Asheron's Call 2 critique

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19 August 2003

by Mike Rozak

A few months ago I purchased my first MMORPG, Asheron's Call 2. Sadly, I was underwhelmed. It didn't deliver the experience I was expecting. I tried Anarchy Online, but it was even less interesting. After reading many other MMORPG reviews, I have concluded that none (yet) deliver on MMORPG's true potential.

Rather than sulk, I decided to write this document to critique the flaws in AC2, as a representative of MMORPGs in general. This critique gets a bit negative. I'm not trying to rip into AC2, but point out areas for improvement. AC2 does lots of things right, but I won't bother to mention them here since this isn't a magazine review trying to provide an unbiased feel for AC2. It's more of a post-mortem, a technical term by software companies when they review what went right and what went wrong in a project.

I am E-mailing this document to a handful of MMORPG companies, although I suspect most will ignore it.

I'm not in the target market

I wish to point out at the beginning that I don't really fit the target market for AC2:

• I am not a teenager and haven't been for some time. (If I had AC2 when I was a teenager I'd be completely enthralled by it.)
• Of the last ten or so games I purchased, the ones I liked best were Myst III and Morrowind. Neverwinter Nights was a better experience than Morrowind, but I liked Morrowind better because of what it was trying to achieve.
• I have been programming computers and designing user interfaces for many years. I look at games on two levels, one being how fun they are for me, and the other how well they're designed and programmed. Most people only care about the fun side.
• I live in Australia and use a satellite dish for Internet connections. As a result my latencies are high (1200 ms for AC2) and I always seem to log on at times that most North Americans are asleep.

Now that I've clarified my point-of-view, let me proceed with AC2's analysis:

Boiling it all down

When I approach a problem I like to look at in different ways so I can get a better grip on the entire problem. One technique for looking at a problem is to boil it down to its essence. It's the "What are we trying to accomplish here?" question. For a MMORPG, my answer is this:

MMORPGs are a themed virtual playground for adults (and teenagers). Instead of swings, merry-go-rounds, and slides, the adults are given combat, economics, empire building, etc. A playground is also an environment that encourages socialisation; so too with a MMORPG.

I'll touch on this more later, but if you think about MMORPG as a playground you'll see that many of their features are actually contrary to a MMORPG's goal.

User interface

I have been designing user interfaces for years, so I think I'm good at it. Some people would disagree. My user interfaces tend to create opinions; people either really like them or really hate them.

The first problem with AC2 user interface is clutter; it has many different floating windows (map, character stats, inventory, radar, help, etc.) that not only obscure the scene, but are drawn with cool-looking half-transparent backgrounds that make reading the small 9-point type difficult to read. I have two suggestions:

1. If there's a second monitor, put all the clutter on the second monitor and use the primary monitor for just the 3D image. Most people don't have a second monitor, so this idea really doesn't work.
2. Display the 3D image in 16:9 widescreen at the top of the 4:3 screen. Put all the clutter on the bottom of the screen in a divided window. Perhaps even allow users to control how large the divided area is.

AC2 should use text-to-speech... Sure, text-to-speech sounds awful. It's a lot better than trying to simultaneously read 9-point type and fight a monster though. (I am a bit biased since I used to work in the speech technology group at Microsoft.)

Remove the radar window. I discovered that I used the radar window a lot. This is actually a problem since it shifted the focus of the game from being a first person experience to a submarine battle, and ultimately took some of the fun out of the game. The purpose of the radar window is so that the small field-of-view from the 3D view doesn't become a frustrating hindrance to game play. One alternative to the radar might be to display two 3D views, one with a 60 degree field of view that occupies most of the screen. The other would have a 180 degree field of view that would allow for peripheral vision without the detail; the 180 degree FOV image could be immediately below the 60 degree FOV image, and one third the height.

The maps could have been better. AC2 only provides a global map (with no detail) and a zoomed in map with more detail, but not enough. Multiple zooms and more detail would greatly improved things. Plus, not having all the points of interest clearly marked would made exploration more fun.

The in-game help was poor. The web-site help is much better, but because AC2 can't handle an Alt-Tab to a web browser I can't both play AC2 and use the internet help. Besides, the in-game help should be a mirror of the HTML version.

Socialisation

Given that MMORPGs are online and have thousands of players, one would assume that they would encourage these thousands of players to interact and entertain one another. This is what merry-go-rounds do, since the more people on a merry-go-round the more fun it is.

AC2 doesn't seem to go far enough to encourage socialisation, for a few reasons:

• Not enough player density - Whenever I played there were usually 350 people per instance of the world. In AC2 the world is fairly large. This meant that I seldom ran into anyone, and it was even rarer that I'd find someone trying to complete the same quests as I was. Part of this is because when I'd log on the rest of the real world would be sleeping, but even when I made an effort to log on a North American weekend night I'd find only 500 or so people per world. Conversely, if there were 5000 people in a world I'd be complaining it was too dense.

• No player E-mail - E-mail is very common in MUDs, so I'd expect to find it in AC2. (It may exist, but I never found it.) E-mail is an excellent way for friendly players to communicate with one another if their paths don't cross.

• No sense of community - I think AC2 has user bulletin boards, but the requirement for users to jump out of game to get into the community is silly. The bulletin boards should somehow be built into the game world. When I ran a RPG BBS in 1986 I allowed users to write graffiti on the walls, which provided similar functionality to a bulletin board. Maybe an Asheron's Call Gazette could be purchased in cities.

• Meeting place required - One feature that might helped is an electronic dating service, although not for dating. Users could indicate what quests they were working on and what time they were usually online; some sort of automatic matching could link up players on the same quests and logging on at the same time. Of course, this system could be extended further to the player's style of play, real-world interests, etc.

• Guilds - AC2 had guilds and patrons but I never joined because I tend to dislike authority figures or belonging to official groups. Since most MMORPGs are populated by teenagers I had images of 200 battle-crazed teenagers running around screaming "Kill the piggy!" - a flashback to a novel about a class of shipwrecked kids I read in high school. Maybe joining a guild would have made the game better for me.

• Chat - My personal preference would be for voice chat, not text chat. This may not be technically feasible due to the large data loads though.

Customising avatars

People like to have characters that look different from the other players. AC2 does not facilitate this:

• Constantly changing armour - Characters all wear armour because it saves their lives. The armour, of course, obscures the character's body. Because characters are always picking up new bits of armour, which inevitably look different from the last bits, the character's appearance is always changing. Users can use armour-dying skill to choose a colour, but it seems to be more work than it's worth. I'd suggest that the armour automatically be dyed when the character puts it on, saving the player the trivialities. Furthermore, AC2 could follow Hollywood's lead and make helmets optional since they end up obscuring the move star's face and hair style.

• Extra bits of clothing - It would be good if characters could wear a cape outside their armour, or a plume on top their helmet, anything to make them more unique. Maybe even a flag strapped to their back.

• Coats of arms - Even better would be a way players could upload bitmaps of their own coat-of-arms (or choose one from a list of thousands) and have the coat-of-arms displayed on their armour.

• More races - AC2 seems to think of character races (Human, Lugian, and Tumerock) as a way to provide characters with unique abilities. I think a better use would be to make characters look different; It doesn't really matter if the races have unique abilities. I recommend at least half a dozen races that are distinctive even when wearing armour. One MMORPG is going to support centaurs; while this causes problems when characters have to climb ladders, it's a race that looks a lot different than the humanoids, and as a result, stands out. I understand why AC2 doesn't support many races though, every race means lots more modelling.

• Customizable face bitmaps - I'm not sure how worthwhile this is because faces are not only small, but they're usually covered by helmets.

The world

AC2's world is huge; I suspect many MMORPG designers assume that bigger worlds are better. I thought this too, until I played AC2:

• Too big means too empty - Not only does a larger world mean that player densities are lower, but world designers must spread their creativity over a much larger area. The result is endless plains of nothing. Morrowind's designers did a much better job of producing a world; it's smaller, but the scenery changes as you travel through it, and hidden (aka: not on the map) amongst the scenery are various quests. Morrowind's world encourages exploration while AC2's world treats the wilderness as an endless source of monsters to kill.

• Lack of scenery - While I didn't expect AC2's scenery to be like Riven or Myst III, I expected more than I got. The topography was very mild (no really tall mountains), the texture maps monotonous (green grass as far as the eye could see), and the forests sparse or non-existent. I'd at least like a few hidden valleys with scenic waterfalls.

• Contiguous - One cool feature of AC2 is that you can walk from one end of the world to the other. This is only cool in theory though. In reality no one undertakes this arduous task because they have portals to zap them around. There isn't anything interesting between the portal sites anyway. AC2 could have been designed as a collection of small worlds connected by portals without any loss of playability.

• Boring cities - AC2's cities are just places where large building-looking objects are plopped down. You can't actually walk into the buildings. You can't purchase anything there. Players don't hang out in them, and there aren't any NPCs wandering around them. Furthermore, the architecture is uninspired. Morrowind does a much better job here.

• Lack of villages - AC2 has a few cities, and no villages anywhere.

• Day and night - AC2's sky changes from day to night about every hour. This is a nice touch except that night is only a slightly darker version of the day. You can still see just as far and nothing really changes in the world. (For example: Nocturnal monsters could come out only at night.) Since nothing really changes the night feature is pretty much a non-event. I'm not sure if making it an event would be a good idea either, since if it really did get dark (and dangerous) then many players would sit their characters around for the duration and complain about wasted time. The same issues exist for any weather condition.

Combat

One of the toys that players in AC2 have is combat. AC2's combat, however, is not fun. In previous games where I found combat fun, it has been fun because of three reasons:

• Strategy - Strategy means that to win the combat you need to think. Chess is the most extreme example of strategic combat. But even a RPG like Neverwinter Nights required some strategy on the tougher monsters. Neverwinter Night's strategy included choice of spells and hiding around corners. In AC2 the scenery is so sparse that there's no where to duck and hide, and combat so quick (and limited) that it consists of repeatedly pressing the attack button until either you or the monster is killed. You do have a choice of what spells to use, but the variety didn't seem designed with strategy in mind since using the strongest blast spell always seemed to work best.

• Adrenaline - Adrenaline (for me) only seems to kick in when combat is infrequent, the outcome is uncertain, and my actions significantly affect the likelihood of success. As stated above, my perception of combat in AC2 is that pressing the attack button as fast as possible was the only thing thing that worked, which means I didn't get an adrenaline rush. This is exacerbated by the large body count in the game; I just can't get an adrenaline rush when attacked by my 10,000th land shark.

• Hand-eye coordination - Shooters are fun partly because you need to aim at the enemy to hit it. In AC2 you just clicked on the monster; no hand-eye coordination is necessary. This is probably for the best though, since the Internet's transmission lag would make aiming impossible.

Ultimately, combat in AC2 becomes make-work, something you have to do in order to reach the next level. You try to reach the next level a) because it's there, and b) because you can't explore further without becoming stronger. Given that exploration in AC2 isn't too exciting, the purpose of combat is only to increase your level for the sake of increasing your level.

I have a limited attention span and was bored with this repetitive pattern by level 5. I did stay with AC2 to level 16 in desperate hope that it would eventually get interesting, and because I didn't have anything else to play.

Some other annoying aspects of combat are:

• Items as the main method for character advancement - My character was a bongo-wielding lizard. His combat damage improved as his level went up. It also improved when he found better versions of bongos. My perception was that the damage increase was more due to the bongos than my character's level. I didn't like this because it meant I was constantly in search of slightly better bongos, my weapon being upgraded about every hour of play. I prefer the system were most of the damage increase is due to the character's level and only once in a long while is a better weapon found.

• The treasure distribution system. Why are dumb animals carrying around bongo drums and armour? And why can't I get the sword off an enemy that was attacking me with a sword? My suspension of disbelief only goes so far. I know why AC2 distributes treasure in this manner (because there aren't any stores), but I think better solutions could exist... like providing stores.

• Treasure distribution system - I was similarly annoyed when scenery items in dungeons couldn't be looted or even examined.

Lack of puzzles

While I like the idea of quests in AC2, I was disappointed that the quests were ultimately scavenger hunts for one or more items. The obstacles between your avatar and the item were lots of beasties to kill. That's it.

A few puzzles scattered here and there would have made the quests more interesting. I suspect that AC2 didn't include puzzles because their solutions would be posted on the Internet about 30 seconds after the first person solved the puzzle. Sure, some people would cheat. But most wouldn't. After all, cheats are available for all adventure games. (Confession: I do use cheats, but only when I've been bashing my head against a puzzle for hours.)

Lack of NPCs

Many MMORPGs discard NPCs (non-player characters) because they think that with thousands of real people playing there's not need for NPCs.

This concept extends to shopping: Goods and services are expected to be player-to-player interactions, not purchases from a NPC at a shop.

I don't think the player-run economy model works...

1. When I ran an adventure BBS in 1986 I wrote in a item selling scheme like E-bay. I thought it was cool; I was creating my own microeconomic. Well, prices never seemed to stabilise. This could be because I didn't have enough players. An E-Bay like service might work with 10,000 players, but AC2 doesn't even supply the feature.
2. After playing AC2, I did some reading about Ultimate Online's history. It seems they've had lots of problems with their virtual economy, either with inflation or people hoarding all the money.

My suggestion would be:

• Provide shops - This would allow characters to buy and sell equipment. It would also provide something to do in towns. And more importantly, you wouldn't need to have land sharks wandering around with bongo drums. (I wonder who ties the bongo drums to their backs.)

• NPCs to talk to - Provide NPCs in the cities that players can talk to. They might only be vehicles for doling out the back story, but they would make the cities more interesting. Morrowind does an excellent job with NPCs, using them for back-story, quests (as does AC2), buying items, learning skills, and to fill the cities.

• Faceless locals wandering around - Just have NPCs walking up and down the city streets doing nothing, just to fill up the streets. If lots of players are in the city then reduce the number of faceless locals to keep the polygon count low.

• Fake adventurers - Similarly, the world could have NPC adventurers running around. They would look like player characters, occasionally pick a fight with monsters, and might even support an Elisa-like chat. This uncertainty keeps players guessing about whether an armour-clad human is a NPC or a real person. Reading some of the transcripts of the Elisa conversation might be good for a laugh too.

Item crafting

Many MMORPGs include an item crafting feature. This allows characters to make equipment for their own use or to sell. Item crafting is included because a) it gives players something to do and provides easy-to-create quests, and b) creates an economy that should (theoretically) make the game more fun.

While I agree with this in theory, it didn't work well for me in AC2 because:

• To craft an item (such as an improved bongo drum) you need two or three other items with certain characteristics, like a "Wood rating of 32+" or a "Steel rating of 16+". This is fine, except I spent 10 minutes looking through my inventory to see which items had the requisite characteristics. AC2 could have removed the drudgery by showing me only a list of those items that had the necessary characteristics.

• Selling items in AC2 is a pain. It needs something like E-bay where a player can put an item up for bid and forget about it. At the very least you need to be able to sell to the shops and have them resell to other players.

• What would be really neat is if I could control the appearance of the items that I make by providing my own texture maps and/or models for it. Some players would actually enjoy the modelling challenge. It's a lot of work for the administrators though since they'd need to approve item appearance, and I suspect transferring the models to everyone's PCs would require too much bandwidth.

Miscellaneous

Asheron's Call 2 appeared in Australian computer stores many months after the US release. I assumed this was because they were setting up servers in Australia or SE Asia. They obviously weren't, because my only choice of server was in North America.

My game experience would have been better if they did have more local servers:

• Less latency
• More people playing on Australian (or SE Asian) hours
• Players from different cultures - While not everyone will agree, I think that playing in the same game world with players from different cultures and languages would be more interesting, even if we couldn't speak the same language.

Other directions

As I stated earlier, MMORPG are really virtual playgrounds for adults. AC2 provides the following "toys" for its players: combat, exploration, and item creation. Other toys could be added: (Many of these ideas are half-baked and shouldn't be taken too seriously.)

• The meta-game - There's no reason that characters couldn't walk into a tavern and play a game of cards, chess, or darts with other players. They could bet game-money or items. Other on-line games have this.

• Jousting - You got horse and lance, why not a jousting ladder?

• Dragon battles - Ariel combat.

• Sea battles - Much of the game world is empty sea. If players could purchase ships (for a lot of money) and sail them around there would be opportunity for trade as well as ship-to-ship battles with ramming and boarding.

• Army battles - Just imagine Age of Empires superimposed on a MMORPG. Players that get enough wealth or somehow capture a city could control armies. These armies would march through the world attacking other player's armies. They wouldn't attack individual player characters since that would be a bit unfair, but maybe a group of player characters could amass to defend their city against the invading army of NPCs, at which pointer the NPCs could attack the player characters. Armies would take several hours to walk between cities, so other players would have time to organize resistance. (I tried something similar to this with my adventure BBS but it never worked, probably because everything had to be text in those days.)

• Build your own house/castle - While it would be nice for players to be able to build their own architecture, this causes a lot of chaos as quaint little cottages are built in the middle of the evil overlord's domain.

• Sim-city - This might also be interesting. A player might be elected mayor of a city and would have to manage it over the course of months. The tax base wouldn't be algorithmically generated though; instead it would be a small percentage of the player purchases within the city, or maybe a player vote.

• Camped PCs - When a player logs off their character disappears from the world. What if the character just set up a tent and sat there? It couldn't be attacked, but other players could "talk" to the camped player character. Maybe they'd leave messages that the camped player would get when he/she logged on. Or maybe camped players could build their own conversation tree with answers to questions like, "What's your favourite music group?". The camped PC would generate answers from these.

• Henchmen - Many years ago a program named Robot Wars was sold for the Apple II. Players of the game didn't control the robots directly, but instead programmed their AI and watched the robots battle it out. Similar games still exist. This idea, with modifications, could be applied to MMORPG. A player could somehow acquire NPC "henchmen" and then provide some AI direction for what his henchmen should do. While I wouldn't expect full programming, the AI could be something as complex as "Go to town X and buy commodity Y, and then sell it in town Z"... for people that want to start a trading empire. Or the henchmen could be tasked with defending an area, or attacking a town and bringing back the loot. Or maybe just run around the world singing songs of praise for the player's character. The henchmen would continue to act even when the player logged off. Since many players would use their henchmen for banditry, it would provide a source for goal-oriented bad guys, instead of bad-guys just wandering the countryside waiting to be attacked.