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What MMORPG Gamers Really Want (very long)
Ghazni
Member UncommonPosts: 23
This is something I wrote for a couple upcoming MMORPG developers. I never intended to post it on a discussion board so it is extremely long. If you don't want to read 9 pages of material, then click "back" now.
WHAT MMORPG GAMERS REALLY WANT:
A Strategic Plan on How to Design a Successful Massively Multiplayer Online Game in Today’s Market, Step-by-Step
June 12, 2008
Making the Case for a Breath of Fresh Air
I’ll get straight to the point here: There is a significant market share of MMORPG players who are not being targeted by any game currently released or in development. If any developer targeted that audience with a quality game, I can assure you that, if designed under the guidelines I provide here, the game would continue to draw at least 3-500,000 active subscribers years after it was released, and still be growing. The true maximum potential for such a game is yet unknown, however, and could pull many casual gamers into its grip, increasing this number. That untapped source is the “hardcore” gamer.
By “hardcore”, I don’t simply mean someone willing to play video games 8 hours/day. Instead, I’m referring to the gamer more willing to involve himself in the game and push himself to meet challenges that some other gamers would rather avoid. I’ll be honest…such a player does not make-up the largest MMO audience that there is (the casual gamer), but that audience is already claimed by Blizzard at the moment and is inferior to the hardcore gamer in a specific way that I’ll address shortly. However, the hardcore gamer is, I believe, the second largest audience with unknown potential to grow once tapped. For evidence of the amount of hardcore players still out there, one need only look log into any major MMO and hear gripes about how dumbed down MMOs are, or browse message boards for the same kind of complaints, or even look at current Everquest subscription numbers. Everquest, the most hardcore MMO yet released, has been out for 9 years, undergone 14 expansions, and still has as many active subscribers as Everquest 2 (a much more casual MMORPG). This helps show that gamers are not looking for another casual MMORPG anymore. [Unfortunately, EQ1 failed on many other levels, which I would be happy to point out in another paper if so desired.] If you have any further doubts, just browse some MMO forums and look at how many people have tried half a dozen or more MMOs in just a few years. Look at how hordes of desperate MMO gamers jump all over any new MMOs that comes out, hoping that they will like it better than their current one. Here is a copy of a poll I put on MMORPG.com:
What MMO Style Best Suits You? |
|
PvP-oriented 10.7% |
|
PvE w/ casual gameplay. Most accomplishments can be done in a 1-2 hour session. Groups are very optional. Travel is safe. Death penalty is low. 14.3% |
|
PvE w/ challenging environments. Travel is dangerous and long. Harsher death penalties. Most accomplishments take awhile. Groups are highly encouraged. 50.0% |
|
Something in between. 14.3% |
|
None of the above. 10.7% |
|
Based on 28 votes. |
|
Granted the polling numbers are low and it’s a slightly biased environment, but it does somewhat back what I’m saying about an audience being out there for a more challenging game like this. I constantly talk to players who are unsatisfied with their current game, yearning for more. I can’t quantify these figures, but I have talked to and read from enough gamers that I believe there is certainly market for a hardcore MMO. The type of game that there is not a market for is the casual gamer. World of Warcraft has these gamers lock, stock, and barrel. Copying WoW with 1-2 improvements will not create a breakthrough MMO. Only Lord of the Rings has discovered how to draw at least some of the audience away from WoW, and that was with a licensed product that appealed very specifically to fans of Lord of the Rings. This is difficult to emulate and you will never get the subscriber numbers that you will if you target the gamers I’m talking about.
As I was stating earlier, although existing in lower numbers than casual gamers, hardcore gamers have a quality that casual gamers do not: longevity. By contrast, casual gamers put much less work into their game and feel far less of a connection to it. This is not only due to their personal preferences, but because of the games themselves. Casual MMOs in which rewards come easy and tasks are simple have less of a stranglehold on gamers. This means that casual gamers are:
1) More prone to drop their accounts due to minor conflicts with real-life,
2) More prone to drop their accounts when minor issues arise with the game, and
3) More prone to drop their accounts when other MMOs are released.
They have no investment in their casual MMO. Just think about Everquest. Never in the history of gaming has a videogame been more addictive to its players, even to the point where it was commonly referred to as EverCrack. Even now, players do not have ties as strong to their MMOs as they did to that game. Why is this? It’s because no other MMO has forced its players to invest as much of themselves into their characters as Everquest did, but I will get more into that later. You are NOT trying to emulate Everquest, but it is unfortunately the closest game yet released to what you are aiming to create. As such, you will find me referencing the game quite a bit throughout this paper.
Now, I want to proceed in a different format…sort of a 8 Commandments for developing a game that will succeed in this audience’s eyes:
1) Be honest when you market the game. Brutally honest.
Do not try to market your game as something it is not! You need to come out and tell people that you’re making an MMO that has more player interaction, more challenge, more teamwork, no PvP, etc etc etc….whatever you want to say. But make sure that people know your game will not appeal to all audiences. This has the anti-politician effect, in that you are straight-out telling the truth about your game, which automatically appeals to consumers, because consumers mistrust corporations, jus as they mistrust politicians. In addition, this will do two more positive things for the game:
1) It will lessen the bad reviews. If you describe the game well enough, gamers who are not interested in such a type of game will not purchase it. This will lower the amount of negativity directed towards the game online and by word-of-mouth. You do not want truly casual players mistakenly playing this game, (though you may hopefully be able to convert some of them).
2) The actual hardcore gamers you are targeting will respect the game for making that statement. They know that by saying such things, you are without-a-doubt making a game that knows what it is and what it isn’t; not something that will try to compromise and please everyone (and fail).
2) The game is Player vs Environment. Focus solely on that.
Making a PvE game also successful as a PvP game is incredibly challenging and takes much more effort than it is worth. Working classes so that the environments, the PvE players, and the PvP players all remain balanced is extremely difficult and almost assuredly will result in detriment to at least one of the groups; probably all. In the end, the gamers your game is targeting will not be concerned with PvP as much as most other gamers, anyway. Their focus is on accomplishment and teamwork…advancing through more and more difficult objectives…achieving greater and greater rewards. PvP generally holds only momentary rewards and will not interest your target audience to the point where it is a make-or-break checkbox for their dream game. It should be properly minimalized, (i.e. duels, simple arenas, and such). Such a split focus also makes the game a working compromise, which not something you want to do.
3) MMO games rely on word-of-mouth/discussion-board advertising. In-game and out-of-game customer service must be pristine.
Make sure your game offers absolutely fantastic customer service. With the complexity of MMORPGs and the myriad of problems that they will have, one of the quickest ways to frustrate a customer is to force him to halt what he is doing and wait for you to fix your product. And while he is waiting, he is constantly thinking about what is wrong with the game. The game must also have an outstanding log so that GMs can properly reimburse players and not find themselves between a rock and a hard place in trying to differentiate between scams and truly wronged players. CS representatives must also interact heavily with the players on the forums. If players feel their concerns about the game or their classes are unnoticed, they will be more prone to leave. Every major concern by the players should be addressed and justified. If healers want to know why their heals are worse than a druids, answer them. If bards feel half of their songs are useless, answer their concerns. Such personal attention (especially to class balancing and bugs) is something that players are not used to and will give the game outstanding brownie points in comparison to the man-hours it will cost. Q&As should occur frequently. Verant/SOE’s atrocious customer service is one of the reasons it lost so many players to WoW. Ex-EQ1 players (one of the groups you’re looking to convert to your game) will remember this especially hard, though all MMO players know how important good CS is.
4) Gathering 100 skeleton bones is not a quest. It’s sad.
I’m not going to go into detail here about specific ideas I have, but suffice to say quests are one of the more important aspects of this game. People are sick to death of meaningless quests. Working one’s way to the max level should not be a chore. It should be as enjoyable as the endgame (or nearly so). As it is, no MMO has yet accomplished this. Enjoyment at pre-endgame levels exists, but it is minimal. For the most part, after their first time through, players do not create new characters for the purpose of experiencing lower levels again. That is why bots and account purchasing are so commonplace. For an MMO to attain longevity, it must have replayability. For an MMO, this means that players must have a good deal of incentive to create new characters. If working their way to level 50 is not fun, subscribers will be more prone to quit the game.
It is possible to create quests that are neither repetitive (kill 20 bats), delivery oriented (go here, talk to this guy, go there), nor time sinks (waiting). Although there are times for these kinds of quests, they should be kept at a minimum because, set up as they usually are, they are not fun. As it is, 90% of MMO quests fall under one of those three categories. Quests should be meaningful to the player. A good test of this is: If the player didn’t read the text of the quest, but just went about accomplishing its objectives, would he be able to piece together the general story on his own? If the answer is no, then the quest does not truly involve the player. The story of the quest must unfold in front of the player in his environment, not in his text window. (see #5 for more info on quests)
5) The world is a living thing, not a wax museum.
Possibly more important than quests is the environment, which includes both NPCs and the static setting. This is an area in which there is currently a great deal of room for improvement, especially in NPC behavior. Currently, games have non-mob NPCs who do nothing but stand like statues on street corners, in shops, or out in middle of a desert. For the most part, they never move or interact with anything. Even mobs are 50/50 in this respect. Some wander set paths seemingly for no purpose, or just stand in a circle staring at each other. Needless to say, their environments do not change either. You call this immersion? You want the player to feel like he is part of a living, breathing world. There should be a vast array of events that occur as NPCs live out their lives around the player. NPCs should not be anywhere without a purpose. The same goes for mobs. Creatures do not stand up around a campfire in a perfect circle, perfectly still, staring at nothing. Instead, consider this. Perhaps they are preparing to roast a halfling over the fire. If you barge in and slay the camp at just the right time, you can talk to the halfling (quest!). If you’re too late, the halfling is dead and you must tell his family (faction!). If you’re too early, the creatures who are returning with the recently-captured halfling see you attacking their camp and send for reinforcements (boss fight!). That is just one example of how world events could happen. Players are more willing to enjoy interacting openly with the storyline as it unfolds around them as opposed to killing indiscriminately.
Such a revamp of the environment must include something else important: mob AI. As of right now, no MMO has given their creatures any AI at all. They stand stationary waiting to be killed. When they are attacked, their associates stand 30ft away like they’re blind and do nothing. The creatures have no concept of who is attacking them and will continue to fight no matter how outnumbered. They use no strategies of their own and require no strategies to be defeated. This is unacceptable. You want your players immersed in the game. You want them to have encounters that they will remember. Standing 50ft away from a group of enemies and pulling them one-by-one for hours is ridiculous. No self-aware creature on the planet is so dumb. Any other genre of game would get laughed at if they had NPCs behave as they do in MMOs. Here’s a contrasting example of what mob behavior could be like: Your group sees a bandit camp in a forest clearing and runs up to the camp to start killing. As you approach, one of them runs away in the opposite direction. You ignore him and start clearing the bandit camp. You are doing well when suddenly you are attacked from the forest by a few scouts that you never saw, because you never looked for them. Your group is now barely holding its ground when the bandit you saw running away earlier returns with a dozen reinforcements and your group is utterly destroyed. Some of your members tried to run away but even more scouts out in the forest intercepted them before they made it too far. You reform and try again, this time with a real strategy. Enemy NPCs must have some idea of when they’re outnumbered, evenly matched, or when you don’t stand a chance, and behave according to the intelligence that such an NPC would be expected to have. Just ask yourself: How would a normal human/goblin/snake behave under certain conditions? The answer would be different for all three mobs, I would hope. Would an intelligent creature stay and fight when he finds himself alone against six players? He would probably try to run. Would he call for reinforcements if his camp is invaded by only two players? Probably not, but the players never know…maybe this particular smuggler is paranoid and will send for reinforcements if he sees more than one player at a time. And what strategies are used to defeat him? How can you prevent him from sending out for help? What strategies do mobs use against you? As players progress to fight more difficult NPCs, they must encounter more difficult strategies with which to cope as well. I would hope a level 40 thief has a different (and hopefully better) attack strategy than a level 5 thief, though they should all have common sense.
Additionally, GM interaction with gamers is always a plus. Creating unique game events, hosting special competitions, hosting some sort of game, or any other such things always contribute to player involvement with the game experiences (which I will cover later) and, of course, add to the fluidity of the environment.
Such changes are incredible leaps forward for the MMO industry, which itself has exponential benefits. If gamers played an MMO with a living world and real mob AI, they would never want to return to games without these qualities. Thinking back on WoW/EQ/LotRO/etc, players would undoubtedly laugh at how utterly stupid the NPCs were. At the very least they would feel more disrespect towards the older games, and far more respect for yours. Players in your game would also feel that they were above other players who played such comparatively dumbed-down MMOs, because they feel the sense of pride that comes with accomplishing tasks that took real strategy and skill. Other players would inevitably hear the voices of those playing your game, creating that much more hype. Such advances would be enormous steps forward for gamers, and they would be far less willing to take that step back to switch to another game. Developers would have no choice but to try and emulate your game because you have set the new standard.
6) Never catch yourself thinking about how to improve on someone else’s concept of anything.
One of the reasons MMOs are having difficulty right now is that they contain very little innovation. Developers will not succeed by copying any game currently out. Never think: “How can we improve this game so that grouping is more appealing?”. Instead, think: “Do we even need formally set groups?” Keep going: “Do we need stats on items? Do we need levels? Do we need names above NPC’s heads? Do we need global chat?” Some of these examples probably wouldn’t work, but you understand my point, I hope. Start from scratch on every single idea. Reconsider every aspect of what an MMO is supposed to be. Why is everyone copying the format that Everquest and WoW made? Everquest was one of the first major MMOs released (aside from UO)…do you think they got everything right on the first game of the genre? Do you think that only moderate improvements need to be made? As different as current MMOs are from EQ1, they still run on essentially the same basic rule set. Why can’t a game be played in a completely different way? Players are sick of clones of current games. These people are becoming more and more suspicious of games as they continually jump on them with anticipation as they release and are disappointed by the lack of creativity in game play. Right now, it’s easy to create hype with an MMO…it’s hard to keep it. Or maybe not so hard…
7) Give players freedom and options, and they will come back for more.
The MMO you are creating must have as little restrictions for gamers as possible. There are some concessions that must be made…such as instituting certain rules that ensure the game’s economy is not ruined in the future, and placing safeguards against kill-stealing and loot-stealing, but other than such obvious necessities, you should let players develop their own ways of playing. Let gamers surprise you with the strategies that they come up with to kill creatures. Do not limit their freedom with artificial restrictions. This will only make the game less involved and the classes more alike. Also, there cannot be a central storyline that they must follow. Players must, for the most part, be let out on their own to choose their own path. If they are forced to follow a certain storyline two of the huge advantages to an RPG are lost: player choice and creativity. You must say to the player “Here is the world. Create your own story. Travel to new and distant places. Fight anywhere you please. Explore the vast world around you. We will show you how to fish, but then you are free to fish on your own.” You must offer the players choices on where to go. All this does not even mention the fact that this exponentially increases the replay value for players. Right now, gamers usually do not enjoy creating another class and going through the same things all over again; however, when you give them choices not only in locations to play, but in ways to play, they will come back for more with other characters.
Of course, this all applies to class diversity as well, though getting into that area is too specific for this paper.
8) Gameplay does not have to be difficult, but it must be challenging. There is a difference.
Many gamers do not like dumbed down MMOs. None of your target audience does (I’ll explain why later). Therefore, you have to make sure your game has challenges that differentiate it from all the other MMOs in this aspect. However, there is a definite difference between “difficulty” and “challenge”. If you look both words up in the dictionary, you will see that “difficulty” is associated with “struggle”, while “challenge” is associated with “skill”. That is the difference, right there. Giving a mob more hit points is adding difficulty and is not something players will necessarily find attractive by itself. Killing that mob may require a tiny bit more attention from the player, but not necessarily any more skill. They either have the straight-forward ability to kill it or they do not. Changing the hit points only changes the struggle. Take that same mob, however, and give him a plethora of interesting abilities and surprises, and the player is now forced to react in ways to counter these abilities, which (if done correctly) will require at least some skill; i.e. the knowledge of his abilities and the target’s behavior and how they interact for the most favorable outcome.
Many of the ways to make a game more challenging I have hinted at earlier, most notably mob AI, but there are of course a lot more ways to force the players into creating their own strategies in order to succeed. I won’t provide specific ideas here, but I do think it’s important for MMO designers to understand why hardcore gamers prefer challenging games. Simply, it’s because of two things:
1) A sense of accomplishment
If a quest or an encounter does not challenge the player, he will not respect the reward. It’s that simple. The less it requires of him, the less meaning it has. That is a simple fact, and very important to note.
2) A sense of experiences
This is a little more complicated. If you talk to an ex-EQ1 player, you will notice they have all sorts of stories about all the memories they had with the game. A great many players who have since quit the game still enjoy discussing all their experiences of different zones, raids, dungeons, travels, or quests. They all presented their own very unique sets of challenges that lasted forever in the minds of the players. This gave them a connection to the game that made it hard to leave. This is primarily where the EverCrack addiction came from. More specifically, I believe 1/3rd of the addiction was due to accomplishment (the amount of effort one has put into their character) and 2/3rd due to the connections players had with the game due to all the distinct experiences. However, players can never have these experiences if there are no challenges. Players will never remember all the long and incredibly dangerous journeys if death is easy to avoid, death penalties are next to nothing, or if one can travel from anywhere to anywhere in 10 minutes by boats, teleports, dragons, or whatever else. Players will also never associate a zone with anything in their mind if it does not offer something uniquely unpredictable, such as a dangerous wandering mob, or loads of enemies being trained everywhere, or some sort of event or challenge that makes the entire zone distinct. They will just think “Uh…I leveled in a zone that was in a forest, I moved to one that was in a desert, then I moved to one near a volcano…” They will have no connection to the zones they spent so much time in. Players will come away with nothing but levels.
Death must have harsh penalties. Travel must be dangerous. Encounters must be challenging. Environments must be unpredictable.
Two more things I want to talk about in this section are grouping and raiding. Firstly, I believe any MMO, no matter how hardcore, has to leave in the ability for players to solo. No matter how good the grouping system, or how many players there are, or how much incentive there exists for grouping, there will always be times where a player has no choice but to solo, or would still prefer to solo, and they must have the ability to do this and be able to advance their character all the way to the top level if they so choose.
With that said, developers must not forget what the first three letters stand for in MMORPG. If you are going to make soloing so appealing to players that they don’t see a very forceful incentive to group, they will solo, and will not enjoy what the game could otherwise offer them. You need to make sure that grouping promises much greater rewards and fun than soloing. You need to make sure to design quests around groups. You need to make sure that players will somehow have the incentive to group with any other player at any given time, whether they are on the same quest or not. You need to have the absolute easiest LFG tool yet created to connect gamers. MMORPGs are designed around groups to get the most out of the game play. Players should ideally be grouping from the single-digit levels all the way to the max level if they so desire. Groups should be barely optional.
Now, as far as raids…Raids are one of the most sought-after experiences for hardcore gamers. The amount of teamwork, cohesion, challenge, and reward is amazing, With dozens of players grouped together, they can accomplish some pretty impressive things that they can be proud of. These people will neglect their wives and children for these raids, trust me. Unfortunately, they are all too rare in games until you reach the highest levels. In this game, they should be one of the main selling points. From some of the lowest levels to some of the highest levels there should be huge opportunities for multi-group encounters, with all the same incentives that were built into the grouping system. The more players involved, the better (do not put a restriction on numbers if at all possible!). As with grouping, raids should be barely optional.
The End
Comments
very good post
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
tl;dr
_________________
Senhores da Guerra
I didn't disagree with everthing you said but the raid-or-quit mentality from the devs was the reason I quit EQ.
I didn't leave EQ because of hell levels, corpse runs, long down time, the idiotic inability of melees to bind themselves, death penalties, or the slow leveling.
I quit because at the end the game I loved ceased to exist and the raiding game began. And that's the only reason I quit.
Totally 100% agree, with everything.
Only reason I quit EQ was because my guild went to DAoC.
ATM MMOrpgs are a joke, they are so incredibly easy.. ... .. .. hell coming from MUDs I thought EQ was easy.
Why do MMOrpgs begin at max level now? where is the journey, why are all games solo borefest quest-a-thons.
Why with technology continually increasing as well as internet speed, do we have instances and
restricted raid sizes?,. 40 players is not a raid.
Make raids hard, that was originally how they started, a dungeon/boss that you can do over and over
a few times a week, is not raiding. Raiding should be epic.
..etc ... my 2c, Rant off.
Does anyone know how to make a mmoRPG anymore?
Totally agree with Nean here. 1 of the fundamental flaw of current mmo now is their end-game concept. The RAID-or-die, or pvp-or-die mentallity must be done away with. A game will have more holding power if their end-game is more open ended....
RIP Orc Choppa
Then what's your solution? Do you have any ideas?
Great Read!
I can only hope that someone will make that game you just described in the near future, which caters to the "hardcore" and loyal playerbase.
You are in part right, challenge definitely needs to come back to mmos, but I think you’re confusing challenge with time sinks.
The only thing I really disagree with is scrapping PvP. The reason I liked DAoC is because it had what I thought was fun PvE, and good grouping dynamics, AND if you got bored with PvE, you could go PvP.
Yes, it's very hard to design a game that does both well, but IMO, it's worth the effort.
This thread brings a smile to my face. You're just like me... so observant on the nature of MMORPGs that you can almost write a "how to" book about it. Me too bro, me too.
This post is well thought out and a good read, but somewhat bizarre in its basic premise.
I mean, surely if you want to know "what MMORPG gamers really want", you should be asking Blizzard, since the vast majority of "MMORPG gamers" play WoW and have been doing for years.
What real mmorpg players want who like to have PVP in an MMO is Darkfall, look no further:).
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
There has to be a different method or a different way of leveling up than the usual quest grind or mob grind. They can actually not be revolutionary but innovative and add some more spice or excitement for the leveling process. Most MMOs are slow paced in action and have the usual errand boy, kill x amount. Some company needs to break from this or add something different.
Most MMOs are the same in almost every aspect, just executed differently.
The best thing I think you said was to stop taking old games and saying "how should we make this better." When you do that, you are just going to remake the same game. It's very difficult to be creative this way. You need to start with a clean sheet, decide what kind of game you want to make, and start setting out some of the major goals and rules for the project. Then you brainstorm like crazy. When you match the brainstorm to the goals, you will find that many things don't quite fit. Maybe you can really bring something new to the table?
Also I totally agree with the point about trying to copy WoW and get a piece of the market. While there are other games which are getting some of that market, the harcore market exists as well and if there were a great modern game that catered to them I don't think you would be lacking subscribers.
But I don't think raids are hardcore, and I don't think severely encouraging grouping is really going to do much either. I'd like to see a game where there are a few people who solo'ed to max level and are considered godlike - not because they have too much time on their hands either, but just because they are extremely skilled.
It's some good stuff to think about.
Its was well written but totally based on evequest OP.
Manythings you said contradicts becouse in a way you want again a everquest.
If you would have played UO or AC not even mentioned:(, you would have understand much better how next mmo should be for hardcore, now you dont.
Even if you dont like Darkfall or wanne play such game you should at least have go over to there website and read all gamelore and dev yournals you would had a far better understanding of what a NEXt MMO should be, with or without pvp, now its just well written but so incomplete, and not realy good analises for new next hardcore MMO, sorry you have missed your chance to realy write a master piece on how a hardcore pve/pvp mmo should be in future.
But keep trying its a good start at least better then 90% of most topics here:)
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
First off threads like this are a bit dubious because... what gamers want varies from gamer to gamer.
Now to what I quoted.
I agree with half of the first thing I quoted.
The problem isn't trying to take an old game and make it better. This actually ties into the second line I quoted..
People are copying WoW... WoW did the same thing the vast majority of games have done. They just made it very casual. Oh what is this.. Well I'll just call it EQ syndrome.
I call it EQ syndrome because EQ was the first MMO I played to do this and.. what worked very well in single player RPG's has ended up imho being the bane of MMO development.
Class, Level, Raid/uber item.
^^ That for the most part is what 99% of MMO's are doing. Even pvp games like DAoC have the "leet must have item(s)".
My first MMO was Ultima Online. No uber items.. sure a pvp player would give me a ton of gold for magical weapons/armor.. personal experience told me they didn't do any better than my master crafted items. So I sold them of course.
Player economy that worked.. actual reasons to craft (people bought my stuff for the entire 6 years I played).
No I don't want someone to copy UO... I just want that kind of freedom and lessons learned from mistake made.. applied. I'm also sick to death of "fantasy" settings.
Oh and I know I side tracked.. so here comes the shorter version.
In a level game you have essentially created a pie or cake.. even a cookie.
People start out at the center (a very small packed area) and work outward as they level. Eventually they end up trapped at the edge with no place to go.
So you release an expansion that increases the size of your pie/cake/cookie.
So they work out even farther until they are stuck at the edge again.
Eventually you end up with a world where everyone is on the outside edge.. and you have this HUGE dead zone in the center nobody goes to.
A skill based game like UO didn't have that issue.. I could always find some reason to be in that "deadzone" .. such as gathering resources.. for my crafter who was always sold out. As opposed to the level based game.. where as soon as I get my raid gear.. crafter? why would i buy that crap..
^^ That is why I hate level based game.. and they bring so many balance/creation issues that I don't understand why its the clone that every developer keeps rehashing into the same friggin mistake.
I liked your write up, I agree in a lot of areas you mentioned, others I haven't thought of before. To me PVP is a bit more important then the PVE aspect, although I enjoy PVE as well. I see things going in the direction of PVP market wise today, but that’s not the say that PVE content including should not be of equal value. I think both hold equal worth.
Lot of cool points you brought up, great read.
SWG......(pre-CU of course)
lol at the polls it's not what a majority of mmorpg gamers want, just a small select elitist forum nostalgic fanbois want. Look at the mmorpg.com polls and PVP always wins out over PVE and thats because most people want to compete against eachother.
So tbh like you said biased nonsense polls.
----------------------------------------
Talking about SWG much?
You never played Ryzom, now did you? The AI is amazing there.
Altough it's a good text, i would say it's totally "biased" from the EQ point of view...
Most of what you said is what EQ has or you hope it would have...
Like some said before, what some people really want (to my understanding) is a sandbox game like UO (with current graphics) or SWG (from the pre-CU era).
Even semi-sandbox like Ryzom and EVE (yeah... that's my opinion. None of these are enough to be called "full" sandbox) fill the gap on the emptyness of sandbox type of MMORPGs nowadays.
Hopefully some of the sandbox titles to be released, are indeed released. Those will take a big "slice" of players who are currently waiting for such type of games.
THIS!!!! OMG loved SWG pre-CU.
Levelling meant doing what the profession demanded. Want to be an architect? you have to build bricks, than walls, then homes.
Hell if you wanted to be a successful business man you had to have people come use your vendors for goodness sakes!!!
The best part? you weren't stuck with one profession. You built your own cities and defended your towers.
I haven't found a replacement to SWG yet. Nothing has filled that void. But I still play MMO's because playing alone sucks.
IRT to most of what you said, I tried not to include any details as it was a "strategic" guide and I didn't feel like sitting down and designing an entire game in my head; so specifics like death penalties, quests, travelling, and such are only covered on a "here's what you should aim for" basis. It's the developer's duty to figure out the balance of challenges.
The title can be a little misleading depending on how you read it, I'll admit. When I say "this is what MMO gamers really want" I do not include gamers who are currently happy with what they play (hence those who are not actively "wanting" anything), if that makes sense.
I've actually played EQ1, EQ2, WoW, SWG, AoC, CoH, TR, and LotRO. No, I haven't played UO or AC, so I couldn't comment on them; however, do I honestly have to play every single MMO ever released before I can make a statement of my opinion? I think I've played enough to figure out where I stand.
I stated in the beginning of the paper that I would use EQ1 as a repeated reference because it is the most hardcore MMORPG in my opinion (although it has become more casual). I certainly don't agree that I advocated creating another EQ1. Of the 8 points I made, EQ1 succeeded on about 2 of them, if that. I also clearly stated that developers shouldn't aim to make another EQ1 or attempt to emulate any game currently out.