MMORPG News - Top 5 Things to Learn

Massively has a list covering the 5 most important things that MMOs should learn in the new year. Here is a piece of the number 1 on the list:

#1 -- "Kill/Quest, Level" concept is a dead horse, get on with it already!

Yes! Get on with it! This is, without a doubt, in my mind, the biggest failure of the industry today. We're following along a solved formula, and it's shooting this industry in the foot. Player needs to level, player completes quests and kills monsters, player reaches next level, player gets new abilities, player uses abilities to go complete quests and kill monsters, et cetera.

We keep asking the question, "Why don't these new games seem like they're as good?" And then we begin this in-depth analysis and begin checking every aspect of the game to find out why this feels like we've done it all before. The answer is taking a step back, looking at the model and exclaiming aloud, "Holy heck in a handwoven handkerchief, we have done this before!"

The reason we keep playing single player games is because each one has it's own twist on the core formula. Couple that with the story and personal experience, and you get a great game. Our MMO industry needs to learn this fact this year -- not next year. The quest/kill, level, quest/kill model has been done and overdone. Gameplay needs to expand past this. Even reputation grinding is nothing more than the quest/kill to level system.

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More information.

Excellent article.

We already has other possibilities.

Making Honey in Divinity, for example.

SP games could be made as offline MMOs; yet no-one tries this, because people seem to believe that making own goods would be no fun.

Plus, if a player-character makes his or her own goods within an SP game, that game actually needs some at least very basic economy system to make the whole world plausible.

Crafting outside of MMOs is imho still very limited. Too much limited, imho.

I agree with everything in the article, except high end content not being the most important. While I agree that capturing players from the start is important, keeping them is just as important. Age of Conan lost many players because they simply didn't have anything to do after reaching 80. I personally feel the whole "levelling process" should be reduced if anything, making it easier for the developers to focus on actual content.

Good points, but BY far not what needs to be learned.

Here is a better example of a Top 5:

1. Dynamic world

Focus on developing a world that can change along with the actions of players. This has been attempted before - but never really done well. WotLK had something with this "phasing" technology, but it should be in a game that's a lot more creative than WoW.

2. Player control/politics

Make the players decide as many rules as possible. Make it possible for players to found political factions, and let THEM decide the internal hierarchy of command. Let the players control cities and let them set rules for taxes, penalties (even death penalties via control of priests), and so on. But ensure there's at least one NPC faction that you can stick to - if you want to avoid the whole powerplay as a player.

3. Do open world PvP properly.

This ties into everything else (politics and dynamic world) - but in the end, this is so untapped and so ripe for MMO development. Currently, the endgame of pretty much all MMOs consist of themepark experiences. That, or something hollow like WAR PvP that's essentially a fair-play team sport. No, integrate player politics and zone control. Instead of permadeath or something silly like that, make assassinations deal with the faction politics and take away the positions of players instead of their lives or items. If someone is a governor of a town, then remove their title of governor if they die, and make them fight for it back. Make death mean something, but allow NPC factions for people who don't want to get involved. But in the end, it's all about making choices mean something and introduce consequences for players who want them in their game.

4. Player created content

As a follow up, allow players to create their own content. Many ways of doing this, and it can be done simply, by making a "quest editor" in-game, complete with objectives and reward - along with potential quest lore. People can put up quests, and other players can decide whether they want to do them or not. More advanced and harder to implement: it should also include player made cities and everything to do with crafting. It's about preparing the design for this before you even start developing. UO did it better than anything in the past 10 years.

5. MUCH more extensive database of player actions and deeds.

Make them more public. Make sure that everything heroic or special a player does is recorded, and make it known to other players. Don't do it by "achievements" or anything corny like that. Don't make it another grind. Simply inspire prestige-related gameplay by actually making the effort to be special WORTH it. Let NPCs talk about great deeds at random, and let bards sing tales of it. Put up posters of it. Let people know if someone is especially good at dealing damage, healing, questing, or whatever - but DO NOT make it a grind.

I think your points (with the exception of 4) are covered for a large part by Darkfall Online, at least that is what the developers claim.

Myrthos said:

I think your points (with the exception of 4) are covered for a large part by Darkfall Online, at least that is what the developers claim.

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Yeah, I've been reading great things about Darkfall - but I'm extremely sceptical about their ability to actually release a working game with these features.

Also, most info is a bit vague and though it sounds great in theory, I'm going to have to see just how far they've taken these concepts.

From what I've read, they don't really take into account those players that don't want to get involved with all this player-controlled content. It seems there are no NPC political factions (or clans I think they call them) that can compete on an even playing field.

But it's been a while since I read up on it, and it's definitely a step in the right direction if they come up with half of what they promised.

I agree on your comments. It really remains to be seen how this will work in practice. I do think the sandbox type of games like Darkfall or Mortal Online might be what the MMO genre needs to move onwards.

Myrthos said:

I agree on your comments. It really remains to be seen how this will work in practice. I do think the sandbox type of games like Darkfall or Mortal Online might be what the MMO genre needs to move onwards.

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It's certainly a direction that I think will please the hardcore fans.

I have no illusions that these features won't turn away the casual playerbase, because most people aren't "into" gaming to the extent that they want to really work for results. I can sympathise, and I'm not even sure I'd ever want to do that again myself. But I do know that I'd rather play a game where I had a good measure of control, and could at least pretend that my actions had meaning than I'd waste another few years of my life playing hollow themepark MMOs.

It's a bit of a paradox, really, because the more akin to reality these games get, the more obvious it becomes that we shouldn't be playing them like they were another reality. Afterall, we have reality for that.

Basically, my ultimate conclusion is that the genre as a whole is a mistake. I just need to realise that and give it up