The First Descendent is unsatisfying because of Monty Haul

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --George Santayana

The First Descendent was released recently and mid-way through even the Pre-Season, it clearly showed a Monty Haul problem, a multi-faceted issue rooted in being overly generous with rewards.  This type of game administration issue was identified over 50 years ago in the era of tabletop roleplaying games with one game master (GM) / dungeon master (DM) administering a game for players. Nowadays the developers of an online game are like these game administrators, and they most certainly encounter the same potential pitfalls.

While TFD complained that their character development feels too slow, this was in fact not the real issue. A combination of bad developer behavior and bad player behavior accelerated the game toward increasingly bad design.

Topics:

• What is a "Monty Haul" problem?
• What does the Monty Haul problem look like in TFD and what are the causes?
• Making endgame content the immediate objective
• Extravagant awards for even less effort
• Overpowered characters
• How TFD should have been handled

What is a "Monty Haul" problem?

• "Monty Haul" was a game show that awarded extravagant prizes. In game design, awarding too-extravagant prizes might seem exciting to players initially, but ultimately backfires and results in an unsatisfying game. This problem was identified literally decades ago, long before online games.
• The Dungeon and Dragons Fandom Wiki summarizes it in this way:

Lack of challenge

Players equipped with exceptional power may find that the game no longer poses a challenge. This can lead to an unsatisfying gameplay experience.

In the article Curing the Monty Haul Malady, Dragon #82 (Feb 1984), Roger E. Moore argues:

"The hidden problem, of course, is that giveaway games like this pale very quickly. Soon no one feels challenged by anything the DM throws at them, people get bored, and the game folds. Sometimes one or two players are shown exceptional favoritism in a campaign by the DM, and everyone else gets shafted. No matter how you do it, giveaway games like those described above will produce nothing whatsover but a sorry, frustrating mess."

 

Lack of rules support

Characters who quickly exceed the standard level limits of the game rules may find that there is no published game content above this level. This will require the Dungeon Master to invent new rules to compensate.

• In short, the Monty Haul problem is about EXCESS. Giving or allowing far too much, thereby diminishing all other aspects of the game.

What does the Monty Haul problem look like in TFD and what are the causes?

• Overpowered weapon early
• Shortly into the game you are introduced to Legendary Weapons and they let you easily obtain one of the best that can carry you through to endgame -- Thundercage -- which causes a strong electrical explosion when enemies are killed, typically resulting in nearby enemies killed as well. This weapon, steadily upgraded, is more than good enough as the only weapon you will ever need.
• Overpowered playable character early
• You are given access to "Bunny", a character who can zoom ahead faster than every other playable character, and who has an electrical area attack while she moves. She can be upgraded such that before other characters can do anything, she's already zoomed ahead and cleared all common enemies -- other characters literally do not have a chance to do anything meaningful.
• Making endgame content the immediate objective.
• Instead of making endgame content a long-term objective to be reached, the developers pushed players to quickly reach it as part of their Pre-Season Battle Pass.
• This is like saying "the short term goal is to have you finish the game quickly". This is completely contrary to a live service game, whether an online RPG or a tabletop RPG.
• Moreover, the developers basically gave out enough XP and loot for players to do so -- to reach maximum possible character development well before the end of Pre-Season. It may not seem like it, but this is in fact part of the "extravagant rewards" problem of a Monty Haul game: It accelerates getting to a point in the game where character development is ended and is pointless to play.
• So instead of enjoying the content, players focussed on the numerical goal of getting their power up and reaching endgame content.
• This is like an RPG where the players stop playing for story and experience and satisfaction of attaining goals, and instead just did whatever was time efficient to reach maximum level because that became the goal.
• However, maximum level is the limit of what the game supports, and beyond this, new content must be created to create satisfying uses for their powerful characters. This is the "lack of rules support" part of the Monty Haul problem. It creates a high-maintenance loop where players chase maximum power, then demand challenges, and when those challenges are too hard, ask for more power again expecting extravagant rewards to quickly attain that power.
• When it becomes too hard to keep up with making challenges for players to aim for, they change the nature of engagement to repetitive grind in order to consume the players' time. Now rewards are locked behind boring repetition instead of satisfying steps in character development.
• With this built-in urgency, players tried to reach endgame in two ways:
• Playing a lot to progress quickly.
• Getting carried by established players.
• In both cases, players wanted to develop their characters and firearms quickly to meet the challenges, so no amount of XP was fast enough. And instead of playing the content as intended they played a meta-game of finding the most efficient sources of XP.
• For example, instead of doing Void Fragment missions to get Void Fragments, players used certain Void Fragment missions solely to get XP.
• In this way, players basically looked for exploits to get extravagant rewards. Unlike a tabletop RPG with a dedicated game administrator to adapt rules as necessary, an automated online game is generally easily exploited in this way to give out great rewards in unintended ways.
• To develop characters required materials that were locked in higher-level and endgame content, further encouraging players to rush or be carried.
• Now that players have been pushed to already reaching endgame and acquiring certain broken builds that trivialize it, Season 1 (i.e., all future content) has to deal still-broken mechanics and a player base leaning toward broken overpowered builds..
• Season 1 "invasions" and other content are scaled for endgame and fully-developed characters.
• This means new players are pushed to rush content even more by any means necessary, including pressuring the developers to give out more XP and getting carried whenever they can.
• So the Monty Haul problem creates downward spiral demanding continuous attention and concessions that ultimately ruin the game.
• Of course some players will just play a lot to progress very quickly no matter what but they are dangerous to the game only if the developers bow to their demands, to the detriment of overall game design, game administration, and other players.
• Remember that in a live service online game, new players are (and should be) constantly entering the game and a healthy and welcoming environment for new players is essential throughout the lifetime of a successful game.
• Players who have so much time to complete one game should be allowed to naturally exit the game and come back at a later date, e.g., by rotating weekly content offering incentives not related to just vertical character development; or even promoting another game by the same publisher.
• Extravagant awards for even less effort.
• Players in general agree that if you defeat a strong enemy or overcome a hard challenge, you should get more of a reward than if you defeat a weak enemy or overcome an easy challenge.
• However, when players attain a lot of power and there is no real distinction between a weak or strong enemy, they still expect to get more XP from supposedly stronger enemies. For example:
• The Bunny playable character can have a wide electric attack developed to be extremely powerful. It can defeat several strong enemies at the same time, and even in endgame modes. So a single level 1 enemy is basically no different from a dozen level 100 enemies because a single pulse of the electric skill will defeat them all at the same time.
• This means for the same amount of effort, they are getting much more XP than they should. Of course they needed to develop their character to be able to do this, but the fundamental principle needs to be in place for a satisfying experience: Reward should be proportional to effort.
• Meanwhile, other players using less developed characters or different characters without the same powerful skill, require more time and effort to defeat the same enemies but are getting the same XP rewards. This also breaks the fundamental principle that reward should be proportional to effort.
• Given that there is a way to get the same reward faster and with less effort with one type of playable character, obviously players will gravitate toward using it.
• This invalidates not just the challenges but all the other playable characters.
• It is the opposite of the expectation that more effort should have more rewards. Instead, players are looking for less effort to get rewards.
• It encourages other players to "leech" by just being part of the party and get full rewards, sometimes outright doing nothing and being "AFK" (Away From Keyboard).
• Early RPGs recognized that when effort and consumable resources used was trivial, XP should basically be zero. In general, players would already get other rewards such as currency or items for their time spent, but because the encounter had no learning value, character Experience did not advance.
• This is basically an extension of the expectation that more challenge equals higher reward: Less challenge equals lower reward, so negligible challenge should mean negligible reward.
• But players are greedy and exploitative if allowed to be and just want Monty Haul style rewards -- in addition to already farming loot quickly.
• Overpowered characters and builds (beyond Bunny)
• Giving players too much power is also a type of Monty Haul problem. In some games it comes from overpowered gear but the result is the same: Lack of challenge.
• Roger E. Moore also identified this issue: "Sometimes one or two players are shown exceptional favoritism in a campaign by the DM, and everyone else gets shafted."
• In the Pre-Season we already saw various playable characters achieving immense power that the game could clearly not handle well. Only some playable characters could attain this and naturally players gravitated toward acquiring and playing them in order to have an easy time.
• These highly or fully developed characters made many of the existing game trivial and any attempt to adapt or rebalance the content would have also penalized every other type of playable character.
• The developers did not (or perhaps could not) rebalance these characters and their broken, overpowered builds. But without doing so it is impossible to properly present satisfying challenges for players.
• With Season 1, the developers introduced yet another overpowered character that can clear one of the harder raid bosses in less than half a minute. From this point forward it seems the developers will just release more such characters, making the game one where hard challenges are overcome by making them trivial.
• It seems they may have abandoned their idea of a diverse cast of playable characters and a looter shooter to just selling power fantasies to a demographic of players who don't actually want to play the game, just overpower everything with ease.
• The gameplay is like using a cheat, except players don't have to look for third-party cheat providers.
• Because these players already do not like work and achievement, putting new characters behind grind so repetitively tedious even for their overpowered characters will push players to simply buy the new character as well as any character development conveniences.
• The problems of this Monty Haul approach still remain: How will they sell more product if the current ones are enough to "do everything"? What will they adjust in order to make new product and new content worth buying?
• Whatever the case, it is no longer the game presented to players during the beta tests and Pre-Season.

How TFD should have been handled

• Don't encouraging rushing content.
• This is the number one thing every online game developer really needs to do.
• Do not set objectives that encouraging players to rush, such as a Pre-Season Battle Pass where reaching endgame is required for completion.
• Preferably do not set Battle Pass challenges involving endgame to clearly signal to players that endgame is not required.
• Alternatively, have a plentiful enough selection of challenges that endgame or rushing is not required.
• Players should be able to complete it without exhausting all content. This signals to players they do not have to rush through all content.
• Slowing down also allows players to repeat some content they like in order to slow down and do some character development, and thereby advance through content more properly prepared (instead of hoping for a carry from established players or even buying services from third party providers).
• Set expectations explicitly: Tell players what they expect players to achieve and that more is not necessary for the following Season. Otherwise they will be wary of falling behind and do whatever they can to rush in case what they have achieved is "not enough".
• Pace the release of content.
• Instead of adding more endgame content to constantly challenge players who have reached endgame, add horizontal content such as cosmetics to collect or encourage players to do more existing content such as collecting descendents.
• Add quests that require specific playable characters or a mix of playable characters.
• Be careful not to add urgency, otherwise players will again rush and demand faster progress. Instead, just add content that can be accessed anytime players qualify.
• Limit character advancement and unlock it slowly.
• There is a reason why many older games continue to have level limits or other types of limits to character development and only increase the development cap when they are ready to release new, harder, content.
• It helps to avoid the problem of reaching endgame too quickly and then complaining there is nothing to do.
• It helps the developers watch how players play and make adjustments if necessary.
• It gives players time to progress horizontally and gives new players time and resources to catch up.
• New players entering the game have the benefit of more character development to advance through early content more quickly, and better catch up with the rest of the community, without necessarily giving them huge handouts of resources, XP, and rewards.
• In TFD this could be handled with a change to how many module points a playable character or firearm can have.
• Use timers very carefully.
• Time limits encourage rushing, which also encourages doing things the one easiest possible way. Any type of rushing can promote bad habits and bad expectations instead of highlighting skill and strategy.
• Instead, use Time limits for non-crucial things that do not block progress or development, such as achievements and titles and other such bragging rights.
• Don't listen to players who play too much and advance too quickly.
• There will always be players who play a lot more than others or are willing to spend an exorbitant amount for progress.
• Trying to keep up with them with challenging content always results in not just alienating other players but badly designed content that probably won't be challenging anyway.
• Instead, give them options to develop horizontally rather than vertically.
• By "horizontal" development we mean doing content other than only what will increase the power of the characters they are playing.
• TFD was actually well-positioned to do this with many playable characters and legendary weapons to grind and develop. Instead, the push to reach endgame content encouraged players to only focus on the most broken and meta builds and complain when getting there wasn't fast enough.
• Another option is cosmetics. For example, various one-time-use dyes could be sprinkled or randomized throughout content, encouraging players to repeatedly experiment with their appearance.
• Don't make Seasonal content for endgame.
• In order to be continually welcoming to new players, they must feel they are able to enter the game and participate at any time, not just be part of the Pre-Season founders with a head start.
• Reinforce good game design principles. For example, that Rewards should be proportional to Effort.
• For example, if using a skill can defeat one enemy as easily as a dozen enemies, then instead of giving XP for all enemies defeated with a single skill use, give XP only for the strongest enemy defeated with a single skill use.
• So if players breeze through content using overpowered characters or weapons, then they rightly receive less XP for doing less work.
• At the same time, less developed characters who required more time and effort to clear the same content are naturally rewarded with more XP, commensurate with the effort put in.
• Don't simply give in to complaints, but understand the root causes of the complaints.
• Example: Players want more XP.
• This is due to the perceived slow rate of progression, but is in turn related to feeling they need a fast rate of progression.
• However this is ultimately self-destructive because once they have reached the limit of their progression, they will feel bored and complain about the lack of challenges.
• If the developers continue to focus on them, they will alienate new players trying to enter the game but faced with endgame content that is too far out of reach. They too will ask for faster progression and this interferes with content design.
• Example: Players want more Gold.
• Gold is used as a second throttle to progress in TFD. You can have a lot of materials to make the items required to change weapon traits or enhance modules, for example, but you still need Gold. Players typically have an excess of those primary materials but a shortage of the common resource, Gold.
• Instead of increasing Gold, consider strategically decreasing Gold required for certain tasks. For example, greatly decreasing or eliminating the Gold required to enhance modules will let players experiment more with builds without necessarily increasing overall character power too quickly.