On MMO design

[Taskmage]

I've probably said all of these things at one point or another, but this guy probably puts it all together more coherently. I'd really like to see MMO design move more in this direction.

[Armando]

Re: On MMO design

I like how well he expounded on the shortcomings of vertical progression. I would argue many offline games would benefit from more use of horizontal progression as well. Funnily enough, this was what I thought FFXIV was going to do in terms of the job system.

[cidbahamut]

Re: On MMO design

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---------- Post added at 11:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 PM ----------

I wish he'd expound upon the shortcomings of horizontal progression, because he seems to be doing his damnedest to sweep those under the rug.

[Raydeus]

Re: On MMO design

Mainly lack of focus really. And since everything would be spread all over the place things like losing focus, meaning or attention would be pretty easy.


I'd like to see a hybrid concept myself.

With a horizontal expansion of content and features, but each with a vertical development features of their own just tall enough to keep me focused for a little while before I moved on to the next fun content while avoiding the feature becoming an aggravating time sink.

Kinda like the original trials of the Magians were in the context of FFXI. You had all these weapons to choose from, each with a grind of it's own, but both the grind and the time required for it consuming enough as to keep me subscribed but not grindy enough to make me lose interest in them*. And all this while actually encouraging player interaction.

And if you applied this philosophy to both character skills and also player skill it would be so much better.

And that's but one of so many possibilities for this kind of development.


*But then they overdone it Tanakaâ„¢ style, and everything went to hell.

---------- Post added at 11:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:23 PM ----------

PS > I think I should expand upon the player skill part.

Think of when you first start playing a game, let's say Assassin's Creed. When you start playing you have the basic abilities you can use, but you don't really have much of an idea how to use them, and even if someone else tells you how they use theirs there is a very good chance that playstyle wont fit your personality. So, to train you you get a series of tutorials and missions to improve your additional weapons ever so slightly and get some better armor, with the main focus always going towards teaching you how to actually play and encouraging you to find you own playstyle, with all the gear/skill improvements taking a back seat to the improvements inside your head.

You can see this after playing a game like the first AC. With enough knowledge and skill you can go from start to finish using only your brain and your hidden blade and the game wont penalize you for it, if you want to go Terminator instead and kill everyone in your path you can do so too, and since there's no reward or punishment for playing either way you are set free to do as you see fit as long as you complete your objective.

This, coupled with actual benefits from cooperating with others rather than forcing you to party just because the devs say so is the kind of thing I'd love to see in MMOGs.

[Armando]

Re: On MMO design

I wish he'd expound upon the shortcomings of horizontal progression, because he seems to be doing his damnedest to sweep those under the rug.

The main drawback - and benefit - is that backtracking is no longer easy. Vertical growth leads to the phenomenon where nothing in Sarutabaruta, Gustaberg or Ronfaure threatens you anymore. In horizontal design, these mobs would remain a threat to you - you just have more ways of dealing with them. It's a pain because backtracking could be a chore if improperly handled, but a benefit because EVERY area in the game is viable for fighting (and if you think about it this is not only more practical, but also more realistic.) You just need to make sure you include some survival skills (e.g. Fleee, Bind, Invis) in your expanding repertoire an good transportation systems like outpost warps so you can reach specific zones without stealthing around every zone in between every time. Additionally you can make it so zones have safe travel paths, something which FFXI already kinda-sorta does.

To me the fact that its main con is also a pro is pretty telling of how good an idea this is.

Kinda like the original trials of the Magians were in the context of FFXI. You had all these weapons to choose from, each with a grind of it's own, but both the grind and the time required for it consuming enough as to keep me subscribed but not grindy enough to make me lose interest in them*. And all this while actually encouraging player interaction.

Horizontal design doesn't preclude grinding though. I'm not sure what shortcoming you're trying to address with a middle-of-the-road approach.

Not that I'm saying that such a thing would be bad - some games are already like this. Paper Mario is one such case - your HP rises slowly and your damage even more so (being stuck in 1-2 damage for quite a while before moving to 2-3, etc). A lot of you character growth is just more ways of dealing with enemies (more types of ranged attacks or AoEs or bypassing resistances) rather than straight-up stronger attacks or higher defense. The important thing is to keep the vertical component small so it never becomes a hindrance to player interactions.

The inability of new players to join in in meaningful gameplay activities with more established players is the main reason most of my friends from school quit FFXI quickly. I never got to do anything with them before they quit other than maybe help with Kazhaam keys because our level gap was too wide. If you think about it the vertical growth is also the reason putting a party together is hard. One or two levels kills your EXP in FFXI, and there's always competition for camps.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: On MMO design

There's also the problem of gear. People like to keep on getting stuff and while gear being more of a custom appearce us a cute idea, there are MMOs that already do that. You can "lock" various skins and tweak colors in DCUO, but change actual gear to better stats:

Additionally you can get new skins via new gear and events.

I think there are more benefits to taking a hybrid approach. DCUO is as casual or hardcore as one wants it to be and there are enough travel options, teleports and checkpoints to avoid frustrating navigation.

[Armando]

Re: On MMO design

People like to keep on getting stuff and while gear being more of a custom appearce us a cute idea, there are MMOs that already do that.

Seems to work pretty well for TF2. I realize one's an MMO and the other is not, but people are just rabid for hats almost exclusively because they're rare. To the point that they will pay real world money for them. They'll pay extra if the hat has some sort of added particle effect or is vintage. We've already seen the idea that looks and rarity are desirable in FFXI with the white box and blue box syndrome. People will pay out the ass to have white box gear even when the benefits are almost theoretical in magnitude.

TF2 uses horizontal growth almost exclusively as well, since any alternate weapons are almost always a sort of sidegrade rather than a strict upgrade, so older players have more options available to them but don't necessarily have a superior arsenal.

As long as players can continue to grind towards something and get some sort of reward I think an MMO can keep its psychological roots deeply ingrained in the player's brain. The rewards doesn't have to be strictly superior to what the player already had. Hell, it can be pure epeen and it'll still work - I would argue epeen is the greatest motivator of all.

EDIT: One more thing that wasn't mentioned in the video is that if your game is heavily horizontal, it's far more acceptable for the devs to sell gear that would be available in-game for real world money. After all, the player who buys the gear isn't becoming strictly superior to other players. TF2 already does that too - and if you don't want to shell out, you can still do achievements, wait for drops, or trade with other people.

[cidbahamut]

Re: On MMO design

I think on some level if you switch gear to being purely comsmetic, you are effectively altering your target audience. It's actually one of my biggest concerns about Guild Wars 2, is that without gear to chase I'll end up without goals and put the game down. Cosmetics only work up to a certain point. If I can get my hands on the perfect aesthetic early on, why on earth would I want to grind that late-game dungeon for fugly gear with the same stats? Same deal with what that guy kept referring to as a spellbook. Once you get that line-up of abilities that you're completely happy with, what encourages you to go hunting for a bunch of other spells you're never going to use? With vertical progression, the grind is generally proportional to the desirability and power of the loot, but with horizontal gaming it isn't. It leads to this awkward problem where you can effectively cap out very early on(akin to achieving a relic and perfect gearsets in FFXI) and have nothing left to work for. If it's truly horizontal, then that perfect lineup is going to be completely subjective in order to keep vertical progression stifled, so you end up targeting players whose goal is completion rather than optimization. That's not to say the two cannot overlap, but I think it makes for a fundamentally different framework upon which the rest of the game is built.

[Armando]

Re: On MMO design

Once you get that line-up of abilities that you're completely happy with, what encourages you to go hunting for a bunch of other spells you're never going to use?

Ideally, achievements. One of the more interesting Youtube comments pointed out that what gave him satisfaction in WoW was being the first clear a boss. The video made a pretty good case for having a better achievement system that rewards constant performance instead of just achieving something once.

I would argue that no one continues to grind for performance reasons even in vertical games. You say the grind is proportional to the desirability of the loot - this much is true - but it's not proportional to its power, at least in FFXI. There's a tipping point where diminishing returns kick in and the cost of getting something far outweighs the small improvement in performance. Yet people will put themselves through the most mundane and sadistic grinds for these tiny improvements. The reason for this can't be utilitarian - it must be rooted in a desire for prestige. A practical person would be satisfied at the tipping point and consider more grinding to be a fruitless endeavor.

Just look at achievement whores. Some people are proud to have a shitload of achievements even if half of them are meaningless or luck-based rather than skill-based.

EDIT: I think this video is worth watching:

[cidbahamut]

Re: On MMO design

Ideally, achievements.

Unfortunately achievements like those from XBox or Steam mean very little to me as a player. I don't consider them incentives personally. I don't particularly like the idea of them much at all, but that's a rant for another thread. Point being, offering achievements is effectively altering your target audience and will influence design choices accordingly. I think we need to be careful not to confuse "improvement" with "altering target audience and consequently expanding overall playerbase". One does not necessarily lead to the other.

I would argue that no one continues to grind for performance reasons even in vertical games. You say the grind is proportional to the desirability of the loot - this much is true - but it's not proportional to its power, at least in FFXI. There's a tipping point where diminishing returns kick in and the cost of getting something far outweighs the small improvement in performance. Yet people will put themselves through the most mundane and sadistic grinds for these tiny improvements. The reason for this can't be utilitarian - it must be rooted in a desire for prestige. A practical person would be satisfied at the tipping point and consider more grinding to be a fruitless endeavor.

I don't really agree with this assessment. When people pass the point of diminishing returns and start doing stuff like relics or comparable grinds, it is in my mind less about the performance increase and more of finishing off that last goal before departing. It's effectively making an effort to complete what is by nature an indefinite game. It's a grind to leave the game. Bah, I can't articulate this properly at all. It's the last upgrade you can make, so the return is perfect performance, something which cannot be improved upon so the investment ramping up exponentially makes sense in a twisted sort of way, because once that goal is accomplished, the game is effectively over.

If that makes any sense at all.

Bouncing away from that, I think a decent middle ground might be something along the lines of gear potency being roughly comparable but mechanically different enough to be situational. You know how for the longest time there was that rule of thumb that 2 INT was equal to 1 MAB? Maybe we have more gear chases being centered around that kind of side-grading. A ring with 2 INT vs a ring with 1 MAB, approximately equal on average, but some situations will favor the INT ring while others will favor the MAB ring, but both are solid enough to be useful in any situation without giving the community cause to min/max with as much severity as we see in most games. That's something I feel FFXI got right in a lot of ways, tons of sidegrades which meant everyone had options that allowed them to be functional without having to be funneled through a single path if they wanted to participate in a meaningful way.

[Raydeus]

Re: On MMO design

What if it was a combination of achievement and a really good storyline cutscene for the reward? That way you can at least hit more targets with the same content.

Those looking for Facebook badges would get them and those who want to watch the story unfold would get cutscenes. And if achievements/storylines eventually gave you access to cosmetic content or abilities it would be a nice extra without actually changing things into a grind.

Unless you want to grind achievements and cutscenes that is. <_<;

[jenova_9]

Re: On MMO design

Oh mew, so many developers out there don't have a clue to greater MMO design, mew. They might have some good ideas but the rest of their approach leads to lopsided results, mew.

One of the first mistakes is treating MMO design like a science instead of a natural art.

[Armando]

Re: On MMO design

Unfortunately achievements like those from XBox or Steam mean very little to me as a player.

Well, no, I don't mean frivolous achievements like "Play for 200 hours" or "Kill 1,000,000 mobs." You could implement an achievement system with real achievements like the video suggested, but I meant more general things like knowing you're at the top of your job or that your guild is one of the best in the server, if not the game. Or knowing you've soloed NMs others wouldn't try, or that you're one of the best at PvP. Generally anything that fulfills your sense of "mastery."

I don't really agree with this assessment. When people pass the point of diminishing returns and start doing stuff like relics or comparable grinds, it is in my mind less about the performance increase and more of finishing off that last goal before departing. It's effectively making an effort to complete what is by nature an indefinite game.

I agree with you on the point that people that get relics want closure so they can quit in peace. But to me, the "tipping point" comes much, much sooner than the point where you even consider going after something like that. Think about the players that have done endgame for 3+ years. They probably reached the tipping point within the first year. Why did they keep playing?

I also agree with you in that FFXI did a much better job of introducing gear sidegrades rather than strict upgrades as time went on, unlike other MMOs.

One of the first mistakes is treating MMO design like a science instead of a natural art.

The fact is that it's both. You can't treat it solely like one or the other. It's a form of engineering. There's a reason computer engineers study data structures, algorithms, design patterns and best practices. Intuition only goes so far. You need to understand the underlying concepts to truly make good quality anything and go beyond what's already been invented. An engineer, just like a game designer, still needs creativity to come up with innovative designs and ideas. Technical knowledge alone is not enough to be innovative. Creativity alone is not enough to execute an idea well.

Your statement is offensive to anyone who cares enough about good design to study it rather than just go by their gut instinct.

[cidbahamut]

Re: On MMO design

Well, no, I don't mean frivolous achievements like "Play for 200 hours" or "Kill 1,000,000 mobs." You could implement an achievement system with real achievements like the video suggested, but I meant more general things like knowing you're at the top of your job or that your guild is one of the best in the server, if not the game. Or knowing you've soloed NMs others wouldn't try, or that you're one of the best at PvP. Generally anything that fulfills your sense of "mastery."

I'm just not convinced that all needs to be tied to a game mechanic. When I go solo some NM, I don't need an in-game trophy, just the act of soloing it makes me feel like a total badass all on its own. I'm clearly not the target audience when it comes to achievement mechanics, and that's what I'm getting at, those mechanics are not necessarily going after the same audience that the MMO genre designs for at present.

I agree with you on the point that people that get relics want closure so they can quit in peace. But to me, the "tipping point" comes much, much sooner than the point where you even consider going after something like that. Think about the players that have done endgame for 3+ years. They probably reached the tipping point within the first year. Why did they keep playing?

I honestly do not know. In fact I'm probably pretty close to fitting that description, and those are some demons I'm just not ready to face.

[Aeni]

Re: On MMO design

MMO design is primarily based on the financial opportunities that the games have the potential to unleash. Even F2P (Free-to-Play) are hinged upon the ability for the company to sell their virtual items and/or advertisement placement (and generation of income for their advertisers) P2P (Pay-to-Play) models are no different but they mostly concentrate on developing a content in which investment of time leads to progression and with content that has enough of an allure to keep players engaged and therefore keep their accounts active (which in turns add to their bottom line)

Sure, there's noble ideas in trying to make MMO into an artform, but the prohibitive costs involved in both maintaining the network (which needs to be up as much as possible, like a Cloud Storage system), developing new content and keeping players engaged have made this genre palatable to only the most business saavy of game developers. Still, many, many MMO games fail for every one that finds success, whether great or small.