Combine three parts Guild Wars, one part Legend of the Five Rings, and one part Battletech and what pops out? In this recipe, I’m hoping for a great Episodic Massive Multiplayer Online… game. (Which should be EMMOG, but “leggo my EMMOG” just doesn’t flow that well.)
Guild Wars has a lot of great features, but the ones I want to emphasize here are the 8-skill limit, easy respecs, and the business model.
Players are stuck with only 8 active skills at one point, but can potentially choose those 8 from hundreds of skills. This allows for variety and focus in builds and makes choice and specialization important, without gutting customizability. The easy and free respecs make this limit work, since players can change their skills and even class focus for free in any town. (Primary and secondary class choices are permanent, but almost everything else can be changed.) Fairly quick missions and map travel (instant travel to any hub you’ve visited before) allow for short play sessions, and if a skill build isn’t working, it won’t take long until you can shuffle skills to try another idea, or long to get back where you were.
The GW business model is a thing of beauty; you buy the game, you play the game. No maintenance fees, no subscription, no microtransactions. There are optional things to buy, sure, but nothing necessary, and still, no subscription. As long as the servers are up, you can play. (That link is highly recommended; Shamus pontificates on online activation and server life… relevant for MMOs, as well.) It’s a lovely throwback to simpler times when gamers and publishers weren’t in a DRM arms race, and subscriptions were for magazines.
There are expansions to the game as well. These aren’t exactly sequels in an overarching storyline, but more like standalone novels that occur sequentially, set in the same fictional world. Players can have a rollicking good time in any of the standalone expansions, or play all of them together, cross pollinating and cherry picking the best parts. It’s like buying ice cream and then buying a chocolate pie. Either is great alone, but together, they can be more than the sum of their parts.
Legend of the Five Rings is a multiplatform game world celebrating its 15th anniversary. The tabletop RPG and CCG in the L5R world are both interesting, but it’s the CCG that I want to look at for this recipe, specifically the player-designer interaction.
The L5R collectible card game is much like many others, in that it is comprised of a large collection of cards that were released in different sets. Players buy various products that have a small semi-random collection of cards selected from given sets. One product purchase will not give the whole game library, then, but usually, an entry-level “starter” set will give players enough to actually play with. Other cards from the entire product line add depth and strategies to the game. Again, you buy it, you can play it, no permission necessary, no logins, no recurring fees. Buying more products tends to open up gameplay options, but players can have fun with a single purchase and never spend another dime.
So much for the CCG business model, though it should be noted that the semi-random purchases tend to prompt further purchasing, thanks to the unholy fusion of the collector’s gene and the gambling gene. In practice, people don’t usually stop at the starter… but it’s definitely possible to play the game with the starter alone. This doesn’t track especially well in MMO design, but it is certainly possible that a publisher could sell in-game skills in “booster” packs, not unlike CCG boosters. Single skills could even be microtransaction sale items… but that’s not a direction that I’d advocate. The randomness of the CCG business model really does put off a lot of people, myself included. (Though I do adore MTG Drafting and Sealed Deck… and GW has experimented with Sealed Deck-type mechanics for PvP… but that’s another article.)
The most interesting thing about L5R for this particular experiment is the way that the game incorporates players in its design. Characters, lore and events are built at least partially around player choices in tournaments. Players register in tournaments by swearing fealty to a particular clan in the game. Their tournament play affects their clan in future expansions of the game. Devs even plant certain cards in sets to see what players will do, planning stories around what might happen. These stories then have a significant effect on future card design. In a very literal way, the players have become important actors within the clan stories, and the interaction between the devs and the players makes for a more immersive sort of gaming experience. Player choices matter beyond the immediate match. Factional differences actually mean something. Your clan matters.
That interplay is what I really want to see in this EMMO recipe. Player action in aggregate, changing the direction of the game design in future expansions. To be sure, crafting a CCG is a very different animal from crafting an MMO, but the design ethos of letting player choices matter beyond immediate combat is what I’m getting at. Those of us who live in the real world tend to leave a stamp of our passing in one way or another, even if it’s on the road less traveled. The world is changed for our presence and our actions. An MMO that offers a living world, indelibly changed by its inhabitants, not just the devs, may well be worth exploring.
The L5R game isn’t entirely built on player choices, since the devs have some pretty clear ideas what they would like to do in the game, but it incorporates player choice far more than a typical MMO, what with the “perpetual now” they have to use to make things technically feasible. An EMMO would by definition be developed in episodes, not unlike L5R sets, to allow for devs to take player choice and do something fun with it between expansions. Players could play any given chapter of the story, or all of them, and each chapter would have its own “perpetual now”, but the world itself would advance in time in between chapters, and the way it advances would be at least partially influenced by player choices in the previous chapter during the window of time in the “real world” where the devs are working on the next game chapter. So a player playing chapter 1 might not affect chapter 3. If you miss the influence window, the game moves on without your input… though you can still reread and play older chapters. This means devs don’t have to craft a wholly dynamic world, but can still let player actions mean something when the world’s timeline advances.
This is crucial to making this actually feasible, by limiting the scope of the project by limiting what players actually can do, and what devs need to allow them to do.
The Battletech contribution to this particular delicacy is the separation of the pilot and the vehicle, where the vehicle is the main gameplay avatar, but the pilot is the player’s presence in the world. Separating the two allows for the flexibility we see in EVE, where the player’s character isn’t stuck with a class choice at creation that they are locked into for the life of that character. If players playing an MMO are playing characters who can switch between ‘Mech weight classes and models between missions, they can tailor their approach to the particular situation they are playing in, rather than find situations that they can shine in with the only hammer they have been given. This also allows for a separation of gameplay mechanics (combat, specifically) and the political game. The mercenary life of many MechWarriors is a great place to tinker with the meaning of allegiance and what it means to the interaction between immediate gameplay and long-term citizenship in a game world.
So, add these five key ingredients to a bowl, blend it up with a fine tooth comb, sift out the bugs, cook at 40hrs/week for a few years. What are we left with?
Things really could go in a few different directions, and the frosting on the cake (the lore and setting) could be any of a couple different flavors. What I’d hope to see is the following:
- Player choice drives future development
- Flexible approaches to mission-based gameplay
- Bring the player, not the class (whether this means role swapping on the fly or a classless system, either is fine)
- Episodic content, where time actually moves on, and some stories have a real end
- Location matters, and allegiance has gameplay ramifications (more than a faction rep grind and unlocking vendors)
- One-time monetization of chapters (like Guild Wars expansions), and the ability to play any as standalone games or mix and match
I’d wrap these up in a Steampunk-Battletech lore cocktail, m’self, but that’s more a matter of taste than functionality.
What think ye? What are the best ingredients of an episodic MMO, and how would it be presented?
Oh, and what if this sort of thing (the reclaiming of Gnomeregan) were built on player actions? At my office, we’ve talked about flow tracking, where devs can take a look at where gamers tend to play and how long they tend to do so, especially where they have problems or memorable moments. I doubt that Blizzard is unaware of such technology, but who knows if they are using it on WoW. BBB also suggests that the Trolls could get a capital; what if that were determined by where Troll players have been playing and how long they did? By aggregate Troll player reputation, either social or faction rep?
There are all sorts of subtle (or gross) ways like that to take player choices into account, whether in aggregate or high profile individual player or guild choices. Not only could that make the game seem alive, but also make it more interesting. (Though maybe more addictive, though, which isn’t always the best idea, duly noted by Callan in the Home Town Pride article’s comments.)
Still, it seems like a good way to make the virtual world more interesting, increasing the quality of feedback between players, devs and the world they share.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
The first lines made me wonder about what you were actually talking.
But… wow. Yeah, this blog entry was a vision of paradise. And it is not only a vision, you also clearly described how it could work.
What really makes me wonder is that nobody dares to copy or enhance the model of Guild Wars. It apparently paid more than the bills, was and is a huge success.
But till GW2 we won’t have any major MMO launch besides WoW’s Cataclysm and SW:TOR. I am highly sceptical about SW:TOR from Bioware, as there are rumors about a sub+item shop model (greetings from CO, STO and Cryptic Entertainment in general, cough) and the focus on story seems to become more a fully voiced interactive movie than a new kind of MMO experience. But Bioware knows what they are doing, though I don’t think that Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 can partly be a template for a new kind of MMO.
I vote for Teshworld. I hope you will soon become president of NinjaBee, make a hostile takeover of Activision Blizzard and bring gamers a new age of enlightenment.
(I think I should have added a smiley… but actually I would really like that.)
*chuckle*
Glad you stuck with it and that it makes sense. That opening isn’t my best work. I wrote this over a week and a half, so it’s a bit disjointed. Ah, well, the core ideas are what I’m really driving at.
I’m looking forward to GW2 as well, and I’m similarly ambivalent about SW:TOR. It has potential to be sure (I loved KOTOR), but I just don’t see it working as an MMO, and if it turns into a spectacular single player game that I have to pay a subscription for, well, I’ll pass.
I would definitely like a NinjaBee squad at my beck and call. Nothing like ninjas to give a company some… leverage.
good post… the only issue i see is that i don’t think there would be enough time after gathering the information from the players to turn around and make a whole new expansion… you’d end up with 2-3 years at least between expansions… or the expansions would just be really similar with very little new and exciting stuff… then again WoW seems to be doing fine with 2-ish years between expansions… but if each episode is a full game that can stand on its own, then that’s going to be tough to create in that short amount of time, especially if you have to wait a year after the original game is released to collect the necessary data to make the next expansion.
it’s a great idea… but i think it’d be a lot more difficult and time consuming that it seems at first glance.
Indeed, you’d have to front-run some design. I think that’s what the L5R guys did; they had the backbone of their next set designed, then had some contingency plans for what the players would do, plans that would change significant parts of the next set, but not the entire thing. Once they got that feedback, they slotted in the relevant data.
Sort of a quantum design, as it were; they set up quantum states for some design elements, and let the player actions collapse the states. Again, it’s about limiting the scope of the project. It’s doable if you’re not waiting for players to choose *everything*, rather, just giving them enough to feel relevant and keep the game interesting.
This also makes the dev process more interesting, I’d think. You’d always want to be at least two or three chapters ahead, but seeing what players do may well change the design in fascinating ways. That’s the beauty (and challenge, to be sure) of working on a “live” game or a series of games that can take player feedback.
I love the idea’s you’ve come up with Tesh and a game like this could be a paradise. I stumbled across a mech game I thought sounded pretty interesting and thought I’d post a link here. Looks to be a EvE-esq mmo, not exactly what you described in your post but maybe worth a look at any rate.
http://www.perpetuum-online.com/
“What really makes me wonder is that nobody dares to copy or enhance the model of Guild Wars.”
Probably because while I think GW made a nice amount of money, it’s design isn’t about making an obscene amount of money. The whole lack of subscription – call me a softy, but I think they wanted people to own the game they play. But it doesn’t allow for obscene amounts of income.
Tesh,
Being a table top roleplayer for many years, the phrase “just giving them enough to feel relevant” makes me shudder.
It’s the ‘feel’ part. I’ve come to realise it’s all too easy to trick someones senses so they feel something is happening, when it isn’t. It’s all too easy to set up a matrix.
Not to mention probably alot of wow players think they are relevant when they raid the lich king, when really they are just sitting on the side lines, merely listening to a story, not taking part in shaping the story.
Just giving someone enough to make them feel relevant? This is as worthless as sitting on the sidelines. Players aught to have a real stake in the future of the story, not just spectators who sometimes either thumb up or thumb down.
Callan, philosophically, I agree. I’d prefer that players have a LOT of control over how the game evolves. The biggest reason I speak of limiting that power is to make this sort of game design feasible by limiting the scope. There are other significant reasons, like the inevitability of abuse by unsavory players and letting devs have a hand in their own playground, but the biggest reason is scope. It’s easier to build in a few quantum storytelling states than it is to build a finite state machine for the whole world.
Perhaps I phrased it unnecessarily unmercifully. Yes, players should have a hand on the wheel. That’s the whole point of this idea at the core. They shouldn’t just feel relevant, they should *be* relevant and even crucial. Trouble is, the devs just can’t count on a faceless horde of anonymous players to be reliable, civil or courteous.
We are *not* playing tabletop games where a few friends sit at the same table, and have to abide by some simple rules of interpersonal conduct, with a GM who is unafraid of slapping down misbehavior, and who has complete control over a world only limited by imagination. We’re dealing with limited digital worlds with finite resources. We’re playing with griefers, pirates, idiots and jerks who have *no* sense of responsibility and no way of being called to task. We can’t even inoculate the game against such players, and the only almost-reliable compensation tool is banning, which doesn’t deter a determined griefer for long.
There must be limits, and every game balances player agency against these concerns.
Believe me, I’d prefer to have a fantastic, whimsical digital world where players have a huge hand in the molding and shaping of the destiny of the world. It simply can’t be done to suit my tastes when there are too many people out there actively seeking to destroy it for kicks, with all the tools to do so.
Perhaps hopefully, this is why there will always be room for tabletop gaming. Perhaps I should be trying to create the digital equivalent of a tabletop game, complete with exclusive access and near-godlike powers for the GM. I think the D&D guys are on that already, though.
My efforts here are bent to try to capture some of the essence of letting players have some control, while still keeping things at least barely civil, and letting devs tell a story, and actually produce the thing at a reasonable rate.
I’m playing in that design space between the “gaming on rails” of WoW and the like and tabletop gaming. Maybe it’s a no-man’s land because it’s impossible to do anything useful there. I can’t help but explore it a bit, though. I even looked around the Barrens a bit. Exploring, it’s what I do, in games and in game design space.
Once I had a GM who actually said to me we could do all sorts of stuff, but in the end he knew where we were ending up.
To me that’s players amuse themselves while the devs tell the ‘real’ story. No, the ‘devs tell a story while players play with some numbers’ model of play only works in so much as everyone pretends to themselves that the players play really has anything to do with the story the devs are telling. I mean, genuinely believe it – which is delusional. And if you don’t genuinely believe it, it’s entirely unsatisfactory. You know what your doing has nothing to do with what is called the big important story.
What I’m talking about is that even the devs don’t really know where the story will end up (gah…’end’ up – that’s also an issue with current mmorpg thinking). The story is only ever being crafted in the moment – it’s not being prescripted by anyone.
If the handling the devs set up for all these unsavory types means they start to know where the story is going in advance, that’s dumb. It’s just taking control of the story with the pretense of maintaining security.
I’m pretty sure security can be maintained without utterly controlling/prescripting the story. So much so that to me someone taking control over it in the name of security is someone just interested in power over it to begin with. It reminds me of politicians using the phenomina of terrorism as a method of empire building for themselves.
Anyway, the critical, pivotal point is that the devs wouldn’t know where the story is going themselves.
That could just be something as binary as whether the orc village or elf village gets destroyed. It doesn’t have to be super intellectual or anything.
But if it doesn’t matter which is destroyed and sir mixalot the NPC paladin will come down either way…then someones been prescripting.
I don’t think it’s impossible, even with mmorpg cultural habits of inviting every weirdo and miscreant they can find. I think you could maintain security on the orc/elf village thing, and yet also resist making it just an activity to keep the players occupied while the devs tell the ‘real’ story. Security doesn’t mean the real story can only ever be in the devs hands.
That’s what I was trying to describe with the quantum states. Devs set up pockets of the game that they open to player input and see what happens. As a dev, I think that would be fascinating. Of course, logandilts up there is right that as a dev, you’d have to stay ahead of the game. That doesn’t mean prescripting everything, but it does mean planning ahead for what players *might* do. If it just winds up as a series of binary situations, that’s fine, too.
See, I’m not thinking of this as a way to fool players into thinking they are important, I’m thinking of it as a way to *make* them important in reality. Speaking as a dev, it would be a bit more to get a handle on, but I’d also really like to see what players do (it’s always crazy) and find a way to work that into the flow and design of the game. When I talk game design, I *want* that feedback as a dev as much as when I’m looking at it as a player.
I’m not sure, logandilts seems to be calling for whole new games, not playing the same game in order to influence what is overall a fictional stories progress/writing?
And I think staying ahead of the game is so close to second guessing/prescripting. I’ve done this at table top myself.
Instead I think you make a base structure which can handle certain types of decisions and you stick with that, rather than trying to pretend absolutely anything can happen. Some of the newer indie rpg’s are based around specific situations, rather than trying to encapsulate some sort of universal set of options. Like in the game ‘my life with master’ you deal alot with…your master. It doesn’t pretend your going to have choices centered around anything else.
That base structure keeps things from diverging outside of what you can handle, rather than trying to second guess what the players want so they can never diverge.
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