I... I just don't see what's so hard about servers... How many bytes of data do players really need? To get a player position/rotation/current animation/every piece of gear on them/race/class/face/hair/skin colour... should all only be about one kilobyte, maybe.
If there were a hundred people in one place, there'd be...
Ah, I figured out my own question. A hundred people all needing a hundred kilobytes from the server at once. Making the server need an 80MBit/s (10MByte/s) upload, just for 100 players in one area.
And that's assuming all the players can download at 100kb/s too. That doesn't even cover the NPCs. Now I know how my cap went over all those years ago when I played WoW heaps.
It probably wouldn't be a kilobyte, if they were smart about it all. More like, I dunno, 200 bytes or so.
I'd like to try to figure out how to make an MMO... like, try to make an MMO engine... that'd be a fun little project. I think I'd create "instances" for the "zones", where "instances" are different "servers".
The whole world could be made up of a few dozen zones. Let's go... 25. 5x5 zones. And the player would be semi-connected to the 8 surrounding zones (assuming it's like a sphere, a world, or something) - so they can see NPCs and players and stuff from those zones.
I'll stop rambling and get to a more on-topic thing here:
5. Instancing doesn't bother me as long as it's done right, and isn't obvious. If people are calling a place an instance, it's done wrong.
4. Questing is crap at the moment. I agree. I'd like to see more maintenance quests around the place "kill ten boars, get reward", but I'd like those to just be glorified grinding, with no item rewards. The only other quests should be ones that are well written, and big. They should involve little scenarios that play out, and NPC characters that grow on you somewhat. One of these quests should give you (in WoW terms) maybe 2-3 levels worth of experience, all up. That, afterall, is a reall quest. Think Lord of the Rings - the quest to throw that ring in Mt. Doom. That's an epic quest. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see.
3. Leveling is ok so long as it doesn't feel like a chore. Better quests/story would help this, if the game were fun, like say Mario, then the game wouldn't feel so much like a chore. It's a balance of static content vs. player content, and how long it takes to get from "having nothing" to "finishing the game".
2. Story should be, like, half of the game, if you want people to remember it. And story isn't just quests, there should be feeling, atmosphere, in the game. WAR had that one right - it was a WAAAUUUGH the whole time, and the quests were basically all 'do something bad to the opposing side!' which really pushed that feeling onto the player. World of Warcraft... does it partially, I suppose. They try to incorporate story into it all, just not hard enough, and really, with their player base, they don't really need to, now, do they?
1. Combat... I don't think we need something other than hotbars. I like hotbars to choose my abilities. I just think we could be doing more interesting things. Things that.... throw players in a direction, things that stun... summoning meteors from the sky, crazy things. What, we can create balls of fire, but we can't summon up a small volcanic eruption from the magma below us? Blegh. Especially in terms of WoW, there needs to be more interesting spells/attacks/effects going on. At the least, make us LOOK like we're progressing - make my fireballs bigger, make the swing of my axe bigger, give me physics and shiny effects, make me feel alive when I'm playing this game!
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
I agree even though I think instancing is something you should be careful with. It do make you feel heroic but it also takes away the massive part from the game. Overusing it is a bad idea.
To have it in every dungeon is bad enough in my book, the end-boss is ok I guess but the entire dungeon should be massive so it doesn't matter if a few other groups are down there.
I hate the small fast dungeons many games have made in the last few years.
As for Combat I would go further and make the mobs smarter. And I would like to get rid of the tanking skill, or at least only make it possible with animals and really dumb creatures like trolls. There is no way something like that would work in real life and it adds a boring predictability to the fights.
As for Combat I would go further and make the mobs smarter. And I would like to get rid of the tanking skill, or at least only make it possible with animals and really dumb creatures like trolls. There is no way something like that would work in real life and it adds a boring predictability to the fights.
Smarter AI would go a long way to improve combat in my opinion. Tabula Rasa probably had some of the "smartest" npc enemies that I've played in an mmo. I mean even simple stuff like using the terrain to their advantage.
Oh yes agree Tabula rasa AI and scripting behavior was amazing. Like being in a base that was getting attacked and being part of the constant defence/attack cycle of bases... very cool stuff.
EivilSar, Deathhand of International Spellborn PvP
Another writer, who never played Dungeons & Dragons Online I guess. Age of Conan cannot even compare to DDO's combat, so if you seek innovation, look there ; ).
Well even DDO or AoC combat system is pretty basic. Lets compare it to something like Assassins Creed or God of War, both have a great combat system in which you can use the terrain and and objects against NPC's and to a certain extent you begin to creat your own style of play. This isn't the case in MMOs, in which you have your basic tank, healer and dps who all more or less play in the same way. However these are twitch game which wouldn't work too well when you have servers hundreds of miles away sending and recieving data.
Actually, blazz, it takes less than that for a per-person basis.
All you need is a position, most likely in XYZ coordinates, ID number (to represent the player), any erroneous data (such as gear), and an ID number for a skill if one is being used. All of which can be well under 200 KB. Any extra information just has to be able to be called when requested, such as character sheets (identify), quest log (just need ID's, staging, all called when requested) and a few other things. Most stuff is more liable to be bursted info than a constant stream. Using just an XYZ coordinate, an ID number, and a skill used number, the client can procedurally produce the desired animations, such as walking, running, jumping, swimming, rotation. There's likely a few calls missed, and it's going to be a tad more complex than this (strafing, anyone?) but the general idea is sound. The client does the majority of the quesswork, using intuitive code.
However, the real killer for lag time, where you can get ridiculous server issues, is when you have a zone populated with thousands upon thousands of mobs, and then need to tell all clients in viewing distance where these mobs are. Remember, for the most part, all your client sees are XYZ coordinates, mob ID, model ID's, ability ID's, and the rest is more or less procedural. But now imagine that, in a game like WoW, you have as much as 50 vissible to any individual person at any individual time. This is why games like WoW often are sparse on enemies and have max draw distances. It's easier to have the server feed 1 person 50 enemies, than 100 enemies, or 200, or the entire zone, which is where other games start to break down.
This is, again, assuming things like target of target aren't also being thrown through the pipe (likely another piece of code saying their target's ID number) and any other data I am too ignorant to point out.
But this is off topic, and I digress.
On the topic of the 5:
Instancing: Instancing is fine as WoW has done it. Not so much as cryptic in general has done it. Points have been brought up, additional info not required.
Questing: Presentation improvements would be nice, for instance full voiceovers, natural progression of acquisition, drawn attention because it's forced in your face, that sort of thing. A mass effect 2 style presentation is fine, or GW2 where it appears to try to be seemless, is also fine. In the end, getting rid of reading mountains of text would improve presentation and flow, and keep immersion higher in general. To this end, both TOR's and GW2's currently shown presentation are great examples of where this can go. It's worth noting that I actually hate the PQ system (Warhammer Online), simply because it's static, doesn't scale, and were often either grindy or outright ignored (which consists entirely of WAR and CO/STO for now, so...yeah), but GW2's take on PQ's is nice to show people can take a bad idea (implementation) and evolve it into a good idea.
Leveling: This is fine. I like having the structure. I do, admit, missing the style found in AC1, but it would lead to a balance nightmare regardless, so if it must be a casualty, I'm fine with it. Planetside also offered a nice take on leveling, where levels gave you access to buying skills of your choice, but for the most part, it's liably here to stay, and that's fine with me. If/when it gets innovated, it will still likely involve leveling, just with different "rules". Since the days of D&D, possibly earlier, classes have existed. And to that end, it hasn't changed overmuch, and doesn't particularly need to, at least until a proper skill system can be added that isn't stupid.
Story: This is a big point for me. Most MMO's present story passively. GW's is probably the first that presents it actively. Real changes happen in GW, so to speak, when you progress the story, up to an epic conclusion (that companies like blizzard seem to miss, especially since they like to stick story exclusively to raids for the most part). It's nice to see SW:TOR and GW2 sticking story as a heavy requirement, and there are past examples, like GW1 and LOTRO, but those both show bad design and old age even now, so looking to the future, the future looks good for the big names. Personal story is important. Whether it's presented actively (SW:TOR, GW style) or passively (WoW) is the real key, however. Passive story isn't engaging, immersive, or otherwise fun. Hard to get involved in. WoW shows this heavily. It's nice to see MMO's react to your story as well, which most MMO's since the days of AC1 pretty much ignore. We'll see what the future holds. That said, I do not want the story to be 100% passive like a game like UO. "Build your own future" sandbox MMO's wreak of lazy content to me, and I prefer having the structure of a story being presented in a "choose your own adventure" style, than having absolute freeform. This is one reason I detest EVE. Sorry for the run-on paragraph, trying to keep them down to one block.
Combat: This is hit and miss. Engaging combat like an FPS (see: Planetside) can work in MMO's, but it's hard to make it work in an RPG-styled MMO. I guess this just comes down to how you want to present the MMO, really. The standard MMO interface is fine, and is reminiscent of any P&P game in nature. Press button, use ability. Having it be more like LotRO, as opposed to WoW, would be a bonus (more buttons to remember, more abilities to use, less time going 1123, repeat). That said, this system will work fine long into the future, and if it stays that way, I will be okay with it. Again, it's a matter of presentation, not of balance or fun. Would it be nice to see more FPS-styled MMO's like planetside? Yes. Would it be more fun to see more Action-RPG MMO's? Yes. However, to say the current MMO combat is bad is just jumping to conclusions. Variety is, however, the spice of life.
I always thought the public quests in Warhammer were a step back in the right direction, not that I rate WAR very highly... but more things like that can't really be bad.
The early days of Asheron's Call were the best for me (before people started making websites about update content, maggie the jackcat was it?). No quest system, only hints from NPC's and/or word of mouth.. you could often stumble across things that a lot of other players hadn't found or even heard about.. felt like you actually accomplished something.
I think the community, although obviously necessary, is it's own worst enemy when I comes to losing that sense of discovery and accomplishment. When we had to do things and figure things out all by ourselves (even as a group or guild) the end result was much more.. satisfying.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Interesting list. I do disagree on a number of points, however.
#5 Instancing: Instancing does something else very beneficial: It allows players to actually progress. I am far from a care bear but when a guild of 50+ people keep a mob camped 24 hours a days 7 days a week there is no fun. They have all far surpassed that mob but it drops loot that they can sell for a sizeable profit so the rest of the server has to either get a huge army together (not gonna happen) or quit in disgust. Blizzard has made some changes with Wrath of the Lich King and instances in that they have introduced phasing of zones. Northern DragonBlight for example, Outside Icecrown Citadel for another. What it boils down to for me is how many asshats am I going to be forced to deal with on any given day.
#4 Questing: I do agree in some respects, questing is getting old because its all kill x of y and bring me z items or go talk to alpha and come back. Oversimplification of stuff that has its roots back in text based adventure games. This is something difficult to change, hell it permeates single player gameplay and that is a far more controlled environment rather than having a few thousand banging away at quests. I think there are limitations to technology and here is where we see some of that limitation.
#3 Leveling: One of the problems that SWG faced was people min/maxing to such an extent that they could never get it under control. TK/Doc, Pistoleer/Fencer etc etc etc. The more skills you have the harder it is for a developer to ever anticipate what the players are going to do. Plus you get to a point (just like in class based games with "talent" specs) where specific builds are expected for different roles and differentiation is not only discouraged but it does lead to less than optimal play. Just sayin
#2 Story: Totally agree but there is a problem. Without heavy instancing you are going to disallow a large number of people from ever getting to experince the story. I think the reason why game communities thrived years ago is 1) Rose Tinted Glasses and 2) different mindsets of the people playing those games.
#1 Combat: I thought there were some "action" mmos out there? Personally I detest games like God of War and definitely would not spend hundreds of hours playing it.
2. Story. Story is very subjective. I don't care about the world's story or history, i care about MY story. This is a MMORPG not a single player RPG. give me the old school UO story - there was none - just what actions players do effects the story of the game and the devs keep up. EvE Online is the only MMO that currently currently comes close
Absolutely disagree with this. EVE is one of the games most bereft of any story. The events were shown to be RIGGED, which makes a joke of any player affecting the story if the developers are trying to railroad two sided events to a "right" conclusion. It only shows there is no conception of what it means to RP or having an evolving storyline if there is such an idea as a "right" conclusion to an event. It also means one side, the side rigged to lose, is wasting their time for a lie. EVE also suffers because the developers have repeatedly treated the idea of RP and story with contempt, then when an expansion hits they make a hurried half baked attempt to rush through several years worth of story in one go, then they go back to ignoring it til the next expansion.
I agree with combat being number 1. For so many years combat has basically been about pressing a button for an ability and then a dice roll is done if it hits or not and how much damage/healing/CC it does. Boring.
One thing that would be really nice if your character had to actually move, like in a real fight you rarely see two people just standing still. They move around, forward, backward, side to side, ducking, seeking cover behind a wall and so on. Really would like to see more of that in MMORPGs.
Also another element I would add to your list is the ability to affect the persistant world, maybe this falls in your quest cathegory but I dont feel it needs to be in a quest. Just living in a world and performing actions in it should have the chance to affect it. Right now the "world" is all but static which imo is quite boring.
Instancing - fine as long as the MMO’s main zones are not instanced. Having to track down your mates in different instances is just a pain.
Questing – what we need are better quests not a new GUI. As staff writers here have pointed out the number of quest writers in MMO’s is dropping as MMO companies ask anyone and the tea boy to write quests.
Levelling – having your own unique story could work but having an avatar with unique powers goes against MMO marketing principles. Everyone needs to feel they can achieve anything another player can and no player should feel his character was gimped because of his choices. The priority is that no player should have a reason to leave the MMO which means we all have to be clones of each other with no choice in how we advance.
Story – Here Murphy has made a great argument for grouping “the story in MMOs is meant to be a participatory event”. If you can only do the story which only turns out one way and you need to do it on your own, well you might as well just go and watch TV.
Combat – Set up more than ancy graphics are important here like so many issues in the MMO world. The Battle Field series has a great set up, the graphics were good too but who cares about that? So animations and fancy powers are as nothing next to good comabat gameplat. The AI of mobs and the PvP setup is the meat here.
I SO agree with the OP! Great article. Get rid of instancing for example! Instancing is nothing more than a way for the developer to shorten the content needed to create the game. For me, it takes away from the gaming experince I expect ingame.
Great article-hopefully developers will read it and act upon the advice given-then again I doubt they will.
Many worlds like WoW or WAR are linear and this serves a problem combined with the level based system where the game becomes top heavy and lower level areas feel empty with noone to group with. I love how SWG had no levels and non linear worlds, so people would be doing content at different times. So you'd often get an old playing just getting round to content that a new player might have just started and it feels no less epic because it is about the Star Wars lore and not getting the best loot for your level.
I agree with combat being number 1. For so many years combat has basically been about pressing a button for an ability and then a dice roll is done if it hits or not and how much damage/healing/CC it does. Boring.
One thing that would be really nice if your character had to actually move, like in a real fight you rarely see two people just standing still. They move around, forward, backward, side to side, ducking, seeking cover behind a wall and so on. Really would like to see more of that in MMORPGs.
Absolutley. The only thing I liked in STO's ground combat was the Kirk roll you could do.
I would love to see abilities that gave you combat maneuvers. It would liven up combat a lot. I think that scares or turns off a lot of MMO players whose reflexes aren't as good as they used to be, but you could limit it to certain classes. Why not have an acrobat class?
What about a game with parkour mechanics?
Also another element I would add to your list is the ability to affect the persistant world, maybe this falls in your quest cathegory but I dont feel it needs to be in a quest. Just living in a world and performing actions in it should have the chance to affect it. Right now the "world" is all but static which imo is quite boring.
I think that is the biggest thing lacking in MMOrpgs (as opposed to single player RPGs.) The ability to change your world. Now, the big problem is that you change everyone else's world, as well. So, a sand box game is the best I can see in that regard. A lot of people seem to dislike change in their game world, unfortunately.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Sandbox is the future... open world without boundries or artificial limitations.
Developers should set the theme, give us the tools, monitor and provide support.
That is the best option for me, but lots of players don't want it.
If players would get over wanting state of the art graphics and settle for a base standard (WoW graphic are plenty good enough for me), game companies could save a lot of time and money on new engines, and design new games, instead.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Sandbox is the future... open world without boundries or artificial limitations.
Developers should set the theme, give us the tools, monitor and provide support.
YES!!! This is what I want. My ultimate MMORPG wet-dream would be for developers to create a world for us to play in. There are no town built for us, there are no vendor NPCs. Think of it like colonizing a new world. The resources are already there and we simply use those resources to build our civilization. I honestly doubt this will ever happen but that's why it's a dream.
Nice article by the way. I remember back in my Anarchy Online (AO) days when a clan...I don't remember their name, maybe "Sands of something-or-other". Anyway, not important, but this clan would pick random times and places to suddenly appear and wipe the entire area clear of people, NPCs and generally anything that got in their way. After they were done and after some of them were killed they would simply leave the area. They were sanctioned by the GMs and there were news releases about the "Sands of something-or-other" conducting another terrorist attack at "such-and-such" City. THAT was player driven story/content and THAT is what I want again.
For instancing and story i think lotro is doing quite well.
Skirmishes area fun and repetitive way of doing instances and they are always playable, as in cant be out leveled.
lotro's story does make you feel that you are progressing in a very epic story.
I think that SWtor will also be very innovative in all of those apart from maybe leveling (said to be traditional levels), epic story fully voiced quests with choices that effect the story, choreographed (sp?) combat, instances we have yet to see details about from the flash point that they showed. (they are going for overwhelming odds as opposed to big massive bosses)
There are tons of facets that need innovation. Character creation, world design, crafting. You could probably point to a game that has each of these to your satisfaction, but worlds have to be build so that all of these idea come together and work with each other. Just pointing out feature 1 of this game and feature 2 of this game doesn't help because you need to know how to make them work together.
Sandboxes are a bit of a dream imho. You want things to persist forever. So after 2 months, all newbie quests should be permanently completed/fixed if the world is properly made (due to persistance). But then any further newbies won't have a good game experience.
This is one thing that irks me more than anything, combat. If you want FPS combat, play an FPS game, the more they put this stuff into a rpg it takes away the fact that it is a rpg. I play FPS games, but I sure as heck don't want my MMORPG to be MMOFPS! We need to call these games what they are and stop calling everything MMO. The combat in WoW is just fine, the people that have a problem with it are the arena and dueling junkies that like to compete with themselves more than anything else. If you make combat in an MMORPG like an FPS, you will take away one very big thing that exists with MMORPG"S which is the whole point of MMORPG's, and that social gaming. I would love to see some uber skilled player fight with his character and have to actually type his message in order to communicate, it doesn't happen and it won't. Which is why so many people are spoiled with 3rd party programs like Teamspeak. Without those programs we wouldn't see the amount of people in MMO's like we do.
People want everything to be easier, but if you want to play and FPS game, then you need to be asking for a MMOFPS game, and leave the MMORPG"s to the people who actually like to read and immerse themselves in the story. Its the whole point of rpg. Learn the difference!
I completely disagree with you. Why does DnD mechanics (essentially MMO combat is hitting a hotkey to use the RNG - equivalent of rolling dice) equate to RPG gaming? Because we've been doing it for 25+ years? It had to be done back then because there wasn't the technology around back then to translate any other type of combat.
If you are playing the role of an archer wouldn't aiming a bow be more immersive - more like an RPG? Would swinging a sword and having to parry blows yourself be more immersive than pressing 1 and having the computer calculate if you parried or not based off the computer's random number generators? Do fencers roll dice during a match to decide who wins? Do archers roll dice and calculate if you they are going to hit a target or not based on their previous hit rates during an archery tournament? If you LARP, do you sit there and roll dice while you are doing it?
Why do all forms of social interactions have to be through typing (or the alternative voice chat you mentioned if typing isn't available)? Just because it's that way now, doesn't mean it needs to be in the future. Prehaps we'll have voice modulator programs where you can talk and stay in character in the future while playing these "twitch" based games (and just because we have these types of combat systems in place does not mean they have to be twitch, aim assistance and long reload and swing times would slow combat down significantly and require less skill, but be far more immersive than the current systems in place). Not all social interaction has to be through reading text.
I personally love to read, so don't take shots at people who want a new type of combat system that we just don't want to read and "immerse" ourselves in the story. How is reading EVERYTHING more immersive? If I pick up a scroll, I want to physically read it, but if someone is talking to me wouldn't it be more immersive if I actually heard their character speaking it?
*wheeze cough* Y'see, back in my day, a roleplaying game was about creating a discrete character wholly seperate from the player, with skills and attributes defined by a set of rules established by a game system. Fat Bob, the grease-stained cashier at the local comics shop might not have been able to hit the broad side of a barn with laser sights, but his Elven Ranger would make William Tell cry. Why? Because he controlled a character that, as defined by the game's rules, was a master archer with a hit rating of 98 percent.
That's roleplaying. Nowadays, people like to pull silly definitions out of their collective asses by saying "roleplaying games are games where you play a role", a definition so broad as to make Super Mario Brothers a roleplaying game, since you're playing the role of a superdeformed little plumber; or Call of Duty, since you're playing the role of a soldier. Poppycock, I say. The minute you take stats-based character skills out and put player skills in as the defining factor of combat, you've taken the roleplaying aspect out of combat and turned the game into a twitch-based action adventure. If that's what you want, fine, but don't perpetuate the fallacy that what you're looking for is a MMORPG, when what you're really asking for is nothing of the sort.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
2. Story. Story is very subjective. I don't care about the world's story or history, i care about MY story. This is a MMORPG not a single player RPG. give me the old school UO story - there was none - just what actions players do effects the story of the game and the devs keep up. EvE Online is the only MMO that currently currently comes close
Absolutely disagree with this. EVE is one of the games most bereft of any story. The events were shown to be RIGGED, which makes a joke of any player affecting the story if the developers are trying to railroad two sided events to a "right" conclusion. It only shows there is no conception of what it means to RP or having an evolving storyline if there is such an idea as a "right" conclusion to an event. It also means one side, the side rigged to lose, is wasting their time for a lie. EVE also suffers because the developers have repeatedly treated the idea of RP and story with contempt, then when an expansion hits they make a hurried half baked attempt to rush through several years worth of story in one go, then they go back to ignoring it til the next expansion.
The only comment I can make is you obviously have ignored the story line in Eve completely to make such a silly statement.
I have played with Rpers in Eve and they would be ahgast at your comment. Eve story line is quite deep and is constantly updated. Sure anyone can ignore the backround story, but it is there for you if you want.
I suppose you want the story line forced on you so you have to particpate? That is not CCP's way, they want you to decide what is important to you.
As to the article, it is right on the spot. Leveling is what irratates me in these games. There is no such thing in reality, or in any stories I have ever read. Levels was something artificially invented for D&D and unfortunately introduced into the MMO genre by EQ for most of us. Soon as I heard that Bioware's Star Wars was going to be levels I knew it was going to be another Wow clone no matter what they do to it.
6) World....We need innovation in "world". Interaction, exploration, mystery, discovery, lore/history, and meaning to it all.
7) Artificial Intelligence....Why do MOBs just stand there where we expect to find them, and die for us if we do predictable things? NPCs should make decisions based on what they see happening around them, and they should not "see" everything. They should have wants and desires and goals. UO had a basic form of this, where creatures had things they went for (gold, food, etc.) They even had a goal to seek out other creatures of their own type. Why has this not been expanded, rather than just dropped? Once critters are gathering, why do they not "elect" a leader? Why do leaders not lead? Why do they not seek out habitation and all the other things a social cell might do? There's a lot that could be done with AI, and it could make a world much more interesting to "live" in.
THIS
My personal favorite plan for quests is to change how they are created and players run them. Quests should be created based on the need of npc's to get jobs done not based on the need of the players to have jobs to do. These also shouldn't be all single job quests, how bout instead of a kill 10 rats quest you get a "join the local gaurd" job. That job means you now get payed for killing all the local nasties like rats/wolves/goblins you also may get called in to help stop unruly players. Or how bout join the army fighting off one of the other factions getting paid for each enemy you kill. Maybe you join the army as a medic getting paid by the number of people you saved etc.
Combat / Leveling
Ok more crazy plans for this. My personal favorite plan here is for a game to make great use of npc's as weapons/tools for the players. It may not be every class but you should be fighting alongside NPC's not against them all the time the line between you and your army should become blurred. You would also have to make sure they are extremely easy and natural to use, selecting a unit and ordering him to launch a net at an enemy = bad, it should be no different than if you where using the ability yourself in a game like wow.
As for combat. hack and slash, think ninja gaiden, dynasty warriors swing your sword around do some combo's and chop through the enemy. Some abilities may still be targeted using a wow like system though. The holy trinnity for this sorta game would be slightly different and be more of a rock paper scissors thing: Minion muncher (aoe dps) > commander > assassin (target dps) > minion muncher. Also make it possible for the commanders to substitute part of their group with a player so armies will be composed of a mixture of npc's and pc's at all positions.
Would most likely use a skill based system to allow players to pick and choose hybrids and add more 'classes' / skill trees as the game evolves. Also limit what skills are active for a player by what equipment / config they currently have active, allows younger players to catch up quickly by focusing but gives older players more variety in what they can do.
Level system I would make more complex by working the death penalty into it. It would be fast and easy for a player to get to mid level but around here they would stop growing unless they increased their death penalty which would let them use higher level skills and give them base bonuses. For example "x % chance to drop armour" would increase your armours effectiveness by 25% and let you train and use more and higher skills. You could of course always go back to low risk and you would give players some flexibility in what penalties they choose to have active. For the highest levels you would add in things like perma-death or perma-injury (lose an arm) but the bonuses for these sort of penalties would make characters a force to be reconned with.
Anything NPC faction's can do I can do
Player guilds/corps/factions/alliances are an awesome thing but they need to be able to do more. I believe that eventually these player run groups should be able to rival the npc run groups created by the makers of the game. Also as the title says ANYTHING an npc faction can do you should be able to do with time and effort, for example:
- Have new players start the game in your area (player made starter areas o/)
- Releasing new technologies, items specific to your faction
A lot of this sort of stuff we would need to look at a game like second life, player created content is extremely powerful. Balancing these sort of things and preventing them from being abused would be a monumental task but if you manage to pull it off.....
Comments
I... I just don't see what's so hard about servers... How many bytes of data do players really need? To get a player position/rotation/current animation/every piece of gear on them/race/class/face/hair/skin colour... should all only be about one kilobyte, maybe.
If there were a hundred people in one place, there'd be...
Ah, I figured out my own question. A hundred people all needing a hundred kilobytes from the server at once. Making the server need an 80MBit/s (10MByte/s) upload, just for 100 players in one area.
And that's assuming all the players can download at 100kb/s too. That doesn't even cover the NPCs. Now I know how my cap went over all those years ago when I played WoW heaps.
It probably wouldn't be a kilobyte, if they were smart about it all. More like, I dunno, 200 bytes or so.
I'd like to try to figure out how to make an MMO... like, try to make an MMO engine... that'd be a fun little project. I think I'd create "instances" for the "zones", where "instances" are different "servers".
The whole world could be made up of a few dozen zones. Let's go... 25. 5x5 zones. And the player would be semi-connected to the 8 surrounding zones (assuming it's like a sphere, a world, or something) - so they can see NPCs and players and stuff from those zones.
I'll stop rambling and get to a more on-topic thing here:
5. Instancing doesn't bother me as long as it's done right, and isn't obvious. If people are calling a place an instance, it's done wrong.
4. Questing is crap at the moment. I agree. I'd like to see more maintenance quests around the place "kill ten boars, get reward", but I'd like those to just be glorified grinding, with no item rewards. The only other quests should be ones that are well written, and big. They should involve little scenarios that play out, and NPC characters that grow on you somewhat. One of these quests should give you (in WoW terms) maybe 2-3 levels worth of experience, all up. That, afterall, is a reall quest. Think Lord of the Rings - the quest to throw that ring in Mt. Doom. That's an epic quest. That's the kind of thing I'd like to see.
3. Leveling is ok so long as it doesn't feel like a chore. Better quests/story would help this, if the game were fun, like say Mario, then the game wouldn't feel so much like a chore. It's a balance of static content vs. player content, and how long it takes to get from "having nothing" to "finishing the game".
2. Story should be, like, half of the game, if you want people to remember it. And story isn't just quests, there should be feeling, atmosphere, in the game. WAR had that one right - it was a WAAAUUUGH the whole time, and the quests were basically all 'do something bad to the opposing side!' which really pushed that feeling onto the player. World of Warcraft... does it partially, I suppose. They try to incorporate story into it all, just not hard enough, and really, with their player base, they don't really need to, now, do they?
1. Combat... I don't think we need something other than hotbars. I like hotbars to choose my abilities. I just think we could be doing more interesting things. Things that.... throw players in a direction, things that stun... summoning meteors from the sky, crazy things. What, we can create balls of fire, but we can't summon up a small volcanic eruption from the magma below us? Blegh. Especially in terms of WoW, there needs to be more interesting spells/attacks/effects going on. At the least, make us LOOK like we're progressing - make my fireballs bigger, make the swing of my axe bigger, give me physics and shiny effects, make me feel alive when I'm playing this game!
I am playing EVE and it's alright... level V skills are a bit much.
You all need to learn to spell.
Good article, Bill.
I agree even though I think instancing is something you should be careful with. It do make you feel heroic but it also takes away the massive part from the game. Overusing it is a bad idea.
To have it in every dungeon is bad enough in my book, the end-boss is ok I guess but the entire dungeon should be massive so it doesn't matter if a few other groups are down there.
I hate the small fast dungeons many games have made in the last few years.
As for Combat I would go further and make the mobs smarter. And I would like to get rid of the tanking skill, or at least only make it possible with animals and really dumb creatures like trolls. There is no way something like that would work in real life and it adds a boring predictability to the fights.
Smarter AI would go a long way to improve combat in my opinion. Tabula Rasa probably had some of the "smartest" npc enemies that I've played in an mmo. I mean even simple stuff like using the terrain to their advantage.
Oh yes agree Tabula rasa AI and scripting behavior was amazing. Like being in a base that was getting attacked and being part of the constant defence/attack cycle of bases... very cool stuff.
EivilSar, Deathhand of International
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Another writer, who never played Dungeons & Dragons Online I guess. Age of Conan cannot even compare to DDO's combat, so if you seek innovation, look there ; ).
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Well even DDO or AoC combat system is pretty basic. Lets compare it to something like Assassins Creed or God of War, both have a great combat system in which you can use the terrain and and objects against NPC's and to a certain extent you begin to creat your own style of play. This isn't the case in MMOs, in which you have your basic tank, healer and dps who all more or less play in the same way. However these are twitch game which wouldn't work too well when you have servers hundreds of miles away sending and recieving data.
Actually, blazz, it takes less than that for a per-person basis.
All you need is a position, most likely in XYZ coordinates, ID number (to represent the player), any erroneous data (such as gear), and an ID number for a skill if one is being used. All of which can be well under 200 KB. Any extra information just has to be able to be called when requested, such as character sheets (identify), quest log (just need ID's, staging, all called when requested) and a few other things. Most stuff is more liable to be bursted info than a constant stream. Using just an XYZ coordinate, an ID number, and a skill used number, the client can procedurally produce the desired animations, such as walking, running, jumping, swimming, rotation. There's likely a few calls missed, and it's going to be a tad more complex than this (strafing, anyone?) but the general idea is sound. The client does the majority of the quesswork, using intuitive code.
However, the real killer for lag time, where you can get ridiculous server issues, is when you have a zone populated with thousands upon thousands of mobs, and then need to tell all clients in viewing distance where these mobs are. Remember, for the most part, all your client sees are XYZ coordinates, mob ID, model ID's, ability ID's, and the rest is more or less procedural. But now imagine that, in a game like WoW, you have as much as 50 vissible to any individual person at any individual time. This is why games like WoW often are sparse on enemies and have max draw distances. It's easier to have the server feed 1 person 50 enemies, than 100 enemies, or 200, or the entire zone, which is where other games start to break down.
This is, again, assuming things like target of target aren't also being thrown through the pipe (likely another piece of code saying their target's ID number) and any other data I am too ignorant to point out.
But this is off topic, and I digress.
On the topic of the 5:
Instancing: Instancing is fine as WoW has done it. Not so much as cryptic in general has done it. Points have been brought up, additional info not required.
Questing: Presentation improvements would be nice, for instance full voiceovers, natural progression of acquisition, drawn attention because it's forced in your face, that sort of thing. A mass effect 2 style presentation is fine, or GW2 where it appears to try to be seemless, is also fine. In the end, getting rid of reading mountains of text would improve presentation and flow, and keep immersion higher in general. To this end, both TOR's and GW2's currently shown presentation are great examples of where this can go. It's worth noting that I actually hate the PQ system (Warhammer Online), simply because it's static, doesn't scale, and were often either grindy or outright ignored (which consists entirely of WAR and CO/STO for now, so...yeah), but GW2's take on PQ's is nice to show people can take a bad idea (implementation) and evolve it into a good idea.
Leveling: This is fine. I like having the structure. I do, admit, missing the style found in AC1, but it would lead to a balance nightmare regardless, so if it must be a casualty, I'm fine with it. Planetside also offered a nice take on leveling, where levels gave you access to buying skills of your choice, but for the most part, it's liably here to stay, and that's fine with me. If/when it gets innovated, it will still likely involve leveling, just with different "rules". Since the days of D&D, possibly earlier, classes have existed. And to that end, it hasn't changed overmuch, and doesn't particularly need to, at least until a proper skill system can be added that isn't stupid.
Story: This is a big point for me. Most MMO's present story passively. GW's is probably the first that presents it actively. Real changes happen in GW, so to speak, when you progress the story, up to an epic conclusion (that companies like blizzard seem to miss, especially since they like to stick story exclusively to raids for the most part). It's nice to see SW:TOR and GW2 sticking story as a heavy requirement, and there are past examples, like GW1 and LOTRO, but those both show bad design and old age even now, so looking to the future, the future looks good for the big names. Personal story is important. Whether it's presented actively (SW:TOR, GW style) or passively (WoW) is the real key, however. Passive story isn't engaging, immersive, or otherwise fun. Hard to get involved in. WoW shows this heavily. It's nice to see MMO's react to your story as well, which most MMO's since the days of AC1 pretty much ignore. We'll see what the future holds. That said, I do not want the story to be 100% passive like a game like UO. "Build your own future" sandbox MMO's wreak of lazy content to me, and I prefer having the structure of a story being presented in a "choose your own adventure" style, than having absolute freeform. This is one reason I detest EVE. Sorry for the run-on paragraph, trying to keep them down to one block.
Combat: This is hit and miss. Engaging combat like an FPS (see: Planetside) can work in MMO's, but it's hard to make it work in an RPG-styled MMO. I guess this just comes down to how you want to present the MMO, really. The standard MMO interface is fine, and is reminiscent of any P&P game in nature. Press button, use ability. Having it be more like LotRO, as opposed to WoW, would be a bonus (more buttons to remember, more abilities to use, less time going 1123, repeat). That said, this system will work fine long into the future, and if it stays that way, I will be okay with it. Again, it's a matter of presentation, not of balance or fun. Would it be nice to see more FPS-styled MMO's like planetside? Yes. Would it be more fun to see more Action-RPG MMO's? Yes. However, to say the current MMO combat is bad is just jumping to conclusions. Variety is, however, the spice of life.
I always thought the public quests in Warhammer were a step back in the right direction, not that I rate WAR very highly... but more things like that can't really be bad.
The early days of Asheron's Call were the best for me (before people started making websites about update content, maggie the jackcat was it?). No quest system, only hints from NPC's and/or word of mouth.. you could often stumble across things that a lot of other players hadn't found or even heard about.. felt like you actually accomplished something.
I think the community, although obviously necessary, is it's own worst enemy when I comes to losing that sense of discovery and accomplishment. When we had to do things and figure things out all by ourselves (even as a group or guild) the end result was much more.. satisfying.
I normally disagree and all together hate Bill Murphy's articles and input. However, I feel he is spot on with this one.
Interesting list. I do disagree on a number of points, however.
#5 Instancing: Instancing does something else very beneficial: It allows players to actually progress. I am far from a care bear but when a guild of 50+ people keep a mob camped 24 hours a days 7 days a week there is no fun. They have all far surpassed that mob but it drops loot that they can sell for a sizeable profit so the rest of the server has to either get a huge army together (not gonna happen) or quit in disgust. Blizzard has made some changes with Wrath of the Lich King and instances in that they have introduced phasing of zones. Northern DragonBlight for example, Outside Icecrown Citadel for another. What it boils down to for me is how many asshats am I going to be forced to deal with on any given day.
#4 Questing: I do agree in some respects, questing is getting old because its all kill x of y and bring me z items or go talk to alpha and come back. Oversimplification of stuff that has its roots back in text based adventure games. This is something difficult to change, hell it permeates single player gameplay and that is a far more controlled environment rather than having a few thousand banging away at quests. I think there are limitations to technology and here is where we see some of that limitation.
#3 Leveling: One of the problems that SWG faced was people min/maxing to such an extent that they could never get it under control. TK/Doc, Pistoleer/Fencer etc etc etc. The more skills you have the harder it is for a developer to ever anticipate what the players are going to do. Plus you get to a point (just like in class based games with "talent" specs) where specific builds are expected for different roles and differentiation is not only discouraged but it does lead to less than optimal play. Just sayin
#2 Story: Totally agree but there is a problem. Without heavy instancing you are going to disallow a large number of people from ever getting to experince the story. I think the reason why game communities thrived years ago is 1) Rose Tinted Glasses and 2) different mindsets of the people playing those games.
#1 Combat: I thought there were some "action" mmos out there? Personally I detest games like God of War and definitely would not spend hundreds of hours playing it.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Sandbox is the future... open world without boundries or artificial limitations.
Developers should set the theme, give us the tools, monitor and provide support.
I agree with combat being number 1. For so many years combat has basically been about pressing a button for an ability and then a dice roll is done if it hits or not and how much damage/healing/CC it does. Boring.
One thing that would be really nice if your character had to actually move, like in a real fight you rarely see two people just standing still. They move around, forward, backward, side to side, ducking, seeking cover behind a wall and so on. Really would like to see more of that in MMORPGs.
Also another element I would add to your list is the ability to affect the persistant world, maybe this falls in your quest cathegory but I dont feel it needs to be in a quest. Just living in a world and performing actions in it should have the chance to affect it. Right now the "world" is all but static which imo is quite boring.
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Instancing - fine as long as the MMO’s main zones are not instanced. Having to track down your mates in different instances is just a pain.
Questing – what we need are better quests not a new GUI. As staff writers here have pointed out the number of quest writers in MMO’s is dropping as MMO companies ask anyone and the tea boy to write quests.
Levelling – having your own unique story could work but having an avatar with unique powers goes against MMO marketing principles. Everyone needs to feel they can achieve anything another player can and no player should feel his character was gimped because of his choices. The priority is that no player should have a reason to leave the MMO which means we all have to be clones of each other with no choice in how we advance.
Story – Here Murphy has made a great argument for grouping “the story in MMOs is meant to be a participatory event”. If you can only do the story which only turns out one way and you need to do it on your own, well you might as well just go and watch TV.
Combat – Set up more than ancy graphics are important here like so many issues in the MMO world. The Battle Field series has a great set up, the graphics were good too but who cares about that? So animations and fancy powers are as nothing next to good comabat gameplat. The AI of mobs and the PvP setup is the meat here.
Totally agree with this article.
I SO agree with the OP! Great article. Get rid of instancing for example! Instancing is nothing more than a way for the developer to shorten the content needed to create the game. For me, it takes away from the gaming experince I expect ingame.
Great article-hopefully developers will read it and act upon the advice given-then again I doubt they will.
6. World design.
Many worlds like WoW or WAR are linear and this serves a problem combined with the level based system where the game becomes top heavy and lower level areas feel empty with noone to group with. I love how SWG had no levels and non linear worlds, so people would be doing content at different times. So you'd often get an old playing just getting round to content that a new player might have just started and it feels no less epic because it is about the Star Wars lore and not getting the best loot for your level.
I think that is the biggest thing lacking in MMOrpgs (as opposed to single player RPGs.) The ability to change your world. Now, the big problem is that you change everyone else's world, as well. So, a sand box game is the best I can see in that regard. A lot of people seem to dislike change in their game world, unfortunately.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
That is the best option for me, but lots of players don't want it.
If players would get over wanting state of the art graphics and settle for a base standard (WoW graphic are plenty good enough for me), game companies could save a lot of time and money on new engines, and design new games, instead.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
YES!!! This is what I want. My ultimate MMORPG wet-dream would be for developers to create a world for us to play in. There are no town built for us, there are no vendor NPCs. Think of it like colonizing a new world. The resources are already there and we simply use those resources to build our civilization. I honestly doubt this will ever happen but that's why it's a dream.
Nice article by the way. I remember back in my Anarchy Online (AO) days when a clan...I don't remember their name, maybe "Sands of something-or-other". Anyway, not important, but this clan would pick random times and places to suddenly appear and wipe the entire area clear of people, NPCs and generally anything that got in their way. After they were done and after some of them were killed they would simply leave the area. They were sanctioned by the GMs and there were news releases about the "Sands of something-or-other" conducting another terrorist attack at "such-and-such" City. THAT was player driven story/content and THAT is what I want again.
For instancing and story i think lotro is doing quite well.
Skirmishes area fun and repetitive way of doing instances and they are always playable, as in cant be out leveled.
lotro's story does make you feel that you are progressing in a very epic story.
I think that SWtor will also be very innovative in all of those apart from maybe leveling (said to be traditional levels), epic story fully voiced quests with choices that effect the story, choreographed (sp?) combat, instances we have yet to see details about from the flash point that they showed. (they are going for overwhelming odds as opposed to big massive bosses)
There are tons of facets that need innovation. Character creation, world design, crafting. You could probably point to a game that has each of these to your satisfaction, but worlds have to be build so that all of these idea come together and work with each other. Just pointing out feature 1 of this game and feature 2 of this game doesn't help because you need to know how to make them work together.
Sandboxes are a bit of a dream imho. You want things to persist forever. So after 2 months, all newbie quests should be permanently completed/fixed if the world is properly made (due to persistance). But then any further newbies won't have a good game experience.
*wheeze cough* Y'see, back in my day, a roleplaying game was about creating a discrete character wholly seperate from the player, with skills and attributes defined by a set of rules established by a game system. Fat Bob, the grease-stained cashier at the local comics shop might not have been able to hit the broad side of a barn with laser sights, but his Elven Ranger would make William Tell cry. Why? Because he controlled a character that, as defined by the game's rules, was a master archer with a hit rating of 98 percent.
That's roleplaying. Nowadays, people like to pull silly definitions out of their collective asses by saying "roleplaying games are games where you play a role", a definition so broad as to make Super Mario Brothers a roleplaying game, since you're playing the role of a superdeformed little plumber; or Call of Duty, since you're playing the role of a soldier. Poppycock, I say. The minute you take stats-based character skills out and put player skills in as the defining factor of combat, you've taken the roleplaying aspect out of combat and turned the game into a twitch-based action adventure. If that's what you want, fine, but don't perpetuate the fallacy that what you're looking for is a MMORPG, when what you're really asking for is nothing of the sort.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
The only comment I can make is you obviously have ignored the story line in Eve completely to make such a silly statement.
I have played with Rpers in Eve and they would be ahgast at your comment. Eve story line is quite deep and is constantly updated. Sure anyone can ignore the backround story, but it is there for you if you want.
I suppose you want the story line forced on you so you have to particpate? That is not CCP's way, they want you to decide what is important to you.
As to the article, it is right on the spot. Leveling is what irratates me in these games. There is no such thing in reality, or in any stories I have ever read. Levels was something artificially invented for D&D and unfortunately introduced into the MMO genre by EQ for most of us. Soon as I heard that Bioware's Star Wars was going to be levels I knew it was going to be another Wow clone no matter what they do to it.
THIS
My personal favorite plan for quests is to change how they are created and players run them. Quests should be created based on the need of npc's to get jobs done not based on the need of the players to have jobs to do. These also shouldn't be all single job quests, how bout instead of a kill 10 rats quest you get a "join the local gaurd" job. That job means you now get payed for killing all the local nasties like rats/wolves/goblins you also may get called in to help stop unruly players. Or how bout join the army fighting off one of the other factions getting paid for each enemy you kill. Maybe you join the army as a medic getting paid by the number of people you saved etc.
Combat / Leveling
Ok more crazy plans for this. My personal favorite plan here is for a game to make great use of npc's as weapons/tools for the players. It may not be every class but you should be fighting alongside NPC's not against them all the time the line between you and your army should become blurred. You would also have to make sure they are extremely easy and natural to use, selecting a unit and ordering him to launch a net at an enemy = bad, it should be no different than if you where using the ability yourself in a game like wow.
As for combat. hack and slash, think ninja gaiden, dynasty warriors swing your sword around do some combo's and chop through the enemy. Some abilities may still be targeted using a wow like system though. The holy trinnity for this sorta game would be slightly different and be more of a rock paper scissors thing: Minion muncher (aoe dps) > commander > assassin (target dps) > minion muncher. Also make it possible for the commanders to substitute part of their group with a player so armies will be composed of a mixture of npc's and pc's at all positions.
Would most likely use a skill based system to allow players to pick and choose hybrids and add more 'classes' / skill trees as the game evolves. Also limit what skills are active for a player by what equipment / config they currently have active, allows younger players to catch up quickly by focusing but gives older players more variety in what they can do.
Level system I would make more complex by working the death penalty into it. It would be fast and easy for a player to get to mid level but around here they would stop growing unless they increased their death penalty which would let them use higher level skills and give them base bonuses. For example "x % chance to drop armour" would increase your armours effectiveness by 25% and let you train and use more and higher skills. You could of course always go back to low risk and you would give players some flexibility in what penalties they choose to have active. For the highest levels you would add in things like perma-death or perma-injury (lose an arm) but the bonuses for these sort of penalties would make characters a force to be reconned with.
Anything NPC faction's can do I can do
Player guilds/corps/factions/alliances are an awesome thing but they need to be able to do more. I believe that eventually these player run groups should be able to rival the npc run groups created by the makers of the game. Also as the title says ANYTHING an npc faction can do you should be able to do with time and effort, for example:
- Have new players start the game in your area (player made starter areas o/)
- Build Cities, castles, watch towers, gates, roads, fast travel systems, labratories.
- Releasing new technologies, items specific to your faction
A lot of this sort of stuff we would need to look at a game like second life, player created content is extremely powerful. Balancing these sort of things and preventing them from being abused would be a monumental task but if you manage to pull it off.....
Into the breach meatbags