MMO Development Lesson #14
Add features because they are fun; don’t add features if they aren’t. Period. You should never add a feature to your game just because you think it’s a standard in the genre. Maybe it is, but why is it? Is it because it’s fun? If so, does it cohesively fit in your game? If it’s not fun, does it… wait, no, if it’s not fun then don’t put in your game. Simple. Don’t put anything in the game that you think is a standard in the genre without first examining why that is so, and include it if it’s a good idea.
I’m really curious to hear what you think would happen to an mmorpg if you skip a standard feature. Some of the usually debated ones are:
- Levels
- Death
- Raids
- Soulboundiness
To get more theoretical how about imagining removing Skills from an mmorpg. Will you still be able to call the game an mmorpg?
Suggested addendum: Don’t add content (as opposed to features) just because the content’s fun… unless, of course, fun is all that your game aspires to be. I think a lot of people confuse the two. Some people say that games are all about fun. Are they? What about evoking emotions throughout the spectrum? I think games are all about the experiences. Fun is simply one motivation, one way to get players to experience the game. Don’t create a fun game for the sake of fun. Fun games can be dull, too.
Wolfe: Most of those have already been skipped in many MMORPGs. You’re essentially looking away from the graphical diku, that’s all.
Of course, it’s important to remember to really think about a feature before you cut it too, right? I mean, death doesn’t seem fun. Everyone hates dying. But it’s one way of creating a challenge, and overcoming challenges is fun.
This will segue into another lesson a little, but never remove a feature for the sake of removing it, and don’t be different for the sake of being different. There’s a really good reason that certain features exist in most MMOs. Death is a good example. Having some sort of punishment for failure enhances risk, which makes rewards all that much sweeter. If you were to remove death, you’d need to come up with a better way to introduce risk/reward to the world (which could surely be done).
I just wish so many games wouldn’t rely on death being the only option for defeat. People always talk about immersion and whatnot, and the first thing that breaks immersion for me is knowing that I can die twenty times a day. I like The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar’s intimation that you character gets hurt or knocked unconscious and retreats to a rally point, or is awakened/helped after the fight by his fellowship. It goes a long way toward keeping me in the world and not at my keyboard.
I agree with Cameron Sorden about death creating challenges, and thus possibly ending up being important to net fun. I think it’s an important ambiguity in “don’t do anything that’s not fun.” There are enough people that respond to challenges (and other things like exclusivity and uncertainty and whatnot) that “if it’s not fun, don’t put it in your game” doesn’t sound like a useful general guideline.
There’s also a real problem with the guideline that even if you can recognize fun when you see it, few people are wise enough to reliably judge when the sum of major, sweeping design changes will increase fun. There’s a big problem with doing the major sweeping design changes, and then thinking “I can see this now, so if it were fun I would know it, and… it’s not fun.”
On the other hand, while the general case is hard, it still might be worth reminding designers to honor the principle in the easy case. I am surprised at the number of things in games which are obviously not fun, as obvious outcomes of local design decisions. To pick on _Oblivion_, since it was generally enjoyable enough that lots of people here will have played it, what designer thought it was fun to have soulstones get irreversibly used up in suboptimal ways if your backpack happened to contain the wrong sizes of unused stones, perhaps because you had just filled up the last right-size one? I really doubt that many players get their satisfaction buttons pushed by the challenge of mousing over their inventory to check which soulstones are still unfilled, and referring to handwritten notes or downloaded game guide to see whether the to-be-soul-trapped creature has the right size of soul; and local fixes seem obvious.
“I like The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar’s intimation that you character gets hurt or knocked unconscious and retreats to a rally point, or is awakened/helped after the fight by his fellowship.”
Same here. Failure still stings but I much prefer loss of morale to loss of life.
I remember, fondly and painfully, the Diku days of death.
Hoping and praying that a level 30+ cleric was around who could rez you. Hoping even more that they were high enough level to warp to you, and/or make the journey safely.
But failing an available healer, taking the death, wandering around the maze of the void till you found the exit to the Midgaard temple… an then grabbing some crappy armor and a weapon from the donation pile so that you can safely mount a corpse run…
all the while realizing that whatever killed you, did so while you were in your primary gear, and now you are running in with newbie armor and a crystal short sword… with a flaming wedge of cheese as a shield. (all of which you stopped using some 10-30 levels ago…)
I never got into ‘Hardcore’ games where death meant a character wipe. I always felt cheated of my efforts when I died in those environments.
But I miss death MEANING something. Armor decay, Experience debt, 5 minutes of rez sickness, etc, just don’t cut it.
The death penalties we faced then were no more or less fun than many of the currently used penalties. They DID create a much more satisfying experience.
For reference, the above death penalty experiences were gathered from (primarily) Northern Crossroads and it’s sister/spinoff Mystik Isles…
Brew I agree, that death really needs to hurt a ton more than todays crop of games. I mean if you look at Vanguard leaderboards for deaths, well there are people up near 2100 deaths reaching level 50. As I write this the leader has 2,052 deaths. Yet there is not one mechanic in place to disuade these players from doing such kamakazi runs to the end game. Heck, who can’t reach the end game when you can’t die…almost like the energizer bunny…just keeps going and going.
There is also no reward for making that journey to the end game with zero deaths, but the games environment seems like it will no allow such activty as I’ve now died twice upon entering the game. Once falling from a great height in the sky to be squashed by the hard world below, and the second time I fell of the bridge in Kojan (wood elves area) when logging in and grabbing a quick smoke to drown in the waters below.
I could have sworn that the Vision(tm) said in Vanguard, death was going to have meaning and sting.
I don’t mind a lot of the activities that are in the games today, even though more and more are being stripped from then as new ‘generations’ of these games are made. What ever happened to first person view (immersion), fishing (passing the time), more focus on group play (more enjoyment in a role playing game), and so many of the other things that made the genre great when it was being introduced.
Why are we still using the EQ Bard model of play for all games today, now before you say ‘auto attack’ was the bore, there are more things they could put in to these games to remove the ‘auto attack’ leave computer, come back later, loot syndrome. But every game these days is forcing me to become an Bard of EQ, spam happy on my buttons. What ever happened to Warriors not having spells to cast in battle, what ever happened to mana/power be more of a precious commodity on the battle field. What ever happened to classes having defined roles in the world and groups settings.
Those lines are being so blurred these days, it really don’t matter which class you choose to play. I would like to see a combat system that does not require hidden math equations to figure out, give me the proper equation and the tools to figure out for myself what I should and should not be capable of on the battlefield. Give me the ability as a warrior to block the path of the enemy with my body instead of having me spam a taunt button. Give me the ability to switch from offensive to defensive by holding down the ’shift’ key for example.
As a Ranger, make my archery skill really worth it on the battle field, heck put in line of sight, to where I need to move around on the battlefield to get a clear shot at the enemy so I don’t plan a barbed tip of my arrow in the Fighters rear side.
As a Arcane caster and other types of casters, make it so that mana is not an ever flowing resource in combat to where it is a chain casting feast each and every fight.
Crafting, take away the feel of working in a factory on an assembly line. Allow me to click on the tools on the forge to do the activities buttons are to represent. Allow there to be ‘complications’ in the process where I need to figure out what should be done next, but still not with a button on the UI screen that does it all for me.
Too many times, we just do what the ‘others’ did while trying to say that we are doing it better, yet there is less fun in these games today than the first generation of games.
the skill spamming goes well beyond the current gen of mmo’s, back to the Diku Roots. Eq1 actually is the abnormality in my experience.
I’d love for a more tactical combat system to actually come into play, with stances, group tactics, and such actually meaning something. I think VSoH had the right initial goal here, but it got lost in the translation…
One of the major factors, is that the players want to feel like they are ‘doing’ something at all times. Spamming skills satisfies the need. Setting autoattack, and using a skill rarely, cautiously, every 5 seconds or 15 seconds, and pausing between actions is too slow of a pace for most players. If combat ‘feels’ slow, then it lacks excitement.
I’d agree on LOTRO’s “death” mechanic being cool and immersive if:
1) I didn’t completely respawn at some “rally point,” which reminds me of a graveyard or other respawn point in every other game.
2) Every single time someone is defeated, people didn’t always say, “damnit, I died.”
Their “defeat” is exactly the same as death except for its different name, and everyone refers to it as death anyway.
I’d prefer if either:
a) A game were to fully explain and integrate its death mechanic, making it a real part of its world (i.e. if you can resurrect in a world, what massive implications does that have?).
b) A game took a completely different approach to losing battles.
I’d judge the LOTRO penalty a little better if I were able to wait around for a few minutes instead of going to the “rally point” and simply become conscious again. Same penalties without the running, because being defeated in battle making me teleport halfway across the world doesn’t really make sense to me.
The point that things should be fun is valid, Death is a negative but unless you have death you cannot have the avoidance of death. And the avoidance of death during a challenging encounter is fun (for some people).
As to death, making it punishing without making it too much for many is the line that always needs walking.
You could need to by a charm from a major church which means that if you die while carrying it you get teleported by one of their duty clerics back to the temple and raised from the dead. That maintains immersion in a magic heavy world, but what about penalty…
You could make the items expensive, but then some folks will end up dying with no way back. People could forget to buy one, or be new and not know about them, even if they are cheap.
You could make the raise dead spells have a negative affect like the D&D raise spells, but how harsh should that be to make people not want to die while not meaning that a single unlucky death destroys the whole evenings accomplishment for the casual player.
Horizons as I recall handled the death idea pretty straightforwardly, yeap you died…but you are one of the immortal defenders, so you got better.
My problem with using the non-autoattack ideas that Boon mentions is that
A) Lag issues (My computer says I’m 2 feet to the left, and thus have a clear shot, the server says otherwise…server wins always for obvious reasons.)
B) Positioning issues, I have horrible depth perception in games, I stopped playing D&D online because my characters almost never hit in combat due to being too close or too far with its ‘the sword only rolls to hit if your avatars swing hits.’
C) What is the difference between auto-attack with special moves (CA’s) and just having the moves really, when you get down to it?
I think Vanguard was going the right way in some areas. Perhaps a combat mode button (You enter into a defensive position) with the ability to attack when needed (standard attack has short cooldown/animation that must complete, etc.) You avatar stands there and faces the selected opponent, when opponent attacks, you defend, sometimes you press the attack / riposte button when they leave themselves open (You need a good way of indicating this, one problem I had with Vanguards method, is not knowing weaknesses being explotable when). Hard to say, you want something immersive, but not punishing for those who are of slower reflexes, as well as those who like me, have perception problems.
Sorry, this is entirely unrelated to your post today, but I just found out that Sanya Weathers, the Internet Community Coordinator (or whatever official title she carried) “mutually agreed” to leave DAoC/Warhammer/EA/Mythic after 6 years communicating between company and playerbase.
She was one of the best things about the dev team at Mythic (from a player perspective) and if 38 Studios was looking to hire someone well worth whatever her recent paycheck was barely affording, she’s the one.
I just figured I’d put in a word for her to someone on the inside at 38 Studios since my guess is in the very near future, someone of her caliber will be needed to run cover on all of the great ways devs like to make the players twist and squirm with ongoing changes to the game and answers to their problems.
I’m already very interested in what may come out of your company and if Sanya were to land at 38, it’d probably be enough for me to jump at the word “go”. Just figured I’d put this out there for your consideration.
–Kaz
What about making death more interesting than just a respawn? For instance, you “awake” in a certain place with no equipment where, before you can rejoin the living, you must:
a) Solve a puzzle/riddle/joke
b) Defeat a foe
c) Win a mini-game
or
d) Something different every time?
That way, Death has a penalty (delay), but remains a unique and interesting experience.
Therm: I think that would rule at first, then you’d yearn for “old school” death after a short while. Something like that would lose its fun pretty fast. The biggest issue here is when you consider groups–how annoying would it be to have to wait extra time for a groupmate to come back because he died?
So you have to start building other mechanics around the new “fun” mechanic so it isn’t annoying. Everyone in the group should be able to resurrect everyone else. Okay, that might work.
Then you realize that people are probably working on quests, unless you promote the grind, so they’ll probably want to be able to get back to the place they’re trying to do their quest at or they will get really frustrated. Not to mention, you realize you’re making your game for small doses of fun, and people with 30 minutes who die won’t be able to progress their character like they want.
Okay, new bandage: You can spend some real world coin to get out of death land and immediately back into the living world. Okay, cool… now I’ve just trivialized all that extra effort of putting in a “cool” death mechanic, because people always bypass it because it’s a lot less “cool” and a lot more “annoying.” Weaksauce.
However, I do see room for something big in the “death world” category. I’d love to see two distinct realms–one life, and one death–that players can adventure in. The only way to get there is to die solo or wipe as a group. This, of course, would have to be one of the major selling points of a game and be done really well. If they put that in WoW, I would think it sucked, for example.
I agree that the group cohesion and original goal functions need to be considered with the death mechanism. Balancing that would require some thought. One option would be to make death, although disruptive to an original goal, presents a unique goal in itself. What if death itself had some risk? So in addition to completing the death task, the player or group might randomly come back with a boon or bane?
You could even make it as simple as offering the player a choice at death: “A) Respawn? B) Enter the world of the dead?” The latter is more of a time sink, but may contain greater/unique rewards.
I personally liked the three-strikes system of death in SWG. Each time your health went below zero, you were “incapactitated” for a number of seconds. If you were “incapacitated” three times in a short period of time, then the third time you were “incapactitated” you died. In that game, you were sent to a cloning station (same as graveyard, respawn point, and so on).
Of course, certain aggressive critters may decide to kill you outright instead of letting you regain consciousness.
This system forced you to regain your composure and maybe change tactics after your first or second incapactiations without the time sink of a huge death penalty. And hey, if you were incapactitated a third time, then it was just your own dumb fault for a) not waiting out the time when your incaps were reset b) continuing to take on an area that was too hard for you.