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Empty worlds
jusomdude
Member RarePosts: 2,706
This is a problem I see too often with MMO games and wonder why more developers don't focus on fixing it. Low lvl content becomes a wasteland with very few or no players in it after a game has been out for awhile. They may as well delete the low lvl zones, especially when games are starting to offer catchup boosts with their new expansions or w/e.
I know they can't force players to go to these zones, but the issue is that they don't have a reason to. This isn't an issue in all MMO games but it is in a good portion of them. Seems like a waste of time to make all that content when it's just left by the wayside. I'd like to see future developers do something about this, but current developers could too. Make your worlds alive and not just a means to an end!
I know they can't force players to go to these zones, but the issue is that they don't have a reason to. This isn't an issue in all MMO games but it is in a good portion of them. Seems like a waste of time to make all that content when it's just left by the wayside. I'd like to see future developers do something about this, but current developers could too. Make your worlds alive and not just a means to an end!
Comments
Civil engineers didn't design the interstate system thinking that they'd be packed bumper to bumper with 5000 cars each day during rush hour either.
At the time, they seemed adequate enough.
Have either been improved upon knowing what they know now? Not really. They just continue to do what they always do.
Scaling has been the only real attempt to make all areas equal in terms of level. The big issue with dead zones is that they are level based. Once you pass that level, you have no incentive to return because everything is face roll to you and of little value (i.e. ore nodes, loot, et al are scaled to level you have long since past).
They release a new expansion (say Battle for Azeroth)... instead of creating content around the existing Azeroth, they create some new land out of thin air and have everyone congregate there, literally, for the entire expansion. All resources are found there, all quests, raids, et al, occur there. It's like everyone took a one way ticket to the moon.
Convenience also kills the rest of the world. You started out traversing the old world on foot. It took you nearly the whole expansion to get a mount. You spent most of your time traveling somewhere. No the world is so large, if the same system were in place, you'd never travel anywhere out of the sheer travel time. You know, like in the real world where going from one part of the world on foot to another takes a great deal of time. It's a big world after all. In the game world, instead of getting bigger, it keeps getting smaller because you are herded into small places rather than large ones.
Imagine if that new resource, Azerite could be found anywhere in the world, not just the new zone? What if quest chains involved the whole world and not just the new zone? What if out in the world, you were just as likely to get dismounted or killed as you were in the new zone?
This false sense of player power is what has killed the world. In the real world, you are just as likely to get killed in a school zone as in a desert. Some 10 year old could gun you down. An 80 year old can run you over. But in the game world, only things equal or greater to you can kill you. And they all congregate in one place. All the new features only affect the new zone. You end up playing in a vacuum.
We don't need to design a road for a million people, we'd never have a population of a million people in one place. That's just insane. There are 130,000 people here now, we only need a road for 150,000 and there will never be any traffic.
Consider for a moment that planned obsolesce is about ensuring future sales. They can build a washing machine that will last forever, they choose not to for their own financial security. Each year they promise a new machine that "actually gets clothes clean" unlike what is out there now.
Games aren't about making worlds alive... that is a marketing gimmick... games are about making money. The the less you are given, the more you are willing to buy.
Scaling makes even less sense in said design style. Why go back to those starting zones, the plot has progressed far away from events that have taken place simultaneously with those you experienced at the beginning.
The only way is to narrow the gap between 0 - max, and give up the story mode design and leave it for single player games only. Zones exists for technical reasons, mainly for limited memory and loading time, but they have now become like chapters in a book in modern MMOs where you complete zone 1 before you can access to zone 2. That's how arcade shooters used to work in early 80's.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
- Making them a center for trade.
- Making them advantageous for crafting and crafting materials.
- Have collectibles in the game that can be found there.
- Put quest mobs there as part of higher level quests.
- Have world events there.
- Put things there to be purchased, like stables for horses.
- Have lower level craft mats included as part of higher level crafting, so those things are still needed
- Have achievements there that people go back to get if they missed them before
- Have buffs that are available somehow that people want and may go back for
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Vertical progression - the continual increase in power - enforces a design style that matches up the player's power with the power of the landscape. It results in all content becoming obsolete except the content at the top of the power scale, but that then becomes obsolete with the next expansion.
There are short term solutions to make a zone "feel" more relevant - scaling is one option, but only works if your content is non-linear. Putting in social hubs, auction houses, crafting stations etc also attracts more people to the zone, but if they're in that zone it just means they aren't somewhere else. You can mix high and low level content together but that does nothing to improve availability of players for grouping and unless that high level content is endgame content, it won't actually help.
The solution is horizontal progression and non-linear content. Horizontal progression ensures everyone is at the same power level, so everyone is "on level" and could group up. But, thats only half the story, you have to design your content to support it. If you still have very linear content driving that progression (i.e. questing....) then your players will still follow the quest path and old zones will still be empty.
But they aren't staying at the same power level, are they? Whether the power of characters is escalating through the strengthening of abilities or broadening with a larger number of on par abilities, it is still greater the longer a character develops.
This invariably leaves older level-based content empty; all existing players have moved to more advanced content and there are no new customers to replace them. This hurts games that rely on box sales, the lack of a continual stream of new customers means no on-going income. I heard this from a potential investor in 2003. There needs to be a more steady revenue stream for games to attract investors. I feel strongly that this early reliance on box sales and subscriptions are in part the reason why we have cash shops today.
Horizontal progression *might* alleviate this phenomena, but I don't feel that it adequately addresses the underlying cause, lack of new players.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
So, as I progress through the game, I unlock new skills/abilities/stats/gear/whatever, but with each thing that improves you balance it against something that diminishes, leaving overall power the same.
Taking DPS as a prime example, you'd start out in the game with an all-rounder. As I progress, I unlock options for raw dps, crit chance, crit multiplier, dots, utilities etc. As I choose to specialise in some areas, I get worse in others. So, I might go full glass cannon, having the best possible burst dps but at the cost of smaller health, mitigations and utility. Maybe I want to be an AoE specialist, unlocking lots of aoe abilities but making me terrible at single target damage.
This sort of progression still gives people tons of things to unlock and really allows them to find their perfect playstyle, without screwing up the power balance. In some situations, sure, one build will be superior to another, but overall it balances out. It also means that difficulty can no longer be balanced against gear, because power is flat. So, difficulty has to be achieved through gameplay alone, so we might actually start getting higher quality content.
It's not perfect by any means, but vertical progression is truly terrible for a massively multiplayer environment. You don't want to keep segregating your community, we have 1000s of years of human history to prove that it doesn't work but that is what vertical progression does: segregate the community by power.
The game has to have many starting zones and races.
The game has to have slow leveling where your 1-10 of a few days.
This is gone in mmorpgs
Zones don't have to be set for certain level range. Every zone in a game can have mobs and quests for various levels and players will learn quickly they don't want to mess with powerful foes.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Long and short , modern game making like killing the cow for meat instead of raise it for milk .
The problem is if the meat don't sell well then there are no more .
In Ultima Online there wasn't really leveling or any specific order of progression.
In Everquest mobs of different levels were scattered throughout the zones. People of varying levels sometimes came to kill those mobs. People of high level might come to buff low levels players or buy regents like bone chips or bat wings off them (used for spells). Someone might be selling buffs or teleports to make money for expensive spells or items. Most of it was reliant upon interdependence, lack of instances, lack of story, meaningful buffs, and meaningful items in low-level areas.
I have to agree that story is a big part of what kills MMOs in this area. Story equates to playing the game as having a start and a finish. That means once you get past something it makes no sense to go backward in the story.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.