More Real Life Characters

Disclaimer:  All names are pure concoctions, its their personalities that are real: believe it or not.

Josh, Fizzlegiggle Tizzletops, the emoter, thirty-something guy who plays the off-the-wall classes, that no one else wants to play, but often critical to group mechanics.  Josh is the player who just loves using his emotes at the end of every battle and chest drop. He plays the dancers, the cook, cabin boy, the grease fitter, or seamstress.  Josh spends more time researching and implementing the craziest emotes one could imagine – his gear and skills are all underpowered but man he can shake his ass and do head stands until the dragons come  home.

Greg, the Griefer, Henderson  — a guy who has been stepped on all his life and finds nothing more pleasurable than to grief all groups of players.  This sadistic fiend will sneak his 100^th level assassin into a newbie zone and constantly challenge new players to duels – often under the cloak of some role-playing flag.  He finds great pleasure in training hordes of mobs onto unsuspecting groups; and his favorite tactic is finding items with nearly identical names of rare finds, then rob unsuspecting shoppers with such audacious gimmicks.  He has the best the world can offer, but all gained through nefarious exploits.  He lives in a shadowed world awry with his own logic and twisted view of reality – never understanding why he can’t find acceptance among his fellow gamers.

Gary, the Righteous-Ninja-Looting-Paladin. He is  the guy, who if you are unlucky enough to group with, will ninja loot every single drop in the game and explain that he as use for the item on one of his many alternate characters.  Gary invariably plays righteous, noble, and moralistic classes like paladins, clerics, jedi, or knights – yet will rob you blind and screw you out of every single copper coin he can get his mealy hands on.  Gary will whine and waffle on about how he never gets anything good, yet when you examine him he has legendary and epic gear that you only dream off – his response is that is that he has friends that have gear that makes his look like newbie crap.

Mitch the Malcontent, a forty-five year old family man with wife and kids, a great job, and rosy income yet everything sucks: the game sucks, the company sucks, the world sucks, just everything sucks.  No matter how good the experience is, it sucks….no matter what kind of loot is found, that sucks too.  Talk of where the game is heading and how the development of new expansions ends with Mitch forcasting its demise, and that sucks as well.  Mitch just brings everyone down with his low balling stories of getting screwed, and how in the end, the Man is just grubbin’ you into the ground.

The A Typical MMO Group

According to recent statistics released by Sony, the average MMO gamer (I assume for Sony games) is a thirty-one, with eighty-five percent of them being male, living in a standard family structure, and belonging to the middle income bracket.  The image that I conjure up of this player is much different than the ones that seemingly exist in the game.  I don’t know about you, but this is generally the group of “characters” I end up with:

Terry, a twenty-eight year old guy, living in his grandma’s basement, out-of-work, and lives and breathes the game.  He has eighteen alts, all the crafting classes covered, the best gear, and you always find him as a guild leader or group leader. Strangely, he is so highly organized and knowledgeable you ask yourself why he is living in the basement, without a girlfriend, and no job?

Jeff Jefferson, who plays an Ogre mage aptly named JeffJefferson. This kid is twelve-years old, and his mom has found that the recent MMO is a cheap and proficient babysitter.  While mom is off getting some at the bar, the group is getting their fill of Jeff who constantly begs for money, equipment, and cheats.  He is of the age and mentality that he thinks there are special power-ups and moves in the game — what little he reads, he still trying to get that special power to unlock by moving North, North, Jump, West, Duck, North, North?

Wanda, a forty-five year old, divorced over weight mom of six, who has no apparent income and often complains her kids have no shoes, socks, or pants, yet she is playing twenty-four — seven on the game with a rig that would make Jeff Gordon blush.  She is a whiz at statistics, spells, and skills yet she tells you she can’t find a job.  The only thing that grates you more than her stories, is that she calls you “Hun” all the time — belittling you down to one of her six mangy kids.

Mike, the thirty six year old bachelor, who is tanked by 5 PM on three cases of beers — and for the love of god don’t ask him which beer is better, or you better close the chat channel.  Mike is introverted and without girlfriends; yet all his characters are scantily clad females with names like LargeTitus InYourFace.  After you comment on his deplorable name, he keeps telling you, “Get it!!?!! its Large tit s in your face,  get it?  Get it??”.  after about a minute of you shaking your head sadly, he says: “Get it!!?!! its Large tit s in your face,  get it?  Get it??”.   Ya, Mike I get it!!!

Brad Jockitch, the over-the-hill-muscle-bound-boob, that recalls his glory days when all the world bent over backwards for him, how the chicks dug him, his boss glorified him, and his family put him on a pedestal of pure ivory. Now Brad is sunk to poppin’ oxycotin every fifteen minutes, half of the time AFK while he is off using the “bio-break” or getting himself another whole-wheat tuna sandwich.  “I was one-tenth of a second away from making the Olympic Shot Put team!!”  ahhhhh Brad, shot put isn’t measure in time? ……………  Long tenable silence, “Did I say Shot Put ((gurgle)) ((gurgle))  I meant Lacrosse, sorry I have sixteen various kinds of painkillers in my system.

Tina, To-Hot-Handle, Torres.  Oh ya baby, I often get Tina in my group, ya baby!! Twenty-two, hot, and sexy….willing to talk the talk, and walk the walk….go to her website and she is dripping all over the site in hot and sexy poses.  She is willing to find backwaters of any world and seek out the promiscuous  in all and all a good night.  The strange thing is, is that she has a horribly sounding voice — something between a buzz saw and a pig being strangled to death?  Ahh, Tina, lets not do Teamspeak…..

And finally, Svenoluntski Horg’ufanslengorthoria, some swedish multi-millionaire who could pay me more money than I can dream of,  to dance naked in Time Square …. could even make Bill Gates blush with envy, yet he is more concerned with playing with a bunch of fat American tools in a dungeon called Chaotic Chamber of Scintillating Hellfire.  He types perfect grammatical English, yet can barely chirp a word in English — everything he says sounds like he is asking for another scoop of Hagen Das Ice Cream — Sorry, Sven, I don’t have any Strawberry Ripple HagenDas!!

Ahh yes, my fantastic a typical MMO group.  The problem is, you ask, is where do I fit in that list of characters?  Well, mull that over while I pop another 1995 Bush Lite (excellent year for American beer), I walk my sixteen dogs, papoose four of my troll looking kids on my back, pop a few painkillers, order my next $8000 dollar Dell, while filling out my government cheese request, and talking to my rabbi why I can’t find the perfect man — man, did I say man, I meant woman, yah, that’s it woman — darn those meds….

Components vs. Time

A thought struck me as to how over the last several years and generations of MMOs, that have been designed, that we have moved away from component based skills and spells. Our games are now a time controlled set of actions, spells, and skills.

Remember in the days of old, when the mage required malachite to form his pet; or the cleric needed a rare gem to instill a buff on another character? Druids of the past could change the weather with a rare pearl, or a shaman could transform himself into a great bear with daunting battle prowess. Where have those days gone? Perhaps it was an added layer of database management that the designers wanted to get rid of; or perhaps it was thought of as being a bother for the character to maintain inventories of small trinkets, baubles, and rare materials.

At times, I must confess that I grumbled about keeping my bags filled with components, and whined when I ran out of them (often in the most inopportune times). But in retrospect, I often think of the times when I refilled my cache of components and how good I felt with bags of malachite and other rare gems. the feeling of power, knowing I could cast life healing magic with impudence with knowledge of a bag full of rubies and emeralds.

I often wonder, what the game scene would be like with component based skills and spells still in the game. It could control so many aspects of games that seem so out of control today. For example, Vanguard and Everquest II basically put a cabash on buffing non-group members. I really enjoyed that aspect of the game. I loved running around town hitting people with SoW, or hearing the cries for mana and life regeneration (oooh the thought of grabbing some mind candy still brings a smile to my face). With a component based spell-sets one could still control its use, but offer those people rich enough or smart enough to perform such duties. A simple mechanism of a rare or costly gem or component would control such use and offer an additional item from within the game to be harvested and sold on the open market (or purchased from a computer NPC at a hefty pre-defined value).

Time based skills and spells often irk me. You have a whole series of icons on your character tabs that are constantly regenerating — some games are better at telling you their refresh timers than others. In a heated battle or when you want to exemplify your character, that is the time you should be able to use such fantastic spells and skills. Nothing is more irritating then to realize that your special skill has 45 seconds to go before you can trigger it — and in 25 seconds the entire group will perish. Wouldn’t it be better to discard time based skill-sets in favor of components that vary in strength and cost? Would not the player feel in more control of his character with such a system?

In key epic battles would it not be better to allow a character to spam glorious abilities if his character is able to afford it (mind you, we are not talking about real money but ingame currency). Couldn’t a series of components be developed that would give varying powers onto a character, with the cost of such ranging from a few coppers to a few platinum (or whatever game values)?

Of course the argument could be raised that with such time controls lifted, and components used instead that balance could be a concern. As it stands now, balance is often a tough act to perfect. Even in the best thought out games, balance often comes in time. As with component based systems, balance would adjust itself accordingly.

Let us return to the days when we could buff our fellow man, where we had more control over when a spell could be used, when a skill could be implemented. Lets dust off those picks and pans, garnering rare gems and ingredients of earth, fire, and water.