When Good Isn't Enough

Archive of the Sojourn3 General Discussion Forum.
Ragorn
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When Good Isn\'t Enough

Postby Ragorn » Wed Aug 22, 2001 1:44 am

I'm gonna post this here because it's relevant. Be warned, this is a RagornPost(tm), with all the usual length and rambling.

This year's hot video game genre is the Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOGs). A MMOG is a game whose client software you buy or download with the intent of connecting to a remote server to play. Sojourn is a MMOG. So is Everquest, and the plethora of knockoffs. Battle.net is a MMOG server.

One of the best features of a MMOG is the ability for the designers to issue patches in real time, which users can download instantly and use. In the past, if you found a bug or imbalance in a game like Civilization or Doom you pretty much just accepted it and moved on. The WWW allowed game manufacturers to post patches online, but finding and retrieving the patches took effort. There was also no feasible way for the common gamer to give feedback on the game to the designer. In essence, we played our games the way they were and just sort of accepted the small imbalances and bugs as part of the game. Now and then we found a v1.1 patch that fixed some of the crash bugs or major issues.

Enter 2001.

Gaming has taken on a whole new meaning. If you purchase a game like Everquest or Diablo 2 and find something you don't like about it, you can access the manufacturer's website and write some feedback about it. The next time a patch is released, your issue may be addressed. Unfortunately, we all know how that simple concept usually works out. A large percentage of the feedback usually turns into whining to the company about their game. Forums like this one often turn into a bitch fest about which class dserves an upgrade first, or why such-and-such a skill is too powerful.

When you let the common gamer believe he can influence balance changes in a game, he can only offer suggestions based on his limited experience with the game. In a game like Sojourn or Diablo, very few players understand the full complexity of balancing all classes and skills against each other. So players make suggestions based on their limited experience, which the game designers see and judge to be unrealistic. The new patch comes out, Johnny Gamer X sees his changes did not get implemented, and he gets disillusioned with the designers. His next feedback post is likely to be negative, sometimes accusing the designers of being unfair or not listening to the players. Multiply this situation by thousands upon thousands of gamers, and you see where the gaming community stands.

The paradox of today's gaming industry is, the more input you give players into the design of your game, the LESS they will like the end result. Look at www.battle.net. Starcraft was released in 1996, five years ago. In the past, no game company would actively support a game released that long ago. But Blizzard promised a new v1.08 patch in November of 2000. It didn't come on time. Months went by and the Starcraft forum whipped itself into an anti-Blizzard, frenzy. One out of three posts were from gamers who threatened to stop buying Blizzard products. Another one out of three were people posting suggestions about what the patch should contain (with all the usual short-sightedness). Finally, 8 months overdue, the patch was released. It fixed a lot of major and minor issues, added new functionality to the game, and essentially changed the way multi-player strategy worked by making many common strategies more or less effective. A flood of "it's about time" messages were written. Two days later, the "What I Think Should Be In 1.09" posts began.

I want to bring up Everquest for a minute. I've made one observation about the EQ community as a whole:

They despise Verant.

Never in my life have I seen fans of a game loathe the company that produced the game with such intensity. Verant finally removed Whineplay (the best name for a feedback board ever) because it was filling up with too much negativity. There was no feedback anymore, only threats, demands, and insults. Who wants to publish a game when the very gaming community you serve hates your guts? There are very prominent websites designed solely to mock and cheapen Verant and the game they've created (www.lumthemad.net is probably the most popular). How fair is this? Not very. No one game can satisfy all the various quirks and wants of an entire gaming community. It's unfortunate that the companies who try the hardest often end up looking the worst.

Games like Everquest, Diablo 2, and even Sojourn smashed gaming conventions when they were released (and still do!). Ten years ago, the gaming community was in an uproar that Doom 2 allowed you to CALL YOUR FRIEND AND PLAY TWO PLAYER!!! Now we have MMOGs where connection stability, frame rate, and even game balance are taken for granted or expected to be flawless. It's a shame that some people can't appreciate what's given to them without wanting an extra inch.

To wrap up, apply all of this to Sojourn for a minute. Some of the classes are unfinished, and have been so for a long time. There are some bugs, and some areas which don't work properly. But we still have 50,000 some odd rooms of working zones and hundreds of functional spells and skills for our use. It sort of saddens me to see people come on here and demand to know when a class (Elementalists) or skill (ranged combat) will be implemented. The people who design games like this one are on the cutting edge of both gaming and customer service. Seriously, cut them a break now and again. No game is perfect, and sometimes GOOD is good enough.

This post was inspired by the recent Diablo 2 realms downtime. They took all the realms offline to fix a major character-deletion bug that was ruining accounts. In the last six hours, the forum has exploded with "bliz sux" sentiment. And so I got to thinking.

- Ragorn

[This message has been edited by Ragorn (edited 08-21-2001).]
Dinggle
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Postby Dinggle » Wed Aug 22, 2001 2:21 am

Well done, Ragorn. Image

I agree with what you said. remember that game i think int was battlecruiser 3000ad. i worked in video game retail at that time and we had folks waiting for years for it. it was released and was so riddled with bugs that most, nearly every copy, came back the next morning.

everquest was full of bugs when it was first released, and it's been amazing to see how often games like everquest and diablo are constantly being updated.

however i dont think we can compare everquest with sojourn. the playerbase of sojourn is far more mature and a lot of us have been around 5 or more years. rarely is a bug intentionally abused (rarely is there an abusable bug that can destabilize the game) and we all police ourselves pretty damned well.

everquest is nothing like this. the staff spends most of it's time finding new ways to stop abuse of a rather outdated game engine by today's standards (game is almost 2 years old). the players range from 8 year olds to 50 year olds who have no concept of how such a game is supposed to work. the main people who bitch and whine are those heavily into console type games, not even into RPG's really, and unfortunately this is the type of crowd that everquest caters to.

sojourn will never stoop to that level, never will bitchey, whiney, clueless players rule the roost here and if they start to dominate i fully expect our staff to butt in and slap them down!

our playerbase is smaller, our staff is superior, and our code is unmatched. much of everquest looks, smells and tastes like sojourn mayhap because an old player of ours is on the design team. why fix what ain't broke, right?

the forums can be a blessing and a hinderance. i think they are a great way for the imms to selectively rummage t hrough feedback instead of being inundated with emails and petitions by noobs and video gamers who believe they should be able to solo the entire game!

ok enough ranting. sojourn is the best game out there and it dont even have pictures!
Lolok Frozencrow
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Postby Lolok Frozencrow » Wed Aug 22, 2001 3:15 am

My wife and friends always ask me why I play a text based game when there are so many other games like Diablo and Everquest, I always answer with " The pictures sojourn puts into my head are impossible to replicate" and I belive this fully.

I always imagined sojourn as a book I was reading. This is why I always try to be on my best behavior while I am visiting sojourn. I want this to be something that I can always look forward to.

To complain about something not done or something that is in the process of being upgraded is almost like flipping pages in a book to see the ending without enjoying the anticipation of what might be coming. Kind of like when I was a kid at Christmas the thought of what I might get was always more exciting then getting it.

L ImageL ImageK aka oromon

ps. excellent post Ragorn , like always .
Gindipple
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Postby Gindipple » Wed Aug 22, 2001 6:53 am

Nice post Ragorn!

Long live the free muds.


------------------
Gindipple (Gnome) stands here.
Malacar
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Postby Malacar » Wed Aug 22, 2001 2:51 pm

Never thought I'd say this, but nice post, Ragorn.

Though one thing to add... I played Everquest for about 2 years-ish. I got a few characters to level 50+.

Now... At the risk of sounding like the masses. I detested, and still detest, Verant. They didn't listen to people, and when they did, all they did was brutal heavy-handed tactics. Banning, deletions, etc.

They had a PR guy that -loved- to bash the hell out of people, or simply not respond. Granted, you will -always- have whiners, losers, complainers. But when you have 200+ posts in a single thread about the plight of bards in EQ... And they just ignore it.. Well, it doesn't do a lot for the game as a whole.

My rancor has settled down now that I don't play. But I can absolutely say one thing:

I will never play a game Verant touches again. Unfortunately this includes the upcoming Star Wars MMORPG. I love Star Wars, but not at the risk of the headache Verant gave me.
Ragorn
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Postby Ragorn » Wed Aug 22, 2001 3:02 pm

It's really not a big surprise to me that Verant chooses to ban first and ask questions later.

Seriously, the response I've seen online to the new Everquest RP server (something Zek?) has been unanimously negative. The guild kiddies are indignant that Verant would even THINK of starting a new server when there are "obviously so many more pressing problems with the game." I've seen more posts telling Verant what they SHOULD be doing with their time than posts actually discussing the new rules. When people aren't being completely self-serving about it, they're talking about how impossible a language-driven racewar mud would be to play (Duris anyone?). The attitude on Lum the Mad concerning the RP server has been "Nobody roleplays in online games, so what you're doing is a terrible idea. Here is what you SHOULD fix instead."

I think this is the best idea in MMOGs... well, ever. Such ingratitude.

- Ragorn
Mplor
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Postby Mplor » Wed Aug 22, 2001 7:55 pm

Very nice post, Ragorn.

I play EQ and Sojourn. I have no personal problem with Verant, and I've seen and done alot over a couple years. The game has become less fun for me because of high-end balance problems and poor customer service, but eventually you get tired of almost every game. Maybe VI makes changes down the road and it becomes more fun for me, or maybe they dont and I find some other way to spend my time and money. I've found that the people who become emotional about the game and spew venom all over the boards are not the sort of people I want to play with in-game anyway, and I often wish they'd go find something they actually enjoy doing rather than act in ways that so obviously expose their severe character flaws to the masses.

Mp
Treladian
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Postby Treladian » Wed Aug 22, 2001 11:41 pm

The ability of some players to whine sometimes really does amaze me. I remember spending lots of time on the Interplay message boards after the release of Fallout 2. While I certainly could understand the frustration at the buggy release, some of the behavior of behavior was just simply appalling. Especially since from my own experience with the game, it was certainly possible to avoid many of the bugs (or all of them actually on my initial play through). Most people on the board didn't qutie seem to understand that. One likened those of us that weren't ripping Interplay for the bugs to people undergoing the Helsinki syndrome, where hostages started to sympathize with terrorists or something like that. I've seen similar things on other boards since then. While I can certainly understand calmly presented complaints, impatient ones and flames get to me. Game developers really do take a lot of abuse.

Sojourn is different from most games though. The player base is smaller and we know that the staff actually will take constructive suggestions into consideration. So we have less outright whining and a greater proportion of constructive ideas (although, as Rags said, most players don't quite have a grasp on the delicate art of game balance). Unfortunately, sometimes the line between the two seems to blur in the eyes of some people so we get accusations of whining and we all know where that goes. Personally, I'm very patient about the ranged combat system even if people may thing otherwise by the sheer volume of some of my posts. I've waited years for a game I wanted to come out. I can wait more than a few months for one feature to make it in and I'm well aware of how difficult it is to code while under RL stress. My real concerns are elsewhere but I have a wait and see attitude. No one feature is going to be a panacea IMO, but I'd prefer to have more data for a better picture of things regardless. Well, enough rambling for now since the mud's back up.

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