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Piercing the Veil On Bioware's MMOG
Ziff Davis' newly rebranded computer-games magazines, Games for Windows, is showing off some of its new content on the 1up hub site. They've got a fantastic interview with James Ohlen, the creative director at Bioware Austin, Rich Vogel, and Gordon Walton, co-studio directors. For the first time, they reveal some new details on Bioware's upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Game. They don't talk about the game's setting, unsurprisingly, but they do go into some depth on the thinking behind their game. From the article: "GFW: One of the big problems with MMO gameplay is repeating the same content, or same instance if you're specifically talking about WoW, over and over again ... JO: That's something we don't want to encourage. We want to encourage players to continue to make progress in their story, to do new quests, consume new content, constantly move forward. The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that."
Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that
Not really. Or rather, it may be "good" in the sense that it's better than other ways, but not "good" in the sense that it actually accomplishes what the designers intended it to.
I was a wiz (admin, sort of) on a MOO back in the day. It was MUD-like in that it had a coded stats/skills system, including combat (both player-vs-player and player-vs-aHaB). It was MOO/MUSH like in that it emphasized actual role play, rather than dungeon crawling. In some ways, it was about the best setup one could hope for: there was a significant cultural value put on role playing.
This didn't stop players from sparring up stats and twinking their way through the game. It didn't stop "the grind." When people complained about what was going on, various technical means were put in place to try and curtail repetitive stat building and encourage role play. None of them succeeded to any great extent.
Or rather, they succeeded fantastically well for the players that availed themselves of the new systems - but those are the players who would have been role playing anyway.
After going through three different stat/skill systems on that game, with each change meant to discourage the grind and encourage role play, and none being terribly effective, I came to the conclusion that if you build it, they will not necessarily come. The very existence of a stats/skills system, I believe, means that there will be people who just try to game it as fast as they can, to up their numbers. And if the stats/skills system means anything at all within the game, those players will have an advantage over players who don't want to spend the time doing that.
Hell, you see the same thing in small groups of table-top RPGers. There's often (almost always, IME) one guy at the table, even in a good group, whose sole focus is levelling up. In that sort of small community setting, with constant one-on-one interaction between the GM and the players, and when the GM is pretty much god (I don't care how many dice you have in sneak, you cannot sneak across the football field in broad daylight. Fine, roll your dice...oh, sorry, you failed. He saw you and you died), this can be dealt with. None of those factors obtain in an online game: you have many people (a "Massive" amount, one might say), there isn't enough staff to have constant interaction with a real person, and the staff that does exist has to follow a specific set of rules, lest there be widespread player bitching and general dissatisfaction.
I spent a good lot of time working up a stat/skill system that, I believe, would have helped alleviate the problem (partially by recognizing that people will grind, and incorporating that into the system). I stopped before even trying to push for its implementation for two reasons: first, because I ended up realizing that it probably wouldn't work as well as I hoped. And second, because most of the players I bounced it off of didn't like it - they wanted the grind.
*shrug*
I wish BioWare and their future player base the best of luck. I really hope it works out for them. But I really don't think it will.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Article summary: Our game will be good. WoW was good, but ours will be better.
Slashdot, the only place where intellectuals can act like idiots... and still sound intellectual.
The grind is not attractive in any way. Going and killing the same dragon over and over again is not something I want to do. There are lots of different ways to encourage players to move forward. Simply putting more weight on storytelling experience points is a good way to do that.
As much gamers complain about "the grind", you can't have a successful MMO without one grind or another. It is unrealistic to expect developers to design, implement, test, and release fresh new content at anywhere near the rate that players can and will consume it. That means you need to have players repeating the same actions ad nauseam to progress, otherwise they will reach the "top" and have nothing left to do. Bored players quit the game, and that will hardly bring the business any money, now will it?
You can put me on record as saying there is absolutely no way to design an MMO without some form of mindless repetition.
I think if they can make an Oblivion/NWN type MMO with more focus on a damn good story and great quests, they will be very successful.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
When playing EQ or EQ2 or World of Warcraft...you get quests. But these quests do NOTHING to change the world around you. You're doing the exact same quests that everyone else is doing and the talk on the channels is like "did anyone do the "Orc Chief" quest yet? I still need two more hammers before I'm done". That's not really RPG is it?
What about dynamic quest generations? Think about this. You start out, you make your character. And that's it. You don't go up to the "quest giving NPC" to get your first quest. You just start out with basic equipment and that's it. Along your travels, perhaps the very first NPC you meet, or perhaps not, THEY may come up to YOU and say something like "my little boy hasn't come home in almost 3 days! I'm really worried about him, he was playing down by the Cave that's just South of here, can you please help?" And WHAM you have a quest. You're ONLY quest by the way. No stacking of quests.
Now, YOU are the only one with that quest. No one else has the "little boy lost quest". You move out and perhaps see another player along the road or off to the side and you ask him if he can help you out...there-by sharing your quest with him. The cave itself can be an instanced cave that is generated for you and in there the quest gets longer and longer and longer, talking to different NPC's that continue on with the generated story, generating more to the story. Perhaps the boy WAS in the the cave, you find a Troll in there that you think ate him...but no, the Troll is really a nice guy that actually saw the little boy being taken away through the caves by a group of soldiers to another area beyond the cave. WHAM, you have more to follow. This quest can go on and on and on and actually span the world as you move through it! And only you and your party have this quest. At any point you can choose to bow out and let the other player or players you've picked up along the way continue it and you go along your merry way. Perhaps to pick back up with it days later with a group STILL on the SAME quest that started with you. Or you go somewhere else.
I know, a story generation engine would have to be built and tested beyond belief. But couldn't something like this actually work? So you feel that you're really part of the world? Sure, there can be quests that are static that everyone of a certain class has to complete. Like a Fighter's quest...more like a "test" to gain rank. That can always be the same because it's the standard test that all fighters must go through. But for a living, breathing world, wouldn't a dynamic quest/story system be much more immersive?
Is something like this do-able? Otherwise, the world never really changes. Maybe big, server wide changes can happen due to a first-time quest like opening a gate to a new expansion or something. But little things that change the world here and there are non-existent. In MMORPG's now, that guy that lost his hammer at the beginning of the Horde newbie area in WoW is ALWAYS lost. You create a new character, BAM he's got a lost hammer in the exact same spot that you go and fetch for him. 3 or 4 people are also there to pick up that same hammer...even though there is only one there, they all pick up a hammer and deliver it to the guy...but the hammer is still lost and the next person now goes to find it. Nothing changes. It's all the same. Wouldn't it be better if a player were to have killed an NPC and now someone has to track down that player?
Or worse, "quests" are given by the same people over and over with the "collect twelve beetle eyes" kind of thing. Or just "kill 10 wild dogs". Doesn't anyone else find this boring? How about a farmer wants you to kill this pack of dogs that's been killing his sheep. You don't know how many there are, but you go out, find the dogs (track them perhaps?) kill them and see that one has a collar on it with a name. These are not wild dogs you find out, but they actually belong to someone. You tell this to the farmer and he tells you that it's a notorious Thief that lives nearby that's
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
As much gamers complain about "the grind", you can't have a successful MMO without one grind or another.
I take it you never played Ultima Online back in the 1998-2000 era?
Sure, you would find yourself doing repetitive tasks like chopping wood, mining, crafting, or killing certain creatures, but in general it wasn't a very kill something rinse and repeat type of game.
Mostly because of the player interaction and virtual economy. That and it wasn't that hard to become a 7xGM (what you would call a level 60 character that is maxed out) with maybe 3-4 months worth of casual play. I'd dare say you could get to be 7xGM in 2 if you macroed and played hard core.
Being such a big fan of UO kept me from being able to get into any other MMOGs since I did not like the grind and level systems.
Take away the leveling and XP and replace it with a skill system and I think you have a good game.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
> You know, I've never played a MMO game, and I doubt I ever will.
shut up then
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
wow... I remember UO. I also remember trying to get 100 in smithing and mining so that I could make money... I quit that after a few weeks because the game began to seem a bit too much like work. So then I tried my hand at some PvP, but got my ass handed to me because I wasn't pimped out... so I tried building my skills so that I could actually do some of the fun stuff... but I quit that after a few weeks because the game began to seem a bit too much like work.
There's a pattern there, but I'll be damned if I can find it...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
There's no easy way to do this.
World of Warcraft is the best yet. Its a mix of quests and grinding. You can grind if you want, or quest if you want. Grinding gets you loot, more money, etc. Questing is a little slower, but full of content and things to read, see, do, etc.
Instance running over and over is kind of dumb in my opinion, but with the game based around equipment so much..it leaves people little choice.
People that dedicate more time to the game should be more powerful than people that play less. A better idea, for WoW, is to make world drops truly drop off of anything in the game. For example, that Glowing Brighwood Staff might drop off of a level 20 enemy and make you rich, or give you a nice staff to look forward to.
The problem is that the best equipment is ONLY accessible to people that put hours and hours and hours and hours of play into the game. Its impossible to get most of the stuff if you aren't in an excellent guild. They could fix this by leaving the current loot tables, but giving more common enemies chances to drop rare equipment. For example if all level 60 creatures had a slight chance of dropping some rare dragon drop. Granted the chance may be pretty low...
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If you hate the grind but would love an evolving story, play Uru: coming this Christmas.
Maybe they can get an MMORPG right since there's no ending to screw up (like they did with NWN2 and KOTOR2).
It's developed by Simutronics (makers of Gemstone, DragonRealms). First of all, realize that this company has nearly 20 years of experience in MUDs.
They've been developing this engine for use in their game, Hero's Journey. One of the key things about Simutronics games is their army of GMs, constantly creating content that's tacked onto the world. Maps, quests, items, etc etc. They've worked hard to make their toolset easy for GMs to use to make new content, and add it to the world - seamlessly, with no patches downloaded.
That means a constant array of new material being released.
One of the aspects of Hero's Journey that I doubt will take place in Bioware's game, but would be awesome if it did, is the concept of an actual Hero's Journey with your character. Quests have branching storylines, several ways to complete them (with reactions appropriately by the quest generation schema)... and eventually you'll find that one of the big baddies of a failed quest has become your nemesis, and shows up again and again.
Another really cool thing about the Hero Engine is its ability for character customization. Think Oblivion (face, skintone, hair, etc) + UO (outfit customizability). I really liked this aspect of UO, and hopefully Bioware will take cue from this part of UO that has yet to be truly present in an MMO since (DAoC had some dyes, but they didn't do much and looked pretty ugly. This is more akin to what the armor customize tool in the NWN toolset was like, except you know - upgraded for today's technology)..
It also handles instancing as well as contiguous common areas. Whether it's more of a Guild Wars or more of a WoW is up to the developers.
Now, some commentary on the meat of the article;
"That's something we don't want to encourage. We want to encourage players to continue to make progress in their story, to do new quests, consume new content, constantly move forward."
This is encouraging to see. I hate grinding instances just as much as I hate grinding random mobs in the Plaguelands. They want players to constantly move forward - but there comes a point when a character's potential is met, and cannot proceed further. This makes a tough decision; my pet idea is to have permanent death, but have that death be an integral part in the creation of your next character. That leads you to build a sort of legacy, etc, and dying eventually becomes - while something of an inconvenience - just another step in playing the game, advancing your legacy. This way the game's overall character strength is more of a bell curve than an exponential curve.
Not sure if this is too late to make an impact but I agree with you very much regarding a death system, but most gamers don't want to waste their time investing in a character that eventually dies. I personally would love to keep rolling out new combinations of skills/etc (provided there was an interesting way to do so) but that doesn't fly with gamers, which makes it a questionable business decision. :(
I know more than a few people who have played a lot of MMORPGs and still think that UO was the best...myself included. What happened to player housing? Clothing? Skill-based systems? The holiday gifts (Guild Wars does this very well)? Player-owned NPC vendors? And a thousand other things that fostered a great social environment. Almost every MMORPG released, especially WoW, has been little more than "EverQuest Improved". People obviously loved being able to own and decorate a house/castle. The only problem was the urban sprawl, which is easy to fix if you only sell certain plots of land.
I just want another game where the CRPC, that huge group of roleplayers on Catskills, could live again. Horizons was going to be something great before internal politics killed it. It's been six years; MMORPGs should be so much more by now.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
All MMOG games have plenty of roleplaying. Everyone is roleplaying a 11year old kid in a basement while constantly typing "L01L0101 STFU!!!1!". If you want proper roleplaying there's nothing close to pen and paper DND. Of course that requires real life friends which I'm sure is very inconvenient for MMORPGers.
Why do all of these games have to have a maximum for their lvl system and skills ect... they should just make it harder and harder to get each new lvl or skill lvl. As far as repetitiveness in games throw in some wide scale wars , have some weapons that are Unique.....Thor's hammer , The Sword of Death . The Flying Ring/blade of Goatsey ect. If someone has it the only way to get it is to challenge them to a fight in an arena or just a fight to the death ect. The one thing i hate (and im a casual player mind you UO) is this BULLSH*T about well people who only play a little each week will feel leftout/disadvantaged/PMS....who cares. you get out of it what you put into it Same as anything in life. You want to just do casual gaming Fine ! You think roleplaying is more important (as in you MUST speak like this "Whom shalt we slay today" and all ways stay in character Coolbeans Be My Guest ! But stop whining when a rabbid squirll kills you. Try swinging that sword around instead of yapping your gums.
Why doesn't someone improve on the Spore engine (unique creatures breeding) for the basis for an RPG? Give a few restraints for certain "species", but let people make the animal look like whatever they want within limits. I know this would be a mess for modelers to make armor and such, but the world would be dynamic. This would also create unique creatures. An evolution approach to mobs. The strong (high level) survive, and the game becomes progressively harder, while continuing to get new mobs without any developer input. Just thinking outloud
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
I found Guild Wars to be full of a lot of story driven game play. The only problem is since I have to go into an instance to play any part of the action or story, I fealt I might as well be playing a single player game that had better graphics and not all the quirks of online game. If I am going to play across the network, I want to see others all the time.
That and it wasn't that hard to become a 7xGM (what you would call a level 60 character that is maxed out) with maybe 3-4 months worth of casual play. I'd dare say you could get to be 7xGM in 2 if you macroed and played hard core.People used macro bots to have a 6xGM (before the game got the PK nerf) in 3 days. Easy.
Yeah, it was *really* challenging to have your toon fight with a knife against another toon with a knife to work your swordfighting skill up. Just bot it up and let them run against each other with a bunch of healing potions, and viola, skills go up!
Please, stop acting like UO was hard. The only thing hard about UO (prior to the PK nerf) was trying to play the game without a bot or a powerful guild of friends. Gangs of PKers would lay in wait for a newbie toon to enter the one dungeon in town, and gank them. Repeatedly. Then wait until the person got tired of it and went to the woods far enough to make a burst run back to town impossible, and then another group would gank them there.
The game was ALL about ganking and griefing. Once they split the shards so that you could actually play the game without fear of being PKed, the game was effectively done. All the people that really wanted that had already been driven off. The rest wanted to continue their gankfest.
I really wanted to like UO, but I didn't know a single other soul playing the game. I met a few nice, fair and friendly people and joined their guild, but we all eventually got tired of not being able to do much of anything without getting ganked. Nothing like having you and 4 others get crushed by 20 "red" toons that lay in wait in a dungeon to really make a game worthless. I quit after about 6 months of being gang raped by people that acted like a pack of 11yr old girls that just decided you were no longer their friend. UO was my first MMO experience, and I almost didn't try another. After years of seeing the dregs of humanity that often was your stereotypical AD&D player that showed up for our college's gaming group, and seeing the exact same childish behavior in UO, I figured what was the point?
I next tried Asheron's Call, and it was almost as bad, with its pyramid scheme mechanics for guilds.
Thankfully, I got to try EQ, and played with some good people I knew in RL. I moved on to a good sized guild that became part of a great alliance. The people I met there will always be people I remember fondly.
Like someone else said, WoW has been such a huge success because the casual player can play it. EQ2 is now designed to really make the casual player have more fun. UO was brutal on the casual player. There was just no point in trying to play UO as anything less than a cold-blooded killer that has regressed to their early teens.
Yeah, that's what *I* want from a MMO.
The only way to eliminate Grind is to eliminate the concept of "leveling". Leveling up works in pen and paper RPGs where a live GM creates new content customized to the players. But the pale immitation of that (grinding) in MMORPGs is inadequate and quickly becomes un-fun.
Shooter multiplayer games are fun with little or no plot, and no character development beyond acquiring different items and maybe picking a character class at the start. The basic actions possible to the player are mostly available from the beginning - it's the interactions with environment and other players and development of *player* skills and knowledge that make them interesting.
Someone needs to implement a "shooter style" (no advancement) RPG. For ego-addicts, maybe provide a "ranking" system that doesn't affect game play, but gives players bragging rights for having played a lot, done lots of quests, etc.
SWG attempted it, but failed miserably. They had some of the concepts such as player run cities, a deep crafting system and player run stores and malls. Unfortunately they also included a grind which started as a skill grind, then became the jedi grind. They also had a severe lack of content. They got the sandbox built, but didn't give people enough toys to keep them playing there.
..to removing grinding is ultimately more unique content, and the removal of randomized rewards.
The second is farily simple, if the boss always drops the item, you've no need to come back and kill him again next week, and the week after, and the week after that. No reason at all to grind now.
The first part of that is the hard part. How do you keep up with player's demand for content without arbitrarily slowing them down. You could make the content very very difficult so that players progress very slowly, but that is not likely to be very popular, or very fun.
You could introduce dynamic content that is generated on the fly, which has been done to a limited extent in various games, but it doesn't work well enough to make up a large portion of the content.
I think a large part of the solution needs to be real GMs with the ability to truly interact with the players, not just glorified customer service people. Fresh content created in real time by GMs and dynamic computer generated content combined would drastically reduce the grinding.
The current model of huge chunks of content delivered every couple of months simply doesn't work.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
And while this article is really old, I just noticed your reply - The point in this different sort of death system is to change the paradigm of building a single character into building a whole legacy of characters. Maybe give characters a hovel when they start their character, and eventually through building their legacy, can have a palace... who knows.