Problem #2: Grinding
Another
issue that stems partly from die-roll combat is that of “grinding.”
Grinding is the act of playing in a repetitive, unexciting, or
otherwise un-enjoyable fashion in order to make faster progress. Since
die-roll combat is based on two factors that are generally very easy to
quantify and predict (the player’s power and the enemy’s power), it
follows that players almost always know at the start of a battle who
the winner will be. This knowledge lessens the excitement and tension
of battles. As players are able to predict outcomes with a high degree
of accuracy, games are balanced with the assumption that players will
win a very high percentage of their battles. In other words, the
punishment for losing a single battle far outstrips the average reward
for winning a single battle. Players will spend hours at a time
churning through feeble, ineffectual opponents rather than taking on
more risk, because the game rewards them more for adopting this style
of play.
Another factor that leads to “grinding” is
that PEGs tend to be balanced in a way such that players run out of new
things to do well before they have advanced their characters far enough
to move on to new content. As a result, they must do the same things
over many times before they can progress.
Finally,
players are willing to “grind” because the primary goal of most PEGs is
to reach the maximum level. This problem is discussed further in the
next section.
Solution 1: Encourage players to play in fun ways
All things being equal, players will choose fun activities over dull
ones; all a game designer has to do is to ensure that players are not
rewarded more for choosing the dull ones. Once the reward for
“grinding” is less appealing than for playing in a fun way, players
have no reason to “grind.”
In particular, games
should give players who take on tougher or more unpredictable
challenges, even if they fail often, better rewards (such as faster
advancement) than if they had 100% success with weak or predictable
challenges.
“Raids” (high-risk, high-reward
challenges) are already an important component of many PEGs, but
unfortunately, the average player does not benefit from raids until
reaching the maximum level. This kind of challenge should be available
to the average player (not just guilds, not just players who looked up
the super-secret quest on the web site), and it should give better,
longer-lasting rewards than grinding does. However, in their current
form raids have their own set of problems, as discussed further in
sections #4 and #6.
Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest
Solution 2: Tune advancement to match game content
If players get bored at level 24 because they can’t have any meaningful
new experiences (such as exploration, loot, enemies, and quests) until
they reach level 30, then players should reach level 30 sooner, or the
designer needs to add more things for them to do until they reach level
30 (besides repeating the same things they have been doing). Players
should still need to “earn” their advancement, but the best way of
earning it should involve overcoming interesting challenges, not by
subjecting oneself to hours of tedium.
Problem #3: Advancement-holics Anonymous
Voluminous discussion (including the lion’s share of all gamer and
developer “rants”) has been conducted on the subject of PEGs. Most of
it, unfortunately, assumes the inclusion of boring gameplay mechanics,
then goes on to debate implementation details such as game balance
issues (whether progression should primarily take the form of character
skills or levels, whether one type of character is more powerful than
another, etc.), how best to prevent real money from influencing in-game
accomplishment, and other secondary issues. They rarely address the
problem described in section #1: boring gameplay mechanics.
This
misplaced focus reflects one of the problems of the genre: issues
related to advancement comprise the bulk of the discussion because the
game’s appeal comes almost entirely from character building. In fact,
designers treat it as the game’s ultimate goal. Everything else—quests,
game mechanics, social interactions—are an often undesirable means to a
desirable end; namely, acquiring levels and loot. Players have learned
that the best rewards in a PEG always come from burning through the
game as quickly as possible. Nothing in the game is worth experiencing
for its own sake; if it doesn’t give experience or loot, it’s a waste
of time in players’ minds. Designers, unfortunately, make little effort
to discourage the player from thinking otherwise, as they put very
little content into the game that is worth experiencing for its own
sake. In other words, they encourage players to play this way. This
model is the exact opposite of single-player games, where character
advancement (skills, items, levels, etc.), though still a reward, is
primarily a one of several tools the player uses in his primary task:
advancing through game content.
As mentioned in the
section on “grinding,” this focus encourages players to do whatever is
necessary to advance quickly so that they can feel more powerful than
their peers or “get to the good stuff.” Quite often, the fastest way to
advance is the least exciting in terms of minute-to-minute enjoyment.
This is backwards; designers should use the appeal of advancement to
entice users into entertaining experiences, rather than using it to
make up for the lack of fun in other aspects of the game.
Character
advancement holds powerful appeal, as has been discussed; it is natural
for players to want to empty the cookie jar of quantifiable
accomplishment as quickly as possible, even if they get a stomachache
in the process. When players zip through the advancement system as
quickly as possible, it hurts both the player and the developer. The
player does not get to enjoy the game to its fullest, and the developer
loses customers as players reach the end quickly and become bored and
dissatisfied.
Solution 1: Provide worthwhile alternate goals
Players like advancement because it gives them a feeling of
accomplishment, acknowledges their abilities (or time spent on the
game, unfortunately), and in some cases, gives them the feeling that
they are getting closer to the best parts of the game.
One
way to tempt players to play for something other than numerical
advancement is to offer other avenues for accomplishment. For example,
a game could allow players to create things in the game (and allow
other players to see them) – art, music, writing, a pet, shops,
museums, etc. Of course, there would need to be some potential game
benefit—fees, royalties, prizes, the power of a trusty
sidekick—attached to any alternate type of accomplishment. Players
should not have to choose between building their persistent entity and
doing something fun.
Solution 2: Make the journey interesting
The
“roller coaster” game has a designated start and end point, as well as
a pre-defined path connecting the two. Experiences as the
roller-coaster travels from the start to the end provide the
enjoyment—visuals, play mechanics, story, characters, enemies,
animations, scripted events, settings, novelty, etc. Examples of
well-received “roller-coaster games” include Half Life 2 and God of War.
Although there are different ways to play and customize the experience
in these games, the player does not deviate from the pre-defined path
in any meaningful way.
Valve's Half-Life 2
Many
PEGs are primarily of the roller-coaster variety. Although they allow
the player to roam around, customize characters, etc., the point of the
game is still to travel along a relatively pre-defined path from the
start (level 1) to the end (maximum level and best equipment). There is
rarely creativity involved, and the only meaningful customization is
typically a series of one-time choices made at the start of the game
(character creation). Players who have reached the “end of the game”
and made the same initial choices (class, race, skills, etc.) often
have nearly identical play experiences and characters. In itself, this
is not a terrible thing, as the same is true of many high-quality
games. However, instead of being like a roller-coaster, PEGs of this
ilk are more like freight trains. Although they are still constrained
to the path dictated by the designer, there are few interesting
experiences between the start and end, the trip is painfully slow and
entirely predictable, and the whole point of the journey is to get to a
destination, not to enjoy the ride.
Obviously, it
can be prohibitively expensive to build a 2000-hour thrill ride.
However, someone will find a way to do it, and everyone else will have
to follow to stay competitive. Finding low-cost methods of creating
entertaining content is a subject that is more suitable for a book or a
game design document than a small section in an article, but a short
list of possible methods includes: giving users tools and incentives to
create compelling content for the game (and providing a quality filter
for this content); designing the game such that interactions between
users provide the bulk of long-term entertainment (real-time content
creation); procedurally generating content; and designing
content/experiences such that they hold their entertainment value over
many repetitions (re-using old content/assets falls into this last
category). Outsourcing to low-cost professional content developers and
development of good content-creation tool sets are also good methods
that are already in widespread use, but they generally do not provide
the radical improvements in cost possible with the other methods.
An
alternative is to design the game as a “creation” game, rather than a
“roller-coaster” game; this is discussed further in section #5.