[Jonboy]

Short version
In World of Warcraft (WoW), the player's ability to get high quality gear determines what they can do rather than the skill of the player. In Jumpgate Classic, the skill of the player was the over-riding factor, and the gear you had was less important. It is my opinion that when people say they don't want WoW in Space, that they want skill to remain the most important factor.


Long version
This discussion is gonna include some basic stuff, so if you know it, please be patient. If you didn't know it, there isn't a test, it's only relevant if you want to understand what I mean.

What do I mean by skill?
In this discussion, I mean solely the ability of the player to play the game. Many games also have 'skill-points,' that are irrelevent to this discussion. Skill-points usually mean you need to do something in-game to use a 'skill' e.g. you might need to train to a minimum of 1 point in 'swords' to wield a sword. It might also mean that there would be a dice-roll that would be modified by your skill-points when you are using that skill, e.g. your sword might hit, or not depending on a roll against your 'skill'. However, in all games the player's skill at the game also is relevent. In poker, it might be knowing when to check and when to fold. In WoW, it usually means knowing which of your character's spells or special-moves to use in a particular situation. In Jumpgate Classic, it means the player's ability to aim their guns well and their ability to move the right way at the right time (e.g. evasion and speed-docking).

What do I mean when I say 'WoW is a gear-based game'?
The combat in WoW is based on random 'dice-rolls'. Let's say you are trying to hit something with your sword. After a simple range-check, you can attempt to hit it. There is a random number generator in WoW (dice-roll), if it generates a high-enough number, you hit, otherwise, you miss. Then, there are also damage-modifiers, like the target might dodge the attack, or you might do an extra damaging hit - again this is decided by a random factor. So, why do I not say that the game is random-number-based? You can decrease the chance to miss by getting better gear. You can decrease the chance of a dodge, and you can increase the damage done. All of this is done by getting better gear. You would have to obtain a dress with a specific bonus to increase your chance to hit. You can also increase other statistics, like your health. Thus, your character is better or worse depending on the gear it has.

There is a leveling tread-mill, i.e. levels 1-70. However, for the most part, levels 1-69 are rushed through to get to level 70. The game is designed so you get the best gear at level 70. You get the best spells at 70. In fact it is commonly stated that the game BEGINS at 70, as you spend most of your time doing things at level 70.

How do you get gear in WoW?
Usually it's by persistence. The developers want you to sit in-front of the computer and play. But there are several routes. For example, you can do an instanced dungeon, kill a boss, and loot its corpse to find that it has dropped something you wanted. If it doesn't drop what you wanted, you have to do the instance all over again, until it does. Another example, you can buy equipment from in-game vendors, but they have to like you enough first (gaining reputation). To get them to like you, you have to do something for them, usually over and over again, like run an instanced dungeon, or do instanced PvP. You don't even have to WIN the PvP, you just have to do it (although you do go faster if you win).

It doesn't matter that you are doing an instanced event here, in fact it's appropriate to the game-style. The fact that 5 million other people have done the same quest before you is irrelevent. All you want is the gear. You are also able to get the gear in a controlled environment. The devs control the maximum number of people in the instance, and you can do it without interference from enemy players. But it's not really very consistent with a persistent universe, as it doesn't change the universe at all.

What is end-game play?
As I mentioned above, the game doesn't start until 70. So end-game play is just stuff you do at level 70. It doesn't mean you've 'finished.' It does mean that you can no longer improve your characters statistics through increasing your level, so you can ONLY improve through improving your gear. At this point, you choose how you want to improve your gear, e.g. you choose more health or you choose to do more damage. So you go onto the internet and find what suits you and you spend your time working towards getting it.

Some gear can only be obtained in large-dungeons that require you to be in a coordinated group (raid) of 5, 10 or 25 people - there used to be 40-man instances. You win here by being able to organise the people to show up, on time, and go with you. All of the people in the raid need to be sober enough to see, have good enough equipment, and be sensible enough not to shoot the bad-guy before everyone is ready. It's kind of artificial, but it is fun, in a social way, and learning how to beat the boss is also interesting. However, it is a source of drama. The monsters only drop a small set of gear, and who gets it can be a source of very heated arguments. This arrangement also acts as a brake on what gear you can get. If you don't have 24 friends, or they don't have the right equipment, you're not going to be able to get what you want. Thus, you can be left with nothing to do until the other 24 guys show up.

As I said, you can get gear from PvP.... only you have to PvP a lot. It's essentially a repetitive grinding time-sink. In fact, it's not even really PvP in a lot of cases. It might be a race to kill a certain boss, over and over again. Because of its repetitive nature, and because you don't have to win to get reputation, people don't actually fight to win, they just skip as much as possible, and only do the stuff that gets reputation. You can get some rush from beating the other guy, but it's never as good as it was in Jumpgate Classic. You're only really doing it because you want reputation enough to buy gear, when you have the gear, you can stop. Some people do it because they enjoy it, but not nearly as many as those just want the gear. It can be a useful way of passing time in-game while waiting for your other 24 friends to get on.

Loot cross-over.
There used to be problems with people doing PvE activities, and getting great gear, and then being amazing in the PvP instances, without ever having to PvP before. Inversely, people thought it wasn't fair, that if they were excellent at PvP and spent a lot of time PvPing, they should be rewarded for doing so, just like the PvE people with their gear. Thus, these PvP rewards came into being, as gear. You were also able to use the PvP rewards in PvE. In some ways these cross-overs aren't all bad. It means you do a variety of things intead of only PvP or PvE. But it isn't easy to balance the easiness of acquiring the same quality of gear. In the end, the developers chose to add a new statistic that was supposed to be for PvP only, and it was added to gear.

Repair and loss-on-death
Your gear is a demonstration of what you've done, and it determines how well you can do other stuff. So you'd be annoyed if you had to go and get it again when you died. So you lose no gear when you die. It can get broken, but you just go and pay for it to be fixed. Equipment breakage is a mechanism to make you give up on something after a while, instead of beating yourself to death. Your only loss is time and money. Yet people STILL whine about it.

Better choice vs better gear in Jumpgate Classic
It's not true to say the gear did not matter in Jumpgate. It mattered a lot. There were big differences between the fighters, and there were big differences between a fighter with optimal gear and sub-par gear. However, there was also a big limit on how far gear would take you, and the gear didn't change when you hit optimus. A skilled pilot in a regular ship would still beat a bad pilot in an artied ship.

The LF/MF/F rebalance was one of the best things to happen to this game. Besides giving vets some new toys, it completely changed what you expected when you went out to fight. It allowed you to choose a fighting style and really practice with it. It was end-game content, even tho you were using lower-level equipment, as you had to choose, rather than suffer a particular ship type.

IMO, this model of PvP is a real selling point for the game. It is so different from the gear-based model of WoW. Instead of playing to get gear, you play to get better and have fun.

Pros/Cons of gear-based games for the developer.
I can see why the gear-based design is popular. Playing for better gear keeps people online. You can add more content to it fairly easily, and just have the bosses drop different loot. They've also managed to encourage newbies by adjusting low-level content - it gets harder and harder to get improvements as you get further into end-game, so low level people can catch up more easily. They keep adjusting the difficulty of the tread-mill, too. If people start to run out of end-game stuff to do, you just move the goal-posts - release an expansion for $50 with another 10 levels and a whole bunch of new content. The problem is that it's all very repetitive. After you've killed fifty elves at level 15, killing a hundred and fifty more at lvl 70 is no different, except for the color of their pants. Really, the only thing that changes is the outfits and the different abilities of the big bosses. Adding an expansion is however a way to reset the game, and new players are on the same footing as old players.

The hard part is getting them on the tread-mill in the first place. There are a bajillion other games with this model now. Worried about WoW in space? It's already being made - http://www.perpetual.com/star_trek_online/ and it will have a willing Star Trek fanbase and be in direct competition with Jumpgate. Read the last line and compare with what I've written here.

WoW is successful, partly because they made the grinds fairly easy and fun, and partly because it already had a massive fan-base. Now it's sort of self-perpetuating, tho a lot of people are wanting to look for pastures new. A lot of people only play because there's nothing else to play. It's all the same, but with less people to play with, and they don't want to invest in yet another grind.

Keeping players from gear
I've commented here before that content in WoW is essentially a means of keeping players from getting the gear that they want. The reputation grinds and the luck-based drops mean that players don't immediately get the gear they want. This keeps people playing until they do, but it is essentially all that you. Seeing as everyone else is trying to get their stuff, if you're not in the same instanced dungeon you then have to find something else to do. Eventually you can run out of things you CAN do except in raids, and you've effectively finished WoW. You can in fact, finish ALL the raids, tho very few do. Then you are bored.

Disadvantages of skill-based play.
Skill-based play does have problems - that you should be familiar with. New content wasn't really ever a feature in Jumpgate Classic. End-game content has to have a different driving force. You need a different reason to do missions other than cash and new gear. I never liked that skill in Jumpgate was often related to whether you could afford a good joystick. I do worry that it may be impossible for a new player to EVER be as good as Liet is.

Gerry Springer Style Summary
Overall, I'd like to see ND maintain its reputation for making MMOs that don't fit the mould. There are difficulties in making a skill-based game that will keep people playing. People like missions - even if they're instanced. People like content. I know that instancing breaks immersion and it keeps people from interacting with the universe. But mainly people just like the entertainment value of interacting with a small story. There should be inspiration for many Jumpgate Evolution features in WoW, that don't have to ruin Jumpgate. I think ND should sell the game on the skill factor it should be designed around fitting that niche well. Trying to merge a skill-based game with gear, IMO would be a disaster, as gear always trumps skill, and you would end up with a mess.

And... I'm spent.

[Ambrosius]

In World of Warcraft (WoW), the player's ability to get high quality gear determines what they can do rather than the skill of the player. In Jumpgate Classic, the skill of the player was the over-riding factor, and the gear you had was less important. It is my opinion that when people say they don't want WoW in Space, that they want skill to remain the most important factor.

The (rhetorical) question is, can you maintain a subscriber base 10,000 - 20,000 people with a skill-based game?

[Bingofuel]

Originally Posted by Ambrosius

The (rhetorical) question is, can you maintain a subscriber base 10,000 - 20,000 people with a skill-based game?

Probably not. Not without stuff that can be earned,crafted and looted that can augment player skills.

[Ambrosius]

Sad. Not surprising, but sad.

[Scorch]

Very well thought out post here!! Cheers to you, its this kind of passion in posts that will lead to a better game for everyone.

As you said, Jumpgate Classic had items and you leveled and earned money to achieve those items. There is a bigger level spread between reasonably even matched ships in Jumpgate Classic than in PvP in WoW for example. WoW however also forces this by artificially changing dice rolls based on level, ie it is harder to hit/damage someone simply because of level regardless of equipment, better equipment simply reinforces the level difference even more. Obviously Jumpgate will not have any sort of artificial hit or damage modifier based on level, only two factors come into play in combat the ship/equipment and the player skill so in that way I already feel we are not "WoW in space, or EQ in space(which used to be the popular thing to say before WoW came along)."

So some random personal thoughts along what you are asking here:
-so what level difference is "OK" for equipment to matter? Lets just take gun damage vs shield damage and recharge rate to keep the conversation simple. Obviously a starter gun vs the best shield in the game will never be able to do enough damage to get through the shields before they recharge (though several players with several of these guns could get through), at least this is what I would expect. The question for you guys is in your opinion what level range should this particular effect (of guns doing less damage than shield recharge) happen. 5 levels, 15, 25? The more levels you spread it out, the less the new equipment matters because it has to be barely better to keep the spread in line which lowers the perceived value of attaining the new equipment. I personally like something that at low levels the damage would increase rapidly but then begin a very gradual drop off around mid-level where working towards the items available at the last few levels being very minor in their difference so that level matters less and less the higher the level.

-I also think that had their been more ships in Jumpgate Classic your opinion might be adjusted here. If there was a "better" light fighter at 50, a "better" medium fighter at 50 and they both had cool roles then it would not be about light fighters being worse than medium but instead one light fighter being better than the other which I personally think is OK, actually I think its really cool and reinforces advancement while still allowing players to choose the play style suited to them. The nimble fighter vs the armored weapons array, both sound cool to me. I feel one of the issues of Jumpgate Classic is that if you like light fighters there is no "better" ships as you progress so once you get the ship you want higher levels does not often open anything new for your play style.

-I have heard others mention they would like to see credits be the only limiter, but this to me is simply a shooter in space at that point. I am not positive but I actually think we were called Quake in space more than anything else, and just using credits with no level or advancement would be pretty much that IMHO.

-Which gets me to my next point, why does someone pay a subscription as opposed to just buying a box? What is expected for the additional monies when you compare something like Guild Wars to WoW? My personal opinion is you pay for persistent advancement in a persistent universe. IE I log into a world, I know it is effected by other players and I pick up where I left off. If there was just money or equipment than someone else could give me than what is different than just playing a shooter walking over the rocket launcher and shooting the other guys. While this can be extremely fun, it is not advancement, and that is what I personally want in an MMO. The sense that I am accomplishing something that I can compare, show off, and use with lots of other players is what gives my time value.

BTW, this is purely my opinion, not the opinion of the entire Jumpgate Evolution team or even indicative of its direction. But I think a post like this deserves a response, so there it is.

[Tritian]

Good posts all around.

Scorch, on the subject of leveling, have you taken a look into PlanetSide's certificate system rather then going with an XP-based system? With a system such as this, the player chooses what upgrades he gets as he levels up, rather then the game choosing for him.

So as an example, if you hit level 3, 6, and 9 in Jumpgate Classic, you get access to the Shuttles and Light Fighter. But if you had a certificate system like PlanetSide, you could choose to get any of the ships you have certificates enough for at any time. So if you forgo the shuttles/light fighter, you can choose to put those certificate points into something more useful to you, such as a Medium Fighter or a Miner or something.

I created a thread about this awhile ago located here: PlanetSide-esque Leveling

IMO, this is the way to go since it allows the player the flexibility to decide their own path, while still progressing in a skill-tree structure.

[Jonboy]

Originally Posted by Bingofuel

Probably not. Not without stuff that can be earned,crafted and looted that can augment player skills.

Yes and no. In some ways, this is what the Jumpgate Classic economic game was built on... building weapons and modx, etc was fun for MACK, and ACME and others.

I definately want a player economy and I'm guessing ND want instanced missions.

It's what you get out of the economy and missions that mess with the balance between skill and gear. If the set of gear (equipment in jumpgate) increases variety without slipping into 'higher gear = more power' type thinking, then we don't break the skill-based game.

We would need new ways of getting gear into the game without breaking the skill-based model while still keeping players entertained. Instanced loot drops are both entertaining and rewarding - but would totally screw the skill-based model, unless you assume everyone is going to succeed at the mission.

I personally don't think instanced missions to get ship licences would be bad for Jumpgate. I think missions could give temporary buffs. I would get into missions that told a fun and involving story.

[Injustice]

Originally Posted by Tritian

Good posts all around.

Scorch, on the subject of leveling, have you taken a look into PlanetSide's certificate system rather then going with an XP-based system? With a system such as this, the player chooses what upgrades he gets as he levels up, rather then the game choosing for him.

So as an example, if you hit level 3, 6, and 9 in Jumpgate Classic, you get access to the Shuttles and Light Fighter. But if you had a certificate system like PlanetSide, you could choose to get any of the ships you have certificates enough for at any time. So if you forgo the shuttles/light fighter, you can choose to put those certificate points into something more useful to you, such as a Medium Fighter or a Miner or something.

I created a thread about this awhile ago located here: PlanetSide-esque Leveling

IMO, this is the way to go since it allows the player the flexibility to decide their own path, while still progressing in a skill-tree structure.

It would definitely give the game a more "MMO-like" feel.

[Elmdor]

Originally Posted by Bingofuel

Probably not. Not without stuff that can be earned,crafted and looted that can augment player skills.

Planetside. It had 50,000 subscribers even. The only thing that could be collected in that game was EXP.

[Scorch]

Yes, I agree the idea of player licences to qualify for various ships is a great idea. However, I personally still like level. Its an easy generic way to quickly size up the equipment, etc of another pilot or AI in the game. I think you can have both systems happily side by side, its not either or to me.