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Lyanna

Gamasutra article: Rethinking the MMO

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Thought I'd just post this for people to read, even though I disagree with a lot of what he said. (Or rather, I think he's speaking from a very biased and limited perspective). Nevertheless, there are some interesting points raised, that maybe the EL dev team might have some opinions on (and anyone else who's interested in making an MMO game). Would love to hear what you think.

 

Soapbox: Rethinking the MMO

 

-Lyn-

Edited by Lyanna

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I dunno how inaccurate it is, there are some things that don't seem thought-out, but mostly it makes sense.

the three things that stood out as 'wrong' to me were that having a lot of player doesn't mean anything (even if you don't see them, they're scenery, adding depth to the world, etc), reaction time is one of the things people should be challenged on (well, for a FPS it makes sense, but in general it just means battle of the ping-times and modded clients), and the idea of grinding being bad

don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the grind, but if progression through a game is based on level, you need something to stop people levelling too fast (and hence running out of stuff to do in a short time), and space between levels is usually it... which then makes people grind to get through them (and miss whatever other content is added, because someone wants to be at the end and everyone else wants to catch up).

I'd be interested to hear of what people think are the alternatives to slowing progression through a game (sure, it'd be possible to make it so you can only level once per day|week, but that's another artificial limitation imposed by the system to limit players, which the article was also against. the only alternative I can think of to either of those is quest-based levelling rather than exp... which might work well, but it's quite a big shift)

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I'm not a fan of the grind, but if progression through a game is based on level, you need something to stop people levelling too fast (and hence running out of stuff to do in a short time), and space between levels is usually it... which then makes people grind to get through them (and miss whatever other content is added, because someone wants to be at the end and everyone else wants to catch up).

 

Hmm - I think one of the biggest examples of a grinding/gameplay problem is the blue lup bush. When you have characters wearing CoL's harvesting flowers to sell them for ~0.5gc each 50 paces away, you clearly have an issue.

 

I'll be the first to agree that there isn't an easy and obvious solution to these problems - otherwise I'm sure it would have been implemented by now.

 

I find myself spending a lot of time grinding. The reason is simple - it is hard to complete on a lot of levels when I've been around six months and others have been around years (playing far more often). So, you end up focusing on finding some activity cycle that yields a net profit and repeating it (make FEs, make bars, sell bars, make WEs, craft gems, take profits and make leather helms, SRs, MEs and level magic/fighting, etc.). There are a number of game activities that I might never be able to participate in simply because of the level gap (like lasting long in KF, participating in invasions, getting to hydro, etc) - except maybe on peace day. I still have fun though - I just aim not to care about most of that stuff.

 

I think many comments in the article are accurate. While you want the game to be social you don't want to force users to do everything in teams of 25. You want to give users the ability to go to the bathroom (EL does well in this regard). You need to make progress less than linear with time investment - reward people for playing 10X as much with 1.5X the benefit or something like that. You want to reward creative play rather than duration of play. You want new people to fit in with advanced players - sure rank will have its privileges, but one character shouldn't be able to take on the bottom 50% of the game players at once and win.

 

I once remember a MUD with an interesting feature - to get beyond a certain level characters would only get xp based on the xp won by low-level characters in their party - so they had to switch to nurturing newbies. Now, this didn't always work out - I recall being a newbie in this game and the high-level char gave me the command to type to join the party, immediately cast invisibility on me, and then led the party around on a grind fest with VERY high level monsters. If a newbie were to participate their invisibility would be lost and they'd be promptly mauled (and then raised/healed/made-invisible). Sure, I made it to non-newbiehood in about 15 minutes (at which point I wasn't worth anything to the high-level car), but I wouldn't call it a great game intro (no dialog, teleporting around without any idea where I was, etc). However, it was still a good idea in concept - maybe tweaks like giving xp only in proporation to damage administered or healing-of-fighters performed or something like that would work.

 

I think EL is a great game overall, but it could certainly be better. I also think that Entropy/etc is aware of this and does genuinely try to implement new ideas - I think that if anybody fixes the MMOG we might see it here first.

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Hmm - I think one of the biggest examples of a grinding/gameplay problem is the blue lup bush. When you have characters wearing CoL's harvesting flowers to sell them for ~0.5gc each 50 paces away, you clearly have an issue.
sure, people will find whatever offers the biggest payoff... but then what to do, let them have the easy money? remove or reduce the cash (and penalise the players who find the best option, that was covered)?

yeah, I agree, that's an example of the grind for cash

I'll be the first to agree that there isn't an easy and obvious solution to these problems - otherwise I'm sure it would have been implemented by now.
there have been many attempts. the quest-based levelling has been done, which means even in a fighting-oriented game (as opposed to EL, where making stuff is an option, some games don't have any item-crafting options) you might get levels by sneaking past critters instead of killing them. that helps with the options. however, a stream of quests is a bit harder than a stream of higher and higher level items/monsters
I still have fun though - I just aim not to care about most of that stuff.
right, you have to either invest the time, find a way around it (peace day) or give up on a lot of the options. such is the hard job of balancing letting everyone do lots of stuff vs giving the older players perks
I once remember a MUD with an interesting feature - to get beyond a certain level characters would only get xp based on the xp won by low-level characters in their party - so they had to switch to nurturing newbies. Now, this didn't always work out - I recall being a newbie in this game and the high-level char gave me the command to type to join the party, immediately cast invisibility on me, and then led the party around on a grind fest with VERY high level monsters. If a newbie were to participate their invisibility would be lost and they'd be promptly mauled (and then raised/healed/made-invisible). Sure, I made it to non-newbiehood in about 15 minutes (at which point I wasn't worth anything to the high-level car), but I wouldn't call it a great game intro (no dialog, teleporting around without any idea where I was, etc). However, it was still a good idea in concept - maybe tweaks like giving xp only in proporation to damage administered or healing-of-fighters performed or something like that would work.
an interesting idea, but like you said, it was badly exploited. and since it's an artificial mechanism, it'd need a mighty good story not to make suspension of disbelief difficult

experience not from the team and only from the newbie's actions would change things a lot... in that idea, the high level players would probably need to be support chars to gain much... forcing the players to have a newbie as the head of the team would make it more difficult

I think EL is a great game overall, but it could certainly be better. I also think that Entropy/etc is aware of this and does genuinely try to implement new ideas - I think that if anybody fixes the MMOG we might see it here first.
that depends on what solutions are available. EL is already quite well developed, so the really radical changes probably aren't likely (at least, not in the current EL, though a version 2 is another story). EL is already different with the lack of classes (which is its own set of problems, but that has been covered elsewhere) Edited by ttlanhil

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