|
|
|
|
| 5/3/2003 | Fix Game Balance Once and for All |
|---|---|
|
A light bulb just went off inside my head. No, it was more like a super nova.
It's so simple, it's amazing it wasn't done years ago. Even more amazing, the answer has been right under our noses for years. The answer already exists within GemStone. There's two big problems in GemStone. This will solve both of them. The first problem is game balance. Face it; it's really impossible. There's just no way to make varied challenges for all training paths for all professions for all levels that provide an equal level of difficulty. There's all sorts of problems; I'm not going to rehash them here. The GM's have done a valiant job trying to solve a puzzle that probably doesn't have a solution. The second problem is anti-diversification. Everyone, players and staff, want to see more variation and diversification. But it doesn't happen. It can't happen. Why? Because the game is hunting centric, and any path that diverges from the norm puts the character at a hunting disadvantage. It's Darwinian in its effectiveness at keeping character diversity to a minimum. A good example of anti-diversification came up in one of the discussions here, and I'll use it as an example. Rogues and bards can both double in the lockpicking skills. In theory, they can both be equally skilled. In practice, the bard's higher costs for lockpicking make a fully doubled bard unfeasible. Let's examine that for a second. A double picking bard can't get enough base combat skills to still hunt. If he can't hunt, he can't effectively level, and if he can't effectively level, he can't progress. The obvious conclusion is that bards shouldn't be able to double in picking, because that's a rogue's prerogative. As a rogue, I say, "Why the heck not?" Why shouldn't a bard be able to be a super locksmith and a terrible hunter? Well, he can't, because GemStone is broken. It's fundamentally broken. It's been broken for a long time, probably since GemStone I was only a glimmer in Bardon's mind. But it can be fixed. And the fix is not all that complicated, either. Here's where it's broken: In order to gain levels, you have to gain experience. To gain experience, you have to hunt creatures that are challenging to you. Therein lies the problem. It's the definition of "challenging". In GemStone, 'challenging" is defined as "character level vs. critter level". That definition is what is wrong. Change the definition, and you can fix both Game Balance and Diversity. The definition should be: "character skill vs. critter skill". I said before that the answer has been right under our noses all along, that it already exists within GemStone. The way experience is calculated for picking boxes is the way the hunting system should work. When you pick a lock, levels are not used at all. They're irrelevant as far as the experience formula is concerned. The only thing that matters is the difficulty of the lock vs. the characters maximum ability, given the equipment he's using (lockpick and spells). This allows old players with modest skills to learn from picking, as well as fully trained locksmiths. Compare that to hunting: Try creating a character that does .5x weapons and see if he can learn from anything. Or take your 100 level character, and decide to take up archery. You can't do it now. But change the experience system to give experience based upon your skill vs. the critters skill, and all that becomes possible. Game Balance becomes a non issue because it's not longer important how one profession stacks up against another, since all that matters is how hard a critter is for your character. If it's hard, you get more experience. Take two warriors. Equally trained. One walks out with his uber blade of instant death, and kills a like-level ickymonster. Other warrior grabs a pebble, a forked stick, and a rubber band, and sets out to kill that same ickymonster. The first one can slay the beast with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. The second one will have a much tougher time, and will probably learn something in the process. The second warrior should learn a lot more from this hunt that the first warrior. Be changing to this kind of system, anyone can hunt for experience, regardless of how they decide to train. That means no profession needs to worry about not being able to hunt at their level, because they can hunt whatever critters are a challenge for them. It also means we can train our characters the way we like, as diverse as we like, without the albatross of becoming unviable hanging over our heads. It also means we can take up new hunting styles later in life, or dabble in skills. That's completely impossible now. It allows us to take up new skills as they are released without having to reroll or reallocate. Imagine how great it would have been to have been able to pick up a bow and arrow, when ranged weapons were first released, and actually hunt with them and gain experience? All you have to do is remove levels from the experience equation. Now is the time to do it. I'm not a fool. I know that a skill v. skill formula is not trivial. But it's possible to do, and although it's complicated, it's something that can be balanced. It's a lot easier to decide how hard a critter is against a character than it is to try to make all characters equally strong. You tweak the formula as needed without disrupting how people are playing. The skill formula will need to take into account not just how you're trained, but what weapon (or attack spell) you're using, your armor, defensive spells, whether you're in a group, etc. One of the stated goals of GS4 is to make lighter armor and light weapons more viable. This does that. It also makes all 'optional necessities', like guild skills and societies, truly optional. Now for the kicker. (Time for that great line from "The Matrix": There is no spoon.) Once you change the hunting experience formula, it's possible to get rid of levels completely. They're no longer needed. There is already a plan for training points to be gained strictly from EXP as part of the inter-level training. That will work for training purposes. In fact, every formula in the game that currently uses LEVEL can be replaced in some fashion with either EXP or SKILLS, as appropriate. If we make this change, we'll have a game where people can train the way they want, and always be viable. Diversity will flourish, and Game Balance issues will be a thing of the past. This one change will solve so many of the major problems we have. We have a golden opportunity with GS4 to make sweeping changes that were never before possible. Please, let's not miss this once in a lifetime chance. The potential is there in GemStone to be great, but it's shackled by the way the hunting system is tied to experience. Now is the time to throw off those chains and make GemStone what we all want it to be. |
|
| 4/19/2003 | Stand and Fight |
|
Melissa,
Like almost everyone else, I've been giving lots of thought to the future of GemStone. I have some thoughts and ideas. I suspect you've probably heard them from others, but they need to be considered, so I'll state them here at the risk of repeating ideas you've probably heard a dozen times. First of all, I've said many times in the past that you're doing an incredible job, and that far more has been accomplished since you took the helm of GS3 than in all the years I had played before your arrival. That is still true. GSIV is obviously an immense undertaking, seeking to correct and improve a breathtaking number of systems in the game. I'm fairly confident when I say that the breadth and scope of the changes probably took nearly everyone by surprise. And therein, I believe, lies the problem. It's too much, in too little time. Even if there was nothing controversial, it still would be too much to absorb; too much to learn; too much to get used to. And there are plenty of things that are controversial. I've been coming around to the conclusion that even if I don't feel much like playing anymore, GemStone is still worth fighting for. It's too rich, and with too much history, to give up on. I know you, all the staff, and nearly all the players feel the same way. It's worth the effort; it's worth fighting the good fight to get it right. Your working title of "GemStone IV" is an apt one. This looks like a new game, almost as different from GS3 as DR is. I have no doubt that GS4 will be, in almost all facets, far better than GS3. Yet you've met with a lot of resistance. Why is that? In a lot of ways, this is reminiscent of the 'New Coke' that was introduced about 20 years ago. Better? Perhaps. But they discovered that Coke drinkers liked Coke the way it was. Part of the reason there's so much opposition is that the players are comfortable with what they have, and such sweeping changes threaten to upset their world. The changes make players uneasy. But it's not just the changes themselves. It's the way they're being introduced. We don't have a choice to switch or not. Even worse, we don't have a choice as to when the changes will happen. We're being thrown into this headfirst, with no safety net. It's got me scared that everything I've worked so hard for we'll be lost, impossible for some reason or another under the new systems. Some of these fears are justified based upon information that's been released. Some of the fears are just fear of the unknown, fear of what could be because hard facts aren't available. What to do? What to do? Ah, the best laid plans, and all that. Cancel the project? Certainly not. It's being done for all the right reasons. The end result WILL be good. But, like New Coke, it might not be what the customers want. Most of my attention has been focused on one particular area of change, and I've been bending Stealth's ear about that non stop. It's a good fight, productive, and making progress, and then I realized this issue was but the tip of the iceberg. There's a dozen other issues I probably would feel just as strongly about if I wasn't completely focused on this one. And 100 other issues that would affect me were I interested in that particular aspect of the game. At that point, I just gave up in despair. It's too big. It's too much. It's all happening at once. It's just too overwhelming. As I said at the top, GemStone is worth the fight to get it right. But the stress level for me, as a customer, was enough to drive me away. I can only imagine what it is like for you and all the GM's and hosts. I know for certain I could not take the pressure right now if I were on your side of the fence. So what do we do? The goals are good, but too much to swallow. Perhaps the way they are introduced can be adjusted so that it offers more leeway for players and developers alike to adjust and modify the plan, without everyone jumping off the proverbial cliff all at once. Perhaps this can be made into something that people look forward to with anticipation instead of fear, without sacrificing your goals. I suggest that GS3 remain online for an indefinite amount of time after the launch of GS4. This would increase acceptance of the GS4 changes by removing the fear that the game we all love will be taken away. If you don't like GS4, you have a choice. We all know there will need to be many adjustments to the new game as the kinks get worked out. By keeping GS3 alive, you provide an alternative to those people who find the new game not to their liking. More importantly, you provide a safe haven for everyone worried about the changes. You will need to provide a mechanism for people to switch from GS3 to GS4. The day GS4 goes live, it should have a copy of everyone's character from GS3. Some people may continue to play GS3 for a while, and switch to GS4 at a later time. There should be a way to move their character over at that later date, so that achievements in GS3 carry over to GS4. There's a huge benefit for you, the producer, to keeping both games running. The relative populations of both games would be an excellent barometer for how well players like different parts of GS4. If 90% of all players move to GS4, but only 25% of empaths move, then you know that the empaths need work. This should be far more accurate a measure of what the entire player population likes than either in-game polling or responses on the boards. I'm not naive enough to think that this would be easy to do. You'll need to staff both games, and it will make development more complex. I think it's worth the effort. Thanks for reading all of this. |
|
| 4/2/2003 | Farewell |
|
The time to leave GemStone has come at last, and it is with a heavy heart
that I must say goodbye to all my dear friends here.
There won't be anymore maps, of course, but I think you'll find that Antalya and Strathe do an admirable job, making maps every bit as good as my own, if not better. You may want to take a look at http://home.attbi.com/~GemstoneMaps/ when you need new maps in the future. I'd like to thank all the staff at Simutronics, both past and present, all of my friends, and everyone I've had the pleasure of meeting in this wonderful place. Whether in person or in our virtual reality of Elanthia, it's truly been my pleasure to share your acquaintance. I'm sure a lot of people may be curious about why I left. To answer that, I suppose I need to explain why I've stayed for the last few years. That reason is the rogue's guild. I've really enjoyed the comraderie with other rogues, as well as the sense of accomplishment of becoming a guild master and mastering some incredibly difficult skills. If you're a guild member or guild master, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, it's impossible to explain, and, sadly, you'll never really get a chance to know now. As part of GS4, the combat skills are being removed from the guilds. That has two ramifications. The first is that, with only non-combat skills remaining, the guilds will become empty halls, and the incredible social interactions will be no more. Secondly, by moving the combat skills to the CM, where all you need to do is click on the a button to become a master in a skill, it undoes all the work we've all done to learn those skills. In return, we've been offered the chance to apply those lost guild ranks to new skills. Of course, it will probably take years until those skills are ready. One will be, however. That's Lock Mastery. That's the skill that was promised for LAST summer, as part of Hot Summer Nights. To me, this is even worse. Being given Lock Mastery, for free, is the same as going out and buying a lockpicking rogue on eBay. I didn't earn that skill. Being handed it on a silver platter is no better than using a cheat code on my kids' Nintendo. This is a classic case of two wrongs not making a right. Taking the hard earned skills away from us is wrong. Giving us new skills for free doesn't right that wrong; it compounds it. The guild is what I've liked most in GS for a long time, and it's being neutered. I am loosing what I liked most here, and, in this case, I've lost it now. It's not even something bad on the horizon. Since I already have more than enough ranks to master every skill that will exist in September when GS4 launches, I have no reason at all to train in the guild anymore. This isn't something I'll loose in 5 months; this is something I lost right now. To sum it up, the changes to the guild render it useless and ruined in my opinion. Since the guild was my favorite part of GemStone, I no longer have any desire to play. |
|
| 12/31/2001 | Happy New Year |
|
Well, it's been quite a year.
Last year (2000) ended with my having been playing Tsoran for some four years. He was 106 at the end of 2000. He's 106 at the end of 2001. In the last days of 2000, Tsoran had this interesting experience trying to pick a couple of Rift boxes. He's never trained in the locksmithing arts, so it was quite surprising that he got them open. At that point I decided to try playing a locksmith, something none of my characters had ever been able to do. And thus was born Koldeen, a dark elven rogue. Dark elves are not much favored by other elves, and Koldeen's parents were murdered in their home near Ta'Illistim. Tsoran ran across the young Koldeen while exploring east of the Dragonspine some six months before the way from Wehnimer's was widely known. Koldeen, though very young, was making do on his own, using, shall we say, some of the less reputable means of making a living. Making good on a pledge made previously to Koldeen's family, Tsoran took the young thief with him back to Wehnimer's and made sure he stayed out of trouble. Mostly. Very few people knew until now who Koldeen is. If you see him, please don't whisper "Thanks for the maps!" to Koldeen. Koldeen didn't make the maps. He doesn't even like Tsoran much - he sees Tsoran as an unnecessary foster parent who does nothing but keep him from doing the things he enjoys. I was pretty bored with playing Tsoran, and really enjoyed playing the young lockpicking rogue, so Tsoran came into the game only to doing mapping chores or on the rare occaision to rescue somebody. I realize, however, that to a lot of Tsoran's friends, few of whom knew about Koldeen, Tsoran simply was no longer around. So I'm letting everyone know who Koldeen is, while hoping that he won't be deluged with people asking about or thanking him for the maps. It's nice to be appreciated. It completely ruins the fun of playing the game to have everyone you don't know stopping you all the time to thank you. So it was a pleasure to be annonymous for the year. And I would greatly appreciate if Koldeen would be treated as Koldeen, and not as "that other character of Tsoran's". Now, if you want a box opened, you can always ask Koldeen. He loves opening locks. He's very, very good at it. For those of you familiar with the mechanics, he's a tripler with lore and good stats. Were he to make it to the level cap he would be, by definition, the best locksmith possible in the game. Not that I expect him to ever make it that far. That, by the way, is another reason I don't like level caps. The concept of "the best possible such-and-such" shouldn't exist. For now, he's 32 and can open anything up to roa'ters. It's been a busy, busy year as far as maps go. The Elven Nations came out right before Simucon, so I figured it would be a few weeks before I had it mapped. Say, 30 or 40 weeks, and counting. There are several reasons it has taken so long. The most obvious reason is the shear size of the EN. The trail alone from Wehnimer's to Ta'Illistim, not counting the half dozen or so hunting areas along the way, is larger than all of Teras Isle. It's larger than River's Rest. The EN trail is not that much smaller than either the complete areas of Icemule or Solhaven. And that's just the EN trail. Looking at the various areas in their entirety, before EN, Wehnimer's was about half of the entire game. The EN is about the same size as Wehnimer's, so, size-wise, the game can be divided into three roughly equal parts: Wehnimer's, the Elven Nations, and everything else. The EN increased the size of GemStone by roughly 50%. It's interesting to note that, although there are not a full set of services available in the EN (it desperately needs rogue and warrior guilds, and it probably needs Voln and COL HQ's even more), it is the only single area anywhere which has a complete range of critters. It is, however, very lacking in undead critters. Although the size of the EN was a big part of the delay, another reason was the excellent set of maps that Antalya made. It's not surprising I like her maps; they look a lot like mine. And she's done some things that I like better than mine. With her maps available, there was less pressure for me to complete my set. That's reflected to this day: You'll notice that the maps that I have completed include all the areas she's too young to map. The areas I'm still missing are on her maps. Nevertheless, I'm a lot closer now to being done with the EN. There are only 5 more hunting areas to do, and the two neighborhoods. The final (and really inexcusable) reason is that I've been having so much fun playing Koldeen, that I didn't want to take a lot of time away from that to go and map out the EN. 2001 was the year I finally bit the bullet and went to Simucon. And what a great time I had. I'm planning on going again this year, although that's not 100% certain yet. I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures from Simucon 2001. Expect more (and better) pictures from Simucon 2002. I might even have mpeg video of the seminars instead of audio files for this year. Last year I had the ability to take some 24 meg worth of 50K-sized pictures. This year, it's 4 gig worth of 2meg-sized pictures and 90-meg per hour video. It should be fun. All in all, quite a year. Happy New Year! |
|
| 5/8/2000 | Mobile Villages |
| With the Giantman Village having moved three times in the last few weeks, it is clear that they intend to live up to their nomadic heritage. Therefore, being transient by definition, it no longer makes sense to try to keep the location of their village on the maps. Today, I removed the village from the Solhaven Trail map. It won't be included on the Danjirland map, which is its current location, just outside the gash. | |
| 4/20/2000 | The Daily Elanthian First Edition! |
|
This isn't something I ever intended to do. But it's something that I've missed, and since nobody else seems
to be doing it, it looks like I'm it. So, starting today, the Daily Elanthian is open for business. You can stop
by here and check for new goings on all across Elanthia.
There are three sections here. The "news" page is for, well, news. The editorial page is for, well, editorials. And I'll bet you can guess what you'll find on the "Upcoming Events" page. |
|