An Ongoing Tribute to my own lameness.....
General random thoughts about gaming, both within and outside of the MMO genre.

So I've been really busy lately and the only games that I've been able to shoehorn into my schedule have been browser based MMOs. The Problem is, most of them suck. So in the public interest, I want to talk about what works and what doesn't work within the context of the browser based medium and why these games could be so much more than what they currently are. Since just about everyone here has the resources to make a passable web game, my bitching may actually accomplish something for a change.

For those of you that don't know, there is a rather large niche for casual browser based games. Most of these games are strategy or sports games like Pardus or Hattrick. More niche still are the RPG style games cast in the mold of the old BBS game Legend of The Red Dragon. The modern incarnation of LORD being Legend of The Green Dragon. While this game was good for the BBSs of olde, they don't quite utilize the full potential of the web. Normally, the only interaction that players have in these newer browser MMORPGs are the ability to chat or do one on one duels with each other. I personally feel that these could be done better.

Let's start with the things are done right.

1) Random encounters - LORD had a number of random things that could happen to the player while out hunting monsters in the woods. This gave the game a sense of immersion that is often times missing in AAA titles of the current generation. More of these would be nice, and create break from the insanely dry grind that constitutes much of the gameplay in browser MMOs.

2) Limited turns - I know that many people will disagree with me on this one, but I feel that limiting how much the player can actually do over a given amount of time helps keep the field level, reduces the cost of bandwidth, and allows players to actually play other games. Time sinks have never made any sense to me. You aren't getting anymore money for hours played, so why force players to play constantly. Even though many of these games operate on advertising and / or donations, keeping the player for more than an hour a day just isn't a very good idea.

3) Server resets - This actually only applies to strict LORD clones. In LORD, the goal is to be the first to level up and defeat the Red Dragon. Since everyone has the same amount of turns, it's all about who uses their time the most efficiently. Once the Red Dragon is defeated, the server gets reset and the player who won gets to start with a slight bonus for the next round. Clearly designed long term goals are a good thing in casual games. Giving players something to shoot for besides just being uber is one of those things that I think all MMORPGs should adopt.

4) Character tweaking - You set the stats. You restat. You are basically in complete control. Autoleveling does not happen in most of these games. These are games of pure statistics and they don't hide that fact. This is also a major problem and we're about to get to that.

Now lets move on to  the things that should be killed with fire.

1) Spreadsheet combat - I realize that most of these games are text, but come the fuck on!!! Why does it take me over five turns to kill a lvl 1 rat?! Fuck!! It doesn't even take that long to kill a slime in the beginning of Dragon Warrior for the NES!!! I just can't get excited about clicking on links that give me options to automatically take one, five or ten turns at a time. The very practice is nothing more than a reminder that I'm playing a fantasy based slot machine! I can understand boss fights and high level mob fights taking more than a few turns, but low level monsters shouldn't devour truckloads of turns and thus character actions. Furthermore, it wouldn't be that difficult to at least add some graphics for the monster you're fighting. Some games, like Legacy, actually do this but the combat still feels incredibly bland due to the unnecessarily long combat. A few graphics and sounds aren't that hard to fit into a web page and would add a great deal to most of these games.

2) Lack of exploration - Everything in these games is a link. This isn't all that bad, but it definitely makes the level grind way more pronounced. Your turns are spent on combat and most of the time you even choose what critter you're fighting against. How hard would it be to implement a simple grid that the player could move through and encounter monsters randomly. Uban Dead and the One Hundred Room Dungeon of Dragon Fable are about the only browser games that I know of that have any kind of exploration and random encounters at all. Yes, I know that talking to NPCs will open up "quests" (usually killing  a specific monster) and new "towns," but that isn't exactly the same as dungeon crawling. There's no reason why a browser game can't resemble something like Wizard's Crown or Akalabeth.

3) Lack of player interaction - Some games have actually tried to make up for this with deeper PvP. Carnage Blender being the first game that pops into mind since it revolves around players controlling parties of characters in PvP. Dragon Fable allows players to bring a couple of friends along in combat and Urban Dead is about as close to a web based MUD as you can probably get. All these games have email and guilds and wot not, but none of them really have any reason for using these tools except to PvP with people that you know. While some games do have auction houses, this is hardly standard.

4) Painfully linear gear progression - I find it really odd that tweaking character stats is so robust in these games but the gear is a straight progression without any deviation at all. There's also a pronounced absence of crafting in most of these games. The shops are normally selling one set of armor and weapons for a given level milestone, usually earmarked by price. There's really no incentive to buy anything other than the weapon with the highest damage and accuracy. While this all seems pretty par for the course, it actually has a kind of domino effect on combat in general. Since there are no tactical considerations outside of what skills you'll be using, you generally stay away from less accurate weapons and skills. In a game where you could occupy the back line of a party formation, or instance, ranged weapons with less accuracy could make sense. Since you're always solo and everything is done Dragon Warrior style, there's no need to be anything but conservative.

So now that I have that out of the way, I'd like to talk about three things that could actually make these games an order of magnitude better. I've already touched on these things in the previous two lists, but I want to go a little bit more in depth. Don't worry, I'm not going to do another list ;-)

Let's start at the heart. Even with the standard model of turn-based combat, there's room for improvement. For starters, why all the missing? I dug out a few of my olde skool 8-bit RPGs from back in the day and gave them a run for comparison. Phantasy Star, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy (the original), In all three of these titles, character and monsters rarely missed. This is actually a no brainer when you consider that players want to feel in control. Excessive missing just makes the player feel powerless and reiterates the fact that it's all just dice rolls and number crunching. Furthermore, the implementation of missing is just plain lazy. You're trying to artificially create an air of tension when you could be just as exciting by actually adjusting the rates of attrition. Completely missing should be very rare. Instead, just have the character inflict less damage. This results in combat being faster and the player feeling as though they have more control over what is going on.

Hold on though, cause I'm not done with combat by a long shot. Why not have a more miniatures feel to combat. There's no reason why combat couldn't be done in the style of the old AD&D Gold Box games or XCOM. Truth be told, this wouldn't require any more bandwidth than you're already using for your game. It requires some artwork, but you can always make some uber low-rez stuff and claim that you're going for a retro feel. What's more, this kind of turn based combat could add some real depth to PvP if done right. It might even open the door to the unthinkable: PvP involving more than two people!! More shocking still: Parties of players doing PvE!!!

Of course, you could still do parties of players, both PvP and PvE, with the DW combat style, but you have to add a few things to the mix. The first being a party cap since no one wants to sit around and wait for his / her turn. I'm thinking about eight players max ought to do it. Next up is front line and back line positions. Tanks up front, healers and nukers in the back. And finally, a system of initiative that dynamically allocates the order of play every turn just to mix things up. Seriously, either of these styles can be easily implemented in a browser MMO and would go a long way toward making your game actually fun.

Exploration seems to be a tougher nut to crack though. This is mainly due to the allocation of turns. I'm thinking that you would have a general overland map and then specific maps for more explorable areas. Basically, you would have the towns and shops set up as they currently are but then have quests that involve dungeons that would would be explorable through either an overhead map (Rogue-like) or a first person perspective in the same manner as the early Wizardry games. The tricky part is whether you take actions for each step and combat in the dungeon, or just take actions for going into the dungeon. Both are fine choices, but they require careful consideration of how you're going to dole out actions and take them away. Another prickly point is how this will work when players are in a party. Do they all designate a leader and just go where he goes, or do they explore on their own, share a map of explored areas and just automatically get included in combat when one of them gets into a random encounter? Do they have to manually click for each step or each room? I personally think that the FastCrawl exploration system is perfectly suited to browser MMOs, but it's certainly not the only way. At any rate, dungeon crawling is doable and would add some much needed depth to these rather dry lists of statistics.

That's all that I really have time for right now. If you are thinking about making a browser MMO (and why wouldn't you considering that the overhead can be less than $20 a month) please keep these issues in mind. The world doesn't need another Marcoland.