If all else fails, so the old adage goes, read the instructions.  Yet ask yourselves, of all the times  you bought an mmo off the shelf (remember when the only way you could buy one was in an actual box?) how many of you even cracked open the instruction booklet?  As for me, I occasionally peruse the instructions… usually when the mmo takes a long time to patch. After all, isn’t that what tutorials are for?

It’s interesting…all the comments I have read about tutorials over the years – everything from “it’s too good” to “it sucks a pile of dead dingo dung.”  With each new game developers face multiple challenges with just the starting area:  How do you make it convey how to play the game but not make it boring? How do you make it good, but not so good it overshadows the rest of the game? (Age of Conan anyone?)  How do you do all that but make it interesting enough so players won’t say “OMG not again!” when they go through the same starting area for the third time.

Yet no matter how good a starting area is, there is no way a developer can convey all the nuances and myriad rules in the short time it takes to complete the tutorial. And there, as the immortal bard once said, “lays the rub”.  Had I had the opportunity to talk to whoever designed the crafting in Fallen Earth this weekend it might have gone like this:

Me:  “My armor crafting seems to be stuck at 28 – no matter how much I craft these stupid t-shirts my score won’t rise.”

FE Dev: “That’s because you are capped out for your level…”

Me: “WHAT! I’VE BEEN AT THIS ALL AFTERNOON! WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘LEVEL’?”

FE Dev: “We mean that the cap on your current craft skill by area is tied to your intelligence and perception scores.”

(long pause while I think)

Me: “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

FE Dev.: “We did…”

Me:  “No you didn’t.”

FE Dev: “Didn’t we send you that wonderful autographed box?”

Me: “Well…yes.”

FE Dev: “Did you spend all your time gawking at the signatures or did you read the instruction book that came with it?”

Me: “Well…I never read those things.”

FE Dev: “We suspected as much. That’s why there is this really nice npc standing right by the exit where you start the game that answers all the questions you have.”

Me: “Oh that guy…I just sort of ignored him.”

FE Dev: “We thought you might. That’s why we sent you to the NPC to teach you about crafting and have her guide you through the process. Did you read everything in the NPC’s dialogue?”

Me: “Well…no.”

FE Dev: “Well then any time you wasted is your own fault.”

Me: “How so?”

FE Dev: “Back in college we failed ‘Mind Reading 101.’”

Whoever designs crafting in any game has an enormous challenge. Make it too easy and it will seem like it was tacked on to the game as an afterthought. Make it too hard and the player will get bored. If crafting is both hard and an integral part of the game it will make the player feel like an animal in a trap – willing to chew off a limb just to get out of it.

Even when a developer hits the proverbial nail on the head when crafting is added to the mmo, the interest of the player is still dependant on both ability and willingness to perceive how the process is done – like reading instructions.  Fortunately, when part of that equation fails those who are fortunate (like me) have a great clan LIKE THE OLDER GAMERS who are willing to help out.

See you online

Julie Whitefeather

Side Notes

 

This last weekend I had a chance to hear a performance on taiko drums.  There may be those of you who don’t know what taiko drums are – for those unenlightened few they are, in brief, REALLY BIG REALLY LOUD DRUMS.  Now it so happens I have heard taiko drums played quite a bit.  Keep in mind that taiko drums are usually not accompanied by other musical instruments, as drums so often are in western music.

Now if I have heard my share of taiko drums, I have heard A LOT of bagpipe music.  The reason for this is simply that there is more than one hard drinking Scotsman in my family tree. That said, taiko drums and bagpipes have at least one thing in common, and that one thing is that it takes a trained ear to really appreciate a performance with either instrument. Otherwise, after the novelty of the performance wears off, reactions start to go like this:

Neophyte audience: “Hey…look…great big drums!  This is really different!”

(Drumming starts)

THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

(15 minutes later)

Taiko Drum Master: “And now ‘Tea for two’ on the taiko drums”

THUMPA, THUMPA, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

Like drums, there are some songs that just shouldn’t be played on bagpipes.  Two that come immediately to mind that I have heard played on bagpipes are “Jesus Christ Superstar” and  “Stairway to Heaven”. As moving as I occasionally find the bag pipes, like taiko drums, they are best taken in moderation.  Otherwise, like our penguin friend above I find myself looking at the piper and saying, “Maybe if you quit biting it’s tail it will quit screaming”

And I used to be in a bagpipe band.

Quote of the day: This quote is from one of our “must reads” here at No Prisoners, No Mercy – Killed in a Smiling accident. This quote is from “When Once the Forms of Civility are Violated, there Remains Little Hope of Return to Kindness or Civility” by Melmoth (and is available here) The title alone is nearly an article in itself but the post is a good read. We recommend both the article and the web site.

 “Well you could do that, but nobody will want to group with you.” A phrase wrapped in wilful condescension so thick that if you spread some patronization between a couple of slices of it you’d have the world’s most bitter doorstop sandwich.” – Melmoth, on “Killed in a Smiling Accident”

The subject of the article is not DDO so much as some of the players who inhabit that virtual realm.  I must say, as a player of DDO from back when it came in a thin little book that said “chain mail” on the outside I agree whole heartedly with the following quote by the same author, from the same article:

“…every MMO has their class of players who think that they are above and beyond the plebeians who don’t play the game the way that they do.” – Melmost, ibid

The article even coins a new word that I just love, describing players who fault others for not squeezing the virtual nickel until the buffalo farts (my comparison not his, so fault me) or ensuring they have squeezed out the last .01 dps. Melmost calls them “Maxminati”. You just have to love the term.