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Mao and Magic

March 8, 2008 / Damion Schubert

In the previous thread on hiding numbers, Raph argues that showing the numbers is bad if

[You have] some other sort of game where figuring out the mystery is part of the point…

The king of these games is, arguably, Mao. The game is a crazy-eights clone, with a whole bunch of Uno-style rules, but with the catch being that the players are not told the rules. The dealer makes up his ruleset in his head, and enforces the rules on the fly, forcing players to deduce the ruleset along the way. Continue reading

WoW Class PvP Metrics

March 7, 2008 / Damion Schubert

My wife pointed these out to me – MMO designers who like metrics will probably find themselves mesmerised as well.

This blog runs metrics on the Armory to determine the class makeup of teams at different Arena ratings. (For the uninitiated, 1500 is an average, starter rating, whereas 1800 is considered good and 2200 is considered wtfpwnage). As an example, you can see that Druids and Warlocks own in 2v2, whereas locks are average in 5v5 and druids are considered kinda crappy. Continue reading

Got Aggro

February 25, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Cameron has some things to say about Aggro Radii over on his blog.

The idea of the aggro radius is inherently understood by longtime MMOG fans, even if you don’t describe it as such. It’s the knowledge you develop over time, by the harsh experience of repeatedly being attacked, that there’s a magic circle around your enemies which if entered will cause them to start angrily hurling everything they have at you. Eventually, you learn how big it is and how to avoid it…

This is how the aggro radius works. Aren’t pictures great?This concept, however, is completely unintuitive for people who don’t play MMOGs. When my fiancee was first learning how to play WoW, I explained the concept to her. She hated it. Even though she knew there were these invisible circles around her enemies, she could never figure out how big they were or whether she was successfully avoiding them (she wasn’t– leveling with her was interesting in those days). It really annoyed her that she could be standing in plain sight of an enemy whose friends she had just killed, but the enemy wouldn’t even glance at her until she wandered into its circle.

How To Write Great Design Documents, Take Two

February 23, 2008 / Damion Schubert

I’m back home from GDC, so now I can catch up on things that have been lingering a bit. Such as finally watching the series premier of Knight Rider.

My presentation on game design documents went well, for what is a decidedly non-sexy topic. The conference associates told me that I had more than 500 people as an audience – not bad for a talk that was basically a revisit of last year’s talk. For those seeking slides, they are here:

How To Write Great Design Documents (ppt)

I’ve been carded

February 19, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Seriously, the 9 of hearts?

Blackstar

February 18, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Check out what all those folks across the street from Bioware’s office are building.

The Presidents Race Actually Matters in Texas

February 18, 2008 / Damion Schubert

Texas is not used to mattering in the presidential race at all. The state going Republican in the general election is, these days, a foregone conclusion, and the primaries happen so late that by the time the race gets here, the nominees of both parties typically have things in the bag. I know that those living in important primary states (New Hampshire, Iowa) and battleground states (Ohio, Florida) get sick of political ads, but its still kind of novel here. Continue reading

Great Moments in Community Management

February 13, 2008 / Damion Schubert

3rd Place: “Shut up and give me my ten bucks per month, little man. My Porsche needs some performance upgrades.”
2nd Place: “It’s not a mirror.”
1st Place: “I disagree with what you said.”

Other nominations?

Original comments thread is here.

The Great Marvel Ghost Ship…

February 11, 2008 / Damion Schubert

… has once again sailed away, as Microsoft mentions off-handedly that the title is ‘dead in the water’.

“I’ll confirm. Marvel and we have agreed to end development on the MMO. It was an amicable decision,” claimed Kim. “It’s just something that we felt that, for us and for them, it would be better if we ended development. Which is disappointing, because that had a lot of promise. But sometimes you have to make these decisions.”

Meanwhile, no one’s heard anything about Sony’s DC game in ages.

Reset Buttons and Permadeath

February 6, 2008 / Damion Schubert

After my post last week about Shadowbane, I was asked, both in the thread and in email, whether or not one of the various Permadeath designs could be seen as a reset button. To me, the answer is simple: Unless you are talking about universally applied systematic character permadeath (i.e. a character wipe), I would argue that it wouldn’t.

Why? Well, the whole point of the reset button is to level the playing field, and bring everything back to an even keel. Reset the risk board. Get back to the land rush, where everyone has an equal chance of getting their stake. Continue reading

Zen Of Design