How to addict consumers to a real next-generation MMO

Zajeer_sl said:

I wonder, how many people enjoyed FFXI and the sub-class system? Sub-classes in FFXI was a way to make leveling content re-usable, and gave players the option of checking out other areas they wouldn't normally play in. When I played, my first character I leveled up in Bastok (the human'ish area), and then I leveled up a sub-class in Bastok. However, for my third sub-class (I was a Taru Taru and went Warrior -> Monk -> Paladin -> White Mage), I played in the Taru lands. Playing in the Bastok area multiple times wasn't bad - in some cases I got to play in certain areas more than I would have on one play-through. And then, being able to play in other areas was nice, to get the newbie experience for those other areas.

It felt different than just playing and leveling an alt in WOW, simply because I felt like I was making meaningful progress on my main character by leveling up those sub-classes.

When looking back on my time playing EQ, I enjoyed the journey (leveling up) just as much as the end game points. Part of that was because when you played in a specific zone, you could miss playing through portions of that zone as you level up. Being able to replay through the same zone and have some familiarity, while getting to play through some additional content which you missed seem fun and fresh. Comparatively you look at WOW, and once you play through Westfall once, you've consumed all Westfall content for all time, which makes replayability of the area boring because you've done it all before.

Personally, I think an end-game only MMO would be boring in some ways, plus it diminishes some level of accomplishment of going through the content and getting to the max level. I think the core issue is, getting to max level has become an easier task in the newer MMOs, which diminishes that accomplishment and makes you guys ask "why bother". In EQ, getting to level 50 before Kunark felt like an accomplishment; in FFXI, getting multiple subclasses to max level felt like an accomplishment. That, coupled with a larger amount of choice in how you consume content made it feel a little more interesting. WOW by comparison was somewhat a linear path to max level, and felt easier to do.

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Jais_sl said:

Can only speak for myself but I'd be a fan of less combat skills. I'll take a more classic EQ approach rather than the piano playing across 6 full hotbars EQ2 style.

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You guys have the right idea IMO. Companies and players keep wanting to re-invent the wheel with MMO's. Much of this on the company end especially is simply creating a broader appeal. The genre really still doesn't have ways to move past what worked for EQ and FFXI, games designed around the truth that a player's time investment is the only true risk/reward paradigm that there is, its the currency for addiction, retention and immersion. If anything the genre should be goingbackto leveling as the meat of your character investment. Going straight to item acquisition like the OP wants is ridiculous. You just want to jumpstart the game right where mudflation begins, terrible.

FFXI had a lot of things right, the job system and the playstyles it encouraged being primary in the strength of addictiveness for that game, it rivaled EQ or surpassed it in terms of obsessive investment in character. Playing whatever the fuck different archetype when you need to is a half ass approach for an MMORPG as opposed to a robust multiclassing system like FFXI jobs. You keep the class roles specialized and distinct, meaning you can balance them against each other, which EQ had as well as opposed to everybody-wins talents and skill button bloat. Of course then you also need forced grouping dynamics so that specialized class roles can work with each other rather than all this jack-of-all trades bullshit classes today.

Most people here turned around and left FFXI immediately once they got a glimpse of the shitastic console port UI that didn't use the mouse, favored a controller and required you to write unintuitive macros to be efficient, so they never got deep enough to see how well the job system really functioned and how healthy and cohesive it made a playerbase, the economy, population and grouping at all levels of the grind. FFXI really was more about living and working in the world than about simply raiding and getting +10 betterer purpz every week, which even EQ suffered from eventually in its own non-WoW fashion. Plus the really big events your character did once, and it was like soft twinking for leveling your next job which still had class specific tasks to do as you advanced it and of course true twinking with items.

Add in story and cutscenes and you had players who wanted to get together and do quests not only for the reward of cash or items or access to areas, but because they simply wanted to experience that quest content. There was soft instancing that you experience as a group without stupid ass phasing, and still open world leveling, trains, dungeons with butthole pinching danger...obviously some of that is predicated on death/XP penalties once again with leveling being the content and XP/time as the risk/reward factor, as well as the existence of zone lines for the trains.

I really do believe that all we need back is a refocusing on the leveling game being the game, but most people seem to just want to chase their suits of armor so I guess all that is gone for good.

Famm_sl said:

You guys have the right idea IMO. Companies and players keep wanting to re-invent the wheel with MMO's. Much of this on the company end especially is simply creating a broader appeal. The genre really still doesn't have ways to move past what worked for EQ and FFXI, games designed around the truth that a player's time investment is the only true risk/reward paradigm that there is, its the currency for addiction, retention and immersion. If anything the genre should be goingbackto leveling as the meat of your character investment. Going straight to item acquisition like the OP wants is ridiculous. You just want to jumpstart the game right where mudflation begins, terrible.

...

I really do believe that all we need back is a refocusing on the leveling game being the game, but most people seem to just want to chase their suits of armor so I guess all that is gone for good.

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Item progression IS leveling, just in another form; especially when items have primary stats on them. Eliminating leveling is simply merging all of that progression into another system, which can work.

I like a lot of the ideas being thrown around (mostly because I am a sucker for armchair design threads). The idea that the end game should just be THE game is a sentiment I have expressed a few times. It makes sense in every way. Having a leveling game that just stops and starts with each new expansion is beyond cumbersome and creates more balance issues than anything.

Collectible Classes
I also am a big fan of incremental complexity and organic gameplay. Start off small and keep adding elements one at a time; Also let the player be the one choosing which elements get added.

I like the idea that classes are things you can collect. I also like faction based rewards. So imagine if classes were tied with faction rewards and acted like titles that could be applied to a character. You gain acceptance into a faction group and they permit you to become one of their associated classes. Each faction might also offer multiple ranks within each class.

Example: There is a faction for the government of the city "Whateva". If you haven't spoiled your reputation with this group you can enlist in the City Guard. You start off as a recruit. As you complete tasks you gain more reputation and can apply for promotions through the ranks. You might even make it to Captain of the Guard or decide to enlist in the military and pursue that path. Each increase in rank would bring access to new abilities or better trainers or new issued equipment. And each increase in reputation might bring access to branching career paths.

This character might even start taking bribes and branch off from the city guard and become a member of the underworld. They would lose almost all of their positive rep with the city in the process, but not the skills they learned.

A player could navigate through the world, deciding which groups they felt like allying with, and piecing together a selection of skills to use. Their current class would reflect their immediate faction alliance and rank, but their other skills could be from all over. Maybe there would be some practical restrictions on skill combinations for balance sake, but even that could be handled without hard barriers.

Character Advancement
I like this system better when combined with skills and flexible stats similar to UO. The process of increasing these items would be different, but the flexibility they offer would be important in a system with so many possible combinations. Skills would be passive and simply determine success rates(to hit % and crit %); stats would determine physical parameters, base values, and maximum potential skill caps.

Stats would increase by allocating stat points that are earned similar to AA points. Every successful action adds to the next stat point a little bit, completed tasks would add whole points. There would be maximum values based on race and there would be an allocated stat cap that was less than the number needed to max every stat. Also, stats would require more stat points to increase as they got higher in value; similar to Fall Out's skill increases.

Skills would be bought from trainers. Most trainers would only cover generic skills to a medium level. Specialized skills or advanced training would be found on faction restricted trainers. And maybe just some hidden and hard to find trainers.

Actual abilities and spells would be rewards for attaining a certain rank within a class. Basic abilities would be found on multiple classes; advanced and specialized abilities would be limited to specific class/rank combos. Example: The Fireball Spell is reserved for Fire Mages of the 5th circle. Many ranks would have an associated quest or task that needed to be completed in order to advance. Most classes with multiple ranks would have an ongoing quest chain leading from one rank to the next.

Equipment as Tools and Modifiers
The final piece to all of this is to treat the equipment as a tool to solve a specific problem or as a modifier to change the way abilities behave. Equipment would contain no base stats found on the character. They would have properties such as weight, restrictions such as preventing certain movements or actions, special abilities that would be deployed when needed (mostly reserved for magical items or consumables), and modifiers for how abilities behave (difference between a sword and shield charge attack and a spear charge attack. First one stuns with a weaker follow up and the second one increases the armor penetration and damage greatly.)

All of those ideas have appeared separately over the years in various genres. However, I think combining them in a sandbox mmo would create a very solid gameplay experience.

Lithose_sl said:

Actually, I really do like PoE's tree/upgrade system. Put that system in with a notoriety/fame system for dungeon access (That degrades on death) and have dungeons follow rules similar to endless dungeons. Then make the world open instead of generated per game (More like an MMO.)--and you'd have the PvE side of the game good for me.

But the whole point of grinding and gear obtainment would be to show it off in the MOBA match up. The different phases of a MOBA, I think, really give a great opportunity to have farmed gear matter (Late game), while still having skill greatly affect the game (Early game/lane phase). MOBA style PvP in a "hybrid" MMO/ARPG setting, imo, could be done very, very well if someone were to bridge the genre gap. (Obviously it would never be balanced enough to be an "E-sport", but I hate that games become limited due to that purpose).

Also, I think it would be really exciting to have a new genre. One of the things I thought was great about LoL was them adding an "out of match", RPG like progression to their game. Yeah, I know they did it mostly to make money--but it added another layer to the game. Just wish some company would take it further and actually have it so "summoners" could exist in the world around where a game like LoL takes place, for example--and I think that "world" would lend itself well to an ARPG (Like PoE) in a persistent state.

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Back in the mid-90s I played a game once that was pretty brilliant and incredibly fun, and the more I think of it, the more I think it was a MOBA-like game before any one thought of DOTA. Here's the game in a nutshell, and I think you could use these theories in a modern design.

The game world was a randomly generated maze that was a 30-40 room grid. The only constant was that the perimeter was open, so you could run in a giant circle around the game map. At each corner there was a "base" with turrets and a same zone. I forget how you won, either defeating the base or getting X amount of kills. There was also a third option of going down below the maze and defeating a captain mob and press a button that blew up the whole map and you got points, and that auto-ended the game. Top points won at that points.

The fun part was that the ground was littered with gear and weapons. So you ran around hunting the other team down and finding armor/weps on the grounds to equip yourself with. There was some rarity etc. There were also bots that you had to contend with.

Essentially it was a Moba without a store and smarter minions. It was pretty damn fun. MOBAs and this ancient MUD had this is common: short term gameplay and a short term leveling/gearing process. Take this theory and combine it with an MMORPG and you get a week long, or month long "game" where you level up and gear up with some kind of end-game winning point. Here's my thought:

Take the MOBA aspect and have a bunch of champs that you can use. You start a new game that lasts, lets say 1-2 weeks. In that two weeks you have to level up, gear up, dungeon, raid and kill the big bad boss at the very pinnacle. Dungeons are 3 people raids are 5 people.

You can have guilds and race, you can solo race. The first team to beat the raid boss wins or some other condition. You can do PVE and PVP matches where the "open world" in PVP-able or not. Else you're just competing for resources. Crafting resources, dungeons are open world, raids are instances. You get server messages that people are entering a raid etc.

The only design flaw, like GW2, is the timezone aspect of things or people with unlimited time have too much of an advantage. You would probably have to create another win scenario or create different game types. Perhaps you can shorten the game span to a few days. But anyway, I would love the idea of that "fresh MMORPG rush" type of gameplay.


You could have blocks like in Magic where Set 1 is Tier 1 raid. Set 2 is Tier 1 and 2 and Set 3 is Tier is 1-3. Then you start the next season or block.

Kind of takes Qhue's idea and twists it a bit. This way early "leveling" content is always uses as the game starts over again. Gear inflation is solved because it gets wiped after the game. And you put in the majority of people's favorite time of an MMORPG: when it's 1-4 weeks old.

Draegan_sl said:

Back in the mid-90s I played a game once that was pretty brilliant and incredibly fun, and the more I think of it, the more I think it was a MOBA-like game before any one thought of DOTA. Here's the game in a nutshell, and I think you could use these theories in a modern design.

The game world was a randomly generated maze that was a 30-40 room grid. The only constant was that the perimeter was open, so you could run in a giant circle around the game map. At each corner there was a "base" with turrets and a same zone. I forget how you won, either defeating the base or getting X amount of kills. There was also a third option of going down below the maze and defeating a captain mob and press a button that blew up the whole map and you got points, and that auto-ended the game. Top points won at that points.

The fun part was that the ground was littered with gear and weapons. So you ran around hunting the other team down and finding armor/weps on the grounds to equip yourself with. There was some rarity etc. There were also bots that you had to contend with.

Essentially it was a Moba without a store and smarter minions. It was pretty damn fun. MOBAs and this ancient MUD had this is common: short term gameplay and a short term leveling/gearing process. Take this theory and combine it with an MMORPG and you get a week long, or month long "game" where you level up and gear up with some kind of end-game winning point. Here's my thought:

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I thinking of that game too! What was the name of it? Paradox or something? You picked a character, there were healers, nukers, and different skills, it was top down and the whole idea was PVP. It was released late 90s for PC. It was really a MOBA before dota for wc3 came out.

It was fun, but the replay value wasn't there. You always need something to do, or achieve for. Gear is a major player in EQ and WOW, I believe once WOW gear given out to anyone people quit, no reason to play if your gear is from the Looking for Dungeon free dispenser.

Flipmode_sl said:

As long as combat is all about max DPS, tactics and strategy seem to take a back seat to "the rotation". The minute combat rewards the person with tactics and strategy, you have a point. Most MMOs it doesn't and ability bloat is definitely an issue.

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Crowd control needs to be required again and come back... and I don't mean simply sheeping a mob. Meaningful crowd control.. I mean i get why folks would think 5 skills are enough because one thing that has been lost is GOOD group dynamics and dependencies. With all of these new games that are action oriented and very simple grouping has gotten worse.. again think of WOTLK and how wow changed from caring a bit about CC to simply collect mobs and AE the shit out of them. It got stupid and fast. There is very little group coordination these days, most new games you go play are just barfights.

When you battled mobs that could one shot you if you pulled aggro, you used CC to counter that... and various other utility spells. One reason for those extra abilities is how useful they are in group situations and in the old days you soloD to get to know your class so you could know what to do in a group situation.

There is something else to consider also about this ability discussion.. If you are a healer, 5 skills is not going to be enough as you would likely have 3 heals minimum ( HOT, smaller heal, big heal ) and 2 attacks ? No thanks. If you want to see good class designs with >10 skills per class that are all VERY useful look at Vanguard classes. I have never not once played a class there and thought - shit these skills are just not useful and i never use them. Same goes for DDO.

Merquise_sl said:

I thinking of that game too! What was the name of it? Paradox or something? You picked a character, there were healers, nukers, and different skills, it was top down and the whole idea was PVP. It was released late 90s for PC. It was really a MOBA before dota for wc3 came out.

It was fun, but the replay value wasn't there. You always need something to do, or achieve for. Gear is a major player in EQ and WOW, I believe once WOW gear given out to anyone people quit, no reason to play if your gear is from the Looking for Dungeon free dispenser.

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That's not it. This game was all text. it was a MUD essentially.

Interesting discussion.

My biggest issues with most of the design ideas of next gen MMOs are how to replace the treadmills and carrot on a stick content that is the reason behind logging in. What I absolutely hate seeing now is any MMO that has scripted content that is only useful for one play through, or an end game based around farming the same dungeon or raid over and over, or rerunning daily quests.

I'm still in the camp of user generated in-world content being the holy grail of dynamism needed to revitalize the genre. I think skills should be fungible, levels should be about as meaningful as they are in Dark Souls, and everything should have consequences, be it someone invading your castle, developing a new spell, or finding a new material that can be crafted into a unique armor set.

I'm intrigued by the idea of an EVE design in a fantasy setting, but with even more player control over the world. I like the ideas thrown around here regarding classes, skills, and limitations. That said, the MMO endgame design of static scripted bosses is overused, simplistic and needs to go away instead of still being used in every new MMO.

Draegan_sl said:

Back in the mid-90s I played a game once that was pretty brilliant and incredibly fun, and the more I think of it, the more I think it was a MOBA-like game before any one thought of DOTA. Here's the game in a nutshell, and I think you could use these theories in a modern design.

The game world was a randomly generated maze that was a 30-40 room grid. The only constant was that the perimeter was open, so you could run in a giant circle around the game map. At each corner there was a "base" with turrets and a same zone. I forget how you won, either defeating the base or getting X amount of kills. There was also a third option of going down below the maze and defeating a captain mob and press a button that blew up the whole map and you got points, and that auto-ended the game. Top points won at that points.

The fun part was that the ground was littered with gear and weapons. So you ran around hunting the other team down and finding armor/weps on the grounds to equip yourself with. There was some rarity etc. There were also bots that you had to contend with.

Essentially it was a Moba without a store and smarter minions. It was pretty damn fun. MOBAs and this ancient MUD had this is common: short term gameplay and a short term leveling/gearing process. Take this theory and combine it with an MMORPG and you get a week long, or month long "game" where you level up and gear up with some kind of end-game winning point. Here's my thought:

Take the MOBA aspect and have a bunch of champs that you can use. You start a new game that lasts, lets say 1-2 weeks. In that two weeks you have to level up, gear up, dungeon, raid and kill the big bad boss at the very pinnacle. Dungeons are 3 people raids are 5 people.

You can have guilds and race, you can solo race. The first team to beat the raid boss wins or some other condition. You can do PVE and PVP matches where the "open world" in PVP-able or not. Else you're just competing for resources. Crafting resources, dungeons are open world, raids are instances. You get server messages that people are entering a raid etc.

The only design flaw, like GW2, is the timezone aspect of things or people with unlimited time have too much of an advantage. You would probably have to create another win scenario or create different game types. Perhaps you can shorten the game span to a few days. But anyway, I would love the idea of that "fresh MMORPG rush" type of gameplay.


You could have blocks like in Magic where Set 1 is Tier 1 raid. Set 2 is Tier 1 and 2 and Set 3 is Tier is 1-3. Then you start the next season or block.

Kind of takes Qhue's idea and twists it a bit. This way early "leveling" content is always uses as the game starts over again. Gear inflation is solved because it gets wiped after the game. And you put in the majority of people's favorite time of an MMORPG: when it's 1-4 weeks old.

Click to expand...

I've posted this idea a bunch of times now. It's basically the Majora's Mask MMO. The real upside to this model is that you can actually have a vast tree of scripted events where players *permanently* change the game world for that particular reset. You can have a game that has thousands of events like sleeper's tomb, in where the actions of a few players have far reaching effects on the rest of the game. More than that, it actually lets you give unique items out to players without worry and whining from players that they never had a shot at it.

The modern themepark MMO fails precisely because of its permanent nature. You simply can't give players anything unique, nor can you give them the ability to make long lasting changes to their gameworld. By adding the wrinkle of frequent resets, you can actually give out far more power to players because it's more ephemeral in the nature.

Personally, I'd design a Majora's Mask style MMO around an active concurrent player count of 300-500 per server. I think you could make an argument for allowing people to have custom servers as well (optional, running concurrently with base servers). Custom in the sense that you have your world based on resets, and then you have someone who basically acts in a Dungeon Master style role to further enhance things like dynamic effects permanently effecting the world.

edit:

Just as a note, the game world resetting doesn't necessarily mean there's no truly permanent (ie: between reset) progression. It's just the progression is more mild in effect and wheel/spoke based. Think of an achievement style system in where achieving some difficult task within a reset ended up giving you a small stat bonus/important starting item for the next reset. A reset based system just places far more importance on what you've done recently (for player power) as opposed to what you've done over a long period of time.

The only things that can be permanent in that ecosytem are titles, achievements, skins or LOL like things like Runes and Masteries.

shabushabu_sl said:

Crowd control needs to be required again and come back... and I don't mean simply sheeping a mob. Meaningful crowd control.. I mean i get why folks would think 5 skills are enough because one thing that has been lost is GOOD group dynamics and dependencies. With all of these new games that are action oriented and very simple grouping has gotten worse.. again think of WOTLK and how wow changed from caring a bit about CC to simply collect mobs and AE the shit out of them. It got stupid and fast. There is very little group coordination these days, most new games you go play are just barfights.

When you battled mobs that could one shot you if you pulled aggro, you used CC to counter that... and various other utility spells. One reason for those extra abilities is how useful they are in group situations and in the old days you soloD to get to know your class so you could know what to do in a group situation.

There is something else to consider also about this ability discussion.. If you are a healer, 5 skills is not going to be enough as you would likely have 3 heals minimum ( HOT, smaller heal, big heal ) and 2 attacks ? No thanks. If you want to see good class designs with >10 skills per class that are all VERY useful look at Vanguard classes. I have never not once played a class there and thought - shit these skills are just not useful and i never use them. Same goes for DDO.

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GW1 and EQ (essentially) had a limited skill setup. You still had tons of spells available and had to make choices on what to run with, only being able to change outside the mission (GW1), in relative safety or under stress (EQ). I liked that. Of course something like GW1 quickly becomes impossible to balance so its probably over the top, and EQ had alot of chaff and duplicates. But still its better then just having 400 buttons of often equal skills with different cooldowns (Rift, TOR) and really only having 5 skills (LoL, cant think of any MMO that is limited like that). So skill variety is fine but dont make each of them available all the time. You can even build gameplay depth both into acquisition of skills and enhancing them.

And on the topic of skills, I want fun or rarely used but useful stuff on the skill lists. Bind sight, Eagle eye, first person pet control, water walking etc. The entire game focus being on combat is taking some fun out of the classes.

I like the ideas so far, I hate the MOBA idea.

I don't play LoL for that reason, as someone else pointed out it takes out the RPG of the MMORPG. It's no longer about the character I love and have adventured with, it's about bringing the right character to the fight. LoL revolves around the meta, not about the cool character you enjoy and like the way it looks.

All of that goes out the window the minute you start having elite dungeons, raid content, and content that's balanced to the best possible party combinations. I can no longer play with my favorite character, now I -have- to play the fotm, or what the meta calls for, otherwise I can forget about getting into any good group to get the end game gear.

In my mind, people want unique characters. They want a character with equipment or something, that no one else has, or that is rare enough that only a few have, that was EQ's thing. Now days everyone is a copy of everyone else. If you're not, all you have to do is put in enough time and service and you'll have any gear your character can possibly get.

I still contend, that the reason most of us are jaded with the current batch of MMO's, is that we don't feel special anymore. Call it that games became easier, call it that things became more casual, call it what ever. MMO's have become extremely socialist in terms of design. Everyone can equally get a slice of the big pie, so no one is special or can stand out above the rest.

For a short while I actually got the EQ vibe back when my buddy and I were clearing 4-player heroic quests just the two of us. Kind of felt cool to be blowing through that content while the puds were yelling in area chat for more members to clear the 4 player stuff.

Helldiver_sl said:

Call it that games became easier, call it that things became more casual, call it what ever. MMO's have become extremely socialist in terms of design. Everyone can equally get a slice of the big pie, so no one is special or can stand out above the rest.

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On the flip side you also can't get fucked over by anyone, which is just as bad for creating a world where much of the content dynamic rests with other players. I'm not talking about losing your corpse or someone looting your gear even, but trains, consequences for death, ninja looting, those things have worth for a community even though they can suck when they are out of your control.

Famm_sl said:

On the flip side you also can't get fucked over by anyone, which is just as bad for creating a world where much of the content dynamic rests with other players. I'm not talking about losing your corpse or someone looting your gear even, but trains, consequences for death, ninja looting, those things have worth for a community even though they can suck when they are out of your control.

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Especially if a player has the tools to exact righteous vengeance on the flaming dick hole that stole his loot, way back when he was level 5. Nothing better than catching up with someone that screwed you over when you were a lowbie, and dishing out some pain. Everyone needs to find their one armed, six fingered, one eyed, culprit who flies the banner of a two headed snake at least once in their lives.

Gecko_sl said:

Interesting discussion.

My biggest issues with most of the design ideas of next gen MMOs are how to replace the treadmills and carrot on a stick content that is the reason behind logging in. What I absolutely hate seeing now is any MMO that has scripted content that is only useful for one play through, or an end game based around farming the same dungeon or raid over and over, or rerunning daily quests.

I'm still in the camp of user generated in-world content being the holy grail of dynamism needed to revitalize the genre. I think skills should be fungible, levels should be about as meaningful as they are in Dark Souls, and everything should have consequences, be it someone invading your castle, developing a new spell, or finding a new material that can be crafted into a unique armor set.

I'm intrigued by the idea of an EVE design in a fantasy setting, but with even more player control over the world. I like the ideas thrown around here regarding classes, skills, and limitations. That said, the MMO endgame design of static scripted bosses is overused, simplistic and needs to go away instead of still being used in every new MMO.

Click to expand...

I agree with you on the importance of player-created content as a feature of the next generation of MMOs. However, one caveat I'd throw in there, just based on my own preferences, is that I want the player creation of content to be something that works from an in-setting or in-character perspective, and not something that comes across as blatantly metagamey.

What that means, is I don't want devs just giving players a dungeon builder tool, that lets someone build an instance and then go run it with a group. What I want is something more organic, and with a definition of player-generated content that isn't about players building a prepackaged bit of gameplay, but rather goes with a more basic definition of pgc of it simply being what happens whenever one player does something that gives another player something to do. The simplest example of this sort of pgc would be PvP; when one player attacks another, he has created gameplay both for himself and that other player.

Take that mindset, and expand it in every conceivable direction, and you've got my ideal vision for player-generated content.

Randin_sl said:

I agree with you on the importance of player-created content as a feature of the next generation of MMOs. However, one caveat I'd throw in there, just based on my own preferences, is that I want the player creation of content to be something that works from an in-setting or in-character perspective, and not something that comes across as blatantly metagamey.

What that means, is I don't want devs just giving players a dungeon builder tool, that lets someone build an instance and then go run it with a group. What I want is something more organic, and with a definition of player-generated content that isn't about players building a prepackaged bit of gameplay, but rather goes with a more basic definition of pgc of it simply being what happens whenever one player does something that gives another player something to do. The simplest example of this sort of pgc would be PvP; when one player attacks another, he has created gameplay both for himself and that other player.

Take that mindset, and expand it in every conceivable direction, and you've got my ideal vision for player-generated content.

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Wow MMO with minecraft tools. Excavate a large area underneath, create tunnels, shafts. After a certain size inhabitants take up the area--you've made a player made dungeon while incorporating mining. Tadaaa
edit: Just don't let it go the way of Vanguard sea-faring combat. Heh.

to add to my previous post, EQ's solution to making you special was;
-A heavy grind to end game, or just a heavy grind
-Rare drops, or drops on random timers or long timers that had to be camped.
-Factional grinds, key grinds, grind grind grind

Other games made you special by locking everything behind Pvp, or some sort of skill contest (if you want to call it that). Lineage 2, crappy grind, open pvp, insane loot grind, and so on.

Maybe those weren't good solutions, to some people they were. Either way, the next generation MMO that manages to make a player feel special and more or less unique above others without resorting to the above, in my mind will be the MMO that rises on top.

The true next gen MMO needs a lot of Dark Souls in it.

From immersion, to leveling, game mechanics, itemisation, skill rewarding gameplay, weight (yes weight!), Dark Souls had to many things just right.

Immersion:
The pre chewed comic book lore and quests need to go. Have everything as mysterious and vague as possible, let the player experience their own stories. People filled whole blogs and disussion boards about Dark Souls, the actual story, the covenants, about the darkness and the light. Epic Shit.

Leveling:
A level 1 player can finish the game due to skill and from learning the game mechanics. Higher level simply allows specialisation, like the ability to wear heavy armor, special weapons etc. Leveling is practically infinite due to the exponential leveling curve, while being a high level makes content a little bit easier it was not neccessary to level beyond a certain point. The ability to stop at a certain level for balanced PvP matches is even recommended.

Game mechanics, skill and weight:
The realistic movement, blocking and dodge mechanics blew my mind. So simple, yet perfect. Once you mastered a weapon set, there was no stopping you. Everything you do has actual weight behind it: Heavy weapons move slower, yet throw a punch and have additional effects like knockdown. Wear light armor and you stay nimble etc. You have a few actual abilities and combos, no skillbar needed with 20 different neglible skills. Your spec IS "you" and what you wear.

Itemisation:
Nothing standing out here, yet it is simple and effective. There is stuff you can farm and stuff you can find and after beating difficult bosses, the option to combine stuff. Risk vs Reward is key.

I am aware that not everything from the Souls games translates well into a MMO, yet i am spoiled by that game and sick of WoW clones. I want an adult MMO, where actions define you. More Westeros, less Tyria.

TL;DR - Sandbox MMO with Dark Souls game mechanics and mysterious and open as fuck Lore. Yes, please.