John Smedley On the Future of MMOGs

RosethornKB writes "John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, wrote a letter about SOE's look to the future. In it, Smedley asks some questions about virtual children, skill based combat and player created content. KillerBetties.com posts a response to his questions. From the article: "What if you could have families in MMO's? Virtual Children... What if your characters could have children and pass on the family name...This is a very vague idea and I'm not sure if he words it that way on purpose or not. The concept of Virtual Children and passing on the family name isn't new. For example, upcoming Limitless Horizons MMO Mourning has had it in their design since the game first was announced. Their system is actually very interesting in theory."" Grimwell.com has commentary on SOE's recent activities.

Comments

I'm really not sure what the future holds...

[Goronmon]

Its tough to know what the future of MMOGs hold when you consider how little the genre has changed since the Everquest days. I mean, really, look at the gameplay elements of the first 3d games, Everquest and Asheron's Call 1...the games coming out today play almost the same exact way. In fact, you could almost consider games today a step back, since in AC1 you could at least dodge projectiles and spells if you wanted to.

I mean, yeah, sure, the games have gotten better, but mostly in terms of graphics. The core of these games is still about creating a character, running at mobs and hitting a bunch of icons on the interface to use different skills. Aside from the gameplay, the environment is still about the same. Quests are getting better, but they are still as simple as "Go here and kill this." with some little variation thrown in.

Another pet peeve of mine is character creation where you have to choose your characters skill set before you even get to play the game. I wish a game was open-ended where you could dabble in different areas as you went on, before deciding what to actually stick to. I want game rules like PvP that are determined by in-game repurcussions, not by hard-coded limits by the developers.

I guess I just see tons of this untapped potential for MMOGs that just isn't being realized. Everygame seems to tought its one big, new "feature" that is really just a mild improvement on what was done previously.

Re:I'm really not sure what the future holds...

[Durinthal]

Funny.. a lot of MUDs have been around for years that have the skill development after creation deal, not to mention the virtual family concept mentioned in the article. I'm honestly wondering why they're still so much more detailed than visual MMOs.

Re:I'm really not sure what the future holds...

[Jameth]

You'd be right about them being largely unchanged if you started at EQ, which really isn't reasonable if you consider how successful UO was. It may be dead now (only 21 servers and an average of around 20,000 players on at a time, not including the free servers), but UO was huge in its day and really kicked off the MMOG market.

So, Ultima Online had:

PvP with in-game repurcussions that worked adequately (bounties, murder counts, reputation, etc...)

Skills that were determined during gameplay (you have a percent score for each skill, you can start with three skills with a total of 100 points and none over fifty), raising in skill level just by using the skill, rather than by putting points towards it.

Statistics (Str/Dex/Int) determined the same as skills.

Skill and stat atrophy (it was fine once they let you control locking and so-such) so that you could not get infinitely good by mastering every skill, but rather had to find your own balance and maintain it. However, you could freely switch skill lines with only a little work.

Whether for better or worse, MMOGs have changed a lot since the beginning.

Re:I'm really not sure what the future holds...

[ajs]

What the future holds for MMOGs is uncertain, as you say, but it certainly will not involve SOE unless they do something dramatic to demonstrate to the gamers of the world that they have changed.

I played EverQuest for four years, and in that time it went from a fairly story-driven game with GMs who at least made an effort to incorporate players into the storyline to a pay-per-dungeon-crawl that had almsot no GMs and very little customer-focus (they changed this a bit just before I quit, but it was far too little, far too late).

When EQ2 came out, almost everyone I knew was in one of two camps: the "I've never played EQ, so I don't need to start" camp and the "another SOE game?!" camp.

For those who wish to learn from SOE's mistakes: yes, customers whine, cheat and otherwise behave poorly, but keep in mind that that ill behaved mass of complaints is your revenue stream, and treating them without a modicum of respect, and more importantly treating them GAME without a great deal of respect is the fastest, easiest way to lose your player base to the next game to come along.

Hope this is helpful to those of you working on the next generaion of game.

-Perlmonkey AKA Deepone

So, in a MMORPG...

[Realistic_Dragon]

...when she walks out and leaves you she takes the kids, half your gold and the pet dragon, just like in real life?

Magic in MMORPGs

[Dogun]

Here's a quick one for you: How many of you out there choose mages as your first character EVERY SINGLE TIME? Probably a lot of you.

You know what I'd like to see?
A MMORPG with a magic system that wasn't geared toward combat, or ease of use. Something so incredibly complicated that you have no idea what's going on. For once, I'd like to see the PLAYER learn magical theory. And the magical theory to be entirely player researched, and incomplete.
A magic system that lets YOU design spells, but all the knowledge you need to do so comes from experimental error. A magic system that KILLS you if you screw up badly enough.
Obviously, that would be one of the greatest challenges ever to create, but I'll tell you right now, I'd quit my job if I had one and play that 24/7.
Who's with me on that?

Re:Magic in MMORPGs

[Jameth]

The problem is that, if you can design the spells it will all just end up in a tutorial online.

The better solution is to just make spells which are more complex to use, as many single player games have. Unfortunately, most complex usage spells require low latency because timing and so-such are often vital for them.

I would personally prefer a magical system which incorporates magic into the world, rather than having it bolted onto the side at random. That is, usually they just say, "It's a world like ours, with magic," rather than making it a world which heavily uses magic. Why don't crafters use magic? Wouldn't fire spells help a blacksmith? Why don't warriors incorporate small spells into battle to give that extra little umph to a swing here and there? What about the city planners? How many of them, used magic to make a place that was truly efficient?

And, remember, above all, that it is a game. Thus, making it fun is paramount. I think that a strongly interwoven magic system with many spells which can be used cleverly can be very fun. I don't think a system where you accidentally blow your head off because you're the only person not reading the mage's strategy guide is such a good idea.

We need more bandwidth

[nate nice]

We seriously need more bandwidth in these games. And if throwing more bandwidth isn't likely anytime soon we will need to develop better algortihms and design better systems for ensuring players have low latecny when encountering large amount of other netoworked players.

All too often when a player is near a large group of other players they are hit with a large lag spike making large scale PvP frustrating and frankly, not fun.

It is this single issue I believe these games need to address before moving onto anything else really.

We'll see how Blizzard tackles it with their battleround concept of making an instance out of a predetermined largescale PvP arena, but even if this works it needs to go further. We have to figure out how to make flash mobs of people interact like anything else without the high latency that is a characteristic of all these games.

Fraom DaOC, Shadowbane, WoW and the few other I have played or observed, it seems this is the one consistant plague they all have.

I offer no solutions as I haven't thought to hard on how to solve this problem and even if I did it's possible my ideas would be naive considering I don't have experiance designing or developing these types of systems. However, from a players viewpoint, I can assure you this is a problem.