*sigh* More shallow design thinking

[StGabe]

I don't care if the catasses achieve from content or not. I want to be able to access said content or content of similar challenge without having to give up my entire lifestyle to do so, ignoring food, bathroom, sunlight and spouse just to be able to raid the great dragon.

And this just epitomizes the self-centric viewpoint that is so common today and that I personally think can be very damaging to the MMO world.  You are saying that if a game offers any content at all then it must be directly applicable to you.  Any game that tries to put in a variety of content for a variety of playstyles is automatically a failure to you because you will look at those parts which aren't for your playstyle and get pissed off that you don't enjoy them -- even though they were never intended for you and the rest of the world still contains lots of content that is suitable fo ryour playtstyle.

That, by the way, is exactly what I think EQ2 is trying to do.  It has guild content, solo content, group content, camp content, story content, etc., all focused towards different styles of achievement.  And it gets attacked from all sides by people who like 3 out 5 and think that the failure of the last 2 to fit their own, personal, specialized playstyle, is a failure of the game.

StGabe.

[HaemishM]

Look, in a fantasy-based game, I'd like the chance to kill a dragon. Tell me that I have to kill 334,576 wombats to do so, and I will go tell you to fuck off. Because no matter how involving the combat is, killing 334,576 wombats is going to get fucking boring.

But I pay the same amount of money as someone who plays twice as long as me. I am a more profitable customer, because I don't suck up so much bandwidth, or make as many CS calls.

See, the problem with most of the treadmill/we need long advancement schemes types are that it really doesn't take skill to get to the top, just perserverence. Any idiot can reach level 70 in EQ1 or 50 in EQ2, just so long as they are patient enough. And I do mean any idiot, because the mechanics really are that simple. That's not so much a knock against EQ2 as it is against most of the games out there, which have the same problem. So by the time I've killed my say 300th wombat, I pretty much know how to play my character. I know the mechanics of the game. And in EQ2, in WoW a bit, in DAoC, etc., abilities that I'll gain after that 300th wombat won't really change the way I play the game, they just make the numbers go up. So if I've learned the skills as a player necessary to do the major activity of the game, say combat, why should I be locked out of content such as killing the big dragon because I haven't killed my 334,576th wombat? The other 330k wombats aren't going to teach me anything new.

I grokked the pattern, now I want something new. And the developer is cockblocking me, saying that I have to ACHIEVE this content. I have to EARN this content.

I EARNED the content when I bought the box and paid my subscription fee. It's not a sense of entitlement that I be entertained, it's the goddamn terms of service. I pay you a subscription fee, you entertain me, not jerk me around. I'm not asking to be given the rewards of the encounter if I fail. I'm not asking this for free. I'm not even asking that I be the only one allowed to access the content. I'm just asking to be entertained, not punished for the privilege.

[El Gallo]

I may be wrong, but I think EQ2 dealt with that problem by having raid encounters where you can go kill big baddies in some instance in a raid full of level 20 characters or whatever.  At least, I remember them talking about having that.

[Sobelius]

Look, in a fantasy-based game, I'd like the chance to kill a dragon. Tell me that I have to kill 334,576 wombats to do so, and I will go tell you to fuck off. Because no matter how involving the combat is, killing 334,576 wombats is going to get fucking boring.

Strongly agree.

See, the problem with most of the treadmill/we need long advancement schemes types are that it really doesn't take skill to get to the top, just perserverence. Any idiot can reach level 70 in EQ1 or 50 in EQ2, just so long as they are patient enough. And I do mean any idiot, because the mechanics really are that simple.

This is why I am coming to enjoy the rate of advancement in WoW. Even though most of the quests are kill x of y, the time required to complete the quest is generally the same at higher levels as it was at lower levels -- usually an hour or two at most -- the difficulty moderate, and the rewards are big enough that I'm not punished for being at a higher level -- my XP advancement rate is similar to that of lower levels. What a refreshing change (it's the ONE thing I wish Cryptic would for for CoH).

The treadmill always seems to set in to most MMOs for me exactly at the point that the devs decide that each successive level not only requires geometrically more Xp than the previous level, but that the rewards for taking on even-con challenges will drop to the point where they're worth even less than the earliest of levels. It is *insane* to me that my lowest level characters in most MMOs can take on even-con or higher challenges employing only tiny skill sets and "starter" equipment, yet advance so much faster than my higher level characters that have tons of skills, great gear, and who face powerful opponents. The game design reasons for this are likely many -- but all it really seems to do, as Haemish says, is separate those with lots of time to invest 'playing' from those with less time.

I've often wondered why MMO designers don't inversely load the content of their games? Create a relatively small amount of lower level content that's easily played through, then explode the content at the highest levels, where everyone eventually ends up. I agree totally that by the time I've whacked the foozle 1000 times, I know how to play the character. It would be great, at that point, to give me a huge breadth of content to enjoy with similar breadth of skill choices to explore. The earlier part of the game can remain narrow and vertical. The reverse seems to happen to most MMOs -- lots of wide choices at lower levels, but then character specialization and fewer and fewer playing fields kicks in and suddenly I get the sense I've been shackled into a narrow path with only one way to go and it's totally uphill. (I'm giving my perception of my experiences since the fall of '99 when I started playng both EQ and AC.)

The Matrix Online, with a skill system that allows me to increase my skill sets as I get higher level and swap out entire sets of skills to reform my character, seems to be one way I think higher levels will be much more enjoyable than lower levels, rather than the reverse.

Guild Wars also seems to have a good idea with capping the levels at 20, providing some wonderful content to get you there, then letting you swap out skills as you hone your PvP skills. GW has a deliberate end game and their infrastructure seems to support the idea that the lower level game teaches you how to play and participate in the world story, while the higher level game is intentionally PvP oriented. And they aren't going the subscriptiojn model, which means (I hope) they have no vested financial interest in having me stay on the network for hours and hours whacking foozles.

[StGabe]

Look, in a fantasy-based game, I'd like the chance to kill a dragon. Tell me that I have to kill 334,576 wombats to do so, and I will go tell you to fuck off. Because no matter how involving the combat is, killing 334,576 wombats is going to get fucking boring.

And did you stick around EQ2 long enough to see if you could, or did you decide, the first time you killed more than 3 wombats in a row, that it was just the horrible game you assumed it was going to be all along?  There are lots of story-based epic quests in EQ2 that require no camping.  Camping is the exception in EQ2, not the rule.

See, the problem with most of the treadmill/we need long advancement schemes types are that it really doesn't take skill to get to the top, just perserverence.

And WoW solvest his? lol.  WoW just makes the treadmill consistently simple and easy but any more interesting than any other game.  That you will hit the end of the road sooner doesn't change much.  WoW takes skill?  Err, right.  Examples please?

And in EQ2, in WoW a bit, in DAoC, etc., abilities that I'll gain after that 300th wombat won't really change the way I play the game, they just make the numbers go up.

This is far more true in WoW than EQ2.  In WoW the majority of ability upgrades are simply small boosts to damage.  In EQ2 you continue to get new, unique abilities through the mid 40's for most classes.

I grokked the pattern, now I want something new. And the developer is cockblocking me, saying that I have to ACHIEVE this content. I have to EARN this content.

Not really.  This is where the absurdity starts to set in.  Players want something they can play for a longer period of time.  Maybe you don't want it, but most players want it.  Yet they want to instantly conquer all challenges in front of them.  The access quests in EQ2 all have interesting stories and such attached to them.  They are content just as much as anything you'll find in WoW.  They are part of the journey through the game not just a treadmill.

The removal of treadmills would be the removal of the game.  WoW is nothing but a huge treadmill, it's just a polished, hand-holding, simple treadmill.  You don't really want that removed, you just want it to be fun.  Ok, no problem.

But then you immediately jump to conclusions about EQ2's treadmill isn't fun when it has more quests, etc., than WoW's) and that's where you start losing coherency.  You just keep saying this stuff about EQ2's system that bares little correlation to the actual game.  You complain about the guild levels -- ok, well it turns out that you just jumped to conclusions and misunderstood how guild leveling work.  You complain about the lack of character diversity -- except that EQ2 characters gain more abilities and have a wider range of types abilities than WoW characters.  Etc., etc., etc.

So I am left thinking that all that we really have here is a willful desire to dislike anything that SOE publishes just because it is SOE and you've got an axe to grind.  None of the complaints seem to come from any reality of what EQ2 actually offers.

StGabe.

[StGabe]

For those of you who think that the options available to EQ2 characters are limited and that you don't have to think during combat, here is a list of the abilities my EQ2 character has and uses regularly at level 31:

Attacks:
Darksong Blade -- medium damage attack that lands a DoT and debuffs mental mitigation
Doleful Thrust -- medium damage attack that drains power and heals attacker
Brilliant Blade -- high damage flanking attack that gives a short haste
Misfortune's Kiss -- high damage stealth attack that debuffs target's agility
Luda's -- high damage, ranged DD
Lanet's -- very high damage, timed DD; debuffs target and lands a DD when the DD ends, 20s later
Sapping Shot -- Bow attack that drains health
Cry of the Departed -- ranged health drain
Falsetto -- small damage attack, debuffs targets defenses
Cheap Shot -- small damage attack, short stun
AE -- a ranged, small damage AE spell

Buffs (I am limited on which I can use so I change them based on the situation):
Bria's -- power regen buff
Crypt's Quiet -- grants group members a chance to proc disease damage
Merciless Melody -- group haste + agi/str buff
Lucky Break -- group skill+int buff, very powerful but high concentration
Jonathan's -- group movement + agi/str + DPS buff
Death's Scent -- self agility/resists buff
Pathfinding -- group movement buff

Debuffs (also limited by concentration):
Clara's: debuffs an encounters defenses
Doleful Dirge: snares and slows an encounter
Reproaching Discante: debuffs an encounters str/agi

Utility:
Garsin's: ranged, short duration fear
Root: short duration root
Escape: transport close group members to a nearby safe spot, usable every 15 minutes
Sneak: sneak by many mobs, but with reduced movement
Sprint: run faster, but drains power

---

Depending on the encounter and whether I am solo or grouped I honestly use almost all of these abilities, all the time.  There are all sorts of combos to use these in, especially solo.  An example fight might be:

1 -- see two enemies in an encounter
2 -- fear one
3 -- cast lanet's on the other while moving backward
4 -- active HO
5 -- land cheap shot to stun and activvate next HO stage
6 -- land DD while moving to land HO
7 -- active HO when it recyles
8 -- use falsetto to debuff armor and advance HO
9 -- land darksong and doleful thrust, finishing HO
10 -- recast fear on second mob as it returns
11 -- recast lanet's on feared mob
12 -- finish first mob in melee
13 -- activate HO
14 -- cheap shot remaining mob as it returns
15 -- get behind it whiile stunned and land brilliant blade
16 -- land DD to finish HO
17 -- finish in melee
18 -- if health gets low, root and back up to use cry of the departed and thuri's sapping shot

That's just an example.  The variations I use for different encounters vary greatly and incorporate pretty much every ability on that list.

In my time playing WoW I never did stuff as involved as that nor used that many abilities.  Most of my solo encounters consisted of obtaining a bit of rage and spamming slam over and over again, for example.

StGabe.

[Sobelius]

As a rogue/assassin in EQ2, I have many of those same choices. I love playing an assassin in EQ2 -- solo or in groups, it's a blast.

As a Warlock in WoW I have an equally large number of impressive choices. 3 pets to choose from, DD, DOTS, an AOE DOT, fear, Drain Health, Drain Mana, Soul Drain (a DOT that creates the component I need if I want to summon my more powerful pets or to use for health stones or soul stones (health stones provide a limited insta-heal while soul stones allow a limited duration potential self-rez)). I can fire ranged damage with a wand or get in close with my staff or my sword -- yes a Warlock with a sword! I love it. I have curses that weaken enemies to reduce their damage or simply DOT. I have a curse that lowers enemy armor while enraging them -- preventing them from fleeing, a tactic I love to use since most WoW creatures tend to try to flee when they get low on HP. I also have a water breathing spell. Add to this my Tactics skill choices -- a set of skills and abilities divided into my three main magic groups, which I can advance by choosing where to spend the points I earn and gain improvements to existing abilities or new abilities, or even the ability to avoid getting interrupted while channelling spells.

My rogue in EQ2 is 26, my Warlock in WoW is 24. I feel both have a huge range of choices.

Now comes one of the most significant differences -- and it has nothing to do with my own character's abilities. The monsters in WoW, even though many of the models appear the same, actually have varying offensive and defensive abilities and furthermore, have differences from mob to mob that are significant. In EQ2, once I got into the 20's, EVERY mob and I mean EVERY mob without exception that I face -- from a beaver to a snake to a bear to a crab to a skeleton to a shriller etc. -- has one special attack that it ALWAYS uses at some point in melee -- a melee stun. Ever get the "Can't cast that" text when doing a *melee* move in EQ2 due to stun?

In WoW, almost all mobs have a special ability or two but they really vary. Some bandits root me with nets, other fire ranged weapons at me while others cast spells, some boars gore me or my pet for a DOT, while raptors have a nasty strike that lowers my armor stat for a few minutes. Some spiders posion with a simple DOT, others prevent my health regen rate, and others have webbed me. OK, so the Murlocs tend to get annoying after a while just because they're Murlocs. But fighting various mobs in WoW, even when the same damn model is used over and over, still keeps me on my toes. I was fighting Shadowpawn gnolls in Lakeshire the other night and they do something other gnolls have never done -- knock me down and completely disrupt my casting! New behavior and a new challenge.

In EQ2, it doesn't matter where I am -- every aggro mob chases me the same way, every grouped mob behaves the same way, and worse, every mob I can potentially solo ALWAYS lands a stun during melee.

Again, there's a lot I like about EQ2; but me thinks, StGabe, you're doing to WoW the same thing you're accusing others of doing with EQ2 -- disliking it just because it doesn't match your play style.

I give WoW props on some quality of life issues:
- in-game emailing system
- excellent auction house system
- no doors to open on city buildings (I didn't even realize this until a few days ago and I really prefer it)
- many griffon routes to many locations
- ease of knowing which NPCs are offering quests appropriate for your level
- in game maps are excellent and still use a fog-of-war element so you only see details of places you've been

EQ2 has some great quality of life issues too:
- rest/vitality bonus no matter where you log out (no need to log out at an inn/city)
- nice housing system with furniture options
- mariner bells to transport between city segments
- a quest journal that lets you hold 50 quests (I wish WoW would up their quest log limit)
- a black market to allow you to buy items from "the other side" -- I think WoW has this as well but I've not found it; it was very easy to access in EQ2.

[StGabe]

Warlock was one class I didn't play in WoW so I can't comment on it.  I know that as a warrior my combat devolved into 5 abilities at best per combat.  This would change slightly for solo or grouped, but not greatly.  Either I was just spamming slam or I was spamming taunt.  My shaman was a bit better but still nothing to write home about.

Absolutely it wasn't my playstyle, but I did play through to level 47 with my warrior to see if it got any better (a lot further than I think most here played EQ2) and I do think that a person would be hardpressed to make a case for much skill or variation in abilities for that class.

FWIW, monsters in EQ2 do have much more variability.  The "you can't cast that now" can come from stuns but it can also come from stifles, a rather interesting ability in EQ2.  Mobs can mez you, harm touch you, fear you, DoT you, DD you, stifle you, stun you, power drain you, etc.  Essentially the mobs in EQ2 have the same classes that the players do.  Most animals tend to be use warrior'ish abilities (thus the stuns, etc.) but they do have different abilities too.  Bears tend ot have a DoT/stifle attack for example which is different than the stun attack that an orc will land on you.

Fight the different ghosts in D'morte for a good showcase of the different abilities EQ2 mobs can bring to bear.  They seem to be able to draw from many of the same classes that characters have and you'll get hit with all sorts of stuff.

StGabe.

[Glazius]

His name was Georg Simmel.

As for your academic name-dropping, it's just that -- name-dropping.  If he has a particularly powerful argument to tell me that my subjective experiences are in fact wrong then by all means tell us what it is.  Otherwise, the fact that there was some guy, once upon a time, who agreed with you, really doesn't add much to the discussion.

StGabe.

Yeah, the main disadvantage with academic name-dropping is inability to memorize and quote on demand upwards of 3000 pages of essays and analysis to back yourself up.

Or main reason for, one of the two.

Anyway, now that I'm home and my personal library is out in front of me...

Simmel first touches on gaming in his 1908 essay on conflict, later coallated into the collection "Conflict and the Web of Group-Associations". He presents a sociological construct called "Kampfspiel", or the conflict-game (I mentioned he was German, right?)

more precisely, the game which is carried on without any prize for victory (for the prize would lie outside of it). The purely sociological attraction of becoming master over the adversary, of asserting oneself against him, is combined here, in the case of games of skill, with the purely individual enjoyment of the most appropriate and successful movements.... At any rate, in its sociological motivation, the antagonistic game contains absolutely nothing but the fight itself.

...

But there is something most remarkable - (the antagonistic game) presupposes sociological forms in the stricter sense of the word, namely, unification. One unites in order to fight, and one fights under the mutually recognized control of norms and rules. To repeat, these unifications do not enter into the motivations of the undertaking, even though it is through them that it takes shape. They rather are the technique without which such a conflict that excludes all heterogenous and objective justifications could not materialize.

When Simmel talks about "fights" here he's talking in the same broad stance taken in the rest of the piece, which encompasses everything from wars between nations to pitched legal battles to labor strikes to lovers' quarrels.

The same sentiment - "a conflict that excludes all heterogenous and objective justifcations" - emerges a few years later, in 1910, in a piece called "Sociability". It appeared in translated form in the American Journal of Sociology, volume 55 no. 3.

If association itself is interaction, it appears in its most purest and stylized form when it goes on among equals, just as symmetry and balance are the most outstanding forms of artistic stylizing of visual elements. Inasmuch as sociability is the abstraction of association - an abstraction of the character of art or of play - it demands the purest, most transparent, most engaging kind of interaction - that among equals. It must, because of its very nature, posit beings who give up so much of their objective content, who are so modified in both their outward and their inner significance, that they are sociably equal.... It is a game in which one "acts" as though all were equal, as though he especially esteemed everyone.

...

The expression "social game" is significant in the deeper sense which I have indicated. The entire interactional or associational complex among men: the desire to gain advantage, trade, formation of parties and the desire to win from one another, the movement between opposition and co-operation, outwitting and revence - all this, fraught with purposive content in the serious affairs of reality, in place leads a life carried along only and completely by the stimulus of these functions. For even when play turns about a money prize, it is not the prize, which could indeed be won in many other ways, which is the specific point of the play; but the attraction for the true sportsman lies in the dynamics and in the chances of that sociologically significant form of activity itself. The social game has a deeper double meaning - that it is played not only in a society as its outward bearer but that with its help people actually "play" "society".

The point I made in brief comes from an earlier part of the same work:

It is no mere accident of language that all sociability, even the purely spontaneous, if it is to have meaning and stability, lays such great value on form, on good form. For "good form" is mutual self-definition, interaction of the elements, through which a unity is made; and since in sociability the concrete matters bound up with life-goals fall away, so must the pure form, the free-playing, interacting independence of individuals stand out so much the more strongly and operate with so much the greater effect.

...

From the realities of life play draws its great, essential themes: the chase and cunning; the proving of physical and mental powers, the contest and reliance on chance and on the favor of forces which one cannot influence. Freed of substance, through which these activities make up the seriousness of life, play gets its cheerfulness but also that symbolic significance which distinguishes it from pure pastime. And just this will show itself more and more as the essence of sociability; that it makes up its substance from numerous fundamental forms of serious relationships among men, a substance, however, spared the frictional realities of real life; but out of its formal relations to real life, sociability (and the more so as it approaches pure sociability) takes on a symbolically playing fullness of life and a significance which a superficial rationalism alwas seeks only in the content. Rationalism, finding no content there, seeks to do away with sociability as empty idleness, as did the savant who asked concerning a work of art, "What does that prove?"

So you talk about how the strength of EQ2 is that it applies to the shadow-substance of a game a mandated minimum challenge. And you talk about the keen, painful awareness that by actually playing WoW with your friends you were leaving the optimal path, as though that path led to a real reward. To you, a game has and enforces its own reality, separate from but similar to the real world, and you derive enjoyment from accomplishment within that reality - and similarly, frustration when you can't progress in the game's reality as quickly as you'd like.

That pushes many buttons inside of me.

If sociability cuts off completely the threads which bind it to real life and out of which it spins its admittedly stylized web, it turns from play to empty farce, to a lifeless schematization proud of its woodenness.

...

It is one of the most pregnant facts of mental life that, if we weld certain elements taken from the whole of being into a realm of their own, which is governed by its own laws and not by those of the whole, this realm, if completely cut off from the life of the whole, can display in its inner realization an empty nature suspended in the air; but then, often altered only by imponderables, precisely in this state of removal from all immediate reality, its deeper nature can appear more completely, more integrated and meaningful, than any attempt to comprehend it realistically and without taking distance. According as the former or the latter experience predominates, will one's own life, running its own course according to its own norms, be a formal, meaningless dead thing - or a symbolic play, in whose aesthetic charm all the finest and most highly sublimated dynamics of social existence and its riches are gathered.

...

Sociability would not hold for so many thoughtful men who feel in every moment the pressure of life, this emancipating and saving exhilaration if it were only a flight from life, the mere momentary lifting of its seriousness. It can often enough by only this negative thing, a conventionalism and inwardly lifeless exchange of formulas; so perhaps in the ancien regime, where gloomy anxiety over a threatening reality drove men into pure escape, into severance from the powers of actual life. The freeing and lightening, however, that precisely the more thoughtful man finds in sociability is this; that association and exchange of stimulus, in which all the tasks and the whole weight of life are realized, here is consumed in an artistic play, in that simultaneous sublimation and dilution, in which the heavily freighted forces of reality are felt only as from a distance, their weight fleeting in a charm.

I think I did overstep a little earlier. Bartle's four types aren't necessarily dysfunctions. Given an empty play space people will set goals and work toward them based on their own nature. But the shadow-world of the game becomes dangerous when people give it its own strength, when fun and enjoyment come from the results and not the process. The explorer who blazes a lightning trail across the outer reaches of the world, looking around only to be sure he's reached his destination and then setting off for the next locale, looking at the miles to his waypoint rather than at the world itself. The socializer who builds a social circle and then expects this cadre of shadowed avatars to bear some weight from the real world he can't carry alone. The killer who only derives enjoyment from winning, no matter how fair or engaging the fight was. The achiever willing to do nothing of consequence for eight hours if on the 481st minute he can accomplish something he hasn't before.

--GF

[Alkiera]

Glazius, that was interesting, if rather dense(in the fashion typical of academic writing), reading.

From it I can see your point about games being about the process, rather than the goal.  I think this is part of why people find the MMO 'endgame' so disappointing...  They've been convinced, often by themselves, that there is 'something good at the end', and then play towards that... rather than playing because the play is fun.

I would like to quote your academian back at you, if I might.  He said

But there is something most remarkable - (the antagonistic game) presupposes sociological forms in the stricter sense of the word, namely, unification. One unites in order to fight, and one fights under the mutually recognized control of norms and rules. To repeat, these unifications do not enter into the motivations of the undertaking, even though it is through them that it takes shape. They rather are the technique without which such a conflict that excludes all heterogenous and objective justifications could not materialize.

I believe part of the reason for multiplayer games, and MMO's specifically, is the 'unification' he discusses here.  This is WHY combat is so prevalent in MMOs, to force the unification of players, specifically as a group.  I'm fairly sure most of us have had that experience where a group works very well together, has great focus on the task at hand, and performs like a well-tuned machine.  This is part of why I think some people hate grouping... a desire to NOT unify with others for some reason.

I'd also argue that this is partly WHY people disolve down to the caricatures of the Bartle types... the unification they experience in an MMO may be a wholey foreign experience to them.  Thus causing Socializers to turn guildchat into the Jerry Springer show, Killers to turn the entrance to Shame(or whatever) into a bloodbath, and Achievers to catass to victory.

Thus titles like 'EverCrack'... the natural drugs of the mind are more powerful, more addicting, than anything you could smoke... the brain LOVES the feeling of unification. Also explains why people become 'jaded' after one long-term MMO.  After the first one, that feeling of unification isn't brand new anymore.  It still feels good, but isn't 'first hit' good anymore.  And you burn out of games faster and faster... because the process that makes up the games isn't yet complex enough to be fun in and of itself, for more than a couple months.

Once the population becomes more resistant to the addiction of unification, developers will HAVE to figure out fun.  Up to now, the drug alone has been enough(and I posit, will continue to be enough for first-time gamers, but not for the experienced).

Alkiera

[StGabe]

You assume that achievement can only mean macro-scale achievement or the "results" you speak of.

That isn't true.

Consider Tetris.  A tetris player may, for example, strive to beat his past scores.  That frames a destination towards which he can have an interesting journey.  He will probably derive enjoyment out of the entire game, whether he actually surpasses his past scores or not.  The goal of doing this just gives him a context and a reason to play.  And he will have all sorts of micro-scale achievements along the way.  Maybe his pieces nearly reach the top but through some very fast and furious play he manages to reduce the stack back to the bottom.  That will be a fun and rewarding experience whether he beats his best score that game or not.

My best score in Tetris, or the best scores of others does end up being a very fundamental point of how I play and enjoy that game.  Maybe you could tell me that it is absurd for me to care whether I can beat other players scores or outdo my prior attempts.  But oh well.  I want a chance to be good at this stuff and my scores and other players scores are how I can measure this.  Whether Herr Simmel approves or not, this stuff is and will be important to me and to many others.

I play MMO's in much the same way.  Achievement of levels, phat lewt, etc., gives me a context, a framework, for my journey through the game.  However it's not as though I obtain entertainment only when I actually ding or get an uber loot.  I derive enjoyment every time I narrowly avoid death, I defeat an enemy that I thought was too difficult for me, I find out a new way to defeat a certain challenge, etc., etc., etc.  But if I didn't have the goal of achieving things in the game then I wouldn't have a destination to seek forth and to give me that path to have fun on.

With WoW, where the best achievement is all in solo play, group play quickly becomes a lot less interesting to a player like me who is interested in the metagame of being an efficient achiever.  The point is not that I ignore the fun that I am having with my friends because I am so focused on achievement but rather that I simply do not have fun with my friends because the game has failed to create the sorts of challenges I can get interested during grouping.

If there had been some very difficult and taxing group challenges with interesting rewards that were unique to grouping in WoW, then I probably would have felt differently.  Then I would have had interesting destinations to visit with my grouped friends and could enjoy that journey.  I simply didn't find this to be the case.  I found that group work was largely mechanical and boring.

Also I found that the challenge of achievement in WoW was greatly diminished.  In other words, the journey framed by my trip through the levels was relatively uninteresting.  Whether grouped or solo, I was not facing interesting subchallenges along the way.  Solo play consisted of spamming slam and grouped play consisted of spamming taunt (or slam if they didn't need a tank).  Any warrior players of WoW are welcome to chime in and tell me all of the amazing tactics and strategy I supposedly was missing here.  My success or failure in a situation rarely had anything to do with the actions I took -- if it did it was because I misclicked or something silly like that.  When I fought and lost to a creature I never felt that perhaps there were other ways to approach that encounter and maybe using these might lead to success -- instead I just decided I'd have to come back next level.  Quite the opposite in EQ2.  Many times I have died or nearly died several times en route to discovering a strategy that would allow me to take on a certain challenge.

And if EQ2 truly were sitting around and doing the same thing for 481 minutes to get a result, then I wouldn't be playing it.  I actually don't have a lot of patience for stuff like that.  It took me 1 month to finish what ended up being a 5 hour grind of armorsmith in SWG (I had all the resources and the only thing to do was mindlessly grind for 5 hours).  I would do about 15 minutes at a time, get bored and find something else to do for a while.  You're vastly oversimplifying if you think there are actually people like this out there.  We could just watch Progress Quest or somesuch if we were truly that simple-minded.

StGabe.

[StGabe]

As for the writings I do not really see an argument held within.

It is simply a description of an aesthetic, an ethic for a "true sportsman". But asserting such an ethic does not mean that it actually has universal relevance or that it is anything other than aesthetic that some like and some do not.  If you feel I have missed the point, do tell me what argument therein might serve as counter-proof to my subjective understandings of how I play games.

I understand your point as being a very simple one that one should enjoy the journey, not the destination -- something I find to be true when I travel.  But that does not mean that one can travel without destinations!  When I travel I do enjoy the journey as much or more than the destinations -- but this is aided by choosing interesting and appropriate destinations.

To one whose travel through a virtual world is largely enhanced by encounters that yield chances to overcome challenges and thereby attain meaningful rewards, a part of the game that does not contain these encounters is simply not interesting.  You can moralize and pontificate all you want but I still do not enjoy grouping in WoW.  You can call me a psychopath or dub me not a "true sportsman" but there will still be many out there like me who "pathologically" seek out abilities to win rewards.

And if a game can let us do that with our friends then this is going to be a better sort of game.  I think you could characterize many of my complaints about MMO's as asking for better journeys towards the rewards.  And an oversimplistic game like WoW doesn't offer this.  A game that depletes the meaning of social rewards by lumping its best rewards into solo play doesn't offer this.  Once I know that I can level in 3 hours solo I can't just hum and put my fingers in my ears and pretend that the 20% of a level I gained while grouped for 3 hours is still a decent reward.  The best rewards are exactly those types that WoW is farthest from offering, and those which I think Herr Simmel would prefer: those created from interactions with other players.  Some of my most rewarding achievements have been successes in player economies or obtaining meaningful rewards while grouped -- WoW's economy sucks hard and grouping sucks reward-wise except very rarely for a few quests or at the end of the game when you go from a largely solo-rewarding game to a group-only game.

StGabe.

[StGabe]

In other words, the journey is important to achievers and it would be a mistake to assume otherwise -- even if achievement posits a certain destination in order to frame its journey.  But WoW destroys the meaning of group rewards which undermines both the destination and the journey for achievers undertaking grouped play.

StGabe.

[HaemishM]

Not really.  This is where the absurdity starts to set in.  Players want something they can play for a longer period of time. 

I think that players EXPECT to be playing for a longer period of time if for no other reason than they have to pay a subscription fee. They EXPECT to be entertained for as long as they want to be, despite how little that jibes with reality. And they SHOULD expect it, because other games don't dick them around with a monthly fee, and the mechanics and experiences in the game FOR THE INDIVIDUAL do not differ that greatly from what they get in single-player games. The only, and I mean ONLY, difference in game play is that there are other people there to either enhance or fuck up the experience for them.

The removal of treadmills would be the removal of the game.  WoW is nothing but a huge treadmill, it's just a polished, hand-holding, simple treadmill.  You don't really want that removed, you just want it to be fun.  Ok, no problem.

Yes, I want the treadmill removed, and replaced with interesting content. Since that is obviously not happening anytime soon, mainly because the treadmill increases subscription length, I expect that the fucking treadmill be filled with interesting variations on the theme.

But then you immediately jump to conclusions about EQ2's treadmill isn't fun when it has more quests, etc., than WoW's)

More is not necessarily better. EQ2's quests bored the ever-living shit out of me, because the game's performance was so bad, the gameplay mechanics felt almost exactly like EQ1 (a game I'd long since gotten burned out on), the voiceovers felt like fluff that actually detracted from gameplay, because I just wanted to hear the quest, and after looking at the abilities I would gain over the life of the character, nothing looked that different from what I was already doing. Perhaps it was just that the warrior archtype in EQ2 is boring shite and I've have enjoyed another archtype more. Maybe, I'm willing to admit that EQ has never done warriors very well. But I like playing warriors, melee guys, I just want the melee to be interesting. Like CoH. Or WoW. And again, we're back to I think WoW's gameplay was more involving than EQ2 and you think just the opposite.

That's ok, on this we will have to agree to disagree.

Yes, I hate SOE, I can't deny that fact, nor would I want to. I think they've shackled the MMOG Industry with some really shitty practices and philosophies, and I won't pay for another of their games again until they show me otherwise. But I did play EQ2 with as much of an open mind as I could, because I WANTED it to be good. I played EQ1 for 2 1/2 years, and I saw a lot of potential in that game that was never realized. I truly hoped that EQ2 could realize that potential, unfettered from The Vision (TM), and with a fresh start. In short, I wanted EQ2 to not make me feel like I was playing a shinier version of the EQ1 engine. But at no time while playing did I ever feel like I was playing any game other than Everquest, a game I've long since gotten tired of.

[StGabe]

Yes, I want the treadmill removed, and replaced with interesting content.

Like I said, you want an interesting treadmill.  There is not an RPG on the market that doesn't have a treadmill because that's what RPG's are.  D2, WoW, Rogue, Baldur's Gate, etc.  These are all fundamentally just content thrown around a treadmill.  You leap over one hurdle just to get to the next.

In fact, that's what stories are.  Stories are treadmills.  Reading fiction is just engaging in another sort of treadmill.  Fiction writers heap conflict and conflict on their protaganist, and make sure that the story becomes more and more dire and suspenseful, etc., until finally there is a conclusion at the end.  At which point they write another book that just creates yet another suspense treadmill for the character.  And as RPG's are really just attempts to render an experience like that of being a protaganist in popular fiction to players of a game, the treadmill is a necessary element.

You can't say you don't want the element without saying you don't want to play RPG's.  That said, all of those who play RPG's essentially want fun treadmills.  That is essentially a no-brainer.

More is not necessarily better. EQ2's quests bored the ever-living shit out of me, because the game's performance was so bad, the gameplay mechanics felt almost exactly like EQ1 (a game I'd long since gotten burned out on), the voiceovers felt like fluff that actually detracted from gameplay, because I just wanted to hear the quest, and after looking at the abilities I would gain over the life of the character, nothing looked that different from what I was already doing.

*shrug*

Not only are there a lot more quests in EQ2 but there are a lot more types and the different types are more frequently used.  In WoW, 95% of the quests follow the same pattern.  In EQ2 the quests are much more varied.  I don't actually have voices turned on myself -- so I don't really know what those do or don't do for the game.

Read my post above for a description of character abilities and playability as a level 31 dirge.

I'd love to hear an argument from the WoW side of things telling me what great fun and challenge there was to playign a warrior in WoW that I somehow missed.  Solo play = slam, slam, slam.  Group play = taunt, taunt, taunt.  There was more to it than that?

[Glazius]

Yes, I want the treadmill removed, and replaced with interesting content.

Like I said, you want an interesting treadmill.  There is not an RPG on the market that doesn't have a treadmill because that's what RPG's are.  D2, WoW, Rogue, Baldur's Gate, etc.  These are all fundamentally just content thrown around a treadmill.  You leap over one hurdle just to get to the next.

In fact, that's what stories are.  Stories are treadmills.  Reading fiction is just engaging in another sort of treadmill.

Sweet Christmas.

Okay, time to haul out another philsopher, this time it's Martin Heidegger, who wrote this in a philosophical discourse on the nature of TIME.

Time is a succession, not of moments, but of stories, and the thread that ties our experience together is not some mystical connection between the moments but our interest in the story.

What does somebody say when you ask them "what did you do today"? "At 7:00 I got out of bed, then at 7:15 I finished breakfast, then at 7:30 I was in the car on my way to work, then at 7:45..."

No.

"Today I had lunch with a buddy from Amalgamated Tile & Grout and that gave me an idea for finally closing out the Biskwaller account, but I won't find out if it worked until tomorrow."

The important bits in the STORY OF YOUR LIFE.

Lordy.

Treadmill is what happens when THERE IS NO STORY. When you're doing the same thing over and over again and time passes without Time passing.

When you get caught up in a story, then Time starts happening and there's no treadmill.

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

--GF

[Stephen Zepp]

Treadmill is what happens when THERE IS NO STORY. When you're doing the same thing over and over again and time passes without Time passing.

When you get caught up in a story, then Time starts happening and there's no treadmill.

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

--GF

That's a pretty interesting (and I feel, valid) differentiation from what I've heard complained about when people say "treadmill". Basically, I think what you are saying is that it isn't the measurable time it takes to reach a certain point in the game, but a perceived time that it takes to reach that point that is important? Taking that point farther, it would be perfectly fine to have a game that takes 12 real world months to reach "max level", IF those 12 real world months were always enjoyable/engaging, instead of tedious?

Note: This is a troll post in a way, because I'm highly curious about the responses of those that absolutely detest treadmills of any sort. I think it also may be why so many WoW players don't see character levelling as a treadmill in near the same light as in other MMOGS: the quest system adds "story" (even if it is rather trivial in the big picture) to what you are doing, and it seems to work--instead of your goal being levelling, your goal is to fulfill the story, and levelling is a byproduct.

[StGabe]

What a glorious misuse of Heidegger.

Hint: he isn't disagreeing with me.

The existentialist movement is about reinventing meaning in the moment of your lives.  But allows that one has to make choices and plot a path in your life to do so.  An existentialist will authentically undertake the "treadmill" of life and simply not dwell on the treadmill aspect.  It doesn't mean that it isn't there.  No existentialist is going to tell you that you shouldn't take a job on an assembly line because that would be too "grindy" or "treadmilly" or doesn't have enough "story".  They'd say that it is up to you to choose -- whichever treadmill or story you like -- just so long as you do so authentically.

In fact I am perfect accordance with Heidegger.  The treadmill is there, whether we like it or not.  But let's put our efforts into being able to enjoy the moment-to-moment ascension or path we take through it.

Existentialism (which Heidegger's phenomenolgy is essentially a subset of) begins with crisis, angst, fear and trembling -- what have you, different writers describe it differently.  Where does this come from?

From the understanding that there is no internal narrative or story that drives our lives that it is up to use to enforce our own meanings on the barren, otherwise meaningless structure of the world.

So harness all that dasein in a useful direction.  Realize that enjoying a game is going to mean enjoying its structure and path, the progression, the treadmill (these are alll different words for the same things, some simply kinder than others), that it offers through its world and story.  Go out and authentically grasp a treadmill near you and create your happy little meanings and stories in its moments.

Gabe.

[StGabe]

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

I'd like to see you attempt a coherent piece of fiction (that other people would actually read) that does not involve a progression from event to event towards a conclusion.  The underlying structure of a novel, this progression from conflict to conflict, is necessary for the modern novel.  Go read any good book on writing and you'll find that, at it's core, it's telling you how to create this structure.

Of course, once that structure is in place, it is the characters, the details, etc., that breathe life into the book and make it speak to its readers.

Enjoyment and structure are not mutually exclusive.  No progression whatsoever would leave most novel-readers, or MMO-players deeply unsatisfied which would greatly hurt their ability to enjoy the book or game in question.

[jpark]

Not only are there a lot more quests in EQ2 but there are a lot more types and the different types are more frequently used.  In WoW, 95% of the quests follow the same pattern.  In EQ2 the quests are much more varied. 

Give me several examples of these varied quests you talk about.  My level 27 EQ2 Templar never saw what my level 17 undead priest has in WoW.  (Yup, they both had full quest books - as if that means anything.)

For WoW quests - you can see them listed in "Favorite Quests" in the Wow Forum on this site.

[StGabe]

? collection quests are a great example.  The boat rides are very cool quests.  The class quests are very cool -- they range from finding hidden enemies, sneaking through an enemy headquarters to steal documents, dealing with an arena full of increasingly difficult solo encounters, etc.  There is a timed race through every major land zone which is a lot of fun.  Many of these zones also have huge exploration quests which involve running through lots of aggro that (unlike in WoW) actually poses a sincere risk.  There are creature mastery quests for each of the major creature type which can be done alongside other quests and are a combo of kill tasks and collections.  There are lots of instance-specific quests with interesting plots -- and there are solo/duo instances so instances aren't just a place for groups (as it was for me in WoW unless everything is green/blue).  There are sabotage quests which let you try to sabotage your enemy's city.  Some of the heritages and access quests include very detailed stories.  There are lots of quests that require harvesting.  There is a whole series of Zek quests that are a combination of kill tasks, exploration tasks and harvesting tasks -- nothing amazing there but it is a nice source of variety.  There is a wide range of quests for solo play, for small group play, and for raid play, for those who want to camp and those who just want to kill right away, etc.  Look at some of the epic quests like the draconic runes for example for a very interesting mix of challenges (you have to discover runes scattered throughout the entire EQ2 world in order to learn to speak dragon, about 20 total, fight some raid mobs, etc.).  The rewards are very different too.  On top of xps and useful items you will receive status points for your guild, you will learn languages, you will gain access to new areas, you can earn new prefix titles and gain faction with certain city groups (unlocking new "fun" things to buy), you can collect books to display in your home, you can betray your city and join another, etc.

The most iteresting quest I did in WoW was the Mithril Order quest probably.  But then obtaining all the truesilver, mithril, etc., required for the quest was a pretty big grind.    The level 30 warrior quests were cool.  But they were relatively short and the Whirlwind quest was very grindy.  WoW did have some interesting quests -- but they were the exceptions.  Like there was that cool gauntlet quest or whatever in Lakeshire or whatever that zone was (been a while).  But it was the only quest I ever found like that -- 95% of what I did find and do was foozle-killing.  In EQ2 I will spend a night just doing harvesting style quests, then I will go explore a whole zone and get maybe 10 quests done just while exploring (which is an interesting challenge with real challenge, not just a timesink like it is in WoW).  Then I will spend a night getting some race quests done.  Then I'll go look for those ?'s I missed.  Then I'll go help a guild group get access to and defeat a new zone, or do a heritage.  Etc.  There's lots of variety there if you want to use it.

Gabe.

[Glazius]

I'm sorry for your reading experience if you think all fiction everywhere = treadmill.

I'd like to see you attempt a coherent piece of fiction (that other people would actually read) that does not involve a progression from event to event towards a conclusion.  The underlying structure of a novel, this progression from conflict to conflict, is necessary for the modern novel.  Go read any good book on writing and you'll find that, at it's core, it's telling you how to create this structure.

Of course, once that structure is in place, it is the characters, the details, etc., that breathe life into the book and make it speak to its readers.

Enjoyment and structure are not mutually exclusive.

"When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, no more and no less."

I'm not sure where you came up with this definition of "treadmill", but around these parts it's generally accepted to have a negative connotation. A treadmill is a structure that you aren't enjoying - it's not an objective reality in and of itself. A treadmill is something that a good book would skip over - one page the protagonist is flying out of Los Angeles and the next he's landing in Tokyo. The story doesn't include the time on the plane unless something important happened.

That's not to say I've never read "treadmill" stories. I have, and I've also read stories where I didn't care how many pages were left in the book until I realized there weren't any more. And while it'd definitely be _easier_ to write the former, I wouldn't really want to.

Enjoyment and structure aren't mutually exclusive. Enjoyment and "treadmill" necessarily are.

--GF

[StGabe]

In other words you are right because you use connotation to define words to make it so that you are right ahead of time?

Then I think you are simply bringing [your definition of] "treadmills" into the discussion when it isn't appropriate.

The real content of this conversation wasn't about something that was pre-defined to be negative but about the fact that all MMO's rely on structure and progression where players have to accomplish one step of the game to get to the next.  In other words, if you assume that treadmills are always negative then you just aren't talking about what we are talking about. *All* RPG's and *all* stories use progression and structure to give characters/readers content.  This isn't going to go away and magically yield "stories" that don't have progressions, that don't bring characters through the world step-by-step, etc.  All we can hope for are progressions and structures that are interesting and fun.

What did you think I meant by making treadmills fun if you just assume, out of hand, that a treadmill must mean something negative?

Gabe.

[StGabe]

The problems here, which I have been discussing all along, are that:

1) Players blame rules and structure and think they are somehow inherently "unfun" when in fact they are absolutely necessary for a fun, fulfilling game (or story for that matter).

2) Players will call the content of a game they like a "story" and a game they don't like a "treadmill".  That's fine, but in so doing they are only revealing their own prejudices, and not actually offering a commentary on the game or on the genre.  The same sorts of structure and rules are used to create both that story and that treadmill.  It's just that they are wielded in slightly different ways so that some like one and some like the other.

So if you want to actually add anything to the conversation, you're going to have to do more than say, "OMG, EQ2 has rules, it's evil" or "EQ2 is such a treadmill whereas WoW is a 'story'".  In particular, which restrictions of EQ2 hurt gameplay and for which audiences?  And to what extent do these same restrictions help gameplay for other audiences?  Given that any MMO must have a structure to it, a natural sequence of events, a progression -- what can we do to make this a fun path to follow?  What does EQ2 do to make this fun?  (lots of things in my opinion, those who miss these things are mostly just deadset on hating, by default, anything that SOE makes, have ignored the many fixes in changes since release because they quit the first time anything went wrong and thus confirmed their preconceived notion that EQ2 was going to suck).  What does WoW do to make this fun and where does WoW also fail?  (I think it fails in a lot of ways, for a lot of the players out there -- if you're just willing to give it an unbiased look for a few moments)

Gabe.

[Strazos]

Like I said, you want an interesting treadmill.  There is not an RPG on the market that doesn't have a treadmill because that's what RPG's are.  D2, WoW, Rogue, Baldur's Gate, etc.  These are all fundamentally just content thrown around a treadmill.

Heh, I got a fairly good chuckle out of that one, as someone who has destroyed every Baldur's Gate (or derivitive) game in existance.

Also, it seems you are using a different understanding of "treadmill" than everyone else here. Commonly, it can be equated with "The Grind(tm)". Both WoW and EQ2 have hideous treadmills, but WoW's is less painful; I found myself sitting around much less, killing the same mobs. Also, it's quicker (for better or worse). In EQ2 it just got to the point where we would find a good spot and grind out mobs....Just like EQ, the only game that could ever put me, quite literally, to sleep. Treadmills are bad because they are not truely content; they just suck up your time so you can pay the developer each month. Granted, both games have some nice quests, but by and large, they are mostly garbage and wastes of time - Even moreso in EQ2 because of the crappy xp rewards and the larger xp requirements to hit the next level. Sorry, but for most people, the game just became agonizingly boring.

And why is BG not a grind? Because I never have to go around and kill mobs, just for the sake of killing mobs for XP - there's usually a good reason. Calling it a grind or treadmill is simply an insult to a legendary game.

[schild]

Calling it a grind or treadmill is simply an insult to a legendary game.

Planescape is a legendary game. Baldur's Gate is just a stellar RPG, the writing simply didn't captivate enough to worth a replay.

As far as calling BG a treadmill. I agree. There weren't enough MOBs to treadmill on anyway. Every mob had some purpose. I'd like to see MMOGs act that way, but it would call for heavy instancing, a la Guild Wars. But even that game has useless mobs.

[Glazius]

In other words, if you assume that treadmills are always negative then you just aren't talking about what we are talking about. *All* RPG's and *all* stories use progression and structure to give characters/readers content.

Except a treadmill isn't really a progression and it's not much of a structure either.

See this imaginary guy walking on a treadmill? Or, y'know, running, jogging, sprinting?

He's not progressing. He's not _going_ anywhere. He's staying in exactly the same place however fast or slow he moves. And the only "structure" there is the minimum necessary to define that "same place".

Stick another imaginary guy in a public park with a nature trail. It's about 4 miles long. Treadmill Imaginary Guy and Park Imaginary Guy both run 4 miles. At the end of it they're at the same place. But Park Imaginary Guy's "same place" is a lot larger than Treadmill Imaginary Guy's same place. I'd bet for a sufficiently large sampling of imaginary guys, Park Imaginary Guy would say he made a little more progress than Treadmill Imaginary Guy.

Stick another imaginary guy in Forrest Gump's shoes and have him run a lap of America. Treadmill Imaginary Guy, Park Imaginary Guy, and Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy all run 4,000 miles. At the end of it all, they're at the same place. Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy's same place is frikkin' HUGE, though. He probably never took the same path twice unless he deliberately chose it. He ran through cities and public parks and maybe health clubs and cornfields and mountains and tunnels and everything in between. Treadmill Imaginary Guy and maybe even Park Imaginary Guy are pretty bored by now. But even in the case of Park Imaginary Guy, running 4,000 miles takes a lot of time, and in the public park the seasons changed, and new people came and went, so even if next to Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy, Park Imaginary Guy didn't see a whole _lot_ of things, he at least had something a little different every time. Treadmill Imaginary Guy just had his treadmill.

MMORPGs are probably a long way off from putting us all in the shoes of Forrest Gump Imaginary Guy, but Park Imaginary Guy is an okay gig if you can land it.

--GF

[Strazos]

Calling it a grind or treadmill is simply an insult to a legendary game.

Planescape is a legendary game. Baldur's Gate is just a stellar RPG, the writing simply didn't captivate enough to worth a replay.

Planescape, Absolutely. And yes, while BG's writing wasn't as good, it Did, almost singlehandedly, revive the RPG genre on the PC. I think that counts for Something.

[StGabe]

Except a treadmill isn't really a progression and it's not much of a structure either.

I think we already established that we mean different things by treadmills and that your use isn't really what we have been discussing (it's just another way of saying "X sucks").  That we are still talking about it is really only because you seem to want to be able to define the conversation so that you can only be right.  To me treadmill is just a way of putting a negative spin on the sequences of challenges, tasks and events that lead one through a game and are an integral part of the RPG design.

EQ2 is nothing like the treadmill in your analogy, nor is its gameplay, and so your analogy and your usage of treadmill is simply irrelevant to this conversation except as a way for you to define the answer you wish to receive.

Gabe.

[Glazius]

Except a treadmill isn't really a progression and it's not much of a structure either.

I think we already established that we mean different things by treadmills and that your use isn't really what we have been discussing (it's just another way of saying "X sucks").  That we are still talking about it is really only because you seem to want to be able to define the conversation so that you can only be right.  To me treadmill is just a way of putting a negative spin on the sequences of challenges, tasks and events that lead one through a game and are an integral part of the RPG design.

EQ2 is nothing like the treadmill in your analogy, nor is its gameplay, and so your analogy and your usage of treadmill is simply irrelevant to this conversation except as a way for you to define the answer you wish to receive.

Gabe.

When the challenges, tasks, and events all feel like the _same_ challenge, task, and/or event, then you _have_ a treadmill.

YES this is subjective. For example, you say "EQ2 is nothing like the treadmill in your analogy", and someone else says "In EQ2 it eventually just got to the point where we would find a good spot and grind out mobs". This is obviously a subjective experience that differs from person to person. But for the latter person, EQ2 _is_ a treadmill, and they're not any more wrong than you are right. For you, WoW turned into a whack-blue-mobs treadmill or a taunt-for-the-win treadmill. Obviously, other people do not have these experiences.

It's pretty much a given that a game is going to be about something. And if you just provide a total sandbox then Bartle's types attempt to explain what sorts of games a given person will make _for themselves_ out of the sandbox.

But what this thread started off with was - "the guild raid we ground out over dozens of writ tasks wasn't challenging or rewarding for any of the guild members - it felt like a slap in the face", and "it's possible for a disgruntled guild member to completely destroy all progress the guild has made".

I think those could be called elements of "treadmill design". An empty reward, and a means to irreparably destroy progress, making the entire process into one giant treadmill. Now, the dev team is pretty much on top of their game and they're patching like madmen - what people complain about two months in the past may have been fixed since then.

Just a question about these won't-fit-in-the-quest-log quests - are they of the "find 20 arbitrary pixels in the entire gameworld" sort, or are they "predictably hidden" secrets? From how the dragon tongue quest was enthusiastically described to me it seems like the "20 arbitrary pixels" kind.

--GF

[Strazos]

I think we already established that we mean different things by treadmills and that your use isn't really what we have been discussing (it's just another way of saying "X sucks").  That we are still talking about it is really only because you seem to want to be able to define the conversation so that you can only be right.

From the looks of it, you're not really having much of a conversation at all, since you're not even using the same language. When me and Glazius say something is a treadmill, we're using the generally accepted meaning of it. Where you are coming up with your meaning, I do not know.

To me treadmill is just a way of putting a negative spin on the sequences of challenges, tasks and events that lead one through a game and are an integral part of the RPG design.

EQ2 is a huge grind, just ask any of the top catasses on any server. There is no "negative spin". And please tell us how whacking 2000 foozles is "an integral part of RPG design". If you want to advance, you have to camp, there's no way around it. I believe it has been sufficiently proven by others here that camping and catassing are not integral parts of Good MMO design....but they Are integral parts of Good MMO Business Design.

[Stephen Zepp]

In other words you are right because you use connotation to define words to make it so that you are right ahead of time?

Then I think you are simply bringing [your definition of] "treadmills" into the discussion when it isn't appropriate.

In the abstract I tend to agree with most of your reasoning St Gabe, but I think that you are the one that introduced an alternate connotation to treadmills in this particular discussion: in this community at least, and I would venture to suggest in most MMOG communities in general, "treadmill" has a negative (and sometimes, very negative) connotation. In your discussion points you gave the term completely neutral connotations, but in the MMOG genre, a treadmill is a "bad thing"...not a neutral one. Interestingly, this is exactly why my last post asked the questions it did, because it does appear that the negativity associated with the concept may not be directly attributable to the length of the treadmill, but the player's perception of the events making up the treadmill itself.

[StGabe]

Look I am not denying that treadmill has a negative connotation.  You guys are just taking that too far as though anything you might consider dubbing a treadmill is automatically poor gaming.  Lots of words both have a negative connotation AND refer to something.  In the case of treadmills what is being referred to is the sequence of challenges a game offers you -- and the connotation is that it is a poor game and monotonous.

My point is very simple: it is that the sequence of challenges/events/conflicts is an integral part of the RPG design paradigm and stories in general.  So you have to be careful how you throw around "treadmill".  Because if you start to just mean that any sequencing of spacing out of challenges and content is bad, then you are basically saying that you don't want to play an RPG or be in a story.

If you want to insist that we call it a treadmill, then my point is: that this treadmill is an inherent design property, not something that can be avoided.  The only thing to be done is to make the treadmill fun and engaging.  If at that point you are willing to declare it no longer a treadmill, so be it!

We are getting way too bogged down in semantics.  With words that weren't even my choice.

And please tell us how whacking 2000 foozles is "an integral part of RPG design".

An RPG with no progression of your character would be an FPS.  To spice up an FPS at all, say by adding flags to capture, is really only setting up a certain sort of progression or story -- you now need to capture 10 foozles (flags) for example.  Stories like the Lord of the Rings are carefully structured sets of conflicts with a rising sense and desperation leading to a conclusion -- a.k.a a climax and resolution.  If you want RPG's to be stories, they they too will have to recreate this modality.  If you want to play an MMORPG for months or years, then the sequencing of these challenges will indeed have to consume a large amount of time.  If you want to script them anyway (like WoW does).  If you want to create dynamic content and go the "virtual world" route then you hope that there is some way to generate spontaneous content that might generate longterm play.  But otherwise you have to face up to the reality that a good singleplayer game might get 100 hours of solid gameplay in after 1-2 years development, and to stretch that out for 12+ months of MMO gameplay (at 25-50 hours a month) is going to mean a fairly large scaling-up of player time investments.

Gabe.

[StGabe]

EQ2 is a huge grind, just ask any of the top catasses on any server.

Let me digress a bit.  It seems interesting to me that people seem to equate the fact that there are people who are higher level than them, with the game being grindy.  I think that players are a lot more concerned that they can't always be the best in systems that have deep time investment than they really care the quality of the progression of the game.  In other words, most of you are actually very much so achievers.  And what you really are most concerned about is that with deep time investments, you can't achieve all the same things as others and are falling behind.  You don't really care if the game is still fun during that time investment period or if that deep investment means that you might have fun with the game for a very long time.  You can't seperate your achievements from others (because you really are a very strong achiever type) and think that you can't have fun if you aren't at the top.

In other words, I think what a lot of you are really asking for, and what you like about WoW, is a game that is so trivial or flat that there is no room for more greatly achieving characters above yourself.  I'm not saying that is right or wrong -- I just think it might be a more accurate depiction of where a lot of people are coming from.

Designating the game a grind, just gives a reason to badmouth all those people who did achieve more than you and to blame the game for not providing a platform where you can be oen of the highest achieving players around.  Instead of saying that that you just don't have the resources to be the best of the best (those resources being time, skiill, computer, etc.) you can say: the game is too grindy and that's why I'm not slaying dragons -- and all those people who are are just fucktards with no life who don't know what "fun" is.

Players are always being irrational about stuff like this.  Make Jedi next to impossible to obtain they declare (and all the while, most of those players assume that they will be among the chosen few to obtain a Jedi and are disappointed and pissed off  -- and most importantly, the fault the game design -- when it turns out that they can't).  [beta posts for SWG indicated that a good majority of players both wanted Jedi to be very rare and would be very disappointed if they didn't get to play one -- uhh, right]

Gabe.

[jpark]

In other words, I think what a lot of you are really asking for, and what you like about WoW, is a game that is so trivial or flat that there is no room for more greatly achieving characters above yourself.  I'm not saying that is right or wrong -- I just think it might be a more accurate depiction of where a lot of people are coming from.
Gabe.

No. 

What we are asking for is content to justify the time it takes to build a character.  We harp on EQ not because it takes so long to build a character to max level, but because the underlying mehanic supporting that journey is not "fun".  WoW is popular not because it might take 5 months to have a max char - but rather Blizzard has not stretched the time required to build such an avatar beyond the enjoyable content of the game.

Expressed concerns are not about "achieving".  It's like a good film at 90 minutes that becomes lousy when the same content is now presented over 3 hours.  The latter is EQ1/2 the former is WoW in my experience to date.