State of the Game - Part 3
by Scott Lewis
Last week, we talked about online game economics and the role of in-game monetary rewards in maintaining player interest. As part of our continuing look at the problem of keeping players, this week we examine the parallel role of increasingly powerful equipment. Today's discussion starts to get a bit math heavy, so bear with me if that's not your thing. I promise this is all going somewhere.
Unlike monetary rewards, better gear represents a direct increase in character power. When a character gets a better piece of equipment, that character is by definition better able to win successive combats and thereby get continually better gear, creating a perpetuating cycle. This cycle, of course, is the basis for much of mmorpg play. We are specifically interested in how this cycle plays out at the highest levels of play, particularly when these levels are beyond the initial scope of the game. We put aside for the moment the new content in the form of additional areas, battles, and puzzles that often accompanies increasing gear. (Don't worry. We'll get back to them all soon enough.)
Several problems accompany the use of gear as motivator. Some of them can be addressed through design, but others can, at best, be mitigated. The first of these problems is the numeric ceiling. This happens most commonly in closed ended systems. When gear comes with game mechanic modifications such as "Increases the chance to dodge an attack by 2%" you will begin to see sizeable power increases as 2% becomes 3, 4, etc. Linear increases in percentage result in geometric reductions in effectiveness for defensive abilities. Consider a character with a basic 10% chance to avoid an attack. The character can thus be said to receive 90% of the damage directed at him. (We ignore mitigation, etc. for simplicity's sake.) If this character gets a new piece of gear that increases his ability to avoid damage by 1% his avoidance rises to 11%. This reduces his damage taken to 89%, for an effective reduction in damage of 1/90. If the character then gets another 1% increase, damage taken is reduced by 1/89, etc. The trend continues. At 25% avoidance (a fairly high number for a standard mmorpg) the next 1% results in a 1/75 reduction, more than double the effect of the change from 10-11%. This problem can be avoided by designing abilities to use comparative systems. If, instead of having a 1% pure increase, an item added to a dodge (parry, block, etc.) skill that was compared to some attack value associated with incoming damage to arrive at an actual avoidance percentage then the increase becomes linear again because of the equivalent increase in the power levels of the enemies a better equipped character will be fighting. This allows game designers to reward players with increasingly powerful equipment without having a spiraling effect on character power.
The use of skill based systems with floating targets creates another problem. If character's abilities are increasing as a result of equipment but enemy ability is increasing at the same rate then gear goes from something you can get to gain an advantage to something you have to get to be able to play. There is a huge perceptual component here. It is almost inevitable that players will become jaded to new, better gear. It is often the case that after a few content expansions player reaction to new items goes from "wow that's really cool, I have to get one" to "yeah, its better, but it's not enough to justify the extra work." Eventually, the equipment arms race between players and enemies will go from a motivator to a source of irritation with the game, defeating the initial purpose. This is particularly the case if successive expansions make it more and more difficult to get (potentially necessary) gear.
One last common problem with increasingly powerful equipment comes from its effect on the value of lower end gear. As higher power gear becomes more and more available, lower end gear drops in both use value and economic value. This has the twin effects of making players less likely to put in the time to acquire the lower tiers of equipment (reducing or even eliminating the extra play time new gear was intended to create) and of leftover lower tier gear being passed down to players who would not normally had access thereto (causing them to move through content faster, again reducing the total time spent playing.) Some more recent designs have cut down on the second factor by binding equipment to players and putting level requirements on items, but the devaluation of existing gear remains an as yet unsolved problem.
Equipment is a good short term reward. The inevitabilities of jaded players and the replacing rather than extending content make it unsuited as a long term basis. Next week we'll have a look at challenge and exploration as long term motivators, with a dip into technological improvements.