This has been delayed for so long, partly due to my reallife workload, some career path choices and new Hackapelle project where I rerolled as a hackapelle. Decided to change up the presentation a bit so it is easier to get the point across (hopefully).
This is part IV of the V part series, a collection of my observations and thoughts over on iToS. As of now Musings IV is not fully complete, I’m still writing the guild and pvp/gvg aspect (mainly due to my limited experiences in both), so I’ll just post whatever is done first on the pve side, which is already kind of long :3
- Balance in general PVE - A hollow game of numbers
Musings on iToS Balance - Part I of V - A hollow game of numbers
- Balance in player experience - Fun and Time Investment
Musings on iToS Balance - Part II of V - Fun & Time Investment
- Balance within player’s own family - the All for One Syndrome
Musings on iToS Balance - Part III of V (The All for One Syndrome)
- Balance in interplayer content - Are we islands?
- Balance in character building - Achieving the 80 class dream
Disclaimer
These are just my personal observations and opinions, do feel free to disagree, suggest and discuss XD.
[Balance in interplayer content - Are we islands?]
What is about the title about islands? Islands are land masses which are surrounded completely by a water body, meaning they aren’t connected to any connected land mass. In this context here, if a player is considered as an island, it means the player is ‘isolated’ and not connected to other players.
The community aspect is what defines MMORPGs as a genre on its own. Players are attracted to MMOs not just because of the gameplay, the game also offers opportunities to foster player to player interaction. This is what makes the genre truly unique, the game allows multiple players to play together, whether they are with or against each other in the given game situation.
Situations are modes of content in which the game presents to allow a myriad of interactions in between players, which can be divided into the following categories:
- Player(s) vs environment (PVE)
- Player vs Player (PVP)
- Large player groups vs environment (Raids, GVE)
- Large player group vs Large player group (GVG)
And interactions themselves can range from simple dialogues between players, trading between players, to performing in game actions and utilizing game mechanics to advance one another’s game experiences. MMOs generally capitalise and innovate on this area as this is their main selling point, and this is what sets the MMO genre apart from the other games. MMOs which kind of fall short in this aspect often have players prefer to do much of the game’s content solo instead of opting to be in a group.
Tree of Islands
I often like to tell my guildmates and others that ToS is just like a single player game with an over-glorified chatbox. Most of its PVE content can be done in a single player setting and players often don’t really interact much in its supposed party/group based content. With the exception of Earth Tower/Solmiki, most of the other party based contents such as Level dungeons and Missions are just silence shows of 5 players running without any interaction.
Is it because the players are shy and not willing to talk? Or is it because the current content design doesn’t require much interaction between players at all?
Interactions between players doesn’t necessarily limit to only chatting. Great games use good content design to create situations in which players will need to work together in order to advance. One example of such is to create simultaneous, concurrent mini goals in which the player group will have to divide themselves up to take on each task in order to complete the overall goal. With different tasks required, players will have to interact among themselves more in order to get the job done in the most efficient manner (finding the best player/build for a particular task).
ET has a few levels in which we can see the above in action. For example the 4th levels (4,9,14,19), an efficient strategy is to have a player to kite the mobs around while the rest chill, or if the team has a Taoist, can just throw some amulets to have an easy way out. This is good interaction design, but sadly this is only reflected in just 1 dungeon of the entire ToS game, with all the rest of the other dungeons having none of such interactions.
One thing in which we know that ET/Solmiki has strict party setup requirements to clear and having interactions which are good in ET/Solmiki isn’t viable for normal, random based party setups in which dungeons are known for. The solution to this is to, and a recurrent suggestion in this Musing Chapter:
Design content with this limitation in mind. Good designs are always done with limitations.
Suggestion: Have alternate objectives/modes of completion
So how do we design interactive content where players need not have a specific party setup? The answer is pretty simple actually, to include game elements in which players need to know each other’s position and adjust themselves. Dungeon goals need not always be whittling down the dungeon boss’s hp down with the party’s own dps.
Consider a dungeon boss which has only 5 hp but invulnerable to all attacks except an environment bomb in which players will take 10secs to set up. It will take 5 bombs to kill the boss. A player will have to get the boss’s attention and kite it around and unto the bombs other players gather and set up. This type of interaction requires no fixed party, needs the group to work together while giving the individual party members small tasks to do.
How about another boss interaction in which the boss will constantly get healed by its underlings and the only way for it to be defeated it to divide the party with one dpsing down the boss and the other doing their best not to let any of the boss’s underlings get near the boss?
Or a boss which will periodically gives a random player a poison debuff that deals no damage to the player itself but is lethal to other players around him/her? That player will have to quickly move away from the party until the debuff is cleared. Or another dungeon type in which the players have to run across the entire dungeon while clearing down walls (either dps down or require 2 separate switches on either end to open) within a set time limit? Failure to do so will result in failing the dungeon?
Just by changing the clear objectives and introducing mini-goals in general party dungeons, it creates more interactions between players.
Next is on large player groups gameplay, one of the key hinderances that is preventing players from enjoying fights that involve large player groups is the limitation of the game’s network/graphics engine. When many players cast spells and use skills at a single location, it will bog down the system to a crawl, and low FPS makes the gaming experience bad and non fulfilling.
Suggestion: Divide and Conquer
One solution to solving the low fps problem is to do up another rendering engine in which will not lag, but till that is implemented there are other methods of create fun, engaging content within the limitation of the current game engine.
If the game lags because many players are at the same location, create situations where they have to split themselves to many locations to clear the objective. Divide and conquer.
An guild raid example will be to have 5 bosses in different rooms of the map (1 in each section of demon prison for example) which needed to be killed 1 minute within each other. This splits out the load of the game engine, making the boss fight a better experience for the entire raid party. This also promotes more player interaction as it isn’t just a simple “open up all dps and kill everything”. The number of bosses and rewards will also change according to the number of player participants.
The divide and conquer strategy can also be utilized in World Bossing too. Following the 5 bosses in map example, a future world boss can split itself up to an X number of replications, and each replica boss will get a lot stronger and hit harder the closer they are to each other replica. World bossing parties will have to pull these replicas a distance away from each other in order to defeat the WB. This allows:
- Smoother fights as players are divided across areas too
- More participation from players as more replicas = more players can fight together
Space provisioned for more content … __φ(￣ー￣ )
To read about the previous sections, please visit the links listed at the beginning of the post.
To be added to Musings IV:
- Guild thoughts and suggestions
- PVP/TBL/GVG thoughts and suggestions
Musings V will have to wait (￣ ￣|||).
