The MMORPG F-word: Fairness

michaelb14a_ESO2

**Beware the wall of text - Part MMO game development theory, part insight, part history, and most importantly - Part opinion.** 

Over the week, we have all noticed an increase in passionate topics and heated debate around issues like:

• The Champion Point System
• Grinding (locations, nerfs, power-gapping)
• Progression Systems - In EVERY form lol,  Vertical, Horizontal, Missionary, on so on....
• Player segments and play styles.

 While divisive topics in themselves. I think we can agree they all are just discrete symptoms. The real subtext of all these posts, rants, flames, and ideas is:

Fairness The MMORPG F-word 

I honestly believe that there is no "version" of fairness, it's an idea, an expectation, not a mechanic. While people will differ (greatly) on their opinions as to any single certain mechanic being fair or not; this is simply their assessment as to its individual contribution to overall fairness.In order to better understand the dynamics of fairness in an MMORPG like ESOTU, let's just consider far simpler example of a single-player game. This I guarantee as gamers we are all intimately familiar. In a single-player game, everything about the game is exclusively in the domain of the developer's control. The dev makes all the rules: from whether where/when/if monster re-spawns, how much gold it has, how much inventory space you have, what items drop and when and where. All of these details are determined by the developer. In fact, all of these details are carefully crafted to produce the game experience.

"When you're creating a solo player game, whether you're talking about advancement in your character's attributes or advancements in their wealth and what they can buy with that wealth -- the next armor or equipment -- those are quite controllable, quite containable, we can very tightly constrain the ways that players have to earn money so by the time that they reach a certain point in the story we can know with pretty good authority what we call the relative scale of money they have in their pocket is. You can increase the scale of wealth and the scale of where they are in the story and you keep them in quite close lock-step."

- Richard Garriott, speaking on his work on the Ultima Series single player RPGs

 Avid RPG fans know that scaling is an important element for an RPG retaining it's sense of challenge. In an RPG, the challenge of an any encounter is directly proportional to the difference between your level and the level of your opponent. If your level 30 and your opponents are level 30, the difficulty may be normal; if you're level 33, the difficulty might be easy and if your level 27 the it may be hard. If your too low a level -- the challenge is too hard, and the usual RPG player response is to backtrack, and "level up" by completing easier challenges. This "grinding" is something many older players of Japanese RPGs from the '80s and '90s will be very familiar with. However, if you're too high a level, and the challenge too easy, the game just feels badly designed. We as players think:

"Shouldn't the developer have expected me to be level 15 by this point in the game?"
- You

This brings us to one of the major changes in single-player RPG design, the somewhat controversial implementation of dynamic content scaling. Oblivion was famously criticized by a portion of "hardcore" gamers for scaling every encounter throughout the entire game to the player's current level. Every dungeon visited, even if previously done previously at lower level, would have monsters at the player's current level.You could never encounter a challenge that was too easy or too hard. That barrier to exploration, that sense of, at some point, you'll be strong enough to go somewhere or do something, simply doesn't exist in Oblivion.

As many here know, Bethesda's follow-up RPG hit, Fallout 3, used the same scaling to set the initial level of encounters, but "locked" the level of monsters once the player visited an area, this avoided some of the annoyances many had with the complete world scaling found previously in Oblivion.

So what does this have to do with MMORPGs, and why is this important? Well, MMORPGs don't scale. They can't, really, because players of all different levels might wander into the same area at the same time. You wouldn't want a game that would spawn a level VR14 mob right next to a level 5 player just because a VR14 player rode by. Thus MMORPGs scale their content in the same way that classical Japanese RPGs did: Mobs of various difficulty levels are intentionally painted over the landscape. Here are just a few examples of this.

World of Warcraft:

Dark Ages of Camelot:

and of course, Elder Scrolls Online:

"So, WTF does this have to do with fairness?". The point is that the distinct geographical layout of mobs in, for example World of Warcraft, or EverQuest; meant that players could directly associate areas with accomplishment. When I first set foot inside Cazic-Thule -- when I finally joined the elite ranks of those who roamed Onyxia's Lair, and Molten Core -- that was an accomplishment. And any time there's a sense of accomplishment compared with others, there's also a sense of fairness.

Fairness is a very important concept in developing MMORPGs. This is because fairness doesn't exist in their single-player predecessors. "Cheating" and other forms of rule-changing in single-player games is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. Many games have difficulty settings or consoles, or built in cheat-codes that allow players to tailor the experience to suit their desires. Does it really matter that you beat the game on easy instead of hard? Only to you.

Fairness comes into play with multiplayer games as well. Cheating suddenly becomes frowned upon when in competition with other players. But only if some players don't agree with the cheating. If you think about it; when everyone agrees to a specific "cheat", it's not really cheating anymore, is it? It's changing the rules. Changing the rules is super common in multiplayer; creating game-mods, which are basically changes to game rules, are incredibly popular; things like FPS maps mods, MineCraft mods and RTS-mods gave birth to entire genres and franchises. But these rule changes intrinsically depend on the agreement of all participants. Everyone has to download the game-mod and choose to use it.

The problem is that there is no structure for change in MMORPGs. There are no cheat codes, no mods, no way to have a subset of people play by a different set of rules. There is one and only one set of rules and if anyone even slightly smudges the clear lines of those rules, all hell breaks loose about fairness. It's this sense of fairness affects everything from PvP class balance to PvE raid progression. And, of course, it affects the in-game economy.

Nowhere is this economic fairness more clear in MMORPGs than in the rate of progression. MMORPGs tend to be based on a very simple formula: time = progression. Most modern MMORPGs are not particularly challenging. They're just time-consuming.

The utter bottom line of ease of play in World of Warcraft gave birth to the term Faceroll. The sheer numbers in EVE Online gave birth to the Blob, and all of them have given birth to a multi-million dollar industry of gold farming and power leveling.

We know the math is simple. Time = progression. Time = money. So, logically, money = progression, right? Yes. Absolutely. Anyone who tries to rationalize otherwise is just plain wrong. So why the outcry about gold farming? Whats wrong with it?

Well, a lot. But on a fundamental level, it points to a major flaw in the game design. If you're willing to pay someone to skip through a game for you, that's a good sign that you're not enjoying the game, and if you're not enjoying the game, then the game is bad. To a game's developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you'll actually pay money to avoid having to play it.

"In almost all RPGs these days, that grind mechanic has been repeated in every facet of your virtual life to the point of, for at least me, distress. Slice the game any place you want and you'll find that exact same game mechanic used over and over again. What you're really doing is having people spend time. You're making them waste time in order to level up."

- Richard Garriott, AKA "Lord British"

So why do MMORPGs keep going back to the grind? Well, if you look at Ultimas in general -- not just Online but Ultimas in general -- Ultimas have very customized story-lines. A customized story-line is very expensive to build and takes a lot of time and effort. To kill 10 more, and 10 more, and 10 more, is something you can create algorithmically, and it works very well. So as much as hardcore 'role-playing' gamers in us might complain, the level grind works astonishingly well.

So the grind is inescapable in game design, and players will pay to skip past it, but where's the unfair bit? Is it really "unfair" that some people spend months getting to level 50 and others spend money? Is it unfair only because the game doesn't officially sell you the levels and some shady third party is doing it? Or is there some inherent sense of fairness in actually doing the grinding yourself?

It's useful to think of "pay for" not as a purely monetary exchange. Players who have limited time to devote to game-play -- begrudge being out progressed by players who do have a large amount of time to devote to game-play. Interestingly, in almost the identical way that those who devote large amounts of time to the game -- begrudge those that purchase progression. But why? Why are players so caught up, not only in the progression of others, but also the method in which they progress? The divide is deep, as a quick look into the forums reveals:

Players with limited time to devote to the game are:

 "the millennial entitlement generation that has pretty much destroyed the MMO genre" 

"cry about the Champion points because it mean they have to actually play the game to get them"

"Pay to win casuals"

Conversely, those that do devote significant time to the game are:

"no-life grinders that need their hard-coded power advantage... pathetic"

"need a power advantage to compensate for lack of skill , spending 12 hours a day in a game isn't skill!"

All hyperbole, and not particularly helpful considering we are all on the same side. However, it is useful to note that each groups comments about the other have to do with the legitimacy of the exact same thing. Achievement.

I think the actual sense of unfairness emanates from a much more fundamental issue: the game-play associated with progression in most MMORPGs isn't fun. It's tedious, it's repetitive, and it's time-consuming. The "leveling" part of most MMORPGs (ESO included) can best be described as an extremely long tutorial you're obliged to complete before you're allowed to start playing the real game. As long as no one can skip it, it's fair because everyone suffers equally, but if there are ways to pay (by either sinking time or money) to skip the level grind, it feels unfair primarily because of how unpleasant the leveling experience really is. People paying others to level their characters, are P2W. Grind spot locations are exploits. Interpretations abound, and shots are fired.

One big concern is that, if games do start to directly (or indirectly) sell levels or level progression, they also unfairly elongate the actual leveling process to encourage more people to pay their way to the top. Players have developed a strong sense of "unjust game development" due to free-to-play game designers who produce absolute barbaric "games" in the hopes that players will pay to avoid having to play them. If ZOS were to roll out a paid service for instant max level characters without shortening their leveling experience to less than a few hours, players would be waving their pitchforks in the air and faces would roll.

These fears are also based on a large number of Asian free-to-play games with extremely harsh "free" environments and a heavy emphasis on forcing players to buy power and progression from item stores. "Free-to-play", technically, but definitely "pay-to-win".

But it's important to note that the crucial difference between these systems and what I was previously describing is the difference between paying for an advantage that cannot be obtained without buying it from the item store and paying for progression that can be obtained by taking the time to do it yourself. Pay-to-win is not the same as pay-to-progress.

It seems recently that many have voiced approval for the implementations akin to WoW's season's and tiers as a possible solution to the divide. Lets look at that. When Blizzard introduced "tiers" of raiding content in World of Warcraft, especially in the Burning Crusade expansion, it dramatically changed the meaning of "gear" in MMORPGs. Weapons and armor used to be more than tokens compiled into a gear score; they used to embody the tales and accomplishments that went into obtaining them.

Everyone I know that played pre-WoW MMOs -- games like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, and Dark Age of Camelot -- could spin a grand yarn of adventure about at least one piece of equipment they had. Many of those pieces of equipment weren't even the "best" of their type, but the rarity and surprise of getting anything special added a great deal of magic to that style of game.

With its refinement to raiding tiers, WoW introduced the concept of gear progression. Progression through raid content was heavily dependent on acquiring the previous tier's gear. You had to get everyone in Tier 1 gear to do Tier 2 raids, and then get everyone into Tier 2 gear to do Tier 3 raids, and so on and so forth. Gearing up became as trivial as leveling up. And, just like XP, all of this gear had to be obtained first-hand. It was all bind-on-pickup.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the same "Chinese gold farmers" who were selling leveling services quickly began to offer raiding services: they would take your character through a raid and get you all the raid gear. Once gearing up became mere progression, it became a time sink… or, optionally, a money sink.

What's ironic is that the whole reason the gear was bind-on-pickup was to ensure a sense of fairness to enforce those accomplishments. You had this epic gear because you raided, not because you bought it from someone else who raided. That sense of accomplishment was part of the rules and circumventing that accomplishment by paying someone to get you the gear was cheating.

The player outcry against "raid farming," however, was dwarfed by outcry against Blizzard's own actions. In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard had the goal of making raiding more accessible to more players. One of the big difficulties, however, was in the nature of gear progression. If you needed Tier 2 gear to go on Tier 3 raids, but no one was doing Tier 2 raids anymore because they were all doing Tier 3, how could you get caught up? Blizzard added the ability to gather tokens from much easier 5-man dungeons -- trivially difficult challenges that merely required a whole lot of time spent farming tokens -- and added merchants that sold gear equivalent to the previous Tier of the current raid zone. See the problem coming?

When Tier 4 raids were introduced, Tier 3 gear showed up on merchants, and within days players who had never set foot in a raid instance were as well geared as those who had toiled for months facing the game's toughest challenges.

Players were justifiably upset: why raid at all if you can just wait for the next set of raids and buy your way through the previous tier of content? What did that accomplishment mean when Blizzard would hand it out to everyone a month or two later?

Blizzard faced a fairness dilemma: the new system wasn't fair to the raiders who worked hard on raiding, but the old system wasn't fair to the casual players who didn't or couldn't spend the time and effort raiding.

The problem was that the raid gear progression in WoW used to be skill-based, rather than time-based, progression. Having a full set of raid gear didn't just mean you had invested the time in raiding, it meant that you were good enough a player to overcome those raid bosses.

It was also a huge mark of social status: it meant you were a part of a group that was capable of working together to overcome those challenges. Throughout Vanilla WoW and, arguably, most of Burning Crusade, raid gear was a very impressive status symbol.

Status symbols are valuable specifically because they are difficult to obtain. If you could go online and buy a knighthood for $15, the title "Sir" would no longer be a status symbol.

Blizzard's error was thinking that fairnessmeant that everyone should have the opportunity to have this status symbol and thereby destroyed the very value the status symbol carried. It's basically the Queen going on TV and announcing "Knighthoods for everybody!"

Still, raid content was very expensive to produce, and arguably some of the most fun content in any MMORPG. It makes perfect sense for Blizzard to want more of their players to be able to enjoy raiding. Blizzard tried to retain the sense of status in a different way: instead of tying it to gear, they tied it to achievements. Blizzard added "normal" and "hard" modes to raid encounters and rewarded players who completed all the hard challenges with rare mounts, titles, and cosmetic achievements.

In "theory", it might appear that this should have worked. However, it didn't. I was certainly pleased with my Ironbound Proto-Drake. At the same time, I found myself extremely aggravated with "hard" modes after Ulduar, and quit WoW after beating the Lich King on normal. The fact was that I enjoyed playing role-playing games for the role-playing aspects, the excitement of adventure, not the convoluted and bizarre challenges contrived for "hard" modes of boss fights. Although the new achievement-based rewards and other later leased reward systems were "fair", they just weren't ones I was interested in achieving.

Itemization. WoW is just not a good example of what happens when rare goods can be traded, since everything of value in WoW is un-tradeable. Final Fantasy XI, can shed some insights on the fairness of trading.

Final Fantasy XI featured "notorious monsters" which rarely appeared in certain locations and had a slim chance of dropping some very rare and valuable gear or crafting material when they were slain.Similar to EverQuest.

Notably, gear in Final Fantasy XI did not "bind", so not only could it be traded, it could be used and traded many times, potentially used and reused by many players. EverQuest did introduce some BoP in expansions and in endgame raids. However, for the most part, if a player wanted one of these rare items, they basically had two options: they could kill the monster and get it themselves or they could save up enough money to buy it. The interesting thing is that, because there were so many possible valuable items for sale, money in FFXI and EQ was extremely valuable and meaningful.

Actually earning enough money to have bought one of these items was no trivial task; it might actually be more challenging than killing the monster and getting it yourself. So, no matter which route you took to obtain the item, it was an accomplishment. And both routes were inherently fair (disregarding the manipulation by RMT activities).

"Fairness" is best maintained in a "wide and flat" game design: allow players as wide as possible a set of challenges to tackle and keep each of these challenges as self-contained as possible. Allowing players to "trade" challenge accomplishment, through the exchange of rewards in an open market, is perfectly fair and acceptable so long as many challenges as possible are accessible to as many players as possible, ensuring that everyone has the chance to complete the ones they wish to complete and trade for the ones they don't want to do. The preference for one challenge over another, does not a good player make. It just make them different.

 - "Not that you care, but now you know"





edit: mah spelling, and some formatting

Shimmer

I like pie.

Forestd16b14_ESO

The sad truth is a MMORPG is never 100% fair there are always gonna be those players who will do what ever it takes to have a unfair advantege over others be pay to wins (not saying ESO has any), endless grinding for higher levels, or doing the same dungeon over and over for gear that's just slightly better than craftable gear such as CoA helmet runs. But that is kinda the fun part to over come those players and show them that even if the are low life cowards who spend hours on hours exploiting and abusing mechanics that there still not gonna be "the best player" cause there is always one person who is better than you and they either better than you by being fair or being a low life abuser.

Sausage

Yep.

BaconMagic

Awesome poast. Thanks for taking the time.

S1ipperyJim

"To a game's developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you'll actually pay money to avoid having to play it"

No. The actual reason is people want to enjoy the end game content immediately with the most powerful character and gear ASAP and simply don't have the patience to earn ranks or gear the regular way the game intended them to.

What was it Jim Morrison said: "We want the world and we want it now".

Acrolas

"Never write more than two pages on any subject." - David Ogilvy

KronicDecay

Good luck havin people read your 20 page rant. This ISNT WoW and it isnt DaoC (Ive played both). This is ESO. If the devs were to make it a copy of another game then why not play the game its copying.

gatwinchester

If you can figure out fairness in MMOs, you can figure out fairness irl. I mean, all those rich people paying to win at life? And those people that grind all the damn time to get ahead? Pfft. Nerf 'em.

NotSo

Best post I've read all week.

Elijah_Crow

Seriously good read with a lot of insight.

Iluvrien

Excellent post. I definitely enjoyed reading your thoughts.

KronicDecay wrote: »

Good luck havin people read your 20 page rant. This ISNT WoW and it isnt DaoC (Ive played both). This is ESO. If the devs were to make it a copy of another game then why not play the game its copying.

Obviously it isn't WoW or DaoC. However the lessons learned from them may well help devs and players alike. Sometimes those lessons include what not to do.

...of course the fact that they are different games also doesn't stop people coming to the forums saying that things like "gear progression are what MMOs are about", or "I can't believe they released without <insert feature x>..." based on their experience in other games.

Personally, I like that ESO tries to be different where it can be. I just wish that ZOS were quicker on content production, more outgoing with their communication and didn't tend to defend changes of policy on the basis of strict literal interpretation (i.e. we didn't say we were never going to do this... etc.)

michaelb14a_ESO2

KronicDecay wrote: »

Good luck havin people read your 20 page rant. This ISNT WoW and it isnt DaoC (Ive played both). This is ESO. If the devs were to make it a copy of another game then why not play the game its copying.

No rant. No discussion as to making ESO a copy of one thing or another. Reading even just a small portion would have revealed that to you. The intention was to spark a small bit insight and elevated understanding/perspective to those interested after a pretty divisiveness full week of discussion, but often empty of context and information.Interested is the operative word here though. There is certainly nothing wrong with not being interested in the text-wall topic, the industry, or its shop talk.

lathbury

A nice read with some great insight but I think you missed the problem ppl are having with the current system is that it is more unfair then others as the cp system has no cap and the diminishing returns aren't so diminishing. thus rewarding players who grind above all others and granting potentially massive advantages in all competitive content. in WOW progression was capped by the raid gear and level not so with the cp system.

michaelb14a_ESO2

lathbury wrote: »

A nice read with some great insight but I think you missed the problem ppl are having with the current system is that it is more unfair then others as the cp system has no cap and the diminishing returns aren't so diminishing. thus rewarding players who grind above all others and granting potentially massive advantages in all competitive content. in WOW progression was capped by the raid gear and level not so with the cp system.

For my reference, since I haven't been in wow for quite some time. For brand new player starting at the bottom. How long does it currently take before they attain max level and are geared to take on competitive content and be successful.

eventide03b14a_ESO

It's sad they couldn't just make a game where progression wasn't a chore. Anyone who played Star Wars Galaxies when it was skill based knows the advantages of a skill based game. Unfortunately ESO decided to not just have levels, but longer even more tedious vet levels. This idea of scaling areas is fine but look at the way that Cyrodiil is essentially the same difficulty no matter what level you are. If the majority of the game had been designed more like that and left harder areas for those that wanted a real challenge, it's possible people might actually enjoy the quests instead of skipping all the dialog or grinding. I know not everyone plays that way, but honestly if the majority of your players aren't even bothering to spend the time listening to hours of dialog you gave to your characters because the quest system is seen as an unrewarding chore, then perhaps you need to reevaluate your game.

Pheefs

this is where you lost me....

michaelb14a_ESO2 wrote: »

The "leveling" part of most MMORPGs (ESO included) can best be described as an extremely long tutorial you're obliged to complete before you're allowed to start playing the real game.

what do you mean by "real game"?

I enjoy the stories and quests, more than pvp.
I like pvp fine, but its more of a combat & tactics tutorial for me, & occasional slapstick comedy

Callous2208

Great read. From my perspective, having played in the genre for a while, the generation that has to have it now started a good deal of this madness. These same folks will throw a tantrum if someone is "better," than them for any reason, be it time invested or overall skill. It has become commonplace, perhaps due to our hectic lives, to read no dialogue, pay attention to no story, rush through every game then demand new content be available. It begs the question; why do you want new content when you skipped 90% of what was already there. Everything is competitive. PvP is the place to talk trash and wave your epeen around, not pve. PvE was supposed to be for teamwork, immersion, playing a role. There perhaps lies a problem in itself. Why have the majority of new players stopped role-playing in mmoRPg's. That's why we just say mmo now. We play but a shell of what once was a thriving world of making lifelong friends and sharing in adventure. It's all about the shiny lootz and who's name is on top of that leader board the fastest. Why play around with builds or use character skills based on what you like to do? Haven't you seen @GenericYouTubeGuys guide for playing that class the best way, the only way? It's just all so, unoriginal, non-personal and uninspiring these days.

Bromburak

Interesting post Michael, but several things are cliché and related to theme park thinking.

"You wouldn't want a game that would spawn a level VR14 mob right next to a level 5 player just because a VR14 player rode by." "Fairness is a very important concept in developing MMORPGs"

It depends on the target group ... Its not true for a good Sandbox.

Theme park hype is not about fairness , its about guiding ... Thats the trick because
most players need a hand in everything they do and if they "high level" they want dailies for more guiding.

Basically thats what its all about, static concepts that feel comfy.
The reason why we see many gamers in every game forum saying "I feel boring" , "I lost fun playing" , "I don't have the same feeling as I had when playing the other game" etc..

They are replete.

Everyone I know that played pre-WoW MMOs -- games like Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, EverQuest,
and Dark Age of Camelot -- could spin a grand yarn of adventure about at least one piece of equipment they had. Many of those pieces of equipment weren't even the "best" of their type, but the rarity and surprise of getting anything special added a great deal of magic to that style of game.

Yes, but it was a kind of grinding already. DAOC for example, before the addons came out and crafting was improved you could get nice drops from dungeons like Tombs of Mithra in Albion (Forlon set for example) jewelery etc.. Players were sticking in those public dungeons for exp and nice drops. But the difference was, it was the only way to get the real good stuff. However, the luck was a very important factor that made players feel happy.

Its impossible today, luck , random factor and "no pain no gain" has been banned out of games unfortunately.

DenMoria

Wow! Now that was a post.

It was a long read, but, actually quite informative.

yodased

it's not fair to expect me to read all that.

smokes

everyone should read this, very insightful and utterly awesome

Kova

It's interesting to see real life problems port to MMOs, or at least when it comes to fairness. It really shows you how far gaming has come. My idea of fairness has always been divided with equality among players, and by that I mean equal consideration. Equal consideration does not mean everyone has access to the same experience of play just because they want it. Instead, it means that the opportunity for that experience is given to everyone despite the choices and decisions that supply or deprive a player of said experience.

There is a caveat, of course, and that is when I'm contained to a specific experience despite my efforts to gain a different one. The most prominent being the famous 5 level range of exp gain from mobs. If I can kite and destroy 20 mobs that are 10 levels higher than me, why do I get diminished or no XP for doing so? My ability is there, but the experience is taken from me as if there is a leveling tax.

The problem exists in PVP, of course. Many complain about broken mechanics and label them as exploits. There are some that are inarguable, like self lagging into a keep or using barriers to jump over a wall, but some are just clever uses of the games mechanics. DKs leaping into a keep, NBs ambushing into a tight spot, and sorcs bolting like the wind have all been demonized as exploits. The reason? "It's not fair." This immature line of thinking is hidden by arguments of skills not "working as they were intended." My problem with that is the fact that we were never told how it WAS intended and never given a big book on the limitations of our skills. You mean to tell me that it was never considered that DKs would leap into keeps? That NBs wouldn't double CC people? That templars wouldn't spam the oblivion out of a powerful execute? Netch...Crap. This is a contained world with several interacting variables. So when a single player figures out how to solo a vet dungeon or figures out that they can just knock a boss off a cliff, it shouldn't be met with a slap on the wrists and a patch.

With every update I feel like ZOS is telling me how I should be playing instead of giving every player equal consideration and opportunity to have their own experience of the game. It's like I'm being punished when I figure out the round peg can ALSO fit in the square hole.

nimander99

This needs to be read by everyone, period.

DisgracefulMind

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

The sad truth is a MMORPG is never 100% fair there are always gonna be those players who will do what ever it takes to have a unfair advantege over others be pay to wins (not saying ESO has any), endless grinding for higher levels, or doing the same dungeon over and over for gear that's just slightly better than craftable gear such as CoA helmet runs. But that is kinda the fun part to over come those players and show them that even if the are low life cowards who spend hours on hours exploiting and abusing mechanics that there still not gonna be "the best player" cause there is always one person who is better than you and they either better than you by being fair or being a low life abuser.

I've not heard one person use helm runs in dungeons as a means to say other players who spend the time doing so are abusers of ingame mechanics lol.

OP, amazing post. I think many people need to understand each and every concept you've brought to the table here.

Gyudan

The lack of game development prevented ESO from renewing its content, turning the game into a boring grind for Champion Points.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

JamilaRaj

michaelb14a_ESO2 wrote: »

Well, a lot. But on a fundamental level, it points to a major flaw in the game design. If you're willing to pay someone to skip through a game for you, that's a good sign that you're not enjoying the game, and if you're not enjoying the game, then the game is bad. To a game's developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you'll actually pay money to avoid having to play it.

I do not think that someone willing to pay implies a bad game or its element.
Sure, with P2W business model in full swing, games are deliberately made in such way players will want to pay to avoid playing them and then they will be readily offered remedies by a developer. For a fee. There indeed desire to pay is a sign of a bad (in a sense) design.
However, it is not necessarily possible to create a game where nobody wants to pay to avoid something, because different players might like/dislike different game elements or differ on particular element.
Most importantly, though, I would say that player who wants to pay to avoid (or get) something in fact wants a game mechanics to be replaced with corruption; in other words, sick people do not make a game bad and devs should not cave in.

Ffastyl

reapthetempestrwb17_ESO wrote: »

"To a game's developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you'll actually pay money to avoid having to play it"

No. The actual reason is people want to enjoy the end game content immediately with the most powerful character and gear ASAP and simply don't have the patience to earn ranks or gear the regular way the game intended them to.

What was it Jim Morrison said: "We want the world and we want it now".

But... that is exactly what you are saying: "The game is so bad you want to skip to the end parts."

Dradhok

To be fair people need to remember EOS is a relatively new game. To draw comparisons to games like WoW is like asking bright youth to complete complex algorithms on par with a mature mathematician. I'm not saying WOW is better than EOS they are very different games at this point, in fact I enjoy many aspects of EOS better. I played WOW at launch and it was a mess it wasn't clean until BC. If EOS can overcome some growing pains it will grow into a great game.

smokes

Dradhok wrote: »

To be fair people need to remember EOS is a relatively new game. To draw comparisons to games like WoW is like asking bright youth to complete complex algorithms on par with a mature mathematician. I'm not saying WOW is better than EOS they are very different games at this point, in fact I enjoy many aspects of EOS better. I played WOW at launch and it was a mess it wasn't clean until BC. If EOS can overcome some growing pains it will grow into a great game.

i think it's quite sensible to draw comparisons with the market leading mmo especially with respect to how and where they made mistakes with their endgame design decisions. of which there have been many, it's also in quite steep decline at the moment.

a lot can be learnt from their mistakes and those of other mmo's

i dont want ESO to be a WoW clone, i honestly think it has the potential to be better.

Armitas

This game has a lot of S words in it.