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Grinding Time - On MMORPG Character Advancement
An anonymous reader alerted us that "Starglade has an editorial about character development systems, where the author discusses the two most common types of character improvement (classes & levelling, and skill based improvement), and makes some suggestions for future systems in MMORPGs."
Not much here that isn't already in any gaming forum, though ussually less verbose. His ideal solution to gaining skills is to set a goal for your character when you leave and when you come back your character has made some progress, (reminds me of ... well I can't remember the name...little help .. not everquest but ...? ). Other methods of achieving this include World of Warcraft's "rest points" which punish players for playing too long by giving them fewer experience points on kills (Blizzard's euphamism:they'll tell you its a reward taking beaks).
Advancement is one of the cornerstones i most MMOGs (if not all). Although you know you are just moving bytes on a server its still gives you a sense of achievement that for me (and i suspect many others) is very important. Although some games have tried "achievement reward" by making it possible to change the world somehow it has imo been with little succes. But as MMOGs are supposed to offer alot of playing time (today - i suspect someday there will be "short life" MMOGs) AND in the process give "achievement reward" there are bound to be stretches of playing time without rewards (or very small rewards). So imo the solution to the "grind" problem doesnt lie in the stat/skill/level system - the solution is to make the grind fun (imo to many MMOGs seems to have started with stat/level system, storyline and environment instead of focusing on what the players will be doing 90% of the time). Discussing different stat/skill/level strategies is ofcourse interrstion but i dont think anyone can be termend better than others - its highly game dependent. The one problem I think is very interresting regarding stat/skill/level strategies is how to make it possible for all players to play together regardless of "level" - and still being fun and rewarding for everyone.
What does D&D do exactly. It creates a ruleset for imaginary characters to behave in a fictional world. So it has rules stating that for each point of strength you have you can lift X amount of goods. That before you can do action X you need skills Y and Z. Nothing wrong with this being used in computer games right?
Wrong. D&D does something else as well. It has carefully twisted and tweaked the rules to be playable with nothing more then a piece of paper a pencil and some dice. This means that the calculations used are kinda simplified, way more simple then a modern computer could handle. It would be like playing a modern flight simulator but for some reason restricting your self to a flight model wich can be calculated by hand. Why? We have a bloody computer. Doing complex math and keeping track of stats is what it does best. Let the CPU sweat.
So if the D&D rules lost their pencil&paper&dice simplifications/optimizations then it would be perfect right?
Wrong. D&D games have something a computer does not have. A sentient game controller. Even if dungeon master is using a boxed adventure he will/should have the capability to adjust the game on the fly to the party playing it. If the thief of the party isn't there any half decent game master will of course quickly add a way around a crucial lock. If a roll fails that is going to kill the adventure to early or a party fails to pick up a clue he will make a choice wether he had enough or to step in and help out. An extra NPC helping in a fight, a monster that stumbles. Or just cut things short if the party is getting bored. The computer has no such capability. It can't adjust the game because it will never detect the need for it.
So if the ruleset started to make full use of the CPU capabilities and the game had godlike scripting to adjust the game to the player it would be good right?
WRONG. D&D has yet one more difference. D&D is a social game, you play it in a group. It is the going on an adventure together that makes Pen&Paper RPG's fun. But it also means a lot of the rules are there to make everyone a "equal" member of the party. No super powerfull everything devastating wizards wiping the battlefield clean while the thief is running for his life from everything bigger then a rat. The most famous adventure party, the fellowship of the ring, would be hard to put in D&D rules. Exactly what is the problem with a healing thief. A sword wielding wizard? Why am I so restricted in my classes? Simple, so that I need the other players in my party. BUT computer games are solo afairs. I am the hero, I am the center of the story, the universe revolves around me! No need to play fair. If I want to stab someone with the biggest sword available and then pour magic into the wound like there is no tomorrow then let me.
But no. Wizards don't sweep the battlefield. They can do 3-4 spells and then must go for a lie down. Constantly finding resting places. IS that supposed to be fun? I rarely use magic in D&D games. I prefer to kick ass.
Get rid of the limits. Battles do not have to be balanced, the computer controlled NPC's are not going to suffer confidence crisises because my player character scores all the kills. Or even the other way around, let the beginner player character have the help of a more powerfull older master. You know to stop the annoying killed by rat syndrome.
D&D has its uses but it is now more restraint on game development then an aid. One of my biggest peefs is that it shouts artificial. Take weapon skills. My character has totally mastered the long sword (one-handed) but if you put a short sword in his hands he has no idea wich end to hold. WTF? It is a bloody sword. Same with bows. Exactly how can someone master the long bow yet have no clue on how to use a short bow? Or going further. The art of using a bow involves working out flightpaths. A skill also needed in using a sling or a thr
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Personally, I don't get why people would play a MMORPG and then spend most of their time solo; if I
You do realize, some people want to play FFXI because they played every single other game in the series, but they don't have the multiple hours to invest in one sitting that organizing a party requires? I have heard many horror stories of people waiting HOURS to find a group that would let them in. Hours of sitting doing nothing is fun?
What if said person wants to level their main job, not do a quest or start a sub-job, but no groups are available?
Ever think of time zone issues, where they might play on off-peak times where the server population is lower?
As a game ages and the average population's level range is higher, who are latecomers going to group with?
I'm not flaming, just there's a lot of downside to the "you have to have the perfect group to advance" style of MMORPG that I thought would die with EverQuest but was reborn in FFXI. If all conditions are perfect grouping is wonderful, but how often does that happen? Having no other option is, in my opinion, terribly narrow-minded design.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
There's a semi-valid point here, but I think it misses some of the "point" of FFXI. First of all, playing the game because you played every other Final Fantasy game, while no doubt a motivation for a lot of people, isn't really the right mindset to go into this with. It's a totally different style of game and you're going to get very different things out of it. Chances are, players who are playing it purely for the "Final Fantasy" factor won't last past a couple of days anyway.
The problems of getting into decent parties are hugely overstated, in my experience. Newbies often find it harder to get invites because there are certain ways in which they inadvertently flag themselves as newbies. Failure to set up a search comment and failure to have at least rank 3 (which you want to get as soon as you get to level 24 or 25) are the most obvious ways. FFXI's job system means that you're always going to get lots of experienced players ploughing through the lower levels and they'll need parties to do so. Look even vaguely competent and you will get invites. It's only since I got above level 50 that things have gotten a bit slower, as the majority of English-speaking players haven't penetrated to these levels yet. It'll improve over time.
Oh, and I'm playing from the UK, where the game isn't even released yet (I imported a copy from the states) and even though I only play in the evenings here, time zone issues have never hindered me.
I think your main point is invalid on its face. Specifically, you seem to denigrate the fact that to get to high levels in an MMORPG requires many, many hours of work while playing down the fact that in order to get "mad skillz" at Quake it takes many, many hours of practice. I could turn it around and complain that when I tried to play Quake 3 multiplayer I got my ass handed to me over and over again because other people had so much more time to dedicate to playing the game - since I don't have that kind of time, I can't enjoy Quake 3 online.
Believe me, if the revolution is to turn MMORPGs into games more like first-person shooters, it's not going to expand the audience. It will simply eliminate the current audience and force the development of a new one.
I think you missed my point. I'm not disagreeing; both the FPS game and the MMORPG require huge time investments to get 'good'. The FPS game rewards you with better skills; you learn the nuances of the game, strategy with using weapons, etc, and combine that with learned reflexes. The MMORPG rewards your character. You gain xp, you go up levels.
I want to take a little of the best of both games. The way I see it: no matter how much you practice at Q3, every game you're starting over. Even if you've won 10,000 1v1 matches against top pros in a row without ever getting fragged, the score is 0-0 and you get a random starting position. With the MMORPG, it's another completely different issue: you've played for years. You've got 5 characters at max level. You are the elite player in terms of world knowledge and build strategy. You create a new level 1 character... and you know what? You're more or less a newb again. This is especially true on City of Heroes, where your ability to hand down gear is ~nil, world knowledge counts for almost nothing (there are very few secrets to know, quests are given out in the most straightforward manner, etc -- BUILD knowledge counts, but not knowing the world; especially not early on), and you're lucky to be able to outperform a brand new character who picked the same AT and powersets as you by 10-20%.
Thus I would propose a combination of sorts. An MMORPG where your character had certain powers and abilities, and even a newb with no twitch skills can aim and fire and grind it out... but where over time, if you end up with mad skillz, you could take the same character and significantly outperform. So you add both the 'twitch' skills (and I think that's a derogatory term; I'd rather call it reflexes or hand-eye) and the character development.
Thus your character grows... and so do you as a player. Even if you start a new character, some chunk of your time spent playing the game is 'portable'; you gain from play.
I think there's a whole set of people who won't like the idea. They want MMORPGs to be about tweaking their characters and grinding out their time. But I also think there's a big set of people who'd love to play a game where you could gain skill at playing while your character gains power. So some of the traditional MMORPG crowd will go away; some of the competitive FPS crowd will join in. And some new players might join the genre.
There are some side advantages. Players will great skill can make the 'less ideal' types still playable through skill. PvP play takes on a whole new depths as you have no only types of characters facing off, but the skill and manner in which they're played matters, too.
I'm going to have to look into Planetside and see how it plays; I'd heard of it, but had not heard it tried to incorporate the two play types.
It sounds to me like you just prefer FPS games to non-twitch RPG games
Actually, after I quit Q3 after the '02 quakecon, NWN had come out and I played that online pretty much as loyally as I'd played Q3. I'm actually an RPG fan from waaay back... infocom, SSI Goldbox, Ultima, etc... whereas Q3 was the only FPS I played after Duke Nukem came out.
I've been fond of the single-player FPS RPGs -- Deux Ex and JKII being good examples of FPS play with RPG-like character development. I think a visionary development shop could merge the two and really have a game for the ages.
Theres no way out of the 'level grind' system. It is the system entire genres are built upon and a gameplay convention thats fromulaic and financially successful. There is no other proven gameplay mechanic which has sold *single player games* as well as multiplayer games that has proven successful other then FPS.
That is *the whole game*. Things that you can only 'consume once' like quests or games in which experience content too fast lose subscribes after the first few months without any content updates. Take a look at the types of games today. In each and every genre they boil down the player doing one of two things:
1) Action/twitch interactivity (skill based) requiring your constant/immediate attention and practice to get better.
2) Passive interaction with you turning on automatically controlled features of your character with little control over your avatar.
3) Skill allocation and item finding/hunting.
4) Goals and challenges that are fun and interesting *for a long time*. The for a long time part is the hard part. Everything suffers from the law familiarity and of diminishing returns even for 'fun' things.
There is just no way to make a game fun for any length of time without some sort of goal or level system. Diablo II is probably the BEST example of a game where people are burnt the hell out but still play anyway. Why? Despite the fact that its free, item finding and making different builds with characters are pretty much the *only* reason you'd continue to play diablo II four or so years after release. The "phat loot" and gamling for better items are essentially the whole game now-adays. That is the only thing that draws people back is finding better stuff otherwise people would have stopped playing it ages ago after the first few weeks or months online.
As a former FFXI player I vouch for the fact that MMO's pacing is too slow and too much of a timesink for most adult people who have jobs.