The WAH, 5/31/09 - What Does WAR's Design Have to do with Star Trek?

[Anglakhel]

Have you ever found yourself wondering what WAR and Star Trek have in common? Not sure? Wondering why I would ask? Well, Josh Drescher and Paul Barnett recently sat down with Warhammer Alliance at Games Day Baltimore for an interview. Things got very interesting though when Frank “PhoenixRed” Sanchez characterized the Land of the Dead as “the first truly new content in WAR” and mentioned “missing careers”.

Frank: So let's talk about Land of the Dead for a second. It's the first truly new content in WAR because missing careers were supposed to be in release, but were -

Josh: I'm going to cut you off right now and address that misnomer or misrepresentation. There were no missing careers. We removed things from the game that we felt were detrimental to the game. When a filmmaker makes a movie and he looks at the footage that he's recorded and he goes "you know what, that shot just doesn't work" or "it made sense in the screenplay, but when we put it in, it's too long, the flow's off, the movie is too long, this character we don't actually need", people won't go "you've stolen valuable content from my movie!" You know, JJ Abrams I'm sure has a bunch of extra Spock footage that he didn't put in the movie and nobody is banging on his door going "You made me pay ten dollars, I know you've got 15 extra minutes of Spock and I want it now!"

Now, we obviously wanted from number angles, one of them being balance, one of them being sort of aesthetic, to add things back in, but we were never going to put things into the game that we thought weren't great for the game. The Hammerer is a good example for that. We never got to a place where we were happy with the Hammerer. We weren't going to just put the Hammerer in because at one point we put a slide up that said "There will be Hammerers in the game". It's the right thing to do. It's the only way to conduct yourself professionally. You never try to drive in your design according to commitments you have made in passing in marketing presentation.

So the game launched the way we wanted it to be according to the things we had developed. The things that we have expanded since that time, 4 careers that we've added to the game, they are additions. They're not things that we removed or were taken away or missing from the game. They are additions to the game that fit with a much larger understanding of where we want to go and it will always be that way. Any content that we add or don't add to the game, it will always be because it's the right choice in our mind for the kind of product we're trying to build. You may now ask the second question.

Frank: *laughs* You've been reading our forums.

Paul goes on to talk about how the problem really is that fans want information and we're holding them to ideas that were "loose" or "sketchy." He even mentions that at one point they considered a career system with 256 careers, but no one is asking where all those missing careers went. You can see the full interview here.

When I hear Josh and Paul justifying the cuts again it makes my skin crawl, much like it did when Mythic first announced the cuts. Frankly, it's spin and marketing doublespeak. But why does it matter how Mythic views the cuts? What happened, happened. The four careers were cut from release and now Mythic has made good on their promise to get them back into the game. Why do I care whether or not Josh considers them "missing careers" or "new content"?

I’ve been going over the issue trying to figure this out and it comes back to the value of the design and the importance of the Archetypes. Mythic created an elegant design to deal with a lot of issues with making an MMO based upon Warhammer. The Warhammer IP has dozens of Armies with hundreds if not thousands of potential Careers. It is very easy to imagine well over 200 Careers based upon the Warhammer IP, but it would have been a balance and labor nightmare for Mythic. Trying to capture all the Armies and Units from Warhammer for the MMO would have been an impossible task. Games Workshop themselves only tackle a few Army revisions every year. They simply couldn't do it all at once. It's too much work. Mythic needed a strong design to translate Warhammer into WAR.

Mythic looked at the Warhammer IP and wisely chose to focus. They created a design that called for two broad factions: Order and Destruction. Then they looked through the dozens of Warhammer Armies and decided to focus on the three oppositions they felt were most central to the world of Warhammer, settling upon the Empire vs Chaos, Dwarfs vs Greenskins and High Elves vs Dark Elves. Now, with the focus on just six Armies, they had to decide how to best transfer the many different types of units in Warhammer into Careers for WAR. The design they came up with was to define four essential Archetypes: Melee Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Support. From all the options available in each Army List, Mythic would create four Careers based upon these essential Archetypes.

But this means that having 24 Careers wasn't some accident. It wasn't just a random number plucked out of the air. 24 Careers were the result of deliberate design decisions made by Mythic. That number is a direct result of basing the game around the four critical Archetypes and needing for each of the six available Armies to have access to those Archetypes. Had Mythic changed the number of Races available, the design would require the number of Careers to change. Had they changed the fundamental Archetypes and removed or added an Archetype, again the design would require a new number of Careers.

My problem is that Mythic wants to have it both ways. They want credit for the design of the game but don't want to take responsibility for blowing the implementation at release. Josh uses making a film as a metaphor for the process of designing WAR. In Josh's metaphor, the careers were cut from WAR to preserve the integrity of the "film". He wants us to believe that cutting the careers preserved the essential goodness of the game. It's like trimming a few minutes of Spock's footage to make a tighter and more compelling film.

The film metaphor has a lot of value, but I absolutely disagree with the parallels Josh draws. Looking at JJ Abrahm's Star Trek, I am certain that along the way decisions were made in bringing Star Trek back to the screen about which characters were necessary and which plot elements were necessary. Klingons get talked about in the dialog but never appear. Spock gets used, but none of the rest of the original cast. The process of designing the film requires thousands of decisions to be made about budget, cast, location, plot, effects, etc.

But once the decisions start getting locked down and the plot put in place, once the "design" of the film gets hammered out, certain things become necessary. Had Abrahm's been approaching release and looked at the film they had shot and suddenly decided Spock wasn't good enough, or that the Romulans weren't "working", it would have set the film back months. They would have been forced to reshoot, rescript, redesign. It would have cost the studio millions and millions of dollars and months and months of time. The design process is long an involved. Almost all the major design decisions for a film are settled before a single frame of film is shot.

In my mind, the Archetype system in WAR is part of the core design of the game. It's the foundational material of WAR's "screenplay". It's the stuff that should be hammered out long before a single frame is captured in film. Sure at one point Mythic may have talked about over 200 different Careers making it into WAR, but then they sat down for serious scripting, casting and budgeting and figured out 200+ Careers would be a mess and never work. So they came up with a tight screenplay that called for 24 Careers.

I think the design for WAR was rock solid. I think the planned interaction between the Armies and Archetypes was a clever solution to the problems presented. However, Mythic simply started running out of time. They couldn't get all the content planned for the game finished by the date they had apparently decided upon with EA. There was nothing wrong with the design. They needed more time to get the final four careers right. This may have meant changing from the Hammerer to the Slayer, but the core design of four Archetypes for each of the six Armies was in no way flawed.

Here is where Mythic and most good films took a different approach though. Rather than taking the time they needed and getting the four Careers right, Mythic made changes to the core design of WAR. They made deep cuts by removing four Careers, but then tried to act like they never really played an essential role in the production. Mythic pushed out WAR knowing that it wasn't "working" as they had designed it to function. Knowing that they didn't get around to 4/24 of the intended Careers and that four of the Armies were missing essential Archetypes. They created the game around the interaction of these Archetypes and when they removed access to these Archetypes it hurt how the game was experienced and played.

Can you imagine JJ Abrahms cutting the Spock entirely from Star Trek and then promising that we would see him in the DVD version of the film? No, because the film as designed doesn't work without Spock. He was placed into a central position of importance and the film wouldn't work without major, major reshoots if Spock wasn't working.

The Archetype system is at the core of how WAR is designed. But the spin and marketing doublespeak make me wonder if Mythic actually gets it. I cringe every time I read the statements they made at the time they announced the cuts or when Josh talks about how they didn't cut content and how it's the same of trimming a few minutes of footage from a film in editing. Josh is right that decisions must be made, shots chosen, dialog trimmed, sometimes even a character or subplot cut from a film. But when film starts cutting into the core structure, ideas, and major characters, it's a sign that the film is in trouble. Editing is not removing four Careers that the design called for anymore than Editing would have allowed for JJ Abrahms to remove Spock or the Romulans entirely from his Star Trek.

The Archetype system is at the very core of WAR. It shouldn't have been sacrificed to save time and resources at release and it should play a central role in how the game progresses and develops. Mythic needs to get back to the design that they created and stop making excuses for failing to properly implement it. As we see Patch 1.3 being tested on the PTS, I still see Mythic not fully grasping their own Archetype system and making sure they balance the game around the four roles they themselves defined. That's why it still gets to me when I hear Josh and Paul defending the cuts as good for the game. I worry that they actually believe that. I worry that the don't really get how important their intended design is to making WAR a great game.

WAR was fundamentally harmed in the early months of release by abandoning their design. People that played as a member of the Greenskin, Dwarf, Dark Elf or Empire Armies had a worse experience than they should of had if the design has been properly implemented. Kudos to Mythic for following through and getting this content into the game, but don't try to tell us that it wasn't designed into the game. Don't try and tell us that delaying these four Careers didn't have a detrimental impact upon WAR. It was your design and you should be proud of it. But not following your design caused WAR to be a lesser game on release than it should have been.

[Azhul]

The prime issue in the development and release of the game is why they have not admitted that the game was rushed out before it was ready. I have played since release, and it is clear that much of the game was/is incomplete and untested.

When the devs refuse to admit this and spin their production decisions as quality-driven, rather than driven by necessity, they show contempt for their customers. How are we supposed to trust anything they say given previous behaviour?

[Rok]

I agree Anglakhel, but marketing double-speak is a fact of life, a skill required to gain a management position. It doesn't really reflect on the company as a whole. Ever heard your boss say "We've identified oppertunities for improvement" and thought to yourself, "Yeah, next time we wont f@#$ it up"?

I agree that Mythic could be more honest with the community with some things, but sometimes they're great. I remember when pet AI was completely borked in Open Beta they freely admitted that this was the case and did something about it. This was quite a refreshing experiance after WoW where every bug was "working as intended" until they suddenly fixed it.

In terms of cost vs. hours of entertainment, Mythic delivered.

[temuchin]

Missing careers isn't equivalent to not having housing at launch or a certain color dye or w/e. It's entirely disingenuous to act as if Mythic didn't fully promote those careers to sell the game. Who started talking about 24 careers? That's right Jacobs and his employees did... in order to move more product. It's not the fans who somehow inferred or created the idea of the Hammerer class or Blackguard out of thin air before launch

It's also dishonest to act as if the added classes are wholly new additions. If they act as if they were not "removed" but are "new" content why is the Blackguard essentially identical to before it was removed? It's not as if they started these new classes from scratch to create new ones. If it was some gameplay decision, KOTB wouldn't have gone into live mechanically the same as it left. The limiting factor wasn't "fun" or game design it was simply running out of time to polish the classes... and a conscious decision during beta to release the missing 4 classes in 3 month intervals to extend subscriptions in the game.

Even changing "hammerer" to "slayer" had more to do with a desperate move to appeal to retaining subs than anything else... during development both Mythic and GW stated IP problems with characters playing slayers... all of the sudden 6 months after launch lore issues with IP suddenly vanish because they can retain 10x more subs with the word "slayer" than "hammerer"?

It's one thing to make corrections for the community... but it's simply low-class to make a semantic point that's a lie. These were missing classes... they were removed for marketing reasons.. to act as if 1)they're totally new and 2)wow we're shocked SHOCKED that people would say they were removed... is very close to just being asinine.

As for missing content. Land of the Dead is cool but let's not pretend that it's not 1 month of subs for beta testers (chance to win a mount OMG!!!) followed by 1 month extended subs to get the patch live and 2 months of grinding gear = 4 months of subs. Do they have any plans to finish "end game" that was projected to ship with the game? Wonder if they're ever going to finish off Tier 4 and add the missing capitals... if they ever intended to do that (and assuming the game lives that long) we're looking at a year and a half to get them all into the game (each launched in 3 month intervals with 2 months of "testing" to extend subs)

[Dastion]

Josh and Paul are likely smart enough to know that the 4 other careers were indeed missing content that was belatedly added to the game. However, when a company decides to place a certain "spin" on things, you can't expect for Josh to admit that it really isn't "New content" even if by letting a statement like that get past.

When they removed the other cities as an option that was acceptable. It was something that had never been put into the game and was, after all, an acceptable decision to make based on the state of the game and what the game needed. They kept a balance in the game by only having one city per side. It didn't drastically effect faction balance because both sides had the same options available. So, if they later add in those cities (which would be a considerable undertaking if they are like Altdorf/IC), then that could be considered "new" content. It will be taking an already working system and "expanding" it.

When they add Land of the Dead, that too will be New Content, it is something that the game doesn't necessarily need to function in it's current state but will definitely "expand" the options.

When it comes to careers though, it's just not something that works. They set up a very strictly defined system per race of 4 careers of a distinct archetype. So, when they failed to implement 4 of those careers before launch it quite blatantly left the career line up "incomplete". So adding in those careers was simply completing content that should have been in at launch. It cannot possibly be considered "new" content, the closest they could come to considering the careers "new" is the Slayer... but the Slayer is merely a replacement to help complete the line up. Attempting to call this stuff "new" content would be like me telling my boss I can't get his project completed in time, getting a weeks extra time, then turning it into him a only a day late and expecting him to commend me.

[kazamx]

This was just Josh trying to be clever and failing. He tried his hand at marketing speak and it blew up in his face. No one believes that the 4 classes were really new content (maybe slayer) they just see it as finishing off the content that was cut right before release. He can spin it however he wants, but its still how the players see it.

Does anyone else remember Mythic bragging about how WAR was the fastest developed MMO ever?

[Reaver330]

Some quick definitions of the word "missing":

• lacking, absent, or not found: a missing person.
• To leave out; omit.

They were missing classes no matter how you try to spin it. They were once there and then were removed, later to be added again. I stopped playing WAR VERY shortly after launch and only returned briefly during the tank update to which I didn't feel progress was good enough and then more recently with the slayer/choppa update. I really do feel sorry for those who continued to pay for beta. The game is slowly starting to come together and with Land of the Dead it could be interesting assuming it is as good as it looks.

I couldn't care about the other major cities being added anymore, there aren't enough players to make them worthwhile and with the current systems in place the defending faction can benefit so much more due to how difficult it is to take a city especially with the poor performance.

WAR was released far too early and for that WAR has lost far too many numbers with a large number of my friends stating they are never going back to WAR. This is a sad time as I have been able to experience what the game is becoming and I like it (who doesn't love booby traps?)

I'm sure Mythic knows what they need to take priority on but unfortunately it takes time and people just aren't willing to be dissapointed or wait around for these changes to take affect.

[Yerk]

There are many examples in the game supporting the idea that it was released early and that, possibly, changes in the team during development had an impact:

- some quest lines that just end, some in the past even had place markers where the next stage of the quest was due to go

- some areas that seem like they were obviously designed to house PQ's

- lack of consistency eg why do some objects which are of no use appear greyed out whilst others allow you to interact, even have a timer, when they serve no function for people of your realm?

They now seem to be in a state of confusion as to how to improve the game and bring in more content. How else to explain the attempt to bring balance to totally disparate careers by changing global variables?

The game still has huge potential and could very well be brilliant in the future. As it is I have just resubbed for another 6 months but there are certain issues that could make me change my mind about continuing the game after that

[LeonHart]

Interesting read there. I just came across this video of Paul, where he talks about the 3 parts of"where the game is going"

Interestingly, careers come under "keeping promises" whereas Land of the Dead is "new content". So yeah, careers != new content

[maideth]

Originally Posted by LeonHart

Interesting read there. I just came across this video of Paul, where he talks about the 3 parts of"where the game is going"

Interestingly, careers come under "keeping promises" whereas Land of the Dead is "new content". So yeah, careers != new content

"we are taking very seriously about keeping the fun value high"
i don't think the fun value is high ,they should work harder

[Azhul]

Originally Posted by maideth

"we are taking very seriously about keeping the fun value high"
i don't think the fun value is high ,they should work harder

I agree.

There is an awful lot in this game that isn't fun.

[spirit]

I'm dissapointed in this WAH. I mean old WAH's used to tackle issues which Mythic may not want to talk about, but they tended to give a fairly balanced account and come off as both reasoned and constructive, much like the WHA boards specify they like you to act when writing. This just came across as a massive b--ch piece, took no attempt to take any kind of balance and wasn't based around an issue of any relevance towards the future of the game.

I'm not saying I disagree with your point or that you have written it badly, but I disagree with the method you chose to go about doing it, and hope WAH returns to being more thought-provoking in the future.

[WeRT]

Originally Posted by Frank

So let's talk about Land of the Dead for a second. It's the first truly new content in WAR because missing careers were supposed to be in release, but were -

Originally Posted by Josh

I'm going to cut you off right now and address that misnomer or misrepresentation. There were no missing careers. We removed things from the game that we felt were detrimental to the game.
...
blablablabla
...
So the game launched the way we wanted it to be according to the things we had developed. The things that we have expanded since that time, 4 careers that we've added to the game, they are additions. They're not things that we removed or were taken away or missing from the game.

All i can say is EPIC FAIL in PR.

ps.

Where is missing content? 4 Capitol Citys? Orcs & Goblins, High Elves, Dark Elves and Dwarfs? You want links to your artworks?

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by spirit

I'm dissapointed in this WAH. I mean old WAH's used to tackle issues which Mythic may not want to talk about, but they tended to give a fairly balanced account and come off as both reasoned and constructive, much like the WHA boards specify they like you to act when writing. This just came across as a massive b--ch piece, took no attempt to take any kind of balance and wasn't based around an issue of any relevance towards the future of the game.

I'm not saying I disagree with your point or that you have written it badly, but I disagree with the method you chose to go about doing it, and hope WAH returns to being more thought-provoking in the future.

As the author of the majority of the WAH posts, from a logistics standpoint it's understandable that a change in voice may be jarring. When one person is responsible for writing these things they tend to create a tone that people come to expect.

The WAH will be written by multiple staff members on this site, including occasional pieces by myself, from now on. There's lots of us on staff that have particular topics and opinions in mind, and our content team can and should be aware of those to present them. It's not fair for me to just hog that WAH spotlight, so expect more from others in the future - but we ask for your patience as we tinker with the writing to make it just right.

As for the piece, don't get me wrong - we respect Mythic for what they've done and know about the trials and tribulations of development. As always, our intent isn't to bash on Mythic (we'd be providing a bad example for our posters in doing so) but to also be clear and honest with opinions and thoughts about the game. If you guys feel that the developers could provide more context to any piece we write, we'd be more than happy to pursue our contacts for follow-up interviews.

To provide you with a little bit of context, when I was interviewing folks in Baltimore I had an average of 8 - 10 questions, taken from a mix of community queries and our own questions. Josh and Paul were my first interview, and I had decidedly less time with them, sadly, than the others. Having a technical flub with the microphone didn't help.

I managed to only ask 2 or 3 questions, but the answers to them were so detailed that they provided a lot of food for thought. I actually was surprised (and pleasantly pleased) that Josh took my original question (which was about Land of the Dead) in this direction, because it showed that Mythic does read our forums, and that they are conscious of the general criticisms of the game's release that they mostly do not have a chance to respond to. But I knew in doing that, that they'd be putting themselves in front of the firing squad.

That being said, perception is a powerful thing, and players really thought the content was missing from release. There was a defensiveness in Josh and Paul (who talked about "broken promises" in another question), but I really can't fault them for that - after all, they're protecting their creation, their game, their product that they put time and sweat, blood, and tears into. But I can't really get behind Josh's explanation, simply because there are too many factors at stake in an MMO release and I fully believe Mythic intended all 24 careers to be in at launch. The movie analogy was a good one, but it doesn't mask the idea that content intended to be in release was not there and had to be put in afterwards.

I can't, however, get behind doomsayers and bashers who claim dishonesty on Mythic's part, simply because of the old adage, "$%$ happens". Anyone who's followed any MMO out there knows and understands that there is hype, there is marketing talk, and there is always good intentions followed by the realism of the development timeline. Pushbacks, delays, and content cuts are usually the result of the realistic way that things work in MMO development, and NO MMO, even WoW, can claim to have launched with all their intended content, or on time. To call Mythic dishonest is to have blinders on as to how development timelines work.

MMO developers need to stop overpromising and underdelivering. They need to create realistic timelines and expectations for their players. They need to eschew Marketing hype for down-to-earth facts, and they need to manage the timeline a bit better so as not to overrun their own deadlines. I'm not a developer, and don't know "how it works", but I think a massive paradigm shift in MMO development philosophy in general is needed - and that can't just start with Mythic. Cryptic, NCSoft, and Bioware are doing the same thing with hyping their game, and same MMO Love Affair-type stuff is just going to happen to those games, too, leaving players with "broken promises" and "not delivering".

[Svengrom]

Agreed Anglakhel

Its gets my goat up when they try labeling it new content when everyones knows its just you finaly getting round to putting in the missing content.

I have been playing since the pre release on karak hirn before the server got merged, and IMO cutting KOTBS out really hurt order because we lacked tanks BADLY in scenarios and ORVR.
My veiw on this is that you get a large core of people who dont like elfs and dont like dwarfs and wanted to play a human in armour, and all they had was the chosen.
I can remeber the months and months of losing scenarios because we would have 1 IB and destro would have 4 chosen doing all the CC they could.
And finaly when they released KOTBS the balance in scenarios finaly came back.

This tells me that they cut the knight cos they had not polished the class off and put little thought in to cutting it.
And the counter argument for blackgaurd is not relevent cos no one plays them, on my kills list i have over 2000 kills on everything except choppa and blackguard, less than 400 black guard kills since they came out.