Jun 27
I Think I May Be Wearing Cranky Pants
Dear Blogger,
I love, love that you have chosen to express yourself on the internet. It’s a great place, innit? It’s a lot of fun to put your voice out here and give the world access to your ‘all new’ opinions and scintillating wit. Here’s the problem, though: you’re talking nonsense. You’re, frankly, talking out of your butt. Now, when I write on my website here I freely admit to butt-talking. I’ve been doing it so long that I’m a well-practiced butt-talker.
One of the things about butt-talking is that you need to understand there are two types of criticism. The constructive kind, and the other kind. Constructive criticism takes a stand on an issues while providing alternatives, and venues for conversation. Mystic Worlds has a great example up here: WOW Crafting 3.0. Lauren takes a topic she feels passionate about, lays out a groundwork, and then moves forward with her conversation. Cameron (of Random Battle) also has a great discussion on his site on the subject of random killing. It’s a topic that irks him, but he follows through with examples of things that work, and points us in a good conversational direction. It’s all good fun, and we can have a talk about it.
Then you have the other kind of criticism, the kind that made me rewrite the start of this post about a dozen times (to make sure I’d taken off my cranky pants). Here is the specific article that got me started on this, the one that pushed me over the edge where all the others didn’t: Quest Journals are Bad.
To start with, this article has no name attached to it. I have said before that blogs (mostly) aren’t journalism, but at least a pseudonym should be the standard by now. Let me identify who is making me angry. The article itself is a picture-book example of mindless blog fodder, spewed forth from some unthinking player’s brain without a shred of consideration or thought. The article offers no concrete objections or issues to discuss, and despite having a section called ‘Moving Forward’ offers no alternatives to the current paradigm of quest journals.
Also, to be blunt, the article writer appears to have been beaten about the head as a child during a daily lead-chip-eating competition:
Back in the days of EverQuest you would have to ‘remember’ what quests you were on and what they wanted you to do, then go out and use what you were told to find the answers, items, and/or people involved in those quests. As other games entered the market and looked to make things simpler – we’ve got the quest journal. All the while they were just making the game easier and much less of challenge than they were making them fun.
Just to clarify this, dear Blogger, the author is indeed advocating a return to the ‘pick out the [word] in the sentence’ style of questing present in launch-day EverQuest. He murkily refers to this as ‘better’ somehow, before going on to bag on “World of Easycraft†and Lord of the Rings Online. I’m going to move on here, but I do want to note specifically that his dismissal of LOTRO’s questing shows that the author himself doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. While, yes, the quests are optional to read, they’re far more story-driven than most other massive games out there: something he’d have noticed if he’d bothered to follow the ideas he’s proposing in this article.
For your sake, Blogger, I don’t want to bag on this nameless hack too much, but his work is a most flagrant example of the ‘wanna-be-designer’ complex. I fully admit that I’ve probably gone there too. I deliberately put my tagline as ‘industry cheerleader’ to try not to confuse the issue, but I’m sure I’ve gotten on my huffy bike once or twice since I started writing here. Just the same, within the last few weeks it seems like everyone is second guessing years of design work, or dismissing others’ gameplay styles out of hand.
I particularly find the grousing of espoused PvE players about the problems with PvP, or the avowed non-raiders about the problems in WoW’s endgame, to be confusing. Wherefore do they get the experience to speak on these matters, I ask myself.
My apologies, dear Blogger, as I am driving to a point: The mmogblogosphere (love that word) is still growing, and what we might be seeing here are birth pangs. Folks stretching their legs and getting their bearings, finding their own writing voices while discussing the subject matter they love. For the most part I think that’s wonderful, and it’s a pleasure to be able to see quality improve overall as more people begin to populate this formerly-occupied-only-by-Sanya-and-Lum part of the internet archipelago.
That said, I’d feel it’s important to observe that throwing rocks at something just because it’s popular isn’t ‘clever’. Second-guessing an element of the Massive genre that most of us now assume to be the standard isn’t ‘innovating’. It can be both of those things … if the rock throwing and second guessing is followed up with alternatives, changes, improvements that could actually work in the real world.
So, dear Blogger, I wish a good day, and I hope that my missive has been of some help. Keep writing, and good luck.
- Michael Zenke
PS: If you think that at-launch EverQuest’s quest system was a good thing, please don’t write anything ever again. Kthnxbye.
Update: Jeezus, you’d think after two years of posting links for living I’d be able to format some html tags. Thanks Tinman.
15 comments15 Comments so far
I get 404’s on the links in this article Michael.
I think you may have missed the point in Darrens Raid article, most people were saying they want an alternative to raiding as an “end game†activity, not that raiding is bad or should be removed or something.
As Darren said himself in the comments section:
“I think thats what we’re asking Ken…another ride in the amusement park besides one that spins.
Don’t take raiding out…lets add other end-game mechanisms to cover other styles of game play. Other end-game mechanisms that are on par with raiding…cause you’re right, we can’t take away an element of the game that is attractive to other members of the MMO population.â€
Raiding is only one game play style and I think Darren is asking where are the other play styles content in the end game?
Seems like a reasonable thing to ask for IMHO.
Invalid security code. Press your browsers back button and try again.Invalid security code. Press your browsers back button and try again.
You say, ‘What word?’
You say, ‘Hail, Michael Zenke’
You say, ‘word’
You say, ‘word?’
You say, ‘I will pick out the word in the sentence’
You say, ‘Hail, Michael Zenke’
You say, ‘give word’
You accidentally press ‘A’, without having pressed Enter to open the chatbar first.
Micheal Zenke hits you for 653 point of damage!
You have died.
LOADING, PLEASE WAIT…
You now are Level 28, again!
Hoooo, yes. Happy days. Literally minutes of entertainment. The really fun ones where those where the Quest Designer had forgotten to put any [words] in at all. You basically had to open the dictionary at A and work your way through.
Anyway, the overall point is well made – if you’re going to pick holes in something, it’s only polite to offer what you consider to be an alternative!
Hemlock: Man, I kick ass. 653 points of damage. :) As you say sir, it’s awesome that they care enough to write, but … perhaps a bit more than that is required.
Tinman: I remember there being a bunch of bitching about PvP last month, and I went hunting around in my RSS feeds for those to no avail. Those posts would probably have made my point better. The bottom line, I think, is that the thousands of people still happily playing WoW point to the game (as it exists right now) being plenty ‘good enough’. I love the idea of going in new ideas, but I find it hard to discount mechanics from WoW, EQ, DAoC, etc, so easily … they’ve got proven track records.
This is all in abstract, of course. If I were making a game, I’d want dozens of things to do at the endgame level. Yet another reason I’m looking forward to WAR. :)
Yep, you’re wearing the cranky pants. But that’s ok, that’s part of what blogs are for.
To clarify, it’s not throwing rocks at something because it’s clever. It’s throwing rocks at something because, while it may work out just beautifully for some, or most, or perhaps nearly all, it’s not working for the blogger-in-question. They may be just expressing frustration, they may be trying to figure out why, they may be offering what they think would be a better solution, they may be reminiscing about something they enjoyed in the past. They are offering a personal opinion.
Now, any particular blogger-in-question may be the only sentient (?) entity in the entire freaking Universe that feels that way. Quite possible, in some cases. However, does that truly render it any less valid as a _personal_ opinion?
And frankly, isn’t it better to know that at least someone feels that way, and for them to have a way to express that view, no matter how “out there” it may seem, instead of having them sitting in a dark isolated cave, muttering deprecations while polishing their Uzi collection or attack-training their horde of vorpal bunnies? (Not that I know anyone like that. Really. :-) )
Hey Mike,
Just to reiterate what I was getting to (…yet again..) in those articles. I was not dismissing current gameplay mechanics…only looking for new ones.
I for one don’t understand how people can jump to the conclusion of “he wants to get rid of everything!!!” when I ask, “are there better/other ways of doing it.” Boggles my mind really. Don’t worry, lots thought that’s what I was going for.
D
I appreciate being cranky about bad blogging, particularly when it was obviously written to fulfill some deadline-driven content need, to make some place a “relevant” destination to be visited daily, to support eyeballs-to-advertising revenue models.
THAT makes me cranky.
Anywho, on the endgame thing, DIKU sorta falls flat on this in trying to offer anything BUT Raiding (in a category which I would include both WoW Arenas and BGs as well. Much better adaptive AI, but fundamentally about the same end goal).
I don’t think a diku could suddenly, at the level cap, offer house purchasing, fun and relevant crafting, exploration points, titles and all that fun stuff. All of that really wants to be delivered for ALL levels, and of course are always second-order importance far behind the core goal of continually giving players something to strive for.
Raids are no different from the level 1- game except that you are repeating content endlessly and the rewards more spread out. They are not an “endgame” per se. They are merely “more of the same game”. They alienate the majority of players by what makes them different though.
I’d like to see a better blend between virtual lifestyle games and dikus so that people can EXIST in the same world WITHOUT having to play the exact same game (which WoW is to everyone).
Michael: I think I felt more personally involved as I had a comment on Darrens page and I didn’t feel he was “dismissing others’ gameplay styles out of hand.”, but was asking “Wheres the rest of it”? end game content wise.
Darren clarified that down in the comments (though it was hard to spot in amongst Kendricks…er…”rebuttal storm”…it’s ok Ken, we get it, you love raiding :o)).
I think I get where your coming from too, non-constructive criticism is a waste of everyone’s time (though qa good rant can be fun to read sometimes :)). Yes, there are a metric butt load of people playing WoW, and more than likely having the time of their MMO-life. But whats gonna happen when they all become “jaded” gamers like us? :o)
And I agree whole heartedly on War :)
Darniaq: Thanks! What for?? You just helped solidify something thats been on my mind lately.
“Raids are no different from the level 1 – game”.
Thats very true, but in a way it isn’t as well. The difference I can see is that raiding is “epic” scale….lets call it “epic grouping”.
I think this is why I start to get that “done” feeling in a lot of MMOG’s “end game”. I had buckets of fun doing the mage epic weapon quest in EQ (mostly), but I was disappointed that their weren’t other “epic” quests for more mage gear. I’m not big on raiding myself (I’m not that into large fleet battles in EVE either really), so once I’d done the single epic quest on offer, I pretty much quit EQ (though I did go back after some expansions).
MMOG companies end up focusing on what is just one facet of the pre-end game, and make that pretty well exclusive as “the thing to do” in the end game. Wheres the “epic questing”, the “epic exploring”, “epic crafting, “epic everything else”?
The company that “fixes” that will have a hit that’s bigger than WoW on their hands IMHO…
I would like to make some comments on your article about my article. While my site is not fully finished in design, and once it is finished it would have been easier to see that away from the index page, this was a ‘Thinking’ article, not something I put in to the ‘design’ category, you would have seen this as more of ‘my thoughts’. Also with the site not finished in the layout I didn’t get the ‘name’ of the author put in to the theme just yet as I have a lot more work to do on the layout (most likely to look like http://mmo360.com/ ) So your points about being nameless are understood and understandable as I normally have that on there. Being someone who runs a Wordpress Blog, I would think you would know about the ‘about’ page, which on my site as at the top just as your is.
I would like to clear up some other points. I never said that EverQuest pick the [word] in dialog was a better system, just that I felt more apart or connected to the world. While I am far from an expert at writing and this article as you can see has been the last written in a while now, as I work on new theme to better display in what category this article is written. I will also place a nice pretty disclaimer about what these categories mean to the articles in them.
You make some key points in your own article, but I think you missed the whole point of the article, namely that was a thinking article, more of a journal entry for future refernce of my thoughts and to expand upon later with I write articles in the ‘design’ topic. I will be the first to admit, I have not shipped at least one game, I have not graduated from a game design school, and I have not done this or that. But I’ve been playing games since the TSR-80, Atari, Commodore 64 days, up through the NES, Apple IIe, 286, 368, 486DX days.
I do think that I have a pretty good grasp on what makes a game fun and enjoyable to me, and as I can see you feel the opposite as I do in many regards. I don’t feel we need to make all the games the same. Just as your previous mention on the Raid Articles, there can be a lot of misunderstandings and I know the condition of my site will not help matter there at this point, hence why the work on a better theme and layout, hopefully it will help many out who visit the site.
In closing, I also never said that Lord of the Rings Online quest system was bad, I just pointed out that it is the same as the others people have seen and played with, that not to expect anything new there. Yes I didn’t mention the ‘story’ feel to them, but that was not the point of the article for me, it was how I felt about the Quest Journal and its side effects on the game. Again this was in a thinking category, it is not being written as law (only Raph Koster writes those). Hopefully after the new them is introduced, I can being to work on some of the design ideals I have and hope to see your opinion on them.
I think Turbine proved that there’s still enough room in this genre to iterate EQ1 and be successful. WoW did it really well and have the millions to prove it. But that doesn’t mean new DIKUs can’t come along. They just better have a strong brand :)
So in the context of the experience one has at the time, yea, being on a Raid is very different than soloing level 1 wolves in Northshire Abbey.
However, where I draw the parallel through the motivation. What are you doing on a Raid? You’re there to get something for yourself with a bunch of other people. By extension you’re helping other people get stuff for themselves that’ll eventually help YOU get your own stuff. In this regard, Raiding is the same as level 1: you are advancing for the sake of advancing, sometimes for your own end, sometimes to help others to help you.
Or, advancement for the sake of advancement. This is not a dig at all on the games. They’re successful enough to continue using this model. But it does alienate the millions of people that COULD be playing these games but which instead are not. I’m a big proponent of soloable endgame, as long as expectations are managed.
People just need to realize that you don’t need the best endest-game Raid stuff if you’re only going to solo at the level cap. And they shouldn’t expect it.
The only reason why people don’t think WoW has been beat is because they’re looking only at one game mechanic and trying to compare everything based on monthly subscriptions. There’s plenty of online experiences far larger than WoW. They’re just not DIKU collecting a monthly fee :)
The EverQuest questing system was wonderful. At launch. What people don’t seem to realize is that genres evolve. MMOs have evolved beyond the MUD in a number of ways. Typing in the quest text was wonderfully awesome back then, but now it would simply be a pain in the ass because times have changed and we have seen a better way.
I could go on to mention… screw it, I will. At some point I’m sure some games will start using natural language AI and all that crazy stuff. Players will be able to hold pseudo-conversations with NPCs and that’s how they’ll get quests. I’m going to go ahead and say that it will be completely sweet when that happens, but I’ll be on the bandwagon with most other people when they say, “that is totally cool for about an hour, then I just want my effing ‘Accept’ button back, thanks.â€
Ryan,
When I first played EQ, I freaking loved it! :D
I hope I never implied otherwise. At the time, in pretty much every way, I liked EQ better than the alternatives. Never really got into AC, so it’s always been my ‘grandpa’ MMOG.
That said, I think that offerings like CoH, WoW, EQ2, etc, have come a long way from those days. Even EQLive’s offerings are head and shoulders above what it launched with. I think Dungeons of Norrath’s content is terrific, on that count. Apologies if I implied otherwise.
As to your point, yeah, Natural language AI would be awesome for about ten minutes. I’m looking forward to having a ‘real’ conversation with an NPC, but I kinda hope never to do that in a MMOG.
Someday me and Alyx Vance are going to sit down for a conversation, though. My wife has ok’d Alyx as one of those extraordinary cases where it’s cool to see other people. She has the same thing with Colin Firth, and I find it much more likely Alyx and I will go on a date someday. :)
@Ryan:
Bleh. That’s my whole problem with the status quo. What on Earth is the point of a quest where you don’t care enough about the quest itself to bother interacting with the NPC? The Fellowship of the Ring wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting if they had said, “Yeah, yeah, forged in the fires of mount whatever– I don’t care. Give me that ring, tell me where to throw it, and show me what you’ll give me so I can decide if it’s worth my time.”
That to me says that our quests are far too common.
The natural language thing might be fun to play with, and I agree it’ll happen with the way voice is getting into games these days (EVE, DDO, et al), but I’m dreading the first time an EVE NPC tells me “I’m afraid I can’t do that Tin”…
I sure hope whomever does it does NOT use it for “kill†quests (see below) and other trivial quests, but uses it for the major storyline type quests.
@Cameron
I think a part of the problem there is the “Kill 10 rats†type quests are way too common. Sure they may have a story, but who really cares, most folks consider them a “throw away†type time filler and do them mostly for the XP boost.
This is one area I think Turbine does an excellent job in. They let you know what the “important†story line quests are and tend to take more notice of them.
Warhammer also looks like changing things around a little with “kill†quests, you’ll kill “stuff†and when you run into an NPC that wanted the “stuff†dead he’ll reward you without you having to get a quest for it to start things off. I expect that will mean people will notice “real†quests a lot more and be willing to read what it’s about.
I think when we look at the mmoblogosphere as a whole it represents the view of many bloggers; that they are simply tired of the same old thing. Its not dismissing years of innovation, on the contrary its throwing out a general message to “The Devs” that a segment of us are ready for something new, something deeper, something mmo3rdgen (hah!) and we are mmomature enough to handle it.
Of course none of that is true, very few people pony up when something really new comes along ( Seed anyone??? Hullo….? Wish…who said that???). No; the fact of the matter is that people love the tried and true, the commonality, the comfortable, the, I can measure my advancement by tiers, quest logs, and how many hit points I have.
The good thing that will eventually evolve out of all of this is what I hope will be a niche-if-ication of MMOs, things like Multiverse, SOEs Station Access, and very likely Kosters Ariea will contribute to this, the idea of personal or smaller gamespaces where people can hop into and out of as they so choose.
Thats where were heading and the general noise of the mmoblogosphere seems to indicate that thats the right direction.
-Gooney