Bragging Rights: Keeping Score
in MMOs

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By Ralsu



In many ways, the enjoyment I cull from massively-multiplayer online
games (MMOs) results from tracking numbers. I like tweaking my
character stats, whether it's to optimize them (like I did when
designing my href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=78">Master
Thief) or to skew them for role-playing purposes (as I did with my href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=113">Stormcaller
sorcerer). I derive pleasure from watching my damage numbers in combat.
I calculate which is the fastest method of gaining XP, the most
mana-efficient spells, and my rate of attack with a one-handed weapon
vs. a 2-hander. Yeah, I'm pretty obsessed with numbers. So why am I
bugging over the href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=796&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0">player-vs-player
(PvP) Leaderboards in Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO)?

Competitive Edge

Keeping score is not a concept limited to us MMO junkies. Microsoft
caught onto the desire to be the best online and are reaping high
participation in their Xbox Live service. If you look outside of
video games, it's easy to focus on sports as an area where we keep
score. We could even talk about counting votes in an election since
midterms are all over the news as I write this. It seems safe to say
that humans are just competitive. But how do our competitive natures
differ.



Working backwards from my examples above, politicians compete so that
they gain the power to influence government policy. Whether you believe
they do this to help society or pocket large checks from lobbyists, it
is clear that beating one (or more) opponent(s) in a one-shot event is
necessary. Athletes use their physical prowess to compete in events
that use score to determine the winner. With the athletes, though,
there is usually more than one game or match. It's more of a war of
attrition in sports with lengthy seasons (Major League Baseball,
National Hockey League). Players going head-to-head via Xbox Live can
play for instant wins (fighting or sports games), series wins ("frag"
fests such as first person shooters, or FPS), or long-term wins (time
online, most total points). The variety appeals to a wide range of
players and is one of the keys to the service's success in my view.



But what do MMO players want to compete for? MMOs typically last
players 6 months on the conservative estimate and years on the generous
guess. As a result, MMO players tend to value status that accrues over
a very long time. Think of us as gaming athletes playing in a lengthy
season. We take pride in seeing our avatars get there final "ding." We
revel in the prestige that comes from being known as a veteran on our
server. But just as Major League Baseball (MLB) has layers of
achievement beyond wins and losses, MMOs have incremental
accomplishments we like to celebrate. Let's take a look.

MMOLB (or something like that)

Staying with the concept that MMO players are like gaming athletes, I
designed a brief chart that might be used to compare milestones in MMOs
to those in MLB:

cellspacing="2">
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;"> style="font-weight: bold;">MMOs
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;"> style="font-weight: bold;">MLB
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Soloing
a starter quest
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">First
career hit
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Killing
a low level boss mob
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">First
career home run
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Having
your character's name mentioned in a "best players" thread
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Going
to the All-Star game
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Successfully
leading a raid
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Winning
league MVP
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Successfully
leading a raid on a deity
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Winning
World Series MVP
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Leading
the raid in kills
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Leading
the league in home runs
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Keeping
the main tank healed on a raid
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(222, 203, 123); text-align: center; width: 50%;">Winning
the Rolaids Relief Award

OK, so you get the idea. We MMO players are proud of achieving various
milestones and like to brag about them. We've all seen the pictures on
the forums of our favorite MMO of the adventurers huddled around the
corpse of the dragon they just killed. In groups, we compare stats
relentlessly. One bard compares his build stats with the other in the
group. One tank compares his gear with another on a raid. href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album03&id=188_G&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="party"
src="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album03/188_G.sized.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px;" align="left">Healers
compare the power of their healing spells or the amount of mana they
have (to keep the heals coming). Casters compare their capacity to
explode damage in a short time (and the smarter ones compare their
ability to keep a steady stream of damage that overtakes the burst
damage coming for a lengthy time).



We love to be reminded of our smart choices, lucky loots, and lengthy
experience playing our favorite game. In a perfect world, our MMO might
have a leaderboard that recognizes some of the milestones mentioned
above. In the less than perfect world in which we live, we just get
into bragging wars on forums or in public chat channels. We know we're
the best, but there is no way to show it off to the rest of the gaming
world. We want to immortalize the successful completion of these
milestones, especially for the first character with which we achieve
them.

Firsts

Firsts--there's something we MMO players get excited about. We've read
the threads containing strategies to kill that dragon from the guild
that was first to get the kill. Being the first tot he level cap, the
first to kill a particular mob, or the first to gain access to a
restricted area are all things that make us proud of the long hours and
hard work we've poured into our characters. We simply love the idea of
being the first to solve a puzzle or achieve a goal.



When Sony Online Entertainment recently created the Progression Servers
for EverQuest (servers that started with original content and
progressed to expansions as players completed certain tasks), they
captured a perfect way to show off firsts. Players could look at the
server status online to see which guild and how many people had first
defeated Vox on that server. Yeah it sucked just a little bit for me
having to look at everyone blasting through content way ahead of me,
but I still respected the accomplishments of the successful guilds on
my server. It was all there with concrete proof; I knew who the firsts
were. That was a cool system.

Enter the Arena

As MMOs developed, debates raged about which class could do the most
damage or which build for a class was best. People would do time tests
by fighting mobs solo. The fastest to kill was declared the winner.
That method favored the burst damage builds and slighted the sustained
damage builds. Long-term, the only way to truly see how two design
concepts stacked up was to pit them against each other. PvP emerged,
and people had a new way to compete. You could fight and easily measure
the outcome: the winner was better.



Current games, like World of Warcraft, keep score with PvP, too.
Leaderboards gave players another way to show their overall skill. A
player who claims to be undefeated might not be impressive when you
learn he has only been in 3 PvP battles. But when you see he has been
in 94, well that is
impressive. And systems like the honor system proved that Mr. 94 Wins
wasn't skewing his results by picking on lowbies. So PvP provided a
good diversion from the grind and allowed gamers to access a new method
of keeping score. It also appealed to a new demographic: the people who
enjoy action and fighting games.

*Twitch*

href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album03&id=195_G&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="warforged"
src="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album03/195_G.sized.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px;" align="right">

Turbine really aimed for that action gamer and fighting crowd when they
designed the active combat system for DDO. Yes, the system also hopes
to address the complaints about how bored semi-turn-based combat from
other MMOs can be, but the result has been that I see far more "twitch"
gamers in DDO than in any other MMO I have ever played. I see a lot of
FPS gamers taking on DDO--looking at it as another squad-based game.



The introduction of PvP combat that came with Module 3 now gives DDO
players a PvP Leaderboard. We can test our mettle against people and
everyone can know the results. PvP doesn't sit well with me in DDO for
a number of reasons. We have repeatedly said here at DDO @ Ten Ton
Hammer that resources spent on PvP are resources that could have been
spent on new quests and fixing major bugs. But, OK, leaving that dead
horse to rot, I also don't like PvP in DDO because it is possible for
my near-perfect build to lose to a crappy build because I do not have
the real life dexterity of a 16 year old. style="font-style: italic;">But that's called skill, you say.
Yeah it is, but it also changes a fundamental aspect of MMOs I have
loved for many years: rewarding people for being smart. DDO PvP reward
people who have spent years playing FPS rather than a guy like me whose
spent years playing D&D and builds intelligently. And that's why
I'm bugging about PvP Leaderboards in DDO.

---

That's my take on keeping score
in MMOs. What's yours?
cellspacing="2">
style="vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(219, 201, 125);">

Do you like the PvP Leaderboards in DDO?

• Ralsu is a hater! PvP is awesome!
• I only do PvP when I am really bored, and I don't care
  about the Leaderboard.
• I am afraid to PvP because I don't want to show up on the
  bottom of the Leaderboard.
• PvP has no place in D&D and I refuse to do it!