Project Ouroboros

So I just made a random name for this post to reflect the content, which is also mostly random.

I have a few posts about MMO concepts already, but I want to get to the meat of that series (mainly because I have no motivation to be thorough with it without having an end game in mind).

I think MMOs, in general, are a great passtime. The whole point is to give someone a world to engross themselves in, to trade time for enjoyment regardless of the allotment. But the problem with most major games is that they are game-y - they take the fundamental shift WoW made in the industry and assume that is the future, and ignore the functional base upon which MMO's were founded, in that they should be an engagement with a world, not an engagement with a dungeon or boss or quest or pvp zone.

So what I am interested in is comprehensive engagement - to suspend ones disbelief, even at a superficial level without engaging in the worlds actual lore, and just living in a virtual reality for a while. Modern titles fail entirely to achieve this - from SWTOR to Rift to GW2 to Neverwinter, the gamification of the world means you can never just live in it, you always have to have an immediate goal in a precessing series of objectives to accomplish as if the world were broken down into stages in Mario. And in effect they always are - zones are level appropriate, quest chains are linear, and the developers want to make sure you see everything neat they made while not getting lost so the objectives are straightforward and marked on your map.

That defeats the point, though. The point is that you should get lost. You should be confused, because reality is confusing. The game world should not be a straightforward playground of colorful events that attract players to ride the rides and then leave. You should find caves at random with show-not-tell stories built in that have no outlying indication of adventure, but that you find it for yourself. And they should not always have great loot - maybe you just find an empty cave with a strange carving on the wall that will drive forum communities mad for years.

If your design is around function and form, you miss the magic. It is the difference between the Morrowind and the Skyrim - between the Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights. In the former titles, you are lost, there is no real direction on where to go, you just find it out as you play along. But even in the absence of a tangible goal the game remains fun because you are engrossed in the world. You don't need to be saving the world for an experience to be enjoyable, it just has to be fun in and of itself.

I used those examples on purpose, because the later games are still considered fantastic. You can have a game where everything is laid out for you, linear or otherwise directed, and have a fantastic time. But I think most of my target demographic (whom I know exists, because I talk to this audience all the time in myself and my friends) find the magic of the prior to be something that is on a level of its own few games can touch. It is why you constantly go back and replay, and still often experience this sense unless you play these games to death, because the world is not arranged to play through in a directed path, it is willy nilly and fantastic for it.

I want to see more MMOs like that. So Project Ouroboros (working title) is my take on how you would achieve this while having a game your friends could play.

Firstly, the model of this idea is novel - development starts with whatever base engine... It would require weeks of planning in and of itself to figure out the best course of action here, but I will present a few options. First, a novel engine built ground up for this game, fully open source and community driven, built on some modern tech stack. Maybe you use QML for the UI and Ogre for the rendering engine, that sounds like fun. Time consuming though, and to achieve this would require external funding sources I am not fond of. Option two is to use an open engine, the most common I can think of is Godot. That one is not suited for a 3d mmo at all though. You could use the staple Unity or some such, but the proprietary nature of it (and most other commercial engines) defeats what I'm getting into further on.

Regardless, once you have an engine of some sort, with a proper development toolchain (released to the public so users can create their own environments, items, etc) you build the first zone. Probably the human race one, since it is a classic "default". And that is it, you ship. I envision a title where the "level" cap is around 20, so this zone could constitute levels 1 to 4 or 5. But anyone playing the game at this point - the 0.1 point - would hit max level and have not much else to do. So that is where the revenue model comes in.

The project would require a custom website, where users can donate a la kickstarter or patreon modeling to whatever idea they want to see implemented most. Whatever has the most money behind it is what is worked on, so the game grows organically dictated by what players are willing to pay for. If the first thing they want is large group raid content, they get that at level 5. If they want more questing zones, we can build those for years. If they want new races, those get made. Anyone can submit proposals, albeit user proposals require a minimum pledge contribution to seeing it happen. Additionally, anything the official development team does not take on as a project the users themselves can build and seek the pledges for themselves. The difference is that the parent company of this project, whatever I would call it, would be able to claim a proposal to let the community know not to work on it, but community works cannot lock proposals in such an absolute way because you cannot guarantee they will finish it, instead they can just mark projects they are intending to create as such, but you have to take those claims with a grain of salt.

The design of this proposition system is key to the entire games success. It needs to have a great integrated discussion system, project management tools for the user and developer creations, the ability to get feedback and iterate rapidly, and the ability to beta test everything with one click integration to the game client. 

The revenue model is then that the main development team, severs, Q/A, etc are all funded by whatever the users pay us to add to the game. Thus there are no microtransactions, no subscriptions, and if the game is a success the revenue should be huge, but it is only reflective of the desire of the community to see new content added. It is a self perpetuating cycle. Hence the project name.

Mechanically, a problem with modern MMO's (and I take this from ZybekTV on youtube) is that a game like WIldstar is very demanding to play. Because it blends action gameplay and 40 man raiding, it means you need a higher degree of constant vigilance in your playstyle while raiding for hours on end. It is a very taxing concept that might be the downfall of that title - where the demands of the gameplay, while fun, are so exhausting the playerbase cannot commit the effort necessary to complete the hardest of challenges. Which is a shame, but I would have forcasted that outcome in advance. It is why, I feel, WoW remains so popular - and why its popularity has only diminished as the game has gotten more complicated.

I am not saying you should have a dumb as bricks gameplay experience - that wil alienate whatever elite players you might have, and those players are essential to maintain a vibrant community. But you need pacing - you need the let players play at those hyper-high skill capped levels when appropriate, while falling back to simpler mechanics when the best is not needed, or not wanted. At the least every player class (note, see further down for details on the distinction between a class and a spec) would have specs that were heavily skill dependent, leading to the highest possible performances, and some that are simplified or not as skillful that do their job but do not have as much performance variance. This can even happen inside a spec - maybe you have two finishing moves with a combo system, one that requires a skillshot and one that does its effect targeted. The skillshot does more damage and might have an added effect, but you trade that for the reality you can miss, and that you have to take the time to aim. It is a tradeoff as such, but the mechanics are succesful if that tradeoff is worth it to the high skill high engagement player while the less skilled or less engaged player can get by with option B without feeling like they are intentionally playing bad.

The class system I also feel is the optimization of modern class mechanics seen in MMOs today. You start the game classless - for engagements sake, you are a potato sack peasant (normally) who, depending on starting experience, picks their starting class and spec according to a need or want. You could legitimately stay level 0 running around flinging your fists as an untrained brute at fence posts as long as you want. But eventually you find your way into an armor proficiency - a class - and you get the default spec of that class, which would be more reflective of its traditional role.

The four armor types would be cloth, leather, mail and plate. The four starting specs would be wizard, mercenary, cleric, and warrior respectively. Each would have simplified mechanics and they would all be jack of all trades specs - they would all be somewhat durable, somewhat damaging, some aoe, some cc, some sustainability. Not high skill specs, but with a few opportunties for skillful play. As you level up you unlock additional specs (funded by desire for them) through quests or just leveling up, that run the gamut of functionality that armor type might provide.

Which is an important distinction - you are really only limited by your armor class moreso than a specific role or playstyle. I can easily imagine all the classes getting access to specs that can perform all the functions of the traditional trinity, meaning  you never need to be without a tank - not because the mechanical benefits of specialization are lost, and the interplay between roles is absent, but because any class has access to a tank spec. This is a compromise - you don't want to give all player characters access to all specs and functions because then you have no progression attachment to your character - you would be going from a plate wearing hulk to a fireball flinging wizard in a robe, which makes no sense. But having the means by which a wizard could transition into a warlock, or a cleric could become a druid, makes more sense. As such, there are four kinds of armor drops - one for each armor type - but that armor is mostly cross-spec applicable. Different stats would be better for different specs, so your elementalist wizard gear might not be optimal for a hellfire warlock, but you would use the same primary stats and benefit somewhat from all your secondaries.

The mechanics to change spec would be a little more involved though. You would want commitment to a playstyle, and unlike most MMOs the customization within a spec would be limited. There should be a sense of commitment to your mercenary being an assassin rather than an archer, and changing between them would take some resources and time, especially to unlock it the first time.

Again, this is a compromise - you do not want player spec swapping every dungeon because of optimality concerns, but you do want players to be able to switch to a tank role when the guilds raid is missing one. I imagine you could switch specs in one of two ways - a class quest, and lump gold. The later is for when it is really necessary for group play, the former is for when you just want to change around.

Each class would, over time, accumulate a lot of specs to chose from - some would be given, some would require quest chains, and some might even be secret. They are effectively kits, where you have base class spells common to all specs that define the class (ie, all cloth wearers have some fundamental arcane magic talent, all mercenaries are skilled with locks, traps, and diplomacy, all clerics have a bond to some deity, all warriors are military trained) but you add on top of those with a spec, that can go from just a shift in spells to a radical change in playstyle.

This diversity is the true specialization of this game - rather than have micromanaged talent points or skill trees to read a wiki page on and then just take the optimal route, you get the skills and spells of a role and it is in your choice of spec that dictates your distinction amongst your peers. That, and your blinging armor.

Appearances are important. TF2 is one of the only games to get this right. I would want to see every race added have a distinct silhouette for each armor class - the warriors would be buff, the clerics would be tall, the mercenaries could be short, the wizards lanky. Depending on race, of course. 

This provides a multitiude of benefits that fix a lot of problems I perceive in class based games of today - developers will add dozens of classes, which means each character is invested into but severely limited to its few specs. Instead, I want that turned on its head, where you have few classes but each one having many specs,  so that you can pick a fundamental playstyle you like - the swashbuckling stealthy charismatic rogue, the master of the arcane, the divine, or the weapon slinging plate clad titan, and explore the diverse interpretations of each of these archetypes through all manner of specializations. And different specs would have different degrees of skill - for example, maybe the mage has a Timelord spec that requires juggling a bunch of disparate resources combined with everything being skillshots, maybe to such a degree that you are juggling a ball of sand around that needs to contact enemies from certain directions to combo into certain effects. It might be the highest theoretical single target spec in the class, but it would require huge dedication and skill to play to its potential, and maybe it has a compounding buff effect where each differentiating combo of ball tossing multiples the effects of the other combos, meaning that if you cannot maintain your juggle your performance is magnitudes worse.

That kind of high risk gameplay would be great for the veteran or pro who wants to be a true badass - and to play with one would be a marvel to behold. But there, you see the difference between a lord of time who manipulates the field to annihilate everything and some goon with a ball of mud that does about as much damage as a wet mud ball to the face would do. Likewise, you could be the elementalist who throws out fireballs with targeted lock on. Maybe the highest performing one causes his spells to explode at the right point to hit the most targets and keep the most burning victims possible, but even the noob would still be lobbing fire grenades into the bosses face that burn everyone around him. The performance difference would be much less pronounced, but for it to be a success  there must be a balance - it needs to be worth it to play the time wizard perfectly if you can, but it also needs to be worth it to bring an elementalist mage because there are very few people who can play a perfect time wizard, especially all the time. And even then, the time mage is not the optimal solution all the time - maybe it is only best on single mob or many mob fights, but if you have two high value targets the buff effects only apply to one while the fire mage can stick burning effects on a few targets really well. That would mean a fire mage at best is out performing that best time wizard under certain circumstances. It is a balancing act, but a rapidly rolling game like this could easily tweak numbers to the fraction to insure the balance is maintained.

Back to how to pull this idea off. So you have your website, your engine, and you have a starting zone - it should encompass my above points, in that while you can go down a nice directed main story through the zone reaching a lot of areas, there should be chunks of the map left unexplored when you reach the end of the main quest, and you should have a motivation to wonder "what the hell is over there?".

There might be a few empty caves of nothing, and maybe a tower full of level 10 skeletons that rip you apart unless you can amass a forty man group of max level (5) players to fight them. Maybe they do not drop anything - maybe they have a really low chance of dropping fantastic items or reagents.

Maybe there is a hut with a book on a shelf that talks about the owners hidden cellar in the swamp. You go to the exact location the book details and find a tiny intractable rock on the floor you would have never seen in passing that opens an underground cavern, containing monsters and unique items. Maybe a secret bookcase in a nobles house just leads to a shoe closet, after you thought you were so clever.

Likewise, you want a living world. Monsters would not just wander around from spawn locations. If an area has reason to contain monsters, it would contain them, and if it did not... it would not. The open fields should just be that, open, maybe some harvestable herbs, maybe a roaming band of bandits on occasion, but nothing just spawning out of thin air to walk in a square area. Think Skyrim, and how much of the world is empty, but where it makes sense to have actors they are there. If there is a village of gnolls, the gnolls respawn from their huts after a set time. And if you attack one, the entire village comes after you, so you need to actually try to pick them off slowly without drawing the attention of the whole hoard of them - screw mechanics where you have aggro radiuses so small you could throw a stone between the mob you just lopped the head off of and his friend who does not care what just happened in front of his face.

Player engagement is also important, and you do not want others in your world to be your antagonists. Quest objectives would naturally be completable by out of group players attacking the same targets or interacting with the same objects. You want there to be an incentive to help others, so maybe attacking a mob another player already tagged nets you more gold drops than usual, and the loot is player independent.

But that is all fluff and detail. The point is that you want a world not designed to be gamed, but designed to be lived. Where NPCs walk around town and most of them want nothing to do with you. Where the blacksmith might get mad and refuse to sell anything to you if you keep trying to pawn off rat ears to him as junk instead of going to a shady guy in a back alley who might just try to murder you if you are too low level.

It would be complicated, but I think quality over quantity can really win here. Take the time to make something truly fantastic and ask for money to create more, not unnaturally gate what you already have and try to produce as much as possible to sell more units. If it is good enough, and I think it could be, the runaway effect would be that players would be throwing money at amazing ideas to such huge degrees that you could forget the money at some point. The community contributions would give you the ultimate hiring pool to draw new developers from, and you could naturally grow the business as popularity and funding grow in tandem.

And I would never want to obsolete content - if we made a raid at level four, and then increased the level cap by adding higher level zones, I'd want to see there be a good enough reason to form raid groups at low levels to run that old content, or to see that content scale. It is the greatest shame in most MMOs today that the real game is just whatever is the latest raid.

Oh, and one last mention - gear. Gear should be hard. You should start in rags, and you should feel amazing when you get a cloth hood that looks like a paper bag. If you see someone in blinged out armor, you know they did not just get a random drop - they got reagents, paid huge sums of money, spent huge amounts of time in professions to craft it, and put in effort beyond just time, luck, or money into seeing it come to fruition. And the dungeons should be hard, and not accessible by all. Because the greatest feeling in an MMO is not being that decked out mage with transdimensional rifts in their shoulders, it is seeing them walk down the street and realizing how much effort he put in to get there. And to think that you want to put in that effort to, and accomplish greatness like he had. The whole plate. To become great requires great commitments and deeds, something all these other titles forget because they want to theme park their way to huge subscriber bases.

Hardware Rants 2: Electric Notebookaru

I'm just dropping a forum post on HN here because I repeat it so often I'd rather just link to a blog at this point.

The subject always revoles around "What is the best Linux notebook?".


The right notebook for Linux is a Linux notebook. Vendors of such machines are still boutique, but unlike in the past they actually exist. Just a few are Zareason, Thinkpenguin, and System76. I personally have an off brand Clevo 740 SU (same model as the System76 Galago) because I had confidence in the notebooks ability and got it OSless since I'd have to install Arch anyway.

But recommending all these Samsung and Llenovo Windows machines is a disservice to everyone. It is a disservice to the Linux ecosystem because you cannot guarantee hardware support and using a non-Windows OS will void your warranty most of the time (at least if they catch you with it). It means that you get a bad impression of the experience due to any bugs or glitches you encounter, and rather than acknowledge you crossed into the land of dragons and took the risk many end up blaming the ecosystem that cannot provide hardware support realistically for any parts the vendors do not support in kernel themselves - especially those that are actively hostile to attempts to implement hardware support (video drivers - Android ones are really bad right now, but Nouveau had to wage a tangible uphill battle to get where it is today, but a lot of wifi cards, pci cards, etc can have no vendor support).

It also means you are paying your MS tax, and getting a Windows license you intend not to use. I'm not even going to argue the price aspect, because we know it really does not matter - if Linux were ever a threat (and really, it already is with Windows talking about version 9 possibly being free or ultra low cost with the looming threat of Android) they would just give away licenses, and that combined with bloatware contracts would provide the vendors more revene than just shipping Ubuntu (or whatever distro).

What I care about is the message. Every Linux Thinkpad fanboy is one bullet point in the Llenovo board meeting affirming the need not to ever ship a non-Windows notebook (except in countries like Germany that actually force them to). It sends the message "go ahead, bill me for a Windows license I'll never use, and make me fight the hardware to make it work, but I will still buy your stuff because having a pleasant straightforward and painless Linux experience is not one of my priorities.
It also obscures how large the market segment is, because to these vendors every machine sold is a mark that Windows is still king. If they do not see retailors selling real Linux machines (including the Dell one) they have absoutely no reason to ever fathom selling Linux native machines themselves.

And that hurts you, because that means there is less adoption, fewer options, and less pressure towards more widespread use of the platform. And for whatever your reason, you want to use Linux right now, and buying these Windows machines denies others from having the chance to even know it exists, and supports the continued monopoly Microsoft has on the personal computing industry (and Apple is not even on that radar).

So please, when you are looking for a new notebook with the intent to run a Linux distro on it, give some consideration to the vendors actually selling Linux machines, with support, as first class citizens. If you cannot find one that meets you needs so be it, but don't go out of your way to buy a Windows notebook and hope it can run a Linux distro flawlessly.

Original posting was here.