Well, now what?

The original Rift was a pretty interesting model but then they killed it because the focus groups hated it. I was at a little press meeting that Scott Hartsman was heading and the subject of Heroes of Telara vs. Rift came up. Essentially it boiled down to was you had two friends who played the game. One guy said, "holy shit this awesome thing happened here!" and then when the friend when to check it out it was taken over by some rift or whatever and wasn't able to experience it.

That's when they decided to go with a more static world. That same focus group or different one at the same time, also told them to go two factions.

What a fucking shame. Someone should of shot that focus group. What the devs at Trion can do with their dynamic system, because it truly is dynamic, is pretty awesome. They just don't really use it much.

Draegan_sl said:

The original Rift was a pretty interesting model but then they killed it because the focus groups hated it. I was at a little press meeting that Scott Hartsman was heading and the subject of Heroes of Telara vs. Rift came up. Essentially it boiled down to was you had two friends who played the game. One guy said, "holy shit this awesome thing happened here!" and then when the friend when to check it out it was taken over by some rift or whatever and wasn't able to experience it.

That's when they decided to go with a more static world. That same focus group or different one at the same time, also told them to go two factions.

What a fucking shame. Someone should of shot that focus group. What the devs at Trion can do with their dynamic system, because it truly is dynamic, is pretty awesome. They just don't really use it much.

Click to expand...

I enjoyed Rift but it always felt like it was missing something and I never could put my finger on it. I know it's been stated before but the folks at Trion sure know how to push content out at a rapid rate and I wish other developers would follow suit. I know you run the risk of Q&A issues but damn it felt like everytime I turned around something new for Rift was coming out.

Draegan_sl said:

Make a PVP focused game, full loot.

Three sides (maybe two).
.

Click to expand...

I dislike hard coding sides, and I like the direction Rift is going in that you can choose 'factions'. There should not be an invisible wall between ones player base.

As far as designs, there needs to be a treadmill or reason to play in an MMO. I like some of what Guildwars 2 is doing, but the WvWvW is, itself, a form of a treadmill also.

I'm personally not so against levels, but I'm tired of static repetitive content. I think the solution is some form of player generated content and player controlled worlds. Most MMOs now are just big single player co-op games with very little world change.

Draegan_sl said:

The original Rift was a pretty interesting model but then they killed it because the focus groups hated it. I was at a little press meeting that Scott Hartsman was heading and the subject of Heroes of Telara vs. Rift came up. Essentially it boiled down to was you had two friends who played the game. One guy said, "holy shit this awesome thing happened here!" and then when the friend when to check it out it was taken over by some rift or whatever and wasn't able to experience it.

That's when they decided to go with a more static world. That same focus group or different one at the same time, also told them to go two factions.

What a fucking shame. Someone should of shot that focus group. What the devs at Trion can do with their dynamic system, because it truly is dynamic, is pretty awesome. They just don't really use it much.

Click to expand...

This sucks to read, I'm still waiting on a dynamic world. So sick of static content. :/

Gecko_sl said:

I dislike hard coding sides, and I like the direction Rift is going in that you can choose 'factions'. There should not be an invisible wall between ones player base.

As far as designs, there needs to be a treadmill or reason to play in an MMO. I like some of what Guildwars 2 is doing, but the WvWvW is, itself, a form of a treadmill also.

I'm personally not so against levels, but I'm tired of static repetitive content. I think the solution is some form of player generated content and player controlled worlds. Most MMOs now are just big single player co-op games with very little world change.

Click to expand...

I'm not against free for all PVP and it might actually work with the game doc I have in my brain. It's just that hard coded sides is just easier to design and build for. For example, you can build parts of the map as "home base" that you can raid. In a game without sides, you can't do this. Also teams or "sides" allows for a better way to create leaderboard competition I think.

Draegan_sl said:

I'm not against free for all PVP and it might actually work with the game doc I have in my brain. It's just that hard coded sides is just easier to design and build for. For example, you can build parts of the map as "home base" that you can raid. In a game without sides, you can't do this. Also teams or "sides" allows for a better way to create leaderboard competition I think.

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There's no need for FFA PVP. The answer is to create a DAOC style 'Frontiers' area for PVP and world conquest, but keep your entire playerbase and PVE areas open for everyone so there is more content allowed.

'Sides' should be player created, and not an entity of 'A' vs 'B', IMHO.

I personally hate 'leaderboards' in an MMO, as they turn it more into TF2 or other FPS type games, versus an alive world. However, that also should be player determined if it's included.

Draegan_sl said:

I'm not against free for all PVP and it might actually work with the game doc I have in my brain. It's just that hard coded sides is just easier to design and build for. For example, you can build parts of the map as "home base" that you can raid. In a game without sides, you can't do this. Also teams or "sides" allows for a better way to create leaderboard competition I think.

Click to expand...

I've always wondered why game devs were so insistent on making multiple sides on each server. It'd be interesting if each server was an identical EQ style PvE game and the "PvP server" was a conflict between each server's PvP forces. This makes server merges less problematic because you are only merging two PvP groups on one server vs. merging six PvP groups (assuming 3 sides on each server) across two servers.

Storyline wise maybe call each server a different reality lol. Could also be your cover for creating skill trees/gear restricted to PvP and PvE. The PvP world can be different without it feeling retarded.

Yea but I said I'm building a PVP focused game. It's specifically catering to people who like and want PVP and no PVE. The game is all about running around the world, gaining xp and levels and loot so you can PVP. Once you get to max level, you either stay max level or start over again at level 1 with better stats. Repeat.

Edit:
I'll toss up my idea tomorrow or later tonight when I have time to type it up.

Draegan_sl said:

Someone should of shot that focus group.

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Unfortunately the odds of picking a group of people who are entirely true gamers and appreciate things like this .... well the deck is a little stacked favor of recruiting the "give me the easiest game possible with the shiniest pixels" people.

Draegan_sl said:

The "next big thing" or whatever will be a game that doesn't follow this formula:

Step 1: Start at level 1
Step 2: Do Quests like WOW etc.
Step 3: Supplement Step 2 with "Dynamic Events" which is just a silly term for randomly generated or locally scripted short term repeated events (See Rift and GW2).
Step 4: Supplement Step 2 and 3 with shitty hallway, trash-boss-trash-boss dungeons.
Step 5: Reach Max Level
Step 6: Do Heroic aka "hard mode" versions of Step 4. This allows you to access Step 7.
Step 7: Raid 10, 20, 25 Man Dungeons.

Now you can add all sorts of flavor to this formula, but it will never make the game stick. Type of flavor are:

• Battleground PVP
• WvW PVP
• Crafting
• Pet Battles
• Achievements etc.

Now PVP can make a game stick if you build a way to promote it. This is what GW2 failed to do. There are no ladders, points, leaderboards or any other way to show off. In a game with mostly horizontal gear treadmills, you need to a way to show off your epeen to others, and the look of your gear is not really the way, because most of the time people only notice it when you're idle.

That's how you fix Battleground, or instanced, pvp and probably WvW too to some degree.

W3 can be fixed by inputting a more permanent aspect to it, even if it's erased one a week. Instead of running around the same map every single week fighting people in the same strats, you really need to add wall and base building like an RTS.

The rest on the list above are just extras that add to the game but never really make it successful. They make great additions though.

TLDR: Get rid of levels, get rid of dungeon grinds.

If I were making a game today this is what I'll do:

Make a PVP focused game, full loot.

Three sides (maybe two).

Max 100-200 people online per side. The smaller the community, the more you're able to become notorious to feed the peen.
Server wide top 20 leaderboards. One for PVE and one for PVP. PVE is 90% gearscore and 10% PVP achieves. PVP is all about kills or "Honor totals" or whatever scores. Build the network so once a week the top 5 players of each server can enter in an automated tournament for bragging rights and more leaderboards.

Figure out some solutions for dying servers or overbalanced servers.

No instances.

Gear is dropped at as a % of a kill. Uber rare weapon has a 1% load chance on a 20% pop mob. Has a chance to load every time a zone "resets", which could be ever 10 minutes or every day. Whatever. Common items have a 90% chance to drop. This is a combo of Diablo style loot and typical loot rules. If it could be done, NPCs would drop what they wear so you can "see" the loot on an NPC before you attack it. So if all your orcs are wearing greyish plate they drop greyish plate, but 5% of the time one will load with a reddish plate that's awesomer. You will see this.

Those are the basics. I've elaborated on the more detailed design elements before.

Click to expand...

I dont see how this idea would ever work.

In every MMO you have those very few that have played the beta, understand the loopholes for mass exp gain from the start, and are anywhere from 15-30 levels higher than others by the end of the second day the game has gone live.

So now you have a lvl 20ish-40ish just running around insta gibbing lower level players for the lulz by the end of the first night. Full loot you say? Ok...

Someone has worked for days to accomplish something, and then someone 2 levels higher jumps then and its all gone. Just how long would you play something like this?

If you are not at the bleeding edge curve from the moment the game goes live, dont have beta info / strats / exploits already mapped out....then you are at a massive disadvantage and you have now reduced your player base already from an extremely small niche group, down to about 10 people.

This design wouldnt be able to turn a profit , nor would it be even remotely fun for anyone other than those that got the initial jump from the instant the game launched.

You've made a ton of assumptions that don't work in my model, but then again I can't fault you since I didn't really flesh it out.

1) You are assuming levels mean a lot in power differentiation. In present terms think about how EVE allows newer players to contribute.
2) You assume that loot has the same significance as it does in WOW or EQ. In present terms think about how Borderlands or Diablo handles loot (just take out the randomness). If loot is plentiful with varying degrees of power, then you don't feel it's loss.
3) There is nothing in the design that takes days to accomplish that can be taken away in an instant.

The game theory is dependent on a "remort" system. First remort level is level 50 which takes, let's say, 4 days played to reach. Then you remort and you start again at level 1. Remort #2 is level 60 and now it takes 7 days played to reach 60 etc. Max level is 100 and you don't have to remort ever. Remorting gives your character some additional powers and flexibility like EVE, but doesn't inherintely make you that much stronger.

I'll flesh it out later for you guys to look at. I have to head out the door.

The fundamental problem with MMOs is that developers can't produce content quickly enough to keep players occupied and so they come up with artificial mechanics to make you repeat content over and over.

The only real way I can see that problem being solved is with generated content.

I think that's going to have to mean player generated (mods/extensions), procedurally generated, and some form of dungeon masters binding that all together and running events. Like a sandbox, but one players can build their own rules and characters and plots into.

The game platform would need all kinds of checks and balances to allow that, rating and budgeting systems, and preventing exploits would probably be much more complicated. I expect human review of submitted content would be needed too, but ultimately finding a cheaper way to make content is the only way to get off the grind.

So for me if there's ever going to be a game that will get MMOs off the safety rails they're stuck on it will be one that manages to put that platform together allowing developers to concentrate on it, and allowing the post launch content to come largely from the player base.

The main publishers funding development are highly risk averse, so they like games sticking to "proven formulas" even if that means the margin is lower and the game's life is limited. I'd bet on it taking a new entrant to disrupt the status quo, nobody already in the industry will manage it. Until that time, we're just going to see variations on the same basic graphical DIKU mud we've had all along.

I imagine the best way to test out player generated content before adding it into any permanent persistent world would be to make miniature game world instances relevant to the content to be tested.

Kind of like how diablo has randomly generated game world instances, you could have randomly picked player modules to test. Then just load up the players who want to test it out with random gear / classes / skills and let them go at it. That would allow for people to easily test out content without grinding on a test server while playing on a regular server. It would also add a bit of mystery and fun because you wouldn't know what dungeon you would be going through or what you would be playing as. It would be like a mini-game on the side of the main rpg mmo grindfest.

The player generated modules with the best after action reviews / scores would float to the top and I'm sure some small group of content developers for a game could QA them and adjust as necessary. Maybe there could even be some sort of player vote about what to add every few months from the top player generated content.

I guess there could be an option to migrate your character from a retail server to a test module, but there would be many situations where your characters level / gear / advancement would make testing out modules unrealistic.

Just study what they did in COH. Did it really add to the game?

I never played COH but it sounds like the player generated content there was popular and added to the gameplay value but the dev's let the system get out of hand.

I wouldn't judge a concept based on one games implementation of said concept.

I'm sure there are ways to manage player generated content to make it not override the rest of the game world. Some parts of a game world should be static, but if you just want to farm the same shit over and over new content is probably not a good thing.

Not all content is created equally. I'm sure some player generated content would be worthy of being permanently in a game but that would probably be a rare occurrence. It's far more likely some content should be rotated out and changed about.

It would make a game feel more alive if npc's or people living in towns periodically changed. Give the game a feeling of being dynamic. Not showing up to a city and everything is always exactly the same.


With any game content it comes down to dev's taking control of the player generated content and not letting it get out of hand. Reading about COH it sounds like the dev's there let players game the system by implementing content that provided too much reward for risk involved.

Limited player generated content is a good idea imo. Massive amounts of it is a bad idea.

User generated content is a horrible idea, in every way.
You have zero quality assurance.
You have no control over the design and implementation of your "world".
You have to create infrastructure and staff just to monitor and/or approve of user generated content.
You have to create the tools and assets to allow users to create content.
You want to be able to sell content to your playerbase but you have to justify that it's better than user generated content.
Infrastructure, back end shit etc.

Sure it's probably a cool idea if you're hosting your own EMU or Neverwinternights server type of deal. It's pretty great if you're doing it on a very small scale with limited people for your own enjoyment. But not with a large scale commerical product.

Draegan_sl said:

User generated content is a horrible idea, in every way.
You have zero quality assurance.
You have no control over the design and implementation of your "world".
You have to create infrastructure and staff just to monitor and/or approve of user generated content.
You have to create the tools and assets to allow users to create content.
You want to be able to sell content to your playerbase but you have to justify that it's better than user generated content.
Infrastructure, back end shit etc.

Sure it's probably a cool idea if you're hosting your own EMU or Neverwinternights server type of deal. It's pretty great if you're doing it on a very small scale with limited people for your own enjoyment. But not with a large scale commerical product.

Click to expand...

Your first two bulletin points seem to conflict with your third bulletin point.

As for player generated content over taking developer content, you would be right that is a bad idea.

Creating a non-static system that is capable of merging player generated content with developer content isn't a bad concept though. The key point here is the developer needs to control the vision of the game and add in content that helps that vision.

The vast majority of player generated content is crap, but there is some good content created. The best way to find that content is to let players run through it on a side mini game system and vote it to the top for the dev's / QA team to look at. That's a relatively low overhead project once the automated systems are set up. It wouldn't affect the persistent game world either so I don't see why you would need somebody to monitor user generated content (well beyond just banning people for inappropriate shit like nudes but access can be limited to subscribers and banning accounts would limit the need for large overhead). Once the highest rated content is QA checked and added to a normal server, monitoring of abuse potential that might have been overlooked can be delegated to the normal online GM's / guides etc.

The key is to not overload a game with too much player generated content to the point where quality assurance testing suffers.

Also, a lot of the content creation tools will already exist because, well, they used them to make the game. It would just be a matter of packaging the tools into a development application.

I also don't see the need to justify selling content to players. If it's that big an issue to you over buying some content that might not be entirely the work of the dev team then just have a game not sell expansions at all. Have all the costs deferred by monthly subscriptions. In all likelihood any game released these days would be FTP either way so the selling content argument wouldn't matter.

It's more about selling access to the game server.

A lot of your arguments come from playing games that were flooded with player generated content and your gaming experience suffered as a result.

Has it been done poorly in the past, yes. Could it be done better in the future, sure. Is it the future of mmo's, Idk.

It's certainly better than the same formula over and over. Level up and grind static unchanging content with an expansion every year or if the game is super popular biyearly.

I could see it as a possibility in an EQ world or any online world but you would be right it's not the type of experience meant for everybody. I would argue that in of itself is a start to solving this mmo game scene. No more games designed on a one size fits all template.

For those of us who value change and uncertainty in a gaming experience (that isn't caused entirely by player drama), player generated content that is well managed would be a step in the right direction.

My bullet points were just a list of independent problems that could arise with player generated content they don't really have to relate to each other honestly. It's just extra shit you either you have to take account of or create in house just to facilitate user generated content.

While a lot of your ideas are cool in theory, like having a system in place for judging content, merging it with dev created content. That's great, but that only works in fantasy land. Just look at game studios today. Do you really think they have time, money and dedication to run that type of system? Hell Arenanet doesn't even have live scoreboards yet, and that shit should be easy to do. The whole point is there is SO MUCH infrastructure, engineering, project management etc. that goes into something like that, that it is reduculious to implement. When building your content how much free space should a player have to create something? Are they free to use up to 1? 5? 10? gigabytes of content? Do you give players access to LUA or any other scripting language? What about sound files?

Do you want to operate and maintain data centers just to store player create environments? There's a reason there is a max size of things when you have player housing in Rift/EQ2 etc.

What about if you content is made in French and it's pretty popular. Do you now pay a language team money to translate it for you for global distribution? Hell, game studios have to take into account the size of tooltips when creating content so the translated material doesn't run out of space. or makes it look like shit.

Draegan_sl said:

My bullet points were just a list of independent problems that could arise with player generated content they don't really have to relate to each other honestly. It's just extra shit you either you have to take account of or create in house just to facilitate user generated content.

While a lot of your ideas are cool in theory, like having a system in place for judging content, merging it with dev created content. That's great, but that only works in fantasy land. Just look at game studios today. Do you really think they have time, money and dedication to run that type of system? Hell Arenanet doesn't even have live scoreboards yet, and that shit should be easy to do. The whole point is there is SO MUCH infrastructure, engineering, project management etc. that goes into something like that, that it is reduculious to implement. When building your content how much free space should a player have to create something? Are they free to use up to 1? 5? 10? gigabytes of content? Do you give players access to LUA or any other scripting language? What about sound files?

Do you want to operate and maintain data centers just to store player create environments? There's a reason there is a max size of things when you have player housing in Rift/EQ2 etc.

What about if you content is made in French and it's pretty popular. Do you now pay a language team money to translate it for you for global distribution? Hell, game studios have to take into account the size of tooltips when creating content so the translated material doesn't run out of space. or makes it look like shit.

Click to expand...

Like I said, I don't think games should be made one size fit all. If a French only player generated module is popular enough to be translated into English it could happen but that comes down to a voting system. For some reason I doubt in an English based game, a French module would rise to the top of a player voting system very often.

If a game was multi-language / country released then it could simply be run regionally. You really are taking this one size fits all game idea too far in my mind.

If you are worried about the size of player generated content you already mentioned the solution. Limit the size of module uploads to official testing system. Player generated content doesn't have to be stored indefinitely. I'm sure some sort of system to purge data could be conceived that cleared out the worst / most unpopular modules while better / more popular ones were stored for a little longer for further testing.

It wouldn't have to be a complicated system, it could even just be 3 tiered.

Maybe in tier 1 a content module gets tested 5 or 10 times and it's deemed unpopular less that 5 out of 10 favorable reviews it's deleted.

Tier 2 a content module gets tested 50 times if its favorable 35 out of 50 it moves on to tier 3.

Tier 3 a content module gets tested 500 times if its favorable 400 out of 500 it moves onto a player polling / voting system and the QA / dev teams can browse the highest favored of those.

Limit the player generated content upload system to paying subscribers and anybody who uploads 3 failed content ideas gets locked out for a period of time so people aren't spamming it with shit.


That's probably a simplistic solution and I'm sure there are better methods out there, I'm simply showing it's possible with automated systems without much overhead.


You really seem to be coming up with any and every reason you think of that this can't work even if there are rather simple solutions to these proposed problems of yours.


All you see is extra costs of a system but I see something that would keep players interested in a game longer, paying subscriptions longer, and giving them something to do if they have already beaten all the current content.

I have my doubts an automated low overhead system would cost a huge amount of money.

The whole language thing is just one issue I'm throwing out there. You can ignore it if you chose.

Running a game regionally is very expensive.

Limiting the size of a module will not give you enough room to create content of any significance.

The whole voting system, stored system, QA system etc. etc. all have huge costs involved with them not only from a software point of view, but from a man power point of view, a hardware point of view, a management point of view, a brand point of view. Sooooooooo many issues that it's not even worth taking on in any triple-A game.

Leave player created content to games that you can mod or support/hose locally. Like I said, Neverwinter Nights, EMUs, or even multiplayer games like CS and shit.

Edit:
Just to add because I want to bust your balls a bit, but you did just toss out a solution to your problem as "voting for something on the internet" which is almost usually serious business.