MMO's of Tomorrow

lordreyiss

The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) Genre (MMO's for short) has changed a-lot over that last 12 years. Many things have changed since the days when Ultima Online was in its early stages. However one thing remains a constant. MMO's Rely entirely on the end users to make them successful. The community that follows an MMO can make or break the game. This is more evident now than ever. As the gamers of the past begin to mature the purely combat oriented MMO's no longer hold interest. We want to make our mark on the world we choose to play. The problem is that game developers rarely give us "the community" the tools we need to make an everlasting mark on a gameworld. I will discuss the key points of MMO's and what I think the genre needs to work towards to help not only the community but the developers keep this genre alive and moving forward. My first and foremost note on this is that I am speaking as a Mature gamer not a kid who is bugging his parents to pay for something to keep the kid out of there hair.

Below I will list the key area's of an MMO and discuss how this affects the community.

1) Combat: Todays Technology, both graphically and data stream, have brought more interactivity to combat in MMO's. The days of auto-attack are in the past as player now have to keep a close eye on what the NPC enemy is doing and make choices according to that data. Twitch combat has failed and only a small audience of teenagers still look for that kind of gameplay. As such making an informed descision and performing the proper tactics to whats going on has become more important than being able to click 15 buttons per second. Combat has not really become any faster, but it is becoming more interactive and interesting. Most importantly scrolling combat texts has to go, making the player need to be involved and react to what they see instead of what they read. A possitive side effect to this will be that Bot Programmers will not be able to keep up. Simply because they generally are relying on text distplays to trigger actions.

2) Quests: Storytelling has to be improved in the MMOs of today. Again text is a thing of the past, developers need to realize that nobody wants to read badly written two-paragraph stories as background for their quests. Quest backgrounds should now be told in cutscenes, little sets of animations paired with voice overs using the games graphics. Game companies do this in Single player RPG's all the time and the funtionality is there if we only use it. Giving the world a more alive feeling. Instead of reading that the goblins have taken over a small village, we could be shown a scene of the village being plundered and the citizens looking starved letting us know we need to kill the goblins and bring food to the villagers.

3) Character development: The level system of the actual character should be wiped from the face of MMO's. Skill based systems are the wave of the future. Ultima Online saw this and this is why its still around and many of its predacessors have failed and dissappeared. A player can make a single character and experience all the game. Where equipment is more important. Allowing the community to work together. Capaqbility is from the players own personal skill than that of the character itself. This will help to reduce the gap between new players and those veterans who have played since release.

4) PvP: PvP very popular, however we need to remove all forms of non-consentual PVP and the negative effects of PVP. The worst thing that we should be worried about is who won and who lost. We can still have various forms of PVP. BattleGrounds, Arenas, Dueling, and Contending for control of regions of the game world. But still keeping the games core focus on PVE and making PvP become just another of the many possible activities. Not taking away from PVP actually giving it more form. The game is balanced through PVE, and the players have to use there brains to make them more competitive if they wish to participate. No longer relying on who has the best gear but can use the best tactics.

5) Crafting: Gamers want to have a larger range of options, to allow us to play inside the MMO. Not just concentrating everything around combat. Crafting systems help to bring a community together. Lets think back to something along the lines of puzzle pirates where every activity is a mini-game with skill-based puzzles, easy enough to play but not trivial to master. Now I dont really want to see crafting dumbed down like that but its to show that community can be fun and interactive instead of the standard havest this click here, get that system. Many of the gamers just craft for fun, developers need to realized that crafting as a money sink doesn't make any sense, and since the time needed to craft an item takes just as much time as getting things from combat it should be just as profitable. Some dedicated players have built up reputations as master crafters, really putting alot of heart into there virtual products, give us more options and more diversity in this area so that we can be the backbone of the games community like our bussinesses are the backbone of our economy.

6) Dynamic Massive Worlds: Its pretty obvious already that gamers cannot stand instances. We dont want to play what feels like a diablo dungeon if we did wouldn't we be playing games with limited players per server. No we are play MMO that means we want to interact with massive amounts of people. Ok instancing some quest area may be ok to help with lag issues but seriously consider that games without to many instanced area's last far longer than those with alot of them. The dynamic world also needs to include in world housing for players. Not an apartment. Something solid in world that anyone who is walking past can see. Stop instancing housing. And allow us to build homes/guild halls/shops/taverns/inns and whatever we can imagine as out little corner of the game world. Giving us a place to host events for our friends and even enemies. I remember a time in SWG that we actually had a player even with over 3000 people who where in a massive battle on Tatooine. Its hard to explain but if it was instanced housing we would not have been able to set the scene for the event.

Its really simple to figure out what players want. We want to be able to play the game our way. Unlimited and interactive. One thing I did not mention above is

7) Character Creation: It is time we get rid of the limitations in character creation. All games by this time should full out customizable characters. Being able to select race, sex, height, weight, muscle mass, shoulder width, eye size, hair style, length, color, etc etc etc etc. It is very possible. To many games in todays age still have us limited to select race, pick one of 5 faces, one of 13 hairs with only 2 or 3 hair colors. Character being unique is one of the biggest gripes I see in most games.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hope you enjoy it and hopefully some of the developers will see this and take into consideration some of the points mentioned here. I hope the community can imput more thoughts that will help remold the MMO's of tomorrow.

BobCrazyton

Does no one understand what off-topic means?

Brenelael

Originally posted by BobCrazyton


Does no one understand what off-topic means?

LOL... I was thinking the same thing.

 

As for the OPs Ideas... Some are good, some not so good. I think as a mature gamer your perspective is a little biased. FPS and twitched based games are the #1 type of game in the world right now and not just enjoyed by a handful of teens like you claim. I think you'll find that once game companies can find a viable solution to the latency issues MMO's will go purely twitch based as this seems to be what gamers in general want. If you ask most gamers that don't like MMOs what is wrong with them most will say that the combat is too slow and mechanical feeling. They find this to be boring. Also twitched based combat is really the only way you can take the AI out of the equation where combat is concerned. Only in a twitch based MMO will player skill totally decide the winner of every fight. This will be the future of MMOs but the technology needs to advance a little more before we see it applied in a fully functional state. We are almost there now so it shouldn't be too much longer before this type of combat becomes commonplace in MMOs.

 

Bren

kanea

Hey, first post !!!

I found this post very interesting. I would like to add one element : Metagaming. While this is nothing new as far as MMOs are concerned, I find that companies are increasignly aware that what makes a good game is not only the game itself, but the community around it. The more tools the community will have to shape the game (in and out), the more engaging the game will be.