Next MMO Generation: Feature set

Games
41

Well, this is one of the things MMO companies should spend money and time on, and the kind of thing they could innovate on.

Anyway, just looking at HPS compared to other healers in the group (adjusted by spec), DPS on relevant targets compared to everyone playing that spec on the encounter or damage taken for tanks, plus the number of times they failed at mechanics, should be already enough to give a pretty usable assessment.

Also, you can tailor game mechanics and encounters so that this kind of thing can always be determined automatically.

Also, you would want this to be done in such a way that less… able players are not told to their face that they suck, otherwise they will just come complain to you that your LFG system is broken.

You can simply not tell players anything but rank players behind the curtains, like League of Lengeds unranked matchmaking.

42

Yes and i support that. What i don’t support is the idea that mmo companies should have designed some super lfg that magically detects how good a player is and matches them with other good players (because “I” am good and the players “I” play with are holding me back).

I also don’t think it is realistic to expect a group put together through LFR to be able to compete with really good guilds in content progression. Being able to do the content is one thing, but competing in clearing new content is just silly to expect.

Again how do you expect to do this? Should blizzard (or whatever company) go through an encounter with their internal team, note down average dps and then any dps who does that encounter and does less dps, loses a point on their skill meter? What if i spend the entire fight aoe’ing useless trash to pad the dps meter when i should be dpsing in order to get skill meter increases? What if i’m really good with bad gear so once i get better gear my dps goes way up but by then my skill meter is really low? What if i’m melee dps and avoid some sort of aoe so my dps is lower than someone who doesn’t avoid it and wastes the healers’ mana?

That barely mentions gear level at all too which can vastly affect these numbers. I also hope your HPS is not counting overhealing. Not to mention when i played, certain classes (druids) had a huge advantage on getting high effective healing numbers due to how their mechanics worked. I think some of that may have changed since i played, but I doubt all of it has.

43

Again how do you expect to do this? Should blizzard (or whatever company) go through an encounter with their internal team, note down average dps and then any dps who does that encounter and does less dps, loses a point on their skill meter?

No, simply the more dps you do, the higher the score.
Perhaps it could be based on the average across encounters of a weighted time-based average of the percentiles your dps is compared to other playing your spec on the specific encounter.
Of course, this needs to combined with the average number of times you fail at mechanics per encounter.

What if i spend the entire fight aoe’ing useless trash to pad the dps meter when i should be dpsing in order to get skill meter increases?

Only count DPS on relevant targets (with encounter-specific code).

What if i’m really good with bad gear so once i get better gear my dps goes way up but by then my skill meter is really low?

The time average needs to be tuned so it’s possible to raise it to its natural level reasonably fast.

What if i’m melee dps and avoid some sort of aoe so my dps is lower than someone who doesn’t avoid it and wastes the healers’ mana?

Make the AoE instakill, or detect that you didn’t avoid it, and count it as a failure at mechanics (per-encounter code, like the EnsidiaFails addon).

That barely mentions gear level at all too which can vastly affect these numbers.

I suppose the game could evaluate gear, and automatically rescale previous performances once you get newer gear instead of just averaging it.

I also hope your HPS is not counting overhealing.
Of course not.

Not to mention when i played, certain classes (druids) had a huge advantage on getting high effective healing numbers due to how their mechanics worked.

Balance healers properly (the druids have been nerfed, although they then managed to make holy paladins somewhat OP).

At any rate, it just needs to be better than the current matchmaking system that simply places anyone together with anyone (or for several non-WoW MMO, doesn’t even exist!), and that’s very easy to do.

Regarding guilds, one of the problem of guilds is that you need to play on a schedule, and very rarely this matches the times when one feels like playing, and is quite a huge inconvenience.
In practice, if you want to actually enjoy the game, you currently need to dedicate 3-5 night per week to it, or dedicate all your weekends, or take a vacation from work/school and play full time.

Obviously, however, I’d expect that most people don’t want to do that, and would much rather play whenever they feel like it, but also not be forced to play a super-dumbed-down version just because of that.
I think this kind of “practical” issue is ultimately more important that how exactly the game plays, at least for some segments of the market.

44

Your suggestions sound great in a theoretical world, but completely impractical in the real world where nothing ever ends up as balanced as the designers wish.

45

Interesting topic. We’re never going to see “one MMO to rule them all” because so many people want different things. I saw a comment somewhere above predicting more, smaller MMOs that appeal to particular segments of the player market. I think a lot of this will happen as the gap between single player games and MMOs narrows. Some genres are already heading this direction, through services like XBoxLive and PSN. The next generation of games may start out as single player games, and allow assets to be moved to shared worlds hosted on those service networks as you progress past the single-player areas. Those shared worlds could be as different as Civ5 is from Skyrim, and there would be a lot of them. All the very interesting suggestions above might be realized in different areas of such an ecosystem of shared worlds.

46

Has no one tried Darkfall? It doesn’t follow the mould of your usual themepark MMO and almost completely avoids the levelling treadmill.

47

I tried it about a year ago, and I do like it but it’s a bit clunky (e.g. it’s back to inventory management being a chore) and the lore’s a bit “empty” for my tastes, although it does have nice, vast single-world atmosphere and that sense of danger and things mattering that you can only get from hardcore open world PvP games. It sounded like people were having fun with the sieges and stuff, and the community was that usual mix of really helpful and gank-squaddey. If I had another lifetime I’d probably enjoy it a lot, but as it is there are other things higher on my list of priorities.

When I played, there was that problem which seems to plague some skill based MMOs (the problem CCP cleverly avoided) which is that people tend to grind up their skill levels doing stupid things like swimming in place for hours on auto and things like that.

It’s definitely more fleshed-out than Mortal Online though - quite a bit more “sand” in the sandbox.

48

I don’t really want one MMO to rule them all, i want an MMO that holds my interest. STO, SW:TOR, DC Universe, Warhammer, DDO, Lotro. CoH…I’m probably missing a few too, all pretty much got me to play one month and done. In all but DC I didnt make ‘endgame’ - so there was more content there, it’s just that the game didn’t compel me to play. With more and more of my friends that play, this is their sentiment too…as people have said, the model just isn’t aging well.

I love the STALKER franchise, and would love some kind of MMO based in that world. However, you couldnt have 10k Stalkers in a game world - it just wouldnt hold up. However a small community of 50 stalkers might…particularly if you built the environment well. You might spend days not running into another player stalker, but then, one day you do…now, what do you do? Friend? Foe?

See, that I find compelling. That is the kind of game I would pay monthly for.

To the classless comments - i think you can build a successful combination, and the key to it is to have positives and negatives. Some of these might be apparent(ie, the negative to light armor is lower protection, but the benefit could be actual movement speed in the game world). You want heavy armor? Ok, it’s there, and great, but you’ll move at .6 the speed ALL THE TIME. Or maybe extra susceptible to heat and lightning spells. Or maybe both those. The point is to make tradeoffs and to make them good and real in the game world. You have enough material, and enough imagination, to make a true rock-paper-scissors system. Good ole rock, nothing beats that…oh wait.

49

Just as a re-affirmation. MMOs that continue to cater to single player mode are all going to fail. Having to deal with other people, is what makes these games engaging. The more that gets stripped away, the shorter the retention of these games becomes. This is not a complicated issue.

Wow got lucky, due to timing. They took EQ, actually more than that they ripped off EQ, right down to the key bindings, and made it easier. The mistaken conclusion by the world at large was, if you make MMOs easier, people will buy them. The reality was, they hit broadband internet, and peoples awareness of the genre at the right time. It actually had very little to do with their game, and mostly to do with timing.

The WoW model, has probably done more harm to the development of MMOs than anything else, because the correct conclusions weren’t drawn.

50

For you maybe - There is a growing trend among MMO players that has them playing it more like a single player game. Early on, WoW recognized this and streamlined the game accordingly. Every big MMO has done this actually.

While the human interaction is important, we want to be able to decide exactly when and how much we are going to interact with other humans, and all group missions are completely optional.

51

This. If the future of the genre is in forced grouping, you can count me out. BTW, UO predated Everquest and it also did not force grouping. It was perfectly suited to lone gunmen like me. WoW was just the next game to develop that ease of solo play.

BTW, I agree with the person who said that there should be more to end game play than raiding. My impression in my years with WoW is that the old raid model has been steadily breaking down. Opening up raid content to the unwashed masses is a big step in that direction. Ideally, the “post character development” phase of these games (whether that’s reflected as max level, skills topped out, etc) should be accessible and engaging. It should be more than dailies and raids.

52

Exactly.

53

The genre was created by nerds, the idea was “virtual worlds” where to have adventures and make new friends. This why grouping was encouraged, it what the whole points of a masive MULTIPLAYER role play game.

Now the genre has ben popularized to not-nerds, and these people want to play theme parks with his friends. The no-nerds don’t understand role playing, even want to ridiculize it. No-nerds act like assholes to other people, because don’t want to make new friends, only “have a good ride”, perhaps with his own IRL friends.

So this why we have soo much “forced soloing” games like WoW, and why the genre has ben ruined. Soloing is boring, and is forced on everyone. Soloing a mmo is funcionally exactly like using a facebook game. Click, click, click, reward, repeat. Soloing a mmo is something a tiny perl script can do, is not something for what you need a human. So, of course, people write tiny perl scripts (bots) to play, or pay other people to play for thenselves (gold, account sales in ebay) because soloing is boring for these people. Soloers have built a empty boring and meaningless world for thenselves, and everyone that used to like this genre before it was destroyed.

:D

54

The difference between casual gamers and enthusiast gamers is experience and level of interest.

Like, if I’m casually interested in cars - I don’t actually know what makes a good car, and that’s why I shouldn’t be allowed to dictate how cars are designed.

In the MMO genre, the casual/mainstream gamers are allowed to dictate how MMOs are designed.

As if they knew what would be the most fun for them.

The problem with allowing people without knowledge and experience dicate game design, is that they only see the short-term “fun”. They don’t have the experience with which to make important long-term design decisions.

That’s exactly why everything in modern MMOs is about the short-term - and nothing is about the long-term.

Note that I’m not “looking down” on casual gamers, because I fully understand that gaming isn’t equally interesting to everyone. I also don’t think enthusiast gamers are “entitled” to enthusiast games.

I’m just looking at this very strange MMO genre, where even many of the most casually interested gamers get locked down by a treadmill carrot design - and they end up spending most of their free time without even being really interested in games or their design. They just enjoy the social aspects and the “log on and know what to do” aspect.

Should those people really dictate what designs should be?

55

Normal people can’t design. Most people (except people trained to do something different) just want to “expand his favorite feature”. And that is bad design.

Also “too much cheffs in a kitchen”. Maybe designing is a solitary task, and only a single designer sould allowed to make the final decision.

56

That would certainly be my preference. The only problem is that most “genuine” designers care more about the actual game than what business it might generate. Well, that’s the ideal designer.

For AAA games, suits can’t have that. They need to dictate things according to “market research”.

Fortunately, things are changing - and people are getting increasingly sick of these me-too designs. So even the suits wil eventually realise that copy-catting without insight is not particularly profitable in the long-term.

57

I am not sure it don’t work. Zynga used that strategy maximized to the top. Even made public that his strategy was steal other people ideas, never invent anything, and have a better marketing. Or that was Zynga said. Maybe what was really doing was taking good ideas, and repackaging then with polish. People like polish.

The suits have Steve Jobs to see a example of how profitable is to let designers take important decisions, and I think the suits respect Jobs. The suits respect people like Bill Gates, that is a “rob baron”. So the suits have examples to show how to run (ruin?) things in different ways, not just the ones that result on good products. The suits are “right” in making games that generate profit but are low quality. In this case is the public that is on the wrong in buying what is not good.

58

What you two are railing against isnt the ordinary person being stupid - frankly, I resent that implication. While it may not suit you, it suits plenty of others, leading to whats going on in the industry. Its market forces, that has driven the industry to where it is today. Push and pull and what sells, and what doesn’t.

What you want, you will not find in the established developer / distributor areas, but in the indie field. An indie MMO that is successful enough to create new market directions is unlikely though.

59

Sure, but I’m talking long-term.

This is what happens everytime a “new” market is discovered. It’s milked to destruction - and at the end, the people responsible are surprised they couldn’t just exploit the market indefinitely.

At the core, that’s what’s happened with the financial recession - with a clear example being the “housing bubble” (or whatever it’s called internationally). People wanted money to generate out of thin air - and they kept at it - on and on and on.

This is what’s happening with Facebook shit and App-market games at the moment. People are convinced this is how to make money, and for the moment - they’re correct.

However, even the masses eventually tire of the same shit exploitation. It will just take time.

It’s my claim that, as far as the MMO segment is concerned, the masses are approaching the realisation that the short-term fun they’re having, chasing that ever elusive carrot does NOT lead to a rainbow endgame where all the magical long-term fun is hiding.

It’s a scam. EXACTLY like TOR PvP endgame.

60

I think I’d appreciate a core mechanic that kept me playing beyond reaching maximum level and acquiring super-awesome-gear-5000. Something that involved a reputation as a player as well as a character being improved (or damaged) when you interact with others. An example could be an assassination style MMO whereby contracts are a common way to resolve business dealings, or end political runs. In a city of many people (mostly NPCs, granted), the players gain reputation for fulfilling contracts set by NPCs (low value) or by players (high value). The idea is to keep interaction high while still requiring the player to play the game. Skill and gear factor into success and there you have it.

Another scenario is one similar to JM’s description, whereby the gear and experience account for a smaller percentage of your “awesome”, and the emphasis is on teamwork, interaction and skill. Space Hulk would be an amazing example as beyond Terminator Armour and, say, Lightning Claws, you’re still vulnerable if your squadmates aren’t covering your back. The possibilities can grow from there if need be, and (ugh) include raiding if the “MMORPG 101”-trained lead designer demands it.

Ultimately I’m not optimistic about MMOs at the moment, they all appear to be aimed at the audience currently absorbed in existing MMO games. I’m not saying that’s a terribad strategy, but I am saying that the market has enough WoW clones at the moment.