Demigod style PvP in Diku MMOs?

I've been playing a lot of Demigod lately, especially since the Demon Assassin update, and I had a thought: Why not put Demigod style PvP arenas in games like Aion, WoW, WAR etc? It would put everyone on the same starting level regardless of weapons/armour/items. It would be challenging and fun, but most of all fair.

For those that haven't played Demigod, you basically choose a god (each have diff skills/abilities), join a team and then fight against another team of demigods. Everyone starts at level one with no weapons or armour and you gain XP and gold by killing waves of enemy NPC grunts that come from gates (in the bases), capturing flags or killing other demigods. Each time you level up, you can spend one skill point. You can also buy weapons and armour with your hard earned gold. Each flag you capture has a different bonus, i.e. +15% Health/Mana, +20% Skill Cool Downs etc. Flags can be recaptured at any time provided they aren't being defended. The ultimate goal is to destroy the other team's citadel, which is defended by destructible guard towers.

Now lets apply this PvP game style to something like WoW. Each class would be the different demigods. There could be 16 levels, with 5 skill points given per level. Everyone has a very basic starting weapon and no armour. You can buy/upgrade these in the game as you earn gold from killing NPC grunts, capturing flags or killing other players. The grunts could start as Murlocs or something and slowly level up as the game progresses. They would spawn from each other's bases and meet in the middle.

I definitely think it would work and it would mean you wouldn't have to grind endless hours for levels and items just to enjoy PvP. May cause a few care-bears with epic loot to cry though ;P

MMO commitment issues

It's not you, it's me... I think...

Problem no 1: MMOs require a considerable time commitment in order to get to the higher echelons of the game. If you're not 100% happy with an MMO when you first buy it, it seems like a smart move to pull out early before you commit too much time to the grind.

This happened with me and Warhammer Online. There were some issues with the game I wasn't happy with, so I quit at the one month mark. The same happened with Aion. Issues, quit. Both games were not horribly bad, but because they used subscription models, I didn't feel like I should keep paying when I wasn't 100% happy. Why waste $90 US and 6 months of time, when you can be playing something else more enjoyable.

Some people like to refer to this type of behavior as MMO tourism. Well, I honestly don't like to tour anything, I just want to be certain that I'm getting a good source of entertainment for my time and money investment. You could think of it as an MMO shareholder really. If the entertainment value is potentially high, then I'm happy to invest.

Problem no 2: All the 'good' content in an MMO these days is at the endgame. When a new MMO is released, nobody knows what the end game is like. Should I take a risk and invest my time/money or should I move to something with a proven entertaining endgame (i.e an older MMO)?

To me it seems smarter to hang back and wait for the MMO to prove itself before making a commitment. This can be a little difficult when you see shiny new graphics and your friends are telling you how cool the battle animations are etc. There is also the fact that you don't want your character to be 6 months behind everyone else's.

Problem no 3: MMOs always release full of bugs and design issues. This does nothing to bolster confidence when determining whether to make a commitment.

Problem no 4: MMO companies love to slap you with that $15 US credit card fee right off the bat, before you've barely tested the water.

This always pisses me off, especially when I've just paid $50+ US for the game. A reward would be nice, since I just choose to buy their game over many others out there... but nope... more money please.

Problem no 5: When the meter is ticking, it feels like you need to get your money's worth. This sux if you're a casual gamer or even if you want to play multiple MMOs at the same time.

What happens if I want to play a new MMO casually? Is such a thing sacrilege these days? I don't like the feeling that my money is draining away when I'm not playing...

Solution no 1: Don't charge a subscription fee.

Solution no 2: If you are going to charge a subscription fee, don't start doing it until players have made a considerable time commitment to the game, or at least felt like they've had their initial money's worth (like 3 months). It's harder to leave when you've invested more...

In summary, the MMO companies need to lose the subscription fee or their MMO will struggle greatly to get off the ground. I'm sure I'm not the only one having commitment issues.

The logging off problem

In the real world, people don't just suddenly disappear because some divine being on a higher plane decides to log off!? So how can we replicate the real world in games when users can log off at any time, or worse have their connection drop? The ability to leave the game at any time isn't just a problem with game realism, it can also cause many issues with group centric activities like raiding and PvP. How much does it suck when your healer or tank drops?

One thing that I have yet to see done in an MMORPG, is the ability to include other players as the objectives to your quest. For example, you receive this quest:

"Find 'Melf Himself' and give him this package."

or better yet:

"Assassinate 'Melf Himself'"

On a side note, it would be funny if your assassination target also had you as their target. It would be pre-ordained PvP with a PvE quest like twist. Something for everyone :P

Upon accepting the quest, you are blocked from talking to the person who is your quest objective. You are also blocked from using the their name in chat. The only way you can find the other person is to talk to NPCs and ask if they saw them recently:

"Yes I saw 'Melf Himself' pass through here only 2 minutes ago. If you hurry, you might catch him at the Blacksmith."

How cool would that be? Oh yeah... logging off problem... What happens if the other person logs off?

Now we discuss a possible solution. Why not have your character become an NPC when you log off? It could wander around and become one of the town folk, or even a henchmen (if you were in a raid or something). No matter what happened to your character while you were logged off, its status would always be the same the next time you logged in. The only thing that would potentially change, is the location of where you last left it. I think it would actually be kinda cool, as you would be surprised every time you logged in.

This would also open up the possibility of 'day jobs', like in city of heroes, except your character actually performs the job as an NPC. Player housing would also become more important, because your NPC character would actually have to live there.

In summary, we need some way to handle the logging off problem, especially with moving toward a dynamic type world. Having having a connection drop or a player rage quit during a group centric activity can really inconvenience other people. It also steals away from the realism of the world a bit. Solve the problem and our online lives become just that little bit easier. ;)

What's blocking MMORPG 2.0?

Well the simple answer to this question is time and money, but I thought I'd analyze it a tad more than that. What are the major problems with the MMORPGs of today?

Problems:

• Static worlds: Player actions have very little impact on the world. Kill something and it respawns moments later.
• Everyone is a hero: Everyone follows the same quests and story lines.
• NPC and monster AI: It's laughable at best. Aggro bubbles? Seriously...
• Balance: How do you make completely different classes equal in strength?
• Grind: These will always exist but the disguises need some work.
• Economy: When you get 10 silver for killing the same rat that respawns every 20 seconds, you know the economy will have issues.

I'm sure there a more, but that's a good enough start. So how do we solve these problems? Can they be solved? These issues aren't new, they just keep getting swept under the design rug for some reason...

Solutions:

• Static worlds: Simple, make the world dynamic... case closed! Lol, I wish it were that easy. As soon as '13 year old brat' learns how to impact the world in such a way that it ruins the gaming experience of thousands of others, game over. There are many ideas floating around on how a dynamic world should work, but as yet I don't think there is a right one. Essentially the world needs to react to player actions and handle them accordingly. For every player action there needs to be an equal and opposite server reaction in order to maintain a dynamic equilibrium. This brings me to the 'world without a player' scenario, where the world is ever changing on its own. Players should only ever speed up or slow down this process. The AI technology required to do this is available today. The problem lies with cost effectively developing the AI required for a living world into a game. You need an AI eco-system, that balances its self out based on player interaction. Slowly software frameworks will emerge, but I can't see it become mainstream for 10-15 years+.


• Everyone is a hero: In MMORPG 2.0, this simply isn't going to happen. You will have a few legendary game changing heroes, a lot of champions and a tonne of community heroes. It's not a bad thing, as motstandet excellently points out:
  
  "Give players the tools to influence the world and some place where they can show off. But make sure there are small pockets of communities. A hero doesn't have to be the one to throw the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom or the one to free everyone from the Matrix. He just has to be the one people tell stories about."
  
  So the only thing blocking this from happening is problem number 1: static worlds. Fix that and everyone can follow their own story to heroism.


• NPC and Monster AI: I've seen CS college graduates build NPCs with better AI than you see in MMOs. I have no idea why this is the case. If I had to guess, I would say that developing AI is hard thus costs money. If they can get away with adding an aggro bubble to a monster with a trigger to attack, then they will. There is nothing stopping NPC and monster AI from improving except the game budget.


• Balance: This unfortunately is a problem that will only slightly improve with time. Balancing a game requires constant analysis of in-game activity via logging. The balancing process can be sped up with better tools and analyzing techniques, but essentially it will always be a problem.


• Grind: Grind is a product of repetitively executing the same activity over and over. The solution to reducing grind also lies in having a dynamic world. If you give the player a different experience each time, the grind with be less prevalent. There will always be a grind, the trick is to disguise it through variety.


• Economy: How can a virtual world get the economy right, when the real world can't? The solution lies with getting a balance of currency generated with currency destroyed. It's hard but not impossible. I often get the feeling that this area doesn't receive the attention it deserves. There is nothing stopping games from having better economies now except neglect.

Summarizing, the only thing stopping MMORPG 2.0 is time and money (told ya). The big stepping stone is developing a truly dynamic world and that won't happen for a while. MMO companies also need to recognize that there are other areas of their game (like AI and economy) that need more attention.

Important MMO elements to me

I recently got asked a question by evizaer about what elements would make a good MMO for me. Unfortunately I couldn't fit that answer into anything less than a thesis, so I took a look at the excellent example provided by evizaer and decided to follow suit:

Ten points:

• Emphasis on horizontal progression
  Some vertical progression is fine, but the game should be based on your ability to use your skills at the right time, rather than being significantly more powerful because of level and/or items.


• World without a player
  The virtual world and all it's NPCs/Monster should exist and interact with one another as if the player wasn't even there. The player's impact on the world should always be minimal. Events should be occurring all the time which are optional but reward the player for participation.


• Minimal static questing
  NPCs can still provide quests, but they should lead to events. If two teams have the same quest, the team that gets there first and completes it gets the reward.


• Carrot and stick society
  Want to kill a peasant? The villages will attack and arrest you. If you break down a door to a house, expect to pay or suffer the consequences. If no one sees or hears you do it, expect to get away with it.


• Destructive and constructive environments
  Want to burn a house? Can do. The villages will rebuild it. Want to cut down a tree? No probs, but some dyad will regrow it. Just be careful not to set the forest on fire on your first day ;)


• Death is bad
  You don't necessary have to lose your character completely upon death, but the consequence should be enough to piss you off for the next ten minutes.


• Difficulty through strategy
  The goblins aren't hard to kill because of their level, they are hard because the sneak up behind you an attack in numbers. Each enemy should have different attack strategies. It's good to feel 'hunted' sometimes.


• Spawning and movement
  You should never see someone appear out of no-where. Spawning should happen out of sight of players. Enemies should not be glued to areas, they should move around and perform believable tasks.


• Aggro
  Forget aggro bubbles. If something hears or see you, then it reacts accordingly. They might ignore, observe, flee, hide, attack or call for re-enforcements. Also if an enemy is losing the battle, surrender and fleeing is an option.


• Players must be able to feel safe
  PvP should be kept to certain areas. This may be an arena or the 'borderlands' etc.

Some more general points:

• Convenience vs Immersion
  MMOs should appeal to both the casual and hardcore audience, with minimum sacrifice to immersion. Its great to be able to teleport everywhere, but unless 'teleportation' is apart of the story somehow, the game loses a bit of it's immersion. Same goes for bears dropping gold and bastard swords. It's nice to get such drops off wild animals, but it makes no sense what so ever. There needs to be a balance between player convenience and game immersion.


• Realism vs Fun
  A truly realistic virtual world, would be no fun. The game need to be a game, but with elements of realism. A good game will have found a balance.


• Solo vs Grouping
  The game must cater for both. Grouping should be rewarded to encourage community involvement, but solo players should not be penalized.

I realise that a lot of the elements listed hear are wishful thinking with today's technology, but lets not forget that MMOs in general were once a wishful thought ;)

Redesigning public quests

Lets just pretend I was a games designer for a big time MMO company (he he):

*boss walk in*

Boss: "Public Quests are the new rave Crimson. I want you to add them to our MMO, but do a better job than our competition... your ass is on the line!!"

Me: "Yes Mr. Boss sir..."

*scrambles for design pad and epic pen of inspiration*

*thinks*

What is a public quest?

A public quest is an open world event with a trigger, where one or more players can participate to gain phat lewtz. Problems with existing implementation are:

• Can feel repetitive and grindy
• Difficulty doesn't scale
• Requires other people to be in the area (static locations)
• Don't always get desired reward
• Contribution is difficult to measure
• Event always plays out the same

Possible Solutions:

• Only one public quest is active at one time per main map
• Have it occur at a random location on the map each time. The mini map could flash the location of where it is starting
• NPCs in the area react and interact with the PQ when it starts (i.e. villagers run form a dragon or try to slay it)
• Difficulty scales with the amount of people involved
• Players are rewarded for early participation
• Reward system based on 'PQ tokens', which can be exchanged for items
  

Nice to haves:

• Have other players control the giant monster(s) involved in the PQ. They have objectives to complete, and boundaries etc. If the objectives are successfully completed (i.e. burn village), they get rewarded
• Have quests spawn from the aftermath of a public quest. For example, players can help to put out fires and rebuild a village that has been burned by collecting wood/stone etc...
• Make the PQ move around the map until players complete it

Ahhh who am I kidding, this is the MMO industry. Designers don't make it to the top by innovating, they get there by copying.

*boss walks in*

Boss: "Where are my ideas Crimson?"

Me: "Ahh... ummm... I suggest we copy WAR's implementation of PQs, but we make the bad guys more cartoony with huge shoulder pads like in WoW?"

Boss: "I love it!!! Crimson, you have lead designer written all over you! Good work!"

*boss leaves*

/sigh

Sad but true...

Micro events idea

One thing that really bothers me in City of Heroes is the static groups of enemies that stand at certain locations around map. When I first started playing CoX, I was running along in the streets of Paragon City with my level 1 hero and I saw a lady's handbag being stolen by some thugs. I instantly jumped in, defeated the thugs and saved the handbag. The lady thanked me and I went on my way feeling as though I had done a good deed. A short time later, I was running past the same location and I saw exactly the same crime happening again???

This is where the realism dramatically dropped out for me...

I decided to just watch and see what would happen to the lady and her handbag if I stood by and did nothing. Well, the handbag snatching animation continued over and over and over and over...

After that point, I decided not to bother helping the citizens of Paragon City, since it obviously didn't matter.

Now for my idea about micro events. Let just say there are 200 micro events per map. One of them could be the lady and her handbag. The server knows that you haven't completed this event before, and so it auto spawns it slightly ahead of your path. You are running along, and you hear a scream:

"Help me! He stole my handbag!!"

You choose to stop and help by apprehending the criminal and returning the handbag. The lady thanks you, and you get a small reward (an event token or something). The event is classified as complete and you never see it again. If you choose not to help, the criminal gets away and the lady weeps. You receive no reward, but you don't get penalised for not helping. The server remembers that you haven't completed the micro event and thus puts it back into the pool of random events that could occur in your path.

With micro events, the player would essentially be given a new experience in the persistent world each time and in different locations to everyone else. The event would be relative to your level. This would make the gaming world seem as though it belongs to you, but at the same time everyone else. If you are in a group when a micro event triggers, the event difficulty would scale. In the case of our handbag snatcher, he could have a bunch of pals around the corner waiting. The event would be completed for all players that participated.

Although I'm sure such a system would be rather complex to implement in an MMO, I think it would add that extra touch of realism, making the persistent world ever so slightly better. It would also make questing feel more sporadic and less static.

When the business model effects the game design

MMO games need to be designed for two reasons: entertainment and money. The need to keep the player entertained, as well as make a profit. If the game does well in one area but not the other, or if it does measly in both, it often fails. Therefore game designers need to be vigilant when designing their games, so that they keep both boxes ticked at all times. This is where you say: "hey wait a minute, the business model has nothing to do with game design!?!?!"... if only that were true.

The design of the MMO must play to the business model and vice versa. An excellent example of this is Wizard 101. The game is designed so that certain areas of the fantasy world are 'locked' and you need to buy in-game tokens in order to unlock them. I know it sounds stupidly simple (and it is), but if the game map hadn't been designed into 'lockable areas', they would of had issues with their business model. In the case of Wizard 101, the alterations to their game design to incorporate the business model were rather minimal. The player's experience is impacted in a very small way.

Lets now take a more extreme example, where the business model greatly impacts on the game design. Since I'm not a big fan of WoW, it seems only fair that I pick on it. WoW unfairly gets a lot of attention on this blog when talking about bad game design. Apologies to the WoW readers.

WoW uses a subscription based model, and therefore makes it's money by enticing players to 'hang around' as long as possible. The game employs multiple techniques to achieve this goal, but the end result is the same. The player must spend a large amount of time to gain a very small step in progress. This could be in the form of grinding to gain a level, an item or an achievement. In the time it takes a casual player to get from level 1 to level 80, Blizzard has just made 4-8 months worth of subscription fees off them. In the time it takes to deck a character out with all the most awesomely powerful items, another 2-4 months. You get the idea... Essentially the game design plays to the business model, and it does an excellent job of it.

Where the problem lies, is what happens if all you want to do is skip the formalities and get to the endgame? You might want to only play WoW so that you can do raids with your mates. Unfortunately incorporating such a design change would conflict heavily with the business model. Blizzard would no longer make the 4-8 months worth of sub fees off you. Such a design change would be considered infeasible and bad for business. What does that mean for the gamer? It means you have to pay the money and put the time in or tough luck.

This brings me to my next question. Which business model has the least impact on the game design?

I haven't fully done my research on all available MMO business models, but I know from experience that the Guild Wars 'pay upfront' model has very little impact on the game design. ArenaNet could change what ever they liked about the game as long as the entertainment value stayed the same or increased. Their designers have one less thing to worry about when taking your entertainment interests into account. Ultimately the gamer benefits.

I know there have been many discussions about what business model works best, and this post is not about reigniting them. I just wanted to provide something else to think about when choosing an MMO :P

Acceptable MMO sitting time?

In my younger days I used to spend 4-6 hours a night leveling up my MMO characters. Back then it was never a huge issue, but now I've got responsibilities and other commitments that consume large amounts of my time. It's very difficult to fit more than 1-2 hours of game play into a single sitting. For some games this is not a problem, but for others it's near impossible to actually get anywhere in the game. World of Warcraft is a prime example of an MMO that requires large amount of time in a single sitting in order to participate in certain elements of the game. If you want to do a raid with your guild, you can kiss the next 3 hours of your time goodbye. If you want to leave the raid early, you are often severely frowned upon by your team members. I used to think this was perfectly acceptable, but now I think it's just bad game design. MMOs should not force the player into large time commitments, and they certainly shouldn't punish them or their team mates for needing to leave early.

When I first started playing Left 4 Dead I was amazed at how easily the game dealt with players joining and leaving. A L4D campaign is around an hour long, and requires incredibly intense concentration in order to progress successfully. So what happens when the phone rings or your partner calls out they need a hand with the cooking? Easy, you just go AFK. The computer automatically detects your absence and the AI takes control of your character. You aren't kicked from the game, and your team mates don't suffer for your temporary loss. You can return to the game at any time and continue playing the campaign. If only such a technology existed in party oriented MMORPGs, so many problems would be solved...

If you asked me what I thought the maximum amount of time that an MMO should enforce in a single sitting, I would say one hour. If MMO designers used this number as their goal when building raids/dungeons/instances, I think we would all be better off. There should also be an automatic mechanism which compensates for the loss of a player, and prevents their team from suffering any consequences.

I should point out that this issue must not be confused with grinding. Time required in a single sitting and the amount grinding required to achieve an element of the game are two separate issues. I'll tackle the grind issue another day ;P

The leveling pact!

One of the things I like about swapping MMOs is discovering new little innovative ideas that make the game better. City of Heroes has a cool little built in feature called a 'leveling pact'. It's easy to set up, you just right click on the person you want to create a pact with and activate it. From there on in, all experience gained on either character is shared between the two, even if the other person is logged off. If the pact was enabled when both characters are first created (i.e. level 1), they will remain the same level all the way to end game, unless the pact is removed or significant death penalty is incurred.

Now, why would I be so excited about sharing my hard earned XP with someone else?

My girlfriend and I have two different types of play styles. In simple terms... I'm a little bit more hardcore than she is (just a tad). This means that I'm most likely going to hit level 20 around the same time she hit's level 14. Unfortunately this creates a bit of a level gap, which kinda ruins the fun of playing together. My only choices up to now were to either play slowly (which is fine, but destroys a bit of the fun for me), or to have an alt which I only use when playing with her.

But not any more!!!

Thank you Mr Leveling Pact!

What an awesome example of a simple game design idea, that solves the leveling gap problem when playing with friends or family. It also means that a utility class has a way of gaining equal XP to a DPS class. This makes it's easier to concentrate on healing people, and not having worry about making kills just to get XP.

It would be nice to see some other leveling based MMOs incorporate this feature. I think it absolutely rocks! ;)

Playable non-playable characters

I started to reply with this idea to a comment in my last post, but it ballooned out as usual into its very own post.

So, the idea was discussed about having players take the role of NPC's. The idea I've had kicking around in my head for a while now is to have a world composed entirely of NPC's that all move around and do their own thing - when a player logs on, they choose an NPC to take control of.

The player is then free to do whatever they wish with that NPC, however within certain bounds. If you take control of a palace guard, he absolutely can not be forced to turn around and slaughter the royal family. However, if you take control of a brigand on the streets... well, his moral compass is a lot more askew, so he can tend more towards the ultra-violence - but he can't be made to go out on a trek to save the city (looting a dragon's lair would of course be a different kettle of fish!). And so forth.

Obviously, there would be some NPC's that would be more desirable to take over than others - your Drizzt's and your Elminster's for example. These characters would have a dynamic price based on the demand for them, and the length of time you can play one for before being logged off it would be less. There could even be some sort of system whereby players can bid on particular slots for particular characters.

The currency with which to buy play time would be accrued by fulfilling the goals of other NPC's you have taken over (i.e. take over that palace guard and defend the royal family from assassins... get points. Take over that brigand on the street and nab some purses for him... get points). Whether you want to blow all your points on playing the most famous character for 10 minutes, or playing a lesser known but still fairly powerful character for a couple of hours, is up to the player. The higher the profile of the character you take over, the more opportunity for changing the world would present itself. There would of course be free characters - peasants and beggars, you know.

So basically, I envision this world that drives along on rails of its own accord resulting from the combined action of thousands of NPC's scattered across the game world. Players can deviate the story from those rails if they work hard enough, by controlling particular NPC's at particular times. Or they can just muck around and enjoy the ride.

One objection many MMO-ites would have (I imagine) is the lack of a persistent avatar with which to identify yourself. To overcome that problem and also to add a bit of flavor, you could have the players being, say, angels or demons, who are able to possess the earth-bound NPC's in the world. In 'spirit' mode players would be able to turbo-fly all around the world, looking for a likely NPC to take control of.

This even makes for interesting faction-based warfare, with angels warring demons by proxy through their human hosts, each seeking to promote their own agenda. Or something.

Conventional MMO problems I see this system as a whole overcoming:

- People can do epic stuff in the game that changes the game world.... they will literally get their 15 minutes of fame (more frequent players will get their 15 minutes of fame more often though!)
- Players will feel like they're driving the story, but because it's governed in large part by NPC actions, they can't deviate things too much from the interesting scripted plots that the developers have in mind for the game.
- No running around in RvR looking for a fight! The armies of NPC's will already be there fighting each other, you can just take control of one and jump right in.
- No armies avoiding each other since 'not defending gives more renown noob'. The NPC's can be made very reluctant to leave their posts (unless of course the army is being routed).
- Death means something - the NPC dies. But YOU don't, you can just take over another one.
- Battles can be balanced - the developers can make sure that in a battle between 2 armies, there is an even representation of all classes. Then the players can waltz in and play whichever class they feel (of course, important battles will fill up fast, so the better you can read the flow of events in the world, the easier it will be to get into such events). No more people bringing classes to a dungeon that are incapable of beating the encounter - developers would be able to design things KNOWING what the group composition will be for each fight.
- No levels or classes or respecs needed for your character (the NPC's have all these things, and control of each one is temporary)
- No accruing endless power - you can save up for that leet NPC, but if I play once a week and you play every day and we both have enough to each take over a wizard in some epic mage duel that's about to happen, we're on the same playing field for that fight.
- Instant travel possible while in spirit mode (avoids wasting player's time) while still avoiding having armies teleport on your doorstep to ruin PvP (since the NPC's still have to walk the old-fashioned way). Also, the 'massive world' epic feeling is retained since in NPC-mode you can't teleport around the place.
- Can easily get rid of griefing while still having a massive open world (since NPC's can not make be made to do things that are too against their nature, those very against griefing can control NPC's in peaceful nations, etc). But, there's still a place for the griefers, since they can take over the murderers and brigands of the world.
- I'm sure there are others....

Anyway, discuss :)

Joint account idea

As the world spirals into recession, I've been thinking of some ways that would allow MMO companies to make the cost of their services more appealing to the penny pinchers (like myself).

My idea is to have a joint account, where two people with separate logins share the same MMO account. Both players can be logged in at the same time and be playing different characters, but they share the same storage and gold. If the game had limited character slots, then that would be shared as well. The cost of the subscription or the upfront cost of the account would be slightly higher than what it would be for one person, but a lot less than the cost for two people. For example, for WoW you would pay a $20 US sub fee instead of $15.

I think this kind of deal would be very appealing to couples who are both gamers. Who knows, it may even bring them closer together :)

I don't think that this idea would be too much of a target for abuse, because it would require having complete trust in the person you were sharing with. This would hopefully eliminate the majority of random internet people sharing accounts to save money.

There is potential for a customer service nightmare, especially if couples separate or friends split up, but this could be circumvented with the option to split the account at any time for a small fee (of course). The gold would be split evenly and the items would go to the account that initially placed them in storage.

Honestly, I think this idea would work, and would be very popular. I'll add it to the pile of great idea's that will never see the light of day (it's a very big pile)...

Universal Gaming Subscription Initiative

"I had a dream. The value of all video gaming entertainment was made equal."

My idea is that you pay for one subscription fee (e.g. $20 a month) and you can choose whatever MMO game you want to play. You don't need to have purchased the game before hand (i.e. no upfront fee), you just pick your game and download it if necessary, then play. The download client would work very similar to how Steam works at the moment (including DRM). You would have one account and all games would be included. At the end of the month your subscription fee would be divided between the different gaming companies depending on the percentage time you played their game for that month. For example: If you play WoW for 15 hours and Guild Wars for 40 hours in the month, 27% of your $20 would go to Blizzard and 73% would go to ArenaNet.

I think this type of pricing model would be very appealing for the casual gamer. They wouldn't feel locked into having to play the same MMO all the time. They could check out new games without having to flip a large upfront fee.

The ease of game swapping would cause increased competitiveness between MMO companies. They would be forced to provide incentives like new content and special events in order to hold onto their gamers. The general MMO gaming experience would ultimately be improved.

Game companies would also benefit from this pricing model. There would be no need for demos anymore. The costs for distribution and marketing of their game would be greatly reduced. Gamers would be encouraged not to do illegal in-game things which would lead to an account banning, as an account ban would mean being locked out of all games for at least a month (all longer depending on the severity). It would also open the doors for smaller game companies, allowing them to compete with market giants.

The difficulty I foresee, would be getting such an initiative off the ground. The industry fat cats would definitely not want to share their subscription fees with the smaller independent companies. It would also be difficult getting a bunch of competing companies to join forces under the one pricing model :(

Oh well, I guess I can always dream...

Taking a chapter from the FPS book

Here's my game pitch:

Take Team Fortress 2 and swap all the classes for classic fantasy style classes (i.e. sorcerer, rogue, priest etc.). Add some PvE with a killer story line and set it in a Tolkien style universe. You now have yourself one hell of an awesome MMO.

Why you ask?

These are the following attributes that TF2 brings to the table, that MMORPGs have been failing to do for years:

• Excellent physics engine
• Balanced classes (and a large variety)
• Large scale battles up 32 vs 32
• Fast paced and stable combat
• New items are obtained through achievement unlocks
• Automatic battle balancing
• The ability to call for healing when you need it ("Medic!")
• Fun and enjoyable PvP with a very low learning curve
  
• The ability to choose your own server at will
• A friends list independent of the game
• Can view statistics and achievements of yourself and others online
• User created PvP maps

This is where I ask:

If an FPS can have all these features then why can't an MMORPG?

Is it because it's not feasible? If no, then why not?

Should these features not apply to MMORPG? Again... why not?

I believe that if an existing MMORPG implemented only three features from the above list, it would do extremely well. I worry that today's MMO game companies aren't looking outside the square when designing their games. All they want to do is make a better WoW clone. Well maybe it's about time they took a chapter from of the FPS book...

MMO character name recycling

One of the most annoying things about starting a new character in an MMO is trying to pick a name that isn't taken. All the best names always go in the first hour of the MMO game being released, and then everyone after that gets stiffed. I'm usually always left making characters with an obscurely spelt variation of the name I wanted, or have to pick some less attractive name. When I created my second character on Guild Wars, I tried to name her 'Crimson Starfire'. Unfortunately the name was already taken and so I had choose a variation of the name. I did however add that person to my friends list in the off chance I would see them online and possibly barter for the name. Four years went by and I've never once seen that person online! Me = annoyed!

I don't know who to blame more, the annoying guy who always takes the name I want, or the MMO game company for forcing over a million people to pick unique names. In a lot of the cases, games allow for multiple character slots and so one person can be holding on to 10 plus names. If that person goes permanently inactive, those names are lost forever into the ether of the interwebs. Seems like such a waste.

So as online gaming populations grow, it makes more and more sense to be able to recycle the character names floating around in this ether. If a player is inactive for more than 6 months, then I think their character names should be made available for re-use. If the player returns for some reason, then they simply have to pick new names for their characters. It does seem a bit harsh, but I think it's fair. If you choose to leave a MMO game for a large period of time, other players shouldn't be penalized for your abandonment. It's possible that losing a character name may cause the player to not want to return, so the inactive period would need to be made long enough to indicate that the player was never coming back anyway. The game company could even send out a courtesy email informing the ex-player that their character names are going to be recycled if they don't log in before a certain date.

Melf_Himself once comically said:

When I was born it was a very long labour. Apparently my parents had to switch servers until they found one on which there were no other 'Phil's...

It's quiet a funny joke, but sadly that's how MMO games operate. Seems extremely unrealistic to me, especially if the game was aiming to increase realism. This brings me to my other solution to the unique naming problem. Why not let the players name their characters what ever the hell they feel like, with no restriction on uniqueness. The player then also has to create a unique 'call-sign' which applies to all characters on the account. The call-sign can be made of tiny picture icons, different coloured text and what ever else would add to the uniqueness. When you add someone to your friend list, you add their call-sign. When ever they are online it shows their call-sign and the name of the character that they are currently playing. In PvP tournaments, it would be your call-sign that shows next to your stats. That way people can identify you even if you change characters. This would definitely solve the unique name problem and a few others at the same time.

I don't know... seems logical to me...

Game design 101

We all bitch about the repetitive nature of MMO's, how we have to grind the same old mobs and areas and whatnot over and over and over again. Everybody talks about which carrots should be dangled in front of which player's faces to make them do these things a bit longer.

What is wrong with this picture? Why do players have to be given shiny items in exchange for playing your game? Isn't your game fun?

Well, in a way, it is. The first time you do it. The first time you use a skill, use a combination of skills, kill a particular enemy, solve a quest, clear a dungeon, defeat a boss, it's fun. It's new, it's unexpected, it was probably a nice scripted little encounter. But what happens when the player runs out of nice scripted little encounters? What happens when they reach the end of the story? The game has lost its appeal, and the player moves on to another game. Unless they can....

1) Play co-op with friends. It's fun. All MMO's have this one down, don't they? Oh wait, my friend who just started playing can't play with me because he is some noob level. And the LFG system sucks, so I can't find anybody new to play with either.

2) Play PvP. Yay PvP, players make the content for you! Again, most MMO's have this don't they?

Except, oops, we included a massive level and item grind to keep players playing to make up for our lack of features, which means nobody who likes PvP would want to PvP, which means many people leave the game after finishing the story anyway. Or, oops, again, we have a piss poor LFG system, so nobody can PvP even if they wanted to.

3) Complete the game on a harder difficulty. Challenge makes games fun.

4) Achieve a high score. Or, in its modern variation, achievements. Basically, any collection of ASCII characters that recognizes someone who is really good at playing the game, so that the player can feel as though their e-peen has just risen in size. Again, the challenge of getting the best achievements or the high score leads to fun.

Caveat to that: Saying "yay I've grinded 10,000 goblins" is not fun. Make it something challenging, not something time consuming.

5) Try different classes. Playing through the game with a different class gives the game heaps of replayability... you can re-use the same areas and storyline, yay!

Except.... Oops, I can't play through the game with this new class. Because I'm a healer and I can't kill anything by myself. Or I'm a tank and I do no damage. Or I'm a nuker and I have to pull stuff one at a time or risk being overwhelmed.

For solutions to this problem, see Diablo 2 (7 classes, all do plenty of damage and have solo survivability, but in groups can fall into various group-based roles to encourage teamwork), or Guild Wars (henchmen allow any class to solo).

The other setback is that a veteran player may not want to take forever to go through all that new content. In Guild Wars I can try out a max level character whenever I want to, and in Diablo 2 it would take a day tops to get rushed through the game to max "ish" level to try out a new spec.

All other online RPG's, go home, you failed on this one.

6) Generate their own content. Pfff nobody would ever play this would they? Nobody ever played Counterstrike, or Team Fortress 2, or Enemy Territory, or Defense of the Ancients did they?

Oh wait, they did. Now, releasing your source code and all is nice, but what's even better is cleaning up your level-making GUI a little and, boom, anyone can make their own stuff. Introduce an in-game rating system and you have yourself a bunch of happy little monkeys.

Reason this didn't work that well for Neverwinter Nights: every server had their own 'house rules' which players can't be bothered learning, sizable download just to try out each world, no in-game rating system, people have to provide their own servers which means the really popular worlds couldn't gain in popularity, etc. Avoid these mistakes and you're golden.

It doesn't have to be whole levels either. We've all seen the phenomenon that is Spore.

7) Leave for a while, and play casually. Seriously, everybody gets sick of playing the same game over and over. They might take a break for a couple of months. When they come back, if they've fallen behind the raid grind, or an expansion has come out that raises the level cap without adding a TON of new functionality for your character to acquire, or if it's impossible to just hop on quickly every now and then and do something fun, you have failed.

That last point is important. In order to be able to hop on and play every now and then, players need instant travel, or instances they can enter from wherever they like (yes, WAR scenarios are good in this respect). They don't want to log on and watch a great big winged beast that they can't control flap around for 15 minutes and then spam LFG for an hour to do what they wanted to do.


However, in lieu of all this stuff that is quite easy to implement, MMO designers instead.... make it take longer to do stuff. Make you spend months leveling up, doing the same things over and over again. Make it take forever for you to travel anywhere (if a player wants to take in the scenery, they will. Let me just get to where I want to go, thanks). Making it necessary to get a large number of people together to do particular content, and then making it really difficult to get a large number of people together. Etc.

The focus is not on designing a good game, not to let you have fun, but to make the company a lot of money. Wake up and smell the roses people! It's only when crap games like these stop attracting large amounts of money that developers will be forced to make MMO's that don't suck.

Automatic balance

I've just started playing Left 4 Dead yesterday. Brilliant game etc, and I'll write a review when I've had more experience with it.

But I wanted to comment today on the ridiculously simple, perfect notion of game balance that they have achieved in PvP. For the record, my definition of balance is this: both teams having equal chances to win. As a rule, this is easy to do if both sides are the same (chess, mirror matches in many games) but difficult to do if you want to include variety in the game (aka fun).

So anyway, back to Left 4 Dead. One side is the survivors, the other side the zombies, and after the survivors make it to the finish or (more usually) are wiped out.... the teams switch sides. The human players switch to the zombies and vice versa.

Not only is this ridiculously fun, it completely removes any unfairness towards one team being able to score points more easily than the other team. The game seems not too unbalanced in that respect anyway, but that's beside the point. If the game were completely unbalanced so that one side were much better than the other, it really wouldn't matter. Both sides would get to compete equally over the course of the match.

Imagine this idea applied to other games. Take Magic: The Gathering for example. In constructed format, both players get to choose their decks before the game starts. This ensures an absolute ton of variety, however, there are often rock-paper-scissors match-ups where one fellow would have to be very lucky to pull off a win. If the players swapped decks after a game, this advantage/disadvantage disappears.

Now, some players might say - "if I'm a pro deck builder and the other guy is noob, I lose any advantage that my superior deck building gives me??" Well.... yes. If you're a better player though, you'll win anyway. But, if this is seen as a big problem regardless, a handy compromise could be made: In a game where 3 matches are played, you could play 2 games with your own deck and 1 game with the other person's deck. This would go a good way to evening up the balance while still providing a bonus to the guy with the better deck building skills (just not as big a bonus as previously).

The technique can be extracted to many other games. A notable example I can think of that suffers from Rock Paper Scissors is Guild Wars Guild vs Guild battles.

Now, extracting the idea to an open RvR game like WAR (was supposed to be) would be more difficult, and would require the game to be designed for it from the ground up... as a starting point, a proper LFG system would be required to *ensure* even numbers on both sides. People may or may not like swapping bodies with the other team, but I'm sure there's a good way to do it that would allow maximal balance with minimal fuss.

Any thoughts on these ideas?

Why don't they milk it?

When a new MMO is released, about a hundred websites pop up offering some kind of service relating to the game. These websites include wikis, forums, item databases, 'armories', games stats etc. I would imagine that a professional website for a popular MMO would receive daily hits somewhere in the millions (and then some if the game is something like WoW). I'm no business expert, but I could image that the advertising revenue for a website like that would be considerably high. It wasn't that long ago that Wowhead.com sold for over a million dollars. Not bad for a database with a 'pretty front end'.

So this raises the question: why don't the games companies build these kind of websites and make a few dollars on the side? After all, they own the data. It would only be a matter of slapping a 'pretty front end' on it. Given that they could build the website prior to the release of their game, they would have a good headstart on the competition. I wonder if there is a particular reason as to why the game companies don't milk it? To me it seems like a wasted opportunity.

You're probably wondering, why should I care?

I care because if game companies have an alternate source of revenue to the usual sales, subscriptions and micro-transactions, it might encourage them to lower their prices. Better yet, make the game completely free. Some time ago I explored different pricing models for online gaming and I think this constitutes a new model. Profit through indirect advertising. I can't actually think of any bad points for this model. The gamers get a cheaper / free game with supporting websites and the game company has a source of continuing revenue. Am I missing something or does everyone benefit?

Seamless server transition

/start of being a tight ass MMO game company

So you created a character on a different server to your friend and now you want to swap so that you can play together? I'm sorry, but that's going to cost you! Changing servers is expensive... didn't you know? At a technical level we have to change one field in the database. That's expensive work... so that will be $25.

What do you mean your server is at a low population and you want to change because it's ruining your gaming experience? $25!

You're sick of being ganked on a PvP server and now you want to swap to a PvE server?? Oh... that's too bad. $25 please...

/end of being a tight ass MMO game company

/start rant

You get my point. The greatest con job in the history of MMO gaming would have to be charging for character transfers. There is no reason why the whole process of transferring a character from one server to another can't be automated and made seamless so that a player can move from one server to the next without a cost or hassle. So why do companies like Blizzard and Mythic charge for the service? Well there are in fact a couple of reasons, but the main one is more $$. I can't actually think of any downsides to allowing players to migrate around servers freely, aside from potential overcrowding. Beats under population in my books.

I think it's funny that Mythic wants to charge for character server transfers when they are having so many server population issues. I also think it's funny that they copied the con job from Blizzard and expect to get away with it (actually they probably will). I suppose they have to earn a few extra bucks on the side...

ArenaNet have already announced that Guild Wars 2 will have seamless server transitions for characters built in as core functionality. No costs involved. It will work similar to changing district at the moment, except you will change server. There are no hassles with conflicting character names because names are unique across all of GW2. They achieve this by enforcing something called a 'last name' for your characters upon creation. Incredibly this allows for more than one person to have the same first name for their character... who would have thought it possible? Not Blizzard and not Mythic, that's for sure.

/end rant

How important are levels in our MMOs?

I started to reply to syncaine's recent post but as usual it ballooned out, so I am just going to paste it here. Paraphrase: syncaine debates the pros and cons of having levels in MMOs, and is undecided.

You definitely have to gradually introduce people to their class. Starting off with 2 skills and acquiring them as your brain can handle them, rather than lumping you with everything all in one go, is a must. This is by necessity an exponential progression - we can handle several things to start with, but need a bit more time each level to adjust to our new set of skills before progressing to the next level.

However, leveling is boring once there is too much time in between levels, as there are no new shinies to play with. The exponential feature really starts to kick in (and suck) in terms of time investment at a certain point. It also starts to suck because the developers simply run out of ideas for what your new skills can do.

They solve this by either
a) letting you advance an entire other skill tree concurrently. This carries the risk of having more and more overpowered combinations of skills, and also provides the character with too many options to choose from at a given time; or
b) make use of "power creep", ie give you a skill that does 10% more damage, which is really meaningless because they simply gave the monsters 10% more HP in the next area
c) give you crap skills that nobody would ever use (of course people still use them, because they sound cool or something. This ruins their game experience (makes them suck), and my game experience (makes my group suck).

The main reason that leveling sucks though, is that the farther down the leveling path you get, the less and less likely it is that you're going to be able to group with a given player, which presents a major barrier to grouping. Which is the whole point of an MMO in the first place.

So, I think the leveling process should stop at a certain point. This point is where you are no longer gaining new, useful functionality after leveling up. The leveling process should take long enough that you get used to all your skills, but not so long that it starts to drag.

After this point, progressing through the game should be rewarded horizontally, and with fluff. ie, players unlock more and more respec options, as well as cool titles, emotes, armor/weapons, housing, etc, to stroke their e-peens with. I think Guild Wars struck a good balance in all these ways.

However, syncaine didn't like Guild Wars. This could be because
a) He is an MMO hampster on the great MMO hamster wheel.
b) There are no elves/orcs etc. Many people find this subconsciously unacceptable.
c) Most likely: there was no persistent world to run around in. The towns are like lobbies to group up with people, and then everything is instanced.

I'd say like I usually do that Guild Wars 2 will save us all since it will have much more persistence, however, I found out recently there's talk of the level cap being 100, or *possibly limitless*, which is of course epic fail /facepalm.

Another cool system was found in Eve. In this game smaller (cheaper) ships are more agile, and so the very large ships can't hit them. This allows "noobs" with small ships to contribute in battles in ways that the people in larger (more "advanced") ships can not, allowing everyone to play together. The game definitely makes use of horizontal progression - a different ship is like a different respec. The only problem is of course the time-based skill grind. If they removed this and turned it into a fantasy game, I would be very happy.

However, this conflicts with the bottom line, which is of course making the most money out of the game. As long as we see developers ruled by this notion, our games are going to continue to suck.