Ekim's Gamer View: Paying for Options
Ekim, 2003-08-29

Problems, problems, and more problems…

The first problem is obviously deciding if rewarding role-playing in a computer game can even be done. The answer is yes, it can be done. But the only way I know of going about it is if an actual human moderator (or a game master) stays in the game 24 hours a day to award role-playing incentives (whichever form they would take) depending on the players' actions. As you can probably guess, this would not only be a costly solution since it would require a staff of dedicated moderators constantly present on every server, but it would also be logistically impossible to pull off on any kind of large scale.

On a smaller scale, we know that it's possible. Neverwinter Nights proved it. But NWN is not an MMO by any means. D&D Online, which is in development, promises to keep things on a smaller scale as well, with about 100 players being the maximum a single server can accommodate. But even on such a small scale you would need at least one moderator for every 10 players in the game to make it a realistic success. A single moderator could never see everything that goes on, and would surely miss a few things, which would then lead to player frustrations. And having players to moderate this on a voluntary basis is asking for trouble, if you ask me.

The other problem, if anyone could even solve the first, is finding ways to actually reward role-playing? In an XP based system I guess that's not really a problem. All you need to do is give a bonus bundle of points. But what about skill-based systems? How can you possibly reward the player for playing a role in that kind of system? In a role-playing sense, you can't, there's just no way. Unless you create a special role-playing skill that would, in time, grant other bonuses (which wouldn't make real sense).

All of this is bad all around anyway. As far as I'm concerned, XP systems don't fit well with role-playing (in its purest form) in CRPGs, while skill-based systems don't allow for role-playing rewards. So what kind of incentive can a game offer players to force them to role-play on a role-playing server? The closest I've seen a developer try to enforce role-playing in an MMORPG is Mythic with DAoC, which published a specific agreement that players needed to accept before logging on to an RP server. But once in the game, there was hardly ever anyone doing any role-playing regardless of that. It only served the developer's justifications for taking action when someone complained about another player that was not being cooperative. If no one complained (and no one really could), then nothing happened.

Pay for how you want to play

The only conceivable way I can see that could successfully attract more (I said more, not only) real role-players to a specific server, and ensure that they really do role-play, is to charge for it. That's right, ask players to pay for it instead of rewarding them. That would ensure that the players signing up on this specific server would really be hardcore role-players, it's the safest way I can see. Of course, there would always be those that justify their logging onto such a server by saying that "it looked cool", regardless of any surcharge, or special EULA, or anything else that would be meant to artificially filter players. I don't think you can ever avoid it, even though I still wonder to this day what seemed so cool to these people when they looked at the DAoC list of servers and saw the name Guinevere….

Role-players (real ones) are generally considered freaks by the online community. Harmless freaks, funny freaks, cool freaks, freakish freaks, but freaks nonetheless. Maybe we should pull the community apart. Would the role-players be willing to pay more to have at least some assurance that they will be surrounded by more like-minded people? I'm sure a good portion of them would yes. The more hardcore among them, those more inclined to pay more for something that they want. Those that don't value role-playing as much would probably just shrug it off and play on a regular server, or another role-playing server that wouldn't offer such a guaranteed role-playing safety.

Am I proposing that developers should charge more for their games? Absolutely not. What I am suggesting though is that publishers might want to look into charging their customers according to what they want out of their game. Why couldn't casual gamers, who know before hand that they won't play more than 10 hours a month, couldn't have the option of only paying for those 10 hours of play on a special "casual" server? Why couldn't a role-player decide that the special role-playing server, which has a dedicated moderator team looking after it, be worth a few more dollars? What about the family that will allow their young kids to play? Can't they find a safer, less expansive home that will make sure that the kids won't play for too long and without profanity?

Bah! Why not just throw us all in the same melting pot instead? It sure is much less complicated that way…