that told you "about" in this area.

In wow, its a double whammy, Badly written quests, bad world layout (nothing relates) and horrible directions, if at all. To some this is "challenge" to others, its just yet another cockblock.

There is a balance to be found.

[tmp]

Skip the middle man, and do it yourself, this way you have more control about the info you do provide players.

As the developer don't you have full control what info you provide to the players anyway? If you choose to provide limited amount of info, one that creates room for the "middle man" then that's design choice. Providing as much info as that middle man would is also the design choice, but neither grants more control over how much info is provided, really. That control was always in your hands.

Btw this argument (if i don't do it someone else will so why not do it yourself) renders number of game genres that involve puzzles to some extent, either obsolete or self-defeating. There's FAQs and walkthroughs written for everything on the interwebs, why then even provide option of challenge for the player (including ones who aren't interested in just following such walkthroughs) to begin with? Could just fill the game with big arrows accompanied with "now click here, moron" ... but would that really improve experience for every player?

[Tarami]

I know I don't have to in WoW, which was also a part of my point. I rarely did use sites for that, not until I had given it an ample try myself. Some did just suck, however. Great to have those sites for those, however rare, occasions. My point was that it shouldn't be mandatory to give out, not that it shouldn't be possible to look up if you wanted.

Secondly you can not control information by releasing better information. You can only suppress misinformation. Consider WoW Armory and WoWJutsu and all the other Armory-mining services. The more perfect information you can extract from the game, the more will people use it, the more it will become the norm to use. Essentially, what I worry will happen is that games that are already very heavy on number-crunching will be reduced even further, warping into hyperspeed one-way trains where nothing is allowed to take time or consideration. I feel Conan's way of fessing up with everything you need to know straight away is a step in that direction.

Optimally I'd like to see an official, external service (a bit like the Lorebook for LotRO), not the intrusive model that Conan uses.

Although, I may be biased since I haven't really played any quest-based games other than LotRO since it released, apart from some Conan. And you all know LotRO kicks ass.

[Mrbloodworth]

yes, one of the reason its awesome is the amount of info provided in the quest log about any given quest, including the pre, middle, and finished text of a given quest.

They do not intentionally inflate the time frame for completion by using lack of information as a "challenge". But they still leave room for exploration, and they way you receive quests, you will already be somewhat familiar about the area in question (the relation part of my other post).

In other games, the quest progression as you encounter them are disjointed, compounded with lack of useful info in the quest log text.

[tmp]

That puzzle games tangent reminded me of rather nice way the latter Tex Murphy adventure games (Under a Killing Moon etc) dealt with this issue -- they did come with basically whole walkthrough built-in and accessible from the in-game help system, but solution to each step was provided as series of increasingly easier hints... similar to how sites like http://www.uhs-hints.com/ work. That gave the player much better control over their game experience, but then of course involves more work.  

[Hutch]

Apparently, it's not just ethical decisions that don't have financial success as a motivator. I predict that whatever you're currently working on won't break 300k subs.

Wow, way to be a dick there, Hutch. If you have something to say, come out and say it. Because it looks like you came out of left field and attacked probably the one single person everybody on this board likes and respects for no particular reason.

I think I did just come out and say it, but I'll repeat it if you like. I'd agree with Lum, if Blizzard was publishing guild (or other private) chat, or players diaries, or something along those lines. Builds, gears, and rep levels aren't personal. They're just attributes of your character. You are not a unique and special snowflake. Blizzard owns that data, and they can do what they want with it.

On a more meta level, letting the players tell you what to do, instead of deciding for yourself what to do, is not the path to success. It's also not a way to guarantee that the players will stay subscribed. You're going to have to build a good game to make that happen.

Having said that, you're right. I was being a dick.

I also think it's fair to say that Lum is not drooling in the corner because some asshole on the internet told him he was wrong.

[Koyasha]

Some of the EQ quest design was excellent in this regard, and the world they created enabled it so easily.  Now, admittedly, a good number of early EQ quests left you with few clues to move on, but many of them were also tremendously well designed in the subtle sense, in that it makes sense if you really think about it and understand the quest you're doing and know the world.  Some of the epic weapon quests were like this - although an equal or greater number suffered from a 'sheer randomness' problem where key NPC's and items were scattered randomly about the world with no particularly apparent reason to be there.  Some quests were great, following a logical path that you could discern, others could only be completed by checking Allakhazam or by sheer luck.  One quest that sticks out most in my mind was the quest for Ice Comet.  You'd get a book with a number of rhymes, each describing a location in-game.  For example: "The tears of Marr a pool make, two towers stand within this lake.  In one tower, guarded high, the fana dreams of sleeping dry."  That was one of the easier ones to find - the location described is the Oasis of Marr, which has two towers, one underwater and one on the island.  The piece is found in the underwater tower.  Others could be much harder to get, such as the one that says the Tiger watches a waterfall or something to that effect, or well of water, upside-down, since far less people knew those locations well.  Those refer to the Tiger's Roar in Highpass, and the Reanimated Hand room in Lower Guk which consists of a 'well' of water magically suspended leading up to the room.

I too lament the fact that the vast majority of games no longer put much effort into this kind of thing, simply accepting the fact that it will be spoiled and thus who cares about making it that fun or interesting to figure out.  Sadly the fact is they're probably right about the value of time spent to reward.  For the few people who enjoy figuring things out themselves these kinds of things are memorable bits that create a world that we can really like, but the vast majority of customers don't even read the short quest text that describes exactly where to go in completely clear terms, which is evidenced by the vast amount of people not even reading quests in WoW, just checking wowhead or asking other people for the instructions on what to do, even on quests where the instructions are laid out perfectly clearly within the quest.  So practically speaking, there isn't a hell of a lot of incentive to put much time into creating such interesting and cleverly designed quests.  I don't want to be told 'go here, kill that, take it elsewhere, and do this', I want to have to figure out some of that for myself, but such quests are rare and will continue to get rarer because time spent on that makes a very small percentage of customers happy.

[amiable]

So practically speaking, there isn't a hell of a lot of incentive to put much time into creating such interesting and cleverly designed quests.  I don't want to be told 'go here, kill that, take it elsewhere, and do this', I want to have to figure out some of that for myself, but such quests are rare and will continue to get rarer because time spent on that makes a very small percentage of customers happy.

But you have to figure that WAR is being marketed primarily as a PvP driven game, not PvE.  I know when I want to do some PvP, the last thing I want to do is spend hours searching for the awesome hand of foozle or somesuch.  Folks who are interested in PvP pretty much view the entire run up to end game as something to get through so the real fun can be had.

[Mrbloodworth]

Sadly the fact is they're probably right about the value of time spent to reward.  For the few people who enjoy figuring things out themselves these kinds of things are memorable bits that create a world that we can really like, but the vast majority of customers don't even read the short quest text that describes exactly where to go in completely clear terms, which is evidenced by the vast amount of people not even reading quests in WoW, just checking wowhead or asking other people for the instructions on what to do, even on quests where the instructions are laid out perfectly clearly within the quest.

They have been conditioned this way, because of bad writing, and "ding" gratz, shiny at the end. MMO have not been about the journey for a while now. Its about the reward, and in most cases for a lot of people i would imagine, quest text is a speed bump in that road they don't want to have to do. (enter wowhead ETC...)

Thats why i keep saying, remove it as part of any kind of "challenge" mechanism in quests (AKA: lack of info, obscure, intentionally vague NPC text), and do real challenges.

Or narration/ Cinematic presentation.

[eldaec]

So practically speaking, there isn't a hell of a lot of incentive to put much time into creating such interesting and cleverly designed quests.  I don't want to be told 'go here, kill that, take it elsewhere, and do this', I want to have to figure out some of that for myself, but such quests are rare and will continue to get rarer because time spent on that makes a very small percentage of customers happy.

But you have to figure that WAR is being marketed primarily as a PvP driven game, not PvE.  I know when I want to do some PvP, the last thing I want to do is spend hours searching for the awesome hand of foozle or somesuch.  Folks who are interested in PvP pretty much view the entire run up to end game as something to get through so the real fun can be had.

This is the potential weakness of the daoc/WAR model - mythic don't see things that way, and want to build pvp into the traditional diku.

The awesome hand of foozle will feature, the question is whether it will feature like in ToA, or merely like classic daoc.

[tmp]

But you have to figure that WAR is being marketed primarily as a PvP driven game, not PvE.  I know when I want to do some PvP, the last thing I want to do is spend hours searching for the awesome hand of foozle or somesuch.  Folks who are interested in PvP pretty much view the entire run up to end game as something to get through so the real fun can be had.

I thought they made it possible to level up whole way in WAR doing nothing but PvP, which leaves the PvE aspect pretty much entirely optional and up to the people who are actually interested in it..?

[sam, an eggplant]

That's correct, yes. Supposedly you can start RvR at level 1.

[Tarami]

That's correct, yes. Supposedly you can start RvR at level 1.

Question is how fun it'll be, considering ganking, 1on1 balance and all that.

[Draegan]

This isn't NDA breaking because it was in a Podcast a ways back, but each area has an RVR area and a PVE area and they won't be mixed.

[fuser]

Could you look up individual players and check out their gear and spec etc?

We had the technical capability to publish that data (it was available to CSRs) but our players were almost unanimously opposed to it.

Well crap Lum, there goes my get rich data mining site! 

[Simond]

Just set up a useful UI tool that also happens to inspect every player in range and reports back its findings to a central database.

[AngryGumball]

Wow, I'm kind of amazed that there are, like, intelligent people who consider WoW's armory a moral issue.  I mean... really?  Really?  Is it bad to be able to inspect people too?  What the hell?

well in terms of real gameplay at least you could explain actually examining a person from what 30 in game yards, rather than alt tabbing out and typing their name into a web broswer to see what they carry. Its being done in game and if you mock said person your doing it in game, not thru some forum bluster which should be banned and handed out 1-2-3 forum bannings for doing.

[eldaec]

[Lum]

I also think it's fair to say that Lum is not drooling in the corner because some asshole on the internet told him he was wrong.

Actually, my reaction was "Hell, I'll take 300k subs!" Actually, that might be too many. As I've said publically on many occasions, the more customers you scale up to support, the more generic the game becomes. You can't make a game with risky design decisions on a $100 million budget supporting millions of users. If you make a game with a more reasonable budget targeting users in the 100k-500k range, you can afford to take some risks.

And if you make a game that can survive off of 50k subs, you can do whatever the hell you want.

I'd think the readers here would be all over that, but, well, I've had assholes on the internet tell me I'm wrong before.

(Note that reading anything about NCsoft's present or future plans based on my bloviating on a message board may not be the wisest of ideas. My job title is Designer, not Producer, General Manager or CEO.)

As for the stuff re: the Armory - I used to work for a data warehousing company. I am a privacy fascist, because I've seen first hand the results of privacy laws and policies being misused. Admittedly Blizzard has managed somehow to be financially successful despite holding opinions on avatar privacy that differ from mine. I'm not sure how, but I suspect blood elves are involved.

(However, you're never going to convince me that mocking your customers in a forum or on your website is a really cool kickass rebel thing to do. Note also that my use of the word customers instead of players was intentional.)

[HaemishM]

If you make a game with a more reasonable budget targeting users in the 100k-500k range, you can afford to take some risks.

And if you make a game that can survive off of 50k subs, you can do whatever the hell you want.

I'd think the readers here would be all over that, but, well, I've had assholes on the internet tell me I'm wrong before.

I've been begging for that 50k niche PVP game that doesn't suck for years now.

[Nebu]

[I've been begging for that 50k niche PVP game that doesn't suck for years now.

You and I both.  I've come to the realization that my tastes are niche.  I just need someone to come to the conclusion that a game can be both niche and profitable.

[Trippy]

As for the stuff re: the Armory - I used to work for a data warehousing company. I am a privacy fascist, because I've seen first hand the results of privacy laws and policies being misused. Admittedly Blizzard has managed somehow to be financially successful despite holding opinions on avatar privacy that differ from mine. I'm not sure how, but I suspect blood elves are involved.

When you are the King you can do whatever you want (with privacy). Witness Google and the way they've handled privacy issues over their history (i.e. badly).

[lamaros]

Stuff.

Privacy is all well and good for certain things, but the WoW Armory doesn't tell you what players IPs are, what country they play from, how many hours they play each day/week/year, how many characters that have on the one account and what their names/classes/servers are, et cetera.

I think you'll find that Blizzard has strong ideas about player privacy too, they just disagree with you about what information about the players and player characters is important to respect and what information is reasonable to share.

And when I'm being a stupid fuckwit and someone illustrates that to me with a friendly joke my typical response is to laugh, not feel mocked and outraged. The fact that Blizzard openly responds to stupidity by saying "we're not doing that", "bad luck", "get over it", and the like, indicates to me that it's much easier build a good game by building a good game and not trying to pander to, humor, or even passively ignore the stupid 'customers'.

If it's ethically justified for you to have views on player privacy then we can say it's artistically justified for people to have views on game design. And at the end of the day people play games because they're good, not because they agree with the devs views on privacy. They might stop playing because they disagree (though WoW's example shows that some people make a big noise about stuff that is reasonably trivial to them), but they're not going to pick a title up just because they agree.

Hoax said that WoW showed that the customer isn't always right, but this is incorrect. When you look at the changes that have taken place in WoW you can clearly see a movement away from some of the 'original concepts' of the game to many customer driven expectations, requirements and requests. The fact that many of these have been for the better and has made the game more fun for many players shows that the customers do have a strong idea on what is 'right' for the game, not that they don't.

Hoax just misunderstands the expression: The 'customer' is not an individual and the expression is not to be applied in every individual instance.

[FatuousTwat]

One of the Netdevil developers was talking about Auto Assault, Betas, and NDAs in a recent interview.  His "lesson learned" is that Beta tests for MMOs are little more than Demos and NDAs in beta usually mean your game isn't that good and probably shouldn't be in Beta in the first place.

I'm not in the WAR beta, but it seems like they are actually using it to develop the game, rather than have it just be a demo.

[WayAbvPar]

Damnit Lum. Now you have me excited that whatever you are working on might be Robot Jesus covered in a delicious candy shell.

[Triforcer]

Damnit Lum. Now you have me excited that whatever you are working on might be Robot Jesus covered in a delicious candy shell.

Does it have FFA?  Why did you cut that class that never made it beyond concept art, it was my favorite one?  Why isn't the world larger?  Why does it feel more like a game than a world?  Why are you trying to make an artsy world and neglect gameplay?  Why aren't there elves?  Why doesn't it support same-sex avatar marriage, are you racist?  You OWE me explanations as someone who might buy your game!  Why do you want to restrict player's freedoms?  I HATE YOU I HATE YOU WHY ARE U SO GAY I QUIT