Any design insights that can be shared, from the Rapid Maneuver changes?

DewiMorgan

[[Backstory, skip if you know already: the "Rapid Maneuver" (aka "Rapids" or "Zoomies") active skill in the "Assault" PvP skill line grants 30 seconds of "Major Gallop" to you & your group. This was a vital skill for PvE-ers, especially new characters, as it makes a horse worth having immediately, rather than only after weeks of feeding it. Initially, it required level 3 in Assault, a level you had as soon as you opened the skill line, either by doing the introductory Cyrodiil quest, or by claiming Alliance Points as a daily reward (so you never even needed to enter PvP areas!). Either way you opened the skill line would grant 3 skillpoints, so you got the Rapids essentially for free.

In a recent update, it was changed from level 3 to level 5, swapping for the "Vigor" skill that "was used more often", meaning that everyone had to grind every character for a couple of hours to get it back, rather than just to get the skill for free. For people with the max 18 characters, this was too much toxic PvP grind so I never did it, and instead started work on levelling the alts to 50 and getting them the speed ring, 18 times. I'd only got it twice before they thankfully made it so you could craft the ring from the stickerbook, but I've still only got 12 of them up to 50.

In the coming update, Major Gallop is probably moving from Rapid Maneuver to a level-3 passive ("Continuous Attack"), so it will not only be free again, it will also always be active. Once again, Horses will be worth riding even for level-10 characters. Downside is, you can't share it with your group any more, so those below level 10 are out of luck.]]

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As an indie game dev myself, ZOS' game design team have my immense respect. All change is painful, especially if you've invested heavily in a meta build that becomes "broken", but every item in every single patch notes since beta has always made sense to me, with a solid rationale, at least from my perspective as a PvEing game-dev. They seem to strive to reduce the "grindiness" of the grind at every turn (a very minor example: I noticed in the beta that ESO has a lower number of pick-hits on a resource to mine it, and so a lower "time-to-mine-a-resource", than any other game I could find... and then later they let you halve it with champion points!)

The only time since 2014 that I've felt they really put a foot wrong was this skill-swap. Their fix, acknowledging the universal importance of Major Gallop, is great out-of-the-box thinking that stops them from needing to take Vigor away from people again, and like much of ESO, it's kinda spoiling us The loss of group-share feels a worthy trade-off for permanence, and means that console players get the same "takes up no slots" advantage as PC players got from the addon that auto-slotted it when mounted.

But I'd really love to see an interview or read a retrospective about any game design lessons that were learned there. All the best design lessons are learned when things get interesting

If any of you streamers are interviewing ZOS designers, please do ask this question, as I suspect their answer will be valuable to all game designers out there. And heck, to all game players: we all have a vested interest in game design!

My suspicion is that the main takeaway would be "datamining metrics and analytics can be really deceptive".

If one group-buffing skill is used more often each day than another, it seems like the playerbase would be overjoyed if the two skills were swapped so the "more popular" skill was made easier to get, right? Especially if the popular spell is a healing spell? Everyone loves heals!

But that simple metric wouldn't show that one spell was a combat skill, used every 8 seconds in every combat by a few thousand players; and the other was the only skill from that tree used by hundreds of thousands, but only maybe once per day on average.

I can think of a number of other metrics they might've looked at, that would all give the same "Rapids isn't as important a skill as Vigor" message, while missing the "Rapids is the only skill in the Assault skill line that the majority of the playerbase cares about at all." Like, there might've been a metric showing how many of the people who had the skill, had it slotted. But that metric would be broken on PC at least, with that addon to auto-slot Rapids when you're mounted. So there are many using Rapids without having it permanently slotted.

But this is just my wild guess at what cool game design lessons might be learned. I'd really love to hear the real skinny!

Lephrel

What?

haelgaan

You seem to be assuming they're making data-driven decisions...

LarsS

Major gallop is removed from rapid in next update and moved to the passiv continuous attack!

DewiMorgan

Lephrel wrote: »

What?

Not sure I can help you without more information. What are you having trouble with?

haelgaan wrote: »

You seem to be assuming they're making data-driven decisions...

That seems a fair assumption based on fairly solid evidence, both based on my experience of working as an MMO developer, and based on reading their patch notes, forum posts, interviews, etc over the last seven or so years.

As I wrote, I have great respect for their designers. It's often considered "cool" in fandoms (whether film, book or game) to scorn the content developers. I'm really not into that kind of silliness: it's unwarranted and has a chilling effect on development. Instead, I feel credit should be given where it's due: and it's certainly due here.

LarsS wrote: »

Major gallop is removed from rapid in next update and moved to the passiv continuous attack!

Yup. "Continuous Attack I" is a level 3 Assault skill, and "Continuous Attack II" is level 9 Assault. Both will give the Major Gallop buff at all times.

I'm interested in the path that the developers took to come to that choice. I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall in those meetings, because once they'd made the skill swap with Vigor, they were stuck on the horns of quite a nasty dilemma.

- They couldn't revert their change, as that would just upset more people (everyone who'd been happy to get Vigor sooner).
- They couldn't put both skills at level 3.

Their solution is a good "out of the box" solution: : if Rapid Maneuver was a "strange hybrid", this one is even stranger! But it solves the problem with the minimum of disruption, and makes a large swathe of the userbase happy.

But what was the process they went through to get there? What went wrong? What insights and lessons were gained? That, to me at least, is where it gets interesting

VaranisArano

What gets me about ZOS' decision is that they easily could have moved Major Gallop to the Continuous Attacks passive when they got the feedback from many PVEers on the Markarth PTS that they wanted the skill without having to PVP up to Rank 5. Its not like there needed to be a lot of data gathered to predict the likely impact, you know?

It really makes it look like either they needed 3 months to make that happen or they decided that in those 3 months before they announced the change, they'd see how many PVEers they could get to go PVP/buy the new AP boost foods.

I'm happy that ZOS moved access to Major Gallop down to Alliance rank 3 (AR 1 would have been better, IMO), but I'm not thrilled that they went ahead with making it AR 5 for an update when they already knew it was a problem for PVEers and new PVPers. That's one more example of the trend where it seems like ZOS often goes with an extreme measure at first, knowing the results won't be what they want and expecting to adjust it back to something more reasonable after an update, without caring that its jerking their playerbase around.

zaria

Now moving Major Gallop into an passive is an major buff for all.
First you do not need to slot it anymore unless you want faster running speed and you don't have to change your bar to replace the missing skill.

This itself makes it very valuable, probably more so in PvP than PvE there you have more time switching skills while in Cyrodil you might ride right into an fight or come in late and the fight is on and you can not swap skills.
Nor put siege equipment on you quickslot wheel who is the only way to put down sieges for reasons.

Varana

DewiMorgan wrote: »

- They couldn't put both skills at level 3.

Why not? (Also, Vigor is at 2, making this even more nonsensical.)

Apart from the things you're asking, I'd also like to know about this alleged connection. Vigor at 2 and Rapids at 3, both at 2 or 3 - I'd really like to know the reason why they went for a simply swap (other than laziness), instead of changing the number in a different way.

UntilValhalla13

"Ok guys, we need a way to sell these alliance xp pots, as well as this double seated mount. (Remember that?) Let's check our spreadsheet to find out which alliance skill is used the most. Rapids, eh? Let's just...move that further down the list then. That'll make EVERYONE have to pvp and buy these pots to unlock it, or they could just ride along in a friend's mount if they don't want to pvp. It's perfect."

But I'm sure that's all just coincidence. I'm joking, of course.




(Or am I?) XD

DewiMorgan

Varana wrote: »

DewiMorgan wrote: »

- They couldn't put both skills at level 3.

Why not? (Also, Vigor is at 2, making this even more nonsensical.)

Good point! This was assumption on my part.

I don't *think* there are any cases in any existing skill trees where multiple active skills turn on at the same level, but I might be wrong... aww crud, I'm gonna have to go check all the darn skill trees to make sure I'm not talking out my ass, aren't I? Including all the different races' trees. *grumbles, but checks anyway* Yeah, no, not that I can see in a half-assed scanning of the wikis (why is there not just one big table somewhere listing the unlock levels of ALL the skills???), but some of the skill lines where they're fitting more skills into the skill line than they have levels (eg psijic) they do have passives locked at the same level as actives.

No idea if it's a technical constraint or (as I suspect) a design constraint. Either way, you're right that it's a constraint that could probably be lifted if they had a strong enough need.

I think the existing pattern makes a lot of sense as a design constraint to minimize limit breaks, work with player expectation, etc. If I were the designer, I don't think that addressing the Rapids kerfuffle would be high enough priority for me to advocate breaking that pattern.

But again, you're right: why not have one at level 1, or 2? The end result is basically the same, but still!

The concerns in game design are rarely all visible to us as players, but are always really interesting to me. This does feel like a case where I'd probably learn something cool from a retrospective about the design concerns here.