Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Lessons Learned: How to Improve MMORPG's
nate1980
Member UncommonPosts: 2,074
So I'm currently playing The Witcher, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I am MMORPG's. There are several reasons for this, as I'll outline below. Here are my lessons learned from The Witcher, and how I think MMORPG's can improve.
1. You don't know how strong opponents are until you take them on. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent is, in enough numbers, you can die.
- When a mobs name is color coded or the mob wears a number, a person in a MMO knows the mob will be a challenge, or the mob will die easily, or the mob is unbeatable. In DAoC, an equal con (color of the mob) mob would pose a challenge. Nowadays, and equal level mob is meant to die. They pose no real threat, unless you're on the last thread of your life and agroed one. When mobs reach a certain level below you, they are no longer a threat, no matter how many attack you.
2. A sense of danger in the world.
- Mobs are not just roaming around waiting for you to kill them. Some lurk beath the waters, some burrow under the ground, and some only come out at night. You could be running along and get ambushed, and because mobs can actually kill you, unlike most MMORPG's these days, you're on edge. You feel the danger, and are excited.
3. No levels
- I have a rank, I have skills, I get points, but I don't have levels. This means I don't know how strong I am against an opponent until I fight him. I can pick and choose which skills I want to spend my points on, giving me the ability to tailor my character to my playstyle. I'm not against class-based MMORPG's, but with the exception of EQ2, DAoC, and Vanguard, games typically forced you to accept certain things about a class that you didn't like in order to get the parts you do like. Take a plate wearing meleer as an example. In most class based games, they are tanks, deal very little damage comparitively, and with the exception of maybe WoW, you're destined to tank only. This is obsurd, since a sword can kill just as quick with or without a shield, and just as fast as an arrow or firebolt would.
- Quests also don't have levels. You can do these quests in any order you choose. In MMORPG's, quests have levels, and are typically done in order of lowest leveled quest to highest leveled quest. A well designed game has the player flowing from one quest to another, naturally taking higher level quests as they become that level. This gives the game a "hand-holding" feel and when your hand is held, the sense of adventure and freedom is gone.
4. Alchemy
- Formulas learned and ingredients harvested can be used at any point of the game with equal effectiveness. You never "level" out of a formula or plant, thus nothing becomes obsolete, making you feel like you've wasted your time "grinding" on things that have no long-term use.
- All potions are useful, and most are used strategically to give you an advantage. Each potion has a toxicity level, and you can't go beyond a certain level of toxicity, which adds to the strategic value of potions and requires you to make a choice. The way potions are used in MMORPG's aren't actually bad, I just think most potions are only useful for certain classes, meaning there's less strategy involved.
5. Purpose, Story, Quests
- In the game, you're a Witcher, a monster-slayer. Most quests revolve around you doing your job. There are some more menial tasks, but there's usually more to those tasks than at first glance. In MMORPG's, you're bogged down by quests, that would be better named "chores," because no serious adventurer would consider doing them. We only do them, because we feel we have to for the best xp, and or for the gear. Every person in MMO's do the same quests too, regardless of what class they are. MMO's should instead create different quest lines for different classes, so that the players feel that they are doing something they should be doing.
- Not all quests have it, but some give the player a choice. If you choose A, C will happen. If you choose B, D will happen. Not only does this give a game some replayability, but it makes the player feel like their choices matter. With the use of instancing, MMO's can do the same thing. It seems Bioware will be the first to actually attempt this.
- The story in The Witcher gives the player purpose. Not only does he carry on his vocation by doing quests, he's also following a central storyline, that keeps the player engaged and wanting more. Kind of like a good book, where you need to put the book down and go to sleep, but "just one more chapter, and then I'll put the book down..." Several MMO's have attempted this with varying degrees of success. Some call their storyline Epic quests, others Campaign quests, and others "Books." MMO's without this leaves the players to deduce that their purpose is only to gain max level, kill other people, or raid for the best gear. Gear should never be a purpose, nor should gaining max level. But killing other people and doing progressively harder content are not bad ideas, depending on the lore and direction of the game.
There are more lessons to be learned, but this is enough to get us started.
Comments
Ya but those idea is what you personally want in MMORPG. You can't really call those an improvement. It's an alternative.
I'm sure many people will want the same thing as you. But I'm also sure there are many others like me who don't want the same thing.
Lastly, it's nice if game developer develop a variety of quest for different class/race and such. The main reason they don't is it takes more time to make the game.
When you want a singleplayer RPG, you want a singleplayer RPG.
They're different beasts. One gives a 20-40 hour custom-crafted experience. The other gives a 200+ hour progression and involves many interesting social elements.
MMORPGs will always lag behind singleplayer titles in terms of graphics and gameplay. It's the nature of the designs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I disagree.
What if you created a game that was planned?
Something like oh say, after 5 hours of in combat gaming (meaning you could play 10-20 hours a week). You start to fatigue heavily. Making combat unappealing. This causes people to only play so much.
Plan it out and after 6 months you have played give or take 390 hours and gone through a great story with about 1,000 other players.
A great story that could have ended many different ways depending on the collective and solo choices of the players.
Then you start on a new server that could have a very different fate.
This is what I would like a MMO with a planned ending. Think of it like Anime - The ones that are planned to be 25 or 50 episodes are always great and not repetative (Such as Gundum Wing or Cowboy BeBop ) The ones that go on for 100s of episodes start to suck, quickly.
It's simple. You have x manhours worth of development. x / 30 is a higher manhour-to-contenthour ratio than x / 300. If you produce 30 "holy crap!" moments, you get 1/hr in the first game, but 1 every 10 hours in the second one.
It's an unavoidable fact. In the above situation the MMORPG project would need to hire 10 times more people to have the same number of manhours per contenthour. But smaller teams have certain innate advantages, and hiring 10 times more people incurs a large amount of inefficiency.
So planning isn't something that's going to solve this issue.
This is without going into single- vs. multi-player design constraints. The world can revolve around you in a single player game.
(I don't mean to sound like I'm talking about how fun these games can be. It's the content density (and to a large degree quality) that I'm referring to. )
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I also disagree, for some similar reasons as posters above.
I'd like to state that I absolutely loved The Witcher and am looking forward to the sequel.
I would be careful when trying to learn lessons for an MMORPG from a single player RPG. In my opinion, they are fundamentally different on a design level. Sure there's stuff about how MMOs need more content and developers can't possibly make more content while keeping quality high, but what I'm saying is much more deep-rooted. The experience and the way you play - hell, the very goals of the game - are different. It would be like trying to add stuff to single player RPGs from lessons learned from sports games.
Story can work in MMOs, but not by injecting a single player story into it - that immediately is immersion breaking which defeats the whole point of having the story in the first place.
Unless a developer can make a unique story for thousands, if not millions, of players and give each of them a cool role to play, their better off experimenting with how to make MMO stories, not slapping an "MMO" onto a single player game.
______________________
Give a man some fun and you entertain him for a day. Teach a man to make fun and you entertain him for a lifetime.
Your ideas are not 'improvements' to MMOs. they are a different way of doing them, equally as entertaining but for a different crowd.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
This is an idea that has been touched upon in a number of threads here: MMOs should maybe stop trying to emulate WoW. They should not try to outnumber WoW in players.
Instead, find your niche audience, tailor the game to them and roll in. Ok, so you may not have that many people. But if your design is coherent, you may give yourself enough. In my opinion, it is better to have 10000 players that are dedicated and will still be p(l)aying in a few years, than have 1milliom registration at launch, but 100 plyers one year down the road.
Just my two cents anyway.
Chealer: "Instead, find your niche audience, tailor the game to them and roll in. Ok, so you may not have that many people. But if your design is coherent, you may give yourself enough. In my opinion, it is better to have 10000 players that are dedicated and will still be p(l)aying in a few years, than have 1milliom registration at launch, but 100 plyers one year down the road."
I certainly agree that this is a great design direction for new MMORPGs to take. The trick is to finding that niche while providing a large amount of different things for players to do within that niche -- because the success of MMORPGs is owed in part to offering a variety of activities, so there's always something different to do if you get bored.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Well there are different ways to find a strong core feature.
It can be the setting (apocalyptic, cyberpunk), the type of player interaction (three-sided PvP, pvpve, cooperation), the leveling process (skill- or class-based), an accent on crafting or exploration...
I think the idea is to select one strong starting point and build coherently around it. yes niche is difficult, but I think it is the best option for MMO at this point... But then I'm not a professional. ^^