2) Make Them Challenging Again
One of the biggest benefits of a single player game is that players can adjust the difficulty setting. There are even permadeath options out there for players that truly hate themselves and disapprove of happiness. While MMOs let players choose difficulty levels for some content, like dungeons and raids, overall most players are going to experience the same stuff as everyone else. This is an interesting issue because developing and balancing content is hard when you have such a wide range of people all playing in the same world at the exact same time.
But rather than finding some happy medium, why not just go ahead and embrace the difficulty? Gamers have shown in recent years that roguelikes and difficult games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls are more popular than ever. Some MMOs have embraced that notion, but in general the “go from point A to point B” themepark design continues to dominate the market. I want to play an MMO that assumes I am an intelligent human that enjoys challenging experiences – something that Pillars of Eternity absolutely captures.
1) Write a Story that’s Actually Interesting
Finally, the biggest thing that MMOs could learn from Pillars of Eternity, is that an actually interesting story is essential to get players interested. I’ll be honest and say that, like most people, I don’t read much quest text. I tend to skim through NPC dialogue. I don’t read many books I find in the world. I’m guilty. Even though I call myself a writer of sorts, I am guilty of not reading a lot of the writing in some of my favorite games. I thought about this and I think I’ve figured out why.
It’s because most of the time, the writing for these portions feels like an afterthought. Why should I waste my time reading this dialogue text explaining the reasons for the quest, if I can just skip it and go do the quest itself? Well, in the case of Pillars, I read it because it’s actually well-written and interesting. Since the game doesn’t rely on flashy cutscenes and tons of voice acting, I have to read to appreciate the details. Clever quest clues, interesting plot twists, and surprising revelations all occur within the written dialogue and flavor text of situations. I don’t think we’ve evolved so much as gamers that we don’t like reading text any longer – I still love replaying older games and lots of indie titles that actually have good writing – it’s more a case of there being a lack of interesting material.
Conclusion
If more MMOs would incorporate at least a couple of the things discussed here, we would be well on our way of having much better games to play. I love MMOs and I love single player games and the more they learn from one another and adapt to improve, the better off all of us gamers will be in the long run. Are there any things that you think MMOs could learn from Pillars of Eternity? What about other non-MMO games?