Risk Versus Reward
Written by Xela

You are fighting the strongest ship in the galaxy. The biggest, most powerful ship ever built. You and two friends are climbing over the outside of the ship in your most expensive battle mechs, in a daring attack plan that could leave any or all of you as cinders in the interstellar wind.

The three of you crawl up towards the weak point that you recently identified after spending a lot of credits on a schematic and the designer's bribe, the weak point where a well aimed and expensive plasma bomb can burn through to the reactor tubes and cause a fatal overheat. Suddenly, your friend's cloaking shileds fail, and he becomes visible to sensors for a moment. All hell breaks loose as the capital ship activates all the hull defense autoturrets and obliterates your ally's craft before starting a scanner sweep that will reveal your exact location in a matter of minutes.

There's no time and you'll never make it out of the system before the long-range weaponry locks on and blows you into dust. The only chance you have is to pilot your mech over to where you ally's craft left a gaping hole in the outer armour - its plasma bomb exploded and left a new chink in the behemoth's armour: an exposed conduit that if disrupted will cause the main engines to overheat.

Quickly, you ram your plasma bomb into the area surrounding the exposed conduit and signal to your friend to get the hell out of there. He doesn't make it, as the capital ship's scanners pick him out and obliterate him - their final act before the bomb detonates and the reactor begins to overload, shutting off power to the entire ship and yet not preventing the meltdown that devastates the dreadnought.

You're the only one of your group to survive, but you did it. You destroyed the strongest ship in the galaxy. Now, time to collect your booty: one picture of a space pie (very interesting, a picture of an invisible object) and a strawberry cheesecake...

It doesn't sound right, does it? When we play MMOs, we expect the rewards for our actions to be in line with the risk or effort we put into them - whether it be killing a huge monster or cutting a lot of trees in RuneScape. If a chicken gave the same drop as fighting the Kalphite Queen then there'd be a lot less dead bodies in the Kalphite Lair!

The balance of risk and reward is very important in MMORPGs, and balancing is a nightmare for any QA team. If an update is too difficult, then nobody will attempt it and it will be shunned into obscurity. If an update is easily exploitable for XP rewards or vastly powerful items, then that skill can be devalued or the market prices for competing items can be completely destabilised. Who still trains thieving using pickpocketing, when there's the lovely speed of Pyramid Plunder or blackjacking? Who still uses dragon weapons when godswords are available for rent easily enough? Equally, if we were still using rune weapons as the best in the game, a lot of us would have become bored a long time ago. It all falls down to how rewarding an update is compared to what we as players have to put in.

Apart from bugs in updates, changes to the risk and reward involved in popular activities (especially PKing) get the RuneScape community talking like nothing else. Mainstream PKing is a high-risk game, and tiny tweaks can cut off some people's methods of making money, as well as providing hidden pitfalls where the unwary can lose millions. That's on top of a play style that is at the end of the day very heavily influenced by pure luck. It's the sharp end of the scale when it comes to risks in RuneScape, but the rewards are great and a skilled PKer with lady luck on his side can amass a vast fortune that a skiller could never hope for.

That's not to say that everyone has to be a PKer to see the scale of risk and reward in motion, and certainly most players choose to stick to skills instead. As Olifers said, "in an MMO not everybody wants to play in a multiplayer environment. Most MMO players, they like the multiplayer environment, but solo. " (Source) While the riches you can gain in a day are considerably lower as a skiller to a PKer or even a slayer, the risk of death and losing your hard earned items are very much lower, and a lot of skillers play for XP and levels which can never be lost.

So, how does this all relate to MechScape? Well, with the mystery non-grinding mechanic, combat and boss fights may well make up a lot more of the game. The story I wrote about mechs climbing over a giant ship? There has actually been a Jagex job posting looking for an animator to make models for boss fights on massive creatures. (Source) Of course, this means that if there is more combat, then Risk and Reward will take a bigger role in the game as it is in combat areas where there is actually something fighting back at you that it becomes more prominent.

Without an XP count, it is possible that our skills themselves could be at risk if we die, thus making high level combat situations all the more dangerous - you can go into dangerous situations without your best armour on, but your XP always stays with you and is so always at risk. For example, if MechScape follows a skill tree for progressing your character, a death could set you back a few tiers.

However, regardless of what skill progression system MechScape uses, getting the crucial balance between risk and reward will be a tough nut to crack for the QA team at Jagex, and it's likely that combined with evening out the species, getting these various balances right is the "polishing" that MechScape needs before it is released. In fact, in an interview with Eurogamer, Olifers says "We constantly playtest the game, invite people to help and run focus tests to find out what they like so we can adjust." (Source) which sounds a lot like Jagex are trying to find people's views on the balance to perfect it before the game is released. This is probably a good thing as it could be fairly catastrophic if one strategy or race had an obvious advantage at the start of the game; the majority of players would probably pick up on it quite quickly and the future demographics of the game would probably be skewed for a long time.

So, what do you think? What are your views on risk and reward - would you go into a combat situation if your hard earned XP was at risk? Do you agree that it's a good reason to hold MechScape up? I'd love to see your views.

~Xela


MechScape and Community News


Name Changing Feature Released
The new name changing feature has been released across all Jagex products. (Read more)

Previous Issues:
MechScape Post #30: The Tale of ThirdScape
MechScape Post #29: Competitiveness in MMORPGs and Real Life
MechScape Post #28: Jagex's Technology Capabilities
MechScape Post #27: A Mech Called Murrie
MechScape Post #26: Solo Play Versus Team Play In MechScape
MechScape Post #25: MechScape and the 4X Genre
MechScape Post #24: MechScape and its future competition
MechScape Post #23: Jagex's use of Social Networking Sites
MechScape Post #22: Basics of the Four Playable Species
MechScape Post #21: The Mecherican Dream
MechScape Post #20: Desert City Art Review and New Beginnings Review

Footnotes
Contributors: Brenden, Ren (Content Research Team); Max, mike470, Xela(Writing & Editing Team).
Disclaimer: The views expressed by members of staff do not necessarily represent the view of MechScape World.

Nice job!
I enjoyed your article Xela

See I told you it wouldn't be bad!
Now at least you know your jobs safe

to all those that contributed.

Balancing is definetly important and a good reason to hold MechScape up. Like you said if one race has an advantage or one strategy has an advantage then that just takes away from the variety of the game, which is very important to me and most likely many others.

As for the risk and reward, I think there should definetly be a risk for any reward. The bigger the reward, the bigger the risk. That's something RuneScape hasn't really done. RuneScape bosses are too easy so people can bring their best armor then pray and safe. So they don't lose anything and more good items come into the game.

Also it suprised me that name changing is the only MechScape and Community News. Just shows the lack of information..

Here's my take on Risk Vs Reward straight and simple: If your enemy is carrying and wearing items, and if they die, then by right their items may become the property of their killer and/or other scavengers. It's the only fair balanced Risk vs Reward system there is.

Was a good read. Good job Xela.

Good job, the thing is what would we possibly have to risk if there is no xp/grinding? If our items are lost we have to grind to get them back. We don't have xp to loose. So what would there be to risk?

As much as I agree Dracul's statement, we have to remember that even though Mechscape is going to appeal to an older group, the game is still going to have little kids who played Runescape, who hop over and aren't pleased with dieing with their items or XP. So as much as I would want people to lose their items or money etc if they lose it, it won't happen.

My preferences in Rewards are those of the more safer terms... yes, you can name call and throw shit at me later.

As such, I am a fan of Guild Wars' combat and reward system, as well as RuneScape's rewarding safe minigames. I find spending HOURS upon HOURS of grinding and obtaining the right equipment, only to LOSE it in a matter of seconds to be extremely Frustrating. As such, I do not support the Risky Rewards systems.

My ideas for the actual ingame combat system to revolve around Balanced Equipment and Skill-Abilities settings, coincided with self Player Skill... All of which to be obtainable, but extremely complex, and varied for each player. Basically, I am thinking along the lines of Steel Sentinel's and Guild Wars combat customization systems.

In terms of rewards with bosses and missions, I will go with the idea of higher levels of customization to become available... Such as, defeating certain bosses will allow you to obtain new unique prestigious experimental parts and abilities. Missions for the same style of rewards, but perhaps more standardized... you can think like the terms of Steel Sentinels once again. But I find it to have a little more grinding involved for some things. (I find they have said that the game Won't Have Grinding to be good in it. They never said anything about being prestigious, as such I believe grinding will be needed to be rewarded prestigious material)

Eh, someone is going to misunderstand me...

I know a lot of people including myself who hate losing hours of work. A feaure like that would put me off. I like risks in games, otherwise it isn't fun. But I hope they don't go over-the-top.
Nice read, I really liked the situation at the beginning

Epic boss fights that can't be soloed (like every boss in Runescape) is what we need :)

Great article Xela, I do love a good story. (If only the game turned out like your story portrays it ;)

I am actually usually on the "Safe" side. I don't like losing items at all, and am very cautious about going into dangerous situations where I could potentially lose it all. That being said, I prefer an increased risk to actually make the game fun. If there is no consequence for dying, then there is little risk at all. I personally want a game that gets the adrenaline pumping and where your raw skill is all that's going to keep you alive.

Considering they are making the game for an adult audience, I personally hope they don't take the young kids into account. Runescape has been dumbed down with gravestones, panels that show you what you will lose, scamming icons when you trade, and all that which makes the game just feel like there is nothing "dangerous" in the game. (Which is actually true seeing as everything is pretty much "Safe") Sure, some safe games are great, but I want to game to be risky. Flying around to sabotage an enemy ship should have consequences if you accidently allow them to lock onto you and fire a barrage of missles.

EVE for instance has a high penalty for death. Unless you have created a "clone" of your character, your death results in all your skills being reset and you have to start over. In addition to that, your ship can be destroyed leaving you only to escape in an escape pod, allowing you to lose millions in mere seconds. I hope they apply something similar to MS.

Nice Read. I believe that in Mechscape, there will be an increased penalty for dying, and therefore make the game more satisfying if you win an attack, and make you not want to lose because of that penalty, meaning that you would be more determined to win. However, that might mean that leveling would have to be inserted, which Jagex said was there was not going to be.

I could see it where you do a quest and discover a new part. That new part then can be used as much as you want. That part then can help you discover better parts doing other quests that you have unlocked and such. Sort of a technology thing mixed in with rewards.

Nice to know you all liked it :)

(And yes, I am reading your comments, and I have done since Sunday but I get self-conscious replying to MSPs. More stories to come in future MSPs if I can fit them in nicely.)

"mystery" should be "mysterious". Gosh, I can't read anything with out editing it anymore

A very interesting article. Past experience in RuneScape has definitely proven that balancing is one of the most difficult aspects of an MMO...and the one which Jagex has proven itself most likely to get wrong, and least likely to fix in a timely manner. Which is the main reason why I'm content to wait for StellarMechDawnScape so that it can get this stuff right on the first try

What makes you think they'll get it right first time? It's the same over ruling company (Jagex) who dicatate the way things go, even if they do have separate teams. Perhaps they'll learn from their mistakes though.