I got an email with a link to this particular blog entry, I assume from Mayhem here.

While I appreciate the kind words about my article, I don’t see the need to put anyone down because they don’t agree with it. Yes, I think the current popularity of MMORPGs will eventually fade, but there’s nothing wrong with making that kind of game if that’s what you like to make, especially if someone’s giving you your first real opportunity to do game design on an original product. Plus, there are plenty of people still willing to play these games.

Now, the comments about Ryan’s experience really irritate me. There are plenty of fantastic designers who have to work their butts off in tester/assistant producer hell for a long time just to get a shot at designing something. (I got started as a tester, too, no shame in that.) On the flip side of things, you have designers with a lot of experience who seemingly can’t hack it nowadays, like Richard Garriott, Brad McQuaid, and plenty of others. Enthusiasm, intuition, and forward thinking are all just as important as experience, if not more so. Confidence and self-promotion don’t hurt, either, in an industry where swagger is what opens most doors.

As far as my ideas go, I’m happy with what I am working on. It’s a game that gives each player control of their own ecosystem (in the figurative sense) that they shape and influence. There are various ways for players to interact with each other, but each player essentially retains control of who is allowed to affect that ecosystem. This kind of game is all about changing a persistent game world–possible because it was designed around that concept–but one where you are the gatekeeper. Since you don’t have hordes of players trampling through it unless you invite them to, it doesn’t have to spring back into its original shape with 10-minute respawns and the like. It’s probably not something that people here would be interested in because progress is harder to quantify and there’s no incentive to form guilds and that kind of thing, but I think there will still be a market for it. By the way , my second article for Gamasutra (”Stories From the Sandbox”) also reflects my work on this game.

I think it would be a mistake to try to apply stuff from my article to the “MMORPG” genre willy-nilly. Like Ryan said, you have to make your feature set and design approach cohesive. The article was about designing new games from the ground up, and why you would want to do that given that the current model is what’s making money. It’s not about trying to bend MMORPGs into something they aren’t.

I dunno about working on an MMO being harder than working on any other kind of game. I mean, it seems like you’ve got a good head for design and all, but until you’ve shipped something that reflects that, it’s all hot air, like Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun, which SWG violated horribly. Not sure why you put on airs of being this great designer coming down from the mountain to share your wisdom when your game will probably just be another game that totally relies on its “treat dispenser” (to steal a term from the article) instead of gameplay that’s actually fun by itself. And at least this guy has made some good games and apparently makes a living as a game design consultant, which seems like it would be hard to do if your advice were impractical or redundant.

Anyway, sorry to be blunt but it just makes no sense to me why people keep making different flavors of Everquest and then insist that their work is the pinnacle of what is even possible with current tech. The reason I like the article is because it elevates the MMO design discussion to a place where skills vs. classes and such are just insignificant details instead of the main differentiating factor between games. It makes me think that much more is possible, but the frustrating thing is that the people who make these games are not interested in . Not that you have any say in the overall game concept and direction, but I would at least hope that you could see the potential in other kinds of games and acknowledge that the genre’s evolution is stunted.

Back to the original point: His solutions aren’t actually solutions, they are random ideas about how to address a perceived problem. For example, saying “create interesting challenges” and actually creating interesting challenges are worlds upon worlds different.

No offense to you or the writer of that article, but nothing in there is even remotely revolutionary. I’ve seen ideas just as well thought out on forums from players. Would I hire them? Maybe, it depends on how hardworking they’d be, their personality, their willingness to learn, etc. But I wouldn’t be much more likely to hire someone who has been a game designer on one sports project.

As for the comment that he has better ideas than 99% of the people who do work on MMOs… it would be hard to comment much on that without getting offended and ranting. But, I will say that 99% of all ideas, good or bad, don’t ever get implemented (they’d take too long to implement, they would impact too many other systems, they don’t follow the vision of the game, there are too many trade-offs, etc.).

And, again, there are very few implementable ideas in that article, and many of the others are already in games. The varied difficulty of 5 weak goblins vs. 1 strong goblin does already exist, and part of the reason it isn’t too prevalent is because not all characters can handle multiple enemies effectively (some have control abilities like mez, dome have big AoE spells, some have neither).

Finally, if any of these solutions really did enumerate what exactly would be done, they would have to include all the trade-offs for doing so. Making instant-travel portals all over the world reduces the depth of the game, harms immersion, reduces the sense of accomplishment you gain from getting somewhere in the first place, changes the economy, and has a number of other trade-offs associated with it. You can’t just solve one problem and disregard all of the problems that solution creates.

The hardest part of game design for me is probably accurately identifying those trade-offs, then weighing the options against each other in the context of a particular game and making a decision without regard to my personal preferences coming into play. For example, I absolutely love skill systems, but are they worth it, or are class systems overall better for the vision of the game you are making? Generally for accessibility purposes, you’re going to always end up deciding that classes are better than skills. If you still want players to be able to customize their character heavily, you can, but this won’t start until a little later in the game.

Found it: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070326/sorens_01.shtml. Such an awesome article. Wonder why this guy hasn’t worked on any MMOs yet? Has 38 studios tried to hire him? He’s got better ideas than 99% of the people who do work on MMOs.

In EQ2, my bags are constantly full with item drops, quest drops, collectibles, potions, resist gear, harvestables, summoned rez and power items, and of course, scrying stones. (I KNOW I’ll get something useful from scrying someday, I just know it!) My bank is so cluttered that I avoid visiting it these days. Bigger bags and bank slots don’t really help, it just prolongs the search time for whatever it is you need to find.

I’d love to see a game move away from bags completely and just use a drop down menu in the UI, which allows you to sort and search it several different ways.

Nice post