Raph Koster on Fire

This week's Escapist has a in-depth article talking with Raph Koster. Author Allen Varney and Mr. Koster go over his best-selling book, the Ultima Online days, the debacle that is Star Wars Galaxies, and what he's planning to do next. From the article: "I'll make an exception for the NGE. I don't think you can or should change a game that radically out from under a user base. You dance with the ones that brung ya, whether they are the market of your dreams or not. They have invested their passion and built expectations about where they want the game to go. Changing things out from under them isn't fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."

Comments

Kosner Sucks.

[JavaLord]

This isn't a flamebait either. This guy has a huge ego, and for what? Because he was in on Ultima Online? The funny part is, most people who look back fondly on ultima online do so because of the all-out PK'ing that went on. Kosner went out of his way to discourage it. Then, we can talk about Star Wars Galaxies...was that not a complete and total failure? The star wars franchise is much more appealing than the world of warcraft one, yet WoW managed to sell copies to people who weren't even interested in Warcraft lore (myself included).

He can write about " A Theory of Fun for Game Design." all he wants, he still doesn't 'get it'. What people want is world of warcraft from levels 1-59 and early WoW/UO PKing. The funny part is, you don't have to spend a zillion dollars making new content every 3 months if the players become the actual content and you give them meaningful ways to effect the world and each other. (ie, real pvp objectives).

Re:Kosner Sucks.

[CadetUmfer]

Koster created virtual worlds with UO and SWG that are unlike anything that exists today--particularly the completely directed experience that is WoW 1-59.

Not to mention he's one of the few developers trying to let players "become the actual content" and "effect the world."

I could play all of WoW and never interact with anyone outside of my guild. Koster's worlds throw everyone together, force dependency, and say "you figure it out." I'd take that over the "shared single player" of WoW any day.

Re:Kosner Sucks.

[snuf23]

"WoW 1-59 is totally 'directed'? Really? It seemed pretty open ended to me, you can get experence from doing almost anything. You want to quest? There are billions of them."

Yes you can choose which NPC to talk to get a scripted quest (well actually even there the quest has to be in your level range). Or you can grind. Or you can use the basic gathering/crafting system.

The point is that this is not representative of "emergent gameplay". The concept where you put together an environment that is complex enough for players to discover the interactions without having to go to NPC Bob and get a "kill 10 goblins because they are bad" quest. It is players iventing how to play the game within the construct of the gaming world rules. WoW doesn't really lend it to this type of behavior because it is a very structured game.
One example of "emergent gameplay" was the player casinos in the early days of WoW. Boy that got shut down quick due to scams. Now you do see other examples of this especially since a lot of players have been playing so long that they are bored of the main game. We used to have naked Gnome alt boxing tournaments or race your level 1 alt across Azeroth contests.
I'm not trying to bash WoW, I honestly don't think open ended gameplay is better than structured games - I think it's certainly easier to provide a better gaming experience if there is structure. Of course this isn't always the case, I enjoyed just messing around in the GTA world for example, but found the missions boring.

Re:Kosner Sucks.

[aafiske]

"WoW 1-59 is totally 'directed'? Really? It seemed pretty open ended to me, you can get experence from doing almost anything. You want to quest? There are billions of them. Some are as simple as "go kill 10 of whatever" while others are long questlines. You can get experence from pvp'ing within battlegrounds. You can get experence from simply grinding. You can level any of a number of professions."

I dunno, one of my friends tried to advance the idea that WoW was open-ended and you could do what you wanted, but it didn't sit well then either.

Look at it this way: as you progress, there are 2, maybe 3 areas where things are balanced for you. There are 2-4 instances that you can go in and not overwhlem/die instantly. If you're level 18 Alliance, you go do the Deadmines. If you didn't know about instances and you hit level 25, the instance is sub-par for you. Sure, you can choose which 10 monsters you want to kill to get your reward, but it really is all the same in the end.

You can go to the battlegrounds, if you're at the upper levels of your tier, and your server isn't overly twinked out. Some people enjoy it nonetheless, so it's a valid option.

Or you can harvest and auction off your goods. But the economy is really limited, and your options for competition are 'lower your prices'.

That's about it. You're stuck in the role your character chose at the beginning. (DPS, Tank, Healer, or a jack-of-some-trades) That's not very open-ended in my book. It's more open ended than, say, Final Fantasy Whatever, but that's not saying much.

WoW provides a PvE environment that is second-to-none, in my experience. What it doesn't do is place you in a big dynamic world full of people and say 'alright tiger, here's your sword, here's your backpack, go out there and do what you want.'

Whatever

[the computer guy nex]

You would need to TRY to fail in making a Star Wars MMORPG fail.

Yes, I was suckered into it. The combat in the game was useless - you could solo anything in the game. The crafting system was the best I've ever seen in a game, but with the combat flaws and high rate of durability loss it didn't matter. The "Entertainer" professions were a joke.

There wasn't interesting quests. There wasn't unique enemies that required special tactics. It was one of the most poorly designed games of our generation.

What he has done to deserve an article boggles my mind.

Re:Whatever

[SB5]

Note: Raph Koster wasn't really involved with SWG from October 2003 on. Essentially after release, he wasn't really part of the team that screwed SWG up.

Plenty of things went wrong with SWG. Such as, released too early, in beta there are a ton of things you can change, that you can't change after release, take combat for example. The other thing is lots of game systems were rushed or cut, just to meet the release deadline(release deadlines don't work for MMOs, you are making a game that should be used for years onwards by at least a hundred thousand users). The skill system was not the ideal one that Raph had in mind, he said the first guy that worked on the skill system left the company the second guy had no idea how to do it, and by then Raph said he would do it the way he wanted, but they ran out of time, so they it the way it was, "the onion" skill system. The way it was supposed to be, was like you take up some scout skills, and some marksmen skills, and soundly, you have a title of sniper, and with that gain some minor abilities. And the way this system worked, is players may take branches that didn't give them any title, but the devs could always add that later on quite easily, they may see players take dancing and hand to hand fighting, and they could add a special title there for those that did that, with some minor abilities and stats added.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/19/community-bui lding/#comments is an article where he talks about such things and responds to comments.

And just a note, what he did, was made a game people love. Its been well over 9 months since the NGE, and people are still calling out for the "pre-CU" game of SWG on the SWG forums, and other forums themselves. To me, that screams that they had a loyal community and SOE abandoned them on the roadside.

The only time I remember being able to solo anything was during the buffs and comp armor debacle. One of the darkest times in SWG, essentially you needed buffs just to put on comp armor, and buffs were so strong, you could solo almost any MOB in the game and never die because you regened health too fast. Although the recent CU and NGE, I heard you could solo a ton then too even though buffs were essentially removed. This is not what SWG was meant to be, but this is the direction it was pulled into,

AI in almost all MMOs are notoriously weak, and some did require special tactics, those tactics mostly being, the MOB had high resists to some types of damage, so you had to use other types of damage to actually damage him. As a rifleman I was limited in my damage types, but when I did damage I really could pound it out.

He was also responsible for Pre-Trammel UO, and I still hear people talk about that game. So yes this man deserves an article.