This is why logoff ghosts in Meridian are such a great and unique dynamic. For those that don't know, Meridian characters can quickly log off during combat, saving themselves from death – but if they don't log back into their 'ghost' in ten minutes, they suffer penalties that increase with each successive use of logging off during combat. Logoff Penalties also don't have the embarassing public message, so their reputation penalties are less. This also has the side effect of creating multiple PvP combats, where guildmates (or the person themselves on an alt) have ten minutes to try to save the 'ghosted' character.

Anyway, this system creates multiple levels of 'losing.' Often, the same few people will fight each other dozens of times (the loser suffering the smaller logoff penalties) before a player screws up and dies for real. This means that players can PvP for an entire night, alternately 'losing' and 'winning', with the risk of M59's debilitating and embarassing death the entire time (the risk giving the jitters and enjoyment), but without actually dying (which typically ends PvP for the night, as the dead person has to regear, rebuild, and suffer through embarassing smacktalk).

Developers should remember that creativity can help overcome any problem, even the 'wearing out' effect of PvP.

I don't think anyone says that players need to fail. But, the risk of failure can add that meaning or spice. The problem is that a fake risk is no risk at all, so failure does have to be an option for this to work. If failure is a possible option, then some people are going to fail. It's just the way it works, and I think it's overall a good thing because it makes the successes all the more exhilarating.

It's not merely nostalgia, either. It's a very noticeable effect as you're playing a game or watching someone play a game. I've only had the same PvP rush I got regularly in M59 a few times in WoW. Why? Because it wasn't just reputation on the line, it was a major setback to my character if I lost. The problem in the PvP scenario is that every winner needs a loser, so after a while it wears on the loser. In PvE, the monsters don't mind being the punching bag most of the time, and don't say nasty things about your mother in global chat. :P

For party interdependency you need to avoid the bard problem. In FFXI you need a bard. In virtually every experience point system, a bard will increase exp gained beyond every class due to a very huge boost in attack and incredible chain pulling. You don't have a bard, especially at 75, people may fake disconnect on you.

Pretty much that is saying don't design mechanics that are vulnerable to imbalance. If you want players to work together, but they can't because their favorite class is gimp, or because no bard is seeking, they will get annoyed very fast. I think a lot of the solo backlash is due to this, the imbalance in grouping.

I really wish developers would get off this kick that failing a lot is meaningful or adds spice if there is a good risk of it. If i need to get 18 people up over the course of six hours to do divine might, and we wipe, all that design theory goes out the window, and people get annoyed real fast. Especially if they need to spend more time replenishing the item that lets you do divine might, and spending hours farming meds or waiting for two hours to recycle.

If I am in a party and I fail the pull, people are not going to find it makes their experience more meaningful, they will bear it to a point and then kick the noob.

When you look back with nostalgia, you think that the risk added flavor, but during it not really.

Agreed, but I think we're kind of talking about different things. I don't think the average crafter, or even a serious crafter, sees crafting in victory and defeat terms. A raider has that outlook towards encounters, a pvp player has that outlook towards his opposition and so on, but I don't think crafters see the being unable to craft as "failure", instead it's more like aggravation.

And sure, we go out and do all sorts of things even though there's always the chance of them being disrupted. We know it and we accept it. We do those things. But I think we do it because we also know the disruption chance is very low. There are all sorts of laws, codes and behaviors that minimize real world disruption. If the chance of disruption was much higher, people would not do these things so much. If I knew that I can't go to bars because on any given night there's a 50/50 chance I won't enjoy it because of disruptions, if I have the means, it won't take long until I open my own bar, under my own conditions and free of disruption. This is exactly what people are doing in virtual worlds where there aren't as many systems to regulate disruptions: They go and do their own thing. Why? Because they can. Why they can? Because we gave them the tools.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for taking those tools away. That'd kill any game. I'm saying we need to distinguish between failure and aggravation. We can have our players fail a lot, but we can't aggravate them too much. The difference between failure and aggravation is that failure tends to be closer to the player's control (a bad pull, inadequate gear, a bad connection, the selection of a bad group, etc). Aggravation usually isn't that close, and it's not something most players can do anything about. Failure is accepted because it can be learned from; aggravation teaches very little.

It happens in every game: players already have top-level characters that can grind epic amounts of gold for them and when they decide to create a crafting character of alternate profession they buy resoucres for much higher prices that system was originally designed for. On top of that, there aren't many players gathering these resources on such a server already.
So, there are really two main reasons for that situation: first, the progression of actual cost of gold for the players of different levels, and, secondly, the connection between the crafting and level progression.

Let me explain it a bit further. When you first start playing, for example, WoW, you aquire your first gold piece, let's say at level 5. You at level 10 you earn 1 gold per hour, at level 20 - 2 gold per hour, and at 80 you can get hundreds of gold during one day of play. That example, of course, is far from accurate (I haven't played wow for a while), but you get my point. Of course, such progression makes sence and creates a beliveable world for a player - but, as soon as he levels up his first character to the top-level, it's broken.

Another thing that leads to such problems is the classical concept of level (and craft) progression. EQ1/2, WoW, LOTRO that we're discussing here are content-driven games in which character gains a lot of levels with a little time on each. By gaining a level the character gets more powerful, he needs more powerful crafting gear and, in the end, the products of low-level crafter aren't needed by anyone except a few alts.

That problem can be addressed in a number of ways. Firstly, we can rely on items that are not tied to some parameters that are growing with level. It can be social items that aren't actually connected to the combat balance in any way like fancy outfits or fireworks, or some items that are equally useful for players of different levels - like "heal 20%" potions or items that affect character speed (since combat speed balance doesn't increase it's scale every 10 levels).
In fact, I'm in the middle of designing the crafting system for the browser-based f2p MMO - so, instead of just leaving some ideas I can describe the actually working systems. Sorry for the awful lot of text here :)

Firstly, we don't have the content capabilities of the big MMO titles; instead of that, we have to introduce the traditional "end-game" gameplay to the player right after the first couple of hours. On the other hand, we don't have to create rapid level progression: we have currently 18 levels in the game, where 18th level can be acquired after 2-3 years of intensive every-day play. We launched in the end of 2008, and our top-level players are now at 7. Players spend a lot of time on the each level, and the whole player audience forms something like a pyramid with the biggest part of the players at the 3-4 levels.

Secondly, we don't have the geometric money value progression - we sell the in-game gold for the real money, so it would make no sense and ruin our monetization. Of course, there is some, but it is much flatter.

Thirdly, our main principle in economic balance is "time is money" and when we award the player with something, we balance it according to time that they spend to acquire it on a constant rate. It is especially right for the gold farm activities, where players spend their time on the game to gain something that they could buy for their real money.
Lastly, our PvP system relies mostly on the consumables, and big part of them is %-based, like "heal 20%" that I described before.

So, with these design ideology the craft system is really predictable. Players with gathering professions spend some time to get resources, and the time is balanced according to predicted price of these resources (which is predicted according to the actual price of the end product). After that the player with the processing profession makes materials, and with another recipe he makes the product from that materials. There are two gathering professions, two processing professions, and player can only get two. One material requires resources of two different gathering professions and one product needs materials from two different processing professions. That way to create every crafted product every profession is needed.

So, the interdependence is here, but, I hope that thanks to different design ideology that lies behind that things we will be able to avoid the problems you described. Of course, if you want to create something, you need the help of other players - or you can just buy the items on the auction house. But if you earn 1 gold per hour by farming mobs and the resources my alt can farm per hour cost 1 gold on the auction house - then I'll just go and buy them there, instead of creating the second character.
I'm sorry I can't prove my point yet, but I hope that I will be able in a short while, when that system will be implemented in the game :)

Personally, I like the idea of allowing any form of play and making anything possible (within limits) yet use gentle curves of reward and punishment to encourage people.

For instance, if Blizzard increased the group bonus and dungeon exp in WoW to make it greater than that recieved through questing AND prevented any exp from grouping with high level players (and possibly introduced a proper EQ2 style mentoring system) then the effects on social interaction and grouping would be drastic and immediate.

Letrange wrote:
I think you're missing an option of the sort that was taken by EVE online.

I think this falls under the "making it more difficult to do all by yourself" system. One could theoretically level up different characters with different focuses, correct? Or, CCP hopes, buy more accounts?

Spinks wrote:
But one thing that was fun in DaoC was that originally the high level crafting materials were only sold in frontier keeps.

I think that was actually added in later. Originally you could only get the materials from breaking down items made of the material. It was a pain in the ass, and where I finally hit the wall as an armorcrafter.

But, this is another interesting perspective. Players could go solo this, but it was much safer to do it as a group.

Julian wrote:
I think the problem with building this sort of strong interdependencies is that you always run the risk of stalling any given player's enjoyment of the game at no fault of his own.

Yes, but as I've said before, without the risk of failure there's less chance for victory to be sweet. You could say the same thing about watching a movie, hitting the bar, or a lot of other activities beyond games. Somehow, the fear of someone else messing the evening up doesn't stop most of us. If someone does disrupt us, we adjust and deal.

Elkestra wrote:
First of all, the 'scholar' you mentioned should be a Sage (to create scrolls).

Heh, that's what I get for playing too much LotRO where Scholars are the ones who make scrolls. Sadly, my main on EQ2 was a Sage, so I should have known better. :)

Keep up the interesting discussions.

First of all, the 'scholar' you mentioned should be a Sage (to create scrolls). The Scholar is the Tier 2 (10-19) combination of Alchemist, Jeweller, Sage, so he could certainly make his inks (for that tier), though he'd have to source his paper and quills elsewhere.

Secondly, I happened to enjoy the sub-component aspects of EQ2 crafting when it started out. That said, it was a real pain at times. But the worst hassle was with WORTs (Washes, Oils, Resins, and Tempers). Every crafter needed these but only the Alchemists made them, and as a result, the prices sky-rocketed. So of course, people started making alt Alchemists of their own to self-supply, which is the first step towards the alt-sourcing of all a crafter's component needs.

I'll try to write a longer response later (it's something I've thought about for a while now, but since I don't currently blog, I've not written it up before).