Taugrim's MMO Blog

The Rift community has been an interesting beast.

When Patch 1.1 went live, the forums were flooded with threads by players claiming that their class had been unfairly nerfed, especially players of my Warrior spec Riftblade. I have been skimming or ignoring the whine-oriented threads on the Warrior forums, as most of the negative viewpoints are not grounded on actual game mechanics and are narrow in their perspective.

That said, there was one thread that caught my attention today: Get your flame hats on. The creator of this thread complained about a podcast from a fan site, and the topic of this podcast was Producer Adam Gershowitz on Class Balance & Patch 1.1.

I listened to the entire podcast, and it’s well worth your time if you want to hear Trion’s perspective on the current state of the game. The interviewer asked a lot of sharp, perceptive questions – and keep in mind the podcast hosts are players and not Trion employees. One particularly interesting comment from Gersh was that once certain specs were brought into balance in 1.1 (e.g. Saboteur), it made issues with other specs much more visible. Gersh said they are looking at Rogues and that they will look at abilities such as Pyro’s Ground of Strength.

I’m pleasantly surprised how much material Trion has been providing on Rift – I haven’t seen this level of interaction with the community from any major game developer, ever. While some people say that Trion hasn’t innovated with Rift, I disagree. Just thinking in terms of community, Trion provides

• Highly visible developer-to-community communication, e.g. via the Dev Tracker forum and fan site podcasts
• Social media integration for player-to-player communication – e.g. you can record and upload videos while playing straight to YouTube

These are clearly differentiated, intentional distinctions in the current market.

I am going to continue to check out The RIFT podcast and blog when I have time as the content is high quality. If you see other interesting news or insightful material, please post links to it.

P.S. I am level 50 now, and IMO Riftblade is still viable @ 50 in PVP, and I have really good footage from Rank 1 (beginner) 50 World PVP and warfronts. I haven’t had time to work on my next video yet. I’ll get there, stay tuned.

At Day 1 of WonderCon 2011, I asked the MMORPG Industry panel: is the MMORPG market viable? As I wrote last year, I have been concerned that Social Gaming could kill the Traditional MMORPG market.

It was awesome to hear the perspective of the panelists on my question. On the panel (in order of speaking):
- Scott Hartsman, Exec Producer, Rift
- Dirk Metzger, VP Publishing, Zentia
- Nick Huggett, Customer Experience Manager, Runes of Magic

I am encouraged by the launch of Rift thus far – Trion has shown that it *is* possible to deliver a high-polish, content-rich game at launch and that the industry is learning from recent spectacular failures.

At WonderCon 2011, I caught up with 3 of Trion’s employees, Exec Producer Scott Hartsman and Community Managers Elrar and Zann, about their recently-launched MMORPG Rift.

Transcript

For full disclosure, these were questions I came up with on the spot, and this was an ad-hoc conversation – the Trion guys didn’t know what I was going to ask.

Me: You came on board about 2 years ago, so how did you help shape or change the direction of the game?

Scott Hartsman (Exec Producer): For me it was really about taking a look at what had already been done, what was already in place, and figuring out how to get from where they were to where we could launch a game that was AAA. And it was amazing to me how much was actually there. I mean it was by far one of the most functional teams with functional technology, and we were in the process of getting the game from Dev mode to Beta mode and later Launch mode. So it was more about guiding, and it really wasn’t about coming in to be Thor with a hammer.

Me: So you had a great staff to work with, a talented staff?

Scott: Yes, an amazing staff.

Me: So how did you guys make the decision as far as the timing of the launch, because I’ve been really impressed with the game after only 5 weeks. I’ve experienced no server downtime (Editor’s note: there have been maintenance windows but they have typically shorter than a half-hour, not the several hours unplanned downtime I have experienced with new titles), no client crashes, no unplanned downtime. So how did you guys, how did you build a case to wait long enough until the game was polished enough to launch?

Scott: It was really simple. We had support all the way up to the Executive Board. All the games that have all flopped in the last number of years have largely flopped because they either didn’t have enough to do or they fell down. And so to us those were the 2 key things, that until we were confident that we were stable, until we were confident that we had enough to do, no one was going to let us launch, so we didn’t have anyone kicking us out the door before it was ready.

Me: So you guys were all aligned about the timing of the launch?

Scott: Everybody was.

Me: That’s good because I feel like that’s been part of what has really killed several titles, the perception of the players.

Scott: I agree.

Me: Congratulations and thank you so much for your time.

Scott: Absolutely, very nice meeting you.

————————————————————————

Elrar (Community Manager): We are the voice of the Development team when they are too busy working. We’re there to field the questions from you guys and then go to the Development team, let them know about it, and we get information back.

Me: You guys made a conscious decision to host your own forums and there is a lot of debate about [doing] that, there are some really good articles I’ve read such as Taming the Forum Tiger, it talked about the risk of having your own forum versus letting other people  host it. So, how do you guys feel about the interaction with the community, because I feel objectively that the community over-reacted a little bit to some of the changes being put in place in 1.1. People are unhappy with changes, even to those things that are objectively “overpowered” that have been tweaked. What do you do with that?

Elrar: So the first thing you always need to keep in mind is that change is hard, so, when you change something there is inevitably going to be someone who doesn’t like it. So you take that, and then you go: “OK, now is he reacting to the change or to a negative effect of that change?” Once you find that out, then you go: “Is that negative effect a valid concern, is that something we might want to look into?” And then from there we pass that on, and then Development team will take that and use all the metrics they get from the game and the qualitative information they get from the players and combine that to come up with the best decision possible. So, not all negative feedback is bad, and we try and understand why do players feel this way and then address that. Either it’s a perception issue or an actual issue. How can we explain it or improve it so that you come to accept the changes more easily?

Me: If there are inaccurate perceptions about the state of the game or state of balance, how do you guys shape or influence that, because people are going to believe whatever they are going to believe, and I think sometimes people tend to react emotionally on the forums?

Elrar: Sometimes we just need to let it simmer, let people just go out there and play the changes. And then eventually they might come back in a weekend and go “OK, I’m into this” or “I’ve found a build that plays the way I want, e.g. really big crits or something like that.” People adapt to changes, they’ll figure out how [they] can enjoy the game. It’s a very small percentage of people who actually just go “this was too much and I don’t want to play this anymore.” And you know what, sometimes it’s perfectly understandable. Sometimes it’s just not the game for you. There’s so many more people who eventually go “I understand why they made the changes, I don’t like them because it makes my class less fun, but on the whole it makes the game more enjoyable for everyone.”

Rift Schwag FTW!

Thanks Scott, Elrar, and Zann for taking the time to share your thoughts. As the t-shirt says, we’re not in Azeroth anymore

I’ve played Rift since Head Start to level 33, and in my opinion Rift is the best MMORPG launch I’ve experienced in the past 5 years, a span which includes the following titles:

• Warhammer Online
• Aion
• Allods Online
• Rift

Rift’s game developer, Trion, has been remarkably savvy in how they have handled the game thus far, in particular by:

1. Not over-hyping their game then under-delivering. My impression is that Rift has mostly spread by word-of-mouth; my gaming friend Nathan and real life friend Gaardarun both raved about Rift from Beta
2. Delivering a stable, polished game at launch, with a clear path for implementing frequent updates/fixes with minimal downtime. The game servers have been taken down for maintenance at times, but the longest I’ve seen so far is 30 minutes, and Trion has managed expectations on downtimes pretty well. I.e. there hasn’t been that 12-hour unplanned downtime that we all dislike
3. Borrowing innovations from other games. Rift has taken some of the best mechanics and design features from games such as Warhammer, including the PVP mechanics for “tanks” such as Guard, Taunt, Hold the Line, etc and Detaunt. And other game features such as Achievements, Guild Achievements, Guild Ranks, etc that originated in Warhammer (and which Blizzard also copied)
4. Designing the most flexible spec system ever, which is both fun-to-play and IMO shields Trion from the class/spec griping from the playerbase

That last point has huge implications. Consider the following example with WoW. You roll a Paladin to heal at endgame as Holy, but you are unhappy with nerfs or issues for your spec. What are your options?

• Continue to play the spec and hope for future buffs, or
• Re-spec to Protection or Retribution and re-gear, or
• Roll a different Healing class, re-level to endgame, and then re-gear

Those are all crappy options to me, given that I value my time and what I enjoy most is endgame not grinding to get back to endgame. I know some people have been conditioned to accept the current market standards and would say “suck it up and re-level, it’s what I did” but I think that is a lousy customer experience.

With Rift, you can simply change which 3 of the 9 talent trees you are playing as a Healer (Cleric). Rift’s flexible spec system protects players from making a steep time investment in a class that they are later unsatisfied with for whatever reason.

The other implication of the spec system is that there are fewer opportunities for (real or perceived) imbalance between specs for the same class. Everyone knows a spec change has a low switching cost. No need to re-roll, re-level, and re-gear from scratch.

Is Rift the next “WoW Killer”? I don’t know and frankly don’t care. It’s the wrong question to ask – the right question is whether a game supports a virtuous cycle:

Trion made the right decision as to when the game was ready to launch, thereby avoiding the irreparable damage that was done by launching too early, as we saw with Warhammer Online and Age of Conan.

Will Trion continue to re-invest in the game over time? It’s too early to tell, but my impression is that they have a sharp management team, a perception further reinforced by an interview with Trion’s Marketing head back in December that I read today, while trying to find paying subscriber numbers. I haven’t been able to find those numbers yet – if you see any good articles please link them.

From a bigger picture perspective, Trion gives me hope for the “traditional MMORPG” market. Just over a year ago, I expressed concern that game developers were moving away from traditional MMORPGs and instead investing in social gaming. Trion shows how to do traditional MMORPGs right.

Please keep in mind that this is my honest, objective opinion. Like many of you, I’ve been burned by bloggers who hype up new games which only end up disappointing.

Allods Online (AO) started its Open Beta last week, and the playerbase is irate over the initial pricing of Item Shop virtual goods and the changes announced for version 1.0.07.07. Keen has written an excellent summary of the concerns of the playerbase.

AO’s Closed Beta was a very positive experience for many players. So what happened at the start of Open Beta? To understand the situation, let’s discuss the basics of a F2P (free-to-play) game from a player perspective:

1. you don’t have to pay for the game client
2. you don’t have to pay for game account(s)
3. you can play the game without having to pay, or you can optionally pay for virtual goods and/or in-game “buffs”

The success of a F2P game depends on the game’s ability to acquire new players and convert some of them into paying customers without alienating the non-paying players, who are advocates for the game and may eventually convert. Typically 10% or less of the playerbase of a F2P game spends real money on the game and the other 90% of the playerbase plays it for free.

An Example of Savvy F2P Core Game Design: KnightOnline

There is a lot of cynicism among players regarding F2P games, but I have played a game, KnightOnline (KO), that had a savvy design for its “item shop.” Let me first state that KO had some major game design and implementation flaws – notably the game was very hackable and exploitable. I’m not here to say that KO was a “good” game, but KO elegantly supported its item shop via two game mechanics:

1. the magic anvil for upgrading items
2. the buff scrolls for PVP

The magic anvil was usable by anyone, and you could upgrade any gear piece or weapon to +1, +2, etc up to +8. Each plus rating granted a significant improvement to the item’s performance, and typically players tried to get gear up to +6 (very good) or +7 (excellent) or even +8 (amazing). And for the cool factor +8 weapons glowed! However, there was a catch: when you attempted to upgrade an item, if the upgrade failed the item was destroyed, and as you tried to upgrade the item to higher plus ratings, the probability for an upgrade to fail increased. KO’s item shop allowed you to buy an item called a “trina” for $15 USD which would increase the success chance of an upgrade by ~20%. This may not sound like a good deal, but consider that upgrading from +6 to +7 had a ~25% success chance, so a trina brought that up to ~45% or almost double. For some players, the risk of having a very rare weapon or item burn in the upgrade process wasn’t worth the time it would take to farm it again, so they would purchase trinas (in my case mostly through a monthly subscription) to use when upgrading very rare items starting from +5 and up.

In KO, you could get equivalent buffs from either a player priest or from buff scrolls. Enemies could place a debuff on you that would cancel out a priest buff or scroll buff. But here’s was the catch: when you removed the debuff, any priest buffs would need to be re-applied, whereas if you had a buff scroll, once the debuff was removed you still had the buff effect. Simply put, buff scrolls were simpler and more reliable from a playability standpoint.

So when I played KO back in 2005 you didn’t have to pay to play the game, but I and others in my guild eventually signed up for the optional $15 USD monthly subscription because we felt it was worthwhile to do so. And that’s how the F2P model should work – you get hooked, you see the benefit of paying, you become a paying customer. Some of our guildees paid more than $50 USD per month – more than triple your typical P2P monthly subscription – to buy virtual goods such as trinas. One guildee, a business owner from Brazil, was paying $100+ USD per month.

KO’s game developer made some F2P changes after I quit playing in 2006 that I thought were poor ideas, such as login queues for players who didn’t pay. But I saw firsthand how the trina concept and buff concept successfully motivated players to pay real money for virtual goods. It was incredible to witness from a business perspective.

The Paradox of Allods Online Planned F2P System

Now that I’ve described a functional F2P example, let’s talk about the game mechanics in AO at endgame and the implications for the players. When you die at endgame you get a debuff, Fear of Death (FoD), for 51 minutes that lowers your stats by 25%, and the debuff can stack up to 4 times.

Currently you can remove the debuff by getting resurrected by another player. However in version 1.0.07.07 resurrection will not remove the debuff so your options are:

1. spend in-game coin, or
2. wait until the debuff wears off, or
3. use an Item shop consumable called Perfume, or
4. some combination of the above

Perfume costs $13.50 USD for a stack of 20, and they last 30 minutes each. Therefore if you die 20 times a month and decide to use Perfume to remove the debuff each time, you’ll be spending $13.50 USD per month, which is conspicuously close to the industry-standard monthly sub of $15 USD. The FoD / Perfume mechanic effectively turns AO from a F2P game into a P2P game because the game experience of not paying will be lousy. The game operator and developer are not going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes about this.

The kicker is you get the FoD debuff if you die in PVE or PVP. This is more harsh than the item repair costs incurred when dying in PVE in WoW. The FoD mechanic has major implications in terms of growing the playerbase and the extent to which players will participate in activities such as PVP where death is part of the experience. I was hoping to see robust, active PVP in endgame for AO, but with the FoD mechanic, it’s not going to happen.

Who is to Blame for the Allods Online Situation?

Some players are claiming that the game operator gPotato is pulling a  “bait and switch.” Certainly, gPotato has culpability in terms of the initial outrageous Item Shop pricing, e.g. $20 USD for a backpack with 24 slots instead of the 18 you start with.

However, the situation may go much deeper than just the game operator. Check out the following comments from a Russian player regarding the game developer:

Guys if u r really do not understand what is going on, i will explain to you from Russian point of view. Firstly – original developer team stopped developing Allods Online at CBT1-2 at Russia, because Nival – company developer, merged with astrum and mail.ru, main game designer left this project because he had another point of view on this game before he could finish it, new director came, after that Allods progress stopped almost completely, mail.ru bought AstrumNival so at this point game was destroyed, because mail.ru is the most greedy russian game service platform.That explains why they cannot fix music and sounds easily, why it tooks so long of them to fix bugs, why animations are partly ruined and Kanian fem for example run through ground, and explains why there are bugs in game that were already fixed before, they just do not know the code well, and they are not capable of further Allods creation. Allods original developers and designer are working now on project that has Dota like gameplay, and that explains why you have a feeling of unfinished good game,because allods creation was stopped at Closed Russian Beta. But however they see the situation so they r trying to make the maximum profit out of game until it will be too late, because they r not capable of programming anything really new, because they have not developed this game, period. even russians not happy with shop, not even game not finished but i found myself not able to afford stuff

If that information is correct, the game changes in version 1.0.07.07 are being designed and implemented by people who were not part of the original development team. Yikes.

When a game has contuinity in the development team’s leadership and staff, it’s reasonable to expect the following positive outcomes:

• there is clarity on the game’s business model
• there is consistent alignment on the game design: the core game mechanics, the direction for content, and how to improve and evolve the game over time
• there is consistency in the quality of implementation because the development team has learned over time how to architect, design, develop, test, and scale the game, and they know the code base inside and out
• there is a consistent feeling of ownership by the people working on the game – it’s “my game” as opposed to “someone else’s game that I’m working on”
• there are strong relationships between the game developer and its customers (the game publishers and game operators) and they collaborate to create a compelling player experience that drives revenue

However, as noted in the comments above, there may have been significant turnover in the AO development team at both the leadership and staff level. It’s unclear to what extent there is a development team that is continuing to work on the game.

I truly hope gPotato and the game developer can sort the situation out in a way that makes sense from a business perspective and from a player perspective, because AO is an excellent game property.

Update @ 8pm PST, 22 February 2010:

There is a great thread by galethbg regarding the ownership structure and history of the companies involved in AO’s development. This at least gives me some hope that there may be some stability and continuity on the AO development team. Hopefully the game developer will heed the worldwide player feedback on the upcoming changes and adjust them in a more reasonable fashion.

In addition, gPotato is now solicting feedback about the Item Shop on their forums, which is a step in the right direction.

Update @ 1am PST, 23 February 2010:

gPotato has posted an article that communicates the development team is intact and that gPotato is evaluating the Item Shop prices based on the feedback thread listed in the previous update.

Update @ 3 March 2010:

gPotato has reduced the prices in the Item Shop to what I consider reasonable levels. Good news for fans of AO!