Evidence-Based Design

There’s been some discussion on the Age of Conan newbie experience, but I haven’t seen anyone talk about the biggest problem — at least, what will become the biggest problem for the people who are counting the money.

It’s an intensely anti-social experience, and that’s going to cause problems in the future.

A lowbie Conan character will spend half of her time soloing in solo instances. Solo instances have chat — sometimes (it seems buggy). Chat is a good way of staying in touch with the world — it reminds you that there are people out there, even if you’re playing on your own. (As an aside, this is also why chat notifications for events are awesome — they give people something to talk about, and they show newbies that there’s stuff going on out there. Cool stuff that you might be able to participate in someday!)

The rest of the time, our Conan lowbie is running around in town, doing quests. Sometimes she gets sent out of town — there is a group-oriented zone with some group quests nearby. It doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot of people grouping there, though. Besides, once they get to the next level band, they would have to drop group anyway to go finish their next batch of solo quests.

There are other things to do in a few other zones that are PvP enabled on PvP servers. People are grouping there! The PKs are grouped together, anyway. So far, it’s generally true that if I run into a solo player, I’m okay. If I see a group, I need to be ready to switch instances.

So that’s another thing — the entire world is instanced. You can switch to (the entrance of) another copy of the zone you’re in at any time with a few clicks. On one hand, this is pretty cool (if a little morally dubious) on PvP servers. On the other hand, it splits players up. I see people asking where their friends are, because they should both be in the same place — player confusion I haven’t seen since the launch of City of Heroes. (At least you don’t have to go to the tram to switch instances in AoC.)

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with solo play. But things are different for open PvP games. In worlds where players can’t make it on their own and don’t know who to trust, it’s vitally important to hook them up with potential friends and guildmates. Repeated gankage, with no recourse and no support network, in a game that’s supposed to be about more than that is bad for business. People quit over that kind of stuff and they don’t come back.

Here’s the business outcome of weak social features, and new player experiences where new players aren’t welcomed with open arms by a waiting community.

They create a Recruitment Problem. New players need to be directed into guilds as soon as possible. L33tz0r PvP guilds need a reason to take newbs under their wing, rather than giving them a Darktide introduction to the game. (Remember? The camping of the new player start locations on the Asheron’s Call 1 PvP server was legendary. Players said they did it to discourage the weak.) So the game needs to provide valuable roles for new, inexperienced, or just plain bad players. Give the newbs grunt tasks that the guild wouldn’t want their best PvPers doing during the siege.

(This is also a really compelling argument against PvP l33tness ranks for guilds — if the guild’s ranking will fall when you invite your newb little brother, you won’t invite him. You won’t invite him and he won’t play, and that’s a lost subscription.)

I’ve heard that Age of Conan sieges are limited to 50 on 50 players. That means only the l33test of the l33t get to participate. Sure, it lessens technical headaches and makes people think it’s “fair,” but in the long run, it contributes to a recruitment problem that hurts profits.

Over time, the playerbase dwindles into the hardest of the hardcore, ever more hostile to outsiders. Outsiders that are worth $14.99 a month … if they make it past the first month.

And when there’s no reason to recruit or even communicate with anyone outside of your little group, we get the Us vs. Them Problem. Picture a social network. Picture a sad, stunted little social network with no links outside of a single guild. Now, give that guild a catastrophe — city gets burned down, guild leader gets hit by a bus — and every $14.99 in that guild has nowhere to go but the unsubscribe page.

A robust political system, with meaningful alliances, allows players to enjoy the magic of the PvP server — the armed and polite society — while knowing how to interact with others. You want players to make friends far and wide so they have support when their guild falls through, while still allowing them to kill the players who need to be killed. Without political systems, players have to fall back on the relationships they made before they joined the guild — “hey, I did Scarlet Monastery with that guy when we were wee little lads and he didn’t totally suck.” These casual bonds don’t form when the entire game is instanced and nobody groups and nobody talks, and every time you see another player, you get ready to run.

I fear that that dwindling, ever more hardcore, and ever more hostile playerbase is in Age of Conan’s future because of that antisocial new player experience. “It was supposed to be a single player game until 20″ nonetheless, this weird hybrid, where nobody communicates and the most meaningful player interaction is getting three-shot by somebody five levels higher than you, is bad for business in the long run.

There’s nothing wrong with getting three-shot by somebody five levels higher than you on a PvP server. You signed up for that when you chose the PvP server. But there is something wrong if you haven’t already been welcomed by a guild that’s sending five bored level cappers his way — a guild that wants you because game systems encourage it, with people you met because content was designed for a social experience.

And to be fair, AoC has a couple of things going for it — I believe it’s the first MMO to ship with a looking for guild feature. (Everquest 2 added theirs after launch, right? And Shadowbane’s was long after launch and not really a proper looking for guild feature anyway. Yeah, sorry about that.) Players can also link guilds in chat, which is really cool. Click on the guild name in chat to get an info pane. (Remember that Anarchy Online, not WoW, was the first MMO with item links in chat.)

I wish AoC the best of luck. I’m delighted to see somebody carrying the open PvP torch again.