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Haven’t read Part I of Part I yet? Check it out!
This is going to be even longer, have less pictures, and even less retard references (ha!)
To recap, we now have a non-retarded/semi experienced staff focused on making fun content that works. As we discussed in Part I we also have brainstormed ideas and asked ourselves “Is this going to be fun?” Let’s dive into brainstorming a bit more. Obviously, we don’t just want a couple Devs coming up with all the ideas whether they’re experienced or not. Hire a polling group to locate and ask gamers what was their favorite/least favorite feature and what they thought was the most revolutionary feature of each MMO they played. I’ll give some quick examples off the top of my head of the type of results this type of activity might produce:
Good Stuff:
-UO: Character ownership/customization, skill system (understandable charc development), travel, player housing, seers with in game events/tournaments, easy crafting system, boats, treasure hunting, city/dungeon system, mounted warfare, notoriety system, community focus
-EQ: Race/Class combos, mid-range raid content, decent support staff
-DAOC: The design basics for a working siege system, decent engine/pre-launch testing
-SB: Massive content, completely customizable UI, improved siege warfare, player built housing/cities/nations, decent race/class balance, NPC driven crafting system, resource based NPC run mining system, intriguing community/politicking, open ended PvP, great group driven end game system
-WoW: Easy to learn quest system, passive leveling, massive raid content, instanced battlegrounds, interesting crafting rewards, a system built to crackdown on 3rd party hacks, launched a finished product
-GW: Instant travel, combat skill system, dueling system with notoriety and rewards, no monthly fee
Bad Stuff: (notice this list is longer)
-Every MMO released has lacked a good system for Dev to Player communication.
-Every game minus WoW and DAOC has had massive system (crashes) and security (hacks, bugs, 3rd party) issues.
-Every game minus UO(only at launch), SB, and GW has had a serious lack of vision and innovation
-Every game has had customer service that rivals the “we don’t give a fuck about you attitude” of most cell phone companies
-UO: Poor staff development (the entire support staff was made up of volunteers), no vision or end goal for the game
-EQ: The game was a giant pointless time sync, bad race/class balance, no community
-DAOC: Stupid mounted travel system, the siege and realm warfare systems were a very lackluster and poorly done attempt at an end game, horrid race/class balance, no support, no events
-SB: Travel time was absurd, PvM was deplorable and shouldn’t have existed, no short term PvP goals, no small scale PvP, pointless end game for small groups of players, poor city maintenance/siege/building balance and rewards, very bad/corrupt support
-WoW: Shiny hunting time sync with no end game goals, a very poorly done skill/leveling/charc development system, the worst race/class balance of any game ever launched, idiotic mounted/ship based travel system, no community, no events
-GW: A serious lack of content in every facet of the game, an end game that is only attainable if you had a set amount of people online, no community, twinked class balance
The best way to make a game fun is to remove any time syncs. Yes I know, it’s the industry standard way to waste people’s time and keep that 15$ rolling in. Here’s a better idea though, make your game interesting with plenty of fun things to do instead! Let’s get specific. Three of the biggest in game issues that affect all players are travel, race/class balance, and end game content/goals.
Travel:
GW and UO have the best solutions here. In UO you could mark a rune to pretty much anywhere and recall to that spot whenever you wanted to. However, this caused some territorial issues and needed to be refined if you plan to add some sort of nation/city content. GW also has a great solution that doesn't involve riding around on some mount that wastes 15 minutes of my life. You can instantly teleport to the nearest NPC run city of the area you want to get to. Furthermore, if you implement a GW type system you could add a modified zone specific SB type system where players can summon group mates to them. So for example, if you’re in Donkeypunch Dungeon fighting Tunkles and you need an additional player, all they would have to do is click the nearest town > teleport > load into the zone > get summoned to the group.
This would work great for PvM but would need to be tweaked for PvP. In PvP scenarios it would need to be more difficult to travel so that smaller groups could compete against larger ones without being insta-zerged. This is where mounts come in. Allow flying, swimming, land mounts that players can use to book it to their buddies who need help. What’s a fun distance to travel? Maybe 5 mins? So build the world to have a NPC run city or waypoints every 5 or so mins worth of travel.
Race/Class Balance:
For the love of god, having 3,938.7 race/class/skill combos is not a selling point and makes the game unplayable due to a serious lack of balance!!! It may look good on a bulleted features list but once players get in game they spend as much time being frustrated with these systems as anything. This can be fixed pretty easily but would take a consistent effort (particularly during beta). There must be a character balance team that is paid to watch people play and play the game themselves to see how everything balances out. With every game currently out other than GW this process consists of a collaboration of devs arguing over why the charc they play at home needs to be overpowered. This needs to be handled by a team that spends there time watching players and learning what is fun for the players and what isn't fun for them. Let’s cover what people do and don’t like about this:
-People hate not understanding what they’re doing. They freak out about making a wrong choice and having to start over. So they’re forced to waste more time reading forums and hoping that the post they read wasn’t made by some wacked out 37 year old wearing a helmet while he roleplays a dark elf female iwow. Furthermore, people don’t want to have to do the pick and choose your path bullshit (that can't be undone) five different times through charc creation. Here’s another big shocker, people do NOT want to play time-sync and remake each charc 3 times to get it right!!! People want to have the same chance of killing any player or monster as anyone else has. Having pro's and cons that require some convoluted race/class combo for 27 different people is NOT FUN!
-People want to make a charc and understand what they are doing. They want their charc to be balanced with everyone else. People pick races based on how they look and their lore. Most people don’t even look at the race specific attributes and it always bites them in the ass down the road so they either start over or quit. Soooo, make them all start with the same stats and abilities but look different. Then give everyone access to the same skills. The actual skill based, level based, or combo system can vary greatly as long as it’s simple and everyone has access to the same skills (which can be refined/undone to avoid re-rolls). This gives every player the ability to make their charc look how they want and play how they want without having to worry about being nerfed/buffed/underpowered/overpowered/etc. A universal ability system also saves HUGE dev time because each class doesn't have to have the exact same spell with a different name and symbol. Your class would be what you make it based on the skills you choose to train in a skill based system or unlock in a level based system.
End Game Content:
What is end game content? It’s something to do when your character is completed. Most games over the years have had the awesome end game goal of absolutely nothing. Your end game content is re-roll. So your entire gaming experience is focused around a very job-like leveling treadmill...wow fun, the EQ devs who set this precedence should all be shot in the foot, twice. DAOC and WoW have both tried to force people into teams with some sort of Middle School PE type system. Many other games have done Race Wars which is essentially the same thing but even more retarded. Other games have used a combo or just gone with a more PvM related end game like gathering rare/shiny items. I guess it’s supposed to work like, whoever is committed enough to the godly time-sync wins somehow? Bottomline, people get bored of this and quit.
Let’s go over some of the things that other games have done right in this regard. Many games have offered a guild warring system where guilds declare war and then can fight whenever they want. Other games have offered alternatives like crafting, treasure hunting, diplomacy, exploring, player housing, guild housing, player city and nation building through community interaction, goal oriented siege warfare, character customization, etc. One of the best ways to create end game content is to focus on it. The focus shouldn’t be on the trip to character completion; it should be on all the fun reasons to complete a character in the first place. Any of the above things could easily be incorporated into a game. Quite frankly, they all should be incorporated in some form. Game Updates and Expansions should be expanded end game content. In other words, additional things to do that you already haven’t done (ie not more leveling).
One of the highly overlooked and best ways to build end game content is to focus on the character and build ownership. This can be achieved by incorporating your properly built Race/Class system. Allow people to customize EVERYTHING! They start by customizing their character and not having to re-roll. Then allow them to customize their weapons, armor, clothes, guild, house, city, nation, boat, mount, etc as they go through the game. So I can pick a big ass Red Demon as my race and then make him small with big ears, put a purple robe on him, with a yellow jesters hat, riding a blue sheep if I want to. I don't want to fucken look like everyone else! Is that too much to ask for?
Then take this a step further in a more GW meets UO system where players have their own customizable Trophy rooms that can be instanced in space, put on a website, added to players in game house/castle/city/etc, or all three! When a player wins an event the trophy pops in there for everyone to see, when a guild declares defeat the log shows up in there, when you uncovered some elite treasure it pops up in there, when you craft your first high end sword it pops up in there, when you defeat some uber NPC it pops up in there, and so on. The possibilities are endless for events and ALL players want to show off their achievements!!! Character customization and player owned assets go way further to build customer loyalty than time spent leveling a charc that is totally useless once it reaches the end game.
This covers the Brain Storming part of Making a MMO, Check Back Later for Part III of Part I: Making a Next Gen MMO: The Completed World!
This is going to be even longer, have less pictures, and even less retard references (ha!)
To recap, we now have a non-retarded/semi experienced staff focused on making fun content that works. As we discussed in Part I we also have brainstormed ideas and asked ourselves “Is this going to be fun?” Let’s dive into brainstorming a bit more. Obviously, we don’t just want a couple Devs coming up with all the ideas whether they’re experienced or not. Hire a polling group to locate and ask gamers what was their favorite/least favorite feature and what they thought was the most revolutionary feature of each MMO they played. I’ll give some quick examples off the top of my head of the type of results this type of activity might produce:
Good Stuff:
-UO: Character ownership/customization, skill system (understandable charc development), travel, player housing, seers with in game events/tournaments, easy crafting system, boats, treasure hunting, city/dungeon system, mounted warfare, notoriety system, community focus
-EQ: Race/Class combos, mid-range raid content, decent support staff
-DAOC: The design basics for a working siege system, decent engine/pre-launch testing
-SB: Massive content, completely customizable UI, improved siege warfare, player built housing/cities/nations, decent race/class balance, NPC driven crafting system, resource based NPC run mining system, intriguing community/politicking, open ended PvP, great group driven end game system
-WoW: Easy to learn quest system, passive leveling, massive raid content, instanced battlegrounds, interesting crafting rewards, a system built to crackdown on 3rd party hacks, launched a finished product
-GW: Instant travel, combat skill system, dueling system with notoriety and rewards, no monthly fee
Bad Stuff: (notice this list is longer)
-Every MMO released has lacked a good system for Dev to Player communication.
-Every game minus WoW and DAOC has had massive system (crashes) and security (hacks, bugs, 3rd party) issues.
-Every game minus UO(only at launch), SB, and GW has had a serious lack of vision and innovation
-Every game has had customer service that rivals the “we don’t give a fuck about you attitude” of most cell phone companies
-UO: Poor staff development (the entire support staff was made up of volunteers), no vision or end goal for the game
-EQ: The game was a giant pointless time sync, bad race/class balance, no community
-DAOC: Stupid mounted travel system, the siege and realm warfare systems were a very lackluster and poorly done attempt at an end game, horrid race/class balance, no support, no events
-SB: Travel time was absurd, PvM was deplorable and shouldn’t have existed, no short term PvP goals, no small scale PvP, pointless end game for small groups of players, poor city maintenance/siege/building balance and rewards, very bad/corrupt support
-WoW: Shiny hunting time sync with no end game goals, a very poorly done skill/leveling/charc development system, the worst race/class balance of any game ever launched, idiotic mounted/ship based travel system, no community, no events
-GW: A serious lack of content in every facet of the game, an end game that is only attainable if you had a set amount of people online, no community, twinked class balance
The best way to make a game fun is to remove any time syncs. Yes I know, it’s the industry standard way to waste people’s time and keep that 15$ rolling in. Here’s a better idea though, make your game interesting with plenty of fun things to do instead! Let’s get specific. Three of the biggest in game issues that affect all players are travel, race/class balance, and end game content/goals.
Travel:
GW and UO have the best solutions here. In UO you could mark a rune to pretty much anywhere and recall to that spot whenever you wanted to. However, this caused some territorial issues and needed to be refined if you plan to add some sort of nation/city content. GW also has a great solution that doesn't involve riding around on some mount that wastes 15 minutes of my life. You can instantly teleport to the nearest NPC run city of the area you want to get to. Furthermore, if you implement a GW type system you could add a modified zone specific SB type system where players can summon group mates to them. So for example, if you’re in Donkeypunch Dungeon fighting Tunkles and you need an additional player, all they would have to do is click the nearest town > teleport > load into the zone > get summoned to the group.
This would work great for PvM but would need to be tweaked for PvP. In PvP scenarios it would need to be more difficult to travel so that smaller groups could compete against larger ones without being insta-zerged. This is where mounts come in. Allow flying, swimming, land mounts that players can use to book it to their buddies who need help. What’s a fun distance to travel? Maybe 5 mins? So build the world to have a NPC run city or waypoints every 5 or so mins worth of travel.
Race/Class Balance:
For the love of god, having 3,938.7 race/class/skill combos is not a selling point and makes the game unplayable due to a serious lack of balance!!! It may look good on a bulleted features list but once players get in game they spend as much time being frustrated with these systems as anything. This can be fixed pretty easily but would take a consistent effort (particularly during beta). There must be a character balance team that is paid to watch people play and play the game themselves to see how everything balances out. With every game currently out other than GW this process consists of a collaboration of devs arguing over why the charc they play at home needs to be overpowered. This needs to be handled by a team that spends there time watching players and learning what is fun for the players and what isn't fun for them. Let’s cover what people do and don’t like about this:
-People hate not understanding what they’re doing. They freak out about making a wrong choice and having to start over. So they’re forced to waste more time reading forums and hoping that the post they read wasn’t made by some wacked out 37 year old wearing a helmet while he roleplays a dark elf female iwow. Furthermore, people don’t want to have to do the pick and choose your path bullshit (that can't be undone) five different times through charc creation. Here’s another big shocker, people do NOT want to play time-sync and remake each charc 3 times to get it right!!! People want to have the same chance of killing any player or monster as anyone else has. Having pro's and cons that require some convoluted race/class combo for 27 different people is NOT FUN!
-People want to make a charc and understand what they are doing. They want their charc to be balanced with everyone else. People pick races based on how they look and their lore. Most people don’t even look at the race specific attributes and it always bites them in the ass down the road so they either start over or quit. Soooo, make them all start with the same stats and abilities but look different. Then give everyone access to the same skills. The actual skill based, level based, or combo system can vary greatly as long as it’s simple and everyone has access to the same skills (which can be refined/undone to avoid re-rolls). This gives every player the ability to make their charc look how they want and play how they want without having to worry about being nerfed/buffed/underpowered/overpowered/etc. A universal ability system also saves HUGE dev time because each class doesn't have to have the exact same spell with a different name and symbol. Your class would be what you make it based on the skills you choose to train in a skill based system or unlock in a level based system.
End Game Content:
What is end game content? It’s something to do when your character is completed. Most games over the years have had the awesome end game goal of absolutely nothing. Your end game content is re-roll. So your entire gaming experience is focused around a very job-like leveling treadmill...wow fun, the EQ devs who set this precedence should all be shot in the foot, twice. DAOC and WoW have both tried to force people into teams with some sort of Middle School PE type system. Many other games have done Race Wars which is essentially the same thing but even more retarded. Other games have used a combo or just gone with a more PvM related end game like gathering rare/shiny items. I guess it’s supposed to work like, whoever is committed enough to the godly time-sync wins somehow? Bottomline, people get bored of this and quit.
Let’s go over some of the things that other games have done right in this regard. Many games have offered a guild warring system where guilds declare war and then can fight whenever they want. Other games have offered alternatives like crafting, treasure hunting, diplomacy, exploring, player housing, guild housing, player city and nation building through community interaction, goal oriented siege warfare, character customization, etc. One of the best ways to create end game content is to focus on it. The focus shouldn’t be on the trip to character completion; it should be on all the fun reasons to complete a character in the first place. Any of the above things could easily be incorporated into a game. Quite frankly, they all should be incorporated in some form. Game Updates and Expansions should be expanded end game content. In other words, additional things to do that you already haven’t done (ie not more leveling).
One of the highly overlooked and best ways to build end game content is to focus on the character and build ownership. This can be achieved by incorporating your properly built Race/Class system. Allow people to customize EVERYTHING! They start by customizing their character and not having to re-roll. Then allow them to customize their weapons, armor, clothes, guild, house, city, nation, boat, mount, etc as they go through the game. So I can pick a big ass Red Demon as my race and then make him small with big ears, put a purple robe on him, with a yellow jesters hat, riding a blue sheep if I want to. I don't want to fucken look like everyone else! Is that too much to ask for?
Then take this a step further in a more GW meets UO system where players have their own customizable Trophy rooms that can be instanced in space, put on a website, added to players in game house/castle/city/etc, or all three! When a player wins an event the trophy pops in there for everyone to see, when a guild declares defeat the log shows up in there, when you uncovered some elite treasure it pops up in there, when you craft your first high end sword it pops up in there, when you defeat some uber NPC it pops up in there, and so on. The possibilities are endless for events and ALL players want to show off their achievements!!! Character customization and player owned assets go way further to build customer loyalty than time spent leveling a charc that is totally useless once it reaches the end game.
This covers the Brain Storming part of Making a MMO, Check Back Later for Part III of Part I: Making a Next Gen MMO: The Completed World!
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