What Would Matt Do

It’s a serious question. How do they continue to update a game that is now years old (almost!) and make it so good? How is that Valve brings up happy happy like this:

And that’s just a part of what’s planned for the Sniper update. Oh, and we probably already know something about the Spy update.

WTF. How does Valve continue to make updates to a game that only make it better? Other companies such as the likes of Relic can’t even balance their released games, much add content, without breaking one to twenty other things. The Neverwinter Nights 2 guys (Obsidian) took months and months just to make their game work with lots and lots of patches. And it didn’t really work that well until they released the first expansion. I kid you not.

Valve has either stumbled upon some alternate dimension of fun and figured out how to easily port it here or they really know what play testing and balancing and design mean. The first option sounds more likely compared to how most developers update…

What Would Matt Do: I’m going to keep playing TF2 of course. I might even give the Sniper a try, a class I don’t really like, if the weapons are easy to get (i.e. – Easy to get while normally playing, not having to hit up achievement servers). What are they going to do next, start releasing updates for other companies games because they are so damn good at it they thought they’d share. It wouldn’t surprise me. That’s how bad ass these guys are.

I’m sure Cryptic Studios HAD to think about the potential problems of adding user generated content (quests that the players create) to their system.

But I’m betting they didn’t put enough thought  in when we start getting things like this happening:

When City of Heroes released its user-created mission generator, it was mere hours before highly exploitative missions existed. Players quickly found the way to min-max the system, and started making quests that gave huge rewards for little effort. These are by far the most popular missions. Actually, from what I can tell, they are nearly the only missions that get used. Aside from a few “developer’s favorite” quests, it’s very hard to find the “fun but not exploitative” missions, because they get rated poorly by users and disappear into the miasma of mediocrity.

None of that is surprising, or it shouldn’t be if you’ve played any online game recently. I can’t speak for the majority of players, but enough players to make it a problem will always try to exploit your system. Especially in something like City of Heroes where leveling is SLOW. Why would I, as a player, play the game the normal way when I could load up one of the user generated missions and get some serious experience from doing it?

I hate to break this to MMO developers, but most of your quests are extremely boring. Most people will do a few or more and then try to figure out the fastest way to level within the given system. MMOs require you to put time into the game to succeed, so as a player your obviously going to be looking to lessen the hit to your time. Whether we’re talking cheating or not is basically left up the readiness of cheats and the specific person.

So when you add user generated content, especially user generated content that is allowed to have an experience reward, you’re going to have people that will make levels to be exploited and people that will play those levels. More than enough to make it a big blip in your leveling curve. Guaranteed.

There are possible solutions, but almost nothing is going to work long term unless you don’t allow any kind of reward from the user generated quests. Or you have a guy examining every single quest that goes through and if it doesn’t meet public posted guidelines, then it’s rejected. Of course, you’re going to get a guy to do that and you’re going to need publicly posted guidelines:

Bingo. You don’t know if you’re breaking the rules until you get punished. So the developers are creating a chilling effect on their own content generator. Now it’s risky for players to even use user-created quests. What if some customer service rep decides the quest is exploitative? You’d retroactively lose your XP. It’s best to just to stick to the old dev-made quests, the ones you know won’t get you punished.

I haven’t got confirmation that they actually removing XP from players at this point, but I have heard from players that they are rejecting missions/quests and potentially not giving back a slot to make another/more.

I’m pulling for Cryptic for no other reason than I hope more games will try to do this. I’d love to log into an MMO and be able to pick from a list of quests created and reviewed by fellow players. Because every single MMO existence is lacking in good content, especially if we aren’t talking about the same four or five multiplayer components being played over and over…

What Would Matt Do: I’d try to do a few things. One, just set an arbitrary experience limit on user generated content based on the level required to play it (as one potential solution for the immediate problem). Two, start thinking outside the box for the next MMO on how to allow user generated quests AND content from the start, instead of adding onto an already existing system that it wasn’t really intended to be in the first place. Three, hope for the best…and prepare for the worst. Meaning, hope your players are going to create incredible, awesome, amazing quests and prepare for them to exploit every little thing they can. Because they will do both of those.

From Shacknews:

BioWare calls it the "most brutal and blood-soaked video we’ve ever created.. a ‘no holds barred’ look at the most intense action ever seen in the history of BioWare games."

The company says this "shit" represents a "new direction for Dragon Age: Origins"–apparently confirming a shift from its roots in the old shit.

Yeah, something like that.

What Would Matt Do: Wonder what Dragon Age could have been like from a non-EA developer. Unless this is just a marketing ploy and we’ll still get the cool game Bioware showed at previous times…

Assuming that Relic gets the 1.3 Patch out for Dawn of War II in the next little bit, it will have only taken them a few months after selling the game to finish it up. That might be a bit harsh, but lets take a look at what they are planning on including in version 1.3 still not yet released:

We’ve been busy! Dawn of War II is going to get a big patch in early May. This is the first of a series of posts where we will talk some details about what to expect in the update. As a bit of a preview, here are just a few things you can look forward to in the patch.

• We are adding a Two-on-Two game mode, with two new four player maps.
Two-on-Two is a ranked game mode with leaderboard support.
• An improved, more challenging Skirmish AI.
• Push to talk voice chat and Company of Heroes style sub-selection options.
• New squad decorators and significant UI improvements.
• A performance test to help measure Dawn of War II performance.

Man, those things are pretty sweet…I hope they include it in the full game when they release it! Oh…yeah, I see what they did there. They listed a bunch of features as if they are expanded features and not things that should have been included in the game in the first place. Can anyone name the last released RTS that had multiplayer of more than 1vs1, but didn’t include 2vs2? I can’t either. And the AI was a total joke, hopefully this will make it more useful. Heck, maybe it will make it Artificial Intelligence.

Relic made a lot of promises about future content and the plans they have. So far, to date (three months later), they’ve released four new maps… And yeah, that’s it. Everything else they’ve done can be categorized into finishing the game. To boot, two of those maps are the 2vs2 feature that should already be in the game.

As I said before, Dawn of War II, don’t make me hate you. The very things I worried about in that article have been proven out so far. The maps are generic and few, to date, and the other promised stuff hasn’t made itself known yet.

When this patch releases, I’ll give it another try for sure. But so far, I’ve played Dawn of War II less than the original. I got extremely bored of the same combat, the same imbalance, of the borked matching system and I never really liked 3vs3 at all.

What Would Matt Do: Hope Relic not only releases features like they mention above, but look into the matching and balance in the game. On the plus side, at least they aren’t in Demigod’s shoes. The multiplayer is/was so hard to get working that it’s a ghost town online when trying to find games. More on that next weekish.

I wouldn’t have made the connection, but Zubon over at Kill Ten Rats does a fine job with it:

In those early years, they are worked hard. As much as you can get out of them, as soon as you can get it, before they realize this is not as glamorous as they thought. Yes, even the ones who heard about the working conditions were still being a bit optimistic. Make sure to have the appropriate chemical stimulants on hand to let them keep going to the limits of youthful endurance. Until they get burned out, these are the best years to work them until they are dry.

Yeah, he said it. Game developers are being used up and spit out. We all know it. Too bad most of the industry doesn’t see it as a problem…

What Would Matt Do: Not work in the game industry. Unless it’s one of the few companies that understands employees are there to help. They aren’t actually there to be used for as long as possible and then let go when they can’t stand it anymore. I hear those companies exist…I’m betting serious money Epic isn’t one of them.