(Removed to protect the guilty. Tsk tsk, on whomever informed you of this falsity.) Will the Eglain the Travel [...] 
First a disclaimer, as with all blogs everything herein is personal opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree, feel free to question motives and stances, but in your judgment of the content herein realize that the commentary contained is meant to offer an opinion not a true scientific explanation. We are all different people with different opinions and they will very rarely mesh so well that we all hug, smile, drink (beverage of choice) and laugh about the old times together. That is reserved for close friends. Those who have foibles and idosyncracies that you choose to deal with over a length of time greater than reading some faceless person’s blog. Thanks!
Second, a word of warning. I ramble in this blog and if you want the nutshell of the post drop to the bottom and read the last few paragraphs.
Of the E’s
What is an exploit and what is emergent behavior? It is a tough question, one that plagues designers and players and presents itself in a fashion that inspires an “us vs. them” mentality that is almost never driven by factual and nearly always elicits emotional response. Still, it exists and seems to be a constant source of divisiveness between forum posting players and designers. The reasons for these difficulties is manifold and, in the case of MMOs, stem from an inequality in game balance and/or the tinkering with the learned behaviors and established moments of fun that players have come to expect with their classes/skills/content. This creates a rift and into that rift is poured, cooked, festered and fermented the dislike, vitriol and bitterness of the masses.
So, in the mind of a developer specifically this one, what are exploits and why do they need to be fixed? Exploit is typically defined as: a heroic deed or act, or to make productive use of; in video games we use the alternate: to make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage. To me, as a designer, an exploit is anything that takes advantage of weaknesses in the underlying game code or design - including the purposeful implementation, unintended implementation, a bug, happenstance etc… It’s a very broad net I cast, and I need to cast it to make sure that I take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of iterative changes that can affect our work on a daily basis.
What then is the definition of emergent behavior to the same designer? A definition of emergent is: coming into view or existence, or arising or occurring unexpectedly requiring prompt action. (Interesting, no?) To me, as a designer, there are two types of emergent gameplay. The first is expected emergent gameplay, we expect that players will use certain aspects of the design to their advantage when we create the design. The second is unexpected emergent behavior, this is the situation where hidden flaws are discovered by the game populace that ultimate result in exploits.
Ultimately, emergent behavior is the precursor to the discovery of an exploit. It is an unfortunate and painful truth about MMO design. The same experiences that would be strategic in a single player game quickly become exploits in an MMO. The design rules are different and are set by a stringent decision made early on in a project. It never seems fair to players and never makes a designer happy when they see something happen that they did not or could not predict happening. Unless that behavior is innocuous to the continued health of the game and fits within the context of the original design decisions.
That said, not all forms of emergent behavior is bad, sometimes it really is something that you look at and wish that you could shake the hand of the people that figured out a new way to do something in the game. Typically, however, these are smaller ticket items not something that can “break” an experience or undermine the core design of the game.
Since I am the proud owner of one of the most often exploited Moria dungeons let me point the finger at myself and explain the design decisions that went into the Grand Stair. First, let me give credit where it is due: Rhidden was the first to bring the idea up, fortunately he was willing to part with the seedling and allow me to nurture the thought into the instance that it became for good or ill.
Let’s look at the intent of the dungeon:
- Introduce a time based goal within the instance space that blocks the acquisition of the best possible loot within the space.
- This should be a primary orc gathering point/seat of power for the Moria orcs.
- Five themes in the space: Moria Orc, Fire Orc, Trolls, White Hand Orcs, Goblin Riders
- Appears like a network of ancient stairways leading through the various levels of Moria
- Show the dissent between the White Hand and other Orcs
- The fastest track through the dungeon space is the most difficult.
- Provide hurdles that will force players to alter traditional character modes as an impedement to swift and simple execution of the space.
Those were the original intentions of the space. We can simply take out some of these are successes based off of what they were, I mean we have the monsters and the locations and the feel of each area comes across fairly well.
Now let’s look at each other point. We introduced a time based goal to players that worked well. It could be presented more clearly, but overall, players get that the way to engage hard mode is to defeat the first boss in the instance and then make your way to the second White Hand Boss and kill him before he launches his attack on the Moria Orcs. We attempted to make the hardest track the fastest but there were some emergent discoveries that lead to exploits as we saw people play through more often, more on this in a moment. We purposely negated some skills from having their full effect in the space. A point of contention among the player populace - expected. Changing rules forces people to have to think differently and I didn’t want this to be a simple DPS-fest where players offed bosses before the bosses could present an acceptable risk to player characters. Thus the negation of force attack skills and aggro catch-up was introduced on a few of the bosses in the space.
Emergence/Exploits in the Grand Stair
Jumping from an increased height no longer killed players: This was painful to see. Expected behavior was for players to jump and plummet far enough to their death, but something in code changed at this time and the damage dealt by falling was reduced…no more death while jumping. Emergent behavior that benefits the players, commendable discovery - unexpected and painful to see and unfortunately a bug. Not caught in testing because my focus was on getting the timing down on legitimate runs.
Timer flips and allows hard-mode to happen if players engage second boss before he makes war on the enemy: Emergent behavior highlighting a bug in the implementation of the content. Another situation where I tested the legitimate and missed the fringe case. Exploit because of the following side effect: players can complete the instance at their own pace regardless of the previously afforementioned design restriction of a timer gating access to the best loot in the instance. A secondary exploit is discovered here as well. Flipping the timer allows players to defeat other bosses and gain their loot without affecting the overall loot from Igash. Ugh, this one was a killer.
Players rush to the second boss (Captain/RK trick or Burglars or whichever variant that existed or still exists) and engage him to stop timer: Emergent with the way that players are doing it, but expected. It was a conscious decision for players to reach the boss, engage him and halt the timer. You needn’t defeat him, just get there and grab his attention. Some of the behavior shows holes in our class structure that expose other design concerns, but overall the goal was to allow players to use this to their advantage. Something did slip through the cracks in that Burglars were able to stealth to the location and then feign death. The feign death part is fine, but it was a bug to not have the wargs pop stealth.
Sometimes behavior is clearly exploitative. Like these: Location in throne room that a hunter/other ranged can hop onto without engaging anti-exploit yet remain untouched by the mob. Standing in a location invokes anit-exploit on mobs within location making their presence useless. These are clear exploits. They are flaws in implementation or game code that are clearly not correct. They need to be fixed.
Emergent behavior like Igash gets hung up on the throne is emergent, but an exploit because it impedes the normal function of game AI. If a mob cannot affect you because you are able to use game physics or a flaw in the game code or implementation then you have found an exploit! It is definitely emergent because it wasn’t caught in testing or was thought to be less exploitative than it turned out and therefore only discovered by mass consumption and usage.
Standing at the back of the throne room means that the devoted never aggros the group and thus never enters the fight: Again emergent, but clearly not the intent of the space. You discovered a clear bug that is now an exploit. After all, the fight is meant to be hard not simple. Igash may still be tough, but not so tough that he doesn’t need a little assistance and the fact that another mob would appear suggests that he should likely be part of the fight, no? The newest exploit is to aggro Igash after a reset and the devoted never attacks; sad making and definitely a bug.
So what makes these exploits? Some will say that these seems like legit strategies to beat a difficult encounter. While true they do make it easier to beat a difficult encounter, they also abuse flaws in game code to achieve their objectives.
Blame Storm
Welcome to the section of the blog where you can all start hating me. This is where I tell you that the changes made to bosses where they could be slowed and rooted was my decision, my voice and hands forced it through and I am perfectly fine with any and all hating me for this. I am unapologetic about this change.
OMGWTFBBQ ORION HATES US! On the contrary, Orion thinks that a boss monster in an instance space that one person slaps with a fish and the others plunk away at distance without fear of reciprocity makes for something with little challenge or challenge inherent throughout the game. When I discovered that this was the case I was livid. I swore up and down hallways and called many designers to the mat. Meat and potatoes creatures are one thing. Trash in instances can be one thing. A boss monster is something completely different. It is a chance to throw the rules out and present players with a puzzle that needs to be solved. It needn’t be a puzzle that is so hard that they spend all their hard earned silver/gold on repairs, but it should serve as a moment where they feel that sense of accomplishment after succumbing to the boss’s prowess, then strike back at the boss with their last breath KHAN STYLE! Rooting a boss in position or slowing them and having them get chased around a circle seems silly, it seems shoddy and frankly it pissed me off.
I got on a very high horse and screamed a lot. Let me explain why: my job is about creating fun for players. Every time that you venture into the wilds of the game to perform a task for an npc you get to fight a bag of hitpoints that may or may not have a special shtick to help support him from falling to ground with a resounding thud. Maybe they have friends nearby, maybe not, maybe they are just the loner type ripe for destruction. These are the meat and potatoes moments and in these moments you should feel like a hero. You should feel like that because against the vermin of the world you are a freaking hero!
When you face a boss or encounter in a fellowship instance, you should feel taxed, pushed to your limit. You should walk away from that fight saying, “Damn, we handled that fight well.” or “That was AWESOME!” not, “Okay guys, same tactics as landscape.” No way! You should also know that you played your class well and as many aspects of your class should be as exposed as possible. This is where you should shine in your group role, whatever that may be.
To me, the whole concept of boss monsters designed to perform certain tasks - like being a melee boss without ranged skills - that can be slowed or rooted exposes, through emergence, flaws in underlying design and code and therefore becomes an exploit of AI logic. That can mean we tackle the situation by setting the boss up to use range skills or that we take a blanket approach. I fought to change the rules on slow and root because I felt that we were creating situations where instances were being reduced to more of the same game play as landscape and needed to be brought back to a state where the bosses were a challenge. As a designer, I believe that challenges should not be the same as the status quo only longer I want them to be fun and unique and inspire people to say, “Now that was a fight.” I got with Udonion in BG and I stopped players from using their marquee skills and asked them to try something different. I may not always win that fight. But I try my damndest.
Class Changes
Classes are not my thing. I will not comment on them beyond this one paragraph. When a skill or ability is as efficient or more efficient than a counterpart ability that the first skill is supposed to be the antithesis of, then there is clearly a bug and an imbalance and those must be fixed.
Closing
Exploits and emergent game play are two-sides of the same coin. Honestly to me, they are nearly identical in the MMO space. It is unlikely that emergent behavior will not expose a hole in design in some fashion. Emergence by its very definition require urgent response. I think that is where the problem comes in - urgency. Responding to an emerging exploit requires process to be undertaken and that process to fix the emerging behavior can take time. Every moment that the behavior is allowed to persist is another moment that someone else has learned this behavior and without calling it an exploit it becomes more and more accepted by the game populace. Then, when it is taken away the reprecussions are greater because many people know about the behavior and employ it in every day tactics not realizing that it was exploitative at all.
So, what is the ultimate difference between exploits and emergence? Emergence comes in two flavors - expected emergence where we as designers expect that players will behave in a certain fashion and are cognizant of the risks and accept in our initial design that things will unfold in a fashion that is acceptable by terms of the core game design; unexpected emergence, where we as designers cannot or do not anticipate, see or otherwise prepare for players behaviors that expose underlying issues with previous designs and code resulting in behavior that is antithetical to core game design. The latter of these emergent behaviors become exploits.
Reading these words I realize how unfair it seems. I realize that I sound hypocritical, because these are such dogmatic stances. Still, as our Creative Director is fond of signing off: “At the heart of every design, perhaps every game, there is an arbitrary decision. Ironically, even if you disagree with it, you may still love the game/design!” the quote is someone else’s but the content is very true. Every design has a decision. Some you may like, some you may dislike, but there are decisions that are made and as designers we implement according to those decisions and adjust as necessary to the core philosophy that drives the whole.
Up Next: If I Were In Charge
(Edit: Forgot to put in the Up Next)
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July 8th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Thanks for your insight into this process.
As a player in computers games of any sort, one of my MAJOR pet peeves, is when I’ve earned a power or ability in game only to find out that the ability doesn’t work against boss monsters.
Why are they immune to my abilities? I’m sure it has to do with balance or anti-exploits, but couldn’t there be another way around it without nerfing character abilities by making bosses immune to them.
That was one of my BIGGEST gripes about DDO and why I quit playing it.
Thanks for reading along. I think you got the better end of the deal since my rant was much shorter.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I agree with some of what you said. However, when fixes lead to mobs jumping off of platforms and leaving the players in combat mode that is not good either. It’s funny at first, but then it’s annoying.
In any case Igash has always been hard to beat whether the archers were there or not.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
I wish your root/snare nerf hadn’t been so sloppily implemented.
Skills that put a debuff and a slow on a mob, should still apply a debuff even if the mob can’t be slowed. Sticky Tar went from being a great class skill that was useful in every boss fight, to being something that’s now really only handy in the Ettenmoors against other players. At least fix the fire debuff so the skill has some utility again against bosses.
And I would still argue that giving specific bosses root-breaking abilities or strong ranged attacks is a better solution than just taking crowd control skills away from players in all boss fights, but if your definition of “different from landscape” means taking a good portion of my skills off the table in boss fights, I guess it’s at least justification for why you did that.
Dark Delvings was very different that landscape when it was populated with trash mobs completely immune to mez. First time I ran it with my LM, and Burglar in group, we didn’t say “That was AWESOME! We really had to be on our feet to survive in there!” — we said, “Man, some dev must really hate our classes. I feel almost useless in there.” That didn’t make it challenging, that made it NOT FUN, and fortunately it was fixed.
Having skills that can’t be used is just annoying, as any Guardian who has played in the Ettenmoors can attest. I don’t mind a fight like Krankluk, who is immune to power drain, or when Igash is immune to snap-taunts… when you give the mob a buff that makes it obvious, and it’s appropriate to that fight. Blanket immunity to CC just strikes me as a lazy way out. But at least it keeps people from soloing Coldbear.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Some will argue that making monsters immune to abilities is the easy way to make a boss fight, but we use it very rarely and when we do there is usually a good reason for doing so. We are also careful to not make it all bosses and to provide other opportunities for players to utilize their skills. I cannot make the dislike go away and I cannot promise that we will stop blocking select skills in the future.
We usually take a select set of skills and remove them or push them to a different stage when they can be used. Changing rules helps - in my mind - keep things interesting and fresh for players.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Interesting, thanks for writing! I have to admit, though, I took your early advice and skipped down to the closing section and last three paragraphs.
However, I did scan the rest of your blog post for interesting sections.
I have to say that I completely disagree with you about the whole concept of trying to fight/control emergent gameplay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay). Gamers will always be finding new things to do and new ways to do things easier/faster/better. As far as others “exploiting” areas or devising strategies you or the Turbine development team never envisioned is what makes things interesting. None of us what to be hand-held through everything and told what to-do or not-do to follow some sort of preconceived plan of progression.
As far as the results of emergent gameplay hurting the community or other members, that’s a debatable area. The in-game economy of LOTRO is already fickle, with goldfarmers/spammers outwitting Turbine at every corner. Heck, I could easily write a problem to automate my play that uses simple and fast screencaps of specific parts of a client’s screen to make its own decisions based upon a mix and match database of captures to interact with the virtual world you created. But therein lies the problem: how much reward is worth how much effort? And as a gamer-first, my interest in emergent gameplay is purely for entertain value, not for profit or with malignant intentions to “grief” or exploit other players.
But there you have: my ultimate goal and motives are much different than yours because I’m on the other side of the fence.
Yet I can certainly respect your opinion and the decisions Turbine devs make every day. And from your heads-up and other warnings in your blog, you already realize there might be a good chunk of people involved in LOTRO who don’t agree with you. 
July 8th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I agree with you you MysterX, that the debuff portion should hang on and not be removed by the immunity, unfortunately that skill is considered a root at all times and there is no way with current tech to separate the two. When it can be done, I will do my best to see it done that way.
On the note with mobs immune to CC, I agree again. We need to communicate the reason (buff) behind that immunity. Bosses should, by the very fact that they are bosses, give the impression of being immune to CC as they are well…again…bosses…
July 8th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
I don’t think that I stated I want to fight or control emergent gameplay, just that it happens as part of the normal play and is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Avalon, I dislike when fixes lead to more bugs too.
July 8th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I agree with your latter comment there. Creatures that are immune to CC should communicate that fact, just like how several bosses in GS have the “buff” that says they are immune to threat increasing skills. This let’s players form a strategy in the manner that is desired by the designers. When there is no indication of how the fight is intended but players devise a successful strategy, we assume that since there was no set structure, the strat is allowable.
This latter thought of mine seems to be at complete odds with your take on emergent gameplay. If as a designer you want something done a certain way, then you should make it really explicit how it should be done and never allow for other actions to have an effect. The fact that it is not explicit what is not allowed indicates that any devised strategies are appropriate.
For example, in a simple GUI maybe you want someone to enter a 4 digit number. Your text might say “enter a 4 digit number.” You prevent errors by making that entry box have a 4 character size limit. You further prevent errors by spitting out some type of feedback if the user tries to enter a string of letters.
Now, let’s say that you don’t restrict the input in this box, so that I can enter the string “ace4″. Perhaps unintentionally, but through some type of run-time casting, a numeric value is produced. The program then goes along on its merry way, because it received a number and is happy. The user, having been allowed to enter a string and seeing that the program still produces some type of output, sees this as acceptable behavior and continues to do so.
If on the other hand, entering “ace4″ causes the client or server to crash, then it is clearly not acceptable behavior to enter such a string.
So let’s return to the hard-mode Igash fight. The presence of the devoted at the start of the fight indicates that they are meant to be a part of it. The fact that there is a buff on Igash saying he is immune to certain types of threat skills indicates that watching DPS is important. Strategies that cause the other mobs to not be engaged, or that cause Igash to be unable to attack are therefore exploits.
But, say a strategy is devised whereby Igash is made to ping-pong back and forth between hunters on opposite sides of the room (thus using DPS as aggro management), while the tank kites archers around the room. Hypothetically speaking, let’s assuming this is an unintended strategy. This is a viable strategy given the explicit rules of the fight. Under your definition of emergent gameplay, even though it obeyed the explicit rules of the encounter, because it was NOT what you intended, it is an exploit.
Your definition of negative emergent behavior is so broad, that it can be viewed as a cop-out. Oh, I didn’t want players to do it that way, but I didn’t make it obvious what I wanted them to do, so, let’s change it. But have you stopped and asked your players, “Is this encounter fun?” Maybe it is a little easier than you intended, but are players still having fun? As you said, your goal is to craft moments of fun for players. Whether or not *YOU* think it is fun doesn’t matter. What matters is whether the *PLAYERS* think it is fun.
This goes to the heart of what that MMO article interviewing the Funcom guy said. If an encounter is fun, it doesn’t matter if it is hard or easy - the fact that it is fun means people will continue to play it. Rather than mess around with available skills or invalidate strategies, you should address other avenues.
So again, take GS. If some of the devised strategies make the content too easy, change the loot tables. Make the really good jewelry drop at a much lower rate. Don’t invalidate the dominant strategy because it isn’t what you wanted to see. Adjust the rewards to become in line with how the difficulty of the fight has changed.
And as far as bugging out the devoted, I’ve never understood why you just don’t make him follow a path around the room. Make him purposefully path behind the throne.
If (devoted does not detect Igash or player) -> then (path around room until Igash or player is detected)
Or hell, just put up a gate that blocks access to behind the thrown, even easier. This forces the encounter to be in the open area where the devoted will be able to detect the players and become involved.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I am all for the occasional instance being “taxing” but when every single instance leaves you tired or drained and requires you to run it 4-8 times for a single piece of armor, THAT is when its time to look else where for my fun. Hard mode once or twice is fun, Hard mode 20-50 times (For kin and country) is a pita without a little exploitation or emergent behavior.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Delphinus,
Your description of the Igash fight is not an exploit, that is one of those good forms of emergent gameplay. You are using skills and abilities that stay within the parameters of the game to handle a difficult situation. I 100% love that strategy because it forces the hunters to be top notch with their skill use to keep Igash ping-ponging. An exploit would entail a hunter dealing damage and running around the throne until Igash gets stuck.
The devoted should always aggro the room, but there was/perhaps is a bug with something in the space.
Again, the strat that you described is exactly the type of stellar emergent gameplay! I love that strat. I have seen that strat used and think that it is top notch. Sure, the description of exploit that I have is broad, as I said it needs to be to satisfy the core decisions that were made.
It is one way to deal with the problem. Just like separating the Devoted from his adds and then mezzing them down with crowd control. There are many ways to beat a fight.
Ryvick,
The number of times that you must run something certainly can play a factor in whether you like it or not and that point I cede to you wholeheartedly.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Great post. Gonna link it on my blog. My problem with the design of many HM’s was that it felt like it demanded negative emergent gameplay. There would be that one trick for so many HM’s (not all) to make it work. If the path were not so narrow to a “win” I think more positive emergent gameplay could have emerged. But, it felt like we were pushed down one chute.
I also think that entirely negating skills (stun/root) creates negative emergent gameplay. Again, the design narrows the amount of choices to make shifting player focus from solve to break. I feel (and maybe this is not possible) a more elegant solution would have been to change how the skills work on bosses (lower armor, increase to-hit chance, etc.) instead of just making them useless.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
A good read, but the decisions made to correct these exploits need to account for the various skills and strategies already in play. This is something that for the last year and a half Turbine has done a very poor job of in a number of instances.
Making all bosses immune to slows has broken subskills from a couple classes. Burglars, Guardians, Lore-masters, Hunters, and most likely others in the fact that abilities with a snare/root/stun no longer function and side effects of those skills no longer function. Sticky Tar will no longer lower fire mitigation on a boss. Stagger will no longer apply to a boss. Dust in the Eyes will no longer apply to a boss. Stagger and DitE were fixed last patch, Sticky Tar still remains broken and has since the immunity was put in play. You say that the skill is considered a root at all times so why not remake the skill and break it into a skill that applies two ‘things’, the current snare root and a second as a debuff that functions like Warding Circles.
You speak about making bosses challenging and requiring strategy, but in many cases strategic tactics were stripped out to make a dumbed down one way fight..
-Haudh Valandil used to require thought and strategy and it is now a DPS fest up to the final room which remains the same.
-The Castellan of Barad Gularan used to require a certain tactic to improve the odds and it is now instead a DPS fest.
-The Udunion encounter of BG has been broken for the last two or more patches. With the instance changes if you die you lose the items making the fight impossible if you should fail or get unlucky with Udunion using the same ability within ten seconds(he has always done that). It is now at the core a DPS fest.
-1.14.1 has always been a tough encounter and before Moria the only way a majority of groups could beat it was by breaking the encounter and fighting the boss out of LoS from his adds. This exploitive strategy required control of the fight, something still difficult for many groups to have pulled off. The encounter in its original thoughts and current implementation is nothing but a DPS fest. There is no control when you have four elite dead wailing on a group with a boss as well, rooting does not help if the foes are ranged, dazing is limited to two classes for a brief time. The dead still heal the boss while under CC so it does no good using control in that aspect. You will be hard pressed to find any group of 48-52 beat that encounter with the post-Moria changes.
-Nengon of Glinghant has always been a DPS fest even when you could exploit the doorway.. Why? Because if you make something so extremely stupid hard to not be worth it, people will never go there to enjoy it or they will find a way to break it so that it is easily doable.
-Your main example is behaviors seen from the Grand Stair.. On that you have the ten minute timer that even with a very well rounded group you would be unable to make it to the second boss by using conventional tactics of fighting as you go. You must either have a group dedicated solely as high DPS(which limits your group makeup) or a group willing to engage in shady behavior by sending some lemmings to trigger the boss speech and then be killed/feint/hips/or jump off.
The decisions to make certain instances easier and more accessible are great. Dark Delving and 16th Hall changes. Changes to the Watcher. Changes to Mordirith and Helchgam. The new Hall of Mirrors instance is wonderful even with the bugs. The Waterworks is an enjoyable challenge up to the broken final boss.
Having things be ‘tough’ but ‘doable’ for the first month or two is great to appease the hardcore out there, but when you make it stupid tough to complete the ‘proper’ way for six months or more due to patch cycles then the softcore and casual people are going to look for a ‘better’/exploitive way.
Perhaps by looking at those ‘better’ ways or the reasons that those ‘better’ ways are being used then truly better instances and better encounters can be designed so as not to repeat the past.
Sorry if this comes off as rantish.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Very interesting post.
I admittedly did not read every post/reply, but that’s never stopped me from sharing (foisting upon others?) my opinion:
If you cut through the thick language and specialized terminology (saved for the high-priests), it seems that the basic division is this: Exploits are simply emergent gameplay that is unintended to the Devs.
Now, I don’t personally have a problem with this definition, if you’re gonna apply formalistic logic to the whole issue. My view, however, is as follows.
What is, or is not, intended by teh Devs is not known to the players who are out there learning the instance. BUT, the discovery process of finding the strat that works - whether intended (legit) or not (exploit) is fun.
Now, some of these are obvious well know exploits that every game has - the spot where you can’t be hit, but you can range from. The spot where you can hang the boss up. The crowd-control skill that reduces a boss to a ping-pong ball.
Consider these, however. The original discoverer finds it - what joy! They share with their friends/kin for glory and fame. Their friends/kin do it, and take much enjoyment from knowing that they’ve found a way to beat it … The circle grows, the PUGs listen intently as they hear “the strat”, only to hear an exploit, but they follow along. Success! They feel good as they’ve done their part in making it so.
Whats my point in all this? I’m not sure. I guess what I’m trying to say is, players take alot of joy out of exploits too. And that’s ultimately what its all about, right?
If I were king, this would be my philosophy, and my directive to my dev team: First, make every instance, every boss fight, every challenge as bug-free and exploit free as you can. Check the in-house laundry list of typical problems. Look at a list of all skills of all classes, consdier its effect, playtest them. Insure that the quest is doable by a variety of classes and that within your zone of legitimate solutions, you have considered various class mixes and player abilities. Define your solution set, have it be inclusive, have it be broad, but know it. Do a good job on it.
Then give it to the public and let them eat it alive. Let people find the mistakes (take note!). Let them enjoy the unintended way of beating it - for 2 weeks, for 4 weeks, maybe 6 weeks. But then, surely and silently, fix it. Behind the scenes. Not with a loud announcement, not with a condmeantion of the “exploiters” (who are really just folks trying to have fun), but with a simple “Bug fixes implemented in [mission x]“.
Then, give it back to the masses, and watch em eat it alive again! Revel in their creativity. Learn from their techniques!
Those who care about exploit vs. emergent play will get their answers over time. Those who are just trying to have fun - they’re happy as well, they may have to learn a new method, or wait for someone to show them one (e.g. many quests post book 7), but thats what they do … they wait for someone to show them. True explorers *should* be overjoyed as they have a new problem set to solve (if they were relying on now changed tactics), or they can be smug knowing their tactics were not changed. And the hardcore “must exploit or die” types, well, they’ll be sad when their easy-mode is gone. But, if you’re gonna upset someone, shouldn’t it be them?
And, I’m happy to say, that seems to be generally how such matters are handled here. For the most part.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
I am an old Everquest player, and burned out on heavy raid farming long ago, so my perspective on your blog is probably a bit different than the average player.
I play the “landscape game” and some of the instances, mostly solo. I enjoy the challenge of completing as much of the game solo as possible, including many of the group quests. As a solo player working on content designed for groups, I have to look for ways to meet that challenge that were not the intended path for a group.
I am doing this for the challenge, after all… so exploits are not what I am going for. Its hard not to find a few along the way, but using them takes away from the challenge.
My end-game raiding and grouping is done almost entirely in PvMP. I find it much less boring and much more challenging (as a monster player) than any PvE the game offers. This brings up a paragraph from your blog:
“When you face a boss or encounter in a fellowship instance, you should feel taxed, pushed to your limit. You should walk away from that fight saying, “Damn, we handled that fight well.” or “That was AWESOME!” not, “Okay guys, same tactics as landscape.” No way! You should also know that you played your class well and as many aspects of your class should be as exposed as possible. This is where you should shine in your group role, whatever that may be.”
If you changed your first sentence to this: |When you face other players in PvMP, you should feel taxed, pushed to your limit.|
Then the rest of the paragraph would be a very good description of what PvMP in LoTRO can be…and sometimes is. Every player in PvMP should feel just as you described. I realize that the PvMP system is a very different animal than PvE instance design, but the present state of PvMP is very challenging for some players, and much less so for others.
In PvE instance design, you often must limit crowd control on the bosses. You make a very good case for why you do this. Yet, the same players, using the same classes, are expected to come out to the Ettenmoors and find challenge in defeating player controlled versions of Monsters with much less morale, much less damage output, and none of the crowd control immunity. The potion system and Dimishing Returns system has very limited usefullness on a battlefield where many players of many classes have several forms of CC that can be rotated to avoid the very brief immunities.
Its an upside down progression in my opinion. The general PvE game gets harder and culminates in the boss instances. Then those same players come out to try PvMP once they have met the challenge of the PvE instances, and find PvMP much easier… mostly because of the almost full effectiveness of crowd control.
PvMP should be the ultimate end-game challenge, but it very defintely isnt. It seems to me, that time spent making PvMP into the end-game challenge that it has the potential to be, would be much more cost-effective than spending months designing PvE instances that are going to be on common farm status within a few weeks of release. After all, PvMP players have been playing on almost the same small map for 2 years, for almost no rewards. Now, thats what I call good return-on-investment.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Making bosses immune to root, snare, stun, and fear makes it a lot easier to make those fights challenging, it is true. It helps prevents emergent tactics from becoming exploits.
But it also makes boss fights a lot less interesting when you’re limited to handling the occasional add, especially when you have useless skills that formerly had a function. I enjoyed being able to help some squishy get away with a timely root. I’d like to see Sticky Tar get fixed, but then again I’d like to see it work like it used to. Yeah, I know. These are big bad BOSSES! They don’t get stuck in the mud like other orcs, ever (anymore). Except for General Talug, who just steps in orc-traps to remind you that the hunter ones are useless.
As a player (and especially as a Lore-master), I’d rather see bosses have various immunities depending on the creature type and the lore of that instance. I want to use my Knowledge skill to scan the boss and tell my group about the lore I have studied on this monster, instead of it always being immune to a whole bunch of our skills. Were roots and snares really so overpowered that blanket boss immunity was the best fix? Did they maybe combine with Line of Sight in a bad way?
It really gets confusing for players when things like line of sight are clearly intended to be gameplay elements in some fights, but turn out to be AI exploits in others. People have soloed Helchgam by using a LOS trick that was employed by every group I ever ran it with. How do you categorize that? The LM that soloed Coldbear was a supreme master of the class, with a lot of patience and a bit of luck, who used every possible advantage to pull off that feat. Was it an exploit that 1 person was able to beat a warm-up raidboss that was still fairly easy with less than a full fellowship?
July 9th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I suppose the core issue for the designer is in figuring out how explicit to mark the “wrong” strategies. If you make it too obvious, then groups figure out what to do too quickly and they complain it was easy. However, in this case as a designer you know that the desired player behavior will be achieved and the “wrong” behavior is largely avoided. On the other hand, if you provide too little information, then you encourage players to figure out anything that works. In this case, you run the high risk of players figuring out a strategy contrary to your intent that you might not be comfortable with.
It’s a tough line to manage. On the one hand, you upset a group of players with content that is too easy. On the other hand, you upset a group of players by invalidating strategies or nerfing core class skills for a fight. I’d bet that in either case, it’s the same group that is going to end up upset. In that sense, getting it right is really an art form, although this is exactly the kind of thing testing “should” catch. Of course, large sample sizes are needed to really catch these kinds of things.
I understand needing to adjust things if a fight is found to be trivially easy due to an unintended dominant strategy. I wouldn’t define that as an exploit, or negative emergent gameplay, though. The consequences of the fight might have a profound negative impact on the game through item proliferation or the economy (such as rampant exploiting pre bk7 caused regarding the availability of the purple non-rad sets). However, such things can be adjusted either through changing the chest contents(i.e. GS chests not all dropping money) or making most items BoA (bartered armour).
This isn’t the space for large-scale theorizing on why players choose to exploit or find strategies that border the edge, although I would wager several gold that the shift to gear-gating for raids was a very large contributor in the case of Moria. A potential second reason would be the lack of multiple, distinct strategies for completing hard-modes that could be applied depending on group make-up. However, amongst the people that I play with, gear-gating was the principle reason for them to use exploits to complete instances.
Players do tend to be more forgiving to content adjustments when we feel there are still attractive alternative strategies that will let us meet our goals. It’s all about perceived choice, even if the choices are all pre-contrived by the designer. Perception of choice > no choice at all.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Going to what ryyvick said, because we are running these things for (at least perceived) required gear; doesn’t that fly in the face what you’re implying when you want us to say damn that was awesome? Because we are not. We are saying “thank god I only have to run it 5 more times.”. Gs isn’t bg. You went voluntarily and with eyes wide open. And if after ten wipes and you hated it, you would never need to go back there again.
We are in a whole different world now and I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound like I’m flaming you, but you are out of touch with our world. Our world is one of end game grinding. And you are doing everything you can to make that tedious grind more difficult than it already is. You think you are making it fun for us, but you’re actually pissing us off. Why do you think exploits have become so rampant? It’s because we are trying to get through these instances as fast as possible to get the only gear that matters.
You, sir, are an awesome designer. I sincerely love bg and even gs. But the gear situation as it stands is making us dread challenging content not appreciate it.
You had a nice quote about design. Here’s another:
Know your customer
July 9th, 2009 at 1:09 am
mysterX and Delphinus feel free to PM me to continue these conversations. You might drive me to write something else up.
Snowlocke,
I am hardly out of touch with the way that the world is now. There are distinct growing pains going on. I cannot say how they all shake out at the end. I will agree that the end game grind that exists right now does need attention. I think that exploits are as rampant as they ever were but are called out more often. And I will leave the discussion on what those changes are to others who are more intimately related to that aspect of the project right now.
In the case of MMOs we need to adjust your quote: know your customers or know the audience.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Fredegar,
Not a rant, an expression of an opinion and opinions are never wrong. Point by point as best I can at this hour:
Not certain when Sticky Tar and the way that the root aspect works will get a look-see. If other skills are getting touched up then it is a fair bet that at some point in the future this will also see improvement. There are tech concerns with skills that sometimes take longer to iron out. As a result, sledgehammer approaches like the root/slow on bosses change - which I still stand behind as being better overall for the game, can be cumbersome for a bit.
Not certain what the changes where in Haudh Valandil.
Castellan fight - the torches were built on a wing and a prayer, I will not mince words about that. I was lucky to get that working the way that it did. At some point another designer saw the hack job that I did to make that work and took it out. We share everything. We have new tech that can help us rebuild it stronger, better, faster! So in my revamp pass this may come to fruition. Tech working for you!
The items disappearing on leaving the instance = tech working against you. It is a bug in my queue and will be addressed. The return of the respawn at the entrance of BG.
1.14.1 will get touched up at some point as well.
Nengon of Glinghant - gotcha, I will look into that as well when I get there in the revamp.
Grand Stair is very doable by a group that goes through without using exploits. I’ve been part of them. Is it easy? No way! You usually get there with only a moment or two to spare, sometimes seconds. Still, it can be done without exploiting. It’s just…well…hard…
The goal is not to make things stupid tough. The goal is to make things intelligent and fun. We’re human and this is a process.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Tzer,
The question of monster play is a very touchy subject. I am one of the members of the team that has the honor of putting monster play together and I am proud to have done so. I can say this, however, there is no single discussion point - not radiance gear, not exploits or class changes or the infamous potato vs potato debates that inspire more divisiveness in the LotRO community than monster play.
Obviously, I am a fan of PvMP. I would like to see more of it - but there are some things that I would like to see changes to fix some of the inequalities.
I am beginning to think that the blog “If I Were in Charge” may become a series of blogs.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:35 am
Pellegro,
As I was reading your response I was saying…but that is pretty close to our directives and what we try to do…
Thanks for acknowledging that.
Oh and no, it is not perfect, but we really do try.
One more thing for Snowlock,
Thank you for the complement, but in truth I am just part of a team of great designers. Without them I would just be overworked and grumpier than I already am.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:20 am
Orion,
You and the other involved devs should be proud of PvMP. It is, in my opinion, the most unique PvP system in any MMO…ever. It has fantastic potential. I brought PvMP up in the discussion of instance design because I think it has alternative answers to many of the problems you face, and because it already is an alternative to end-game instance farming.
The game designers are going to great lengths and spending much time to design fun raid and group instances, and then spend even more time working out the exploits. All the while, an admittedly flawed and somewhat neglected PvMP system seems to be doing surprisingly well without all the worries over exploits. I suppose its harder to exploit “smart” opponents, as opposed to AI bosses.
In my experience over many years and many MMOs, you can never ever keep raid junkies satisfied. You are forced to crank out new group/raid content at a pretty fast pace just to keep them playing. This escalates into gated progressions as a way to keep all that content relevant, and eventually… you leave all but the most hard-core of your player base behind.
While PvMP (or any PvP) will always have balance problems, you have a solution to many of your other end-game problems built into PvMP. It seems a shame not to take advantage of it.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:47 am
Very insightful, always great to know a devs thoughts on these sort of things. I also find that HC, and the new three mans are almost impossible to exploit, so it seems that you guys have been really working hard on getting the polish on that part of the instances.
Also, I like the thought of you putting together an “If I were in charge” blog on monster play. There’s so much room to expand on it if resources are found, and so many different directions it could go. If you do make a post on that topic, I’ll have to post my own wish list on it.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Very Interesting Orion!
It seems like an exploit is anything that makes a boss act in a non-challenging non-realistic manner for the group.
So Guardians Pledge to avoid a Balrog’s Roar is Emergent since it does not effect the challenge to the group. But old IHW +LS by captains negated the last (and hardest) 15 seconds of the fight, being labeled as non desirable emergent game play, causing the Balrog to have no effect on the group during it’s most challenging phase.
So Emergent Gameplay allows an individual to perform “heroic” acts. Exploits allow groups to easily kill a boss.
Now of course this has nothing to do with bugs, glitches and real exploits.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Orion, Thanks for the post.
Being that it is a follow on to an earlier discussion and article link I posted let me add a few things.
If players are emerging in game play and finding new ways of doing things, if it is fun for the players and does not take advantage of system bugs, then what is really wrong with this? After all, if players are having fun than it shouldn’t be wrong. That was the point of the initial article I pointed to in the link. Who’s definition of fun matters - the designers or the players.
Second, on the specific examples of the Grand Stairs. Many of your points on the encounter with Igash are valid, but with those points did anyone consider WHY those things were being done? Simply put, the hard mode and rad gear weave through the design of all those instances and, quite honestly, when you run the same run over and over and over again it gets, well, boring. So it becomes a chore rather than fun and it is only fair to help all members of the group gain their coins when doing it.
Regardless of the intent of the instance, as long as this underlying mechanic exists in its current form, players are constantly going to look for the shortcuts.
We all like a challenge, but when you are forced to repeat that challenge again and again and again, it instead turns into a chore and therefore will be subject to many trying to find the easiest way to get it done.
Finally, to your point where you were POd about the way players were approaching it, did you consider why this didn’t exist before and now it existed so heavily in the Moria instances? My opinion is you addressed the wrong thing, to nerf player skills, rather than the underlying blanket design (hard mode and rad equipment) that is causing the problem to exist in the first place. And this is why there is contention between many players and the design philosophy - there seems to be different views on where the root of the problem exists in the first place.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Ara,
I think the old school IHW+LS scenario described was great strategy actually, because it fit within the rules of the game and did not cause the monster AI to fail at all. I think that it highlights a flaw in the design of the skills and class because that specific tactic can be used in any situation at any time (given cool downs) to defeat a boss and thus trivialize the encounter.
Remember, I said that design that is implemented on purpose can also create the problems because we miss the holes in our own logic and then we have the painful situation of closing those holes and that is very difficult.
I think that your distillation of emergent and exploit is incorrect. I believe emergent gameplay allows players to perform “heroic” acts in ways that we had not thought possible without forcing the game/AI/scripting to fault is awesome! The pain point is when it highlights flaws in our design and we have to assess how that affects the longevity of the game on the whole.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Orion, if you think making grinding content on the high end of the challenge scale something your customers desire, I’d have to say you’re out of touch. How often was Watcher 2.0 run? How about Dark Delving? You have the numbers, I do not so everything I say is anecdotal. But at least on Vilya, most kins and basically all pugging stopped on Watcher 2.0. And for DD, it appears to be the same.
I don’t claim you have control over the decisions over gear gating. I doubt you do. But I think you should recognize in your decisions about difficulty how much we have to run this stuff and how much enjoyment we’re getting out of it before you start taking away skills.
I disagree about the number of instances of exploiting too. Maybe I’m being naieve. Again, obviously, my beliefs are based on anecdotal evidence, not hard numbers but everyone I knew was exploiting GS and Skumfil and DD when we could, not to make those fights easier per se. But to make them go faster with less wipes because we had to devote so much gametime to them.
I do believe Turbine has forgotten their customers and I’m very sorry to have that belief. It appears apparent that you, and others at Turbine value the “integrity” of the game over your customers enjoyment of it. You strive to improve the game which you should, but with the nerfs, the closing of exploits on grinding content, the invalidation of skills, and the lack of other avenues to achieve goals other than the ones Turbine ascribes, you are doing so at our expense.
One last thing, You say:
“When a skill or ability is as efficient or more efficient than a counterpart ability that the first skill is supposed to be the antithesis of, then there is clearly a bug and an imbalance and those must be fixed.”
Please explain incurable poisons, wounds, and fears in PvMP. Thank you.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Wayshuba,
If players are doing something that does not take advantage of system bugs or design flaws there is absolutely nothing wrong. I encourage that wholeheartedly, because that is fun! As for who has the correct definition of fun - the players win in an MMO, I can only guess that what I am making is fun and then retrieve the news when whatever I do goes live.
We always consider why someone is doing something with our content. The first reason is always - because they can. For each of the exploits identified, that can be the first answer. We then make a checklist to figure out the other plausible reasons. Yes, I understand the Rad gear argument but does that make an exploit any less an exploit?
Slows/Roots were used on bosses pre-Moria. That call had nothing to do with the Moria instances and everything to do with what I and others perceived to be a design flaw. In essence it was a bug in our own logic that we closed.
If I distill your last statement down I get this:
We are not dictating to you the way to play the game on a moment to moment basis, rather we are dictating how you will play the end game by forcing you to obtain certain items.
Is that a fair assessment?
July 9th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Snow,
Incurables in PvMP is an attempt to create a semblance of balance and equality between decidedly divergent and unequal entities. Does it imply any level of being fair? Nope. It is an arbitrary decision for good or ill. One that we made to address a perceived problem.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:42 am
OK, here’s a question: When it’s impossible to do the instance “as intended,” is it an exploit?
Case in point - the new +15 barter items, the elf-stones, drop whether or not you succeed in Hard Mode. The extra chest that disappears contains only IXP runes and low level settings - hardly enough incentive to set Hard Mode (at least, in Water Wheels & Mirrors - HoC you HAVE to do it in Hard Mode or the boss gets too difficult. Isn’t that funny? Failing hard mode in HoC doesn’t make it easier - it makes it nightmarishly difficult).
So, what would you call that? It’s happened more than once in these instances.
Honestly, I’ve tried to fight tooth and nail against many of my friends to try to get them to do fights “as intended,” but it’s a losing battle. Their argument is “It’s all emergent gameplay. If it’s an exploit, it would have been fixed before Live - or at least in a patch shortly afterwards,” which - clearly - is an excuse no reasonable person could really believe.
Group suicide runs & Still as Death in Skum & FG? Exploit? I tend to thing not, but it feels cheap.
I wish Dev’s would come out and say “THIS IS AN EXPLOIT - DON’T DO IT OR YOU MAY SUFFER REPERCUSSIONS!”
July 9th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Since I know Way, and agree with many of his points, I’ll add my opinion and answer for him:
“We are not dictating to you the way to play the game on a moment to moment basis, rather we are dictating how you will play the end game by forcing you to obtain certain items.”
No, it’s not the point. It’s not that we’re forced to obtain certain items, it’s the repetitious manner in which we’re forced to obtain them, and the RNG system inherent.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Orion,
First of all, let me say this. I have run GS quite a few times and, maybe this will help a bit at understanding one players viewpoint. I never really enjoyed a hard mode run, not once, it was to much of a laser focus on getting the gear rather than enjoying the content. I didn’t like skipping through the instance in a rushed manner and I didn’t like having to do it over and over again. I did, however, run the entire instance one night with a group of kin and that WAS fun.
On my last statement, the hard mode and rad gear really needs to be re-thought, sooner rather than later. My example above of GS is a good example. I like to run the whole instance, once, twice, maybe three times. When I have to run it 6-8 times for each toons skipping the majority of it just to have a chance at a coin, I don’t want a challenge, it is a chore as exciting as farming ore, so I just want to get through it.
Hope that helps in understanding the bigeest challenge you now have in designing instances isn’t the players, it is an underlying game mechanic which goes contrary to enjoying the instances anymore.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I read this blog post last night and have been letting it stew in the back of my mind. It’s a great post BTW and I am glad you wrote it.
Basically, what I took away from the blog post is emergent behavior on its own is fine and interesting, as long as it doesn’t turn into an exploit by negating the effectiveness/difficulty of the boss. It’s a fine line, but if Turbine comes back and says “X” emergent behavior and changes a fight to negate the behavior, it is an exploit.
I guess my big hang up has been, and still is based on the fact that I don’t like to cheat. I like to obey the rules and am uncomfortable when I accidentally break rules. But I don’t know when something really is an exploit or not. I don’t want to cut myself short on a legit strategy, but I don’t want to be a cheater either.
For example, when I first ran GS, everyone I went with jumped. I hated it and though it was dumb and was very glad when the exploit was fixed. But before it was fixed, I really thought “that’s how you get down there” because that’s all I ever saw (I just assumed if you continued forward, it would be a dead end).
I felt badly when I found out this was an exploit. Then I wondered if other stuff I took for granted as being “the strategy” was an exploit or not and I found myself worrying and not having fun.
And to add to the confusion, what is an exploit in one place, isn’t in another. Using the jumping down as an example again, there are places where you jump down and it’s the only way to go as far as I can tell… such after in the 16th Hall on the way to the final boss as you run though the passageways of bugs. I sometimes break my legs too–but there is clearly only one path and it requires jumping down.
I guess the argument can be made that in GS there “is” a path to take that doesn’t require jumping down and in 16th Hall, there isn’t. But when you run it with a group that just tells you, jump here and you know you need to skip some of the content anyway to keep hard mode (like skipping the kennels and the trolls), how am I to know?
Short of being told, “X is an exploit” how is a player to know? Can a player even know. And is Turbine forgiving when the player wasn’t aware? That’s always been my question/concern.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am
“Incurables in PvMP is an attempt to create a semblance of balance and equality between decidedly divergent and unequal entities. Does it imply any level of being fair? Nope. It is an arbitrary decision for good or ill. One that we made to address a perceived problem.”
What was the perceived problem? I guess the obvious answer would be that freeps were kicking the crap out of creeps and the incurable combat states came into being to alter that. But at least on Vilya (the major hunter buff that needed to be removed not withstanding) creeps usually beat freeps. Now, wargs rank 6 and higher are beating most all classes but tactical 1v1 and only the best players at the tactical classes are winning. Don’t even get me started on reavers.
It’s causing more raiding rather than less. And I thought the renown nerf with MoM was put in to encourage more small groups and solos.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Ah I think it is a bit clearer now. Exploits cause the AI to be unable to successfully react to a strategy. Emergent gameplay does not affect the AI’s actions. But when certain types of emergent gameplay (IHW LS) (Rooting/Kiting) effect a large number of challenging encounters and allow them to be fought as if they were roughly the same instance, then the skill will be reconsidered as possibly OP/funbreaking.
But I do agree that the fact that you need to keep running each instance x times to get the gear means people will run them as fast as possible at the highest chance of success at any cost.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Orion,
Building on my first post and also a slight tangent..
Haudh Valandil: The lower six chambers with the levers used to house a unique fight in each chamber. Now all the chambers are the exact same, kill the Arnorian Dead thing and ignore the adds since the adds infinitely respawn. I had a wonderful time dragging kinmates through the original to document all the battles and trying different tactics to win in each chamber. After the change I was like.. Bleh!.. and I haven’t been back.
This applies to cases were the abilities and skills of a player are causing content to become trivial due to the inherent design of the ability/skill. Something I would like to see them do is making small razor edge adjustments overtime rather than cudgel bashing, something few developers seem to do.. I’m not in the business so I can’t say why that is.. I think development houses should have an on staff psychologist or at least someone who loves the theories of psychology to apply towards their game structure and design.
Instead of mobs or bosses having outright immunities or ‘nerfing’ a class ability, lower its effectiveness in the one case that it does pose a problem. So instead of Boss A is made to easy with Enrage so lets make it immune, make it so that Boss A deals slightly more damage in a berserked state.. Risk vs reward. Boss B comes out with two adds, instead of having the adds immune to daze give the boss an interruptable ability that will wake up any dazed creature in range and apply an attack buff to the freshly awoken dazed creature, “Wake UP or I’ll gut YOU!”. Not wanting force taunts to work as well make Boss C slightly deaf (Igash). Boss D being tanked by a fervour champion too often then add an attack check to see if the target is wearing heavy armour and using a shield that is effective(fervour negates block) and if not grant an additional ability of somesort such as an aggro drop with a knockback “Hah, you can’t STOP me!”.
The whole Moria/Forochel Auras and Moria Corruptions are on the right path.
As a novice designer/builder/runner whatever of a NWN PW a few years back I know that all those exceptions and special checks means far more work and far more code to check, debug, double check, and triple check. Those exceptions make each boss battle something unique though. In the end I’d like to think it is worth it.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:36 am
I don’t pretend that exploits (or unexpected emergent game play) will ever stop from occurring - I hope they won’t. For me, unexpected emergent play is simply the product of player’s creativity in forging answers to the puzzle that you as developers didn’t see. It’s something that helps drive the game forward, keeps you on your toes and thereby hopefully sharpens the quality of your products - be it an encounter, an instance or a class.
But while the negative impact of opportunistic behaviour is inescapable, it doesn’t have to damage the overall gameplay. The situation where it does - and where it has done to a great extent in this game - is when there’s a clear absence of action towards it; or at least a very delayed one. Apart from server stability, having players play the game as intended should be a priority, and any failure to do so should be corrected instantly, for the alternative undermines your work in its entirety.
There was a bug with a roaming boss in another MMO where a class could ‘pump up’ a skill and then unleash it on that boss, soloing a 40-man encounter in a matter of seconds. The kill took place midday, and by supper time all servers had been fixed to prevent it from reoccurring. No way they could have predicted this behavioural pattern, but they stopped it before it ever became a problem.
Put frankly, you can curse people’s creativity all the way to the Misty Mountains, but it won’t prevent them from exploiting. And you won’t ever learn to prevent exploits from happening altogether. All you can do is provide efficient tools to correcting them on the way. What you need is an effective hotfix system.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:58 am
One of the things that’s so baffling about Igash is the broad spectrum of immunities in that final battle. The Devoted starts out with an unmarked semi-Enrage on, and (basically) can’t be allowed to take damage. He already grants CC immunity to nearby mobs, and runs around the room…but despite that, Igash gets additional CC immunity. And slow immunity. And taunt immunity. And the archers then have to be tanked, preferably without being killed so as to maintain their hate list.
It’s just such a jumbled mess of immunities…and Igash hits so hard that the strategy really does just become “do as much damage as you can without pulling aggro.” There’s nothing left but damage, healing, and ‘don’t stand in the fire.’ Then add his massive, unavoidable AOE stun + damage, and it really feels like a big middle finger at times - like disabling half our skill arsenal wasn’t enough, now you’re going to disable the second half, too, while dumping a boatload of damage at the same time.
I know it’s not, but it sometimes feels that way. And bringing a kinmate through to get his rad piece, someone who’s already run the instance 15 times and just wants to get his armour and be done with it, and have Igash AoE stun back to back and kill everyone…exploits start making a lot more sense. And, just to head off discussion, since it was mentioned on the forums that you folks are considering putting the new ‘coin for everyone’ mechanic in the old rad instances - having to run the instance an extra six times to get another kinmate his or her armour doesn’t make the exploits look any less inviting.
As someone who’s been the hunter kiting Igash around, I can tell you it was no walk in the park, especially when you’re the only one with an available slow, and getting hit by the stun at the top Igash’s hate list means you’re taking melee damage, and a lot of it. I don’t like kiting, but I’m not sure it’s a heck of a lot less skillful than “switch to stance:endurance and hit Quickshot until the aggro switches to the other hunter. Switch to stance:strength and take aggro back.” At the least, a kiting hunter is contributing little to DPS.
Contrast this with the last fight in Fil Gashan, one of my favorite boss fights in the game, if a little gimicky. But hunters, rks, lore-masters, and wardens, off the top of my head, have the tools necessary to pull it off.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Hi, I am TheFrank and I poke holes in people’s works of art for a living. It’s true! My IRL job is IT security and my side job is security consulting. That being said, here is my list of holes and possible fixes:
Grand Stairs:
1)Problem: You can enter the room without triggering the fight.
1a)Solution: Make the room smaller to prevent people from making to the throne without starting the fight.
OR
1b)Solution: Extend the trigger area to the walls.
2)Problem: You can stand on the throne.
2a)Solution: Move the loot chests
OR
2b)Solution: Make the throne higher
3)Problem: You can prevent the Devoted and his adds from entering the fight by exploiting Anti-Exploit (irony, irony, irony)
3a)Solution: Not sure if this is possible but…prevent the Devoted and his adds from entering Anti-Exploit at all. Instead of entering AE they should begin to run around the room (including behind the throne to smoke out the people hugging the back of the throne.
3b)Solution: Have them spawn behind the throne. This might actually solve all three problems with one change.
NOTE: Currently, if the throne “turkey” (my word for exploit) is not done correctly Igash WILL enter AE and/or the Devoted and his crew will chew up your fellowship because they did not enter AE.
Halls of Crafting:
1)Problem: The first boss can be fought entirely on blue.
1)Solution: Change the AI to recognize its own buffs. If it has a huge stack of ranged damage increases it should use ranged damage even if the entire fellowship is standing on his feet.
2)Problem: The second boss can be fought outside of his fire room. PM me if you want more details.
2)Solution: Instead of making a door that flips up [cool idea!]. Make a gate that closes when the party (or even one person) enters.
There is more but I think you should have your hands full fixing these.
Good luck!
TheFrank
July 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I think the biggest problem with the “Hard Mode” instances is that it was never spelled out initially what Hard Mode actually was. It was left up to the players to figure it out and this lead to more discovery of exploits. I would also point out that what is “intended” and what is an “exploit” is quite vague and opposite of what a rationale player might expect sometimes. For example, based on your description, Orion, it seems you intended for people to be able to just engage Nardur without having to kill him. Often the way this is done is for one player to run ahead, engage him, and then just jump of the stairs. This seemed like much more of a potential exploit than having a Burglar use his actual skills to accomplish the same thing. Now it turns out the former is intended while the latter is not?!? That’s pretty crazy, and there is no way you can blame the players for not being able to judge the line between the two in this case.
Personally I like the way the new instances are going, where to get the armor barter item you just have to kill the boss. If you want more loot then you do Hard Mode. I think this will lead to far fewer exploits than the extremely nebulous previous ways.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I really have to agree with Frank above. If someone manages to figure out a strategy (I hate calling them exploits- it took time and skill to find the edge cases) *don’t* remove that in future fixes, but patch it in a way that makes it more challenging.
The Turtle is a great example. Burg Enrage wasn’t intended, but it’s a workable strategy. Don’t make the fix that the Turtle can’t be Enraged- that’s just cheap. Instead, when Enraged let the Turtle stack up a Corruption every 3-5 seconds or so called “It’s getting really angry” More than 5 corruptions and the turtle does double damage. The Enrage strat will still work, but at the cost of constant vigilance on corruptions. (Personally, I think you should have left it alone entirely since there were plenty of groups that couldn’t down him even doing that, but anyway)
Check the change between Watcher 1.0 and 2.0 for a good example of a success. Range tanking the Watcher was boring and stupid- the perfect group was 2 minstrels and 10 hunters. Solution: add an unremoveable corruption to increase ranged damage. I hated 1.0 and *really* hated 2.0, but I hated 1.0 because it was a bad instance rather than being staggeringly hard. I at least respected 2.0 for being a fight that rewarded group cooperation, tactics and near-perfect play rather than the forethought to roll a hunter on the opening screen.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I think what bothers me the most about Turbine’s treatment of “exploits” is seen very clearly in the turtle raid.
LM’s Bear tank: I haven’t seen this done, but by how it was explained to me, it makes sense that this was considered an exploit. Especially since it supposedly makes it so you can beat the turtle easily with a very small group.
Enrage: I still don’t see why this was considered an exploit. Someone previously mentioned that part of the testing process should involve looking at each skill of each class, I would think that would at least be true for the more potent skills. It seems that when the turtle raid was being put together, someone should have said, “well, how will this boss respond to Enrage?” Orion, in one of your responses above, you talk about how you think Igash ping-pong is a great strategy. Why is it great when 2 hunters do it to Igash, but bad if a burg uses engage to basically do the same to the turtle?
Shield Wall: I could see you saying that this was an exploit since it negates the big bleed. But if that were the case, then the logical “fix” would have been to pass bleeds thru the shield wall along with other damage. The fact that that wasn’t the solution makes it seem that having Shield Wall negate bleeds is WAI. If that’s the case, then I don’t see how this could be an exploit either. It was still a difficult battle using the Shield Wall strategy, usually we still had a few casualties along the way. And it got us to use a skill that had been all but useless in PvE, which seemed like a plus.
The fact that one of the more popular strategies aside from the so-called exploits, is to have the tank die mid-battle once the bleed gets unmanageable, seems like much more of an exploit than either the Engage or Shield Wall approaches. Any strategy that involves intentionally sacrificing one of your fellows is just ludicrous IMO.
July 9th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I’m with Orion in that I see no real distinction between exploits and emergent gameplay. The accepted definition of exploit just seems to be “emergent gameplay that’s too good.” This is why I think the word “exploits” is too loaded of a term when all they really are are the newly discovered strats that turn out to be too good. As a player, emergent gameplay is a _huge_ part of a game’s appeal for me, LOTRO included. I have used strats that became classified “exploits” in B7 and B8 but I discovered myself/with friends, through constant trial and error with a sort of “what crazy things can we do here?” attitude. IMO the process of discovery is the most fun part of any game, and the search for emergent strategies extends the discovery phase of the game past the point where you’ve already learned the “accepted” way to beat an encounter.
Similarly, I don’t get possessive about my strategies and feel aggrieved when the devs nerf them. I can readily accept that some of the unexpected things players discover are in fact too good - but the fact that they eventually are nerfed doesn’t, for me, demonstrate that I was wrong to use the strat originally to begin with. ISB was nerfed with B7. Does that mean that players who recognized how good it was in B6 and heavily spammed the skill were exploiting? Of course not, they were simply using a strat that turned out to be too good. Enraging the turtle was nerfed with B8. That doesn’t make enraging the turtle in B7 an exploit, it was just a strat that the devs decided was too good (a decision I agree with BTW). Similarly, I’m far more sanguine about using terrain features, smart positioning, etc. to achieve advantages in tough fights - but I don’t hold it against the devs for taking those strats away from me after I’ve discovered them.
I guess I just don’t see the “antagonistic” relationship that Orion decries as necessarily a bad thing. I thrive on constantly discovering or rediscovering challenges, and that’s not possible if the devs don’t present a moving target for me. From my point of view, the constant arms race of finding emergent strats/nerfing them/finding new ones/etc. etc. is just part of what makes a game fun. So keep up the good work nerfing our “exploits” Orion… I’m still going to be poking around in the corners of your gameworld, looking for stuff you missed =P
July 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
When I first heard that we couldn’t use roots on those bosses I wasn’t happy. I tend, though not ever intentionally, to run in groups where folks want a proven strat to follow before even stepping foot IN an instance. This is why I don’t raid anymore. I want to, but I want a challenge. Not a repeat on what Joe Schmoe found.
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this post out. It explains a lot and makes me feel like I’m not the only one. I need the challenge, even if a skill is blocked in a fight. Makes me flesh out my LM even more, looking for new ways of doing things.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
That was a great read and I am always glad to hear what is going on behind-the-scenes with the choices that are made.
Exploits absolutely need to be fixed, if they are dev made or player dissected. If it doesn’t meet the goals of the developer then absolutely you should change it up to more closely move in line with the original intent.
But… Are you adding gameplay or taking it away when you nerf a class? There are tons of ideas that don’t meet the goals a person is looking for, but that means they go back to the drawing board, not that you force the player shoulder the responsibility for it.
Nerfing the class creates frustration. 100% of players are going to feel this way when they go to use a skill and find it ineffective. Is frustration one of your goals?
Especially as a class gets changed. What happens when a class gets a skill that blows open your puzzle box again? You nerf their newly acquired skill?
That path leads to frustration, and frustration that builds up wont end favorably.
With that particular instance the fixes for the boss fight seem easy to me. (presumptions?)
- fix the hunter cheat location so that it no longer gives the advantage (Can’t reach it or the mob can still reach them)
- have the archers spawn in a set location
- make Igash switch targets if he goes behind the throne
- if he slows down too much, have him pull out a bow that does greater dmg.
Now the puzzle is, how do you defeat the adds without taking Igash around the throne and ensure that we keep him in melee range? And how do we get all the treasure piles in the room to go into our pockets?
Maybe that doesn’t solve your problem, but I think nerfing a class is the easiest way out and possibly even a little vengeful.
“They want to use that skill!? Well then I will take it away!”
Which you can have and feel, especially as it is your design. You can also feel that way and give completely legitimate reasons to nerf a class and tell the player it is to their benefit. But should you?
There will always be more smarter people playing the game then there are smart people making the game. Should the entire population lose their skills because of it?
All a person has to do is realize that they are getting hit harder when they slow the mob down to make them stop slowing down the mob. It might not be the easiest but isn’t that easy enough?
July 9th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
oh yeah
I totally add the length for revenge from reading yours. ;D
wall crit -218
July 10th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Wanted to add a bit here about the boss challenges themselves that may or may not help in the future.
Some of the most challenging, and enjoyable, boss fights in the game for me have required a group to split and “dissect” the encounter a piece at a time. For example, with the 3 Wargs in the Hall of Mirrors I did the run with a Guardian, Captain and myself (a Champ). I grabbed aggro on one add and the guard on the other while the Captain assisted me. Once the first warg was down, the guard came to us to finish the other add and then the boss. We beat the encounter but it required us to work it in pieces. Sometimes, in the past, using roots and mezs is part of this dissection.
There are many examples (Skumfil, Annuminas, etc.) where splitting the group into smaller groups gets you through the encounter. These are a challenge as every member then needs to do their roles in order to succeed. They are fun, because figuring out how to handle it is half the battle and when players figure it out it is a sense of accomplishment.
Part of the exploits you mentioned on Igash, for example, are because many of these encounters are ridiculously hard (meaning many wipes and high repair bills) when taking on everything at once. Instead, I personally believe some encounters should be designed with the piece mentality; meaning the group either splits to accomplish it or you use mezs and roots to get through it. However, many of the current boss fights have the bosses and adds all dealing massive (beyond reasonable) damage or the current fad of the AoE group wipe attacks, that require more luck and timing than skill.
I’d also like to add that, for those instances in Moria I have played completely through - GS, Skumfil, FG and Hall of Mirrors - I got immense enjoyment from them. I still would like to play all of the Forges, 16th Hall and maybe DD one day but getting a group together for doing these instances completely is tough. Why? because hard mode goes against the grain of this and, honestly, people after doing just a portion or the instance in hard mode two dozen times are burnt out.
So, to summarize, give Burgs and LMs back their skills and design final boss encounters where they can be utilized, get rid of the massive AoE party wipe attacks (they are not the slightest bit of fun at all) and get rid of hard mode and the need to run an instance more than two or three times (per toon) at most. Personally, in Moria for example, it would be better if, in GS for instance, you get the teal chest on Igash only if you clear the other bosses in the instance first, otherwise he gives just the purple gear. When you do do this, then every member of the group gets a teal coin for trade at the end. Since they are bound, it doesn’t matter that they get it on the first run. Also, since there is so much grind in the game now with LIs, armour, Rep, etc. Making every grind (such as getting a coin but having to run hard mode six times to do it) is not fun either.
Hope this helps.
July 10th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Forgot one important point to my most recent post…
The night I ran through GS completely with my kin we did it for the sole purpose of enjoying the content. Not for a rad piece, not for the quests, and not even for leveling… just because we wanted to have fun and, we did.
That being said, the hard mode/rad runs, have removed a lot of instance play related to that point… just having fun and enjoying the content, as they have created a “chore” of the content instead.
July 10th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Grand Stairs is one of the instances which I enjoyed when done without any exploit, and when the players are doing it right. Actually it is quite do-able without exploit, but controlling the devoted is really painful. I have 5 wipes in a row before and I can feel for people who wish for an exploit.
However, trial and error, plus wipe, isn’t fun for a lot of people. While I applaud on your focus on end-game content for large group, sometimes I wish there is a focus on small fellowship quests and making ways to find fellowships faster. Dynamic instances which difficultly depends on the size of the fellowship, like old good Diablo 2, is good for the at-the-moment kin/buddy play.
Actually, I have no big feeling on the nerfing of CC skills (except for Dark Delvings. As a LM main I feel unneeded there. Go ahead and make the boss immune, but every single foe!? At least let us have something else to do - increased vulnerability to light/fire and etc.); I have other skills to rely on in a boss fight besides those main ones.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Interesting post as always Orion. I think the real disconnect that comes in for many people is how this emergent behavior is overlooked in proper QA testing. Things like standing behind the throne (and we are not talking about on a very small specific spot) can cause serious issues with the AI that is immeaditaly apparent to anyone paying attention. The goal of QA is to find where things break so they can get fixed not just run stuff as the developer of the dungeon intended. I must say this is just not getting done at Turbine.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
[...] Allan “Orion” Maki blogs, “Thoughts on Exploits and Emergent Game Play” as well as a follow up post on his blog at [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I never quite agreed with the idea of a boss being completely CC-immune… mezzes, sure, we’re used to high-ranked mobs being mez-immune. But slows and roots are great for buying an extra few seconds for the group to recover from a nasty AoE crit, for example.
I always liked the idea of a boss mob reacting in a particular way to certain skills. You could make the CC issue more interesting by doing something like this: instead of Igash being totally CC-immune, he can be rooted and slowed, but the Devoted (if present) will bust him out of roots after a few seconds, and possibly give him a temporary buff to his damage. For slows, the Devoted could start putting a sizeable heal on him for the duration of the slow - not enough to full heal him through full DPS, but enough to set back the group a bit if the slows are used frequently.
This would mean that it would have to be a conscious and deliberate decision to use CC and the group would have to either understand the consequences and react appropriately or have a nasty surprise for their actions. It would put extra options into the fight, which is always good for making a fight a little different each time it’s done.
This, of course, brings up a couple more problems - skills that have slows on them that are frequently used (like Burning Embers), and what happens when the Devoted isn’t there. If the Devoted isn’t there, I say Igash is affected normally by roots and slows and doesn’t do anything special - the fight is pretty simple anyway when you’ve lost Hard Mode, and I don’t think that non-hard-mode has to be any tougher than a tank and spank.
As for frequently used skills that have a slowing component on them naturally, that’s a tough one to answer. Are LMs willing to give up the use of burning embers for the ability to use roots and slows when desired? Are hunters willing to give up strength stance - or quick shot while in strength stance, anyway - for the ability to toss a root when needed?
They don’t, of course, HAVE to give up those options. If the group wants to put all of its resources into DPSing Igash to burn through the previously suggested heal while he’s slowed, then that’s their choice, but their healer might get pounded by the archers later on in the fight if the tank (who would be fighting the archers in the current version) is also on Igash.
Anyway, I know it’s potentially a lot of extra coding - and a lot of extra problems - but I think that devs who write boss mobs should strive to allow for as much freedom and decision-making as possible, and each decision should have certain consequences - and that would really let diverse class roles shine as they put their skills to work to make up for the consequences that do occur.
All that said, I commend you on your efforts to make a challenging instance that is as exploit-free as possible. I know that with all of the different factors involved, including and especially the limitations of the game engine, it must be very tough to make content that is both open-ended and challenging. Thank you for taking the time to post about it.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
This is slightly off-topic, but I’ve wanted to ask this for a while. How would the devs classify the (now removed) mechanic to reset the chests in Ingash’s room by going into the other boss rooms? I ALWAYS wondered, because it “seemed” like an exploit, but there was a specific animation of the orc with the sack (”orc clause”) that happened before the chests refilled which would suggest that it was designed intentionally… so… “Emergent behavior”, or “Easter Egg”?
July 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Thanks for posting this Orion, I found this a very candid view into the developer’s world and it was a very interesting read. First of all let me say I can understand the rationale for everything you stated. But, hopefully without sounding preachy, I’d like to voice a few opinions of my own regarding this.
First of all the idea of eliminating exploits based on unforseen hangups in the environment (unassailable combat locations) or unintentional features in code (falling and not dying) make perfect sense. There’s nothing about their elimination that should be a surprise to any player.
Now onto the modification of player skills. My take on “skills” is that their purpose is to add complexity and create interesting strategic scenarios in games that would otherwise be a simple DPS race. They also add flavor and uniqueness to different classes that allow mulitiple players to cooperate and create unique combinations. In other words they add depth to the game and make it interesting. They also add complexity to both the player’s and developer’s worlds. I think there ought to be a truism in game development that goes something like: “Every reduction in character skills moves the game closer to a one-dimensional DPS race.”
Given that some group of developers added skills to the game to make it more interesting it’s kind of ironic to see another group take them out based on the same reasoning.
There was one paragraph in your entry that I thought was telling: “Classes are not my thing. I will not comment on them beyond this one paragraph. When a skill or ability is as efficient or more efficient than a counterpart ability that the first skill is supposed to be the antithesis of, then there is clearly a bug and an imbalance and those must be fixed.”
I think that eliminating or nerfing player skills to make battle instances work is lazy. To me it means: “I don’t know class skills and I’m not interested in learning them so rather than take them into account, I’ll just modify them to make my instance work.” But like it or not class skills are part of the environment.
Presumably the player’s use of these skills to make the instance easier than you intended looks “emergent” to you because you chose not to be familiar with class skills to being with. Had you been aware, this player behavior might have been “anticipated” instead.
This just shifts the work and complexity of making the instance work to your customer, who now has to figure out “hey I just died 3 times, I guess I my debuff skills don’t work here” and come up with something else. It’s hard to see this as an interesting twist, it’s more like the experience of trying to make poorly documented software work… frustrating.
If there were some methodology to this: “Uber Gork Kludgenhammers are always immune to mezzes” maybe it could work, but really it seems kind of whimiscal in it’s implementation.
Anyway that’s my rant. You’ve made a beautiful and very engaging game. You and everyone else on the development team have obviously put a lot of thought into nearly every aspect of this game. That’s why this kind of thing seems so out of place, to me anyway.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
1. There seems to be an underlying flaw in combat mechanics or monster AI. Any monster, boss or not, will:
a. Decide what skill to use.
b. Decide who to attack.
c. Move, if necessary, to execute chosen skill on chosen person.
d. Repeat c indefinitely until skill execution allowed.
This allows for things like kiting as a strategy to prevent boss special attacks (used most commonly in GS and 16th, but also in DD, FG) and the exploit of finding positions you can’t be attacked. That is, any mob that is in c, will not execute until it’s chosen skill has completed.
Like any good creep, the mob needs to reset the loop every couple seconds. Re-evaluate what skill needs to execute, then pick a new target. You could also make the ‘who’ selection one based partially on convenience instead of pure aggro.
2. Test server. Many bugs and exploits are discovered on the test server. This would seem to be a good opportunity to pickup on them and fix before release… It just doesn’t seem there’s a high priority to address, in test or via patches.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:37 am
How can you say that a Captain using IHW/LS trivializes content due to “implemented on purpose can also create the problems because we miss the holes in our own logic” when thats not in any way a “hole” in the developer logic, but the entire point that the skills were designed for.
Using enrage on the Turtle, again is a perfect example of using the skill as intended but being told that it is exploiting.
Shield wall on Turtle, wow you guys are using a skill that is nearly useless with good effect, slap: “thats exploiting”
Making all bosses mez immune by the way filtered all the way down to at least the bosses of the Infused Garnet item XP instances so please don’t make it sound like “only some bosses” were made immune. (guess how much of a surprise my burg had the first time I tried to mez the boss in training hall to get a chance of using “well placed strike” to start the fight with a decent bleed)
For the Grand Stairs exploit of running to Nardur and jumping or playing dead, why not just make the hard mode achieved by finishing off Nardur within 15 minutes instead of simply activating him within 10?
And why is it that as a developer you quickly decided that players were trivializing your boss encounters with CC but after over 2 years Turbine continues to allow CC to trivialize Creep encounters so heavily? Just think about the fact that there have long been stories of CC being used heavily allowing a solo player to take out raid or mini-raid bosses such as Coldbear and Tyrants at Outposts. Then imagine that same player against a solo creep without only 5-7k morale instead of 70K.
On another note, if it is decided to use the “each player gets a coin and 6x coins = rad piece” concept in the old radiance instances, then please do consider making it so that each coin pops up with the option to PASS for the folks who already have the piece.
If 6 kin mates go to the Grand Stairs to get 1 of them the boots, it would absolutely suck to require 6 runs to get a single pair of boots for the single member who needs them.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Orion,
I am not able to play many of the things that this (your) post refers to. I can only speak to my personal game experience, as of last night with my level 45 Champion.
1. Requiring a pair of level 60 characters to properly defeat something at a level 38-40 instance is not fun, costs ALOT of coin that I do not have and takes away from the play experience. After we gathered those TWO level 60 players to help after having people leave mid instance, the encounter was really neat and in point of fact fun, however unintended in the game design. This happened twice in Evendim on two seperate instances, of which I died enough times that it is painful to recall.
2. My higher level kinfolk (LOL kinfolk not being relatives) have been complaining about running many of these upper level instances lately and not being able to complete them, and going broke in the process of failing them repeatedly. Now having played with these same fellows on lower characters and the like, they are not stupid, and do not have trash equipment, essentially the things that I attribute most of my own deaths to (more the stupidity than the trash equipment… but don’t tell the metal smith that I like ribbing him about my armor). They are very knowledgable and skillful players, and the fact that they have failed to beat an instance within the last two weeks tells me something about this content… I want no part of it. If completion of this type of event is so taxing that you are unable to complete it, it quickly loses its fun factor and then becomes DREADED. When these self same events provide rewards, loot, etc that is deemed required or so desirable that a level XX must have it to continue then it becomes forced content, not in a hardcoded way but in the rather more difficult soft coded way. I need the rest of my radiance gear, and I have been trying for the last three weeks to beat the event and I have failed every time. I have to stop trying and farm just to afford my repairs before I keep trying, I think you crossed the thresh hold of fun and entered something different. I would ask that that be kept in mind, the most hardcore of players might pull something off that the rest of the playerbase just stares at in awe, that doesn’t mean the content should be that difficult, only that it is theoretically possible and proven by one set of six players.
I offer this as well, real life often dictates how we approach other things. In this situation, I look at defeating these instances as combat… because it is what I relate too, I will use any and all means to destroy my foe, afterall he is a pit of evil and I the defender of what is good and holy, in my viewpoint anyway, and if I can engage the monster from the cliffs with bows (LOTR MOVIE… GOLEM) then I will. Negating a design decision is not my goal, surviving the encounter is. I have done things the hard way, unintentional mostly, and then the easy way, usually because my kinmates are threatening my life if I take agro again, but in any of those cases my goal in to beat the instance and stay alive, I do not always accomplish this and if its through my own fault I humbly bow my head and admit my stupidity, if however its because something else happened, I get upset, I followed all the cookie cutter examples, and I am still dead and left with a repair bill. This is afterall a game and the above should not happen.
The other thing, and keep in mind I am not up to this level yet so it’s as close to an objective opinion as possible, is that for the last 45 levels I have been learning how to use my skills to the best advantage and to keep myself and others alive, why would anyone think its a good idea to take someone who has worked even harder to learn there’s at that level and negate them because your monster is too stupid to avoid a chair?
When these instances are being tested it seems that more research should go into how can people defeat this rather than how do we want people to defeat this. If the AI is functioning the correct way, and not resetting after almost being killed repeatedly, or bugged so bad that the monster takes no damage, that is not fun for the player that died 7 times to get there, and still has to pay the repair bill even though the event is a lost cause. These things should have beeen caught during testing and the fact that numerous of these issues were not, tells me the testing that QA/QC is doing is not stringent enough.
In the end blaming the customer for making something work after failing a few times too many would to me tell me that I missed the fun mark and made it overly difficult for the non-hardcore player.
I will not knowingly exploit something to win, I just think thats wrong, but using the skills that YOU gave me to wwin I think is right, and because you don’t want to see root after root applied to the monster seems a shoddy reason for negating skills. If the player has to think outside the box everytime to defeat this monster maybe you guys could think outside the box a bit and create a more fun challanging monster without negating player skills. How about the PVMP being thrown into Moria, a thinking enemy is all ways harder than a coded one. Better yet, get on live control of the monster and wipe the team out and eat them or something, while the sit there waiting for a REZ, that would get peoples attention, but I have to think there is a better way than negating skills to achieve a smarter more tactical fight.
OK wow that was really long, and I don’t even have much vested in this at this point. Sorry for the eyestrain.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
To Orion,
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. It is meaningful that you have the courage to speak on such controversial topics, it is also heartening to know you are trying to get other members of the Turbine team to be more forthcoming. Simply put, brilliant. You have even taken the time to answer some very harsh critics. The only devI have ever seen take public stances as open and upfront as yourself is Ghostcrawler from WoW. Some people might consider that comparison an insult, I consider it the highest compliment I could give a MMO developer.
I have no idea if I will agree with the team’s solution to gear gating. To me personally, that really does not matter. You are addressing the issue, you understand there is concern, and know what you try first might or might not work. This is all we can ask of you.
“Being that I wrote a spec on how to deal with the issue” Any chance you could send me that spec if I signed a non-disclosure first? If you ever need an adult male, husband and father, casual but formerly hard core player with vast MMO experience as a consultant on these meetings, I would work for some free play time, ….just saying.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:17 am
A guildmate told me about this post and i had to come and read it. Its great and way better then any forum post by blue name because you are talking about the “real thing”, not only the exploit and stuff (because i really don’t care) but the other side of the coin Player vs Blue Names.
I’ll continue my reading on the most recent post.
Have a good day.
MorningStarSE
***
On a second note…..
…and having them get chased around a circle seems silly, it seems shoddy and frankly it pissed me off..
Well if you were in charge of Thrang, I’m glad I could piss you off on this one, though 11 other person was happy. You build fun, i made people happy, so 1 unhappy for 11 happy ;-)…
Long Story short -> prevented a wipe by running in circle for 15 minutes /rolleye….
August 13th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Oh and staying on topic, i dont know if you read my topics about my deeds of greatness, they weren’t intented because i will not bug stuff willingly, but i’m not going to let me die if a strange and obscure bug appear and let me solo something that i should not do…… Just a thought