Ioannes
Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.
- Reaction score
- 49
Many fan-produced maps on Bnet have irritated me over something. Something I have had hard time to define, but was always there. Something about the gameplay, similar to the familiar concepts of balance or tempo, but still very different. Something about the whole process of playing in a competitive PvP maps that has reminded me of inequality and discrepancy of rewards. I can name some maps that have this problem. Battleships Crossfire, RISK-series, perhaps even DotA - the fabric of their gameplay is inevitable flawed by this problem which repulses new players by treating them in a seemingly unjust way.
It is not hard to see this problem. I am talking about the occasions when the strong dominate the weak to a disproportionate degree. The occasions when bonuses amass for the player or team who is already stronger and are denied to the players unfortunate enough to be in weaker disposition. This is what the designers of Guild Wars in this interview have called "Z-factor". This post will try to explain to any aspiring mapmaker what the Z-factor consists of, why it is bad for your map, and how you could possibly minimize it.
First of all, how do we define the "Z-factor"? In the aforementioned developers' words:
How this looks like in flawed DotA-style games is clear. The player who is skilled enough to kill enemy heroes first gains advantage over them in the form of money and experience gained from the kill. The money is exchanged for better items and so the victor deals more damage and also becomes harder to kill. The defeated player gets nothing but loss of time spent on the battlefield (and so less experience). The objective of such games (Battleships, AOS, Battletanks, DotA) is to use force against the enemy forces. When successful use of force (player kills) facilitates use of force in the future (by rewarding players with additional power), we have the problem in the game "Z."
Similarly, RISK-based maps may have the same problem. The objective of a RISK map is to gain control over 40-100 checkpoints (usually) scattered throughout the map. This is done by killing the single units guarding them using units of your own. Units are bought and the gold to do so comes from checkpoints and its amount increases in proportion to the amount of checkpoints a player controls (the more checkpoints, the more gold, hence, the bigger army). The problem is that the more checkpoints one has, the more that player's army strength increases. The more that player's power increases, the better he can push in all directions and the more able s/he is to become even stronger. The players who lack income at the beginning are less capable of securing income, a powerful army, and therefore ability to compete.
Basically, the distribution of power crumbles down like an avalanche, hauling more and more with it in its fall. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Those already strong get stronger and those who for some reason have missed the crucial first stages of the game see their chances of success grow smaller and smaller in geometric progression. The more important "the first few minutes" are for the future balance of power, the higher the Z-factor is.
I already showed why a high Z-factor is basically bad. Nobody would like to find him/herself constantly killed by players from the other team with stronger and faster ships just because they immediately joined the fight and got money and experience, while s/he was constrained and as a result not only kills AI units slower (gaining less money for boosting the ship) but is also an easier prey for the stronger enemies who will come and kill him/her, gaining money from the kill and further widening the gap. I deliberately used the old phrase "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" because the analogy with society and income gap is so appropriate.
Of course, it is not necessarily always like this. Good coordination between players with weaker heroes/ships/less checkpoints can turn the tide if they work as a team and focus efforts. Also, well-made maps usually have some ways to keep such gaps in check. Normal Wc3 multiplayer has the mechanism of "Upkeep," which reduces income depending on the strength of the player's army. Professional game designers know about this and bear it in mind. Legend-Fire's BFME also has upkeep, keeping the Z-factor at a lower level than GolluM[WoMe]'s BFME 6.4.
However, the majority of cases out there on Bnet are not that merciful. Often, the person one might want to ally with is a moron, plus that the map may have no sorts of "handicap" features whatsoever. The playing experience is reminiscent of plain old brutal capitalism where the first person to go first in the race for better items and higher level also slows the others down by killing them and denying them progress.
And so, this is the Z-factor. The ease with which the "progress gap" between players' attempts to become stronger widens during the gameplay is what the Z-factor describes. The smaller the possibility for the unlucky players to regain the initiative and grow strong enough to match the fortunate ones, the higher the Z-factor is. And, as a consequence, the less fun the map will be for the unlucky ones.
This is a problem that every mapmaker who creates PvP maps has to address. Maps in which players play against players are always endangered of high levels of Z-factor and avalanche-like widening of gap (this piece of writing, I admit, is an answer to the high Z-factor I have witnessed in "Battleships Crossfire4.40" or "4.41" - nothing personal, but even if I'm on the winning team I'm still bored). Mapmakers ought to bear in mind that every way the map rewards a player for dealing damage to another player contributes to the level of the Z-factor. Thus, they need to be wary about it when designing the map.
Finally, how can this be averted? The answer is: using "handicap" measures that make the progressive widening of the gap as the game progresses harder.
PvP maps are reminiscent of "Zero-sum games" - a term from game theory which means that the amount of gain by one player is inevitably connected to equal loss by the opposing player. PvP maps we make are not exactly a struggle for a limited resource, but often the progress of one player IS tied to the relative regress of another. The reward for careening player B's battleship is not only the experience and the gold, but also 30 seconds during which player A will be prevented from gaining experience and gold himself.
Measures to prevent this will try to either reduce the prize for player B, or offer compensation for player A. For example, the half of players with the higher levels could receive a smaller reward per enemy kill, that is, kill of a player from the other half - the ones with low levels. RISK-type maps could reduce the Z-factor by putting a food limit or upkeep similar to that of melee maps. Footmen maps, traditionally cursed by high Z-factor, could use some compensation for lagging behind with the hero's level.
A notable example for dealing with the Z-factor is Chapter 4 of the Human campaign in "The Frozen Throne" - "The Search for Illidan." That mission is structured like an AOS map with a special unit - Illidan's prison wagon - moving towards one of the two bases. Armies are periodically sent from the two bases in order to push the enemy away from the prison wagon and make it go into their own base. We can imagine the Z-factor in this mission - if the player fails to get to the prison wagon at the beginning and allows it to automatically proceed to the enemy base, the hostile AI army could forevre keep the player from reaching it and so s/he will lose. Blizzard's genius solution to this problem is to make the waves from the two bases unequal. More precisely, the closer the prison wagon is to one of the bases, the more that side is penalized for reinforcements and, consequentially, gets smaller waves. The other side, who is witnessing victory slip away, is then given bigger waves than usual. As a result, the map automatically compensates for getting closer to success (helping the prison wagon move back to safety) by altering the balance of power and making it harder to defend. That mission is basically clean of any presence of the Z-factor, making it a notable example of how to make an AOS-kind of map.
In conclusion, the Z-factor is a problem still present in Battle.net, just like in the old days. Custom maps made by inexperienced mapmakers who cannot boast with the experience of game designers are likely to suffer from this. As a result, they will not be as fun as they could have been and their popularity will probably be limited, as the Z-factor will cause an outflux of people willing to pursue victory in a system that seems unfair and biased against them.
Also, I deliberately defend a point of view here, it's just how people write in academia.
It is not hard to see this problem. I am talking about the occasions when the strong dominate the weak to a disproportionate degree. The occasions when bonuses amass for the player or team who is already stronger and are denied to the players unfortunate enough to be in weaker disposition. This is what the designers of Guild Wars in this interview have called "Z-factor". This post will try to explain to any aspiring mapmaker what the Z-factor consists of, why it is bad for your map, and how you could possibly minimize it.
First of all, how do we define the "Z-factor"? In the aforementioned developers' words:
What this means is that whoever gained the initial advantage inevitably secured victory. Even though the players start at equal strength, the initial balance is feeble and the very first interruption destroys the equilibrium; the direction of the first quake will topple the balance of power beyond restoration. Whoever starts winning at the beginning will become more and more powerful, while whoever starts losing will be weaker and weaker until it is useless to continue playing because the outcome is obvious.
How this looks like in flawed DotA-style games is clear. The player who is skilled enough to kill enemy heroes first gains advantage over them in the form of money and experience gained from the kill. The money is exchanged for better items and so the victor deals more damage and also becomes harder to kill. The defeated player gets nothing but loss of time spent on the battlefield (and so less experience). The objective of such games (Battleships, AOS, Battletanks, DotA) is to use force against the enemy forces. When successful use of force (player kills) facilitates use of force in the future (by rewarding players with additional power), we have the problem in the game "Z."
Similarly, RISK-based maps may have the same problem. The objective of a RISK map is to gain control over 40-100 checkpoints (usually) scattered throughout the map. This is done by killing the single units guarding them using units of your own. Units are bought and the gold to do so comes from checkpoints and its amount increases in proportion to the amount of checkpoints a player controls (the more checkpoints, the more gold, hence, the bigger army). The problem is that the more checkpoints one has, the more that player's army strength increases. The more that player's power increases, the better he can push in all directions and the more able s/he is to become even stronger. The players who lack income at the beginning are less capable of securing income, a powerful army, and therefore ability to compete.
Basically, the distribution of power crumbles down like an avalanche, hauling more and more with it in its fall. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Those already strong get stronger and those who for some reason have missed the crucial first stages of the game see their chances of success grow smaller and smaller in geometric progression. The more important "the first few minutes" are for the future balance of power, the higher the Z-factor is.
I already showed why a high Z-factor is basically bad. Nobody would like to find him/herself constantly killed by players from the other team with stronger and faster ships just because they immediately joined the fight and got money and experience, while s/he was constrained and as a result not only kills AI units slower (gaining less money for boosting the ship) but is also an easier prey for the stronger enemies who will come and kill him/her, gaining money from the kill and further widening the gap. I deliberately used the old phrase "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" because the analogy with society and income gap is so appropriate.
Of course, it is not necessarily always like this. Good coordination between players with weaker heroes/ships/less checkpoints can turn the tide if they work as a team and focus efforts. Also, well-made maps usually have some ways to keep such gaps in check. Normal Wc3 multiplayer has the mechanism of "Upkeep," which reduces income depending on the strength of the player's army. Professional game designers know about this and bear it in mind. Legend-Fire's BFME also has upkeep, keeping the Z-factor at a lower level than GolluM[WoMe]'s BFME 6.4.
However, the majority of cases out there on Bnet are not that merciful. Often, the person one might want to ally with is a moron, plus that the map may have no sorts of "handicap" features whatsoever. The playing experience is reminiscent of plain old brutal capitalism where the first person to go first in the race for better items and higher level also slows the others down by killing them and denying them progress.
And so, this is the Z-factor. The ease with which the "progress gap" between players' attempts to become stronger widens during the gameplay is what the Z-factor describes. The smaller the possibility for the unlucky players to regain the initiative and grow strong enough to match the fortunate ones, the higher the Z-factor is. And, as a consequence, the less fun the map will be for the unlucky ones.
This is a problem that every mapmaker who creates PvP maps has to address. Maps in which players play against players are always endangered of high levels of Z-factor and avalanche-like widening of gap (this piece of writing, I admit, is an answer to the high Z-factor I have witnessed in "Battleships Crossfire4.40" or "4.41" - nothing personal, but even if I'm on the winning team I'm still bored). Mapmakers ought to bear in mind that every way the map rewards a player for dealing damage to another player contributes to the level of the Z-factor. Thus, they need to be wary about it when designing the map.
Finally, how can this be averted? The answer is: using "handicap" measures that make the progressive widening of the gap as the game progresses harder.
PvP maps are reminiscent of "Zero-sum games" - a term from game theory which means that the amount of gain by one player is inevitably connected to equal loss by the opposing player. PvP maps we make are not exactly a struggle for a limited resource, but often the progress of one player IS tied to the relative regress of another. The reward for careening player B's battleship is not only the experience and the gold, but also 30 seconds during which player A will be prevented from gaining experience and gold himself.
Measures to prevent this will try to either reduce the prize for player B, or offer compensation for player A. For example, the half of players with the higher levels could receive a smaller reward per enemy kill, that is, kill of a player from the other half - the ones with low levels. RISK-type maps could reduce the Z-factor by putting a food limit or upkeep similar to that of melee maps. Footmen maps, traditionally cursed by high Z-factor, could use some compensation for lagging behind with the hero's level.
A notable example for dealing with the Z-factor is Chapter 4 of the Human campaign in "The Frozen Throne" - "The Search for Illidan." That mission is structured like an AOS map with a special unit - Illidan's prison wagon - moving towards one of the two bases. Armies are periodically sent from the two bases in order to push the enemy away from the prison wagon and make it go into their own base. We can imagine the Z-factor in this mission - if the player fails to get to the prison wagon at the beginning and allows it to automatically proceed to the enemy base, the hostile AI army could forevre keep the player from reaching it and so s/he will lose. Blizzard's genius solution to this problem is to make the waves from the two bases unequal. More precisely, the closer the prison wagon is to one of the bases, the more that side is penalized for reinforcements and, consequentially, gets smaller waves. The other side, who is witnessing victory slip away, is then given bigger waves than usual. As a result, the map automatically compensates for getting closer to success (helping the prison wagon move back to safety) by altering the balance of power and making it harder to defend. That mission is basically clean of any presence of the Z-factor, making it a notable example of how to make an AOS-kind of map.
In conclusion, the Z-factor is a problem still present in Battle.net, just like in the old days. Custom maps made by inexperienced mapmakers who cannot boast with the experience of game designers are likely to suffer from this. As a result, they will not be as fun as they could have been and their popularity will probably be limited, as the Z-factor will cause an outflux of people willing to pursue victory in a system that seems unfair and biased against them.
Also, I deliberately defend a point of view here, it's just how people write in academia.
