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The Trouble with MMORPGs
jasoncart writes "The trouble with MMORPGs is a humorous account of one gamer's struggle to find and assume his place in the rapidly evolving societies which form a part of the online RPG explosion. Ultimately, it is also a lament for the loss of direction that is the scourge of the genre."
I got to the same stage as this author about 6 years ago. I spent lots and lots of time playing MUDs - (remember MUDs? Nahh, didn't think so!) before there even were such things as MMORPGs, and while I loved it at the time, after a while you've just done it all, seen it all, and just don't want to do it again. As a result, I've never bothered playing any of the graphical MMORPGs. They can't be that different from MUDs really, can they? I mean, in the enjoyment factor?
I enjoyed the social scene on my favourite MUDs but apart from the jadedness factor, they were a huge time (and money, this was pre-unmetered internet) sink.
-- Soluzar
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Simply put, MMORPGs are years behind MUDs. MMORPGs these days are glorified versions of Diablo. Even the most trade skill savvy MUDs really have just reduced trade skills into a Diablo equivalent... press this button so many times and win a prize. MMORPGs do not have consistent or coherent worlds. They rely purely upon addictive game mechanics and social communities built within the game to thrive. Personally, I went through the stage where I tried out addiction and found it to be less then enjoyable once I stepped back and realized how utterly boring these games were.
These days, I stick to MUDs. MUDs are light years ahead of MMORPGs. For instance, the MUD I normally play, ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ has a coherent world, enforced RP, and permanent death. No MMORPG comes even close to this. The game is NOT built around slaughtering thousands of NPCs. Just like in real life, it will only get you dead.
The day that MMORPGs will become worth while is when they find a formula other then pure addiction to keep people active. I think A Tale in the Desert is a great leap forward. Combining that sort of game play in with traditional action and adventure is where I believe it is at.
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless. I think that we have many years to come before MMORPGs can pull off what MUDs have already done.
Don't make me pay for the game twice:
If you charge a monthly fee to maintain your virtual world, that's okay. Just don't charge a second time for the game itself. The "game" in the box is just a client to connect to the real game on the server. It's as stupid as if AOL charged $50 for those CDs they give away and then charged their monthly fee.
By charging $50 just to get one's foot in the door, you chase of 90% of the people who would try the game if it just cost the first month's fee. At least some of those people would stick around.
Jason
ProfQuotes
But you're a trooper. You stiffen that upper lip and press on, certain that if you can only hang in there the good times will arrive and the game will be FUN again.
You, sir, should avoid cocaine at all costs.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Is systemic. These being 'persistent' worlds, they permit somebody to spend all their time in them, 16 hours a day if they like (although that is an extreme example). Yet the only way to get anywhere faster in the game is to spend more time at it.
Ordinary, casual gamers are forced to compete with everyone else in the game for the status/level of accomplishment they want, and to do this they have to run on a treadmill that just keeps getting steeper. Most people cannot devote 8 hours a day to the game, for the average person, even an hour every day works out to quit a lot.
Anybody who doesn't have some kind of obsession with in game achievements (which are NOT IMPORTANT, it's supposed to be a game, fun, not a substitute for real life), is eventually going to throw up their hands, questioning "How many rats do I have to kill?!" What happens is that the distance between the levels/goals you want to achieve keeps getting broader, yet the activities to reach them don't get consistently more challenging. It's just the same old repetition, and once it goes on long enough without you getting anywhere, you have to question the legitimacy of your goal. Is getting there really fun, or are you only trying to get there to get ahead of other people? If it's the latter, the game is probably adding more stress to your life than it relieves.
For the people on top, who essentially have free run of the game, it is fun, but to get to their level you have to spend ungodly amounts of time in the game, to the point where it is overwhelming your entire life. But that's the only way to get there. If they didn't do it, someone else would. Remember what I said about status in-game being the result of a competition between all the players, with those who spend the most time winning?
Everybody wants to feel like a winner, in life or even in any game where there is competition. But you have to ask yourself at some point, do I want to be a winner at point and click killing? The best trader of nonexistent commodities? How much are you willing to sacrifice for these things? For most people, MMORPGs make the sacrifice far too great.
Every time somebody tries to spell out what's wrong with MMORPGs they always get lost in the technical minutia and miss the big picture.
Multiplayer RPGs aren't anything new, they've been played with dice and pencils for decades, and these problems have all been solved there. People aren't tired of killing orcs in D&D. Pest control isn't the problem.
Making an RPG fun is about rewards. On a basic level, the player has fun when they are rewarded for their effors. The trouble is that giving the same reward over and over quickly looses it's apeal. It's hard, however, to create reward variety in an MMORPG because intangible rewards require a lot of creative output. There can't be a controlled plot because there are just so many people that it's infeasable to create that much independant content. This has caused the entire genre to fall into the trap of using levels, experience, and items as the sole rewards. After a while, another level is just a number on the screen, and another item is just another item. Unless the actual game play is it's own reward players will get tired of the game. This means that unexpected things need to happen that cause the players to think critically and encourage them to play the role. It means that every adventure can't be another version of "go kill this thing"; and it doesn't matter if that thing is a rat, or some new creature you've never seen. You'd get tired of all of it if that's all you did.
Sure, there's a small protion of gamers out there that will be sitisfied with seeing the level number go up over and over, but most people will find that it gets old quick.
Now if only the solution was simple....
The only options I see aren't compatible with the "let's make buckets of money for something we used to only be able to charge $50 for" model that most of these games follow. Either the game has to build a community that can support it on social merit alone, which people will not be willing to pay large sums of money for, or large numbers of creative professionals will have to be employed on the server side (think like the precursor to interactive entertainment as described in "The Diamond Age"), which would also cut severly into obscene profits. Either way, it seems to me that the massivly profitable MMORPG will soon be a thing of the past.
I think what he's more referring to is the Verant style of GM event, though.
Verant's guide to GM events: GM events can only involve a few people. Other players will be resentful if event participants get stuff they can't, purely because they were online at the right time to get in the event. Therefore, avoid giving players special rewards in events. Killing players is OK, because nobody is jealous of that.
Player's response: "When you see an event, log out. There's nothing in it for you and you'll probably get killed." I actually saw this posted on an EQ forum.
I think the focus needs to shift in RPG's away from leveling at all. Progression should be made mostly outside of computer. Want to kill dragons instead of rats? Then you're going to have to get good at playing the game. You (the person outside the computer) are going to have to gain new skills.
Whether the actual skills required to have your character succeed involve manual dexterity, fast thinking, good memory, or knowledge of the game world doesn't matter - and perhaps it could vary by class.
A lot of the fun of a game is getting better at the game (like I'm good at Super Monkey Ball) - where you are able to do things you just couldn't do before. Levelling is one way to have that happen, but it's artificial and ultimately unsatisfying - especially in a competitive setting where the winner is determined primarily by time/luck/cheating (rather than skill/focus).
If progress was based on progressing the skill of the player, imagine how much more satisfying it would be. Ever wonder why the first month of an MMORPG is satisfying? Because that's when YOU are gaining the skill to play,instead of your character.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Babylon 5, all flamewars aside, stands out from other series of its kind mainly because the entire 5-season storyline was written ahead of time. There were story arcs spanning multiple seasons, as well as fun little non-arc episodes. This is in contrast to most series, where the people behind it might come up with a rough overall sketch for the next season, but there's no solid framework that's been well thought out in advance, and when your ability to come up with new ideas falls behind the schedule of shows, it comes apart.
So maybe the way to keep people playing is to not keep them playing, so to speak. Come out with a game and say, "This game will be around until November 2005" (if it came out today). Have a coherent overall storyline and subplots, with contingency plans in case the users change the flow of things too far in one direction. Create an ultimate evil that needs HORDES of high-level warriors of all sorts to even meet face-to-face, let alone kill. And maybe in the end, if they don't have the strength, the players lose! Have events play out so that the big climactic battle is about a month before the game itself ends to provide a little coda and see what happens.
I think planning ahead like this will merge the best elements of offline RPGs and MMORPGs. There probably will be "heroes", or at least local badasses that everyone in town knows because they are fanatical players and have amazing powers.
This would be far cooler than, say, PSO Online: "Well, 534 teams of 4 people each have destroyed the 'ultimate evil' repeatedly, and that's just today." Better to have a definitive end, going out with a bang and all that.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I think that portion of the article is a good example of what is wrong with a lot of MMOG players. They find they don't like what they've already played, yet they still look towards the next game as if it's going to solve all of the problems. The author of the article already knew far more about WoW than I had even known was available about the game, and was writing about it as if he had already played the game.
WoW may or may not solve some of the problems with MMOGs, but it's not out yet and no one will even have any idea if it does until then. I still have problems with the payment model, even though I've tried 3 games for myself (UO, EQ, and PlanetSide), and my girlfriend just saw the payment model for herself last nite when I was showing her some of the information on Final Fantasy XI, and thought they (or I) were insane. She could've understood either the up-front payment or the subscription model, but the combination is too far out there, and I tend to agree. Even if I had to pay slightly more than normal for the first month, or subscribe for a minimum of 3 months at the start I could understand it, but $50 + $X/month is just too much. Luckily, I managed to find each of the games I've tried so far for less than $50, but in each case it certainly meant waiting quite a while (though less time with PS) after the launch, or even the stability problems being reduced.
PlanetSide had much less of the level treadmill and the 'pest control' aspects, but still started you off as basically cannon fodder rather than a useful individual. It also had a very short build-up until you reached the maximum level, and no content beyond the basic storyline (and a very sparse world with hotly contested areas that change hands constantly).
At the start of EQ, it seemed like there was something to do immediately, but then I realized after a couple of hours that I wouldn't be able to complete my first quest until I had levelled up a great deal (I couldn't even start on my way towards the area I needed to get to to start the quest without facing enemies that were significantly more powerful than I was). Oh, and getting killed by insects and bats was not my idea of fun, not to mention having to kill so many of them to get to level 3 (woohoo! ding!).
UO felt like a world that was already well established in which there was nothing to be done, and immediately presented me with a wolf to attack my character and another player that decided to help the wolf out. Oh, or a rabbit, which also had a 50/50 chance of killing my character.
I don't need to be all-powerful when I start a game, I just want a sense of something to do and a feeling that my character is maybe slightly more powerful than I really am in some way. It doesn't matter if it means that an orc in WoW has the same power (both in attack power and defensive power) as a bat in EQ, at least I would get killed by a swarm of orcs instead of a swarm of bats. If I have to commit genocide to level up, though, there's still something wrong. Genocide should be reserved for high-level characters (and committed quite easily against bats and low-level orcs).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I hate to say it, but ALL the so-called MMORPG games are based on 12 year old technology. They used to be called MUD's, used to be free to play, and required only a telnet client to play. The had this awesome graphics engine called "imagination" that let you read efficient little text descriptions and picture scenes that have yet to be created in any 3D game to date.
:)
SWG innovated by offering in-depth crafting and non-combat experience? Please. BatMUD did this a decade ago, and is still around and going strong. All of the things that these new graphical games are experimenting with are well-established ideas from text-based games.
I know, text games aren't COOL enough for today's kids. If it doesn't induce nausea at 120FPS or more, it's boring. Try playing one though. Yes, there are lots of them out there, and many of them are cookie-cutter garbage. But some of the larger ones really do provide good gameplay, and well crafted environments. Plus they don't cost you $50 to try.
I have also tried several of the MMORPG's, and the only one I ever went back to was DAoC, mainly because I liked the overall feel. I don't play them as much (since my cable modem is slow all too often), but I do hop on every so often when I want some eye-candy.
*I* am the favorite player of the company. I pay my $12/month and probably play about 20 hours or so, as opposed to the uber-leveler who plays 12 hours a day every day just to see if they can max out every class before the next expansion.
Very interesting... not that "the game is broken" because I don't really think the game is broken. I think SWG is a victim of its own ambition.
SWG is so realistic, it's actually just as mundane, tedious, political and intimidating as in real life! But that's the problem. People want to log into a fantasy world and be king of the mountain, and if everyone is king of the mountain, then what's the point of playing.
I can't disagree with any of your criticisms. I am amused however, because today's generation of ADHD kids don't have the patience and want instant gratification with the next generation of MMORPGs, and there's a paradox of trying to make a game immersive but also delivering the instant reward/motivation that keep people coming back.
I agree, SWG isn't terribly playable right now, but that's mainly because the game was designed as a backdrop world where the players would create an unparalled amount of content as opposed to following a script. If the game cannot attract the base amount, it will fail. It will be very interesting to see if: a) the game can mature so as to be playable and b) if SOE and Lucas have the patience to let this "Star Trek" be recognized for its genius before they cancel it.