Where MMO misses the boat
This entry is totally technical about massively-multiplayer online gaming, and where efforts to make the next best evolution in this genre have failed... imho. This is brainstorm format, meaning the order of points has no significance.
-- Graphics realism doesn't necessarily mean better immersion. The graphics card manufacturers want to push this idea so they can convince you to spend more on a graphics upgrade than you did on the entire rest of your computer... and they're succeeding! There's a lot that can be done with the graphics limitations of WoW (or perhaps EQ2) that won't need a quad-GPU rendering solution with 2gb of video RAM. Lighting, particle effects, atmospheric effects, EAX sound environments, character voice acting, facial expressions, lip-synch, this and more is possible to do in EQ2 and is done to a degree. I don't have to get a 2nd mortgage to run EQ2 and I think that more attention to detail and the WHOLE sensory experience is more important than getting water to reflect nicer and get realistic reflections off gore-covered sword surfaces.
-- Tell a story, don't make the game a beggar's banquet of NPCs asking for favors. Let a player get introduced to higher eschelons of society by virtue of their actions. Let them actually receive social and storytelling immersion by virtue of things they choose to do and whom to please or patronize.
-- Allow players to rank other players. Yes, this can go bad, but just as eBay has a quasi-workable ratings system, so can gaming. Make it so that people who grouped with another person are the only ones allowed to vote on their competancy, and perhaps charge game fees (like Second Life does) for registering your rant or rave. Give the recipient a means to rebuff criticism and appoint some arbitrator (perhaps ultimately an indifferent player judge) to settle disputes.
This ratings system should soon start identifying gold farmers, unreliable and incompetant healers, and so forth - as well as making it easy to search for GOOD available gaming partners who you can trust to stay through to the end of the dungeon, not just bail when their agenda is met.
If ratings follow accounts, and not characters, then gold farmers who re-roll characters won't be able to dodge their bad rep.
When a family plays on the same account, various characters on the account can be better and worse played. I think ALL those playing a character on an attached account should realize there is responsibility for behavior and it reflects on everybody. This is a good lesson for a game to teach any age.
-- Don't punish people with boring waits. I loathe WoW's flight times between distant points on the map. I wish all travel was more or less like their intercontinental travel. I think offering people a way to rent a ride (like in DAoC) and/or get vehicles early and/or cheap (like Vanguard) is a good idea. Save the status vehicles for money sinks, but give the common player a pretty good way to get where they want to be and get back into PLAYING.
-- Give a way to provide in-game items and currency to those wanting to buy it, instead of creating a black market for gold and item farmers. Maybe there are several jurisdictions that prohibit gambling, therefore you cannot convert game currency back to cash, but there basically isn't any prohibition against paying for in game items and currency. Second Life does it both ways and they've not been shut down by the bunco squad.
Yes, the "vision" held by the EverQuest founders was that your financial status should hold NO sway over what your limits are in game, but by being so anal retentive about the amount of time and effort to afford mounts, good equipment, levels, etc., they created a black market for these services done on the sly. Truth be told, you don't let real world cash influence an MMO, somebody else will. You might as well obviate the problem and improve your operating revenue at the same time by being a legitimate, legal, and TRUSTWORTHY source of these kinds of services.
What about the idiots who get pre-leveled characters? you ask. Simply put, if they don't perform up to expectations in groups, the ratings system will make people avoid them like the plague. I guess someone might possibly create a power-leveling reputation service, but it should be grounds for banning much as it is when eBay discovers this sort of thing going on.
-- Codependency is an ILLNESS. Stop designing games as if it's a mandatory element you ultimately graduate into. I agree it is good to inspire TEAMWORK, but that is a different thing altogether. I think a good ratings system makes teamwork actually have a reward and purpose transcending whatever in-game rewards may be realized. Being a 5-star cleric is going to mean lots more than just the 4011th epic-wielding cleric in game.
To this end, content should always be available for solo players REGARDLESS OF THEIR LEVEL. And I feel the drop rate of desirable items (save for quest/epic items) should be statistically identical. Say a raid of 60 people is needed to get a single coveted item to drop, which has a given probability of being the outcome on any given day. Recompute this as a probability of the same item dropping for a SOLO effort, and this should be the rule.
-- Customized loot tables depending on who's looting. Let's face it, if item farmers actually had to farm using a warrior character to get warrior items, wizard character to get wizard items, etc., this would greatly complicate this business - perhaps to the point where except for some highly coveted items anyone can use, there's no real reward for grinding.
I agree that most in-game economies are based on the assumption that if a warrior gets a wizard item, they realize some cash selling it via in-game auction, and turn around and buy what they wanted. However, why complicate things this much? Do you really ENJOY escrowing that many transactions and accounting for all these items for sale? Basically, is the money sink worth the EXTREME complexity (and massive amounts of data storage and database front end power) you have to invest to make it work?
I'd rather see auction houses eliminated - go back to auction channels, auction add-ons, players having to enter a selling mode (using their own inventory storage) to trade things.
Well, that's my micro thesis on how to evolve MMO gaming. I only hope someone takes it to heart.
-- Graphics realism doesn't necessarily mean better immersion. The graphics card manufacturers want to push this idea so they can convince you to spend more on a graphics upgrade than you did on the entire rest of your computer... and they're succeeding! There's a lot that can be done with the graphics limitations of WoW (or perhaps EQ2) that won't need a quad-GPU rendering solution with 2gb of video RAM. Lighting, particle effects, atmospheric effects, EAX sound environments, character voice acting, facial expressions, lip-synch, this and more is possible to do in EQ2 and is done to a degree. I don't have to get a 2nd mortgage to run EQ2 and I think that more attention to detail and the WHOLE sensory experience is more important than getting water to reflect nicer and get realistic reflections off gore-covered sword surfaces.
-- Tell a story, don't make the game a beggar's banquet of NPCs asking for favors. Let a player get introduced to higher eschelons of society by virtue of their actions. Let them actually receive social and storytelling immersion by virtue of things they choose to do and whom to please or patronize.
-- Allow players to rank other players. Yes, this can go bad, but just as eBay has a quasi-workable ratings system, so can gaming. Make it so that people who grouped with another person are the only ones allowed to vote on their competancy, and perhaps charge game fees (like Second Life does) for registering your rant or rave. Give the recipient a means to rebuff criticism and appoint some arbitrator (perhaps ultimately an indifferent player judge) to settle disputes.
This ratings system should soon start identifying gold farmers, unreliable and incompetant healers, and so forth - as well as making it easy to search for GOOD available gaming partners who you can trust to stay through to the end of the dungeon, not just bail when their agenda is met.
If ratings follow accounts, and not characters, then gold farmers who re-roll characters won't be able to dodge their bad rep.
When a family plays on the same account, various characters on the account can be better and worse played. I think ALL those playing a character on an attached account should realize there is responsibility for behavior and it reflects on everybody. This is a good lesson for a game to teach any age.
-- Don't punish people with boring waits. I loathe WoW's flight times between distant points on the map. I wish all travel was more or less like their intercontinental travel. I think offering people a way to rent a ride (like in DAoC) and/or get vehicles early and/or cheap (like Vanguard) is a good idea. Save the status vehicles for money sinks, but give the common player a pretty good way to get where they want to be and get back into PLAYING.
-- Give a way to provide in-game items and currency to those wanting to buy it, instead of creating a black market for gold and item farmers. Maybe there are several jurisdictions that prohibit gambling, therefore you cannot convert game currency back to cash, but there basically isn't any prohibition against paying for in game items and currency. Second Life does it both ways and they've not been shut down by the bunco squad.
Yes, the "vision" held by the EverQuest founders was that your financial status should hold NO sway over what your limits are in game, but by being so anal retentive about the amount of time and effort to afford mounts, good equipment, levels, etc., they created a black market for these services done on the sly. Truth be told, you don't let real world cash influence an MMO, somebody else will. You might as well obviate the problem and improve your operating revenue at the same time by being a legitimate, legal, and TRUSTWORTHY source of these kinds of services.
What about the idiots who get pre-leveled characters? you ask. Simply put, if they don't perform up to expectations in groups, the ratings system will make people avoid them like the plague. I guess someone might possibly create a power-leveling reputation service, but it should be grounds for banning much as it is when eBay discovers this sort of thing going on.
-- Codependency is an ILLNESS. Stop designing games as if it's a mandatory element you ultimately graduate into. I agree it is good to inspire TEAMWORK, but that is a different thing altogether. I think a good ratings system makes teamwork actually have a reward and purpose transcending whatever in-game rewards may be realized. Being a 5-star cleric is going to mean lots more than just the 4011th epic-wielding cleric in game.
To this end, content should always be available for solo players REGARDLESS OF THEIR LEVEL. And I feel the drop rate of desirable items (save for quest/epic items) should be statistically identical. Say a raid of 60 people is needed to get a single coveted item to drop, which has a given probability of being the outcome on any given day. Recompute this as a probability of the same item dropping for a SOLO effort, and this should be the rule.
-- Customized loot tables depending on who's looting. Let's face it, if item farmers actually had to farm using a warrior character to get warrior items, wizard character to get wizard items, etc., this would greatly complicate this business - perhaps to the point where except for some highly coveted items anyone can use, there's no real reward for grinding.
I agree that most in-game economies are based on the assumption that if a warrior gets a wizard item, they realize some cash selling it via in-game auction, and turn around and buy what they wanted. However, why complicate things this much? Do you really ENJOY escrowing that many transactions and accounting for all these items for sale? Basically, is the money sink worth the EXTREME complexity (and massive amounts of data storage and database front end power) you have to invest to make it work?
I'd rather see auction houses eliminated - go back to auction channels, auction add-ons, players having to enter a selling mode (using their own inventory storage) to trade things.
Well, that's my micro thesis on how to evolve MMO gaming. I only hope someone takes it to heart.