Statistics Galore(y)!

Ravious is talking about leaderboards, data collection and elitism today, so I thought I’d throw my two cents in. I think data collection is a key to long term survival for an MMO, and its fortunate byproduct should be player accessible stats, both about themselves and the community at large. Its been argued before that players don’t care about the MMO’s fictional story as much as they care about their own stories and memories from the game. Player stat devices like the Tome of Knowledge and even WoW Achievements reinforce the players’ own history, reminding them of what they have achieved.

Unfortunately even a system as mindless as WoW Achievements can be perverted by players’ darker sides, as seen in the current trend of only allowing players to join a PUG for a dungeon if they can show the achievement for the dungeon.

As long as stats have been recorded, they’ve been used for comparison, its just natural human behavior. Its also human nature to pursue what’s best for yourself, and when these two instincts are combined its only natural for people to exclude based on statistical thresholds. It becomes a problem when there is no way for people to improve their important statistics. In this case it means that players who are just reaching level cap cannot improve their gearscore or complete dungeon achievements since no one will group with them. Ravious (and Sanya) mention a solution to the problem, tracking everything. I agree, and offer two more solutions.

First, don’t just report all stats, reward all stats! Johnny Newbie may not be able to kill the UberDragon within his first week of play, but if he manages to fall off cliffs and get himself killed more than any other player, he deserves some recognition. Give him the weekly title of “Johnny the Fragile, Chief Inspector of Gravity” and watch him be proud to show off his title. Even if he’s showing his title off to other new players with equally lame titles, they’ll be happy because they are unique, for that week they are the absolute best (or worst) at something. With any statistic there can be only one leader, so if no other statistics are shown (or are shown but without possibility of recognition or incentive) they are naturally going to gravitate towards the one or two stats they are told matter.

Second, don’t show statistics that can be easily improved simply by playing the game a long time. Total number of times a player has killed a dungeon boss is a number that should really be more depressing the higher it is, because its just a neon sign screaming LACK OF CONTENT, but instead it would be (and is) used to gauge how worthy a player is. Why not instead track a players success rate at a dungeon, or fastest time to clear a boss, or largest damage healed/dealt/tanked in a single boss fight? These still measure the success and relative skill of a player, but do it in a way that at least limits the impact of longer time /played. And if you absolutely must show quantity stats, show them over a standardized period, like the week or month. That way players who suffer from EPeen Redundant Incessant Comparison Ketosis (EPRICK) will still have something to show for it.

I’ll throw in a third solution just for good measure. Role Proficiency Ratings! See my previous post for details, but it addresses these same types of problems of socialization gated by arbitrary statistics.

Another Thought on Old News

It was reported a while ago that 70% of WoW trial players never make it to level 10. There are a couple of interesting observations you can make about this statistic, and some important inferences to be made as well. First and most obviously, WoW is losing an enormous chunk of their potential customer base. Second, players are losing interest so fast that they aren't even willing to play for free.

Perhaps one of the important questions to ask is, why use level 10 as the benchmark? It may be the case that 99% of trial players make it to level 9 and quit, but its far more likely that this was chosen because its when Talents become available, and when many classes gain a key ability that defines their class. In other words, level 10 is when "the good stuff" starts. Its also the very first opportunity for a player to make their character different from all the other new characters of that class and race. If you're hiding the fun and player identity behind hours of initial grind, what would you expect to happen?

Cataclysm sounds like a brilliant idea, one which will revamp the starting areas and bring veterans back into old Azeroth, giving the current playerbase a great reason to invest more time and keep paying those subs. But for a brand new player the visuals and quests will be taken for granted, and if the initial grind-to-fun and grind-to-identity of 1-10 is still there, WoW will still let a huge amount of potential subs slip through their fingers.

Cataclysm should change the starting point for talents (and key abilities) to five, right around the time players are finishing the initial cave quests and leaving the very first area of the starting zones. Any sooner and they would be overwhelmed by too many features (there is a learning curve, small as it may be). At level five there should be a quick tutorial explaining the classes different talent trees, with a brief overview of each. This way the player will be less than two hours into the game and will already have their "cool abilities" and at least the beginnings of a sense of uniqueness in a 10 class world. Come to think of it, veteran players are so used to spending a talent point immediately after they level up, they're probably Pavloved into opening their talent menus, which will lead to exactly 9 instances per character of "…oh right, I don't get to do that yet. *sniffle*". Cataclysm is supposed to reinvigorate the current playerbase, so why not surprise them with talent points earlier?