Cameron at Random Battle brought up this topic, which was one that we tossed around at dinner last Saturday night at IMGDC over fish and chips and scotch eggs. Cameron himself uses 5 add-ons specifically for raiding in World of Warcraft. Kendricke uses 3-4 for Everquest 2. He asks the question:“Why in the hell is raiding so complicated that we need 3+ programs that aren’t built into the game to do it well and efficiently?”The fact is, it isn’t.
I live less than miles from my workplace. Walking would be incredibly doable; good exercise, mind-clearing and wouldn’t take too long. I could walk to the office and have it take the same amount of time that it takes for some people to drive there. Why don’t I walk? Because I have a car, and I have cash to spend on the gas it takes to drive there. I like the minimal work that it takes to get in my car, how quickly I can get there, and how I don’t have to worry about being too hot or too cold. This might be a shitty analogy, but I’ve never been good at those.
You use the add-ons because you used them once. Someone created them, and someone in your guild tried them and realized that made raiding just “that” much easier. We don’t intentionally put ourselves into situations that are more complicated then they have to be. We tend to search for the shortest path between A and B, and the use of optional add-ons show us that path. Once you’ve tried something that simplifies your task and shortens the timesink – you’re going to use it. The raid encounters aren’t designed for you to use the addons, but of course they’ll make it easier and therefore you’ll want to use them.Raids are designed to be challenging and take a bit of time, in exchange for rewards and a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a really a double-edged sword and it has to be one hell of a headache for raid designers of games with such an extensible UI. You really only have the three choices right?
- You can develop your raid encounter completely disregarding add-ons and therefore they’ll end up too trivial when people do use add-ons.
- You could regard add-ons and make your boss raid more difficult and therefore require those addons to defeat (which would make one wonder – why not just bake those add-ons into the game interface itself if they’re so crucial?)
- You could regard add-ons AND regard people who don’t use them. Make the raids easier (but still not trivial) if you use add-ons, and make them still doable but challenging without them. Sounds like the current situation?
So what’s the other alternative that I didn’t highlight? Well, you could completely disable the use of add-ons. Fact is, people like to customize. Your average player likes making their interface look prettier. Any player who is starting to get serious about a game starts thinking of ways that the game could be more fun for them as an individual by means of ease and added features. Your hardcore player wants to play the game in ‘cheat mode’, min/maxing in pvp, raiding, and leveling and wants to seek out a combination of interface tools and in-game resources (potions, food, etc.) to make themselves stand out from the crowd and be “the best rogue on the server”. Having a Lua based UI that is so extensible is a sheer advantage in WoW over other MMOs. This isn’t even taking into consideration the user-created content that making UI add-ons for other people adds to the community of your game.
And voice chat? It’s time to realize that voice chat is the norm now in massive competitive games that require coordination between more than two people. Humans are socially interactive people who like to use our vocal words to represent ourselves. We like that our tones display emotion like sarcasm, anger, and happiness. We’re drifting away from enjoying representing ourselves through emotes. Technology has opened new doors that take away the archaic need for typing 120 words per minute. And frankly, Blizzard has every right to design encounters that all but require voice chat – because they’ve built voice chat into their game. (Even if no one uses their in-game voice software…but that’s another post).
Bottom line, I remember what raiding was like in Everquest without voice chat (and with 72+ people in a raid) and without the added functionality of a customizable interface. I’ll take our current situation that allows choice and encourages community created content over being crippled by a stifling UI. If I were Blizzard, I’d support the interface community by hosting the add-ons on my official site and incorporating some sort of automatic updater that keeps your interfaces up-to-date and working. Embrace your strengths Blizz!
(BTW, it’s good to be back to ranting about games.)
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
“I’d support the interface community by hosting the add-ons on my official site and incorporating some sort of automatic updater that keeps your interfaces up-to-date and working.”
I’d say that’s the key, and take it one step further: They should identify a core set of those mods that are the “raiding mods.” They can say, “Okay. When we design raids, we have these mods in mind. If you want to use them, just check this box in your interface and we’ll install them for ya and keep them updated.”
By the way, your comment window has no scroll bar. If you type below the box, you just have to guess at what you’re typing (or do like me and copy over from Word).
damn. that’s annoying. Thanks for telling me!
As I pointed out last Saturday, I think the real choice is designing a game where the add-on’s are largely unnecessary. These add-on’s aren’t universal, and they aren’t included in your box to play.
Imagine if console games worked this way. What if the ONLY reasonable way to complete the single player campaign of Halo3 or Call of Duty 4 was to include an aim-mod, or a speed-mod, or a map-mod. What if the only way to reasonably complete Bioshock involved multiattack mods, or if you had to track your current damage per second by way of an add-on log parser? What if the only way to win in Assassin’s Creed was with a Text-to-Speech warning that let you know when to dodge?
Sounds ridiculous when we apply it to games such as this, but when we discuss MMO raiding, it’s perfectly reasonable to EXPECT UI add-on’s, log parsers, AE timers, heal macros, and on-screen/in-ear warning announcements. Why is that?
If the goal is to involve more players in raiding or group type content, why are so many encounters built to essentially require tools that weren’t part of the game’s actual code? I’m all for strategy guides and the occasional cheat code when I’m playing a console game, but when I’m raiding or even just grouping in an MMO, should I really require a 3rd party real time log parser just to make sure my raid force knows that the moment they go above X damage per second, that’s going to trigger a wave of adds and a 10 second invulnerability on the target?
I’m not talking about optional tools here, either. Is it possible for a guild in World of Warcraft to raid the highest content without those add-on’s or applications? Is it possible in Everquest II? Will it be possible in future MMO’s such as Warhammer Online or Age of Conan?
You have a choice to walk to work or not. For many high end raid encounters in current MMO’s, there’s no real choice – either use the mods and applications or don’t raid that content. That’s the real issue I take umbrage with. It’s not whether or not those applications should be useful, but whether or not they become de facto required.
“Sounds ridiculous when we apply it to games such as this, but when we discuss MMO raiding, it’s perfectly reasonable to EXPECT UI add-on’s, log parsers, AE timers, heal macros, and on-screen/in-ear warning announcements. Why is that?”
Because it’s on the PC. PC gamers like PC games because of the extensibility. It’s always been an advantage of PC gaming to be able to create mods, create UI’s, packs, dungeons, new art, etc. That’s part of the console barrier that games like Spore and PS3 Home are trying to fix – putting in extensibility and user created content.
“Is it possible for a guild in World of Warcraft to raid the highest content without those add-on’s or applications? Is it possible in Everquest II? Will it be possible in future MMO’s such as Warhammer Online or Age of Conan?”
I haven’t raided in EQ2 and it’s been quite some time for raiding in WoW for me. But I remember it being completely DOABLE just taking longer. Perhaps that’s changed? I mean, that’s one of those age old debates, isn’t it? It’s like creating a template for a task you do every day at work. Either you skip making the template and every time you do the task it takes longer…or you spend a little preparation time creating a template and it makes the job easier/quicker every time. Both of those seem reasonably possible depending how you like to work. Or raid. Or level. Or pvp.
Who purposely chooses to do something the longer way when a shorter way is possible and the longer way involves more work?
Then what’s the big deal? 30 seconds to click a link and use an add-on, or 2 hours longer to do the raid encounter?
(I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, I’m as interested in a proposed solution as everyone else).
I guess I’m not seeing what the viable solution is here using WoW as context. There will always be new add-ons made for any type of unique experience that Blizzard puts in their game. You have the choice to design around them or ban them. They’ve banned some of them. What do you propose?
Start Conspiracy Theory:
I think WoW purposefully made the default UI balls (scrolling quest text, srsly???), because the developers knew that players would make their own customizations, therefore creating a modding community.
Blizzard created a robust customizable interface system which allowed them to save time with their UI design and art, because they figured if the players don’t like it the players can change it. This is certainly way to solve the problem of UI design.
But a better way is to have a team that designs a UI and iterates it and redesigns it and keeps going until it is awesome and usable. Most MMO’s don’t seem to have this and UI design goes basically ignored or thrown together by the coder who is implementing the systems, ie. quest journal, guild window, etc.
I’m not saying player UI modding should be thrown out, because it shouldn’t… But I think it sucks that some developers don’t take the time to first try and make a UI that the players will want to use.
I don’t think that’s a conspiracy theory at all, I’m pretty sure that’s commonplace known fact around these parts.
I mean, sure its the lazy way out – but hell, it works. Any time you open the flood gates and allow users to create content, some freakishly amazing pieces of functionality come out of it. For every designer you have on your team, you probably have 10 potentially BETTER designers playing your game. Gotta love free help from the masses.
I also think we’re referring to different types of UI customization here. Luke, it sounds like you’re referring to the look and feel of a UI rather than the specific mechanical additions. There is no possible way that Blizzard could have created a UI out of the box that would have rivaled the add-ons that some raiders use. I doubt they’ve planned every raid boss’s mechanics prior to launch and prior to ‘completing’ their UI design. Some things (like for example an add-on only for Solarian that tells you when you’ve been debuffed with his specific curse) are going to come out of the woodwork regardless how awesome your stock UI is.
I agree with you in general though about the lack of work put into designing UI’s. Considering it’s something that is static for EVERY PERSON who plays your game – it should be of a higher priority then it is IMO.
Kendricke said: “As I pointed out last Saturday, I think the real choice is designing a game where the add-on’s are largely unnecessary. These add-on’s aren’t universal, and they aren’t included in your box to play.”
I don’t think designers should have to build their content around a UI, otherwise you would get some very boring content, especially raids. But the designer knows what complications UI-wise are going into these fights (assuming they play test) and should have a plan for handling them, like getting a new UI element added to the game — such as a simple DPS tracker.
The reality is this doesn’t always happen for multiple reasons, like time restraints or budget or Cuppy’s “taking the lazy way out”.
In general, MMO players put up with a lot of things in their games that console or single player PC game players would never put up with. (But that’s a rant for another time.)
“In general, MMO players put up with a lot of things in their games that console or single player PC game players would never put up with.”
Touche. Maybe MMO players have a tiny bit of empathy on what it *really* takes to develop a multiplayer experience in terms of scope, future extensibility, balance, and community-encouraging mechanics. We can dream, right?
I don’t think it has as much to do with empathy as it does with the size of the market. If you don’t like what’s going on in FPS 1, you have 22 different FPS’s to choose from. In fact, if I mentioned just the FPS’s that were released in the last 6 months, I’d bet I could have more listed titles than every current MMO currently being tracked by Massively.com.
That’s just the first person shooters. Want to do the same with RPG’s, RTS’s, puzzle games…
Fact is that current MMO’s require the add-ons and applications. You think there’s a single World of Warcraft guild capable – CAPABLE of handling Black Temple without a single 3rd party mod or app? I’m not talking about making it easier – I’m talking about the content being reasonably accomplishable at all.
Shard of Hate releases next Tuesday for Everquest II. In an interview with Tipa over at Massively, he indicates that there will be at least two encounters which will push Veeshan’s Peak capable guilds to their limits. Does anyone really think those top guilds he’s referring to would consider “their limits” to NOT include 3rd party mods or apps?
Kendricke,
Like I said it’s been awhile (Since BWL) since I’ve raided in WoW. Never raided in EQ2, so take my comments for a grain of salt.
And I was being facetious with the empathy thing. I believe its a combination of:
* Size of the market & choices
* The games out there haven’t raised the bar high enough for people to expect that level of quality.
Some would say – if you’re know you’re designing a game for the PC and it’s not going to be cross-platform…and you know that you’re going to have an open UI that anyone who knows Lua can create content for…maybe you should just embrace addons and require them? I mean, it’s clear players like to use them, right? Why not require them.
Thoughts?
THANK you… Now I’ll admit I use 2 mods for WoW and one for EQ2 but not because I *HAVE* to. You don’t need to know your exact DPS over X encounter because if you are playing 100% it’s doubtful that extra 5% damage you squeeze out is going to make or break the raid.
They are a handy tool, but if it gets to the point content requires them then thedevelopers have done something wrong. You also make a great point about cnosoles. As time goes on and we’ll hopefully see more content on them, what will you do in those instances? Just not have raid content?
I can list at least one encounter where putting in 100% makes the encounter not only harder…but impossible. If you break X damage per second at any time during this encounter, the target becomes invulnerable and a wave of adds spawns.
So the goal is making sure you’re putting forth as much damage per second as possible without hitting X. Now, without any add-on’s, please explain how it’s possible – not just easier, but possible – to know (A) what X is in the first place and (B) that your raid force is approaching X so you can inform them to back off.
Again, I fully embrace using mods when and where available to make my life easier. However, when those add-on’s become defacto required, it creates a gatekeeper effect all on its own that works to a great extent to keep players away from the content in the first place – because playing the game “as intended” doesn’t explain what’s going on. It’s frustrating and intimidating to many players that the only way they can even understand the raid encounters in an MMO is by log parsing, screenshotting descriptions of spells, and utilizing on-screen timers/warnings.
Console gamers won’t put up with this. If MMO developers want to tap into that console player market, this is one thing that has to change.
Er… it’s my understanding that in WoW every raid past Molten Core was designed with mods in mind. As an early BC example, the final non-summoned boss in Karazahn has an attack that drops nine players’ health to virtually nothing. How does he pick the spared raider? It’s not the guy who has aggro, it’s the player with the most threat. How do you tell who has the most threat? You can guess, I suppose, but you’re probably gonna get your tank enfeebled and then shortly dead since he follows up with an aoe. Mods are one reason why there’s no new tank-and-spank bosses that aren’t gear checks.
People obsess over minor boosts because you never get major ones. A big upgrade once you’re raiding isn’t going to give you more than a couple percent boost to your heal, damage, or threat per second. In a FPS you’ve generally got no more than fifteen or so weapons, and they stand out pretty well. But it’s not so easy when you’re comparing fifteen different reasonably powerful crossbows that will change performance not only depending on the rest of your gear, but your talents and those of your party and raid. And then there’s those pretty bows and guns…