Improving the end-game of social strategy games

Improving the end-game of social strategy games

I removed Clash of Clans (CoC) from my iPad on August 20, 2014. The game had just reached two years old, and I had been playing it since February 2013. I played very actively (2-3 hours per day on average) until December 2013, then considerably slowed down (1 hour per week).

No new content

I think I slowed down, and eventually stopped playing mostly because no significantly new content was introduced. New content mattered a lot to me because I had reached Town Hall 10, the very end of the game, for many months. So far, the game has received four updates in 2014.

Month	Description
January	Introduced Hero abilities, which are not really a new gameplay feature, but rather a design fix to encourage players to use and upgrade their heroes. Great, and perhaps even necessary, but no impact on battle strategy or base design.
April	Introduced Clan Wars, a feature asked by players since the game came out. My clan was very excited, but we stopped Clan Wars after a couple weeks. We realized that the match-making algorithm alternated pairing our clan against once a much stronger clan, once a moderately weaker clan. Clan Wars require a lot of time and in-game resources, so we kept asking for enemy clans, but only attacked when we were sure to win. After a few weeks, we realized the Clan Wars rewards were not worth the frustration, so we stopped match-making.
May	Mostly usability tweaks.
July	Improved Hero abilities. Once again, this was more a design fix to encourage the use and upgrading of Heroes than a new feature.

Moreover, in these four updates, the Hog Rider received three nerfs, but my base still got trampled by mass-hog armies. (Yes, anti-hog base designs exist, but these designs are very vulnerable to air attacks). The Valkyrie was buffed twice, but it still was not enough to make her useful for her cost. To sum up the last 8 months, no new mechanic, be it a unit or a tower, was introduced, and I did not find the balance tweaks adequate.

Lessons for social strategy games

Troop synergies

The game was released with 10 basic units that make sense when used together. For example, the Giants are slow and target defenses so that the Healer can follow them without being hit. These synergies are expected: the team had time to iterate and polish before launch. But introducing new troops after launch is tricky: the new troops must 1) have an interesting gameplay element, 2) complement existing troops, and 3) keep existing troops useful.

The Minion is a perfect example: it is cheap and flying. This makes it a great complement for farming with Barbarians and Archers (called the BAM strategy). It is also great for high-level PvP when paired with Balloons (Balloonion strategy). And since it costs dark elixir and has low HP, it can't be used by itself.

The pricey Golem is another great example: it synergizes well with Wizards and Pekkas (GoWiWi strategy), which are necessary troops in high-level PvP. The Golem's production stats are perfect: 45 minutes to make, and a cost of 2.5 hours-worth of dark elixir, which is the same as Pekka. The Golem was clearly designed to be trained in parallel of Pekka. Plus Supercell must have made a lot of money from players gemming it!

On the other hand, the moderately expensive wall-jumping Hog Rider does not complement any other troop. Neither does the Valkyrie. Interesting ideas, but no synergy! Supercell keeps trying to fix them, so they may have realized that. Or maybe Supercell abandoned them completely, and has been working on more troops, such as the Spider, Centaur, or Yeti, which have not been released yet, but were leaked in July 2014.

More things to do in the end game

As the Town Hall levels go by, so does the average duration of building upgrades. For example, upgrades take 3-10 hours at TH3, 1-3 days at TH6, and 7-14 days at TH10. By TH10, the player should have 5 Builders, so the average time between two building upgrades is still 2-3 days. During these 2-3 days, players come back to the game only because their troops are ready for battle, not because they have something to do with their base. But by TH10, players have spent months being progressively conditioned to come back for their troops and not their base. So they still come back, but more and more reluctantly, since the rewards are less and less frequent. At some point, they unlearn the habit of coming back to play: what's the point when nothing seems to be happening? They eventually stop playing.

Possible solutions involve shortening upgrade times or providing more builders, but both may seem like Supercell would lose money. The game should at least give players things to do with their buildings (beyond collecting resources twice a day). The Bomb very short upgrade times have been a step in that direction. A crafting system like in Monster Legacy, or Angry Birds Epic, but applied to strengthening buildings, or increasing towers' rate of fire, may increase the game's lifespan even more.

Dominion's balance

Chapel

One of the cards in the Dominion base set is considered slightly better than most: the Chapel. Some simply say This is the best card in the game.. Others suggest that Chapel is very overpowered and should cost more. Vaccarino, Dominion's designer, is quite present on board game forums, and has stepped up to answer players' suggestions. Surprisingly, he admitted himself that Chapel is the most powerful Dominion card relative to its cost. This is the occasion to glean interesting tidbits about game balance!

First, since both players can buy the same cards, poorly balanced cards don't make the game unfair, [...] but they do make the game worse. It seems that as long as an unbalanced card makes the game fun, it should stay (and probably be tweaked).

Let's start with adjusting the cost. If Chapel cost more, it would be much weaker, and would not be used at all. This would reduce the number of options available in the game. Since it's more fun to have more options, increasing the cost is not a good solution. Ideally, everything gets played sometimes, and the only weak cards are those that are overrated. That is why to keep the metagame and discussion interesting, Vaccarino would rather avoid commenting himself.

This does not mean that overpowered cards are better than underpowered cards: if a card is so strong it is unavoidable, then cards that do not combo well with it will never be played, which is a waste. When using Chapel, a lot is left up to you. This provides a lot of diverse game play, which means Chapel has a strong play value, and the game benefits from it overall. As they progress, players learn using Chapel in new ways, which is a long-term rewarding experience:

1. why would I ever buy this when Witch isn't out?
2. trash your Estates with it and just have one dead card instead of three
3. trash your coppers [and estates] with it, and get a thin deck
4. is Chapel / Militia better so I can hurt other Chapel decks, or should I go Chapel / Spy to ensure trashing 4 cards
5. Chapel / Throne Room / Remodel

Another player suggested nerfing Chapel from trashing 4 cards to only 3 cards. Vaccarino seems to agree: in general, overpowered or underpowered cards can only be fixed by changing what the card does, not by changing their cost. But during playtesting, Chapel with "trash up to 3" was way slower than trashing up to 4, and Vaccarino couldn't win with it.

And this is how Chapel stayed at trashing up to 4 cards for a cost of 2 coins.

Playtesting

The play space of Dominion is quite big: there are around 10^15 possible combinations of 10 cards among the 157 available as of 2012. Therefore not all combinations of cards can be checked during playtesting. Since games get played way more than they get playtested, there may be some card combos that go unchecked until release. If a single card is overpowered, it is quite easy to spot and will be fixed. Two-card combos happen more rarely, so if one of them is overpowered, it may not be spotted as easily, but will also matter less. As for overpowered three-card combos, the Dominion developers aren't necessarily finding them. But if one happens during a game, and a player figures it out, it is highly unlikely that the player will face these three cards again in another game.

Playtesting can also reveal interesting/core design ideas. For example, Vaccarino was worried that drawing your whole deck would be bad. Soon [he] realized it was in fact fun.

[Literature] Game Balance ch10 - Economics and Multiplayer Dynamics

My notes from course 10 of the Game Balance class of Summer 2010, by Ian Schreiber.

Economy

In an economic system, players can generate, consume/destroy, or trade resources in a zero-sum fashion (what a player consumes is what another can not consume). Supply and demand curves:

• supply = f(price) is monotonic (increasing): if I sell for $5, then I also can sell for $10
• demand = f(price) is decreasing: if I accept to buy for $10, I also accept to buy for $5

Market price = where the 2 curves intersect. Prices fluctuate as players need or produce items. Prices fluctuate more if there are fewer players. Demand curves affect each other:

• substitutes: SP potion (+ casting Heal spell) is a substitute for HP potion. Increasing supply of X means decreasing demand of Y.
• item sets/collectibles: when together, sword X + shield Y give +10atk bonus. Increasing supply of X means increasing demand of Y.

The price per unit can increase or decrease depending on how many of that unit the player already has. If more units of the same kind brings increasing bonuses, then marginal cost decreases. If each unit costs more and more, the game is more stable and homogeneous.

Demand increases with scarcity. Example in FPS: ammo can be limited (player don't shot all the time, therefore it'd make sense if they died in one shot) or infinite (trigger happy, players should only loose a bit of life when they're hurt). In RTS, limited number of mines to get gold from means shorter games, whereas more and bigger mines means longer games (and more military encounters).

Closed-system = game systems that are self-contained, nothing outside of them can influence what's inside. Somehow, gold farmers open the closed economies of MMOGs, making them harder to design and control. The game should not allow players who have more RL money to have more power, it should just allow more options/variety. Experts using cheap/default CCG decks should beat novices using expensive/rare decks. Yet RL money could be used to speed up progression/avoid grinding.

Inflation happens in MMOs because the game is positive sum (money comes from quests and monsters). New players will never catch up unless negative-sum (sinks) or zero-sum elements are included. Negative-sum/Sinks can be: NPC, repair and death penalties, luxury items, or even tax richest players and give that money to poor players (Robin Hood transforming positive-sum into zero-sum). Zero-sum can be: player-bound/non-tradable items, quests can be repeated but reward only once. Nothing tradable also is a solution.

Trading mechanics

By giving players resources they do not need, they'll have an incentive to trade. Trading mechanics usually serve as a negative-feedback loop, especially within a closed economy. Players are generally more willing to offer favorable trades to those who are behind, while they expect to get a better deal from someone who is ahead (or else they won’t trade at all).

• future agreements: I give X now for Y now and Z later. Players could renege, making them more suspicious when trading with delays.
• scope: powerful resources (eg victory points in Catan) should not be tradable. Tradable resources become more fluid.
• time and phases: players can trade all the time, and trades could take effect at once. Or trading could be limited to certain phases (every 5 turns, or before player starts his building phase) and/or this phase could be timed (eg 5-min timer to bargain).
• evenness: gifts (0 for n) vs even trades (1 for 1) vs uneven trades (1 for n)
• quantification: trading can happen only once per turn/per hour, or as much as player wants. Number of exchanged objects may be bounded as well.
• tax: if trading coalitions are too powerful, put a tax as a cost to trade
• forced: I look at the cards in your hand and pick the best, and give you in exchange my worse card.

Auctions

Auctions = players' willingness to pay for a resource. Auctions work best when the actual cost is variable, different between players, and situational. Each time players decide how much the resource is worth to them, they are making an «interesting choice».

• Many types of auctions (increasing, blind, decreasing, ...),
• with different kinds of rewards (winner gets the entire lot, or first pick in the draft, and/or looser gets bonus or penalty),
• different payers (top bidder, top 2 bidders, top and bottom bidders, all players, ...),
• different recipients (bank = deflation, shared fund, or to other players),
• different events when no one bids (resource given to a random player, or more resources are added to the current resource and the auction restart, or resource is just discarded)

Misc. problems

Name	Problem	Solution
Turtling	Everybody shelters and nobody actually plays because attacking seems more costly and inefficient than defending and waiting for opportunities.	Give incentives to attack (when players wins, she gets more resources next turn), or force players to attack (player has to draw and play one card each turn, and 90% of cards are attack cards).
Kill the leader and sandbagging	Players recognize a clear leader, Players see their best chance to win as eliminating the leader, Players coordinate to attack the leader Players fear to become leader, and play suboptimally	Hidden scores make it impossible to know who is the leader, or make it obvious that eliminating the leader is not the best chance to win, or make the game non-PVP, or make players not able to team-up against another/give advantage when a player defends against many
Kingmaking	One player recognizes they cannot win, Player recognizes that they can give support to any leading player, Losing player chooses one leading player to win	Make players believe they can always win, or make it impossible to know which action will make a king, or make it impossible to choose who to make king, or simply do not allow last players to help leaders
Elimination	Player is killed at the beginning of the game and has to wait for the game to end	Players can only eliminate others if they are strong enough to eliminate all others, or the goal can be to collect points (instead of killing others), or when one player dies, the game stops immediately or within a certain time, and winner is current leader, or make the killed player take control of NPC, or make it interesting to look at other players playing (cf Mafia or Werewolf), or let killed players have goals as well (Cosmic Encounter or BSG)

Final note: balance is not always a must-have. Some games are ostensibly unfair but fun nevertheless. In single-player games, progression matters more than fairness. The unfairness of some one-against-many multiplayer games sometimes makes them fun.

[Literature] Game Balance ch4 - Cards, Dice, and Other Randomness

My notes from course 4 of the Game Balance class of Summer 2010, by Ian Schreiber.

Monte Carlo simulation = good way to approximate stats when the maths are too hard.

Dices are used for independent game events: each dice roll is independent of the previous roll. XdY = throw X items that have Y sides at the same time (ex: 1d6 = one 6-sided dice). For custom dices, eg a 6-sided dice with 1-1-1-2-2-3 on the sides: p(1)>p(2)>p(3).
More dice = less random (= smaller std deviation)> Example: p(7) for 1d10 is 1/10, but it is 10/32 for 5d2.

Cards are used for dependent game events: some events may not happen again if they have happened a certain number of times Revealing information as the game goes does not change the odds in previous player choices, but it changes the odds of non-player variables. Famous related problems: Monty Hall's 3 doors or families with at least one boy.

[Literature] Game Balance ch1 - Intro

My notes from course 1 of the Game Balance class of Summer 2010, by Ian Schreiber.

What is game balance:

• for single player games, it is difficulty, pacing, character progression
• for multiplayer, advantage at the beginning of the game, strategies (any strategy could be viable OR some are more viable than others (could be overpowered)) or game objects

How to balance a game:

• intuition (from experience, not teachable),
• playtesting (statistical analysis, rely on player skill: novices could never find a needed good strategy),
• math (numbers are everywhere in games)

Playtest is really needed for interconnected systems, because modifications can have rippled effects.
Player skill can make a difference in exploiting an imbalance.

Some game vocabulary

• deterministic. Deterministic + perfect information = solvable.
• solvable: has a single, knowable “best” action to take at any given point in play, and the player can know this action (it is undesired in games if it's trivial); including humans in the loop (like in Poker) fixes the problem of solvability
• intransitive (eg in rock paper scissors, paper > rock and rock > scissors, but paper is not > scissors)
• symmetric (means balance at the beginning, but not between game objects or strategies)
• metagame: can be balanced as well, and definitely affects the game balance: drafting and rarity for trading card games, analyzing opponents' strategies to win the next Poker game, capping the salary of sport players so that most clubs can afford recruiting them

Tips

When trying to fix an unbalance, ask where it really comes from
If you do not know how much an advantage a beginning side is in a RTS like Warcraft3, you can let the playtesters bid in auctions for their beginning side. Knowing how much they give makes you know how much is necessary to balance the beginning state.
Allowing players to cooperate to kill the strongest player can balance a diplomacy game, but also sometimes only make it last longer and be more annoying (players do not want to appear too strong)

Bowling Bash build

EDIT: This is a pre-RENEWAL build, but it might still be worth it in Renewal :-)

The name of this blog, Bowling Bash, comes from the eponymous Ragnarök Online Knight skill. Here is how to build a BB Knight (or LK). I am not an expert BB LK, but I used to play it a lot in WoE (guild versus guild events) and in small PvM parties. For PvM or leveling, the build is either STR(+DEX)+Spear Stab (you will need potions or a Priest) or AGI+Quicken (little DEX or Heal needed). To my mind, the trickiest and most interesting builds are those for WoE. Below are a few build possibilities; I suggest you adjust and try them so that you find the one that fits your needs perfectly.

Gear

-	Easier to get	Harder to get
Sword	Blade or Saber (3slot) with Hydra and Skel Worker cards	Sword Guardian Card(s) on a slotted Executioner (quest) or Schweizersabel (should be surprising against Unfrozen armors)
Spear	Pike or Trident (3slot) with Hydra and Skel Worker cards	Brocca, Assaulter Spear (obtained in the Battlegrounds), or Glorious Spear (most recommended, obtained in the KVM Battlegrounds).
Top Head	Helm, Bone Helm or Magni's Cap (combo with Odin's Blessing and Stone Buckler), Grand Peco card	Feather Beret (quest), slotted Alice Doll with Vanberk Card or Giant Majestic Goat (from the Sealed Shrine quest)
Middle Head	Geek Glasses, Fin Helm or Evil Wing Ears	Slotted Sunglasses (temporary quest) with Vanberk or Maya Purple Card or Robo Eye (custom or temporary quest?)
Low Head	Gangster Mask or Iron Cain	Pirate Dagger (temporary quests) or Well-Chewed Pencil (Back to school quest)
Shield	Shield, Mirror Shield or Stone Buckler with Thara Frog Card (if one-hand weapon)	Valkyrja's Shield with Thara Frog Card (if one-hand weapon)
Armor	Full Plate or Odin's Blessing with Pecopeco Card or Picky Card	Valkyrian Armor or Glittering Jacket with Ghostring, Evil Druid or Marc Cards
Garment	Muffler, Manteau or Wool Scarf with Raydric Card	Pauldron, Diabolus Manteau or Nydhorgg's Shadow Garb with Raydric Card, or Asprika
Shoes	Boots or High Quality Sandals with Matyr or Verit Card	Greaves or Diabolus Boots with Firelock Soldier or Ice Titan Card, or Variant Shoes
Accessories	Ring with Mantis Card	Megingjard

Stats

STR	buffed, try to reach a 10 threshold (eg 84+26, 99+31 or 55+105)
VIT	buffed, try to get 100 (eg 82+18 or 92+8) to gain Stun and Silence immunity
DEX	aim for an even number (eg 78+32) to get HP bonus; the more, the higher chance to hit your enemy
AGI	what is left; the more, the faster you can launch BB
INT&LUK	1

Below are several build examples. They are just build styles/aspects, as you will have to adapt them to your gear, whether you want to use food buffs, etc. In parentheses are the bonus points for Lord Knight job level 70.

type	STR (+15)	AGI (+8)	VIT (+8)	DEX (+9)
High DEX, low STR, needs 2 Megingjard	35	40	82	97
6x STR, likely to use a Megingjard	67	41	85	75
High STR, could avoid using any Megingjard	97	12	83	56
Not using any VIT food	78	31	92	61

Resources

• Lord Knight: A Comprehensive Guide for PvM/WoE/PvP
• The "Post your Knight/Lord Knight" Thread
• Bowling Bash build help
• The Complete Guide to Bowling Bash on INRO wiki
• Character Calculator

[Literature] Fundamentals of Game Design, ch 1: Games and Video Games

These are my notes for the first chapter of Fundamentals of Game Design, a book by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings (pages 3 to 35). I do not know if I will do all of their chapters, but you can expect other posts dealing with this interesting book. [My comments will be inside square brackets.]

What is a game?

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and ... Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do
-- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A game contains rules, goals, play and pretending. [play and pretending bring games close to theater]. Toys have no rules. Puzzles have only one goal but no rules. In some languages like Swedish, playing with a goal and playing without one are two different words.

Interactivity: Games require acive players whose participation changes the course of events. Play is a participatory interactive entertainment. Unlike books or movies which are presentational, ie their content does not change. [What about Gamebooks?]

Suspension of disbelief: The Magic Circle is the playground for pretended reality. However, the distinction between real world and pretended reality is sometimes blurred if events in the game [losing for instance] are meaningful outside of it [death! cf Mesoamerican ballcourt game sacrifices].

Challenge: A game must include challenge [cf Flow Csikszentmihalyi]. Challenge difficulty is perceived differently by players. Gameplay consists of challenge and actions.

Rules: Victory and defeat conditions are not must-have rules. They only make the game more exciting. Metarules are immutable rules that define how which mutables rules can be changed. [cf Morpheus in Matrix: some rules can be bent, others can be broken] [smart metarules make mods possible; this kind of meta-concepts echoes software engineering principles]

Players who are trying to achieve different unrelated goals that are not mutually exclusive are neither competing nor cooperating - they are not really playing the same game [what about AH/bankers/tradeskill players in MMOG? It seems there are different goals players can look for. Are there different games within MMOG (ie different rewards for different actions) or different ways to play the same game (ie same reward for different actions)?]

Symetry and roles: In a symetric game, all players follow the same rules. Fox games are non-symetric games: one player has the fox, the other has the sheep/geese/hounds.

Types of interaction	In simple words	Examples
Single-player	"me versus the situation"	Solitaire
Two-player competitive	"you versus me"	Chess
Multiplayer competitive	everyone for himself" (but agreements between players might be possible)	Monopoly, Diplomacy, Agricola
Multiplayer cooperative	"all of us together"	Shadows over Camelot (without Traitor)
Team-based	"us versus them"	Bridge

Conventional games versus video games

Advantage of video games: With video games, players do not have to control the rules themselves. [In MMOG, Game Masters are often needed, not only for police purpose but also for in-game events] This means more immersion for the players.

Avoid trial and error [that is also a general HCI recommendation: users do not read handbooks. I wonder if "trial and success" could be a relevant game design that teaches the rules to the player. For example, whatever possible action done by the player in the first levels of Plant versus Zombies leads to victory. Even though it is not really a tutorial, the point is only to teach the player what key elements do and the principal game mechanics and actions.]

AI: Players often believe the game contains smart AI. In fact, most of the time, the game only fakes smart in-game characters to entertain the player enough. But sometimes, the magic circle is broken because of AI dysfunction or an unexpected choice from a player. [see for instance a NPC in eXistenZ that stucks the player in a while loop]

Segment: Your game can not please everyone because everyone does not enjoy the same thing. [interestingly, this applies perfectly well to marketing segments]

Gameplay is the primary source of entertainment in all video games. But aesthetics and harmony/coherence matter.

Types of challenge	Video game examples
Physical coordination	DDR, Tetris, Street Fighter
Logic	Mastermind
Pattern recognition	Sonic the Hedgehog (behavior patterns of ennemies), Mahjong
Time pressure	Trackmania, Zuma
Memory and knowledge	You Dont Know Jack, Memory Match
Exploration	Doom, Portal
Conflict	Age of Empires, Pac-Man, Half-Life, ICO
Economic	Civilization, The Settlers
Conceptual Reasoning	The Incredible Machine, Façade, Syberia

Risk implies reward, otherwise there is no incentive to take the risk.

Types of immersion	Examples
Tactical	Tetris trance, the action is so fast the brain has no time to focus on something else
Strategic	Chess master, observing, calculating and planning [you need a player of the same or higher level so that you are not bored]
Narrative	being inside a story, like in good books or movies

Test your skills

Each chapter has a collection of multiple choice questions to let you check if you have learned the biggest points the authors wanted to make. Following the questions, a few exercises and discussion questions bring interesting and inspirational matter about the current chapter. I only give my pick of the best exercises I found in this chapter.

• Create a competitive game for two players and a ball that does not involve throwing it or kicking it.
• Define a competitive game with a single winner, for an unlimited number of players, in which only creative actions are available.
• As a potential designer, do you see yourself as an artist, an engineer, a craftsman, or something else?

RO bosses

Appearances and atmospheres

The Mummies series follow the same principle seen with Doom II monsters. A Mummy can first be encountered on the second and third floors of Pyramid dungeon. Then, on the fourth floor of Pyramid dungeon, Ancient Mummies appear, along with Osiris, a MVP. The higher the pyramid floor, the more difficult the Mummies, until Osiris at the fourth floor of the Pyramid. In my opinion, putting in parallel a spatial feeling of "going up the floors" and increasing the monster difficulty makes the player excited about "what's next floor?" and "will I be strong enough to kill them?".

As I described before, the atmosphere really matters to introduce the boss. In a video from Doddler fighting one of the last boss, Nidhoggur Shadow, a particular importance is given to the NPC broadcast in the area. Naght Siegel, the MVP standing at the top of Endless Tower required to empty all the floors of the tower during 2 hours and a half.

The game evolves

RO Vanilla

Golden Thief Bug is one of the first bosses of RO. It has always been in the game since its first launch in August 2002, along with Baphomet or Eddga. But after 7 years for kRO and 6 years for iRO, the players have started to kill these MVP very fast: less than 15 seconds for Eddga, 40 seconds for Baphomet and Golden Thief Bug in 50s.

And even without being totally "overpowered", some players find ways to exploit/use the system to kill MVP, such as this wizard using the warp as a protection to kill GTB, or this wizard killing Turtle General in 5 minutes with Ice Wall. I am obviously not talking about high-rate-server no-cast Creators inflicting ridiculously big damage to any monster (but "Hakuna Matata" in Portuguese is really cool!).

Episode 10 and after

However, Gravity game designers have realized their 200,000-HP 3k-attack MVP were not a challenge for high-level players anymore, and they progressively increased the difficulty of the MVP they released such as Lord Knight Seyren (1.6M HP, 10k attack) in the Episode 10.2 of March 2006, Gloom Under Night (2.3M HP, 7k attack) in the Episode 11.1 of May 2007, or Satan Morocc (20M+15M HP, 32k attack) in the Episode 12 of December 2008. At the same time, Gravity game designers also increased previous MVP such as Orc Lord which was granted the Earthquake skill, inflicting ridiculous damage. As Doddler writes:

Basically, earthquake is an extremely powerful attack that strikes all players on screen. Its based on the monsters physical attack power, though it is calculated as a magical attack. The key feature of earthquake is that the damage it deals is split across all players on screen. The more people who are within range of the boss monster when it casts the skill, the less damage the player takes.

But groups in RO are limited to 12 players, and as Doddler wrote when commenting (look for the "Orc Lord on Valkyrie" post) a video he recorded while fighting Orc Lord,

Like many earthquake MVPs, Orc Lord basically doesn't do anything that can be seen as a challenge other than earthquake. Unfortunately, earthquake is really a bad thing to deal with when you have no cranials, immunes, and limited access to assumptio. As you can see, our strategy generally involved simply falling over when it did end up using earthquake. More than that, the plan was to burn it down in a way that it would never use earthquake while in power up. We were successful in that, though just barely. Another 2 seconds and we would have been toast.

However, RO game designers also tried to innovate and create group strategies to beat MVP. MVP are no longer solo-able but require highly-organized players to group together. This new MVP design provided a challenging non-PvP activity for guilds. As Doddler writes,

The MVP's that I think gravity has done a 'good' job in making fun requiring interesting strategies to beat are:

Beelzebub - For reasons mentioned above [even though it is hard to coordinate the group, his attacks can be countered and his hellflys should be tanked as well, see Doddler's post for a full description]

Fallen Bishop - Same as beelzebub really but scaled down to be easier. Pneuma blocks hells judgement, sanctuary blocks evil land, magnetic earth stops dark/holy grand cross. Tank holds the whole crowd with evil armor... Holy cross will hurt but its managable (crusaders have 50% resist to holy so they're the best tanks). You can counter critical wounds with sacrifice if you need to but its not required here. If you can kill the banshees with an AoE (like focus arrow strike), its even easier. Could probably be done in a killer/priest/bard/scholar/tank combo.

Ktullanux - Textbook boss control. Split mob/boss on different tanks, counter stormgust knockback by using the terrain, block physical hits with safety wall. Ever use magic rod to counter his waterball? Its pretty cool.

Gloom Under Night - Very powerful physically but his abnormally slow attack speed and reaction time highlight defensive skills.

Atroce - Throws around some hefty attack power at high speeds. Pulse strike keeps you watching where you're standing but can be blocked, and you have to watch out for his magnum break counter to being attacked by multiple melee attackers. His two hand quick is scary, but it can be dispelled.

Kiel-D-01 - High powered melee attack, a powerful fire attack and a deadly dark blessing make Kiel tough, but his mob can be reduced drastically, and constant safety wall will keep the tank safe from his relatively slow attacks. Don't forget green potions.

Memory of Thanatos - Weaker than most people give him credit for. His main strength is in his mob, which can be mostly removed without problem. Exile really means you need two people that can take his hits, but otherwise its a simple exercise in monster control. If you can dispel his two hand quicken, its easier to just tank him on a magnetic earth than to use safety walls, as the magic is more destructive than his melee.

This might seem a blunt copy/pasting of Doddler's post, but I could not formulate it better and with more details.

Complaints

As Doddler explains in a RO's MVP System and it's Flaws post in April 2008, weaker MVP's can be killed in a very small group, some are even easy enough to take solo, with the high tier bosses taking a sizable party with many player roles and coordination, and the higher tier MVPs are harder to deal with, usually requiring anywhere from 5-10 people to properly fight. This system of weak, medium and strong MVP seems to provide an appropriate challenge to lower-, medium- and higher-skilled players. However, bosses are free for all, that is to say bosses are what would be referred to as world bosses in other MMORPG's, bosses that appear within the game world where any other players in the game world can attack, influence and interfere with bosses as you fight them. Except for Endless Tower and Orc Recollection, there is no instance.

As a result, some players often stay "camping" on a map, they wait for the monster's re-appearance to kill it first and get the drops. While Heimdallr, a community manager on iRO's forums, wrote he was sure that instancing will become more common in RO as time continues, MVPs are still wandering freely outside instances and are still being camped. A very common strategy consists of sending the same Monk character, capable of inflicting much of damage in one shot, in suicide missions. A player writes Champ solo Atroce really, /memo, fist, inn regen, buff, warp back rince and repeat. I actually mention this problem in my paper about RO private servers. As one of the main activities for high-level players is hunting MVP (along with WoE), camping Champions are spoilsports. A potential solution could be to let many MVPs use the Full Heal skill: this skill can only be used in an idle state (ie not in combat) and regenerates the all the HP of a monster. This happens naturally for all monsters in other MMOGs such as WoW.

Doddler also complained about MVPs. He listed 4 major points to fix:

• A too big contrast between frequently dropped mudflated useless items, and valuable rare (less than 1% drop chance) drops
• Players should play by the boss set of rules, not the opposite (RO game designers tried to address this with the post Episode 10 MVPs, see previous section)
• Ankle Snare, a Hunter skill used to trap monsters, works on MVP
• Earthquake, especially when MVP are in Power Up mode (attack and def multiplied by 3, cf Episode 10.3 monsters), deals ridiculously big damage to players

Even though I have played RO, I am not a RO expert as much as Doddler. However, I think that Earthquake requires really good gears and can be tanked by a party. Bosses in WoW sometimes require weeks to understand, see for instance Yogg-Saron's world first by Ensidia. Not all monsters can use Earthquake, and maybe those who can use Earthquake require the group to follow specific strategies yet undiscovered? Nevertheless, I perfectly understand how frustrating it can be to keep facing failure when trying to kill a boss because not everyone in the group has godly equipments such as Asprika (reduces 30% of elemental attacks, ie 30% of the damage received from Earthquake!). But these god equipments require items (only collectible in very coveted guild castles) to unlock painful long quests to accomplish, such as The Seals or Fallacious Okolnir.