The 10 Rules Every New MMORPG Needs to Follow

[Breand]

To expand on the One Rule post by Slamz, what rules do you think every new MMORPG thats developed should be required to follow? Your idea should be a one line statement, to make it a short and sweet list. Here's my ideas so far:

The 10 Rules Every New MMORPG Needs to Follow:

1.) Let me play with my friends with no restrictions on levels, numbers, quests, or class type.
2.) Instancing should be avoided at all costs.
3.) PvP should have a purpose, a persistent effect on the world, should have equal rewards to PvE and should not be a "development afterthought."
4.) It should take no less than 5 minutes for any player to meet up with another player.
5.) Group play should never be less enticing than soloing.
6.) Inventory management should be simple and not a source of frustration. Quest items should not take up inventory space.

[Arnon]

Group and Raid play should not be required to recieve high end gear.

[Slamz]

To expand on the One Rule post by Slamz, what rules do you think every new MMORPG thats developed should be required to follow? Your idea should be a one line statement, to make it a short and sweet list. Here's my ideas so far:

The 10 Rules Every New MMORPG Needs to Follow:

1.) Let me play with my friends with no restrictions on levels, numbers, quests, or class type.
2.) Instancing should be avoided at all costs.
3.) PvP should have a purpose, a persistent effect on the world, should have equal rewards to PvE and should not be a "development afterthought."
4.) It should take no less than 5 minutes for any player to meet up with another player.
5.) Group play should never be less enticing than soloing.
6.) Inventory management should be simple and not a source of frustration. Quest items should not take up inventory space.

Do we get to debate these?

Like...
#2 I don't feel that strongly about. I'm not sure I have a problem with instancing in the Champions/COH/COV/Age of Conan meaning, where you can have 3 instances of the same zone simply because that's how they stop zones from filling up and crashing: they duplicate it into an extra instances.

What I DON'T like is like in WOW, where instancing is used to remove a group of people from the game world. I feel that this sort of gameplay is contrary to "MMO" gaming and is headed more towards "multiplayer co-op" gaming.

Granted a lot of people like multi-player co-op, but my take on rule 2 would be more like,
"Do not use instancing to separate people from an otherwise MMO game world."


#4.... actually I think I can agree with this. I'm thinking of World War 2 Online. The game world is huuuuge. Front lines are extensive. If you had to walk all up the front line it would probably take you a week. The sense that the world is big is always there. But they set it up so that you can always spawn wherever it is your friends are spawning and I think that may be a wise choice. Such a concept could really turn PvP on its head but since spawns are destroyable it works. That is, in WW2O, the only time you can't join up with your friends within 5 minutes is when they're really far away from a workable spawn, and I think that's an okay limitation. As soon as they die or put up a spawn, you'll be able to join them.

It's a good method that keeps the world "big" but allows you to join your friends without risking making the world "small" by simply giving you a really fast mount.

[Slamz]

Group and Raid play should not be required to recieve high end gear.

I would modify this into something like,
"My gameplay should be improved by but not dependent on other players."

For example, Team Fortress 2. The Heavy is not dependent on the doctor. He can still mow people down and do good things even if he has no doctor, even if his team sucks.

His gameplay is improved by a good doctor and a good team, of course, but he's not dependent.


MMORPGs make us dependent. If one member of the holy trinity sucks, then the whole group sucks. They are completely dependent. If you can't find a good group to raid with, you won't get good gear. You're dependent on other people. It doesn't matter how awesome you are, if the group tank can't tank, you won't get anything done.

We have to get away from dependency.

[Diggles]

instancing like CoH & CO do is just a cop out for decent quest/level design or server load balancing code that would prevent high traffic areas. Why is there a 20x20 area that I need to go collect items in? Why cant they be found in various locations thorought the zone and I gather them at my leisure?

This is the problem with linear quest games, they suck at making a real breathing game world.

[Arnon]

I think my thought on that was more of the gear driven type of game. It always pissed me off to sit for weeks on end to get to the highest level of crafting in my desired field, just to have my greatest work blown out of the water by gear dropped by a raid mob that I will never get to fight if I'm not a member of the L33T guild of the server and dedicate 40 hours a day.

[Breand]

I with Slamz on #2, but agree with Diggles, all in all it is still a bit of a cop out.

[Slamz]

instancing like CoH & CO do is just a cop out for decent quest/level design or server load balancing code that would prevent high traffic areas.

Yeah, that's the cost of hand-crafted content.

The only game in the world that I know of which lets everyone play on the same server with no instances is EVE.

EVE has very bland content that's a combination of randomly generated and cut-and-paste.


I still agree with you though. This is why I think we need "wargames" rather than "quest driven MMORPGs". Wargames don't need a lot of 'content' in the RPG sense -- they just need stuff to build, destroy and fight over. Wargame content could be generated randomly and via cut-and-paste and you could still come out with a good, fun, long lasting game, because the fun is in the battles and the conquering rather than in the "completion of content".


So when I say we need to get away from the quest model, I don't mean we need to go back to EQ, but rather, we need a good wargame, where there is stuff to do that has more to do with battles and construction and landscape and less to do with painstakingly hand crafted quest lines.

[Zouji]

My top 10 rules would be the following. They are in order of importance to me.

#1 Make sure that you are releasing a finished game and not a beta that people are paying money to play test!!!

#2 Let me play with my friends with no restrictions on levels, numbers, quests, or class type.

#3 Group play should never be less enticing than soloing.

#4 It should take no less than 5 minutes for any player to meet up with another player.

#5 PvP should have a purpose, a persistent effect on the world, should have equal rewards to PvE and should not be a "development afterthought."

#6 Specific hard to find/obtain (zOMG uber item lawlz!) items should not be required to successfully compete in PvP. Player skills and tactics should be
the deciding factor in PvP not items!

#7 Player death should have fairly significant consequences and ramifications.

#8 Make sure that a player run guild/faction/clan has a real purpose in the game. Also make sure that it is easy for the guild/faction/clan to be able
to store and retrieve items.

#9 Inventory management should be simple to navigate and not a source of frustration. Quest items should not take up inventory space. Items
should be stack-able. Make sure that you make transferring of multiple items from A to B efficient AND simple.

#10 Listen to your players comments and feedback. Make it easy for the players to communicate "good ideas" and "good solutions
to problems" to the design and development team.

[Slamz]

#9 Inventory management should be simple to navigate and not a source of frustration. Quest items should not take up inventory space. Items should be stack-able. Make sure that you make transferring of multiple items from A to B efficient AND simple.

I actually wonder if there's merit in doing an X-Com / Planetside style inventory system. Your backpack is basically represented as a grid, items take up different numbers of grid spaces and your ability to carry stuff is pretty limited. There is very little that your enemy drops that you actually need or want.

I think typical MMORPGs really spoil us with the idea that should always come back with 1500 pounds of scrap. In AD&D you could kill stuff and say, "Oh, I strip all his armor off and stuff it into my backpack" but you wouldn't be able to keep that up because you can only carry so much junk. You'd basically loot any unusual valuables and leave the rest.

So I think a solution to the MMORPG problem is to change it so that you simply don't want or need to carry around so much crap all the time. My Aion character is practically a mobile warehouse of worthless shit. ("Demon horn? Sure, I have one of those... *upends backpack creating a pile of shit 15 feet high* Let's see, where'd I put it...")

[Diggles]

several of the D&D computer games have weights attached to all items and you have alot of space, so your strength was the limiting factor. DDO I think uses this.

maybe add a weight & volume measure to how much you can carry. But I would like to see pack mules and other means of summoning a mobile bank for carrying loot away. they should be easy to kill though~ and have to use them in strategic spots.

[Breand]

I like the grid system, Resident Evil has always used that too. There should definitely be a concerted effort to reduce inventory needs. I always HATED the fact that quest items took up inventory slots in WoW, it was so ridiculous. And how you need 5 different armor sets depending on the situation.

[Hoofhurr]

I'm good with grids. That way every time you loot it's like a tetris mini-game. Next topic. :lol:

[Zouji]

I'm also good with grids. Does no one remember the Diablo 2 inventory system? Gaming has taught me at least one thing that is useful in the real world. How to stack things to save the most space.

[Vllad]

I am with Breand on instancing.

No good comes from instancing in a PVP game. There should only be one server and everyone should fight over the resourses in that server. Having multiple servers per zone destroys PVP not enhance it. If you have to instance your game then your game isn't designed for pvp to begin with.


I am not sure I agree with only taking 5 minutes to meet up with people. I think worlds need to be big (not neccessarily size but travel distance) in order to create solid strategic goals. There was no point to having multiple strategic maps in WAR because you could bounce from one to the other with in 5 minutes.

That made the pvp worse not better.


Vllad

[Slamz]

I can agree with meeting up in 5 minutes provided there are some restrictions.

I'm thinking like Planetside and WW2O -- you can *sort of* meet your friends within 5 minutes provided they aren't off doing something crazy with no spawn point.

In WW2O you can always spawn at your friend's spawn point, wherever that is. If they're off doing a no-spawn sabotage mission in the middle of nowhere then there's no way to join them and that's as it should be.

Similarly in Planetside, if your friends are assaulting a base, you may not be able to spawn directly where they are but you can *probably* reach them in a reasonably amount of time if that's your goal.


The secret to PvP without instances, by the way, is dispersed game goals. WAR fucked it up by making fort/city raids which, of course, everyone on the entire server will simultaneously try to attend. Stupid. Planetside and WW2O always had a wide front (since WW2O is single server, it has a VERY wide front to distribute players across a wide area).

[Diggles]

Friendly fire~...the zerg equalizer

[Hoofhurr]

To be fair, Mythic's goal was to have obscenely huge battles with hundreds of players battling each other. Their code/server just couldn't handle it. I've never been a fan of really big battles like that or at least not a battle of that magnitude where everyone is within LOS of each other.

[Slamz]

I'm pretty sure Mythic was being stupid, though.

I believe they originally envisioned an active 3-front war, with 3 cities to fight over, so you'd always have the server population split into thirds.

On their forums, way before launch, I asked repeatedly "what's going to happen when everyone ditches their front and crams into the same city battle? You know this is going to happen, right?" WAR fanbois insisted that people would have loyalty to their battle and wouldn't just wander off and join someone else's battle. I never understood what lead them to this conclusion. Maybe Mythic thought that way too.

And then later they actually ditched 4 of the cities, so only 1 per side, so obviously now you really do have everyone cramming into one fight.


Seems to me that they just didn't think through this war at all. I think they had some expectation that dwarves and orcs would keep fighting each other on their front even if chaos was currently sacking the human city. Stupid assumption.

Aion might have the same problem with Fortress raids. Ideally people will split up and attack/defend multiple places but in reality they'll just pile into whichever fort seems the most likely to get sacked, because a little piece of a winning lottery is better than cooling your heels at a fort that didn't get enough people to flip it.

[Hoofhurr]

Lack of understanding about human psychology I suppose. Let's figure out though why in WAR everyone crams into the same city to fight each other but in Planetside some squads take off to fight in uninhabited areas and complete side missions. The gap therein is the secret.

[Jakensama]

Poplock?

[Dustie]

To be fair, Mythic's goal was to have obscenely huge battles with hundreds of players battling each other. Their code/server just couldn't handle it. I've never been a fan of really big battles like that or at least not a battle of that magnitude where everyone is within LOS of each other.

I agree. But I think we might be a fan of bigger battles if they were done right (if its even possible to do it right). For example, most massive battles in WAR resulted in a blob of people all fighting over a small patch of land or a gate. What if you could draw out the battle lines and have a massive fight, even though there are only 20 people within 50 feet of you (you're part of a long line).

   

[Jakensama]

Bigger battles are still technologically limited by lag/fps issues as well. Probably why I enjoyed BGs/Instanced combat in Wow far more than any large scale pvp in any of these subsequent games.

You can give people all these little incentives to fight at different places but barring physical limitations people will gravitate towards the biggest combat because no one likes to pay $15 bucks a month to sit back and hold their dicks while other people are fighting.

[Dustie]

Bigger battles are still technologically limited by lag/fps issues as well.

If there was some way to draw out the battle lines (either forcibly or with incentives), you could have big battles with long lines whereby you're part of a 500 v 500 battle, but you're only "near" 10 people.

[Slamz]

That's where I think "soloable objectives" come in.

In Planetside and WW2O you can technically capture a base/town with 1 guy. If you see it's 500v500 over here, it's awfully tempting to sneak off and try to capture an important objective by yourself or with a small group. When lots of people start thinking this, that 500v500 never forms up because lots of people are trying to do sneaky things.

Whereas in WAR/Aion, if you see a massive fight at a fort, you might as well join in, because it's not like you can sneak off to some other fort and solo it. The NPCs will kick your ass unless you bring a big enough group. So there's no incentive for soloers or small groups to split off from a main force.