"Dungeon Keeper" and its Implications.
Note: This treatise was written offline.
Well, I always liked the way of thinking differently, the other way than the majority.
Like Gary Larson in his Cartoons, for example.
I always asked myself : "Why is this the way it is ?" And: "Could't it be better, or different, the OTHER WAY ?"
Visitors of the LMK-Forum might well remember how I "teased" Marian with my question: "Why do Dungeons ALWAYS have to be dark and murky?" And he answered me in a way like "Because THEY'RE DUNGEONS!"
That's where "Dungeon Keeper" comes in.
Anyone has probably asked himself ( I assume it was Mr. Molyneux, although I'm not sure at all): "Why do I ALWAYS have to enter a Dungeon as a Hero (from a hero's point of view) ?"
I assume that a thought like this led - as we already know - to the game "Dungeon Keeper".
It was a few years ago, as I played the game "Hokus Pokus" from Apogee. It features a Wizard Apprentice who has to get through several "Levels" of testimony.
Well, as I saw those creature he had to fight against - as part of his trial - I thought: "These creatures look quite nice, sometimes (although rather seldom) even beatiful; why does he always have to destroy them ? Wouldn't it be more fun if he could cooperate with them ?"
This thing struck me in a way; and since then I always dreamt of a game (for example an RPG), where I (playing a Character) can cooperate with creatures, animals, not always having to destroy, kill them. A kind of Unity between Human and Animal Kingdom. Even more, in my point of view, it would be a delight to work together with - let me say - Unicorns in a RPG-game !
(Must the beauty of the Animal Kingdom be destroyed to become strength - through serving as a field of practise - for the Human Side ?)
So, I always ask myself, why not creating a game where it is possible to cooperate with animals, creatures and possibly even monsters ?
I personally think, that intelligent or semi-intelligent beings - Orcs or goblins for example - have their own culture, a historical background. It should be possible - from this point on - to create an alliance between Orcs and Humans, for example against a mightier foe. Only in an alliance they have a chance to survive.
In the "Realms of Arcania" (German: DSA) Universe, dragons are sometimes the foes of humans, even elves and dwarfes; but sometimes, they are allies against a much "heavier" foe, the infamous Borbarad.
I remember a mission in "Warcraft", where humans and orcs (a single tribe, as far as I can remember) had to fight TOGETHER against another tribe of orcs.
That was unexpected. The cliche of "Orcs vs. Humans" had been overridden.
Helping an Orc - or a monster, an animal or another neutral creature - could also lead to at least SOME help, as was seen in "Simon the Sorcerer". There, Simon helped someone ( was it a Giant ? Or what was it ?) through picking something out of this being's foot. Later on, this one helped Simon.
So, helping an animal - perhaps through healing - could also lead to help, no matter whether this "help" consists of giving information, or help in a battle, or bringing healing plants to the character he or she didn't know that they were healing or whatever.
I'd even go further and think of special relationships between creatures - or animals - and humans. For example, an animal could give a human information not accessible to other beings. Maybe this knowledge is even traditional in the "society" of those animals (Unicorns for example), but never reached - or even lost - in the society of other beings - Goblins for example.
I think, sometimes it could even be possible to open a special "communications channel" - unaccessible to others - between a) single individuals or b) two groups of beings. I mean something like telepathy. Maybe somthing like in "Drakan" between "Rynn" and the dragon: two specially "joined" individuals. In my point of view it is possible that a character has - maybe through magic, learning or by birth, but then it is common between all ancestors and all successors of this individual (genetically based) - a "special communication channel" for example between his or her horse and himself or herself. Like Bard from Tolkiens "Hobbit" book, for example, who could understand a certain bird.
A rider could tell his or her horse commands much better when he or she "speaks" with the horse directly. "Look out ! I can see a cloud of dust before us ! I suspect that these are foes, so we must avoid them !" A horse could tell it's "master" it's own situation more effectively by communicate with him or her directly. "Woe ! I feel so exhausted ! We must quickly find some shelter or this will be the last time you rode my back !"
Scene: A character and a dog, who brings in times of danger and/or need some food to the character, enter a dungeon, used by an evil witch. They can't see much, so they must follow other sources of information (feeling, touching). "Wait !" the dog speaks through telepathy into the character's mind. "I can smell a certain poison. The walls are covered with it." Character: "Why ? I mean, are you sure ? How do you know that ?" The dog replies: " I can locate the direction of that smell. It smells from the left and the right of me, but not from the floor or the ceiling. How do I know it is a certain poison ? well this is traditional knowledge within our folks. Evil witches used to hunt dogs for centuries, yet somehow we managed to discover a) poison was used by them, b) this poison is deadly for us dogs and c) it has a certain smell. Smell the poison and you can avoid it. Of course, everyone of us has to learn what kind of smell this is." The character is embarassed. He did not even suspect that his dog could have such a variety of knowledge. He has always seen in him only someone who is loyal (defending him) and brings food in times of need. If the evil witches knew, he wonderes …
A thought like "that's impossible !" does not exist for me. at least to some degree. And not at all in game design.
Sticking to cliches is not innovative in my opinion.
Only innovative ideas are able to develop society, business, culture - and game design.
And innovative ideas do not arise from sticking to a cliche.
In my opinion, innovative ideas arise rather from thinking DIFFERENTLY.
And without thinking differently, a game like "Dungeon Keeper" would have never seen the light. And that's where the circle [of this writing] closes again…
Maybe you
- start the game
- select some options
- adjust Auto-leveling
- adjust Auto-Mapping
- adjust Auto-AI
- adjust Auto-Dialog
and then watch the game auto-resolving.
AlrikFassbauer said:Yes, of course I could always organize my own group - but since I *never* suceeded in doing the NP I believe I just have no expertise - as is required from a group leader. No matter what I do, I can only do it wrong, because I just have no experience in doing the NP. Everyone else is better than me, because everyone else HAS that experience - cynically put.
I just don't want to be a group leader who fails. I just don't. And I don't want to be an entry in "the weird people you meet in group finder". That's whjy I hardly ever open up my own group - except with good friends who know me well.
Failure is something I'm very bad at getting over, that's why I don't do PvP and GSF, too. Only in solo PvE I do know what I can do and what I can't. A few people / guilds who know me sometimes even invited me to OPS, but that's quite some time ago now, too.
I can only get over failure when I have the feeling that I'm having an overview and in part some control over something. That's why I prefer solo PvE. In PvP and in GSF I have the feeling that I don't have an overview and can't control my outcome anyway. And without having experience in fighting a world boss I don't have it, either.
Therefore I prefer to get into PUGs, "watch and learn", as the famous quote goes - but if no PUG is there, then I just cannot "watch and learn".
AlrikFassbauer said:Yes, that's right. At leaast to some degree.
When I came to SWTOR - my second MMO and my first one with PvP - I was too naive, thinking that I would have duels with equal skill. Equals among equals.
Nothing did I know about skill progression, skill progression, and high-level characters having more skills than low-level characters, yet both competing with one another on the same battlefield.
Nothing did I know of people trying to get an edge over others througfh all means possible, and I say ALL.
To me, all of these "hacking" accuses are nothing but hogwash (thanks for teaching me this new word ), but i still do believe that some people might do everything they can to get an edge over others. Dominate others.
However, I'm living in a different age. With 40 years, competition among players becomes almost meaningless to me. There is more in RL to do. I just do it for fun. I do not want to dominate someone else.
Maybe I'm too old, I don't really know why I don't get it, but maybe competition and the wish to domninate others is a thing of younger people ? I really have no idea.
Since I have been at the loosing end since my childhood, I could never grow into someone who found joy in dominating and in pwning others. Since I was always losing, and gained not much, I was never at the top - and that made an impression on me.
I assume that this is the reason why I just cannot understand this "will to win". Because every time I had a "will to win", someone else was better. This led to self-pity long, long ago. Which I didn't want to drown in, so I gave it up, but it really shines through more often than I want it to.
Now, my strategy is to simply monitor how good I am against others. When I lose, then I draw back. This creates so much LESS frustration and less self-pity as well. Plus, I can concentrate on other things again, things which I'm strong at in RL.
The weather is fine here. I thinkl I should go out for a walk, really, after 3 days of playing the Consular story.
The fresh air will be good.
SithAceI said:As the great pilot Tommmsunb said of you in another thread... I also have Cancer because of your rantings!
Really?
I am 42 and age has nothing to do with it. If you ask around the community about me I do not always top the charts but no one is safe just letting me do what I do in a game.
As a great football coach has said "You play to win the game!"
That's what this is "a game" not some metaphor for life, or society, or whatever you are reading into this game.
I do give you the coveted "major award" of "Troll of The Year" award! No one does passive-aggressive quite like you Bra!
Stop just Stop dude.
This additional stress is often in the form of what Roger Dickey from Zynga calls “fun pain”. I describe this in my Two Contrasting Views of Monetization paper from 2011. This involves putting the consumer in a very uncomfortable or undesirable position in the game and then offering to remove this “pain” in return for spending money. This money is always layered in coercive monetization models, because if confronted with a “real” purchase the consumer would be less likely to fall for the trick.
Treating Consumers Like a Disease
Imagine that in the old days a game consumer would spend $60 to go from A to D, and get a game they could do whatever they wanted with. You know, back in the dark ages of gaming, like 10 years ago. Now we do something like this instead:
A ---> B (free)
B--->C ($1)
C--->D ($500)
Because we include a “free” step, from A to B, we call this model “Free to Play”. The second step, from B to C we can describe as the “Lure”, because we know that once a consumer spends any amount of money, no matter how small, they are then much more likely to keep spending. I will call the third step the “Hook” because once we find a consumer who cannot recognize the relationship between C and D, and thus A and D, they can be farmed fairly mercilessly. These players have very high TtC, for whatever reason, at least initially. Also, by layering our monetization we are attempting to lower our VoC as much as possible. Thus if we can keep VoC below the TtC of enough customers, and milk them rapidly before they realize what is going on, we can make a lot of money.
There is a “real world” system that mirrors this very well. It is our battle against disease where we use antibiotics as our weapons. By hitting diseases with new antibiotics we can wipe them out before they have a chance to adapt. If you could wipe out every last disease this way, this approach would work long term. The problem is that some diseases survive and over time they become more resistant to our antibiotics. Eventually the only new antibiotics available to us might kill us too, and at that point we lose this war despite winning so many battles. The other alternative, removing the source of the disease, is not receiving serious consideration in the USA. This is why we get less bang for our buck in medical care than any other country.
By attempting to trick our consumers into paying much more than the value of the product they are receiving, we are angering our customers. Over time their TtC goes down, and they become much faster at identifying the “A to B to C to D” mechanism. Our industry is very rapidly adopting a strategy where we reduce product quality (and cost to produce) but attempt to maximize our income by adopting an “A to B to C to D” version of F2P. While I could call this “layered F2P”, I think I am going to just call this Coercive F2P.
So in my analogy we are feeding Coercive F2P (the antibiotics) to our consumers (the disease) in order to make money in the shortest and easiest way possible. This has led to some early victories against the consumer. Here I will point to pretty much the entirety of social network game makers, with rare exceptions. Mobile is quickly following the same battle plan.
Difficulty is like a filter : It lets only a percentage of *all* players through.
Like a funnel, those who get through it feel like as if they have achieved something extraordinarily. Which isn't bad as such.
What then happens is that the established player base of those who made it through just don't want others to water down their sense of an achievement. Any VIP club just is / stays as long VIP as it isn't available for the masses.
And Progression Raiding / End Game Raiding (especially NIM) is the highest tier of an VIP club in SWTOR - apart from Ranked PvP, which is like a sister or brother tier (in fact I see PvP & PvE like 2 branches of the same tree, nothing else).
To me, this means that if people don't want their "VIPness" to be watered down, then they've got to defend what they have achieved - they've got to defend the VIP club's entrance from being flooded by the masses. This is the only logical consequence.
Because any VIP club is senseless if masses can freely enter it.
And that's why there is such an hash and unforgiving argumentation against making SM mode OPs more accessible for the masses : Because this SM mode is like the first step of stairs up into an VIP club. Not everyone is meant to be able to enter. And this first step is merely the very first one in / of a series of filters / funnels.
And this is this war here in these forums that is currently going on :
Elitists (PvP & PvE alike) defending their VIP club doors against those masses who want to enter this VIP club as well - because if they'd let the masses in, it wouldn't be "VIP" anymore - and that's just bad for those who WNT to be VIP and are already "arrived Raiders".
And "Arrived Raiders" would like to keep everyone out, until he or she has been provinghimself or herslf worthy of entering. Equals among Equals.
And they look down from a point "standing on higher ground", down upon the masses which are doing that "rat race".
This is one of the reasons why I actually believe now that the human race is in fact a "pack race", like a pack of wolves.
There are Alpha- Beta- and Gamma-Animals in the pack, and a clear hierarchy.
You can see human hierarchy very clearly in firms, in companies, yes even in governments. The existence of Kings & Queens alone tells us that we are in fact "hierachy beings".
And the hierarchy in MMORPGs is merely another expression of the human hierarchy race (word-game).
foxmob said:you made it further than me. I stopped after "AlrikFassbauer"
Alrik truly is a special snowflake.
Let's get some facts straight though: When Alrik showed up years ago as a regular in the German pvp forums he immediately displayed the same attitude he still fashions today, blaming everybody else but himself for how miserable he was in PvP. You see, deep down inside Alrik actually has a pretty competitive side. Losing, losing badly, actually upsets him and makes him feel miserable, unlike, let's say, the PvE-equipped nabs that show up in warzones and really don't care what happens as long as they get their conquest points. So, being new to PvP, he really had absolutely not clue whatsoever and it showed. Of course, that's perfectly normal when you're new to something.
Instead of getting better though he quickly figured who was really at fault: all the evil PvPrs whose only apparent purpose was to make him miserable and who did so daily with delight while cackling maniacally IRL.
Cheaters, FOTM players, premades... you name it, Alrik called them out. Not to mention the evil empire players constantly plotting against the republic. Several times people offered to take him into their premade group and teach him the ropes in TS but he declined. Holier than thou Alrik wants to have nothing to do with these monsters.
Instead he focused his attention on the forums producing posts about how evil/psychopathic real-life people do of course also choose to become evil/psychopathic PvPers, especially imperial PvPers. He became somewhat famous and people from other German servers came to us just to behold him with their own eyes. Mind you, the toxic environment we're talking about here is the German RP Server Vanjervalis Chain, the most tame place imaginable when it comes to PvP. And while the months go by, all what these cruel and sadistic PvPers do is torturing Alrik's innocent Sage and they do so fully aware of how much he suffers and with a smile on their face. (back then Alrik was still constantly whining about muh Sage, he only switched to muh Gunslinger once Sage became overpowered)
He made posts about how immensely intelligent he is. You see, in Alrik's happy-happy-la-la-fantasyland he's an extremely gifted, high IQ person looking down on the unwashed masses, who despite lacking his mental faculties, possess the required manual dexterity and a certain peasant shrewdness to prevail anyway - in PvP. Probably due to their innate sadistic nature which makes them great at PvP (torturing others). It is this high IQ that brings you hilarities like this one.
You see, for years Alrik has heard about this mythical ability called "entrench" which is alleged to bestow CC immunity on a sniper. Of course, just using the term "entrench" the entire time is already an imp plot aimed at making life harder for reps. Yet, Alrik only plays Gunslinger and only in the German client, so he kinda hasn't figured out yet how this ability is called for Gunslingers in German. Operating Google was too hard, reading through the tooltips of his abilities was too hard and - if all else fails - asking someone who knows it, was too hard as well. I can only assume that it was his vast intellect that held him back here.
Alrik is a good example of someone who considers himself smart, yet fails to display even the most rudimentary brain activity. I know Alrik for a long time. Drakensang, Larian forums, RPGWatch. He was a "special" person 15 years ago and he is one now. This will never change for there is no cure for stupidity.
So Alrik got himself a stalker.I know Alrik for a long time. Drakensang, Larian forums, RPGWatch. He was a "special" person 15 years ago and he is one now. This will never change for there is no cure for stupidity.
I think it'd be cool if you took a year off from posting anything about SWTOR. I think it would improve your mental health. I mean is that game the total meaning of your life? Spend a little time here on Earth. Play other games.
Looks like you got an obsessed fan, Alrik. Mind the bathrobe pictures!
I don't recognize you from the enclosed description. Is that you?
pibbur who