Richard Garriot Argues Against Stagnant MMOG Design

The creator of Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa and well-known designer Richard Garriot spoke at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England on the subjects of stagnating MMOG design and the NCSoft deal with Sony. His commentary on Massive game design is fairly direct: "If you look at the vast majority of MMOs that has come out since Ultima Online and Everquest, you can look at the features and they are almost exactly the same. Even though the graphics have got better and the interface is much slicker, fundamentally the gameplay is unchanged. Worse yet, there are many things that have become standard that I look at and even though they are powerful enough to encourage the behavior of people obsessed with playing these games, I don't think they are the right way of building the future."

Comments

Re:Very perceptive Richard

[Om]

I think (and I could be wrong here) that that is exactly what he is trying to do with Tabula Rasa, innit?

Oh, I get it... this is the obligatory Richard-Garriot-Sucks thread. I would think it would be further down. My bad.

More elements of simulation needed

[spun]

MMORPGs need more interactive elements and less static content. I would love to see a game where you could start a merchant empire, overthrow a king, or build a village, as well as delving in dungeons and hacking monsters. Everything outside of combat skills is relatively useless in most MMORPGs. With elements of simulation included, skills such as diplomacy, leadership, and acting would become important. Every server would develop differently. Developers wouldn't write static content, but would instead script dynamic content that would draw from the present game world instead of shoe-horning new plots into every instance. For instance, rather than making quests that use the same NPCs, existing NPCs with the right characteristics would be used every time the quest was given. Rather than use the same locations, generic locations such as "any lower class bar" could be specified, and the quest might be activated any time the PC went into such a location.

Re:More elements of simulation needed

[vux984]

eve online only has one server, so developing 'dynamic' content that will work regardless of how 'each' server develops is comparatively trivial. All it has to do is work with the one server they've got in the state that its in.

As for being player directed...sure. But its player directed the way the real world is. A few are at the top calling the shots, and the VAST majority work for them, or work for someone who works for them, or are otherwise relatively irrelevant pawns in the game, who have about as much impact on the direction the game takes as they have on the direction the real world takes.

Now don't get me wrong, its entirely -possible- to control a trade empire. Its just utterly unlikely of ever becoming a reality. If 250,000 people log in each day dreaming of controlling a galaxy spanning empire... well, 249,500 of them will never reach their goal. The nature of the power consolidation that is represented by an empire is such that it is controlled by a small number of people. And to be one of the lucky few you have to essentially out-compete nearly everyone else who wants that same empire.

I guess if all you really want is to be a cog in someone elses wheel you'll likely reach that goal in Eve.

And, that, is eve at its hypothetical best... Eve, in my opinion, has been tainted by the devs/gm's who also PLAY. Even when they aren't outright cheating to give their corporations an edge, its pretty much a given that they'll have an information advantage. (Is it merely a coincidence that a corporation/alliance the devs are known to be involved with has been a dominant force in the game?) I don't mind devs playing a pve mmog, but when the game developers are also a competing to win against their own subscribers it sets the stage for scandals... which Eve has seen plenty of.

UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right since

[Xlipse]

He's totally right and he doesn't need to offer suggestions -- he's just stating the obvious because that's apparently what all the MMOG developers have forgotten since the UO/EQ days. Now, it's mostly about keeping players on the hamster wheel (grind) and paying the monthly fee to make your parent company/publisher happy.

For example: WoW is a terrible GRIND when you compare it to a game like UO, which had a much more robust setting to play in. Uo had crafting, gathering, hunting, quests, treasure hunting, boating in the seas, dungeons, role playing, houses, player cities and PVP (and that's just from 1996 to 2000 when I played) Those were all *MAJOR* aspects of the game. In WOW, the only major aspects are: PVP and Gear Grinding.

BOOORRRINNNGGG

Games like UO were designed to be open ended and non-linear, unlike WoW (which I played for 2 years, BTW). The UO developers might not have thought players would create an innovative city (such as Oasis on the Sonoma server) or build Fish Tanks in their towers using scraps of cloth left over from crafting and the fish you could catch from the sea... but due to the open ended design of the game, you COULD do creative things like this -- ALL over the place in UO.

That's what he is saying and I agree with him.

Re:Very perceptive Richard

[*weasel]

He's building a game. We don't know whether it will be better or not.

Also, he left Origin in 2000 and ostensibly started conceptualizing Tabula Rasa shortly thereafter.
That's a 3D Realms-style dry spell, punctuated with his occassional 'massmogs are niche/stagnant/whatever' articles.
Granted, TR will almost certainly hit shelves before DNF, but 3DRealms already had a Vaporware Lifetime Achievement award after 7 years. Surely he's due some 'pipe down until you ship' sentiment.

The other sticking point is that anyone who's followed the genre for more than a couple years knows the popular games are stagnating to a degree. And anyone who has any appreciable knowledge of the genre knows they've been stuck for more than 10 years -- all the most popular games are still pretty much derivatives of Diku, itself not a very big step away from D&D. One would more accurately say that massmogs have been largely stagnant since the first bastard child of Gygax and Bartle.

And yet the subtle change between EQ's level grind and WoW's level grind had a much larger practical impact on Diku play than the 'moral choices' seen thus far in Tabula Rasa. Granted, TR's still beta, but the system itself looks like a more slight update to faction mechanics than WoW's update to quest mechanics. So calling everyone onto the carpet while your own contribution is still minor compared to theirs, is ill-advised.

However, I do grant Garriott any and all respect for whatever role he had in UO releasing as a Koster-land. Even if he merely hired the guy who actually had good ideas, that's worth some points. Unfortunately, TR's less ambitious design does make it look like he only green-lit such a bold design because he didn't know any different.

Also, the bonus points one gets for 'leaving a comfy job' are significantly diminished when you're already fabulously wealthy.
I think the rule is: first personal castle takes half and extraplanetary property takes the other half.
Any subsequent castles or russian rovers make him a valid target of scorn if he ever doesn't have his own company. ;)

Re:UO=innovative and no one has gotten it right si

[GearType2]

The point he was trying(at least I am hoping he was trying) to make is that in WoW the difference between a lower level and a higher level is pretty vast and outright. Lower levels are worthless in groups, or parties. In Ultima Online, you only grind if you feel the need to. You are virtually effective at any level. Just at higher levels you are more effective. This was one of Garriot's core game design issues when designing UO. I remember high "level" players coming to my blacksmith for gear, and repairs well before I was 100 in my blacksmithy skill(which is the max in UO).

Can you say the same in WoW? Is there any reason for a high level player to go to a low level crafter? Or how about low level players helping on high level quests?

This is grind. Players feel the need to do monotonous dull tasks to level up because doing the riskier task will kill them and halt their progression, or slow it down(exp penalty). In UO the only reason to grind was if your impatient, or a powergamer. There was never a need for it. In WoW, it's gameplay design. This is what Garriot is angry about. Grind is now considered to be a gameplay aspect that players "expect", and grind isn't fun.