Topic 5 : Items
Man, I can't believe I'm up to part 5 already. This was originally supposed to be a 10 part series, but looking at the topics I had originally, and the ones that keep seeming to just show up, who knows where this will end. Anyways, let's keep this train going, shall we?
(As always, here are some links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, just in case you want to do some back reading.)
Thanks to my recent binges of Diablo3:RoS, I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of the skinner box as well as Premack's Principle. Without getting too wrapped up in behavior psychology (You can read the links if you're really into it), the Skinner Box is basically a way to condition behavior through reward or punishment and the Premack Principle is the idea that people will do something less desirable to reach something more desirable.
Both of these concepts are pretty central to gaming. In combination with pixels they essentially lay the ground work for a reward structure that keep people playing. I'm not going to go into a debate about the ethical nature of using these behavior psychology tricks to keep people coming back, but what I do what to talk about is how these reward structures have impacted my perspectives on WoW Items and gaming in general.
So let's talk about games. This idea started with frustrations over the item rarity system used in WoW, I couldn't define it at first, but after reading about the Premack Principle, it turns out that if you take someone who's really into candy, and say "If you eat this candy, you get to play pinball after!" they aren't very interested in the pinball at all. Yet if you switch it around, they will gladly play pinball to get to the candy. Seems pretty simple and obvious right? I thought so too. But when I made the connection here with WoW and it's item reward structure, things became more clear.
In recent years, all the rage with wow item design is the "item level". I make no effort to hide that I'm not a fan of item level. I feel like it's a weak solution to fix a poorly designed item reward structure. Obtaining the best items is generally the end goal of a game, and WoW is no exception. As long as there are better items out there a player should be motivated to keep moving forward and actively progressing their character. The problem here is that item level allows for a chasm of difference in player power between two epic items. This gap is much, much larger than the gap between two items of different rarities. The difference between an uncommon item and a rare item is often pretty small. As is the difference between a rare item and an epic item of relative similar item level. But the difference between two epic items can be the grand canyon.
But what's wrong with that right? I mean, people like getting epics, people like feeling like they are doing well and that they are awesome and that they have the best gear type you can get, right? Right. They do. But looking at Premack, you can see that people will forgo a less desirable reward if they obtain the more desirable reward first. In my personal experience with multiple level 90 characters, I'll gladly work by doing dungeons, raids, timeless isle, or whatever other content to replace a blue item with an epic. But to replace an epic with another epic? Nah, not so much. I often rationalize this with thoughts like "Finally all epics", or things like "This one epic upgrade won't make a big difference." Meanwhile going from a blue to a purple feels amazing. In essence going from epic to epic actually takes away from my drive to keep playing. I consciously know that there are better epics out there, but i'm already all purple right? You could actually argue that giving me epics early and replacing my current epics with more epics has the potential of taking gameplay away from me. Because the items just aren't different enough for me to really truly care.
I think a large part of this is the mental categorization of items. Since item rarity and item level are decoupled from each other you can't really define a "better item" with one or the other. Is an ilvl 500 uncommon better than an ilvl 450 epic? All of these answers exist in the math, and if you know the math it's really not that complicated of a system. But I don't want to do math, I want to play the game. I once heard a highly respected game designer say "if your game isn't about math, then don't make me do math."
I've seen some effort to help further categorize items with "tags" in recent years. And epic item may have a "Raid Finder" or a "Warforged" tag on it. In my mind this is a step in the right direction, as it allows for some level of differentiation between two items that, at first glance, are of the same rarity. But it's just not enough to make me willing to play that pinball for some other candy, when I already have a stockpile of candy you gave me before. (Boy, this candy/pinball reference is going to get old quick. ><)
In addition to looking at rarity and item level here we also have to take into account that WoW is a progressive game. There will always be another patch, there will always be new dungeons and another raid on the horizon. So we run into the dilemma of "I want to reward people for getting to the top of this content with epics. But when new content comes out, I have to give them new epics for reaching the top. So let's make the new epics radically more powerful to motivate people to not be content in their current epics." This is what leaves us with the radical power gaps we see now. The developers are forcing themselves to make the new items radically more powerful to convince players that the new candy is worth playing pinball for.
I feel like the most obvious solution here would be to reduce the item rarity of items as patches happen. I could see that being a functional solution from a mechanical standpoint. If every item dropped one rarity on every patch, it would be clear that people have new content to obtain new power. But it's also a solution that just feels shitty. Having all of my epic items, the representation of my hard work, being downgraded to rares feels like the game developers are taking something away from me. We can consciously rationalize all day about how it's better for the game, and how it keeps us motivated to keep playing, to keep seeking new heights and challenges, etc, but in the end it feels like I'm being punished.
I think the tags system is a potential solution, but needs to be taken a bit further. In my mind, a small green tag just isn't enough to motivate me to seek the next level of reward. Item rarity is great because it allows me to identify my gear level, or someone else's gear level at a glance. I can compare our efforts with a once second glance over an armory page or an inspection screen. I should be able to just glance at someone's armory and have a rough idea of their investment and current status in the eternal grind.
So what do I want here? After all this blog series is about what I want to see in wow patch notes, not just me bitching about how things work now. Honestly, the designer side of me really wants the item rarity shift to happen, but the gamer side of me hates that idea. I think tags are a good start, but that the tags need to be more visible, and need to shift with content. What if every patch had green, blue, and purple items representing different levels of content achievement (Green = world or dungeon items, Blue = rare dungeon items/LFR items, purple = Raid items) and the current tier of items included an icon in the item name? Sometime simple like a star could work. I really want the tag to be up-front and visible immediately. I want to see the star in the corner of item icons on the armory, or in front of the item name when items are linked. I want to be able to glance at someone's profile, and within a split second know "OK, they have full epics, and they are all current tier. nice."
Hell you could even combine the two concepts. add a yellow item rarity for the tippy top heroic raiders that turns into epic when the next tier is released. I think people would be more responsive to the system if it were introduced with the expectations up front. One thing people love to do in WoW is show off. Showing off has value in the world of Azeroth. It let's the people at the top feel prideful over their achievements, and it gives people who are still advancing their characters something to strive for. Something to say "I'm going to have that one day." I remember feeling this exact emotion while leveling in classic wow, seeing people link epic items in chat. I thought to myself "someday, I'll have those epics!" Now that I do, I feel like there's nowhere to go. Now if heroic raiders, linked yellow items, and I'm wearing purple items... well... that just might make me want to obtain some yellow items.
In writing this, I keep thinking about cars and relating them to in-game items. I think of item rarity like the body design of a car, and the ilvl as the engines. You can have a ferarri engine, but if your car looks the same at a glance to mine, I'm really not impressed. Sure, your car will destroy mine in a race, but unless we're at the race track, I can't really tell. Your car may say "super charged" or "god mode" on it, but when we pass on the street, we pretty much look the same. That's sort of I see item rarity and ilvl. Make my car look better, because it is. Give my awesome engine the up-front, at a glance, appeal it deserves.
What I don't want, is some ambiguous number that means nothing to me without a frame of reference.
(As always, here are some links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, just in case you want to do some back reading.)
Thanks to my recent binges of Diablo3:RoS, I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of the skinner box as well as Premack's Principle. Without getting too wrapped up in behavior psychology (You can read the links if you're really into it), the Skinner Box is basically a way to condition behavior through reward or punishment and the Premack Principle is the idea that people will do something less desirable to reach something more desirable.
Both of these concepts are pretty central to gaming. In combination with pixels they essentially lay the ground work for a reward structure that keep people playing. I'm not going to go into a debate about the ethical nature of using these behavior psychology tricks to keep people coming back, but what I do what to talk about is how these reward structures have impacted my perspectives on WoW Items and gaming in general.
So let's talk about games. This idea started with frustrations over the item rarity system used in WoW, I couldn't define it at first, but after reading about the Premack Principle, it turns out that if you take someone who's really into candy, and say "If you eat this candy, you get to play pinball after!" they aren't very interested in the pinball at all. Yet if you switch it around, they will gladly play pinball to get to the candy. Seems pretty simple and obvious right? I thought so too. But when I made the connection here with WoW and it's item reward structure, things became more clear.
In recent years, all the rage with wow item design is the "item level". I make no effort to hide that I'm not a fan of item level. I feel like it's a weak solution to fix a poorly designed item reward structure. Obtaining the best items is generally the end goal of a game, and WoW is no exception. As long as there are better items out there a player should be motivated to keep moving forward and actively progressing their character. The problem here is that item level allows for a chasm of difference in player power between two epic items. This gap is much, much larger than the gap between two items of different rarities. The difference between an uncommon item and a rare item is often pretty small. As is the difference between a rare item and an epic item of relative similar item level. But the difference between two epic items can be the grand canyon.
But what's wrong with that right? I mean, people like getting epics, people like feeling like they are doing well and that they are awesome and that they have the best gear type you can get, right? Right. They do. But looking at Premack, you can see that people will forgo a less desirable reward if they obtain the more desirable reward first. In my personal experience with multiple level 90 characters, I'll gladly work by doing dungeons, raids, timeless isle, or whatever other content to replace a blue item with an epic. But to replace an epic with another epic? Nah, not so much. I often rationalize this with thoughts like "Finally all epics", or things like "This one epic upgrade won't make a big difference." Meanwhile going from a blue to a purple feels amazing. In essence going from epic to epic actually takes away from my drive to keep playing. I consciously know that there are better epics out there, but i'm already all purple right? You could actually argue that giving me epics early and replacing my current epics with more epics has the potential of taking gameplay away from me. Because the items just aren't different enough for me to really truly care.
I think a large part of this is the mental categorization of items. Since item rarity and item level are decoupled from each other you can't really define a "better item" with one or the other. Is an ilvl 500 uncommon better than an ilvl 450 epic? All of these answers exist in the math, and if you know the math it's really not that complicated of a system. But I don't want to do math, I want to play the game. I once heard a highly respected game designer say "if your game isn't about math, then don't make me do math."
I've seen some effort to help further categorize items with "tags" in recent years. And epic item may have a "Raid Finder" or a "Warforged" tag on it. In my mind this is a step in the right direction, as it allows for some level of differentiation between two items that, at first glance, are of the same rarity. But it's just not enough to make me willing to play that pinball for some other candy, when I already have a stockpile of candy you gave me before. (Boy, this candy/pinball reference is going to get old quick. ><)
In addition to looking at rarity and item level here we also have to take into account that WoW is a progressive game. There will always be another patch, there will always be new dungeons and another raid on the horizon. So we run into the dilemma of "I want to reward people for getting to the top of this content with epics. But when new content comes out, I have to give them new epics for reaching the top. So let's make the new epics radically more powerful to motivate people to not be content in their current epics." This is what leaves us with the radical power gaps we see now. The developers are forcing themselves to make the new items radically more powerful to convince players that the new candy is worth playing pinball for.
I feel like the most obvious solution here would be to reduce the item rarity of items as patches happen. I could see that being a functional solution from a mechanical standpoint. If every item dropped one rarity on every patch, it would be clear that people have new content to obtain new power. But it's also a solution that just feels shitty. Having all of my epic items, the representation of my hard work, being downgraded to rares feels like the game developers are taking something away from me. We can consciously rationalize all day about how it's better for the game, and how it keeps us motivated to keep playing, to keep seeking new heights and challenges, etc, but in the end it feels like I'm being punished.
I think the tags system is a potential solution, but needs to be taken a bit further. In my mind, a small green tag just isn't enough to motivate me to seek the next level of reward. Item rarity is great because it allows me to identify my gear level, or someone else's gear level at a glance. I can compare our efforts with a once second glance over an armory page or an inspection screen. I should be able to just glance at someone's armory and have a rough idea of their investment and current status in the eternal grind.
So what do I want here? After all this blog series is about what I want to see in wow patch notes, not just me bitching about how things work now. Honestly, the designer side of me really wants the item rarity shift to happen, but the gamer side of me hates that idea. I think tags are a good start, but that the tags need to be more visible, and need to shift with content. What if every patch had green, blue, and purple items representing different levels of content achievement (Green = world or dungeon items, Blue = rare dungeon items/LFR items, purple = Raid items) and the current tier of items included an icon in the item name? Sometime simple like a star could work. I really want the tag to be up-front and visible immediately. I want to see the star in the corner of item icons on the armory, or in front of the item name when items are linked. I want to be able to glance at someone's profile, and within a split second know "OK, they have full epics, and they are all current tier. nice."
Hell you could even combine the two concepts. add a yellow item rarity for the tippy top heroic raiders that turns into epic when the next tier is released. I think people would be more responsive to the system if it were introduced with the expectations up front. One thing people love to do in WoW is show off. Showing off has value in the world of Azeroth. It let's the people at the top feel prideful over their achievements, and it gives people who are still advancing their characters something to strive for. Something to say "I'm going to have that one day." I remember feeling this exact emotion while leveling in classic wow, seeing people link epic items in chat. I thought to myself "someday, I'll have those epics!" Now that I do, I feel like there's nowhere to go. Now if heroic raiders, linked yellow items, and I'm wearing purple items... well... that just might make me want to obtain some yellow items.
In writing this, I keep thinking about cars and relating them to in-game items. I think of item rarity like the body design of a car, and the ilvl as the engines. You can have a ferarri engine, but if your car looks the same at a glance to mine, I'm really not impressed. Sure, your car will destroy mine in a race, but unless we're at the race track, I can't really tell. Your car may say "super charged" or "god mode" on it, but when we pass on the street, we pretty much look the same. That's sort of I see item rarity and ilvl. Make my car look better, because it is. Give my awesome engine the up-front, at a glance, appeal it deserves.
What I don't want, is some ambiguous number that means nothing to me without a frame of reference.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment