if it's open world dungeon it's better be staggeringly super difficult bosses, and I'm not talking sponges. I'm talking going to Mordor, where you die before meeting Sauron. if you just spawn bosses people bound to camp it then it is a dumb idea. If the boss is unreachable behind walls of armies you have to force the entire server to cooperate in reaching said boss and it better be world changing when the server win, and not respawning moving to the next super evil bosses. but no game would do that in fear the boss is too easy and they have to spend a lot of time designing new one.
Seen this request a bit over the years and more so in recent discussions.
OPEN WORLD DUNGEONS.
But lets say hypothetically speaking, this new MMO is a large densely populated MMO like WoW/GW2 etc
How would you design these Open World Dungeons to be a fun experience?
i dont know anything about making a game, so im not sure if this is even possible.
but i would do it like asherons call did it. portals in the open world that you take to get into the dungeon. im not sure if they had all the dungeons on another server to lessen the lag? or how it works, but keep it separate from the open world part to reduce lag. anybody can go into the dungeon and if its on pvp you cant enter the portal if you have been attacked within the last 30 seconds or so that way you cant just jump back and forth.
they had some dungeons that were meant for quest, and many dungeons just meant to level up in. and they were scattered all over the map.
Life is funny .. players talk about wanting innovation and something new and different, and then they talk about wanting to go back to how EQ did dungeons.
Well I guess, the best way to do it, would be doing it the way these players remember and want to go back to.
Innovation comes in many forms.
I've never played EQ dungeons so I can't comment on them. I love Lineage 2 dungeons. They were fun, there were other players about, you sometimes had to be careful about enemy clans/alliances. I suppose that made them more fun.
Innovation can mean that the mobs/rooms act-react to what the players are doing and how many there are.
It could mean having a theme on one day when certain bosses roam the halls with their minions, it could mean that the rooms might move/slide around changing things and changing how the players enter, leave.
Also, it's important to note that "some" players want innovation (which is a misused word and sometime people don't know what they want) but it's ok to find something that's fun and not mess with it.
You would be amazed at how many people say they want that.. and then complain when they get it.
Case in point, EQ, used to have issues with people camping a dungeon, often running "trains" to the zone, and the like. Mistmoore was notorious for this.
Anyway, as you can imagine this was mocked by many people, and this problems was often complained about.
SOE at the time opted to solve the problem when Kunark launched, with the idea of one-way dungeons, this was simple in design, the exit and entrance were not the same, this was often accomplished by putting in drop downs before you engaged mobs so players could not backtrack to the zone, they had to move ahead through the dungeon to get to the exit.
Those dungeons were deader than a doornails family reunion.
The end result of this, much like many other things, is that Smedly was in fact right.. "Players don't know what they Want" at best they know what they like and what they don't like.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
How about get rid of stagnant dungeons. Dungeons that repopulate on their own into something different.
That's where a difference between EQ (at least early EQ) and WoW matters.
In EQ, mobs spawned, and when they got killed, they were gone for a while until they respawned. Often a long while. So when you went into a dungeon, that say has 10 possible bosses, who knows which ones will be up and which ones not? The experience varied. [Of course granted resets provided more predictability].
In WoW, your dungeon is instanced, and every boss is guaranteed to be up and ready just for you. That is certainly much more convenient, but it takes all of the surprise and mystery right out of it. It's like dungeon running a wax museum where every wax figure is right in its place.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
How about get rid of stagnant dungeons. Dungeons that repopulate on their own into something different.
What's the stop camping especially if the population is big in this imaginary MMO we talking about?
Nothing. It's a whole design change that would need to happen from loot to spawning. We don't have to have very specially itemized stagnant monsters waiting for murder hobos to come kill them.
Open world dungeons are generally a bad idea, if we're talking about places where you kill bosses for phat loot. They end up being like shopping malls for hundreds of players who just camp the bosses and each others. No immersion what-so-ever.
That being said, if you still insist to have open world dungeons in your game you better make them so big and complex that those players won't often even see each others in there. Include trapdoors and stairways, locked doors, teleports, etc. Make them like 3d versions of Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder.
In more general level, dungeons have been very underwhelming experience in the latest MMO games. They are too small, too linear, and too similar to each others and the whole run revolves around killing the final boss and getting the loot. There sure is room for improvement on that area.
I completely agree with this. Open world dungeons are a waste of time when you have hundreds of players trying to tag a single mob. Unless you were a part of the best guilds on the server you were SOL on these bosses. AA tried this and the best guilds on the servers owned this content.
We need more Vanilla and TBC like raids and Dungeons. Not stuff you can burn through in an hour in the first week of the game.
Of course i want an open dungeon,i want an open game else why bother with login screens?
It is not as simple as saying ok it's open ended the game is good to go..pfft,you still have to build a good game with reason. WHY,like why are we going into dungeons...just because?There is some loot there,a mmo and a rpg is or should be a heck of a lot more than go there ,get loot.
These games should look like a really good producer was behind them,the story was well thought out,the mechanics scream real world,most games i have seen you might as well get a kid off the street to be the producer. Start making mmorpg's because you want to make a great game and not because you see a money angle.When i see some of these videos the dev says "a game we want to play" i say bullshit,a dev i won't believe a single word they say.
$15 sub fee,that is more than enough money per month if your game is any good.NO cash shops,NO "premium"wording of any kind,no perks for pre sales,there is NO reason for pre sales.100% absolutely NO kickstarter or crowd funding games,all of them are crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Shouldn't be a progression requirement or part of any
Shouldn't have "trash mobs", every fight should be mini-boss level that can be handled by a PUG raid
There should be door/gate mechanics that require groups to open
Each conquered mini boss unlocks community progression into the dungeon
The final boss should be a public multi-raid fight
Rewards/Loot should be based on individual participation level
Loot should be instanced to the player (loot stealing/arguing shouldn't be a thing ever again)
There could be an additional "treasure room" that can be PVP'ed over to satiate any competitive bloodlust between guilds
Easier said than done though, and it could actually suck in practice. *shrugs*
I like a lot of this. Would also add that just because its open world dont mean there cant be some instance somewhere at the end for a story or boss or whatever.
The open world aspect should have scaling and every fight should be miniboss level as stated above in the quote
There should be some kind of grand wipe like Dragonstand in GW2.
Open world dungeons are the best. Great for farming gear, leveling and PvPing. Instances are stupid in my opinion and always have been. Instance content are for the whiners and cry babies. All mmorpgs at their core should be centered around pvp. This makes the world more exciting in my opinion.
I think they would have to be more organic. When a dungeon was "cleared" it would be empty for a while, maybe forever. Meanwhile, a new threat was discovered elsewhere. So it would really have to include something like procedural generation or a robust toolset that let the devs quickly build and spawn dungeons. No more running the same dungeon 50 times to face the same "bosses". No more "camping" a boss that magically respawns in 20 minutes. No... we go in and root out the vile beasts and then the dungeon is done. That is not to say that you cannot have a huge dungeon that will take a long time to conquer but the idea of a "open world dungeon" is IMHO incongruous with a dungeon that is static and never changes and is eternal.
Pretty much every game system needs to be more organic. I wouldn't mind seeing a "campaign" system for dungeons. That could be a nice way to hybridize it all.
A large, overrun ruin/dungeon that would be big enough/full enough that it could take several days to fully root out. Spawns/population can easily be adjusted based on how many players are in a given area.
Let people who don't see the final showdown(so to speak) still be rewarded for their participation when the dungeon is finally completed.
It would make for a nice combination of grouping, open-world dungeons, dynamic events, raiding, etc.
How about get rid of stagnant dungeons. Dungeons that repopulate on their own into something different.
That's where a difference between EQ (at least early EQ) and WoW matters.
In EQ, mobs spawned, and when they got killed, they were gone for a while until they respawned. Often a long while. So when you went into a dungeon, that say has 10 possible bosses, who knows which ones will be up and which ones not? The experience varied. [Of course granted resets provided more predictability].
In WoW, your dungeon is instanced, and every boss is guaranteed to be up and ready just for you. That is certainly much more convenient, but it takes all of the surprise and mystery right out of it. It's like dungeon running a wax museum where every wax figure is right in its place.
Takes away the disappointment as well. Many mobs killed, no boss or you met another group coming out - or - another group camping it. And the mobs did respawn ..... The complaints were real.
I'm not sure there would be the same "excitement" either. That was a time before you could watch videos telling you what to expect.
I certainly don't want open world dungeons in future mmorpgs.
I think this design should stick exclusively to mmos and leave mmorpgs out of it. It was always a ridiculous concept, and will never make sense in an rpg. If anything I think dungeons should be the opposite - rarer, harder, and always for small groups. It should somewhat make sense.
I wouldn't mind a complete revamp on raiding, like make raiding storming a castle or something. But open-world dungeons have always stunk - from EQ to things like the ratgul disease event in SWTOR.
I strongly prefer a dungeon experience in my MMO, I also do not care if it is open world or instanced. The 1 gripe I have about them are "safe rooms" to set up camp and pull nameds. I am in favor of what I call "zoned nameds." Every named in a dungeon can spawn in a predefined zone, or area, within the dungeon, but that zone isn't confined to a singular room. The Sage in Everquest 1's Lower Guk might show up in the Executioner's room since they are right next door to each other, or he might show up in a random hallway in the middle of nowhere. The predefined zones would prevent that Sage from showing up in the King room though, because they are too far apart.
This method encourages people to move around and makes camping an item more difficult.
Making dungeon boss walking around dungeon and make him unkillable so he can give fear to players .
let the boss chase the player out of his base hahaha .
I agree with this!
Not joking, I think there should be "beings", "ships", whatever that have the purpose of scaring the wits out of players and that they should be mindful of these things.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
First things first. How does hte OP define open world? Do you define it as non-linear progression, as in you can choose the quest you want to do, and it's typically not defined by a linear string of storyline quests, rather it's defined by you creating your own story. You do a lot of exploring. Or do you define it to mean non-instanced, as in players will play alongside other players? Or do you define it to merely mean the world is seamless, as in there're no zones or uncrossable terrain.
Personally, I think all three define it, but 2 for 3 is good enough for most players--not all. For example, I think the original Everquest was fairly open world. It was non-linear because it didn't force you down a particular line of quests or zones--the story was in the lore, and it was up to you to piece together a story for yourself. It was non-instanced originally, all hte way up to POP expansion. It did have zones, so it's only 2 for 3. However, it didn't prevent you from falling off cliffs, so I give it points for that. And if you were within the zone lines, you could just about go anywhere--except a couple places like in Butcherblock Mountains (some of the mountains were unpassable).
If it's an open world MMORPG then the dungeons need to be open world too. I don't like instances. I'd ratger have a larger world as a solution to content congestion, or smarter, more aggressive and rewarding monsters, with varying spawns and paths to make camping harder--this will free up monster spawns for other players. Meeting other players is what makes it an MMO for me. I don't wnat to only meet players in quest hubs (or cities in general). IMHO, convenience at all costs has diminished MMO's, so they're now SP/MP hybrids--not MMO anymore.
I don't like the modern instancing of whole zones when there're 50 or more players. That never happened in original Everquest (1999), so tell me why does it have to happen now? Overcontrol. Excuses. That's all I'll ever hear. They will barf up technical reasons, but truth is, instancing has opened up doors that have changed MMO's fundamentally so they're not MMO's--and most people drink the koolaid.
drop the this boss drops this item, and make look like Asheron's Call, and call it a day, put whatever bosses you want wherever you want. I can't believe 20 years later nobody has even come close to the AC loot system
Comments
.......oh.
Well, if anything changes, let me know.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Case in point, EQ, used to have issues with people camping a dungeon, often running "trains" to the zone, and the like. Mistmoore was notorious for this.
Anyway, as you can imagine this was mocked by many people, and this problems was often complained about.
SOE at the time opted to solve the problem when Kunark launched, with the idea of one-way dungeons, this was simple in design, the exit and entrance were not the same, this was often accomplished by putting in drop downs before you engaged mobs so players could not backtrack to the zone, they had to move ahead through the dungeon to get to the exit.
Those dungeons were deader than a doornails family reunion.
The end result of this, much like many other things, is that Smedly was in fact right.. "Players don't know what they Want" at best they know what they like and what they don't like.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
In EQ, mobs spawned, and when they got killed, they were gone for a while until they respawned. Often a long while. So when you went into a dungeon, that say has 10 possible bosses, who knows which ones will be up and which ones not? The experience varied. [Of course granted resets provided more predictability].
In WoW, your dungeon is instanced, and every boss is guaranteed to be up and ready just for you. That is certainly much more convenient, but it takes all of the surprise and mystery right out of it. It's like dungeon running a wax museum where every wax figure is right in its place.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Easier said than done though, and it could actually suck in practice. *shrugs*
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We need more Vanilla and TBC like raids and Dungeons. Not stuff you can burn through in an hour in the first week of the game.
It is not as simple as saying ok it's open ended the game is good to go..pfft,you still have to build a good game with reason.
WHY,like why are we going into dungeons...just because?There is some loot there,a mmo and a rpg is or should be a heck of a lot more than go there ,get loot.
These games should look like a really good producer was behind them,the story was well thought out,the mechanics scream real world,most games i have seen you might as well get a kid off the street to be the producer.
Start making mmorpg's because you want to make a great game and not because you see a money angle.When i see some of these videos the dev says "a game we want to play" i say bullshit,a dev i won't believe a single word they say.
$15 sub fee,that is more than enough money per month if your game is any good.NO cash shops,NO "premium"wording of any kind,no perks for pre sales,there is NO reason for pre sales.100% absolutely NO kickstarter or crowd funding games,all of them are crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The open world aspect should have scaling and every fight should be miniboss level as stated above in the quote
There should be some kind of grand wipe like Dragonstand in GW2.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I'm not sure there would be the same "excitement" either. That was a time before you could watch videos telling you what to expect.
I think this design should stick exclusively to mmos and leave mmorpgs out of it. It was always a ridiculous concept, and will never make sense in an rpg. If anything I think dungeons should be the opposite - rarer, harder, and always for small groups. It should somewhat make sense.
I wouldn't mind a complete revamp on raiding, like make raiding storming a castle or something. But open-world dungeons have always stunk - from EQ to things like the ratgul disease event in SWTOR.
The bosses that wander can be killed but as the groups in tend to be just a few people .....
This method encourages people to move around and makes camping an item more difficult.
Not joking, I think there should be "beings", "ships", whatever that have the purpose of scaring the wits out of players and that they should be mindful of these things.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo