Good qualities the perfect game should have; any candidates?

Xhieron

So I'm picky. Why not? I'm part of the older generation (in terms of the MMO genre, not older literally, although relatively speeking that's probably usually true), who were witness to UO, EQ1, and the muds before them, and so I've seen essentially everything this genre has produced so far. Like others in my position, now that I have a family and other obligations, I don't have a lot of time to devote to a game (although now I have the disposable income), but there are certain qualities I've seen over the years (or that I've thought up) that I think are ideal.

This post might end up sounding more like an open letter to developers than an actual plea for a game fitting my needs, and I apologize for the length, but this seemed the appropriate place to put it, since here I hope to get more feedback from other people as disillusioned as I am about what the market is doing now.

I've played EQ1, EQ2, DAOC, FFXI, AC2 (now defunct), COH/V, Ryzom briefly (also defunct, alas), EVE, GW, L2 briefly, WOW, and WAR, along with a smattering of f2p's and others that I didn't play long enough to make it to the list. I mention this because I speak the language from these games and can use them for comparison if anybody wants to reference something.

I'm prompted to write this because I've been playing WAR since release now, and I'm reaching the burnout point on it. Maybe my demands have changed or gotten more difficult for a developer to satisfy, or maybe my perceptions about the game being repetitive, un-innovative, and lacking in a number of areas that made repetitive play acceptable in other games are correct. In any event, I've started shopping around.

These are in no particular order.

• I want PVP.

I don't care if it's instanced, and generally I don't care what the consequences are (as long as they aren't perma-death, significant exp loss at any level, or full inventory and person-looting where one set of gear represents a significant time investment and players are unlikely to have multiples [i.e., turn the victims of PK into paupers]). EVE's death penalty in PVP was acceptable, as was WAR/WOW/DAOC's (none; brief run back to the fight). Also I don't care if griefing is permitted or not, as long as it's reciprocal (i.e., WOW PVP servers). I'd like to see meaningful consequences to PVP (such as DAOC relics), and I'd also like to see restraints on zerg power (such as DAOC mezzing; honestly I was against mezzing when WAR was in beta, but I regret to say that now that I've seen the power of the zerg in force on the servers, especially since Rift got nerfed, I have to turn about face on that issue).

• I want grouping to mean something.

One of the game-defining qualities of FFXI was that grouping was damn near necessary for everyone but one job (I think this may have changed with the new jobs, but I don't know exactly), and that was one of the best communities I have ever encountered, due in large part I believe to the characters' inter-dependence on each other. I think FFXI represents an extreme though, with perhaps WOW representing the other extreme, at least for most of a character's career. On balance, I'd like to see a system like EQ1's, or even EQ2's, where grouping is the default for accomplishing most things, but most classes can solo if absolutely necessary, and a handful just flat excel at soloing.

EDIT: This is not to suggest that I want a game that demands a huge time commitment or a lot of grinding. I do believe that the move from the first day of play until the last should be long and progressive, but I also believe that soloing should be a viable alternative to waiting in town for a group, and that there should be niche playstyles that make life easier for casual players (such as EQ1's druid, bard, and necro) without eliminating those class's usefulness in groups.

• I want camps.

By camps I mean old-fashioned Runnyeye-Garliage style camps. Mobs spawn in a set location, group pitches a tent, someone pulls, and the gravy train commences for a few hours while everybody talks about their kids over a beer. This is another one of those things that was essential to community and has essentially evaporated in Western games. I'm not suggesting instancing should go away--not at all. I know a lot of people hated camps and rejoiced whenever games offered alternatives. But some of us out here still like them, and miss them. It's one thing to add options in terms of how a dungeon is laid out, but what I noticed is that with WOW, camping was essentially a thing of the past. The group chased the mobs rather than bringing the mobs to the group, and even if one wanted to set a camp somewhere, mobs didn't respawn fast enough in dungeons and didn't need more than one person outside of them.

So I don't insist that a game abandon advances since EQ1, but some of the best experience I ever had gaming were in the Dreadlands and Valkurm Dunes (or the glorious all-nighter in Battalia Downs where our red mage kept falling asleep at the keyboard and we had to use the text sounds to keep him awake: SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!). Nothing can replace those memories, but to be honest, I haven't made any such memories since. In WOW the focus was always on the next objective in the dungeon, and hands were never free to talk for more than a few lines.

• I want more toys, not less.

Kiting, teleporting, summoning players (with only one caster, thank you very much), reverse kiting, ninja tanking, twisting (WITH A RESPONSIVE UI! Damnit, Mythic, wtf?), pets that can actually tank, multiple simultaneous pets, healing pets, shroom fields, crack, speed, charm, lay on hands, harm touch, pre-nerfed chaotic rift, feign death, balanced stealth, character flight, etc. You get the idea. I want a game to give characters options, and things that an individual player can offer to a group that actually mean something. WAR especially has done away with a lot of the toys that made DAOC stand out. There's nothing wrong with gimmicks, and if class balance is going to be such a straight-jacket that you won't allow anyone to do something no one else can, you should just abandon classes altogether.

• I prefer a skill-based system.

Mind you I say prefer here--not want or insist on. The skill-based system in EVE is near-perfect in that not only does it encourage subscriber retention, but it limits character specialization (by capping every skill at five and having a limited selection of modifying skills) so that older characters aren't infinitely more powerful than younger ones while still allowing a single character to be developed however a player wants without the need for alts. Ryzom's stanza system was also spectacular, although I did not get to spend much time with it. I understand Darkfall is using this kind of system, but other things about that game frighten me (namely the eight-year development life and history of scandal).

• I want guilds to have a meaningful, but not central, role in the world.

I've been a guild leader of several successful guilds in FFXI, EVE, COV, WOW, and now WAR. I've also seen guild politics destroy people's reputations and joy within a game, intentionally and otherwise. I believe a guild should mean something. A guild should be able to make a difference, and guild members should feel a sense of investiture in their guilds. However, I've always been frustrated when games, despite the noisome proclamations of developers to the contrary, have made membership in a massive guild necessary for success or enjoyment. WAR has counteracted this somewhat with Public Quests, but on the other hand has taken the same step back by employing a guild leveling system. Another thing that frustrates me about Darkfall's promises is that they intend to make people leaders of towns in the game--now this is a good idea if those towns are player-made and run, and exist alongside NPC-managed towns available to everyone, but otherwise it puts a premium on membership in a guild-corporation. I'm also aware of other games giving very significant rewards to leaders of large guilds, from everything from titles to mounts. This is inappropriate. The members of a guild should be able to decide what a guild should be and do without the members feeling pressured to join a larger guild (and comply with its rules, such as being forced to spec a certain way) or the leaders feeling pressured to turn their guilds into military units.

[Force players to feel like they need to belong to x guild because x guild was first to accomplish x on the server, and then reward leader of x guild for his member count, and, well, you see the problem that comes up here. A, b, c, d, e, g, w, y, and z guilds just ceased to exist, you've spent development time and money on content that one out of five-thousand players will use, and you might as well not have guilds at all.] 

The best guild system I've seen to date has been FFXI's linkshell system. People could belong to multiple linkshells, and so smaller, social linkshells thrived alongside the elitist linkshells that have caused people to even transfer servers or quit altogether in such games as WOW and WAR.

A player should never be made king of anything other than a player-made kingdom, and then only by player fiat.

• I want an interactive NPC and PC environment.

It's really sad to say that EQ1 did this better than anyone else to date. The faction system, despite all its drawbacks, was still infinitely better than most of its successors. I mean, you could camp guards! How cool is that?! I killed a bard (a million times, but still--die, Misty Storyswapper, you bitch, die!), and sure enough bards the world over wouldn't have anything to do with me. Go figure. Furthermore, some players were just evil, and even if the other PC's didn't treat them that way, the authorities did. There's something to be said for that. Darkfall claims to be implementing something like this, but I'll reserve judgment.

Aside from NPC behavior though, one of the fundamental things no game has managed to do so far (in my experience) is to have a living world. No game has ever destroyed a town--and from a developer's standpoint that's understandable. No one wants to make his hard-earned work unusable. But there's something to be said for having city X be the center of civilization for a year and then have a month long event after which where the city used to be there's a big crater with monsters pouring out of it and ruins of the city's buildings. I've heard that AC1 did this to some extent, but I didn't have the pleasure of playing that game.

As for PC's, I do believe player housing, towns, and a player-run economy are essential components to games of the future. The player-run economy in EVE is immense and in my experience, essentially perfect. It has all the advantages and disadvantages of a real economy, so much so that an experienced economist in the real world should have an advantage in EVE if he spends time analyzing the game's market. A player-run economy also requires certain elements that by their nature fix other problems in games, such as the money-sink problem. There should be no item binding. What kind of nonsense is this? I touched the sword so now no one else can touch it? Even the One Ring could change hands!!!!!! Bound items don't reflect enchantment--it's the same mechanic you'd read about if an item was cursed! It should be done away with. Items can be rare, but they shouldn't leave the market just because the developers want an easy way to control money (in fact, I think experience has shown just how un-easy it actually works, given the amount of profit you can make on WOW's AH which is controlled by developer fiat, versus the market in EVE which is controlled by capitalism).

 

 

That's what I have so far. If I think of more I'll edit.

Is there such a game out there, that has a lot of these elements? I have a feeling there isn't and won't be for a long, long time, if ever. If anyone has anything to contribute, though, please feel free, and in any event thanks for reading my meaningless drivel. If nothing else, I needed to get it off my chest.

 

Edit: A few more for the list.

• I want content that isn't gated based on my ability to assemble a zerg or to occupy a narrow percentage of the player population.

This seems pretty self-explanatory, and I suppose in the end it's just a matter of preference. I don't raid. I've raided before and I don't like it. I don't mind having raids included for people who like raiding and want to raid, but at the same time I don't want a preferential portion of the development budget devoted to raid-size content. The absolute meanest, hardest non-event boss in a game should be killable (killable, not easy) by eighteen people (three groups of six). Event bosses are a different matter (e.g., world boss controlled by a GM that's essential to the story). I understand WOW is moving in this direction and that's good, but the gear disparity in WOW is more epic than anything else in WOW's legacy. High-population content (such as raids, seiges, etc.) rewards should be good for that purpose, but they should be competitive with parallel low-population content rewards.

If a six-man boss requires as much preparation and as many tries and as much strategizing and as much organization and precision to kill as a raid boss, then it should drop comparable loot to a raid boss, all other things being equal. Having access to forty people is not an accomplishment in itself. It's commendable, but being able to have forty people complete content with you ought to be enough of a reward in itself. If parity in rewards would cause people not to raid (because doing non-raid content means not sitting somewhere for two hours while someone whines on vent)... then maybe raiding is a bad idea.

Furthermore, if a person who is good at PVP gets gear from being good at PVP that makes him better at PVP, the system essentially makes the rich richer. That's not to say people should get omgholysh!t111 gear for being utterly pathetic--winners should be rewarded for winning--but the accumulation of wealth should reward the diligent over the fortunate (and over the one who can buy entry into an arena team and game the system). I've read that recently WOW has made it harder and harder to get gear from arenas (of course... you take away the binding system and this problem is solved, but I want to make the point anyway). To me this is absurd even from a business standpoint, since it essentially means that developers are spending development dollars implementing content that will be used by only 1% of the population (or whatever the number is). We get to deal with the upper 1% in the real world; we shouldn't have to put up with it in a game.

• I want customization.

In the West, customization is king. I want my character to be a unique and delicate snowflake, not another soldier. Also his house should be a unique and delicate snowflake, and his mount and his gear and his personal effects. This is resource and development-intensive, but for goodness sake, if SOE can do it in EQ2 (and I think especially now we all agree SOE are a bunch of bastards), someone else should be able to. We want sliders, dye, even model choices. Give me fifteen races (I never played SWG, but it comes to mind when I think of races; EQ2 would be a contender here as well), ten starting skill-sets (Ryzom), one all-encompassing crafting system that's adapted to variations across product-type (think EVE), a bunch of morphing tools and the ability to dynamically change my character's appearance after creation to reflect changes resulting from roleplaying, and you're off to a good start. If you want to restrict the urban sprawl, put in zoning laws.

• I want vast, wide open spaces and the ability to travel them quickly.

Developers might not want to hear this, but this is what we think of when we say immersion. I want to be able to go somewhere off the map. I want a desert the size of the sahara with nothing there but an occasional scorpion, and the ability to completely bypass it if I want. Does this mean developers will be making content that won't be used? Probably--unlike other instances of this problem, however, the content isn't implemented in a way that divides the community, and it isn't wasted on time-sinks. One of my favorite things about EQ1 was the Karanas. In the early days before maps, the Karanas were essentially just wide, open empty space. No real civilization, and it rained a lot. I could camp out there and see no one for a week if I wanted, and when I went back into town I could find that indeed the server was still vastly populated. Similarly to this issue:

• I want re-visitable areas.

What happened to this? EQ1 had several areas that could be used for one purpose for one level range and another for another level range (e.g., West Commons and Oasis). Is the idea of getting mauled by a bear you can't kill so frightening to people now (the same people who are willing to chance being ganked by a player 50 levels higher than them) that developers have even attached levels to zones? This is exactly what's happened in WAR. Tier 1 has monsters level 1 through 11. This is insulting to me, even from the perspective of a casual player. If I'm going to put four-hundred play hours getting from start to finish (not finish per se, but high enough up that I feel like a master of the universe), what's wrong with bringing me back to somewhere I was three-hundred play hours ago to do something? Hell, I might be nostalgic (in fact I know I'd be nostalgic; it happened to me in EQ1 and FFXI--I still miss Qufim). It reuses content--especially some of that vast desert people are always teleporting across--and it creates community cohesion because high-level characters are brought into close proximity with lower-level characters.

• I want hybrids.

This really falls under the skill-based system heading, but I want to put it here to emphasize as well, because it's an item of great frustration in WAR. I believe it is possible to allow players to build hybrid characters without ending up with the one-class-fits-all problem (*cough*Death Knight*cough*). If someone wants to build a dedicated healer, he should be able to. If he wants to build a healer that can take a hit and can actually solo a little, however, he should be able to do that too. And if everyone wants to build tanking nuking healers, they should be able to do that as well, and their choices in gearing and speccing their characters should determine which of those they're most proficient at at a given time (e.g., EVE).

spinach8puff

Couldn't you have made it shorter.

Xhieron

 Eh... yeah, I could have, but I would have left something out (probably still did). If you just read the yellow stuff you can get the tldr version I suppose. What can I say? I wanted to be thorough.

spinach8puff

Now that I have finished reading there are definately no other games that have all of that. I think it would get a huge response from the people who long for the old EQ/AC days, but I doubt we will ever see something like that. Game producers are seeing that the big money comes from the casual players and you won't find one in that type of game.

Xhieron

 ... I'm a casual player.

I see your point though, especially with the talk about grouping. Editing to clarify.

Master_Razor

I hated the necessity of groups in MMOs, because I could never get any. I had such a hard time getting groups that I wound up having to do just about everything solo. I was not at all set up for solo grinding though, so it made things quite difficult. I think a perfect game should be devoid of group-dependent classes. Everyone should be able to go solo without having to change their class/spec. I enjoy playing in a group, but since I often have trouble getting a group, I want to be able to solo without too much effort.

Xhieron

 I think I may have even played something before (or maybe I just dreamed it up because it would be such a good idea) where there was a soloability indicator on the character creation screen. "This class's soloing potential is (Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Nonexistant)."

Would that alleviate your concern? I'm with you that no one should be forced to sit idle looking for a group, but at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with a caveat emptor system, i.e. We warned you up front, plain and simple, that this dedicated healing class can't solo worth a damn.

Furthermore, if we had a game with a skill-based advancement system, you could build a character that could solo if you wanted anyway. One of the things WOW taught me is that you really can't have it both ways. You either make a game solo-friendly with grouping included (WOW) or you make it group-friendly with soloing included (EQ, FFXI). In my experience the latter has just been better games, so I gravitate that way. Again though, a skill-based game (among other merits) has the potential to completely alter this dynamic.

It also impacts relationships, and to me this is the heart of the grouping argument. No matter what class I played in WOW, I never felt essential to a group, even if I was doing an essential function, like tanking. In FFXI, however, when I played my Galka PLD, I felt like damn near a god. The difference is of course that, at least until heroics were introduced, nobody got two-shotted in PVE in WOW unless there was a particularly nasty boss fight. In FFXI, every single mob worth exp could three-shot a healer or worse. And you NEEDED that healer alive, because without a healer the same mob will drop even a good tank less than thirty seconds later. In FFXI I built a reputation as good tank, and people sought me out. In WOW I built the same good reputation (albeit as a healer and as DPS), but I never got the same clout for it. Maybe it's just a function of my experience, but I can't help but feel the mechanics were involved as well.

Master_Razor

In WoW I could hardly do anything solo because I played a prot warrior. Being a tank, my role was almost as high in demand as a healer, although not enough for me to get a group more than a couple of times a week. I agree with your stance on skill based games. The problem with warning players about how bad a class is at soloing is no one is going to play that class unless there's enough group content that they can always find a group.

Xhieron

I think this is coming down to our different experiences. In FFXI the forced grouping was very, very good for some classes and very, very bad for other classes because of the way the group dynamic was set up (you need one tank, one healer, one crack-dealer, and any three dps you want). On the other hand, the group content was very, very good (and it had to be, seeing as how there was no solo content per se), and I think WOW has failed to deliver here.

What's really frustrating to me though is that the whole group problem with WOW could have been fixed very, very easily. Allow characters to respec for free without visiting a trainer, and save certain specs to their characters. Prot tank when in a group, Fury/Arms warrior when solo--problem solved. FFXI fixed this issue even to some extent by allowing people to change classes. It was clunky as hell (since you had to go to town to do it, and keep separate gear), but it was better than nothing.

I do believe there has to be an ideal balance out there, though, where players can feel like they are needed, useful contributors to their group, but also that when they're soloing they aren't pulling teeth. To date no one has gotten this right, so I know it's a tall order, but I figure if I'm going to make a wish list, I might as well put everything I want on it.

ToKu

Really the only game anything near your requirements would be UO,  I havnt played the newest expansion since they redid thier graphics but the pvp was still fairly fun though and of course you had ultimate customization.

There used to be a few F2P servers with fairly healthy communities,  1 pvp oriented and the other RP with pvp,  havnt paid much attention to them lately though so cannot say much about them.

Rydran

I believe the ability to pick between weither or not you want to group or not is a good one. I sometimes prefer to go off alone and other times I want to raid. I believe the choice is what makes a good game. Everyone that played WOW knows that its hard enough to find 5-10 people that arn't so dumb that they are drooling on themselves let alone 20-40.

I also think that the customization of a character to seperate you from everyone else is nice. If everyone is always going for the same gear then everyone looks the same. UO and TR had it down with armor dyeing. Or even CoH/V. They have an amazing character gen system.

The ablity to respec a will like in Matrix online (at least in beta) was a neat idea.

PVP is a must!!!

The Guild system in Warhammer is a great idea. I haven't seen it in action (on the massive city sacking scale), but the idea that the guild has a role in how the game changes is awesome. How every members xp is added to guild xp and you get more out of having more members and being active. That even a PVP guild can be just as high in the guild ranking as a raiding guild.

These are just some ideas.

(Games played (or beta'd): UO, AoC, CoH/V, 9Dragons, AO, MO, SWG, Ryzom, WOW, EQ1&2, Gunz, DoC, Guild Wars, Lineage II, Knight Online, RF Online, Fury, Warhammer Online, ect....)

 

Rydran

As for the Solo meter... What they should do is make everything able to be scaled to what you are doing. Like if you have a quest in an instance (like in TR) that when you enter the instance scales to you (or your group). It doesn't make it easy but it does make it where you don't need 5 other people to go into one.

Otakun

I have been studying the qualities of a good MMO for quite sometime. I can tell you from the things you have listed that if those all were in a MMO it would fail simply because all of those things cannot exist in a game at the same time. Why? Because people wont allow it. If this needs to be more detailed then I would consider writing more up but in general it cannot happen because people wont let it happen.

nickelpat

I really loved the post, well written and kept my attention (even though I know have a killer headache and found a smudge on my glasses) the whole way through. The points you brought up are awesome, and I agree most of the time.

I would recommend you try LOTRO. It isn't perfect for sure but it does a few things:

PvP: MPvP, it's really quite a fun thing to do. And there's always someone willing to fight (psst, watch for those pesky invisible Hobbits)

Group and Solo content: It really blends them well, and not so much by scaling content, as by design. A skilled player can solo the whole game, but someone like me who isn't as good, does a need a group for some parts while others need groups for near everything. And there's always someone willing to help, be it a level 60 who's jumping out of Moria to help you or a level 40 coming from Ettenmoors. There's also plenty of grouping to be had quite randomly, you'll tend to get a request a day if you're around the first few cites/areas, questing.

Customization: Not so much at the beginning (There's four races, two genders for each race apart from Dwarves who only get males. Then there's a number of faces, hairstyles, and race dependent accessories to choose from as well as your hair/skin/accessory color and nationality. There's 8 classes to choose from, each plays vastly differently.), but later on using the outfit system pretty much every character you see will look different.

It does have a lot to explore, but none of it is barren or unneeded.

It may suit your needs, what would a trial hurt?

sazabi

other than minesweeper... i cant think of any game that fits all of your points.

seriously... you wont find the game you are looking for.

you will have to wait... maybe forever, maybe not.

id suggest you go and try to have fun with some game of different genre.

maybe singleplayer too..

Xhieron

Originally posted by sazabi


other than minesweeper... i cant think of any game that fits all of your points.
seriously... you wont find the game you are looking for.
you will have to wait... maybe forever, maybe not.
id suggest you go and try to have fun with some game of different genre.
maybe singleplayer too..

 

The funny thing is, single player games just don't mean anything to me anymore. I still try to keep up with the FF franchise (although I don't have a 360 or PS3 at the moment, so I have no idea what I'll do about 13), but in general, if I want a good story I read a book, and whenever I find a game with exceptional gameplay, I end up questioning why the hell no one has implemented elements of it in an MMO. To me MMO's represent the current stage in gaming entertainment. That's not to impugn other genres by any means. I just mean that from the perspective of the traditional RPG "completist" gamer, MMO's represent a logical next step. Devoting 40 hours of play to a single-player game was a lot of fun when I was a kid, but now I've been spoiled by someone informing me that if I spend the same 40 hours on another game, I can use that 40 hours worth of progress for or against another person, and that 40 hours contributes to something that continues to exist when I'm not there and has an expected replayability life of up to five years.

The list isn't a list of demands. It's things I want; realistically, I know that in order to get the perfect game, I'd have to make it myself. Since I don't know any coders or modelers and don't have the budget to pay them if I did (nor the connections to get a loan for such a budget), I pass on the wish list to those who do in the hopes that some of them will agree on at least a handful of points, so that the future, if it comes, comes more quickly than otherwise.

I have considered other genres, since I know at least some of my wants would be satisfied there, but my friends play Halo and I have no 360 nor the desire to relearn how to aim with a controller instead of a mouse--and they don't want to move to PC--and I have a hard time convincing myself to move to a non-persistent environment. It just seems like a step backwards. I welcome a MMOFPS that embraces the things I'm looking for though. I'd be beside myself with joy, and I know others would be too.

Paul22

The only game to my current knowledge that gives character difficulty (and I may be wrong, but this is how I remember it) was Anarchy Online.  It had a difficulty meter for each class if I remember correctly...not a bad game really, however its showing its age.  Then again, UO is too, and I loved that for a long long time.