Everlasting vs Resets

[Chris]

Everlasting games - the game go on forever and ever.

Reset games - the game is periodically reset, progress is wiped out and a new round/age/era starts.

Combined games - the game has persistent elements and elements that are reset periodically.

Free will reset games - the game let the player decide when/if to reset, for example ascension in Kingdom Of Loathing.

Which model is better and why/when?


Related topics:
http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,834.0.html (Persistant or Rounds?)
http://community.bbgamezone.net/index.php/topic,557.0.html (RPG that is reset each few months)

[Nox]

Do you believe some model is clearly superior to others?

I personally favor reset or combine games, currently I aim for kinda combined game, mostly reseted, but there will be some influence based on actions made in previous round

What I see as benefits of reset (or similar) games is (and I value all of them quite high):

- if you made mistakes, they won't cripple you permanently, you get a chance to make it this time right
- when you get better, you actually have a chance to get among top players - in everlasting they will be just too far
- you can change whatever course you went last time: different class, different upgrade choices, different skills etc.
 => you're not stuck with the same setting all the time

of course there can be mechanics in the everlasting ones that will try to get near this benefits, but reset-based grant this automatically and in full intensity

[Chris]

Well, yes. I see reset model clearly superior to everlasting model. Everlasting model has one advantage, it does not give a feeling of lost progress, apart from it it has only disadvantages (content drain, troublesome development, no serious changes after the game was launched possible, no chance to catch up for late starters, etc).

I'm especially interested if I haven't overlooked any other advantages of everlasting model or if the only advantage of permanent achievements is so important that it overweights plenty of nasty drawbacks.

[Shrapnel]

From a player perspective, I tend to disagree Chris.  Resets suck big time.  Why do I want to lose all my hard work and start over?  I see your point about everlasting so I guess I'm not going to claim resets are better than everlasting, but I will claim that neither are better.  I think some kind of combined system would be best.  A partial reset, but with the ability to carry something over from earlier progress.  I also favor including Free Will in this system.  Let players decide when to reset or reset them if they don't choose to reset by a certain time (i.e. they have a choice to reset early).  Maybe even better is give them a choice of options of things they can take with them when they reset.

[Doidel]

Greetings.

Mentioned disadvantages of persistant systems are a design issue in my eyes. Further, how would you categorzie WoW? You don't lose anything, still most your items become useless after every raise of level capacity.
For instance you say "content drain" as a negative aspect of everlasting, however I see the "content drain" in resetted games, just in a relative way. You play the same again you've already experienced.
No serious changes - A matter of handling them correctly. Most persistant games divide their game into "chapters" or add "expansions", each of them bringing big changes with them.
No chance to catch up for late starters - I see that, however it depends on the effort necessary to reach e.g. the "max level". Still, having these kind of differences is a problem in every game. In games there are the occasional and the hardcore players. Being able to catch up completely as a occasional player would be a design mistake itself in my eyes. Resets will barely ease the catching up..

I don't get the "troublesome development" 'cause I can't see any differences here - please explain

Please forgive me relativizing all of Chris' statements
All the best
Doidel

[Chris]

By content drain I mean that content is used up and you, as a designer, have to create a new one over and over again. Take a look at KoL, it is a nightmare, years after years and they need to push new content constantly. If they ever stop the KoL will lose its main attraction. For designer such a game is like selling your soul This disadvantage alone disqualify everlasting model for lone developers in my eyes.

As for troublesome development, it's kind of obvious... You can not make drastic changes in the middle. You break something it stays broken forever (with better or worse fixes). If you have reset you can just redo everything (items, rules, mechanics, database scheme, whatever).
Imagine you got drunk one day and coded some sword with instant kill. If it was round based you would just wait till next reset and remove it, with everlasting you need to either make counters or remove the item with causes havock and mistrust among players.

Anyway, let's not talk about disadvantages of everlasting model. There is legion of them and when it comes to quantity of disadvantages everlasting obviously loses. The thing is, at what points the everlasting model is better? Or is it that there is only one advantage of this system, which is the feeling of not losing achievements that is sooo important that it outweights all the numerous disadvantages?

[dsheroh]

Which model is better and why/when?

Another term I've seen occasionally used for server-based games in general (not just BBGs, but also MMOs and other related categories) is "persistent world games".  Breaking that down into the two component noun phrases, we happen to get the real split between the two types:  In general, everlasting games emphasize the "persistent world" aspect, while reset-based games emphasize the "game" aspect.

I personally prefer everlasting games because I enjoy exploring virtual worlds and don't really take a competitive approach to it.  Knowing that the same world will be there tomorrow and next week and next year adds significantly to my enjoyment of it, both for the increased sense of reality and because it means that I can keep exploring new stuff instead of being forced to go back and repeat what I've already done.  My personal Holy Grail of games is one in which player actions have permanent effect, so that there will always be something new to explore, even in areas I've visited a million times before - plus, again, that would add immensely to the sense of the virtual world being real - without having the constant 'mini resets' of monsters respawning, quests resetting, etc., but that hasn't really been done on any large scale and my impression of the industry is that none of the major game studios are even trying for it, not only for technical reasons, but also because a static world makes it much easier to direct the players' in-game experience.

Reset-based games strike me as much more suited to competitive mindsets - you play hard, get to the top, someone is declared the "winner", and then it starts over so that someone else can win the next round.  I realize that, in my previous paragraphs, I drifted off a bit into talking about MMORPGs rather than staying entirely with BBGs, but, if an MMO is the epitome of everlasting games, then FPS and RTS games are the extreme of reset-based games.


Going over the suggested advantages of resets in the discussion so far, I see only one that really rings true:

- when you get better, you actually have a chance to get among top players - in everlasting they will be just too far

All of the others can be easily addressed within an everlasting world (many of them by allowing players to have alts instead of limiting them to a single character), but this one goes straight to the heart of the distinction I made above:  If your goals are competitive and you want to become a "top player", you have several chances to do so in a resetting game, but only one chance at it in an everlasting game and, if you're not there the day the game launches, that chance will be lost.  This is the great strength of resets.

However, everlasting games have a corresponding advantage over resetting games, specifically because of their less-competitive nature:  You can take your time, explore, and still see everything.  If you have a game with content that requires, say 500 hours to reach (leveling up, gathering resources, whatever) and that game resets every six months, then anyone who plays less than 20 hours/week on average will never be able to access that content, nor will anyone who spends most of their in-game time interacting with other players or the game world in ways which don't advance them towards it.  For an everlasting game, however, it doesn't matter whether you play 10 hours a day or 10 hours a year, it doesn't matter whether you push hard to advance while in-game or you just socialize and pick virtual flowers, everyone will eventually be able to access that content regardless of their schedule or preferred play style.


As for combined and free-will games, I've never actually played either, but I have seen some interesting ideas on how to mix the two styles and it definitely should be possible to come up with something that provides the strengths of both - a meaningful chance for competitive players to reach the top regardless of when they join the game, while also allowing explorers to take their time and see the sights without having the rug pulled out from under them - but that's something else I've never seen done, or even attempted all that seriously.

[lindhsky]

I agree with dsheroh.

My interest for creating my own games mostly came from roleplaying games as a youngster or playing MMORPGs when I got a little older. And I would have a hard time joining a game that resets mostly because I love to build up my characters, history world etc. But I have no idea what setup is best in browser-games but I would imagine it is 50/50. I think everlasting games lose their players more slowly than reset-games but that reset-games get more new players more often if that makes sense? I am just guessing here though.

I know that when I started to check out browser games I was surprised how popular the reset-model was.

To me it's important in an everlasting game to make the players feel important even if they're not the highest level. That they somehow can be of use for the higher levels or for whatever objectives the game has. That is what I am aiming for in my own game, but I am not there yet.

My game is an everlasting game but I have put in a few things that resets. For an example the Arena where clans battle eachother. This resets every month and the winner get a reward and are written into the historybook. The War resets every time one side have sacked the enemy capital city and plundered it. The walls are back to 100% and the war is moved back to the zone in the center of the map. The problem here though is that the strength of the clans/heroes are not reset so a new clan will still have problems winning the arena. But they will always be of use in the war.

I don't think I would ever create a reset-model type of game because I think I would have problems thinking outside the box. I love the everlasting types too much. I do understand that a good developer should be able to think outside the box, but I am not there yet.

It is an interesting thread though and something I was thinking about less than a week ago when I started to code on a post-apocalyptic game.

[Chris]

In general, everlasting games emphasize the "persistent world" aspect, while reset-based games emphasize the "game" aspect.

Yes... everlasting being "virtual worlds" and resetted being "games" sounds like the core difference.

Knowing that the same world will be there tomorrow and next week and next year adds significantly to my enjoyment of it

They always delete my accounts due to inactivity before I have a chance to see everything. Just because I got distracted and forgot to login for a year or two does not mean I won't want to return ever again
Maybe it's about attention span, but I always wake up and find out my account in yet another supposed to be everlasting game evaporated...

However, everlasting games have a corresponding advantage over resetting games, specifically because of their less-competitive nature:  You can take your time, explore, and still see everything.  If you have a game with content that requires, say 500 hours to reach (leveling up, gathering resources, whatever) and that game resets every six months, then anyone who plays less than 20 hours/week on average will never be able to access that content, nor will anyone who spends most of their in-game time interacting with other players or the game world in ways which don't advance them towards it.  For an everlasting game, however, it doesn't matter whether you play 10 hours a day or 10 hours a year, it doesn't matter whether you push hard to advance while in-game or you just socialize and pick virtual flowers, everyone will eventually be able to access that content regardless of their schedule or preferred play style.

I though, the major goal of a designer is to prevent a player to ever see the whole content? So the player have an incentive to stay and play. Do you really continue playing everlasting games after you saw everything!?

The biggest question about everlasing games is, how do they prevent content being used up? Like items. You level up and get all the items and... you have nothing else to get! Sure, WoW have a tons of items with extrelmely low drop rates, but it is not a typical example. How about average lone developed games? For example I played Afterdoomsday, a small everlasting game, they have such problem, very few items, no resets and players complaining they have nothing to do. The game deteriorated with old players sitting and complaing (but still staying because they are used to it or for other reasons ). I wonder how that game would turn out if they had regular resets...

[dsheroh]

I though, the major goal of a designer is to prevent a player to ever see the whole content? So the player have an incentive to stay and play.

That's where the "Holy Grail" I mentioned earlier (ideally) comes in:  "player actions have permanent effect, so that there will always be something new to explore, even in areas I've visited a million times before".  EVE Online takes this basic approach, providing only a minimum of missions and focusing developer-provided content on ships and ship systems, then making the results of player actions permanent.  As a result, the vast majority of the game's content arises out of the factional politics and conflicts between player-run corporations (guilds) without requiring any direct involvement from the developers.

Procedural content can also be used to ensure that there will always be "new" content available, although it has its limitations when used for creating maps or missions.

The biggest question about everlasing games is, how do they prevent content being used up? Like items. You level up and get all the items and... you have nothing else to get!

Player-generated content answer:  Allow players to craft unique items, whether by discovering/creating their own crafting recipes or by having the resulting item's stats affected by the ingredients used and/or the skills of the player who crafted it.  For all its flaws, Auto Assault had an impressive crafting community of experts constantly experimenting with attaching different materials to items in hopes of discovering a recipe for a new uber-enhancement that would give their more combat-focused guildmates an edge over everyone else on the server.

Procedural content answer:  Instead of hand-crafting every item's stats, allow for random variation in each individual item's base stats and/or apply random sets of bonuses to items of above-"common" quality.  Going again to Auto Assault, you might loot two machine guns and get one that does 2-4 damage with a 4.07 rate of fire while the other does 2-5 damage, but only has a 3.64 RoF.  Allow variation in a half-dozen stats and there's a very real possibility that players may never see two identical items.  Even without pushing it that far, how much time will players spend trying to get the loot generator to roll them a machine gun with 2-5 damage and 4.50 rof?

How about average lone developed games? For example I played Afterdoomsday, a small everlasting game, they have such problem, very few items, no resets and players complaining they have nothing to do. The game deteriorated with old players sitting and complaing (but still staying because they are used to it or for other reasons ). I wonder how that game would turn out if they had regular resets...

I wonder how it would have turned out with Auto Assault-style item generation...  If the players were driven by finding new and better items, that would have allowed them to keep doing so more-or-less indefinitely.

[pixlepix]

For the kind of game i ma making, a highly competitive city building game, similar to tribal wars, I am planning on having both a perpetual server and a limited time server. In the limited time server, the game mechanics make it so that, there will be one victor eventually.  If you get destroyed, you go on the perpetual server, where players who have played longer get a disavvantage in resprod among other things, so new rulers keep upthrowing the world

[dsheroh]

Interesting structure, but one likely problem jumps out at me:

If you get destroyed, you go on the perpetual server, where players who have played longer get a disavvantage in resprod among other things, so new rulers keep upthrowing the world

That disadvantage should be based on current power level (e.g., something like the "unrest" mechanic in most Civ-style games, which requires you to divert an ever-increasing proportion of your resources to keeping your population happy as you get more powerful) rather than on the age of your account.  Doing it based on age means that, after a player has been overthrown, they would have no chance to rebuild and take over again because they'd still be suffering from the age penalty.

[pixlepix]

Interesting structure, but one likely problem jumps out at me:

If you get destroyed, you go on the perpetual server, where players who have played longer get a disavvantage in resprod among other things, so new rulers keep upthrowing the world

That disadvantage should be based on current power level (e.g., something like the "unrest" mechanic in most Civ-style games, which requires you to divert an ever-increasing proportion of your resources to keeping your population happy as you get more powerful) rather than on the age of your account.  Doing it based on age means that, after a player has been overthrown, they would have no chance to rebuild and take over again because they'd still be suffering from the age penalty.

The point would be, if you are overthrown, to start over again. Though, I think power is better. It gives a chance for everyone to shine eventually