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Incentive To Keep Playing MMORPGs?
Thanks to RPGDot for their opinion piece discussing why gamers would want to continue playing MMORPGs over long periods of time. The piece asks: "What is the best way to keep a player in an MMORPG? Reward their effort? Players will never have enough rewards to satisfy them for long periods of time. Remove all advancement limits? Players will complain that there is no goal. Reward their patience? Sure, but the gameplay has to be pretty engaging, if skills are gained through time instead of effort", but concludes without a definitive answer, begging the question - is there one?
I think the first asheron's call had the right idea: create an epic storyline, with quests and events, and the base the outcomes on what the community does.
For example, in AC1, there was a period during which these shadowy beings began to invade. over a couple of months, these creepy floating fortresses started appearing outside towns, strange new monsters appeared, and new dungeons opened up. Over the coming months, quests and events precedeing the resurection of a demon-god began to appear. Some players swore to help revive the god, and others tried to defend the shirnes and prevent it. One server actually held back the march of darkness most of the month but finally fell and the entire world was assaulted by this devil.
I am simplfying it a lot but you get the idea. I had a lot of friends that started playing the game more than ever when this event was going on, and I think something like thisis the key to keeping your customers.
The "sandbox model" in which players are just let loose in a static world to kill respawning mobs over and over isn't appealing to about 90% of the potential MMORPG players (that is anyone that plays RPGs) If they want to grab that market, they need to make the game as interesting as a brandnew epic RPG every month. "new content every month? that will cost a fortune!" you say. But I say "whoever figures out a way to do it without breaking the bank or hiking subscription costs will be the one that comes out on top"
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
If your players stop playing your game, they have to reformat their brains to stop thinking about it. They have to deal with everyday life, which is annoying, because they've been neglecting it for so long. Thus you don't have to try very hard to keep them in the game, they want to stay in.
These questions could be the same as the ones to real life. What is the point of living? What is the point of going to work? Is there a goal? What is the goal? Yet numbers of people find life exceptionally fun, intriguing and worth living.
:P). It allows them to make choices without guilt or consequence. An MMORPG needs to have such a wide set of goals and choices to get to those goals, that a person's insatiable, psychologically proven, need for more more more takes over. The status quo is never good enough for people when there's an option.
/emote. Right now, people are too limited.
:P) still with you. I once knew a guy who proclaimed to be a video game fanatic. He didn't play many games. The reason? He owned a business, and that was the same kind of high to a whole new level.
Like previously mentioned, content is a wonderful, albeit expensive way, to keep people interest, coming back, and enjoying their online lives. But then, that's like reading a book. The game, like mentioned, has to be interactive. I believe this needs to be taken a full step further, to full interactivity.
MMORPGs can allow people to become things they can't be in real life (like real jackals
Another invention into interactivity is communication. Letting people interact with each other in brand new ways. I personally can't wait until they reach such a level that most any act is possible, that there is a graphical version of
The final thing, which is hard to balance between no consequence, is risk. There has to be some risk of loss. A game is no fun if it's too easy. There have to be ways you can end up where you began, with only the experience you've gained (RL kind, not ingame kind
Games need to emulate the openness of life without the consequences. They can be a person's release from the govt., from taxes, from the DMCA, from weird slashdot modders modding their great posts offtopic, from horrible cubicle life, from anything that has to exist in real life but they can't stand.
Is all this possible? No. You can't code life, yet. But you can make damn sure you come close, and if you do, people will want to escape into your world.
The best thing, IMO, is to let players start running their own worlds/servers at some point. The company could even move on to something else, and just keep selling client software (or not). It could even move into the new world of independent servers and sell game items and services, or contract tools and services to the people running independent servers. (On the other hand, maybe they would just be putting themselves out of business, I don't know :)
:)
This is generally where I'd like to see online gaming/entertainment go, maybe a mixture of free and commercial software, but with low barriers on people who want to run servers. This is how the Web happened
reed
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Of course there is a way...the social atmosphere.
Think about it..what is the difference between an MMORPG, and a game you play on your console at home? The thounsands of other people that make up the "world" you play in online combined with the immersive experience of playing in that world. That is what should be a MAIN attraction in online gaming. Of course, the content provider cannot dictate the quality of those playing the game, but they can help with:
*Limitless ammounts of clothing and items to make you unique in a crowded world
*Countless communication options (from chat, to emotes, etc) to allow for meaningful conversation and roleplay.
Of course there is always a tactical and gameplay component to these games, and to some this is the only reason for playing. But that will not keep people coming back alone, or else you are out of the game as soon as a better action packed game comes along, or the current one gets old (and it will sometime).
In my opinion, the social atmosphere is the only reason to continue to play MMORPGs for an extended period of time. I think many roleplayers would agree!
The biggest thing I have to say is that you should do a little dividing of the playing field.
For power gamer types, you can have a really difficult server where they will find many more people just like them. They will have no restrictions on how much they can play or do, but getting to the top will take tons of effort and time.
For more casual gamers, the kind that may get frustrated by how much time and effort it takes to do anything (WHAT?? I have to kill 300 Rats to get to level 2????), you should have a Social/Casual server. One in which "levelling" aspects of the game are restricted. You can only be in a fighting area of the game for a certain time amount per day/week. This would allow people that like to do things socially, or maybe only have time to play 1 or 2 nights a week or weekends to enjoy the game and progress, but not have tons of freaking power gamers running around to get jealous of.
The other main aspect that is critical, is that you need to make the game require some cooperation to reach goals. It can't be just click click click wow, I'm a god.... Next game! Make the game require teamwork and creativity to go forward. You also have to allow power gamer types to have influence over the world. They have to be able to affect the storyline, and be spontaneously inventive. Otherwise they will hit any limit you imagine.