Developers Corner

I notice that in the Developer's Corner, players often compare certain ideas with existing mmorpgs.  Sometimes, it seems like we're being too narrow minded in what sources can provide ideas and lessons to be applied to mmorpgs.  People often take certain features for granted that really may not be necessary in an mmorpg.  I'd like to see more people examining non mmorpg virtual worlds for useful concepts.  Please note this is not a promotion for any of these, I just thought they had some good ideas the community might want to discuss.  Here are some examples:

Text MUDs.  These have been around for alot longer than mmorpgs, and there are alot more of them.  So many ideas that are thought to be untested in mmorpgs have been tried before in MUDs.  So often, an mmorpg is celebrated for trying a new feature, but actually it's one that's been tried before.

I'm playing retromud these days, and among other interesting ideas, they have a good service profession, the merchant.  I've always been in favor of adding more service oriented professions, and they do a good job of this.  Among the services provided by merchants are
-loot selling (they get a higher price)

-equipment resizing (A looted weapons and armor are often the wrong size for a character of a given race)

-identifying (not really sure how this works)

-banking (merchants can deposit and wire money from anywhere, so they protect a party's money)

Characters of other classes also provide valuable services to each other, such as ressurecting, teleporting, respeccing, translation, and lock picking.  Some of these are actually in some mmorpgs, but few mmorpgs have all.  Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that there can be more roles for "civillians" to fill besides crafting.  I expect more interdependent roles in the economy, the more complex and dynamic it will be.

Browser games.  I've seen several empire building games based around empire-building or economics, which might provide an example of other types of gameplay besides the standrad RPG.  There's another type, not really sure what to call them but sites like Neopets or Gaia, are something unlike what we typically see in an mmorpg.

The example I'll focus on is neopets. This is interesting to me for two reasons. 

The first is they aren't shy about what type of content they introduce.  There are minigames of every genre, a great variety of productive activities, and plenty of just for fun features.  There is no direction whatever.  You are free to pursue anyone of probably dozens if not more of completely separate goals.  This has the effect of creating the impression that the game is infinitely complex and full of secrets and there's always more to explore, even though it's probably pretty simple behind the scenes.  This is something I think major mmorpgs should learn from.  Too often you get the feeling you've seen and done it all far too quickly.  Most of the things Neopets does to occupy players aren't that complex.  Games of chance, collections, puzzles etc. all of which provide often unique in game rewards.  I think that major mmorpgs could replicate some of the atmosphere without too much difficulty.

The second reason is they have a surprisingly effective economy.  They use a faucet/drain approach, but unlike most they have effective drains.  They have player merchants, and a search engine that lets you find the best price out of a certain random sample.  There are no NPC item buyers, and input of items is controlled.  Money is drained out the economy by NPC shops which only stock limited amounts of everything, and are the only source of many items in the game.  Other money sinks include games of chance, random events, donation drives (a certain minigame won't open until it gets a certain amount of donations each day) and more.

They also have effective item sinks as well.  You can either seek out or be randomly assigned to do a "quest" which involves giving a specific item to an NPC.  The rewards are rarely worth the cost of the item, but people still do them because there's a chance you'll be greatly rewarded, possibly with something you didn't even know existed.  This means that almost every item in the game has some value.  Even if it has no practical use, it may be required for a quest.  The way the market's set up, it's easy to connect people who want to buy and sell.  The quests, combined with the sheer diversity of items in the game, ensure there's always something to trade.

Another thing their economy has going for it is there are vastly different wealth levels.  There's so much you can choose to spend money on along the way that not everyone gets very high up the ladder.  The fact that there's content for vastly different wealth levels means that no player ever feels he has too much money and nothing to do with it.  Furthermore, it gives players something to always strive for.  I see too often on major mmorpgs there's too much money and nothing to spend it on.  Solving the "too much money" part is half of fixing inflation, but for ideas on how to fix the other half, I suggest looking at Neopets.

I also give them credit for sponsoring player art, poetry, stories, and articles and publishing them on their site.  This is something that could result in a stronger feeling of being part of a community.

In designing mmorpgs of the future, current mmorpgs are not the only possible source of good ideas and concepts.  I would encourage all of you to expand your range of possible inspirations.  Just because something hasn't been done in an mmorpg before, does not mean it hasn't been done.

summerise to long to read

Originally posted by DeadlyMage

summerise to long to read

The only way a noname, no investment, and no whatever else company will ever get any attention is by being very different.

edit: this also is NOT the place for TL:DRs kinda silly expecting to find short posts in this forum.

Personally, if I were to learn one thing from a non-MMO, it would be Oblivion. There are so many things which that RPG had, they would be great for MMOs today.

Different skills-  There were so many skills that Oblivion had, and they came with good rewards as well.  I remember doing alchemy, and searching around for different ingredients that would help me create a potion.  Or perhaps I would work on thieving and steal from the local shop at night, which would also make me train my lockpicking skill.  There were also things like agility which would make an impact on how you jumped and ran, each attribute was a skill that could be leveled up, which is why I loived that game so much.

Combat-  With bows, I would actually have to train aim my bow and shoot, while getting hit would have an impact on my aim.  For using swords and shields, you would have to have good timing, always ready to know when to shield and when to attack.  You had to be ready to predict what the enemy would do next.  Sure, your gear played a role, but I never thought it made a huge difference in how things happened.

You can see, that with this brief overview of Oblivion, that a game should have many different skills and should have combat that takes skills.

Just my 2 cents on things you can learn from RPGs.

Originally posted by mike470

Combat-  With bows, I would actually have to train aim my bow and shoot, while getting hit would have an impact on my aim.  For using swords and shields, you would have to have good timing, always ready to know when to shield and when to attack.  You had to be ready to predict what the enemy would do next.  Sure, your gear played a role, but I never thought it made a huge difference in how things happened.

That's tricky, unfortunately.  In an online game, there's always going to be some delay between the time when you send a command and when the server receives it, and another one in between the time the server sends your client an update and when your client displays it.  In an FPS with only a few players, they can make it work, but in an mmo with many players across the world with vastly different hardware and connections, it would be problematic.  It would be nice though, if a game could pull it off.

There are plenty of things to be learned from all types of games. You'd be a poor Creative Lead / Creative Manager / Creative Whatever-Your-Company-Calls-It if you didn't understand the advantages, limitations, successes, and failures of other genres and products.

For example:

You might need to come up with some entertaining approach to combat in your game. So what do you do? Find all the games you can with any kind of combat system in them and play a few levels in each (good AND bad games, you want to know where and how you can fail as well as succeed). Try to isolate the best and worst aspects of each game and write them down as references. You should also find and label reasons for why you liked or didn't like a part of that game.

When you've got your information, find your project limitations (technological, financial, etc.) and determine which aspects of the game mechanic are most important for project completion.

As a developer, you must always be ready to scrap or alter your concepts and come up with something to replace or patch the void. This is why having a library of games (a library of possible solutions) is important to the creative process in development.

Whether you use anything from them or not, you'll find that inspiration for design problem solving comes from the most uncanny places in this industry (like a solution to an MMO economy being found in one of MechWarrior 4's quotes).

The moral of the story is: buy lots of games, even ones you think you'll hate, and play all of them. You'll gain a very valuable perspective on development strategy, and you'll move quickly along your path to finding the coveted 'fun formula'.