The Laws of Online Gaming Revisited...

[magicback]

Xilren,

Thank you for commenting on CoH's design perspective.

They appear to have done well with the perspectives of:

1. gameplay first, online world second
2. simplicity and accessibility now, complexity and depth later

I think it is OK for CoH to be described by seasoned players, like Ajax, as a game lacking depth.  Unseasoned players can enjoy the game for now.  When depth is patched in, they should be seasoned enough to compete with existing seasoned players.

Thus, I see CoH as a game that self-selects its community, starting with players who want simple gameplay (this may be the aveage new online game player).  After one or two years of successfully patching new gameplay, they can "patch" in the seasoned players looking for depth and breadth.  By this time CoH will be a well-tuned F1 Racer worthy of Michael Schumacher.

If EQ is known for depth or breadth, EQ didn't get both overnight :)

[Raph]

Maybe we should redub the "laws of online gaming" to the "laws of online world design"

They were already called that. :)

[Krakrok]

try to do PvP and hope that you get it right (actually find the definition of "well") and that the griefers don't ruin you.

Um, they did and it's called Planetside.

[Soukyan]

Maybe we should redub the "flaws of online gaming" to the "flaws of online world design"

Because it's late and I feel snarky. Goodnight. ;)

[Xilren's Twin]

Maybe we should redub the "laws of online gaming" to the "laws of online world design"

They were already called that. :)

Well yes, but I think most of this thread has revealed that people naturally assume when you say online game and online world you actually mean the same thing.  Just look at the thread title.  As you said, while online worlds CAN have games within them, they dont have to do and even if they do they might not be very good ones as they must fit within the framework of the rest of the world.  And yet all along these world are being marketed to people looking for the game parts first.

This disconnect of expectations is the source of much frustration.

Games aren't worlds and worlds aren't games.  Semantics for the win, but it's damned important or we'll never get anywhere, from either side.

Xilren

[daveNYC]

Xilren,

Thank you for commenting on CoH's design perspective.

They appear to have done well with the perspectives of:

1. gameplay first, online world second

You know what the sad thing is?  CoH's world seems more alive than most MMOGs around.  It's all those NPCs running around and getting mugged.  More games need active NPCs like that.

[nesta]

Debate seems to have stalled on this thread so here’s my contribution, for what its worth. Again referring back to the original laws:

Storytelling versus simulation
If you write a static story (or indeed include any static element) in your game, everyone in the world will know how it ends in a matter of days. Mathematically, it is not possible for a design team to create stories fast enough to supply everyone playing. This is the traditional approach to this sort of game nonetheless. You can try a sim-style game which doesn't supply stories but instead supplies freedom to make them. This is a lot harder and arguably has never been done successfully.

Lets imagine I'm the guy making a MMOG and I'm still dry-humping the dream that one day I'll be able to create an online world that, as outlined above, qualifies as a simulation or at least addresses the problems with a purely storytelling driven game. The first thing I do is throw out the idea that a game must be one or the other, either a sim or a story-based game, and label it "False Dichotomy #4353" and try to build a game with both elements. Next I spend time designing the skeleton of a system where players can be empowered to create actual content, mods, events, etc that can be incorporated into the game at some point. I get help from the community if I need it. Importantly, this part of the project must not take up more than a fraction of available resources, knowing that if this happens then my game will become a fun vortex, a singularity from which no fun can escape.

Then I proceed, under pain of torutre and death by my corporate sponsors, to create a refined clone in the tradition of EQ-WoW-CoH and craft enough content in to satisfy the catasses for a while. Say two to three months for the uber ones, and closer to a year for the less hardcore and casual players. And I mean quality content - no corners cut grade-A PvE content (I'll set aside PvP for now). I test, test test and test some more. Then I test again for good measure. Then I release.

Finally comes the great experiment: after the game's been out for a while and I've had 5 or 6 months solid to code the tools needed, I unleash the modding/content creation tools to the community. Whether it is an in game system (not likely) or a stand alone download doesn't matter. What matters is that I am putting some of the "God power" that I as a developer have into the hands of the community. The test server would become a playground for fertile minds, and might just become the popular server to hang on. If I was feeling truly ballsy I would allow crippled versions of the server code to be downloaded and then run as testing grounds for new player created content. The best of it would be incorporated into the game, with the caveat that itemization occurs in-house only for balance reasons. If corporate gets upset, I'll pitch it as an expansion, albeit a free one. Or if I must, I would consider charging for the tools.

Sure some of the free servers would sap away some of my paying playerbase (and that depends more on how I decide to cripple the server code than anything else), but the rewards would be reaped in game longevity and reduced content creation costs. Plus this is assuming that creating a game where strorytelling problems are mitigated was my dream and that the core game is appealing in its own right, as this must come first. People had to buy Half Life and like it for Counter Strike to become such a hit. Same thing applies here.

Some will argue that this isn't quite the same as a true simulation. It does however solve the same "mathmatical" problems that a pure sim does and solves one other large problem that MMOG's have been grappling with for quite a while: it allows players to truly affect their virtual world and play God. It in fact addresses the "Ownership is Key," "If your game is narrow" and "Rickys" laws quite nicely.

Ownership is key
You have to give players a sense of ownership in the game. This is what will make them stay--it is a "barrier to departure." Social bonds are not enough, because good social bonds extend outside the game. Instead, it is context. If they can build their own buildings, build a character, own possessions, hold down a job, feel a sense of responsibility to something that cannot be removed from the game--then you have ownership.

If your game is narrow, it will fail
Your game design must be expansive. Even the coolest game mechanic becomes tiresome after a time. You have to supply alternate ways of playing, or alternate ways of experiencing the world. Otherwise, the players will go to another world where they can have new experiences. This means new additions, or better yet, completely different subgames embedded in the actual game.

Rickey's Law
People don't want "A story". They want *their* story.

Though I doubt anyone will ever try the mod approach to MMOGs, especially in the way I've outlined, I do think that the above would be a game I would play - and play for quite a while.

[ajax34i]

Storytelling versus simulation
If you write a static story (or indeed include any static element) in your game, everyone in the world will know how it ends in a matter of days.

I disagree with this, because it depends on the story.  Sure, the answer to a quest will be up on a website in hours, but if your entire game is a story, it'll take much longer (as long as the catasses take to "finish", I suppose).  Problem is that in a lot of games the point is to "build an online persona", not to participate in a story.

As a side note, despite its other (current) faults, Ryzom is trying the story approach.  EVE has some plot elements that haven't been released yet that no one knows.  And the reason why established universes such as Star Wars are attractive is because there's a background epic story, and everyone wants to participate, or at least witness it.

Problem with stories is that they have to have an ending, and no one wants that.

Personally, I disagree with Rickey's Law, too.  I may be in the minority, but I want A story, not MY story.  It's why I watch movies and read books: I want a story, any story.    Even when I roleplay within a game, it's not MY story, it's the character's story; it's still someone else's story.

[Raph]

I tend to read Rickey's Law as "a story that players are not involved in is not a story that will involve players." If that makes sense. It has to be THEIR story in that they have to be invested in it.

[ajax34i]

I don't know how to put it but the law implies that the story has to be a subset of the game, that the game's (existing) players need a good story to keep them busy or something.

If the devs start with the design decision that "the story = the game", then it is implied that the story is good (it better be!), and that players are involved in it (players wouldn't be "players" if they weren't in the game, and thus in the story).

It's like they want the game to have a good story in it, but not badly enough to stake the (fate of the) game on it.

[nesta]

The principal of charitable interpretation needs to be used extensively when reading the laws. They are not robust. Consider them insights or pseudo-laws if it helps (does for me).

I mention this because this made no sense to me: "I don't know how to put it but the law implies that the story has to be a subset of the game, that the game's (existing) players need a good story to keep them busy or something"

Storytelling is a way to describe the art of content building. What is important is that the act of telling the story takes resources and these resources are expensive and could arguably be better spent creating the tools for the players themselves to create their own content.

As for Raph's comment that "a story that players are not involved in is not a story that will involve players," thats just 6 one way and half a dozen another? The point is well taken though. I do like to feel invested in a game, and would feel that way even more so if I could create and see pushed live my own hand-crafted encounters, missions, dungeons or what have you.

[AOFanboi]

Problem with stories is that they have to have an ending, and no one wants that.

Only if it's the single story in the whole game. CoH has several "small" stories you get a glimpse into if you read what the mission contacts and bosses say, and read all the clues gathered during the missions. The same could be said for other games with prolonged series of interconnected missions; especially FFXI with its cut-scenes related to the main plot missions.

When my Ice/Ice Tanker ran through "The Vazhilok Pollutant Plot", that was a small story that was summarized in the description of the souvernir I got. It was not "the" story, but "a" story.

[ajax34i]

Storytelling is a way to describe the art of content building. What is important is that the act of telling the story takes resources and these resources are expensive and could arguably be better spent creating the tools for the players themselves to create their own content.

Then I think we differ in the definition of the word "game."  For you, it seems that the game is the software, the package that has to be filled with content, whereas for me the game is the content.  Same for "book:"  the book is the paper and ink that hold the story, vs. the book is the story itself.

And my point was that when you look at it from the perspective that the content is the game, then you implicitly stake the game's success on the quality of the content (which generally results in better content), and if you don't have content you don't have a game (giving the players tools to make their own content results in a simulation, not a game, in my opinion).

As for Raph's comment that "a story that players are not involved in is not a story that will involve players," thats just 6 one way and half a dozen another?

If you reword it to "a story that players aren't involved in is not a story that attracts players," and then refine it to "a story that doesn't involve players isn't fun," you get what I think he was trying to say.

Only if it's the single story in the whole game.

CoH doesn't have a main plot.  Come to think of it, none of the MMOG's seem to have a main plot.  Why is it that CRPG's all have a main plot, in addition to all the little stories you find in the game, but MMORPG's only have the little stories?

The reasons why have been stated already, I know.  I was asking the question rhetorically as a way to whine that devs should put a main plot in a MMO game in the future.

[HaemishM]

Devs have TRIED over and over to put a "main plot" in an MMOG. One reason and one reason only that this doesn't succed.

THERE ARE TOO MANY FUCKING PLAYERS.

No storyteller can handle as many characters as an MMOG, even a segregated server MMOG, can throw at a story. The human mind cannot process that many actors. Take the War of the Ring in the real Holy Triloyg, the Lord of the Rings. Sure, there were armies of actors, thousands, hundreds of thousands of participants.

There were maybe, MAYBE 40 characters all told. I'd have to go back and count.

No one wants the little shitty plaque that says "Participant." No one wants to be the cog. They may not all want to be Aragorn, but they sure as hell want to have at least as much importance as Pippin or Merry. They want to act upon the story, have the story act upon them, and for something SOMETHING to come out of it other than a "Participant" badge that everyone gets.

That's why main storylines don't work in MMOG's.

[Dark Vengeance]

If you reword it to "a story that players aren't involved in is not a story that attracts players," and then refine it to "a story that doesn't involve players isn't fun," you get what I think he was trying to say.

Semantics for the win, yet again.

If the story doesn't affect or include the players in any way, expecting anything more than a tiny fraction of the playerbase to give a shit about it is asinine. That's what the law, and Raph are trying to say....and it's true.

Players care about what happens to their character more than any other character in the gameworld. They want to make an impact on the world around them. If you introduce a narrative story to an MMOG that doesn't include the player, and doesn't allow them to affect the outcome, what's the point?

It's like the tree falling in the forest....if something happens in your gameworld, and it neither affects or involves any of your players, does it really need to be there at all? Rickey's law says no, and I tend to agree with that.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

[nesta]

And my point was that when you look at it from the perspective that the content is the game, then you implicitly stake the game's success on the quality of the content (which generally results in better content), and if you don't have content you don't have a game

No argument that content is king, I think I said that a few times in my post.

(giving the players tools to make their own content results in a simulation, not a game, in my opinion).

I think you're wrong here. What I'm arguing for is for devs to share the power of creation of content. Where the content comes from is irrelevant in terms of the Storytelling vs. Sim law. Again, the gist of the law is that it is expensive and probably impossible to supply new content to a large number of gamers (or world participants if you prefer) indefinetly. One soultution is a sim style game, another is what I described above: give the players the ability to create their own game assets, instance them, and watch the content roll on in.

I still think you can have both Sim and Storytelling aspects in one game though. Its not a zero sum choice.

[Raph]

As for Raph's comment that "a story that players are not involved in is not a story that will involve players," thats just 6 one way and half a dozen another?

If you reword it to "a story that players aren't involved in is not a story that attracts players," and then refine it to "a story that doesn't involve players isn't fun," you get what I think he was trying to say.

Alas, I fell victim to the pithy formulation. Two different meanings of "involve" there. :)

A story that players are not participating in is not a story that they will invest in.

That's somewhat reductionist, nbecause of course, many many passive consumers of fiction are out there--me included. But I think most would agree that in the case of an MMO, the stories (or histories) that are most captivating are the ones that you were personally involved in to some degree.

And that is what I think the law means, and why I put it in the document.

If Dave would just delurk, we could settle this once and for all!

[Raph]

Again, the gist of the law is that it is expensive and probably impossible to supply new content to a large number of gamers (or world participants if you prefer) indefinetly.

Well, we do it anyway, but it's sort of like bumblebees flying. :)

For a fun math workout on it, try this link and get ready to feel depressed:

http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/contentcreation.html

[Sky]

The content creation game is a losing battle. It's blatantly obvious if you think about it for four or five seconds.

This is why I always tend to think back to UO, where there were several player-run quest groups. UO gave the players limited means to create their own content. Now instead of a few beleaguered devs trying to hammer out content, you have potentially thousands of content creators.

Gotta smack down the griefers, though, or it'll get messy fast. That's why my watchword since the very beginning has been "accountability". Achieve that, and a lot of things will fall into line a lot more smoothly, and the genre can truly move forward.

For an example, I'd offer the time we were sitting around the Serpent's Cross Tavern, sipping ale and playing chess with the other guys in the Yew Militia. Suddenly a teacher from the Acadamy bursts in and informs us of attacks on their school. We move out and engage the "evildoers" and then stick around for a while to be certain they have moved on to easier pickings. The headmistress buys the ales later that night.

As a counter-example, my dark elf necromancer heard the rumor of his lord's daughter, Lanys, appearing in the Rathe Mountains. He moves out to meet this divine beauty, and finds her surrounded by throngs of not only devout tierdal, but hordes of unbelievers and light folk. Lanys tells us of her father's wishes, but she is drown out by the light folk who are trying to attack her, and several of them are bringing the local giant population to aid their cause. After teleporting away several times, she finally is able to say she is looking for a champion....and all the devout tierdal are ecstatic! She turns to a human monk of Quellious and chooses him as the champion, then teleports away.

The first example was a common night in UO. The second was the only gm-run quest I saw in my 3 years of playing EQ on and off, which was poorly acted, scripted, and gave a dark elf quest to a goddamned human monk. More specific to the topic, the first was run entirely by players, including four player run institutions, the second cost manhours of staff time, generated a one-off quest that left a bad taste in all but one player's mouth (for teh phat lewtz!).

EQ's popularity set the genre back several years, imo. That and no accountability, it's easier to create a pvp- mirror.

[ori0nnebula]

It seems to me that part of the hope with Raph's Laws isn't to serve as a box for MMOG development but as a source of accumulated wisdom.  I think maybe the title 'laws' is what has rubbed some the wrong way.  Maybe they could be more accurately described as 'theorems' or 'pearls of wisdom.'

Something, I have always found funny is that if people (myself included) who spent copious amounts of time thinking, discussing, writing, and bitching about online games spent that time actually working on making a game they could put all these excellent ideas to good use.  I know everyone talks about barriers to entry and development costs.  In reality, it is just a lack of motivation and organization. Most of the cost of software development is the programmers and artists time.  There are plenty of open source projects which rival the commercial projects in scale and complexity.  A great example is traditional text based MUDs.  They don't have the fancy graphics or scale that MMOG's do but they have served and could serve as excellent proofs of concept for everyones views and ideas on game design.  

Raph is fortunate enough to get paid to do that.  Although, after reading a thread like this I don't envy him ;)  It is much easier to be an armchair designer then actually do anything myself.

[Dark Vengeance]

It seems to me that part of the hope with Raph's Laws isn't to serve as a box for MMOG development but as a source of accumulated wisdom.  I think maybe the title 'laws' is what has rubbed some the wrong way.  Maybe they could be more accurately described as 'theorems' or 'pearls of wisdom.'

Since we are well down the road of semantics anyway, they aren't "Raph's Laws"....they are a collection of 'laws' compiled from the MUD-Dev mailing list, with contributions from well over a dozen different devs. I'm going to bet that on that mailing list, the laws weren't just made up out of the blue and left unchallenged. Raph, Dundee, feel free to confirm or deny on that one.

I think its more likely that bashing Raph has become fashionable since SWG's launch, and the laws have generally been viewed as the paradigm for conventional wisdom by the community. When the laws are compiled by a guy who puts out two high profile, commercially successful MMOGs, it's natural backlash for the folks who didn't care for his work to attack those laws.

What's more interesting to me is watching some compelling design concepts get shitcanned in favor of making a safe, commercially friendly MMOG in the same vein as UO, EQ, or DAoC. I don't think you can lay that one at Raph's doorstep, or blame the laws, either. That's a matter of the suits doing the funding wanting maximum ROI with minimal risk.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

[Sky]

What's more interesting to me is watching some compelling design concepts get shitcanned in favor of making a safe, commercially friendly MMOG in the same vein as UO, EQ, or DAoC. I don't think you can lay that one at Raph's doorstep, or blame the laws, either. That's a matter of the suits doing the funding wanting maximum ROI with minimal risk.

Hell, that's UO's whole story, right there. Which is why I uttered that quote so many years ago when Raph first told us he was going to work on SWG. I held out hope that once that debacle was over, he would make the game he really wanted to make, without "the suits" throwing monkey wrenches into the workings. I still hold that hope, that I'll see something as vibrant and mature as UO could have been, almost was.

He replied at the time that he hoped that's what he was doing (with swg), but I have a hard time buying that. SWG feels like a bad compromise that lost its way somewhere in development.

Anyway, it's that hope and respect that have made me refrain from many, many brutal attacks over the years ;)

[nesta]

Well, we do it anyway, but it's sort of like bumblebees flying. :)

For a fun math workout on it, try this link and get ready to feel depressed:

http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/contentcreation.html

The content creation game is a losing battle. It's blatantly obvious if you think about it for four or five seconds.

Interesting read. I think the content creation battle can be won, and I thought about it for slightly more than 5 seconds. Schlid's original article was ostensibly written to provoke "new" ideas and discussion not just defeatism, so here’s one possible solution.

In Raph’s article it states that the player time:dev time ratio is 1:460 based on the assumption that one year of dev time is needed to craft 40 hours of game content (or story). This does indeed look like a daunting ratio, but it's quite a ways from Dembski's universal probability bound of 10^-150, so it is possible :)

What I've been beating like a dead horse these past few posts is to flip the ratio, and make creating content part of the "player time" side. Supply tools ala Neverwinter Nights to the community and set up a test server to try out the player produced content. Send the best of it live and instance it.

With an already solid game seeded with good content, this could work, and increase the longevity of the game/world for those that need new content to continue playing.

All that said...

It is much easier to be an armchair designer then actually do anything myself.

Amen.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

While not the first, UO sort of got the snowball rolling into full effect. Because it was dubbed as an 'online world' by a boasting mantra of 'we create them thar worlds' - this has become the identification for online games with persistent content.

Other than UO, of the 'big league' MMOs, I dont think any of them have attempted to create a world. They seem to betroth the motto: "We Create Stuff For You To Do."

And maybe there is an important distinction.

[Zaphkiel]

I still hold that hope, that I'll see something as vibrant and mature as UO could have been, almost was.

     UO was never even close to being "mature".  Vibrant, I'll give you.

[Sky]

Actually, it was very mature until some pancaker showed up in his death robe tossing purple potions and uttering his mantra "OMGLOL!!1"

That's why I'm a stickler on accountability. OSI had a playerbase that actively made the game a better game, added content continually, but they treated us the same as any douchebag who's fun was derived by disrupting other paying customer's gameplay. It's too bad the constructor's $10 was equivalent (or even lesser in some ways) than the destructor's $10.

[Zaphkiel]

Actually, it was very mature until some pancaker showed up in his death robe tossing purple potions and uttering his mantra "OMGLOL!!1"

That's why I'm a stickler on accountability. OSI had a playerbase that actively made the game a better game, added content continually, but they treated us the same as any douchebag who's fun was derived by disrupting other paying customer's gameplay. It's too bad the constructor's $10 was equivalent (or even lesser in some ways) than the destructor's $10.

   I'm not saying there weren't some mature players in UO. I'm saying the game wasn't mature.  It wasn't designed to be mature.  It catered to immature players.  The staff was immature, from the lead dev right down to the last GM in Ironwill's GM PK guild.  The programmers were immature, and lazy.  For every step forward, they introduced three new bugs to be exploited.  
   Maybe we're just arguing semantics.  If so, I don't want to win that way.  I agree that constructive players were treated like shit, and griefers were rewarded and patted on the head.

[daveNYC]

Mature as in 'players given freedom to interact with each other and the world' vs. Mature as in 'polished code, professional staff'?

[MahrinSkel]

Had some trouble with logging into F13, so I'm a bit late to the party.  Anyway, "Rickey's Law" was the punchline to about 3 paragraphs of explanation of why developer imposed stories that try to create an overall "plot" for the players to experience are in general doomed to suck.  Players want to experience a story, but they don't want to be bit players in it, and they don't want it to roll on without regard for what they do (cf. the Siege of Trinsic).  The stories they are most invested in are the ones that are about them, for example for those that were there the "Siege of Trinsic" that occurred during UO Beta where a couple of PK guilds made peace with each other and made it nearly impossible to enter or leave Trinsic by land, and the players who banded together to try and drive them out and break the siege (this was before Magic was in common use in UO) will always be more memorable and compelling than the officially sanctioned one that marked the introduction of UO:R, which dictated that even on the server where the players *won*, UO:R rolled on regardless.

So it's essentially intended as a statement that we need find ways to empower the players to create stories they care about, and make the results relevant.  Our stories are *always* backstory (even when they are "backstory that hasn't happened yet"), and we need to accept that and move on.

--Dave

[Sky]

Mature as in 'players given freedom to interact with each other and the world' vs. Mature as in 'polished code, professional staff'?

Exactly. I was speaking of the former, and apparently the latter was the death of the former.

Dave brings up an excellent point. The Seer program was hurting, not just because of the slow pace of enacting things, but also because it wasn't as loose and from the hip as player quests were, it was inflexible. Most Seer's RPCs were better than any "official" plot they were involved in. The other bad thing about the Seer program is that it harvested a lot of the designers of the player quests, leaving those like me, willing to participate but not that good at designing and implementing, to fend for ourselves.

I wish the Seer program had worked, imo we'd be playing a far different kind of mmorpg today. Instead I'm barely even interested in the genre at all.

[ori0nnebula]

This might already have been said, I haven't read every post in this thread.  I agree 100% with what MahrinSkel said, especially the contrast between the UO:R story versus the adventures surrounding those PK guilds.

At least for me I think part of the distinction between a virtual world and a 'game' is the virtual world is an environment where one can experience, and play, and interact with others.  There may be stimuli and certain rulesets, and subsets of the virtual world but within the context of the system you have the ability to create your own story.  Because, even at the most basic level whatever you do IS the story.

In a 'game' there is a specific purpose or set of goals (although they may be open ended, simulation games for instance).  There is a finite set of rules which defines the experience and there is a progression through the game.  Doesn't matter if you are talking about an MMOG or checkers.  The entire purpose is to entertain, compete, learn, or whatever other purpose the game provides.

I guess I see that as part of the distinction between a virtual world and a game.  Even though a game might dynamically respond to your actions it contains a predefined purpose.  In a virtual world you are defining your own purpose.

There is of course a lot more to it then just that, but I think it is a good point to make.  An english professor once quoted, "There are three types of stories, the story the author wants to write, the story which wants to be written, and the compromise."  That is applicable here, they should ideally be a medium where that compromise can happen.[/quote]

[Zaphkiel]

Mature as in 'players given freedom to interact with each other and the world' vs. Mature as in 'polished code, professional staff'?

    Freedom to interact isn't mature.  In UO, you were free to interact negatively.  You could kill, steal, loot bodies and houses.  If you wanted to build something positive, like a community, you were limited to using the same tools.   Killing, stealing, looting.  Anything that couldn't be done with those tools just couldn't be done.  When the ability to interact positively, on a community level, is just as effective as the negative tools, then it would be on the road to being a mature game.

[daveNYC]

When the ability to interact positively, on a community level, is just as effective as the negative tools, then it would be on the road to being a mature game.

Examples of positive tools?

Edit: Because, to be honest, the only real tool I can think of off the top of my head is communication.  That allows you to use any other tools in the game for both good and ill.

[Dark Vengeance]

Dave brings up an excellent point. The Seer program was hurting, not just because of the slow pace of enacting things, but also because it wasn't as loose and from the hip as player quests were, it was inflexible.

Don't confuse the Seer/Interest program with the official OSI events. There is a big difference. Interest program events were pretty much independently created plots provided to various RP communities.

Seers were basically players who ran their own events....they were just players that were provided additional tools and support from OSI to do so.

Most Seer's RPCs were better than any "official" plot they were involved in.

Some of this was due to the fact that Seers, Elders, Troubadors, and RPCs often needed to have an IGM to make any significant alterations to their character. Want to become a dragon as a final boss? Need an IGM. Need to have armor or other items created? Need an IGM.

That's why the RPC often came off more natural....by playing the character as essentially a roleplaying PC, it lended itself to the same style of play and improvisation as most roleplayers.

The other bad thing about the Seer program is that it harvested a lot of the designers of the player quests, leaving those like me, willing to participate but not that good at designing and implementing, to fend for ourselves.

Well, you had to either seek out the rp communities that were getting Seer events, come up with your own, or find a group that was doing player events.

Unfortunately, there weren't enough Interest members to support their shard. This is why we tended to find a player city, or established RP community to work with. It just wasn't feasible to run 10 events with 10 different groups each week....a fair amount of "sup thou, can you wipe my murder counts" or "gimme a quest with a kewl reward" and whatnot.

I wish the Seer program had worked, imo we'd be playing a far different kind of mmorpg today.

I agree, but blame the vol lawsuit, dishonest interest members, and bitchy participants....because that's really what killed the program.

The vol lawsuit brough the liability issue, which eventually got it shut down.

Dishonest interest members screwed the entire program, because they destroyed any sort of trust OSI had for us to use our powers responsibly.

Bitchy participants neutered the program, by taking personal recognition out of the picture. People crying "favoritism" every time eventually reduced us to the point of issuing "participant" type rewards and generic "thanks for your help" messages. These same people would try going toe-to-toe with a Seer-controlled dragon using a viking sword, wearing no armor, and then BITCH when they died. Sometimes they'd die to AI and complain that "this bastard GM just killed me".

OSI didn't trust us with the limited powers and small teams we had, let alone with teams of the proper size, and appropriate powers.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

[Zaphkiel]

When the ability to interact positively, on a community level, is just as effective as the negative tools, then it would be on the road to being a mature game.

Examples of positive tools?

Edit: Because, to be honest, the only real tool I can think of off the top of my head is communication.  That allows you to use any other tools in the game for both good and ill.

    The ability to make your house a guard zone.   This was actually promised by Raph, but he couldn't find a way to do it that wasn't *unfair* to murderers.  
    Kick/Ban options for organizations running events.  
   
    Stealing was included in the game.  It was possible to steal, in five seconds, with a 5 minute old character, literally a million gold worth of
house deeds.  In order to level the playing field, there should have been an ability to have an equally significant impact on the thieves.   Any house owned by a character on the same account as a thief that had been caught or detected should have been subject to attack.  Once enough damage was done to the door, it should have opened, and the house lootable.  That would have been a positive tool.  

    The ability for miners to rig explosive potions to go off when they die and their corpse is opened that destroys everything in a three tile area.  Kills characters, destroys weapons, armor, magic items.  Everything.  Using bags of purples to disrupt player gatherings, no problem.  Working as intended.  Expanding the idea to defend miners, too much trouble.  Can't be done.  It would be unfair to PKs.  

    However, as I said, Raph cared a lot about being fair to assholes, and didn't give a flying fuck about being fair to the victims.