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Pirates of the Burning Sea pre-order boxes were supposed to be on shelves October 23. Only problem is, that didn’t happen - and we didn’t find out until October 25. God and Heroes did something that I’ve never heard of before - they got pre-order boxes on the shelves and then they canceled the game. Now, all of the problems that caused have to be cleared up before Pirates can be on the shelves, which means November 13.

I have a host of fond memories of multiplayer in Halo 1. Then Halo 2 came out, and I quickly found that I didn’t enjoy the multiplayer nearly as much. Now Halo 3 is out, and I enjoy it even less.

It’s really simple - the original Halo sported an overpowered pistol as part of your starting equipment. It was a versatile weapon that worked for just about any task. Other weapons - the rocket launcher, sniper and shotgun - were better than the pistol in limited situations. Sometimes it was difficult, but you could still fight back with your pistol.

That all changed in Halo 2, and Halo 3 continues down the same path. I was really good at Halo 2, and it wasn’t long before I found that skill rarely determined whether I won the match. What really mattered is whether I started close to the weapon of choice on the map. Usually that was the rocket launcher, and acquiring the first rocket was always enough to ensure my victory. I’d get enough kills with the rocket launcher that equal skilled players wouldn’t be able to catch me. With my new weapon, I’d be able to secure more ammo and powerups like overshield and cloak. I had several deathmatches against equally skilled players where I won 25-0 just because I spawned near the rockets, sword or sniper. Likewise, I had plenty of matches where I lost just because someone else spawned in a favorable location.

This problem exists on many levels. For example, the single SMG is no match for anything dual wielded unless you’re in a favorable grenade location. It feels worse in Halo 3 because I start with the assault rifle. At least with the SMG, there were SMGs laying everywhere so you could hardly take a step without picking up a second one for dual wield. With the AR, you’re just plain screwed in so many situations. I’m not nearly as good at Halo 3 as I was at Halo 2, but I see the same results. I can tell that if my aim was steadier, I’d never lose to an assault rifle when I have a battle rifle. I feel helpless running around with the AR. It’s responsible for the majority of my kills, but that’s primarily from situations where I’d win with any weapon.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I think this is sucky gameplay. For whatever reason, I didn’t have the same feeling when I played games like Unreal Tournament, even though they have a similar degree of weapon disparity. Perhaps because in UT, if I snuck up on someone I would still kill them. In Halo 2, sneaking on a skilled player with a rocket launcher didn’t mean you win - it just extends your life a split second.

Is online and you can find it here.

I posted part one of a two part devlog on tuning in Pirates of the Burning Sea today.

–Taelorn

Recently, the subject of death in MMOs has been bothering me, so I’m going to make it into the first real post on my site.

We make games to entertain our customers. Although the overall experience varies from user to user, there are encapsulated experiences we can expect every user to share. Defeat is one of those experiences. If it’s our goal to entertain and we can ensure players will experience defeat, then why don’t we make it something players can enjoy?

Naturally, we want players to strive to avoid defeat. Most games accomplish that goal through death penalties and setbacks. While setbacks might be necessary, we should not deliberately create situations where the players feel penalized. I read a great quote from Will Wright in Bill Moggridge’s Designing Interactions a few days ago, and it gave clarity to my collection of vague and scattered concerns. I didn’t care for the book nearly enough to read the entire thing, but it’s always great to listen to Will Wright. Here’s the quote:

Frequently, the really important thing for the designer to concentrate on is not the success side of these interactions, but the failure side. If you can make failure a big part of the entertainment value of the game, people get a blast out of it. If you look at kids playing with blocks; they build a tower and it falls over and they laugh, and they build it again and it falls over. At some point, if they build it and they run out of blocks, they’ll knock it over on purpose. This is designing the playability of the game.

Failure should be an enjoyable, bittersweet experience. Would anyone play Dominos if they couldn’t topple their creation? Over the past two decades of gaming, I’ve come across a number of situations where games actually made failure into a fun part of the experience:

• Fade to Black: In this 1995 sequel to Flashback, you are treated with a short cutscene with each death. The cutscene changes depending on how you die. As with the adventure games of the era, there are lots of ways to die. Although death was a setback, it didn’t feel punitive because I got to watch an interesting scene. Before long, I would seek out and find all the different ways I could die because I wanted to see the different scenes.
• Sim City: Seeing as how this is inspired by Will Wright, it’s only natural to include Sim City. There was a path to a spectacular failure for every area of the city you needed to work to protect. Disasters, fires, crime, traffic accidents - there were plenty of interesting ways to destroy your city.
• Fallout 1 & 2: Every once in awhile, I’d be talking to an NPC in Fallout and they’d do something to piss me off… and I’d shoot them. Since I’m in a city, that kind of action doesn’t go unnoticed. So the nearby people attack… and I shoot them. Then the guards come… and I shoot them. I run out into the streets and more people come… and I shoot them. Thirty minutes later, I’ve wiped out the entire town in a horrible chain reaction. I knew I was going to reload as soon as I shot the first guy, but I kept playing. Failure gave me a scenario that I wasn’t going to get anywhere else, and it was just fun to try the combat against an entire town.
• Populous: You could destroy your own creation with a volcano. Do I need to say anything else?
• Theme Hospital: This game really put my teenage micromanagement skills to the test. Theme Hospital demanded an impossible large number of tasks from the player, and I loved it all. At times, it would just become too much and I’d get overwhelmed… and I’d witness my carefully constructed tower of blocks come crumbling down. Only, there were no blocks in this game. The hospital would collapse in a scene of purely chaotic comedy. One patient would vomit and cause a chain reaction. A patient with an inflated (literally) head would run around aimlessly and his head would pop. Things really fall apart once a patient dies in your hospital. Although I was horrified watching my creation collapse, but it didn’t matter. It delivered a smooth transition from intense, frantic micromanagement to a distance and relaxed comedy. It made me eager to try it again and avoid the whole fiasco.
• Realms of Arkania: Star Trail: This isn’t an example of a good failure. This is an example of bad failure. Early in the game, you can return to a town that you’re supposed to flee. When you arrive, there’s a major fight where you’re outnumbered and severely outclassed. It’s an insanely tough fight, and it looks very lucrative when you see all the stuff the enemies drop. So I kept trying to beat this fight, over and over. It was so much more interesting than the fights I found outside the city, and my actions were admittedly motivated by greed (loot!). Well, when I finally beat it I was treated to an automatic defeat screen. That’s bad. That made me want to scream. They put a fight in the game that you’re not supposed to be able to beat, but they didn’t make it impossible. They knew someone would beat it, so they put an automatic failure condition if you win the fight. Did I mention that’s horrible? This would have been such a better experience if they just forced me out of the town and let me keep my loot and experience!

After reading all of this, you probably just think I’m incredibly destructive. While these scenarios all involve destruction, that’s not the element they have in common that I find appealing. They expand the game and provide an experience that I could only find by dying, and none of those experiences were punitive as a result.

So, how do we apply this to MMOs? All of the examples I gave are from single player games. Most of them relied on the ability to fall back to an older save. It’s an interesting question, and I don’t have a clear answer yet. I have some ideas, and I’m hoping to explore those and discuss them with my fellow designers on our next project.

–Taelorn

Welcome to my new site. I haven’t learned how to swim yet, so this beast is still struggling to breathe.

Since I don’t really have anything to say yet, I figure I’ll just link all the devlogs I’ve written on Pirates of the Burning Sea.

• Don’t Haze the New Guy: There’s absolutely no design-related content in this log, but it tells the harrowing tale of my first day at Flying Lab Software.
• Broken Silence: I may have written this, but I still have no idea what it’s about.
• Data-Driven Design & Architecture: This is probably basic stuff for anyone who’s interesting in game design, but it was a cool experience for me since it was my first big project.
• It’s All About the Ships (Part One, Part Two): A big devlog about ships in Pirates.
• Waging War: This is a devlog about the beta Battle Royale 2, a 24 player versus 24 developer battle. I played the role of admiral for the developers.

–Taelorn