{"id":1138,"date":"2009-05-12T07:15:04","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T13:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2009-05-12T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T14:31:13","slug":"lessons-from-mission-architect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2009\/05\/lessons-from-mission-architect.html","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Mission Architect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting and lengthy article by Eric on Elder Game\u00a0(cited by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2009\/05\/12\/users-asked-to-desig.html\" target=\"_blank\">BoingBoing<\/a>, via Ginny) on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eldergame.com\/2009\/05\/11\/user-generated-quests-and-the-ruby-slippers\/\" target=\"_blank\">the experience of CoX and user-generated content<\/a>. Bottom line &#8212; Paragon ought to have known this was going to have problems, from past times when it&#8217;s been tried.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\"><p>When designers would bring up this feature (and yes, it\u2019s been brought up on every game I\u2019ve worked on), the veteran designers would tell them, \u201cThat\u2019s going to backfire tremendously. People will exploit it to make the easiest possible missions, and you won\u2019t like the results.\u201d This is always countered by some variety of \u201c<em>you can\u2019t possibly know that for sure!\u201d<\/em> But actually, working on a live team teaches that lesson very quickly. From AC2, I learned:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Players subconsciously calculate the cost-to-benefit ratio of content when deciding if it\u2019s fun. For most MMO players, more reward = more fun. (This is a bitch of a lesson to learn, too. \u201cMy custom-scripted quest was so incredibly cool! Why aren\u2019t players doing the quest? Well, yes, the reward was a <em>little<\/em> sub-par, but so what? You\u2019re telling me they aren\u2019t playing it because of THAT? Players can\u2019t be THAT shallow!\u201d Ha ha, newb.)<\/li>\n<li> Players aren\u2019t objective reviewers. If you ask them to grade content, they <em>will grade more rewarding content higher than other content <\/em>even if it isn\u2019t as good by other metrics (like plot, writing, annoyance factor, or originality).<\/li>\n<li> Many players spend incredible amounts of time finding ways to min-max the system so they can get more power for less effort. That\u2019s part of the fun for many players. So there are tens of thousands of people actively looking for mistakes, loopholes, and gray areas in your game. All the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cYes yes,\u201d the other designers would say, \u201cthose lessons from the live team are interesting, but that isn\u2019t exactly the same situation as user-created content, is it? Nobody can say <em>for sure<\/em> if user-created quests are problematic.\u201d Maybe, just maybe, users could be convinced to grade content fairly. Maybe they would discover how fun it is to run really well-plotted quests instead of just trying to level up as fast as possible. Maybe players can change their stripes. <a href=\"http:\/\/playervsdeveloper.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/problem-with-player-created-content-and.html\">Nope.<\/a> MMORPG players are as predictable as the sunrise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">As the article continues, as soon as Mission Architect came out, people were coming up with min-maxed systems. The Devs have since come out to try to stop it, by punishing &#8220;cheaty&#8221; content &#8212; but then the issue becomes defining <em>that<\/em>. (In many ways it&#8217;s like managing a forum or mailing list and define what type of content violates the terms of conduct and what doesn&#8217;t.)<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Devs have decided not to define what is cheaty and what is not, causing a &#8220;chilling effect&#8221; by deliberately not creating clear guidelines\u00a0beyond the vague \u201cDisregard for the risk and\/or time to reward ratio.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\"><p>This is startlingly unhelpful to people trying to figure out how to make ban-safe, but fun, content.\u00a0To keep this fiasco from chilling the buzz, they need to publish guidelines about what is and isn\u2019t \u201cfair\u201d, or better yet, code this fairness into their tools. As I write this, pick-up groups are running user-generated quests consisting of nothing but max-level boss monsters, so that doesn\u2019t seem to be \u201cunfair\u201d\u2026 of course, since there\u2019s no guidelines, who knows if those quests are about to get banned? Since deletion only happens after an \u201cabusive\u201d quest is reported to customer service, it could just be a matter of time before any quest you play gets banned and your hard work gets reversed. Worse yet, since the rules are secret and enforced by numerous people, it is very likely that they will be enforced semi-arbitrarily, and will tend to become more aggressive over time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Worse, it&#8217;s not clear that the enforcement itself will clear, either. What lessons will actually be learned, how clear will the feedback be, etc. And how clearly will it be reported? &#8220;I had a friend of a friend who got banned &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">More importantly, the author says, this won&#8217;t resolve the problem, because players will always design content to maximize gain at minimized risk. Unless the tools lock that down intrinsically, there will be distortions of the risk\/time : reward ratio, and the Devs will be unhappy. Throwing internal staff at the problem to review all content is hardly cost-effective (nor useful for players). And, of course, the more attention they have to pay to this, the greater the opportunity costs for other content.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In the end, it may (sadly) turn out that Mission Architect is as big a white elephant (and real estate eyesore) as the Arenas &#8212; used by a small population, but a tribute to how what people say they want (and how the Devs decide is best to give it to them) don&#8217;t always work out as planned &#8230; especially if lessons of the past are ignored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting and lengthy article by Eric on Elder Game\u00a0(cited by BoingBoing, via Ginny) on the experience of CoX and user-generated content. Bottom line &#8212; Paragon ought to have known this was going to have problems, from past times when it&#8217;s been tried. When designers would bring up this feature (and yes, it\u2019s been brought &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2009\/05\/lessons-from-mission-architect.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Lessons from Mission Architect&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1141,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}