I had forgotten this for many years, but back in my Subspace days I came up with the phrase “Sharks and fishes” to describe the problem dwindling player population towards the later days of the game. About 20%-25% of the player population would be sharks – skilled players, who could get on a team without too much trouble. The remainder were fishes – food for the sharks, couldn’t get on a team, never had much fun. I knew at the time this is why the game was dying, but it never really occurred to me I was making the same mistake with my own game until I spoke to Joseph Lieberman today.
In your average FPS the difference in kill ratios between the best and worst players is maybe 2:1 to 1:2. In Subspace it was possible to go 30-0, or more, if you really tried. I think I went 200:0 once, more typically I maintained a ratio of 4:1 and that was just through normal play, without even trying to get a ratio. This was unfun for both sides – the newbies get blown away without a chance. The pros have no challenge and are bored.
He pointed out problem after problem with this kind of design, and each time I realized it’s been something I’ve been thinking all along, and knew, but pushed it to the back of my mind. Like how yesterday a couple of newbies came in, and one guy who was moderately good. I was bored in my own game, except for the guy who was moderately good, who was mildly interesting to beat. The newbies quit soon after, even though I was going easy on them, and then the moderately good guy quit too.
Another problem with Subspace was that the community was exclusionary, with private teams, that you could only get in if you were highly talented. This also alienated newbies and led a the slow death for the game.
The result of all of this is that I’m going to try to introduce a greater difference between the ships, weapons, and items. Combat will now depend in large part on how you customize your ship, what ship you picked, with major and noticeable difference between them. Because each ship has weaknesses now, team play becomes more important for complimentary abilities.
This means that even though I’m a better player, I might still die to newbies, just because they had the ship that counterbalanced mine, or I was outnumbered. Essentially squishing down the skill curve so that newbies go from 0 chance to a roughly even chance to win, tilted by skill.
Some people like the challenge that Subspace provided, and I’m going to leave in a few game modes that play to those settings. But I think my main focus and where most of the players are going to be is on the more newbie friendly servers.
One reply on “Sharks and fishes”
You might want to look at Guild Wars for PvP modes. I don’t know what you planned so far. One of the best features in Guild Wars is the “Random Arena”, where two teams play against each other, but players are selected randomly into each team.
In general, Guild Wars works like what you described: There is no one, who can survive every possible situations. It is possible for a newbie to kill professional players easily, with the right skills selected. In GW you may only select 8 specific skills out of a huge list. Only these skills can be used in combat and may only changed in an outpost. Equipment plays a minor role.
I think this is the way to go 😉