MMO Development Lesson #23
Inconvenience does not make a game harder, it makes it less convenient. Tedium does not equal difficulty. Making something unnecessarily complex, tedious, or in some way inconvenient doesn’t make the game more challenging or more fun. Is having an extremely limited amount of inventory space fun or challenging? No, it’s tedious. It’s not fun gameplay for most people, even if there are some freaks out there who want to painstakingly manage their inventory and consider the absence of that unfun. Don’t design for those people unless you are making a niche game. Make a game challenging via gameplay, not tedious barriers to fun.
Amen, Brother S!
The trick is to impose the “realistic” limitation in a way that opens a new challenge. Halo is a great example. It was the first FPS where you couldn’t carry the entire duffel-bag arsenal. You could carry two (three if you dual-wielded). While at face value this sucked, Bungie tweaked the HUD display and buttons so that finding and swapping out new guns was relatively easy. You still had the challenge of limited ammo and carrying capacity, but no tedium.
As for inventory control in MMOs, there’s something to be said for not being able to carry 57 swords. You also reach a point where you have more crap than you can actually remember. There has to be a happy medium solution where inventory space is limited, but not constricting.
The Elder Scrolls series had an interesting method for a lot of these things. Every problem in the game can be solved by a boon in the game. Bad lighting: use a spell/torch/lantern/night vision. Carrying capacity: buff your strength or cast Feather on yourself. Blocked by a wall: get a flying staff/shoes/hat. So while carrying capacity might initially be a problem, providing an in-game solution will add flavor and additional goals while reducing the tedium.
When I first saw EQ2 inventory I thought WTF?!
Thought maybe Id fell into a timewarp or something.
I agree. This is all strictly my opinion, of course, but some limitations or penalties might be good for the playerbase as a whole. Take death penalties in eq1. You lost experience in that game, which did suck majorly, however, it encouraged the using of content in the game. If people could never feel 100% safe even at “max level” then you basically force even the most uber of the uber to, at least occasionally, to group with people. They had to do something, even if it was killing rats, to keep their level, and thus interact with the community as a whole. Some games (and I’m mostly thinking eq2 when I say this) suffer from an “empty” feeling in overland zones or outside of instnaces if they have lower subscriber numbers, simply because there are so many at max lvl and with no need to experience any content anymore at all. When you are max lvl and AA there is often a feeling of “what do I do but raid?” If you provide xp loss upon death, it forces the character to at least group/quest/adventure in some way, to get the lvl padded or safe.
I know that assuming what is best for the player is generally a bad idea, but in some cases, it is warranted for the overall long term health of the game
However it is very easy to go too far, some tedium actually can be a good thing for a game. Sure, people complain about bag space, but at the same time, infinite inventory can just as easily kill a game. ‘Fire elemental? Let me equip my fire elemental set? Oh, then orcs, equip my orc slayer set.’ The idea is to force the player to make choices, but not be overly tedious about it. Weapons lockers / walls in the players house to store gear, can be a great idea, ( Hmm, I’m about to adventure in the mountains, so I’ll leave my tarzan suit in its locker.) Weight restrictions can also be a good limit, as long as you have ways to adjust. A wagon you can leave at the entrance of the dungeon holding some of your stuff, just be carefull, it might draw bandits on you when you exit the dungeon. Similar idea can help with other things that can be tedious, but also prevent pushing the ‘easy button’.
Yep, Mythilt. There is room for limitations if they make the game better. I agree that having too much bag space can actually harm gameplay. If you have 500 slots, how will you find what you need?
Tedium is not gameplay, but sometimes you need to limit or restrict things for the benefit of players, even if they don’t know you’re doing it for their own good.
There’s a difference between giving the player an interesting choice (bag space) and giving the player tedium for the sake of ‘pacing’ or ‘for his own good’ (example: travel times in most MMOs).
When you do the latter, all you’re actually doing is giving your competitors a cheap and easy competitive advantage.
Interestingly, I am a much happier camper about travel time than bag space.
There’s not fun or payoff for me (as a player) when I get frustrated that I’ve run out of bag space and have to trek my slow ass back to town and pause the fun OR sacrifice loot and therefore money. To me there is no micromanagement metagame in limited bag space, there is just inconvenience in being forced (in the mind of me as a player) to make frequent town stops to sell and stop having fun for big chunks of my incredibly limited playtime.
There is fun or payoff for me (as a player) when I have to actually get somewhere the old-fashioned way and explore, avoid dangers along the way, etc., rather than instantly teleport somewhere. I like when a world feels big, and a lack of widespread instant travel seems to help that for me. You might argue that I’m being hypocritical since I mentioned my limited playtime as a factor for hating limited bag space, noting that travel time makes that suck as well: in my mind, it just means that I go somewhere and learn to “live” there for a while before making the long treks across the land.