Changing the Rules
The First thing that needs be achieved in the MMORPG industry is the total disposal of the current paradigm: grind levels to the max, then raid. That literally defines all of the big-names in the MMORPG world: World of Warcraft, Everquest 1 and 2, etc. They create quests and populate worlds -- but both the quests and the worlds are not dynamic. You grind both -- for the quests, most people don't even read the text, just glimpsing at the "what do I have to do" part; and for the worlds, the creatures typically stand around doing nothing except reacting to a player's action (and then return to their standing-spot or their "patrol area").
We can add some sub-points to those two: that grouping is automatically preferable over so-called soloing; and that rewards (items like weapons and so forth) must automatically scale, so that rewards from RAIDs are always better than non-RAID and so forth. Crafting? Can't allow a craftable item to be better than one obtained as a reward from a RAID, and in some games not even better than some questlines. There's a huge gimping of the entire game because of the grind levels then RAID mentality, because everything is geared around providing rewards to specific (and limited) types of behavior.
If you don't RAID, you won't see the best of anything - because these games define RAIDs and only RAIDs as the "best" of the endgame. WoW, for instance, even places its top-level crafting trainers deep inside RAID instances -- so if you want only to craft, you literally CAN'T, because you have to have a RAID group put together to reach the trainer.
How about this? We actually work on a different dynamic. We throw out the RAID-as-only-viable-endgame idea, and all that devolve from it (itemisation limitations, reward limitations, ideas of 'best' playstyles, etc.).
In the next few posts, having defined the problem (quickly), we'll begin exploring some other ideas that might build a world that is more dynamic in many ways (creature behavior, itemisation, NPC behavior, etc) but one that is also more involving for the players -- where player behavior actually creates quests, because the mechanisms are in place to generate quests based on player behavior (not just, complete this quest and get the next one; but a mechanism that looks at who you've been killing, for instance, and generates wanted posters if you've been killing NPCs or other players substantially below your level... for instance).
The idea is to create a world where NPCs are more vibrant; where player behavior actually creates content and hopefully, in turn, that content helps create a self-policing playerbase; where the mechanisms support player choices, instead of manhandling players into narrowly-tailored choices.
Next time: self-policing and player-behavior generating quests.
We can add some sub-points to those two: that grouping is automatically preferable over so-called soloing; and that rewards (items like weapons and so forth) must automatically scale, so that rewards from RAIDs are always better than non-RAID and so forth. Crafting? Can't allow a craftable item to be better than one obtained as a reward from a RAID, and in some games not even better than some questlines. There's a huge gimping of the entire game because of the grind levels then RAID mentality, because everything is geared around providing rewards to specific (and limited) types of behavior.
If you don't RAID, you won't see the best of anything - because these games define RAIDs and only RAIDs as the "best" of the endgame. WoW, for instance, even places its top-level crafting trainers deep inside RAID instances -- so if you want only to craft, you literally CAN'T, because you have to have a RAID group put together to reach the trainer.
How about this? We actually work on a different dynamic. We throw out the RAID-as-only-viable-endgame idea, and all that devolve from it (itemisation limitations, reward limitations, ideas of 'best' playstyles, etc.).
In the next few posts, having defined the problem (quickly), we'll begin exploring some other ideas that might build a world that is more dynamic in many ways (creature behavior, itemisation, NPC behavior, etc) but one that is also more involving for the players -- where player behavior actually creates quests, because the mechanisms are in place to generate quests based on player behavior (not just, complete this quest and get the next one; but a mechanism that looks at who you've been killing, for instance, and generates wanted posters if you've been killing NPCs or other players substantially below your level... for instance).
The idea is to create a world where NPCs are more vibrant; where player behavior actually creates content and hopefully, in turn, that content helps create a self-policing playerbase; where the mechanisms support player choices, instead of manhandling players into narrowly-tailored choices.
Next time: self-policing and player-behavior generating quests.
posted by Thurken | 2:27 PM
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