"The Snowball of Nerf-Hate Effect"

[Calantus]

Read a post on the WoW Boards that actually sounded intelligent and thought I'd share. You can find the post by Paikeke here, but I'll post it below for convenience:

If anything, just put diminishing returns on snare. That's fair. You only need like 10 seconds of snare to kill someone dead anyway don't you?

Put diminishing returns on Power Word: Shield. You only need one shield to kill someone dead anyway don't you?

This conversation is retarded. No SNARE in the game has diminishing returns, only TOTAL movement stoppers do. Comparing Frost Shock to fear/polymorph/etc is ridiculous -- those things take you out of the fight entirely, Frost Shock means that you move at half rate unless you're intelligent enough to drink a potion, in which case all it did was really mana inefficient damage.

As a Mage, I can keep you slowed forever while doing damage, and I can cast it twice every five seconds instead of once, meaning I do 1000 damage where Frost Shock did 500, and you still have absolutely no chance of escaping it. Everyone complains about how Shaman crush Warriors and Rogues due to Frost Shock... well Mages crush Warriors and Rogues even more thoroughly, often without getting hit as well. Yet the complaints are about Shaman, because of something called "The Snowball of Nerf-Hate Effect" as I like to call it.

We have a subset of posters on these forums that are "nerf posters." People are mistaken as to why they do it though, I think. They don't come here necessarily because they suck, or they got owned, or anything else (though all those things can lead to one becoming a "nerf poster".) No, they want to feel like they have some sort of control over the game's evolution, to feel "good" about themselves -- these people often have very little real power over their actual lives, often being teenagers.

So they arrive at the forum and need to think of something to #@%$! about in hopes of getting changed, and thus feeling powerful. Some try to go it alone, #@%$! about some isolated topic and get smacked down -- these folks have little chance of success in their goal, and thus you don't hear a lot from them.

Others, however, realize that by attaching themselves to slightly more popular nerf complaints, they can weasle in and get others actually agreeing with them. For some reason, these people feel that if a LOT of posters #@%$! about something, it WILL get changed, and thus THEIR complaint got changed, surely because THEY complained. Thus, no matter why it might have actually gotten changed if it did, they felt powerful and intelligent (Oh, I SAW the imbalance, and campaigned for it).

Because of this second type of nerf poster, certain complaints snowball into much larger matters than they logically should be. Paladins was an example, and a good one. People whined and whined about healing + shield making Paladins too powerful. They complained pages upon pages. Then, a bug got fixed that was TOTALLY unrelated to the vast majority of the complaints... but then the complaints about healing + shielding virtually stopped. Why? Because these delusional posters felt they had "won by association," got their illusionary power trip, and went to something else. It doesn't matter that none of their complaints were actually addressed, the bug fix fell into the general topic of them enough to FEEL like they had caused it.

Frost Shock is just another of these snowball whines, same with Purge to a lesser extent (which is why it's usually Purge being whined about instead of Dispel, which is better in every way). It doesn't matter that these things aren't imbalanced, or that other instances of the "logical problem" people cite pertaining to them exist in the game. All they care about is snowballing their complaints in hopes that SOMETHING will get changed, regardless of why. When that happens, they'll feel special again and move on to another whine.

They could post tomorrow that Shaman's Lightning Shield was deemed overpowerful and thus removed, and 80% of the nerf complaints would stop. It's not about Frost Shock in actuality, it's about these people feeling good about their pathetic selves. Any change would appease them. So take heart, I'm sure sooner or later a bug that is in some remote way beneficial to Shaman will be discovered in the Shaman class, fixed, and then the #@%$!ing will end for a while as these losers turn their attentions to Priests, Rogues, or whoever else they think they can get away with.

Until then, don't let it fool you into thinking your class actually IS problematic; it's finely polished and just fine as it is in every respect. You don't need to make "concession posts" in which you say things like the above; it's not necessary, and doesn't fix balance issues, as they don't exist. Frost Shock being changed from 8 seconds to 4 seconds wouldn't substantially alter any of your fighting styles, Purge costing a bit more mana and removing less effects would lead to it being spammed a little bit more to clear all the effects, nothing else. These aren't imbalances, they aren't issues, and don't let yourself be fooled into thinking they are.

That was a lot longer than I intended. I was just planning on rebutting the dumb Priest, but the general class of people pathetic creatures like her belong to coing to mind forced me into a righteous frenzy. Don't blame me, blame the vermin for being so detestable.

I don't know about anyone else but when I read that I got the feeling that it was a though I had subconsciously, but had never pinned down. Frankly I think she hit the nail right on the head.

[AcidCat]

Hmm, yeah. I've often thought about how the evolving nature of an MMORPG coupled with official forums gives certain individuals a kind of self-important mindset, that if they complain enough the game may change to suit them. "I gave you X amount of dollars, my voice must be heard!" and all that. These obsessive types get this tunnel vision, where molehills become mountains, minor quirks or nitpicks become class-breaking imbalances.

I guess I'm too old for any of that crap. I have no illusions, I'm just one customer out of hundreds of thousands, Blizzard could care less about what I think or if I individually stay or go. The game is the game, I'll play it, and adapt my playstyle to its reality instead of complaining that some portion of the game isn't custom-tailored to my exact expectations.

[Paelos]

Squeaky wheels. It's almost why gamers need a players union for these things. Most of the unwashed masses of the US can't string coherent sentences together, that's why we elect officials. The forums are a testament to the stupidity of an open sounding board.

[Stephen Zepp]

I apologize for not providing a link, but I think that it was Raph that essayed several months ago about the precept that players are really not the ones to "help" developers balance games, or design new features.

One of the things that players cannot see, but developers can, is the "long term view". And in some cases, even the dev's can't see it--for example, take a look at the "easy/no death penalty" that WoW has, and how much the players like it.

We all hated cr runs (especially at the raid level) in EQ, and all the death penalties that have been used by various games over the years, but one of the things that Raph (again, if it was he) pointed out is that there is a long term downside to minimal/nonexistent death penalties: when there is no perceived risk, players will do anything and everything. A perfect example (of this example) is the complaints about territorial control on PvP servers I've read here in WoW: it really doesn't matter what you do, if a player wants to keep coming back after they die, they can, and do. "Griefers", PvP defenders (in the case of territorial/spawn control), and pretty much anyone else can simply keep on coming back regardless of what happens, making the end of the conflict simply whomever gives up first, or runs out of time.

This cascades over the entire lifecycle of the game-with no meaningful risk associated with dying, and the fact that you can respawn very near where you died (graveyards, etc.) makes any conflict in the game that involves someone dying meaningless--and for any game where conflict between players of any sort (not just combat), when there is no downside involved with the conflict, the players will eventually stop using the game mechanic because it has no actual net effect.

Heinlein coined a term when discussing one of the fundamental flaws of democracy: "bread and circuses". What he meant by this is that once a population recognizes the fact that they can make things "better" for themselves simply by voting for it (and being the controlling majority), they will, regardless of the long term consequences of the decisions--they will vote for everyone to have unlimited bread, and a circus every day, regardless of the fact that this will destroy the survivability of the society in the long term. Or, from another perspective: when decisions are made based on the opinions of unenlightened self-interest, those decisions are inevitably self-destructive.

Obviously, there are players that have enlightened interest (even if it is self-interest) when it comes to a game they play, but in general, the average gamer simply has no idea of the long term consequences of things they want in a game, and the developers have to temper any player inputs/requests/nerf calls with the long term survivability of the game itself, or the game will eventually become unplayable.

Minimal/no death penalties certainly makes things easier--but they also will cause extensive playability issues for the game itself in the long run.

EDIT: It's possible it was Richard Bartle that wrote the article I'm talking about--but I haven't been able to confirm one way or the other yet...

[Train Wreck]

We all hated cr runs (especially at the raid level) in EQ, and all the death penalties that have been used by various games over the years, but one of the things that Raph (again, if it was he) pointed out is that there is a long term downside to minimal/nonexistent death penalties: when there is no perceived risk, players will do anything and everything. A perfect example (of this example) is the complaints about territorial control on PvP servers I've read here in WoW: it really doesn't matter what you do, if a player wants to keep coming back after they die, they can, and do. "Griefers", PvP defenders (in the case of territorial/spawn control), and pretty much anyone else can simply keep on coming back regardless of what happens, making the end of the conflict simply whomever gives up first, or runs out of time.

This cascades over the entire lifecycle of the game-with no meaningful risk associated with dying, and the fact that you can respawn very near where you died (graveyards, etc.) makes any conflict in the game that involves someone dying meaningless--and for any game where conflict between players of any sort (not just combat), when there is no downside involved with the conflict, the players will eventually stop using the game mechanic because it has no actual net effect.

WoW's lack of a death penalty is one of the best things about it.  I don't know about you, but I've lost dozens of hours of my life spent on recovering corpses in various MORPGs throughout the years.  No more!

By removing penalties from PvP and Battlegrounds, it encourages more players to participate.  If losing means that you get a broken glass bottle shoved up your rectum, less people will be willing to do it.  It's a damned game, it's meant to be fun.  Any game that is determined to punish its players is very wrong-minded.  The primary reason I usually avoid PvP in MORPGs is because I hate dying in general, and recognize that I will die often during the learning curve.  But in WoW, I'm actually looking forward to it.  I'd probably even laugh about getting killed, because I don't have to spend an hour of my time getting back on my feet.

The points you make about players being able to res in graveyards behind enemy lines to facilitate tactical advantages that they didn't earn are highly valid, but they can be addressed without a general penalty for death.  Certain graveyards can be flagged to be Horde or Alliance-only, players can be prevented from ressing at their corpse if it is in enemy territory, or timers can be set so that they can't ress or enter certain areas before a set time expires.  Several options exist to fix the unintended consequences of having inconsequential deaths without busting out painful penalties.

I sincerely doubt that players will stop engaging in PvP because their victims keep coming back for more.  I even venture to say that they derive enjoyment from killing the same person over and over again because they won't give up.  If players decline to engage in PvP, it is because it no longer entertains them, which is more likely to happen if they spend most of their time and money recovering from dying.

[Stephen Zepp]

Please realize I am not advocating "broken glass bottle shoved into the rectum" (great phrase by the way!) style death penalties--but I do think that the WoW version of the concept is a pendulum swing too far in the wrong direction (and to relate back to the original post, a swing caused by the general MMOG player base). WoW is also not a very good example--a better example would be if Shadowbane were to use WoW's death penalty mechanics, because in the PvP/GvG area of the game, such a lax death penalty would have made sieges even more unbearable than they were.

[AcidCat]

It's a damned game, it's meant to be fun.  Any game that is determined to punish its players is very wrong-minded. 

 If players decline to engage in PvP, it is because it no longer entertains them, which is more likely to happen if they spend most of their time and money recovering from dying.

Totally agree. A game doesn't need a death penalty to have fun PvP. I hate getting killed just out of ... well pride I guess, it's like a personal thing. It doesn't matter if it's just a short trip from a graveyard, the other guy won, he bested me, that doesn't sit right. Anyone who honestly doesn't care less when they are killed, well I guess they just don't have any kind of emotional investment in the game. I have PvP encounters where my heart actually beats fast, I get into it ... in a way it's just like playing against people in Battlefield or Quake, there was no death penalty there, there didn't need to be, the spirit of competition, the fun of playing against real upredictable people is all you need.

[Jayce]

EDIT: It's possible it was Richard Bartle that wrote the article I'm talking about--but I haven't been able to confirm one way or the other yet...

Also, it was the Roman poet Juvenal  (http://www.bartleby.com/61/39/B0463950.html) who coined bread and circuses.  Though I'm sure Heinlein used it to great effect.

I agree about the death penalty.  I'm torn as to whether the penalty should be the same for PvP deaths; currrently there is none, but the PvE penalty is 10% item degradation if you res at your corpse, 25% at the spirit healer (plus 10 minutes res sickness).  That's enough to calm down the zerg effect while not wasting massive amounts of time or cash.

I understand why PvP isn't included in the penalty, but at the same time that's one place the zerg effect is most noticeable.  A_Foozle_027 isn't going to complain about it, even if zerging him is somewhat cheesy.

[Stephen Zepp]

In retrospect I should have used a different example of the underlying point, because death penalties are such a hot topic. The main point of my post was to point out that if dev's let the players influence design/balance decisions without very carefully tempering how those decisions will effect the long term model of their game, there is a huge risk of the game becoming unplayable in some form or another in the long term.

Here's a different example:

EQ player input: We want to kill the gods!

EQ decision: release Planes of Power, where the gods (eventually) become nothing more than equipment farms.

Consequence: Wow! Now we have to come up with yet another bigger, better, badder expansion, thereby making the entire history and relative power of the gods of the game from the beginning pretty much irrelevant.

[Stephen Zepp]

EDIT: It's possible it was Richard Bartle that wrote the article I'm talking about--but I haven't been able to confirm one way or the other yet...

Also, it was the Roman poet Juvenal  (http://www.bartleby.com/61/39/B0463950.html) who coined bread and circuses.  Though I'm sure Heinlein used it to great effect.

Good point, I should have qualified my statement with "in recent literature"...although I didn't know the origin of the quote!

[Righ]

The back-and-forth of the current PvP in WoW is kind of boring. There's no objective or sense of lasting victory. You can't do it for long. That's okay, its mostly a diversion at the end of an evening. I look forward to battlegrounds. However, the lack of death penalty is a good thing - there are always willing participants even on a non-PvP server.

I certainly don't look forward to PvP death, but I don't hate it as AcidCat suggests I should. Last night I got feared away from my group, rooted once isolated, and then chain stunned and ganked by several rogues. No pride hurt in those circumstances, in fact I'm rather proud that they singled me out for such treatment.

But I guess I should have been punished for my participation. 

[Train Wreck]

Please realize I am not advocating "broken glass bottle shoved into the rectum" (great phrase by the way!) style death penalties--but I do think that the WoW version of the concept is a pendulum swing too far in the wrong direction (and to relate back to the original post, a swing caused by the general MMOG player base).

You made good points earlier of how the lack of death penalties is exploited in WoW, but I submitted changes they can make regarding PvP deaths without introducing penalties (several of which will be included in the Battlegrounds system).  Hell, even the broadcasting the Jedi Academy-style "So-and-so has been thrown to their doom by what's-his-smell" would be sufficient  to encourage players to try not to die, without sticking a metaphorical fork in their eye.

What do you think should happen to players when they die in WoW?  How would you "swing the pendulum" back to where you believe it should be?

[AcidCat]

I certainly don't look forward to PvP death, but I don't hate it as AcidCat suggests I should.

Eh, hate was probably too strong a word. I'm only speaking for myself anyway, not suggesting people should feel the same. :)

[Stephen Zepp]

Please realize I am not advocating "broken glass bottle shoved into the rectum" (great phrase by the way!) style death penalties--but I do think that the WoW version of the concept is a pendulum swing too far in the wrong direction (and to relate back to the original post, a swing caused by the general MMOG player base).

You made good points earlier of how the lack of death penalties is exploited in WoW, but I submitted changes they can make regarding PvP deaths without introducing penalties (several of which will be included in the Battlegrounds system).  Hell, even the broadcasting the Jedi Academy-style "So-and-so has been thrown to their doom by what's-his-smell" would be sufficient  to encourage players to try not to die, without sticking a metaphorical fork in their eye.

What do you think should happen to players when they die in WoW?  How would you "swing the pendulum" back to where you believe it should be?

I don't play WoW, so I cannot make an opinion about what death penalties would be appropriate in the game unfortunately--all I could do is to identify (based on posts here, as well as comments from friends and relatives) what appears to be, from a design perspective, something that will cause trouble in the long run.

Each game is different--as you said, in some games, you can reply on making the player simply not want to die much--touch their pride so to speak. In a game where territorial/asset control (either real player built structures, or even simply best farming/exp grounds) are an important consideration, it does have to be something meaningful.

I can speak about our design, and it's somewhat of a mix between the two: for avatar/rpg style players, it will be a mixed penalty of recovery time (to balance things like raids and sieges), as well as equipment upkeep. No exp penalty.

For RTS/Small Squad players (avatars that focus on battle leadership, giving them control over squads of troops), the primary penalty of dying is loss of (npc) reputation and leadership ability, implemented by lowering the total troops they can command as once, as well as a penalty to the morale of the units they command.

For the low persistence players (the "killer" player type), dying is simply the end of their "session", requiring a respawn as a different npc, possibly resulting in a reduced ability to spawn in creatures of that level if at least some of the session goals were not met. For example, if their session goal was to raid a set of villages, and they died before they even got the village in sight, this would be a "failed mission" and their power index would be reduced slightly, curbing how high powered npc's they could spawn into.

[Signe]

I don't play WoW

 

Have I been tricked by the title of this forum?

[Stephen Zepp]

I don't play WoW

 

Have I been tricked by the title of this forum?

Heh..the only relation this thread had from the beginning in regards to WoW is that the original post that was quoted came from a WoW forum. The underlying concept applies to most MMOG's, and I did reference WoW as my first example.

There are quite a few people that post about games they don't necessarily play--hell, many people post about games they absolutely detest.

[Signe]

I still say you tricked me!!  I even found you your first avatar to celebrate it.

[HaemishM]

We all hated cr runs (especially at the raid level) in EQ, and all the death penalties that have been used by various games over the years, but one of the things that Raph (again, if it was he) pointed out is that there is a long term downside to minimal/nonexistent death penalties: when there is no perceived risk, players will do anything and everything. A perfect example (of this example) is the complaints about territorial control on PvP servers I've read here in WoW: it really doesn't matter what you do, if a player wants to keep coming back after they die, they can, and do. "Griefers", PvP defenders (in the case of territorial/spawn control), and pretty much anyone else can simply keep on coming back regardless of what happens, making the end of the conflict simply whomever gives up first, or runs out of time.

That isn't an issue of death penalties, that's an issue of not thinking through the PVP system. One minor change would have made this problem go away, or be significantly less of a problem. In a contensted zone, deaths take you out of the contested zone to the nearest friendly graveyard. Why this wasn't considered I can only blame on the addition of PVP too late in beta to change things. The penalty for death hasn't changed, but it has made the return to a conflict more difficult. DAOC had this system in place at release, but they went to far to the other side, really punishing the player by sending him a long distance from the battle. They later added mechanics that eased up on that.

[Stephen Zepp]

We all hated cr runs (especially at the raid level) in EQ, and all the death penalties that have been used by various games over the years, but one of the things that Raph (again, if it was he) pointed out is that there is a long term downside to minimal/nonexistent death penalties: when there is no perceived risk, players will do anything and everything. A perfect example (of this example) is the complaints about territorial control on PvP servers I've read here in WoW: it really doesn't matter what you do, if a player wants to keep coming back after they die, they can, and do. "Griefers", PvP defenders (in the case of territorial/spawn control), and pretty much anyone else can simply keep on coming back regardless of what happens, making the end of the conflict simply whomever gives up first, or runs out of time.

That isn't an issue of death penalties, that's an issue of not thinking through the PVP system. One minor change would have made this problem go away, or be significantly less of a problem. In a contensted zone, deaths take you out of the contested zone to the nearest friendly graveyard. Why this wasn't considered I can only blame on the addition of PVP too late in beta to change things. The penalty for death hasn't changed, but it has made the return to a conflict more difficult. DAOC had this system in place at release, but they went to far to the other side, really punishing the player by sending him a long distance from the battle. They later added mechanics that eased up on that.

Valid point, but based on the dynamics of other posts dealing with WoW's "death penalty", some people do consider the time to "recover" from a death and getting back to what you were doing as part of the overall "penalty". A matter of semantics I completely agree, but from the game balance perspective (as you pointed out) I would suggest that the total downtime resulting from a death could/should be considered as part of the "death penalty". In our design for sieges/large scale combat for example, the primary "death penalty" is the amount of time it would take for an avatar to return to the fight ready to rally more npc troops, as well as their effectiveness in the siege post death (their rallied troops morale, as well as their ability to act directly).

[Train Wreck]

Valid point, but based on the dynamics of other posts dealing with WoW's "death penalty", some people do consider the time to "recover" from a death and getting back to what you were doing as part of the overall "penalty".

If it is an exercise in tedium, then yes, it is a death penalty.

[HaemishM]

For my money these days, if you aren't INSTANCING sieges, with hard caps on the number of times someone can die while taking part in them, you aren't doing sieges correctly.

[Sky]

Hmm..not a bad idea, Haemstein. But then, I've always been a cautious player, which is why I favor bf1942 over UT2k4. My kill:death ratio was always pretty good, because I was about being sneaky and killing the other bastards without them killing me. Which I figure is pretty basic to understand, but the kids do love their zergs. I like playing /around/ the zerg, which enables the horde (heh) to be more effective as it fights mindlessly. A small unit supporting a big zerg in planetside, for example, can make a HUGE difference.

It'd be nice if you had 3 "lives" (hey, remember arcade games?). You could even earn more lives by dominating on the battlefield, maybe (a certain amount of objectives without dying or killing x foes without dying, etc).

[Stephen Zepp]

For my money these days, if you aren't INSTANCING sieges, with hard caps on the number of times someone can die while taking part in them, you aren't doing sieges correctly.

Would you fully define "instancing" in this circumstance please? If you mean reserved/dedicated cpu and network resources for the fight and the surrounding area, then certainly.

If you mean "level balancing", forcing equal numbers, set duration, "no one else can join", non-persistent world effects once the siege is "complete", or anything along those lines, then I most definately disagree completely.

[sinij]

One of the things that players cannot see, but developers can, is the "long term view".

Most developers are not capable of seeing "long term effect" or we would not have an industry with track record of continuous fuck-ups. To name few games that died to lack of “long term effect” are UO, AO, SWG and SB with DAoC and CoH coming close to it. UO developers are notorious for bluntly disregarding “long term effect” with game entering “lay low until shit blows over” almost EVERY expansion since release.

[HRose]

That isn't an issue of death penalties, that's an issue of not thinking through the PVP system. One minor change would have made this problem go away, or be significantly less of a problem. In a contensted zone, deaths take you out of the contested zone to the nearest friendly graveyard. Why this wasn't considered I can only blame on the addition of PVP too late in beta to change things.

I point out that this was suggested by me and many, many other testers since the PvP servers started in June. They had plenty of time to intruduce a similar system.

At least it seems that they are planning about the conquest of graveyards.

[Righ]

Beta testers are to load the game to expose bugs you'd otherwise miss. Godot help you if you do design by consensus based on feedback from the bleating of tens of thousand of sheep. I remember the Shadowbane beta.

[sinij]

Beta testers are to load the game to expose bugs you'd otherwise miss. Godot help you if you do design by consensus based on feedback from the bleating of tens of thousand of sheep. I remember the Shadowbane beta.

SB would still be popular game if devs paid more attention to what player base thinks. Instead SB ended up at release with untested siege system and unreasonable building times that drove all but most stoic players out of the game. A lot of people left due to crashes but a lot more left due to loosing city and having no way to rebuild.

Listening to player base is single most important thing any developer can do. Catch is to look for general concerns instead of specific issues and act quickly but in incremental steps. If you don’t listen to player base they will hate you and will be more likely to get worked up over some small issue and quit over it. At the same time rapid changes are bad, drastic nerfs are bad – take evolution path over revolution if you can help it.

[Righ]

It was the hardcore beta testers that told Wolfpack that they needed (a) a siege system that prevented city loss due to "ninja raids" in the middle of the night (b) to get rid of synched trebs as a required means of detroying the ToL (c) that cities were too easy to build (d) that the loss in GvG needed to be higher (e) that x, y, and z spells needed nerfed with timers.

The result was massive changes late in beta to get rid of a perfectly fine seige combat and replace it with the bungled mess that they have now, massive increases in time and cost of city building, and so many system timers for everything that the game choked. They did listen. However, the swarming mass of uberguild ganktards had a louder voice than those who appreciated their initial game mechanics. The only thing that they needed to fix in beta 3.0 was the EotW bug. Give me back that version of the game without the EotW bug and I'll sign up now. Seriously.

[Sky]

However, the swarming mass of uberguild ganktards had a louder voice than those who appreciated their initial game mechanics.

You know, sometimes I think of that contingent of players as a bizarro American Family Association. A small fringe group lobbying the government/developers that in no way speaks for the majority of citizens/players.

But hey, hire them to do your endgame so it is radically suckier than the mainstream portion! 

[Train Wreck]

Don't blaim the AFA for Shadowbane.

I think they might have protested against it at some point, though.

[Hoax]

WoW is a damn good example of how its a damned if you do damned if you dont situation with testers.  They didn't listen to anything and all the major complaints are still complaints to this day.

Basically beta testing is stupid.

If I ran a game, I wouldn't even have public forums, there would be one board, that was meant for bug reports only.  No fucking suggestions, no ideas, no complaints nothing but "this is a bug, blahblah".

Some testers have the best ideas ever, some have the worst.

Either the company can balance the game themselves and stick to their vision or they can't and it will suck.

[Righ]

Either the company can balance the game themselves and stick to their vision or they can't and it will suck.

I'd substitute 'balance' with 'design' in the above myself, but you're clearly on the mark.

[HaemishM]

For my money these days, if you aren't INSTANCING sieges, with hard caps on the number of times someone can die while taking part in them, you aren't doing sieges correctly.

Would you fully define "instancing" in this circumstance please? If you mean reserved/dedicated cpu and network resources for the fight and the surrounding area, then certainly.

Yes... AND

If you mean "level balancing", forcing equal numbers, set duration, "no one else can join", non-persistent world effects once the siege is "complete", or anything along those lines, then I most definately disagree completely.

Go ahead and disagree. Now go back and play Shadowbane. If you do not start implementing some forms of non-persistent world effects on sieges, THEY WILL FUCKING SUCK. They will be lagfests full of retardation, buggy pieces of shit, not to mention that in early release, all your hardcore catass wastes of flesh will rule the world, get bored with ruling, and quit, reducing your player base to half what it was simply by removing any effective leadership from most of the popular guilds.

Persistent world effects just means the winners always win, the losers have no recourse and is a repeat of all the failures of the past.

[Stephen Zepp]

Go ahead and disagree. Now go back and play Shadowbane. If you do not start implementing some forms of non-persistent world effects on sieges, THEY WILL FUCKING SUCK. They will be lagfests full of retardation, buggy pieces of shit, not to mention that in early release, all your hardcore catass wastes of flesh will rule the world, get bored with ruling, and quit, reducing your player base to half what it was simply by removing any effective leadership from most of the popular guilds.

Persistent world effects just means the winners always win, the losers have no recourse and is a repeat of all the failures of the past.

Shadowbane's sieging implementation is basically the perfect example of what not to do--from how they handled networking code (lag), lack of per player collision (stacking, lag), to how they (didn't) focus on their core game elements (SB was supposed to be THE sieging game, yet as you quite accurately point out, it was the worst game feature they had).

Shadowbane's focus on grinding away on mobs for both the exp and the farming was also a rediculously simple mechanic, and much too easily abused by "those in the know".

Shadowbane's binary "city destroyed, city not destroyed" (ok, there were a few grey areas such as doing a lot of wall/building damage without actually destroying the ToL, but it's still a pretty much binary situation) was also way too simplistic for persistent effect to actually accomplish much. During a siege, all the attackers could ever lose was the time, combined with the gold spent on siege equipment and repairs. If their city got attacked during the siege, they could all recall if they wished and instantly defend.

Finally, since there was no actual interaction between the "npc world" and the "player world" of any persistent sort, there were no negative sides to winning a siege except for the fact that other players may react.

Consider for a moment a completely different design, where the primary offensive strength of a siege lies not in the mass number of players involved on a particular side, but the ability to manage logistics to get the minimum effective number of npc troops (who, by the way, cannot recall or be summoned) to a siege location. Then, consider that the npc troops lost in the attack are now no longer available to respond to an counter-attack, and therefore have to be committed very carefully in offense.

You also add an entire new dimension that SB's summons chains (and indirectly their entirely player populated armies) destroyed: the concept of defense in depth. In SB, it was a matter of an hour tops to pretty much centralize the entire server's combat capability at a single location (more if your summons chain organization sucked, or you had a ton of non-nation guilds), and this location could be anywhere in the game world. One summons spy alt in an enemy guild and you could mobilize across the entire map at any time. Take away this instant mobilization and you have a much more strategic level to the siege game that requires good logisitics skills, as well as force management. Taking and holding territory actually means something.

Also the fact (as I mentioned above) that there was no interaction with the npcs in the game world except as sources of revenue (exp or gold) gave the player base free reign do whatever they wanted. When the npc population becomes a signifigant "player" in the military and political spheres of a game, persistent effects of sieging starts to become not only viable, but required.

[sinij]

Basically beta testing is stupid.

We all know how well anybody can get complex systems balanced on a first try. Beta testing is a mandatory form of testing that if avoided will result in a product with tons of bugs that wasn't properly stress and balance tested.

If I ran a game, I wouldn't even have public forums, there would be one board, that was meant for bug reports only.  No fucking suggestions, no ideas, no complaints nothing but "this is a bug, blahblah".

Any game with multiplayer can be considered a service and you need communication channels in order to provide service. I'd personally never pay subscription fee to a game that does not maintain official message boards. Simple truth is that you can't balance your game without developers getting some form of feedback, be it playing your game and listening to opinions of 'in crowd' or reading message boards. If you maintain official message boards you at least remove some bias in form of moderators with agenda and unrepresentative opinions of ‘in crowd’ people.