Forums » General
Macros might not be so bad.
Essay follows...
Some people involved with online RPGs have come to hate the use of macros, and fear the use of scripts that play the game for a player. While the abuse of macros and scripts is indicative of something wrong, the ability of the player to write such things is not the real issue.
If you haven't seen it already, and have access to a Windows machine somewhere, have a look at Progress Quest. Progress Quest is a farcical, and deep cutting mockery of what has come to be wrong with RPGs recently. The issue being that there are players (and games entirely geared towards) advancing a set of numbers, the player stats. These players have seemingly forgotten that RPG stands for role-playing game, and getting too caught up in the numbers, have forgotten to role-play.
Macros, in a somewhat twisted irony, actually help to free these players to do some actual role playing, having advanced their stats so far as they can. The depth of this role playing is somewhat limited, as the players are probably overly powerful at this point to get into any really interesting situations, but it's better than nothing.
This is not what is really desired though, as it completely invalidates an entire component of the game, which is why people take such issue with the use of macros in the first place. Macros, for the uninitiated, do something that the player can do in-game, and potentially do it repeatedly. That is, they take some repetitive task, and turn it into a keypress, or the click of a button. Vendetta's alias/bind system is not sophisticated enough for most things that macros would be used for yet, but it's getting close. There are many uses of aliases and binds and many uses of macros that no player would take offense to. It's the specific use of doing something repeatedly that gets people all worked up.
But if macros are not the problem, then what is? The problem is that the actions people need to do in order to strengthen their character and gain access to powerful weapons and abilities, are designed such that they are repetitive, and rather boring and tedious if one is obsessed with quick progression.
Players aren't really supposed to be entirely focused on quick progression, but the situation quickly degenerates once there is a particular mass of players that do hold such obsessions, and other players are forced to catch up.
So how to deal with these relentless players who care less about role playing than stats? Take the repetition out of progression. Make it so all the tasks that have to be done to progress can't be performed by repeating things indefinitely. Not in some false way, but by genuinely making the tasks interesting. This is initially more work for the designers of the game, as they have to invent interesting tasks. The game is more fun to play as a result though.
In the long run, how can the developers continue to come up with good things for the players to do though? The answer is that they can't. They can to some extent, but as the game gets larger, another means of keeping things new and different is needed. In the case of trading, two things help here. A dynamic economy keeps the best deals shifting around and prevents trade routes from stagnating, and pirates keep the traders on their toes. They can't just leave some macro to play for them, or a pirate will come along and blow them out of the sky, and if that doesn't happen, they will create an oversupply of widget X wherever they're taking it, and they'll start losing money on the deals.
In many regions, the very technology that people are afraid of can actually help diversify things. Player created missions, bots, and objects can add flavour to the game that the original designers might not have thought of. Some moderation of this is of course required, but that's needed in the game regardless.
Allowing players that are willing to script things and add them to the game to do so within resonable limits can really give these players the feeling that they are contributing well after the codebase for the game is pretty much finished, and it might be argued, can strengthen their ties to their subscriptions.
It also keeps things fresh and interesting for even those players not able to script things. Even relatively few wizards can still put on quite a good show and keep everyone entertained. The goal is to keep repetition to a minimum and to keep the game as dynamic and ever-changing as it can be within limits, so that people can forget about needing to constantly progress toward some end-goal, and get some real role-playing done. As game development progresses, allow macros, see where they are being used to eliminate tedious tasks and focus on making those tasks more interesting in the next release. The game will be better for it.
- Mesostel Ze
Some people involved with online RPGs have come to hate the use of macros, and fear the use of scripts that play the game for a player. While the abuse of macros and scripts is indicative of something wrong, the ability of the player to write such things is not the real issue.
If you haven't seen it already, and have access to a Windows machine somewhere, have a look at Progress Quest. Progress Quest is a farcical, and deep cutting mockery of what has come to be wrong with RPGs recently. The issue being that there are players (and games entirely geared towards) advancing a set of numbers, the player stats. These players have seemingly forgotten that RPG stands for role-playing game, and getting too caught up in the numbers, have forgotten to role-play.
Macros, in a somewhat twisted irony, actually help to free these players to do some actual role playing, having advanced their stats so far as they can. The depth of this role playing is somewhat limited, as the players are probably overly powerful at this point to get into any really interesting situations, but it's better than nothing.
This is not what is really desired though, as it completely invalidates an entire component of the game, which is why people take such issue with the use of macros in the first place. Macros, for the uninitiated, do something that the player can do in-game, and potentially do it repeatedly. That is, they take some repetitive task, and turn it into a keypress, or the click of a button. Vendetta's alias/bind system is not sophisticated enough for most things that macros would be used for yet, but it's getting close. There are many uses of aliases and binds and many uses of macros that no player would take offense to. It's the specific use of doing something repeatedly that gets people all worked up.
But if macros are not the problem, then what is? The problem is that the actions people need to do in order to strengthen their character and gain access to powerful weapons and abilities, are designed such that they are repetitive, and rather boring and tedious if one is obsessed with quick progression.
Players aren't really supposed to be entirely focused on quick progression, but the situation quickly degenerates once there is a particular mass of players that do hold such obsessions, and other players are forced to catch up.
So how to deal with these relentless players who care less about role playing than stats? Take the repetition out of progression. Make it so all the tasks that have to be done to progress can't be performed by repeating things indefinitely. Not in some false way, but by genuinely making the tasks interesting. This is initially more work for the designers of the game, as they have to invent interesting tasks. The game is more fun to play as a result though.
In the long run, how can the developers continue to come up with good things for the players to do though? The answer is that they can't. They can to some extent, but as the game gets larger, another means of keeping things new and different is needed. In the case of trading, two things help here. A dynamic economy keeps the best deals shifting around and prevents trade routes from stagnating, and pirates keep the traders on their toes. They can't just leave some macro to play for them, or a pirate will come along and blow them out of the sky, and if that doesn't happen, they will create an oversupply of widget X wherever they're taking it, and they'll start losing money on the deals.
In many regions, the very technology that people are afraid of can actually help diversify things. Player created missions, bots, and objects can add flavour to the game that the original designers might not have thought of. Some moderation of this is of course required, but that's needed in the game regardless.
Allowing players that are willing to script things and add them to the game to do so within resonable limits can really give these players the feeling that they are contributing well after the codebase for the game is pretty much finished, and it might be argued, can strengthen their ties to their subscriptions.
It also keeps things fresh and interesting for even those players not able to script things. Even relatively few wizards can still put on quite a good show and keep everyone entertained. The goal is to keep repetition to a minimum and to keep the game as dynamic and ever-changing as it can be within limits, so that people can forget about needing to constantly progress toward some end-goal, and get some real role-playing done. As game development progresses, allow macros, see where they are being used to eliminate tedious tasks and focus on making those tasks more interesting in the next release. The game will be better for it.
- Mesostel Ze
My most complex alias, is yes, my donkey bind. ;-)
To find out what i am quoting, go to www.weebl.jolt.co.uk and watch every single episode of that cartoon thing.
In the game where my brother got banned\jailed\banished\deleted\etc. We had n00bs who set up a macro to walk left, then right. In the game whenever you ran into a enemy you would automatically attacked it, so they set up there char in a n00b zone and got free expereince.
I helped a few people to trap the people that did this, and the n00b badies would kill the n00bs.
To find out what i am quoting, go to www.weebl.jolt.co.uk and watch every single episode of that cartoon thing.
In the game where my brother got banned\jailed\banished\deleted\etc. We had n00bs who set up a macro to walk left, then right. In the game whenever you ran into a enemy you would automatically attacked it, so they set up there char in a n00b zone and got free expereince.
I helped a few people to trap the people that did this, and the n00b badies would kill the n00bs.