The Great Tree

[Erik]

[Professor Askew]

Nice post, LC. Let's take a look at the latter portion first.

I agree 100% that ultimately UU was detrimental to certain players where Myst Online was concerned. I count myself one of those players. I spent so much time in a game that wasn't a game that by the time the real game returned, I was really looking for some action, some momentum, some story to make up for lost time. Had I not played at all from the moment Prologue closed, I'm sure I would have had great fun rediscovering D'ni and playing the game as presented. (At least for a while.) I don't blame Cyan one bit for this as UU seemed a logical step in making efforts to keep the fan base and it was a great demo, I'm sure, for potential partners. But, yes, eventually most fans who participated in UU came to know D'ni better than the back of their hand. You could watch the paint dry in there during those days.

And thanks, LC, for colorfully illustrating the use of NPCs. I really feel you justified my thoughts by pointing out just those few possibilities. That one paragraph you wrote represented more game play interaction than I experienced in an entire season. If I could have done what you just described, I would have been reasonably happy.

Many would argue that nothing could replace the Live actors. It was dynamic, unpredictable, spontaneous, people were more involved, story could change on the fly....All good. Great, even, for those lucky few who got to experience it. Re-tool the Uru model...make "Live" accessible to all or stick with traditional NPCs. Or at least re-imagine how NPCs could work.
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Professor Daniel Askew - Securing our reality from the machinations of the Station Masters.

[Durin Mephit]

[Erik]

Yeah, you couldn't interact with the live actors during the episodes, which was a real shame. The crowds just made it impossible.

However, before the episodes, you could have personal conversations with the NPCs. I often had a chat with Nick White... I met Engberg once early in the year and had a nice conversation. After that, I felt I had really met him, and that he got to know a bit of me. That was all great...

[Lord Chaos]

The only thing I got was a chat with Nick one time. I was in the City a couple of times when a character showed up, but the main thing I got from that was a headache as everyone shouted out the same stupid questions. I really wanted to meet Phil sometime and ask him some real questions. Perhaps they needed to be there more often so that the novelty would wear off.

[BladeLakem]

I think the Live actor thing could have worked just fine. As a matter of fact, I've seen similar things work in large LARPs exceedingly well.

I understand the argument about having to experience the story second-hand. But you can have an interesting environment with characters and historical events providing the backdrop, and providing lecture the environment. And that can be effective story telling even if you have to hear about it second-hand. The existence of interesting personalities interacting with others generates an environment that people can dig into, even when those characters are not there.

I think it was primarily a problem because the story is what it was. There was a single thread in the story - only one official or overarching narrative to pay attention to. However, if there had been several, then we shift from hundreds of people staring at the same one thing, to those people focusing on several different things at once.

This splits up the burden of interest, especially if the stories have slightly different focuses - a little of something for everyone. But more importantly, it adds a dimension of depth to the environment. With appropriate depth, you have greater immersiveness and people care about the world more.

My favorite example is Vormaen's arguments with Sharper. They were private arguments. But there was something that told us about Sharper and gave him dimension. People cared, even if Vormaen was the only one who actually talked to Sharper there.

Additionally, you have to make those stories interactive. The biggest blow to the story, I think, is that players had no place in it. It's okay to say that the characters have their own agendas and goals. But as a game designer, you have to design those goals so that they have room for people to affect things, even in small ways. Engaged players go on to engage other players even after the official characters left.

The Great Tree from Prologue is a prime example. Brian and Daed and the other original people interacted with Sharper - Sharper built a narrative relationship with them. They took that and went farther with it than Sharper ever did.

I think that Cyan became gun-shy. They were worried about the fact that these interactions were too narrow in scope because you couldn't make that sort of connection with hundreds and hundreds of players. So they avoided those connections, instead of making those connections work for them.

I think the move to episodes rattled their confidence in engaging the players. That, and the reaction to the rise of Sydney Austin (which I think could have been turned around with more active attention from Cyan - the problem here is they lit the fuse and walked away without paying attention to what was going on).

Thinking it over, I can sum up my opinion like this: Cyan ran MOUL like it was an adventure game or a novel - a basic story with storytellers and an audience. But what they needed to do was run it like a role-playing game, which is a different paradigm, that includes adapting in response to the players, improvising the details, taking narrative risks and trusting at least some of their players to bear the burden of the game (which the community was rabid to take on).

I'd assumed that they'd had some plan for this, actually. There were little hints here and there - the move to the Guilds, the responses to things like JWPlatt pushing for the pellet data, the sorta acknowledgment of J.D. Barnes, etc. But in the end, it didn't seem high on their priority list.
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MOULagain KI#27460

[dcos]

This kind of ran away from me, but I've gone back over it to try and make it as coherant as possible.

[Lord Chaos]

All those "special" things--JD Barnes, Austin, Bahro wars, etc--tended to make me angry. They happened rarely and seemed applied from the outside, rather than growing frorm the story. There was never a cogent summary anywhere. They were good for the few people who were able to participate but everyone else was left out. Oh, I suppose I could have assembled the story from bits and pieces on forums, but I just got tired of having to do that.

I agree with Blade about Cyan's haphazard approach: One week Guilds are a Big Thing, the next week you hear "What guilds?" There needed to be consisten support. I started the Uru Live 2 period with a belief that Cyan had an overall plan, and about halfway through just gave up on it. If they did have a plan they were not going to share it with anyone.

[dcos]

[Professor Askew]

Excellent posts, everyone! If we keep this up we may eventually end up with a working model for Uru. Then maybe we can pass the whole thread over to Cyan for future use.

Really, what I don't get is who's dropping the ball? I'm not interested in blaming anyone but I would love to solve the mystery of the disconnect. One would presume that everyone at Cyan has had many connversations similar to the one we're having here. They must have had a very detailed plan as to how Uru would work. OR...maybe they convinced themselves that their new take on a MMOG did not require constant stimulation. This opinion may have developed over time after the release of Mysts 1, 2, & 3, knowing their fans were perfectly content to explore ages in search of clues and story tidbits and not much else (which is true...alone in a pre-rendered slide show). If said opinion is true, that was there first mistake. One of the biggest selling points of an MMOG versus standalone is the perpetual activity. Exploring, of course great, music and ambience, awesome, social activity, plus for some, less so for others. But, there has to be something to do at all times. When the exploring is done and you've finished chatting with friends, there has to be a reason to stay logged on.

So, let's assume Cyan did understand this. Is Cyan presenting a laundry list to Ubisoft or GameTap of things that have to be in place in order to engage the masses on a continuous basis and are these distributors constantly refusing to devote resources to said list? I think both of these publishers were very hopeful they could cash in on the Myst name. Ubisoft forced Cyan into creating offline content. GameTap happily acquired the Myst games for their oldy, moldy library. But, it's obvious neither company understood what it would take to make Uru work. Or perhaps they simply saw Uru as a MMOG that simply required less resources than the usual action-packed D&D style game.

Another big mistake.

Myst fans require lots of room to explore, lots of puzzles to solve, and above all....more story. The story comes out of the exploration, the puzzles, the journals.....and the actors/NPCs. I find it hard to believe that Cyan thought people would enter the game every day (and you want people to log in every day) to explore a finite Age, solve a puzzle (which unfortunately Myst players tend to solve the first day and share on forums), and then chat it up amongst themselves for the remainder of the month and be satisfied with that until the next month. I remember the original plan was for a major new Age every month with several smaller things opening up throughout. They never promised us character interaction or developing story. And they certainly never promised something to do each and every day we logged on. What were we thinking? For myself, this release schedule sounded great. Now I see it couldn't have worked. We all assumed that these spaces would be filled with the kind of (TGT) activity that took place in Prologue.

Perhaps that's true, I don't know.

So, what was GameTap thinking? Where's the disconnect? Did they say we'd love to have Uru in our library but we're going to hold back on resources until Uru has proven itself...which it can't do because it doesn't have the resources? Or did Cyan convince GameTap that large resources weren't necessary because Uru wasn't the standard MMOG. Somebody doesn't get it.

I've been playing Lord of the Rings Online for about ten months. I try not to make direct comparisons because they are different game types. But, it's hard. I have four characters, two high level, two mid. The game world is magnificently huge so my interest in exploration is satisfied. I'm in a role-playing group so that aspect is satisfied despite the lack of direct interaction with the NPCs. And of course, participating in Tolkien's universe/story is tremendously satisfying. I'm in the game almost every day for a half hour or four hours depending upon RL. I'm never bored. And I still think about Uru. And I get mad if I think about Uru's potential too much.

Cyan needs to bring a couple of MMOG experts onboard and make this thing work. Someone needs to get their crap together.
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Professor Daniel Askew - Securing our reality from the machinations of the Station Masters.

[dcos]

Some interesting points there Prof, I too have often wondered where what you call the "disconnect" is occuring. Something has just never sat right about how it was being handled.

I think Cyan's stance of not wanting to reveal too much 'behind the curtain' was a major problem this time round. Had Prologue continued I doubt it would have mattered. But with MOUL I think a developer blog, or something might have helped set expectations better.

Ah well, I was avoiding doing too much post-mortem just now, but I suppose a little bit is healthy, eh?

[Professor Askew]

[BladeLakem]

[Professor Askew]

Absolutely effing right, Blade, about the low-effort methods. Had the DRC forum been updated regularly...had there been just one devoted actor hopping on and off as various characters throughout the day (every day)...had Cyan posted chat logs...had they taken just an hour to put up a new journal every now and then...I, and others like myself, might have felt less like we were floundering, wondering what we were supposed to be doing. A good part of our focus would have been on these more immersive aspects and slightly less concerned about things to do. And it would have been so easy to do...relatively speaking.
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Professor Daniel Askew - Securing our reality from the machinations of the Station Masters.

[dcos]

I know there were limits on how many man-hours they had but still... why couldn't they have focused on this more?