MMORPG News - 10 Ways to Fix MMOs

[Dhruin]

Tim writes about a piece at Trembling Hand titled 10 Ways to Fix MMOs and inspired by Tom Chick's recent (and controverisal) 5 Reasons MMOs Are Broken. Number #1 is making the worlds more engaging:

MMOs tend to come in one of two flavours: theme park or sandbox. But theme parks, like WoW, have come to the fore in recent years, probably because of the grand success of its exemplar. However, theme parks must be done well in order to be convincing, and WoW does do it well. Others don't.

In fact, Warhamme Online is an interesting case in point. You'd think Warhammer would have the ideal pretext for a theme park: a world that doesn't need to change significantly because it's always in a state of war, and no one side can win outright. But it fails, with many on the forums (myself included) finding the static nature of the world to be hollow and unfulfilling - it doesn't take long before you really feel as though your character can make virtually no impact on the world. Which is odd, because in WoW you also know you can't make much impact on the world, but the illusion that you can is more convincing.

More information.

 

[Yeesh]

One problem with this list is that it seems to pretend that WoW is just one MMO among many, instead of the pole star which has more influence over the genre than even a whole baker's dozen mighty op ed pieces. Which is to say, including in your list anything that WoW has already addressed seems pretty silly, since other MMOs were already planning on copying it before you brought it up. It's kind of like saying, "You know what sucks in MMOs? Hourly connection fees. Corpse Runs. ASCII graphics*."

1) Make the worlds more engaging
This isn't a technical problem but a conceptual one. Figure out a better way and revolutionize gaming or shut up about it. You want the world to change based on your actions? Figure out how you can do that without screwing up the gameplay of EVERYBODY ELSE playing in the same gameworld. How do you save the town from the evil centaur army without leaving the rest of us with nothing to do? We're all ears.

2) Ditch classes and levels
Now there's something no one's complaining about. Hey ditch money and equipment while you're at it.

3) Make combat smarter
Make things better? OK, good suggestion. If you've raided in WoW, you know that there are all sorts of fun tricks like that on most bosses. Pure "tank and spank" is rare at that level. But sure there's room for improvement at the lower end.

4) Don't make me grind
You should try a game called WoW. I think the PVE part especially might be up your alley. If you try to do even half the quests without killing a single mob more than you have to, you'll still level up faster than you can complete the quests.

5) Make mobs smarter
Yes, of course. Make the mobs as smart as players. Next come up with copy protection that can't be cracked. AI will always be exploitable, and the less predictable it is the more random it will seem. Do we really want the entire orc army in the stronghold rampaging through newbie town and corpse camping everyone for 2 hours? Do we really want soloing to be impossible because the monsters hang out in groups of 50 and an attack on one is an attack on all? Do we really want a monster who hits hard enough to hurt a tank class one-shotting the clothies because duh, of course he'd go after the weakest link? Oh wait there won't be any clothies because we've gotten rid of classes. I'm not wearing a dress if I don't have to.

6) Encourage grouping
Yes, I think MMOs should have grouping too. Good one.

7) Quality of life
I'm a big fan of this, but again WoW pretty much has the industry heading in this direction already, don't you think?

8) Make subscriptions cheaper
Hell, make the games free. Better yet pay us to play. I would love that, but I don't think the industry is looking for this sort of suggestion.

9) Listen to, and engage with, players
If you can make a game that's commercially successful, I think you're doing enough. People only pay subscription fees for games they want to play, no matter how much they may complain. There is a difference between what people think they want, and what they actually want. (PRO TIP: outside of gaming, that especially applies to girls)

10) Launch when it's finished
There's a new one.

*But we all know a Dwarf Fortress MMO would R-O-C-K!

 

[Tim]

The big difference between myself and Yeesh is that I'm not willing to accept the status quo in MMOs, even if that is the mega-successful WoW. After all, rugby might be mega popular but I like lawn bowls (or, for those who don't know what I'm taking about: baseball might be mega popular, but I like lacrosse).

And I think you misunderstand 'improved AI'. It doesn't mean harder, it means more dynamic, more reactive, less predictable etc. It means they can have less hp and still be fun to fight. Like the marines in Half-Life compared to the dumb bundles of hp in Doom.

 

[hishadow]

I personally don't care about most of those fixes. My only complaint of current MMORPGs is lack of storytelling. I hope SWTOR will make some progress with storytelling. It's a shame Blizzard couldn't manage to make innovations in this regard, given their financial freedom. The closest thing I came to a story in WoW was during my hunter quest for the bow and staff, which is something Blizzard should have done more off.

 

[The Hulk]

2) Ditch classes and levels

I've been saying that about MMORPG's since well before City of Heroes came out with sidekicking and EQ2 came out with mentoring(similar to CoH sidekicking except downwards only). I and a friend had been playing mmorpg's together(pre- CoH)and we wondered, how could we group together in a mmorpg when he advanced much more slowly than I did and I ended up being much higher level than him(And I didn't want to slow down and he ddin't want to speed up and we didn't want to waste time making alts). I mentioned to him that we need a mmorpg with a system similar to GURPS(there was at least one attempt to make a GURPS mmog but it fell through and was never finished), and there was the answer for us. Take away classes and levels(might have been ok back in the early days of pencil and paper rpg's, but not so hot in he days of mmorpg's), just have skills(many skills, but each character is limited in how many skills they can have and how high they can advance in them)and perhaps advantages and disdvantages too and then players can group together without levels limiting them. One can look to Ultima Online for an example of a skills based game that didn't have classes or levels where there were no restrictions on who could group with who. On the other hand, if one is not familiar with the GURPS, and didn't play it for years like I did, it might be difficult to understand where I(and others) am coming from.
But it is a bit moot now post CoH(sidekicking)and post Everquest 2 and soon to be Vanguard Saga of Heroes(mentoring). Still, the vast majority of mmorpg's have no system in place like that, that allows characters of widely varying levels to group together effectively. And even with sidekicking or mentoring, some people don't like being stuck in a rigid class(like a wizard who can never pick up and use a sword). What if someone wants to play someone like a longsword wielding wizard like Gandalf? You are out of luck in most level and class based games,but with a skill based mmorpg like GURPS Online, you could easily have that longsword wielding wizard like Gandalf, or a warrior who could cast a fireball or just about any combination of skills(relevant to the genre) you could think of, within reason, the limits being a pure wizard would be more powerful in many ways than a wizard/warrior hybrid, for those who think such a system would be unfair or overpowering, as the hybrid character would have his skill points spread much thinner and would be a significantly less powerful wizard than the pure wizard. Having so much freedom in character creation and development helps differentiate players from each other. Some people don't like looking too much like everyone else, and having more or less the same skill sets as everyone else(everyone of their same class), some people like to stand out and dare to be different(me included).

 

[Yeesh]

The big difference between myself and Yeesh is that I'm not willing to accept the status quo in MMOs, even if that is the mega-successful WoW. After all, rugby might be mega popular but I like lawn bowls (or, for those who don't know what I'm taking about: baseball might be mega popular, but I like lacrosse).

The more important differences between myself and Tim are that he has a job and probably some hair.

Look, this particular community embraces less popular games and the sort of gameplay that no AAA title is likely to ever have again. So vive la différence. I still don't like any new game as much as Jagged Alliance 2, and oh what I wouldn't give to see a few games being developer with similar (dead) gameplay. Except not from Russia.

But just because one prefers badminton to basketball doesn't mean basketball is broken and should be "fixed" through the incorporation of some play mechanics found in badminton. I would want a game developers to only tinker around with genre basics, or even the gameplay of their individual games, if they were to expect that the players/fans of the game/genre would end up having more fun. I'd want them considering the desires of the basketball lovers, not the badminton lovers, when deciding how to tinker with basketball.

A person could look at WoW and think, "There's the status quo. The only reason X, Y, and Z are the way they are in this game is because of inertia, a play-it-safe refusal to do exciting things with the game (and the genre)."

I'm a realist, and a skeptic, and a pessimist, so I might be inclined to agree. But one might also look at WoW and think, "This game is so immensely popular because Blizzard, much more so than all its many competitors, figured out how to give players what they want. Maybe that means that if you contemplate some change to that formula, for every one person who enjoys the result, two more will be turned off."

Maybe I'm getting soft in my dotage, but I subscribe to this view. I've seen many discussions where folks patiently explain how WoW isn't actually any fun and Blizzard has somehow tricked all those people out of countless hours and monthly dollars. Yet I feel that this is a case where the simplest explanation is best: WoW is just more fun than the rest of them. In some ways, WoW is more fun than real life.

But then what isn't?

Anywho, innovation will bring us better games, of course, of course, of course. But first of all, WoW DOES innovate, and people who still talk about WoW as if it just ripped off everything from other games are living in the 4 years old past. And second, innovation isn't fixing, because the genre just isn't broken. For some reason, MMOs carry this weight of expectation that other genres don't, and people who dislike MMOs are more prone to attribute their distaste to some sort of problem of the genre, rather than "I just don't like those kind of games." Let me note that I do not accuse anyone of this, I'm only saying it's out there.

Hey, I don't like adventure games, but I don't assume there's something wrong with them. It's merely a matter of taste.