MMOs vs SPGs and keeping MMOs focused

[Dustie]

MMOs vs SPGs and keeping MMOs focused (a Variation of "The One Rule")
v2

The difference between MMOs and single player games can basically be boiled down to two key components. Focusing on MMO games, MMOs add two things that single player games can't offer. The first is a social component. The second is an ability to fight with or against other players. No matter how good a single player game is, it can't really offer those two items. As such, MMO developers can't forget why their games exist and what their priorities should be when faced with design decisions.

The social aspect is highly important. People like to talk and interact with other people. Doing so can lead to new friendships or new rivalries which further enhance the gaming experience. The friendships, rivalries and communities which spring up from these social interactions is arguably as important as the game itself. Even those who don't use MMOs to socialize in general, are very happy that the social element exists when it comes time to talk about in game conquests, kills, feats of economic triumph etc. No matter who you are, the social aspect of MMOs and the communities that can form around them are an integral part of any game. Social interaction and the resulting communities it builds are critical.

The second aspect, the player interaction one, is what really sets MMOs apart. Just as its often more fun to play your friends in Chess or Monopoly then it is to play the computer, the same holds true for computer games. Its just more fun to group up with other people to go fight other people or computer players then it is to fight alone with or against a computer by itself. I'm sure there are times, just as we sometimes like to be by ourselves reading a book, that a good single player game can provide the environment we want at the moment. But any advanced gamer's true love (imo) will always lie in interacting with other players.

Whether its the social element or competitive/cooperative player interaction element, MMO developers need to keep focused on what sets MMOs apart from other computer games. As such, MMOs developers should go out of their way to ensure that the social and player to player interaction is well done, easy to use, and central to the game. Anything that takes focus away from these two components, should be the enemy of any good MMO game design. All of this seems fairly obvious, but I imagine that I must be missing something since game developers continue to lose focus on these two most basic and most important aspects of MMO gaming.

[Hoofhurr]

I agree with the majority of your post. The only thing I would add is that sometimes the social component and the competitive interaction can be at odds with one another depending on the delivery. To clarify, I mean that socializing and being competitive are often mutually exclusive in the sense that it's hard to have a conversation with someone when you are engaged in competition. As an example, WoW arenas were a highly competitive environment but the pacing of the competition was so fast that all your mental energy was focused on interacting with the game interface that there was little time for socializing. By contrast, a group of Everquest players could be farming spectres in Feerott and maybe your character was responsible for hitting 3 buttons every 30 seconds or so which freed up a lot of time for socializing in between pulls or while meditating.

I feel like games with arcade style pacing don't offer much by way of socializing but can still be highly competitive. I suppose however, one game could provide an opportunity for both socialization and competition in their own game-niches.

I also feel that sometimes the social component and the massively component are at odds with one another. It's nice to have a pool of 10,000 people because that ups your chances of finding other players whenever you have a chance to play but the odds of you playing with the same 100 people time after time seems to be greatly diminished. That's the cross-server dilemma there.

The last thing I'll say is the strange phenomenon of the solo player. Quite a few players enjoy playing MMOs primarily or partially by themselves. I would love to know what the percentage is and if that percentage is financially significant to the game. Maybe a poll is called for. Speaking for myself I probably rate my interest in solo play at around 15-20% of my playtime.

[Jakensama]

The biggest advantage MMOs have is a community. I view single player RPGs similar to a book - the most important thing to me is not the gameplay, its the story. Knights of the Old Republic, Planescape: Torment, Ultima 7 Part 2, and Baldur's Gate part 2 are the 4 best single player RPGs in history because they all told a very compelling story - even if 3 of the 4 had serious flaws in their actual gameplay (torment was more of a novel than a video game). I have played all 4 of those games through completion at least 3 times and love them as much as many of my favorite books.

I missed the whole EQ thing but pre-battleground Wow had something they didn't - a community. I wasnt just fighting against mobs or players like I was in pickup internet games, I knew who I was killing. This died when they had interserve battlegrounds because while it made the game more fun for instant gratification it made it have no community - I didn't know who I was killing. I think Aion has the buildings of a good community game.

The problem is, I no longer have the time to play a community game. And thats the problem, the things that make a good MMO also require you to spend an inordinate amount of time playing that MMO. You can't build a community unless you are a regular member, and that requires a lot of time invested. When I got big in wow I had just graduated and broken up with my ex girlfriend and my roomate played - I could dedicate alot of time to it. Now, I can't. I'm not sure if you can appreciate the good things about an MMO if you don't play it religiously, otherwise it really isn't any different than just jumping on a random counterstrike server...

[Hoofhurr]

I agree there Jake. The most rewarding MMO experiences occur when a lot of the same people are playing at the same time for long periods of time. This is really the framework for social interaction and the foundation of MMOs and is harder and harder to come by.

[Dustie]

I agree with the community aspect and I'll work that into my "social aspect" paragraph.

As far as time, can't we envision a less bleak scenario? Can't we come up with some way where gamers play together over long periods of time but not necessarily in 8 hour chunks 7 days a week but rather 1 hours chunks a few days a week? Why can't communities be built around that paradigm?

[Slamz]

Rather than ask how many people solo I think we should ask *why* they solo, which is to say, why they are doing something in the game that nobody else is doing or helping them with in any way.

For example, you never really played "solo" in Planetside or World War 2 Online. The whole game is built around team goals so you might be solo in the sense that you aren't grouped with anyone but you're still working with some other people towards something in particular.

I think the soloer issue isn't so much an issue of people prefering solo play, it's simply what you get when the game hands you nothing but personal goals.


Ideally, you want team objectives which can technically be accomplished solo but realistically result in groups of players working together. e.g., maybe capturing the base just involves pushing a button and standing there for 15 minutes, which anyone can do solo, but more likely it's going to be a PvP rumble between two teams with a lot of PUG action. Or maybe you need to hack and slash your way through the forest to reach this objective, and you can kill everything solo, but it's a lot better when 15 other random people show up to work towards the same goal.

We need team goals that either replace or at least overshadow the current RPG solo goal system.

[Dustie]

We need team goals that either replace or at least overshadow the current RPG solo goal system.

Rather then replacing or overshadowing personal goals with team goals, I think that personal goals should be aligned with team goals. After all, you can't override human nature. I think you'll have a lot more luck with that approach. Much like salesmen who get bonuses for meeting sales goals. If I sell 10 million this year, that's great for the company and me since I get a percentage of those sales.

[Hoofhurr]

Rather than ask how many people solo I think we should ask *why* they solo, which is to say, why they are doing something in the game that nobody else is doing or helping them with in any way.

Can't we come up with some way where gamers play together over long periods of time but not necessarily in 8 hour chunks 7 days a week but rather 1 hours chunks a few days a week?

For me personally, these two comments are interwoven. I solo in an MMOG because I like the game and I occasionally have an abbreviated length of time to play the game. In a game where distance and time have value and can't be circumvented immediately this often makes joining friends prohibitive. If the game is only team oriented and I don't have much time to play then I would probably not even log in for an hour to clean a bank or farm some resources, sort of like POTBS.

Dustie: I'm not sure if there is a way or not. I haven't been able to come up with one. The difference in the math you have laid out is a 56 hour gaming week vs. a 7 or maybe 14 hour gaming week. If John is playing for 56 hours a week and those hours are during primetime, let's say 3pm to 11pm, that means that Chris playing a 14 hour gaming week during primetime has a 100% chance of finding John online whenever he logs on. If John plays for 14 hours a week, let's say 4pm-6pm (56 hours total) and Chris plays a 14 hour gaming week during primtime but that time period changes slightly everyday then Chris has a 14/56=40% chance of finding John online for a full two hour period.

By comparison, non-game communities like this forum for instance don't require us to be participating at any specific time in order to interact. I can leave a post at 4am on Tuesday morning and you can answer it at 7pm on Wednesday and that's how we interact. The geopolitical browser based game some of us were playing for a while where you played for the Irish or the Canadians, had a limited number of moves you could make everyday and it didn't matter what time of day you made them is probably the type of game that has the robustness to keep a time fractured community together.

If the One Rule means community and community is derived from interaction, then the first design hurdle you have to overcome is to find the medium through which people, that don't always have time to play together, can still interact.

I actually liked the NPC driven game for this reason. If John logs on and sets 20 NPCs into action and then logs off and then Chris logs on and sets 20 NPCs into action this would allow John and Chris to play together without actually playing at the same time. The potential pitfalls here though are if John plays for 56 hours and can make 56 hours worth of moves and Chris only makes 14 hours worth of moves, the addtional playtime available to John can't grant him too great of an advantage. Another pitfall is that if Chris logs in right after John logs off and sets his NPCs to move before Johns NPCs can complete their moves then Chris has the advantage.

[Slamz]

What I'm getting at is you need team goals which can be accomplished (or worked towards) individually, as if they were personal goals. So you log on for an hour and do X to accomplish some personal goal of yours, but it also impacts the greater goal of Y which many people are contributing towards.

I keep going back to Planetside for this because I think in a wagame, individuals can create their own goals which can be fun, short term and still help the team.

Kind of like our "Superminefield". Three of us would get together, go to a likely intersection of roads, hide a spawn spot nearby and start mining the road, setting up turrets, etc. It was our own personal little mission that was fun for us but it also helped the team, mainly by waylaying incoming enemies trying to approach the base through that road. We wouldn't have minded if someone else wandered in and started helping. From his perspective, he's doing his own personal job of killing enemies. From our perspective, he's helping with Superminefield. From the team's perspective, we're impeding the enemy from reaching the main battle.

By comparison, typical MMORPGs would have him show up and start killing NPCs for some quest and we simply don't care at all what he's doing because it's of no use to us, nor is it of any use to the team. He's truly soloing in an MMORPG, as good as being offline, because the game has given him solo goals that don't mean anything to anyone except him.



Wargames support my idea well simply because it's not quest driven anyway. There are team objectives to keep combat focused and it's up to you to find something fun to do within that system.

Accomplishing this in a quest based system is harder to conceptualize.

I just don't think "quests" are the proper way to move forward in MMORPGs. All they do is get in the way of community building. I think "questing" has forced people to act more as individuals, to the point that a lot of players play the game as if it was single player.

[Hoofhurr]

If planetside has already achieved successfully what we're trying to achieve in an ideal game then simply superimpose the Aion (or favorite flavor of) game engine and combat model onto the planetside strategic and tactics map and viola.

To me there's still something missing and I'd contest that the aforementioned hybrid would still struggle to maintain a population long enough to build community in the EQ sense and have a staying power reaching into year long timescales. Is that something we want in a game? As a developer you surely do.

I thought the question was more of, "How do we obey the One rule?" and how do we build a sustainable and, dare I say it, engaging community. Additionally, I'd say the trouble with wargames is they 'don't' really tell a story and it's that feeling of progression that compells people to play for years. At least not how they are currently implemented.

[Slamz]

I think what makes WOW (and EVE and most other MMOs) appealing long term is the fact that it's based around loot and levels. That's your real personal goal, with quests simply providing a better way to see bite sized progress that doesn't involve watching your XP bar slowly fill up.

But ultimately I think that's a shallow mechanic that turns off long term gamers, like us. We want more substance.


So I think the elements we need are:

1) Long term character improvement goals (levels? loot? faction? what can we come up with here?) accomplished via
2) Short term character improvement goals (quests?)
and this improvement must not conflict with:
3) Good PvP, even in the case of veterans versus newbies
4) Always being able to benefit from grouping with your RL friend, regardless of difference in /played time.
5) "Big picture" team goals


Our problem, as PvP gamers, is that most games focus on #1 ends up destroying #3, and #2 usually ruins #4 and #5 usually just doesn't exist.

Mass appeal games so far have basically dropped #3, #4 and #5, which is why we eventually quit.

[Hoofhurr]

If you could incorporate a story into planetside the game would have more staying power I think. Here's a thought. In Rome Total War whenever you have a really crushing victory of 2:1 odds or so they put a crossed swords graphic on the map that when you moused over it would tell you the details of when the battle took place and who the victorious and defeated generals were. This type of information really adds a story to a wargame. The other thing that really adds story are those sweeping arrows in WWII games that show you where battalions moved in on positions.

If there were some way to add this type of thing to a wargame espousing the accomplishments of guilds rather than individuals you might really increase a wargame-centric game's longevity.

[Slamz]

Yeah I do think there's an element of "fame" that's really being overlooked in MMOs. They *sort* of get it because they implement special titles and special loot and fancy looking helmets whose primary job is to allow you to show off, but since the games have no larger context to put these things into, all you end up with is a guy you've never heard of standing in Orgrimmir showing off his hat.

If we could get rid of instance based, quest based combat and move towards a dynamic wargame, that might give us a much better outlet for "fame".

I wonder if this could take the place of #1, at least to some extent? If loot and levels = accomplishments, then maybe we can satisfy people by just tracking their actual in game accomplishments. Maybe your level is a reflection of your total number of accomplishments but additionally I can get detailed info on what those accomplishments were.

Yesterday:
Killed 23 vampires.
Killed 2 vampire teleporters.
Secured the base at Loth Lorien.

Two days ago:
Killed 72 vampires.
Killed 4 vampire teleporters.
Killed 2 vampire captains.
Captured the base at Loth Lorien.
Collected 50 aether.
Built 1 teleporter.

"Level" simply becomes a prestige item gained by accomplishing goals, and those goals are recorded and displayed to anyone who bothers to look at you. Rather than level ups giving you new abilities and fancy hats, you're just growing your list of accomplishments to look increasingly more impressive.

[Hoofhurr]

Level as a function of your accomplishments has promise. Guild level as a function of guild accomplishment has promise too. I'm not opposed to fancy hats or fancy titles to reflect those accomplishments however.

Going back to my idea of guilds having classes maybe if your group of superminefielders keep laying superminefields with great success you start to acquire accomplishments in that area that then impact the look, feel, and titles you have access to. Maybe superminefielders have access to equipment graphics that have shields and armor like the bomb squaders and your guild actually gets titles like "Superminefielders" if they want to display them.

I think though that these levels should have a decay built into them such that if you switch activities the items and titles you have access to changes or another guild outperforms you then they have a chance in the spotlight as well.

The game should mark somehow if your team layed a really awesome minefield that had significant impact, either on the strategic map or with a monolith of somesort. These should decay over time as well.

[Dustie]

I think you're right hoof, many past games have already implemented pieces of what we're talking about here. We would just need to bring ideas together, unify/solidify them so they work together, and tie them into the game.

I'd organize the goals and achievements like this:

Goals

• Team Goals (Overall strategic goals for your entire team/faction/side)
  Guild Goals (Mostly logistical goals for your guild, keeping it supplies, armed, running, fighting, etc)
  Group Goals (tactical goals for your group to carry out in order to further the team, guild, and individual members)
  Personal Goals (personal goals to advance your character and gain recognition, achievements, and rewards)

Achievements, Recognition, and Rewards

• Team Achievements, Recognition, and Rewards
  Guild Achievements, Recognition, and Rewards
  Group Achievements, Recognition, and Rewards
  Personal Achievements, Recognition, and Rewards

Essentially you want to have goals that further your team/group/yourself and have some recognition that you've contributed.

Some Examples:

Thinking in terms of EVE, they almost implemented this. They had the idea of corp shares. Your importance to the corp and your financial support to the corp could have been tied into the game using shares and ownership but they failed to implement that very last piece and formalize share trading on the market. Instead, it was just an informal "hey, here are some shares, do something with them or do nothing with them" type of thing. If they had done it right, they could have aligned corp goals with personal goals by giving incentives to players to build up large stakes in a corp which then become more valuable as the corp advances and grows in value.

Another example from EVE. We have this guy Veraphim. He logs in and does market translations, refines stuff, makes ammo, makes ships, and makes weapons for the corp. Then he logs off. Some of us know he's doing that and say, hey that's great, thanks. It would be nice to take that contribution and put it up on the "corp stats" page. Under "corp production" it would show this:
Corp production output:
Veraphim: 96%
Corp member 2: 3%
Corp Member 3: 1%

And continuing Slamz theme
Karne's group staffed by Veraphim, Slamz and Arsilon killed:
1 Frigate
2 Cruises
and salvaged 20 metal, 10 large guns etc etc

[Hoofhurr]

Yes. I feel, however, you would eventually have to summarize, condense, or decay an entity's contributions or the sheer volume of data would be so overwhelming that it would have the same effect has having no feedback data at all, i.e. no one would have any sense of where they stand relative to anyone else.

One thing I always really loved from the D&D games was the titles they associated with level. All the player manuals had these lists of titles per class, like a thief went from footpad to cutpurse to master thief etc. I'd be more interested in a classless system where instead of XP gain, level and title being strictly linked and inflexible, everyone started out with access to the same gear, like planetside, and as you performed certain tasks like killing players or vehicles with mines, gear and titles with a 'mine theme' would open up to you. But there would be an added level of complexity. Let's say your group or guild laid mines but you personally provided airsupport for the minelayers. Your titles, graphics and gear should be some combination of your personal role and the guild/group role.

[Dustie]

Yes. I feel, however, you would eventually have to summarize, condense, or decay an entity's contributions or the sheer volume of data would be so overwhelming that it would have the same effect has having no feedback data at all, i.e. no one would have any sense of where they stand relative to anyone else.

Definitely. You would have some high level "index number", rank, title or whatever that shows your total achievements at a glance. Like the planetside badges and merit awards. But I think it would still be neat to be able to drill down and see the data if you so chose.

One thing I always really loved from the D&D games was the titles they associated with level. All the player manuals had these lists of titles per class, like a thief went from footpad to cutpurse to master thief etc. I'd be more interested in a classless system where instead of XP gain, level and title being strictly linked and inflexible, everyone started out with access to the same gear, like planetside, and as you performed certain tasks like killing players or vehicles with mines, gear and titles with a 'mine theme' would open up to you. But there would be an added level of complexity. Let's say your group or guild laid mines but you personally provided airsupport for the minelayers. Your titles, graphics and gear should be some combination of your personal role and the guild/group role.

Yep.

[Vllad]

In Planetside you achieved ranks, medals and ribbons that was applied to your uniform. You chose the Ribbons to show but I still noticed them when I killed players.

I always killed the Engineers first. Especially the high ranking ones because you knew they invested a large amount of time on those skills in order to attain those ribbons so I regarded them as the most dangerous.


Vllad