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I started today's blog with lots of pre-amble about Demon's Souls, but decided to cut it and a long section describing in detail the mechanics of the game. Instead let me cut to the basic mechanic I need to explain my article: when you die in Demon's Souls, you resume play as a Soul with reduced health. You can only play multiplayer games between living and dead players: either a living player pulls souls into their game to play co-operatively, or a dead player invades a living player's game to steal their life.
The problem I want to cover in today's blog is this: one multi-player mode (pvp) allows players to deny others the opportunity to play in the other multi-player mode (co-op). When a Black Phantom invades your game and kills you, you are dead, so you can no longer play co-op until either you or one of your friends comes back to life.
Let me put another analogy. Immaigne you're playing co-op Halo. All of a sudden, a PVP ganker enters the game and kills you. Your co-op button is now grayed out until you beat the game single-player (or you gank another player's co-op game)! This strikes me as absurd.
Personally, I don't like ganking in games. If a game has too much gank in it, I just won't play it. The problem is when a game has just a little gank, and how well I can avoid it. I enjoy playing EVE Online, even though I hide out in high-sec space. That's ok. I still team up with friends and we do missions or exploration sites. We have fun together in our own way. But Demon's Souls is more ruthless in its ganking: there is no way to hide from gankers, no "safe space," no mode that allows co-op without gank. My friends and I can't play together, because whenever we try, the living one among us is cut down by a Black Phantom, and now the game mechanics won't even let us initiate a co-op session.
It seems like such a small, trivial thing, too. It seems so easy for the designers to have added an option to turn off Black Phantom play. This could be abused, to be sure, by players who toggle it off every time they're alive (so they can't be invaded) and turn it on again every time they're dead (so they can invade). But there's other options, like a fixed setting when you create a character, whether or not this character will forever be banned from pvp (never invade or be invaded) or will forever be open to pvp.
Yet it's just not there. Players aren't given any choice. If they want to play the game at all online, they do so at their own peril.
Jamie Skelton's column on MMORPG.com about seeing red is about pvp vs "carebear" players and the split of games into "pvp" and "non pvp" servers. She points out, rightfully so, that PVPers need carebears because killers need victims to prey upon. However, she fails to note that carebears do not need PVPers to enjoy the game, and actually enjoy the game more when there are no PVPers.
Ultimately, it seems to me that a multiplayer game must stay one course or the other: it must appeal to PVPers or carebears, because it cannot make both happy. If you make a game with restricted PVP, the PVPers are unhappy because they have no victims to prey upon. If you make a game with unresitricted PVP, the carebears are unhappy because they do not want to be preyed upon.
So, which type of gamer should Demon's Souls have targetted? I think this is an interesting discussion because the PVP element is relatively small to the scope of the game itself. Not only can be it be played offline with no multiplayer interference at all, but I can picture a game without the Black Soul mechanic and it is still perfectly fun and thorough. Nothing is lost by taking it away. The question is merely whether or not what is gained by adding it is of sufficiently positive value.
What do you think? Should Demon's Souls stay a PVP game and the carebears be damned, or should the carebears be catered to with some patched option to disable Black Soul invasions so they can play co-op in peace?
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At the start of the article, where you list "all" the multiplayer game play, you miss a whole section of the online game (dueling).
Your comment of "Your co-op button is now grayed out until you beat the game single-player (or you gank another player's co-op game)! This strikes me as absurd. " is a little misleading. You come back to life quite often in Demons Souls - every time you kill a boss (15 - 20 or so in the game), whenever you use an eye item (I ended my first runthrough with 17 I hadn't used), whenever you go into another person's game and kill them (easy to do, as you point out), and when you go into another persons game and help them kill a boss.
"there is no way to hide from gankers". There are several items in the game which drop your viability to other players to almost zero, making it very easy to hide in larger levels, if you need to.
"My friends and I can't play together, because whenever we try, the living one among us is cut down by a Black Phantom" Another thing to point out - this mode is level constrained - a level 100 can't just walk in and gank a level 1. Also, you can have up to 2 other players on your side, black phantoms can only go in alone. Its actually very much stacked against the attacker in a lot of ways.
You're missing the biggest, most crucial point - the game, more than any I've played in a very very long time, makes being alive incredibly valuable. The game is about collecting souls, and every aspect of the game forces one fact down your throat at all times - being alive is the most valuable thing in the game, reinforcing it's brutally unforgiving game play.
The one boss, where instead of fighting him he summons in a random other player for you to fight against is an incredible game play twist, quite unlike anything I've seen in a while.
Beating a great non-PVPer is generally easier than beating a decent PVPer in most modern MMOs. This is primarily due to the fact that gameplay in PVP is very different from what is offered in PVE. The best solution to this problem is to create a game in which the differences between PVE and PVP are minimal. This is very difficult to do because it would either require very limited gameplay or very robust AI. However, I think that as MMOs continue to evolve, any successful mixture (especially if it is forced on all players) of PVP and PVE should be handled in this fashion.
First off, your analogy of comparing a Halo co-op to Demon's Souls' is erroneous. You can't compare the two on a "what if" basis; Halo offers what it offers and Demon's Souls likewise. This is what makes them their own unique experiences. The thought that a game should adhere to some sort of status quo because it doesn't suit your fancy, and therefore must be flawed, is simply nothing more than a narrow-minded perspective. If you don't like the game for what it is, then don't play it. Demon's Souls offers something new, and that should be rewarded in its own right.
As for an option to turn off phantom mode, you have to respect a developers position to adhere to the vision they had for their game. Sometimes making a game is a passion, and not simply seen as a cash-cow to exploit on the ignorant masses.
"Players aren't given any choice"- Sure you are. You either pop the game in to play it, or you don't.
Furthermore, I don't care about Jamie Skelton's post because your position cannot be validated. You say that "PVPers need carebears because killers need victims to prey upon", well that's a blanket statement if I ever did see one. Ganking "carebears", while fun for maybe a small amount of time, isn't fulfilling. As a PVPer I get the most satisfaction fighting those of the same level as I am as I'm questing. That's just me, however.
"Nothing is lost by taking it away"- Nothing is lost to you because you don't care for it.
If you want every game to be the same, in that it has to cater to as many people as possible, then you are against creativity, or just being selfish. There's already a plethora of games out there that cater to the type of play-style you have- don't barge in to try to change the niche category.
However, it does illuminate the point of view that led me to write this blog entry in the first place: "If you don't like the game for what it is, then don't play it."
Do we, as game designers, really want to lock ourselves into the "my way or the highway" mentality? Have From Software and Atlus made a better game by denying their players the option to play co-op without being ganked?
1. What would be the effect of removing PvP? Would the game become too predictable?
2. Does the unpredictability factor need to be pvp? A great example of unpredictable pve is in vanilla EverQuest Commonlands zone. Two different npcs, that could insta-gib a player, patrolled the zone. They could be easily avoided, if you kept your head on a swivel. These two npcs took an ordinary zone and took it up a notch.
3. What is the time penalty of being ganked, and is there opportunities to be serially ganked? For example, if in a 30 minute play session you routinely lose 3 minutes of co-op play to ganking that might be acceptable, but 6 minutes in a 30 minute session may be too much. It is possible that it is not the ganking that is the problem, but how much of a penalty you take from being ganked.
In regards to the "my way or the highway mentality" statement, well, that's a nice try at coyly putting a pejorative on the creative process. Just because someone doesn't offer something to a particular crowd, doesn't mean they take to that mentality. You seem to like blanket statements, so I'll throw one in myself - "This particular piece of gameplay might not appeal to everyone, lets steer clear of it/change it/add a different mode". Is that what you are advocating? What if the developers can't put in a different mode to make it easier for the casual gamer? Should they change their whole design layout to fit them? This is where your line of thinking gets flawed, that games should be for everyone. That's just not possible.
As for my staunchness against it from a creative standpoint. Let's look at it this way, here's an analogy for you. What if the game industry took more of an approach to the way that Hollywood makes its movies? Hollywood can say that its movies surely try to appeal to "everyone" - look at all the shitty PG-13 movies and big budget sequels that come out of the woodwork.
If they bend and give in to their own rules, aka include an "easy mode", then the game losses its attitude. The developers obviously wanted to cater to the hardcore crowd and wanted it to be challenging. That's it. To go back on that is to betray their vision and waters down what gives them their uniqueness. I mean, if you would reverse this scenario, would you be posting up a blog about how a casual game is too easy?
Don't play the game. Every game doesn't have to be for everyone. As an aside, what's that new feature that Nintendo is coming out with that allows you to skip the hard parts in Mario?
Blue phantoms are able to maliciously steal your crystal lizards and/or just run them off, the black phantom just be flat out cheap and run around killing your npcs in the level, or worse yet use them for cover as you try to fight. When invaded you can't leave with the black phantom still there and from all I've experienced there doesn't appear to be any time limit - so if the invader wants to get set up in an advantageous position and wait for you to walk into their slaughter then depending on your character build there will be nothing you can do except get slaughtered, wait forever for them to leave, or just reset.
Bottom line, if it were "just" getting killed every so often by an overgeared invader 15 soul levels above you who two shots you in exchange for having the good times with co-op and the high-adrenaline moments during relatively even-matched bouts of pvp, I wouldn't have an issue with it. But without any containment on what guests to your world - welcome or otherwise - can do, the experience rapidly deteriorates in accordance with John Gabriel's Greater Internet ******* Theory. Any time there is participation from a random internet audience there will always be the gremlin who has no greater desire than to make your play experience miserable - and in this game there's a lot they can do to make you miserable.
I must have taken the wrong route to argue my point, because a lot of those who have commented seem to have the false impression that I don't enjoy Demon's Souls. Quite the contrary, I not only enjoy the game, but I find many of it's Multiplayer features (the ghostly afterimages in particular) to be highly innovative.
But, as Jebediah points out, the "jerk" factor can become intolerable and there is no "Guest Containment" to keep them out. Being "ganked" is only one factor of the misery introduced by the Black Phantom mechanic.
I would like to encourage readers to redirect their focus from who should or should not be playing a game, and instead consider the game design issues concerning uncontrolled "guests".