Building The Perfect MMOG For Casuals And Soloers

I'm going to outline, flesh out, detail, and explore what I think would be a perfect MMOG for casual players and soloers - and any group and hardcore players that are looking for something truly different, and don't mind sharing top rewards and content.

Author: Meleagar

So, PC Gamer and MMORPG.com have both selected EVE online as the best online game of 2009.  With a subscription base that went up 22% and 300k subscribers, EVE is obviously a success. What does EVE have that virtually no other online game has?

Offline advancement and a sandbox character/ship development system.

The idea of true offline advancement has taken a lot of heat, but here we have a very successful MMOG model built around both offline advancement and sandbox character development. Imagine what the numbers would be if EVE had dragons, elves, orcs, and barbarians; wings, mix-and-match melee  and magic, and AION quality graphics.

EVE has broken the myth that offline advancement and sandbox-style progression cannot be very successful. Now, when are the game companies going to take what EVE did and run with it?  When are we going to be treated with true, full offline progression and full sandbox character development in a larger variety of genres?

It's bizarre that there are so many companies willing to try and fail at rote amusement-park clones of WoW, and so few attempting to cash in on EVE's proven new model.

In this blog I'm advocating an MMORPG where all players advance 24/7, and can invest their progress in any area of advancement they wish, even "working at a job" to make money based on other  skils they might have. When they create an avatar to start the game, they get to distribute their initial character stats as they wish.  When advancing, one can set their advancement to accrue in any area they wish.

Since this generates a population without any categorizable features even at the most basic level, obviously one cannot generate an automatic "con" system, where a player can immediately see if they have a good chance of defeating a mob or not.  However, since there is no death penalty in the game, there is no reason to not simply try. 

One must remember that in this true sandbox game, there are more means of "defeating" mobs than just killing them.  One can become an advanced animal trainer and tame many mobs (or at least pacify them in order to get by them); one can also become an expert diplomat, learn the language of the mob, and negotiate for whatever they want; one can seduce or confuse the mob, or become an expert at camoflage and disguise to fool the mob.

However, in just fighting a mob, one can invest some advancement time in learning about that particular mob and get a detailed spec sheet about range of hit points, offensive capability, defensive, special attributes, drops, aggro, race affiliations, habits, treaties, known affililates and opportunities, language, range, food, etc.  Having such information will allow the player to tailor specific training strategies that will advance particular traits, abilities, talents, and skills in order to be able to defeat that particular mob in combat.

In this way, if a particular crafting skill you have requires, say, the fur off of a snow leopard, you could set your avatar to work to earn money to buy the furs you require from other players, or you could go in and tame a leopard, bring it to town and let your stronger friends kill it for you so you can then get the fur; you could tame a creature that can kill a snow leopard, take it with you and get your furs that way; you could do some work for a neighboriing tribe and take the trade in furs; or, you could examine detailed information about the snow leopards and train yourself up in the appropriate commodities so that you can defeat it in combat yourself and then skin it (and perhaps process it for other valuable resources).

So no, you will not be able to immediately "con" a mob and know if you can defeat it, but you can spend a short time learning about the mob and from that info figure out how you can either defeat it or get what you want from it.

When MMOG developers attempt to create a "balanced" game, this means that they are trying to create a finite set of class/ability combinations that are - essentially - equal.  Basically, it means that at a certain stage, Class 1 can avoid X damage; class 2 can block X damage; class 3 can heal X damage; and class 4 has armor that prevents X damage. 

The problem is, this balance formula, one way or another, makes all the classes, especially from game to game, the same.  This is why there is nothing new under the sun in MMOGs, and why sci-fi or gothic MMOGs have the same fundamental feel as any other.  They are all designed with grouping and end-game raiding in mind, meaning that each class must be designed to fill a role and balanced to be the relative equal of any other character within a range of levels.

Of course, you have to balance if you're going to include PvP or coerced grouping; balance is broken in such games when it is discovered that a particular class/ability combination results in a character that is significantly more powerful than (1) other characters at its level, or (2) in group or raid situations.  In a raid, all characters must be able to contribute X value, or else one is gimped and the other is over-powered.

But, what if the developer threw out the whole concept of "balanced" groups and forumlaic end-game raiding?  What if PvP had no guarantees that your character would be the relative equal of others with similar time in the game? What if there were not one or two ways to create an over-powered or gimped character, but virtually infinite ways?  What if one of the accepted principles of the game was that you could create a character overpowered in some ways and gimped in others, instead of a development team that slow-fed you a sugar-coated diet of forced balance and end-game relevance?

From the perspective of what this blog is about (a 24/7 progression game whether online or not), a player could make themselves, say, a fire tank by putting virtually all of their advancement time into fire resistance, generating aggro, and health. Such a character might be able to handle fire-based enemies well beyond the capacity of others of equal time investment.   Imagine a much higher-level (meaning: more time invested, since this blog is advocating a game without levels) fire mage attacking a much lower-level player who has their time invested thusly; the lower character might be impossible for that particular higher-level character to kill. 

But then, an ice-mage would make short work of that same character.

Imagine a game where you can pursue highly specified characteristics indefinitely. The ultimate fire-demon conjurer. The ultimate two-handed mace expert. The ultimate healer of humans.  The ultimate healer of mixed groups.  The ultimate chain-lightning caster.  Near-infinite specificity of ability and no limitatation to how good one can get at it.  It might be that you have virtually no health, no defense, no crafting capacity or any other game skills whatsoever, but if a group can smuggle you into the enemy camp alive and get you to just cast one ultimate chain-lightning spell, then even if you get killed immediatly afterward they have a chance of winning because you've decimated the opposing army.

That's real variety, and endless potential for highly individual characters.  If it is in a system that has 24/7 advancement for all your characters, then even if you find one of your characters gimped from doing something you wish to do, all you have to do is set them on a development course to fix the problem.

If you google "offline progression", you'll find three games mentioned: Earthrise, Eve, and Alganon and - revealingly enough -  my blog posts here. That's it.

Seriously?

If it was not so sadly revealing about the current state of the MMOG industry, it would be funny. Here is a gaming genre primarily based on monthly subscription, where you pay for 24./7 access, and yet out of dozens of pay-to-play games, only two current games offer any form of offline progression whatsoever?

Really?

It seems to me to be so fundamentally obvious that if you can provide a 24/7 benefit for a customer's monthly subscription fee, you should give them something, if nothing other than some kind of ongoing "thank you for staying subscribed even if you can't play much."   A functioning, meaningful reason to keep subscribing even if one's ability to stay online diminishes over time, or even if one wishes to try out another game.

Is that not obvious to everyone? I mean, is it just me or what? How can one explain that the entire genre basically ignores what would be an easily-coded and included major draw and selling point for casual and time-starved players?  Heck, you could get players to subscribe to several games concurrently if those games had significant off-line progression.

It's really mind-boggling that this obvious feature has been so ignored by the industry.

In prior  posts I've outlined some of what a perfect 24/7 offline advancement sandbox MMORPG would contain. Two essential commodities were discussed; character and guild progression.  One of the interesting ramifications of having offline character and guild advancement is that "how much time a player can be online" becomes a very small consideration when it comes to looking for guild members, since guildies can advance whether the player is live or not, and thus their characters can develop in-game requirements ncessary for the guild to advance.

One can easily see that this changes the dynamic of how members are cultivated by guilds; the question no longer becomes how much time can the player spend in live guild activities (for most guilds) but rather how much of their 24/7 advancement time are they willing to commit towards guild goals?

This brings up a very pertinent issue: how many characters should the player be able to have advancing at the same time?  In Alganon, for example, you can only have one of  your characters advancing offline at a time. My question is: why?  If it is fun to have one character advancing offline, wouldn't it be even more fun to have two or three?

Of course, some limit needs to be set or a player could simply form their own super-mega guild just by inviting all of his or her own characters and setting their advancements in accordance with the goals of the guild. I suggest that a limit of three characters would be a good balance; it makes decisions about what to do with each character very meaningful, but still allows for some great diversification. When joining a guild, a player can bring all three of his characters to contribute, or just one or two, while perhaps joining another guild with his remaining characters. 

This makes every player, no matter how casually they play, a valuable member for any guild. This can give the player the satisfying sense that they are contributing not only to their personal character advancement, but also to the advancement of the guild they have become a part of, even when they are offline, resolving the conflict between having a full real life, but wanting to advance and contribute in the MMORPG world. One of the problems I faced as a casual gamer was that I didn't feel like a valuable member of any guild because I couldn't really contribute much in the way of gameplay; with offline advancement that is also tied to guild advancement, this problem is solved.

So, consider the fun and joy of being able to not only manage the 24/7 advancement of one character, but of three, and being able to meaningfully contribute to the advancment of any guild you become a member of. Or, even if being in  a guild isn't your thing, imagine the  potential strategy involved in coordinating the advancements of three characters towards your overall in-game goals.

There are two basic kinds of game players; those for whom the most important aspect of the game is winning, and those for whom the most important aspect of the game is playing. For the former, the end-game is **the** destination; for the latter, the journey and not some final goal is the most important.

One might also very loosely define the first category as hardcore players, and the latter as casuals.  For those whom winning is the most important thing, getting there first or among the first "means", to them, that they win. Burning through any new content first is, to them, the major goal of playing any MMORPG.  These hardcore players tend to be much more focused and involved in the game, and in talking about the game, and in populating forums about their game, than casuals. This focus on the game leads them to take positions in the industry; hardcore players tend to become the developers and the fan-site gatekeepers of the industry.  The hardcore treats gaming like a career; the casual treats the game like a hobby, and so the former tends to drive the functional path of the genre as it develops, because theyr'e the ones that end up in positions to make decisions about the structure of future games.

The hardcores brought an energy and enthusiasm into a genre that quickly exploded in popularity, but then hit what appeared to be customer base wall a couple of years after World of Warcraft was launched.  Although many  millions of people play games online, like hearts or poker at community sites, those people were not gravitating towards online MMORPGs. It quickly became apparent that online MMOGs were competing for the same base of players. After World of Warcraft, few new players were being lured into the western MMORPG market.

The reason for this is simple; virtually all MMORPGs are essentially the same game with various minor tweaks here and there, like better graphics, more character customization, wings, pets, real-money stores, pvp, etc.  Since the bulk of western developers were culled from the powergamer mold, they essentially all think alike, and basically perfected their powergamer-oriented game with World of Warcraft.

Now, some may argue that WoW is not a true powergamer game, but here's my perspective: the powergamer developers built and revised WoW over the years around a fairly simple maxim: alienate as few powergamers as possible while appealing to as many casuals as possible thereby maximizing profitability. Second to that is: throw in whatever other games offer that seem to appeal to significant players if possible so that WoW players don't have to leave WoW to get the "stufff" the other game offers.

 The reason new MMORPGs can't compete with WoW when it comes to size of player base is simple: all those other games are simply revised versions of WoW.  They offer no significant reason to start over or go to  a game that might fail and be a waste of money, when playing in Azeroth is money in the bank.

So, why do developers keep trying to sell us on WoW variations instead of trying something fundamentally different? Why do we literally have hundreds of MMORPGs out there and maybe one or two is functionally different from WoW? Is it because they wish to copy WoW's success?

No, the simple fact is that virtually all developers and idea men that gain entrance into the arena of game development must go through the same gatekeeping process, which means they have to be powergamers and have  a powergamer mentality, which in turn means that they can only imagine games that are WoW-like; roles that fulfill group functions, groups that have access to content that can't be accomplished solo; raids that can accomplish content that can't be achieved by groups; a linear path of progression towards a guild-raiding end-game comprised of exclusively superior rewards and content, all centered around career-level investments of online time.

To the powergamer, this is what an MMORPG "means", and playing the game any other way, or for any other reason, is so alien to their thought process they can only muster contempt and ridicule for anyone that talks about offline progression or equitable solo rewards.

The powergamers that brought the necessary energy and commitment to the MMORPG genre to get it started have become the entrenched system, guarding the gateways and pumping out one failed attempt to draw customers away from WoW after another, becoming so desperate that they even offer their games for free.  That has worked to some extent, but it is pushing the game industry into a certain business model that a lot of gamers abhor: the cash shop. It's hard to call a game with a cash shop a game, isn't it? It would be like Green Bay buying yards in the middle of a football game.

And so the MMORPG genre is stalled out, not because there is no more room for new, different, successful games, but because the powergamer oligarchy cannot imagine outside of their theme-park, linear progression, end-game, group-oriented,online- time-centric box. If they could, then we'd have true sandbox games, classless models, solo-oriented games, and offline progresion models ... but the fact is that we don't, and the reason we don't is simply because the developers as a whole can't fathom that people unlike them would play a game for reasons entirely foreign to their mentality.

(Please note that all of the blog posts here are made under the premise of a MMOG built around a 24/7 advancement system that goes forward if the player is online or offline.)

I think it's time that we reimagine what a guild can be in a game, and provide guild leadership with real tools that allow for complete guild customization.

Formation of a guild: first, the capacity to register a guild will be part of the 24/7 character advancement system. An example would be: Tier 1: Leadership > Tier 2: Group Organization (modifiers to group performances) > Tier 3: Guild organization, where this advancement occurs relatively quickly to the point of T3, perhaps a few days. Upon reaching T3, the character can then organize an "open guild".

An "open guild", or a Tier 1 guild, can have 10 signatures of any 10 characters regardless of their skill specs. Open guilds can lead to things like renting local buildings to house the guild, common guild vaults, teleportation stones, discount prices on purchased goods, etc. The founder of the guild can set the guild political scheme to any of various mechanics that actually work in-game: dictatorial, representational, democratic. etc.

However, to advance to a Tier 2 guild, one must have a certain number of characters with certain skill qualifications. Let's say that the leader, representatives or a majority of the guild wants to become a Crafting & Mercantile guild; in order to qualify for such status, there must be at all times at least 5 characters in the guild with Tier 4 or Tier 5 crafting skills.

Becoming a Crafting & Mercantile guild opens up various capabilites and options. First, it greatly reduces prices of publically available crafting supplies and common materials. Second, it increases yield from active, online resource mining. Third, it generates guild revenue by serving the public. These are all subsidiary avenues of crafting guild offline advancement available to the discretionary management of guild leadership.

The Tier 3 Crafting & Mercantile Guild can be something like a Metalworks Guild, or an Alchemal Guild, or a Leatherworks Guild, which specializes in a particular area of crafting, but requires, again, a certain number of characters that specialize in the same area. Note that all of the Tier 2 bonuses to all crafting still apply, but upon embarking upon an area of guild specialization, new bonuses are awarded to any crafter engaged in any form of that craft specialization. In the "Metalworks" Guild example, the T3 bonuses would apply to those who crafted any metal product, from weapons to armor to building materials, to home decor or metal mechanisms.

Specializing is a lengthy process, but yes, the guild can "specialize" in any number of avenues it wishes, given they invest enough time. Specialization gives the guild access to bid on government contracts for products in their line of specialization. Also, if a guild specializes in metalworks and owns a building, they have the capacity to set up their own business instead of using the auction house system.

Now imagine avenues of guild advancement for: Exploration & Adventure - bonuses to running speed, jumping, swimming, climbing, larger "fog" reveals on the map as one moves through new territories, shared fog reveals for all players in the game; detailed map information that appears on mouse-overs, information about items in-game that is hidden from other players without such advancements (which players can gain on their own, but don't have to directly advance if they are a member of a guild that has done the advancing on a guild level), access to corresponding links; Diplomacy & Politics Guild, Mercenary & Protection Guild ... well, you get the idea.  These would be tier 2 guild advancement paths equal to the Crafting & Mercantile guild path.

The guild specializations would provide all members of the guild with a set of temporary advancement bonuses in effect only as long as they are actually in the guild, advancement bonuses they could train up themselves in solo 24/7 offline advancement management if they wanted to go that route. Being a member of a crafting guild that specializes in metal fabrication would give a player that has no training in that craft area whatsoever the ability to craft metal items up to a certain level.

Also, it should be noted that leadership can set membership fees in a global, automated system that sends out notes when membership fees are due and then the player can either pay the dues or elect to leave the guild. There would be a great benefit to any player that is a member of a guild, and a great benefit to the guild for having members, especially since member contribution to the status of the guild doesn't necessarily rely on how much time they can spend online.

Here is a scenario for a player to construct a building, or even a city, in a 24/7 offline advancement sandbox system.

Tier 1: Local government faction (5 levels, including many quests for material rewards)

Tier 2:     > township management  (ditto)

Tier 3:          >  zoning, design & planning (ditto)

Getting to this point might require  a week of time or so if the player advances no other aspect of their character.  Higher tiers will include alternate path options; for instance, after completing Tier 1, alternate Tier 2 paths might include township protecion (local police), which might then lead to a career in the military, among other things.

Note that that all of the above offer a means for offline jobbing (earning money while offline).

Once one player  has achieved  the Tier 3 zoning, design & planning status, they are able to buy land lots or unused buildings and approve them for various purposes, such as construction of player housing, businesses, guild halls, etc. However, this requires money, so either the character must now earn money, or other guild members (or perhaps other charcters of his/her own) have specialzed in earning money.  Also necessary is a character with the necessary architectural/building skills; a source for materials and craftsmanship, either learned or purchased, etc.

For example, being able to quarry stones will lead to various stonemasonry skills necessary to provide materials for a building project.  Other materials/products will be necessary as per the plans/specifications provided in the building "recipe" the architect/builder character can purchase.  Wood, metal and glass products will be required; then there is the issue of furnishing and decorating the structure. Of course the first character with the city planning skills can obtain the licenses necessary to operate a business or guild, as long as appropriate taxes and licensing fees are kept up to date.

Now, building anything can be accomplished over time by any single player because they can eventually master all of the skills necessary; but it can be accomplished in far less time by a coordinated team of players.  Note how just advancing down a single path can provide any player with a character that has skills other players will eventually hire just so they don't have to spend their advancement time becoming a third-tier city planner or a third-tier city architect, or a  3rd-level stonemason or woodcrafter.

Now, imagine a 4th and 5th tier to such avenues that allow the construction of actual cities by advancing beyond local government and single-building architectural/building skills, and also requiring the advancing of a guild thorough various tiered requirements into a body capable of responsibly administrating the needs of a city.

Next: The 24/7 Guild Advancement System

Have you ever leveled your character too fast in an MMOG? I remember some game I played that allowed the player to turn off their experience gain if they wished. They did this because (1) some players fell behind their friends because they couldn't spend as much time online, and (2) because leveling too fast trivialized vast amounts of content for players that didn't want to invest time in multiple characters; they wanted to do every level 1 quest there was in the world without it being trivialized or unavailable to them because they had outleveled the content.

Isn't that a scream? Players complaining about leveling too fast and not being able to fully enjoy (in a meaningful way with their primary character) the full breadth and depth of what the developers had put in the entire game. Players that took their time and explored every nook and cranny of the game, the lore, the quests, etc. Yes, there are players like this; for instance,I found out in one game that I couldn't even max out all my weapons skills (raising my ranged, blunt, blade, unarmed, etc.) to max for a level without going up yet another level or two .. meaning, I had no means by which to simply raise one set of skills without raising my entire level and increasing the upper limit on all my skills. At the same time I was becoming too high a level for my current recipes; they were for level 6, but I was now level 8 ... just because I wanted to increase my unarmed combat to its max for my level.

And there, my friend, is the organizational nightmare that is the level-based system, and why it is so easy for current games to be broken, horribly unbalanced, and unplayable for many.

How do you fine-tune and balance such a chaotic system? You can't please almost anyone when it comes to how fast one finds themselves leveling when they are simply moving along the programmed developmental pathway for their "class" or "role". Also, you have to beware how many options you allow the player to have or else they'll get stuck and be largely unable to progress if they make lousy developmental choices along the way; best to confine their options to a very narrowly-defined and tested set so that, if they really work at mucking up their character, it will still be viable and they'll still be progressing down the level path (even if most players will avoid grouping with them). If you're not min-maxed, you're SOL. 

Of course this system makes for what most call a "dumbed down" game; you have to dumb a game down if you want to avoid structural problems with the advancement path. The fact is that in a level system all characters must be in roles, they must be on paths, they must play a class, or else the door is open to chaos and failure down the road, because challenges must be designed to fit certain stages of a character's development and how their role is defined and powered in relationship to those challenges. Only, the problem is that everyone plays differently and has different expectations and, even after the best testing, unforseen advantages and disadvantages will be found out.This is why a good section of every game population considers the game broken regardless of how it is balanced, nerfed, adjusted, or fine-tuned.

In other words, a level & class based game necessitates a very controlled and narrow development path for every player. End-Game scenarios require fine tuning of group potentials so that the end game content can be challenging to a certain number of players in a group or raid. The chaotic nature of the scope of even  these dumbed-down games ensures that everyone is going to consider some aspect of the game broken.

In a sandbox game, the "end content" is whatever the player wants it to be, and it provides a plethora of development avenues and options. If I wish to raise all my combat skills to say, level 3, then I can do so, and I'm just a player with all my base combat skills at level 3. That doesn't make me a level 3 character; it doesn't trivialize any other content. It might make me more diverse when it comes to combat, but it doesn't remove me from being able to get those magical knitted gloves offered by one of the first quest givers in the game. Can I get over-powered for certain content? You bet; that's the way it should be. There are occasions when I should be monstrously powerful, even compared to other players who have been in the game as long as me; just as they may be able to produce crafted items I have no means to create, and just as someone else is selling super-buffs in the marketplace or at the city gates, even if they have no combat or crafting skills.

Yes, that kind of game doesn't avoid chaos; it deliberately embraces it. The only way to offer players true character freedom and customization is to just let them develop their avatars in whatever direction they wish. If after a week they are incapable of defeating a foe others can with ease, well they can simply start studying or training skills that will allow them to win that battle. Nothing they will have done up until then will be wasted; they'll still have all those other skills they invested their progression time into.

You see, you can't break a game that doesn't try to generate control patterns enroute to specific end-game content. If it takes 10 players to beat X in one case, and only one to beat it in another case, so what? It all depends on how you, or you and your guild have organized the development of your characters. There is no "balance" whatsoever because there is no objective, linear goal to balance anything for.

You can't break a game like that. If, during PvP, you always end up dying just a whisper before your opponents, then it's time to train up some endurance or stamina and increase those hit points, or speed up  your attack, or make your attacks more potent, or get some healing skills - whatever fits the need of your character and suits the style of your play.

A game like that becomes all about the strategy in relationship to what you want to accomplish in the game and has nothing whatsoever to do with how much time you have to invest in sitting at your keyboard punching the same buttons over and over.

1. Increase running speed.

2. Increase jumping and safe fall disance.

3. Increase swimming speed.

4. Increase the amount of time you can hold your breath under water.  There could be all kinds of underwater content this aids with.

5. Establish and develop an Out-Of-Body ability; the more trained you are, the longer you can stay out-of-body, scouting locations or just wandering around.

6. Raise base stats.

7. Learn new dances.

8. Learn how to play a musical instrument and then learn different tunes. If anyone ever played Asheron's Call 2, that game had the most advanced interactive musical instrument system I've ever seen in a game. Being able to develop musical skills would be great, especially if very advanced musicans could actually buff characters in a meaningful way or open the door to certain storylines/quests.

9. Gymnastics, opening the door to all kinds of cool animations and moves, even in battle.

10. Crafting, of course, which can be any number of paths in itself.

11. Weapon specializations that increase one's effectiveness with very specific weapons.

12. Swordplay - opens up new combat animations with various weapons which the player can substitue for standard animations.

13. Spellcraft - same as swordplay, only with magic-based animations.

14. Sneaking

15. Ability to use any specific armor, magic, or weapons.

16. Job - ability to apply various other skills and abilities towards a job or career that earns the player  money while offline. For example, if one develops their gymnast ability, they can become a certain level of a gymnast teacher through this offline progression avenue (but only to their corresponding level of gymnastics training).  They can then, instead of advancing in some skill while offline, set their character to be at their job and earn money while you're offline.

17. Bartering - buy items in shops for less, get more money for items you sell to NPCs.

18. Increasing various factions via oflline service to those groups.

19. Learning new emotes.

20. Cartography - grants detailed maps of various areas of the game (especially if the game has a "fog of exploration" style reveal.