The Perfect MMO

[Reoh]

Gamerzine has been spouting articles and is now ready to pitch their perfect MMO, but I have to ask; what is yours?

The perfect MMO concept is complete - Massively

For me it will be a game that has diversity. It should be a game that appeals to all aspects of the gaming community. binding them together into a 3d-social networking world for entertainment.

I particularly appreciate the cross-polination of genre's ideas. MMO FPS, with RPG elements but I ask why stop there. Why not have a game that has multiple genre's. A Scifi game where you can be a commander with RTS troops, hop into a ship and fight your way through space, get down onto the planet and walk across it in some sort of RPG Mecha cobat, and then pop out and FPS your way through the end base!

[Drac]

The perfect MMO would consist of one player, me, and millions extremely talented employees working day and night to craft the ultimate experience just for me. Unlimited freedom and worlds that changed massively from my unique interactions populated with witty characters played by real and talented actors & comedians as well as hundreds of writers and designers crafting just the right kind of challenges and stories for me to experience.

[Piemole]

Originally Posted by Drac

The perfect MMO would consist of one player, me, and millions extremely talented employees working day and night to craft the ultimate experience just for me. Unlimited freedom and worlds that changed massively from my unique interactions populated with witty characters played by real and talented actors & comedians as well as hundreds of writers and designers crafting just the right kind of challenges and stories for me to experience.

WOW You don't want much

[hipcheck]

The perfect MMO would be Damage, from Iain Banks' Culture novels.

The worst MMO ever is: your life. it's almost all grinding!

[Drac]

Originally Posted by Piemole

WOW You don't want much

Oh and it would need to be setup in a holo-deck or matrix like construct, we're going for perfection so lets not hold back.

[Reoh]

Originally Posted by Piemole

WOW You don't want much

Yes but think of it this way. Each "Aspect" of the game could be a new chapter to purchase. If you didn't like RTS don't buy that part of the game to play.

[Piemole]

Originally Posted by Reoh

Yes but think of it this way. Each "Aspect" of the game could be a new chapter to purchase. If you didn't like RTS don't buy that part of the game to play.

But if it was the "perfect" game we wouldn't need to pay extra for stuff.

One off buy, full content. Perfect.

[hipcheck]

one thing that MxO didn't have but was considering because of the community (one of my crew's ideas, actually -- not mine, so I'll toot the horn) was the concept of a 'construct'. like the training programs that Zion had on their ships, we thought it would be a great idea to have some constructs that we could jack into, where the content and pretty much anything would be made by us. it made sense in the context, because we were all supposed to be jacking in from ships anyhow, but also in practice, it would be like a web 2.0 content system, where we could design our own stuff and the publisher would have very little liability.

[sschrupp]

Hipcheck, that's pretty much exactly what the new Mission Architect is in City of Heroes/Villains.

It definitely makes sense in MxO though.

As for my perfect MMO I would say that along with the standard stuff that makes games fun like variety of classes, variety within classes, etc. it would need to have certain elements to really make it perfect for me:

Grouping:
- It would have an easy to use grouping system that would allow high level people to group with low level teams, and vice versa. It would provide a capable user interface allowing groups to mark themselves as willing to accept low level people to join, and low level groups willting to accept high level people. It would also allow for people to search for groups to join and submit a request to join. It would then allow for members to all teleport to a spawn point closest to the leader. We're here to have fun, not spend an hour trying to fill a group and all get to the right place. I don't have time for that.

Quests:
- The MMO would have the quest sharing mechanism found in some, but not all MMOs. When working on quests, any group member completing a step of the quest would update ALL group members within range. No more, "Ok, I need 6 more stones, Bob needs 10, Chuck needs 3. We'll all be here for a few more hours as we alternate..." Ditto for activating items, talking to NPCs, etc. Don't make each person have to wait their turn to click on a bag that takes a minute to respawn. Quit wasting my time! What really makes me crack up sometimes is in some of these games certain actions WILL update the rest of the group that are on the quest, but then certain actions still require every single person to do it. HUH??

- Quests involving boss mobs would not have long spawn times on the bosses. That's ridiculous. Make it so only people on the quest get XP and loot from killing the boss. And make them respawn fairly quickly so another group isn't waiting around. Crikey, how long did we spend in Spellborn the other night waiting for the bugged Daphne to spawn only to unspawn right away? Or how about waiting for a group to wait for Gravis so that we can wait another 30-45 minutes ourselves once they kill him? It's not needed and detracts from having fun. Spawn timers like that are from 1993ish in Everquest and the like (probably even started in old MUDs) to keep people from farming bosses for uber loot. Welcome to the 21st century. We know how to program complex algorithms now. Uber MOBs with long spawn timers are fine for those that like that sort of thing, but dear god don't make it a quest mob. If the intention is to make it difficult to complete the quest, make the MOB difficult. Don't use an artificial difficulty like making us be bored and aggravated.

- Let me track quests that I'm on. Give me the option of cheating a little by having an indicator on my map, but allow me to turn that option off. If you don't want your hand held, then turn it off. If you just want to have fun and don't mind it, turn it on. Win/win situation there. Don't listen to whiners that say it ruins games to hold the users' hand. Just give the whiners the option to use it or not. Don't detract from MY fun by not having the option at all though. Nothing pisses me off more when someone tries to tell me how I should enjoy a game. Just because I want the quest to tell me what to do and where to go doesn't mean you have to see it. And just because you don't want to see it doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to. Go cry me a river and alt-tab to some website that tells you the answer anyhow and pretend you're elite some more by not using an in-game interface.

Granted, generally games that hold your hand right now don't allow more hardcore gamers the option to turn it off. I'm saying give them the option to turn it off, and give me the option to turn it on. Let them play how they want, and me play how I want.

Interface:
- Give us SOME degree of control at least on the basics. I should be able to adjust font size and color in chat boxes. I should be able to keep it from showing "You gained 10 xp!" I should be able to ignore a general channel all together.

Let us move and resize elements of the UI. We all have differing needs or ideas of what's important.

- Allowing mods I'm all for as long as they can't actually play the game for you. We should still be having fun running around and fighting things ourselves, but if there's a mod that lets me hover over an item to see the current market value at the auction house, great! Or hovering over a mob tells me I need it for one of my quests, awesome! But don't listen to the jerks that say that's cheating or it is ruining the game. Again, how many elitist asshats complain that showing quest info in pop-ups or on the mini-map is cheating or makes the game too easy and then they go and alt-tab anyhow to look up information on a website somewhere. Hey jackass, if you don't like a mod, don't use it. Who are you to tell me how to enjoy my game? Pay more attention to YOUR joy, or lack thereof, and not everyone elses.

Content:
- Overall most games have a nice amount of content. However, after playing around with the Mission Architect from City of Heroes/Villains I'd have to say this is a must-have feature for any game now. It'd have to be adjusted obviously for different games. Maybe instead of a one-stop shop like in CoX where you search for missions in the database and then walk 3 feet to access it, user-made content could be accessed by "randomly" placed portals, caves, dungeons, buildings, ship voyages, etc. I'd also want to see the mechanics of the user-made content fixed up a bit compared to the CoX Mission Architect. Right now it's too easy to make content allowing people to powerlevel incredibly fast. Although that can be fun, it can also spoil the user's experience by making other content seem less desireable.

Of course there are the standard things every MMO should have to be desireable such as decent graphics, performance, sound, storyline, stability, fun, etc. But the above points are what would set a game above all others for me.

[hipcheck]

hm, I haven't really read anything about the mission architect. guess I'll have to look into it. certainly wasn't around when I was playing, years back...

one important detail for me is visual differentiation. after playing Lineage 2, I got spoiled by the armor and weapons. I played LotRO and was really bummed that everyone looked like and dressed alike. items were a bigger deal in L2, so that's a game element that one producer chose and the other didn't, but I think it makes a big difference. with all the fuss about character creation options in LotRO, people still end up looking the same, which takes a lot of the fun out for me. the detail on the armor in L2 had people coming up to me and asking me if that was really Armor X that I had, and how had I acquired it... or, aha, here comes my friend, the only one with that dark red armor on this server...