The psychology of Total War gamming.

[Tomisama]

The psychology of Total War gamming.

An amateurs attempt.

I would like to know if you agree or disagree with my observations and opinions, so please read the following statements carefully, and with that in mind.

There will be a test

*****

Total War players basically polarize to either single or multiplayer self descriptions.

A few are both, and some switch back and forth, but the camps are fairly well separated and distinct at any given time.

I am writing this to explore the differences between the two, mainly to be able to make suggestions in game design that will be beneficial to both players and designers.

Basic motivations for the two groups, at least at their extremes, are quite different.

Single players play to win, multiplayers play to play.

The SPs play against the machine at progressive levels, and to the end of learning how to, and then beating the game.

This can be a great deal of fun, and is great interactive entertainment.

The MPs play against other people, they too want to win, but their expectations are very different.

Because of the nature of multiplayer, MPs can achieve winning only half the time, and still be comfortable with the game.

In fact they might consider the game to be very well balanced, if their equally skilled opponents won half their games together.

A SP might become discouraged winning only half the time, and there by unable to progress to total victory at some point.

MPs might also become disinterested in the single-player game because of the imbalance of testing a person against a program, preferring their opponents to be at least equally people like them selves.

SPs have an offline community of like-interest players, to compare progress and share tips and advice with.

MPs play in an interactive real time community, that encourages natural gang groupings to both learn from and team together for multi-partner encounters.

Most MPs at some point become community-aware.

By that I mean that they begin to understand that teaching new players, forming clans, and participating in events, are necessary to maintain the community of multiplayers.

New MPs are constantly arriving, but there is no guarantee that they will fit in the culture, and become integrated into the society of avid players.

MP community needs to be maintained to keep a pool of qualified players active enough to provide challenging partners for games.

What does this mean to game design?

You can encourage SPs to participate in multiplayer, and the reverse, but their personalities will not be changed, and they will always gravitate back to their respective core groups.

You can’t really mix the two, except those who already play both sides of the fence; it is like the apples and oranges comparison.

The must-win orientation and accompanying aggressive attitude of the first-person-shooter SP, versus the “good luck and have fun” real-time-strategist community sustaining MP, are a bad mix.

They aggravate each other, but are happy to coexist, if left to satisfy their own needs in their own games.

True?
Untrue?
Needs correction.
Needs explanation.
Or, I have a totally different understanding or view.

Thanks in advance!

[gollum]

I thought this fine article would be about the "competitive psychology" when you play mp, but instead its about what types of fan are involved and how they approach/enjoy the game and so forms bond with it. Interesting.

I don't think that they are happy to co-exist, but that they exist by necessity and in a certain sense they balance each other out, Put too many competitive minded people in the community and relationships become strained ("that unit is unbalanced!" "you talk only AFTER you've beaten us" etc etc), friendliness decreases while gameplay becomes more one dimensional as nobody wants to try new things or is interested in balance for its own sake. The ease for new players in the community, and especially from the huge pool of SPers decreases and the community/game stagnates to dominating bragging/harsh/"manlyman" types. However, make the community too fair and too friendly and too SP open, and the gameplay quality will decrease because there would be less edge in battles, and no strong filter for the weak players to realise that they are weak.

In sum total, the two need to coexist and CA needs also to take that account into consideration. Serious mp play requires a lot of commitment and people will not put the hours if the game is of flimpsy balance and buggy, in other words unrewarding and lacking gameplay depth. They need to get that right in order for the mp potential of TW to take off.

[Tomisama]

Thanks for your response Gollum.

The title was just a catch phrase (something pulled out of the air) to head up an explanation of fundamental motivational differences. I was possibly trying to attract "real" psychologists, as my training was sketchy at best, and over forty years ago at-least (something about dogs and bells, or something).

Even the decision of where to post this discussion was difficult. SP or MP section of ETW or NTW or S2 forums; each had their potential bias attached. I choose Napoleon and multiplayer because it is the most recent game out, and I think that MPers have to think about SPers (invading their turf with the MP campaign), but in the reverse, Spers can safely ignore the MPers (for the time being anyway).

Your summation brought out something very improtant that I forgot, and was right on the mark. The required commitment of serious multiplayers, especially MPer teams and the Clan groups that support them, is a major difference between the two.

To me, the pinnacle of Total War gaming is the 4v4 Clan team tournament game. Maybe some day it will reach its full potential not only as extremely exciting to participate in, but also to watch on live stream distribution. In its full glory the vision includes global Olympic style competitions and titles, large cash prizes and international fame (albeit as temporary as any sport). But they would have to let me out of the asylum, if that were to really happen

I found your "competitive psychology" observations very intriguing. Having a look at the affects of the range of individual personalities within multiplayer, how they interact and change the nature of the game, would be a fascinating study. Clan psychology, team dynamics, the freelance ronin personality, the influx of “other game” players, and now the migration of TW single players coming to multiplayer campaigns, wow! There’s at least a book in there somewhere.

Please tell us more if it comes to you, all can benifit form a better understaning of these things

[Fisherking]

I am an old board wargamer that made the transition to computer games.

Since that time my experience has been mostly SP. I have played MP in NTW and I will cover that later.

As an SP player, I may have a different priority playing than most, I play for the experience and enjoyment. I like to see historical accuracy in unit capabilities and develop tactics, within historical limitations, to defeat the enemy in battle or out maneuver him in the strategic game.
I am not interested in the balance between say, English Infantry and German Infantry. I am more interested that they portray their strengths and weaknesses accurately. If a faction is militarily weak it just presents more of a challenge to play.

On the other hand, this seems to run counter to what many in the MP community want. They seem to want all units to be clones of the other factions, and if they are not they say the game is unbalanced.

After a CA rebalance I am usually disappointed if not down right outraged.

That to me, is the major sticking point.

As to my MP experience it has been mixed. I knew few of the opponents or if they were new to MP or old hands.

I have had some very enjoyable experiences where we were working with historic tactics and deployment trying to test one another’s skill. Win or lose I can’t express how great it felt just to play.

Then, the majority have been using some gimmick or exploit just to hammer the opponent as quickly as possible. I guess I would call the Head Hunters who just want a high MP rating. Needless to say they were not in the least enjoyable though I stayed to the end of every battle I do understand those who escape out in the middle.

To me it seems that many MP players have formula units and tactics and are not interested in exploring the more historical aspects of the game.
Were it otherwise I would love to have a human opponent to match wits with.

[Zim]

My reasons for playing SP are similar to Fisherking's. I play SP to create a story, and lean towards mods with a focus on historical accuracy. I'll do thigns like forgo advantages for roleplaying purposes, or play to general's traits rather than just aim to win battles as easily as possible,

My mp experience is minimal. I've generally found mp players (mostly in hotseats, where I have the most experience) to be far aware of imbalances and exploits, whether they use them or not. This is likely because these things tend to come out more when playing in a more competitive environment with other people, than in SP where the AIs in recent TW games have been easy to beat without seeking advantages.

[gollum]

I never knew what to make of your optimism Tommi (or how to be that way myself). Its such a great blessing:)

TW in mp is a different game altogether. Especially team games as Tommi says, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 are amazing. The transition from SP, is certainly not easy for most, especially if you decide to just "drop in" all by yourself. That's because you need to learn the ropes, and to do that you need someone that can teach them to you. This requires time, patience from both sides, commitment and friendliness, otherwise it just won't work. Most people never cross this stage, and this is profoundly related to psychology; you need to be able to accept losing face in front of your online friends in order to learn to play the game. This however prevents you, for a while at least, from posting in the forums (say) with your usual elan, as now everyone knows "how good" you are. The key here is perseverance and an active, serious but friendly clan community that will take up new players and integrate them. However once you start getting it, and your play improve, there is lots more fun than in sp involved, especially with good company. 6 to 9 hours of straight online play at that stage are not uncommon, and an hour of mp is far more intense than an hour of sp in which your minds "coasts" while on the campaign map.

Although all TW games have their quirks and characteristics (due to the different engines and periods/settings/gameplay explored), they have enough in common to say that a competent mper in one game will probably do a succesful transition to another. Its however in the cooking and coordination of the engine parameters from an MP perspective that things are decided for mpers. CA carries a lot of responsibility for that; bugs are relatively harmless for SPers, but for mpers an +1 or +0 stat in a unit due to a bug can make all the difference in the world between a balanced game and an unbalanced one.

"Balance" it self is a tricky word; some people will bring up concepts like "rock,paper,scissors" with great intent while others will mock with equally great contempt, and these players are usually SPers to the core. They will argue from a "historical" and "realistic" perspective, but these mean little to an mper; the setting is a little more than a stage for them to play out their struggles in a way, but for many (not all) SPers the stage is just as, if not much more important than the acting of the interpreters.

Needless to say that from a commercial perspective SPers are far easier to satisfy, as it requires less rigor and playtesting - besically the developers can get away with putting many things under the rug - and many companies, including i would say CA go for that, hence all the "bad blood" between the two communities.

A good and certain measure for balance is the variety of units and gameplay styles the gameplay will allow for. In an mp context this manifests very easily, and there are waves of "styles", that is at one point everyone discovers that spear units (say) are too strong and build their tactics/strategy and armies around that. At some point, either the company changes the stats or someone finds (through skill or luck or combo of both) a way to beat the prevalent style; then everyone else slowly finds that out and the armies (of players in general) shift to the new style etc. Now, if there is a relatively quick succession and decent number of such styles (that perhaps recyslce), then the game most certainly is balanced. If however playstyles go down the same route and there is no coming out of there, then, the game is badly balanced and gameplay is poor, This property - more or less - of the gameplay is what mpers refer to as "depth". It is a very important property indeed, and an absolute preerquisite for a strong community. If the gameplay is shallow, ie its all the same and rush on rush with the same army, people will not commit to the game, and the community will either stagnate or worse still be filled with shallow people, that aren't interested in good play so much, but more in bragging.

SP stats and MP stats have very different criteria for correct balance. Price of a unit in the camp map is determined also by the historicity, building dependencies etc, while the one in MP strictly in battle performance relative to the other units avialable in that era. The two clearly cannot be the same, and it is a major mistake that for many years - perhaps even still? - CA did not institute a different set of stats for SP and MP that would have gone a long way towards solving the issue.