What I DON'T want in an MMORPG

[Lears_fool]

First of all, yes this is totally inspired by Lurch's 'it gets sad' thread.

I was talking with the Ms. about MMORPGs in general and we went from things we liked in the game (well refined introductory systems (i.e. WoW), fun combat (Tabula Rasa) and so on) and we quickly diverged into things we DON'T like. It was a fun little convo

So. . without further ado. .things I DON'T want in an MMOPRG

1) Teenie-Bopper PvP.
What do I mean by that? Simply put, PvP's only real advantage over PvE is the human element (skill, diverse strategy, simple unpredictability). . so it takes away from the game if I'm going against some other guy and he's virtually helpless against me due to my higher levels/skills/dps/etc. Heck, it's just lame. .and that goes both ways. I know there are some people who get off on that whole 'slaughtering the helpless/griefing' thing (UO anyone) but if I'm in a game I want one that players who get off on that will avoid, not flock to.

Warhammer Online seems to have a good formula there with their level bands and a design group that's focused on good RvR. Otherwise IMHO you're best off flattening out the level bands so that in PvP a Lv 10 character with skill can hold his/her own against a level 50. Probably easiest to pull off in a contemporary/sci-fi game (since you could have your avatar play an avatar of himself and make that more natural).

2) Hugely big time consuming Raid content taking over the end game.
Okay, here's the deal. Whether I'm level 1 or level 99 there are times I'd love to get together with a big group and do some epic thing. And whether I'm level 1 or 99 most of the time I don't have six hours to dedicate (one to getting everyone together of course). While I understand the whole pokemon fever thing (If you've dedicated umpteen hours to 'x' character you're of course going to bite on getting the next uber shiny for him/her) I don't think games should be depending on it.

3) JRPG leveling curves
I suppose good ol' D&D can be blamed a bit for this too. The idea that your level 50 toon can nap while a pack of wild (but lower level) dogs gnaws on them without making a dent is kind of silly. And in this day and age it's unnecessary, the curves can be flattened just fine, so that even at high levels you're not absurdly distant from your low level persona, and it doesn't take away all the fun. You see plenty of evolution along those lines in the pen-and-paper world but only rare glimmers in MMORPGs and CRPGs.

4) logarithmic leveling curves.
The other part about leveling that it seems like we should have matured past ages ago. There's no need to rush us through the first five levels while we're going through the tutorial while having 27 to 28 take eleventy-million dead murlocs. Give us partial levels, change the banding, or something.

5) bot-friendly play
Simply put, if you can program a robot (or a well motivated toddler) to play my guy as well as I can. .then maybe there's something wrong here. Add more elements of randomness and skill to a game so it at least FEELS like the person behind the keyboard's important not because he can hit that '3' key at precisely 2.3 seconds after he hit the '2' key. Make combat mobile (i.e. Tabula Rasa and possibly Age of Conan from what I've seen so far), make encounters more dynamic and allow players to benefit more from skill and thinking on the fly (i.e. DAOC type CC, EQ1 enchanters and EQ2 coercers, surprise adds and tactics from the baddies, etc.). It seems like we've been moving away from letting the bad guys surprise us in favor of safe predictability.

6) travel times of dooom
I know, teleportation is unrealistic, but in a game I honestly don't care. Running a half hour from one place to another or spending 15 minutes riding a horse or a pretty flying thing gets bo-ring. Tighten up the maps and create lots of waypoints (like Tabula Rasa) and/or make travel itself more fun (like City of Heroes/Villains)

And yes, a mount is a status figure, but why does my PC have to save the entire land to get a freakin' pony? Those two guys who's axle I had to fix had two of them, and they couldn't kill some level one bandits! If you're going that route, maybe I need to be 30 to get a golden rocket-powered pony or a dragon that won't eat me, but let me have a horse when I want.

7) Most valuable item - bigger bags.
We're already bucking reality by letting someone carry ten suits of armor in their backpack. . because it just makes life easier. So why not finish the job? Make separate 'sections' for different types of items and do more auto-sorting. Customize drops a bit for the dropee (Schrödinger's items. . that glowy purple drop may be a sword for me or a hat for you). Be creative!

8 ) Blind Murlocs
If some guy sends me on a quest for murloc eyes, I'm smart enough to only kill ones that have them and stab them in the heart/groin instead of the eyeball. So why is it that there are so many zero-eyed murlocs and spleenless bugbears and fangless tigers out there? I know 'five of 'x' that drop 33% of the time from killing 'y'' sounds a bit better than 'kill fifteen sputtering globules' . .but only if you don't make up for it by having silly organ-light critters populating the realms.

9) 'Hold on while I delete some quests'
Okay, so my wife sends me to get her some Sprite, and my daughter wants some chocolate. If a friend asks me to pick her up a pizza on the way I don't need to choose to forget the sprite/chocolate to do so. .and even if I did, I should be able to grab the chocolate and get credit anyway.

If you're going to give out all those quests in a game, then don't limit them. Eventually PCs will invent notebooks or hire servants to help them remember.

10) Free Trials that can Broadcast.
EQ2 figured this out with their little newbie/trial island. Those gold farmers can be cute sometimes with their odd usage of words and boundless enthusiasm, but they get old fast. Limit your free trials to a newbie area and limit their broadcasting to the same. Let them whisper, but limit how much unless they get friended or something. it's a small price to pay to get rid of the annoying buggers.

Umm, that was a bit ranty actually, but fun

[Deadfyre]

I agree with everything you just mentioned.

Travel times are frigging stupid. Nothing I hate more in an MMO then spending 40 minutes flying to one side of the continent. There are many games which make this colossal mistake. EQ/EQ2/Eve/WoW/Daoc. In fact, there are only two games I can think of that I have played that violated this rule of extended travel times being needed. UO (runestones, I wish to the gaming gods that more games would use these), and Hellgate (too some extent Mythos).
Everyone else thinks its ok that a hyper jump through 10 gates is ok, or that a bird ride should last longer then a 30 minute sit com, or a horse ride that I can go afk to make dinner for 4 while I am riding is fun.
Its not fun, its plain ignorant and a waste of time.

Bigger bags. Yeah. Needless to say, this is a no brainer. I can see the Dev's laughing at anyone who ever griped at this one. Lets give them room for 20 items, and lets make items drop like candy! Yeah, so by the time I finish my run through a single zone, I will have had to portal back to town 5 times to sell off all of my junk, and by that time, half the zone has reset. Makes perfect sense. This is another rule that ONLY Ultima Online broke (actualy when they did it, it wasnt a rule). 400+ stones of weight in UO. Hell you could farm for a long damn time to fill a bag, and hell it would hold 100k easy. Then you can just runestone to the 2 story L shaped house, drop off the junk, runestone back to the same spot, in time to find that your dragons had killed off 4-5 more critters. Repeat process, infinite loop of loot. Every other game around thinks its funny to have a whole game of loot to find, and these itty bitty tinsey tiny bags to hold it all in.

Where in the flying nine hells of the abyss is my bag of infinite holding. D&D 1st edition had one? Why not everyone else. I mean most of these worlds are magical.

A bear is a bear, is a bear. Im level 50. A bear bites me, if its low level bear, it does maybe 1-2 pts, a level 60 bear kills me in one bite. Yea, it is dumb. I wont go into the fact that im shooting fire balls at the bear at the time.

Plain and simple, a bear in a starter area should be just as dangerous as a bear in another area. yet another fact about UO, was that no one looked at a silver serpent and said, ahh, it cant kill me! Let alone an ancient wyrm! Hell, someone can die in UO to 20 mongbats, lets not talk about the titans that run at mach 7 now days.


Blind Murlocs. Not much more to say on that. In fact, I have done that quest a couple of times, as with bear tongues, merman scales, mountain lion tails.

I would prefer games without levels any more. I was ok with farming for levels during EQ. Then I hit Daoc, and I farmed, farmed, and farmed some more. Then the expansions hit, and I farmed some more, and some more after that. In uo you farmed for fun. In EQ2, its about farming grind for exp, WoW, the same. Hell, in Hellgate, they at least give achievements for farming. You get Achievement points for killing of 1k zombies, 25k zombies, 2k demons, 20k demons, filling up your bag space, collecting 30k gold, killing the act 1 boss 100 times. Not that AP points do ANYTHING yet, but at least I know that I have slain 30k zombies now.

Raid or die, raid or die. Its sad, that you can spend a week or two in WoW getting to level 70, and yet after you hit 70, you get no exp for killing stuff, but you can spend the next frigging year still killing stuff just for loot (or the chance at loot). This is another one of the no brainer its just dumb algorithms of gaming. Raiding a zone the 1st time is fun. Its still fun the 1st time you clear that raid zone. The next 4 months of Karazhan after that, where you can practically nap through the process, is just dumb.

Pvp. Pvp is alot funner then killing mobs. Mobs are mindless, and do what they are programmed to do. Pvp, can be fun, sometimes. UO pvp could be fun, if you were an anti pk, and liked to hunt felluca (before trammel), for reds and grey griefers. Trammel broke this though. Daoc, could indeed be fun, you could not talk with the other side, you could still laugh at them as you stabbed them. What makes Warcraft pvp suck, isnt the objectives, its being able to see what all the other horde people are calling each other on chat. I could do without it. Hellgate, ingame global chat, makes me wanna vomit with all the kids and how they talk.

Frankly, no game has every gotten any of it right, for any length of time. Daoc had it right up until ToA, Uo had it close to right up till Trammel. EQ2 I left before Pvp even started, so I cant say. Any game that actively promotes me as a level 70 to hunt down level 40's for fun (or even allows it) isnt really a game to the level 40. Thats why BG's in daoc were so fun, it was very, very even there.

I pin alot of hope on Warhammer, and the chicken theory. I would love it if UO would open up a 2nd age only server, without any of the other trash. I could still walk through Hythloth and Shame to this day and not get lost, and its been many years since I was there.

Will the perfect MMORPG ever happen, it would be nice, but I will not hold my breathe.

[FunkyJ]

When I played SWG for the first time, I spent 2 hours in real time chasing the quest icon.

I didn't realise it was in another town, hundreds of clicks away. I literally ran across half of Tattooine, just to be told I had to go back...

As to the Blind Murloc thing, apparently Warhammer addresses this - as well as the whole "see a quest icon above a dude on a hill, kill 10 bears to get to him, be told you have to kill another 10 bears" thing because it records your stats and the quest givers know what you have been doing, and adapt to it.

Personally I'd be more into MMOs if they weren't pay to play. I understand the theory behind why they are, but still think it's rubbish, but furthermore when I play once a week, if that, why should I be charged as much as some kid who plays it from 4pm to 1am every day?

[Deadfyre]

The feasibility or bridging the gap between casuals and power gamers is almost two different games saddly.

One of the only games that comes close to that break is Eve with its time based skill learning (which is a pain). But after the 1st couple of days, all of the skills are 6+ hours to learn, and then some even more.

That is a hard bridge to gap.

[Lears_fool]

Originally Posted by Deadfyre

The feasibility or bridging the gap between casuals and power gamers is almost two different games saddly.

One of the only games that comes close to that break is Eve with its time based skill learning (which is a pain). But after the 1st couple of days, all of the skills are 6+ hours to learn, and then some even more.

That is a hard bridge to gap.

Yes, Eve does have some brilliant things going for it, even if some drive people batty.

What do we mean by 'power gamers' though? I think now that the Genie is out of the bottle (thanks to WoW) the range of types of gamers is very diverse and IMHO the middle ground is extremely broad. I also think there's some subsets of individuals (griefers, belittlers, power-obsessed gamers (not to be mistaken for power gamers)) that I'd happily have driven away from my dream MMORPG

[Deadfyre]

Power gamers, they play on binges for 2-3 days straight, inject caffeine instead of air. They live and breathe the game.

Like I used to be back in the days.

[Lears_fool]

Originally Posted by Deadfyre

Power gamers, they play on binges for 2-3 days straight, inject caffeine instead of air. They live and breathe the game.

Like I used to be back in the days.

Well, I don't think there's anything I was thinking that would be that sort of 'powergamer' unfriendly. I'm no stranger to the concept . . going way back to the old Ultimas even.

Really, it's about the motivations and rewards . . when I'm going gonzo I'm all about the 'stuff', both the in-game items/experience/abilities/etc. and also the skill/technique. Not having a fast ramp-up in power for example wouldn't hurt most of us in that respect as long as we get something tangible and the skills we gain are meaningful. So having a more skill-oriented game helps right there, and the new items don't HAVE to be overpowering, just 'a smidge better'. When I go obsessive it's all about me and, to be totally honest, it's generally more about the process than the reward.

I think honestly lots of people waver all over the place playstyle wise. A game may not reward all of our 'parts' equally, but that doesn't mean that we won't be able to have fun.

[Milali]

Max raid size should be 10.

Raids should SAVE so at any time everyone can just buggar off and come back some other time NOT reset unless they chose to reset the instance.

what does that mean? It means if I want to play casually I mean true casual a couple times a week with 9 other mates we can chip away at an instance each week without having to start again and deal with the most RETARDED THING IN ANY GAME... TRASH MOBS.

I quit wow becuase it was a joke I was in an end game raid guild plowing through T5 stuff and it was not fun not fun at all week after week hitting walls of pointless rubbish

DAOC had the best pvp ever simple put you can make a game as good as that due to one simple fact. 3 realms = unpredictable. No one is ever trying this not even Warhammer is so I think my MMO days are over.

Every other game (cod4) is all MMO in design with lvls etc anyway So I guess I get my mmo fix in those games

[Mordocai]

A very good list Lears!

[Tularian]

Yea Lears hit it spot on. DAoC had one of the best PvP systems in a game. Mythic killed DAoC themselves, instead of basing more stuff around the PvP (Darkness Falls,Relics) they tried to add more skills to the PvP (ML's, Artifacts) which sort of backfired in a way. Honestly I am done with Medeival MMO's for a very long time been playing them for 10 years and just plain tired of them.

WoW to me has also sullied the MMO's just becuase it caused it them to be mainstream. So now every publisher sees the 90 million subscribers as a potential target to reach and they assume "If you make it like WoW, they will come" mentality. Been saying it for month and months gaming is going corperate and its less and less about the games and more and more about how much money they will make if they push the game out faster. Its really pathetic situation there.

The Travel thing well I played City of heroes a lot and well when I thought Super Speed and Teleportation were slow well. I would go play a free trial of WoW and BAM everything looked a whole lot faster in CoH lol. They could do what Vanguard did and make horses easy and cheap to get for at least the medieval games.

There are some Casual MMO's out there like EvE which thanks to those "Real Time learning of skills" thing which I love. I can go play other games and still be advancing in the game, uh oh gotta help clean the house, yep still advancing. Oh crude dishes again ooo looky still advancing in skills. Just have to log in and change them when the previous skill is learned. Uh oh montezuma's revenge...yep still advancing in skills which is great for casual gamers. Guild Wars is another MMOish type game out there low level cap, FREE play, You just gotta keep your eyes open for them they are out there.

Once again well said Lears