Bartle Test....

As if I'm the type who needs to make a pun-filled title for a post about the Bartle Test. I took it twice, first as myself and another time as my Second Life persona, and the results were as follows:

The above is the Bartle Test results for my personality

The above is the Bartle Test result for my Second Life persona, K2 Donogal.

Of course, neither proved to be particularly surprising, considering, in life, I tend to overthink everything and wish to get the job done, regardless of the method, whereas K2 is a career griefer who likes to make other people miserable, so the results were as I had expected.

Final Project Ideation #3

The Big Idea: Virtual Dungeonscape for DMs & Players
Demographic: 13-30 Dungeons & Dragon DMs & Players

Concept Brief

• Users pay for memberships, either as DM or Player.
  
  
• DMs can create entire campaigns in world.
  
  
• Players can choose to play any quest or entire campaigns.
  
  
• DMs earn points that can be used towards paying for subscription for every time a quest they create is played by a player.
  

Final Project Ideation #2

The Big Idea: Virtual B-Boy Studio and Showcase
Demographic: B-boys ages 13-25, or those interested in b-boying

Concept Brief:

• Occurs in an existing virtual world
  
  
• Users may pay in-game currencty to take "classes" to learn individual moves, which provide video tutorials as well as information regarding the history of the move in question. Upon finishing the class, the player's avatar gains the ability to perform the move in question.
  
  
• Admin set up tournaments for both groups and individuals, with winners winning in-game currency.
  

Final Project Ideation #1

The Big Idea: Online TCG Meeting Area
Demographic: TCG players, 13-30

Concept Brief

• Players can build decks from different TCGs and sit down at tables in the virtual world to play with each other
  
  
• Forum for discussion, theater style with designated speaker, with a line, speaker is center of attention
  
  
• Proprietary TCG available only in-world with digital releases of new cards, through booster packs, to generate revenue, with free trading of cards of said TCG
  

Not Quite There.... Dot Com

If nothing else, my experiences in There.com was quite different than those in Second Life. Unlike Second Life, here users are more chatty, when they feel like it; however, this also showcases one of the system's flaws.

Unlike Disney's ToonTown Online, which also utilized speech bubbles to help users communicate with one another, There.com does not require users to face each other when conversing, instead putting all the speech bubbles of nearby users onto the HUD. However, the causes major problems when a user is in a high-traffic environment where many users are carrying on multiple conversations, leading to confusion, especially when a user is involved in several conversations at once.

Unlike Second Life, There.com has a much smoother innoculation process in the form of a video tutorial; though itself less interactive than the process in Second Life, the video tutorial is much more straight forward and teaches by example, which is, in this case, superior than the "learning by doing" model used in the Second Life tutorial.

Shortly after joining There.com, I attended an event where the host promised free money to those who attended. Aside from being a bait-and-switch, which was interesting in itself, I also came to realize that, in There.com, users are less likely to chat at events, at least at parties, instead performing location specific actions such as dancing.

Finding the previously mentioned party to be quite boring, I logged out of There.com; however, when I logged in at a later time, I encountered another problem that I would come to associate with There.com: rubberbanding. Because I had left the world on the third floor of a building, when I logged back in, the building itself had not loaded directly into my computer's cache, and, as such, my avatar was placed back on the ground. However, as the location's polygons and what-have-you began to load onto my machine, my avatar began bouncing up and down quite rapidly as the world attempted to place me once again at the exact location where I had logged out, which caused a nauseating rubberbanding effect.

Persona Report

If nothing else, K2 Donogal is a misanthrope; though often accused of being a misogynist, this is false, as he hates all people, himself included, equally. A cynic and a curmudgeon, he derives pleasure from making curt and sardonic remarks aimed at other people, using his way with words as his preferred method of express himself and his discontent with the world. Though not particularly talented in any area at all, he nonetheless carries himself with the arrogance only somebody in his youth would be capable of.

Physically, K2 doesn't look like much; he is not a narcissist, to say the least, and his appearance only facilitates his own ability to catch others off-guard and hit them with verbal jabs. He strongly fears being ignored, which makes him feel insignificant, yet his greatest desire is to make others uncomfortable in his presence, making him an interesting paradox.

Solving Leeching & Kill-Stealing in ToonTown

Just how could designers of ToonTown Online solve the problem of Leeching and Kill-Stealing? The answer to this is surprisingly simple. Simply put, there are two methods, neither mutually exclusive, that can be used to limit leeching and kill-stealing.

The first, and most-easily implemented, is the creation of a closed battle system, where, following the first round, players cannot join a battle; doing so, however, only limits leechers and kill-stealers who join fights after enemies have been worn down, and do little to deal with leechers and kill-stealers who join battles, then feign AFK status to avoid being targeted by enemies.

The other method, and possibly the most effective one, is to allow players to form parties of up to four; doing so allows players to play with other players of their own choosing, often-times friends, and are less likely to wind up in parties with griefers. This system, however, is flawed in that it only solves the problem if players are in parties of four, since smaller parties will not completely "fill" a battle, thus leaving slots opens for leechers and kill-stealers.

Combining the two systems, Disney will doing a great deal to limit leeching and kill-stealing; by locking down battles that are on-going and allowing players to choose who they play with, leechers and kill-stealers will find their ways no longer effective in progressing their characters, effectively putting a limit to griefers in-game.

Lack of Health Management Encourages Leeching and Kill-Stealing

There is no health management in Disney's ToonTown Online; there's really no way around this fact. Players are unable to regenerate their own health outside of returning to town and waiting for health to regenerate over time, and since health is a vital resource, the one that is most important to players, management of the resource and expending the least amounts of it for the greatest reward is of highest priority to players.

That said, not being able to manage one's health encourages players to leech; when joining battles where enemies are at low health, players can effectively risk little of their health, since the enemy will likely be defeated within the round without a chance of retaliation, since players always act before enemies, yet at the same time gaining quest rewards and, depending on the speed of the weapon chosen by the leech in question, weapon skill progression. At higher levels, players can even steal the kill of the players who worked to wear down the enemies in question, effectively voiding any concept of playing together or even a sense of achievement.

Simply put, the lack of health management is a failure on the part of the game designers that will be detrimental to the game in the long run.

Playing Together: Leeching and Kill-Stealing In Any Other MMORPG

A major part of Disney's ToonTown online is built around the concept of "playing together", and "fairness", hence the lack of a trading/market system for the fear of "unfair" trades (which don't actually exist, considering nobody ever trade for anything they don't actually desire, even if they suffer buyer's regret afterwards), as well aspects of the game's combat system, which requires other players for healing and so forth.

However, this concept fails hard when it comes down to the party-based combat system. By not allowing players to form parties, along with having combat encounters occur in the in-game world and allowing any player to join in any battle that has less than four players active, Disney has built a system where players are encouraged to find and join battles were one or two other players have expended significant amounts of resources in wearing down the enemy to near their breaking point. Once such a player has joined the battle, they can then choose a low speed weapon, thus allowing the other players in the battle to expend resources in killing the opponent(s) present, at the same time progressing in quests (called ToonTasks) and what not without having to expend any resources.

Likewise, a player who joins an ongoing battle can choose a high speed weapon and make the kill, effectively robbing any player who has invested resources into the battle of the satisfaction of killing the enemy at hand.

In every other game, these activities would be called "leeching" and "kill-stealing", all of which are considered aspects of "griefing", that is, a negative style of play associated with players who wish to cause others grief. So, why is it that in Disney's ToonTown Online, players are encouraged to leech, kill-steal and grief in general? If this game is supposed to be fun for everyone, the gameplay design decisions certainly aren't designed for this.

Toon Town Immersion Breaker

Talk about breaking immersion. Apparently, signs in ToonTown have no thickness, only two faces, although, I do give them credit for making sure the two faces are both right reading. Nonetheless, a sign with no thickness just takes immersion and steps all over it.

And this game's supposed to be Rated E for Everyone?

So, loading up Disney's ToonTown Online when I noticed this loading screen. Now, either they're doing this on purpose, or somebody ought to fire the people proofreading through this stuff, because, if taken the wrong way, this could probably get Disney sued.

Seriously, "play with your Doodle"? What were they thinking? If the answer was "not a lot", I wouldn't really be surprised.