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New Issue Of The Daedalus Project
Nick Yee writes "The Daedalus Project have new findings and a news survey. The Daedalus Project is an ongoing online survey study of MMORPG players that started 5 years ago and has surveyed over 35,000 players. Some highlights of this issue's findings: While the media likes to talk about how "virtual" relationships in MMOs are, about 80% of players actually play with someone they know in real life (a romantic partner, a family member, or a friend). PvP servers attract younger players as well as more men than PvE servers. This has implications for gender-bending rates. On PvP servers, female avatars are much more likely to be played by men. 22% of respondents said that they had purchased virtual gold. On average, these players have spent $135 USD on virtual gold. While older players are more likely to have done so, there were no gender differences."
I was thinking the other day, one of the basic things that is missing from a MMORPG that you get with a tabletop RPG is personal touch of a dedicated Game Master. I can remember playing MUDs where I actually had the freedom to change the world because a GM was there to review what I had done and keep things "in check". This is taken to the obvious extreme with tabletop RPGs where you can do anything after negotiating with the GM. Of course, in a MMORPG there's just way too many other players for you to have a relationship with a GM. In fact, it's almost always company policy that GMs remain out of the game, otherwise everyone will want access to them. Personally, I think that's the wrong way to go. Instead of hiding the GMs the company should be offering their interaction for a fee. To really do this well the development team needs to supply the GM with simple but powerful scripting tools. I'd imagine a conversation might go something like this:
Player: My enchantment resistance is low and I keep losing rolls against Paladins, what can I do?
GM: Well, you could go see the Enchantrist, she can probably supply you with some boots that will boost your enchantment resistance.
Player: Where's the Enchantrist?
GM: Heh! I can't tell you that. But if you ask at the bar in town you're bound to find someone who can.
Player: alright then!
The player then runs off in the direction of town. Meanwhile the GM starts writing a script for one of the bar characters which responds to the keyword 'Enchantrist'. If he gets writers block halfway through writing the list of challenges the player is going to have to face to meet the Enchantrist he can always send some ghouls to intercept the player and delay his arrival at the bar.
Eventually the player gets to the bar and asks around for the Enchantrist. The character planted there by the GM gives the player the instructions and the player sets off on his quest. The quest may have been a pre-existing one or the GM may have coded it up just now. With a library of sufficient content and a simple scripting language, it should be easy for a GM to give the illusion of an exciting dynamic world.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think that people who join RPGish MMOs for the PvP (or stay for it) don't really want to play the game. The ones I know IRL are castoffs from other genres (mainly FPSers weaned on Halo, The Abominable) and now play WoW or whatever because they can get a game anytime, and it's fresh blood, not just their network of friends in real life. They don't care about roleplaying, just being as powerful as possible (and yes, they're all guys). They also don't ever play non-aggro classes. Buut, I've never played a "real" MMO (subscription based, persistent, etc. (I play GW)) so I can't really say whether I'd be down for PvP (I'm somewhat the dying breed of hardcore consoler, raised on the NES).
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Not all games are GW or even WoW in that aspect. There are games that were launched completely without PvP.
E.g., PSO was the most extreme case. It wasn't just that you couldn't attack another player, it's that you just couldn't do _anything_ to them. You couldn't leave aggressive NPCs to someone, you couldn't block their retreat, etc. Heck, you couldn't even kill-steal. So people who wanted to play it like a FPS deathmatch just soon left.
That however also contains the "problem". It's entirely too easy for a publisher to see it as "whaa? you mean we're losing players for lack of PvP? well, then let's add PvP to the game!" And from there the balance that was finely tuned for PvE goes down the drain, as the boards get swamped with "my <insert support class> should deal as much direct damage as the mages and take as much damage as the tanks in a duel" whine. Powers and classes which were useful in more subtle ways than 1-on-1 damage, e.g., even AOE attacks or aggro-management, get proclaimed useless because they're not an alpha-strike in 1-on-1 PvP.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's a worryingly high proportion of players who've engaged in real-world currency trading, particularly as there's no doubt a further margin of people who have also done this trading, but won't admit to it. I play FFXI myself and I'm fairly sure that a few of the people I know in-game have bought gil before, but it is, of course, nigh-on impossible to prove (unless they do something really stupid, like being broke one day and buying a peacock charm, kraken club and scorpion harness +1 on the Auction House the next - and I only know of one person who was dumb enough to do something like that).
To be honest, I'd have thought it would be pretty easy to identify and close down the accounts used for real world currency trade. The game always tells you who has sent you currency, unless it's via an auction-house purchase. Reading IGE's (the largest currency trading site) website, it sounds like they just send gil directly to the recipient. All the GMs would need to do would be make a few purchases (spending maybe a couple of hundred dollars total) and close down the accounts that the gil came from. Rinse and repeat a few times and you'd have made the whole business deeply unprofitable. I'm almost tempted to take matters into my own hand, make a few minimum purchases from IGE, get screenshots of the gil in my delivery box and report the senders to the GMs. Sadly, I've a sneaking suspicion that all this would achieve would be to get my own account suspended. So I won't.
On the topic of PvP, I think the article is right in broad terms about the demographic involved, but perhaps goes a little too far and risks being a bit unfair in the stereotype it builds up. It's true that in the days before FFXI had any PvP at all, the vast majority of the players who were demanding it were immature 14 year olds who wanted to get revenge on somebody who'd annoyed them a week before. Once limited PvP appeared, in the form of ballista, and people realised that PvP works both ways and that immature grief-kiddies tend to have far smaller social networks to call on for backup than the more rounded players, most of the clamour vanished overnight. Ballista these days tends to be played by people who are pretty dedicated and specialised. It's not my thing and I doubt I'll ever be any good at it, but kudos to those who are.
I've played World of Warcraft and while I think it's vastly inferior to FFXI in most respects, I do like the way it's managed to integrate PvP into the game-world without turning it over to the griefers. Having the two major game factions in a de facto state of war, with their own towns and territory, is great for encouraging people to blend the social/organisational challenges of traditional PvE combat with the more tightly defined skillset of PvP. I think that's definitely the model that future MMORPGs (hopefully ones with a bit more depth and challenge than WoW) should be looking to imitate and build upon.
Finally, on the gender issue. I always assume that any character in game is played by a male, no matter the gender of the avatar or anything they say in game, unless I have met them in real life. I do know a couple of women in real life who play the game - they both use male player characters, simply because while the hassling that female pcs get in-game from male teenagers is flattering (and occasionally profitable) at first, it gets old real fast.
"On the topic of PvP, I think the article is right in broad terms about the demographic involved, but perhaps goes a little too far and risks being a bit unfair in the stereotype it builds up. It's true that in the days before FFXI had any PvP at all, the vast majority of the players who were demanding it were immature 14 year olds who wanted to get revenge on somebody who'd annoyed them a week before. Once limited PvP appeared, in the form of ballista, and people realised that PvP works both ways and that immature grief-kiddies tend to have far smaller social networks to call on for backup than the more rounded players, most of the clamour vanished overnight. Ballista these days tends to be played by people who are pretty dedicated and specialised. It's not my thing and I doubt I'll ever be any good at it, but kudos to those who are."
That all is based on the assumption that everyone cares equally about their character. E.g., that the socializers who got ganked in the newbie area, and the "immature grief-kiddies" who made a bunch of people chase them and then logged off, are equally saddened that you killed their character.
In practice, it just doesn't work that way. There are people who just don't care about their character. At all. It's just a disposable tool, to be used as needed and discarded when no longer needed. They don't need any backup, unless it's for a grander scale scam or ganking run. If you ended up calling on a whole social network to chase him, you haven't "punished" him, you haven't taught him a lesson, you've "fed a troll" in internet lingo. You gave that kiddie the attention he wanted. Lots of it.
The real reason why they tend to disappear off pure fullt-time PK worlds was already explained by Bartle in the days of MUDs. It's not that they learn a valuable lesson, it's just the same reason why wolves die off too when the population of rabbits goes way down: they run out of prey. What a griefer ("killer" in Bartle's terms) needs is victims. Unwilling victims. The moment they end up on a server where everyone else doesn't give a damn about their character and about anything happening to that character, they lose interest and leave.
Really, you should read Bartle's studies. It's fascinating, and might turn your assumptions right on their head. For example, it's not that those kiddies have some vengeance for some grief they suffered earlier, it's that actually their favourite victim is a socializer who never did them any wrong. The aim is simply to cause grief. Nothing more, nothing less. And the best target for that is someone who was trying to make friends and tends to take offense at being received with all-out hostility. Other griefers (i.e., the ones you'd have a reason to want to exact vengeance on) are actually their _least_ favourite prey.
"I've played World of Warcraft and while I think it's vastly inferior to FFXI in most respects, I do like the way it's managed to integrate PvP into the game-world without turning it over to the griefers. Having the two major game factions in a de facto state of war, with their own towns and territory, is great for encouraging people to blend the social/organisational challenges of traditional PvE combat with the more tightly defined skillset of PvP. I think that's definitely the model that future MMORPGs (hopefully ones with a bit more depth and challenge than WoW) should be looking to imitate and build upon."
As someone who <bleep>ing hates PvP, I should hope they don't. Putting some funky back-story explaining why it's there, still doesn't change the fact that I don't want it. If it's an activity I dislike, it's an activity I dislike, and that's that. I don't care what convoluted excuse the designers came up with, as to why should I take part in that.
WoW still sorta does the right thing in that it has separate PvP and non-PvP servers. That's ok by me. I'm not opposed to the PvP people getting their jollies too, as long as I'm not dragged into it. Even then, what I'd like is the choice of a server which is "strictly non-PvP", but ok, I can also live with Blizzard's solution.
But of a game really tried any harder to integrate PvP into it, well, that's one game which wouldn't see my money.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"And how many of those players want to pay $25/hr for a GM? Frankly, if you can make that kind of money off a player you can afford to set up a few thousand terminals in India and train that many GMs."
1. So basically, you're proposing... what? That anyone who can pay $25 can officially get not just an advantage in the game, but they get someone to customize and tailor it especially for them.
You know what? No, thanks. It's bad enough to have people with rare super-powerful items bought on eBay. Having the game company itself sell customized "swords of Paladin slaying" to every PK idiot with a credit card... no, thanks. I like achievements in the game to at least pretend to reflect some personal skill or effort. A whole game built on achievements being how much RL cash you're willing to pay, wth is the point and achievement in that? How insecure _does_ someone have to be to measure their achievements that way?
2. You're still proposing that a bunch of people be trusted with creating and putting content in the game on short notice, completely bypassing any QA or testing. You may notice that even stuff that senior designers and programmers made, and still after an extensive internal- and beta-testing, still needs to be tweaked and balanced against everything else in the game.
Would I trust some half-trained tech-support guy's 5-minute hack to actually be anywhere near balanced? Does that guy even know everything in the game that the item needs to be balanced against?
It's not even whether it's in India or not, it's just that _noone_ can have the whole game in the head, and know the balancing factors and decisions that went into everything. (E.g., that yeah, item X is also that powerful, but it's something that's the big reward for a whole story arc, spanning several instanced missions.)
Do I even trust that not to break the game? E.g., if the player wants a potion of teleporting through walls for the next instance, how do you know they won't use it to get into an unfinished area still in development? E.g., if the player wants a wand that creates a deadly plague to finish off some NPCs, how do you know they won't use it to start a plague in the capital city or in the newbie area, for grief's sake?
Both cases above, getting into restricted areas _and_ a world-wide plague, are stuff that actually happened in WoW. Again, stuff designed by professional designers, with code/scripts made by professional coders, and after an extensive internal- and beta-testing. And shit still happened. Do you trust 1000 monkeys with keyboards, bypassing QA and testing completely, not to create that problem 1000 times a day?
How do you trust them _all_ to not be _bribed_ to explicitly code something against the rules? There are some people with a _lot_ of disposable income. (I've been in a game where someone had paid literally over 20,000 USD for in-game advantages.) And there are countries where those cheap GM's would end up recruited from, where salaries are really low. It's very easy for a westerner to pony-up a bribe that's ludicriously high for that country.
E.g., I don't know about India, but in China an average wage is about 1000$ per year. If I knew my GM is from China, I already know that for a 1000$ bribe, the guy will roll repeatedly against will-power to refuse it. Even if he gets fired for taking it, it's a year's salary in one go. People have stabbed each other there for a $800 virtual item. "Hey, buddy, I'm sick and tired of running away from all these murlocks. Make me a pair of 100D6 damage daggers for my rogue, and you get 1000$ by PayPal right now." Are you sure he won't take it?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.