But I Want It, Too! June 15, 2007
Posted by Kendricke in General Game Concepts.19 comments
The word of the day is “entitlement”. It’s the idea that you or I deserve the same or better rewards as others without having to put forth the same effort and/or resources.
Whether you’re in school, at work, or simply playing in an online virtual world, there will always be someone who feels that they are “owed” more - that they are entitled to more. They feel they deserve more rewards for less work. They should not have to put forth the effort of those who come before them because they feel the system, whatever that is, should be altered to fit their needs.
Generally speaking, in the MMO’s we play, raiding is available to anyone and everyone who is willing to put forth the work. Critics of the system continue to say that this is a bad attitude - this “putting forth the effort”. These critics continue to insist that such effort is impossible for them and they go to great lengths to prove how that is so.
“It takes too much time”, or “It’s too much of a hassle”, or “I need to go AFK a lot” or “I never know how long I’ll have online”.
When advice is freely given to show them how they can make this impossibility possible, such suggestions are often brushed off entirely. Some players simply want the same rewards as everyone else…without having to put in the same effort overall. They want their work as individuals counted differently than everyone else’s work.
Why am I bringing this up today? Because the old “Solo vs. Raid” subject is rearing it’s ugly head once more. Unsuprisingly, players who feel that raiders are unfairly given rewards want similar or even identical rewards…without the hassle or bother of bringing other players together to actually attain the rewards.
Apparently, online life just isn’t fair.
All We Have to Fear… June 15, 2007
Posted by Kendricke in Everquest 2.2 comments
I wish I understood earlier that people don’t operate on a wholly rational basis where, once the logic of a solution is explained to them, they will embrace it and move on. I wish I had understood that in the absence of information, people often fill the void with their worst possible imaginings.-Mark Mullaly, PMP
President, Interthink Consulting
So Upate 36 is coming.
Basic achievements for all classes is being pretty dramatically altered. Builds which player have been relying upon since early 2006 are suddenly being changed. Forums are filling quickly with posts on the subject, but I don’t think the majority of players have really grasped “what does this mean for me” quite yet. It hasn’t hit yet.
In a few weeks - perhaps less - it’s going to hit and hit big. Forums that aren’t quite raging yet are going to see a major upsurge in activity. People, who might normally be rational and calm, are going to come to the forums full of vitriol and hurt. We’ll see comparisons to Update 13. We’ll see comparisons to the NGE. We may even see a few comparisons to Nazi Germany (which I’ll quickly Godwin).
In some ways, this is going to dramatically alter how raids and even groups are run…which can be good (in some ways). However, these changes are also going to see some changes to rosters, which is going to directly impact a lot of players on a nightly basis. Classes traditionally used for hate support or management are going to have to start competing in other areas (which isn’t necessarily bad) and a whole lot of higher end DPS scout players (I’m looking at you brigands, swashbucklers, assassins, and rangers) are going to have to start reigning in their DPS till they readjust to the “new hate”.
To be fair, there are some changes to the ways fighters can gain hate, but this will also require some adjustment.
There’s a few of us testing some of the achievements pretty hard right now, but it’s difficult to make accurate comparisons from Live to Test since most players don’t have high level Test characters to begin with, much less ones which are in similar gear to their Live characters.
I’d love to see a short 2 week stint where players were allowed to temporarily copy or buff on Test. There’s actually an SOE precendent for this. Back in mid-2006 (about a year ago, actually), they used Test server as an open Beta for the Fallen Dynasty adventure pack. For the duration of the Beta, you could create a new character on Test server and use a Beta buffer NPC to level up for testing purposes.
It wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but it would definately get more visibility on these changes before they go Live. Because once the changes go Live, that’s when you’ll start to see the real complaints and problems hitting the forums, when players who aren’t going to bother with levelling up another 60-70 character with another 50-100 achievements start to see differences to their nightly play.
There are some good changes here. There are also a lot of gaping holes in the communication that are being filled in with worst fears and assumptions. Hidden somewhere in all the confusion are the actual problems we haven’t managed to find yet.
SOE has a real opportunity to nip this bud early, to openly involve and engage players in some of the most significant changes to their nightly groups and raiding since September of ‘05 (the Desert of Flames Combat “Revamp”). I’m pretty optimistic we’ll see more interactivity and communications. However, with Dev Tracker down, I’m worried about how many players will actually see these communications. Even without Dev Tracker, how many players aren’t reading forums or fansites on a regular basis?
Toward that end, something needs to be put up in Station Launcher, scrolling across the top, which points players at an article or two on EQ2players which describes the changes in detail, and then includes developer statements and explanations on why some changes were needed.
As mentioned above, without that communication, people will simply fill in the blanks as they see fit…and that’s most likely not the way SOE wants players to come to their conclusions here.
