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Why niche games are better (maybe)
nimloh
Member Posts: 177 Bounty Hunter
Over the past year or so my gaming habits have changed. Ten years ago I would've tried to play everything in sight since it all interested me (at least most rpgs). Now, for many reasons, my time is more limited and I can't do that anymore.
The consequence of this is that I must pick and choose more selectively, favoring games I think will ultimately be the most satisfying, and passing on others even if they have their merits.
So lately I've done a lot of thinking about game design and the gaming industry--two things I know nothing about except from what I've absorbed as a consumer. I want to hear other gamers thoughts on this so I'm airing mine here.
Games should be designed with niche appeal
Currently MMOs are primarily made with broad appeal attempting to be all things to all people. However, I think that developers will eventually shift to creating niche games instead. Here are some reasons why:
1. It's costs less to develop a niche MMO because one is developing less game systems. Traditional "AAA" MMOs have huge development costs because they have to create robust systems for everything deemed standard in an MMO.
2. Too much competition as shifted the payment models from subscriptions to f2p. The f2p model synergizes well with a niche based game. Less is asked of the player financially. Less is presented to a player initially to reduce dev costs. What is presented are the niche concepts.
3. Too much competition requires that games do more to distinguish itself from others. One way to do that is to build the game around a special niche and do that better then the competition, even if you don't do everything.
4. Developing a game with fewer design goals will, all things being equal, yield higher quality results. This is something I want to develop next.
Niche games produce higher quality
When one examines engineering principles, one finds that designs are all optimized with respect to what is called a "performance criterion." Optimization does not have meaning except in light of some target goal. Otherwise, a design is only nominal--a kind of "acceptable" design but not optimal.
The problem is that best solution with respect to some goal will not be the best solution with respect to some other goal. You can try to optimize a design for multiple goals, but each individual goal would not be optimal. This principle is a part of any design including MMO design.
Now I'm going to drop the hammer. PvP and PvE for a genuine MMORPG have design goals that are inconsistent with each other. (PvP here means a robust competitive PvP system offering leveling, gold, gear, etc. By PvE I really mean all of the traditional aspect of an "rpg" related to diverse characters immersed in a factional world). Maximizing one of these areas can only come at expense of the other. So long as the multiple design goals remain tethered together, both will suffer in quality as a result.
Lets take an example. The Bard is a class that typically is not thought of a great fighter with melee weapons. If you want competent melee you ask the fighter, rogue, monk, ranger, etc. Nor is the bard an exceptional spell caster. They cast less spells, a constrained selection, heavy on enchantment / illusions that are not widely used, and so forth. Many pen and papers players however have a soft spot for the bard in part because of the great "flavor" of the class.
Lets also say that the D&D Bard shines within a group setting. The bard tends to have good buffs for allies, some debuffs of enemies, and some other mostly non-combat related abilities. The bards true value is making everyone else in the group better but is generally weaker alone.
Flavor however means little to the devoted competitive PvPer. PvPers will require that the class be viable in PvP by making it a balanced as possible for 1v1 pvp. It may not be possible to truly balance the classes but devs need to get close. This is important because the nature of competition requires the same rules and that everything be "equal". This means that skill is what is paramount and competitive PvPers want pvp to be a skillful activity.
The typical D&D bard described above is not suitable for pvp in competitive settings. It will be the class that is deemed suboptimal and not played (it's easy to how this would be the case). But it is great for group PvE. Suppose you are someone who really likes the bard concept. You understand its limitations and accept it. You love the flavor and what it does in a group and want to play it. Why shouldn't you.
Well if a robust pvp system is in place you can't. The bard would need to balanced with everyone meaning it gets more dps instead just being a group buffer/debuffer. In group PvE however, you can have a weak dps class be fully valuable. The design goals of pvp and pve in this case are at odds with each other. Something has to give.
I've said enough for now. I'm tired and need sleep. I sort of just belched out some of the things I've been thinking about concerning games. I don't think it's organized particularly well but I think you get the gist.
The consequence of this is that I must pick and choose more selectively, favoring games I think will ultimately be the most satisfying, and passing on others even if they have their merits.
So lately I've done a lot of thinking about game design and the gaming industry--two things I know nothing about except from what I've absorbed as a consumer. I want to hear other gamers thoughts on this so I'm airing mine here.
Games should be designed with niche appeal
Currently MMOs are primarily made with broad appeal attempting to be all things to all people. However, I think that developers will eventually shift to creating niche games instead. Here are some reasons why:
1. It's costs less to develop a niche MMO because one is developing less game systems. Traditional "AAA" MMOs have huge development costs because they have to create robust systems for everything deemed standard in an MMO.
2. Too much competition as shifted the payment models from subscriptions to f2p. The f2p model synergizes well with a niche based game. Less is asked of the player financially. Less is presented to a player initially to reduce dev costs. What is presented are the niche concepts.
3. Too much competition requires that games do more to distinguish itself from others. One way to do that is to build the game around a special niche and do that better then the competition, even if you don't do everything.
4. Developing a game with fewer design goals will, all things being equal, yield higher quality results. This is something I want to develop next.
Niche games produce higher quality
When one examines engineering principles, one finds that designs are all optimized with respect to what is called a "performance criterion." Optimization does not have meaning except in light of some target goal. Otherwise, a design is only nominal--a kind of "acceptable" design but not optimal.
The problem is that best solution with respect to some goal will not be the best solution with respect to some other goal. You can try to optimize a design for multiple goals, but each individual goal would not be optimal. This principle is a part of any design including MMO design.
Now I'm going to drop the hammer. PvP and PvE for a genuine MMORPG have design goals that are inconsistent with each other. (PvP here means a robust competitive PvP system offering leveling, gold, gear, etc. By PvE I really mean all of the traditional aspect of an "rpg" related to diverse characters immersed in a factional world). Maximizing one of these areas can only come at expense of the other. So long as the multiple design goals remain tethered together, both will suffer in quality as a result.
Lets take an example. The Bard is a class that typically is not thought of a great fighter with melee weapons. If you want competent melee you ask the fighter, rogue, monk, ranger, etc. Nor is the bard an exceptional spell caster. They cast less spells, a constrained selection, heavy on enchantment / illusions that are not widely used, and so forth. Many pen and papers players however have a soft spot for the bard in part because of the great "flavor" of the class.
Lets also say that the D&D Bard shines within a group setting. The bard tends to have good buffs for allies, some debuffs of enemies, and some other mostly non-combat related abilities. The bards true value is making everyone else in the group better but is generally weaker alone.
Flavor however means little to the devoted competitive PvPer. PvPers will require that the class be viable in PvP by making it a balanced as possible for 1v1 pvp. It may not be possible to truly balance the classes but devs need to get close. This is important because the nature of competition requires the same rules and that everything be "equal". This means that skill is what is paramount and competitive PvPers want pvp to be a skillful activity.
The typical D&D bard described above is not suitable for pvp in competitive settings. It will be the class that is deemed suboptimal and not played (it's easy to how this would be the case). But it is great for group PvE. Suppose you are someone who really likes the bard concept. You understand its limitations and accept it. You love the flavor and what it does in a group and want to play it. Why shouldn't you.
Well if a robust pvp system is in place you can't. The bard would need to balanced with everyone meaning it gets more dps instead just being a group buffer/debuffer. In group PvE however, you can have a weak dps class be fully valuable. The design goals of pvp and pve in this case are at odds with each other. Something has to give.
I've said enough for now. I'm tired and need sleep. I sort of just belched out some of the things I've been thinking about concerning games. I don't think it's organized particularly well but I think you get the gist.
Post edited by nimloh on
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Comments
My personal feeling is that PvP is fine as long as you don't try and balance the classes against each other. If the player is a magic user and he wishes to challenge a fighter in a duel, then he needs to prepare his character in order to overcome his m?l?e weaknesses, rather than the producers making his spells weaker and his m?l?e abilities better so that he more resembles a spell-sword rather than a true mage. The companies should make true distinguishable classes and let the players figure out how make them competitive in PvP. If the player needs to be smart enough to know what his character needs to survive.
Of course in a game that is mainly PvE, PvP should be minimal. It should be in a setting that makes sense to the game. For instance the aforementioned mage is attacking the fighter because the fighter has joined the army that is attempting to take the city, and the mage is attempting to defend the city. They should meet there on the battlefield, with the reset of the battle taking place around them. I always felt that "arena" PvP were some what of a gimmick unless it was at a class guild house and it was identical classes battling in a tournament environment or as a practise exercise to learn new abilities.
One thing I always hated in MMO's is not feeling that I mattered (You just Killed a lich? Big deal so has twelve million other people!) when you are playing a niche title that is far less a problem.
I am really glad that Cryptic is not launching with PVP, while it's important to have it from a business standpoint, they have seen how it effects the PVE game, delaying it's implementation gives me hope they have figured something out.
I miss the days when we played and enjoyed what the devs came up with and not what we demand them to do... Now if a dev decided to take a game a certain direction there is so much outcry, it makes a dev think twice, and restrained out of fear the community or person will not buy the product...
The others are the hardcore competitive pvpers that have grown over the years. They want a highly developed pvp system focusing on facilitating competitive play that rewards them with gold and gear for the way they want to play the game.
Neither side is right or wrong. They're just players with different interests and expectations. And certainly you got people who love both.
The problem is that design goals for each concept are generally not complementary. The Bard example tried to highlight that. Having "combat mechanics" tied to multiple design goals will yield sub-optimal results for all the different goals.
The way I'd like to see PvP work in Neverwinter is simply to make it visceral and organic. I'd put some "RvR lakes" in the game (perhaps in Neverwinter itself which looks huge). When one crosses into the lake they become flagged for PvP. There will be objectives inside that factions will fight over. Perhaps a secret warehouse which stores value material items (crafting, artifact, magic goods, valuable stuff. etc). Domination of the control points yields the faction a global XP boost, vendor discounts, minor buffs, etc. One can earn some, gold, XP, mats, even valuable items for participating--it provides some incentive to engaging in PvP.
But it needs to remain naturally flowing out of the rest of the game. It should not become a big parallel system full of rankings and way to gear up completely and level completely though PvP alone. If that happens, it turns into a competitive system that must be balanced and equalized, and requires the game to be designed around it.
Ah! But what if PvP was such that only rogues fought rogues, clerics vs. clerics, etc? Then it really focuses on who is the best at their class, rather than which class dominates PvP. Personally, I'd think this would be a better measure of skill anyway (at least of how to play your class- there's a difference between being skilled at playing alone and skilled at playing with groups (and not everyone is good at both)).
As for player demands... people will always complain. Having worked in a community position before, I half believe that some people complain because actually LIKING something is seen as uncool. Add to that the fact that not all of your player base actually posts on the forums, and you've got a difficult time actually knowing what the majority of people want. In the case of Neverwinter though, I think a large number of the people working on the game play D&D- this gives them a players insight into what is good and what is lame.
If PVP wasonly limited like that, then imho it would be pretty boring... Not that I ever really liked PVP at all, but if a dev is gonna include them in their game they might as well go the extra mile and make it not entirely tasteless...
The best I've seen so far regarding PVP balance is adopting a sort of more complex rock-paper-scissors relation between different classes. Like, in Forsaken World, protectors are strong against assasins, while bards are superior against protectors, while vampires have an easy time against bards, and assasins easily beat vampires... in the end, the game ends up being fairly balanced for what it's trying to do, ie group PVP. Yeah, that means that competitive 1v1 is pretty much impossible to include, except if they only put same class vs same class like you suggested, but you can't have your cake and eat it I guess...
Don't like PvP much too, but what if it were some kind of challenge PvP. I mean, so far the PvP I' ve seen is combat, but what if the 1 on 1 PvP for rogues would be to assasinate a randomly chosen from presets target NPC, in a randomly generated preset environment that would be the same for both PvPers? Or 2 identical targets in 2 identical instances (still randomly chosen so it's not always the same scenario)? Or Bards musical showdown? Or wizards a mgic show or duel? And fighters, well, arena? Wouldn't be too boring like that.
Well, idk... for half the classes it will ultimately be a 1v1 fight anyway, and as for the rogues... competing to assasinate certain targets just makes no sense imo...
I'll never understand the desire to PvP in a Role-playing game though, especially something like a Dungeons & Dragons title. There are plenty of PvP orientated Fantasy MMOs to choose from and I loathe how games end up changing PvE because of the PvP whine (and vice versa in those pvp orientated games). In Dungeons & Dragons, the emphasis should always be on Adventurers versus Campaign, or PvE in a video game - with loads of roleplay and lore in fun and exciting ways. Any PvP that I would imagine to take place in a D&D Campaign would be those very rare occasions -- you know what I'm talking about -- which Duels should suffice for.
I'm sure that whatever form of PvP does come, as long as it is not forced pvp, I doubt that it will matter very much to those who do not PvP. Boil it all down, I just hope the PvP system - and all that it entails, doesn't serve to divide the Communities away from the core fundamentals of the essence that is "Dungeons & Dragons."
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