Reworked GW2 vs WoW

Reworked Guild Wars 2 vs World of Warcraft

-D (25-Jul-2012)

I was about to write a long dry article comparing Guild Wars 2 to World of Warcraft. The article provided an interesting way to apply the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework [1]. About half way through the general explanation of what MDA is and how it shows two perspectives—Designer perspective of games, and player perspective of games—I realized the article couldn't work. My desire to build games is strongly overriding my desire to explain games. A framework, such as MDA, can help developers talk to each other about games, but the power of games goes far beyond what language can communicate.

I am only aware of one 'public figure'—Jonathan Blow—who seems to see this the way I do. Fortunately a 'journalist' presented Blow's thoughts on games where he brings WoW into the picture [2]. This is a good place to start if you want to dig into my thoughts on the matter. Guild Wars 2 isn't innocent either, but its significantly more aligned with my development philosophy.

My development philosophy was brought to the forefront as I attempted to write the GW2 vs WoW article. The philosophy is based on a few rules:

• Respect the Player
• No exploitation: skinner box/reward schedules, societal harm, time wasting, etc
• Don't hold their hand: give them their “ah ha” moments
• Respect myself
• Game development is the only remaining area of sufficient challenge for me
• Games must have the depth to interest me as a philosopher, programmer, and designer
• Provide 'good' embodiment experiences

Respect the player is first. WoW, and their developers do not respect their players [3,4]. In their defense, it may not be intentional. Those developers are probably just trying to give their players an experience they themselves enjoy. I find it hard to believe that they could maintain ignorance for so long. Guild Wars 2, and their developers 'try' to respect their players [5]. GW2 isn't a saintly game either, but it's significantly more respectful than the tools employed in WoW. As a matter of principle, developers that seek to improve the player's life should be encouraged.

Even gamers that play for “submission”—games as a pastime—should still prefer GW2 over WoW [1]. The content in GW2 is never obsolete. It is designed to keep all content current, the entire game is end game content. Situations where WoW subscribers are forced to pay for development of rehashed content—SFK, Deadmines, Zul'Gurub, Zul'Aman, Naxx, etc, etc—cannot occur in GW2 because of their lack of subscription and dynamic content adjustment [6]. This is just one example area, I could go in depth into MDA or other features as well. The bottom line is, the developers for GW2—ArenaNet—care about their players and will respect their time; the developers for WoW—Blizzard—really enjoy stringing players along on random item reward schedules.

In the end it's the consumer that must decide. The problem is, as Blow put it: “what I see right now is that we're cultivating this style of gamer that just says 'I want more of that because it tastes delicious, and that's all I know” [2]. What he is hinting at here, beyond the direct meaning, is network externality [7]. As the landscape of players is changed, by various exploitation methods, they don't mind that they are being exploited. Many even seek it [8]. Within the coming months we will see what happens as Guild Wars 2 enters the market. Will respect triumph over exploitation? For the sake of MMO players everywhere I hope they can break the problem of network externality, and give us a new experience.

[1] Hunicke, R. & LeBlanc, M. & Zubek, R. 2004. “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” Available online at:

https://sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/af43d59b-528f-42d0-b8e5-70af85c439dc/reading/hunicke_2004.pdf

[2] Brandon Boyer, Leigh Alexander, 2007, “MIGS 2007: Jonathan Blow On The 'WoW Drug', Meaningful Games”

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16392

[3] Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw 2011, “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm

[4] The Game Design Forum, “Acceleration Flow”

http://thegamedesignforum.com/features/acceleration_flow_1.html

[5] Ben Miller, July 3rd 2012, “The Golden Rules of Guild Wars”

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

[6] Guild Wars 2 wiki, “Dynamic Level Adjustment”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment

[7] S.J. Liebowtiz, Stephen E. Marholis, “Network Externalities (Effects)”

http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/palgrave/network.html

[8] Richard T. A. Wood, July 2007, “Problems with the Concept of Video Game 'Addition': Some Case Study Examples”

http://laurier.communicationstudies.ca/files/wood_problems_game_addiction.pdf

Battleground Scoreboard

---disclaimer---

This article is part of a series that will later be combined into how to twink the DV way.  The main purpose of this article is to provide an application of is not a measure of skill.  Alternatively, it provides some insight on a popular trend in feedback systems that focus on gameplay as submission, rather than gameplay as obstacles.

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I have the most "Killing Blows" I'm the greatest player in the world! But wait! Some other player has way more "Healing Done" than I've ever seen! She's the best healer in the world!

What is really happening here? What does the scoreboard mean?

The scoreboard is divided into the following categories:

Deaths: players health was reduced to zero or less.

Honorable Kills: player was within range of an opponents death.

Damage Done: amount of health a player reduced on other players.

Healing Done: amount of health a player replenished on teammates. This doesn't include absorbs.

Flag Captures: player held the opposing teams flag while their team controlled both flags, all while stepping on the cap location.

Flag Returns: player clicked on their team flag after an enemy flag carrier died, but before the flag despawned.

Honor Gained: the supposed amount of honor the player gained, its accuracy is diminished as the same opponents are killed repeatedly.

Killing Blows: This represents that the damage a player did reduced their opponent to zero or less health. This can mean 1 point of damage with a weak thrown weapon or 1000 points of damage with a templar's verdict. Generally these are easy to acquire if you either hit very hard or hit very frequently.

Did you notice a “skill” category? Was that category overlooked? This isn't the case. In fact, the skill category doesn't exist because it is too hard to measure with a simple battleground wide combat log. Is it odd that blizzard chose to use “Killing Blows” as the default category?

Lets look at each category a little more closely to find out why:

Do deaths measure skill? Having many deaths does not equal poor skills. A players death can be used to split an enemy team or distract them from your flag carrier. There have been frequent times where I'm able to kite and tow 3-5 people that are just focusing me. This buys the team extra time to get to the flag carriers. You can also use a death to quickly get back to the your teams base. This is the first of the two most useful stats to sort. It can be a great aid to help determine which path to take when leaving the enemy base with a flag.

Do honorable kills measure skill? This is the second of the most useful stats with which to sort the scoreboard. Honorable kills don't measure skill either, but what they do measure is who is playing with whom. If you join a game late, or are sitting back home protecting the flag carrier and wonder how the groups look, just sort the scoreboard by honorable kills. The players that are clustered next to each other are fighting with each other. With this information you can know who is on the enemy flag defense team. You can see which sets of players on both sides tend to fight together. This has more advanced uses, but I won't get into that until I flesh out the full guide more.

Does damage done measure skill? In some ways it can, but probably not in the way that most players think. It measures ability to read the situation and control your damage per second (dps). Lets say I have two players that each do 200 dps and we are fighting one player that has 1200 health. Assuming no cc or interrupts happen that 1200 health player will only live 3 seconds. Except... no one has a dps turn on button. That dps can be focused into burst or sustained for longer fights. Knowing how to control your dps is real time calculus. But there is a critical problem with looking to damage done. It's variable based on both the teammates that are with that player, and the locations and roles of the players.

Does healing done measure skill? In almost the same way as damage done, yes and no. It measures the players ability to read the situation and control their healing per second (hps). It has the same limitations that damage done has: even if healers are identically skilled, and there is a slight difference in latency, the healer with the faster connection will seem to be slightly better. And much like dps, the hps between different classes gives advantages and disadvantages in the 'skill' component here. I have not written about 'skill' yet but I mean my own definition. Not only that, but absorbs are not even listed.

Does capturing flags measure skill? This is extremely random. I've helped 800hp flag carriers cross the field. I could not have crossed on my own, but by supporting another player I can run ranged support so that no one gets anywhere near them. I've also run with extremely good flag carriers which make this considerably easier to do. But this player wasn't skilled “because” he had 3 flags captured by his name. He was skilled period. The specific feat of having 'flags captured' by a players name does not necessarily represent that players skill.

Does returning flags measure skill? This only means the player was the first one to click the flag after the enemy flag carrier died. There is almost nothing to say here except that rogues and classes with movement abilities should have a lot of these. The only skill it requires is clicking on a flag with a hitbox half the size of the screen.

Does honor gained measure skill? Honor gained measures both the honor the team has gained for objectives and what the player has gained through honorable kills. This measures how well the team performed against the opponents team. Generally, I would say that the team with the higher overall honor gained should have won. If that team doesn't win there is a serious issue with that teams strategy, or more likely they were farming mid/gy.

Do killing blows measure skill? No. And this is the primary reason blizzard chose this as the default category. Any random player can get one of these. It is possible that you can make a similar argument for skill here as is made for damage done. And in some ways reading the situation and controlling dps can get you more kbs. But that is not always the best move. In fact, very often a team loses a great deal of potential damage because too many people 'overkill' a low health opponent. It is extremely common to see several projectiles flood into a player that is already dead, or at least see casts in progress on players that were going to die before the cast could complete. This generally measures players that do either big or frequent damage.

There is certainly some measure of skill you can glean from the numbers on the scoreboard. But this will only give you an extremely broad estimation. The only particularly useful areas of the scoreboard are deaths and honorable kills. Although you could also assume that a player that has captured one flag will probably go for another capture.

So how can one tell if a player is good or not? The short answer is, skill level is not on the scoreboard. You can see it in their gameplay. But what skill means, is a post for another day.

Hiatus 2012

I took a break. It may have been considered long by some, but it was a needed break nonetheless.

1. Recap
2. What happened
3. Now What
4. Only WoW
5. Agenda

1. Recap.

• I had plans for:
  • Writing 'How to Twink' the deadvulcano way
  • Posting GW2 information and videos

• I was writing periodically on my gaming experience

I will probably still make the 'How to Twink' guide, but it will be slowly built as a side project. The gw2 information is unnecessary with all the coverage already available. (That and I don't want my favorite classes gimped.) The gaming experience will be mainly information about what I'm planning and producing as I work on developing games.

2. What happening?

I have been programming after several years of military work. During these past months I have created a few prototypes of games I've been thinking of making. This most recent prototype, which I built in about 4 weeks, is the most complete game I've ever made. Once it was finally finished I played a few games of wsg again.

I have played 2-5 wsg games periodically. The f2p bracket has changed considerably.

3. Now what?

Programming mostly. I'm not sure if I'll post game ideas and work load here to possibly help other aspiring indie developers. Or if I should just keep a clean split between the various parts of my e-life by producing elsewhere.

I can understand why many people prefer to keep that distinction. But in reality these game developers are also players. Maybe they served in the military for several years as well? Who knows? But I know that watching the journey is much more enjoyable if its easier to understand where the person is coming from.

4. Only WoW?

WoW is why you know about me so far. I still have several hours of f2p footage that I want to put together once my movie making skills have improved. We have known, loved, and played to same game together for years. But playing gw2 really did kill WoW for me. Its not that WoW is unenjoyable, its just that its less enjoyable than gw2 by a substantial margin. I will likely continue to login to WoW because mages have been a large part of my life for years. But the flavor of this blog may change drastically as I open up more information.

5. Agenda:

• Learn about developing indie games, and develop indie games
• Build the twink guide, I will probably start with something basic like what the scoreboard means
• Programming wise I'm working on shaders next, specifically GLSL
• Adjust the site to reflect elements I'm bringing together now. (does webgl work?)