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I've previously started a thread to design a new version of TIE fighter, and the attempt to isolate the good features of RTS games caused a lot of butt-hurt. So here I go, starting something similar. Hopefully we won't get people defending the grind.

So what makes a MMORPG good? What could be done to make the genre better? What features deserve a second chance, and which should we throw out before they get into any more games? And just how should you handled existing properties like Warcraft, Warhammer or Star Wars when making one of these games?

Remember, you need to not only create a game that can sell, but that can sustain millions of players coughing up a $15/month fee.

Exploration, persistent worlds, and character development are good.

Boring, repetitive gameplay is bad.

Solution: steal a non-boring gameplay model from another game. Like, say, Mount & Blade, which is lots of fun just to run around and fight people in, has an excellent leveling system (a level 1 character is always a credible threat to a level wholedamnlot character, but the level wholedamnlot character is still markedly superior, especially when properly equipped with gear and minions).

Remove repetitive nature by making the world big, explorable, and varied, and by allowing players and player clans to own and capture territory, reap the benefits of that territory, and wage war against other players for territory. A huge randomly generated world subdivided into instances a mile square or so combined with a Mound&Blade style zoomed-out travel mode, with the ability to zoom-in at any time into the appropriate instance, would be interesting. If a hostile player is occupying the same square as you, you are required to automatically zoom in unless you succeed on a diceroll to evade combat, modified by your number of minions (less improves your chances), their number of minions (less improves your chances), your evasion skill (more improves your chances) and their pursuit skill (less improves your chances). These instances could be seeded with villages (or space stations, if you prefer) which players may dominate, interact with, or rob, and with hostile and neutral NPCs (who you could rob, murder, or interact with if you like).

Players will not mind doing the same thing over and over again if the same thing is fun to do in and of itself, has enough variety to keep things from getting bogged down, and itself changes the things you are doing.

My main problem with the current EQ/WoW system is that combat itself really isn't very fun. It can still be amusing when you manage to defeat something challenging or work together with others to accomplish something, but the fighting mechanics themselves are really boring. You target an enemy, aim yourself at it so your automatic attacks hit, and spam your special skills. Maybe you run around in circles or do something similarly glitchy if the enemy's strong enough to require it. The fighting is awkward and detached from your personal control, so as a result it's not very engaging. You're forced to expend some time and concentration on killing each enemy over and over, but it's simply wasting your attention by forcing you to do a bot's job.

If the combat was actually fun, there wouldn't be complaints about grinding. People don't generally complain about having to kill all the enemies in an FPS or action game, because it's actually fun to do that for its own sake in those games. A game where it's entertaining and engaging to fight without even getting an in-game reward would be the best model.

I think something similar to Zelda might work well, where you are in direct control of a variety of attacks/defenses/other skills that you can use either while locked on to the enemy or freely.

I'm really interested in this MMO called "Darkfall" that's supposed to be coming out this year. They are trying a few new things with MMO design.

1) They got rid of levelling, so its a bit like the skills in oblivion, where they get better through use.
2) The importance of equipment is going to be decreased, so while it does make a difference to gameplay, it won't be huge.
3) Nearly all items can be player crafted, which is a bit like Eve online.
4) Castles can be built and beseiged by clans.
5) "A real-time combat system that includes FPS-style manual aiming & blocking"
6) Apparently clans can build their own "cities"

Sounds very ambitious. I think its the right way to go, less grinding, equipment hunting, bringing X to Y to get Z, etc. and more player driven content. Wars between clans over pieces of land, alliances, trying to control areas with resources etc. Now that sounds awesome.

Darkfall Wiki Link
Wikipedia has a neat listing of all the features.

Eve online is the best for econ and player corp shit.

I like the idea of a mount and blade combat system.

Seggybop wrote:My main problem with the current EQ/WoW system is that combat itself really isn't very fun. It can still be amusing when you manage to defeat something challenging or work together with others to accomplish something, but the fighting mechanics themselves are really boring. You target an enemy, aim yourself at it so your automatic attacks hit, and spam your special skills. Maybe you run around in circles or do something similarly glitchy if the enemy's strong enough to require it. The fighting is awkward and detached from your personal control, so as a result it's not very engaging. You're forced to expend some time and concentration on killing each enemy over and over, but it's simply wasting your attention by forcing you to do a bot's job.

If the combat was actually fun, there wouldn't be complaints about grinding. People don't generally complain about having to kill all the enemies in an FPS or action game, because it's actually fun to do that for its own sake in those games. A game where it's entertaining and engaging to fight without even getting an in-game reward would be the best model.

I think something similar to Zelda might work well, where you are in direct control of a variety of attacks/defenses/other skills that you can use either while locked on to the enemy or freely.

I've noticed that combat seems a bit more dynamic when I'm playing my druid than when I'm playing other classes; maybe because I have to duck in and out of shapeshifted forms in order to keep my health up.

You know what I'm waiting for? An MMO that has the massive world and variety of Oblivion, the economy of Eve Online, the pacing of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the environmental effects of Battlefield: Bad Company, and the violence and gameplay of Viking. That's what I'm waiting for. When I can tromp across a countryside with fifty guys, kick in a section of random wall in an enemy fort and engage in a brutal, action-based sword fight culminating in strategic dismemberment rather than whittling down a health bar, and loot his shit, I'll be happy.

I'm in a similar place Lag, the last time I had a really unique experience with an MMO was Planetside back in its release days. Health bars have been the bane of my gameplay existence ever since my subconscious declared them obsolete relics in 2003. Come on, it's time for broken tracks, strained transmissions, dislocated shoulders, flooded magazines. Not this bullshit "lawl 10 damage to lower hull -5 damage modifier".

What's funny is that the technology for this kind of stuff is readily available. It's just that developers have some wierd sense of nostalgia to old tabletop RPG tropes and they LOVE to hold to them. When was the last time D&D used anything other than stat-lists? Given that most stand alone games can't even do damage modeling, christ knows how likely I am to play any MMO ever again.

I'm waiting on an MMO where you can actually affect shit and have an impact on the world in question in a way that actually makes sense but doesn't fuck over the game for anyone else, which would probably be impossible to do with existing technology. The vast majority of MMOs nothing you do affects shit outside of your character's own stats and the game world resets after you complete a given mission. Even something like an MMO where there were, say, given laws in effect of a certain region, and whatever guild/clan/whatever managed to gain control of it got to change the laws in question. With the laws affecting mechanical bonuses and the like would be a vast improvement over what there is now, and the possibility of unseating the reigning champions at any given moment.

I actually enjoyed playing Guild Wars but the one thing that continually pissed me off was the way combat was handled. It was basically down to each combat instance being a game of Magic: The Gathering where you and your opponent would sit there trading ineffectual blows with each other until you played your cards/skills that you'd selected to be part of your deck/skill bar in the order that triggered your combo that did some damage, then you'd wait and do it again, until you won. Then you'd slog off to your next confrontation. I got tired of my supposedly godlike warrior hammering away on a plant with a massive sword for five minutes while noticing that absolutely none of his blows amounted to more than a blown kiss.

Combat in Guild Wars and WoW to me resembled two slabs of wood taking turns smacking each other with a fish while waiting for their flintlock pistols to be reloaded so they could chip off another chunk of splinters from the other.

It's the fact that reproducing enjoyable melee combat is difficult; you either have to make it horribly unfair (like deathmatch Jedi Knight II with the one-hit-dismemberment kill lightsaber mods on) or horribly convoluted (like a bout of Street Fighter), or horribly boring (like WoW).

I'm of the opinion that the MMO is a perfect platform to design online worlds as opposed to simply games.

A game, by definition, is an structured activity with rules, challenge, interactivity and goals. The problem with the goals part for an MMO is that, once they are met, you're left with nothing else to do. Current MMOs try to compensate by throwing increasing amounts of endgame content for players to complete, but the core problem remains. Once you've done all the quests and beaten the last boss, even World of Warcraft becomes pointless.

The "increase endgame" approach also creates the current situation in WoW were low level content becomes obsolete and is promptly skipped by players in a hurry to join others who are up ahead. From a design perspective, this means a lot of work going down the crapper.

My opinion is that it would be preferrable to create a sandbox enviroment of sorts (or game world) were players themselves could adventure without following the path set down by designers. EvE's economy would be an example of this. Also, if players are given the ability to create content (like new settlements, as well as items and factions) not only are you reducing the need to pay for professionals to churn out content, and not only is there a source of new content for new players, but also if said content becomes obsolete, it's not a problem.

Of course, those looking for an actual game, instead of a massive sandbox, would not like such a thing (you know, not having a clear track to follow, or a nice endgame animation telling them they are awesome, not to mention how many players can't accept the idea of them not being the protagonists), but there's still the regular single player market for that!

Oh well, I recently read an article by Yatzhee about Australia's censorship, and how for the horror genre as an artform, the adult themes are essential. I was profoundly bothered by a poster replying to the article simply dismissing all of it, saying that a game is just a product that must benefit publishers and retailers, and that the benefit to the player is only meaningful in making it willing to purchase. Unfortunately, this is the prevailing attitude towards games (and most media), so as long as grindtastic MMOs with massive time sinks are profitable, more and more producers will keep within it's safe confines rather than try to push for something new.

General Zod wrote:I'm waiting on an MMO where you can actually affect shit and have an impact on the world in question in a way that actually makes sense but doesn't fuck over the game for anyone else, which would probably be impossible to do with existing technology.

World of Warcraft is actually starting to do something like this in their upcoming expansion, though it's only being applied in a few areas and may need a little more refining (not being in the beta, I don't know all the details).

You complete a quest, and it moves you into a different phase of the game world, but doesn't affect anyone who has not yet done that quest. So some general orders you to kill some evil guy in a castle, and you go do it. You return with the evil guy's head, the general congratulates you, then strikes the camp and moves his battalion into the castle and garrisons it. Anyone who hasn't done the quest to kill the evil guy would find it full of monsters (and the general is still outside waiting to order you to kill them), but anyone who has finds it full of friendly soldiers.

A lot of it is being implemented in the Death Knight starting quests, but as far as I know there isn't much of it in the rest of the expansion content.

Unfortunately, it can't really be applied everywhere with the way the game is set up. Raiding, for instance. Unless Illidan or Kil'jaeden or Arthas starts dropping all the rewards for killing them, in high enough numbers that everyone who participates in the raid can get all the rewards they were looking to obtain, then players need to be able to kill them multiple times so it doesn't screw over anyone who is disliked by the random number generator.

Darkfall has some interesting ideas, but the gameplay video that's posted made the combat look sloppy. More of a fast paced click-fest than anything resembling Mount & Blade. I like the idea of moving away from auto-attack, but what you're moving to has to be good, and unless that video was not representative or they're planning or refining it for the final product, I can't see myself enjoying that type of combat any more than WoW's.

Anyone remember Galactic Battlegrounds, way back in the day of Total Annihilation? I want something like that implemented in an MMO. Have a gigantic two-sided war, where players can be on either side, and have them duke it out over huge swaths of territory. There's a victory condition for each territory (could be as simple as "occupy these buildings for x amount of time" or there could be special ones) and territory can change hands. In the areas behind the front lines, you can have standard-ish quests (deliver this, gather this, find this, etc) and small involvement in the war (kill this enemy raiding party). On the front lines, you'll be fighting other people, NPCs, and there will be few, if any, quest givers besides the general that tells you "To capture this territory, occupy the castle and hold it for 3 days."

Then add the economic system, the crafting, etc. Everything should be geared towards the big war that's the main focus of the game.

Best MMO I ever played was Horizions.

The previews spoke of such a great concept. A world you could alter and make a difference in. A great class system and one of the best crafting systems I ever read about, best of all the change to play the game as a dragon.

Then the assholes in charge decided to fuck the paying public in the ear. Just before the game launched they sacked the brains behind the operation and a large part of the development team, but still it started off pretty good despite this and I enjoyed playing.

This must have pissed off the birdbrains in charge so they sacked nearly everyone except the graphics developers and cackled like idiots as the game went to shit as planned.

Civil War Man wrote: A lot of it is being implemented in the Death Knight starting quests, but as far as I know there isn't much of it in the rest of the expansion content.

Sorry to bring bad news, but the Death Knight starter zone will be instanced for each player, that's why they can do that. in other words, you play a single-player game until you're done with it.

Eurogamer interview

Eurogamer: The Death Knight starting area is very different to anything you've done in World of Warcraft before.

Tom Chilton: Absolutely. We felt like that was part of delivering on making the Death Knight feel like a hero class. Really what that means, more than anything else, is that your start is heroic. You end in the same place as any other character class, for balance, but we wanted to make sure that the start felt very different, not only with level 55 - but because of the level, we can assume more about the player, we know they know something about the game, so we can do more with them than we'd be comfortable doing to a level 1 player that's never seen WOW before.

There's also the lore aspect - we wanted all Death Knights to start as servants of the Lich King. So how does the player become a Death Knight that's a free agent with their own agenda? We had to answer that as well.

You're also using instancing quite a lot more... the world changes dynamically as you move through the story.

J. Allen Brack: It's actually not instances. What we do is we have different world states, and depending on what quests you've completed, it changes what world state you're seeing. It's also broken up between Horde and Alliance... because until you finish that quest, we don't really want the Horde and Alliance conflict muddying what's going on. The Lich King doesn't care for PVP.

Eurogamer: Is that less static world something we're going to see more of in the game proper?

J. Allen Brack: Yes, we actually have used it in several places in Northrend, what we call the phasing technology. There's quests that you do when you arrive at a town that's overrun by Scourge, it's like a "Choplifter" quest, you have to fly in and rescue villagers. As you bring them back to your quest hub, those villagers are there permanently for you, whereas if somebody who hasn't done the quest shows up, they don't see them.

The problem with the persistent world with player generated content is that it decreases the amount of impact and influence the casual player can have. If Bob in accounting only gets one hour per day, and isn't a member of a guild, what is he supposed to do with his hour of gameplay? What is the little guy to do that doesn't leave him a cog in a machine?

Another issue I can see with persistant game play where players can rise to the level of regional leaders is that without some limits, the most powerful players could just make life hell on everyone else.

Also, I've played enough games to know that many gamers aren't very mature individuals. A sandbox type of game would probably just devolve into a lot of spam due to the lack of direction. For the sandbox idea to work, it would require very strict moderation, and limits on how powerful one player can get.

I don't think 13 year old idiots are going to become overly powerful. Optimally you'd have to be the leader of a large, very well organized guild in order to assert serious control over an area, and I don't think the typical immature gamer kid would be capable of that. If despotic guilds do emerge that make it their mission to grief random players, then that provides motivation for those players to organize and defeat the evil guild.

Being part of an actual player-run army means there's no need for stupid quests where you harvest 12 icky spider legs or go kill the same named troll everyone else has killed a million times. You'd instead be harvesting the materials you need to equip your forces or attacking enemy bases. It's much more meaningful when you're part of a unique event that will have unforseeable consequences than the present retarded system where you may as well be playing an SP RPG with lag and bad gameplay.

Vehrec wrote:The problem with the persistent world with player generated content is that it decreases the amount of impact and influence the casual player can have. If Bob in accounting only gets one hour per day, and isn't a member of a guild, what is he supposed to do with his hour of gameplay? What is the little guy to do that doesn't leave him a cog in a machine?

You could always limit it to certain regions of the world, like pvp areas in existing MMOs.

LordOskuro wrote: Sorry to bring bad news, but the Death Knight starter zone will be instanced for each player, that's why they can do that. in other words, you play a single-player game until you're done with it.

Its not. I've done it in the beta. It does dynamically change for you as you advance though. See screenshot, thats me starting the final quest in the instance, with other players.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2002-8/4 ... 005032.jpg


The same tech is used for some northrend events like the Battle for Undercity.

General Zod wrote:I'm waiting on an MMO where you can actually affect shit and have an impact on the world in question in a way that actually makes sense but doesn't fuck over the game for anyone else, which would probably be impossible to do with existing technology. The vast majority of MMOs nothing you do affects shit outside of your character's own stats and the game world resets after you complete a given mission. Even something like an MMO where there were, say, given laws in effect of a certain region, and whatever guild/clan/whatever managed to gain control of it got to change the laws in question. With the laws affecting mechanical bonuses and the like would be a vast improvement over what there is now, and the possibility of unseating the reigning champions at any given moment.

They're working on implementing whatever bonuses they have planned for guilds holding keeps in WAR, but when you hold Keeps in the RvR areas in WAR you do get slight bonuses in the area, plus you get NPCs in the keeps to buy stuff from. And when you do RvR stuff it contributes to the ranking of your side's capital city, and when the city levels up, more stuff becomes accessible there.

The beginnings of the phasing stuff in WoW were actually present prior to this latest expansion/patch.

One of the daily quests that appeared in patch 2.4 involved travelling to a certain region and looting an item called "Bashir Phasing Device". When you use it, your character is shifted to the ethereal plane or something like that, allowing you to complete the quest goal of stealing technology that's being hidden there. When you shift, all the monsters and players in the normal world disappear and all the monsters and players who are in the phased world appear.

Civil War Man wrote:The beginnings of the phasing stuff in WoW were actually present prior to this latest expansion/patch.

One of the daily quests that appeared in patch 2.4 involved travelling to a certain region and looting an item called "Bashir Phasing Device". When you use it, your character is shifted to the ethereal plane or something like that, allowing you to complete the quest goal of stealing technology that's being hidden there. When you shift, all the monsters and players in the normal world disappear and all the monsters and players who are in the phased world appear.

I wonder if the goblin beer goggles from the latest Oktoberfest work on anything like a similar principle?