MMO Devs repeating history: It isn't idiocy, ignorance, or insanity. So what is it?

LynxJSA

A recent article on New World had this 'observation' from the NW devs: 

The devs invited a group of players to give it a whirl, and discovered that they didn’t tackle the game quite as expected. “We were hoping people would go out into the world – and we built this beautiful world that’s very similar to what we have now […] where they could build their own structures, where they could go and fight each other, and really chase each other down, and it was so cool. And that’s not what happened.”

What did happen was a fair bit of “griefing on the beach”, which the devs addressed so new players could join in and enjoy it. Then players started “grief[ing] at the settlement”. So, “now we’re gonna see if we can do opt-in PvP instead of required PvP,” Kaszynski says of the devs’ approach at this point.

 - PCGamesN article 'Early New World fans played it like Rust'

Funny... around the turn of the century, the developers of UO discovered players would behave that way in an open world PVP game.

Countless examples of this were given in the early years of MMORPGs, including the ranters of the then-popular Lum the Mad's site - people normally against griefing - shocked to find they themselves took to doing it to lowbies in Glitchless' Race War Kingdoms.

Twenty years of history of MMO gamers doing the same exact thing. PVE players will locust thru PVE content. Open world PVP players will consistently target lower levels and those least interested in PVP. There is no evidence to indicate otherwise, yet studio after studio thinks they're going to do the same thing with different outcomes.

I used to think they were just ignorant of history or that it was some level of insanity. I've met lots and lots of MMO devs over the years, and I can safely say almost every one was impressive in their skills and knowledge related to their field. In that light, I can safely say I don't believe it is due to stupidity or lack of intelligence. 


So what is it? Smart people at a company with gobs of cash/resources and access to 20-year history of player behavior in MMORPGs started Alpha 10 the way they did and were surprised by how things went sideways. What causes that, and how can we as players help prevent it from continuing to happen?

Rungar

I think the devil gives them a bonus if they can turn people against each other and cause as much strife and torment as possible. Hence the endless push for generally unprofitable pvp mmo's. 

its not repeating mistakes if that is the design. 

WhiteLantern

Drop people into a world with no established moral code and/or no way to enforce one and people go nuts?
D. All of the above (idiocy, ignorance and insanity)

Sovrath

I think it's more along these two lines (depending on the developers)

1, They want an open lawless land as that generates the gameplay. It's why some people didn't understand lineage 2. "You're getting griefed? Great! Join a clan. Clan not strong enough? Join an alliance."

that was the gameplay. And that type of gameplay caters to a specific audience.

I remember a clanmate of mine, good guy, was concerned about an all red clan. My thought was "that's just one flavor of conflict in the world. It's part of the game."

or ...

2, This time it's different, insert some sort of reason as to why it's different. Even though the game will attract all types of people. In some ways they are making the game they want to play.

Djijin

Everyone uses the same development and business model today. That's why these issue repeat themselves.

Release when it's ready? Not anymore.

Now, it's release when a quarterly report return for investors can be maximized, then rush the next project to juice up another investor return report.

The gamer's interests are secondary.

olepi

All devs are not the same. The devs who do the graphics, who do the networking code, who do the database code, who do the animations, who do the cutscenes, who do the login accounting, who do the UI, these will not be involved in the game's design most likely.

The fact that New World was originally going to be an open world PvP game with little content is testament to a short-sighted game designer. Very few, if any, open world full-loot PvP games are successful.

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kitarad

History repeating itself is almost certainly the reason for this. I think generally people always think they can be the exception and instead fall for the same pitfalls.

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LynxJSA

olepi said:

All devs are not the same. 

Please forgive my lack of clarity. I am talking specifically about those who design the games. 

LynxJSA

Wargfoot said:

I'd be shocked if there was a single person on this forum who would think it possible to create an online world beautiful enough to distract people from murdering new players as they spawn.

Very true, and made me LOL.  

cameltosis

Very good question @LynxJSA !

I have actually thought about this very thing a hell of a lot over the years, done my own research into the subject, and even got some first hand insight from a short stint working QA for a games studio in the UK. I arrived at two key reasons for the games industry as a whole, plus a third reason that is more specific to the MMO world.

1) An almost complete lack of scientific research into computer games.

This is the most fundamental reason why so many "mistakes" get repeated. This is an industry of trial-and-error, rather than an industry of understanding and improvement. Most people who work in the games industry lack a fundamental understanding of the purpose of games, what makes them fun or engaging, how to make them appeal to the right people etc.

Instead, designers take occasional risks. Most fail, some succeed, but hardly any of those risks are based on any sort of scientific understanding of what should work. The successful ideas then get iterated upon until we're bored to death of them, and those ideas and gameplay then become cyclical in nature - we might have 5 years of RTS glory, then we get bored and RTS's get little love for 10 years, then they come back and the cycle repeats.

An additional consequence of this lack of understanding is that most designers are then almost entirely influenced by what has come before. If you grew up only playing RPGs that are based around a story, it is very hard to conceive of an RPG with no story, for example, even though such a thing is both possible and more appropriate for a roleplaying game.

Luckily, this problem of a lack of understanding is beginning to be addressed. Universities around the world are starting to take the games industry seriously, proper research is being done, conclusions are being found, suggestions are being made. It will just take a while for that new knowledge to filter its way into the industry.

2) The design and funding process

Despite how many people are involved in building a good game, the design process will typically only involve a few people. You'll have a creative director overseeing the design, plus whatever department leads you decide to get involved, but it'll be a small team.

Being designed by a small team means if anyone on that team can't spot a mistake, the mistake gets made. By the time the programmers get involved, the design is already locked in place.

Now, in a healthy company, the design should be fluid, mistakes should be spotted and fixed - assuming you have the budget to do so.

In reality, nobody likes being criticised and most people get defensive when receiving criticism, causing them to stick even more strongly to their mistake. Given the lack of understanding in the industry, criticism of a design often comes off as personal preference and can therefore be more easily dismissed.

Then comes the funding.

That design has to be sold to someone. It may be sold to the CEO of your company. You may have to sell the design to a publisher. Maybe you have to seek other investment, or go the crowdfunding route.

Investors have even less understanding of the games industry than devs do. Selling them complex new designs with innovative features is virtually impossible, especially because you cannot back it up with scientific evidence. Investors see too much risk and so you wont get funded.

Much easier to say "We're building a game like Skyrim, but with these minor tweaks to gameplay and this new IP". Investors understand that. Its easy to sell to the public too.

3) The long lifespan of MMOs

Assuming you are a successful games designer, in most genres you probably get to work on a new game every couple of years. That gives you a relatively quick turnaround for fixing mistakes, or even understanding that you made a mistake.

If you work in the MMO industry, you might get stuck on the same game for 5 or 10 years. You are then locked in to a specific design and specific technology and can only make small tweaks, rather than wholesale changes.

When combined with the general lack of retention of staff within the games industry, this means MMO designers probably only work on 2 or 3 games maximum before they leave the industry.

That simply isn't enough time or games to be able to iterate on designs and find the best options.

kitarad

Wargfoot said:

kitarad said:

History repeating itself is almost certainly the reason for this. I think generally people always think they can be the exception and instead fall for the same pitfalls.

Sure, some of that.... but really, do you know anyone even faintly familiar with gaming who isn't aware of this issue in a big way?

I'd be shocked if there was a single person on this forum who would think it possible to create an online world beautiful enough to distract people from murdering new players as they spawn.

In the planning meetings for this game not a single developer stood up and said: "So, I've been reading some gaming forums and..."

I wasn't concerned for the game until just now.

May be they are enamoured with the idea rather than the execution.

There is always the thing that people say that this amount of killing is normal and you have to accept it for there to be a successful PvP open world game. That it will eventually die down. That the people who leave weren't meant to play this type of game. That there is a great deal of exaggeration and nothing has ever been this bad in reality.

Scot

The only thing I think missing from the OP's appraisal is the effect of flagged PvP. This has created a game where PvE players can take part. Its not the best way, three way RvR is the best of all worlds, but flagging does throw a curve on the normal issues in Open World PvP. If I was playing I could say more all I can do is think of where I saw this before and note that as far as the PvE guys there were concerned the PvP did not exist, it was irrelevant to them..  

TwistedSister77

Age of Conan had very acceptable open world PvP for years.  Guess what... ZERO faction based, was guild based and guild alliances/politics mattered.

So, since it is not factioned based... it wasn't "all of us vs all of you"... wasn't red = dead mentality.  You want to kill or grief other players... be prepared for their guilds to hunt you down (and declare war on your guild).

Also, individual guilds can be asshats in a faction... and that faction has zero pvp retaliation capabilities.  AoC, guilds swapped alliegences all the time... especially teaming up against exploiting guilds... made guild politics really matter.

Finally, AoC had limits on starter area PvP and PvP disabled in all major towns/cities.

PS - I love me some faction based RvR.  Warhammer Online Reckoning (really tightly run server with tons of updates and almost weekly special content)... is where I get my fix.  300 vs 300 is common on a single castle with a 2008 server tech engine (which they put on crack)... doesn't lag out with full graphics and particle effects enabled & massive battle calculations needed... Amazon New World cant even limp past 50 vs 50 instanced.

KnightFalz

It's naivety.

Ungood

For the same reason why some players will always say "This Full Loot, Open world PvP Game, failed, because of some technical problem, there is nothing wrong with Full Loot Open World Games"

The hard reality is a lot of the early MMO's, mainly the MUD's, were in fact Open world full loot games, and they were kept in check due to population RP, and community.

But, times have changed, gone are the days of small communities that can tend their own issues, and want to play RP games, MMO's have gone mainstream with all the drawbacks included, so gone are those days of players settling their score, or duels in the street over personal issues.

Now, for some it is just outright denial that the era of players being able to resolve their own problems via RP and PVP, is long dead.

Honestly, with New World, no joke, and unironically, they just seemed hell bent to make every single mistake that other MMO's have made in the past, and outright refused to learn anything from what anyone before them had done, they had the money before them, and decided they had to make all their own mistakes on this project, right from the start to the launch, and now with the gold dupe bugs, no doubt there will be other bugs that get exploited as well as time will go on, and there will be just a while train wreck of problems, that they seem bent to make sure they make the same mistakes everyone else made before them.

On the flip side of this, a game like GW2, seems to blow in the wind to respond and cater to whatever demographic souted at them the laodest, and just wisped around the game trying new things as they went along, often, not realizing that the players, were very bad at knowing what they want, because all of them were asking for something this other game had, and they left that game. Like. hey dude.. that game had XYZ, they want XYZ, but, why did they leave other game with XYZ, if they really wanted XYZ. and someone be like "Give them XYZ, what's the worst that can happen" With GW2, the worst was, it pissed off a lot of their other players.

Now Anet, unlike new world, does not seem to have such as fast response time, and ability to respond to make changes in short order, might be due to lacking an unlimited income from Amazon.

In any case, you would think they would not all make the same mistakes, but it's like they al watch the same events, a pull totally different lessons from them.

Perhaps they should play MMO's a bit more.

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Scot

TwistedSister77 said:

Age of Conan had very acceptable open world PvP for years.  Guess what... ZERO faction based, was guild based and guild alliances/politics mattered.

So, since it is not factioned based... it wasn't "all of us vs all of you"... wasn't red = dead mentality.  You want to kill or grief other players... be prepared for their guilds to hunt you down (and declare war on your guild).

Also, individual guilds can be asshats in a faction... and that faction has zero pvp retaliation capabilities.  AoC, guilds swapped alliegences all the time... especially teaming up against exploiting guilds... made guild politics really matter.

Finally, AoC had limits on starter area PvP and PvP disabled in all major towns/cities.

PS - I love me some faction based RvR.  Warhammer Online Reckoning (really tightly run server with tons of updates and almost weekly special content)... is where I get my fix.  300 vs 300 is common on a single castle with a 2008 server tech engine (which they put on crack)... doesn't lag out with full graphics and particle effects enabled & massive battle calculations needed... Amazon New World cant even limp past 50 vs 50 instanced.

I knew players in those AoC open world PvP servers, it is much like you say but after a few years the guild and "policing" structure broke down. I don't know if that happened on all those servers (but I think it did?) but those I knew definitely felt the server was better at the start than the end. Did they close them in the end or just merge them I can't remember now? The PvE servers (with optional fort wars) lasted better, that for me is one of the reasons I don't see open world pvp has having the long term potential of RvR.

Kyleran

Scot said:

TwistedSister77 said:

Age of Conan had very acceptable open world PvP for years.  Guess what... ZERO faction based, was guild based and guild alliances/politics mattered.

So, since it is not factioned based... it wasn't "all of us vs all of you"... wasn't red = dead mentality.  You want to kill or grief other players... be prepared for their guilds to hunt you down (and declare war on your guild).

Also, individual guilds can be asshats in a faction... and that faction has zero pvp retaliation capabilities.  AoC, guilds swapped alliegences all the time... especially teaming up against exploiting guilds... made guild politics really matter.

Finally, AoC had limits on starter area PvP and PvP disabled in all major towns/cities.

PS - I love me some faction based RvR.  Warhammer Online Reckoning (really tightly run server with tons of updates and almost weekly special content)... is where I get my fix.  300 vs 300 is common on a single castle with a 2008 server tech engine (which they put on crack)... doesn't lag out with full graphics and particle effects enabled & massive battle calculations needed... Amazon New World cant even limp past 50 vs 50 instanced.

I knew players in those AoC open world PvP servers, it is much like you say but after a few years the guild and "policing" structure broke down. I don't know if that happened on all those servers (but I think it did?) but those I knew definitely felt the server was better at the start than the end. Did they close them in the end or just merge them I can't remember now? The PvE servers (with optional fort wars) lasted better, that for me is one of the reasons I don't see open world pvp has having the long term potential of RvR.

I played AOC for the first three months after launch and I don't recall any of those Guild based enforcement practices but perhaps they developed after I left.

I do recall going to quest hubs and feverishly trying to get or turn in quests, speed scrolling past all text without reading in fear of being ganked as I stood there, often by a much higher level player.

Fortunately I was a stealther so could actually observe for a bit and try to detect other stealthers but I still got smacked enough to wish I could have gone back and played on a PVE server just to read all the text I passed over.

LynxJSA

Scot said:

I knew players in those AoC open world PvP servers, it is much like you say but after a few years the guild and "policing" structure broke down. I don't know if that happened on all those servers (but I think it did?) but those I knew definitely felt the server was better at the start than the end.

That tends to happen in all MMOs where players try to police/organize but don't have sufficient tools to do so. 

Asheron's Call's Morningthaw server and several other servers had monthly Monarch (guild leaders) meetings to address community and server issues and to 'keep the peace'.  However, those go in one of two directions. Either people start saying they don't care about the rules of an authority that cannot effectively enforce them, or the ability to enforce is there and that authority becomes authoritarian over time. Either way, it breaks down eventually. 

laserit

Sometimes it makes one wonder if the designers even played a mmorpg before they designed one.
Maybe they just read reviews from other games and watched a couple videos.

 I’m not talking about the technical work.

Theocritus

If I were designing a game, it would not have PVP.....You are just asking for a toxic environment by doing so......

Rungar

Theocritus said:

If I were designing a game, it would not have PVP.....You are just asking for a toxic environment by doing so......

In gangster world only certain people get to design things and it isn't you. You can all scoff but it does account for all the disconnects, all of us who actually played all the games, see regularly.  

Scorchien

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Full loot FFA PvP doesn't work in MMORPGs because a too large subset of players seem to favor role playing a psychotic murderer, and the punishment for such behavior has never been harsh enough.

While it's not surprising some indie devs still try it nowadays (and fail), it's indeed weird that some major development companies still make that mistake.

It only takes ONE no life with more levels camping lowbies on a beach to turn it from "Adventure Beach" into "Non stop griefing on the beach".

Eve online says Hi

Scorchien

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Kyleran said:

Scot said:

TwistedSister77 said:

Age of Conan had very acceptable open world PvP for years.  Guess what... ZERO faction based, was guild based and guild alliances/politics mattered.

So, since it is not factioned based... it wasn't "all of us vs all of you"... wasn't red = dead mentality.  You want to kill or grief other players... be prepared for their guilds to hunt you down (and declare war on your guild).

Also, individual guilds can be asshats in a faction... and that faction has zero pvp retaliation capabilities.  AoC, guilds swapped alliegences all the time... especially teaming up against exploiting guilds... made guild politics really matter.

Finally, AoC had limits on starter area PvP and PvP disabled in all major towns/cities.

PS - I love me some faction based RvR.  Warhammer Online Reckoning (really tightly run server with tons of updates and almost weekly special content)... is where I get my fix.  300 vs 300 is common on a single castle with a 2008 server tech engine (which they put on crack)... doesn't lag out with full graphics and particle effects enabled & massive battle calculations needed... Amazon New World cant even limp past 50 vs 50 instanced.

I knew players in those AoC open world PvP servers, it is much like you say but after a few years the guild and "policing" structure broke down. I don't know if that happened on all those servers (but I think it did?) but those I knew definitely felt the server was better at the start than the end. Did they close them in the end or just merge them I can't remember now? The PvE servers (with optional fort wars) lasted better, that for me is one of the reasons I don't see open world pvp has having the long term potential of RvR.

I played AOC for the first three months after launch and I don't recall any of those Guild based enforcement practices but perhaps they developed after I left.

I do recall going to quest hubs and feverishly trying to get or turn in quests, speed scrolling past all text without reading in fear of being ganked as I stood there, often by a much higher level player.

Fortunately I was a stealther so could actually observe for a bit and try to detect other stealthers but I still got smacked enough to wish I could have gone back and played on a PVE server just to read all the text I passed over.

AOC was a gank fest, at quest givers, at respawn points, it was terrible.

And UO didn't have factions either... but still had to patch in a PvE mirror world to stop the constant griefing. So the whole "no factions = less ganking" logic falls apart. The people ganking don't give a shit about factions, if they could they would gank their own faction's newbies, and in some games where it was possible, they actually did.

Your legendary and fearful flight from UO is well documented, so your ignorance to its systems are excusable  but UO had factions up to I think was publish 86 in 2016 , was 4 factions to be exact  and was replaced with a 2 faction system Vice vs Virtue at that time .. 


Have a nice day