There’s a bizarre mentality in the upper echelons of MMO design that suggests that the rank and file player needs “hardcore, high end” players to look up to and special loot to covet in order to motivate their own play.
Poppycock.
MMOs don’t need more high profile superstars preening about their Thoridal, MMOs need more reasons for everyone to play.
“Keeping up with the Joneses” and loot lust will carry some people, sure, but it only lasts for so long, and it can be very frustrating to those not blessed by the random loot probability goblins. Once a player achieves their own loot to preen about, their heroes are irrelevant. On the other hand, if they don’t climb to the same pedestal, they will be perpetually frustrated. The loot lust paradigm is all about making players just covetous enough to keep going, without frustrating them enough to drive them away.
To me, that’s a poor method for keeping players in your game. They should be having fun just playing, not chasing a carrot. Tobold has an article up about rewards and how they fit into MMOs, especially WoW. To me, there should be a wide range of rewards, including the sheer joy of playing the game itself.
That’s part of why I play Atlantica Online and Wizard 101; their combat systems are unique and lots of fun, their worlds are well crafted and a pleasure to explore, and their monetization is palatable. Puzzle Pirates has a full suite of minigames that offer a wide variety of skills to master, and plenty of progress rewards and measures of success. Achievements and collectables scratch that itch somewhat, but even those are about relentless acquisition, just horizontal rather than vertical. There need to be reasons to play other than the pack rat mentality.
I know, not everyone will play like me, but that’s the point; games that only offer the loot/level paradigm are pandering to a pretty Pavlovian mechanic, but they are in an untenable long term position. Once the content is consumed, and the raids looted (or would that be loot raided?), there really isn’t much reason for players to stick around. Non-normalized gear-dependant PvP is a joke, complete with abuse and imbalances. The world takes a back seat to the relentless aquisition of more and better *stuff*. All in all, it’s a very shallow experience, and the only way to stay ahead of it to keep people playing is to keep shifting the goalposts. ProgressQuest is a sharp parody, but it’s dead on in skewering the mindless rat race of chasing the “Sword of N+1″ forever.
We don’t need heroes to keep us focused on the carrot on the treadmill. We need reasons to go out and explore the world. We need reasons to interact with people for more diverse reasons than forming raiding parties. We need rewarding activities that have nothing to do with public preening or treadmills. We need player driven economies and social constructs, and the ability to affect the game world. We need adventurers who wander the game world, content and even enthusiastic about just spending some time in the game, regardless of what they are doing.
We need devs to provide ways for anyone to become those adventurers. Any suggestions? I have a few, but I would like to hear from some of my fellow adventurers.
Download Only Gamer has another riff on this concept over here:
MMO=Massive Rewards
It’s a good read, and a good reminder that not everyone plays for the same reasons.
While some people cannot realize it, when you play a game for several hours a day hoping that the 10% drop rate Gods have decided you are a worthy paragon of the loot obsessed population and thusly bestow upon to thee an item that lets you do 15 more damage a hit….
You need to find a FUN game.
While I was one of the masses that was obsessed with loot due to an inferior blinking capability,(No that makes no sense what so ever.) after I had achieved my goal I then realized..
Where from here? More minor upgrades? That was really it. There was nothing left to explore, the quests are laughable, and what great storyline I thought the Warcraft cannon had has been ruined by the poor storytelling that World of Warcraft has.
Good post. =)
The charm that MMOs have always had for me is the concept of ownership of scarce goods, but not necessarily just the high-end stuff. I always thought it would be really fun to play an MMORPG where you can buy a plot of land in a city and build a house or something. In my opinion, the greatest failing of WoW was that I never felt unique.
An MMO should have a niche for every player, and allow every player to do something creative, yet there should be more substantial rewards for those ambitious enough to pursue them.
Tobold wrote about something similar. The need of players to differentiate themselves from others, to be better than them.
True, this might be a motivator for quite a lot of people. They are for sure angry if everyone gets their “welfare epic”, this is the derogatory term if getting something which was expected to be hard to get suddenly becomes very easy to get.
I do not see the problem in the lack of possibilities to distinguish oneself from other players, to show off how better you are than them… but in the dumbing down of gameplay.
I like to become good at a game, to get presented challenges to overcome. I actually thought that all people would somehow feel similar!!!
But it seems that people nowadays prefer easy victories, +1 achievement, +1 badge, +1 whatever to having to think about a problem, to find a solution, to try hard.
Instant and guaranteed virtual placation – this is how someone described “WoW, the placation simulator”. Something is going fundamentally wrong here!!!!
I agree that I don’t need any “star athletes” to look up to when I play any MMO’s. Lol, the whole concept is rather ludicrous if you ask me, and is more about satisfying the ego of said “star MMO player” rather than the rest of us.
Regarding level/loot grind:
Well, IMHO, Atlantica Online still has it’s treadmill/grind. But the rewards tend to be new Mercs for you to recruit rather than just gear (yes, you can choose gear instead of the new Merc, or sell the Merc’s stone on the Market).
WAR was keeping my interest by giving me the short term reward of getting see how much Reknown I could get. But that started to get old after my 500th (or maybe 2,000th) RvR battle.
So I think another key for me, is that the actual grind is still interesting (for me) when it comes to Atlantica Online. Squad tactics is still button mashing (or click mashing, depending on how you play), but it’s more fun, since it’s different from WoW/WAR/EQ and even EVE’s single unit that you control type of combat. I can see myself doing 1,000′s of more battles because of the basic difference. I couldn’t/didn’t want to do that any more in the more traditional MMO’s.
sdg, aye, Atlantica Online is still a grindy game, and I can get burned out on it. I think the appeal for me is that it’s different, and that tactical squad based combat scratches an itch that no other MMO even gets close to. Would it be possible to make it interesting without the level/loot grind that is attached to it? I think so, but would Achievers?
Long, nope, not everyone wants challenge. Some people play games to relax. This is especially true in MMOs, which are often glorified chat rooms. That said, I agree with your sentiment, and as Tobold and Waffles note (love the last paragraph, Waffles), there should also be the challenging material for those who want it. At least, if that’s your target audience. In something like the hypothetical Harvest Moon Online, what would the challenges be? Some sort of “home rating agency” like Animal Crossing? Financial domination? Urban sprawl? Political power?
Again, it’s a different sort of player. I’ll admit, I’m asking about this partially to brainstorm to see if I can define another MMO niche that might be profitable. I get the feeling that people are getting tired of the level/loot treadmill… but maybe that’s just me.
If a game must be “loot” centric, then everyone should have access to said loot.
No “Must have 20+ other players” to get a piece, that MAY drop, and I MAY win in a random roll.
No “Must grind millions and millions of mobs” to get a piece.
Either let the player craft the item that can also be found or raided for. Or let them “purchase” it with real cash (RMT FTW!!!).
But, the item needs to be accessible. If a person gains capabilities due to that item, it must not be hard to get.
When I play single player games, I love getting better stuff, but it is because I progressed to that place to get it.
Again, Guild Wars has this down pat. Armor for example is a reward by reaching a specific place…..but, everyone can get there. Also, I do not need a special Eye of Newt that I must raid 20 times in one week to get either. All I need is items that any person can gather.
Ok…back to the regularly scheduled blog post!
Open, very nicely stated. I wholeheartedly agree. A game world with such a philosophy would be more about skill and shared experience, rather than time investment and loot tables. That’s very appealing to me.
I think it would be great to figure out some sort of dynamic that could get players motivated to keep playing a game for years that isn’t the same ol’ gear grind that’s so prevalent in the major MMO’s.
IMHO, progression of some type is the key factor. And changing the key factor from being gear, might be a new and fun twist to the basic progression model. I’d go so far as to say part of the problem is that WoW is so gear dependant, that a lot of us are burnt out on that model.
To summarize, I’d cast the basic framework of these games with the following model:
Short term challenges/obstacles
Long term progression/improvement
Anything that’s ventured out of that model usually doesn’t hold my interest for years like a game like WoW did.
That being said, what other designs do I like, even if it’s only for a shorter timeframe?
1) Story telling works great. I get the feeling it’s much more design and development heavy, however.
2) Sandbox games. The main problem I’ve got is that I tend to get worn down by the constraints of the sandbox. That I spend more time fretting about what I can’t do, within the structure of the game, rather than what I can.
3) 4X games are great. I’ll play them a lot, but eventually, the repetitiveness wears down my interest. I don’t think 4X games in general execute progression/improvement all that well, although quite a few attempt to do so. This, perhaps, has the best potential?
So what kinds of progression, that aren’t gear & xp/level progression, could be interesting?
I’ve always been interested in the passing down traits to children/inherited/genetics types of ideas. I don’t think it’s been done well in a lot of games that have tried in the past. But it’s something that could work if enough design balance, gameplay elements, and testing is carried through.
Cosmetic & special titles seem to be in vogue. It certainly helps you feel like your toon is “special” and “unique”.
Temporary items. Atlantica Online and Puzzle Pirates give you things that will help you progress, but that have time limit and/or level limits to them (i.e. in AO, you get scrolls that you can use up to lvl 60 and in PP, you get items that decay after a month). While I suppose it works, it’s not my fav method. And is it really progression if it disappears or is unusable after a month?
Skill points/attribute points/spell points – probably the #1 alternative being given out in addition to gear progression. It’s fine and it works.
Yum. Food for thought, sdg. Thanks!
I’m kind of busy at the moment, and I’ll comment more later, but for now, I wanted to chip in on the AO and PP “consumable” or temporary items. You’re right, those aren’t really progression mechanics. AO scrolls are acceleration tools, not so much alternate progress mechanics; the treadmill is the same, you just shift gears. PP Badges simply unlock elements of gameplay, like sailing your own ship or parlor games. They aren’t mechanics in and of themselves, they allow access to other parts of the game. (PP progress is typically in player skill or pocketbook anyway, since there are no levels.)
As such, I’d not really call those examples of temporary items progress mechanics so much as monetization strategies that earn money for the company based on progress already being made. Perhaps it’s a semantic distinction, but I don’t see them offering a new type of progress. Does that make sense, or am I scatterbrained again?
Makes good sense, thanks!
I just remembered another progression model for games that fascinate me & hold my interest for a long time. Being the GM for a sports team.
The basic formula:
Young player/prospect – high potential, cheapest cost
Peak year veteran – reaches potential, most expensive
Older veteran – gets bye on wile and experience, cheaper cost
In theory, you could keep other types of games going with this. The progression tends to work when you can keep a constant cycle of players in your farm systems & minor leagues.
It won’t work if you only control a single toon like WoW/WAR/EQ, but there’s probably a way to incorporate this into a squad based game like Atlantica Online. And it definitely could work in 4X games.
I’ll expand on this in another post (I’m already in the middle of writing it), but yes, “keeplayable” games with a single avatar are far more constrained in alternate progression. Squad based games are much more flexible. That’s part of why I like Atlantica Online; the potential for tinkering is much greater than toying with WoW respecs.
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