Editorial: The Game Stops Here

By Jeffrey Philipp | August 7, 2009 | | Filed under: Editorials | Tags: Editorial, Editorials, Raiding

Greetings again everyone, and a fine how do you do.

Today I’m going to toss on some waders and an asbestos onesie and come into the ever present debate about “the casuals against the hardcores”.

This debate largely centres around the endgame experience of a particular game, as up to that point everyone is pretty much doing the same thing. That experience has it’s own issues but we won’t go into them here.

Specifically this comes up when people begin to talk about raiding. I know I’m probably repeating what everyone here knows but for the sake of completeness I’ll just go over the concept really quick. The developers have made a really difficult enemy that’s it’s simply impractical or impossible for a solo or small group of players (depending on your definition of small) to complete on their own. As such these encounters require large groups of players, “raids”, to use the jargon though they have had several titles since then, to organize and defeat the big bad evil guy/beast thing.

Traditionally, these encounters tend to be long and gruelling, but they reward the players that are successful with powerful and often top of the line loot. Traditionally they are also very demanding of players’ time and dedication. It is the combination of these two aspects that seems to cause the most trouble.

I’ll start with a quick examination of the “against” side, so to speak.

I intended the title to be a little bit tongue in cheek, but it is something that tends to come up in these debates. There are a number of people who claim that they don’t want their game to “be a second job” or that they work all day and don’t want to do it when they get home to play games.

Now believe me when I say that I understand the general sentiment of this particular statement, if you spend a lot of time being miserable throughout the course of the day then you’re likely going to want to avoid doing other things that make you miserable. If you don’t, then seek help; quickly, as there’s something very seriously wrong with you.

Being that these people are not the majority, and are all now off scouring the phone books looking for psychiatrists, we can discuss what us normal folk think. I would hazard a guess that if you are one of the people with whom this particular statement resonates, then it stands to reason you do not find the progression model created by Everquest particularly entertaining. I hold absolutely nothing against you for that, as it can seem rather unpleasant at times.

While the specifics of the raid game have changed greatly over the years, spilling over even into PvP territory, which is something of it’s own beast, the spirit has remained largely the same. A great and powerful enemy that takes a great deal of time, practice and preparation to defeat, allowing a group to progress onto the next great and powerful enemy, repeat ad nauseum. This is not the description, to an appreciable number of gamers, of fun. Understandably many of us simply want to fire up our favourite game and kill some time, and perhaps some brightly textured enemies. Fair enough.

Now I’d like to take a second and turn this coin over and take a close look at what’s on the other side.

There is nothing in any of the game requirements or documentation that says you’re required to do this, especially if you don’t enjoy yourself doing it.

I know that sounds a little bit like a cop out, but I can’t recall the time that I’ve seen someone go on a rage-y forum rant about how much they hate crafting or hunting down rare exploration points, or any of a dozen other things that might be provided for people to do. Instead people who don’t like doing those things just don’t do them, and remain relatively quiet.

In the case of the end game raiding however, people end up getting quite loud about their dislikes with the time requirement, or the necessity to hunt down rare or expensive consumables, or resist fights (Which I actually have to say I agree with, resist fights are a gimmick and uncreative way to add difficulty to an encounter). To the other two complaints however, I simply have to suggest that perhaps it’s a play style choice that you are not fond of.

While I have never been a particularly gifted raider, and am very much out of the loop for recent raiding news, I would like to state very firmly that I am a proponent of the traditional raid model. I think that while it requires a great deal of time and coordination, and even a not insignificant amount of swearing and willingness to bash your head against a wall for a while, it has been an incredible muse for designers, and it has provided an immense creative outlet for unique and interesting mechanics.

It has also allowed the developers to get some of their aggression out by thinking up new and sadistic ways to punish their players, which I think I can understand a little bit.

In my personal and nominally humble opinion I think that the root of this particular problem is the same as almost every other design problem out there. Narrow design focus. I’ve harped on this time and time again by now and I’ve only been here just over a month, but I’ll say it again. Violence doesn’t solve everything, just most things. Players need other things to do.

In this case, choosing to make raiding your endgame is just that, a choice. Developers consciously made the choice to focus on creating big and nigh unkillable monsters for the benefit of sizable groups of players. If that’s not the sort of thing that you as a player enjoy than I can’t see any reason why you should desire to partake, and there is certainly no reason why you should ask for it to be changed to be more convenient for you, since it’s not something that you would call entertaining to you anyway.

I suppose if I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t think that the above reason is the sole reason why people see the need to raid. I also have to admit that a great deal of developer time and effort goes into creating this quite spectacular areas and encounters, and people feel left out if they don’t get to play them. This much I can understand, what I can’t understand is changing the whole concept behind to allow people who aren’t of the mind that this is fun in the first place to partake.

All the more reason, I say, to broaden design focus and start thinking of other ways to provide player progression, on top of raiding.

Broken record sounding message aside, all gamers are not the same, and all games should not expect to cater to all gamers. On the other hand though, we as gamers, should certainly not expect whichever game we choose to be just the thing we were looking for. When we decide to play a game we have to be aware that we may have to accept some compromises in things that we think are important, or be willing to shop around to find something that more closely matches our desires. The one thing that we should not do, as players is start making demands as to how the specific game we have settled on should be changed, or the direction that it must take in the future.

That’s not to say that there’s no place for suggestion and debate, and in fact that sort of thing is encouraged, but it should be understood that these are ONLY suggestions and ONLY debate, and should not be expected to make it into the final product.

Well that’s largely the better part of what I have to say on that subject, and I hope that I managed to make at least a point or two that makes sense in there somewhere. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have to pull on this fireproof hood before the flames start.

Until next time!