If all else fails, add/cut content!
In my first post, I listed a few of the things I think are wrong about MMOs. One large perpetrator is content. These games take such an exceptionally long time to develop, and take even longer to polish and debug. If a non-MMO game took 5 years to develop and release, towards the end most people would be labeling it as vaporware, but for an MMO four to five years is basically the standard, and year long delays aren’t uncommon.
Why do these games take so long to make? Well, when a game has 20 miles of game world, and thousands of quests, and more classes than you can count, all needing work from everyone from writers to QA testers, it isn’t hard to see where all the time goes. But do we really need all of that? What is the purpose of having thousands of quests, when each player can count on one hand the amount of quests they really care about having done? Why do we need a game world the size of a small country when most of it ends up being a barren wasteland devoid of any player life?
It’s a common occurrence in the MMO world for games to be released lacking promised content, or having area of the world basically unused. To take a recent example, Age of Conan, it was released with virtually no quests from level 40 all the way up to level 80. You went from being able to level purely from quests to having to level almost purely from grinding monsters. Not only that, but all the end game content (and I mean all of it) was either broken or non-existent. There was no pvp reward or penalty system, city building was broken so this prevented siege combat, and most of the raids were bugged or unavailable.
Why did this happen? They had a massive amount of time to work on this project, yet it launched with basically the bare minimum of what was planned. Well, in my humble opinion, they tried to do far too much. They created 12 classes, each with 80 levels worth of abilities and each with three trees of specialized feats to select as you level, a massive game world, three races with different starting zones, and all the content that never made it in at launch. The sheer time it would take to develop the assets for this would be immense. To make it all interesting, and balanced would take even more time. It comes as little shock to me that much didn’t work or had to be cut at the last minute.
So what can be done about this? Well, first of all, condense the content. Instead of making 20 miles of game desert, make a smaller world. Increase the size, and you need more content to fill it. If you need more and more content, you will have less time to spend on each thing you add. The less time you spend on each piece, the lower overall quality of each thing added. Logically, if you make a huge game world, either you’re going to have a relatively empty world, or you’re going to have very basic and repetitive content.
Another thing adding to this insatiable hunger for content is the system common to many MMOs; levels. Levels may have worked back in D&D, but this is a game system that is positively ancient, and has been bastardized to a degree that is shameful. In D&D, gaining a level wasn’t something you strove for, it just happened as you played, and it was an interesting event. MMOs however used levels as the primary form of advancement. Instead of going to kill that evil sorcerer to end his reign of terror, you’re doing it to hit level 20.
Why do we need levels? Most players who play a game beyond the opening week spend most of their time at max level anyway, so surely levels aren’t, truthfully, a tool to retain customers. Furthermore, they are a significant barrier to entry. If you convince your friend to play World of Warcraft, chances are the first thing you’re going to do once he starts playing is attempt to get him to the maximum level or create a new character so you can actually play together.
Why this arbitrary boundary? Levels have no grounding in reality, and they seem to serve little purpose beyond an incredibly simple tool for gloating. I suggest we remove levels altogether, and replace them with an achievement driven skill tree, similar to the feats of Age of Conan, or the talents of World of Warcraft or something of this nature. By doing this you stop people from being able to “level past” content, and open many doors to what you could do with the content itself.
One of the problems with levels is that, with them in place, it is hard to create “difficult” content. If something is difficult people will ignore it until they reach a level where it is trivial. Not only this, but a large amount of the content created from the game will be completely untouched by a player because they reached too high of a level before they even found that area or quest. Without levels, both of these problems are effectively eliminated; you can make challenging content that will always be relevant to a player.
Another thing I want to write on briefly is restricted factions, i.e. WoW’s Horde and Alliance. First of all, this is a completely unrealistic scenario. Even in the bitterest of wars, there is negotiation between enemies, cooperation between opposing citizens, and neutral land where both parties can coincide. By restricting interaction between the factions, you’re effectively reducing your player base in half, meanwhile by restricting access to content based on faction, you’re doubling the amount of content needed to satiate your players.
In the end, content is relative to what restrictions you put on it. These games wouldn’t need so much of it, nor need to cut as much come release if they didn’t keep shooting themselves in the foot by restricting access to it or by creating such vast pointless space. Condense your content and make it work instead of creating ten thousand “Kill ten X” quests, and thirty variations of mage, warrior, priest and rogue.
Tom “Daelus” Pettus
damm right all of it tho i have been plaing a game extreamly similar to what you are wanting
they just had an algorythim generat a few hunderd thousand planets most of them we dont use or look at but it dosnt matter since it took an hour to make them all
chucked in a n umber of diffrent starships
and a skill system with a cap on the number of skills you can have at over 100 and away we went and its fun no quests
and 1 year after they started and 1 year in testing it went live (note those numbers are a estimate based on what i can find out about the game in 30 sec of pruseing)
so see it is possibial to have what you want but they are normaly indy games since the big publishing houses take a look at the idea and say our buscuit slice wont make one like that which is the majior barrier to makeing devs shoot themselves in the foot
Tue Jul 29 2008 5:42AM ReportSo you want less content and no levels.
You contradict yourself by saying that:
"I suggest we remove levels altogether, and replace them with an achievement driven skill tree, similar to the feats of Age of Conan, or the talents of World of Warcraft "
Followed by:
Without levels, both of these problems are effectively eliminated; you can make challenging content that will always be relevant to a player.
But what is the point of this skill tree if it doesn't make your character more powerful? If it does, then you still have the same problem you describe, some content will become trivial, and some content will be too difficult for the players without your advanced ability. If you don't have the skill tree doesn't give the players more power, than why pursue it?
Building your character's ability, is grounded in reality. Just like with real life martial arts or archery, the more you do it, the better you will become at it.
But simply put, people like to work on and advance their characters. I am not sure what game caemsg is speaking about, but if it is Eve, Eve has the most grinding of any game. Sure, their aren't levels, but there is currency, which you need to collect in mass to buy the best ships (ie become the most powerful players). Even simply replaces levelling with accumilating money. In the end, it's still the same thing.
Tue Jul 29 2008 6:34AM ReportCheck Guild Wars - you might like it. Max level is 20. You can get to 20 in roughly 10 hours of playing (and about 30-40% of the content) - past that you are maxed. Items have a hard cap that is reached at about 50-60% of the campaign - past that all that differs are skins..... Sounds crazy isn't it? However it was a huge success since being a good player in there means a) finding and choosing your perfect 8 skill setup for a mission amongst hundreds of possibilities b) using these skills wisely c) teamplay.
Tue Jul 29 2008 12:34PM ReportGrimfall:
But what is the point of this skill tree if it doesn't make your character more powerful? If it does, then you still have the same problem you describe, some content will become trivial, and some content will be too difficult for the players without your advanced ability. If you don't have the skill tree doesn't give the players more power, than why pursue it?
Logically, there are few ways to advance your character and yourself without making things slightly easier. If you get a piece of armor that protects you better than the previous piece you're going to take less damage, and things will get easier. However, levels aren't like this.
In most games with levels, a level means more than simply new skills. It usually means more health, more damage, and unlocking new items (coinciding of course with making older items obsolete). I am fine with a character becoming stronger the longer you play them, but your character should not become so strong that the content intended for new players is stuff that you defeat in one hit and get no relative benefit for.
Tue Jul 29 2008 2:23PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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