Levels, friends, and lobbies

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Levels, friends, and lobbies

9 March 2006

A month ago, Raph Koster's blog discussed how levels make it difficult for friends to play together. That got me thinking, and when combined with ideas from The parlour, the lobby, and the sandbox, I came up with some interesting thoughts.

The problem

Levels are a useful gameplay device. They provide the following "features":

Pace users' consumption of content - A player with a level-N character can only play in parts of the world with similarly-levelled content, such as between level N-5 and N+5, about 10% of the world's content. Higher levels are too difficult, while lower levels don't provide enough reward. Designers easily control how quickly characters advance levels based on how much experience they award.
Provide a mechanism for introducing new gameplay - As player characters advance levels, they acquire new "skills", which are essentially new abilities (aka: toys) for the player to experiment with, learn, and use. The new skills gradually alter the way the game is played and keep the game fun.
Rewards - Gaining a new level is a reward.
Others - Some other less-important effects occur, such as the ability for players to easily compare each others' characters.

Unfortunately, levels have some major downsides with respect to friends:

Friends find it difficult to play together - Since a given character can only participate in about 10% of the world's content at a time, if a group of friends don't have characters that are similar level, then the friends can't play together. Even if a group of friends starts playing the game at the same time, a few will play more/less often, quickly preventing the friends from playing together.
Meeting other players is difficult - If only 10% of the player characters in the world are approximately the same level as a player's character's level, then a player with the "looking for group (LFG)" flag set can, at best, only be matched up with 10% of the other players. Since most players are already grouped or intentionally playing alone, only about 10% of the player population has the LFG flag set. Multiplying the percentages together reveals that if a player sets their LFG flag in a world with a population of 500 players, then only 1% of the 500 players (5 players) will be interested in joining up. Since a typical group is five players, the smallest world population which ensures that a group can be formed is 500 simultaneous players. Such a large minimum is problematical for smaller (niche) virtual worlds.

The odds are even worse, since (from my experience) I don't really want to play with most of the players I meet in virtual worlds. The bulk are either too immature, not terribly friendly, or not very interesting people. (They undoubtedly would say the same about me.) The fact is, not everyone gets along. In an ideal LFG, I'd have the option of specifying an age range or other filter conditions, eliminating 80% of the players because I probably wouldn't get along with them. If I were to only find 20% of the other players compatible, which is about right given my experience, then the world would need 2500 simultaneous players to "guarantee" a group!

Of course, some work-arounds to the level/friends conflict have been invented:

Players have multiple characters - If a player advances levels more quickly than his friends, he can maintain an "alt" at his friends' characters' level.
Infrequent player rewards - Players that don't play as often are given more experience points. This helps infrequent players keep up with their friends.
Sidekicks - City of Heroes has a sidekick feature that automatically raises the level of a lower-level character. Everquest II's sidekick feature lowers the level of a high-level character.
Self-adjusting quests - Quests automatically adjust their difficulty to suit the levels of the characters involved.
Real money transfers (RMT) - Players can buy equipment and characters so they can play with their friends.
Worlds with large populations - The larger the population, the easier it is to find a group.

All of these work arounds help, but they don't entirely solve the problem.

Levels have additional problems, namely that players feel railroaded into one advancement path, and don't feel like they can individualise their characters. To solve the railroading problem, some virtual worlds use skills.

Skills make the "friend" problem worse!

To allow players to better customise their characters, many virtual worlds let players advance individual skills rather than levels. If all of the skills are from the same combat oriented skill-family (swordsmanship, archery, dodge, etc.), then the sum of a character's skill levels is a good measure of how "combat worthy" the character is. This combat worthiness can be used to determine what content the character can handle, and what player characters it can group with. Basically, "combat worthiness" is another name for "level". The only difference between individual combat skills and levels is that the individual skills allow some customization, giving players more freedom.

However, the logical next step with a skill system is to introduce skills like "basket weaving". This presents a problem!

Imagine that the game has two skills (or skill families), "combat worthiness" and "basket weaving".

A character with combat worthiness of 20 can play in dungeons and quests targeted at combat worthiness levels 15 to 25. This behaves just like levels, where a player can partake in 10% of the content at any point in time.
Likewise, a character with basket weaving skill 30 can partake in dungeons and quests targeted at basket weaving levels 25 to 35. Again, it's just like levels.
What happens if a quest is targeted at players with combat worthiness of 20 AND basket weaving of 30? What percentage of players will be able to participate? 10% times 10% = 1%!

Consequently, if a world has two orthogonal skills (or skill families) as opposed to a single orthogonal skill (or skill family) then:

The world will need 10 times as much content.
The world will need 10 times as many simultaneous players to ensure that people "looking for group" will meet.
Friends will have absolutely no chance of ever playing together.

As with levels, some work arounds exist:

A world can provide a large number of skills as long as they're all in the same (combat specific) skill family; swordsmanship, archery, shield defence, magic missile, etc. One disadvantage of skills still exists: Inexperienced players will be able to chose poor combinations of skills that result in ineffective characters.
The world can ensure that orthogonal skills are all kept at roughly the same level - For example, if combat worthiness and basket weaving levels are loosely tied together so they're always approximately the same, then the problem goes away... but then again, if the two skill levels are tied, the game has just returned to a level-based system.
The world can ignore content for all but one of the skills - Many virtual worlds have combat and basket weaving. They provide oodles of dungeons and quests specific to combat. They provide virtually no content for basket weavers, except trading.
Quests and content can be specific to one skill - Some quests are about killing things, some are about weaving baskets, but quests never involve both killing and weaving baskets. A game that takes this route might as well be divided into two separate games, one for combat and the other for basket weaving.

No skills or levels

A third alternative is to not have skills and levels (or to have very weak ones), making all characters equal. This trivial solution always lets friends play together, but it destroys some of the fundamental tenants of CRPGs, levels (as above) and classes. Classes are important because they allow players to tackle problems using character-skills that suit the players, customising the gameplay experience to the player.

One way to handle not having skills or levels is described in Storylines III.

My intuition tells me that if there are no levels/skills for players to improve (goals), and there are no classes (customization), and there are no storylines (goals), then the world won't be very fun for most players. This might be part of the reason why Uru Live failed.

Lobbies and friends

If a game designer wants to ensure that friends can play together, and/or that players can meet and play with strangers, another solution exists, the lobby.

Basically, a virtual world designed around a lobby has the following features:

There is a main world which acts as a lobby. Players can't do much in the lobby besides meet up with other players. Players have characters in the lobby, but the characters are basically holograms without substance.
The lobby includes a "dating" services that helps players meet. It maintains a record of what content (instances) the player hasn't yet experienced so that players won't be grouped unless they have content that they might wish to experience together. The lobby might also link up players based on age, how much time they have to play in the session, or other search criteria.
An instance is a private world that only a group of friendly players can enter. It is created when a group of players meets in the lobby and decides to enter the instance. The instance is destroyed when the players leave.
Instances are short enough (1-3 hours) to be completed in one session. An instance could potentially be saved mid-way, but this would require that the same group of players get together at the same time on another night, something that is logistically difficult, even among friends. It is even more difficult for casual players who only play five hours a week.
In games like GuildWars and Dungeons and Dragons Online, players bring persistent characters into the instances, which doesn't solve the "playing with friends" problem. In the lobby that I'm describing, players are given instance-appropriate characters when they enter the instance. Thus, if they enter a standard dungeon, players are given fighters, magic users, clerics, and thieves. If they enter a murder mystery, they're given detective characters. These player characters' backgrounds might even be specifically designed to fit in with the instance's story.
Some instances are sequels to previous instances, just as television series are discrete episodes, yet form a longer narrative. Players can skip around "episodes" of an instance series in order to play with friends.

First, I'll list some of the downsides of a lobby world:

Instances have no impact on the lobby - What happens in an instance has no effect on the lobby, minimising how immersive the lobby and instances can be.
Players won't be given time to become emotionally attached to a character - One reason CRPGs are successful is that players bond with their characters. Since players are provided a new character every time they enter an instance, they won't have enough time to bond. They won't connect with their lobby character either, perceiving it as more of a representation of themselves than a separate entity.
Players won't have time to master controlling their characters - In a standard MMORPG, players spend hundreds of hours learning how to effectively control their character, learning when to cast fireball, use their sword, or to heal. Since players will be handed a new character every time they enter an instance, they will need to master a different skill-set for every instance. Some players will enjoy the challenge; many will dislike it.
Players won't be able to make long-term decisions - In a CRPG or MMORPG, players make choices that have long-term consequences, such as which faction to join. Since an instance will last only 1-3 hours, the longest-term consequence is only three hours.
Friends might have already played the instance - This can't be helped. For variety, someone replaying an instance could use a different character, experiencing the instance from a different skill-set and point of view.
Player-vs.-player can exist, but only in a controlled manner - Players might choose to enter an arena and fight it out, but conflict only exists on a consensual basis, turning it into a sport. Furthermore, because players don't actually have a character to build up, the winners of any PvP will be players with the most skill, not players who have spent the most time levelling up.
Instances can't be saved - If a group gets half way through an instance and wishes to save the game so they can play it another day, they can't. While saving is technically possible, in practice, it isn't worthwhile. Since instances will be targeted at casual players (see below), the likelihood of the same group finding time when they can all get together and finish off the instance is pretty small. It is far easier for the game designer to produce instances that are short enough that they can be completed in one session.
Some popular MMORPG sub-games won't work in a lobby - Crafting and trading, for example.

However, lobbies have many benefits:

Story - Because instances are wholly contained, they can incorporate more "story" elements, even going so far as giving each of the player characters a history and role within the story. Creating a (short) story that spans 1-3 hours of play is much easier than creating a story (aka: epic) that lasts 100 hours. A good story is very important for a lobby-game's success since it must make up for some of the player motivation lost by the player's inability to play the same character throughout the entire game.
Variety - More variety can exist between instances. Some instances can be about killing monsters in dungeons, others about romantic relationships, while some might even be murder mysteries. Variety isn't possible in worlds where player characters are persistent and inevitably become combat specialists.
Experiment with different roles - Since players aren't stuck with one character, they can experiment with different roles.
Great for casual players - Lobby-based worlds allow players to quickly meet up with other players, and have fun right away. They don't penalise players that can't play 20 hours a week like MMORPGs do, particularly sandbox games.
Game balance - One problem with designing a quest or dungeon for a typical MMORPG is that the author can't accurately control how powerful the player characters will be, or what skills they will have. This makes it impossible to balance gameplay to make the experience challenging but not frustrating. An instance that limits the number of player characters, as well as providing specific player characters or classes, can be more easily balanced.
Adventure games - Adventure game designers try to minimise the number of objects they give players because they know that once players get hold of a hammer (or any type of object), players will try to use the hammer on every other object in the world. The more objects in a world, the more interactions that exist, exponentially so. In an instanced world, players won't be able to carry objects from one instance to another, making the adventure-game developer's life immensely easier.
Fewer issues with griefing - Verbal griefing in the main lobby will still exist. However, if there's any griefing in an instance, abused players will simply leave and play with someone else. This anti-griefing aspect is particularly advantageous to amateur worlds since the worlds won't have 24-hour in-game support to deal with griefing.
1-3 hour instances are good for small developers - One concern I have about intertwined storylines is that a world needs to be created from 20 (or so) storylines, each with around 20 hours of content. That's 400 hours of content! Since the storylines are intertwined, a large chunk of that 400 hours must be written in one go, before players are allowed into the world. This is a lot of work. However, with instances of 1-3 hours, an indie developer can begin with a lobby and a few 1-3 hour instances, adding a new instance every 3 to 4 weeks.
Symmetric multiprocessing (multicore) - In a typical MMORPG, each player consumes 1% of a single-core CPU. A world with 1000 simultaneous players requires 1000% of a single-core CPU, or 10 CPUs. This means that the developer must code their server to use at least 10 threads, a tricky task for inexperienced programmers, and a source of bugs that are difficult to find, reproduce, and fix. In a lobby-and-instance world, each instance can be in its own thread or process, so the instances are easily divided amongst several processors/cores. Only the lobby is a potential bottleneck, which is easily remedied by getting players into groups and into an instance as quickly as possible. Simple, single-threaded coding makes lobby worlds ideal for amateurs.