So imagine my terror this morning upon waking to discover Tobold had replied to my Weeding vs. Astrophysics post. Terror because, OMG, Tobold[i] but also because I was alerted to the post not by the post itself but by people storming in telling me what a horriblebadwrong person I was for implying that WoW was harder than EverQuest OMG how dare I!
I was a bit baffled by this — I wasn’t aware that I actually had — until I swallowed my terror of intellectual evisceration and read Tobold’s post. The opening paragraph made it clear:
Dee from Lost in Azeroth ponders what makes MMORPGs hard, what skills you need to play them. I like her list, but I think that not having actually played Everquest she wrongly judges EQ as not needing any of those skills and just being a grind, comparable to weeding a garden. I think she got that one the wrong way round[.]
Oh. Oh yeah; I did sort of imply that, didn’t I? Oops.
The danger of the specious analogy
To be honest, I didn’t entirely intend to; I figured something like this would come up, which is why I referred to the weeding/astrophysics analogy as “specious“.[ii] Obviously I haven’t played EQ — it’s a bit before my time — so I should probably clarify by saying that the way people describe EQ’s “difficulty” makes it sound like weeding. Plus I’ve played games that use similar tactics — forced grouping, XP loss on death, extensive downtime, et cetera — and, yeah. They’re weeding.
On the other hand, I really didn’t mean to imply that weeding-games contain no astrophysics, only that I think the “weeding” mechanics are unrelated to (and, in fact, detract-by-obfuscation from) the game’s actual difficulty. People assure me that EQ had plenty of astrophysics in it by my definition thereof, and I’m prepared to take their word for it; if anything, I would assume the era of EQ’s heyday would’ve meant the meta-game community was less accessible, therefore there were less crib-notes to get players through the hard parts, therefore the EQ experience was overall harder for most players.
I think the point I was originally trying to make was that WoW was essentially the first MMORPG to realise the weeding/astrophysics split, and to ditch most of the former and try and shift the focus to the latter. Blizzard continues to do this, and WoW gets less weedy every year: dungeon currency instead of random loot tables; linking rep grind mechanics into things people actually enjoy doing (e.g. dungeons); and reducing “social downtime” with tools like LFD are all examples. Most other MMOs choose to follow their lead.
WoW and the Four Categories of MMO Difficulty
I’m also not saying that WoW is the epitome of difficulty in every single difficulty category; I’d be the first to admit its resource management requirements — particularly macro-management of non-combat resources — are not huge, especially compared to games that have more involved crafting/trading systems (EVE and SWG are examples I’ve heard thrown around). This is neither here nor there; I don’t think WoW is OMG THE HARDEST MMO EVAH! and nor do I think, a) it should be, or b) Blizzard is even trying to make it into that.
The main mistake I think Tobold makes is assuming that I’m basing my Four Categories of Difficulty purely around WoW’s experience; I’m not. The examples I gave were mostly WoW-related since this is, in fact, a WoW-focused blog, but I tried to design the categories to apply across all MMORPGs. Actually, the main games I was thinking of when I imagined them were Allods and Rift, since those are the MMOs I’m currently playing. Allods in particularly is arguably harder than WoW on criteria 1 and 2, since my experience of it is that there’s a lot less room for rotation error in combat (sometimes almost to the point of combat outcomes appearing randomly-determined!), as well as requiring planning out three character-building resources — stat points, skill points and talent points — as opposed to WoW’s one.[iii] Meanwhile, Rift is arguably harder than WoW on criteria 4, since its titular mechanic means a lot more working with other people than your average day levelling in Azeroth. I’d also say Rift is harder on criteria 1 as its Calling/Soul system — while having very light punishments for respeccing — leaves so much room for builds completely lacking in synergy that players who don’t know they have to plan from about level 3 onwards can easily fuck up the noob zone to unplayability.[iv] As alluded to before, I also think sandbox MMOs are generally harder on criteria 4 than their theme-park cousins, though I loathe sandbox MMOs with a passion so this assumption is based on secondhand evidence.
It’s not difficulty if you can’t be better at it than someone else
The second mistake I think people make when discussing MMO difficulty is assuming that it has to be egalitarian. As I mentioned — albeit in an offhand sort of way — I don’t think the existence of game meta a la EJ negates a game’s difficulty. Actually, I think it supports the fact that it is hard. To go back to the astrophysics analogy (well, physics physics really), the fact that most everyone can rattle off the equation for mass-energy equivalence doesn’t actually mean that, a) devising that equation in the first place wasn’t difficult, and therefore, b) physics is easy. Actually, this is sort of the entire point of decoupling punitive and time-based game mechanics from difficulty; if it’s not something you can improve at, it’s not true difficulty. You can’t “be better” at sitting and waiting for mana to regen, for example. Corpse-running is borderline, as you can be better at the twitch[v] required to evade mobs, but I’d argue that this is distinct from the time/punishment of the corpse-run itself; as I mentioned in the comments on the previous post, I learnt to do the same thing WoW due to my irrational moral objection to killing mobs not related to quests (not to mention my love of exploring areas I shouldn’t be).
The side effects of only counting difficulty as skills that can be improved is that, a) some people will be better at them than others, and b) people who are “naturally” less good may obtain assistance at improvement from more skilled players. I’ll admit this is probably more pronounced in MMORPGs due to the lack of focus on twitch/micro; people can tell you how to twitch or micro but only individual training will ultimately make you better at it (I still can’t circle-strafe, for example, despite knowing how to do it in theory). Unlike pure-twitch games, MMORPG difficulty relies a lot more on what I’ve heard described (by Richard Dawkins, no less) as “binary techniques”;[vi] that is, techniques that can be either 100% or 0% accurately conveyed to another person. When you copy an “optimum” build from EJ you either copy it correctly or you don’t. Your rotation macro is either in the correct order or it isn’t.
In the case of “analogue” techniques like circle strafing, player quality is ranked by technique execution. With binary abilities, player quality is ranked by the ability to come up with the technique in the first place.
Binary-versus-analogue techniques are present in other genres, too. Your early-game build order in an RTS is binary (you either 9-pool or you don’t) but your APM is analogue (you might have a higher APM than that guy but not as high as the lady in the corner). In a MOBA your character build is usually binary (you do it right or you don’t) but your overall performance in-lane is analogue (you missed with your ulti, but you still successfully pushed the tower).
Point being, we need to stop assuming that games with high binary technique requirements are “easier” than games without. Sure, it takes time to perfect circle-strafing, but it also takes a hell of a lot of time crunching numbers every patch to come up with an optimum build or rotation. The difference is that everyone can (potentially) be good at circle strafing all at once, whereas devising a “best build” is more like a race with only one winner (i.e. whomever comes up with the build first). If anything, high reliance on binary techniques stratifies a game’s difficulty even more than reliance on their analogue counterparts.
Tangent: That thing about consequences
I’ve sort of alluded to it before, but I’m going to outright state it here; I don’t think “harsher consequences” equals difficulty if — as most people seem to do — you’re purely describing “consequences” as “punitive game mechanics” (read: “the way the game punishes you for failure”).
It’s worth mentioning in an aside here that not all games have punitive faliure conditions in the first place; many puzzle games (including puzzle adventures) have no “game over” (and no unwinnable plot screws), meaning the worst than can happen from getting a puzzle “wrong” is having to try some other solution. Some sim games are the same. The RPG Planescape: Torment is notable as using death as a mechanic and having only a handful of “real” game over conditions that are, in most cases, obvious; making triggering those conditions something of a reward in itself (“succeeding at failing”). So punishing faliure is not something universal in videogames.
Even in games that do have failure conditions, the punishments for that failure can be relatively light when considered in context. Single player games can be reloaded from saves; some games will do this for you automatically with no loss of game progress. Punishments in online games are generally even more lenient. FPSes are classic; failure in an online FPS usually means death, but the game itself rarely imposes more punishment on a player than making her observe the remainder of the round for a few minutes, and once the match is over she can join a new one immediately. Her failure in one game frequently has no implications for her next. Games with ranking/ladder style play, like SCII or HoN, might punish players for losses by deducting from their overall game ranking, though this is then usually mitigated by the reward (though some players might see it as a “reward”) of using this score to try and match players of similar skill in future games. In these cases, failure is largely considered its own punishment; the game doesn’t feel obliged to heap on substantial additional penalties.
Compared to other games, pre-WoW MMOs imposed some pretty harsh conditions for failure, and these conditions to this day are considered part of what makes a MMO “hard”. It’s probably no surprise that I considered punitive failure mechanics to be probably the biggest contributor to weeding. Imposing harsh conditions upon death doesn’t, for example, actually make combat in MMOs any more difficult. Destroying materials on crafting failure doesn’t increase the difficulty of crafting, given that crafting failure in most games is randomly determined and thus cannot be improved by players being “better” at crafting.
Of course, the argument actually runs that imposing harsher failure conditions makes players try harder to avoid failure and therefore become better players. I don’t necessarily disagree but, again, I don’t think this makes a game inherently “harder” per se so much as merely reduces accessibility based on non-skill factors like time; the fact that I don’t want to deal with extended periods of downtime in a game reflects less on my ability as a player than it does on the fact that I have a job and a family and, quite frankly, have better things to do. Punitive mecanics have the effect of breaking a game’s population down into those who are prepared to pay the “time tax” and those who aren’t; actual game skill doesn’t enter into it as much as I think people want to convince themselves it does.
Even with WoW’s incredibly light punishments for failure, I’ve very rarely encountered truly “bad” players randomly in-game. The fact that the situation in which bad players are most often complained about is raids is, I think, telling; raids are supposed to be harder than other content and the fact that people are bad at them is sort of like the entire point! Vanilla 40-man raids were, for the most part, tank-and-spank zergs; and let’s remember these were designed by ex-EverQuest people. The fact that, since then, boss complexity has increased as people requirements have gone down is pretty much exactly indicative of the notion that less people overall are able to execute difficult content. I don’t think WoW gets the raid difficulty curve 100% right 100% of the time, of course, but I can see where they’re going with it: The best groups will complete the content first, “blind”, and be rewarded with prestige and the first shot at phat lewtz; most of the rest of the player base will follow along once the strategies devised by the best players have been codified into the appropriate dance steps. I like this approach, and I think it works better than the alternate, “uber or GTFO” mentality.
Let’s wrap this up; I have a Rift head start to download!
That’s slightly off topic, though. The main thing I was trying to do was respond to Tobold’s response, so let’s summarize that it dot points for those of you who haven’t been paying attention for the last two posts and 4,000-odd words:
- I’m not trying to diss everyone’s One True Love by implying EverQuest wasn’t hard, only that the things people usually mention as making it “more difficult” are, in fact, bullshit (and outdated) game mechanics and not actual manifestations of difficulty.
- I don’t think WoW is the epitome of MMO difficulty, more-so in some respects than others.
- I don’t even know what would be the epitome of MMO game difficulty, come to think of it, because I think the genre is still too confused with weeding to properly work this out yet.
- I don’t think, as Tobold suggests, that Blizzard patches mean there’s no such thing as long-term planning in WoW. The fact that Blizzard patches classes isn’t new; it wasn’t even new six years ago, given their track record with Diablo II. The fact that your chosen class may, next month, no longer be OMG BESTEST EVAH AT [X] should be part of your long-term plan.
- Which leads me to: The meta-game is part of a game’s difficulty, not separate from it. I think this is valid more-so in online games than off, but that’s probably a whole other post.
- I don’t think the fact that some techniques in MMOs are binary and can be learnt verbatim rather than improvised impacts on difficulty; they were still hard to come up with in the first place.
- I still think Tobold is conflating “aggressive extroversion” with “people skills”, and I think in part this is probably because I can’t think of a decent word for “people skills” that doesn’t evoke this association, which is a shame because “aggressive extroversion” is explicitly not what I’m talking about.
- Tobold is also still conflating punitive game mechanics with difficulty (e.g. in the comment about “two spec options”).
- Finally, I agree that pre-Cataclysm WoW did a bit of bait-and-switch re. its twitch requirements, most of which is due to vanilla raids being tank-and-spank, especially compared to post-WotLK raids. The fact that WoW now introduces raid-style mechanics in its low-level questing is one of the biggest — and probably least remarked-upon — improvements added in Cata.
Is that clearer? I thought not…
- Fangirlish fanning. ↩
- Honestly, that entire last section kind of an ambiguous mess but, well, I’d been writing on-and-off for hours and was ready to press “Publish”. Bad Dee! ↩
- It’s also the only game I’ve played where you can resist your own heals. Seriously; WTF? ↩
- Protip: Max one soul, bonus points in a second soul, no points in the third soul (just get whichever one has the best 0-point abilities). I tend to build with two souls of roughly the same type and one completely different (e.g. one melee DPS soul and two healing souls, etc.), because I do loves me a hybrid. You can start screwing around with funkier builds later on when you get the hang of it. ↩
- Tobold’s apparent MMO nemesis! ↩
- And yes, I realise my use of words like “technique”, “skill” and “ability” is weird and all over the place. ↩