Making People Group – GW2 vs The Old Way

I’m a month late to reading this post on Guild Wars 2, where Milady expresses an argument that defends “forced grouping” as having significant benefits for players to make social connections with each other, and suggests that GW2’s new system of incentivizing sociable activities makes the actions players take comparatively more meaningless than in the traditional forced group MMO setting.

I beg to differ.

You can motivate people by forcing them somewhere with a stick, or encouraging them to approach with a carrot. Personally, I know which one I’d prefer.

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One liners aside, I’d agree that “forced grouping” does provide a compulsion to interact with others, and an opportunity (in that there is a captive audience) for those who would like to exercise the free choice to socialize with people.

However, there is another not-inconsiderable-in-number subset of players who do take issue with the compulsion and the “force” because it reduces their freedom of choice – to make game progress with whomever they want, alone or with others. By feeling like they have no choice in the matter, there’s even less incentive and desire to connect with others, beyond making use of them to get to wherever they want.

In a scenario like this, it becomes important to be able to tell these players apart and not befriend them overly, because you run the risk of getting stabbed in the back and having trust betrayed when they ditch you for greener pastures, possibly making off with all your items or what-not.

I’d argue that in Guild Wars 2, far from making social interaction an automatic meaningless reaction to get rewards – the aim of all the incentives, all the systems working in tandem, is to move past all that in-group out-group nonsense by making everyone on your server in-group.

Everyone is a potential person that you could make the free choice to open up to, chat with, and befriend. There is no lack of free choice with GW2’s system either.

I believe the degree of incentivization may be crucial as well in helping GW2’s system function appropriately.

The default option of many MMO players (especially if they’re trained by WoW) is to go their own way and solo. (Among just some of the in-built incentives to this option: not needing to wait for someone else, can pause or sidetrek at any time, no exposure of vulnerability to other players required.)

If you over-incentivize with a carrot, say if you gain a lot more xp in a group than you would solo, then yeah, you’d see lots of people clamoring to get into groups and travel together. But no deep social interaction occurs – people group, farm xp, leave when their objective is achieved with nary a word.

Some people may take advantage of this enforced audience to build social connections, through chatting, through personal exposure, through performing a group combat role well, through good leadership, etc. but there is free choice at work here. Others may very well not bother to connect.

Very soon, the over-incentive to group is perceived as “forced” grouping. I may want to solo, but I cannot progress my character at a good clip without “having” to group up. Free choice is lost. And then people complain.

There’s also the real force with a stick option. That’s the typical raid mechanic. If you don’t participate in this group activity that -requires- such and such amount of people, no progression for you. Or to take xp as an example: no xp when alone, you only get xp with others. Do you have any choice in the matter? Only a very binary one, play it and get the reward or not play and forgo the reward.

But what if you defuse some of the built-in incentives to soloing by providing (approximately) -equivalent- alternative options  to gain rewards with other players?

At any time, I can choose to walk away from other players and solo and gain a set rate of xp and rewards. In most typical MMOs, if I choose to walk towards other players to group, my set rate of xp doesn’t change much, or it may even go down – “omg, u’re killstealing frm me.” To maintain or slightly improve my xp, I’d have to pause, invite everyone to the same group, lead, converse, organize and keep talking – that’s an increased amount of effort for not very much reward.

Milady argues that putting up with this mild disincentive proves how worthy a “friend” another player is, because they’ve made the choice to value a social connection over self-progression. Fair enough, if your criteria for friendship is only with people who don’t mind un-optimizing themselves temporarily in order to connect with others. That’s one way of forming an in-group, only connecting with those who think more of the good of the group than personal gain.

But why would we want to lose out on the opportunity to build connections with the rest? Plenty of people balance both community good and personal gain.

In Guild Wars 2, the aim is to remove the disincentivizing barriers to grouping with others. If I walk toward other players, and help out on their mobs, I’m not taking away any xp from them, and I’m helping them kill faster, benefiting all. Social interaction doesn’t have to be a zero sum game – I put up with irritation in order to help you more? Both of us can benefit from the interaction in GW2.

Rezzing people is not the only way to gain xp in GW2. If it was, then yeah, I’d say that would promote meaningless exchanges because everyone would be racing to rez people for progress. Rezzing people is an option, and by performing it, you gain a reward. You could also happily ignore the dead person, and continue to swing away at the dynamic event boss, because when he dies, you get a big reward. That small reward for rezzing people just provides positive reinforcement, a ‘good job!’ signal for people who make the free choice to reach out and help someone – often facing the risk of coming under fire in combat to do so.

I actually think there are a couple more critical factors in this rezzing mechanic than just reward optimization encouraging automatic behavior. As Chris Bell proposes at GDC, social interaction requires vulnerability in order for people to become open to trusting another. Being defeated and about to die is about as vulnerable as it gets without harsher mechanics like the risk of item loss or permadeath. Naturally, you take note of those who come to your aid, rather than the rest of the masses who are still unthinkingly automatic firing at the boss. A little bit of trust and respect is built, paving the way for more chances at future social interactions.

I’d argue that by encouraging these sorts of iterative and positive small gestures in a game, it has a subtle effect on the entire community of the game. It becomes more welcoming, more willing to respond to someone in need and help, rather than taking the default option of treating others like a stranger who will bring more trouble than he’s worth. City of Heroes was a much nicer place when people ran around giving out free money to lowbies because they had no other use for it, instead of now being incentivized to hoard the cash to buy better loot for their characters.

As for the not-so-good apples, or those who put personal gain over anything or anyone else, Guild Wars 2 actively strives to ensure that they can never perform actions that harm others while doing so. Whatever they do, will still indirectly help others on their server.  That’s a far better design goal than tacitly permitting them to do harm.

Is it crucial to be able to tell them apart in order to judge who is worth being “friends” with? I don’t believe so, they likely have very little interest in getting to know you anyway, so they won’t make the free choice to open their mouths and interact, or even bother to travel together with you.

Guild Wars 2 is the next stage, the next experiment, in players socially interacting with one another. To move from a system that has less “I win, you lose” interactions, and more “I win, you win” ones. It’ll be interesting to see where it takes us.

CoH: WTB Clarity

Let’s play a game of compare and contrast!

Behavior Adjustment Facility (BAF) Trial – Some Praetorian Clockwork Elite-ish bosses with an air to ground rocket attack

Can anyone tell me where the AoE damage will be coming down in 2-3 seconds from now?

Rhetorical question, I suspect.

This picture is a little messier. Can you tell me where one should be wary of standing, in case some kind of cage forms?

Behavior Adjustment Facility (BAF) Trial – Nightstar’s sequestration warnings

In the above case, the mechanic gives you two chances and a long interval to react as well. The player’s name appears in a pop up “Player Name: First Sequestration Warning!”

Then “Second Sequestration Warning!” And if you haven’t moved out of range by then, then this happens:

You’re held. It says so in bright red. You can’t move. There’s awful red fencing everywhere on your screen, and it’s a really clear indication that you don’t want to have this keep happening, and you’ll do better next time when you see the warning circles come up. That’s a fair gimmick.

Now, how about this picture?

Magisterium (MAG) Trial – Tyrant’s Fist

I’m going to have to break this down for you. And probably this image is best expanded to digest properly…

From the Paragon Wiki’s still incomplete breakdown of the trial:

Hammer of Justice is another attack to watch out for due to the 60ft range PBAoE which does not display any warning and deals severe Smashing/Energy damage. Unlike Statesman’s version, Tyrant is able to use his in midair.

I’m going to guess this fist attack is what they’re referring to. I’m not entirely sure, it’s not as if he says “EAT MY HAMMER OF JUSTICE” before he does it.

What Tyrant does do, is raise his fist in the air. This fist raise appears to be mildly more vertical than his other fist raise which just does a normal attack on the tank. About 0.5 seconds later, his fist comes down, and that cracked ground effect shows up. At the same time, no delay, no nothing, everyone near him (apparently a 60ft range if we trust the wiki) eats an attack which does 1000-4000 hp damage, presumably depending on your resistances and your current level shift at the time.

That’s likely to one-shot anyone not a brute or a tank with high hp. So what cue are we supposed to look out for here? The damage extends beyond the cracked ground effect, so you can’t even use that as a judgement of where not to stand. I’m directly behind him and I still got demolished.

I guess everyone just needs to read the wiki and know exactly how large 60ft is in their heads.

And when do we back away from him anyhow? If we spend the whole trial 60ft away to avoid this attack, all melee is screwed. 0.5 seconds is not enough time to move when you see his fist raise – assuming that you aren’t locked in an attack animation to begin with.

I suppose we just need to count to 30 in our heads per fist attack and hope that’s the interval at which he attacks – assuming it’s not random.

Conclusion: Bad bad design

(I will get around to explaining why I have UI splashed across my entire screen when dealing with this trial, so hang tight.)

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I will grant that Tyrant has two other gimmicks which skirt the edge of clarity fairness into ‘acceptable’ territory.

Tyrant, as an incarnation of Marcus Cole/Statesman, has a signature Zeus lightning style kind of attack. This is cued by a red letter splash warning: “The air around Tyrant crackles!”

1-2 seconds later, if you are within a radius of Tyrant approximately the size of the crater he spawns in, a lightning patch will be summoned at your feet – which steadily trickles in 100-200 hp damage per tick for a period of time. Paragon Wiki says 12 ticks, I’ve never bothered to stand in one long enough to count, cos I’ll be dead before all the ticks hit.

This applies to all players, so your screen sort of looks like this every 35 odd seconds. Don’t stand in any of the bright patches, kthxbai.

It’s moderately fair. 1-2 seconds is a pretty short time interval to react, given the preponderance of long rooting animations in CoH, but it is doable. And even if you don’t have time to completely dodge all the way, you can survive one or two ticks of the lightning patch with not too much harm, as long as you don’t get trapped in overlapping patches.

On the other paw, they -are- awfully bright and it’s not like the exact radius of the patch is demarcated clearly. People have crashed out when their graphics cards can no longer manage to draw the intense lightning strikes (or a memory leak of some kind, most often seen when playing for too long in big groups with too much particle effects.)

His other gimmick can be seen cued in the trial UI, and the bright yellowish-white cylindrical pillars of light (as contrasted with the bright purple-white jaggly pillars of light). Those are his Lights of the Well, and they can be taken down with a temporary power all players get when doing the trial, called the Quills of Jocas.

The trial UI indicates the Time until Light of the Well. When it ticks down to 0, all the Lights respawn. It’s about 38 seconds or thereabouts per interval. At least it is cued in the UI. This is fair.

In this way, the people assigned to managing the Lights can anticipate roughly when they will spawn, backing away from Tyrant maybe 3-5 seconds before they spawn, hit their Quills temp power and destroy the Lights quickly. Never mind that the players had to figure out how to use the Quills – it’s an AoE attack, standing near or in the pillar of light works, no need to target the Lights like previous temp powers used in another trial. The animation is a quill burst – players can figure it out from there.

Again, the number of Lights (Connections to the Well – why the different terminology, eh?) existing at any time are cued in the UI. This is fair. Bad design would be not indicating the number of Lights in the UI and forcing people to rotate their screens to keep track and count manually. This is a key gimmick, a key mechanic, it -should- be cued.

But guess what, it’s not ENTIRELY cued. The result of taking down all the lights is NOT indicated to everyone. It is supposed to level shift everyone in the league upwards 1 level per light destroyed. Level shifts are usually only indicated in one place in the normal CoH UI – by highlighting another player and checking their levels in the target window.

How do you see if you yourself are level shifted? You don’t glow or anything. You’d think someone might have thought about adding that as a visual indicator.

Or even, write BRIGHT BLUE LETTERS across players’ screens going “YOU HAVE SEVERED TYRANT’S CONNECTIONS TO THE WELL AND STOLEN HIS POWER” (it’s not like there isn’t prior use of this) or have Tyrant curse out loud, “How dare you take my power from me? You will still die!”

No, what you have to do, assuming you read forum boards and pay attention to this sort of thing, is click on your Powers button, then enable Combat Attributes. This brings up the advanced Combat Attributes in the middle of your window. Click on the +Base to expand and scroll down the long list:

Right at the bottom, you see those tiny words “Level Shift?”

Right-click on that. Select “Monitor Level Shift”. And your level shift will finally appear in smaller form in your Attribute Monitor window. Which for me, I smashed to the right of my screen real estate to keep an eye on.

With that up, one can -finally- keep track of one’s level shifting while in the Magisterium Trial fighting Tyrant.

That’s where you find out that the level shifting only appears to happen:

a) in between the short interval that the lights are taken down and the lights come up again

b) possibly when Tyrant’s favor of the well is 50% or less (that’s just my personal guess from observations made – it’s not like the UI explains what the favor of the well is for, besides the cryptic message “The Well will favor the stronger combatant” nor does it explain how exactly to affect Tyrant’s favor anywhere)

c) and only to maybe 16 people out of a 24 member max trial, possibly within a certain radius of Tyrant or Tyrant and/or the players may have to remain in the vicinity of an invisible mob that does the level shifting, no one really knows for effing sure

Should players really have to guess at why or why not this key mechanic is or isn’t working?

In one of my above screenshots, a leaguemate asks, “What does it mean your soul will be trapped if you die?”

That’s the message the cryptic UI reports. I have no clue what it means. Neither does anyone else, if the lack of explanation is any indicator. Does that mean if you die, you won’t be able to level shift for a while? Does that mean your avatar is thrown into some secret dungeon to fight their way out if you die? (Apparently not, though I’ve never hit the hospital button – willpower comes with a handy self-recharging rez. I could not have cherry picked a better self-sufficient class on these irritating trials.) Does that mean Tyrant regains health or gets better regen if people die near him? (Some people say yea, some say nay.)

We’re also supposed to “Keep Olympian Guards away from Tyrant.” I suppose that’s clear enough. But how near is near? And what does he do in conjunction with the Olympian Guards that we should be keeping him away from them? (My current theory is that he kills them to heal himself, but I don’t actually -know-. It’s not like you can see him do any animation with regards to them, nor is there any message. O_o)

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Here’s a minor nitpick with the phase 2 Magisterium fight. We’re supposed to fight three Arch-Villains, Shadowhunter, Chimera, and Nega-Pendragon. All of them have a gimmick of some sort. One gets stronger if not fighting. One gets stronger and shields up as he continues fighting. One teleports all over the place, and also does a variant of “Marks For Death” that he uses to target a rain of arrows.

“Marks for Death” is a gimmick originally used by the Arch-Villain Maelstrom in the TPN Campus Trial.

As you fight him, a red target may appear above your head.

In case you are blinded by everything happening in your vicinity, because oh…I don’t know, particle effects, melee combat?

Helpfully, “Marked For Death” letters also appear on your buff/debuff status bar indicator, so you don’t have to squint at the sea of red targets to see if maybe one of those is above your head.

You have about 3-5 seconds to hop out of range, or get out of line of sight. Then this announcement happens:

Shortly after that, anyone still within range or LOS bites the dust. Note the many cues and set time interval to get away.

Now in the Magisterium trial, Chimera does this:

See the red targets? Ok. I’m targeted. I think. Note the lack of “Marked for Death” red letters in the status bar? What gives? You can do it in one trial, why not do it for the other?

So anyway, I know I am targeted because I can see the red target above my head, because I am not dumb. So I intuitively move away because the trial UI says “Chimera will rain arrows down upon marked targets!”

About 5-6 seconds later of cooling my heels, feeling uncomfortable because when I’m not in melee range, I’m not contributing, and feeling extremely dumb because no one else has moved away and nothing has happened, I realize that the trial UI is missing one very important cue. Just WHEN is this rain of arrows supposed to take place? You have timers for all sorts of things happening in trials, why did you forget this one?

So anyhow, feeling sheepish for trying to avoid a stacked rain of arrows, I move back in to join the others. THEN Chimera decides to shower down his rain of arrows, presumably one centered around each targeted player, and 7 out of 8 members of the team (including myself) fall over dead.

Right.

So much for partial cues.

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You know, what really upsets me about this is the lack of consistency. It’s not like they don’t know how to do it. Look at the same trial UI for Shadow Hunter and Nega-Pendragon. Their gimmick is explained crystal clearly in words. “Shadow Hunter’s strength grows if out of combat!”- Translation: Keep him in combat. Ok, I understand that, let’s do it, done.

“Nega-Pendragon’s strength grows with each attack!” And they even bothered to show us his shielding come up, and his rage. (Though what use it serves, I’m not sure. It’s not like we can do very much about it besides pile on and kill as fast as possible, which we were already doing.)

For the record, I’ve managed the Magisterium trial successfully once. There were about 4 kinetics on the team, and everyone’s damage was buffed to gills. I was hovering at 200-400% damage bonus the entire trial. The lights came down very quickly, and we consistently level shifted for about 15-20 seconds. The length of time level shifted is critical to being able to do enough damage to Tyrant to defeat him, as his favor with the well appears to jump up as he loses health for whatever reason.

At all other times, and I think I’ve got 5 other attempts under my belt by now, the level shifts have not been consistently applied, due to some unknown reason. Lights either didn’t come down fast due to players not reacting fast enough – or there was some badly timed lowering of the lights (level shifts reset when the light timer ticks down to respawn) – or the level shifts are buggy and not working properly – I don’t know the actual reason, but there have been trials where my level shifts jump from 3 to 9 for 2 seconds, and then flicker back to 3, over and over. Two seconds is not a long enough interval to do any damage to Tyrant. And others where a level shift simply doesn’t happen at all.

This sort of guesswork can actually be mitigated with clear UI and in-trial explanations. We should not have to rely on wikis, and player spading, and player gossip/rumor/lectures in order to successfully understand what to do.

These two concepts are not the same thing: a fair and challenging trial, and one that is unfair in order to be challenging.

I think it’s pretty clear where my opinion stands on the current Magisterium trial.