MMO's and Player Driven Worlds

Rhowin · May 2010

Hi there,

I was wondering if I missed any Fantasy MMO (even if not a fully polished title) that for once tries to create a more interactive endgame content. I mean currently most Games ultimately focus on 'increasing' some number - no matter if it is some faction, level, gear, pvp rank, alternate skill - it usually ends in something fairly repetitive with the goal to improve your ability to kill something. Among all MMO's I've played EVE was among the few that were about a more community driven enviroment - unfortunally I simply cannot really identify too much with an EVE character. Besides the game offered with its trade system etc. more than one dimension - the ability 'to kill stuff' (and auction house economics is not what I'd call something thrilling if you'd argue you could try working as a trader in any mmo with an auction house).

The thing that surprises me is that it seems fairly obvious that fantasy games seem to run in a dead end with the current development - people want to be entertained and usually most people don't like doing the same thing over and over again + they want some reward. Even if you'd say a game such as WoW releases with its patches new raid content on a regular basis - it's still somewhat onesided and besides it has another problem: if a character development is all about items and you'd offer tons of raids (faster than you could finish) it would seperate more and more the people depending on the amount of time they spent / their 'skill'. This would likely make the 'elite' players happy, but the majority would complain being excluded from the 'new stuff'.

Warhammer has a somewhat interactive open PVP system, but I'd still consider it somewhat static and not everyone is in love for PVP + the PVP objects stay pretty much the same. AoC has sieges but is fairly excluse to larger guilds, most MMO's have some kind of 'Battlegrouds, Scenarios, Mini's ... Caputure the Flag / King of the hill thingy' and open ganking.. pvp. Now not everyone likes PVP - still I guess some reason for the popularity of PVP the fights are usually not really repetitive (only the pvp objectives tend to be).

Most PVE people would be happy if they'd have something new to explore constantly with nice storylines, but this a fairly unrealistic wish as it takes a fair amount of time to create such quest lines with a fitting setting and story line (or it tends to be a bit generic / or mainly small independent quest lines).

Crafting tends to be about killing as well unfortunally - usually you have to kill the 'biggest monster' or 'travel in the most dangerous' areas for resources / recepies.

Something I'd like to see (and would love to know if there are any games developed in that direction): A player-driven world that incorperates PVP, PVE and 'economics' / 'tradeskills' with some mechanisms that help balancing a bit the solo and guild players.

I don't see what is so hard to take many of the ideas of a game such as EVE and melt it into a more classic fantasy game world - give the world areas where you might be more strongly protected by other players who are out for PVP, while other areas offer no such protection. If a player is known for killing 'peaceful' citizens spawn increasingly harder random NPC patrols if they wonder closer into highly protected areas, set a high bounty / reward on their hat... independent of the PVP part add NPC's who plunder the different regions. An area plagued by NPCs (or even hostile players) decreases their economic activity - they might produce fewer goods / offer different 'somewhat generic quests'. If players could run factilities such as a bar they'd buy less ale etc. - in short it's of best intrest of the players to rid the area of the NPC plague. On the other hand - the higher the economic activity the more aggressive / stronger the NPC's / bigger rewards for PVP players. The quests / encounters to influence the areas could be somewhat generic and you could allow as well 'sabotage' PVE - type quests to make it not 'PVP killing' exclusive to increase the rating of an area. Add a resource such as heros that will settle in the area with the 'hightest' rating who give particular intresting quests / help the activity in an area- so it might be of your intrest to sabotage neighboring areas. Something else to help the reputation of your area might be more raid / dungeon focused - adding trophies of killed monsters to the tavern might further improve the money flow. Add players who might enjoy being musicians... To increase the security of areas the players could pay taxes / have to pay taxes etc. pp

Now I guess you get my point , my small brainstorming is not meant to be 'the solution', but I'd really enjoy something along the lines- I don't see why there doesn't seem to be any MMO out there currently that focuses on creating a player driven interactive world that has more dimensions than killing to it. The core mechanics don't seem that complicated and pretty much exist in games already (only in eve these mechanics seem to be somewhat connected however).

Not only lift the players some weight of the developers since they create some content themselves - it seems to me that such system helps as well avoiding the problem of power levels since there is more than killing to it and everyone can contribute something. And it doesn't exclude the more casual player - he might be able to work as artist, mercenary, co-trader, spy etc for larger guild driven areas and the larger guilds might be intrested in creating opportunities for such players since they get some synergy out of it as well. And obviously that wouldn't prohibit more static / very lore rich regular additions to such an game - but it would be a nice integral part of it.

BadSpock · May 2010

Guild War 2's "dynamic" public questing system mixed with Tabula Rasa's territorial control / warfare with a NPC faction mixed with Left 4 Dead's smart AI generator would a dynamic PvE end-game create.

Throw in a healthy dose of WoW's terrain and environmental phasing...

Even UO had better territorial PvP control with the Factions system then many modern games.

Ceridith · May 2010

Ahh, the good old Sandbox versus Themepark issue.

Sadly there are no longer any respectible true sandbox MMOs that exist. The ones that did exist, were altered to be themeparks. There are certain MMOs that attempt to loosely mimic some sandbox mechanics, but they lack most of the breadth and depth of the original sandbox games, Ultima Online and StarWars Galaxies -- both sadly were altered into the themepark state at the whim of their publishers.

Sadly most developers these days seem completely uninterested in making virtual gameworlds, and those that are interested are smaller indie developers.

Daywolf · May 2010

If you are talking about modern mmo’s, no, not really. Pretty much linear based like stale off-line/multi-player RPG games in a wrapper… it’s all the rage. But anyway, I don’t know about GW2, it’s not released yet, and I’ve seen enough BS hype to not bother believing a word from any AAA dev/publisher anylonger.

Now I missed some of your post, it’s a bit on the side of the great wall of text (block with few breaks) but questing is not as hard to implement as you may think. Although if you make instanced zones with that, than yes it’s a pain, as well as voice dialog and new animations etc. I can write a quest and have in implemented into an existing open zone in about 30 minutes, taking a player an hour to complete. But it’s a matter of the right tools and an engine that is designed to support quests w/o much complication. I’ve written many quests for indie projects being developed.

End-game content is really dependant on the world. I guess if it’s linear, than you are stuck in a manufactured box at the end with limited options. It’s one reason I have always disliked expansions, it takes players out of the world and puts them into a new location, thinning the player population until there are few around. Most big expansions are simply introduced to raise the cap and to collect on the box fee, which is popular for publishers. It also gets the box back into stores, but that imo has become irrelevant.

Basically with the games you have now, and the older ones morphed into, you choose either PvP, raid or find another gamey-game to grind all over again. I could explain an open world hunting, gathering, crafting, commerce, questing, pvp, socializing end-game scenario, but meh to long-long posts today.

pencilrick · May 2010

Players don't have to drive the world, and the world does not have to drive the players. Players can motivate and make choices for themselves, and the world does not need to be mutable. This is not a case of extremes, folks, the middle path is the first path and was arguably the best.