Players vs. volunteers

11 days ago, Xillix Queen of Fools, one of Planeshift’s devs, opened a discussion gauging the players’ opinions on a wipe. Late in the discussion, the developer weltall explained the database problems that Planeshift has.

91 items are buggy as there is a sorta of shift in the columns, before those items even crashed everyone in sight of who used them. (note there are probably countless ones in addition to these 91 bugged for other reasons, like items with a script which is missing etc)
the db is full of missing pet cross references
some items aren’t anymore supposed to be called in a certain way but til they are removed they stay there,
there are some named gold ring which aren’t supposed to be there at all and are due for deletion
money item glitches
items which shouldn’t have been released
problems with id consistency among various db
items which are losing unpickupable flag in laanx lately
data cruft loaded by the npcclient which doesn’t have anymore correlation with the main characters table
guildhouses abused as item storage, the next time you see laanx taking 40 minutes to load it’s the fault of those who use them for that the items in the sack maybe improve your pc performance but hogs down anyway the server, an alt is better.

and if you want past bugs what about fish of blinding strike, fish of talad arm, spidersilk fish or the hammer…

This is not unreasonable. After all, Planeshift is currently at 0.5, a beta version they codename Steel Blue. Their last wipe was in 2005, which was as far back as Crystal Blue, 0.3. Four years of development will likely result in a lot of database schema changes as bugs get fixed, exploits get closed and the design simply gets changed. Planeshift is a world in continual development, rather than a professional world that is launched as a (hopefully) polished 1.0. It is also built and administered by volunteers. These people donate their free time to keeping a world running for others to enjoy and they probably have to deal with a lot of frustration nursing along a crufty database. If Planeshift were a commercial world, doing this would be part of the job description, but we must keep in mind that these people are volunteers.

You can read the entire 22 pages of gore here. In a nutshell, some of the playerbase were supportive and understanding of the idea. An alarmingly large plurality was not at all supportive of the idea with posts ranging from emotional rants and warnings of leaving to “Monday morning deving” as one poster put it.

Planeshift, at least on in Laanx server, is supposed to be an in-character roleplay world. A character could potentially simply be recreated from scratch and keep all its memories and relationships. Far too many players define their characters by their stats and not by their stories and relationships; friendships, rivalries, etc. That players on a roleplay server would put their avatar capital ahead of their roleplay capital is alarming. As I mentioned in my previous post, Planeshift’s abortive wipe trial balloon might be an argument for an RPI style de-emphasis of avatar capital; either flattening character advancement or hiding the numbers. Also, the players seem to suffer from myopia and see only their own character. The volunteers running the world simply don’t exist as people. They are simply faceless trolls whose purpose in life to revolve around that leveled up character. A less myopic and selfish playerbase would have agreed that those who donate their time to make the world function should perhaps not have to work around a crufty database.

I find it depressing.

Wipes and Avatar Capital

Planeshift – who’s Laanx server is one of the few roleplay centric worlds that is not a text MUD or NWN PW – is nearly ready to iterate to version 0.5. Last week, one of the developers, Xillix Queen of Fools, opened a discussion gauging the playerbase’s feelings about a wipe. Predictably, the forums erupted into a massive furor. Planeshift has not wiped in years, despite continual development. I’m not privy to the inner workings of the dev team there, but given that the player reaction to a wipe is going to be highly emotional they have probably been following a trickle down strategy regarding changes; where changes in design are made and slowly filter through the world. If they are at a point where they are seriously considering a wipe and gauging player reaction, then they are probably at a point where they feel that the current database content is a serious technical liability; one that can only be fulfilled with a wipe.

One interesting thing is that the PS team has always been clear that players should expect a wipe sometime and they are certainly not making the mistake that Radu Privantu made on Eternal Lands when he did not tell players to expect a wipe in the future. Yet despite this, opinion is only marginally in favor of a wipe and many, many players are especially vocal in their opposition.

Given that Planeshift is still an avatar capital centric world and that the opposition largely stems from reluctance of many players to re-grind characters at the top of the skill hierarchy, my question is as follows. Would a world design that less avatar capital centric (say with flat skill/level hierarchies) be immune to such drama?

Design Documents – Yes, you need them!

Hallsofvallhalla started a conversation on Friday questioning the value of design documents. I think he is mostly wrong and partially right. I’ll start with why I agree because that is easiest. Most design documents that I have seen are not terribly valuable because they focus solely on the color of the bike shed. They discuss things like level layout, class abilities, races, etc. and ignore the deep decisions about the physics of the world; how it actually works. The design doc should be useful to all team members; not just artists and designers. Now the other side of the argument:

Architecture Matters

Persistent worlds are certainly complex enough to require serious planning. Part of preproduction – and an important part of the design document – is figuring out how to do the hard problems. How will inventory work? How can it be implemented? Etc. Etc. Unless you want to constantly be throwing your work and starting over again, these things need to be worked out before you write a single line of code. All too often, I see freshly started projects publishing screenshots, which hints that they have skipped preproduction entirely.

While writing the Angela interpreter engine for Memotica, I’m reaching the point where I’ve got the core of the interpreter to the point where I’m writing the brokering mechanisms for actions and stimuli. I designed the overall, high level architecture of the engine over a year ago and looking back on it now allows me to continue without flailing about and redesigning the whole choreography. In short, the time spent then is saving me considerable time now.

The ship needs a rudder

Where is the project going? Is it still going in the same direction as six months ago? Or is it adrift and rudderless, buffeted by whatever is being talked about on the project’s forums?

A dirty secret about community/indy teams

One of halls’ argumenents against design documents is that it acts as a straightjacket that restricts creativity and makes the project less interesting to portential team members. One of the dirty secrets is that half of the people who show an interest in helping out a project are useless. They have neither the work ethic, nor the patience and tenacity to stick with the project and be productive. They will happily shoot the breeze on your forums and pontificate endlessly. Do you really want these people setting – and changing – the direction of your project? 90% of the other half are only valuable if they were recruited at the right time and there is consensus on vision; two things that are only possible after the valley of tears phase.

The valley of tears

Every PW project goes through the valley of tears. This is the phase in the project when the interesting theoretical discussions have been had and it is clear that it won’t take weeks to realize the world, but months and years. It will seem that “nothing is happening and the project is going nowhere” for long stretches as the foundations are laid. This is a time when no flashy screenshots are created, but instead the plumbing is laid in. In the worst case scenario, you will be the only person sticking with the project during this time. Projects whose leads allowed them to turn into designed by committee, vampire/puppy/rainbow monstrosities tend to die tragic and lonely deaths in the valley of tears; identified only by the lonely husks of once active forums that will one day disappear into the great 404. You didn’t let it turn into something that you are not entirely happy with during the pontification phase did you? Because it is your passion and drive that will see the project through to the promised land on the other side.

Please tell me that you are recruiting your team at the end of prepreproduction!

You have a prototype. It may be butt ugly. It may not be very performant and will need the attention of better programmers than yourself. The important thing is that the project is past the valley of tears phase, is picking up speed and has direction. The people you recruit at this phase will be attracted to:

• The fact that it has direction. Hey, we have all been on teams with no rudder or team stuck in perpetual pontification mode. Being on a team that is on the move has its own attraction and for years has been one that Luca Pancallo (Talad) of Planeshift has used in dev team recruiting drives.
• The vision. In the pontification (a.k.a. early design) phase, you will inevitably find that others want your goth-vampire world to be about puppies. Perhaps those puppies could have a vampire option as a compromise, but rainbows are much more important. The kinds of people who join because they read your design doc are true believers.

The live team that runs the PW won’t be the same as the one that initially works on it

I don’t say “built” or “delivered” as community worlds are never finished and are always works in progress. People come and go on the project and over time the composition of the dev crew will change. The people coming in will need to sign onto that vision. When a player (always a self identified “ideas” person) starts pontificating about how you need to change your world, you can point him to the vision. Not having a clearly defined vision contributed to Etilica’s death spiral. From the perspective of the leads, I was probably a rogue developer. If there was a design doc to refer back to, we probably would not have been in the habit of surprising each other with changes.

A final caveat. The document need not be set in stone

A design document needs to be a living document. You’ll want to prevent the pontificators from rewriting your design document, but you’ll also want the committed team members to effect change as long as they earn the right. As these committed team members get their ideas accepted, the design doc should be updated to reflect the new status quo.

A Definition for Successful Worlds

I’ve been pondering what a proper definition for a successful roleplay world would be.

Generally speaking, hardcore, high immersion, enforced rp is the jazz, or perhaps better yet classical music, of persistent worlds. It will never have the market of say something such as the usual PvE theme parks. The potential market is similar in probably size to the hardcore PvP crowd; except that RPers don’t gank each other off the server. (in fact, a well designed sandbox RP shares many design conventions as a well designed PvP world. Darkfall – without Darkfall’s community – could also have potential in the RP niche market). So our numbers are small. A successful concert pianist plays to much smaller venues than a successful emo band. This leaves hobbyist worlds and the odd enforced RP commercial MUD, such as Threshold.

One serious problem that roleplay worlds have is player concurrency. How many zombie MUDS and NWN 1/2 servers are there with nobody on? If there are not enough players on, players will log off and move elsewhere. This is a no brainer. From anecdotal evidence that I’ve seen over the years, the peak concurrency on a world with needs to be above 40 players. Notice that I said nothing about relationship to world size. We are presuming here that the world is either small, or if it is large that it has honeypot spots designed to bring the players together. Worlds with a peak concurrency less than that magic two score may remain healthy for long periods, but are susceptible to sudden mass exoduses. Oftentimes, a seemingly perfectly healthy world can become a ghost town within a few weeks. For the long term health of a world, it has to exceed Dunbar’s number by a healthy margin. If you do so, your world has multiple sub-communities and can weather one of them imploding.

It’s not actually the number of players that matters, but the number of highly networked players (HNPs) that matters. If your active playerbase is at or below Dunbar’s number, you are subject to the risk that one or more key HNPs leaves and the social anchor of the community is shattered.

But… success is not all about the size of the playerbase. A world may have the community size, but may not last. Two years ago, the NWN1 world Three Kingdoms was peaking above 40 players. It is currently empty. On paper, it had everything a world could ask for. So having enough HNPs is like having enough food to eat. It can’t guarantee that your world will thrive over the long haul, but one bout of starvation can kill it. A world that has enough highly networked players now may not have them in two years if the world has no newbie hose, or no community manager with a deft hand.

The real measure of success for a world is longevity as an active server. A server that runs for an extended period of time with an active community is a successful one. A good measure of is the amount of time that a server has operated with an active community; this means regular postings on the forums and a certainty of finding players online.

(Disclaimer! The following definition is extremely stringent. I’ll openly admit to not having a successful world under my belt. Under my caretaking, Etilica went through its death throes and I made probably every mistake possible to make things worse; except adding an DM to the GM team before properly vetting her. That one I could only helplessly watch unfold.)

Moderately Successful (2+ years) – The world operated for two years with an active community. Two years is not a long time, but the vast majority of worlds never really acquire a community beyond those who built it and some transient tenants. The usual patterns are to either to never acquire a community, or to have a lively one for a few months until a critical HNP or two leaves. Any live team who can keep a server active for two years or longer deserves a pat on the back. Some NWN2 worlds have reached the moderately successful stage, but none have yet been around long enough for the real test of time.

Outstandingly Successful (5+ years) – If your world has had a healthy and active community for this long, then you have something special. If your world was built by modding (as with the NWN series), then you have long past the point where the game’s newbie hose was shut off. While the total number of available clients that could log into your server have dramatically declined since the heydey, your community is still vibrant. If you have accustom client, then you are long past “teh shiney” phase. Several MUDS and NWN1 worlds – including some not operating anymore – had long runs with active communities. Some came close to this mark before their communities imploded. Among the early worlds that launched in late 2002; those that were still operating in late 2007 fit this category. If it launched any time before spring of 2004 and is still operating with a viable community, then you can call it an unqualified success. Planeshift is notable here as well. I’d actually give it extra marks as it is not a mod and not a text world, but a custom codebase server and client that is constantly evolving.

Legendary (10+ years) – Seriously, if you have a world that is still operating and launched before March of 1999, you are my hero! This rarified atmosphere leaves only a handful of MUDS; notably Threshold. Those that reach this point will probably pass another ten.