Jun
16

Entitlement and the Lazy Rabbit

19 Comments

Love it when I cause a shit storm.

Cameron and Ken think its a question of entitlement…and yes, it is exactly a question of entitlement for all players to be able to see all of the content that they pay for on a monthly basis. Fine…but entitlement is not a dirty word for people who pay for a product and don’t get access to all of it. Entitlement isn’t about the “lazy” solo/casual player vs the “hard-working” raider. Some say that the coordination, effort and time to put raid groups together as well as the teamwork involved cannot be quantified. Poppy-cock! They are being quantified or there wouldn’t be raid gear to begin with. There is an inherent delta between raid equipment and non-raid equipment…that delta (…be it stats on a sword, armor or rare crafting drops, i.e. difference between “blue” and “purple” items in WoW) is all of that organization time, effort and teamwork quantified.

Last I checked, the $15 that casuals pay is the exact same $15 dollars that raiders pay. So, by way of conclusion, they should be able to access every nook and crevasse as raiders. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that this should not be the case, however; people can convince me that there are design implementations such that effort and reward are on par for both groups.

Pixey put in an example of one design implementation:

That is to say ‘50 people form up to kill a dragon to free the damsel (trite I know but oh well), where as 5 people form up to free the damsel from the dragon but so it via stealth. equal reward for the same goal different experience for the players. This can be tailored by gm , or even better give multiple options for the quest / raid based on number of players entering the instance ….

…if there is one idea, then there has got to be more out there. Let me spell this out very, very clearly:

Give designers ideas such that reward and effort are on par for both raiders and solo players.

Work and effort…effort and work. No “silver platters”, no “special treatment”…nadda. AN ON PAR SYSTEM….end of story. Thats all I want. That was the point of the first article…that is the point of this one. It think the status quo of raiding is unacceptable in its current state, so THROW OUT NEW IDEAS!!! New end game scenarios. Alternate raiding schemes. Present raiding schemes but with differing paths to success.

Posted in Editorial
19 Comments Posted by Darren

19 Responses to "Entitlement and the Lazy Rabbit"

  • Cameron Sorden says:
    June 16, 2007 at 12:09 pm

    Why is the status quo of raiding unacceptable? It’s not raiding that’s the problem. It’s not even raiding for the best gear available that’s the problem. It’s that your character stops being able to advance at some point if you choose not to raid. There’s nothing more for you to do.

    Hrrm. Here’s an idea. What if you had raid specific gear that was only useful for advancing through a raid structure? That gear would look really cool and be available through traditional raiding. Low drops, time sinks, keys, dungeons, and massive 40-man raids. You have a raid team working on that content. Here’s the key: The weapons deal special elemental damage and the armor has special elemental resistance. These numbers increase, and are godly inside the raid instances. Lets call the enemies planar fiends, and they require special energy weapons to kill and special energy armor to defend against.

    But these weapons and armor are pretty much useless outside of the planar raids. They’re no better than common weapons and armor (although they do look awesome with cool energy auras so players know that you’re a serious raider). There’s a separate solo advancement or small group advancement track that also gives awesome armor, with a totally different look, and at the end game these small solo and group instances get pretty challenging (although not necessarily longer). Planar weapons are pretty much worthless here, but terrestrial gear (the stuff you get through this advancement line) gets progressively better.

    Boom. We have two separate tracks, you can go in or out of either at will, and raiders aren’t enormously overpowered compared to solo players or small group players. Raiders can’t really complain about handing stuff out to casuals because the small content is hard and they can do it too (and they will), and there can also be a “planar battleground” style thing for the raiders to battle other raiders in their planar gear. Thoughts?

  • Two tracks: Raiding and Solo/Small Group | Random Battle says:
    June 16, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    [...] and running!Cameron Sorden on What ARE you entitled to?Cuppycake on My new site is up and running!The Common Sense Gamer » Blog Archive » Entitlement and the Lazy Rabbit on What ARE you entitled to?pixie styx on What ARE you entitled [...]

  • Darren says:
    June 16, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    There you go….another great idea. Thanks Cam.

    Keep em coming guys.

  • Pai says:
    June 16, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Cameron’s idea is stellar, in my opinion.

    The entire argument that ‘Casuals want everything handed to them on a plate, unlike the Raiders who work for it’ is a load… Casuals don’t want to hit that wall where there’s NOTHING ELSE TO DO and no way to progress with your character unless you’re raiding and getting that gear.

    The second criticism would be, why is the game’s only goal to get ‘UberSword+1′ ad nauseum? I think games need more options… more variety to what constitutes ‘progress’. I think adding social and crafting goals fills that spot… stuff like guild/player towns that can be built up over time with teamwork, more robust player crafting economy so that can a person can make their own ‘trade empire’ if they so choose, instead of dungeon crawling. More social tools along with the basic game mechanics.

    Those were, after all, the whole selling point of MMOs and virtual worlds, no? Make a place for yourself in a fantasy world, see new things, have adventures with friends, etc.

    The thing that will strangle WoW, imo… is that they are too focused on dev-made heavily-scripted content, and seem unwilling to come up with tools for the USERS to customize their own things. USER CONTENT is a much easier and cheaper way to entertain your customers… give them the tools to have their own fun here and there, and they will enjoy it a lot longer than that manhour-sucking instanced dungeon that will get beaten and discarded faster than it took the devs to make.

    The next MMO that has that mix of 50/50 dev content folded into a robust user-content creation tools, will be the best of both worlds (‘sandbox’ and ‘game’ style MMOs).

  • Tanha, MMO Style « The Ancient Gaming Noob says:
    June 16, 2007 at 4:42 pm

    [...] accurate, the rewards yielded by some content.? You know the drill, raiders vs. non-raiders.? Darren, Kendricke, Bildo, and Cameron have all been stirring the pot on this of late.? Of course, not [...]

  • Oakstout says:
    June 16, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    Darren and Cameron have Got it, they Got it, they truly truly got it, Right! Yes, that is what I have been trying to say, and they did it ohhhhh soo much better than me.

    The fact is as Darren stated: everyone pays the same amount of money every month for same game. Does that entitle me to the same things even if I spend 4hours a week playing compared to someone that plays 40hours a week…..YES, it does. Why does a person that plays more than me deserve more reward? Where is the entitlement then? Is he then entitled to better gear cause he can spend more time and resources playing? Thats not fair either.

    Its the same game for both of us. The difference is hardcore vs. Casual player and as a game designer, you have to decide which consumer you want to gear your End content towards. If as in the case of WoW and BC, they decided to gear the new content towards the Hardcore Raider and that is the reason why lots of causal people are looking for something new to play.

    And what Cameron said is great idea and should be something designers take into consideration. The only reason I as a solo-er or small group person that I even want the Raiding type gear in the first place is because it looks really great on my character and the stats and damage buffs do great damage to mobs and Players in the world outside the Dungeon. If the raid gear you got, did the same as the solo/small group gear that you could get from an alternate line of quests outside the instance, but did extra damage inside or had special buffs against main bosses, then that would work as well. It would look different, but the only advantage Raiders would have using it would be in raids.

    You wouldn’t even have to take the gear off. The way it would work is, the gear would check to see if your in a raid, small group or soloing, then the gear would scale for you.

    Hows that for adding to a great idea?

  • Cameron Sorden says:
    June 16, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    I feel like it’s important to clarify that I DO think that more time spent playing should equal more rewards. That’s the whole basis of these games. That’s a constant, whether you’re level 2 or level 100. Someone with more time on their hands is always going to to have more gold, cooler items, and probably be more knowledgeable about the game than someone with less time. Someone with more time is also going to hit max level faster. But that’s okay.

    I just want to have access to a fun and engaging experience where I can advance at my own pace, and not have to feel like I’m leaving something unfinished if I choose not to partake in one specialized part of the game. Example: If I decide not to craft, I miss some content– but I don’t feel like I didn’t fulfill my character’s mission or like I’m dropping the main story. That’s what raiding does right now. Brick wall in the story-line.

    LoTRO is sort of tackling this with their optional raiding. It remains to be seen how successful it is, and if “optional raiding” only means optional if you like having a much harder time on the smaller quests, but it will be interesting to watch.

  • Mort says:
    June 17, 2007 at 6:42 pm

    People always keep asking Time vs. reward. But my question is what is this reward. Now people will say its X items. But what makes us want X. X is always going to be different form game or even from player to player. But I think we can agree on is X is to have something that someone else doesn’t have or very few people have. End game raids have certainly created that gap. This gap is what drives the raider to spend 20+ hours farming and raiding to get said items. Lets face it people, we like to say we are better then others. Will raiding go away? NO. Should it change it? Should there be other thing to do?
    Yes! Being able to do such things as assuming political control of cities. Having the power to being able to adjust prices and raise taxes. Being able to take Military control of small towns and outpost so you can create your own faction. Trade skill empires with market controls. Heck I think we should allow a player to become the raid. Let somebody become the city boss. And let people become the target of the raid (now that would be pvp). Sorry rambling. All I have to say is this. Before people ask they want their share they should know what they want. Is it fun? or is it to say I have something you don’t. Sorry just my 2 cents.

  • Bildo says:
    June 18, 2007 at 7:57 am

    I understand the time argument, I really do. I shouldn’t expect to beat a Zelda game in 1/4 of the time just because I can’t play it as much as someone who can play it 4 times that amount.

    So time put in should have a say in what you can accomplish in just about any game. But still, that has nothing to do with raiding or not raiding. As has been said here a million times, just come up with a way to please everyone and you’ll be set. Not that hard, eh? ;)

    Here’s a solution… maybe. No need to have to do away with raiding. I’m sure most of us have heard of the Ryzom Ring, which lets users create and run their own instanced content for the game. Now, this could even work in a licensed MMO if the filters for content were strong enough to not allow certain things to be scripted (no killing Darth Vader in SWG for example). But why not devote an entire team on an MMO towards filtering through user-created content, with user-assigned rewards?

    The rewards would be from a database of rewards approved for dispersing by the developers, with smaller rewards for less difficult scenarios, and better rewards for more difficult scenarios. Notice I didn’t say raiding or non-raiding. If a small 3 person group gets put up against something that takes a lot of skill and a good chunk of time, and in another instance a 10 person group does something of similar time and difficulty for their group size, then they would both be able to attain equal rewards.

    I know Kendricke would come back with the “harder to organize” argument, but I don’t think that should ever apply to a game we’re paying for. It’s relaxation and leisure above all, or at least it should be.

    Now the problem with the above mentioned idea, is that it’s simply not feasible yet. Even Ryzome Ring doesn’t quite go this distance. But user-created content is a good part of the MMO’s future, I believe. It just might be a few years from now.

    Anyway… I’ve rambled. Sorry. :)

  • Kendricke says:
    June 18, 2007 at 10:07 am

    It’s not just about “harder to organize”.

    It’s about loss of control.

    In a solo enviroment, you control all player variables. You control when to attack, when to wait, when to go AFK, how long you go AFK, when to start, when to stop, when to run, when to heal – everything is under your control. Whether you’re in charge of one character or 8 (like Baldur’s Gate or something similar), it’s still a solo play situation where you control all of your own variables.

    The more variables in control you introduce, the more inherently difficult a situation becomes – far beyond the ability to equate or compare to a solo situation.

    With a small group, there’s not too many variables. You control roughly 1/3 of your side of the fight, and likely specialize for several of the areas of delegation (giving you 100% control over healing, for example).

    Now, throw in raiding and you’ve got a minimum of 18-40 individuals to consider for variables. Now, instead of having full control, you’ve got people who do what they want to do – and they will. Right about to pull…and someone shoots a spell early. Healers go line dead. Tanks hear something funny on TV. A scout in Group 4 runs too far into the run. All of Group 3 takes an AE hit because someone had low resists. A bard runs the wrong song. One of the rangers spikes damage and pulls hate. Murphy certainly loves raids, and it’s very possible for a variety of things to go wrong – despite your best efforts.

    When soloing, you’re already the weakest link on the team. You don’t have to rely on anyone else, or share with anyone else, or worry about anyone else. Those are factors that simply can’t equate to a soloing gameplay situation.

    As far as user created content…I direct your attention to your nearest MUD. Better yet, Second Life. Even better yet, just look at character names on your nearest server of your favorite MMO.

    It’s one thing to view the world of user created content through rose colored glasses. Just make sure you never cringe when you see someone named Drizzzt or Gaandaalf or Toker McPotty and you’ll be happy as can be with user created content… And that’s not half of what they can do to you in Second Life.

    Which of course raises the second point about user created content. Even Bethesda had to pull Oblivion from the shelf last year and repackage them as Mature rated due to a player created mod that would allow all the females to walk around topless. “Player created mod” – NOT something Bethesda included (ala Hot Coffee), but a mod that a player created after the fact.

    This cost Bethesda a known fortune (in repackaging costs) and an unknown fortune (in lost revenue due to the new, more restrictive MA label). Introduce user created content and all the filters in the world won’t prevent users from doing whatever they want – just ask Toker.

  • Bildo says:
    June 18, 2007 at 10:11 am

    I didn’t say it would be easy, Ken. I also said a human fun filter team would need to be in place. ;) But I’m not going to rule it out as an option for future game content just because there are lots of variables. If that was the case, we wouldn’t be constantly pontificating about MMOs, true?

  • Bildo says:
    June 18, 2007 at 10:12 am

    *run* not fun. :) No that job would not be “fun” at all.

  • Kendricke says:
    June 18, 2007 at 11:47 am

    We pontificate because we can. Because we don’t have tens of millions of dollars on the line and dozens of employees counting on us. I’m a fan of pontificating, and with my volumes of posts online, I should think that would be obvious by this point.

    However, I also very much enjoy playing Devil’s advocate, because as fun as it is to play “wouldn’t it be cool if…”(TM), there’s got to be one guy in the room who points out potential holes in the ideas.

    It’s not because I enjoy playing the jackass. It’s because I am passionate about design – good design – and I’d prefer to see ideas that get tossed around get treated as real ideas, not just fluff. What? You think game developers never poke holes in each others’ ideas? ;)

  • Bildo says:
    June 18, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    You’re not a jackass, you’re a lawyer! Ha, I caught you! :) I kid, I kid.

    I thouroughly enjoy these discussions. If I didn’t, I’d tuck tail and run like the wind.

  • KingMob says:
    June 19, 2007 at 2:55 pm

    Is gear the only reward worth mentioning? What about special pets, titles, ornamental items (banners for your back, a halo for your head, wings), music that follows you around, a cheering crowd that appears when you visit your capital city, a drastic discount on consumables, access to consumables, stat-tracking on a website outside the game, unique mounts, minigames, crafting skills, etc. etc.

    Look at games with microtransactions – people pay for lots of the stuff I’m talking about.

    Now I’m going to talk about my ideal game for casuals – people who can only log in for a few hours a time, a few hours a week. What about letting us make a max-level character and advance that character by collecting unique pets, practicing tradeskills, and the like?

    Personally I think we, as players, have confused gear in MMOs with our sense of self-worth.
    There are cooler ways of showing how long you’ve played a game, or how skilled you are at that game, than by having a stick that whacks rabbits a bit faster than it did before.
    Loot-based games are fine in their place but I’m looking for a game in which I advance my character in a different way.

  • Kendricke says:
    June 19, 2007 at 4:02 pm

    How does the idea of an item that can be acquired solo, made stronger through grouping, and maximized in potential through raiding sound to most of you?

  • Villainelle says:
    June 20, 2007 at 4:20 am

    KingMob is on the money.

    Excessive investment of time in a game with a large “casual” player population should be rewarded–with aesthetic rewards. These rewards should not influence combat or overall competitiveness with other players. The gear can look uber, sure, but the stats must be equal to, or otherwise NOT more generally advantageous than, what a non-raider, or non-large-consecutive-block-of-time-invester, can acquire.

    Kendricke, your ideas are great for a game that would be designated on-the-box as a serious raiding game that requires a certain time investment for the player to expect to remain competitive in the game world and be able to enjoy all of the game’s content. Your ideas simply don’t work in a game with a large “casual” playerbase. No matter how much you try to minimize the inequality, it remains a fundamental aspect of the game and breeds discontent.

    And there is the rub. I think the problem is that we’re trying to force two opposing PvE concepts into one game, similar to WoW’s strained marriage of PvE and PvP (which has failed on the PvP end, as most admit).

    Over time I’ve come to realize that the two types of PvE endgame–which I’m woefully generalizing for the sake of brevity as “hardcore” and “casual”–simply cannot satisfyingly coexist in the same game, by their very nature. Why? Because casual endgame is inclusive, while hardcore endgame is exclusive. The casual gamer wants to participate in everything and have an equal chance at an equal game experience, loot, etc. The casual does not want an “easier” game (if I hear this one more time…), but he DOES want an “equal” game. The hardcore gamer, conversely, wants to compete with her peers and achieve something that allows her to dominate, in some way, for a time (world firsts, guild/gear prestige etc.). The hardcore gamer does not want a “harder” game per se (see below), but she DOES want a meaningful reward for her time investment.

    Both are valid game goals. They’re just mutually incompatible.

    If we’re reasonable, we don’t need to rehash why the “casual” label does not mean “someone who wants easymode.” I hope I don’t need to explain why some people do not want to or cannot participate in a typical 20hr+/week raiding schedule, reside in a large guild, etc. Logically we must accept that there is no reason for “contiguous 6-hour block of time” to be qualitatively superior to “six separate 1-hour blocks of time” in an MMORPG. If game design tries to make it so, then the game design clearly favors the “hardcore” endgame model and is anti-casual, and again, there’s no point trying to force both in the same game; the devs should settle on one goal and pursue it openly. To do else is folly and will alienate the casual base; see World of Warcraft.

    But I do want to debunk the “hardcore gamers just want more challenge and don’t care about loot” myth. Being a powergamer and a hardcore raider who has done a hard bit of self-examination, I feel quite qualified to posit my theory on this one. Someone on a game forum offered up an excellent thought experiment that nailed it for me:

    Let’s say MMORPG X puts in a raid instance, and when you enter the instance you’re presented with a choice: Easy or Hard Mode. Both modes reward IDENTICAL loot. The Easy instance is just…easier! And so on. No one will be able to tell how you got the gear. There is absolutely no special reward or penalty based on your choice of mode.

    Now what would you, as a hardcore raider, choose? Knowing that “casuals” will have absolutely no qualms about throwing together a PUG and going for an Easy run to grab some great gear?

    If we’re being honest, most raiders would choose Easy first, gear up as quickly and efficiently as possible, and perhaps for kicks someday, try a Hard Mode run. (My former guild in WoW occasionally tried some silly challenges when we had nothing else to do…like having me, a rogue, tank Onyxia in an alt farming run. Sadly, with my Naxx epics, I did better as an evasion tank than some poor warrior in blues/T1, and managed to hold aggro (after a minute’s headstart of DPSing) too.) Very few people truly invest so much time into hardcore raiding chiefly for “the challenge.” Our main goal is THE PRESTIGE. Challenge is a SIDE goal for most; it keeps things interesting and makes competition more fierce, but honestly, inside most raiders there is some degree of gear lust, a desire to collect shinies or some completist/collector urge (rare recipes, full armor sets, etc.).

    I say again: I’m definitely in that group; I love collecting gear and strutting around looking pimp after slaving in some choreographed raid chorus line for weeks. That’s fun for me. I’m a chick, so, you know, it’s okay if I’m into dress-up. But it belongs in its own MMO, and it’s not fair to tack on that sort of endgame onto a game that is primarily populated by–and worse, MARKETED toward–casuals.

    But I think this is only a real problem for WoW, which has been in the throes of an identity crisis since release: is it a hardcore PvE raiding game? Is it a PvP game? Is there any place for casuals after hitting max level? WoW’s fragmented community and census numbers of late indicate that it at least has not succeeded at blending these three aspects, and glancing over the huge amount of commentary on the web regarding this issue tells you that it’s the PvP and casual PvE contingents which are most dissatisfied.

    I think once Conan and Warhammer are released, we’ll see the PvP crowd finally leave WoW en masse, as to some degree the casual PvE crowd has been steadily bleeding away or jumping ship in small handfuls to games like LotRO. Unfortunately, there is no flagship casual PvE game out there, although LotRO may gradually win this spot by the favorable word-of-mouth it’s generating. (It’s been a fun diversion for me, although I know it’s inevitable that I’ll powergame it to death and soon become bored.) While I was ultimately dissatisfied with WoW’s endgame despite being the right type for it, I think the game development and community will be much healthier once players have true choices and stop trying to wring out of WoW what it simply can’t deliver. WoW is the slicker, newer EQ–and better at it than EQ2 is!–an excellent, dedicated raiding game with abortive attempts at PvP and casual PvE grafted on; I’ll be less resentful of Blizzard for my own broken hopes once they have the balls to admit that. But again, I don’t see that happening until these next-gen MMORPGs are released, and the first-gen MMORPG players realize they have a choice aside from WoW.

    MMORPGs aren’t niche anymore. WoW proved they have broad appeal, yet failed to satisfy all gaming types equally; it remains to next-gen online games to realize that a smash-hit jack-of-all-trades like WoW is unlikely to happen again any time soon, and that specialization–and a necessarily smaller market share–is the next step for the genre. Once we’ve had a few years of highly specialized games refining their respective modes of gameplay (PvP, raiding, casual grouping, soloing, crafting, role-playing/socialization, everything), we may see another brilliant synthesis of all that has come before, as WoW was the culmination and dazzling refinement of all that came before it.

    And maybe, by then, Blizz will freaking fix Vanish.

    One can dream.

    -Vill

  • The Common Sense Gamer » Blog Archive » Hasenfeffer got my Rabbit says:
    June 20, 2007 at 7:37 am

    [...] had a great comment from Villainelle my article on the Lazy Rabbit and I thought I’d bring it up [...]

  • The End Game Acid Test « p?tsh?t says:
    June 23, 2007 at 1:01 pm

    [...] TBC Killed WoW” discussion including Tobold’s departure, and on the broader side, a hardcore v. casual who-should-get-access-to-end-game content discussion. ? There were quite a few other quality [...]

Leave a Comment