Essay on downtime in games
(Rambling post about something you probably do not care about)
What is downtime? For this essay I will be defining downtime as the time a person is not fully engaged in a specific in game activity or gaining progress for their character. E.G. load times, Time to regenerate health and mana, respawn times, ect. What I do not consider downtime is things like travel times unless it is automated (Flight Path, airship rides ect.) or doing crafting or processing activities. Everything in this essay is based on my personal experiences and observations.
Why have downtime in games? I hate downtime!
I often hear people saying outright they hate downtime, They do not like waiting to get back into the “action” of the game. At the same time they might not like the effect this has on a game. There is both a psychological effect and a physical one. Efficiency is always king and that will not change.
An example of a psychological effect is the mindset that if you are not actively doing something to progress you are wasting your time. This means stopping to chat with someone feels bad, Going to the bathroom feels bad, travel times feel bad. All these create inefficiencies in your game play. There is no ratio of activity vs downtime to ease pressures a player will put on themselves to remain efficient. It makes chatting or going to the bathroom a 100% efficiency loss, Vs a 70% efficiency loss if you have 30% downtime. (Random numbers do not read into it). This means if you chat during downtime it takes the feeling of time and efficiency loss from negative to positive. You were playing more efficiently because you did a social activity without any loss to progression efficiency, thus making a player feel like they were double dipping so to speak.
For the example of a physical effect I will be using 2 games that I played a lot of that both use the same control scheme. Path of Exile and League of Legends. Both games involve controlling a character’s movement with your mouse and activating abilities with your keyboard. For Path of Exile efficiency is everything, It gives you more currency, more items, more exp, more progress in every way. An efficient player gains magnatudes more progress than a slightly inefficient player does. Path of Exile basically has no downtime if you want to be efficient. You stop, you lose. League of Legends has downtime when your character dies or in between matches. You can take your hands off your controller and rest your hands and brain. This is significant physically and mentally. I would argue League is more intensive on both your hands and brain in most ways. This is significant because the main complaint about Path of Exile is hand strain. Why is Path of Exile seemingly doing more damage to someone’s hands when League has more clicking? Path of Exile has no imposed downtime. You never have to stop to take a break in the game because the game never makes you, You are punished for it with efficiency loss. People will play for 5 hours without ever stopping to rest their hands. It is incredibly draining to play a game like this imo. Especially an mmo where you are expected to do longer play sessions. There are still reports of hand issues from league players but it is not nearly as pronounced as in the Path of Exile community. To me this tells me even small amounts of downtime such as on character death or in between matches has an impact on player health.
Downtime used as a knob to balance around.
My main concern here is the idea of the choice to play safely vs dangerous and efficient. Downtime is one thing that can be used to tune down how efficient AoE spells usually are. If AoE pulling mobs is taxing on both your health and mana but health and mana regenerate in seconds people will be encouraged to always play that way. Players do not like efficiency loss and will always opt for more efficient tactics. If mana and health regen are not near instant you gain a choice as a player. You can play safely and use efficient single target spells to maintain a high health and mana pool. This also would help keep you safe in spontaneous pvp scenarios. Or you can aoe pull mobs and burn health and mana to kill multiple targets in around the same time you could kill 1 mob playing safe. Without any downtime needed to recover, the second option will always be the right choice. There is no concept of reckless spikes of action vs slow but steady. Players are not going to choose to play inefficiently if the alternative is just worse in every way. AoE will probably always be more efficient in terms of time even with downtime but downtime makes this an actual choice. There are also things like proper group composition to reduce downtime that can come into play when it is present in the game. Something a group focused game like Ashes could make proper use of.
Downtime’s impact in pvp.
This is a lot of my own personal preference I think. I do not want to see siege gameplay devolve into endless projectile and aoe spam into a choke point. I do not see it as fun or engaging gameplay. This is where some downtime would come into play. If you use your mana spamming aoe it should be an opening for your opponent. If mana regen is too fast there will be few gaps to exploit decisively. A good leader should be able to see a gap in defense and take advantage imo. Not to say I think it should be impossible to spam. I just think a player should have to give up damage stats and passives to maintain their mana pool. I like the idea of a mana regen mage spec that has full mana gear that can be used to lock down a choke point in exchange for dealing way less damage. This means you have more interesting choices in exchange for some downtime for people who are just spamming.
Economic and group play dynamics.
I like the idea of people playing around downtime. Gear sets that reduce downtime in exchange for other utility or power. Consumables that exchange gold for efficiency. Encouraging grouping up and playing to your strengths based on group composition. E.G. Using CC vs aoe pulling depending on what kind of group you have. Will you single target down a pack of mobs and never have to stop for mana or will you blast the pack down and then pause for a moment to recover but leave your group weakened for potential pvp. None of these things are really possible without some kind of downtime.
What is there to gain?
I am not a huge fan of the Go, Go, Go mentality and it is not caused by players. It is all in the game design. I think downtime is an important concept to implement early into testing. No one would like it if you decided a year down the line that it is now important. It is 1000x easier to start with a baseline and increase it to a point where you are happy then reduce it after players have already played with a system. People hate when you take away efficiency even if it makes the game better overall. Not many people are going to tell you they like “being slowed down” but I believe some amount of friction and action slow downs can be good for the overall health of the game and the players. You can increase actual player choice that is not just “You are choosing to play less efficiently for no gain”. 10% efficiency loss because of a trade off is an easier downside to swallow than a 100% efficiency loss because you had to answer the doorbell.
Players will not change but the design of the game can. Downtime is just 1 knob that can be tweaked.
TL;DR - I like downtime in games when used in the right places.
