Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

In the earlier post: 'Possible Solutions to Design Barriers Hindering People Fun' I had mentioned several solutions to five design barriers which hinder people fun in MMORPG games.

• The Power Gap

• Quests and Restricted Access

• Solo Focused

• Sharing Resources

• Noise

I managed to experiment on three of these barriers that were found in my initial game version, using possible solutions based on my prior research.

By iterating the possible design solutions to the second version, I was happy to note that all three had a positive impact on the player feedback related to people fun.

While the final artifact is far from being a fun game by itself, more iterations to focus on adding content, balance, challenge and meaningful choices would certainly improve its enjoy-ability, however I will not be attempting this as it was not the purpose of my experiment.

I hope I will someday get the opportunity to test my suggested possible solutions on a larger scale as I am fond of the MMORPG genre and would like it to be more creative, stray from the norm and take the next steps forward towards the improvement of people fun.

Playing Instructions

Instructions

Players and Teams

Requires: 3+ Players, but sessions can start with 1 player

Teams: Players vs Game

Simultaneous Player Limit: 4 Simultaneous Players

Objective

• If the final boss is defeated by anyone, the victory condition is achieved for everyone.
• The players must defeat the final boss and escape the game world in as few turns as possible. 
• Note: This version still has no fixed rule towards how many turns players may take.

Setup

All players are given a player card (this helps them remember their base stats: 5 Power and 30 Hp).

The database is opened (using a notebook or spreadsheet).

New players have their names added to the database.
For each player: damage taken, items acquired and gold acquired are tracked in the database.
Each boss defeated is tracked in the database.

All players are given the items they owned in their previous sessions (if any).

At least one player is advised to keep track of everyone's stats, this information is available to all players.

The 'market' deck is shuffled and placed face down.

All 'zone' decks are shuffled and placed face down.

Previously defeated bosses are removed from the zone decks.

The turn order is decided and players start taking turns.

Progression of Play

During their turn, the player can choose one of the following actions:

- Teleport to town and rest

Damage taken by the player is set to 0.

Player may leave the game session while in town.

Player must shuffle all encounter cards in his/her possession back into their respective zone deck.

- Search the town market

Player draws 3 cards from the 'market' deck and may spend gold to purchase any of them (as long as they can afford it).

Cards that are not purchased are returned to the market deck which is then shuffled.

Player can place the purchased card face up in front of them to show that it is equipped.

Player may only equip 1 item of each type (one for each hand, one for body, and one for back).

If the player has more, they must choose which one to equip. The other card is returned to the market deck which is then shuffled. (No refunds!)

Player may only choose this action while in town.

Player may leave the game session while in town.

- Explore a zone

Player chooses a zone draws a card from it. The card can either be an encounter with a regular enemy or with the zone's boss.

Players may not access a zone unless the previous zone's boss has been defeated. Initially only zone 1 is available.

If the player is already in a zone, they may only explore the zone they are in until they return to town.

Whenever a player chooses to explore, they may ask other players in the same zone or in town whether they would like to assist with the encounter.

Grouping up must happen before revealing the encounter card.

After assisting in an encounter, players must pass their next turn.

*** Handling Regular Encounters ***

Each player in the encounter attacks.

- Attack deals damage equal to the player's power.

When all players have attacked, (even if the enemy has taken lethal damage), players taking part in the fight will decide who between them will take the enemy's attack.

After all damage is dealt to both sides, check if any players or enemies have taken damage equal or greater to their health pool, these characters are defeated.

Defeated players lose their gold, and are returned to town with their damage removed.

If all players are defeated, the encounter is lost.

If the enemy is not defeated after the first cycle, the same steps are repeated until the players or the enemy is defeated.

When the enemy is defeated the encounter is complete. The gold reward is divided between all participants (rounded up).

The enemy cards remains in the possession of the last player who was attacked until:

• The player returns to town
• The entire zone deck has been drawn

If any of the above occurs, the player shuffles the encounter cards back into the zone deck.

*** Handling Boss Encounters ***

If players encounter the zone boss, they can take the same actions as with a regular encounter, however any of the players may also choose to teleport to town instead. If all players teleport away, the boss card is then reshuffled back into the zone deck.

If a boss is defeated, all players in the game (including ones currently not playing) gain access to the next level and the boss card is permanently removed from the game.

Version 2: Player Feedback

Version 2: Player Feedback

For the second test I had three testers playing the game. Two of them started alone at different times while the third player would join in later for the sake of re-creating a power gap with a similar gap in time investment to the previous test.

Next I gathered all three players and (manually) loaded the gold and items of  the first two players in order to start a session with all three of them. And the game carried off from there.

Due to the increase in difficulty in this version, players were reacting in a different manner than before. They paid more attention to the benefits of being in a group and progressed together whenever possible.

In the previous sessions where the players were alone, they were buying whatever items they could afford to buy from the market. This time however, they devised a strategy where player 1 would focus on buying as much health as possible as he had the most health of the three, while player 2 and player 3 focused on power upgrades.

This allowed the big health pool of player 1 to take more hits and buy time while the others used their big attacks.

Another interesting change in behavior that I noticed was the inclusion of player 3 (The Weak Player). Due to the increased base stats, player 3 - while still weaker than the others, was still considered worth inviting, even though the group would have to share the gold rewards 3-way.

Important Points & Feedback Summary

• While players did find a bit more challenge in the game, it still seemed rather fake due to the fact that there still wasn't a turn limit. If players wished to, they could repeatedly beat one enemy in a zone and return to town until they safely buy all the items.

• Taking some of the control away from players however did increase motivation to work together as was planned.

• The weak player was no longer frustrated for being a meaningless existence in the game now that the power gap is significantly smaller. The other players did not mind inviting him as he was an asset to the team regardless of having just started playing.

• Since the quantity of powerful items in the market was increased, players did not complain about having to share limited resources.

• Players still commented that there are far too little meaningful choices and ways to interact with other players - however this was to be expected as I tried to keep the game as simple as possible.

Conclusion

Overall I am satisfied to see the positive impact that the changes had on people fun as most feedback turned out to be what I was expecting.

Unfortunately the game itself would need a lot of changes to actually be fun to play, but it has served its purpose in trying to replicate the actions of players in a (very small scale) MMORPG.

Game Version 2: Iteration Notes

Game Version 2: Iteration Notes

When looking back at the feedback from the first version, a number of design barriers were noticed to be hindering people fun:

• The player is in control, not the game. Because of this, players don't need each other, thus leading to anti-social behavior.

• The difference in the gap of power between players was very big, this made the assistance of weaker players next to insignificant to the stronger ones, causing players to separate based on their power.

• Having to share limited resources was annoying since every player wanted to be able to have as many upgrade options as possible.

I will be trying the following solutions to make the next iteration:

Taking control away from the players

Taking control away from players, and giving some of it to the game would mean that players would start considering more ways to increase their chance of surviving. Naturally, working with other players would improve their chances. 

There are several ways to do this, some methods would be: 

- Adding a maximum turn limit for each player so they must use their turns wisely.

- Increasing the difficulty to add more danger for each encounter.

- Making players ask for help before seeing the enemy they're about to encounter, rather than after, making it risky to progress alone unless confident that you can beat any enemy in the zone.

I will focus on the last two points for this iteration, the increased danger should motivate players to want to work together to avoid a bigger risk of dying and to make use of the synergy gained from working in group: (Efficient sharing of damage, and less turns needed to defeat each enemy.)

Reducing the gap of power between players

In several MMORPGs the great gap of power between player exists to force players to reach the levels that the designer wants them to reach before progressing further. 

The problem with having a smaller gap of power is that through skillful play, players might be able to complete content which is meant to be done much later.

Likewise, less skilled players will not be able to power through difficult content by simply gaining a few more levels, and the power gap would not be so big between them and the weaker enemies.

This might be a price worth paying in order to improve people fun, however in my game, skill is hardly a factor so it should cause no issues of the sort.

I will try a simple change in order to reduce the gap of power: Players will start several times stronger but may still gain the same amount of power from purchased items as they would in version 1.

In other words if I were to put a range on the player power levels of version 1 and version 2, it would be something like: 

ver. 1) Power ranging from 1 to 10 across the game. (player becomes 10 times stronger)

ver. 2) Power ranging from 10 to 19 across the game. (player becomes twice as strong)

Obviously, enemies will have to become stronger as well, otherwise player would find no resistance from fighting them whatsoever.

Dealing with shared limited resources

Sharing limited resources with other players would typically be an issue in an MMORPG. Some players may never be of any use to others on their same team or faction, while others may even end up becoming their competition later on. Knowing this, helping other players progress at the expense of your own progress would be the last thing one would want to do.

In this game's case I could simply increase the number of items to make them not feel limited.

Rule Change

Encounter cards will no longer be shuffled back into the zone deck after an encounter is completed. 

If the boss of the zone has yet to be defeated, the player who receives the last attack before the enemy is defeated, will keep the card until said player returns to town.

While this is not an improvement for people fun, it is a small rule change that should give players a more meaningful choice to risk going forward or lose the progress they've made thus far towards finding the boss.