The Brave New World of MMOs

[Surf314]

MMOs will be the future of multiplayer if only someone could do them right. Think about it. Multi-player is becoming more and more important now that most people who play games have access to broadband Internet. But regular multiplayer games have distinct drawbacks. Servers have to be community provided or hosted locally on a player’s machine.These can have a wide variety of lag and stability issues, which will give significant advantages to the host and sometimes the server provider. Another issue is player interaction. Games are social by nature, but with traditional multiplayer games you are either thrown in with a bunch of people you don’t know or you have to find your own group of people before you even play. Sometimes you can get lucky and pop into a server with great people, sometimes you aren’t. This creates the need for large internet cliques which can create great communities (BRBU), but are mostly limited to who you stumble across by luck.

This brings us to MMOs and the promise they hold for the future of gaming. With an MMO, the developer can craft the player experience from beginning to end. They control the servers, they provide avenues for socializing and forming groups, and they shepherd these players from action to action. They can keep a close eye on how everyone is playing the game and fix bad experiences while adding new good ones. Truly this is the way to do things. Everyone gets thrown in together and then they divide themselves into groups to play together. It’s a smooth and logical process. Unfortunately I have yet to see a developer really understand the opportunities available to them. This article will attempt break down the key issues of MMOs to see what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.

The Grind

MMOs started with RPGs so it is no wonder that they all seem to have a grind, even when they claim to not be RPGs themselves. Grinding provides a purpose to the player, a way to advance towards the “end game.” To grind you play solely to advance something: the amount of cash you have, your level, your equipment, your upgrades, etc. The problem is grinding isn’t very fun. Players want fun but they see other players that are so much more powerful and with so much better stuff and they think “man these guys are having way more fun than me.” So they delay their fun in search of stuff and power. But fun delayed is fun denied and you may never be satisfied enough with what you have to just have fun. APB provides us with a good example of this. The player wants to have fun with just player versus player battles but some players have better upgrades and equipment. The disadvantaged players feel like they need the same equipment to compete and have fun. To get the better equipment they need to increase standing with factions and contacts and to earn money. In order to get these things as fast as possible they stop enjoying the player versus player combat and start focusing on the quickest way to rank up and make money until the game is no longer fun.

So who does it right? Planetside is the best example I can think of. You level up to earn certification points and use those to be able to use new kinds of equipment. But you can unlearn current equipment and relearn new equipment once a day, so even as a new player you don’t feel the need to acquire stuff. The equipment is nice but the fun is more important. Guild Wars also tackled this issue nicely by setting a low level cap that is easy to reach and putting the focus on making the player choose the best set of 8 spells or abilities.

However, when you take away grinding you need to fill that need for progression with something else. Most people need a purpose to play a game. The good MMOs take the focus off grinding as a purpose and put it on something else. With Planetside it was persistent global objectives. You wanted your faction to hold as much territory as possible. That was more important than getting stuff. With Guild Wars it’s strategically optimizing a limited amount of stuff to work together with other stuff you have or stuff teammates have.

The Price

The pricing for MMOs is tricky because you are buying a game and then buying a service. A lot of people don’t like buying a game for full retail and then paying a monthly fee on top of that. The major hang up I see here is that the game is the mixing of the ideas of a game and a service. All MMOs are made up of the game you buy and then the service they provide you by hosting your client and updating the content. But for the consumer the entire cost is a tough pill to swallow because you are paying full retail for something that you need the service to use.

There are several better ways to handle this. You can offer your game for pretty cheap. Games like EvE and WoW you can often get into for the price of a month (depending on sales). This is a good way to do it because you want the customers subscribed to the service more than you want them to pay a one time fee for the game. Another good way of handling it is to sell the game and try and keep the service free like Guild Wars. This is challenging but you can do it if you sell content updates. The last way I’ve seen this handled effectively is by shifting to an hourly pricing model. In APB when I buy the game for $50 I also get 50 hours guaranteed action time. That seems like an amazing deal to me as it is more than I’d put in for most single player games. Then they give me the option of buying more hours or unlimited months.

The Social

MMOs are supposed to be extremely social games but they just aren’t unless you have a good reason to interact. Most of the time this interaction is people looking for groups, but this process can be painful. In games like RPGs you have to find a group in which your skillset is valuable. You also have to hope you get into a group with players that are roughly as good as you and who aren’t trolls. Most people I know find people they like out of game and try and meet up with them in game. They won’t play with random strangers if they can help it.

The best way I have seen this addressed is in games where the focus is a broad faction goal as in Planetside. Everyone has to work together to take bases and to take planets. You can go lone wolf but eventually you will probably want to co-ordinate a bit with the people around you. This co-ordination breeds familiarity which turns into e-cquaintances. Then you have more people to play with when you are logged on.

The Instance

Instances are a controversial issue. Dividing up players into smaller servers could be a cheap trick to spare resources, but it could also be a good way of dividing up the action into discrete sections. The problem is twofold: you need enough players in an instance to give the feeling of an MMO and you need the divisions to make sense within the gameplay. A good example of the instance done right is Planetside. Each instance represents a planet and the player cap is 750. Both issues are handled nicely. A good example of the instance done wrong is APB. As of now the instance only allows for 80 players and there is no clear division of the instances within the context of the game. Each instance is just a copy of one of two districts made for up to 80 players. Any narrative the game was trying to tell gets broken at this point and it is just an 80 person competitive server.

The Support

Support is one of the most important things in keeping an MMO alive. People expect to have the game continually improved and content added pretty much from launch. By far the best supported MMO I have seen is EvE. EvE only has one retail game, you don’t buy expansions or other add on games. They just keep adding features to the original for free. They treat the game entirely as a service and benefit greatly from it.

Adding content and features to an MMO can be as important as bug fixes. An MMO should be designed to last for years and have a clear expansion strategy to keep the game fresh and interesting to its subscribers. But content should be well thought out and executed. Planetside added new content that drastically changed the way the game was played, and many thought it was not for the better. Their addition of giant robots unbalanced the game and forced SOE to scramble to try and fix it. They never got it to where it was before and lost a lot their player base. So while content is important, it should be properly planned and executed.

The Game

By now we have a complete idea of how an MMO should be designed. It shouldn’t focus on grinding but have an objective or strategic based progression. It should be well priced based on whether you are selling content or a service and ultimately be fair to the consumer. It should encourage co-operation with strangers to get people to socialize and it should be well supported after launch.

But this doesn’t answer the question of what kind of games should be MMOs. The answer is pretty much anything. Every day I see more and more developers thinking up new ways to have large scale player interaction and competition. In Jumpgate: Evolution I’m looking forward to large scale dogfighting. APB, while off to a rocky start, creates a city where cops and robbers duke it out. An old game I missed, Planetside, provided epic planetary battles. End of Nations could be an exciting new take on the MMO as a real-time strategy game. With the state of modern technology there is no longer a reason to limit your multiplayer game to a collection of 24-32 player servers found in a browser. By making your game an MMO you open up a whole world of interactivity and features. But if you can’t handle the issues that come with it you might as well stick to making an old fashion multiplayer game. But then, there already is TF2.

[zaneyard]

GW2

[Vandamguy]

as much as i want to support frontpage content creation here surf , i cant help but want to constructively criticize your article.. you seem to reference three MMO games for the right and wrong way to do things. I want you to add more sources. I don't mean to say that unless you've played every MMO ever that you're not qualified ,but perhaps interviewing a few community members that are into other games could provide different perspectives.
It kept leaping into my mind when I was reading 'The Support' section about bugfixes and updates and stuff, there's no mention of blizzards content patches. stuff they would develop and deliver as a content patch, for free, other companies would call an expansion.
I remember Dave was really into guild wars, Tim is doing Everquest1, Kor is bawls deep in WOW, im sure we have some other closet MMO'ers that could provide more meat for the bones of this article. would be nice to find someone that plays runescape as well , it's being popular and all they must be doing something right.
also addenum to your 'The Price' section you could outline the different payment methods; monthly, free to play (like dungeons and dragons, or anarchy online), or cash shop (like gunbound)

[Versus]

GW2

>> fantasy setting

[zaneyard]

[quote author=zaneyard link=topic=4834.msg165876#msg165876 date=1279985109]
GW2

>> fantasy setting
[/quote]

however, the way they are removing "healers" and integrating the classes into less of a "trying to get a group together to have fun" and more of a "having fun" aspect is seems like something to watch out for.

the holy trinity of "healer", "dps", and "tank" is being shaken by the roots here.

[Versus]

[quote author=zaneyard link=topic=4834.msg165876#msg165876 date=1279985109]
GW2

>> fantasy setting
[/quote]

[Surf314]

as much as i want to support frontpage content creation here surf , i cant help but want to constructively criticize your article.. you seem to reference three MMO games for the right and wrong way to do things. I want you to add more sources. I don't mean to say that unless you've played every MMO ever that you're not qualified ,but perhaps interviewing a few community members that are into other games could provide different perspectives.
It kept leaping into my mind when I was reading 'The Support' section about bugfixes and updates and stuff, there's no mention of blizzards content patches. stuff they would develop and deliver as a content patch, for free, other companies would call an expansion.
I remember Dave was really into guild wars, Tim is doing Everquest1, Kor is bawls deep in WOW, im sure we have some other closet MMO'ers that could provide more meat for the bones of this article. would be nice to find someone that plays runescape as well , it's being popular and all they must be doing something right.
also addenum to your 'The Price' section you could outline the different payment methods; monthly, free to play (like dungeons and dragons, or anarchy online), or cash shop (like gunbound)

That's true, I was drawing on my own experiences of someone who was very much against MMOs now seeing how they are the future of multiplayer. But there is definitely more there to write about.

[Duck, Duck, Goose]

GW2

[Cloud_9ine]

Still reading "e-cquaintances" in my head and it still hasn't quite sunk in...

[at0m]

i like my internet friends i've made through gaming.

they're good people.

CUBA LIBRE