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An idea about how to get more quality MMOs
fivoroth
Member UncommonPosts: 3,916
I want to talk about how I would go about designing an MMO if I was given the choice.
The main flaw of current generation MMOs in my opinion is how bland the actual content is and how terrible the gameplay is. MMOs sacrifice quality to achieve quantity. This in my opinion is why they are so bad and inoriginal.
The first major change I would do is to how quests are handled. Now I don't want to go back to how MMOs like EQ handled levelling. I think that's an even worse solution to the questing craze we face now. In singleplayer games quests or missions are used to give meaning to your action, to provide you with context and to tell a good story. They are a lot more interactive but there is very few of them.
Why have 3000+ quests in an MMO when they are all the same copy pasted crap? Why not have say 200 quests in your entire game but they are much more interactive, engaging and you know...fun? I think it would be nice of quests flowed into one massive quest chain. What's the point of doing a quest which works in isolation and once you're done with it, it's over. I would go to such an extreme to say provide 3 massive quest chains only:
1. THe first question chain may focus on the world as a whole. THis is the "main" story which spans the entire levelling process and takes place across the world. You learn about the grand things that happen in the world and this can take your from level 1 to the maximum level. This can also be further expanded with future patches so it feels like the world's story is evolving. This quest chain can evolve at max level. Also at max level the focus may switch from singleplayer to requiring groups of people to complete the main storyline.
2. The second quest chain can be your class storyline. Read SWTOR here. However, these quests may involve heavy use of your class skills. They can reward you with most/the majority/some of your class skills.
3. Zone questline. SO each zone has a long quest chain which tells you the story of the zone you are in. There is only ONE of these per zone and they are mostly confined to the zone you are in.
So in total you would only have 3 quests at any time! They are all linked. As there would be a lot fewer of them, they should be made a lot more interactive, throw in voice overs, cut scenes, phased areas to deliver some proper singleplayer style experience.
Now there should be other ways to level up as well. Make AOE mob grinding viable for people who like this sort of stuff. Make it so crafting gives experience. Actually make it so that EVERYTHING you do can level you up.
I think at every point during your leveling experience you should be able to choose how you want to level up:
1. Do those epic quest chains to learn more about the world, the zone you are in or your class.
2. PVP
3. Dungeons, there should be at least 2 of these per level 5 range. Have a hardmode version of all of these at max level.
4. AOE Mob grinding
5. MAYBE have a bounty board (although I would probably not have these in an MMO) where people can be rewarded for mass grinding mobs or collecting random crap from the map. These should have no background. Just have something like kill 1000 zombies cause they want to eat us or collect 500 crab shells for no good reason. This is basically what the quests are like in MMOs at the moment.
6. Maybe have mini games - for example like some of GW2's activities.
7. Add all sorts of other way to level up. Can't think of anything else at the moment but I am sure there are tons of other ways to do this.
Also we don't need everything to be a massive numebr just for the sake of quantity. We don't need a billion quests, we dont need massive empty zones which just serve to waste our time. ALL MMOs can be reduced to only 100-200 hours of quality gameplay if all the crap is taken out.
WoW took out a lot of the insane time sinks of the MMOs before it and it became a hit. Whatever people say, you can't play games like EQ if you don't have an insane amount of time to kill. WoW got rid of a lot of that but why has no one made MMOs more focused on quality in the past 10 years? Why do we need 5k quests whih are all crap. Why not have only 200 of them but they are fun?
TLDR: Give us few quests which are the same quality as singleplayer games. THe current mass quest thing is just ridiculous. Mass mob grinding is also not the solution.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! We don't need MMOs to last 50000000000 hours only for the sake of wasting our time.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Comments
Already done in Diablo RoS with great success. They also have random dungeons to go with bounties. No quest text to read, no pretentious reasons, just pure grinding and reward.
This can be a problem in any game. If the main quest in a singleplayer RPG is bugged and there's not much you as a player can do until the developer fixes it.
Lower number of quests should hopefully mean better QA over them. Also if one of the quests are bugged you can always carry doing one of the other two quest chains or do some of the other activities until the developer fixes it.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I'm going to cast my vote that it's all about art, not just visual and audio, but the entire experience. All these people, like op, are using very cerebral ideas as in an algorithm what formula will constitute success. I think that's wrong. I don't think it will lead to a breakthrough.
All the successful games have many parts which are "good" unto themselves, but collected, the parts become a whole with a greater value. We need people with "artist vision" to collect pieces and put them together.
You know, in history, there have not been 500 Leonardos, but people try. There have not been 500 Mozarts, but people show promise. What we do have is thousands of people emulating Leonardo and Mozart and we say, "huh, I kinda like that because it is like this other but it's not what I'm looking for". What we need is a new artist for a new time, because mmos are art.
edit: also, the artist needs to stop visiting reddit, because people collected, in general, aren't wise and don't have vision. If Leonardo or Mozart had 50k "experts" peeking over their shoulders giving advice, I don't think their work would have been as novel. I'd really like to see an artist tell people to "go fly a kite" when they say "this must be in an mmo or I won't buy it".
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
A broken quest is much less if a problem if it means that you just can't do that quest or maybe are blocked from the two that follow it than if it locks you out of the next hundred quests in the chain.
Also, fewer quests doesn't necessarily mean that they're more likely to work right. The only way to reduce bugginess in computer programs is to make stopping to fix them a high priority. That steals time from future content, not past content. If you're not willing to delay future updates whenever necessary, bugs in old content aren't going to be fixed very quickly.
Not always. Marvel Heroes have fun combat to me (less polished than D3, but certainly better than many Diablo clones). I would agree that is more the exception than the rule though.
That is perhaps why I am selective, and only play MMOs with fun (to me) gameplay.
Can't you think something outside of combat , quests and instance dungeon ?
How about MMORPG with racing , air fighting , cards game , farmvillage , pet raising ?
Let forget about quests , dungeon and think about something you can have fun with your friend .
For example you play RPG , fighting monster , drive in dungeon to get the rare card for cards game .
Catch rare monster for pet raising then use them to racing . Or buy land and become a farmer .
Maybe build your troops to play tower defend with other
RPG is the basic of a lots difference genres , don't just tie it with quests and dungeon .
Each of the items you mention (dungeon runs, racing, card game, farmvillage ...) are all available as different games. There is little reasons to put them all in a MMORPG .. in fact, that makes things less convenient.
Sure if you want to call Hearthstone a MMO, be my guest. But don't put it in a MMORPG because if i want to play the card game, i want to just click and play from a lobby.
You know how smartphone change the world ? It put all features in one .
It's not just about bugs. What if you out level a quest, do you have to do a bunch of low level content to catch up? What about playing with your friends who are up to different parts of the quest?
Having lots of non essential quests means there's content neither you or your friends have done for the current area you're in. This is why they do it, not because they are too stupid to think what you think.
and how is that relevant to games, which can also co-exist on one PC?
Do what Borderland or Diablo does? One person "host" the game, and the other joins and are helpers.
I totally disagree ,the old way was much better and more realistic.You should never give xp towards questing as it has nothing to do with leveling a Warrior or a Mage.
Also linear questing makes every player identical and gives NO option for how YOU want to play your game.
Questing does not have to follow the whole story line, a story line should simply be the back drop,a setting to define the world and nothing more,the story should be your OWN story.
As to fixing quests,developers are not going to go that extra mile,that has been proven,they want a simple and acceptable design so they can make a game as cheap as possible and still be accepted.
As to interaction,i have seen some pretty lame interaction,like sparklies all around a lever ,geesh "I am i suppose to pull that lever'?i mean seriously lame hand holding.
As pointed out by i think was the second poster,if your quest chain is broken/bugged the whole quest is ruined and your game fun is ruined.That very thing happened to me in Wow and go figure it was the 3 very best interactive quests that were all bugged.SO there is another problem devs are not only lazy and cheap in design they are more than willing to release a buggy product to meet their investors or their bosses time dead line.
What really needs to happen is people stop handing out free money ,stop with pre orders,be patient and force the developers to deliver a solid product or simply don't support them if they can't.A perfect example is all of these games released over the last 5 years,everyone of those made a killing because millions jump on the bandwagon every time then quit those games 1-3 months later but the dev already made their profit.So the devs keep thinking,this is great just make a cheap game,get 1-4 solid months out of it and fill up your bank accounts,rinse and repeat over and over.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
As mentioned, focusing in "quest" isn't the solution.
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Take a look at the NPCs. What are the NPCs for? Now, they are nothing but just exp and reward vending machine rooted at one place. Do players care about them? No. Do players care about what they say? No. Are they matter to you and the world? No. Do they have a life? No.
I don't want a fixed way to play a game. I don't want a fixed quest line. I am not NPC's slave, or their postman. Start any MMORPG now and you got shoved around doing errand for them. Who am I? I dunno, all I feel is that I am just another puppet running around just like everyone else.
What I envision is a true living virtual world, every NPCs have their own life, purpose, history, behavior, opinion against every players. The world runs on naturally, with randomized events happening all over the place that players can participate. Player's participation in happening will changes the world, changes how other players and NPCs opinion about you. A world that every happening matter, not you fail one thing and can retry with no consequences. A destroyed city in wars is destroyed, there is no restart. You can only re-build on the ashes.
Primary story related events also randomized around the world, players have to seek them out in the wild- or in chance, they will come at you at your least prepared time. A world where players carve their own journey and experience, not following someone else's script.
The purpose of your character need to be choosen & explained during character creation phase, who are you, what are you suppose to be doing and where are you going. Different chose result in different starting point. Not 3 starting newbie towns, not 10, not 100. But dynamic location depends on your role and current happening of the world. So you sign up as a soldier? Then you start at army camp. So you choose to be a common folks? Then you start at a village. Etc.
Why must one always be the hero? Choice of being a villain should be there. Join the dark side of the world, do what the dark lord tells you to, become the enemy of the world and other players... Oh, why must we always play as a humanoid? I choose to be a villain and I will find my path, obtaining evil power, advance into much darker creature form...
Or, just be a loner. Just live my own way, don't care about all those politics, don't care about the war. Hunting in the wild, stealing in the cities, as long as I don't get caught and thrown into the jail. Being no body should also be a choice.
With vast amount of events, and developers continue to add more along the way to provide bigger variety, preventing repetitive. Events shouldn't be just a scripted happening - but variable. So the demon attack town, this time, just a few small groups. Next time, hell know they bring war machines. Tomorrow, hell know demon king came. In chance a demonic orc came... oh wait, that's a player! Maybe next week the town is no more... Variation in events, not like what in GuildWars2 where every time the same shit at the same spot.
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The world need to split into thousands of instances to avoid zerg crowd problem, it's really immersion breaking when there are hundreds of people doing the exact same event at the same spot, till you can't even see shit on your screen.
Let just throw the idea of leveling out of the window already. If number is all players care about, what is the point we even call it MMO"RPG" and create all sort of bull shit stories? Without numbers, how are we gauge stuff like players' strength, etc? Proficiency. Proficiency on combat aspect, proficiency on crafting, proficiency on material gathering / looting. The higher your proficiency the better you perform with certain weapons or spells, the better and rarer the material you gather, the better the stuff you can craft.
The idea of dungeon grinding also need to be throw out of the window. Every MMORPG out there, as far as I played (not much) ended up with dungeon raid to earn gold, materials, or gears. It's an idea recycled for a million times over. Stop. We don't need that when we already have a dynamic world to explore.
Looting. So I need some wolf fang to craft something. Hunt wolf - oh wait, no drop. Hunt more... That's stupid. Every freaking wolf have fangs and you telling me there's "no drop"? Loot need to be realistic.
Group play, now Guild Wars 2 did the right thing of not require menu clicking with their open world events. This should extend into all aspect of the game. Just participate in happenings and get your share of glory, or get outta the way. Don't need to shout LFG anymore.
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I understand some stuff I trying to describe may be ahead of time or require much serious undertaking to be achieved. But that's my vision, my opinion of how MMORPG should be. It shouldn't just be a game where people level from 1 to 100 and nothing else matter.
I agree and you put it well.
same same..
So then what can be done to progress MMOs? WE have seen two major types of MMOs. The current system of mass grinding quests which is just boring. I mean it's fun for your first MMO but then it gets mindboglingly boring. The second main way of doing it was mass mob grinding aka EQ and Lineage style. That didn't work either.
What Xonedl is suggesting sounds good on paper but the reality of implemeting that seems to have proven extremely difficult to do. So many games have said that they will have interactive content and that it will adapt to your choices but that never seems to happen. It's a great direction to follow but no one seems how to do it. Everyone mostly talks in vague terms.of being give more choice, having your own story, being able to impact the world etc.
GW2 promised so much yet delivered so little in terms of interactivity. Their "dynamic events" were just static quests which kept on repeating every so often in the same location. Yet the way the sold it was that it's going to be dynamic, interactive and random. But there doesn't seem to be anything random about those events.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
+1.
Very good thinking.
Think about city tycoon progress . You build village/city , you character get progress by level of your city . Then random monster appear to destroy your city .
Defend it ? Someone help you to defend it ? Add them to the friend list .
Come on , player need more role to play than heroes .
You also forget the progress through collection ,
something like card game collection (i use this example a lot currently lol )
And some part of game don't need progress , special multiplayer part . Temporary progress is fine for multiplayer .
Later i start to question if people ready like to progress or what they want is collect , i mean the collect also part of progress .
For example in some old RPG , you don't progress stats or level , but collect key items to unlock and finish the game
Yes, people care about progression and number. We call it MMORPG because it is convenient, and number crunching has been a CRPG thing for a long time. It is just semantics.
And why throw dungeon grinding out when it works? Just look at Diablo ... people play the second one for 10 years for nothing but grind, combat & loot. And loot needs to be fun. Why be realistic when it can be just fun?