Awesome article. I'd LOVE to see a soccor-type game in Everquest II, WOW, etc. One of the things I loved in KOTOR was the mini-games (Pazchek (sp) and bike racing). It was a good side-trip, when the main storyline got boring.
MMO games played or tested: EQ, DAoC, Archlord, Auto Assault, CoH, CoV, EQ2, EVE, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Linneage II, LOTRO, MxO, Planetside, SWG, Sword of the New World, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, WWIIOL, WOW, Age of Conan
Very interesting article (it made me subscribe to this site).
In order to get people interested to any kind of alternative style of playing, a game should explore the problem at the source: what is the measure of a succesfull character?
Its generally easy to identify what players are after and, from that, the means they have at their disposal to acquire it will determine the way they'll shape their gameplay. For example, if the game is xp based and the sole way for a player to actually gauge his/her success is the xp meter, then all players (with a very small minority of exceptional individuals) will go the main route to acquire xp the fastest... quite simple up to here, right?
So if bashing trolls or sinking ships is the fastest (and as is often the case, the only way to obtain rewards) you know what your players are going to spend their time on. It could be made a case that allowing players to gain xp through singing or dancing might reward the players going that route just as much as the ones bashing trolls. The only problem is that universally, if there is no other measure for a character success than his xp, the level X troll-bashing character will always be able to go bash the level X singing character's face in whenever he wants (even tho both have accumulated the same amount of xp by becoming experts in their respective professions). Granted the singing character could try and serenade the tough guy to death but that might prove more difficult than expected.
So how do we make games that allow different carreer paths to compete? The answer i come up with everytime is this: We need the great equilizer. And no, i dont mean a gun here. I mean money. I do firmly believe that the maestro singer, interplanetary star of the bothan empire may very well be 10 times more powerfull than any galactic bounty hunter just because he has earned a fortune and made powerfull connections in the establishment by the sole virtue of being the best damn voice this side of the galaxy. A player really bent on becoming an important social figure may very well become a viable option if the amount of his succes is globally measured by the money he owns. In clear, the level of character in his profession should only measure his possibility of obtaining the universal units of success (in our case, money units).
The next logically assumption here being that the game's structure allow riches to actually be put to work for the character. Of course it doenst hold true if the only thing you can buy with your money is a better blaster or the +9 skin eating battle sword with laser shark eyes. But if being rich allows you to actually restrict another character's access to certain zones by bribing officials or simply affording personal protection by other players or NPCs, then the singing richman may very well have the upper hand on our ass-kicking asocial bounty hunter. One of the worst example of this that comes to mind is World of warcraft: lets say you took control of the market and now you're ubber rich. Well, first of all you;re already original because this example happens to be one of the only ways to make money outisde of becoming the ubber adventurer. Then what? can you actually spend your money on something fruitfull? Not really, you cant bribe your way into royalty, you cant buy the crossroads and buy your own militia, you cant even build a house, much less a guild place for other people to congregate. What can you do? Count your money. that's about it.
Another point is the place of NPCs in a player-driven world. Should that fat NPC leather crafter be replaceable by the entreprising young elf player if this one decides to take his place? What's with the unnattainable characters? Devs dont want to see a king killed? make him tougher to get to but not impossible by some game mechanics short-cut. Fat merchant stores riches by the truck loads in his back shop? he better call Brinks to move it over to his bank. Someone mugged the banker and ran with the coffers? How about a player character with tons of money and guns for hire takes his place at the new player-owned bank of commerce?
From all this stems the conclusion that, in order to offer different avenues to gamers, the games way of enjoying your rewards must be diversified. Multiple ways of accumulating xp, money or items should be enjoyed in multiple ways by the different kinds of players you wish to have in your world. Hence, games should strive to "open up" their content as much as possible to player interaction. Player owned structures or organizations should integrate with existing content as thigtly as possible. Players should have the same status than NPCs (their all CHARACTERS after all in the story).
Hope i didnt bore you to death and thank you all for reading.
"Why are MMORPGs almost universally based on combat? Aside from a few rare exceptions, the vast majority of games, online and offline, are centered around, or at least focused on, battle."
Answer: Those few rare exceptions you mention have little to no subscriber base and therefor are nonprofitable.
The Sims offline = The most popular PC game in history.
The Sims Online failed.
"In continued mourning of what it once was, the original release of Star Wars Galaxies also incorporated a wide variety of non-combat activities, and in the same vein, so did Ultima Online. Were talking about activities that have nothing to do with battle here, so the ability to craft healing potions out of herbs doesnt count, because thats something directly related to combat."
This just in: Star Wars galaxies sucked then and still sucks now. It has been completely revamped and still continues to be horrible. Why? becuase the combat was dismal and whats worse the combat was the most enjoyable aspect of the game. The Star Wars license is arguably the best IP possible for an MMO and even that couldn't save the game.
I love articles like this. A guy who is obviosuly not in the industry calls out to the industry to provide gameplay that he will ultimately label as "boring". There are reasons that combat systems dominate the current MMO market. The biggest one being time. The second being resources. Developers do not have the time nor the money to invest in robust non combat advancement schemes. Do any of you honestly think the industry hasn't tried? They have. The reason that there aren't many of these systems in place in most games is simple. They just don't provide enough gameplay and more importantly hog up content resources better spent on combat driven encounter centric game play.
Always good to hear from a skeptic. Stating that something can't or shouldn't be done is a great motivator.
That said, I'm with Nathan on this one (and here's yet another sensible essay from him -- I'm starting to respect this guy).
Here's my take on why too many games are wildly combat-centric. I believe there are two main reasons for this:
1. Big Developer reason: Marketing says the target demo wants combat.
2. Small Developer reason: The lead designer likes combat.
There's no help for the big developers. Marketing controls design, and marketing can't see past current (hardcore) gamers to the many, many, many more people out there with computers and Internet connections who'd just like to play a nice casual, cooperative game.
The small developers are the problem, because they at least are in a position to innovate if they felt like it... but they don't. Instead, games get made by people with a lot of passion and free time. These energetic people get to decide what the game will be about -- and most folks like this care primarily about competitive, action-oriented play. That's what excites them, so that's the kind of game they create.
Constructive play, exploratory play, social play -- these designers just don't get why anybody would want to waste their time on that kind of stuff. Result: those kinds of gameplay are implemented only grudgingly, if at all. And then they're ignored post-launch in order to focus on enhancing combat.
From my perspective, the reason there aren't more games with great non-combat features is that there aren't more designers who understand and respect people who enjoy non-combat gameplay, and who have the opportunity and means to create games.
The two impediments to this happening are:
content creation -- it can't cost $100,000 to license serious development tools
content distribution -- it can't require a marketing-driven publisher to access consumers
Solve those two problems, and the builders of non-combat worlds will come.
Sturgeon's Law will still apply, but at least we'll finally start seeing the 5% of worlds that blow away the designers of yet another utterly conventional hack'n'slash world.
Originally posted by Amaranthar How about animal husbandry? Suppose there were a skill like this that allowed players to increase chances to breed various beasts. Lets take horses for example. If the game had various types, a player could purchase them and breed them to try to come up with different horse abilities. Lets say that stats can be mingled for strength, agility, stamina, durability, and mental aptitude. A player could then try to discover variations that make better war horses, plow horses, race horses, and riding horses. Even show horses if you added in a way to breed for coloring. It might require a combination of skill, discovery chance, and of course the right breeding stock. It might even be a chance for modifications that is purely random, and one players discovery might not be duplicated by anyone else. Some of these new "breeds" might turn out to be useless, or they might be something really special. The same system could be used for dogs or any other animal that's breedable.
Add that to the long, long, long, long, LONG list of reasons why MMOs today basically suck.
WE WANT World of EVEcraft, EVErquest and EVE Galaxies!
I'd normally be able to forgive the incompetence of the entire MMO industry except... these assholes repeatedly lie about their products having EVE-like features when they don't!
-Battlegrounds? why are there battles here? why are we fighting at all?
-Why are there Guild Wars? What guilds? What wars? What is with all these damn arenas? WHY ARE WE FIGHTING?
-Galactic Civil War? Don't make me laugh. What civil war? Between who and who? In case SOE didn't realize, they designed and built a Galactic Star Wars Theme Park.
Seriously, I've been hearing the EVE worshippers out there for a while, and they have a point. Intentionally or accidentally, EVE has hit upon the exact sorts of features that can make a game fun without involving combat. Why can't every MMO developer publicy admit their idiocy and failure, bow down to EVE, and promise to integrate those features into every future MMO design? If a single company would do that, they'd have a guaranteed pre-order here.
Just wanted to mention my personal wishlist for an online game. Ever since playing AD&D, I've been fascinated with the ranger character - protector of the woodlands type. I've always wanted to play the type of character who watches over a particular spot in the wilderness, sneaking around, checking up on things. If a bunch of characters move in and start wasting all the creatures in sight, Mr. Ranger steps in and kicks their butts. I've also liked the idea of, say, a caravan/merchant/lowbie party/etc passing through, and being able to shadow them and protect them from maurading monsters - all without the caravan/etc even knowing I was there. Most of the time, a ranger character would be just sneaking around, so there would need to be some sort of skill gain not related to combat to cover this, such as a "area" experince pool where if a character knows the area well, bonuses to stealth and movement. Other ideas include: * some sort of reward for preventing monsters from attacking travelers - whether by negotiation, leading them away, or just killing them * keeping nature balanced type quests, such as wolves killing more deer than before, so thin out their numbers, or vice versa, too many deer, so thin out the deer * rewards for protecting villages, whether by kill all the monsters in a region, making sure monsters are happy so they don't start attacking, providing advance warning if a raid of some type is approaching, etc. * building a cabin or staking out a cave or customizing a grove, or some such, basically a stronghold of some type, plus all the stuff related to keeping this up. For instance, camoflaging the enterance to a cave, or building a makeshift forge for repairs, or storing fletching equipment there to improve arrow making, etc.
I realize that a lot of this stuff is combat focused, which was the point of the article, but at the same time, this allows for a greater variety of character types, and is definetly a change of pace from the "Go out and kill something for xp, return to town to sell stuff & repair, repeat" formula which basically defines most mmorpgs. I think that this also weens players and developers from that mentality, and will open up more oppertunities, and incrementally lead to much of the things the article was talking about.
the issue of having to do one thing in order to be able to do another already has a solution: skill system.
however, i think thats not enough. in most skill games, all the goods that can be created are for combat uses. even if it can be done in other ways, the backbone of the economy is still combat.
different games try different things, like the chroncle of spellborn making most of the rewards focused on exploration, but still: the reward IS being more powerful in combat.
how can we reach alternative backbones for the game?
well, you can make the game into a complete invertebrate: games like second life, where you really don't have any goal. this is fun to the extent of which the games tools are, and i would really like more games to have such tools, but this looses something special for mmo's: the potential of your actions becoming meaninful in another players expirience.
one way of doing so is not having combat at all. all power is derived out of acomplishments unreleated to combat: tale in the desert, sims online, puzzle pirates, etc... yes, limiting the possible activities limits the directions in which soceity can move into, easy right? no icecream industry with no icecream. but everyone knows (despite dentistry) that icecreams is good for you from time to time.
another way is making long term surviving the basic goal of your character. if you have a game with permadeath, and you have more risks then you can fight, like starvation, gods, and enemy npc's actually attacking you instead of you attacking them, then the economy, any religious system, and construction, suddently become as importent to the game as combat.
"leave the fight and run away, and you'l live and get drunk another day"
or something of that sort... trials of ascension if completely focused around this, while the chronicle include it to a lesser and more indevidualised extent.
this design style might become very successful in the future. it doesn't take a long time to feel a certein staleness to most modern mmo activites, coming not only out of lack of inflounce over the world, but also, in my opinion, because the veil between "expirience" and existentialist see-through is that much thinner: not only the game is an ilusion, but any feedback the game provided you such as gain or lose, is an ilusion within that ilusion: it doesn't mean anything even within the game terms. however, if the main goal of a regular game is an ilusion of "power", which corresponds with needs for tools of self-perservation, then a game where the main ilusion is self preservation, a.k.a. character-preservation, will hit us that much deeper.
i personaly believe that you can take it even deeper or aim at different spots: freedom of expression with an icreasing rate of the world reaction to your expression, while giving you the opertunity to "explore" the results of your actions, could be an even greater reward. an everexpanding range of system interaction, vogue enough to not be obvious, can lead to even greater sense of wonder if done right. remember: at some point in our lives, you probebly thought that the ability to turn light switchs on and off was the most amazing thing in the world, and to some extent, we are still those little curious people, when the distance between what we do and the wolds reaction is vogue enough to mystify us.
Comments
MMO games played or tested: EQ, DAoC, Archlord, Auto Assault, CoH, CoV, EQ2, EVE, Guild Wars, Hellgate: London, Linneage II, LOTRO, MxO, Planetside, SWG, Sword of the New World, Tabula Rasa, Vanguard, WWIIOL, WOW, Age of Conan
Very interesting article (it made me subscribe to this site).
In order to get people interested to any kind of alternative style of playing, a game should explore the problem at the source: what is the measure of a succesfull character?
Its generally easy to identify what players are after and, from that, the means they have at their disposal to acquire it will determine the way they'll shape their gameplay. For example, if the game is xp based and the sole way for a player to actually gauge his/her success is the xp meter, then all players (with a very small minority of exceptional individuals) will go the main route to acquire xp the fastest... quite simple up to here, right?
So if bashing trolls or sinking ships is the fastest (and as is often the case, the only way to obtain rewards) you know what your players are going to spend their time on. It could be made a case that allowing players to gain xp through singing or dancing might reward the players going that route just as much as the ones bashing trolls. The only problem is that universally, if there is no other measure for a character success than his xp, the level X troll-bashing character will always be able to go bash the level X singing character's face in whenever he wants (even tho both have accumulated the same amount of xp by becoming experts in their respective professions). Granted the singing character could try and serenade the tough guy to death but that might prove more difficult than expected.
So how do we make games that allow different carreer paths to compete? The answer i come up with everytime is this: We need the great equilizer. And no, i dont mean a gun here. I mean money. I do firmly believe that the maestro singer, interplanetary star of the bothan empire may very well be 10 times more powerfull than any galactic bounty hunter just because he has earned a fortune and made powerfull connections in the establishment by the sole virtue of being the best damn voice this side of the galaxy. A player really bent on becoming an important social figure may very well become a viable option if the amount of his succes is globally measured by the money he owns. In clear, the level of character in his profession should only measure his possibility of obtaining the universal units of success (in our case, money units).
The next logically assumption here being that the game's structure allow riches to actually be put to work for the character. Of course it doenst hold true if the only thing you can buy with your money is a better blaster or the +9 skin eating battle sword with laser shark eyes. But if being rich allows you to actually restrict another character's access to certain zones by bribing officials or simply affording personal protection by other players or NPCs, then the singing richman may very well have the upper hand on our ass-kicking asocial bounty hunter. One of the worst example of this that comes to mind is World of warcraft: lets say you took control of the market and now you're ubber rich. Well, first of all you;re already original because this example happens to be one of the only ways to make money outisde of becoming the ubber adventurer. Then what? can you actually spend your money on something fruitfull? Not really, you cant bribe your way into royalty, you cant buy the crossroads and buy your own militia, you cant even build a house, much less a guild place for other people to congregate. What can you do? Count your money. that's about it.
Another point is the place of NPCs in a player-driven world. Should that fat NPC leather crafter be replaceable by the entreprising young elf player if this one decides to take his place? What's with the unnattainable characters? Devs dont want to see a king killed? make him tougher to get to but not impossible by some game mechanics short-cut. Fat merchant stores riches by the truck loads in his back shop? he better call Brinks to move it over to his bank. Someone mugged the banker and ran with the coffers? How about a player character with tons of money and guns for hire takes his place at the new player-owned bank of commerce?
From all this stems the conclusion that, in order to offer different avenues to gamers, the games way of enjoying your rewards must be diversified. Multiple ways of accumulating xp, money or items should be enjoyed in multiple ways by the different kinds of players you wish to have in your world. Hence, games should strive to "open up" their content as much as possible to player interaction. Player owned structures or organizations should integrate with existing content as thigtly as possible. Players should have the same status than NPCs (their all CHARACTERS after all in the story).
Hope i didnt bore you to death and thank you all for reading.
"Why are MMORPGs almost universally based on combat? Aside from a few rare exceptions, the vast majority of games, online and offline, are centered around, or at least focused on, battle."
Answer:
Those few rare exceptions you mention have little to no subscriber base and therefor are nonprofitable.
The Sims offline = The most popular PC game in history.
The Sims Online failed.
"In continued mourning of what it once was, the original release of Star Wars Galaxies also incorporated a wide variety of non-combat activities, and in the same vein, so did Ultima Online. Were talking about activities that have nothing to do with battle here, so the ability to craft healing potions out of herbs doesnt count, because thats something directly related to combat."
This just in: Star Wars galaxies sucked then and still sucks now. It has been completely revamped and still continues to be horrible. Why? becuase the combat was dismal and whats worse the combat was the most enjoyable aspect of the game. The Star Wars license is arguably the best IP possible for an MMO and even that couldn't save the game.
I love articles like this. A guy who is obviosuly not in the industry calls out to the industry to provide gameplay that he will ultimately label as "boring".
There are reasons that combat systems dominate the current MMO market. The biggest one being time. The second being resources. Developers do not have the time nor the money to invest in robust non combat advancement schemes.
Do any of you honestly think the industry hasn't tried?
They have. The reason that there aren't many of these systems in place in most games is simple. They just don't provide enough gameplay and more importantly hog up content resources better spent on combat driven encounter centric game play.
Always good to hear from a skeptic. Stating that something can't or shouldn't be done is a great motivator.
That said, I'm with Nathan on this one (and here's yet another sensible essay from him -- I'm starting to respect this guy).
Here's my take on why too many games are wildly combat-centric. I believe there are two main reasons for this:
1. Big Developer reason: Marketing says the target demo wants combat.
2. Small Developer reason: The lead designer likes combat.
There's no help for the big developers. Marketing controls design, and marketing can't see past current (hardcore) gamers to the many, many, many more people out there with computers and Internet connections who'd just like to play a nice casual, cooperative game.
The small developers are the problem, because they at least are in a position to innovate if they felt like it... but they don't. Instead, games get made by people with a lot of passion and free time. These energetic people get to decide what the game will be about -- and most folks like this care primarily about competitive, action-oriented play. That's what excites them, so that's the kind of game they create.
Constructive play, exploratory play, social play -- these designers just don't get why anybody would want to waste their time on that kind of stuff. Result: those kinds of gameplay are implemented only grudgingly, if at all. And then they're ignored post-launch in order to focus on enhancing combat.
From my perspective, the reason there aren't more games with great non-combat features is that there aren't more designers who understand and respect people who enjoy non-combat gameplay, and who have the opportunity and means to create games.
The two impediments to this happening are:
Solve those two problems, and the builders of non-combat worlds will come.
Sturgeon's Law will still apply, but at least we'll finally start seeing the 5% of worlds that blow away the designers of yet another utterly conventional hack'n'slash world.
--Flatfingers
Dude, you stole my idea!
Right on.
Add that to the long, long, long, long, LONG list of reasons why MMOs today basically suck.
WE WANT World of EVEcraft, EVErquest and EVE Galaxies!
I'd normally be able to forgive the incompetence of the entire MMO industry except... these assholes repeatedly lie about their products having EVE-like features when they don't!
-Battlegrounds? why are there battles here? why are we fighting at all?
-Why are there Guild Wars? What guilds? What wars? What is with all these damn arenas? WHY ARE WE FIGHTING?
-Galactic Civil War? Don't make me laugh. What civil war? Between who and who? In case SOE didn't realize, they designed and built a Galactic Star Wars Theme Park.
Seriously, I've been hearing the EVE worshippers out there for a while, and they have a point. Intentionally or accidentally, EVE has hit upon the exact sorts of features that can make a game fun without involving combat. Why can't every MMO developer publicy admit their idiocy and failure, bow down to EVE, and promise to integrate those features into every future MMO design? If a single company would do that, they'd have a guaranteed pre-order here.
Just wanted to mention my personal wishlist for an online game. Ever since playing AD&D, I've been fascinated with the ranger character - protector of the woodlands type. I've always wanted to play the type of character who watches over a particular spot in the wilderness, sneaking around, checking up on things. If a bunch of characters move in and start wasting all the creatures in sight, Mr. Ranger steps in and kicks their butts. I've also liked the idea of, say, a caravan/merchant/lowbie party/etc passing through, and being able to shadow them and protect them from maurading monsters - all without the caravan/etc even knowing I was there. Most of the time, a ranger character would be just sneaking around, so there would need to be some sort of skill gain not related to combat to cover this, such as a "area" experince pool where if a character knows the area well, bonuses to stealth and movement. Other ideas include:
* some sort of reward for preventing monsters from attacking travelers - whether by negotiation, leading them away, or just killing them
* keeping nature balanced type quests, such as wolves killing more deer than before, so thin out their numbers, or vice versa, too many deer, so thin out the deer
* rewards for protecting villages, whether by kill all the monsters in a region, making sure monsters are happy so they don't start attacking, providing advance warning if a raid of some type is approaching, etc.
* building a cabin or staking out a cave or customizing a grove, or some such, basically a stronghold of some type, plus all the stuff related to keeping this up. For instance, camoflaging the enterance to a cave, or building a makeshift forge for repairs, or storing fletching equipment there to improve arrow making, etc.
I realize that a lot of this stuff is combat focused, which was the point of the article, but at the same time, this allows for a greater variety of character types, and is definetly a change of pace from the "Go out and kill something for xp, return to town to sell stuff & repair, repeat" formula which basically defines most mmorpgs. I think that this also weens players and developers from that mentality, and will open up more oppertunities, and incrementally lead to much of the things the article was talking about.
the issue of having to do one thing in order to be able to do another already has a solution: skill system.
however, i think thats not enough. in most skill games, all the goods that can be created are for combat uses. even if it can be done in other ways, the backbone of the economy is still combat.
different games try different things, like the chroncle of spellborn making most of the rewards focused on exploration, but still: the reward IS being more powerful in combat.
how can we reach alternative backbones for the game?
well, you can make the game into a complete invertebrate: games like second life, where you really don't have any goal. this is fun to the extent of which the games tools are, and i would really like more games to have such tools, but this looses something special for mmo's: the potential of your actions becoming meaninful in another players expirience.
one way of doing so is not having combat at all. all power is derived out of acomplishments unreleated to combat: tale in the desert, sims online, puzzle pirates, etc... yes, limiting the possible activities limits the directions in which soceity can move into, easy right? no icecream industry with no icecream. but everyone knows (despite dentistry) that icecreams is good for you from time to time.
another way is making long term surviving the basic goal of your character. if you have a game with permadeath, and you have more risks then you can fight, like starvation, gods, and enemy npc's actually attacking you instead of you attacking them, then the economy, any religious system, and construction, suddently become as importent to the game as combat.
"leave the fight and run away, and you'l live and get drunk another day"
or something of that sort... trials of ascension if completely focused around this, while the chronicle include it to a lesser and more indevidualised extent.
this design style might become very successful in the future. it doesn't take a long time to feel a certein staleness to most modern mmo activites, coming not only out of lack of inflounce over the world, but also, in my opinion, because the veil between "expirience" and existentialist see-through is that much thinner: not only the game is an ilusion, but any feedback the game provided you such as gain or lose, is an ilusion within that ilusion: it doesn't mean anything even within the game terms. however, if the main goal of a regular game is an ilusion of "power", which corresponds with needs for tools of self-perservation, then a game where the main ilusion is self preservation, a.k.a. character-preservation, will hit us that much deeper.
i personaly believe that you can take it even deeper or aim at different spots: freedom of expression with an icreasing rate of the world reaction to your expression, while giving you the opertunity to "explore" the results of your actions, could be an even greater reward. an everexpanding range of system interaction, vogue enough to not be obvious, can lead to even greater sense of wonder if done right. remember: at some point in our lives, you probebly thought that the ability to turn light switchs on and off was the most amazing thing in the world, and to some extent, we are still those little curious people, when the distance between what we do and the wolds reaction is vogue enough to mystify us.
i'm sure their are other ways