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Let's Design: The Perfect MMO
Nuhaine
Member UncommonPosts: 58
A freelance game designer, I have come to the MMORPG.com forums in search of opinions regarding the perfect MMO. Perfection is impossible to achieve, but striving for it will let you end up with something pretty close.
Most of us have been there, playing one of our first few MMOs so many years ago. Hooked, we set all our standards at that level and never looked back, only forward at 'the better MMO' that many of us now chase.
In my opinion, the Perfect MMO should have Fluff, Polish, Rewarding but Avoidable PvP, and plenty of 'the little things' that keep us glued to titles like WoW after so many years (Remember Mr. Pinchy? SM Monastery Ashbringer Easter Egg? Glitching? Seasonal Events, Darkmoon Faire and more? So few games have that many 'other' things to do.) The quest system should be done away with intuitively, and the game should only hold your hand in the early stages of the game. The world should evolve around you, and PvE combat should reflect this. You should never have to kill ten orcs, ever. Everything you do is about reason, and the NPCs have generated history of varying complexity that allows you to interact with them depending on the AI they generated. You might find an outcast ex-robber on the road, asking for you to vouch for his new identity in a nearby town. Or you could kill him, and not be rewarded with the other encounters helping him might bring. At the same time, if you are looking for a good fight you should be able to find it within a few minutes of play.
The world should be malleable, at least to some degree. End game content should be about establishing your presence in the world, and fighting to keep it there. It shouldn't be about a gear treadmill. Lastly, the game should be fun. It should have the best possible combat system, and as to what that is I am still on the fence.
Do you have anything to add or subtract to my opinion, or your own?
Comments
I just hope your not seeking a consensus
Some people hate what others love.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It's a trap.
Seriously, though. I spotted about five things right off the bat in your post that will provide fertile grounds for vitriolic and enthusiastic debate here. Furthermore, the likelihood of anything emerging from this inevitable debate that has not already been beaten vigorously into the ground with a +5 mithril boot of flaming trollstompage is very small.
That said, good luck! I would participate, but you lost me at "avoidable PvP," which is case in point in regard to my above comments about divergent opinions.
Cheers!
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
I don't mind killing ten orcs...or whatever...as long as there is a reason for killing those ten orcs. Even loot quest don't have to be so dreaded as long as they are reasonable. If I need 10 furs from foxes why do I have to kill 100 foxes to get them? There are really 90% of the foxes running around without fur although there appearance seems no different than those with fur or what in the heck was I doing wrong in those 90 other kills that made the fur unusable? Also I want to be able to define my character so much that if I decide I have something against orcs (or anything else) or I just happen to enjoy going around killing certain things or I'm wanting to practice my skill by hunting a particular thing, I should be able to get a reasonable amount of experience from killing random stuff at an appropriate level of difficulty. It shouldn't take thousands of random kills to equal one quest or mission.
As far as the perfect MMO for me, I've spent a while typing up a description of my dream MMO and it still is incomplete. One of these days I'm probably going to copy/paste it to these forums since people keep having threads about the subject and I've seen other people describes features they'd like to see in MMOs that match some of the features that would be in my dream MMO (such as dynamic quests where the choices one makes in a quest including whether or not to do the quest effects the availability of other quests in the future).
Of course, as someone has already said, there will be no perfect MMO for everyone since people have different preferences.
My current dream MMO design WildWright, over on GameSprout: http://www.gamesprout.com/ideas/5212baa4e3211cd266000029/design_document
TLDR:
- Interactive story core. (Heck yes quests forever, though questing is optional if you don't care about the unique rewards)
- Sandbox peripherals. Crafting-focused game including player-constructed housing and storage, player-constructed crafting appliances, gathering, plant growing, pet/mount breeding, and lots of avatar appearance customization-related crafting. (Players do not get to make their characters highly customized before play, instead this happens as a gameplay element.)
- "Starfish" game shape. Players start at the "center", in a capital city or similar where socialization is easy. From here they can hop right into any of the "arms", which are the mostly-independent types of gameplay: pve, quests, pvp, crafting, minigames, flirting with courtable NPCs, building faction reputation, team dungeon runs, or secondary combat system (pet monster tactical battles or collectible card battles).
- NO classes, ew. Players purchase any skills they want with skill points, creating unique combinations. If you want a group identity, you can join one of the NPC factions and work your way up to being allowed to wear their uniform and title. Other titles can be earned as achievements, and players can pick which of their earned titles to wear. There is only one playable starting race, but appearance customizations earnable during the game include a race change.
- Story is mostly cheerful, with adventure, comedy, and romance elements; not horrific, gritty, gory, depressing, etc, ew again. No supernatural or high fantasy elements; original non-earth low fantasy please, free from gods and undead.
- Example story summary (not the only story I'd be happy with):
WildWright - You are a nature spirit, specifically a teenage one who has aaaalmost passed the final test to allow you to set out on your own into the universe *cough*pokemon journey*cough*. But you're stuck on the "nursery" world where your parents chose, like most WildWrights, to like while their children were too young to defend themselves against the monster found on other worlds. (A world is like an island floating in air-filled space; magic wooden sailing ships take passengers between them, or you can fly if you have a flying mount.) So to get people to finally recognize you as an adult, you have to prove to your teachers that you can master 3 things: summoning your pocket dimension Estate, taming your first pet, and crafting yourself a set of clothes and basic healing potions. (After the player leaves the nursery world there are factions to build reputation with, courtable NPCs, minigames to play, a PvP arena for avatar combat and a separate one for tactical pet combat, plus story and quests where you can develop your character to be a hero or a villain by how you deal with the two great enemies of your people: stasis and entropy.)
There is no perfect: Every choice leads to a trade off of something. Every choice leads to a narrowing of the people who will consider that a viable decision.
As long as you budget properly, and understand roughly how many people are interested in your particular 'perfect game', you can make it work. Mess that one up and its curtains fer yoou!
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
What I wish could be done in an MMO:
1. Dungeons would be hidden though out the world and would have to be discovered and the location keep secret if one wanted to.
2. Skills wouldn't be static and had to be discoverable and learned, like if beating bosses had a chance to drop the skill books of one or more of the skills it was using on your party. You then in turn had to translate then study the skill and practice the skill to then get the full potential of that skill. Anyone could learn any skill but some skills are better suited with certain attributes then others. Now the skill books themselves would not be able to be used again, but you could if you wanted teach others the skill or choose to keep the skill for yourself.
Other then some very basic skills to start the game, no one will be given skills in the game. You would have to acquire any skill through playing and finding skills hiding in dungeons, crypts and relics all through out the world.
3. Crafting would really be skill based, not just some gather and auto create an item. If you had to make a bow, you would have to carve the bow and shape the bow and based on how well you did in crafting it, increases or decreases the stats on the bow. The crafting of the bow needs time, patience, a steady hand and skill to craft a great item. I want crafting to be interactive, almost another game within it self to make it fun and worthwhile to craft.
Recipes would only give you a blueprint of the design, what tools would be necessary and the measurements needed to create the finished item.
I have so many others I want to add, but I would end up writing a book. I really want a game played so much different then what we have been given as of late. I want new ideas and new ways of doing things.
My idea of a perfect MMO is that the world is autonomous. By that I mean, if any part of the world needs a player to interact with it, then the design of that part has failed. You don't get to choose where you start, its chosen for you, running the gamut of just different ends of the world to differing social status (slave, merchant, random adventurer, noble) with corresponding main story lines that feel unique to where you are. The NPCs have lives, whether a PC is there a not. Go home or hit the tavern when it gets dark, shop for food and necessities, murder, steal, cheat.
Quests aren't given to you. Quests sweep you along in its wake. You are attacked by a dragon swooping out of the sky. A street urchin snags your purse in the crowded capital city. You are minding your business, only to be called out by corrupt city guard who have planted evidence to frame you for their own crimes. The local crazy staggers up to several people, looking for anyone who might listen to his rambling and perhaps he's found a listener in you.
Seasons, appropriate for the location. Perhaps its further north, long winters and prices of local perishable goods go up, or the appearance of more salted, perserved items. More patrols for desperate wildlife, greater demand for armor or housing repairs. Or perhaps its south, by the equator and while North is freezing, you are dealing with typhoon season, restoring homes and relocating refugees after a bad storm.
No need for phasing, or instancing. Simply have the world change. Not everyone who plays must have the same experience. I would like players to be able to say, "You should have been here when..." and each player builds their own history just by participating.
The combat system I've envisioned to be in "tiers." You start off at Tier 1. A set of basic abilities. Jump. Fireball. Slash. Dodge. Which you then combine 2 of into Tier 2 abilities, suited to your play style. And with enough experience gained to, Tier 3 joins 3 abilities together, either 3 Tier 1 or a 2 and 1, for more specific and specialized combos. Elite tiers associated with an achievement, special events players can stumble into to broaden the system for progression. Free form, manual aiming. No levels, no classes. Can't take that dragon that's terrorizing your home town? Get some friends or tie your shoe laces and spend time taking it down yourself.
Crafting is for the most part singular, if you are just in it to make coin for yourself. But if you want to take on large challenges, building boats, castles, supplying an army, feeding a city, you're going to need help.
I'm could keep going, but this is just the basics. I have a design document for it, maybe I'll get the chance to see it come alive someday.
If you had a game with procedural or semi-procedural dungeons, this could work. Dungeon entrances could spawn on the map like a gatherable resource, and last for a certain length of time or a certain number of boss defeats or a certain number of players entering.
IMO the perfect MMO would not necessarily deliver anything new, perhaps just be a copy of some other MMO that worked OK. It should have a huge IP that most everyone is already familiar with that practically sells itself, and takes very little funding and effort to get going relative to its projected release date sales.
I'd spend all of my development time on making quest lines and art assets that match the IP and just copy/paste every other game system from some other game that already figured all those boring details out.
I would probably try to maximize box sales on release with a ready to go free to play model for when those fall off.
Maybe something like "Fallout Online" and just copy/paste SWTOR into a fallout theme.
That is probably how I would design an MMO.
My idea design is created a big board MMO game like PnP RPG where GM can work behind the scene , manually change the world around players.
Something like drop a dragon in cave near a village
change villager's line to all about "evil dragon going to eat us" and the major give reward for player who cut down dragon and bring his horn back.
Or
Created a devil army to destroy everything and give players quest to slay devil king save the world .
Or ....
Ect ect ...
Because even if you spend 5 years to created contents , player can beat it in lest than half of year
So ability to manually live changing game contents without release a expansion patch is a part of perfect MMO.
This guy here wins. Give him a cookie.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Step 1: No forums. Ever.
Perfection or close to for who, for you or for me?
I suggest reading through some of the numerous posts already devoted to this very topic on this site.
Your first mistake. This is the very last place you should ever come to get opinions on MMORPGs.
"the Perfect MMO should have Fluff, Polish, Rewarding but Avoidable PvP"
I felt rather ill when I read this, but agreed with the baulk of the rest of the OP's ideas.
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
@soulfire
A crapton of money and a team that not only can figure out 15-yr old code that's been updated by three different teams, but one that can then do a complete rewrite of the code to allow a modern AC do all the cool amazing stuff that classic AC does.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
"Let's design: The perfect MMO"
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compute...
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Cannot compute: Insufficient Data
SCNR. Dunno you could create an elaborate survey and ask about different aspects (e.g. usability, tutorials, game mechanics, lore, campaign setting, hardware requirements, etc.) of what people expect of an MMO/game.
You could take some time and think about what you personally expect from an MMO/game.
The first approach will lead to some streamlined product. Since the survey results will show you what features/requirements are the lowest common denominator.
The second approach will lead to a product that you personally like. It may be somewhat unorthodox.
Both ways could lead to a popular product. You can never be sure, though. Sometimes it's just being at the proper place at the right time, literally. It helps if a developer/manufacturer stands behind his product. You can't help it if you are too early like good old Mr. Goodyear.
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