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Raph Koster from Playable Worlds is back with another Riffs by Raph, this time tackling the issues of player retention, building a relationship with players and touching on cynicism by MMO players.
Comments
He must be reading delete's threads lol. Anyway I kinda think he gets it, it's just what to do about it.
And that's a major part of the problem. Repetition can be ok, if the basic gameplay is fun and engaging and if the change happens around us. Like in the real world.
Most of us do very repetitive things each day - there's no impressario standing behind our backs and giving us a new fun activity every day. But the world is fully dynamic and stimulates our senses and minds. We never know what crazy, interesting, dangerous or horrifying thing we'll come across during our day, either in person, through our contacts or media.
There are many extremely repetitive games that are insanely fun and addictive. Like Warframe, which is fundamentally an extremely grindy and repetitive game. But its core is also great fun and the combat, abilities, gunplay, parkour are done so well that people gladly do those repetitive activities for the sheer fun of it.
If you built a world around such fun core gameplay, a world that would provide the necessary stimuli by itself, you'd nail it. A world that is as close to fully dynamic as possible, while also unified and coherent in all its (geographical) parts and systems, with events and in-game development scaling from small, local ones, to world-spanning. The world itself must provide entertainment and engagement, while gameplay provides fun and satisfaction. A big task, no doubt, but worth it in the end.
If you do it the other way around and try to be the impressario desperately juggling circus activities from one day to the next trying to keep players entertained, you will end up a nervous wreck with an empty auditorium. Except for that one guy who fell asleep and that dear lady who thinks you're such a lovely boy for keeping her company.
all the systems should be built accordingly.
or he is not that much of a dumbass to think everything he does and his promises should be taken by face value, and can read over the internet not only in ONE forum.
distrust over company are growing for years and its over the whole internet, even worse is companys who know only reason they game survive or are any good is because the mod community but love to ignore that and lie saying it all because of how "creative" they are
remember all bethesda games are playable because of mods, cyberpunk atrocious driving was lessened by modders, 3rd person too since some don't like, modders did this
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
bruh...it was a joke. People are harder to please and stuff that was impressive at the time may be less now. I have a bunch of older early 2000s games I break out from time to time thinking, man this game was great back in the day, only to find they really aren't that great now and feel dated. I do think there are some systems that are just too old to make a return to mainstream, like perma-death, corpse runs, player looting ect to name a few.
I miss the days of player dependency on others (ala SWG like Raph designed) but are there even enough people who want that anymore to support a full fledged game?
Went back to a few of my old favorites and it was a terrible experience. I remember thinking on one in particular "how did I ever think this was fun".
Guess it depends a bit on the game and how things are implemented. Some newer games can use old-school elements if they are implemented well. I've been playing co-op through Valheim and loving the challenge and sense of tangible danger as a result of the corpse run/skill loss death penalties. Game has a lot of old school flavor, but I feel like it's tuned to the appropriate level for me.
When i make a statement i take into account what is going on in the gaming industry and not just spewing out fanbois nonsense.
Survival games have given us the ability to game OUR way in an open world.They do NOT do what the mmorpg's have been doing which is sell houses,sell pets,sell mounts etc etc.
So we can look at Valheim or my old fave game Atlas which i played rigorously for 2 years straight and we get ALL of the package with NO added monetization,no subscription,no cash shops.
Raph mentions "retention"well the most populated mmorpg has long been WOW and i want NOTHING to do with ANY of Wow's design.
Wow has absolutely NOTHING in common with survival games,Atlas for example does EVERYTHING better than Wow,better pets,better mounts,better housing,better open world.
Wow tagain i am using this example because it is the most popular ,most populated has you pay an ongoing subscription,pay to get pets,pay to get mounts.
EVERY single last asset made for Atlas or ARK or Valheim comes with your one time purchase,NO added costs.
So if Raph is referring o making a game that accomplishes what Wow has done,he is on course to making a terrible mmorpg.There are two sides the gamer and the business,guess which side couldn't care less about how much money the other side makes.
I can again use Valheim as an example,retention,WHO CARES?Most people play/ed solo and most others were simply playing with friends,so why we would care about retention,WHO or what does retention actually favor>>the business>>>$$$.
With Raph talk is cheap,he loves to talk about it but he has NEVER done it,he has never made the true rpg I and others want to play.
Open worlds,no added monetization,no hand holding or gaited gameplay,ECO systems,Biomes,true water zones,ship building,house building,ports,defense bases,this is all new wit h survival games,mmorpg's are still stuck in the 90's.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I don't think that distrust and cynicism are related as much to just disappointment as Raph thinks it is.
Sure, if you look forward to games you think will be fun and they turn out not to be, that's disappointing and if it happens to you often enough, that may lead to some mistrust and cynicism.
But gaming has gone way beyond that to the point that there are many passing themselves off as game publishers, studios or developers that are little more than fly-by-night con men. con studios and con publishers.
These are not isolated cases and they represent a significant portion of gaming. It also isn't only fringe developers like Titov and Walsh but includes large studios like EA who send one of their lawyers to London to say to a parliamentary committee that they don't call them loot boxes but surprise mechanics.
There's a lot more required than just making a good game to regain the lost trust. How about developers, instead of closing ranks, call out the scams, the cons and the bullshit that some in their ranks are guilty of. In short, police yourselves and distance yourselves from the bullshit if you want our trust.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
"The reason why businesspeople need to use other words is because “fun” isn’t particularly measurable. For one thing, it’s really different for different people."
Well I mentioned this in a post the other day so I think a lot of us realise this is the case, it is just that it is easy to talk about gameplay in simplistic terms, we all do it.
I really do not agree here, the failings of society should not stop us trying to create virtual societies. Yes there will be issues, big issues, but that comes with being human. Would you say we should not face up to the challenges our society has? I think I know you well enough that you would never say that, so we need to face up to the challenges any virtual society will have. We will no doubt do as badly doing that as we do in real life, but we still live here don't we?
XD
https://www.mmorpg.com/videos/swg-legends-sets-date-for-its-long-awaited-bespin-expansion-coming-may-4th-2000121690
I actually think the corpse run are the perfect death penalty. Full stop. Nothing else is needed. Its gameplay oriented and pushes all the right buttons in a players mind. If you want an atmosphere of danger in your game, nothing can really compare with it.
Those features all came from sandbox MMOs. Ultima Online had quite a lot of that. So did SWG. Survival games are largely inspired by UO in the first place, via Minecraft.
Due to the current events I ended up playing online chess and while it doesn't have an obvious progression you have a learning curve with longterm improvements.
I also play gloomhaven with friends, with new classes, gear and class setups you constantly have to play good and you have a more obvious progression.
Ever since I quit mmorpg my longest running hobby is bridge, with a social side, competitive side and longterm improvements of how you play.
I would jump back into mmorpg if they could bring back the feeling of actual progression and forcing me as a player to improve.
Huh? He has mentioned that his is a consultant on Crowfall nothing more, nothing less.
Raph, the biggest issue with trust can be totally wiped clean if you have a publisher people don't trust. That alone sends off red flags. It has to be self-published, and an IP that is either introduced or that is locked to be used for a while.
And if you want retention you have to have a focus on social interaction that becomes forced by timesinks. These are things players must do in order to thrive that require us to connect to other players. We may not like it, but it builds community, because at the core we are social creatures.
SWG did this first by having lines at starports/shuttleports, buffs from doctors and standing in line waiting your turn, getting buffs at the cantina.
All these helped force interaction to build community and bonding. Once you get that retention goes up because people want to interact with others and almost use your game sometimes as nothing more than to afk some area and chat.
Believe it or not, I still prefer to use ingame chat over VOIP for 95% of interactions, a few of people I make friends with or are guildmates, sure VOIP becomes fine, but majority lets type!
I talked about the importance of in game activities to encourage social interaction in the article he did on "social" so fully agree with you there. As I never played SWG perhaps you can confirm if you had some sort of death penalty which you could work of by resting or listening to a minstrel?
I can't be sure but I think part of Ralph's thinking is that if you are in the same "world/shard" you are all going to want to socialise, knowing gamers that is simply not going to be enough.
Yes, you had to listen in a cantina to clear mind wounds. Buffs also became pretty much essential and even after the NGE came out, buffs were still required as they added a plethora of enhancements for whatever you were partaking in that day.
As for your original about publisher, seems all the ones that MMOs attach too are bad, so independent seems the best route at least you know when it sinks it all sinks and not just a financial decision from a company such as NcSoft, Daybreak (or whoever owns it now), PWE, etc.