With regards to predictability and dynamic content....think about WoW's "invasion" events. The basic concept is there....it's something different but Blizz didn't follow through with it. The mobs simply spawned...and sat. They did *nothing*. Just like every other mob in the game. They might as well all be different colored sheep waiting to be led to the slaughter.
But what if you add the ability for the mobs to build defenses, reinforce their position, to seek out resources to claim, and by virtue of their activity they become more powerful. What happens if they're left alone too long? They start to build more than a village...they start building towers, cities, fortresses....an empire. Give them the ability to overrun a player city completely or even raze it to the ground(until players can retake the area and rebuild). Allow players in turn to bolster the defenses.....building their own towers and guard points, reinforcing city defenses with structural improvements, stronger npc troops, better equipped troops, etc. You could even let players pick sides and go at it if it's a pvp oriented game.
The point being, the landscape changes. Mob position and strength fluctuates. Players are able to affect change to the gameworld. The gameworld itself changes based on player action or inaction.
How long has Van Cleef been building that ship of his? What if he managed to finish it and launch it? How long have the Scourge been sitting content within the plaguelands? How many times are the Burning Legion going to assault the Dark Portal before they finally break through for once? Or get crushed and pushed out of the area.
In this kind of world boss mobs would not be static per se. You'd kill one...eventually another will rise to take his place but the one you killed stays dead. Someone else moves into that dungeon and sets up shop....so the mobs and the encounters in the dungeon change on a semi-regular basis for some areas. Others might be more or less permanent simply because the enemy is too strong to be overcome. The challenge is then to see how far into the dungeon you can progress before being pushed back and forced to retreat.
It would be a very different kind of game from what people are used to that's for sure.
It would be the kind of game that cannot support millions of subscribers. If every time a player runs through some content, that content goes away, you would need about ten times as many developers as players to maintain the same rate of content as in, say, World of Warcraft. It's much easier to consume than to create.
More likely, of course, is that everything just becomes bland and generic, and everything reaches a state of equilibrium where nothing changes and all that work goes to waste because nobody is seeing it. And that's why nobody's made an MMO like that.
And current MMOs don't reach a state where everything is bland and generic and nothing changes? And yes, that kind of game could support millions. Rotating dungeon npcs would be similar to rotating maps in an FPS game. The kind of game design I'm talking about would be coded from the ground up to dynamically change without the need for intervention. Perpetual motion....set it up once, flip the switch, and it runs on it's own. Cue expansions as per every other MMO to add new content. No extra work necessary once the basic system is in place and the potential is there for the npcs to do unexpected things...to move beyond the boundaries of the dungeon and go other places. Both players and npcs would be able to fundamentally alter the landscape. Another thing I'd like to see are things like actual seasons. They have day night/cycles....rain or shine....why not add spring/summer/fall/winter....have the terrain change to match the season, maybe even have the npc mobs change according to the seasonal cycle.
Or you know, we could just stick to current game design where nothing ever changes.
Edit: It would be a little more difficult to design unique encounters for this kind of game design but it could be done. You could have a mix of dynamic dungeons/outside areas as well as more static content as per WoW.
At least for the first attempt at this kind of content, it would be fairly easy to just have a set expansion timer.
If Mob X which spawns from Point A reaches point Z, mob plants object W and starts Timer 1.
When Timer 1 runs out, If Mob X and Object W are still present, mob Y Spawns.
Etc etc.
It would still be repetitive, but you'd at least have content in motion.
All you need is a huge pile of If code.
Right, but the problem here is that you're now devoting developer time to content that may not ever be visible, by any player, ever. If mob X is camped around the clock, it will NEVER reach point Z, and mob Y will NEVER spawn.
Oh, and Gof help you if you give mob Y some useful piece of loot. Can you imagine the BITCHING: "OMG NOOB Y U KILL X U DUMFUCK FUCK YOU GET THE FUCK OFF MY SERVER /1 HAY GUISE NOOB IZ A FUCKING DUMBFUCK DONT GRUP WIT HIM WTF"
There's a damn good reason why Blizzard isn't slashing and burning their old instances: it's so that they can devote time to MORE content, rather than REPLACING content.
Half the problem with PvE in MMOs is that it has to be predictable otherwise you'd just lose. In EVE, a lot of the time when a dungeon goes south on you you're fucked long before you die and there's nothing you can do about it.
What's needed is PvE where you have more maneuvering options.
PvE pretty much sucks in every MMOG I can think of. It's too predictable.
PvP pretty much sucks in every MMOG I can think of, because there is always some asshat who gets his rocks off by making other people miserable, not because he wants to make the game more immersive, but because he likes being a dick.
Fun at other people's expense eventually equals one happy player, and nine frustrated players who quit. Then the happy player has nothing left to do, and so he quits, too. End of MMO.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
PvE pretty much sucks in every MMOG I can think of. It's too predictable.
PvP pretty much sucks in every MMOG I can think of, because there is always some asshat who gets his rocks off by making other people miserable, not because he wants to make the game more immersive, but because he likes being a dick.
Fun at other people's expense eventually equals one happy player, and nine frustrated players who quit. Then the happy player has nothing left to do, and so he quits, too. End of MMO.
Are you trying to argue with me or something? I don't follow.
I'm not really sure where I stand on this. My first reaction is that there's no way a PVP-oriented game is going to be in the majority. Popular and successful, sure, but a huge portion of the MMO market? That seems unlikely. I think PVP runs counter to many things that people want to do in games. You can't always relax and have fun if you're looking over your shoulder all of the time, you can't just go off on your own, etc.
Plus, who defines what "done right" means? I know for a fact that my definition is different than other people's.
I don't mean to keep harping on PVP stuff, but I can't help from thinking that there's this idea that if only someone would create a good game, if only someone would get it right, then a people would "come around" and finally realize that PVP is the way to go. Maybe I'm off base here, I don't know. That's just an impression that I get sometimes.
See, i agree with you. The majority of people who play MMO's dont like having to worry about being killed, or not being able to carry all of their shit around with them all the time. But me personally, what i find really frustrating in a PVE MMO is that people can fuck with you with no real "reprocussion". They can jump on all the resources in a zone, they can kill the monsters you need to kill for your quest, they can hop around like an asshole, or basically whatever else they want to do to annoy you or impede your progress. So basically your only option is to go somewhere else or stop playing for a while and hope they arent persistent enough to hang around and wait for you.
In a full PVP MMO, you can atleast attempt to kill them, get rid of them for a while, and even better, take their stuff. Now the downside to this is, that instead of just doing the stuff listed above, he can also kill you. But you also have the opportunity to kill him, or at the very least, round up a bunch of people to help kill him. Just the fact that theres another choice in the matter makes me feel relieved, especially when its an intended choice. I dont think any MMO developer sets out to make a PVE game, and in the design docket theyve written "Ocassionaly players will need to take a break due to an asshole disrupting gameplay".
And yes, ive heard the complaints before, high level players ganging up on low levels, killing and stealing from defenseless players, etc, and of course ive been on the receiving end of this as well. But the main flaw ive seen in any open PVP game is that there are never any really harsh consequences (atleast any more) for doing these kinds of things. I remember when i was reading the initial plans for the honor system PVP in WoW, it was basically something like "If you initiate combat with a player 10 levels or more below you, and you kill them, youll get dishonor points which will make some merchants turn against you or raise their prices, and some gaurds may attack you at random until you manage to lose the dishonor points". Not implementing that was one of the biggest ever made regarding WoW pvp, atleast back when i played about 2 years ago. On my server anyway, youd end up with high level players raiding the lower level open PVP zones and with absolutely zero reprocussions.
The same thing happened in UO after they took away statloss. I wasnt a fan of statloss persay, but i remember when it was in, being a PK actually meant something. You didnt just kill some random miner who still had all his newbie gear because it wasnt worth killing him. You didnt kill the random new player who wandered into a dungeon with only his candle because doing so wouldnt give you shit. You either killed other PKs, people who fucked with you, or anyone who would yeild a good reward (money, items, etc). After they got rid of statloss, everyone and their mother had a PK character and you basically couldnt do anything in Fel side anymore because everyone was killing anything that was player controlled.
I think that truely is the biggest problem with any MMO advocating truely open PVP, there just isnt enough of a risk that random joe newb doesnt freak out about being killed 5 minutes into the game. As much as i love PVP, whether as the attacker or the defender, it is frustrating to be killed when theres absolutely no chance of a win. But knowing that because i was killed (for example) the person who did it wont be able to buy anything from an NPC vendor for 2 weeks kind of justifies it. Especially also knowing that i probably didnt lose anything of value and he didnt gain anything at all.
I also think one of the problems with current MMO's is they make you chose your side before youve even played the game. You need to either start on a PVP server or a PVE server. Again to bring up UO, i think they had the right idea, mirror copies of the world, one PVE and one PVP, but on the same server. Of course, every time this is brought up now a days, the main complaint is "But no one will level in the PVP zone because its too dangerous! It will just be filled with max level players trying to kill everyone!". Thats bullshit, to a point. Again it comes back to risk versus reward. Sure you can level up in relative safety, not having to worry about being PK'd randomly by some 12 year old jerkass, but its going to take you 6 months to do it, and at the end youre not going to have accumulated as much stuff. On the otherhand, if you want to take the risk of constantly being killed, losing your stuff, whatever, youll be able to max out in maybe 3 months, and come out with a lot more neat stuff to show for it. And then at the end, the guy who stayed in the safety lands the entire time can decide hes sick of that shit, come over with the character hes already got, and start kicking the shit out of people.
Anyway, we probably wont be seeing an MMO done the way i want it any time soon. I think WoW is probably going to be the model for a long time to come. Which is great, in a way, since a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I dont, so im just going to have to wait for a game that does appeal to me again.
Because the pvp environment would presumably have incentives for people to participate.
Zeon's hit on the exact problem with PvP in MMOs to date: it's hard to strike the right balance of consequences and structure.
In WoW, the only sort of PvP with any real reward is massively structured and repetitive, and there aren't really any negative consequences for players. I see why people aren't big fans of it. In games where player looting has been an option, PvP's taken place mostly in environments with very little structure. i.e., you're out on your own in the virtual wasteland when you're happened upon by a predator.
There isn't a game yet that I'm aware of where there are serious consequences, but your involvement in PvP is also something that you've got pretty direct control over.
I'd like to see a game where you take part in a faction-based war, and if you want to be up on the front lines of the war it's kill or be killed and to the victor go the spoils. But if you're behind the lines in a support role, you've got more structural protection against random ganking (it's hard for attackers to get back there, they can't carry off that much stuff, there are warning systems, etc.) If you want to do more crafting/trading, or you just need some time to acclimate to how things work, you can do it fairly safely.
The trick is giving the players involved in the support structure something meaningful to do, which is in my mind where EVE falls flat. You can play it safe in highsec if you want, but not only are the rewards horrible compared to what goes on in 0.0, you don't feel like you can help the war effort in any sort of substantial way.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
With regards to predictability and dynamic content....think about WoW's "invasion" events. The basic concept is there....it's something different but Blizz didn't follow through with it. The mobs simply spawned...and sat. They did *nothing*. Just like every other mob in the game. They might as well all be different colored sheep waiting to be led to the slaughter.
But what if you add the ability for the mobs to build defenses, reinforce their position, to seek out resources to claim, and by virtue of their activity they become more powerful. What happens if they're left alone too long? They start to build more than a village...they start building towers, cities, fortresses....an empire. Give them the ability to overrun a player city completely or even raze it to the ground(until players can retake the area and rebuild). Allow players in turn to bolster the defenses.....building their own towers and guard points, reinforcing city defenses with structural improvements, stronger npc troops, better equipped troops, etc. You could even let players pick sides and go at it if it's a pvp oriented game.
The point being, the landscape changes. Mob position and strength fluctuates. Players are able to affect change to the gameworld. The gameworld itself changes based on player action or inaction.
How long has Van Cleef been building that ship of his? What if he managed to finish it and launch it? How long have the Scourge been sitting content within the plaguelands? How many times are the Burning Legion going to assault the Dark Portal before they finally break through for once? Or get crushed and pushed out of the area.
In this kind of world boss mobs would not be static per se. You'd kill one...eventually another will rise to take his place but the one you killed stays dead. Someone else moves into that dungeon and sets up shop....so the mobs and the encounters in the dungeon change on a semi-regular basis for some areas. Others might be more or less permanent simply because the enemy is too strong to be overcome. The challenge is then to see how far into the dungeon you can progress before being pushed back and forced to retreat.
It would be a very different kind of game from what people are used to that's for sure.
It would be the kind of game that cannot support millions of subscribers. If every time a player runs through some content, that content goes away, you would need about ten times as many developers as players to maintain the same rate of content as in, say, World of Warcraft. It's much easier to consume than to create.
More likely, of course, is that everything just becomes bland and generic, and everything reaches a state of equilibrium where nothing changes and all that work goes to waste because nobody is seeing it. And that's why nobody's made an MMO like that.
I really like the idea of better fleshed-out invasion events and the possibility of particular areas becoming overrun with a given enemy. It'd give a lot more incentive to participate, and, more importantly, do a lot to make the world feel more vibrant and 'alive' rather than everything staying static forever.
Constantly creating new content would certainly pose a problem, but I'd think that using a system similar to Diablo's random boss generator would help alleviate that to a huge degree. So, rather than having Van Cleef finish his ship and attack stormwind, and once he's dead the deadmines are closed forever, you'd have VC staying put, and instead an attack might be led by a boss who is essentially a powerful elite who has a set of abilities and AI behaviors randomly selected from a list, as well as, if you wanted to get particularly detailed, a set of 'personality' modifiers that could alter his AI and change the style/tone of his taunts and so forth. He might go down in half an hour, sure, or he might go unkilled for a week or a month and become a minor server celebrity whose (randomly-generated) name people remember.
All such bosses could be easily set to have the same loot table, or randomly assigned one of x number of loot tables, so that you don't have any problems with item y becoming impossible to obtain once the boss is killed.
In other words, you put in some work establishing a large set of different random tables, each with a large set of variables, and you'd have a lot of unique content without anyone feeling like they're 'excluded' from a particular event or experience.
Maybe you get an enemy commander in a certain zone whose personality tables come up as 'angry' 'aggressive' and 'stupid'. He has pretty standard 'me kill puny human' type taunts on aggro/player death/etc, and those personality traits also make him, say, have a large aggro radius, have slightly higher attack and lower defense, and be more susceptible to taunts and aggro management.
He comes up on the ability tables has having a cleave, a big direct hit, and a partial aggro wipe. Nothing too special, but still a neat boss, and he goes down in a couple hours.
A little later, someone spawns to take his place, and the exact same tables give him an 'intelligent' 'cautious' and 'cultured' personality. His taunts are silly elevated 'I say, you do seem to have had a bit of difficulty, there, chap' phrases, and he's immune to taunts and has high defense. He's got a nastier set of abilities, like the ability to spawn adds, a full aggro clear, a ranged attack that randomly selects a target, maybe a banish or whatever. He sticks around longer, because he's harder to kill, and gets to be pretty well-known, but when he DOES go down, nobody gets too pissed about not being there for the kill, because hey, just a random boss and the next one will be up in an hour or two.
You want to get particularly fancy, set up an arena-type instance with whatever lore justification makes you happy where players can go fight any old random bosses who managed to stay alive for x amount of time.
Why would people level faster in a PVP environment?
Sorry, i should have explained that more... I was saying it should take longer and pay off less to level in the safe zone rather than the open PVP zone. That is how you encourage people to come over and risk something when there would otherwise be no incentive.
As for levels, again, im not a fan... Id like to see a return to a skill based system like, to bring it up again, UO. Or maybe something completely different. Any sort of dynamic and modular way of growing your character, rather than from the beginning picking what you want to be from a generic list and then following a set path of growth.
So, you arbitrarily penalize the PVE community in order to "enlighten" it to the splendor that is PVP?
Or...just don't make a PvE game.
I think the reality is that trying to shoehorn PvP and PvE into the same game always ends up a bit shit. Usually one or both aspects end up suffering. There are two reasons developers do this. Firstly, they are greedy - they want PvP and PvE fans to buy their game. Secondly...I forgot the second reason while I was writing the first one, but there was definitely a second reason.
The point is, it isn't necessary. Online games can be fun as co-operative affairs. They can also be fun as competitive affairs. There's no reason why any one game absolutely has to combine both. Generally, they are better for not doing so.
Indeed, but if you take out the levelling I'm not sure why it'd draw any sort of PVE crowd over.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I think it's pretty easy to see at this point that if you want PvP and PvE in the same game, that each class needs to have a completely different rule set for PvE and PvP, along with an entirely different rule set for game mechanics for each mode. Basically two games in one.
Indeed, but if you take out the levelling I'm not sure why it'd draw any sort of PVE crowd over.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I'm not sure why it would anyway. Half Life 2 draws a pretty big PvE crowd and it doesn't have any levelling. As does Mario Kart. And FIFA. And pretty much any non-RPG game. If you took the levelling out you might alienate the RPG market, but the PvE market? I don't see why that'd be the case.
The real problem is if you took the leveling aspects out of MMORPGs is that you would immediately realize how shallow the game play is in comparison to something like a fighting game.
If the game was deep enough, you could get rid of leveling though. As it is, the only thing stopping you from doing the last raid of a game like WoW the second you create your character is your level and the level of your gear, not player skill.
(Note: I quit WoW when BWL was the latest instance)
If you take out leveling, what is the incentive to play an MMO game?
You could have ranks or something I guess, but 90% of the people aren't going to be good enough to make it on the scoreboard.
Advancing the story or side quests or something might work.
I guess the big thing I see about current MMORPGs is that the big focus is about making your character more powerful. It's not necessarily leveling, though leveling is a component of character power.
Edit: I guess what I'm really getting at is that the standard MMO game is designed to be a long-term game. While a single player game may take you some hours or a few weeks (not straight) to finish, an MMO is designed to be played for months. I'm not sure that this time model will work with a low-progression model. Do you really want to play the same character for months if he doesn't acquire better gear or become more powerful?
Perhaps move away from the persistent character model? I'm not sure where to go in that case.
PvP requires a level playing field to be fair and fun for all participants. Getting steamrolled by a T6 WSG premade is only fun for half of the players because of the gear disparity. There's no skill involved, and so people get frustrated. Making PvP fun requires power balance so that when you get beat, at least you knew it was fair. Let's take BF2 for instace: everyone can play with the same kit as everyone else. Sure, experienced players get access to some slightly better variant gear, but it's not game-breaking in power. Just because your recon kit includes the .50 cal doesn't make it any harder for Nooblet0349 to kill your ass with his basic assault kit.
The current MMO PvP model though throws that fairness of play right out the window, which is why MMO PvP content is terrible right now. Gear should be only a small bonus to PvP capability, so that a skilled player in greens still has a better than even chance of beating a crappy player in T6. Or a skilled EvE player in a T1 frigate should have a chance against a complete nub in a T2 frig. But they don't, and that is why a lot of people are turned off by the PvP in both systems: it's not fair.
And don't give me that BS about "oh, well they didn't put in the work I did" because these are supposed to be games that we play for fun, not something we need to devote our entire lives to just so that we don't get told by some pasty-faced prick living out of his basement that we were "pwned like n00bz". PvP needs to be accessible to everyone, not just those who can dedicate months of their lives to kitting out. If it ends up being a second job, then why the fuck would any normal person want to participate?
You want PvP to get better? Give everyone full Gladiator for FREE. Give starting players access to a cheap pirate frig that can tear apart larger ships in one-on-one. Once people are on equal footing, only then will you see a PvP-oriented MMO as big as WoW.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Here's the thing I don't like about free for all PvP with no consequences, rules, etc.....
When I played UO....there was nothing to stop roving bands of pks going around and killing everything in their path. If you killed them they lost....a newbie deathrobe and a few reagents. If they killed you(much more likely) you lost a lot more in terms of gear. Completely unbalanced risk vs reward there.
When they put housing in some pks set up a house along a road outside of Britain. They'd flag or steal from someone and run into their house. If you tried to follow them in they'd just ban you, teleporting you back outside. So maybe they died once or twice in the process.....by the time they did they'd pickpocketed, killed, and looted so much stuff it didn't matter. They could log off inside their house with people trying to get to them.
It most cases it was better to move on and just forget about it. Trying to kill them or get your stuff back was utterly futile and a waste of time. It was extremely frustrating and not much fun for the targets of such attacks. MMOs like WoW where you can't be looted at least eliminate that part of the frustration and balance it out a bit. You can still be griefed but it's not quite as punitive for the victim.
If you take out leveling, what is the incentive to play an MMO game?
You could have ranks or something I guess, but 90% of the people aren't going to be good enough to make it on the scoreboard.
Advancing the story or side quests or something might work.
I guess the big thing I see about current MMORPGs is that the big focus is about making your character more powerful. It's not necessarily leveling, though leveling is a component of character power.
Edit: I guess what I'm really getting at is that the standard MMO game is designed to be a long-term game. While a single player game may take you some hours or a few weeks (not straight) to finish, an MMO is designed to be played for months. I'm not sure that this time model will work with a low-progression model. Do you really want to play the same character for months if he doesn't acquire better gear or become more powerful?
Perhaps move away from the persistent character model? I'm not sure where to go in that case.
What's the incentive of playing an MMO game without leveling? Well, hopefully the game is simply fun enough to warrant playing with no leveling.
There are more ways to advance then just gear and items. Take a game like Go or Virtua Fighter 5. There is no difference in 'level' or 'gear' between players in those games, yet because the game has depth in terms of strategy and tactics there is a huge difference between an experienced player and a new one. The good player has advanced, but not in terms of game mechanics.
The problem with having levels and gear discrepancies is it just forces it so you have to invest X amount of time before you can play the "real" game, the game at the max level. You can give players many different sorts of ways to advance themselves in the game. For example, since MMOs are supposed to be social games. Why not let people advance something like their guild. Build a town, research a new item, discover an uncharted land. But, when it's something like that, it means that a player that has played for 500 hours can still play with his friend who just got the game a week ago in a meaningful way.
If you take out leveling, what is the incentive to play an MMO game?
You could have ranks or something I guess, but 90% of the people aren't going to be good enough to make it on the scoreboard.
Cue string of surprised, perplexed and horrified smilies.
Did you seriously just ask that?
If the game isn't fun, nobody is going to play it even if it does include levelling. Auto Assault had levelling. So did The Matrix Online.
Advancing the story or side quests or something might work.
I guess the big thing I see about current MMORPGs is that the big focus is about making your character more powerful. It's not necessarily leveling, though leveling is a component of character power.
Edit: I guess what I'm really getting at is that the standard MMO game is designed to be a long-term game. While a single player game may take you some hours or a few weeks (not straight) to finish, an MMO is designed to be played for months. I'm not sure that this time model will work with a low-progression model. Do you really want to play the same character for months if he doesn't acquire better gear or become more powerful?
Perhaps move away from the persistent character model? I'm not sure where to go in that case.
Yes and then some. The current status quo for MMOs is based on traditional pen and paper RPGs. But that's chiefly because those were simply the first type of MMOs to materialise. It's not a physical restriction of the genre, just a psychological restriction. People (at least most people) don't play EvE to increase the level of their character, they play it because they have various careers and roles in the game which they enjoy participating in. Yeah yeah, EvE is a 'minority' MMO, but the point is still valid. People play lots of games that aren't MMOs and don't involve levelling, it's not a completely crazy idea that people might play MMOs that don't involve levelling.
In fact, an MMO without levelling - or at least where levelling isn't the core focus of the game experience - is likely to be more accessible and thus is a highly probable future trend for MMOs. The difficulty is in developing a compelling enough game to hold peoples attention month after month without resorting to a basic addiction to joyless grinding. The most likely success in achieving this long-term connection without levelling is likely to come from peoples natural competitiveness. People played Starcraft and Counterstrike for years after the original games had long past their consumption date, not because the single player game had a storyline that lasted years, not because they had a time investment in levelling their characters, but because they were addicted to the multiplayer competitive game. Battlefield 2 enjoyed a similar commitment from it's player base (although they raped it through buggy patches and horrendous balancing issues).
If you're going to take away the frankly lazy hook of forcing people to grind for two months to see any exciting content to keep them playing your game, then appealing to humans competitive nature is likely to be a good step. Likewise, appealing to their social nature - their desire to belong to a tribe - will help, so providing them with the means and option to not only fight with but co-operate with other players will provide them with a huge emotional investment.
I guess I'm still mostly thinking in terms of RPGs here.
And I guess that I'm still not seeing how this will work. I'll think about it some more, but so far it just sounds like you guys are saying, "Well, game X does fine without leveling, so it can be done for an MMO." Yeah, Virtua Fighter and Go have the players on a level playing field, but those are also 2 player games. Even something multiplayer like Starcraft or Counterstrike would be difficult to translate to an MMO, especially when considering that someone who could come out on top of the scoreboard in his usual pickup games or server will likely not enjoy the same position in the MMO.
And, how level is the playing field really in some of these games? Time played is still a huge factor. Instead of getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours raiding to get his Leet Sword of Destruction +5, you're getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours playing or perfecting Strategy X.
Edit: And I'm not saying this this won't work, I'm just not sure how it would work at this point.
As an aside, the idea that "the end game starts at max level" always bothers me a bit. I've always had more fun on the journey than when I've arrived, and it always seemed like the wrong way to go about things.
I meant the real game in term of strategy and tactics. While you are leveling you don't have all your moves so any strategy you come up with is going to be subpar after more leveling.
Inquisitor on
0
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited December 2007
Doesn't WAR focus on PVP quests? Like instead of going out and killing 10 NPC dwarfs and collecting their skulls you have to go out and kill 10 player dwarfs and collect their skulls?
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Doesn't WAR focus on PVP quests? Like instead of going out and killing 10 NPC dwarfs and collecting their skulls you have to go out and kill 10 player dwarfs and collect their skulls?
Yeah, I think you get exp for killing players too.
I know in Age of Conan you have your player level and your PvP level. I am not sure how the interact to determine your over all level for PvP though.
I meant the real game in term of strategy and tactics. While you are leveling you don't have all your moves so any strategy you come up with is going to be subpar after more leveling.
Doesn't WAR focus on PVP quests? Like instead of going out and killing 10 NPC dwarfs and collecting their skulls you have to go out and kill 10 player dwarfs and collect their skulls?
Something about that is raising design red flags in my head, but I'm not sure what. I'd hate to suck at that game though. "Man, I've been on this dwarf skull quest for days."
Indeed, but if you take out the levelling I'm not sure why it'd draw any sort of PVE crowd over.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I'm not sure why it would anyway. Half Life 2 draws a pretty big PvE crowd and it doesn't have any levelling. As does Mario Kart. And FIFA. And pretty much any non-RPG game. If you took the levelling out you might alienate the RPG market, but the PvE market? I don't see why that'd be the case.
So, you arbitrarily penalize the PVE community in order to "enlighten" it to the splendor that is PVP?
No, its rewarding the people who want to take more risk. Otherwise, everyone would obviously level up where its safer, and then move to the PVP lands when theyve maxed out.
Indeed, but if you take out the levelling I'm not sure why it'd draw any sort of PVE crowd over.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I'm not sure why it would anyway. Half Life 2 draws a pretty big PvE crowd and it doesn't have any levelling. As does Mario Kart. And FIFA. And pretty much any non-RPG game. If you took the levelling out you might alienate the RPG market, but the PvE market? I don't see why that'd be the case.
How much do you pay a month to play Mario Kart?
Where's Mario Kart's persistent world and frequent content updates?
So, you arbitrarily penalize the PVE community in order to "enlighten" it to the splendor that is PVP?
No, its rewarding the people who want to take more risk. Otherwise, everyone would obviously level up where its safer, and then move to the PVP lands when theyve maxed out.
In a competition (in this case, to level) giving to one side == penalizing the other. Anyway. If everyone would obviously level up in PVE areas, doesn't that imply that levelling+PVP is less fun? Where fun equals "what players want to do", because otherwise the definitions just get silly and nebulous.
So, you arbitrarily penalize the PVE community in order to "enlighten" it to the splendor that is PVP?
No, its rewarding the people who want to take more risk. Otherwise, everyone would obviously level up where its safer, and then move to the PVP lands when theyve maxed out.
In a competition (in this case, to level) giving to one side == penalizing the other. Anyway. If everyone would obviously level up in PVE areas, doesn't that imply that levelling+PVP is less fun? Where fun equals "what players want to do", because otherwise the definitions just get silly and nebulous.
Players clearly do not know what is fun for them and need to be guided like the good sheep they are towards the MORE FUN* PvP areas.
I guess I'm still mostly thinking in terms of RPGs here.
And I guess that I'm still not seeing how this will work. I'll think about it some more, but so far it just sounds like you guys are saying, "Well, game X does fine without leveling, so it can be done for an MMO." Yeah, Virtua Fighter and Go have the players on a level playing field, but those are also 2 player games. Even something multiplayer like Starcraft or Counterstrike would be difficult to translate to an MMO, especially when considering that someone who could come out on top of the scoreboard in his usual pickup games or server will likely not enjoy the same position in the MMO.
And, how level is the playing field really in some of these games? Time played is still a huge factor. Instead of getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours raiding to get his Leet Sword of Destruction +5, you're getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours playing or perfecting Strategy X.
Edit: And I'm not saying this this won't work, I'm just not sure how it would work at this point.
As an aside, the idea that "the end game starts at max level" always bothers me a bit. I've always had more fun on the journey than when I've arrived, and it always seemed like the wrong way to go about things.
Battlefield 2, I think, is really quite a good example of how I see (some) future MMOs. It isn't an MMO yet, but it's fairly close to being one. I suspect in time, it will be seen as the game that brought FPS into the MMO world (because everyone will conveniently forget about Planetside). Sure, BF2 has some token leveling but really all you get for your experience points are some extra toys to play with. They don't ever turn you into an indestructible killing machine with a massive advantage over newer players, they just give you more options. Newer players are still perfectly capable of killing you though, so someone with an upgraded kit might be having more fun as a reward for playing longer, but they never unbalance a map. Besides that, you could use any vehicle or weapon on the map. You could even pick up the kit of a fallen enemy or comrade and use guns you hadn't yet unlocked.
It rewards you for playing for a long time (and for playing well) but it doesn't penalise you for being new to the game.
I see no reason why this model couldn't be expanded into a persistent (or semi-persistent) world, genuine MMO environment. I don't think it'll be the only route MMOs take, the traditional RPG MMO is definitely here to stay for the forseable future, but at the same time there is clearly a desire amongst players for both more accessibility (hence a removal of ability penalisation for being new) and for both competitive and teamwork based games.
So, you arbitrarily penalize the PVE community in order to "enlighten" it to the splendor that is PVP?
No, its rewarding the people who want to take more risk. Otherwise, everyone would obviously level up where its safer, and then move to the PVP lands when theyve maxed out.
In a competition (in this case, to level) giving to one side == penalizing the other. Anyway. If everyone would obviously level up in PVE areas, doesn't that imply that levelling+PVP is less fun? Where fun equals "what players want to do", because otherwise the definitions just get silly and nebulous.
You have to take "fun" and world balancing into consideration when planning something like that.
The idea is to give people the option, but also try to jam everyone into the same area so everyone can have fun together, whether their idea of fun is killing monsters or killing players, and not ending up with a portion of your world thats used for one thing, and a portion thats used for the other.
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
Now im not saying the disparity has to be so huge, as in the 2:1 or 40:1 case, but there needs to be some incentive otherwise people wont do it. Everyone is always going to pick the safer bet if the results are going to be the same, thats human nature. The idea is not so much to make people do something theyre uncomfortable with, its more to present them with the choice and show them the results of picking either path. The choice they make is up to them, and for some people, they would rather invest a little more time if it means less frustration on the way to their goal, while others are going to accept that frustration as part of the cost of taking the shortcut, or not even view it as a frustration at all.
And leveling and money was just an example (one thats already been used in a live game). It can be anything, more space for housing, more frequent monster spawns, whatever. Extra content though, should be off limits, as youre right, you dont want to force people to do anything in a game, because thats not fun.
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It would be the kind of game that cannot support millions of subscribers. If every time a player runs through some content, that content goes away, you would need about ten times as many developers as players to maintain the same rate of content as in, say, World of Warcraft. It's much easier to consume than to create.
More likely, of course, is that everything just becomes bland and generic, and everything reaches a state of equilibrium where nothing changes and all that work goes to waste because nobody is seeing it. And that's why nobody's made an MMO like that.
Or you know, we could just stick to current game design where nothing ever changes.
Edit: It would be a little more difficult to design unique encounters for this kind of game design but it could be done. You could have a mix of dynamic dungeons/outside areas as well as more static content as per WoW.
If Mob X which spawns from Point A reaches point Z, mob plants object W and starts Timer 1.
When Timer 1 runs out, If Mob X and Object W are still present, mob Y Spawns.
Etc etc.
It would still be repetitive, but you'd at least have content in motion.
All you need is a huge pile of If code.
Right, but the problem here is that you're now devoting developer time to content that may not ever be visible, by any player, ever. If mob X is camped around the clock, it will NEVER reach point Z, and mob Y will NEVER spawn.
Oh, and Gof help you if you give mob Y some useful piece of loot. Can you imagine the BITCHING: "OMG NOOB Y U KILL X U DUMFUCK FUCK YOU GET THE FUCK OFF MY SERVER /1 HAY GUISE NOOB IZ A FUCKING DUMBFUCK DONT GRUP WIT HIM WTF"
There's a damn good reason why Blizzard isn't slashing and burning their old instances: it's so that they can devote time to MORE content, rather than REPLACING content.
What's needed is PvE where you have more maneuvering options.
PvP pretty much sucks in every MMOG I can think of, because there is always some asshat who gets his rocks off by making other people miserable, not because he wants to make the game more immersive, but because he likes being a dick.
Fun at other people's expense eventually equals one happy player, and nine frustrated players who quit. Then the happy player has nothing left to do, and so he quits, too. End of MMO.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Are you trying to argue with me or something? I don't follow.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
See, i agree with you. The majority of people who play MMO's dont like having to worry about being killed, or not being able to carry all of their shit around with them all the time. But me personally, what i find really frustrating in a PVE MMO is that people can fuck with you with no real "reprocussion". They can jump on all the resources in a zone, they can kill the monsters you need to kill for your quest, they can hop around like an asshole, or basically whatever else they want to do to annoy you or impede your progress. So basically your only option is to go somewhere else or stop playing for a while and hope they arent persistent enough to hang around and wait for you.
In a full PVP MMO, you can atleast attempt to kill them, get rid of them for a while, and even better, take their stuff. Now the downside to this is, that instead of just doing the stuff listed above, he can also kill you. But you also have the opportunity to kill him, or at the very least, round up a bunch of people to help kill him. Just the fact that theres another choice in the matter makes me feel relieved, especially when its an intended choice. I dont think any MMO developer sets out to make a PVE game, and in the design docket theyve written "Ocassionaly players will need to take a break due to an asshole disrupting gameplay".
And yes, ive heard the complaints before, high level players ganging up on low levels, killing and stealing from defenseless players, etc, and of course ive been on the receiving end of this as well. But the main flaw ive seen in any open PVP game is that there are never any really harsh consequences (atleast any more) for doing these kinds of things. I remember when i was reading the initial plans for the honor system PVP in WoW, it was basically something like "If you initiate combat with a player 10 levels or more below you, and you kill them, youll get dishonor points which will make some merchants turn against you or raise their prices, and some gaurds may attack you at random until you manage to lose the dishonor points". Not implementing that was one of the biggest ever made regarding WoW pvp, atleast back when i played about 2 years ago. On my server anyway, youd end up with high level players raiding the lower level open PVP zones and with absolutely zero reprocussions.
The same thing happened in UO after they took away statloss. I wasnt a fan of statloss persay, but i remember when it was in, being a PK actually meant something. You didnt just kill some random miner who still had all his newbie gear because it wasnt worth killing him. You didnt kill the random new player who wandered into a dungeon with only his candle because doing so wouldnt give you shit. You either killed other PKs, people who fucked with you, or anyone who would yeild a good reward (money, items, etc). After they got rid of statloss, everyone and their mother had a PK character and you basically couldnt do anything in Fel side anymore because everyone was killing anything that was player controlled.
I think that truely is the biggest problem with any MMO advocating truely open PVP, there just isnt enough of a risk that random joe newb doesnt freak out about being killed 5 minutes into the game. As much as i love PVP, whether as the attacker or the defender, it is frustrating to be killed when theres absolutely no chance of a win. But knowing that because i was killed (for example) the person who did it wont be able to buy anything from an NPC vendor for 2 weeks kind of justifies it. Especially also knowing that i probably didnt lose anything of value and he didnt gain anything at all.
I also think one of the problems with current MMO's is they make you chose your side before youve even played the game. You need to either start on a PVP server or a PVE server. Again to bring up UO, i think they had the right idea, mirror copies of the world, one PVE and one PVP, but on the same server. Of course, every time this is brought up now a days, the main complaint is "But no one will level in the PVP zone because its too dangerous! It will just be filled with max level players trying to kill everyone!". Thats bullshit, to a point. Again it comes back to risk versus reward. Sure you can level up in relative safety, not having to worry about being PK'd randomly by some 12 year old jerkass, but its going to take you 6 months to do it, and at the end youre not going to have accumulated as much stuff. On the otherhand, if you want to take the risk of constantly being killed, losing your stuff, whatever, youll be able to max out in maybe 3 months, and come out with a lot more neat stuff to show for it. And then at the end, the guy who stayed in the safety lands the entire time can decide hes sick of that shit, come over with the character hes already got, and start kicking the shit out of people.
Anyway, we probably wont be seeing an MMO done the way i want it any time soon. I think WoW is probably going to be the model for a long time to come. Which is great, in a way, since a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I dont, so im just going to have to wait for a game that does appeal to me again.
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Zeon's hit on the exact problem with PvP in MMOs to date: it's hard to strike the right balance of consequences and structure.
In WoW, the only sort of PvP with any real reward is massively structured and repetitive, and there aren't really any negative consequences for players. I see why people aren't big fans of it. In games where player looting has been an option, PvP's taken place mostly in environments with very little structure. i.e., you're out on your own in the virtual wasteland when you're happened upon by a predator.
There isn't a game yet that I'm aware of where there are serious consequences, but your involvement in PvP is also something that you've got pretty direct control over.
I'd like to see a game where you take part in a faction-based war, and if you want to be up on the front lines of the war it's kill or be killed and to the victor go the spoils. But if you're behind the lines in a support role, you've got more structural protection against random ganking (it's hard for attackers to get back there, they can't carry off that much stuff, there are warning systems, etc.) If you want to do more crafting/trading, or you just need some time to acclimate to how things work, you can do it fairly safely.
The trick is giving the players involved in the support structure something meaningful to do, which is in my mind where EVE falls flat. You can play it safe in highsec if you want, but not only are the rewards horrible compared to what goes on in 0.0, you don't feel like you can help the war effort in any sort of substantial way.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Why would a PvP game have levelling in the first place?
I really like the idea of better fleshed-out invasion events and the possibility of particular areas becoming overrun with a given enemy. It'd give a lot more incentive to participate, and, more importantly, do a lot to make the world feel more vibrant and 'alive' rather than everything staying static forever.
Constantly creating new content would certainly pose a problem, but I'd think that using a system similar to Diablo's random boss generator would help alleviate that to a huge degree. So, rather than having Van Cleef finish his ship and attack stormwind, and once he's dead the deadmines are closed forever, you'd have VC staying put, and instead an attack might be led by a boss who is essentially a powerful elite who has a set of abilities and AI behaviors randomly selected from a list, as well as, if you wanted to get particularly detailed, a set of 'personality' modifiers that could alter his AI and change the style/tone of his taunts and so forth. He might go down in half an hour, sure, or he might go unkilled for a week or a month and become a minor server celebrity whose (randomly-generated) name people remember.
All such bosses could be easily set to have the same loot table, or randomly assigned one of x number of loot tables, so that you don't have any problems with item y becoming impossible to obtain once the boss is killed.
In other words, you put in some work establishing a large set of different random tables, each with a large set of variables, and you'd have a lot of unique content without anyone feeling like they're 'excluded' from a particular event or experience.
Maybe you get an enemy commander in a certain zone whose personality tables come up as 'angry' 'aggressive' and 'stupid'. He has pretty standard 'me kill puny human' type taunts on aggro/player death/etc, and those personality traits also make him, say, have a large aggro radius, have slightly higher attack and lower defense, and be more susceptible to taunts and aggro management.
He comes up on the ability tables has having a cleave, a big direct hit, and a partial aggro wipe. Nothing too special, but still a neat boss, and he goes down in a couple hours.
A little later, someone spawns to take his place, and the exact same tables give him an 'intelligent' 'cautious' and 'cultured' personality. His taunts are silly elevated 'I say, you do seem to have had a bit of difficulty, there, chap' phrases, and he's immune to taunts and has high defense. He's got a nastier set of abilities, like the ability to spawn adds, a full aggro clear, a ranged attack that randomly selects a target, maybe a banish or whatever. He sticks around longer, because he's harder to kill, and gets to be pretty well-known, but when he DOES go down, nobody gets too pissed about not being there for the kill, because hey, just a random boss and the next one will be up in an hour or two.
You want to get particularly fancy, set up an arena-type instance with whatever lore justification makes you happy where players can go fight any old random bosses who managed to stay alive for x amount of time.
Sorry, i should have explained that more... I was saying it should take longer and pay off less to level in the safe zone rather than the open PVP zone. That is how you encourage people to come over and risk something when there would otherwise be no incentive.
As for levels, again, im not a fan... Id like to see a return to a skill based system like, to bring it up again, UO. Or maybe something completely different. Any sort of dynamic and modular way of growing your character, rather than from the beginning picking what you want to be from a generic list and then following a set path of growth.
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Or...just don't make a PvE game.
I think the reality is that trying to shoehorn PvP and PvE into the same game always ends up a bit shit. Usually one or both aspects end up suffering. There are two reasons developers do this. Firstly, they are greedy - they want PvP and PvE fans to buy their game. Secondly...I forgot the second reason while I was writing the first one, but there was definitely a second reason.
The point is, it isn't necessary. Online games can be fun as co-operative affairs. They can also be fun as competitive affairs. There's no reason why any one game absolutely has to combine both. Generally, they are better for not doing so.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I think it's pretty easy to see at this point that if you want PvP and PvE in the same game, that each class needs to have a completely different rule set for PvE and PvP, along with an entirely different rule set for game mechanics for each mode. Basically two games in one.
I'm not sure why it would anyway. Half Life 2 draws a pretty big PvE crowd and it doesn't have any levelling. As does Mario Kart. And FIFA. And pretty much any non-RPG game. If you took the levelling out you might alienate the RPG market, but the PvE market? I don't see why that'd be the case.
If the game was deep enough, you could get rid of leveling though. As it is, the only thing stopping you from doing the last raid of a game like WoW the second you create your character is your level and the level of your gear, not player skill.
(Note: I quit WoW when BWL was the latest instance)
You could have ranks or something I guess, but 90% of the people aren't going to be good enough to make it on the scoreboard.
Advancing the story or side quests or something might work.
I guess the big thing I see about current MMORPGs is that the big focus is about making your character more powerful. It's not necessarily leveling, though leveling is a component of character power.
Edit: I guess what I'm really getting at is that the standard MMO game is designed to be a long-term game. While a single player game may take you some hours or a few weeks (not straight) to finish, an MMO is designed to be played for months. I'm not sure that this time model will work with a low-progression model. Do you really want to play the same character for months if he doesn't acquire better gear or become more powerful?
Perhaps move away from the persistent character model? I'm not sure where to go in that case.
The current MMO PvP model though throws that fairness of play right out the window, which is why MMO PvP content is terrible right now. Gear should be only a small bonus to PvP capability, so that a skilled player in greens still has a better than even chance of beating a crappy player in T6. Or a skilled EvE player in a T1 frigate should have a chance against a complete nub in a T2 frig. But they don't, and that is why a lot of people are turned off by the PvP in both systems: it's not fair.
And don't give me that BS about "oh, well they didn't put in the work I did" because these are supposed to be games that we play for fun, not something we need to devote our entire lives to just so that we don't get told by some pasty-faced prick living out of his basement that we were "pwned like n00bz". PvP needs to be accessible to everyone, not just those who can dedicate months of their lives to kitting out. If it ends up being a second job, then why the fuck would any normal person want to participate?
You want PvP to get better? Give everyone full Gladiator for FREE. Give starting players access to a cheap pirate frig that can tear apart larger ships in one-on-one. Once people are on equal footing, only then will you see a PvP-oriented MMO as big as WoW.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
When I played UO....there was nothing to stop roving bands of pks going around and killing everything in their path. If you killed them they lost....a newbie deathrobe and a few reagents. If they killed you(much more likely) you lost a lot more in terms of gear. Completely unbalanced risk vs reward there.
When they put housing in some pks set up a house along a road outside of Britain. They'd flag or steal from someone and run into their house. If you tried to follow them in they'd just ban you, teleporting you back outside. So maybe they died once or twice in the process.....by the time they did they'd pickpocketed, killed, and looted so much stuff it didn't matter. They could log off inside their house with people trying to get to them.
It most cases it was better to move on and just forget about it. Trying to kill them or get your stuff back was utterly futile and a waste of time. It was extremely frustrating and not much fun for the targets of such attacks. MMOs like WoW where you can't be looted at least eliminate that part of the frustration and balance it out a bit. You can still be griefed but it's not quite as punitive for the victim.
What's the incentive of playing an MMO game without leveling? Well, hopefully the game is simply fun enough to warrant playing with no leveling.
There are more ways to advance then just gear and items. Take a game like Go or Virtua Fighter 5. There is no difference in 'level' or 'gear' between players in those games, yet because the game has depth in terms of strategy and tactics there is a huge difference between an experienced player and a new one. The good player has advanced, but not in terms of game mechanics.
The problem with having levels and gear discrepancies is it just forces it so you have to invest X amount of time before you can play the "real" game, the game at the max level. You can give players many different sorts of ways to advance themselves in the game. For example, since MMOs are supposed to be social games. Why not let people advance something like their guild. Build a town, research a new item, discover an uncharted land. But, when it's something like that, it means that a player that has played for 500 hours can still play with his friend who just got the game a week ago in a meaningful way.
Cue string of surprised, perplexed and horrified smilies.
Did you seriously just ask that?
If the game isn't fun, nobody is going to play it even if it does include levelling. Auto Assault had levelling. So did The Matrix Online.
Yes and then some. The current status quo for MMOs is based on traditional pen and paper RPGs. But that's chiefly because those were simply the first type of MMOs to materialise. It's not a physical restriction of the genre, just a psychological restriction. People (at least most people) don't play EvE to increase the level of their character, they play it because they have various careers and roles in the game which they enjoy participating in. Yeah yeah, EvE is a 'minority' MMO, but the point is still valid. People play lots of games that aren't MMOs and don't involve levelling, it's not a completely crazy idea that people might play MMOs that don't involve levelling.
In fact, an MMO without levelling - or at least where levelling isn't the core focus of the game experience - is likely to be more accessible and thus is a highly probable future trend for MMOs. The difficulty is in developing a compelling enough game to hold peoples attention month after month without resorting to a basic addiction to joyless grinding. The most likely success in achieving this long-term connection without levelling is likely to come from peoples natural competitiveness. People played Starcraft and Counterstrike for years after the original games had long past their consumption date, not because the single player game had a storyline that lasted years, not because they had a time investment in levelling their characters, but because they were addicted to the multiplayer competitive game. Battlefield 2 enjoyed a similar commitment from it's player base (although they raped it through buggy patches and horrendous balancing issues).
If you're going to take away the frankly lazy hook of forcing people to grind for two months to see any exciting content to keep them playing your game, then appealing to humans competitive nature is likely to be a good step. Likewise, appealing to their social nature - their desire to belong to a tribe - will help, so providing them with the means and option to not only fight with but co-operate with other players will provide them with a huge emotional investment.
And I guess that I'm still not seeing how this will work. I'll think about it some more, but so far it just sounds like you guys are saying, "Well, game X does fine without leveling, so it can be done for an MMO." Yeah, Virtua Fighter and Go have the players on a level playing field, but those are also 2 player games. Even something multiplayer like Starcraft or Counterstrike would be difficult to translate to an MMO, especially when considering that someone who could come out on top of the scoreboard in his usual pickup games or server will likely not enjoy the same position in the MMO.
And, how level is the playing field really in some of these games? Time played is still a huge factor. Instead of getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours raiding to get his Leet Sword of Destruction +5, you're getting killed by the kid who spent hours and hours playing or perfecting Strategy X.
Edit: And I'm not saying this this won't work, I'm just not sure how it would work at this point.
As an aside, the idea that "the end game starts at max level" always bothers me a bit. I've always had more fun on the journey than when I've arrived, and it always seemed like the wrong way to go about things.
Yeah, I think you get exp for killing players too.
I know in Age of Conan you have your player level and your PvP level. I am not sure how the interact to determine your over all level for PvP though.
Ok, that does make sense.
Something about that is raising design red flags in my head, but I'm not sure what. I'd hate to suck at that game though. "Man, I've been on this dwarf skull quest for days."
How much do you pay a month to play Mario Kart?
No, its rewarding the people who want to take more risk. Otherwise, everyone would obviously level up where its safer, and then move to the PVP lands when theyve maxed out.
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Where's Mario Kart's persistent world and frequent content updates?
Players clearly do not know what is fun for them and need to be guided like the good sheep they are towards the MORE FUN* PvP areas.
Battlefield 2, I think, is really quite a good example of how I see (some) future MMOs. It isn't an MMO yet, but it's fairly close to being one. I suspect in time, it will be seen as the game that brought FPS into the MMO world (because everyone will conveniently forget about Planetside). Sure, BF2 has some token leveling but really all you get for your experience points are some extra toys to play with. They don't ever turn you into an indestructible killing machine with a massive advantage over newer players, they just give you more options. Newer players are still perfectly capable of killing you though, so someone with an upgraded kit might be having more fun as a reward for playing longer, but they never unbalance a map. Besides that, you could use any vehicle or weapon on the map. You could even pick up the kit of a fallen enemy or comrade and use guns you hadn't yet unlocked.
It rewards you for playing for a long time (and for playing well) but it doesn't penalise you for being new to the game.
I see no reason why this model couldn't be expanded into a persistent (or semi-persistent) world, genuine MMO environment. I don't think it'll be the only route MMOs take, the traditional RPG MMO is definitely here to stay for the forseable future, but at the same time there is clearly a desire amongst players for both more accessibility (hence a removal of ability penalisation for being new) and for both competitive and teamwork based games.
You have to take "fun" and world balancing into consideration when planning something like that.
The idea is to give people the option, but also try to jam everyone into the same area so everyone can have fun together, whether their idea of fun is killing monsters or killing players, and not ending up with a portion of your world thats used for one thing, and a portion thats used for the other.
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
Now im not saying the disparity has to be so huge, as in the 2:1 or 40:1 case, but there needs to be some incentive otherwise people wont do it. Everyone is always going to pick the safer bet if the results are going to be the same, thats human nature. The idea is not so much to make people do something theyre uncomfortable with, its more to present them with the choice and show them the results of picking either path. The choice they make is up to them, and for some people, they would rather invest a little more time if it means less frustration on the way to their goal, while others are going to accept that frustration as part of the cost of taking the shortcut, or not even view it as a frustration at all.
And leveling and money was just an example (one thats already been used in a live game). It can be anything, more space for housing, more frequent monster spawns, whatever. Extra content though, should be off limits, as youre right, you dont want to force people to do anything in a game, because thats not fun.
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