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General: Free Zone: Concepts I'd Like to See More
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com columnist Richard Aihoshi writes this week's Free Zone column on different core MMO concepts that he feels could be used more frequently in F2P MMOs and beyond.
It's exceedingly easy to find MMOGs bashed for being clone-like. This cuts across both the subscription and free to play business models. It does happen far more often in the latter sector, which is only natural since it includes a lot more titles; I'm not convinced whether such criticism is appropriate or not on a proportional basis.
Earlier this month, this site's Managing Editor, Jon Wood, wrote a column about five games that deviated significantly from what he referred to as "traditional style MMORPGs" by aiming beyond this hypothetical model in order to present far greater diversity and innovation. Coincidentally, I had been thinking in a similar vein, although not with his focus on past and current releases. Instead, mine centered on wondering what and how much more might be done with designs employing uncommon core concepts. The list below isn't comprehensive; in fact, I look forward to seeing other interesting possibilities brought up in the comments thread.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Just wanted to point out, but at the same time not 100% on this, but isn't Wurm Online purely a crafting game or centered primarily on crafting?
I always like the idea of player built cities. We say this with SWG, and now were seing it with FE. To bad some of the other games don't do it. FE crafting is a must, not just a side game.
But I have to agree so many MMO's are based of the same old same ol,a nd they copy one another it is so obvious.
Doesn't 'A Tale In The Desert' count as an MMORPG centered around crafting? I haven't played it in a long time, but I think it even has mini-games as part of the gameplay these days, no?
I thought the same about this title, based on crafting. I would like to see more crafting that IS a mini-game, like in Vanguard and to some extent EQ2.
Vanguard had a few minigames in it.. It had the diplomacy cardplaying thing and the crafting minigame. They werent teribly exciting though.
To me AoC also had something a little like minigames for their combat and spell weaving system. It was nerfed for melee though so you couldnt do warmup swings and hit for full effect at the end of the combo.. but spell weaving was, while a bit pointless when I was playing, atleast something different.
I never really liked how casters had powerful spells that were either click to fire or click and wait for a bit and then fire. Seems like something any idiot could do.. Id much rather have it based on some sort of minigame, possibly like the one in AoC, that took some effort to use well and also where you could mix different effects into the spell.
I kinda feel the same about crafting. It seems like more pointless grinding, sometimes with the added bonus of a chance based result. Potentially you could get the best result possible for the same amount of work you did to make something mediocre..
To me good quality should come from effort.. make it dificult to make a masterclass sword instead of just time consuming, resource heavy and/or chance based. That would put crafters on par with other mmo players that play to slay monsters or eachother. They would have a career in the game they could be proud of. Just like the raid tanks and the pvp champions or whatever fits a particular game more.
SWG I think is widely recognized as one of the best crafting systems that has ever been.
In SWG crafting wasent a "hobby", it was either fully or partially your class. i.e you could be either tailor, or swordfighter, or a little of both with a little of something else with it.
I do belive that is the way to go, not purely crafting.
On another note to your article, I've had wet dreams of building centric games.
Imagine an MMO world, where there are various construction classes.. where the actuall fighting is tops 50% of the gameplay, and the rest is crafting and constructing cities, monuments, devices and vehicles. Both as a group with various assets, or at part, solo.
Would be awesome
I'd really like to see a game that had a bit of everything. I think the core mechanism that your article is aiming at is a player controlled environment, and with that in mind, I think it's time for the NPC to take a back seat.
I'd like to see the private store mechanic expanded on. The two ways I've seen it implemented (RO and Aion) you set up shop somewhere, set your items and prices, and then walk away from your PC and do something else. I'd really like the option to set up a shop in some random location and still be able to go do something else. While you can accomplish this with an auction house, it removes part of the thrill of vending, which is location, location, location.
To remove the kind of vendor clutter you would find in RO, I'd limit the creation of shops to "building nodes," pre-designated squares where you can set up shop. Perhaps these nodes could serve additional functions, such as crafting bonuses, etc.
If you can set up a store anywhere as a player, then you'll start to see players construct their own little shanty towns in convenient locations. This could potentially remove the necessity of having NPC lead outpost towns near instances or other locales of interest. It gives players a reason to invest more time in crafting. If someone isn't making healing potions, then there aren't any to buy.
And now, since crafting has become a mainstay of world interaction and survival, why not give the player something to do while they watch their crafting bar fill. It bugs me that my character is obviously hard at work on an item and I'm just watching a bar slowly load. Why not make crafting a mini game, where success determines whether you make a mundane version of the item or a special version. Think Ms. PacMan, but instead of the cherries netting you a few extra thousand points, it makes the potion you're crafting heal 5% more health.
And why not just a generic mini game to play when you're not bashing baddies? Several single player RPGs featured card games, dice, etc. Why not put that into the game as a less violent form of PVP.
So there it is: crafting, mini games, and building. I think they all kinda go hand-in-hand.
Crafting
Yes i agree crafting could/should be utilized a lot more than it is in games.However what does a developer look for when designing his/her game?To get lots of subscriptions no doubt.This means they look at trends at what are trends of gamers?NO game game play,they want max level,then to PVP or raid,that makes for a pretty cheap game experience in my books,but this seems to be the simplistic mindset of new wave gamers.FFXI has been trying something a tad different by utilizing grouped crafting,i never got to try it so i cannot comment much,other than i don't really like the idea lol.
The other big problem with crafting is that players will join the game knowing full well it is all about crafting,then spam the developer with complaints.We see this already with grouped games,people join them then complain it is not solo friendly.So i guarantee crafters will join and complain and send the wrong message to the developer,thinking nobody wants it.Perhaps the developer is also to blame,because we have all seen their BS PR talk at how great their game caters to EVERYONE and EVERYONE does things in the game that have meaning,yes i tire of the blatant lies by developers.
minigames
I don't care much for minigames at all,i think that is too boring and literally has nothing to do with the story line or the characters and game play.It is what it is ..a side show,not interested in it.IMO it just means the game is too boring and they are looking for something to get away from the game.
Building
Yes i like this idea a lot,i think we need a simulation type MMORPG.The problem here however is expectations.I am a big stickler,i believe if you are going to implement something ,then do it right.Biggest example i can think of is EVE,a horribly done. game,cheap 101.To do a game that involves not only great combat and game play but involves massive building of structures would take a ton of database and time to develop.I am pretty sure at this stage in gaming,no developer would take on such a task without dumbing down other parts of the game to make up for lost time.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
To add to the list, i would like to see MMOs that incorporate different games that effect the same universe.
Only game i know of that is trying this at the moment is Eve, with their Dust 514 game.
Another example, Why can't there be a FFA PvP server and PvE server on the same server? You pick a life of a commoner, or the life of a soldier which both have major impact on the world they both play on. And actually have the gameplay design for both roles radically different, instead of some pvp flag you could just turn off and on.
This probably doesn't belong in this thread but, What about a Dungeon Keeper MMO? Where you build your domain and send your minions out to plunder villages for flesh and treasure? On the flip side you could play a Hero capable of slaying massive amounts of the demonic hordes, or venturing deep into a keepers lair and wounding it in a way as to pacify it for a time.
Maybe its time to stop arguing about what makes a real MMO and start melding the different concepts and designs into one world.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
"I'd really like to see a game that had a bit of everything. I think the core mechanism that your article is aiming at is a player controlled environment, and with that in mind, I think it's time for the NPC to take a back seat."
I don't agree with this at all,this is only the case because games are so cheap they have been giving us static useless NPC's.They could/should be a part of the game world also but in a meaningful way,taking part in everyday activities.
Anyone that played Wizardry 7 knows of this as NPC'S wandered the world and would actually do things like look for lost treasures and hunt down other NPC's .They also had an archaic intelligence to communicate,this could be expanded upon with modern day technology.These same NPC's would buy/sell things you could try and steal from them,ask questions of LORE,so much you could do.They could/should also have NPC's age,this way they have tons of lore and sell great stuff as time goes by,but eventually they die and new veteran NPC's would be sought out.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The crafting and building are ideas I would like to see. I really think it would be nice to have crafting that is truely useful and profitable. Building a home or place for business such as store to see crafted items in would be great and fun.
As for a game within a game I have no use for it.
I am sure to some degree crafting and building is in some games but not the way it should or could be.
Gikku
Horizons was primarily a crafting game. The game had some great idea's for city building and bringing the community together on group projects. The game had bridges that needed repair before many of the player cities became available. The cities had fountains, street lamps, walls and npc stores that needed to be repaired before they became functional. There were also monuments in towns, that when repaired, gave plot owners buffs in combat.
The game failed, I believe, because the combat side of the game wasn't done very well. Also, developers had said that once all the items in a town were repaired, new projects would appear (which to my knowledge never occured).
Crafting and building are a BIG part of Istaria. It has one of the most extensive crafting systems I've seen. But you are quite correct, the combat system at the time needed to be much better designed and implimented. Its a shame that its graphics engine is so out dated now, but for those interested in crafting and building, it has a good(but some what limited) community.
well, i would divide crafting to 2 separate parts: item crafting and building/designing.
with item crafting, which has most of the games (either in just simple way of get_mats_then_click_and_wait_for_progress_bar or as a minigame (vanguard, eq2)).
with both this ways i see 1 major problem - it is capped. it means, that more or less every player, no matter how much time and effort he spends crafting and how much he spends doing something completely different, will know the same recipes and will be able to craft the exact same items. what i would like, would be way to award effort - do you instead of killing mobs spend your time crafting? then you know crafting better then the mob hunters. it would be done e.g. this way: with every item you make, you would have small chance, that the RECIPE for that item would become better (like +1 or +5% to all stats etc.) and this could happend infinitely, only with each increase the chance for the next one would go slightly (eg. *0.9) down. this way if you would spend a lot of time creating 1 particular item, you would know making it better then anyone else and it would have better stats.
as for building/designing - why games with player/guild housing dont have possibility of those houses to be player made? if you would choose special builder class, you would spend all your time (on that char) building houses for either yourself or the others, it would just take you a lot of time to build it. also why no game i ever played had a possibility to create your own design for armor/painting/sculpture ...? you would in some in-game or out-of-game editor desing what you would want, send it to developers for approval (to prevent e.g. designs with things like nazi logos, dirty pictures or things which are under licenses) and the it would be added into game and streamed to other players.
as for the minigames - i would like to see a possibility to collect every item/mob/skill/spell in the game as a collector card and be able to play with it a MtG-like card game against other players or against server. there would be some basic stat transforming routine, which would take stats of and in-game item and created from it a card (e.g. each 100 armor on armor card would mean -1 from damage you get in card game, +10 str would mean +1 damage you deal etc.), same with mobs and every time you would kill a mob, there would be chance that his card drops, everytime you would crafted item or it would drop from mob you would again has chance card would also drop etc.
actually i thought about this some time and have some ideas how that card game could work (different rules then MtG and other collector card games i know)
Crafting is a good way to go to make your in game money, however, if the game is going to have crafting as a main portion then make farming for the mats, one cheaper to buy, and two easier to farm without having to worry about delving off into some mob to strike a node or pick herbs, or even fish. Hunting, however, is what it is to get the meats or antlers or even hoofs and so on off land animals. This is just my opinion if a game is going to be more crafting based. thx for letting me write mmorpg and keep up the good work.
Future Game Animator
well i really love how is mining and "herb" gathering done in wurm online - do you need ore? take a pickaxe, go prospect some some rock or mountain and then when you get "ore is near" message, start to dig a mine
do you need herbs for cooking? make a field, seed and nurture herbs, then harvest it 
Project Entropia (and Entropia Universe) are both very focused on crafting because of its RMT-based economy. In order to make a profit - yes, you can indeed make money by playing that game! - you had to get into a certain "trade" and do it well; crafting was one of the main options you could choose from.
You could also say Final Fantasy XI is a good example of how to build a crafting system. You could literally use just about any non-equippable loot item as crafting material, some of which were quite valuable in-game.
Both of the above games still used the ever-so-boring "click-and-wait" system, but they also gave you the possibility of failure, including the loss of crafting materials. This is also essential to any good crafting system. WoW took the easy way out and simply said "if you got the skills and the mats, you can build it any time, every time," as did several other notable games.
As far as minigames go... NEED MOAR!
I would also like to see more games that have science (or alchemy, whatever) in them. I really enjoyed the Bio-engineer aspect of old SWG back in the day. It was fun to explore the planet, tracking down beasts to extract DNA, searching for rare animal spawns, etc. The new Beastmaster system in the current SWG is pretty cool, although it costs a lot of money and time to have fun with it.
Exploration is every interesting enough in these games either. They need to make it a career path with its own gameplay elements.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
So how did random MMO blog post was published as a feature article?
I agree with this. Slow down the typical building games out there, make them more in depth. Scale from large battles down to individual heroes. Achievements in the forms of monuments, etc. There is so much that comes to mind which I would enjoy playing.
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***4 out of 5 voices in my head agree--I'm ok. It's the fifth one the scares the hell out of me.***
I totally agree with this article and give it my golden seal of approval or whatever
The foolish thing about crafting in most MMORPGs is that it is no different than collecting money to buy a item on a shop, or spend the same effort on a quest or on monster hunting to gain the same thing. You craft items that aren't customizable at all. Whoever has the same ingredients as you can craft the EXACT same item as you do.
The whole point about being a crafter is being able to create something unique, something new and different from anything else. If crafted items were more customizable, I'm sure it would be more of a success. It might be extremely complicated, I understand, but how nice would it be if we could even shape our swords and perhaps choose whether you want to add diverse complements, like a ricasso or a crossguard, perhaps a hilt or a pommel of the materials of your choice. Of course that depending on how you create it, it might end up being too heavy for anyone to use, or too unbalanced when it comes to weight (thus reducing accuracy, perhaps?). And of course the same thing could apply for pretty much anything craft-able. The same could also apply for building. The more we can affect the final item, the better.
And this is obviously too complex to have in a game, much more interesting than whatever we see on MMORPGs today, however. It would also be nice if they also tried to approach reality with crafting, instead of just having to push a button, choose the item you want and poof! Blacksmithy is not a simple process, and there could be several stages in which a mistake would somehow affect the final product. I don't really mind having a few mini games instead of random numbers to decide whether such stages would be successful or not anyways, for me what rmatters the most is how creativity affects the process.
Crafting tends to draw attention to in-game exploits: to have specialized crafting characters, you need a developed in-game economy. It causes players to immediately notice if they are up against powergamers, exploiters and people who are simply better merchants, so if the crafting mini-game is not enjoyable in and of itself, players can become extremely frustrated with the economy around them.
I'm a fan of the model of seeing an MMO as a platform for minigames. Fighting a chain of bigger, tougher monsters is just one popular mini-game, but a rich MMO world should have other . Typically the idea in MMOs has been to add more classes that attempt the same set of challenges. I prefer games that offer new sets of challenges that people can choose to specialize in.
Building has two issues: the dead warehouse sprawl (lifeless communities of player-built housing where people aren't logging in regularly don't actually add to the game) and a blurring between a player's an emotional ownership and what the user contract actually says they own (not an issue for the company so much as something players just need to remind themselves to watch out for - expending creative energy into someone else's IP arena can be a very unsatisfactory experience in the long run)
Some people have mentioned SWG already, and in that game (Pre-CU/NGE) all of these concepts were implemented, and not as afterthoughts, but stand-alone careers and gameplay. In terms of integrating combat and non-combat careers,I have yet to experience a game that put it all together in the way SWG did in its prime.
As it stands now, combat seems to be the main focus of social interaction. Without other means for people (players) to interact socially outside of a chat box, it's not surprising that games today feel as though they have little depth.
I would love to see a game designed with all of these concepts implemented again.