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阐述MMORPG运气vs刷任务机制的文化差异

发布时间:2013-04-28 17:44:01

作者:Simon Ludgate

我最近看到许多关于东西方MMORPG的免费增值模式vs订阅模式之争,但在此我想避开盈利模式,谈谈游戏设计本身的问题。我注意到东西方MMORPG之间的主要区别之一在于,通过“刷任务”或“运气”机制减缓进程的设置。

刷任务:这里我指的是游戏机制耗费很长时间,但相对可预测。关于刷任务的一个例子就是通过杀怪来升级角色,每杀一只怪可获得固定的经验值(XP)。如果你需要获得1万个XP才能升级,每个怪能给予100个XP,那么玩家就得杀死100个怪才能升级。

运气:这里我指的是高度不可预测的游戏系统。例如许多西方设计游戏的武器系统,你有机会获得一个更好或者更糟的武器(或者甚至是彻底丧失武器)。每一步都有较少的成功机会,所以要获得最佳武器就必须进行相当多次的尝试(或者极高的运气)以便通关。有些玩家运气够好可以顺利过关,有些玩家则需经历相当长时间才能闯关,有些玩家则无论怎么努力,好像永远也得不到那件武器。

带有运气的刷任务:我还想提一下介于运气与刷任务的情况,尤其是西方MMORPG。例如,在《魔兽世界》(WoW)中,升级贸易技能需要一定的运气(你每次锻造一些东西,就可能或者不可能得到一个点数),但这些运气元素看起来,却并不是很理想(例如,你可能需要10-30次锻造以获得10个技能点,但一般情况下不会超过这个点数)。

西方MMORPG减少运气元素

我认为我们可以从西方游戏如何减少或降低运气元素开始谈起。《魔兽世界》就是一个极好的研究案例,因为它有一个积极的运气消除机制。在“Vanilla”WoW中,突袭中的战利品掉落可能会包含一些从相对大型的配套战利品而来的道具,例如特定职业装甲中的一部分(游戏邦注:例如猎人头盔,魔法手套等)。在Burning Crusade中,这个系统则被一个“代币”掉落系统所取代,在其中掉落的三种代币中,有一种可用于购买特定的装甲,而后者又可用于交易购买三四种装甲中的一者(例如:猎人/战士/教士头盔,术士/僧侣/巫师手套等)。在Wrath of the Lich King中,系统中只有三种代币,玩家花掉代币可以购买一种装甲(例如猎人/战士/教士代币等)。

WoW(from wowuigallery.com)

WoW(from wowuigallery.com)

这种变化是为了减少玩家备齐一套装甲所需要的运气元素,以便减少不必要的道具浪费。结果是在Vanilla中减少了50种战利品(10个职业,5种道具),在BC中减少了15件(3种代币,5件道具),最后只剩下3种战利品(只有3种代币)。

战利品掉落是WoW中唯一基于运气的前进系统。锻造系统要受限于基于运气的刷任务,因为稀有的原材料可能要靠运气才能获得(你可能难以找到自己所需的节点,或者自己想得到的资源),而搜集过程中却有极高机率获得那些并非基于运气因素的原材料。更重要的是,在WoW的锻造过程中,你刚开始时会一直获得自己急需的产品。

东方MMORPG以及运气(非运气)进程系统

与WoW可靠的锻造系统截然不同,《最终幻想XI》的锻造系统却可能让玩家失去一些配方中的资源,但更重要的是这种基于运气的产品可能具有不同等级。锻造一件武器时,你有4种基本的结果:你失败并失去了材料(游戏邦注:其中包括获取材料很困难,以及材料很昂贵,最重要的是你所有的努力可能会付之东流);你失败但没有损失(那你就可以再次尝试);你成功并获得一般的结果(可能不是你想要的结果);你成功并获得极高质量的产品。针对许多道具而言,玩家都想得到高质量的结果,而一般结果可能并不值得他们付出任何努力。

这种锻造系统,更像是一种运气-刷任务,尽管其中的迭代可能需要耗费大量时间(当你锻造道具需要的一种材料来自那种每周只会刷新一次的稀有怪物之时,你实际上只能亦步亦趋地跟随这种怪物了)。这种极低的概率创造了特定道具的稀缺性,因此会增加它们的价值。

我曾提到许多出现于早期东方MMORPG的一种不同进程系统就是“武器升级”系统。其基本原理就是每种武器都有“等级”,并且必须“升级”才能不断提升。但是,当你尝试升级武器时,可能有4种结果(取决于游戏):你失败并彻底失去武器;你失败但武器失去一个等级;你失败而武器保持原样,或者你成功让武器升到更高等级。

在《Phantasy Star Universe》中,锻造系统允许武器从普遍道具(+0)升到10级(+10)。最开始,你在一个等级上的失败可能会彻底失去道具。但在之后的补丁中,该道具会返回+0,而你能够上升的最大等级就会下降一个。因此,获得+10武器的唯一方法就是运用10次连续的成功升级,并且永远不准失败。换句话说,+10道具极为罕见。

文化因素对运气vs刷任务的影响?

你可以想象WoW玩家如果遇到从Epic到Legendary的升级过程中,必须10次升级自己的Shadowmourne,并且每次都会增加彻底失去武器的机率,最后却只剩下1%获胜机率时会有多愤怒吗?但这种基于运气的系统在东方MMORPG中却极为普遍,甚至被运用于一些原本就已经很难获取的道具。

我并非社会学专家,但想在此斗胆一试,分析下东方vs西方之间的文化差异。在我看来西方的潜在哲学就是:“每个人”如果足够努力就可以做到“任何事”。当然,我们也要接受这并非是完全正确——例如,天生失明的人永远也无法成为空军飞行员。但我们西方人就是高度重视让更多人可以做更多事情的哲理,最重要的是,我们会为此努力消除人为障碍(例如种族、职业、性别等因素)以进入自己梦寐以求的事业、活动、领域等。在西方我们奉行的哲学是:如果你努力,就能获得自己想要的结果。

虽然我对西方文化所知甚少,但也知道他们并不奉行西方这种基于优秀表现的系统。最重要的是,他们并没有那种努力工作与实现目标存在直接连接的意识,而命运、运气对他们的生活却有更深远的影响。在此我强调,这也并非东方文化中的绝对真正。

但这种文化差异的理解似乎也可以解释游戏设计上的区别:西方MMGRPG重视的是功劳,所以采用了那种确保每个人如果都投入了足够的精力,那就可以实现目标的游戏系统。东方MMGRPG则强调运气,采用了那种基于运气的游戏系统,以保证让运气成为玩家更为强大的因素。

这对F2P游戏有何意义?

东方设计的F2P游戏若要针对西方市场进行本土化,可能就需要对基于运气的游戏系统进行设计,将其变成基刷任务的系统,以便取悦西方用户。这一原则还适用于道具虚拟商城中的内容,以直接销售更好的道具来替换“运气抽奖”式的道具。

鉴于WoW的Celestial Mount(25美元,你花钱就能获得)与《Atlantica Online》中的Enigma of Scheherazade(1美元,获得一盒的机会只有1%)之间存在的巨大差别,我认为如果不到25人去购买这种道具,你最好还是直接出售内容。当然,如果真有许多人对这种赌博机制极为上瘾,那我想游戏在营收上的成功就足以说明问题了对吧?(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

MMORPG: Luck or Grind?

by Simon Ludgate

The following blog was, unless otherwise noted, independently written by a member of Gamasutra’s game development community. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Gamasutra or its parent company.

Want to write your own blog post on Gamasutra? It’s easy! Click here to get started. Your post could be featured on Gamasutra’s home page, right alongside our award-winning articles and news stories.

I see plenty of articles about the Free to Play versus Subscription argument when it comes to Eastern vs Western MMORPGs, but I’d like to step away from the revenue model and look at game design itself (as much as I actually can, given how closely tied revenue model is to game design). One of the major differences I’ve noticed between Eastern and Western MMORPGs are the differences in slowing progress through either “grind” or “luck” mechanics.

Grind: By grind, I refer to a game system that takes a long time, but is relatively predictable.  An example of grind is leveling a character by killing monsters that give a fixed amount of XP per kill. If it takes 10,000 XP to level up, and a monster gives 100 XP, then every player that kills 100 of these monsters will go up a level.

Luck: By luck, I refer to a game system that is highly unpredictable. An example of luck would be weapon improvement common in many Eastern-designed games, where you have a chance to either get a better weapon or a worse weapon (or lose the weapon entirely). Each step has a lower chance of success, so getting the best weapon requires very many attempts (or tremendous luck) in order to pass all the levels. Some players might get it right away, some players might get it in a very long time, and some players might never get it, no matter how hard they try.

Luck-ish Grind: I’d also like to mention that there is a bit of a cross-over between luck and grind, especially in Western MMORPGs. For example, in World of Warcraft, leveling up trade skills has a certain degree of luck (each time you craft something, you may or may not get a point), but the luck element seems, by and large, marginalized by the generally predicable leveling slope from sufficiently high odds (IE: it might take 10 to 30 crafts to get 10 skill points, but it generally won’t take more than that).

Western MMORPGs Reducing Luck

I think a great place to start this discussion is to see how Western games are trying to eliminate or reduce luck. World of Warcraft makes a fantastic case study becuase of their agressive luck-elimination program. In “Vanilla” WoW, loot drops in raids would consist of a few items from relatively large loot tables, such as a piece of armor for a specific class (eg: hunter helmet, mage gloves, etc.). In Burning Crusade, this system was replaced by a “token” drop system, where one of three tokens would drop for a specific piece of armor, which in turn could be traded for one of three or four armor pieces (eg: hunter/warrior/druid helmet, warlock/priest/shaman gloves, etc.). Then, in Wrath of the Lich King, the token system was further refined to eliminate the armor piece from the token, so there was only the three tokens and players could pick the piece of armor when turning it in (eg: hunter/warrior/druid token, etc.).

The reason for these changes were basically to reduce the luck needed to complete a set of armor and to reduce the wasted items that were not needed by the current raid composition. The end result was to reduce 50 pieces of loot (5 pieces, 10 classes) in Vanilla, to 15 pieces (5 pieces, 3 tokens) in BC, to 3 pieces of loot (just the 3 tokens).

Loot drops, however, were pretty much the only luck-based progression system in World of Warcraft. Crafting is limited by a luck-ish grind, because rare materials may be luck-based (you may or may not find the node you need, or get the resource you need when you harvest it) but harvesting has sufficiently high odds that all raw materials needed are sufficiently common to not be a strong luck-based limiting factor. More importantly, when crafting in World of Warcraft, you ALWAYS get the exact product you expect to get when you start.

Eastern MMORPGs and Lucky (or Unlucky) Progress

In stark contrast to World of Warcraft’s reliable crafting, consider the crafting system in Final Fantasy XI, which has a luck-based chance of losing some of the resources put into the recipe, but more importantly a luck-based chance of the product being of different grades. When crafting a weapon, you have 4 basic categories of outcomes: you fail and lose materials (including potentially difficult to obtain and expensive materials, essentially causing you to lose all the work put into obtaining them), you fail but lose nothing (so you can try again!), you succeed and get a common result (which may not be the result you wanted…), or you succeed and get a high-quality result. For many items, players expect to get the high-quality result, and the common result may not even be worth much or anything at all.

This crafting system, over sufficient iterations, becomes more of a lucky-grind, though the iterations can be incredibly time-consuming when one of the materials you need to craft the item are a slim drop from a rare monster that might spawn once a week, assuming you actually tag the monster. The incredibly slim odds create rarity of certain crafted items, thus increasing their value.

A different progression system that I mentioned earlier exists in many Estern MMORPGs, and that’s the “weapon upgrade” system. The basic principle is that each weapon has “levels” and must be “upgraded” to get from one level to the next. However, when you try to upgrade the weapon, there are four possible outcomes (depending on the game): you fail and lose the weapon entirely, you fail and the weapon loses a level, you fail and the weapon stays the same, or you succeed and the weapon goes up a level.

In Phantasy Star Universe, the grind system allowed weapons to go from plain items (+0) to level 10 (+10). Originally, when you failed a level attempt the item would be lost entirely. However, in a later patch, the item would go back to +0 on a fail and the maximum you could upgrade a weapon would go down by one. Thus, the only way to get a +10 weapon would be to apply 10 consecutive successful upgrades and never ever fail on that weapon. Suffice it to say, the rarity of +10 items was extreme.

Cultural Influences on Luck vs Grind?

Could you immagine how upset a WoW player would be if they had to upgrade their Shadowmourne 10 times during the upgrade process from Epic to Legendary, and each time they had an increasing chance of losing the weapon entirely, with the final step leaving them with a slim (1%?) chance of actually succeeding? Yet this very luck-based system is common in Eastern MMORPGs, even applied to already extremely difficult to obtain items.

I’m no expert on sociology, however I’m going to go out on a limb and cast some wide generalizations on the East vs West cultural divide. It seems to me that an underlying philosophy in the West is one of merit: that “everyone” can do “anything” if they work hard at it. Of course, we all accept that this isn’t entirely true: a person born blind will probably never be a military airfighter pilot. However, we in the west have put significant effort into ensuring that as many people can do as much as possible; most importantly, we have worked to eliminate artificial boundaries, such as race, class, gender, etc. in access to careers, activities, areas, and so forth. In the West we embrace the philosophy that if you want something that you can actually get, you can get it if you work hard enough.

Though I know relatively little about Eastern culture, I’m under the impression that they don’t have the same sort of merit-based system we’ve adopted in the west. Most crucially, they don’t have the same sense that hard work directly leads to achiving goals; rather, things like fate, destiny, and luck have a far greater impact on the outcome of each life. I reiterate, of course, that this is not a great understanding of Eastern culture, and I’d be grateful of another Gamasutra member could reply in the comments with more information about this.

However, this interpretation of cultural differences does seem to translate into the differences in game design: Western MMORPGs epitomize the ideal of merit, employing game systems that ensure that everyone can accomplish everything available if they put in enough hours grinding away; Eastern MMORPGs epitomize the ideal of luck, employing game systems that exaggerate luck-based success, ensuring that it is luck, not hard work, that leads to the greatest power.

What Does This Mean for F2P?

I want to tag on one last bit to this story: and that comes to localizing Eastern-designed F2P games for Western markets. It strikes me that it might be necessary to re-design many of the luck-based game systems into grind-based systems to appeal to Western audiences. The same consideration may need to be placed on the contents of the item mall, replacing “luck box” style items (where you might get a great prize or, more likely, a dud) with directly selling the better items.

Consider the difference between World of Warcraft’s Celestial Mount ($25, 100% chance of getting what you paid for) with Atlantica Online’s Enigma of Scheherazade ($1, some tiny (1%?) chance of getting a mount box, which in turn gives you a random chance of getting the mount you actually want). I’m not sure how many boxes people buy before they give up, but if it’s less than 25, you’d be better off just selling the mount directly! Of course, if there’s gambling addicts out there buying a LOT more than 25… well, I guess the financial success of the game speaks for itself, right? (source:gamasutra


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