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How do mmorpgs fix the issue of becoming top heavy?
John.A.Zoid
Member Posts: 1,531
We've seen this with every level based mmorpg so far where over time all the population ends up being top heavy, meaning everyone is at end level. What this does is casuses new players to have to solo through the game and play alone and as we all know that is very boring in a mmorpg and puts you off playing. I was saying in an EQ2 topic how what killed it for me (apart from all the zoning) was that there was noone to play with at the lower levels and I spent 20 levels on my own and still couldn't find a group and then quit. Whats even weirder is EQ2 only needs one server per variant as that game is zoned up when one zone becomes too populated it creates another clone and keep on creating clones. So I don't understand why they have so mant empty servers that put off new players when they could just have two.. PVP and PVE.
So Problem one that mmorpgs need to fix is having too many servers with a small playerbase. SWG for example if you took all their prime time players at any one time you wouldn't even fill two servers to 5000 people each and yet it has 20 odd servers.......
Theres often too many starting areas offered to players like WoW has several and this straight away splits up everyone because an old mmorpg wont have many new players so say WoW had 5 new players on a server that day they'd more than likely pick different sides and different races and never see eachother. I know why they want to keep adding new starting zones to keep old content fresh and to tie in new races but that needs to be fixed because it is no fun for new players who just end up feeling lonely. The best System I've seen is the one that SWG has now where you all start on Mos Eisley in the same area and you have to choose what faction you want to join once in the game. I never understood why mmorpgs made you choose your faction before you've even played seeing as you know nothing about them! The great thing about SWG was the world was open and you don't have to do them starting quests or even start there if you don't want to. You could take the Starport and go somewhere else and have full freedom and veteran players are given an incentive to go to that starting location so it is never empty and new players are meeting people right away.
So Problem Two that mmorpgs need to fix is too many starting areas and thats fine for when the game just launches but years after and the game has very few new people joining, it's becomes lonely and makes you wanna quit.
When I'm playing World of Warcraft theres always this one bit that I hate and it is the old world 1 - 60. The problem here is all the new content that has been added in is so much better and I find myself not wanting to make new characters. I got my friend who had never played WoW before to come round my house and I told him to make a new character and start the game. He chose a Orc and got bored at the starting area saying the quests suck. I then told him to make a level 55 Death Knight and he thought all he played it for much longer and really liked how story driven it was and really it is just so much better than the old stuff... though he got bored and well I guess WoW isn't for him. However my point is that the new content is just much better and up to the standards of today where as the old content is still in 2004 when it was greta back then but not anymore.
So Problem three is developers ignore renewing older content so new players are having a better time. I don't mean make a new starting area or new zones becuase that's spreading out the population even more. I mean go back to them old zones and redo them and make them interesting again with new quests and give them a facelift.
Again I'm going to talk about WoW but this goes for other mmorpgs too, is that theres this whole "the game doesn't start till end level" mentality. Where the PVP sucks until you get to end level and all the good dungeons start then and it's where everyones playing. Everyone wants to be end level and get all the uber loot but I see this as a flaw because this just means people rush through all the content and takes no notice off most of it and that puts off developers putting in new content for lower levels and focusing on the higher levels which makes the game even more top heavy. So you have to ask yourself are levels the best system for mmorpgs? Sure they are fine in single player games but for persistent Online worlds do they work? Why are our levels permanent? Why do levels play such a big role in how powerful we are by changing our stats? Why do they even have to be called levels? Why do we even have levels? Why is there this big need to get to the end when we are meant to be playing the game for the content? Surely we can find new ways to customize our characters.
So Problem four is levels and how they cause that end game which is causing newer players not wanting to play the game because they have noone to group with and have to wait a month of grinding through dated content just to be able to play with their friends. I'm going to bring Star Wars Galaxies up again but this game fixed that for me pre CU because there were no levels. Everyone had the same stats and what changed your stats were things you could buy from crafters or your friends could give you. Instead you advanced your character through gaining new skills which gave you more abilities, you didn't become any more powerful but just more diverse in what you could do. This meant a new player could join the game and start playign with their friends straight away and it was a fantastic system but will be overlooked now because SOE/LA screwed it up. So it isn't that it didn't work but SOE/LA kept ruining the game with stupid patches and then they got rid of it with the CU and NGE.
Anyone else have any other ideas of what the problems are and how to fix them?
Comments
The easiest way to fix it is to allow everyone to be able to make a whole lot of characters. In games where you are limited to a few you get this problem worse.
Also the classes should differ a lot and therefor making alts funny. If you are quest based the classes should have diffrent questslines so you don't have to go through the same junk many times.
Isn’t that why you do anything? To get to the end. At this point any low level playing is only a grind. I play WoW and I miss the low level zone quests. WoW has made it easy to get from 1-70 in no time. They increased XP from mobs and quests and lowered the amount needed to level. It should only take a days (of game time) to get to 70 by questing alone. You can also get the Bind to Account gear that grants and extra 10% XP gained.
I am from a small guild of friends and we often will make alts and run old world stuff together. WoW also has the invite a friend that rewards 3x more XP while grouping with your friend. Also new server start up, join them and stay with the leveling curve.
To cure this problem is do away with levels and gear farming completely.
Let players do more than trying to race to the top, get bored and search for another game (which bleeds MMOs, as they race to their next game to wash, rinse and repeat again).
Levels itself and the gear isn't what is important, it's the ability to achieve something everyday and feel good about it. From what I'm seeing not many happy people are playing these MMOs, partly because like drugs the initial high can't be repeated; and because anything social brings along the social baggage (e.g., dramas; s/he said, s/he said; the juvenile behaviors -- stuff most people will skirt from, as it's even cleaner to watch it on TV).
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
If you only have enough players in low-level content to fill two servers, then only have two servers of low-level content. Don't divide that segment of the playerbase among 20 servers.
If that means that there are separate servers for low and high level content, and you give players a free server transfer when they reach the level theshold, that's fine.
The whole "the game doesn't start until the end-game" bit is just players being idiots, though. MMORPGs become less fun as you get higher level. I've played quite a few games (yes, including WoW), and never seen an exception to this. It's not that the content gets worse; it's that things that were once new and exciting become old and mundane. And end-games tend to be particularly horrendous grinding, to the degree that a game with no end-game at all has an above-average end-game, because the competition is just that awful.
The problem with mmorpgs is there should be no end as they're persistent online worlds and you should always be advancing and customizing your character, mmorpgs should have no end and thats why they keep adding in new content and expansions which give you more to do. If you get to the end of an mmorpg then you quit......
Also you say it should only take days of game time solo questing, well this is still like 72 hours of solo playing which is so boring and most of us have quit within 12 hours of soloing because you don't play a online game to be alone.
Alot of us don't have any friends and come into a new mmorpg to make friends and you try but everyone is end level so you can't start making friends to play with until you've gone through and solo'd the whole game while missing out on all the fun group content.
1) Remove the levels
or
2) Reduce the power gap between higher and lower level players
or
3) Work out some way for lower level players to contribute
The problem is that you're postulating that a game should have infinite content. Companies don't have infinite resources with which to develop their games. They can't create infinite content without eventually making the content really stupid and repetitive. That's the point of an end-game: something that will take a really, really long time for players to get through, with minimal development time spent designing it. And that's why end-games are almost invariably stupid, so that even if you like a game enough to reach the end-game, it rarely makes sense to spend any time playing the end-game.
The problem is that you're postulating that a game should have infinite content. Companies don't have infinite resources with which to develop their games. They can't create infinite content without eventually making the content really stupid and repetitive. That's the point of an end-game: something that will take a really, really long time for players to get through, with minimal development time spent designing it. And that's why end-games are almost invariably stupid, so that even if you like a game enough to reach the end-game, it rarely makes sense to spend any time playing the end-game.
What I'm saying is it's the character development, levels which are causing a weird linear progression that causes the end game and spliting up the community.
Well, alot of us don't come online to make up for not having friends in RL, too. I try to stay away from the social aspects of the game, as frankly talking about drugs and alcohol with 15 years-olds and reformed hippies isn't only tacky, not even my interest. It's enough in life to have RL drama and obligations, last thing I want is to play a game that feels like my last job.
But, yes, there needs to be a way that lower level characters can participate in the game along with vets. A solution is a game of projects that is much like La Sagrada Familia (the famous cathedral that folks claim can never be finished). If MMOs have to have a grind to keep folks in the game for months and years, at least make the grind something that's tangible and a true group project. Like on launch, the site is shown as but a patch of land (with trees still standing and rocks and other obstacles all over), and groups or solo players are given the ultimate task of building XYZ. As time goes on, players will visually see the enterprise take shape -- be it the foundation of a house/building/ship, etc. When one project is finished, there is joy and celebrations for a few days, before the launch of the next one. Eventually, whole cities can be created in this fashion. And when a city is made, the players have jobs to fulfill to keep it running -- city guards (who'll also help to protect the city from invaders -- this fulfills the raiding and PvP aspects); the tradeskills; and other tasks.
This helps also to keep cities more than just empty ghost towns, as the time spent building them players will take more interest in maintaining them.
For soloers and those who come later, there will be more projects (dams/levees/outposts/hamlets/villages -- and maybe even another large city to construct).
The whole point is the game is built from the ground up for everyone to contribute, be it the fighter to the crafter; soloer or raider, as each needs somewhere to call home, and home needs a lot of people to upkeep it. Everyone will now have a role, regardless of group affinity, gear, levels and titles.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
The problem is that you're postulating that a game should have infinite content. Companies don't have infinite resources with which to develop their games. They can't create infinite content without eventually making the content really stupid and repetitive. That's the point of an end-game: something that will take a really, really long time for players to get through, with minimal development time spent designing it. And that's why end-games are almost invariably stupid, so that even if you like a game enough to reach the end-game, it rarely makes sense to spend any time playing the end-game.
What I'm saying is it's the character development, levels which are causing a weird linear progression that causes the end game and spliting up the community.
So are you a skill based game advocate and is this your way to trick us into getting to your point?
EXACTLY.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Why would you cater to the few people trying the game for the first time 3-4 years after coming out compared to those top heavy players which make the majority of the population.
I see what your point is, but with limited resources, the goal is to get new content out quickly as opposed to catering to the trickling few that are coming in.
I guess this would be an issue that needed to be addressed in the beginning stages of the game. I actually feel that WoW 1-70 is where the real game is, end game for WoW sucks imo. But that's just me.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
EQ2's mentoring and achievment system directly combats this. You can gain extra achievement points by returning to lowbie dungeons to powerlvl people and even just for lowbie questing in an area you haven't done before.
--
Note: PlayNC will refuse to allow you access to your account if you forget your password and can't provide a scanned image of the product key for the first product you purchased..... LOL
Well, I believe the problem is the linear character progression with vertical progression of achievement which creates a top-heavy community.
My idea to solve this is that to use, instead of a linear character progression with vertical progression of achievement, use a multi-branch character (horizontal) progression with separate progression system of achievement.
How would this solve the top-heavy issue?
1.) By designing horizontally instead of vertically you can create more options of play-styles and at the same time limit the gap between veteran players and new players (but there will be achievement and difference between veteran players and new players.)
2.) By separating the achievement from character progression, you can create more detail system in balancing the character and create unique achievement to separate vets from newbies.
3.) By designing with these elements, you don't need to re-roll as a vet, you can just re-build the template with different branch (instead of starting at the bottom again, which would bored many vets for the same contents again and again, you can just slowing switching trees without really gimping your abilities.
This can go into more detail discussion, but the general idea is to design horizontal for character progression, and separate achievement from character progression.
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
Maybe its because I've been playing them so long, but I can't go into a new MMO without any friends to play with, I just get bored and quit after a few weeks/months...anyone else who's been playing MMO's for a while should have friends or a clan they stick with..its different when you're new in the genre.
Top-heaviness is only an issue in long-running level-based games, or poorly designed skill-based ones.
If you want a game that's not top-heavy you have to make it so that rookies and vets can play together on a mostly even field and make the game about something other than collecting gear.
Eve avoids the whole top-heaviness issue alltogether by having mostly lateral character progression (vets can do lots of things but not all at the same time) and making all your gear temporary - you'll lose it, sooner or later. PvP setups are as much about economics as they are effectiveness, as well as an economy and combat system that emphasizes teamwork, ensures everyone has something meaningful they can do, whether they started 5 seconds or 5 years ago, and is more about player skills than character skills.
I think the concept of loss is something that's been weeded out of most MMOs in the name of catering to casual players. But if it becomes impossible to truly fail in any meaningful sense, then the only direction anyone can go is forward - poor players will advance slowly but they'll still get there. Top-heaviness is an inevitable side-effect of a system like this.
I don't think any big mass-market type of game will ever be free of the top-heaviness issue as the type of game required to truly fix that issue wouldn't have a whole lot of mainstream appeal - again, just look at Eve. I love it to death but I know better than expect it to ever reach WoW's level of success, it's just too hard, plain and simple, and there's no real way to change that without turning it into a linear progression-based game like every other MMO out there, and I think after the whole SWG NGE debacle the devs know better than to try.
Instead, I think WoW has the best tactic here, which is to make it easier for new people to catch up to everyone else. A lot of old content falls by the wayside but as long as they keep adding on to the end and make it possible for new people to reach the 'end game' in a reasonable amount of time, people will keep playing.
The previous comments about horizontal mobility are really the solution here. My best experiences with veteran/non-veteran inter-playability have been EVE and FFXI, and they both implement types of this, albeit in different fashions.
A sidekick/exemplar/mentor system a la COH/V and later EQ2 is a reasonable stopgap to lower-level attrition, but I think they really just mask the problem rather than genuinely fix it. In either situation, you're addressing your top-heavy problem by giving lower-level characters the potential access to higher-level content. This is good for the community, but bad for the budget, since this results in the potential for content to be bypassed by players. This was rampant in COH, where especially in the later years, characters in SG's (guilds for the uninitiated) could routinely get powerleveled at least up into the 20's, thus eclipsing the low-level content, and alienating those players who did not have similar access (since it made it harder for them to find groups, even though the power-leveled characters often had very legitimate reasons for bypassing it. Nobody wants to spend any time in King's Row after the sixth or seventh time).
FFXI fixed this problem by implementing horizontal mobility in the job system. They coupled this with a premium on using one and only one character (in the form of an additional charge for alts), and honestly I think this was a good decision, business-wise and socially. Players invested in their character, and a lot of the micromanagement problems alt-heavy games have were eliminated (such as transferring wealth, guild membership caps, group-advertising problems, etc.). To this day Samhain, the Deacon Chair of the grand and holy Scarlet Dawn (my Galka PLD (Valefor server) and the leader of my linkshell, may it rest peacefully), is my favorite character of any I've ever had in any game, ever. If I was playing FFXI, I was on Sam. I never needed to switch chars, and my guild-members always knew where I was if I was playing the game. If somebody needed somebody to group with at a different level range, I could have Sam take his pick of any of his non-main jobs and just head on down, no questions asked, no fuss, no muss.
FFXI wasn't top-heavy because the player-base wasn't top-heavy, and this was by design. Only once the English-speaking population declined did I find it difficult to find a group at any level range, and until then I could find many of the same names of people I knew at the high levels showing up at low and mid-levels, and since there were really no alts to speak of, you knew if someone was someone you played with before because of the name. It was a good system and I miss it dearly.
[After writing this up I noticed that it repeats a lot of the previous posters comments, so season to taste.]
EVE went about this in an entirely different direction, and I have similar fondness for my time playing it. It was also an alt-minimal game (since practically speaking, to have an alt you had to have a second account, which I understand many, many people do), but rather than having job changing, there were no jobs at all. Not only was the game skill-based, but the skill system was permanent, advanced at fixed increments (based on account time rather than play time), and skills were dependent in a type of matrix which depended on a host of factors, chief of which was the ship a character was currently driving. If you changed ships, you could potentially change to an entirely different set of skills which could be at an entirely different number of levels.
In EVE, a character could essentially max out his total potential with a given ship or ship type (Minmatar Cruisers and the appropriate weapon load-outs, for example) in probably well under a year, but players who've been with the game since release are probably now proficient in whole litanies of areas. The game favors the veteran because there's literally no way for a new player to catch up with the total number of skill points a vet has, no matter what he does. However, it also avoided being top-heavy by capping absolutely the level of mastery a given character could obtain with a certain system in the game (there just comes a point where, no matter how many years you play and how many skills you've mastered, you just can't get any better with Minmatar Cruisers and their guns).
This was and is also an excellent system, and I think it's honestly the very best in any game created to date. And that's not something I say lightly.
I left EVE over social issues (my girlfriend whom I played with went apesh*t on me (
), and I left because I intended to cut all ties with her--regrettably that was one of the ties--even so, every few months I see the adds and miss it; I have no friends to play EVE with, though, and my skills have been sitting idle for some time, so nothing has yet persuaded me to re-sub), and I left FFXI finally because the English-speaking community was too small to support the group-heavy nature of the game, and also over some guild politics and general burnout.
Having said that though, I think both systems represent very, very significant steps forward in MMO development with respect to potential longevity. The "make them raid while we work on content to increase the level cap and give them something else to grind" model is old, out-dated, out-moded, and just bad. It saddens me to see games continue to emerge that support it (and let's not kid ourselves, a PVP zerg is functionally the equivalent of a PVE raid--I'm looking at you, Mythic). Re-usable content in a sandbox environment, supported by optional quests along-side grindable and dungeon group content with some solo access is to me the high-water mark. And aside from making for good gaming, it's smart from a business standpoint (no need to churn out a free expansion every six months if the content is sufficient for the player base; make new stuff to taste instead, and add flavor and depth across all levels of play--I say free because I think paid expansions should also go the way of the dodo, along with mandatory raid content for gating purposes).
Peace and safety.
FFXI worked to some degree with the job change feature which you could then change to any job whenever you felt like it. The only bad thing was FFXI always needed the perfect group (for the best XP) which made it somewhat hard to group.
But the game wasn't top heavy for a good 3/4 years and even then there is so much eng game stuff you could do If you wanted that it was a win/win for everyone, pity it's on it's last legs now imo.
-------------------------------
MMOs that I'm waiting for:
WAR
Aion
SGW
TCoS
Darkfall
STO
The issue from my perspective.. period.. is levels. The first MMO I played was Ultima Online and it launched around sept (?) of 1997... so I had that experience for a good period of time before EQ1 launched.
*fast forward a bit* This is why I hate it when WoW is mentioned. WoW in fact uses the same generic "template" that almost every MMO has used.. The EQ Clone. I am not sure what M59 or the original NwN were like as I never played them. So maybe its the M59 clone or w/e... regardless..
EQ1 did much better than UO did so it was seen as the success. As the OP mentioned SWG a lot and it was one of the few other "main stream" skill based games.. that was seen as a failure (after WoW launched.. but not before.. ironic enough).
You mentioned most of it... By "it" I mean the issues with this tired "template".
I don't really see the "spreading out" of the player base as an issue. Or having "to many starter areas".
Its the fact that a level based MMO is like a pie.. you start at the center and move out. When you get stuck at the crust they make the pie bigger. Until you get stuck at the crust again.. etc.. of course in a level based game you eventually have a large center of the pie that nobody uses.
You don't have to do this in a skill based game.
The other issue is crafting.. hey I love to craft.. others don't.
When you play a Level, Loot, Raid based games.. crafting sucks.
There is no level based MMO (well there may be but I've never played it) where crafters can make long term sustained sales.
Oddly most skill based games.. also feature "player driven economies".
Sorry for the ramble... this is like my number 1 irritation with the market atm.
Oh and I stopped here.. even I can't go through this rant-page again (yes its like a rampage but different).
I enjoyed your post OP and agree with a lot of the problems that you pointed out. A combination of lack of players in starting areas, multiple starting areas, too many servers, and leveling that is just too slow to keep people interested while they essentially solo there way up to the vets has doomed some of the old mmo's.
I am probably a bit extreme. I think probably you should only get two characters per account, but that each character starts without a class or level. Basically, you create your character as you play. And if you find you don't like a particular play style, you should be able to respec all the way back to the beginning if that is what you want. SWG was a perfect example of this.
Instead of having classes or levels, have titles that display your accomplishments. For example, if you use a pistol all the time, you get the title of Master Gunfighter. If you duel a lot and win with that pistol, you get the title Quick Draw. Titles that describe your playstyle are a lot more fun than just Warrior...or Mage...or Necromancer.
Levels and classes and not being able to completely respec an existing toon is too restrictive. Not being able to change your appearance after character creation or wear clothing/armor for purely the appearance is too restrictive. A skill point system is much more interesting to me.
While not a mind shattering reply here. I will say this. The most fun I've had with World of Warcraft was my first run In Deadmines. That is probably the most well done and interesting instance World of Warcraft has, especially for a brand new player. However anyone that first made a horde player gets shafted as their first instance doesn't even compare* I can't recall the name, the one in Ogrimmar*
It IS true that most developers focus on End-game content, and they have a somewhat good reason. While your leveling, most people focus on getting new spells, abilities, weapons, and other perks of being higher level than they were. However what do players get once they have reached the peak? Developers HAVE to craft something to keep these players entertained, so they have to focus on the end game. Does this mean lower level characters get put to the sideline? Yes.
I would love to see a developer go out on a limb, take a chance, and make a skill based system. While AeriaGames's MegaTen KINDA does it, it is still not a full fledged skill system. JumpGate Evolution however is, so I'm looking forward to beta testing that. But that's space...not a more fantasy setting. Blade & Soul promises to be a "skill" type of game, but only time will tell..
God I ramble on a lot. I apologize.
If you're not using feint, you're not doing enough damage.
Author of http://themmoexperience.blogspot.com and writer for http://www.negativegamer.com