Grinding Narratives

Grind is feared by developers, avoided by would-be buyers, but secretly loved by gamers.  It's a controversial little thing that has emerged from the most addictive and most played genres in gaming history.  Game developers are constantly trying to find ways to eliminate it, but all they end up doing is changing its nature.  In this collection of words, I'm basically going to defend the Grind.

With Diablo 3 about to arrive, I've been considering whether Blizzard will be making any bold steps to defeat the Grind.  In making a prediction, we have to look back at how developers have tried to tackle the problem over the years, and the easiest way to do this, of course, is to look at MMORPGs.

Everquest 1, by modern standards, was very light on questing.  Most of your time in the game would be spent grinding with a group of players at the bottom of some dungeon somewhere.  The game made no attempt to guide you there with narrative, and your time there wasn't spiced up with story events, NPC dialogue or fanciful set pieces.  It was just you and a handful of players alone with the rawest of gameplay mechanics.  Class interaction, group roles, combat, survival and loot.  The original grind.

This minimalist gameplay is directly comparable to how things were/are in Diablo 2 on Battle.net.   Where do many players spend most of their time as their character progresses through the levels?  Tristram runs, tomb runs, cow runs and finally baal runs.  Maybe some meph/diablo gear runs along the way to hell.  Was there any narrative here?  Any attempt at storytelling?  No - the narrative exists in the quest progression, a system that sits separately from these runs.

Back in the world of MMOs, we start seeing quests becoming more and more the focus.  Anarchy Online uses a random mission system as the main source of XP and loot while leveling.  A few years later WoW is released with 2 big steps taken to reduce the grind further:  First, enough unique quests are designed that the player can reach the cap just by following them (*not strictly true at launch). Second, dungeons became linear instances with a start and an end point, and played more like levels from traditional games than MUD/EQ-style dungeons.  In many ways, the rest of the Everquest gameplay remained untouched (avoiding a debate on death penalties or travel); it was still a game of levels and loot.

Nowadays, most will agree that the "collect 10 bear pelts" quest structure is a grindy mechanic, and some will also agree that running the same instance 50 times to progress is just as grindy.  So what did these mechanics actually solve?  The grind is still there, but now there is pointless fluff the player has to constantly discard as they optimize their playtime to progress at the fastest rate.  Now, rather than efficient play being purely about a how well your group of players can kill and survive, it's also about knowing which trash mobs you can walk around by glitching up the side of the map, clicking through NPC dialogue as quickly as possible and knowing where those 10 levers are that you need to pull in order to complete some repeatable quest for the 500th time.

So what did Bioware try to do with SWTOR?  Mask the grind even more.  Add more narative.  Now not only are dungeons linear instances that you'll run 50 times, but each time you run them you get a re-telling of the same story, with small superficial choices thrown in to further make people feel like theyre playing a traditional game rather than the the old, grindy MMO of the past.   Did this cure the grind?  No.  People were grinding Black Talon constantly for "social points", skipping through unnecessary dialogue and cut-scenes as fast as possible to maximise how many points they could get per hour.  Daily flashpoint quests mean long term players are seeing the same key characters follow the same set pieces over and over again , skipping through them because they lost interest in that microstory a long time ago.  Unless people are only running these instances once with each character, they'll inevitably become grinds no matter how much money you throw at voice actors.

Ultimately, in these games, a lot of people will do whatever it takes to progress quickly and effectively.  More than that, entire meta-games will emerge based around quick progression.  Throwing narrative fluff in the way of them just makes this experience less genuine, and somehow more tedious.  What would you rather do?  A load of aimless tomb runs, where it's just you, your allies and constant combat and loot? Or repeating the same directed storyline many times over (NPC talks to party, party skips cutscene, party kills monster, NPC talks to party, etc)?  The former is pure gameplay; it is the essence of the game, uninterrupted and undirected.  The latter, in contrast, quickly becomes a frustrating experience.  Closing dialog boxes or pressing ESC to skip a cut-scene simply isn't gameplay.

From interviews with the Diablo 3 dev team, one of the biggest differences between Diablo 2 and 3 will be the stronger emphasis on storytelling.  Which leads me back to my main point.  By all means, tell a story as the player progresses through the acts.  But it only needs to be told once per difficulty - per playthrough.  Nobody needs to hear some small part of the story repeated 500 times a week just because it happens to exist at a particularly farmable point in the game.  Nobody wants to farm Black Talon endlessly.

Diablo was always, first and foremost, about the pure loot-hunting experience:  The original grind.  This author hopes that Blizzard has embraced this, and that we won't find ourselves forever stuck in narrative deja vu while searching for that Windforce.

Well, you don't have to believe EVERYTHING...

Oh, you died? Don't worry, in this world, death is temporary: you must wander the lands as a ghost for a while, but if you're able to find your old body, magical forces will enable you to re-enter it and come back to life. No permanent damage done, and no existential disillusion! It's all very well explained, you see. What's that? You want to chase someone into that cave, the one with the swirling

airy entrance? You can't, I'm afraid. He'll be in his own private instance. Yeah, you see, the server clones the cave multiple times for every player or group that wants to enter, so you don't get in each others way. Erm, I mean, the magical forces.. they cause a, um, a splice in the ether.. and.. er.....

Has anyone noticed this strange unwritten rule amongst MMO developers about which gameplay elements should be shrouded in immersive details, and which should not? No? Well it's unusual, because developers and players seem to have quietly established rules that exist uniformly across all the major MMOs.

Take death. Whether it's fully explained or not, you very rarely encounter an MMO where you just respawn upon death. You're never just plopped back to the start of the dungeon like you've reloaded a saved game. There's always some (flimsy or not) explanation as to why YOU CANT DIE, whether it's because you're some kind of mighty immortal (Eve Online, Rift) or because the

world has advanced magic/technology that prevents it (Anarchy Online).

Developers spend a lot of money on creating a game that feels like a world. This is done through building detailed lore, beautiful art direction and musical backing, through in-game storytelling and in the very structuring of its mechanics. Nobody would play The MMORPG, the latest and most generic MMO including 6 classes (class1, class2, class3...), 10 races (race1, race2...) each with unique abilities (class1_spell1, class1_spell2...) and zero filler text.

I mean, that's what the skeleton of a WoW-style MMO is, anyway. But until its fleshed out with colourful and engrossing detail, it's not exactly going to get many players.

Why, and how, then, have developers come to happily leave bones showing? Why is it completely accepted that instances need no in-game explanation? Surely it's worth explaining why you'll never find the person you chased into the swirly-aired cave? Or the fact you can be standing anywhere in the world, and all of a sudden be transported to a battleground to do battle with people who don't even share the same world as you, before being shot back to where you were originally? Or why you're standing in exactly the same room as your friend that you were hunting with earlier, yet you can't see him?

Some games have made more effort than others. For instance, in Anarchy Online and Neocron, you entered your instanced flat by entering a lift in a big appartment building, and you just don't see the bit where you move to your individual room. Meanwhile in Everquest 2 you would zone into your room by entering its specific door, in-and-out of which would be tens of other players. Huh?

Sometimes it creates more serious gameplay repurcussions, such as in Age of Conan where outdoor areas were heavily instanced. Not only did this mean you might be talking to a friend who's supposedly standing right next to you but isn't, but on pvp servers resulted in the ridiculous game of chasing people through the different instances, with players inexplicably fleeing to unexplained parallel universes.

I've always had a problem with instances, and how they destroy many aspects of MMORPGs that I consider important. But the way developers chuck them into games with absolutely no concern for continuity, and that players have just come to accept their functional but inexplicable nature, really hints at how badly the MMO genre needs a good fucking shake about.

MAG: A guide on how to play good (for good players)

You're awesome at FPS games: you're endlessly pulling off sexy flick shots and cleaning out militarily-themed rooms full of bastards, your KDR is cool as shit and you're just so consistently amazing that bragging about it would be a huge injustice to your skill. But wow, you fucking suck at MAG. Really badly - shockingly. You can't even reach down and touch yourself before getting sniped, airstriked, gassed, grenaded and run over simultaneously. What's worse is that you look around you and every other person on your huge fucking team is also being brutalized in a similar fashion. Over and over again, in exactly the same way. For 30 minutes straight.

So here are some thoughts that might help you and those around you, like cigarettes of tactical wisdom to be passed around the children of MAG.

Attacking Stuff:

Doesn't matter what: whether it's the A B C of Sabotage maps, a bunker at the start of an Acquisition round or the final objectives in Domination, it's all fundamentally the same.

What happens normally:

Everyone takes the shortest possible path directly to the target. This may mean walking through vast open areas covered in landmines, a fleet of enemy hummers or the ironsights of a few bunker turrets. Snipers hang well back, finding a few targets in those defenders bored enough to start attacking your spawn point. After so many minutes of repeatedly walking into the meatgrinder, people will come to the conclusion that the other team is just unfathomably better and will start abandoning all hope and dropping out of the game.

What could happen instead:

Think about what you really don't like happening when you're on the defending side. It won't take you long to figure out a few core ideas that will make you a better attacker. First up, attacking from every possible direction is the ideal way to really fuck up a defense. There isn't a single objective in MAG that can't be attacked from at least 2-3 directions, often far more if you consider the different elevations of attack routes.

So here's a basic principle to apply when attacking any target: If you look at the map and you see you are one of many in a swarm of blue dots, split off and take a different approach. Do it for selfish reasons, even. Because unlike the rest of the blue dots in that swarm, you know something very useful: defenders are almost entirely reactive. The huge mass of people attacking their front doors means there's a huge mass of defenders sitting there waiting for them. Meanwhile, the side door, through which not a single person has attacked from, has nobody watching it. Have a stroll over to that side door and enjoy your 6-7 quick kills. You've just single handedly tipped the balance at that chokepoint and you'll probably find that swarm of blue dots is now pushing closer to the objective thanks to you.

You might be thinking "MAG is about teamwork, why are you telling people to go off on their own to rack up kills?". Well, a few people flanking solo is a lot better than every single person "teamworking" towards their deaths endlessly. In such cases of mass uselessness, it's the few people that tear away from the flock that make all the difference. However, ideally you want to be slightly more coordinated. Here's some food for thought:

Think of an objective that has 4 fronts: North, south, east, west. Your spawn point is directly to the south, the enemy's spawn point is directly to the north. The most efficient way to take this objective involves two methods: disruption and terrorism. You want to disrupt the enemy respawns to reduce the number of recently-dead players who make it back to the objective to defend (at an advantage, typically). This can be done in many different ways. Snipers can set up on the forward flanks to pick off enemies running from their spawn point to the objective (one of the more useful roles for the sniper when attacking). Commandos (lone wolf or in pairs) can ambush freshly respawned players rushing to get back to the action (who therefore have their guard down and often make for easy kills). Even entire squads could swing their APC round the back there and take the focus completely off of the objective for a bit.

Ok, so once you've started to disrupt the respawns, you can begin to terrorize the defenders remaining at the objective. A happy defender is one who can just sit behind cover unloading on full-auto into a swarm of fleshy targets. To make this defender much less happy, you want him to know that whatever cover he's found is no good. You want him to become a nervous paranoid wreck, checking his back every 4 seconds and getting increasingly distressed that some of those fleshy targets in front of him are getting rather close. In other words, you want to attack from the flanks. Whether you want even numbers from every angle or more on some fronts than others entirely depends on the terrain. You don't want the bulk of the attack to be charging into whatever front happens to be the biggest choke point, and you don't want only 2-3 people attacking the side which is elevated and spacious. Even numbers at each side is usually a safe bet. Quickly the defence will become totally incompetent: either the flankers will wipe them out effortlessly, or they'll put enough pressure on them to allow the frontal attack to overwhelm. And with your forward commandos and snipers putting pressure on their spawn point, you won't be seeing too many reinforcements arriving.

Like I said, the general idea behind this approach works for attacking anything. But here are some specifics for certain stuff:

Bunkers

Bunkers have two main features that affect how you attack them. Firstly, the fact that the enemy respawns inside them. They aren't running back from some distant respawn, they'll pop up right in front of you. They also have the advantage of being able to look around before exiting the bunker, making it hard to surprise them. Once again the key is to have people surrounding it. Someone getting out of a bunker isn't going to get far when they're surrounded. If you're all just waiting on one side of the bunker, that respawn can respawn on the other side, sneak around behind you and unload on you from a defensive position, rather than just being shot to pieces as soon as he sees the sky.

The second feature would be that massive turret on top. This can be taken out pretty effectively by RPGs, and quite effectively by concentrated fire. Firing off all 3 of your RPG shells and then unloading a couple of mags from an LMG generally does the trick, although you'll be telling everyone, including the turret, where you are. Taking out the turret isn't all that important if you're able to flank well, though. The turret can only point in one direction, its turning rate isn't too speedy and its bullets won't pass through solid objects (of which there are usually quite a few). One person hidden behind a box teasing the turret by sticking his foot out occasionally can be enough to distract it entirely while 7 people stroll in outside its field of vision. People manning turrets are prone to obsessing over one person they saw and not looking away until they know that person is dead. So if there aren't loads of defenders right at the bunker (e.g. they're all at the burn-off tower or something) this is usually the best way to quickly and quietly take it down.

Sabotage: A & B

The fuckup I see the most in Sabotage is how people choose to defend A/B after capturing it. It seems a lot of people think the best way to defend it is just to sit by the control console, in the corner, next to 15 other people that had exactly the same awesome idea. Meanwhile the defending team can walk right up to every available door and fill the room with lead and grenades. Very simply, the key to holding on to an objective after capturing it is to keep pushing forward. Don't defend it from your spawn's side, set up your defense in between the objective and the enemy's spawn. This means snipers should be right up on the objective, and most of everyone else should be further forward than that. This massively increases the depth of flesh and bone that the defending team have to chew through before they can re-secure their objective, and prevents the embarrassment of a single grenade wiping out half your platoon.

Domination A-H

Each pair of objectives on domination maps have different features that you need to exploit to be the most effective. For example, C and D on Valor's map (I think): D is on the top floor and C is on the bottom floor, and from D you can walk along the top floor to a position that overlooks almost all of C. This balcony is typically occupied by bad guys if D isn't secure. Trying to take C while said bad guys are pointing their guns down on it is hard. So, a good tactic in this case is for the platoon to focus on breaking and securing D: once D has been overwhelmed, taking C is complete cake. Other objectives have similarly exploitable features, such as being able to get up onto the roof and aim down through broken windows at the console itself. Remember that these positions are so good that clued up defenders will be using them while you're attacking, so the key to keeping these objectives once you've secured them is to make use of these handy spots the same way the original defenders would. Capturing an objective then having a 16-man celebration right next to the console pretty much guarantees that you aren't going to hold it for long: the key to holding it is to get in strong defensive positions as soon as you can after clearing out the bad guys. Pretty much all of these final objectives on every map have some form of elevation inside the buildings. People in MAG very rarely seem to look up at these elevated points, so you'll quickly find yourself enjoying a lot of very easy kills, and making it very difficult for the defenders to re-secure the objective.

Next up: Squad/Platoon/Company leading