I am happy to see that a staff writer has started another topic about something I am really eager to talk about - the so-called "next generation" MMORPGs. And, as I did in my own posting, he lists main points where current MMORPGs excel while others don't - when they don't do exactly the opposite.
I think that he left out several points, though, which are pretty important and necessary for an exhaustive discussion about the matter.
Since we're talking about "ULTIMATE MMORPG", I suppose that problems like clients or server performances will not even be skimmed - in that [far] future, that won't be an issue anymore. Let's just focus on gaming characteristics, rather then technical aspects of the whole thing. And let's imagine that we'll all have a supercomputer as our little personal to play with. Besides, that's not so hard to think of as something happening in a few years from now...
I'll follow the good plot Jeremy laid down; since he starts discussing about Character Customization, I would add a couple of things. In our MMORPGs, a character is a "template" with a few (or a lot of) variants, like skin color, complexion, facial hair, body structure, hair color, and so on. One HUGE lack? Age! OK, I already hear you screaming. How in the hell is a child supposed to deal with monsters or space ships? Answer: he is not! What I mean is, we could think that a character is someone who starts interacting with the surroundings at a certain age - according to the race and the background of the game - let's say 14/15 for a human and so on. At that point, as it is in reality, you start specializing, choosing a job (weather be a scientist, a pirate, a rogue or an assassin), and possibly following a "teacher", a "maestro". It would be great that such a teacher could be another player... but I suppose that that would require too much from a simple player - so it could be a "human NPC", someone on the game's producer payroll, interacting with disciples with a little more enthusiasm than a totally automatic NPC whose best performance is to allow us to select a new skill to learn as soon as we reach a certain level - and for a fixed, pre-defined, well known amount of money. I don't really think that a "normal" player can be so dedicated, so available and so... good, actually, to play that role, therefore, I bet for a specialized, really paid profession master whose job in the real life is to train other players. Since no one can work 24/7, that could represent a good job opportunity for working from home, too, and would expand immensely the reward of learning and growing our char through the game. This leads us to a slower growth, maybe (you cannot just login, and start slaying dragons!), but it would bring another layer to the game levels - human interaction between teacher and student. Of course, I would definitely leave there the option for an "old-fashioned" template-based char creation funnel - even to some higher levels - so that all the players just wanting to feel the breeze of whacking through the mobs could actually be up and running in minutes... besides, Blizzard did set up some "RPG" servers - the same could happen here... "Attention people... for serious players, wanting to grow naturally in a human-like style, there's the brand new RL Server..." or something like that.
Growth doesn't only mean learning something. It means learning all what you want - and so here we have the reference to all those games and ideas of Jeremy and other posters saying that it's unnatural that a mage is just a mage, and cannot swing a blade too - so the class-based system definitely has to retire. It's nice, but old, and too simple to reproduce a complex reality like learning and doing. Of course, we're all aware that the class system has been used in actual MMORPGs because the client engine has to represent the char performing the action requested - and that required legions of programmers and designers who drew the allowed sequences before the game could actually ship... but in our ULTIMATE MMORPG, we don't really have this problem, since an engine able to reproduce a lot more movements and actions (emote included, and, yeah, why not, *THAT* TOO! ) will be on place for sure. So we'll have more natural movements, a lot more interaction with the environment (a skill could be tree climbing, another diving and so on) and a lot more complicated system of damages to our avatar because of his/her clumsy attempt in doing something (what about a cold leading to bronchitis because of a fall in gelid waters, reflecting in a permanent loss of some constitution?)... but several others just come to my mind.
Another thing a character does when he/she grows is aging. Therefore, I imagine such an engine, putting some weight up here and there with passing of years, some wrinkles at a certain moment... a constitution and dexterity changing according to the profession, actions and events happening through all our character's life... at that point, with such a superengine working on our character, I really doubt that we'll have similar characters around, or, as Jeremy correctly says in his article, clones for high levels.
What about death? No one likes to die. Not even in a game. But, we can do a lot more in a game that we cannot do (yet) in the real life. We can extend our life span. A mage can use potions, or simply have a slower aging rate. Or maybe spells can be cast on a char. In a sci-fi based game, technological treatments can be used to restore one's body, or to repair it - to some extent. But, as much as I would HATE it, I think a character, sooner or later, should DIE. Stop stop stop yelling! Yes, boys, DIE! And you know why? Because we do die. If people could really live forever, we would have so many more problems! And the same happens to our beloved, cherished avatars. I have SO MANY friends who reached the fatal "TOP CAP LEVEL" in SO MANY games. The outcome? BOREDOM. Oh yeah, the games always put you in front of something which is SO GREAT, IMMENSE, POWERFUL and DEVASTATING that only characters of the top level, grouped, can deal with them. But that's it. The game dies, then, when the final level has been reached. The char cannot advance any further. Cannot learn anything else. Cannot be any more powerful. And this semi-god, my dears, is then condemned to be left hanging around on a server's disk for a while, maybe a lot, while other chars, maybe belonging to other races, start their life, in a totally disconnected relationship with our previous ancient, old, powerful and now boring top level char.
What I propose is something we cannot have in the real life: the possibility to live several lives. When our char has the "right age", he/she can have a child. Of course it's something which must be worked out, graphically, technically and socially. But, the outcome is: you "dad" char ages, gets old, and the top level can be reached... but in the meanwhile, a new char is "spawned", and we have the "child" char learning skills from his/her parents, living in the same house (yep, housing is a must!), using the same artifacts his parents gave him... I am sure I read something about this in a MMORPG news - could have been D&L, or another one - to me it's just *THE* only possible "GOOD" way of keeping a gaming experience alive and connected. Besides, think of the number of possibilities connected to this: family graves, quests based on revenge for killing the monster who killed your ancestor... family treasures... households... the choices are almost endless.
Well, dealing with the previous topic, I said "Yep, housing is a must". And it actually is. For several reasons - one futile is the possibility to expose trophies and treasures, one more interesting is the possibility to give our "family" a common "base-camp"... but housing itself has been discussed diffusely in other topics, therefore I won't go any further in this one.
One other aspect which has not been even skimmed is the environment. Someone wrote, MORE CINEMATICS. Of course! A static world is not going to be any appealing anymore. I agree, Guild Wars is not as loved as World of Warcraft or Star Wars... but its graphic effects are just refreshing and give the player a feeling of a real simulated environment. If you look at a fixed scene, sometime WoW looks like an old platform... even if it has beautiful effects (water and sky, or lights reflecting on snow for example), it's way too static.
Environment does not mean only an animated background. That's a first step. But we need to go beyond. It needs INTERACTION. I have to have the possibility to gather flowers from a field, if I fell like wanting to. I have to have the possibility to dig a ditch in the ground, and then jump into it and wait for the possibility to ambush someone. I want the possibility of chopping down a tree and obstruct a passage. And of course other players have to have the possibility to overcome the tree (climbing it, chopping their way through it, setting it on fire and burning it to dust, or simply walking around it) or any other obstacle posed in the world. One of the most annoying things in Guild Wars is the fact you cannot RUN freely towards a field you see. Sometimes, programmers put invisible barriers and forced players to follow narrow, pre-defined, invisible paths. That's SO DISAPPOINTING! And so unreal. What the heck, I cannot walk behind a house when I clearly see the back? Darn!
In dealing with the world, we have to have bigger worlds. Worlds, I mean, not just big maps. The worlds we know now are too small - it takes a few to cross all of them if your char is powerful and rich enough to pay for all the transits (WoW). I want a world where it literally takes weeks to go from one side to another. In other words, the whole concept of MMO must be reworked here. Massively Multiuser Online. A lot of users, then. Thousands. Maybe, dozen, hundreds of thousands. How is it possible that hundreds of thousands share only a few dozens square acres? Come on, in a real world, where you can only walk or ride horses, you would take years, or decades, to change continent. Let's scale that down, we're talking about weeks or days. Not minutes! For a space game, it's even easier. It means trillions of star systems, obviously generated by the computers and maintained by them. No human programmer has to tamper with that from a certain point - otherwise, it would be simply impossible to say, "where no one has ever been before"! Really, huge spaces available to avatars only scare project managers because they're just scared to death of the risk of content-empty regions. But the worlds should NEVER be that empty - of course, they won't be, if you throw in weather, wild animals (or monsters), a nicely interactive environment, seasons, and so on!
Anyway! There're so many things we could go on discussing about the perfect MMORPG. As someone pointed out correctly, there will never be something like "the ultimate MMORPG", since everything we're talking about is in a constant evolution. But, there're a few ideas which simply cannot be left behind too much.
As usual, I wrote too much! So I hope I didn't get y'all bored, ONCE AGAIN. Stay tuned and give me your feedback! Seeeeyaaaa!
What we need is for one bright young developer to sit down and take the best concepts from all games, and put them in to one game. No one will ever agree on what features are the most important in an MMORPG, but if one game had all the features, then it would make sense that that one game would have a great majority of the market.
Sadly, I don't think this will ever be possible, because almost everyone will have different thoughts on where to stand on each of your wishes. Different people like different things. Most of them can only be implemented in one way because they are all quite fundamental to the design of the MMOG.
Character customization - no complaints here.
Combat - You can't get a happy medium between auto-attack and twitch. There is a continuum between full auto-attack and full FPS twitch. You can give a perfectly good argument where on this continuum you draw the line, and anyone else can give a perfectly good argument as to why the line should be drawn elsewhere. Different people all have there own views as to what is best here and there is no way to please everyone.
Crafting - While I personally agree with you on SWG "crafting", others see it as a cop-out and a cheat. "The player gets all this reward for doing NO work! On my MMOG, I studiously have to *earn* my money"! There is some argument that money earned through "hard" work is worth more.
Housing - Is a very difficult problem. Allowing easy and cheap housing soon gives you a great city ... of *empty unused* houses. I guess some kind of decay is required to stop this happening (or a good old fashioned city raze a la Shadowbane). So maybe this point is quite valid.
Quests - Having randomly-generated quests certainly avoids the Google cheat problem, and the spawn-wait problem, but it'll lead to cries of unfair when other players see the rewards that some players got from quests "which I can never get a chance to complete".
Skill vs Class - Like twitch-vs-autoattack, this is a totally subjective decision and you will never get two people agreeing on what is right here. Again, there is a continuum between All-skills to All-classes, and no answer is correct.
A lot of the decisions are fundamental to the mechanics of the MMOG. The designer can't incorporate the option to please everyone, thus, in my view, there never will be a "perfect MMOG".
P.S. And you didn't even touch on the other contraversial topics: PvP, perma-death, in-game economies, immersion-vs-RW, forced RPing, etc ...
This is about the third time I have posted something like this, Oh well its fun anyway.
Character Customization- Full control of height, facial features and proportions, body scaling and measurements, and the proportion of fat and muscle. full options of clothing and how to wear each item, IE open jacket, closed jacket, or partially open. options for character background, charcter traits, like dislikes, querks, fears, and other character profiling. Pretty much the ability to create a little virtual human.
Combat- Soul Calibur, Devil May Cry, Advent Rising, And MGS3, all mushed together to create, fighting bliss. No click and wait or stat crunching or random chance, I'll have none of that crap in my Prefect MMO. lol
Crafting- Crafting should be easy, just get the materials and there you go, with enough practice anyone can create anything. Also I would have a good way to enhance weapons and items, think City of Heroes enhancement sysytem, but with items. And lite item decay.
Player Housing and Cities- Of course player owned houses and buildings, including the ability to create new buildings and run towns, counties and such.
Quests and Spawns- Good banlance of common and instanced quests like CoH. And quests should be open-ended so the player has the ability to get creative and do things in their own way.
Character Skills and Class- No classes, schools or skill trees, just practice it and you get better at it, if you kick alot of stuff you get better at kicking, like to cook alot, you'll get better at it. So simple its crazy.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Wow, three games that got overlooked, but these are easy to miss though so you're forgiven.
1. Asheron's Call (Character customization is great, the early days of gathering and trial-and-error spell recipes was a blast) --Asheron's Call (AC1) which suffered being released during the original Everquest boom. This game suffers like most other non-EQ MMO's suffer... it's not EQ. In the MMO fantasy world there is Everquest and games that are not Everquest. AC had some of the greatest ideas like random monster camps, reagent collecting and spell research. If AC2 would have stayed more true to the original Asheron's Call I believe it would have been an EQ killer.
2. Horizons (The often over-looked mother of customization -- tired of swords? Start casting... oh but keep that sword handy 'cuz you can still use it. Add in *limited* housing and there are some of the best player run towns I've seen) --Horizons killed itself. You can't release a beta product for retail or you're toast. It's the first impressions of those willing to spend the cash on something different that will bring their friends into it and Horizons failed here. The game now is at a retail stage while the client is a free download and most people searching for a new MMO because they are tired of the same old boredom of EQ and WoW are overlooking the freeness of Horizons. It's too bad you can't turn back time because the storyline in Horizons could have been top notch.
3. Ultima Online (The grand-daddy of character customization and crafting... so you like whittling wood? Get yer damn axe out and start chopping trees. Hate being stuck in a dungeon? train up your spellbook and cast those recall runes back to town) --Ultima Online is only played by the most loyal of loyal MMO fans these days due to the graphics (which is a shame because the game was done very well for it's time and has almost everything from every other game except fancy graphics).
So for my idea of the perfect game, combine the above three games, mix in some intelligent npc monster raids on towns, add a dynamic world map with capturable strategic points and towns and you've got the best game. (And graphics don't hurt either
I enjoyed the article a great deal. The content was concise and easy to follow; the physical length was also reasonable so I was willing to read the entire thing (this is a problem on some of your game reviews and should be addressed). I also agreed with most if not all of the points but I feel there was one that stood out: Character Classes.
This has got to be the most redundant feature of any MMO to date. You are either a tank, a caster or some jack of all trades who is neither excellent in everything nor lacking in anything. I would quite literally wet myself if I found a game which had a skill set available for me to choose from. Not a class, not a mold, not even a template. Just a pool of skills for me to customize from and to use as I see fit. The only MMO that I have found that comes close to this Planet Side.
This game allows me to choose an air, ground, vehicle, or some twisted combination of the three. There are different weapons you can choose from and of course a variety of support roles you can take on. This is one of the few games that allows you to truly define yourself within the game world according to your taste and ability. No one role dominates (though this can of course be argued and no doubt will by the Anti-BFR group) so there is no outrageous "lopsidedness" to any build.
Anyway, as I said above I liked the article and it can pretty much be cited as the reason why I no longer subscribe to "traditional" MMORPG's. These types of articles are arguably the reason I became a frequent visitor to MMORPG.com. Needless to say I would love to see this type of writing in the future, Lepidus!
I can agree as a veteran player . It is hard too choose your MMORPG game. All seem to miss something.
As 38 year old marketing and Massive Online Game lover i do have a concept of a Massive Online game that has all in it. All and more things you made clear in your article is in the concept. But the funding of it is nowhere to find. An investment of 15 to 20 million dollars is almost impossible to get, for one man with a great idea. So i am trying to get another idea from the ground which could generate some money. Another massive online game but with an investment of 2 million, which also brings something complete new to the MMO genre.
The problem is funding also ... I see many talents on forums and on the web, with good suggestions that just needs to be picked up. Problem is also developers do not/cannot listen to community and reprogram, there is no flexibility. I also see and hear of many commercial pressure on releasedates etc... Two kinds of pressures and reason why the games arenot
1. Please companies try and give some ideas a chance
2. Finish your product as intented instead of must release... The Game Horizons is a great example of a promising game that never became one....
3. Listen to your community before you make xxxx
well my project (or projects) still needs a strategic partner and i hope i find one so we can give you some nice games.
Camping/Spawns - This needs to go. Dungeons need to be instanced, and designed to be crawled through. Do away with this camp X location until you level, then go to Y location. Important spawns need to be triggerable.
Twinking - Umm, bring it back, nitwits. This was our reward for advancing. Its kinda like your alt is your main's apprentice. So, he gets nice stuff.
Crafting - Less tedious. Shouldn't take 1,000,000,000 combines to go up a level. Ridiculous and leads to most crafters using illegal macroes.
Classes - Ok, why in every game is there completely worthless class(es)? I think AC did this best. You don't even pick a class. Put EXP points where you want them. I can't believe no one as followed up on this. AC is an awesome game, but the graphics are from the nintendo age.
Soloing/Groups - Soloing is a fad. Should you be able to solo while lfg? Yes, of course. Should soloing be a viable option to level to max quickly? No. Groups need to have a significant reward to make people want to group. Grouping and meeting others is what makes people love MMOs not soloing.
Quest - Ok, its not this way in every game, but quest need to be worth it. In many games you can spend 2-1000 hours on a quest and the reward is a complete and worthless joke.
Raids - Wow, whoever finds standing around for 5 hours while you annihilate one loser is easily amused. Then you get a very small chance to win some uber loot. If raiding is your endgame it needs to be accessible to all. Not just those in uber guilds. No locking out people who have paid for the game and all expansions since release to make these guys feel special. Encounters should drop something for everyone, also. I'm not sure of the percentage of people who like to raid 24/7, but I personally have met very few who do. Even in the raid happy game EQ, which I played for 4 years.
To be honest, the real idea of the ultimate mmorpg (for me that is) was Star Wars: Galaxies before the Combat Upgrade was implemented... But that's just my opinion.
The only bad part there was the quest system (to me).
Unfortunately, I don't currently have the time to thoroughly read all the responses in the forum.
So, forgive me if I am repeating some of the things that peeps might have all ready posted about said article.
The editorial makes some great points. The only problem I had with this piece is the lack of the variety of the games the author referred to. It seemed that the only games referred to were SWG, WoW, EQII, Neocron, and even the SIMS!? (note: I admit that I haven't even bothered to try any of the games mentioned)
What about the plethora of other games that seem to qualify the authors wants? Dare I say that DAoC and EVE online (two games I am currently involved with) seem to answer some of the authors needs? Or am I way off base with that statement?
Has the author tried the hundreds of other games besides the ones he is involved with? Would they meet some if not most of his criteria for an ultimate mmorpg?
I understand that this article was an editorial, an opinion piece. But it seems to me that the author should experience a lot of the other games out there before pining for an ultimate mmorpg. And if the author has played a lot more than the couple of games he repeatedly mentioned in his editorial, I wonder why he didn't refer to them specifically?
I think what this article does serve to do is open up a good discussion on how the current crop of games can be improved and give ideas to future publishers/programmers.
For that, I definitely applaud this editorial.
"I have live my life by these nine simple words: It sounded like a good idea at the time." --Livingston Taylor
IMHO just copying existing games, while maybe resulting in a good game, would not generate a next MMORPG generation game. Actually I think of WoW doing this.
One way of bringing MMORPg into a next generation could be done by hightening combat interaction both skill as environment wise. This supplemented by things like none trivialised Monster profiles that have great in pact on player-used-skills and tactics. A new type of encounter model substituting the wander spawn point model where encounter first are not so predictable and secondly more like a little story where some things happens that can be fore seen. This could be purely combat wise like an ambush or sprinkled other options.
Quests need to get way from being task systems and even if you have to bring 10 red fuzzles this can be done in a more immersive way than the accountant mentality expressed through the phrase bring 10 red fuzzles. Illusion is half the rent here IMHO.
Also MMORPG need to think of a ways how to transport the feeling of adventure in there content in a world where the Internet exists. Note that I not talking about spoiler proof content but the players experience while consuming content to very different things.
I think some of these things would advance MMORPG greatly but there many other ways one could go. Like not inventing a MMORPG a new every time instead advancing an own system or third party system like D&D defining a MMORPG rule set standard which could be advanced with each new title. So MMORPG could is actually progress and not suffer of many reoccurring problems as is presently the case. Just to mention 1 optional way of many possible that could improve MMORPGs greatly
But two things I am quite sure of you wont really get a next generation MMORPG by picking best features of current games and that future MMORPGs need to progress in things I call adventure feel.
have fun psi
--- Light laughter and sweet water to you fellow adventures.
Originally posted by Lepidus A question for those of you responding to this article... Your opinion of this piece aside - is this something you would find interesting to see more of on the site? Edit: To be clear, I meant editorials in general.
I know for myself Lepidus, I would love to see much more of these kinds of articles on mmorpg.com. In the short time I've been involved with this community I've found some wonderfully intelligent, passionate people that are deeply commited to mmo's in general, it would be nice to have this site write more then the occasional review, special event or promotion for some game.
The MMO community is filled with wonders at the future of gaming, technology, amazing and very smart people/gamers and they all have an oppinnion. What better base could you possible build your site's content around ? Anyways, my vote is more, much more.
read your article and I agree with part but disagreee with the majority of it.
Here is my ultimate MMORPG.
1. The questing of WoW
2. The skill system of Asherons call
3. the Graphics of WoW, although just a bit less cartoony
4. Combat system where there is no auto attack..its all based on styles.
5. no circle strafing like in WoW..its un realistic.
6. The PvP of DAoC..but without the NPC keep Guards.
7. The crafting of AC but with the difficulty of WoW...I believe loot should be the only form of equipment..crafting should be used to upgrade the stats/durability of Loot ala AC Tinkering.
8. Absolutly no huge time sink style raids like in DAoC, EQ or WoW..its not fun and it doesnt take skill jsut organization....AC, CoH and to a degree WoW non raid isntances are where the real skill shines.
9. No player housing..Player housing takes people out of the citys of the world making them feel less populated..if you want then have inn rooms like in EQ2 but thats as far as i would go.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Note: These are not in any specific order and are only my personal opinions.
Graphics - This is a major, but not defining aspect of a good MMORPG. The graphics, IMHO, need to be realistic (none of the cartoonish crap from the comic strip mmorpg - aka WoW). They must allow you to immerse not only your character, but yourself into the world and make it feel as if the tree, or plant you're looking at should be in your back yard as opposed to "just another pixeled picture." I've played a lot of the current MMORPG's out there, and Lineage II has some of the best looking graphics I've seen to date.
Combat - This is a difficult one for me. In some cases, I like the "hit this button and watch me do the work" combat systems, but for the most part I enjoy doing combos and using a variety of skills rather than always "delete - sit back - loot." I believe that DAoC did it pretty good with the combo systems requiring your opponent to, lets say, dodge before you can use that certain ability. This, in turn, opened up more moves that you're able to add onto that first attack. I also like the spell line up that DAoC and Lineage II have allowing you to start casting the first spell, then follow it up with another spell in a queue.
Crafting - Although I have never played SWG, from the other posts it sounds like my crafting dream. I enjoy crafting in most games, but only if the work I put into making an item provides me with equal quality/usefulness. What I HATED (yes, absolutely 100% hated) was Runescape's crafting. With 24 inventory, you were not only limited to space, but you had to craft thousands of the same item that were utterly worthless JUST to make one level in the skill. I ended up spending hours just to raise my skill one point and ended up with a large stack of useless, unstrung bows that were available to anyone in a store. I believe that materials should be easy to gather (find the location/large deposits of ore/herbs/etc) and make it fast gathering. Or make it so that you can hire or assign NPC's to extract the raw materials for you while you went about your business (like someone mentioned in SWG's).
Player Housing - Absolute must. One of the brightest stars in the near future that is going to implement free build housing/city/kingdom development is Dark and Light. In fact, I'm surprised this game wasn't even mentioned and it's the number one hyped up and coming MMORPG. I am looking forward to making a village adapt to what is needed, whether it be a small farming community that is self sustaining, or a large crafting city that relies on player trade to stay afloat. To the game designers in the current MMORPG's that had specific houses already setup (little to no customization), WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! A house is just like a player. It should be able to be customized and tweaked down to the very last detail, since the house will most likely reflect the player who owns it.
PvP - I understand that alot of people do not enjoy PvP for the simple fact that it becomes far too competative, and there are always those "few" griefers who enjoy killing the same person hundreds of times. But let's face the facts; almost every game out there either has PvP in it, or is primarily focused around it. This is an aspect that I loved in DAoC for large scale Realm vs Realm, and also in the highly competative Planet Side. One of the main reasons that I like to PvP isn't just to gain another player's respect, but for rewards. WoW completely ignored this when it was released. PvP got you absolutely NOTHING. And then they tried to make up for it with released the Honor system; something that requires you to kill other players weekly to keep up your rank (daily if you want a high rank). A static rank would be nice, thanks. Something hard to obtain, but once you reached it, the difficulties were worth enduring for the reward(s).
Community - This is one thing I'm not even going to touch with a 10 foot pole. I am a soloist player, though I do believe in having a close knit clan/guild/monarchy with the ability to have a guild house(s) would be ideal. Dealing with other players is something I do as little as possible.
I know there are many other aspects of MMORPG's that I left out, but these are just some of the things that I believe are the major parts of a game I look at.
*Note* The poll is based on Fantasy MMORPG (sorry but Sci-Fi isn't my "thing").
Left out of the editorial: artificial downtime, the grind, noodle guns, loot stupidity.
Artificial downtime after combat is one of the most moronic inventions ever. Why would I want to spend my free time watching my avatar sit on his virtual can while a mana or endurance bar fills up? I don't care what the developer is trying to balance, forcing the player to read a book or watch tv between fights just plain sucks.
The grind is what players often gripe about when at later levels in RPGs it takes longer and longer to gain the next level. This is because the experience necessary to go from one level to the next almost always doubles, but the experience from killing a same level monster doesn't or it becomes more difficult or takes much longer to kill a same level monster. We're playing this virtual avatar for fun - if the game isn't a lot of fun and gets repetative, the distance between levels becomes very obvious.
In Planetside, for example, it's possible to get a chain gun which has an immense rate of fire. To balance the fire rate, the developers created a "cone of fire", which means that though you may be standing 2 feet from your victim with your gun barrel shoved into his stomach, the bullets are flying over his head, over his shoulder, to either side, and occasionally actually hitting the target. A real gun with a random kick like that would have ripped off your arms, so we can only assume the barrel of this chain gun is made of spaghetti noodle and whips around like an elephant's trunk spraying bullets in every direction but where it's actually aimed. Point is, if I'm aimed at something, I want to hit it.
Picture this: You sneak up on a guy in full platemail that's carrying a flaming sword, you carefully get behind, and wham! You neatly sever his spine from his head with a well placed stab in the neck. You go to loot the corpse of your victim and find...a rusty dagger and 2 copper. What?!?!?!? The corpse is wearing a full set of platemail! Why can't I loot it? I don't care about the mechanics of limiting player acquisition - find some other way to do that. I'm tired of killing blind, toothless, quadraplegic, gutless, bloodless, skinless, boneless, hairless, tendonless, meatless animals. How do these poor excuses for animals get into the world? I have no idea how they could possibly damage my avatar in their condition but if I have a quest to get a tooth from a wolf, I expect to get a mouthful every time.
Left out of the editorial: artificial downtime, the grind, noodle guns, loot stupidity.
Artificial downtime after combat is one of the most moronic inventions ever. Why would I want to spend my free time watching my avatar sit on his virtual can while a mana or endurance bar fills up? I don't care what the developer is trying to balance, forcing the player to read a book or watch tv between fights just plain sucks.
Well, battleaxe, actually a mana or endurance bar filling up in some time is not what I would have put in my perfect game. I would have put some more realistic effect as a possible outcome of a fight. Yep, for sake of realism. I would love to see my character falling, and not being able to stand up, BEFORE dieing. Actually, for the level of realism it has right now, a mana bar is totally useless, I agree. It only bothers the player. What about a good, human-like need to take a nap of a few hours (even in a camp, not necessarily in an inn) after a very long day? I know, there're people out there who couldn't even stand the idea - their template is a good old Commodore 64 Commando, where you don't stop a second dodging bullets and mines and all you have to do is franctically click the mouse button to hack everything moving around. Well, it's a little bit different from an "evoluted" game, IMHO (here H stays for haughty, as I am so), and therefore I think that companies could provide a wonderful game for them AND another one, much slower, much more intriguing and maybe even more expensive, for people who want a little bit (or a lot, of course) more than that. I think it would be the only possible solution - you'll never be able to make a real adventurer, whose greatest reward could be finding a treasure in a lost temple inhabited by ghosts, and a rambo-like fighter, who is not satisfied if he doesn't kill his daily rate of monsters all around. There must be different games, or at least different scenarios for them. Something like Guild Wars did - but taken even further.
The grind is what players often gripe about when at later levels in RPGs it takes longer and longer to gain the next level. This is because the experience necessary to go from one level to the next almost always doubles, but the experience from killing a same level monster doesn't or it becomes more difficult or takes much longer to kill a same level monster. We're playing this virtual avatar for fun - if the game isn't a lot of fun and gets repetative, the distance between levels becomes very obvious.
I don't understand your position about that (it may be because I am not English mothertongue). Do you mean you dislike it, or that it's necessary? Actually, I think that the way it is implemented is not so bad, even if a lot of improvements could be easily put in place. If I am learning how to haunt, it's obvious I start with some animal (or alien) who's of no or little danger. The more I "grow", the more I seek for challenge in more powerful opponents. But, what if I don't? What if I want to become a hunter, and specialize in hunting boars? In most games, boars will always be "easy prey", and therefore a high level hunting boars would just kill them by looking at them. Which is not what happens in reality. The reality teaches you that a wild boar can still kill an expert hunter. Games overcome this by throwing in the game different "flavours" of the same base enemy - so we have wild boars, blood seeking boars, orcish boars, supernatural boars and semi-divine boars, looking exactly like their "class base" ancestors but tremendously powerful... hmmm... once again, poor similarity with the real achieves poor gaming experience... IMHO, as usual.
In Planetside, for example, it's possible to get a chain gun which has an immense rate of fire. To balance the fire rate, the developers created a "cone of fire", which means that though you may be standing 2 feet from your victim with your gun barrel shoved into his stomach, the bullets are flying over his head, over his shoulder, to either side, and occasionally actually hitting the target. A real gun with a random kick like that would have ripped off your arms, so we can only assume the barrel of this chain gun is made of spaghetti noodle and whips around like an elephant's trunk spraying bullets in every direction but where it's actually aimed. Point is, if I'm aimed at something, I want to hit it.
I didn't play that game, but of course that is just laughable. If you have a chain gun, you're going to kill most enemies, no matter how disperse is the "cone of fire". Maybe you should have a certain difficulty to aim correctly (you know what I mean if you have practiced shooting: after hours, arms simply won't raise, or they will but the aim will be trembling). But please, let me kill someone even with a dull spoon, if I am just a foot away... :-)
Picture this: You sneak up on a guy in full platemail that's carrying a flaming sword, you carefully get behind, and wham! You neatly sever his spine from his head with a well placed stab in the neck. You go to loot the corpse of your victim and find...a rusty dagger and 2 copper. What?!?!?!? The corpse is wearing a full set of platemail! Why can't I loot it? I don't care about the mechanics of limiting player acquisition - find some other way to do that. I'm tired of killing blind, toothless, quadraplegic, gutless, bloodless, skinless, boneless, hairless, tendonless, meatless animals. How do these poor excuses for animals get into the world? I have no idea how they could possibly damage my avatar in their condition but if I have a quest to get a tooth from a wolf, I expect to get a mouthful every time.
Same thing. Poor interaction with the environment. You're 100% right. That guy SHOULD have left his body available to you for looting - eye bulbs, tongue and teeth included! The same for each other animal you kill. It's just a shortcut to make quests last longer - but it ruins the reality (immersion) so much. Like finding objects when looting animals. What the hell was this bear doing with a neat leather purse under his arms?
Realism, friends. Is it so hard to understand that the easiest (and best) way to do things is just to look at the way they are in reality?
The one thing I disagree with completely, is an automated crafting system. Personally I like spending a couple minutes manually mining ore or chopping down a tree or cutting flax etc, This keeps the immersion real for me and is why I play MMOG's.
Crafting is supposed to be a slow tedious process, for realism sake, and to make it unappealing for many to pursue. Yes that's right, make it unappealing. Sounds crazy right? But if you make it too enjoyable and too easy, then everyone will pursue it and everyone will be a master crafter and the market will be flooded with items and no one will stand out as having accomplished anything special.
Some games artificially limit accounts and characters to 1 tradeskill choice only, in order to try and limit the amount of crafters, but this is not a logical restriction. As long as I am willing to make the effort, I should be able to pursue as many crafts as I want to, certainly with other characters, without having to buy multiple accounts.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it." Brad McQuaid Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc. Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes www.vanguardsoh
Unfortunately, I don't currently have the time to thoroughly read all the responses in the forum. The editorial makes some great points. The only problem I had with this piece is the lack of the variety of the games the author referred to. It seemed that the only games referred to were SWG, WoW, EQII, Neocron, and even the SIMS!? (note: I admit that I haven't even bothered to try any of the games mentioned) What about the plethora of other games that seem to qualify the authors wants? Dare I say that DAoC and EVE online (two games I am currently involved with) seem to answer some of the authors needs? Or am I way off base with that statement? Has the author tried the hundreds of other games besides the ones he is involved with? Would they meet some if not most of his criteria for an ultimate mmorpg? I understand that this article was an editorial, an opinion piece. But it seems to me that the author should experience a lot of the other games out there before pining for an ultimate mmorpg. And if the author has played a lot more than the couple of games he repeatedly mentioned in his editorial, I wonder why he didn't refer to them specifically?
The point of my article was that though some games have good features that fit my criteria for a good MMORPG, no one game has all of these features incorporated. People are pointing out games left and right that have this feature or that, but none of these games contain all of the features.
Now, to address the concern that I only mentioned a few games. Firstly, I have played many, many MMORPGs. For the purposes of the article, I tried to limit my references to more recent games, as it was primarily written with "next generation" games in mind. I also did not mention games that did not have features that fit my criteria, and I did not reference games that I had not played thoroughly.
As for The Chronicle, I am following the development of the game, but I don't like to - excuse the clich
Agent_X7 AKA J Star [/URL] Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
To be an ultimate MMO for me, it has to be completely new. Sure, combining the best aspects from current games to create a "best of" game would be great, I'm really waiting for the next game to really break the mold. Below are some of my ideas:
Fully interactive world - let's say a fight breaks out in a bar. In most games, I can used my equipped weapons to fight. Otherwise I can dig a weapon out of my inventory to fight. I can't pick up the chair and beat someone over the back with it. I can't throw them through the front window. I can't pull a rug out from under them. Why? Because the chair is only usable to sit on, the front window is actually too solid for that, and the rug is just part of the scenery.
Someone above mentioned digging a hole to ambush someone. In addition - how about cutting down a tree to create a roadblock? Or being able to climb a tree to scout ahead?
Ability to change the world - this goes with the above, but when I kill someone, I want them to stay dead. In WoW, one instance sent you to the bottom of Gnomeregan to assassinate the leader and help the gnomes move back in. Funny thing is, though, after I did all of that work, they're still standing in their exact same spots in Ironforge. In order to accomplish this, however, you'd need:
Dynamic quest system - NPC quests need to be able to be generated on the fly. Onyxia killed? Then another quest would pop up to kill some other massive leader, who would also be randomly generated. Perhaps they're in a randomly generated dungeon as well? To go along with this, provide tools for players to create quests as well. If I'm attacked by a 12 foot tall gnoll in the middle of the wilderness, and I'm steamed about it, allow me to put a bounty on him - first player to kill him gets the bounty.
Meaningful PvP - right now, most people go and kill other players just for the sake of killing other players. Make it so there's a reason to kill. Gain territory that means something, like a mine or water source. Allow defenses to be built to make it hard for the territory to change hands, to make the capture meaningful. In SWG, my server had an imperial city with countless bases, turrets, minefields, etc. It stood for months, and any raid against it failed. Imagine the feeling of excitment when the first raid successfully defeated the towns defenses.
Player created content - provide means for players to actually create good content. Player bounties are a good start, and already in some games. SWG has the abilities to contact the events staff to have special stuff added. One of my guildies was leaving the game, and they wrote a special suicide emote and animation for him to use to delete his character. In addition to events, allow players to create "Stuff". In SWG, all T-21 rifles have the same features, just better or worse quality. Maybe I want to create a sawed off shotgun though, that had decent concealability with poor accuracy.
These are just some suggestions. I agreed with the editorial that those are all great features to be emulated, but they are features that currently exist. I'm waiting to see the next revolutionary game, rather than just another evolutionary game.
excellently written article the best overall Fantasy MMORPG I have found in all honesty however is UO despite it's age and lack of pixel crack. It does have a very repetitive crafting system. but as far as open ended characters goes it is very good want a warrior that heals and yet can cast mage spells you got it - or vise versa if you want a mage that can be a thief it's yours - the only limiter is the total skill points allowed for every character which is 700 you choose how you want to allocate the points to make yourself unique. 90% of the gear is dyeable so unique dress is also possiable. hair color can be changed at any time in game as well. Used to play EQ for 6yrs and gave it up for UO due to the ability to do just about anything in game with a very small group of friends 2-6 max with the exception of champion spawns.
Originally posted by Manacle So to you, a the ultimate MMORPG would be SWG with a better quest and and combat system?
Yeah!
I guess alot of people hasn't tried SWG because of it's reputation of being buggy, and it's true, but it got alot of positive sides too. It just has to be 1) more fun 2) less buggy 3) more stuff to do (good quests) ..
With SWG, SOE has forgot the most important thing with a game - it gotta be fun. And it was - for some months after launch. But all the changes, nerfs, and finally the dreaded CU put an end to the fun.
It is still not perfect, but has a lot of customisation for your character, and a very unique skill & combat systems.
The 'quests' do get added to with every event, annd they vary location & enemies from person to person, and attempt to attempt.
Crafting (coding) is a good system, but you cannot 'make' goods without first having decompiled one wich is a sore spot atm, hopefully actual creating will be possible in the future.
'Housing' still neds to be added in, but it is very much getting there.
Comments
Hi!
I am happy to see that a staff writer has started another topic about something I am really eager to talk about - the so-called "next generation" MMORPGs. And, as I did in my own posting, he lists main points where current MMORPGs excel while others don't - when they don't do exactly the opposite.
I think that he left out several points, though, which are pretty important and necessary for an exhaustive discussion about the matter.
Since we're talking about "ULTIMATE MMORPG", I suppose that problems like clients or server performances will not even be skimmed - in that [far] future, that won't be an issue anymore. Let's just focus on gaming characteristics, rather then technical aspects of the whole thing. And let's imagine that we'll all have a supercomputer as our little personal to play with. Besides, that's not so hard to think of as something happening in a few years from now...
I'll follow the good plot Jeremy laid down; since he starts discussing about Character Customization, I would add a couple of things. In our MMORPGs, a character is a "template" with a few (or a lot of) variants, like skin color, complexion, facial hair, body structure, hair color, and so on. One HUGE lack? Age! OK, I already hear you screaming. How in the hell is a child supposed to deal with monsters or space ships? Answer: he is not! What I mean is, we could think that a character is someone who starts interacting with the surroundings at a certain age - according to the race and the background of the game - let's say 14/15 for a human and so on. At that point, as it is in reality, you start specializing, choosing a job (weather be a scientist, a pirate, a rogue or an assassin), and possibly following a "teacher", a "maestro". It would be great that such a teacher could be another player... but I suppose that that would require too much from a simple player - so it could be a "human NPC", someone on the game's producer payroll, interacting with disciples with a little more enthusiasm than a totally automatic NPC whose best performance is to allow us to select a new skill to learn as soon as we reach a certain level - and for a fixed, pre-defined, well known amount of money. I don't really think that a "normal" player can be so dedicated, so available and so... good, actually, to play that role, therefore, I bet for a specialized, really paid profession master whose job in the real life is to train other players. Since no one can work 24/7, that could represent a good job opportunity for working from home, too, and would expand immensely the reward of learning and growing our char through the game. This leads us to a slower growth, maybe (you cannot just login, and start slaying dragons!), but it would bring another layer to the game levels - human interaction between teacher and student. Of course, I would definitely leave there the option for an "old-fashioned" template-based char creation funnel - even to some higher levels - so that all the players just wanting to feel the breeze of whacking through the mobs could actually be up and running in minutes... besides, Blizzard did set up some "RPG" servers - the same could happen here... "Attention people... for serious players, wanting to grow naturally in a human-like style, there's the brand new RL Server..." or something like that.
Growth doesn't only mean learning something. It means learning all what you want - and so here we have the reference to all those games and ideas of Jeremy and other posters saying that it's unnatural that a mage is just a mage, and cannot swing a blade too - so the class-based system definitely has to retire. It's nice, but old, and too simple to reproduce a complex reality like learning and doing. Of course, we're all aware that the class system has been used in actual MMORPGs because the client engine has to represent the char performing the action requested - and that required legions of programmers and designers who drew the allowed sequences before the game could actually ship... but in our ULTIMATE MMORPG, we don't really have this problem, since an engine able to reproduce a lot more movements and actions (emote included, and, yeah, why not, *THAT* TOO!
) will be on place for sure. So we'll have more natural movements, a lot more interaction with the environment (a skill could be tree climbing, another diving and so on) and a lot more complicated system of damages to our avatar because of his/her clumsy attempt in doing something (what about a cold leading to bronchitis because of a fall in gelid waters, reflecting in a permanent loss of some constitution?)... but several others just come to my mind.
Another thing a character does when he/she grows is aging. Therefore, I imagine such an engine, putting some weight up here and there with passing of years, some wrinkles at a certain moment... a constitution and dexterity changing according to the profession, actions and events happening through all our character's life... at that point, with such a superengine working on our character, I really doubt that we'll have similar characters around, or, as Jeremy correctly says in his article, clones for high levels.
What about death? No one likes to die. Not even in a game. But, we can do a lot more in a game that we cannot do (yet) in the real life. We can extend our life span. A mage can use potions, or simply have a slower aging rate. Or maybe spells can be cast on a char. In a sci-fi based game, technological treatments can be used to restore one's body, or to repair it - to some extent. But, as much as I would HATE it, I think a character, sooner or later, should DIE. Stop stop stop yelling! Yes, boys, DIE! And you know why? Because we do die. If people could really live forever, we would have so many more problems! And the same happens to our beloved, cherished avatars. I have SO MANY friends who reached the fatal "TOP CAP LEVEL" in SO MANY games. The outcome? BOREDOM. Oh yeah, the games always put you in front of something which is SO GREAT, IMMENSE, POWERFUL and DEVASTATING that only characters of the top level, grouped, can deal with them. But that's it. The game dies, then, when the final level has been reached. The char cannot advance any further. Cannot learn anything else. Cannot be any more powerful. And this semi-god, my dears, is then condemned to be left hanging around on a server's disk for a while, maybe a lot, while other chars, maybe belonging to other races, start their life, in a totally disconnected relationship with our previous ancient, old, powerful and now boring top level char.
What I propose is something we cannot have in the real life: the possibility to live several lives. When our char has the "right age", he/she can have a child. Of course it's something which must be worked out, graphically, technically and socially. But, the outcome is: you "dad" char ages, gets old, and the top level can be reached... but in the meanwhile, a new char is "spawned", and we have the "child" char learning skills from his/her parents, living in the same house (yep, housing is a must!), using the same artifacts his parents gave him... I am sure I read something about this in a MMORPG news - could have been D&L, or another one - to me it's just *THE* only possible "GOOD" way of keeping a gaming experience alive and connected. Besides, think of the number of possibilities connected to this: family graves, quests based on revenge for killing the monster who killed your ancestor... family treasures... households... the choices are almost endless.
Well, dealing with the previous topic, I said "Yep, housing is a must". And it actually is. For several reasons - one futile is the possibility to expose trophies and treasures, one more interesting is the possibility to give our "family" a common "base-camp"... but housing itself has been discussed diffusely in other topics, therefore I won't go any further in this one.
One other aspect which has not been even skimmed is the environment. Someone wrote, MORE CINEMATICS. Of course! A static world is not going to be any appealing anymore. I agree, Guild Wars is not as loved as World of Warcraft or Star Wars... but its graphic effects are just refreshing and give the player a feeling of a real simulated environment. If you look at a fixed scene, sometime WoW looks like an old platform... even if it has beautiful effects (water and sky, or lights reflecting on snow for example), it's way too static.
Environment does not mean only an animated background. That's a first step. But we need to go beyond. It needs INTERACTION. I have to have the possibility to gather flowers from a field, if I fell like wanting to. I have to have the possibility to dig a ditch in the ground, and then jump into it and wait for the possibility to ambush someone. I want the possibility of chopping down a tree and obstruct a passage. And of course other players have to have the possibility to overcome the tree (climbing it, chopping their way through it, setting it on fire and burning it to dust, or simply walking around it) or any other obstacle posed in the world. One of the most annoying things in Guild Wars is the fact you cannot RUN freely towards a field you see. Sometimes, programmers put invisible barriers and forced players to follow narrow, pre-defined, invisible paths. That's SO DISAPPOINTING! And so unreal. What the heck, I cannot walk behind a house when I clearly see the back? Darn!
In dealing with the world, we have to have bigger worlds. Worlds, I mean, not just big maps. The worlds we know now are too small - it takes a few to cross all of them if your char is powerful and rich enough to pay for all the transits (WoW). I want a world where it literally takes weeks to go from one side to another. In other words, the whole concept of MMO must be reworked here. Massively Multiuser Online. A lot of users, then. Thousands. Maybe, dozen, hundreds of thousands. How is it possible that hundreds of thousands share only a few dozens square acres? Come on, in a real world, where you can only walk or ride horses, you would take years, or decades, to change continent. Let's scale that down, we're talking about weeks or days. Not minutes! For a space game, it's even easier. It means trillions of star systems, obviously generated by the computers and maintained by them. No human programmer has to tamper with that from a certain point - otherwise, it would be simply impossible to say, "where no one has ever been before"! Really, huge spaces available to avatars only scare project managers because they're just scared to death of the risk of content-empty regions. But the worlds should NEVER be that empty - of course, they won't be, if you throw in weather, wild animals (or monsters), a nicely interactive environment, seasons, and so on!
Anyway! There're so many things we could go on discussing about the perfect MMORPG. As someone pointed out correctly, there will never be something like "the ultimate MMORPG", since everything we're talking about is in a constant evolution. But, there're a few ideas which simply cannot be left behind too much.
As usual, I wrote too much! So I hope I didn't get y'all bored, ONCE AGAIN. Stay tuned and give me your feedback! Seeeeyaaaa!
Claudio de Biasio
A good and well-written article.
Sadly, I don't think this will ever be possible, because almost everyone will have different thoughts on where to stand on each of your wishes. Different people like different things. Most of them can only be implemented in one way because they are all quite fundamental to the design of the MMOG.
Character customization - no complaints here.
Combat - You can't get a happy medium between auto-attack and twitch. There is a continuum between full auto-attack and full FPS twitch. You can give a perfectly good argument where on this continuum you draw the line, and anyone else can give a perfectly good argument as to why the line should be drawn elsewhere. Different people all have there own views as to what is best here and there is no way to please everyone.
Crafting - While I personally agree with you on SWG "crafting", others see it as a cop-out and a cheat. "The player gets all this reward for doing NO work! On my MMOG, I studiously have to *earn* my money"! There is some argument that money earned through "hard" work is worth more.
Housing - Is a very difficult problem. Allowing easy and cheap housing soon gives you a great city ... of *empty unused* houses. I guess some kind of decay is required to stop this happening (or a good old fashioned city raze a la Shadowbane). So maybe this point is quite valid.
Quests - Having randomly-generated quests certainly avoids the Google cheat problem, and the spawn-wait problem, but it'll lead to cries of unfair when other players see the rewards that some players got from quests "which I can never get a chance to complete".
Skill vs Class - Like twitch-vs-autoattack, this is a totally subjective decision and you will never get two people agreeing on what is right here. Again, there is a continuum between All-skills to All-classes, and no answer is correct.
A lot of the decisions are fundamental to the mechanics of the MMOG. The designer can't incorporate the option to please everyone, thus, in my view, there never will be a "perfect MMOG".
P.S. And you didn't even touch on the other contraversial topics: PvP, perma-death, in-game economies, immersion-vs-RW, forced RPing, etc ...
This is about the third time I have posted something like this, Oh well its fun anyway.
Character Customization- Full control of height, facial features and proportions, body scaling and measurements, and the proportion of fat and muscle. full options of clothing and how to wear each item, IE open jacket, closed jacket, or partially open. options for character background, charcter traits, like dislikes, querks, fears, and other character profiling. Pretty much the ability to create a little virtual human.
Combat- Soul Calibur, Devil May Cry, Advent Rising, And MGS3, all mushed together to create, fighting bliss. No click and wait or stat crunching or random chance, I'll have none of that crap in my Prefect MMO. lol
Crafting- Crafting should be easy, just get the materials and there you go, with enough practice anyone can create anything. Also I would have a good way to enhance weapons and items, think City of Heroes enhancement sysytem, but with items. And lite item decay.
Player Housing and Cities- Of course player owned houses and buildings, including the ability to create new buildings and run towns, counties and such.
Quests and Spawns- Good banlance of common and instanced quests like CoH. And quests should be open-ended so the player has the ability to get creative and do things in their own way.
Character Skills and Class- No classes, schools or skill trees, just practice it and you get better at it, if you kick alot of stuff you get better at kicking, like to cook alot, you'll get better at it. So simple its crazy.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Classes are a good thing. Do away with class and use purely skill based system and everyone will eventually end up being the exact same.
Remember tank/mages in UO? I thought so.
Yeah new games can learn from the past, just don't ignore things like that also.
Classes ensure diversity and I hope that is part of mmo's in the future otherwise why bother.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
Wow, three games that got overlooked, but these are easy to miss though so you're forgiven.
1. Asheron's Call (Character customization is great, the early days of gathering and trial-and-error spell recipes was a blast)
--Asheron's Call (AC1) which suffered being released during the original Everquest boom. This game suffers like most other non-EQ MMO's suffer... it's not EQ. In the MMO fantasy world there is Everquest and games that are not Everquest. AC had some of the greatest ideas like random monster camps, reagent collecting and spell research. If AC2 would have stayed more true to the original Asheron's Call I believe it would have been an EQ killer.
2. Horizons (The often over-looked mother of customization -- tired of swords? Start casting... oh but keep that sword handy 'cuz you can still use it. Add in *limited* housing and there are some of the best player run towns I've seen)
--Horizons killed itself. You can't release a beta product for retail or you're toast. It's the first impressions of those willing to spend the cash on something different that will bring their friends into it and Horizons failed here. The game now is at a retail stage while the client is a free download and most people searching for a new MMO because they are tired of the same old boredom of EQ and WoW are overlooking the freeness of Horizons. It's too bad you can't turn back time because the storyline in Horizons could have been top notch.
3. Ultima Online (The grand-daddy of character customization and crafting... so you like whittling wood? Get yer damn axe out and start chopping trees. Hate being stuck in a dungeon? train up your spellbook and cast those recall runes back to town)
--Ultima Online is only played by the most loyal of loyal MMO fans these days due to the graphics (which is a shame because the game was done very well for it's time and has almost everything from every other game except fancy graphics).
So for my idea of the perfect game, combine the above three games, mix in some intelligent npc monster raids on towns, add a dynamic world map with capturable strategic points and towns and you've got the best game. (And graphics don't hurt either
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28371832@N02/2648951313/[/url]
I enjoyed the article a great deal. The content was concise and easy to follow; the physical length was also reasonable so I was willing to read the entire thing (this is a problem on some of your game reviews and should be addressed). I also agreed with most if not all of the points but I feel there was one that stood out: Character Classes.
This has got to be the most redundant feature of any MMO to date. You are either a tank, a caster or some jack of all trades who is neither excellent in everything nor lacking in anything. I would quite literally wet myself if I found a game which had a skill set available for me to choose from. Not a class, not a mold, not even a template. Just a pool of skills for me to customize from and to use as I see fit. The only MMO that I have found that comes close to this Planet Side.
This game allows me to choose an air, ground, vehicle, or some twisted combination of the three. There are different weapons you can choose from and of course a variety of support roles you can take on. This is one of the few games that allows you to truly define yourself within the game world according to your taste and ability. No one role dominates (though this can of course be argued and no doubt will by the Anti-BFR group) so there is no outrageous "lopsidedness" to any build.
Anyway, as I said above I liked the article and it can pretty much be cited as the reason why I no longer subscribe to "traditional" MMORPG's. These types of articles are arguably the reason I became a frequent visitor to MMORPG.com. Needless to say I would love to see this type of writing in the future, Lepidus!
Nice artikel.
I can agree as a veteran player . It is hard too choose your MMORPG game. All seem to miss something.
As 38 year old marketing and Massive Online Game lover i do have a concept of a Massive Online game that has all in it. All and more things you made clear in your article is in the concept. But the funding of it is nowhere to find. An investment of 15 to 20 million dollars is almost impossible to get, for one man with a great idea. So i am trying to get another idea from the ground which could generate some money. Another massive online game but with an investment of 2 million, which also brings something complete new to the MMO genre.
The problem is funding also ... I see many talents on forums and on the web, with good suggestions that just needs to be picked up. Problem is also developers do not/cannot listen to community and reprogram, there is no flexibility. I also see and hear of many commercial pressure on releasedates etc... Two kinds of pressures and reason why the games arenot
1. Please companies try and give some ideas a chance
2. Finish your product as intented instead of must release... The Game Horizons is a great example of a promising game that never became one....
3. Listen to your community before you make xxxx
well my project (or projects) still needs a strategic partner and i hope i find one so we can give you some nice games.
Have no fear, Xru is here.
Camping/Spawns - This needs to go. Dungeons need to be instanced, and designed to be crawled through. Do away with this camp X location until you level, then go to Y location. Important spawns need to be triggerable.
Twinking - Umm, bring it back, nitwits. This was our reward for advancing. Its kinda like your alt is your main's apprentice. So, he gets nice stuff.
Crafting - Less tedious. Shouldn't take 1,000,000,000 combines to go up a level. Ridiculous and leads to most crafters using illegal macroes.
Classes - Ok, why in every game is there completely worthless class(es)? I think AC did this best. You don't even pick a class. Put EXP points where you want them. I can't believe no one as followed up on this. AC is an awesome game, but the graphics are from the nintendo age.
Soloing/Groups - Soloing is a fad. Should you be able to solo while lfg? Yes, of course. Should soloing be a viable option to level to max quickly? No. Groups need to have a significant reward to make people want to group. Grouping and meeting others is what makes people love MMOs not soloing.
Quest - Ok, its not this way in every game, but quest need to be worth it. In many games you can spend 2-1000 hours on a quest and the reward is a complete and worthless joke.
Raids - Wow, whoever finds standing around for 5 hours while you annihilate one loser is easily amused. Then you get a very small chance to win some uber loot. If raiding is your endgame it needs to be accessible to all. Not just those in uber guilds. No locking out people who have paid for the game and all expansions since release to make these guys feel special. Encounters should drop something for everyone, also. I'm not sure of the percentage of people who like to raid 24/7, but I personally have met very few who do. Even in the raid happy game EQ, which I played for 4 years.
Anyhow, just my O.
To be honest, the real idea of the ultimate mmorpg (for me that is) was Star Wars: Galaxies before the Combat Upgrade was implemented... But that's just my opinion.
The only bad part there was the quest system (to me).
I decide who lives or who dies!
Good article. Well written.
Unfortunately, I don't currently have the time to thoroughly read all the responses in the forum.
So, forgive me if I am repeating some of the things that peeps might have all ready posted about said article.
The editorial makes some great points. The only problem I had with this piece is the lack of the variety of the games the author referred to. It seemed that the only games referred to were SWG, WoW, EQII, Neocron, and even the SIMS!? (note: I admit that I haven't even bothered to try any of the games mentioned)
What about the plethora of other games that seem to qualify the authors wants? Dare I say that DAoC and EVE online (two games I am currently involved with) seem to answer some of the authors needs? Or am I way off base with that statement?
Has the author tried the hundreds of other games besides the ones he is involved with? Would they meet some if not most of his criteria for an ultimate mmorpg?
I understand that this article was an editorial, an opinion piece. But it seems to me that the author should experience a lot of the other games out there before pining for an ultimate mmorpg. And if the author has played a lot more than the couple of games he repeatedly mentioned in his editorial, I wonder why he didn't refer to them specifically?
I think what this article does serve to do is open up a good discussion on how the current crop of games can be improved and give ideas to future publishers/programmers.
For that, I definitely applaud this editorial.
"I have live my life by these nine simple words: It sounded like a good idea at the time."
--Livingston Taylor
IMHO just copying existing games, while maybe resulting in a good game, would not generate a next MMORPG generation game. Actually I think of WoW doing this.
One way of bringing MMORPg into a next generation could be done by hightening combat interaction both skill as environment wise. This supplemented by things like none trivialised Monster profiles that have great in pact on player-used-skills and tactics. A new type of encounter model substituting the wander spawn point model where encounter first are not so predictable and secondly more like a little story where some things happens that can be fore seen. This could be purely combat wise like an ambush or sprinkled other options.
Quests need to get way from being task systems and even if you have to bring 10 red fuzzles this can be done in a more immersive way than the accountant mentality expressed through the phrase bring 10 red fuzzles. Illusion is half the rent here IMHO.
Also MMORPG need to think of a ways how to transport the feeling of adventure in there content in a world where the Internet exists. Note that I not talking about spoiler proof content but the players experience while consuming content to very different things.
I think some of these things would advance MMORPG greatly but there many other ways one could go. Like not inventing a MMORPG a new every time instead advancing an own system or third party system like D&D defining a MMORPG rule set standard which could be advanced with each new title. So MMORPG could is actually progress and not suffer of many reoccurring problems as is presently the case. Just to mention 1 optional way of many possible that could improve MMORPGs greatly
But two things I am quite sure of you wont really get a next generation MMORPG by picking best features of current games and that future MMORPGs need to progress in things I call adventure feel.
have fun psi
---
Light laughter and sweet water to you fellow adventures.
I know for myself Lepidus, I would love to see much more of these kinds of articles on mmorpg.com. In the short time I've been involved with this community I've found some wonderfully intelligent, passionate people that are deeply commited to mmo's in general, it would be nice to have this site write more then the occasional review, special event or promotion for some game.
The MMO community is filled with wonders at the future of gaming, technology, amazing and very smart people/gamers and they all have an oppinnion. What better base could you possible build your site's content around ? Anyways, my vote is more, much more.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
read your article and I agree with part but disagreee with the majority of it.
Here is my ultimate MMORPG.
1. The questing of WoW
2. The skill system of Asherons call
3. the Graphics of WoW, although just a bit less cartoony
4. Combat system where there is no auto attack..its all based on styles.
5. no circle strafing like in WoW..its un realistic.
6. The PvP of DAoC..but without the NPC keep Guards.
7. The crafting of AC but with the difficulty of WoW...I believe loot should be the only form of equipment..crafting should be used to upgrade the stats/durability of Loot ala AC Tinkering.
8. Absolutly no huge time sink style raids like in DAoC, EQ or WoW..its not fun and it doesnt take skill jsut organization....AC, CoH and to a degree WoW non raid isntances are where the real skill shines.
9. No player housing..Player housing takes people out of the citys of the world making them feel less populated..if you want then have inn rooms like in EQ2 but thats as far as i would go.
10.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Just throwing my 2 cents in for what it's worth.
Note: These are not in any specific order and are only my personal opinions.
Graphics - This is a major, but not defining aspect of a good MMORPG. The graphics, IMHO, need to be realistic (none of the cartoonish crap from the comic strip mmorpg - aka WoW). They must allow you to immerse not only your character, but yourself into the world and make it feel as if the tree, or plant you're looking at should be in your back yard as opposed to "just another pixeled picture." I've played a lot of the current MMORPG's out there, and Lineage II has some of the best looking graphics I've seen to date.
Combat - This is a difficult one for me. In some cases, I like the "hit this button and watch me do the work" combat systems, but for the most part I enjoy doing combos and using a variety of skills rather than always "delete - sit back - loot." I believe that DAoC did it pretty good with the combo systems requiring your opponent to, lets say, dodge before you can use that certain ability. This, in turn, opened up more moves that you're able to add onto that first attack. I also like the spell line up that DAoC and Lineage II have allowing you to start casting the first spell, then follow it up with another spell in a queue.
Crafting - Although I have never played SWG, from the other posts it sounds like my crafting dream. I enjoy crafting in most games, but only if the work I put into making an item provides me with equal quality/usefulness. What I HATED (yes, absolutely 100% hated) was Runescape's crafting. With 24 inventory, you were not only limited to space, but you had to craft thousands of the same item that were utterly worthless JUST to make one level in the skill. I ended up spending hours just to raise my skill one point and ended up with a large stack of useless, unstrung bows that were available to anyone in a store. I believe that materials should be easy to gather (find the location/large deposits of ore/herbs/etc) and make it fast gathering. Or make it so that you can hire or assign NPC's to extract the raw materials for you while you went about your business (like someone mentioned in SWG's).
Player Housing - Absolute must. One of the brightest stars in the near future that is going to implement free build housing/city/kingdom development is Dark and Light. In fact, I'm surprised this game wasn't even mentioned and it's the number one hyped up and coming MMORPG. I am looking forward to making a village adapt to what is needed, whether it be a small farming community that is self sustaining, or a large crafting city that relies on player trade to stay afloat. To the game designers in the current MMORPG's that had specific houses already setup (little to no customization), WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?! A house is just like a player. It should be able to be customized and tweaked down to the very last detail, since the house will most likely reflect the player who owns it.
PvP - I understand that alot of people do not enjoy PvP for the simple fact that it becomes far too competative, and there are always those "few" griefers who enjoy killing the same person hundreds of times. But let's face the facts; almost every game out there either has PvP in it, or is primarily focused around it. This is an aspect that I loved in DAoC for large scale Realm vs Realm, and also in the highly competative Planet Side. One of the main reasons that I like to PvP isn't just to gain another player's respect, but for rewards. WoW completely ignored this when it was released. PvP got you absolutely NOTHING. And then they tried to make up for it with released the Honor system; something that requires you to kill other players weekly to keep up your rank (daily if you want a high rank). A static rank would be nice, thanks. Something hard to obtain, but once you reached it, the difficulties were worth enduring for the reward(s).
Community - This is one thing I'm not even going to touch with a 10 foot pole. I am a soloist player, though I do believe in having a close knit clan/guild/monarchy with the ability to have a guild house(s) would be ideal. Dealing with other players is something I do as little as possible.
I know there are many other aspects of MMORPG's that I left out, but these are just some of the things that I believe are the major parts of a game I look at.
*Note* The poll is based on Fantasy MMORPG (sorry but Sci-Fi isn't my "thing").
Which FF Character Are You?
Left out of the editorial: artificial downtime, the grind, noodle guns, loot stupidity.
The grind is what players often gripe about when at later levels in RPGs it takes longer and longer to gain the next level. This is because the experience necessary to go from one level to the next almost always doubles, but the experience from killing a same level monster doesn't or it becomes more difficult or takes much longer to kill a same level monster. We're playing this virtual avatar for fun - if the game isn't a lot of fun and gets repetative, the distance between levels becomes very obvious.
In Planetside, for example, it's possible to get a chain gun which has an immense rate of fire. To balance the fire rate, the developers created a "cone of fire", which means that though you may be standing 2 feet from your victim with your gun barrel shoved into his stomach, the bullets are flying over his head, over his shoulder, to either side, and occasionally actually hitting the target. A real gun with a random kick like that would have ripped off your arms, so we can only assume the barrel of this chain gun is made of spaghetti noodle and whips around like an elephant's trunk spraying bullets in every direction but where it's actually aimed. Point is, if I'm aimed at something, I want to hit it.
Picture this: You sneak up on a guy in full platemail that's carrying a flaming sword, you carefully get behind, and wham! You neatly sever his spine from his head with a well placed stab in the neck. You go to loot the corpse of your victim and find...a rusty dagger and 2 copper. What?!?!?!? The corpse is wearing a full set of platemail! Why can't I loot it? I don't care about the mechanics of limiting player acquisition - find some other way to do that. I'm tired of killing blind, toothless, quadraplegic, gutless, bloodless, skinless, boneless, hairless, tendonless, meatless animals. How do these poor excuses for animals get into the world? I have no idea how they could possibly damage my avatar in their condition but if I have a quest to get a tooth from a wolf, I expect to get a mouthful every time.
Well, battleaxe, actually a mana or endurance bar filling up in some time is not what I would have put in my perfect game. I would have put some more realistic effect as a possible outcome of a fight. Yep, for sake of realism. I would love to see my character falling, and not being able to stand up, BEFORE dieing. Actually, for the level of realism it has right now, a mana bar is totally useless, I agree. It only bothers the player. What about a good, human-like need to take a nap of a few hours (even in a camp, not necessarily in an inn) after a very long day? I know, there're people out there who couldn't even stand the idea - their template is a good old Commodore 64 Commando, where you don't stop a second dodging bullets and mines and all you have to do is franctically click the mouse button to hack everything moving around. Well, it's a little bit different from an "evoluted" game, IMHO (here H stays for haughty, as I am so), and therefore I think that companies could provide a wonderful game for them AND another one, much slower, much more intriguing and maybe even more expensive, for people who want a little bit (or a lot, of course) more than that. I think it would be the only possible solution - you'll never be able to make a real adventurer, whose greatest reward could be finding a treasure in a lost temple inhabited by ghosts, and a rambo-like fighter, who is not satisfied if he doesn't kill his daily rate of monsters all around. There must be different games, or at least different scenarios for them. Something like Guild Wars did - but taken even further.
I don't understand your position about that (it may be because I am not English mothertongue). Do you mean you dislike it, or that it's necessary? Actually, I think that the way it is implemented is not so bad, even if a lot of improvements could be easily put in place. If I am learning how to haunt, it's obvious I start with some animal (or alien) who's of no or little danger. The more I "grow", the more I seek for challenge in more powerful opponents. But, what if I don't? What if I want to become a hunter, and specialize in hunting boars? In most games, boars will always be "easy prey", and therefore a high level hunting boars would just kill them by looking at them. Which is not what happens in reality. The reality teaches you that a wild boar can still kill an expert hunter. Games overcome this by throwing in the game different "flavours" of the same base enemy - so we have wild boars, blood seeking boars, orcish boars, supernatural boars and semi-divine boars, looking exactly like their "class base" ancestors but tremendously powerful... hmmm... once again, poor similarity with the real achieves poor gaming experience... IMHO, as usual.
I didn't play that game, but of course that is just laughable. If you have a chain gun, you're going to kill most enemies, no matter how disperse is the "cone of fire". Maybe you should have a certain difficulty to aim correctly (you know what I mean if you have practiced shooting: after hours, arms simply won't raise, or they will but the aim will be trembling). But please, let me kill someone even with a dull spoon, if I am just a foot away... :-)
Same thing. Poor interaction with the environment. You're 100% right. That guy SHOULD have left his body available to you for looting - eye bulbs, tongue and teeth included! The same for each other animal you kill. It's just a shortcut to make quests last longer - but it ruins the reality (immersion) so much. Like finding objects when looting animals. What the hell was this bear doing with a neat leather purse under his arms?
Realism, friends. Is it so hard to understand that the easiest (and best) way to do things is just to look at the way they are in reality?
Byeeeeeee
Claudio de Biasio
The one thing I disagree with completely, is an automated crafting system. Personally I like spending a couple minutes manually mining ore or chopping down a tree or cutting flax etc, This keeps the immersion real for me and is why I play MMOG's.
Crafting is supposed to be a slow tedious process, for realism sake, and to make it unappealing for many to pursue. Yes that's right, make it unappealing. Sounds crazy right? But if you make it too enjoyable and too easy, then everyone will pursue it and everyone will be a master crafter and the market will be flooded with items and no one will stand out as having accomplished anything special.
Some games artificially limit accounts and characters to 1 tradeskill choice only, in order to try and limit the amount of crafters, but this is not a logical restriction. As long as I am willing to make the effort, I should be able to pursue as many crafts as I want to, certainly with other characters, without having to buy multiple accounts.
"We feel gold selling and websites that promote it damage games like Vanguard and will do everything possible to combat it."
Brad McQuaid
Chairman & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Executive Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh
The point of my article was that though some games have good features that fit my criteria for a good MMORPG, no one game has all of these features incorporated. People are pointing out games left and right that have this feature or that, but none of these games contain all of the features.
Now, to address the concern that I only mentioned a few games. Firstly, I have played many, many MMORPGs. For the purposes of the article, I tried to limit my references to more recent games, as it was primarily written with "next generation" games in mind. I also did not mention games that did not have features that fit my criteria, and I did not reference games that I had not played thoroughly.
As for The Chronicle, I am following the development of the game, but I don't like to - excuse the clich
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
[/URL]
Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Thank you Agent_X7 for clarifying.
Once again, I would like to compliment you on a fine editorial that started a good discussion.
I guess that's why I'm member of this site. To read informative articles and well informed opinion pieces.
Thank you.
"I have live my life by these nine simple words: It sounded like a good idea at the time."
--Livingston Taylor
To be an ultimate MMO for me, it has to be completely new. Sure, combining the best aspects from current games to create a "best of" game would be great, I'm really waiting for the next game to really break the mold. Below are some of my ideas:
Fully interactive world - let's say a fight breaks out in a bar. In most games, I can used my equipped weapons to fight. Otherwise I can dig a weapon out of my inventory to fight. I can't pick up the chair and beat someone over the back with it. I can't throw them through the front window. I can't pull a rug out from under them. Why? Because the chair is only usable to sit on, the front window is actually too solid for that, and the rug is just part of the scenery.
Someone above mentioned digging a hole to ambush someone. In addition - how about cutting down a tree to create a roadblock? Or being able to climb a tree to scout ahead?
Ability to change the world - this goes with the above, but when I kill someone, I want them to stay dead. In WoW, one instance sent you to the bottom of Gnomeregan to assassinate the leader and help the gnomes move back in. Funny thing is, though, after I did all of that work, they're still standing in their exact same spots in Ironforge. In order to accomplish this, however, you'd need:
Dynamic quest system - NPC quests need to be able to be generated on the fly. Onyxia killed? Then another quest would pop up to kill some other massive leader, who would also be randomly generated. Perhaps they're in a randomly generated dungeon as well? To go along with this, provide tools for players to create quests as well. If I'm attacked by a 12 foot tall gnoll in the middle of the wilderness, and I'm steamed about it, allow me to put a bounty on him - first player to kill him gets the bounty.
Meaningful PvP - right now, most people go and kill other players just for the sake of killing other players. Make it so there's a reason to kill. Gain territory that means something, like a mine or water source. Allow defenses to be built to make it hard for the territory to change hands, to make the capture meaningful. In SWG, my server had an imperial city with countless bases, turrets, minefields, etc. It stood for months, and any raid against it failed. Imagine the feeling of excitment when the first raid successfully defeated the towns defenses.
Player created content - provide means for players to actually create good content. Player bounties are a good start, and already in some games. SWG has the abilities to contact the events staff to have special stuff added. One of my guildies was leaving the game, and they wrote a special suicide emote and animation for him to use to delete his character. In addition to events, allow players to create "Stuff". In SWG, all T-21 rifles have the same features, just better or worse quality. Maybe I want to create a sawed off shotgun though, that had decent concealability with poor accuracy.
These are just some suggestions. I agreed with the editorial that those are all great features to be emulated, but they are features that currently exist. I'm waiting to see the next revolutionary game, rather than just another evolutionary game.
i think that full looting and stealing would be awesome. if not, there is no point in being a rogue.
Yeah!
I guess alot of people hasn't tried SWG because of it's reputation of being buggy, and it's true, but it got alot of positive sides too. It just has to be 1) more fun 2) less buggy 3) more stuff to do (good quests) ..
With SWG, SOE has forgot the most important thing with a game - it gotta be fun. And it was - for some months after launch. But all the changes, nerfs, and finally the dreaded CU put an end to the fun.
Apart from that, it's a great game.
What about The Matrix Online ?
It is still not perfect, but has a lot of customisation for your character, and a very unique skill & combat systems.
The 'quests' do get added to with every event, annd they vary location & enemies from person to person, and attempt to attempt.
Crafting (coding) is a good system, but you cannot 'make' goods without first having decompiled one wich is a sore spot atm, hopefully actual creating will be possible in the future.
'Housing' still neds to be added in, but it is very much getting there.
I enjoy it a lot, after playing UO for 6 years.
Have any of you heard about ToA. Pretty much everything this guy wants, PLUS more goodies.
Warning: Open PvP ahead.
http://www.shadowpool.com/index.php
read the whole faq, and get to know the forum community. They are the coolest group you'll ever know.