[TRENCHES] Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - Dominion

Geth

Dominion
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/dominion

The Biggest Problem

Anonymous

I have this story secondhand, but it’s humorous enough to share regardless.

Back in the iron age of MMOs, there was a designer with a pet project: Guildhalls. These would be fortresses that provided benefits to the guild that controlled them as well as providing an additional PvP element: Rival guilds could “storm the castle” to claim it for their own. This required the permission of the defending guild, since griefers were everywhere.

The team likes the idea, but they don’t have the resources for it. So, this brave designer takes it upon himself to do all that alone. Yes, he pulls multiple all-nighters and nearly drives himself mad designing, coding, and testing an incredibly complex new feature.

Through herculean effort, he succeeds and the guildhalls go live. Our hero pats himself on the back for his accomplishment.

A month later, Guild A starts a riot on the game boards. Guild B has stolen their guildhall while everyone was offline! As the team does damage control on the boards, our hero flips out, convinced he’s going to get fired if he doesn’t find and squash the bug ASAP. He spends hours going through the code line by line, making and discarding multiple theories in the mad search for a bug that would undermine the whole system. How could this happen? He was sure everything was ironclad!

Finally, the case is solved by an e-mail from a member of Guild A:

“There’s no bug. I let Guild B in late last night so that they could take over the guildhall. Please don’t tell my guildmates.” Our hero breathes a sigh of relief. The team has a big laugh over it, then posts to the message boards that the guildhalls are working exactly as intended.

Back in the day, there was a saying about MMOs: “The biggest problems with the game are the ones playing alongside you.”

RMS Oceanic

Uncertainty about a bug is the worst thing.

Discovering it isn't a bug is the best thing.

Huzzah!

Jortalus

I love the stories of MMO double-crossing. Like the story from Eve about the guy who single-handedly betrayed and dismantled two of the largest alliances ever >_>

Ori Klein

"Trust is a weakness."

Einzel

I would play *.mmo if it included a guild fortress design/building element that could be attacked and defended like an instanced dungeon. All day, son.

Warlock82

What an odd set of rules on those guild halls. Kind of surprised they couldn't foresee that one dude in the guild being an asshole and letting people in :P Also surprised that sort of thing wasn't limited to officers (although maybe it was an he was one?)

Also, you know, wouldn't they have logs of that sort of thing? :P

Gaslight

Story-related: I can't see a reason why any guild would ever knowingly give permission to a rival guild to try to take their guildhall, betrayals like the one in the story aside.

Comic-related: I love old bookstore guy. "Huzzah!" He has no idea what's going on but he's lived long enough to learn that when people are celebrating something you may as well join in.

Has anybody actually made a game which combined PC MMO gameplay with location-based mobile stuff like Ballad-Ur seems to have, with both aspects having an effect on the other? I think that could be pretty successful if done right. Offers something to both the hardcore poopsocking MMO gamers and the more casual crowd, and those who prefer one facet would never necessarily have to get involved in the other at all but could still help their guild/faction.

Warlock82

Gaslight wrote: »

Has anybody actually made a game which combined PC MMO gameplay with location-based mobile stuff like Ballad-Ur seems to have, with both aspects having an effect on the other? I think that could be pretty successful if done right. Offers something to both the hardcore poopsocking MMO gamers and the more casual crowd, and those who prefer one facet would never necessarily have to get involved in the other at all but could still help their guild/faction.

Maybe? I dunno. But I don't see much of a point to it. I mean, how would what is essentially a Four-Square app relate to MMO gameplay? You could probably do it but it seems like an arbitrary thing. Like, there's realistically no benefit between doing it at your house or the local bookstore. At which point, why do it at all?

I suppose the only reason might be if you were to work in some form of cross promotion (i.e. you are trying to get people to go to a certain location to maybe buy other stuff) but I can't imagine many scenarios for this.

Gaslight

Warlock82 wrote: »

Gaslight wrote: »

Has anybody actually made a game which combined PC MMO gameplay with location-based mobile stuff like Ballad-Ur seems to have, with both aspects having an effect on the other? I think that could be pretty successful if done right. Offers something to both the hardcore poopsocking MMO gamers and the more casual crowd, and those who prefer one facet would never necessarily have to get involved in the other at all but could still help their guild/faction.

Maybe? I dunno. But I don't see much of a point to it. I mean, how would what is essentially a Four-Square app relate to MMO gameplay? You could probably do it but it seems like an arbitrary thing. Like, there's realistically no benefit between doing it at your house or the local bookstore. At which point, why do it at all?

I would point to Ingress as a good example of location-based mobile gameplay.

King Riptor

People take that mayor stuff very seriously
Attaching a game to it would probably make a mint

RatherDashing89

When did a comic about denouncing the myth that QA is a job where you get paid to play video games become a comic about QA staff getting paid to play video games? And run personal errands at the same time?

Darkewolfe

Gaslight wrote: »

Warlock82 wrote: »

Gaslight wrote: »

Has anybody actually made a game which combined PC MMO gameplay with location-based mobile stuff like Ballad-Ur seems to have, with both aspects having an effect on the other? I think that could be pretty successful if done right. Offers something to both the hardcore poopsocking MMO gamers and the more casual crowd, and those who prefer one facet would never necessarily have to get involved in the other at all but could still help their guild/faction.

Maybe? I dunno. But I don't see much of a point to it. I mean, how would what is essentially a Four-Square app relate to MMO gameplay? You could probably do it but it seems like an arbitrary thing. Like, there's realistically no benefit between doing it at your house or the local bookstore. At which point, why do it at all?

I would point to Ingress as a good example of location-based mobile gameplay.

Ingress is a cool idea. It's really boring in practice. It isn't even fun to try to do while jogging, because I have to jog into the middle of baseball fields.

forty

Warlock82 wrote: »

What an odd set of rules on those guild halls. Kind of surprised they couldn't foresee that one dude in the guild being an asshole and letting people in :P Also surprised that sort of thing wasn't limited to officers (although maybe it was an he was one?)

Also, you know, wouldn't they have logs of that sort of thing? :P

Yes, I was wondering this as well. Also, the story just kind of ends.

Guild A is pissed because the game is broken from their perspective. Devs figure out that there isn't a defect but just tell the players that it's working fine with no further explanation. Guild A accepts this and moves on? GAMERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!


Also, this sounds like a really terrible MMO.

Hevach

forty wrote: »

Warlock82 wrote: »

What an odd set of rules on those guild halls. Kind of surprised they couldn't foresee that one dude in the guild being an asshole and letting people in :P Also surprised that sort of thing wasn't limited to officers (although maybe it was an he was one?)

Also, you know, wouldn't they have logs of that sort of thing? :P

Yes, I was wondering this as well. Also, the story just kind of ends.

Guild A is pissed because the game is broken from their perspective. Devs figure out that there isn't a defect but just tell the players that it's working fine with no further explanation. Guild A accepts this and moves on? GAMERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!


Also, this sounds like a really terrible MMO.

Sounds like common bad-old-days design, where player/guild housing, despite all its expenses and grind, could still be attacked, damaged, destroyed, or taken over when you're not online to protect them. I mean, kudos for not going full retard with the system, at least, most of the old MMOs wouldn't have even given you the easily bypassed option of preventing a raid.

Then I know of a few games from those days where this probably should be the case, where the landscape is just littered with the half completed frames of houses whose owners quit long ago and didn't clear their sites for sale.