At 09:30 10/06/00 +0000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
>In the end, I think while non-epic games certainly have a large audience,
>epicness will always capture the largest audience over time.
>--matt
Yes, epicness, how famous you are, how you saved the world from the
ultimate destruction are all vital. To a degree.
The issue is that this gets WAY fricking boring***. On some of the muds I
have played to maxLevel on I would not even bother going on the most recent
"save the world quest" because it was boring to me. And I would watch like
the 2nd or 3rd tier players attempt to fight the uber bad guy and just get
whacked. And my guild/friends and I would just sit there laughing to
ourselves thinking: "I wonder what great NPC hero the gods will bring in
this time to beat the uber evil overlord this time." In EQ the epicness of
going to kill the gods or dragons has totally lost it's glimmer and those
mobs are just viewed the same as a kobold for me; set up shop and whack
them, loot corpse, NEXT!
[
***I don't want to the point of making tradeskills more complex to be
equated with that will extend the game for people. I think it adds more
goals for people to accomplish but I do not believe that adding more goals
to accomplish is the correct methodology for making the life of a game longer.
]
If you had to watch star wars EVERY week on TV you would get bored with it
very quickly. Now compare that to the various sitcoms: simpsons and
seinfled are a key example that another reader (jszeder@roshambo.net
) brought up. They are funny not so much for what the end result of the
conflict is but HOW they overcome the conflict and how the characters react
in the face of the conflict.
One of the reasons is that "epicness" has been seemingly always been
defined as: the darkness/event cometh and the world as we know it / out
way of life / etc etc is going to be extinguished if the heros don't rise
up and stop it. We ALL know that the "good" guys are going to win. That
is how theses things turn out. But it is HOW / the PROCESS of how they go
about winning that is interesting. The stories one can write and tell
about the process the heros went through to vanquish the bad guys / event.
These epic battles usually have lots of parts and battles and information
that must be uncovered to complete them. Those are the interesting parts
of the quests (and if they aren't then you are doing quests incorrectly to
have long term questing stay vibrant in your world). It is not stand in
the middle of the town and click the "do epic quest button" and have some %
chance of being the big hero!
Heck, even on Everquest you are having some EPIC event occurring and of the
2000 people on the server only about 100 show up for big event. Certainly
this is because you get 40+ people in close proximity and the frame rate
just drops. But it is also a symptom of: while epicness is interesting it
is not the end all be all. Epicness might be fun but making bread can be /
should be JUST as fun!
Imagine if you will:
----------------------
The entire kingdom is under siege! The all encompassing evil is on the
horizon! The dark clouds of doom are here! The call goes out! The
trumpets sound!!!
"Heros! Heros! Come to the town square!!! We must save our kingdom!!!"
The heros all arrive. They form a mile long line. The king sits upon his
throne in the middle of the town square. The aged king calls for his
sorcerer to "Give us the Epic Quest!"
The sorcerer raises his hands and with a grand gesture the Giant Red Button
labeled "Complete Epic Quest" appears!!!!!!!!!!
Ooooohhhs and Ahhhhss from the crowd! "The eepppiiccccc qquueeessttttttt"
The king stands up raising his hands for silence! "Adventurer number one
come forth!"
From the mile long line of adventurers the fight mighty warrior steps
forth! He is bristling in armor, his muscle bulging, his magical FLAMING
SWORD OF DOOM in his hands!!!
The crowd is quiet but you can hear the murmurs: "FrazzleFoo has a 96%
skill rating in Epic Quests!!" "FrazzleFoo will save us!" "Where did he
get that sword! That's new!"
FrazzleFoo reaches out his hand and the crowd is silent! You can cut the
tension with a knife!! His hand comes in contact with the floating button!
--> You're attempt at the Epic Quest has resulted in failure.
The crowd begins to weep. The king jumps to his feet! "Never fear my
kingdom!! We have 200 more heros with 90+ probability of success! We are
assured to defeat this threat to our kingdom!!!!"
Cheers emanate from the crowd!
"Adventurer two come forth!"
Years later the mighty adventurers are retelling their tales. "Yeah I
stood in line for 2 hours before I got to touch the button. I failed
sadly. And you know what, it was the best thing that ever happened to
me. I went back and practiced "epic quest" skill and now I almost never fail!"
----------------------
Someone else has brought up this same point. Combat / action oriented /
_exciting_ things are not single button click based. There is some human
investment and skill thrown into the mix.
I see ZERO evidence why baking can not be turned into an epic-ness
equivalent to the heros that go out and kick the dragon's ass.
In all of these "epic" examples that our society has grown to be addicted
to are of the form:
the world is going to end ...... unless something happens.
What that "something happens" consists of is what we, as
designers/admins/wizzes, can make to what ever we want!!! We often define
it as: bad guy must be killed, or key strategic point in the bad guys's
uber plan must be stopped / destroyed.
I ask the question of: why can't that strategic point be:
The kingdom is under attack. Your heros have a good chance of being able
to stop it. But you are not certain. The ancient Hung-Su warriors could
stop the bad guys for certain! Interestingly enough the Hung-Su value the
taste of food over all else in their life. They battle and fight for the
RIGHT to dine on the finest BREAD!!! If you want to get the Hung-Su to
stop the bad guys you must make the UBER-raisin bread for their emperor!!!!
Now you have that "simple???" breadmaker be able to be vaulted up to the
"epic ness" level. His skill at baking bread is ANOTHER way (maybe the
only way) for your kingdom to be saved. Perhaps the Hung-Su will give you
a number of shock troops based on how tasty your bread is.
Imagine if you had the above scenario with the Hung-Su ready to help for
the raisin bread and all you had to do is click the button to make it. And
making some quest to get the uber raisin bread from the Chefs of Cobal is
not the same as the sudden realization that you need to take the wussy
Breadbaker deep into the maw of hell itself to find an oven that is hot
enough to make the uber raisin bread.
I think people REALLY REALLY REALLY under estimate what people find
valuable. On EQ people are paying like 5k platinum+ for a picture of their
character to be drawn by Raene (
http://2amstudios.com/eq/portraits.htm
). She has SOO much demand for her picts that she can't meet supply.
(currently RL came back in but throughout her portrait creation time
she could never meet demand)
In games right now, tradeskills are just a button. Click and combine
baby. Certain people (not characters but irl humans) should be BETTER at
breadbaking than others. They should be the people that make the
uber-raisin bread. The bread that dragons will stop attacking the kingdom
for! The bread that will reduce a year off your life because it is soooo
damn good.
Just because we as admins/gods/wizzes don't see ANY value in the raisin
bread does not mean the players will MAKE it valuable. Either as a status
symbol, or excess material goods or some crazy cult of the raisin bread
that ONLY will eat raisin bread.
In both UO and EQ it has come up time and time again about how much CRAP
people keep in their banks/houses. Why do people keep that crap? It is
not worth anything in game or on ebay. But yet I have EVERY single robe my
necromancer on everquest has gotten. Why me, a consummate powergamer,
would ever do such a thing? I have no idea it just happened. And now all
my high lvl friends and I all have the gossimer white robe and we wear them
for fun.
msew