QOTD: I nearly died

"When people tell stories about their greatest moments, they often revolve around nearly dying. In games, what's really special for people is not, 'I killed the bad guy and I was perfect', it's, 'I nearly died, but I just managed to kill the bad guy.' How do we set out specifically to give them those experiences? That's a great challenge for us as game makers."

-- Brian Fleming, via The seduction secrets of video game designers

Guild Wars 2, with their downed, defeated, and rally mechanics, looks to be making a smart move. In contrast WoW's battle rezz (in various forms) seems to have missed the point - you are dead, a red smear on the landscape, and btw quite possibly by some mechanic that wiped out 50% of your health in one hit.

A little idea to toss into the mix - make damage and health work on a reverse logarithmic scale. The big nasty blows at the start of the fight when you're full of pep and bluster will knock 5%, 10% or more off your health, but the same blow when you're nearly dead only knocks off 1% or 2%. It might take 10 hits to get you down to 10%, then another 10 hits to get you down to 1%, and finally 10 more knock down drag 'em out hits to finally put you down. Down, but not defeated of course ;-)

It's all smoke an mirrors, but it'll work in the same way that players like having a 200% bonus for rested XP vs a 50% penalty for unrested XP.

Will they storm the caves?

Sure, the soldiers of your faction and the Earthen Ring might still be in trouble, but again, the zone depends too heavily on telling us that our allies are in danger without ever showing us how they are in danger. Do these naga that we need to be afraid of ever storm the caves we get our quests from? Do they send out scouting parties to see if we have become a threat yet?
-- Ardol, WoW Philosophized - “Oh dear, Vashj'ir”

Yup, I had the same sense of non-danger.

What I'd like to see is some kind of counter, showing the number of naga outside, gradually ticking over and growing. Once it hits 100 then a swarm of naga come busting in .. if you don't beat them off then quest givers and vendors die. Don't worry, they'll come back in five or so minutes. Five minutes, that'll feel like an eternity if you're trying to level.

That "number of naga" mechanic would of course also be affected by players killing naga, reducing the number. This could give rise to interesting dynamics - say you're returning to hand in some quests, and see the naga count inching close to 100 .. do you detour to kill a few first, or rush in hoping to get your hand-ins done before they attack?

Permadeath vs twinking

If you had a friendly guild that could fully twink out any new character you roll, even helping out with power-leveling and such, would that soften the blow of permadeath?

we barely got out alive

We carefully picked our way to the boss's inner sanctum, went over the plan one last time, and then unleashed hell. The fight was going well, our hero commanded the villain's attention while our cohorts pummeled him bodily and pierced him through with our sharpest arrows. Brother Ereidos kept our spirits up, and tended to our wounded too.

Where things went wrong we don't know, but suddenly our champion was mortally struck down and it was now our turn to suffer his wrath. What few survived his initial assault fled - all but bold Tomas, he gave his life in one last desperate bid to distract him with some vile taunt, but to no avail alas. The rest of us took that boon offered by Tomas, we heeded his final exhortation to flee.

Now, we were scattered and broken, and the alarm had been raised. Patrols were fervently searching for us, some of us took cover in side rooms, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse, making our way to the broken door which was our entry to this hell.

Hmm ... a scenario unlikely to occur in WoW - when the tank dies the raid will typically quickly wipe. If you run, if you can, if you're not locked in the room, he will relentlessly pursue you with incredible speed and unerring omniscience, and deadly potency. The lair will not be abuzz with patrols freshly roused. There are no games you can play with line of sight to escape capture and a sound beating. It matters no difference if you release your spirit or await the return of your comrades to render aid, there is only one state of defeat, there is no lingering incapacitation.

Side note: how about, at least, instead of being locked in the room there would appear additional enemy troops who stand back, obedient to their master, letting him deal with the interlopers (oh, the folly of the arrogant evil overlord, so used to their omnipotence they little realise the real danger facing them). If the boss goes down, the patrols are routed, fleeing in fear that our attention will now be turned to them. If any players attempt to flee then they face certain death for themselves, and may even trigger an all-in reaction (to their immediate and eternal ire of their fellow raiders).

Side note the second: just once, I'd like to see a raid boss set up such that once he's down we now have a new fight on our hands just to simply get out, or for our colleagues to rejoin us. I don't mean finish off the adds, I mean your exit is blocked by mobs. There should be ample time to recover from the boss fight, raise your dead, patch your wounds, summon reinforcements. If however you down the boss with only the tank and one dps still standing then they have an uncomfortable choice on your hands. Simply surviving the fight wouldn't be enough now.

In Naxxramas there's at least one point a little bit like this: to fight Gluth you must drop into his room, and once done there you have no way you can simply walk out. You must either hearth, port, be summoned, or fight through the rest of the construct quarter. Or die. Your comrades can join you in this predicament very easily though - you can simply walk in then jump into the room with you. So, not the same.

There's also a few cases where time is used as the limit to your freedom - both timed events for strathholme mean you don't have the luxury of releasing and walking back in, you not only have to survive each fight but must survive it with strength to spare.

Conclusion: yeah, getting bored with the reboot-video game design of raiding right now. Someone please make a more interesting game kkthxbai.

Spellborn Chronicles - one to watch

Reading the FAQ for Spellborn Chronicles, and I'm obviously intrigued...

Here's a new twist on death penalties - provide a survival bonus instead:

We intend to put a system in place which rewards good play and not dying. This system will provide benefits over time for those who play in a skilled manner and who are capable of surviving. A short period of time will provide minor benefits, while a longer period of time will provide greater benefits. In general it will be quite desirable to survive and to be cautious, as the benefits gained will be noticeable.

Five factions, sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, and a hint of environment impact:

In addition, TCoS is a world which a rich storyline, ripe with opportunities to live inside an evolving world. Players interested in making a difference will find themselves at home in the struggle to forward their High House. Those wishing to take up arms for their cause will be able to make an impact on their environment. While members of other Houses may be friendly in general, all bets are off once Houses come into conflict. This mix of cooperation and competition makes for a complex, yet exhilarating combination. No longer are you stuck with being "good" or "evil" . . . you will be a member of one of five differing factions all working together yet apart in order to bring peace to your civilization.

Windows only though, I suspect.

player driven pvp policies

The guards on the Isle of Quel'danas are severe in punishing pvp within their territory, but they could be more severe in policing: they could punish all the participants of the pvp action - both attacker and attacked. The only way to remain safe would be to not flag at all. (Incidentally, this will also get rid of the asshats that flag and stand on top of the NPCs.)

Such a determined design would be immediately decried by players: some would say it's too harsh (and should be softened), some would say it's too carebear (and made even harsher), and some would say it was fine before so why change it. There's no satisfying the mob.

Consider though if the devs put their effort into designing self-balancing systems, where players can, through their influence and reputation with the local government, determine what the security policies are for the area. Some servers might drift towards a harsh anything-goes climate, while others would reflect a prevailing carebear attitude.

If the world was big enough to support multiple towns/villages acting as alternatives to each other, rather than the token civilisation centers along a linear progression path (a la WoW), then you might well have different policies evolving on the same server. One town might drift towards a carebear crafting utopia, while another might be a lawless den of iniquity, home of the quick and the dead.

Will simply flagging bring down the the wrath of the constabulary, or even entering town with your pvp flag already on? Maybe the guards will take action if you've recently done pvp outside of the town. On the other hand, maybe the local warlord is a sadist and hands out candy and gold to everyone that does pvp .. if you can stay alive long enough to talk to the NPC, that is.

As to game mechanics, consider if PvP deaths result in two tokens dropping – one into the killer's inventory, one into the dead player's inventory – either of which could be handed in to various NPCs to influence the local policy (or just trashed if the player doesn't care). Different NPCs, and different options at the same NPC, would determine which local policy gets voted on.

If each town/village had it's own reputation faction then your vote could also be weighted by your current faction standing, which would make it difficult for an outsider guild to zerg the vote.

Would such a design make open free-for-all pvp viable, or at least tolerable?

partial cooldowns?

Here's a stupid thought to start the day - what if the cool-downs of various abilities were replaced with a chance of success mechanic. Thus, Bestial Wrath would be available with a 100% chance after 2 minutes, and a degraded chance before that time - it would have a 50% chance of working after 1 minute, and a 75% chance after 1:30. Failure would result in the cool down timer restarting, as well as the full resource cost.

How might this affect your game play?

I know I'd stop spamming my Feign Death button while stun locked, and weaving Arcane Shot into my shot rotation would be trickier. The lazy macro I use that attempts to cast Kill Command after every Steady Shot would need to be tossed out. That said, I'd definitely know there will be a few hail Mary moments where a partial chance of success is better than getting wiped - how cool would it be to get the kill shot on a boss as he's heading towards me, knowing I've only got a 10% chance of the shot even working?

more than death itself

Death is the usual penalty for failure to be victorious over your opponent. Sometimes you can escape by running away. It bothers me though that defeat has only one outcome.

Possibilities here, thinking out loud ...

Falling on the battlefield could result in a near-death state, one in which you are incapacitated but not dead quite yet. If help is at hand, then you can be "rezzed" through swift application of simple first aid, a skill available to all classes. This might encourage more grouping. To avoid players exploiting this as an in-combat rez, perhaps it requires 60 seconds of "cast time", and applies a further 60 second "woozy" debuff.

Your near-death state is on a timer though ... you will eventually succumb to your wounds. When you actually die persons with special magical skills could still rez you, or you could release and do a ghost run.

Different mobs will result in different outcomes - simpleminded non-predatory beasts would be satisfied with you being severely wounded and retreating, while predatory beasts will want to kill you (at least). More intelligent mobs would likely investigate any corpse stinking up their compound, so please have the good grace to get some distance in before falling else you’ll find them applying a coup de grâce.

why only one end to the game?

The game starts with different starting zones, based on your choice of race. Each is different and interesting, some are better than others, but eventually everyone converges into the same few zones, such as the Stranglethorn Hole. After that the game then progresses with some divergence and paths, but all eventually leading back to the same end-game series of instances, and eventually to Black Temple.

The design concept underlying all this is that all roads lead to Rome - a plethora of choices early on, narrowing as you go, and ultimately being funneled towards one end destination. This idea is all well and fine at first blush, but there are problems becoming very evident.

Problems like: the only way to add new content is by shifting the goals further down the road, resulting in an even longer leveling death-march; and then whatever was the previous end destination becomes obsoleted and henceforth completely skipped; end-game epic gear becoming obsoleted by the trash greens that drop in the expansion; and fewer and fewer choices of where to play just at the time when your character finally has lots of capabilities (spells, talents, skills, etc).

What if the game had multiple ending zones, each rivaling the other, each requiring the same massive investment of time and effort to gather necessary faction reputations, resistance gear, etc. Now, not only could you experience a totally different game by choosing a different starting zone, but you could experience a totally different game by choosing a different ending zone.

Importantly, pursuit of one particular ending zone should come at the opportunity cost of the other ending zones - the simplest means might be via different resistance sets, more complex means might involve rivalrous factions. The point being that you don't get everyone congregating in one end city/zone/instance, but instead are spread out over different places. It should still be possible to take your champion from one place and go explore the alternative end zones, but the success in that first place shouldn't result in easy success in the second place (due to gear etc). Some advantage, but not much .. the same way success in the PvP arenas doesn't result in being equally suited for success in PvE raiding (and vice versa).

This divergent-endings design could be further enhanced by introducing meaningful faction rivalries, such that it might be quicker to level an alt to take on different ending, rather than grind down the hatred your main accumulated with the faction in charge of the other end-game instance.

I can imagine entire guilds being formed around different end-games. Fellowship of the Mountain, Black Rock Raiders, Underdeep Underdogs, Southsea Buccaneers.

Each expansion of the game could introduce new end-zones and instances, but no raising of the level cap (by not raising the level cap, you don't further exacerbate the death-march grind required to reach the level cap). Introduce new talents and gear and potions and enchants which are tuned for that expansion, but all at the same level as what is already in the game.

This idea isn't without it's own problems of course: many players get precious about their one character, and after the hard struggle to topple Illidan they would want to take the same character into the content of the next expansion. Counter that by ensuring there is enough divergent paths through leveling content, with the barest crossovers and melting pots like Stranglethorn.

hero class? phfft

The WoTLK expansion for WoW will include the Death Knight class - one touted as a hero class, but on closer inspection it seems to be more hype than hero.

I'm thinking there's an opportunity here though - a way to have their cake and eat it too. The opportunity arises because each player is different in their demands: some are casuals, some are min/maxers, some are hard core, some role play, some PvP, and so on. Trying to balance every character class to satisfy all player types is difficult and frustrating .. so how about introducing a character class that appeals to the hard core types only?

Make the "hero" class more powerful than other classes of the same level, but make them pay to have that power. Pay a salty price of blood, sweat, and tears.

Make it damn heroic to have that class, and not just some past glory of a qualifying quest either. Make it damn hard to level a character of that class, make it damn hard to even maintain that class. Make the class heroic, such that the average scrub looks at your Death Knight and says two things: (1) that's one mighty fine laudable achievement you got there, and (2) you must be crazy and totally off your nut to have even tried.

Firstly, given that the class would be more powerful for it's level than others, it follows that knocking over similar level mobs would be much easier. Therefore, don't give experience for same or lower level mobs. Heck, give only minimal experience for mobs one level higher. You want to be a hero? Take on some real challenges. A Death Knight should scour the land for elites to defeat, not min/max the optimum grinding of XP/hour.

Secondly, since there isn't anything particularly heroic about just putting in lots of time to progress, institute penalties that punish the character if they fail to perform at an exceptional level of capability at all times. While other classes have it ez-mode for leveling when it comes to death penalties, Death Knights should be more hard core. Dieing too many times through incompetence should result in slower progression, perhaps even backwards progression. Heck, simply running away from a fight should result in a penalty - do or die please, you're a hero, behave like one. And just for kicks give them a bigger aggro radius.

Many will try, most will fail. Do you have what it takes to be a Hero?

the stupidity of mob IA

Over at Zen of Design, Damion comments on aggro circles vs "realism":

"It would be trivially easy to make it so that every monster within eyesight attacked you when they saw you walk by or attack their friend."

Attack on sight? Realism? Firstly, wild animals in the wild don't attack you on sight .. they ignore you, they prowl, they sneak, they stalk, they move away, they bathe lazily in the sun .. they don't behave like mobs in WoW: blatently ignore you until some binary switch flips, and then immediately and mindlessly charge ferociously to attack.

It's this binary nature of mobs which is unrealistic and unsatisfying. Sure, there are exceptions scattered about - there's a bird critter in Nagrand that "senses danger and flees", and there are some mobs inside instances that immediately take flight and bang some gong or some other non-attacking action. But these are the very rare exceptions, and would seem to be specially programmed for just those specific mobs.

Currently, in WoW, apart from some rare exceptions programmed into instances, the usual pattern of responses for mobs is the following: first, completely ignore you until you get too close, then immediately charge to attack, and keep fighting until either dead, or (for some creatures but not others) when severely wounded attempt to flee .. but then turn around and come back. Every time, every monster, again and again, and again.

Once you've twigged onto this pattern, the only other factor to work out is just how big the aggro circle is. That's it. No further thinking required. Commence grinding now.

How come more creatures don't try to run away at the first sign of danger? You take a whack at a zebra in the real world and it will flee, perhaps getting a kick in as it goes .. but you try the same on a zhevra on the barrens and it will be right there with you, attacking you back.

Not every creature needs to have a custom AI behaviour, that's a lot of work, you'd just need maybe a half dozen or so basic response patterns. Every creature of a given type would respond in the same manner, so it's deterministic and solvable. You've just got to work out how each time for that general species, and probably make safe assumptions according to whether it's a herd animal or loner, whether it's a predator or not.

How much more interesting would it be if the zhevras would immediately flee, and keep fleeing, only turning to fight to the death if you somehow get them below 50% health? If there was a quest to gather zhevras tails you'd need to solve this puzzle .. probably involving a few team mates spread out so it has nowhere to run, or maybe have most of your group waiting behind a log while one goes out and scares it towards you. Don't have a group? Try maneuvering such that the direction away from you is into some dead end gully. Maybe you could scare it off in the direction of some natural predator, and let it finish it off. Puzzle solved.

So, a half dozen response patterns .. it would help if the mobs had more than three choices available (ignore, fight, or flee). Can you imagine the mayhem and the fun if certain predatory cats would generally ignore you, would move away if you breach one radius, but attack if you got really close ... and would also sneak up close if they see you are distracted, perhaps attacking if they see you are wounded ... or running off again back to it's usual spot if they see you more than capably dispatching your current distraction. Deterministic and predictable behaviour, but typical for a predator creature, whether it be a lion in the Barrens, or a panther in Stranglethorn Vale.

So, design the mobs AI such that it has multiple possible responses, and design these responses such that they don't all commit the player to combat. Provide the possibility for the player to gently probe the encounter, to gather intelligence, to learn something about the mob before committing to combat. Doing so sets up the game play of making predictions about how the mob will react, and then testing it, all without every experiment being potentially lethal.

Some types of mobs might respond to being stalked by closing ranks. If you slowly approach them, they slowly group up, such that if you then attack you're within the aggro radius of many more. Puzzle. Solution: wait until they are scattered, then rush in to attack just one while it's away from it's friends; or try to outflank it from it's herd and then close in on it.

Some mobs might put on a show of ferociousness once you breach some outer radius, howling and charging right at you .. but then pulling up short, snarling at you, daring you to further intrude on its territory. It has a large reaction radius, one where it will defend it's territory, but it's real aggro radius is actually quite smaller.

Imagine some creature that has a very small aggro radius, but a large reaction radius. One where if it sees any of it's kind being attacked inside that reaction radius it will then also aggro. These would be a real bugger to go hunt, and be a nasty surprise the first time you sneak up on one. Maybe the key to this puzzle is to notice that such a mob has an innate curiosity to any intruders of it's reaction radius, meaning it slowly wanders over in your direction. So, let it wander over, draw it in, then once it has wandered far enough away from it's fellows that is when you spring your trap. Lower level spawns of this mob response would curiously sniff groups of intruders, but have higher level spawns be a bit smarter and only approach intruders who have no colleagues within 40 yards. For those, you'd need to have one of your party be the bait, with the others a bit further away. Puzzles with solutions.

Some randomness can be added to further spice the mix. The usual way the aggro radius mechanic works is that as soon as you breach that circle, and I mean immediately, they will respond. So here's a simple change to the mechanic .. make it a % chance of response, evaluated every tick. Stumble a bit too close and maybe it will attack, maybe it won't, but stay too close and it damn well will eventually. If you're lucky, or foolish, you might even be able to walk right up to the mob before it responds. For added realism, you could have the mob emote in some way even when it doesn't decide to attack, just as a warning or signal to the player that they actually are now within the aggro radius.

The mobs don't need to have real AI programmed in, just some variety of responses, and these responses don't need to be custom programmed for each mob but instead just a broad variety of general response patterns with some tweaking of the variables for each mob. Decide whether it's first instinct is to fight or to flee if you breach the aggro radius, add a reaction radius outside of the aggro radius, is it aggressively protective of it's territory if you breach the reaction radius, or is it cautiously curious and will stalk you, or is it skittish and will move away from you, is it a herd/social creature and will move towards others of it's own kind?