I would like to comment on the two questions at the front of the article themselves.
The reason people answer those two questions in that way is a single player RPG has a finite finish point. There are a couple true sandbox type games although they are usuall space based...but I never had fun playing those anyways. So if you ask someone where they are on a journey which has a specific begining point and a specific ending point the chances are you are going to get a metric that defines a point in that journey IE city x or dungeon y.
In an MMO there is no endpoint unless the game simply runs out of subscribers and money. Thus the game itself is "infinite"(I use infinite as a term loosely here). In such a game you the journey is instead measured from a begining point to an end point this being levels in many cases. In other cases its unlockable content aka EQ1 with planes of power progression, GoD progression etc. In all other ways how can you descirbe a way point in something which has no final destination?
So while the rest of your article does have some good points and I aggree with the idea of the journey being more important than reaching the end as an ideal...to make the assumption that the way we answer those two questions actually means anything of significance I think a bad assumption. We are time based creatures that think in terms of linear paths. We all have a destination in mind when we set out...we might never reach that destination or it may change frequently...but the destination is there in our minds and the metric we use to measure our journey is completely dependant on the type of journey we are on and what the destination is.
For instance I might respond to question #2 I am a lvl 30 human mage. Depending on the game that could mean a lot of things about where I am on my journey. It could denote the type and location of the content I have visited and not yet able to visit. It should denote the type of gameplay I experience which would perhaps be different than that of a lvl 30 darkelf healer or whatever.
In the end its not the metric that is the problem or the speed of attaining a particular metric...whether its levels, skills, unlocks, equipment, reputation etc. The problem still boils down to these questions: Is the content fun? Is there enough content for the money I am paying? Everyone will answer these questions differently for every game out there. The only important answers are the ones you give to determine if you spend your money wisely.
Edit: After rereading the article i wanted to add one more thing. I believe i stated this discussion from the last column but I want to reemphasize it here. What each individual views as fun is unique to them. To hollar for all games to be what you think is fun is just as bad and just as wrong as for all games to take the WoW route and try to copy them. If i wanted to play WoW I would play wow....give me something different please. So while you do have an idea of what makes a game fun...please dont expect all games to fit your model as that would be boring to about 80% of the gaming population. We need a wide diversity of games and game types so everyone can have fun in thier own way.
My biggest pet peeve is when I jump into the forums of a game I am looking forward to because of the way the devs have described it and watch as people come and go complaining how the game will suck because its not an exact copy of thier favorite MMO from the past. How every fundamental system in the game just has to be changed or the game will suck. The biggest example of this are pvp types come into pve game forums and yell for advanced pvp systems and pve types come into a game designed around pvp and whine about lack of pve content. The same goes for the casual vrs hardcore and the solo vrs group players.
Without having read many of the posts in this thread, here is what I think:
Any MMO has content that is built around formulas and equations. This can not be avoided. However, what happens is that companies design concepts that in theory sound good, but as soon as people start figuring out the underlying things of how they work and why, they just go about finding tricks and efficient ways to accomplish goals or tasks instead of following along with any parts of it designed to pull the player in to some virtual world of play. What I think needs to happen is more intricate designing of games so that it is much more difficult to understand exactly what in the game always causes different things; without making the game unplayable. An analogy for this would be with encryption. It is very easy to multiply two numbers together, but it can be very diffucult to then factor the result of their multiplication. Creators needs to find a way to create different parts and "multiply" them together so that they are still fun and useable but the way in which things are exactly working is not as well known or decipherable by the players. In this way, they are more immeresed in the world. I don't claim to have any idea for how to actually do this. It is merly a train of thought that I think deserves consideration within the MMO development community. LIke the original story said, the MMO's need to level up.
I agree that developers need to do something to get mmos more interesting. But in the end I think it is all up to the players and how they think about the game. Im playing Warhammer Online right now and I love it. I do the pvp because I think that it is fun, im not doing it just to get my maximum renown. I just think that everyone has gotten used to going about the fastest way to get to the level cap of whatever they are playing. You have to play the game to enjoy it, not just to be the best, and I think alot of people play mmos just to be the best at them.
The reason single player rpgs are soo much more immersive is because they generally look better and have more things in them to explore.
AoC, I think, is a step in the right direciton in making things more fun in mmos. I think that once AoC gets all its problems sorted out that it will be a big mmo, maybe even challenge WoW. It has THE best graphics of any mmo, it does have a storyline, and it has the most involving combat of any mmo. I say just give it time and it will shine.
But right now, I'd say that Warhammer Online is the most fun mmo i've ever played.
I have a lot of problems with the question to be honest. In the game I am currently playing, I have no less than 7 characters, 4 of them are played actively and 3 are at max level. Asking me, where I am at is pretty meaningless, I'd probably answer with my "mains" level and such just because it was the simplist answer to a nonsensical question, not out of some deep and meaningful motivational difference.
Secondly, all the harping on WAR was a poor choice. We could spend weeks debating what Mythic did wrong (or right) but it's not really relevent to your main point.
>edit< Because I have to, AoC fans, please get a grip. The game is stagnant and over, it will never again rise to the level of subs it had at launch, let alone challenge WoW. I'm not going to slam the game in detail, but please, show a little contact with reality.
Excellent article. I fully agree. The main problem with WoW is the advancement. When you stop advancing in levels, it stops being fun, because that's all there really is to do is advance in levels.
SWG I think had an awesome formula and had great potential to break away from this. There were different things to do, the community came together to create awesome things. "Leveling" was hardly on people's radar back closer to the beginning.
MMO developers are too compelled to follow the formula.
As some people already said ... ppl who attend E3 are not a good representative of gamers, at all. I also disagree that mmos are niche genre. I think in the recent years, especially with WoW that has changed. You do have a point about the whole fun thing though. DAoC was my first mmo, and since that game I've played most of the major mmo titles. SWG was something that I had high hopes for, but somehow they managed to release the game with all the bugs a game can have. Like the bug that let you get the stormtrooper armor, like 3rd best faction armor of the whole game, 4 days after the release. I also had fun playing WoW when it first came out, as well as EQ2.
The thing is I never had as much fun as I did playing DAoC (just thinking about grinding willows at gna faste makes me happy) and that game was HARD. Like leveling up to 50 was a HUGE HUGE deal. There were no maps, you had to find the dungeons either from other players or remembering either the /loc or the enviroment. There were not as many quests and they were def not straight forward. I remember all those quests that you had to go at specific times or kill a whole lot of something for the guy to spawn. The game was not cartoonish and had a very authentic feel to it. When you died, it really sucked because you lost xp and going back to your grave was always scary because of the aggro. There were no mounts except for those horse rides from major areas/cities to the next. There were 3 realms, something that no other game ever replicated that way and I don't get why. Each realm had so many truely unique areas and named monsters. Crafting was SO difficult and slow. Also there was a great community feel, maybe it had something to do with the age group. For example on the mid side, from pretty much lvl 45 to 50 everyone would go near the dragon and kill all those werewolves. There were no warbands or whatever, so the two groups had to manually work together. Also there was a que, you would pm the person in charge and based on your class you'd have to go and camp at the edge waiting until it was your turn. I can go on and on but that was just the PVE part. Once you got to 50 and got your epic gear, it was like a whole new game was unlocked. Each realm had relics and keeps and anyone who ever played RVR in that game knows how much fun it was. it was even fun(sometimes more so) when there were a few people fighting. Not to mention how the keep system played into darkness falls which was also an amazing idea, a great place for mix pve and pvp, and to get gear.
I played WAR in beta and also after release, and I can safely say, it was the biggest dissapointment of my mmo gaming experience. And thats where I agree with you about the fun thing. They added all this crap assuming if you can find where youre quest is without ever having to even read the quest stuff, it will cut down on wasting time and instead you will have FUN. All those scenarios, IMO, were just terrible and killed any potential for pvp fun. NOt to mention the tiny number of classes they have as well as the whole class/race thing. Also it really bothered me that they kept trying to use terms like RVR...which made no sense where there were only two sides. I also think mmos not being a niche genre really opened it up to a whole lot of crazy young kids, the problem I had with WoW once it really took off. Almost every DAoC player will agree that as soon as the expansions came out with the idea of "less grind" the game went to hell.
I think my mmo days are over for good, but I'm always watching for something to come that is actually fun as a game, not just borrowing elements that were tradiotionally "fun" and throwing them into a vat.
First, I am not taking any shots at Warhammer here. I have been playing it, so it becomes the most obvious example in my articles. That unto itself should be a compliment. No game is perfect, and I think everyone knows the core flaws, but it has its value too. I am not attempting to pick on it, it is just my best example in a few cases. At its core, it is a game that by all logic should have been a hit, but wasn't. So disecting why is an interesting exercise.
A couple people mentioned Wish. Let's just say, God invented the NDA for a reason. I've written some pretty high level stuff on the topic (google my name, Wish and The Escapist), but that's about as deep into it as I will ever get. That ship has long since sailed.
Dana Massey Formerly of MMORPG.com Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true.
I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game.
It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting.
So is there a "true" solution?
I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace.
So personally, I don't believe there is a solution.
Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR.
In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills.
In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear.
In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.
It's about measurables. In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it. The measurable is the point in that storyline. In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class. For example: In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game. In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.
Agreed. The underlying question is "how far have you got in the game?". In AoC, if you answered "Out of Tortage" it was an answer to the same question. Or "what part of the story are you up to?" works in SRPGs because character abilities have often progressed to match what the story wants the character to do.
The hilarious issue of single-player vs MMO-player games is that people quit single player RPGs at probably the same rate as MMOs. Think of all the RPGs you've started but not finished - I try to complete all my titles, but there are always exceptions (e.g. corrupted saves, grown really bored of the game, went away from it and never quite came back, etc). But no-one worries if a player doesn't complete a single player game, regardless of how good the story was - it is all about box sales at launch. A MMO, on the other hand, typically relies on continued subs / income from players, so having players drop out before they reach the 'end' (whatever that might be) is a big issue. In fact, MMOs want players to play to the end plus - you are meant to 'finish' the game, then keep playing.
MMOs and SRPGs operate to very different standards, despite having some superficial similarites.
People have been saying this for over a decade, people play the mechanics of an MMO.
Modern MMOs are designed to appeal to achievers and competitive people, they're not designed for people who enjoy a good story or simple fun.
So, how about everyone stops rehashing this point and actually goes out there and makes a friggin game out of an MMO... oh wait.. that is what BioWare is doing
Loved the article.....and hit the nail on the head of why war is not really fun for me anymore....and why DAoC is still up and running with enough subs to keep RvR fun
I completely agree with most of what is said in the article but not with the conclusion
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There is hope, though. As much as I’d like to take credit for all this, it’s clear many others have come to this conclusion sooner (and over the course of a lot less columns). The best looking games at E3 took this to heart. Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic looks a heck of a lot like a cooperative single-player RPG. The narrative seems, at a glance, to be a large part of the focus. While other exciting games like All Points Bulletin and Global Agenda are much more focused on character parity and unlockable content.
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It is paradox that one should seek the core mechanics single player RPGs as an improvement to the MMORPG, because these mechanics are specialized to some extend on beeing... single player.
When people want to buy an MMO, the usually do not want a single player game with a little global chat box. Story is important, and immersion ist, too - but if you take on the Guild Wars-type of instanced storytelling, then you are bound to fail. GW did not live of the story, but of PvP, and no matter how good the story may turn out to be... if you took the same story into an single player game, it would still work better - because the expectation towards an MMO are quite different from that of an single player game.
Basically we are speaking immersion ( = instancing content to create a good storyline) vs. interaction here, and if people buy an MMO they are seeking some form of interaction (may it be socializing or of competetive nature), as opposed to someone buying an offline game.
Finding an satisfying way to combine interaction and immersion ( = "storytelling as a 4th pillar") is the real problem MMO's face today... and i do not believe instancing cn be a valid tool to achieve it. The only i can think of is the use of GM's to run live events, but that is way too expensive to do in a bigger MMO
I am waiting for SW:TOR as much as the next guy and i will buy it and play it, but unless Bioware's got an ace up it's sleeve i think they will fail on the long run.
Good article, think its spot on why WAR did not become a hit.
Also Developers often fail to understand that its in the human nature to make anything we do as effective as possiball. So if you have a levlel system some people will find the best and fastes way to get thru it, and others will follow. You have a pvp grind system people will learn how it works and do what is most effective, least amount of time for the best kinds of rewards.
I personaly dont think MMOS should be built as road movies, going from point A to point B. First you level from 0-MAX then you raid, pvp from worst gear to the best gear. Now this in my book is kinda boring.
I think more Devlopers should look at the Sandbox format for MMORPGs. Let the players build the world for you, dont make it for them. Give them the tools to build towns, construct trading rutes, fight over resources. Let them live a life in your virtual world dont do a Them park becuase one day you will run out of rides.
If a developer made a Huge world and let the players be the builders and makers of it ( scary I know as you dont know what will happen) we come mush closer to how real life works, and I think that is a mush more interesting concept then Raiding or PvPing for ranks and items.
EvE is the game that comes closest to this right now, and as shown it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year, Reason for this I think is that everything is up to the players. CCP do not waste time cunstructing conflicts and Raid dungeons, The players make the content in EvE. And what you do can actually effect others. I have never understood why people play in virtual worlds that are static like WoW and War. No mather how mush you raid or how mush you pvp for gear the world will at the end of the day look and feel exacly the same. This is not true in EvE as power strugles shift, stations gets built and destroyed. and new items get manafactured and destroyed, the landscape of the game changes.
Now why not plug the holes in what EvE is bad at, Repetetive gameplay, It has some boring aspects to it I have to admit,but it lets the world belong to the players and that is more then you can say for most MMORPGS.
We need more player control in MMOS. The best sugestion would be go and look how a strategic board game works, let us Build landmarks, citys, trade hubs and let us fight over resources and claim the land we play in and call it our own. We can fight for hundreads of years before we get tired. All real wars show us this, the 100 year war betwen France and England was based on who owned what lands and who controled the trade and who had the Power. Human nature wants to own and control. If the developers make a game that focus on this they can run it for years to come. But you have to give over the power to the players, and I think this scares many of the developers today. Because they do not know what will happen if they no longer can predict ( okey now they will be raiding this for 3 months, then they will do this and we got enough time to give out our next expansion) what the players will do in thier game.
Very good article, I especially enjoyed the conclusion
I believe with the system-shock that WoW has caused, the next set of mmo's have begun dev within WoW's timeline, and have learned new ways of combatting how the genre has changed - hopefully for the good, not necessarily just focusing on WoW.
While the classic mmo style is all but dead (or only living in still active old mmos) and "player-friendly" is king, the idea of employing more single player RPG focuses to MMOs is a very interesting concept, that hopefully some mmo creators will ponder on. Good thread in general, I'm excited for Q4 09' - Mid 2010.
Unfortunately in the end, these companies as businesses will always continue to rush to the exp bar - because it is tried & true at making money. MMOs take so much time and money, our only hope that the giants (Bliz, EA, Square, etc...) attempt to look beyond the buck and to the forums.
Also, Khalathwyr - you sir are a true intellectual with some refreshing thoughts.
It's about measurables. In single person RPGs, you've got a static story line to follow - even if there are different paths through it. The measurable is the point in that storyline. In MMOs, you have a wide variety of choices and the measurable is your level and class. For example: In RPGs, arriving at a certain city measures how far you've gotten in a game. In MMOs, you have several dozen cities to visit and that feat does not measure your advancement.
I think Sylvene pretty much has a grasp of what Dana was trying to say, however, I think we have to look at the whole picture and not just one little aspect of the MMORPG before saying this is why MMORPG's are broken. MMORPG's are not like most games in that there is so much going on in them besides just one thing. In a single player RPG most of the time you are in pursuit of the end of the storyline the SRPG is based on(Oblivion, and a few other games, is an exception since it is a sandbox with a story tacked onto it). In an MMORPG players maybe be following an epic tale, but they are probably also crafting, gathering resources and socializing(guild stuff and just being social) and adventuring/exploring. So there is a lot going on in an MMORPG compared to most other types of games.
The reason Dana you found this little Litmus Test is because there is no other real well to measure our progression in 98% of the MMORPG's on the market today due to their complexity - compared to a single player RPG. Single player RPG's are fairly linear creatures just by design and there is a beginning, middle and an end to them(99%) of the time...so naturally when you ask a person where they are in an RPG they'll say, 'Oh I am just now getting to X and about to do Y so I can move onto Z." That is not the case in MMORPG's.
Why?
Because we're talking two different games here. SRPG's are rarely anything like an MMORPG, the only thing they have in common is that they were both born of the same gaming system developed in the mid 70's by these two guys named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
So your Litmus test is good to a point in that it really shows the difference in the games - but it misses what is really wrong with the MMORPG genre on a whole - not with all games, in this genre, mind you, but with most.
Here is what I see the biggest problem with MMORPG's these days is - the leveling system. That leveling system born of that game developed by two guys back in the 1970's. See in that table top game people played they measured progress by saying, 'Yeah, I have a level 12 fighter/mage." Ask anyone from WoW where they are in the game of WoW and they will most likely shoot back with I'm in Northrend and have X characters, one Human Paly, Night Elf Rogue, and a Night Elf Hunter all level 80.
Why? Because there is no other real way to tell you what it is they do in the game and where they are in the game other than telling you that they are this race, this class and this level. Just like players of the old table top games use to do.
So though you think you have figured out what the core problem of the genre is - grinding to get to level x. That is not the problem. The problem is the journey on the way to get to level x. What manners of grinding hell did the players have to endure to get to level X. That is the problem with MMORPG's today - especially those with an end game like WoW - end games revolving around PvP. These games were suppose to be about the journey - not the end of the journey, because in an MMORPG there should be no perceivable end. However because of the way these games are designed, born that old table top game that is how players tend to look at these games - via leveling.
So how do we get away from this rutt that plagues this genre and get back to the journey for which these games were truly designed for - a journey of escape, entertainment, and imagination? The old pen and paper system has to be tossed out. Leveling has got to go. A new system has to be designed that eliminates the "level" - eliminate the level and you've essentially eliminated the grind - depending on the player and the game.
I can give you three good MMORPG's that didn't really rely on that old table top system. One was UO with it's skill based progression system. Second was SWG pre-NGE with it's skill bsed progression system. Third is EvE with it's skilled based progression system.
When you ask someone where they were in those games they didn't say, I am an X level Z. They would most likely say they are X and they do this in the game and this and this and a little of this and a little of that and oh and I every once in a while do this. I rarely ever heard people mention the word grind in relation to progression or making the journey through the games I mentioned above. The people that play those games and like them see them as a journey and not as grinds and they do not measure their advancement by level - but where they are in game and what they are doing.
For instance in SWG pre-NGE I was a master Artisan/Dancer and I ran a cantina and a vehicle business on Tatooine in a town east of Mos Espa and was constantly in fear of being harrassed by Tusken Raiders and the Empire and I smuggled arms for the Rebellion. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. Yep...that is what I do in WoW.
Ask me what I do in EvE. I am a small time miner living in the back end of nowhere trying to scratch out a living and doing my best to gather enough ISK to buy a new mining vessel so someday I might be able to start my own Corp all the while dodging raiders and pirates that seem to be on the rise. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. LOL!
That is the difference and that is where so many of these games go wrong. It isn't about the journey...it's about the level. Kinda of what you were aiming at I think in your Litmus test. In the SRPG it is about the journey, and in an MMORPG it is about the class and level. Alot of these games have lost there way and need to get back to being about the journey and not the level. Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.
Good article. Glad to see more people finally touching on what a few MMOs have been trying to push into the limelight for years. I hope it catches on (Guild Wars / Eve comes to mind).
I think some people are still missing the point, though. Even when people are playing single-player MMOs with multiple progressions / endings, they still answer the same. To be honest, very few MMOs are sandbox anyhow. For example, take WoW. Yes, you have your level progression, but you also have a very clear quest / content progression that most players follow. So instead of saying 'I'm lvl X / rank X', one could say "i'm working my way through the black temple content / gear", and still be crystal clear as to where you are in the game. The point of the article is simple almost everyone will say the former, regardless of the content. And I think the author is dead on about this. It's such a simple difference, but the amount of people who still can't see this shows how powerfully it grips us and shapes the genre as a whole.
People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true. I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game. It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting. So is there a "true" solution? I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace. So personally, I don't believe there is a solution. Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR. In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills. In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear. In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.
Yes, some people will play like that no matter what, but i think the reason that most people play like that at the moment is because that stuff just isnt fun or involving. People dont read quesst text becuase most of the time it is generic and meaningless. In the end its up to the players, and I think if developers find a way to make something fun and make players want to play something that the majority of players will enjoy themselves and not just grind to the cap.
I do believe that level grind, and a players rush for max level are ruining the MMO genre. I do think we as players need measurable progress. IMO Guild Wars found the perfect balance for doing this. Max level is 20 so there is no grind. After level 20 you spend time polishing your character capping eltie skills, and gathering max stat weapons. The entire time you are unlocking skills and equipment for PvP. After nearly 3 years of playing more traditional MMO's I realize that ArenaNet had it right so now I'm hoping they don't break it in guild wars 2
When I first started playing MMOG's back in 2001, experience grinding was one way to show how popular an online game was... it kept people online for long periods of time, and thus showed a high online population over a period of time. It was the accepted way of measuring how successful an online game was back then. However, things have changed. It now seems that the number of paid subscriptions now seems to be the measuring stick. So do we still need the grind?... perhaps, perhaps not.
I have left several online games simply because I was just so tired of the grind... pull, kill, pull, kill... Hours spent in DAoC getting a group together and then going to a pull/kill space, only to spend hours pulling and killing until we leveled or got enough coin. It was just so damn boring and a waste of my time!!!... and I have learned over the years to really value my time.
That is one reason I play EVE Online now. Skills are gained by time, not experience grinding. Still have to run missions and stuff for money and resources, but one just has to wait a period of time to get to a skill level for a particular skill. I loved it... though I find other things in EvE Online that I do not like, I really like the skill advancement. Not the best by far, but better than most out there.
What I would like to see is the whole idea of leveling and experience grinding to just go away... it is a dead animal waiting to be buried. Everytime I look at a new online game and they mention leveling, I just roll my eyes. What I would like to see is a skill advancement system that one advances in an individual skill by doing it... and not by doing something else. With a little imagination on the Dev's part, creating a system where one is not class restricted and has an long progressive skill learning process. In EVE Online, it is estimated that it would take 26 years for one to learn all the skills in the game. Again, not the best system in the world, but better than the endless experience grind... in my opinion.
Very few people can sum up the thousands of ideas that flow through my mind as I spend/burn countless hours playing a genre that I love, but at the same time feel guilty playing.
My tag name is Krityc (Critique) because I pick apart every game I play. My friends nag on me because I always chew games apart, and the ask why I play because it sounds like I'm not having fun. I'm enjoying myself with every comment, but it frustrates me because the genre isn't evolving.
It seems like every game that comes out with new & unique ideas fail, and the games that copy the same formula stick around. It's time for something new and refreshing, and I'm hoping that swtor is our answer.
"Hey, I'll tell you what. You can get a good look at a butcher's azz by sticking your head up there. But, wouldn't you rather to take his word for it?" - Tommy Boy
Interesting article. Gave me something to think about.
When I play a game like Titan's Quest or Diablo 2 or even Fallout 3 it's true; I think about the character's level and current gear as a measure of his progress. After the first playthrough, I don't give much thought to "Oh, I'm on chapter 3 in D2".
But when I play a story-driven game like Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit), I think about my progress in terms of where I am in the story.
Other games are kinda in the middle for me. In Bioshock or Mass Effect, I was always aware of roughly how far along the main quest I was, but also how my gear and abilities were shaping up.
So, in some games, I enjoy the process of becoming more powerful, and I think you are right in that this is particularly true for MMOs. In other games, I enjoy the process of seeing where the character(s) and story lead next. In the upcoming game Dragon's Age, I am equally looking forward to both aspects, and feel the same for the new SW:TOR mmo. I think you're dead on that for MMOs to 'evolve', they must incorporate both these aspects.
One other difference I should mention is that in a story-driven SP game, once I've completed the story, it loses alot of replay value, except perhaps to see what would've happened if I'd made different choices. But with the power-driven games, there seems to be more replayability; finding even better gear, taking on harder challenges, etc. This is why I think that most MMOs go the second route. You want your players to stick around and keep playing and paying.
Originally posted by Teala For instance in SWG pre-NGE I was a master Artisan/Dancer and I ran a cantina and a vehicle business on Tatooine in a town east of Mos Espa and was constantly in fear of being harrassed by Tusken Raiders and the Empire and I smuggled arms for the Rebellion. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. Yep...that is what I do in WoW. Ask me what I do in EvE. I am a small time miner living in the back end of nowhere trying to scratch out a living and doing my best to gather enough ISK to buy a new mining vessel so someday I might be able to start my own Corp all the while dodging raiders and pirates that seem to be on the rise. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. LOL!
I liked the rest of your response but these statements are your own personal biasis showing. You do not enjoy WoW so you only identify with your character in a surface way. You enjoy your EVE character so you identify deeply with that character.
In turn I could never really enjoy EVE so my character there always remained a bland empire miner who tried to get into the mission running business. My WoW character is a mature human mage who is obssessive about completing tasks and is an encyclopedia of usefull knowledge. He mainly joins groups to run smaller dungeons now but is trying to find a way to join in on the bigger raids. He is a top-notch chef and a superb fisherman.
Because I like playing my WoW character I merged my own personality with the base aspects of the character class and race. In EVE I never liked it enough to go that far in personalizing my character.
The basic problem with the question this article is that it asks 'Where you are?' when it actually means 'Who you are?'. In a single player game the Where and Who are pretty much interchangeable so one answer covers it all. In a MMORPG the Where and Who are different animals just like in real life so the anwer is way more complex.
The second failure of the question is that it is asking for a superficial answer. When asked "Who are you?" people will start with the most generic identifier and then if given time an opportunity will expand on past acheivements, current goals and future aspirations. By limiting himself to a short answer the author is cutting off any meaningfull discussiona about the topic.
So if the people asked were asked to elaborate it might go like this:
Single Player RPG: I am now in the city of X. I already rescued the merchant from the bandits and found the Sword of Might. I am currently exploring the sewers looking for the Necromancer. When I defeat him I will be able to go after the Dark Lord.
MMORPG: I am now a level X human mage. I used to raid when I was level 50 but now do small instances. I am a miner and blacksmith I just defeated the boss of the Dark Dungeon and got myself a Sword of Might. Later this week I will try to do The Sewers and kill the Necromancer. When I level more I hope to join a raid to kill the Dark Lord.
While there's rarely a single explanation for failure, and WAR certainly had many different weak points, this column is precisely the kind of preaching we need if we are to get rid of the strait jacket that is the D&D mmo heritage.
The analysis are allready there, the technology advances and the market expands. I commend Massey for doing his part with regards to enlightenment and attitude.
Comments
I would like to comment on the two questions at the front of the article themselves.
The reason people answer those two questions in that way is a single player RPG has a finite finish point. There are a couple true sandbox type games although they are usuall space based...but I never had fun playing those anyways. So if you ask someone where they are on a journey which has a specific begining point and a specific ending point the chances are you are going to get a metric that defines a point in that journey IE city x or dungeon y.
In an MMO there is no endpoint unless the game simply runs out of subscribers and money. Thus the game itself is "infinite"(I use infinite as a term loosely here). In such a game you the journey is instead measured from a begining point to an end point this being levels in many cases. In other cases its unlockable content aka EQ1 with planes of power progression, GoD progression etc. In all other ways how can you descirbe a way point in something which has no final destination?
So while the rest of your article does have some good points and I aggree with the idea of the journey being more important than reaching the end as an ideal...to make the assumption that the way we answer those two questions actually means anything of significance I think a bad assumption. We are time based creatures that think in terms of linear paths. We all have a destination in mind when we set out...we might never reach that destination or it may change frequently...but the destination is there in our minds and the metric we use to measure our journey is completely dependant on the type of journey we are on and what the destination is.
For instance I might respond to question #2 I am a lvl 30 human mage. Depending on the game that could mean a lot of things about where I am on my journey. It could denote the type and location of the content I have visited and not yet able to visit. It should denote the type of gameplay I experience which would perhaps be different than that of a lvl 30 darkelf healer or whatever.
In the end its not the metric that is the problem or the speed of attaining a particular metric...whether its levels, skills, unlocks, equipment, reputation etc. The problem still boils down to these questions: Is the content fun? Is there enough content for the money I am paying? Everyone will answer these questions differently for every game out there. The only important answers are the ones you give to determine if you spend your money wisely.
Edit: After rereading the article i wanted to add one more thing. I believe i stated this discussion from the last column but I want to reemphasize it here. What each individual views as fun is unique to them. To hollar for all games to be what you think is fun is just as bad and just as wrong as for all games to take the WoW route and try to copy them. If i wanted to play WoW I would play wow....give me something different please. So while you do have an idea of what makes a game fun...please dont expect all games to fit your model as that would be boring to about 80% of the gaming population. We need a wide diversity of games and game types so everyone can have fun in thier own way.
My biggest pet peeve is when I jump into the forums of a game I am looking forward to because of the way the devs have described it and watch as people come and go complaining how the game will suck because its not an exact copy of thier favorite MMO from the past. How every fundamental system in the game just has to be changed or the game will suck. The biggest example of this are pvp types come into pve game forums and yell for advanced pvp systems and pve types come into a game designed around pvp and whine about lack of pve content. The same goes for the casual vrs hardcore and the solo vrs group players.
Without having read many of the posts in this thread, here is what I think:
Any MMO has content that is built around formulas and equations. This can not be avoided. However, what happens is that companies design concepts that in theory sound good, but as soon as people start figuring out the underlying things of how they work and why, they just go about finding tricks and efficient ways to accomplish goals or tasks instead of following along with any parts of it designed to pull the player in to some virtual world of play. What I think needs to happen is more intricate designing of games so that it is much more difficult to understand exactly what in the game always causes different things; without making the game unplayable. An analogy for this would be with encryption. It is very easy to multiply two numbers together, but it can be very diffucult to then factor the result of their multiplication. Creators needs to find a way to create different parts and "multiply" them together so that they are still fun and useable but the way in which things are exactly working is not as well known or decipherable by the players. In this way, they are more immeresed in the world. I don't claim to have any idea for how to actually do this. It is merly a train of thought that I think deserves consideration within the MMO development community. LIke the original story said, the MMO's need to level up.
I agree that developers need to do something to get mmos more interesting. But in the end I think it is all up to the players and how they think about the game. Im playing Warhammer Online right now and I love it. I do the pvp because I think that it is fun, im not doing it just to get my maximum renown. I just think that everyone has gotten used to going about the fastest way to get to the level cap of whatever they are playing. You have to play the game to enjoy it, not just to be the best, and I think alot of people play mmos just to be the best at them.
The reason single player rpgs are soo much more immersive is because they generally look better and have more things in them to explore.
AoC, I think, is a step in the right direciton in making things more fun in mmos. I think that once AoC gets all its problems sorted out that it will be a big mmo, maybe even challenge WoW. It has THE best graphics of any mmo, it does have a storyline, and it has the most involving combat of any mmo. I say just give it time and it will shine.
But right now, I'd say that Warhammer Online is the most fun mmo i've ever played.
Mr. Bagguns
I have a lot of problems with the question to be honest. In the game I am currently playing, I have no less than 7 characters, 4 of them are played actively and 3 are at max level. Asking me, where I am at is pretty meaningless, I'd probably answer with my "mains" level and such just because it was the simplist answer to a nonsensical question, not out of some deep and meaningful motivational difference.
Secondly, all the harping on WAR was a poor choice. We could spend weeks debating what Mythic did wrong (or right) but it's not really relevent to your main point.
>edit< Because I have to, AoC fans, please get a grip. The game is stagnant and over, it will never again rise to the level of subs it had at launch, let alone challenge WoW. I'm not going to slam the game in detail, but please, show a little contact with reality.
Excellent article. I fully agree. The main problem with WoW is the advancement. When you stop advancing in levels, it stops being fun, because that's all there really is to do is advance in levels.
SWG I think had an awesome formula and had great potential to break away from this. There were different things to do, the community came together to create awesome things. "Leveling" was hardly on people's radar back closer to the beginning.
MMO developers are too compelled to follow the formula.
As some people already said ... ppl who attend E3 are not a good representative of gamers, at all. I also disagree that mmos are niche genre. I think in the recent years, especially with WoW that has changed. You do have a point about the whole fun thing though. DAoC was my first mmo, and since that game I've played most of the major mmo titles. SWG was something that I had high hopes for, but somehow they managed to release the game with all the bugs a game can have. Like the bug that let you get the stormtrooper armor, like 3rd best faction armor of the whole game, 4 days after the release. I also had fun playing WoW when it first came out, as well as EQ2.
The thing is I never had as much fun as I did playing DAoC (just thinking about grinding willows at gna faste makes me happy) and that game was HARD. Like leveling up to 50 was a HUGE HUGE deal. There were no maps, you had to find the dungeons either from other players or remembering either the /loc or the enviroment. There were not as many quests and they were def not straight forward. I remember all those quests that you had to go at specific times or kill a whole lot of something for the guy to spawn. The game was not cartoonish and had a very authentic feel to it. When you died, it really sucked because you lost xp and going back to your grave was always scary because of the aggro. There were no mounts except for those horse rides from major areas/cities to the next. There were 3 realms, something that no other game ever replicated that way and I don't get why. Each realm had so many truely unique areas and named monsters. Crafting was SO difficult and slow. Also there was a great community feel, maybe it had something to do with the age group. For example on the mid side, from pretty much lvl 45 to 50 everyone would go near the dragon and kill all those werewolves. There were no warbands or whatever, so the two groups had to manually work together. Also there was a que, you would pm the person in charge and based on your class you'd have to go and camp at the edge waiting until it was your turn. I can go on and on but that was just the PVE part. Once you got to 50 and got your epic gear, it was like a whole new game was unlocked. Each realm had relics and keeps and anyone who ever played RVR in that game knows how much fun it was. it was even fun(sometimes more so) when there were a few people fighting. Not to mention how the keep system played into darkness falls which was also an amazing idea, a great place for mix pve and pvp, and to get gear.
I played WAR in beta and also after release, and I can safely say, it was the biggest dissapointment of my mmo gaming experience. And thats where I agree with you about the fun thing. They added all this crap assuming if you can find where youre quest is without ever having to even read the quest stuff, it will cut down on wasting time and instead you will have FUN. All those scenarios, IMO, were just terrible and killed any potential for pvp fun. NOt to mention the tiny number of classes they have as well as the whole class/race thing. Also it really bothered me that they kept trying to use terms like RVR...which made no sense where there were only two sides. I also think mmos not being a niche genre really opened it up to a whole lot of crazy young kids, the problem I had with WoW once it really took off. Almost every DAoC player will agree that as soon as the expansions came out with the idea of "less grind" the game went to hell.
I think my mmo days are over for good, but I'm always watching for something to come that is actually fun as a game, not just borrowing elements that were tradiotionally "fun" and throwing them into a vat.
A couple general responses here...
First, I am not taking any shots at Warhammer here. I have been playing it, so it becomes the most obvious example in my articles. That unto itself should be a compliment. No game is perfect, and I think everyone knows the core flaws, but it has its value too. I am not attempting to pick on it, it is just my best example in a few cases. At its core, it is a game that by all logic should have been a hit, but wasn't. So disecting why is an interesting exercise.
A couple people mentioned Wish. Let's just say, God invented the NDA for a reason. I've written some pretty high level stuff on the topic (google my name, Wish and The Escapist), but that's about as deep into it as I will ever get. That ship has long since sailed.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Let's face it.
People don't want great content in MMORPGs. Of course, I'm making an over-generalization, but it is still true.
I'm just wondering, what % of players who played for example, Wrath of the Lick King, and just skiped through the text of the quests and just looked at the objectives? I did, personally. But even if you make the game without any levels and content base, some people will enjoy it and some others, will just skip through the content, do quest ASAP to advance in the content. It's going to be content grinding because people will want to cap the content as fast as possible to access the high content available to the game.
It's going to be the same problem, just in a different setting.
So is there a "true" solution?
I don't think so, humans are driven to show their worth through any means necessary, and for some, MMORPGs are it. Alright, I give it to you that it isn't much worth, but the online world is a total different entity and growing at a breath-taking pace.
So personally, I don't believe there is a solution.
Like you mentionned, it happened with WAR.
In Darkfall, people grind weapon / archery / magic on afk players, while the afk players grind them defensive skills.
In WoW, you grind gear and then a few weeks or months later you grind the upper new set of gear.
In [insert new game name here], you grind content super fast with your new "Get to Max Content in 6 hours of Gameplay" guide, sold for 9.99$ U.S.
Agreed. The underlying question is "how far have you got in the game?". In AoC, if you answered "Out of Tortage" it was an answer to the same question. Or "what part of the story are you up to?" works in SRPGs because character abilities have often progressed to match what the story wants the character to do.
The hilarious issue of single-player vs MMO-player games is that people quit single player RPGs at probably the same rate as MMOs. Think of all the RPGs you've started but not finished - I try to complete all my titles, but there are always exceptions (e.g. corrupted saves, grown really bored of the game, went away from it and never quite came back, etc). But no-one worries if a player doesn't complete a single player game, regardless of how good the story was - it is all about box sales at launch. A MMO, on the other hand, typically relies on continued subs / income from players, so having players drop out before they reach the 'end' (whatever that might be) is a big issue. In fact, MMOs want players to play to the end plus - you are meant to 'finish' the game, then keep playing.
MMOs and SRPGs operate to very different standards, despite having some superficial similarites.
I had this same discussion with someone from Mythic in this thread from July '06. RJCox used to be Richard from Mythic.
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/837531#837531
ROFL
People have been saying this for over a decade, people play the mechanics of an MMO.
Modern MMOs are designed to appeal to achievers and competitive people, they're not designed for people who enjoy a good story or simple fun.
So, how about everyone stops rehashing this point and actually goes out there and makes a friggin game out of an MMO... oh wait.. that is what BioWare is doing
Loved the article.....and hit the nail on the head of why war is not really fun for me anymore....and why DAoC is still up and running with enough subs to keep RvR fun
I completely agree with most of what is said in the article but not with the conclusion
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There is hope, though. As much as I’d like to take credit for all this, it’s clear many others have come to this conclusion sooner (and over the course of a lot less columns). The best looking games at E3 took this to heart. Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic looks a heck of a lot like a cooperative single-player RPG. The narrative seems, at a glance, to be a large part of the focus. While other exciting games like All Points Bulletin and Global Agenda are much more focused on character parity and unlockable content.
[/Quote]
It is paradox that one should seek the core mechanics single player RPGs as an improvement to the MMORPG, because these mechanics are specialized to some extend on beeing... single player.
When people want to buy an MMO, the usually do not want a single player game with a little global chat box. Story is important, and immersion ist, too - but if you take on the Guild Wars-type of instanced storytelling, then you are bound to fail. GW did not live of the story, but of PvP, and no matter how good the story may turn out to be... if you took the same story into an single player game, it would still work better - because the expectation towards an MMO are quite different from that of an single player game.
Basically we are speaking immersion ( = instancing content to create a good storyline) vs. interaction here, and if people buy an MMO they are seeking some form of interaction (may it be socializing or of competetive nature), as opposed to someone buying an offline game.
Finding an satisfying way to combine interaction and immersion ( = "storytelling as a 4th pillar") is the real problem MMO's face today... and i do not believe instancing cn be a valid tool to achieve it. The only i can think of is the use of GM's to run live events, but that is way too expensive to do in a bigger MMO
I am waiting for SW:TOR as much as the next guy and i will buy it and play it, but unless Bioware's got an ace up it's sleeve i think they will fail on the long run.
Erm. Just my 2ct for today.
Good article, think its spot on why WAR did not become a hit.
Also Developers often fail to understand that its in the human nature to make anything we do as effective as possiball. So if you have a levlel system some people will find the best and fastes way to get thru it, and others will follow. You have a pvp grind system people will learn how it works and do what is most effective, least amount of time for the best kinds of rewards.
I personaly dont think MMOS should be built as road movies, going from point A to point B. First you level from 0-MAX then you raid, pvp from worst gear to the best gear. Now this in my book is kinda boring.
I think more Devlopers should look at the Sandbox format for MMORPGs. Let the players build the world for you, dont make it for them. Give them the tools to build towns, construct trading rutes, fight over resources. Let them live a life in your virtual world dont do a Them park becuase one day you will run out of rides.
If a developer made a Huge world and let the players be the builders and makers of it ( scary I know as you dont know what will happen) we come mush closer to how real life works, and I think that is a mush more interesting concept then Raiding or PvPing for ranks and items.
EvE is the game that comes closest to this right now, and as shown it keeps getting bigger and bigger each year, Reason for this I think is that everything is up to the players. CCP do not waste time cunstructing conflicts and Raid dungeons, The players make the content in EvE. And what you do can actually effect others. I have never understood why people play in virtual worlds that are static like WoW and War. No mather how mush you raid or how mush you pvp for gear the world will at the end of the day look and feel exacly the same. This is not true in EvE as power strugles shift, stations gets built and destroyed. and new items get manafactured and destroyed, the landscape of the game changes.
Now why not plug the holes in what EvE is bad at, Repetetive gameplay, It has some boring aspects to it I have to admit,but it lets the world belong to the players and that is more then you can say for most MMORPGS.
We need more player control in MMOS. The best sugestion would be go and look how a strategic board game works, let us Build landmarks, citys, trade hubs and let us fight over resources and claim the land we play in and call it our own. We can fight for hundreads of years before we get tired. All real wars show us this, the 100 year war betwen France and England was based on who owned what lands and who controled the trade and who had the Power. Human nature wants to own and control. If the developers make a game that focus on this they can run it for years to come. But you have to give over the power to the players, and I think this scares many of the developers today. Because they do not know what will happen if they no longer can predict ( okey now they will be raiding this for 3 months, then they will do this and we got enough time to give out our next expansion) what the players will do in thier game.
Very good article, I especially enjoyed the conclusion
I believe with the system-shock that WoW has caused, the next set of mmo's have begun dev within WoW's timeline, and have learned new ways of combatting how the genre has changed - hopefully for the good, not necessarily just focusing on WoW.
While the classic mmo style is all but dead (or only living in still active old mmos) and "player-friendly" is king, the idea of employing more single player RPG focuses to MMOs is a very interesting concept, that hopefully some mmo creators will ponder on. Good thread in general, I'm excited for Q4 09' - Mid 2010.
Unfortunately in the end, these companies as businesses will always continue to rush to the exp bar - because it is tried & true at making money. MMOs take so much time and money, our only hope that the giants (Bliz, EA, Square, etc...) attempt to look beyond the buck and to the forums.
Also, Khalathwyr - you sir are a true intellectual with some refreshing thoughts.
I think Sylvene pretty much has a grasp of what Dana was trying to say, however, I think we have to look at the whole picture and not just one little aspect of the MMORPG before saying this is why MMORPG's are broken. MMORPG's are not like most games in that there is so much going on in them besides just one thing. In a single player RPG most of the time you are in pursuit of the end of the storyline the SRPG is based on(Oblivion, and a few other games, is an exception since it is a sandbox with a story tacked onto it). In an MMORPG players maybe be following an epic tale, but they are probably also crafting, gathering resources and socializing(guild stuff and just being social) and adventuring/exploring. So there is a lot going on in an MMORPG compared to most other types of games.
The reason Dana you found this little Litmus Test is because there is no other real well to measure our progression in 98% of the MMORPG's on the market today due to their complexity - compared to a single player RPG. Single player RPG's are fairly linear creatures just by design and there is a beginning, middle and an end to them(99%) of the time...so naturally when you ask a person where they are in an RPG they'll say, 'Oh I am just now getting to X and about to do Y so I can move onto Z." That is not the case in MMORPG's.
Why?
Because we're talking two different games here. SRPG's are rarely anything like an MMORPG, the only thing they have in common is that they were both born of the same gaming system developed in the mid 70's by these two guys named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
So your Litmus test is good to a point in that it really shows the difference in the games - but it misses what is really wrong with the MMORPG genre on a whole - not with all games, in this genre, mind you, but with most.
Here is what I see the biggest problem with MMORPG's these days is - the leveling system. That leveling system born of that game developed by two guys back in the 1970's. See in that table top game people played they measured progress by saying, 'Yeah, I have a level 12 fighter/mage." Ask anyone from WoW where they are in the game of WoW and they will most likely shoot back with I'm in Northrend and have X characters, one Human Paly, Night Elf Rogue, and a Night Elf Hunter all level 80.
Why? Because there is no other real way to tell you what it is they do in the game and where they are in the game other than telling you that they are this race, this class and this level. Just like players of the old table top games use to do.
So though you think you have figured out what the core problem of the genre is - grinding to get to level x. That is not the problem. The problem is the journey on the way to get to level x. What manners of grinding hell did the players have to endure to get to level X. That is the problem with MMORPG's today - especially those with an end game like WoW - end games revolving around PvP. These games were suppose to be about the journey - not the end of the journey, because in an MMORPG there should be no perceivable end. However because of the way these games are designed, born that old table top game that is how players tend to look at these games - via leveling.
So how do we get away from this rutt that plagues this genre and get back to the journey for which these games were truly designed for - a journey of escape, entertainment, and imagination? The old pen and paper system has to be tossed out. Leveling has got to go. A new system has to be designed that eliminates the "level" - eliminate the level and you've essentially eliminated the grind - depending on the player and the game.
I can give you three good MMORPG's that didn't really rely on that old table top system. One was UO with it's skill based progression system. Second was SWG pre-NGE with it's skill bsed progression system. Third is EvE with it's skilled based progression system.
When you ask someone where they were in those games they didn't say, I am an X level Z. They would most likely say they are X and they do this in the game and this and this and a little of this and a little of that and oh and I every once in a while do this. I rarely ever heard people mention the word grind in relation to progression or making the journey through the games I mentioned above. The people that play those games and like them see them as a journey and not as grinds and they do not measure their advancement by level - but where they are in game and what they are doing.
For instance in SWG pre-NGE I was a master Artisan/Dancer and I ran a cantina and a vehicle business on Tatooine in a town east of Mos Espa and was constantly in fear of being harrassed by Tusken Raiders and the Empire and I smuggled arms for the Rebellion. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. Yep...that is what I do in WoW.
Ask me what I do in EvE. I am a small time miner living in the back end of nowhere trying to scratch out a living and doing my best to gather enough ISK to buy a new mining vessel so someday I might be able to start my own Corp all the while dodging raiders and pirates that seem to be on the rise. Ask me what I do in WoW. I play a level X Blood Elf Huntress. LOL!
That is the difference and that is where so many of these games go wrong. It isn't about the journey...it's about the level. Kinda of what you were aiming at I think in your Litmus test. In the SRPG it is about the journey, and in an MMORPG it is about the class and level. Alot of these games have lost there way and need to get back to being about the journey and not the level. Very few actually do that and the three I mentioned are UO, SWG preNGE and EvE got it right....98% of the others got it wrong.
Good article. Glad to see more people finally touching on what a few MMOs have been trying to push into the limelight for years. I hope it catches on (Guild Wars / Eve comes to mind).
I think some people are still missing the point, though. Even when people are playing single-player MMOs with multiple progressions / endings, they still answer the same. To be honest, very few MMOs are sandbox anyhow. For example, take WoW. Yes, you have your level progression, but you also have a very clear quest / content progression that most players follow. So instead of saying 'I'm lvl X / rank X', one could say "i'm working my way through the black temple content / gear", and still be crystal clear as to where you are in the game. The point of the article is simple almost everyone will say the former, regardless of the content. And I think the author is dead on about this. It's such a simple difference, but the amount of people who still can't see this shows how powerfully it grips us and shapes the genre as a whole.
By jove hes got it!
After reading the article i completly agree, i hadnt seen it before but yes it is the advancement, the mathematically most efficient approach.
Lets hope that the devs of the upcoming mmos have realised this indeed.
Yes, some people will play like that no matter what, but i think the reason that most people play like that at the moment is because that stuff just isnt fun or involving. People dont read quesst text becuase most of the time it is generic and meaningless. In the end its up to the players, and I think if developers find a way to make something fun and make players want to play something that the majority of players will enjoy themselves and not just grind to the cap.
Mr. Bagguns
Very good article!
I do believe that level grind, and a players rush for max level are ruining the MMO genre. I do think we as players need measurable progress. IMO Guild Wars found the perfect balance for doing this. Max level is 20 so there is no grind. After level 20 you spend time polishing your character capping eltie skills, and gathering max stat weapons. The entire time you are unlocking skills and equipment for PvP. After nearly 3 years of playing more traditional MMO's I realize that ArenaNet had it right so now I'm hoping they don't break it in guild wars 2
When I first started playing MMOG's back in 2001, experience grinding was one way to show how popular an online game was... it kept people online for long periods of time, and thus showed a high online population over a period of time. It was the accepted way of measuring how successful an online game was back then. However, things have changed. It now seems that the number of paid subscriptions now seems to be the measuring stick. So do we still need the grind?... perhaps, perhaps not.
I have left several online games simply because I was just so tired of the grind... pull, kill, pull, kill... Hours spent in DAoC getting a group together and then going to a pull/kill space, only to spend hours pulling and killing until we leveled or got enough coin. It was just so damn boring and a waste of my time!!!... and I have learned over the years to really value my time.
That is one reason I play EVE Online now. Skills are gained by time, not experience grinding. Still have to run missions and stuff for money and resources, but one just has to wait a period of time to get to a skill level for a particular skill. I loved it... though I find other things in EvE Online that I do not like, I really like the skill advancement. Not the best by far, but better than most out there.
What I would like to see is the whole idea of leveling and experience grinding to just go away... it is a dead animal waiting to be buried. Everytime I look at a new online game and they mention leveling, I just roll my eyes. What I would like to see is a skill advancement system that one advances in an individual skill by doing it... and not by doing something else. With a little imagination on the Dev's part, creating a system where one is not class restricted and has an long progressive skill learning process. In EVE Online, it is estimated that it would take 26 years for one to learn all the skills in the game. Again, not the best system in the world, but better than the endless experience grind... in my opinion.
Very few people can sum up the thousands of ideas that flow through my mind as I spend/burn countless hours playing a genre that I love, but at the same time feel guilty playing.
My tag name is Krityc (Critique) because I pick apart every game I play. My friends nag on me because I always chew games apart, and the ask why I play because it sounds like I'm not having fun. I'm enjoying myself with every comment, but it frustrates me because the genre isn't evolving.
It seems like every game that comes out with new & unique ideas fail, and the games that copy the same formula stick around. It's time for something new and refreshing, and I'm hoping that swtor is our answer.
[(T+G=W)=Gr*Nf]-S=FoF
T=Time G=Gear W=Win Gr=Grind Nf=NoFun S=Skill FoF=FullofFail
"Hey, I'll tell you what. You can get a good look at a butcher's azz by sticking your head up there. But, wouldn't you rather to take his word for it?" - Tommy Boy
Interesting article. Gave me something to think about.
When I play a game like Titan's Quest or Diablo 2 or even Fallout 3 it's true; I think about the character's level and current gear as a measure of his progress. After the first playthrough, I don't give much thought to "Oh, I'm on chapter 3 in D2".
But when I play a story-driven game like Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit), I think about my progress in terms of where I am in the story.
Other games are kinda in the middle for me. In Bioshock or Mass Effect, I was always aware of roughly how far along the main quest I was, but also how my gear and abilities were shaping up.
So, in some games, I enjoy the process of becoming more powerful, and I think you are right in that this is particularly true for MMOs. In other games, I enjoy the process of seeing where the character(s) and story lead next. In the upcoming game Dragon's Age, I am equally looking forward to both aspects, and feel the same for the new SW:TOR mmo. I think you're dead on that for MMOs to 'evolve', they must incorporate both these aspects.
One other difference I should mention is that in a story-driven SP game, once I've completed the story, it loses alot of replay value, except perhaps to see what would've happened if I'd made different choices. But with the power-driven games, there seems to be more replayability; finding even better gear, taking on harder challenges, etc. This is why I think that most MMOs go the second route. You want your players to stick around and keep playing and paying.
Just my two cents. Good article, good read.
I liked the rest of your response but these statements are your own personal biasis showing. You do not enjoy WoW so you only identify with your character in a surface way. You enjoy your EVE character so you identify deeply with that character.
In turn I could never really enjoy EVE so my character there always remained a bland empire miner who tried to get into the mission running business. My WoW character is a mature human mage who is obssessive about completing tasks and is an encyclopedia of usefull knowledge. He mainly joins groups to run smaller dungeons now but is trying to find a way to join in on the bigger raids. He is a top-notch chef and a superb fisherman.
Because I like playing my WoW character I merged my own personality with the base aspects of the character class and race. In EVE I never liked it enough to go that far in personalizing my character.
The basic problem with the question this article is that it asks 'Where you are?' when it actually means 'Who you are?'. In a single player game the Where and Who are pretty much interchangeable so one answer covers it all. In a MMORPG the Where and Who are different animals just like in real life so the anwer is way more complex.
The second failure of the question is that it is asking for a superficial answer. When asked "Who are you?" people will start with the most generic identifier and then if given time an opportunity will expand on past acheivements, current goals and future aspirations. By limiting himself to a short answer the author is cutting off any meaningfull discussiona about the topic.
So if the people asked were asked to elaborate it might go like this:
Single Player RPG: I am now in the city of X. I already rescued the merchant from the bandits and found the Sword of Might. I am currently exploring the sewers looking for the Necromancer. When I defeat him I will be able to go after the Dark Lord.
MMORPG: I am now a level X human mage. I used to raid when I was level 50 but now do small instances. I am a miner and blacksmith I just defeated the boss of the Dark Dungeon and got myself a Sword of Might. Later this week I will try to do The Sewers and kill the Necromancer. When I level more I hope to join a raid to kill the Dark Lord.
While there's rarely a single explanation for failure, and WAR certainly had many different weak points, this column is precisely the kind of preaching we need if we are to get rid of the strait jacket that is the D&D mmo heritage.
The analysis are allready there, the technology advances and the market expands. I commend Massey for doing his part with regards to enlightenment and attitude.