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Escape from Vastin's Castle, Page 1
Cardell "Annuvin" Kerr
You enter the dimly lit room, abuzz with quiet conversation, and find your seat. The presentation is about to begin! You're just in time, too, as Design Director Annuvin serenely takes the stage. An expectant hush falls over the crowd.
Accomplishments and you!
Greetings, Annuvin here. So, it's come to my attention that a lot of people are interested in "where ideas come from" especially in regards to the Accomplishment system for The Lord of the Rings OnlineTM: Shadows of AngmarTM (LOTRO). Well, over the course of this long (and quite verbose) dev diary, I hope to illustrate the following:
When I first rolled over to LOTRO from DDO, I was pretty focused on making sure the games were VERY different. We wanted the LOTRO play cycle to be different (ie: I wanted you to be able to play LOTRO for hours, while DDO's play cycle was typically higher impact, and thus shorter), and I wanted to focus on the protagonist, not the system. If anything, I wanted the system to be informed by the protagonist, since LOTRO is based off of a story, while DDO is based off of a system. However, that's not the entire story. Early on in LOTRO dev (not MEO dev, as I've only been on the project since November of '04), I got into a long argument with another designer about media types (re: Stories, Movies, Games), and what their strengths and weaknesses are. His position... well, it's not important, as I'm the one writing this (I still love him for his brains, though). My position has been bolstered by numerous instances of point 1 (above), and are built around a core of point 2. That position states that books tell stories that can be deeply personal, movies further refine that (or trivialize it/miss the point entirely, depending on your reference), while games... well, games don't present stories as well as either (for the majority of people). Instead, they allow for interaction, something that no movie really does well, and only choose your own adventure books did reasonably well in the past (for a medium that wasn't a video game).
Telling a story in an MMO space would be an uphill battle, one that would be a bloody fight, which would guarantee no victors. Additionally, it would be going against the grain of the medium, which is to get people to interact, not to have them "sit and listen". So, while we would have a cohesive story thread in our game (which is really a whole other dev diary, though complete with plenty of points 1 and 2 above), we really needed to let the player tell their own story. Here's where it gets challenging... What sort of story can we let our players tell? And how will it affect our ESRB rating? We wanted to make sure we have a comprehensive system that would support all play styles at a base level. This eventually got very complicated, so we took a step back and tried to get back to basics. To put it in perspective, I went back to our good friend, Richard Bartle. I still find his works on player types to be the most illuminating, so we set about trying to find Accomplishments for the big four: Socializer, Achiever, Explorer, and Killer.
For those of you that are currently playing the Beta, the Achiever and the Explorer Accomplishments make up the majority. As for the Socializer and the Killer? Well, stay tuned, as we have yet more accomplishment types to introduce...(and yes, monster play and Killer Accomplishments are related) As Annuvin finishes that thought, a ruckus is heard behind the stage curtains...suddenly Content Designer Vastin appears! A brief twitch crosses Annuvin's calm façade, as if he foresees already what is about to transpire. He gives no further indication, however, and returns to his seat.
Special Powers: I can walk on top of snow, like that mincing Legolas.
Prior releases include:
Vastin walks up to the podium, taps the microphone, and begins to speak.
What does all that stuff above have to do with creating the Accomplishments for LOTRO? Not much, save that I've had a lot of experience romping around as a content designer in other people's IPs, and I have what might be considered a capricious sense of humor. I like to foster my own ego with the idea that I personally set the stage for the absolute, soul-crushing dominance of WoW in today's game market when I introduced the concept of 'Heroic Units' way back in the early days of WarCraft II. This concept was leveraged heavily into the core hero units of WCIII, and then of course merged with concepts from Diablo to create the behemoth you see today. Not only have my inspired designs served to bankrupt you of 1000's of hours of your lives, but it looks like you'll have plenty more to look forwards to in LOTRO - whether you like it or not. And so, on to the Accomplishments:
Accomplishments What are Accomplishments? Well, in the broader sense of things, they are quests that just kind of sit in the world background, keeping track of all kinds of things that you do as you go about your virtual lives in Middle-earth. Strangely, the bulk of this activity seems to revolve around fighting and killing things. Who'd have thought? Unlike quests, Accomplishments aren't particularly directed. There isn't some NPC telling you to complete them as quickly as possible, lest the dark forces overwhelm you all - they just kind of happen in the course of your day to day business trudging through dark orc-pits and scaling mountains that in any more realistic setting would result in some very unpleasant frostbite debuff effects - particularly for those ridiculously unshod Hobbit runts. Yeaaah...if I were in charge around here, those twerps would suffer movement penalties the likes of which you have not conceived in your darkest nightmares whenever they so much as stuck a pinky toe into the deadly snowdrifts of the Misty Mountains! Luckily for those of you with vertically challenged avatars, Annuvin is in charge of such decisions and not me. A palpable wave of relief passes through the crowd, though Annuvin remains inscrutable and mysterious, giving nothing away even at the brazen invocation of his name. Vastin continues, a wicked and wistful gleam in his eye... So very lucky...
Accomplishments are the primary source of Title awards in LOTRO. These are quite a bit of fun to come up with, but they are a little odd from the designer's perspective. There are some of you out there who generally couldn't care less about titles, while there are others who seem to value them more highly than a legendary weapon. Depending on whatever character or personality you've built around your avatar (ok, ok, I know, many of you just like to run around and wreak havoc - but some players do actually roleplay now and again...and some titles would be quite appropriate for havoc-wreakers) - anyway, depending on the character concept you have, you may discover that there is that one totally indispensible title you just have to have sitting next to your character's name. This makes titles weird because it means their value is totally subjective. Nevertheless, they are cool and certainly fun to come up with, so for those of you who do value them I'm more than happy to provide. Anyway, it's up to you if you care about titles of not. Good luck collecting them! Oh, on that last note, I should warn you that there are going to be a fair number of hidden accomplishments and titles being constructed, which require players to do mysterious things in order to earn them. Ah, but see, I've already said too much...
The best part about working on Accomplishments is that they let me exercise my writing skills. The technical format for them is pretty simple, which leaves me the freedom to get expressive in the writing for them - sometimes. Of course, by the time one is writing the 50th or so piece of text for a yet another Slayer Accomplishment, it can get pretty challenging to come up with something interesting to say about it! My favorites are the Exploration and Lore Accomplishments. Each of these Accomplishments is relatively unique, and they beg for cool color and historical elements to be woven into them. It is here that my familiarity with Tolkien's core work comes in handy, as I can write historical references and regional color while being reasonably sure I'm not stepping on some critical point in the canon.
Feh. All that really means is that *I* have to go re-write the mechanics or text for half a dozen of my Accomplishments every time one of these chronic meddlers goes to work tweaking your character's skills during Beta.
Death By Numbers
So, I feel rather certain that the single biggest question many of you have for me is this one: "OMG, What are you thinking with the kill/use/whatever numbers on accomplishment 'X'! That's ridiculous! I'd have to grind for 3 weeks straight to complete that!"
Being of a strictly rational and scientific mindset when it comes to numbers and game design, I applied an extremely rigorous and well-tested approach to the calculation of numbers in the various Accomplishments: That is to say, I made them all up. Arbitrarily. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I have been somewhat random about the kinds of numbers I've thrown into those accomplishment counters - but it's all in the name of Science, really! Science!
Y'see, we just don't know how long they'll take to complete until living, breathing players actually complete them. I can look at skill cool-down timers, and combat duration estimates provided by our game systems guys - but at the end of the day, those numbers don't mean all that much in the real world, or the virtual one for that matter. What I am looking at rather closely are how long each of our Beta Program participants are actually taking to complete those Accomplishments in Beta - how many of you complete them, how long it took, etc. Yes, Big Brother is alive and well in the MMOG domain, my friends, and we... are Him. So in truth, I was intentionally capricious with the first pass of the numbers, because I want to see which ones work - and I definitely want to see some not work - in game design terms this is called bracketing your solution. Anyway, we've got a fair amount of this info now, so the next round of numbers ought to be a lot closer to their intended values. I don't mean to suggest that we aren't going to make you kill things till your eyes bleed in order to complete the most difficult Accomplishments - this is an MMOG after all. We'll just be able to measure it with a fine degree of accuracy. Measure the bleeding that is. From your eyesssss... And with that, Vastin cackles. A blinding flash accompanied by a loud crack and the smell of gunpowder follows, and when you look again, he is nowhere to be seen.
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THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE™ interactive video game © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc and patents pending. All rights reserved. Middle-earth Poster Map © 2007 The Saul Zaentz Company, d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises (SZC), under license to Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.. All rights reserved. "The Lord of the Rings Online", Middle-earth Enterprises logo, "The Lord of the Rings" and the names of the characters, events, items and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SZC under license to Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.