Culling in MMO's.

[Garthilk]

The idea behind this post is in response to Paul Barnetts post on the topic of 'culling'. I guess 'culling' is Pauls way of saying cutting features. Now obviously the dream MMO has every system seamlessly woven together in a symphony of code and masterwork game design. Now the reality is culling does happen and it will even happen in WAR. The question I ponder though is at what point are game developers cutting features that just ten years ago were standards?

Example. Racing games. By and large most racing games have at their core the same premise. Different physics, car selection, realism, weather, locales, etc. However, by and large there is a set of stock features that can be attributed to nearly all of them.

If you were to design a racing game today would you really be worried about culling weather effects? I mean every decent racing game released in the last ten years has had weather effects.

At what point does a standard exist within a genre?

When is it okay to break away from the standard, or do standards ever apply?

[Bear]

My real quick response would have to be if your considering "culling" a certain feature that has become a "standard" in the games of the genre you're working in, you'd have to take into account whether or not that feature still holds the same importance anymore to the majority of people that would possibly be playing your game .

I don't think there's any value in spending the resources needed in keeping a feature that's only important to a small fraction of potential players who still hold on to it as being important, when everyone else couldn't care less.

[Tykon Roe]

Yeah, there is way to much room for interpretation to answer that question deffinatively.

If you look at a feature that has outlived it's usefullness, there is no reason to keep it in. IE gear grinding. Just because most games have it, doesnt mean its the best system.

[Ruinx]

Paul presents the question "cut number of cars", or "cut types of weather". I think the answer depends entirely on what kind of racing game you're going for, a realistic "comprehensive" game of a simulator-ish mould demands more weather, less cars, whereas a less realistic, "collection"-oriented game (like Gran Turismo), demands more cars, MORE CARS!

I think he was hoping everyone would answer more cars, but that's not always the answer.

Now Garth poses an even trickier question, that being when do standards exist in a genre. It's almost impossible to answer precisely.

I think standards exist, for me, when people are going to actively avoid/disdain your game due to your failure to include a feature which you at no point announced or caused a fanfare about.

Do you see? When people are saying "I won't play that game because it doesn't have X!", even though it never claimed to have X, that's when you have to wonder if you culled the right features. Sometimes you did, and your game will be successful anyway, sometimes you didn't.

It's also important to note that Paul is talking about culling, not just normal design decisions. He's talking about removing features that they'd like to have, rather than intentionally designing a game so that it doesn't have certain features, and never would.

For example, Jurassic Park: Trespasser didn't have a normal HUD, reloading, or the like, but it was a design decision. It didn't have as many levels as intended, or as complex gameplay, and that was due to culling. Two different things which both result in it not having expected features. It's much easier to "sell" design decisions than it is the results of culling.

It's one thing to design a racing game with the idea in mind that it will always be a perfect sunny day, it's quite another to design a game where you'd LIKE to have varied weather, but you have to cut it to get the game out in time.

Another example is the development of a game I followed closely, Master of Orion 3, generally regarded as trash, these days, but during development, one of the most promising games ever.

They had a huge number of interesting and complex gameplay ideas, but whilst good, they were hard to test and implement, and the development was taking a long time, so the decision was made to cull virtually every clever or original feature about the game in order to ship it. They even culled upgrading the game's resolution to modern standards (despite the fact that, according to the lead artist himself, the art was made in such a fashion that it wouldn't have taken long to do so). Even before that, we'd seen huge lists for culls, from space monsters, to certain races, to other gameplay elements. Whereas there were design decisions taken, for example, to not include the Mrrshan or other "furry"/"elf"-type races, and they sold those decisions to the community just fine.

Tykon - I think that point is slightly to the side of this issue. It's not an "expected feature", it's a specific gameplay design and as soon as there were multiple MMOs, they were playing with the amount and type of gear grind in the game. I mean, DAoC was one of the earlier 3D MMOs, yet even that had little "gear grind". So I'd suggest that was unlikely to be an "expected" feature.

PS - I think weather is an "expected" feature of modern MMOs, but it's not a feature that's likely to make people disdain the MMO by itself. It's also something that's reasonably doable to add post-release.

DAoC is full of once-culled features that were eventually added in expansions, mounts are one example. Hopefully most of the "culled" features in WAR will resurface, but history relates that it's never all of them!

[Dalwin]

Perhaps more germaine would be to come up with a list of some features that have been accepted norms in PvP/RvR MMOs that have perhaps outlived their usefullness.

One example might be piling up some sort of honor points or whatever based on RvR kills. Is it important to have this in the game? Is spending lots of time in RvR supposed to get you better gear or a higher rank. Many would say yes, but I am not sure that such a feature is indispensible even though it is more or less standard.

Perhaps rank and such should come more from participating in successful campaigns and missions rather than from your individual kill count.

Crafting is another feature in MMOs that is fairly standard. Unless the crafting system is well designed and the crafted items well balanced against the dropped items/quest rewards, it might do more harm than good. There are a few games I have seen where the crafting system is badly enough done that it would have been better had there been no crafting at all.

I am sure others can come up with some things that are considered standard in these games but which might in fact not be indispensible.

[Averardus]

You have to be willing to "cut", or you risk being stuck in the box. The games of 10 years ago, are still around today, and many of those features still pop up in new games.

Thats really not a good thing. Look at the leveling idea, it has been around in some form or another with every single game I can think of. Not just MMO's, but even in FPS and RTS games. Theres even a car based MMO, adn yes you guessed it, there is alot of leveling involved. Single player games also have leveling. Your always chasing that carrot, and I frillan hate it!

The Devs need to take a hard look at what features really work, and are really needed. Im talking about the real core stuff that we have to have. If you think about it, that list is very small. Stuff like, a virtual world to play in, mobs and some gold to buy things you need, throw in some form of travel and you have a game. Sure its a bit basic, but thats all you need to call it a game.

Features like weather and armor dyes can easily be added later in expansions by player requests. Stuff like honor points, realm points and uber gear are all carrots we dont HAVE to have. Also, how about character customization, that has turned into a big thing and I cant figure out why. How often do you get a close look at anyones face?? Housing is also something we dont need.

I say cut all that crap out. Start with someting simple, and build it up with features never seen before, but still getting the desired effect of immersing the player in the game world. I call it "revamping", because you wouldnt be making up something entirely new, just adjusting features that players expect to see.

I could give examples, but thats not the point, the point is that devs must be willing to see beyond what they know will make money, because you never know if a game will come along that changes everything about how future games are made, but that will never happen if the devs are afraid.

[mongoose]

Originally Posted by Garthilk

Now the reality is culling does happen and it will even happen in WAR. The question I ponder though is at what point are game developers cutting features that just ten years ago were standards?

The question I have to ask first is......Exactly which 10 year old 'standard' features are we talking about here?

I ask this because, in relation to todays MMOs, there really werent that many features to begin with and of those, most if not all, are feature upgrades that really cant go backwards.

Lets examine some of EQs base features:

1 - 3D environment
2 - Personalized character models
3 - Social interaction, both in grouping and chatting
4 - Overcoming foes for a reward
5 - Performing non-confrontational tasks for reward (i.e. quests)

All of these I would say are required as part of standard MMOs.....

1 - Going back to a MUD is not an option. Graphics evolve and get better so going backwards as computer capabilities increase makes no sense. Now Games like WoW have managed to side step this feature somewhat (and even arguably WAR) by having simpler models than other equivalent MMOs but they make up for those polygon deficiencies with rich texture modeling and style.

2 - Again going from just a name to a fully 3d model is not an option anymore. Would anyone want to go back to this?

3 - Social interaction is 'the name of the game' and the reason for MMOs in the first place so this is a must.

4&5 - aka PvE. If this feature was removed we wouldnt have any way progressing (other than a pure PvP environment) There has to be some form of task and some sort of gain. Otherwise there would be nothing more than a glorified chat room.

A more generalized term for this might be a 'time sink' or something that keeps players entertained. Without time sinks players WILL become bored eventually.



Now there are some standard features that can be considered superfluous like PvP or crafting (to name but a few)

PvP - Some prefer this aspect but many games have proven that this is not necessary for an MMO to be successful.

Crafting - While many consider this to be 'required', games like City of Heros have proved that, while a good feature, is not necessary.



But back to the topic at hand and how it relates to WAR............

My concern in all this is, when have they cut too deeply, causing the 'patient' to hemorrhage and die?

As Paul's first rule states: [FONT=Arial]Rule one: If you have to cut, cut early and cut deep.[/FONT]

Well Mythic did that. They determined early on certain things weren't feasible;

1 - 3 sides (way too resource consuming and would leave future problems like huge expansions and not enough WH races to go around.......cut)

2 - Only 6 races (again, boiling it down to the absolute minimum. This also leaves more races for late expansion = more potential for $ later.......cut)

3 - Worshiping all 4 Chaos gods (once again all 4 would have been far too labor intensive. Focus on a single god instead.......cut)

and these were just the 3 major cuts at the very beginning.

The problem now however is they are breaking rule #1 and continuing to 'cull' things left and right, leaving many to wonder if there will be anything left when the game ships. Of that long list we have things like; No slayers, no cross classing for greenskins, no unique character models, no dynamic weather effects, etc.

With 10+ months left to go what will be next? mounts?, crafting?, ambient weather?, unique armor?, all emotes?, taking of a capitol? The list goes on and on of possible features we could see fall to the cutting room floor. Needless to say Im a bit worried.

[Ruinx]

Originally Posted by mongoose

The problem now however is they are breaking rule #1 and continuing to 'cull' things left and right, leaving many to wonder if there will be anything left when the game ships. Of that long list we have things like; No slayers, no cross classing for greenskins, no unique character models, no dynamic weather effects, etc.

With 10+ months left to go what will be next? mounts?, crafting?, ambient weather?, taking of a capitol? The list goes on and on of possible features we could see fall to the cutting room floor. Needless to say Im a bit worried.

Very good list of features, those certainly are the defining characteristics of an MMORPG (you didn't even include anything optional like levels, which most people would have). Like you I'd see their current culling as somewhat counterproductive. I think they cut Greenskin cross-classing early enough to get away with it, but the recent cutting of Slayers (after specifically saying they would be in the game) was probably a little late. Dynamic weather seems like a horrid cut without any "We'll put it in later!" promise. Personally, I'm quite worried for mounts, because it's tricky to see a simple way to implement them without messing the game up, and Paul is clearly not even allowed to say the word mount, much as he might hint at it, even with only 10 months to go. Though, for all I know, the big press release soon could be mount-tastic.

I think there comes a point where a game needs to accept that it's not going to make it's stated release date, and rather than cull further, it should hold back and finish features and polish. Looking at gaming history, there are a dozen flops because they came out early or unfinished for every game that took too long to come out. Most games that come out "late" are extremely successful.

[STARSBarry]

if you cut the branches off a tree it encourages growth, however cut off to many and the tree dies... of course it could grow back into some weird huanted looking tree (john kerry) cutting standards it a bit stupid, especialy weather how hard can it be to program a simple weather feature?

[WarTrader]

Originally Posted by STARSBarry

if you cut the branches off a tree it encourages growth, however cut off to many and the tree dies... of course it could grow back into some weird huanted looking tree (john kerry) cutting standards it a bit stupid, especialy weather how hard can it be to program a simple weather feature?

What if you had to choose between weather and the game being done on time? What if it was weather or backround texture? What if its weather or a extra quest or two being put in? If they choose weather over the quests you bet people would start complaining about lack of content. Mythic couldnt have won this fight if they have including everything in the gaming world and then invented some new stuff to put in. People had their minds up going in.

[Decadence]

Originally Posted by Garthilk

At what point does a standard exist within a genre?

When is it okay to break away from the standard, or do standards ever apply?

It exists when it's part of the fundamental purpose of the genre.. Such as storytelling for RPG's, immersive environment for MMORPG's, rivalries/challenges for fighting games, and etc things.

It's okay to break away only when your game is based in an alien(to the players) environment/setting, which requires a completely different and/or created set of directed notion/ideals.

It's not okay to break away, when your game is based on an already set ideal/notion(fantasy, futurists, western, etc).. This will only lead to complaints about everything that ppl would expect to be available. ie.. Imagine if you only had dirt roads, instead of normal streets for a modern car racing game.. The majority would not like this idea at all, unless you were transported to mars or something. It is one thing to be innovative and creative, but completely another to twist a genre to the point of no longer appearing as part of said genre. The above example starts to leave the confines of a modern car racing genre.. If you had a bunch of chevy's on the front cover, most ppl would be annoyed to find out your running ur vette/maro on dirt and transported to mars of all things. That's why we must stay within the confines of the standardized characteristics of such genres. Some ppl have this notion that the standard is simply as such because some joe dreamed it up years ago.. I would disagree as I feel it is a standard, because most ppl tend to perceive things in that specific way instead.

IMO As far as WAR.. One of their priorities should be to bolster the PvE/RvR environments, as everyone will be expecting a living Warhammer WORLD. Infact their focus should be on PvE enviroments, as the majority are not likely to enter RvR anytime soon. The majority(esp release) will delegate most of their game time to PvE and would expect a certain kind of atmosphere in place. Remember that MMORPG's are all about the immersiveness, it's not some action kill 'em game where you can disregard the surroundings..

[Averardus]

Originally Posted by Decadence

IMO As far as WAR.. One of their priorities should be to bolster the PvE/RvR environments, as everyone will be expecting a living Warhammer WORLD. Infact their focus should be on PvE enviroments, as the majority are not likely to enter RvR anytime soon. The majority(esp release) will delegate most of their game time to PvE and would expect a certain kind of atmosphere in place. Remember that MMORPG's are all about the immersiveness, it's not some action kill 'em game where you can disregard the surroundings..

really? I wouldnt think most WAR players are there for the PvE, but I could be wrong... I guess.

I've always thought of a RvR environment, as a PvE world with PvP around every corner. You can have a happy marriage of both, but we do not have to follow the same ideology of old.

There does not have to be camping of mobs, so we can level up. There are other ways to integrate PvE. Quests for one is perfect. You get a great story arc, with either a dungeon crawl or outdorr adventure, lots of mobs to deal with, and maybe even some PvP.

Its got it all!

[Daiboth]

I'd really have to say that it depends on exactly what he's talking about with #/type of cars & weather, as to how exactly this translates into WAR.

For example, let's look at WoW...
Pre-Beta they released several interviews & hype purporting that they would have excellent PvP, "because that's what Warcraft has always been about". Fast forward a couple years... and there's JACK SQUAT of anything resembling SATISFACTORY PvP in WoW (I mean really, instanced Capture-the-Flag & crap servers that can't handle the load, huge queues, etc...).

So, in WoW's case, I look at the game and know that there's no way in hell I would play it, because they "culled" this feature. Of course, what's worse is that they straight up lied to the community about it, which pretty much broke any faith I had in Blizzard in a company as a whole.

Now obviously WoW has been successful despite cutting this entire aspect of gameplay, which to me seems like it's a "standard" for MMO's.

This leaves the question: How much is PvP really a standard for MMOs? and how much more weighted is PvE & "effects"?

As for what Paul's talking about with culling though, he really does have a good grasp on the concept. WoW's [lack-of] PvP wouldn't absolutely piss me off had they not gone so far out of their way to promote the game as having the best PvP ever. They set the expectation, and then they lied (culled it).

I'm ok with WAR having features culled, as long as the things they've built up are there & done well when release-time rolls around. If that means Elfs or Chaos/Empire are put on hold until an expansion 6-months after release, great. I'd way rather spend an extra $20 later on and have the game PERFECT, than have them crap out everything they initially intended, and have it all be ... well, crap. Heck, if they did ONLY Dwarves/Greenskins @ release, and have all the game-mechanics, RvR & PvE done perfectly, and add the other races later, that'd be sooooooooo far above releasing a ton of options, all of which are broken.

[Decadence]

Originally Posted by Averardus

really? I wouldnt think most WAR players are there for the PvE, but I could be wrong... I guess.

I've always thought of a RvR environment, as a PvE world with PvP around every corner. You can have a happy marriage of both, but we do not have to follow the same ideology of old.

There does not have to be camping of mobs, so we can level up. There are other ways to integrate PvE. Quests for one is perfect. You get a great story arc, with either a dungeon crawl or outdorr adventure, lots of mobs to deal with, and maybe even some PvP.

Its got it all!

Well I didn't mean for you to take my statements as the overall focus of the game design.. Fact is if you have to delay some feature(as discussed by a poster), it's better to delay endgame related things in order to offer a more relevant focus(PvE) to the majority of players. The majority will be leveling up in PvE zones and probably take a while to lvl up.. It's better to delay RvR based features, rather than PvE, which would be accessed from the very start. This does not mean neglect RvR, only that if they require more time, then it's more logical to delay the areas/features which probably would not be used much till the mid/end-game..

Everyone uses PvE zones, not everyone uses RvR zones.. Most players will not jump straight to PvP, so whatever type of gamer WAR attracts doesn't have much relevance. The truest PvP'ers(ME!) will be content just killing ppl without receiving an award. The majority will not participate, untill they've gotten past their need to progress through leveling and wish to attempt the other aspects of the game. I think we tend to forget, the majority will likely be very casual players, who are just trying out a new game..

BTW I'm not debating how to implement PvE, if I were to assume, they will have safe zones with 'camping' of mobs.. Unless there is something new you've read.

[Vail]

It all seems like a clever way to set us up for less stuff

Still I am of the camp that if the release is flawless and fun and the first expansion adds the "culled" but expected stuff, so be it.

However if the Gold release is flawed and culled...well then I believe we will see mutiny.

I am sure the time and money pressure is crazy... I am sure EA will start crapping hamsters if they delay.... I am sure they are DOING their best. I am hopeful that WAR will be a game i play for years.